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CHAPTER FOUR

LIFE IN THE LORD:

OBJECTIVE, PERSPECTIVE, POWER AND PROCEDURE

In being reasonable, one needs to know something of how a thing proceeds, to what it is directed, by what power it is to be done and in what perspective it is to be understood. Hence in this Chapter, we look at biblical treatments, brief and pointed, on these topics. Hence they become readily examinable.

Elements found are as follows:

1 Objective

3 Foci

4 Sites, together with

5 Glories in the Field of Gifts, with their 5 Wonders.

The last are not in the more limited field of specifics, but in the generic, a matter of kind. For the former, one may look in the short work, A Question of Gifts.

The four sites are the four major Bible passages, noted in A, B and C below. There is much for our purpose in the pastoral epistles, those to Timothy from Paul, but we add more from Ephesians 2-3 and I Corinthians 9.

We are looking at the disciple's life in Christ with particular matters in mind and to view, so that we see it in PERSPECTIVE, in POWER and in GIFTS. These are the three foci. Last we come to 5 Glories in the Field of Gifts, found in Ephesians and I Corinthians, with their 5 Wonders .

IN PERSPECTIVE

I TIMOTHY 1:5

One Objective

I Timothy 1:5 tells us that the purpose of the commandment (a term signifying all in sum) is love.

The word is agape, the deep religious love found in and due to the Lord. I Corinthians 13 tells of its nature, that it is does not seek its own (special, selfish) things, is not puffed up, hopes all things, believes all things, bears all things, is not unseemly, is superior to all gifts, for example. It is consonant with the love of God who did not withhold His eternal Word from becoming His only begotten Son, but rather so loved that He gave Him, so that, not in judgment as aim but with salvation, He came to offer Himself, a substitutionary sacrifice for all who receive Him, sufficient for all, adapted to all, available for all, with a love expansive enough to cover all (Colossians 1:19ff., I John 4:7, 2:2), so that His death was on behalf of all though only applicable through faith, no more a cover for any, than the sacrificial lamb, where faith lacked (Deuteronomy 29:18-20, in parallel with Romans 8:32).

The funds are adequate, but cheques are not made out where the recipient does not desire them...

Such love is neither undiscriminating, nor discriminatory. Love is, after all, not blind. In I Corinthians 13, we find that love "rejoices in the truth." There is its base, and there its milieu. God is love AND truth (I John 4:7ff., John 14:6). There is no division. Lies are NEVER lovely, and love never has need to lie.

Not only so, such is the rejoicing in truth on the part of love, that not only is sin diagnosed carefully, its sentence lovingly accepted by the Lord Himself (I Peter 1:22ff.), for those who will receive it (Romans 8:32, Isaiah 53:1-6), but the word, will and ways of God are published exceedingly clearly in the Bible, which Christ endorsed and showed forth (Matthew 5:17ff., John 14:26). This shows the love in the free offer of the Gospel, the truth in its provisions, both to engage and save and to disengage from what rejects it, leaving it where it was, so that the sentence on sin in that case remains. It neither forces nor acts in a discriminatory fashion, but in truth it discriminates between faith and disbelief, and receives what receives it. In doing so, it is in the light of the Gospel.

Love, such love, is the objective. It is one. This is the motivation of God in sending His Son for our salvation, rather than condemnation, and it is to be the motive, in this same Son, by His Spirit, of those who receive Him.

Yet love uses means, which are intimate. Thus the objective is love with three issues joined; for it is the LOVE OF GOD, which is in view, of God in whom faith is to be vested, in whose Spirit life is to be lived, by whose knowledge love is to be implemented, His love AS God, who alone IS God.

Firstly, it is love out of a pure heart, secondly, with a pure conscience, and thirdly, associated with faith unfeigned. This last is genuine faith which has nothing whatever to do with convenient statements, useful words, agreeable agendas. It is from the heart and actual. God is actual. Pretence and pretension are not privileged in the least with Him; in fact, as to the former, you see an excellent example in Sapphira and Ananias in Acts 5. Pure lucidity of truth is in this faith. As to the latter, you find it in Matthew 23, where strutting pretension was an abomination to Christ.

So much for the unfeigned faith. The clear conscience is one which is not merely seeking to get along with life, but as keen for its clarity, as with the pure mountain streams, as is a housewife with zeal, for the shining, sparkling lustre of her kitchen, ready for food and joy. The pure heart is ally and friend of both of these, and abhors mixed motives, casuistry, blatant latencies, which border on action, but never manage to come into being. It is the one which as Christ declared in Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, sees God.

