AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH

A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST AND BASE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
OF AUSTRALIA ON BIBLICAL LINES …

THE BIBLE ON THE SPIRITUAL WALK:
NOT POST-MORTEM, BUT POST-NATAL

Walking, Working and Not Wandering
The Victory of Grace and the Grace of Victory

There has been a huge amount of attention in recent years in some church circles, on being born again. It is not untrue, far from it; but it has tended to be added, contrary to liberal ideas, and while that is good, it has also tended to become a feature so vast as to diminish the phenomenon of growth in grace and in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as prescribed by Peter (II Peter 3:18).

Accordingly, many have become a virtual law to themselves, despising such a thing as authority, or textual care in exposition, and making opinion lord, feeling fact and a featureless emotion-filled lordliness to assume the power to determine all things. One recalls one person who could scarcely conceive that ANYONE would THINK of differing with scriptural grounds exposed, with any vigour. It appeared axiomatic to her that one held opinions and that was that. Pastors were cushions for comfort, but as to exhorting, rebuking as Paul prescribes (II Timothy 4:2), it appeared unthinkable, like a man from Mars.

While pastors and elders are certainly not to be lordly (I Peter 5:1ff.), they do have an office, and the word of God is not a mere resource in which one can rest one's weary mental limbs, and choosing tea or coffee, ignore the spread provided. We must GROW in KNOWLEDGE, not in self-will or domains of undisciplined thought. The word of God rules; it does not suggest. God is Lord, not convener.

It is the word of God itself which must rule, all of it; and when being BORN AGAIN is all, or virtually all, then of course the idea of actually growing UP spiritually, acquiring grace and understanding and illumination and gaining more and more systematic scriptural grasp, applying the ways of God from the word of God with vigour and address, this becomes an oddity. Yet as in all birth, growing up is integumental to reality. Life DOES grow. It is only God who does not! We are children of God, not lords of life.

Let us then examine some of the Biblical texts on WALKING, which presupposes strength and an ambulatory technique, getting on with direction and purpose, with wisdom and traversing territory on our way. After all, this is ONE of the verifications of the word of God, that it works! ONE of the fields in which it works is that of the personal life of the man or woman or indeed child of God.

First, let us consider the phrases in which walking occurs, relative to life in the presence of the living God, and garner the thematic stress, the scope and the wonder of it all.

Then, we may ponder the path of Romans 7-8, and apply this background the more completely to the issue of VICTORY by faith. As this involves power with wisdom, going with grace, control with kindness, it is no mere exemption from this or that, though there are many pointed outcomes; it is an entire grace and goodness which works in life, with a spiritual power which is personal, since God is personal, and which imbues the recipient with an image-conforming dynamic towards Christ-likeness. Naturally, there is no way the natural, the created, can become more than godly, since God is infinite, and it is as a child of God that one is to act; but through the Cross of Christ, there is a way in which one may be made not less! One may be conformed more and more in character to the Christ who as the very Word of God created man, to the image of Him who created in the first place, man in the divine image.

That this same Jesus is the incarnate Christ, no mere luminary, but one so that there is none in the heavens like Him, the precise image of the eternal God, eternal, with the fulness of deity His everlasting nature, is no mere theological doctrine. It means that in being saved from sin, as a child by a life-saver in the tides of the ocean, one meets the God of creation, and no surrogate, and thus despite sin, man may both meet and know God. Knowing Him is a vaster experience than any oceanic grandeur or mountainous glory. Being changed from glory to glory according to His likeness (II Corinthians 3:18), and yet as a child having liberty in the Lord, this is re-generation, a creation in itself; and though it is bringing one back to where one came from, the hand of the Maker, it has additional features.

Thus Adam was with God, but on probation; the redeemed are with God, but immune to reprobation because as Romans 5 puts it, if God saved us when we were yet sinners, how much more will we be saved from wrath by Him. Let us put it in Paul's very words:

^"For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die;
yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.

^"Much more then, having now been justified by His blood,
we shall be saved from wrath through Him.
For if when we were enemies
we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son,
much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

"And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received the reconciliation."

It is the same in one aspect, with that coming regenerative work which God has foretold is to come to many in Israel, as in Romans 11:25ff., Ezekiel 37. Deuteronomy 32, from which Paul quotes relative to coming events for that land, indicates that it is when Israel is without strength (32:36), when it faces stark ruin, that God will act for its deliverance with a power which will be nothing short of divine! As in Micah 7:15, it will have that celestial magnitude, that divine grace which was shown to Israel in the Exodus (cf. Downfall from Defamation Ch. 4).