There then is one objective, with means to it.

As to the faith, it is directed to its right object, for it is not a mere quality of confidence, such as the abhorrent self-belief which so many vainly tout, though it is so superficial as to merely a strut, and a wrongly placed one at that. The biblical object of faith is not at all oneself (Jeremiah 17), but altogether God, as U.S. coins have stated, though the mood seems to be diverging.

Proverbs 3:3-5 tells us to trust in the Lord with ALL our hearts, not to lean to our own understanding, in all our ways to acknowledge Him, and that He will direct, give straightness to our paths. It is not a matter of tasting, but swallowing.

Hebrews 6, speaks of tasting and going no further). As to the question of WHO is LORD, the Bible has one unequivocal answer. It is the God who has spoken consistently, insistently and resistantly to any addition or variation of man, in both the Old and the New Testament (II Timothy 3:16, Matthew 5:17-20 cf. SMR Appendix D). It is He who has revealed both the substance of His desire for man to know Him, even deep things, and the expressive means by which to have it exactly and effectively articulated.

It is in the supreme and personal revelation, in stringent accord with that written, since both come from the same Person (cf. I Peter 1:10ff., II Peter 2:19ff.). The expressive finale of focus is Jesus Christ, the exact image of the living God, sent as God from Him (Isaiah 48:16), being in the form of God but for the service of redemption, adopting that of man, exploding grace into the atmosphere of life, by His atonement for sin, breach of death's bounds and bonds and gift of eternal life for man.

Unfeigned faith has thus an object: it is God as shown in the Bible, manifested in Jesus Christ, Creator (Colossians 1:15), Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11, Acts 4:11-12) and friend of heart (John 15), indispensable (Luke 13), indisputable (II Corinthians 10:5) and wholly reliable to the end, till His return and forever (John 10:9,27-28).

There then is the one objective, and there are the means for it. These are searching, but then, when GOD is the One who does the searching, then comes by His place, position and power, that purification and purging so necessary for the beauty of holiness, wonder of truth and keenness of peace (Psalms 32, 139:23, 51).

IN POWER

II TIMOTHY 1:6-7

The Entwining of the Power of the Lord, through the Spirit,
around the spirit of man
so that a spirit of power
replaces one intimidated, disoriented or seduced.

Paul is addressing his son in the faith, Timothy. Knowing that Timothy has genuine faith, he reminds him of this, and of its family background, for Timothy is not the first to know Christ in that milieu. Then he asks him to "STIR UP THE GIFT OF GOD WHICH IS IN YOU." This involves recognition of one negative and three positive features. God has NOT given us the spirit of fear, but he HAS given us who believe, a spirit of power, and of love and of a sound mind.

This spirit is what we ourselves have (as in I Thessalonians 5:23), being part of being a member of the human race. Thus in Proverbs 20:27, we learn that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord through which He examines our hearts. We have, in our created milieu of body, mind and spirit, a spirit as an investigatory, ruminative, imaginative, vitalising, searching and researching thrust to which mind is adduced and for which the body is produced. God IS a Spirit; and in HIS being are the Speaker, the Father, the Spoken, the Word and the Holy Spirit, He who applies broadly. Now, the Holy Spirit, in His broadcast of power and grace and intimation and for the people of the Lord, intimacy and inward health and strength of being, assists our spirits, when they are repentant, received and redeemed by Christ, to be strong.

Hence Paul tells Timothy that we have not been given the spirit of weakness and fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. THIS is our norm, if sin had never visited us. Toward this, is our restoration, at redemption. Within this, there is the enlivening Spirit of God for those who through Christ have this blessed guest in their lives. Thus remade, moved and enabled, Timothy is to reflect IN HIS SPIRIT, to realise in other words that fear and weakness are no part of the spiritual inheritance of the Christian.

Dispel such thought, and being endued by God, stir up the very gifts in you, given by God in His own way as it pleases Him (as in I Corinthians 12:11), so that the privilege of underlying and supported strength, like the engine of a car, can move you to apt things, confident appraisal, relish and liveliness. Let love be actuating you, and a sound mind, preserved from pollution through grace and obedience, be working for you, and the power of God, thrusting in your spirit.

The experience of being lifted from exhaustion, enervation, or even something approaching the asthenic, to the athletic, abounding, is available by promise as in Isaiah 40:28-31. It declares this, that

"He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, he increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

Thus the power and the spirit are thrust in and out, and the Spirit of God (Ephesians 3:16) strengthens with might, just as He does not allow the strain to surpass the power to bear it (I Corinthians 10:13).

This has been my own experience on multiplied occasions, it simply being a fact that the empty vessel and the hand of faith, presenting it to one's Lord and Saviour, finds such a result, yes even when to mere fainthearted and headstrong self-affirmation, it might seem out of the question.

Observe also that what is here in view is "the spirit of power". The Holy Spirit being given (Romans 8:9) to every Christian, God through His Spirit gives power to those who obey Him (Acts 5:32), His presence and His tuition in the will of God in accord with His word (cf. Acts 16). Moreover, the capital is not put in this Greek discourse, so that the meaning equally moves to the RESULT of the activation by the Spirit of God in the converted heart, making the enclosed and sharpened spirit of man, one endued, endowed, with a thrust in the wind through the sails of the life boat, a surging rather than a static, an aspiring rather than a sedate, an energised rather than a merely formalistic spirit, indeed a spirit led out, which has the very savour and tang of Christ (II Corinthians 2:14), who "through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place."

IN GIFTS

EPHESIANS 2-3, and II CORINTHIANS 9:15

As noted we are not here concerned with specifications of gifts, but rather with the deeper overall concepts which are here covered. There are even so, glories to be noted in this region.

The gifts from God, in grace, power and favour, here considered from the word of God, are five.

First, there is the gift which provides the POWER TO DO, to take action and complete it, as specified by the Lord in His wisdom. You find this in Ephesians 3:7. Paul states that he became a minister (service provider) "according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effectual working of His power" (bold added). Grace is undeserved favour. Hence this being given in general, through adoption of the saved sinner into the very family of God, so that it is an individual childhood in Christ that is in view. To this growing new creation, there comes not a donation as if to a beggar, thrown down, but one more like a modelled feature added to a building, something planned, as by an architect, construed by a creator, inbuilt now by the fitter. The effectual working of the power of God ENSURES that the gift of the grace of God for the work, way and pilgrimage to come, is implanted, not lost in transmission or hindered by effective obstruction!

Secondly, there is the POWER TO SAVE. Salvation is unearnable, we find in Ephesians 2:7-8, the whole bundle of becoming a saved person by grace through faith being NOT of ourselves, but the gift of God. NOTHING of ourselves is its contribution, seeing that it is a gift; and since it is a gift by grace (Romans 5:15), even the postage, as it were, is free! It is on the other hand, never forced, nor is love smashed by some kind of sovereignty without feeling, since GOD IS LOVE! He would have ALL reconciled to Himself by the blood of Christ (Colossians 1:19ff.), but all are NOT, because the divine disposition is not to force nor selfishly to seek His own. He is quite incapable of fraud, of 'finding' what is not to be found because the will of man, discerned before creation, is contrary (the case in John 3:19, despite Christ coming NOT to judge the world but that it might be saved), has another preference.

We move from this power to save, to the POWER TO OVERWHELM.

Before this, Christ weeps (Luke 19:42ff.), and there is REASON for those tears. In the case of Jerusalem, its proud religious boastfulness in so many at last led to their smashing instead of being saved by Christ! as far as His body was concerned, and His bearing their execration as part of the curse He took in order to deliver many from the rule, reign of error or terror or both, of sin, yes, and from death no less, for eternal life does not die, and what became of His raised body, is what is to become of that of the one pardoned, at peace with God and subject to the general resurrection to be with Christ.

Just as the gift from God is effectual, so in particular salvation is unearnable, because it is a gift. So further the love that gives and the dimensions of the gift are vast as in Ephesians 3:8: for what Paul preaches to man is

"the unsearchable riches of Christ."

Consider in superabundance this, as in II Corinthians 8:9, that Christ,

"though He was rich, yet ... He became poor that we, through His poverty might become rich."

That is the third aspect of its glory to which we look.

Next, we find the POWER TO INUNDATE. The gift in the Gospel is also unspeakable (II Corinthians 9:15), beyond any normal form of utterance, overwhelming. The pondering of infinite bliss from the infinite God in His infinite holiness, brought near by the blood of Christ, and the news of adoption in His family, the kingdom where truth is relished and peace is realised, being unspeakable, inundates! How long to relish infinity!

Last we consider the POWER TO EXTRADITE, not for judgment, but FROM it! Thus, this gift, glory, Gospel, salvation and eternal life is indispensable (Ephesians 2:12-13). Overwhelming indeed is this bounty and beauty and blessing in the gift of God, which is eternal life, the grant of glory (Romans 6:23).

There is the fourth aspect of its glory set before us.

Thus we are given perspective, power, and gifts in an array which provides in Christ Himself the grant of what is vast, effectual, indispensable and unearnable. Yet they are also, once given, inalienable. Thus in Ephesians 1:11, we who are Christians, have ALREADY obtained an inheritance. Not only so, but it is because those who are Christians and so obtain, have been PREDESTINATED to this; which also you see in II Timothy 1:8-9, so that once saving faith is there, so is eternity in Christ, because the tip of the iceberg in faith, has beneath it the foreknowledge and predestination of God as also in Romans 8:29ff...

Shamefacedness, secret-discipleship and the like are mere tastings without swallowing; for Christ did not indicate, Whoever tastes this drink, but whoever drinks it ... and whoever crumbles the bread, but whoever eats it has eternal life. Yes, it can be hard, and so is rock. It can be testing; but so do we wish our new airplanes to be! Truth must out, and when the love of God in Christ, framed in the Gospel is in, then truth being back of it and in it, and the Spirit of truth in power being with it, then truth WILL out, and one place will be in the mouth of the believer (Luke 9:26). A good tree in FACT bears good fruit, and whatever is planted by the Father is NOT uprooted, while false seed may lead to false plants that are. The seed in question is that of the word of God (I Peter 1:23). Through Peter we here learn that it is THROUGH that very seed, not some other, that we are reborn as children of God in the first place.

Thus in perspective and power, in gifts and with love, the LOVE OF GOD, as the objective, in the truth which He is, there is cohesion as in life, the inter-relationship and even inter-penetration in this way and in that, of many things. Life, eternal life, life for human kind, not some aerial option but what it is built for in the first place, depends on the seed being right, the power being adequate, the instructions being followed to find Christ and who He is and what He wants, so that faith is not in vain, but in Him: not some idol of the same name, invented by culture, psychological desire or political intrigue.

In Him, there are not worlds, but something much more: the power and invention and grace and plan to INVENT them, as He will, and in its time, the Lord will make a new heavens and a new earth. Then the total environment will be in one accord. For now, there is test in a test environment, and passing the test is one of the dowered properties, however weak like a bruised reed one may like Peter, become on some occasion. Not only is the Christian NOT tested beyond what he or she can bear (I Corinthians 10:13), but the seed and the need is spiritually met, so that according to that need, so is the feed, the function and the power. This is so even when one is brought before the wicked councils of destructive man (Luke 21:15).

It is rather like entering an airplane. It is ridiculous to expect to run at 700 k.p.h.. When in a modern yet, it is just so NOT to expect a result of THIS ORDER. That is where you have been conveyed, and in this conveyance, this is what is able to happen (Colossians 1:13, Luke 137, Ephesians 1:19).. Since the power involved is that which raised Christ mangled body from the dead, is that of the Creator of all the power of the universe as an aside, while the information in the DNA of His word to man would occupy perhaps 1000 volumes of code, all correlated, in one language only, so He speaks to the heart and spirit of man, no less, in words fit for our comprehension with the spirit of a man, which also, He has made, adjusted, adapted, created for use! (cf.Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed: Barrister of Bliss Ch. 4).

Life with this Lord is lovely: neither a matter of mere convenience, nor ludicrous impossibility, neither too easy for serious judgment, nor so hard as to break; it is exciting in this, that it is really living, calling for all. It requires patience, since having the Lord, you are not your own lord any more; but where love is present (even a horse can respond to some extent in this way, making of its kind, a glorious fellowship), then this is an improvement, a feature of function to be desired. Again, it is not as if the most difficult decisions will not have to be made, and search for biblical principles perceived with clarity, and one WILL be tested in more ways than one. Yet what is the good of BEING something, if you cannot be tested to be what you are!

Here is more than being; it is being blessed; and more than that, being blessed by your Creator; and more yet than this, being blessed by your Saviour, Redeemer and abiding Friend. That, it is life in Christ Jesus.