Similarly, for anyone who comes to Christ, even where there is no national aspect, or military, there is the same covenantal power of grace to fulfil itself in love. When the strength of the psyche is no more trusted in, the power of one's own nature is no longer the be-all and end-all, when one seeks God because of need, because of His grace, when one seeks pardon as treasure and peace as life, when one seeks God through His covenant in the Cross of Christ: it is then in repentance that one finds realisation, that reality imbues the spirit and divinity acts on humanity to beget one new child, a child of God (cf. Romans 8:16, Titus 3:5-7, John 3 and see SMR pp.520ff.).

It i then, in turn, that there is found the extreme grace of the work of the Spirit of God, for God is a trinity (cf. SMR pp. 532ff.). Then comes that nurture, that empowering in peace, that grace with gumption, that courage with kindness, that pity with training and that comfort with control, that liberty with love which is the very acme of human life. It is found in the name of Christ, in the confines of His covenant (for the way IS narrow), but in the grandeur of His presence (cf. II Cor. 3:17-18), who is the God of all comfort, and deliverance (II Timothy 4:17-18, II Corinthians 1:3-4,10).

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our tribulation,
that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble,
with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

"For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us,
so our consolation also abounds through Christ.
Now if we are afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation,
which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer.

"Or if we are comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.
And our hope for you is steadfast,
because we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings,
so also you will partake of the consolation.

"For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength,
so that we despaired even of life.

"Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves,
that we should not trust in ourselves
but in God who raises the dead,
who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us;
in whom we trust that He will still deliver us..."

Paul then acknowledges the work of their prayers for Him.

First, then, our domain is that of walking in the Lord, acting in His presence, living in His direction, confined to what is narrow, yet abounding in a grandeur incomparable, in the power of One with an indomitable Lord, one willing to die on the Cross, able to be resurrected from the tomb! It is a thrilling, sometimes a painful, but a glorious condition in which to be found, grounded in grace.

In one respect, it is like the train-line through the Rocky Mountains in Canada, from Vancouver to Banff. Narrow ? exceedingly. Yet is not the grandeur incomparable, and are not the very limits the means of abundance and generosities of participation which come in no other way ?

I THE WALK OF PRACTICAL FAITH

1) Romans 4:12, 2) Romans 6:4, 3) II Corinthians 10:3, 4) II Cor. 12:18

The first: Walk in the steps of Abraham - a faith with both temporal and eternal results, the one taking time, the other receiving eternity.

The second: Walk in newness of life. Do not walk as if still an embryo (very limiting - while you cannot wander in the womb, you cannot go far either). So live, think, act and decide as one regenerate with spiritual values, objectives and ethics, with the power that comes from the God of regeneration, and the purposefulness, and the point of it all, love from a pure heart, a clear conscience and from sincere faith (I Timothy 1:5).

The third: Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war in the flesh ... Spiritual war is our affair, not mere bloodshed; for our weapons and way are spiritual (Ephesians 6). Thus, in II Corinthians 10:5, Paul is casting down not bodies but 'imaginations' and bringing everything into subjection, not to himself or his junta, but to the obedience of Christ. THIS is the aim, beyond ourselves, under God.

The fourth: Did we not walk in the same spirit ? Here Paul is appealing to the consistency of his unselfish and sacrificial service; and it is important that all of us have such a testimony to back our ways. I will very gladly, said Paul, spend and be spent for your sakes!

II THE WORKING IN WALKING - PLUS AND MINUS

1) Galatians 5:25, 2) Ephesians 2:10, 3) 4:17-18

In the first, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Life is more than experience. It is also a matter of cogitation, action and result. If then your spiritual life is active, and not a merely nominal and formal thing, it will not rest in idle thought, but be found forming works of action. Even in the very midst of emphasis on being saved by faith through grace, Paul insists that the RESULT of work, be not missing. Graciousness and goodness is needed: in Christ’s people, the flesh is crucified. Thus, similarly, Titus 3:5-7 on the basis, is followed by v. 8 on the result!

In the second, we find this: we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus or good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should WALK IN THEM. HE regenerates us, and then provides the way for the life which works and walks, for Him. Ephesians, with Galatians and Isaiah and the Psalms, is perhaps the most grace-emphatic of all the word of God, yet here we have this inseparable companion: He who predestines not only works out for us our place in grace for ever, but the walk in grace that accompanies it. It is necessary constantly to seek this governance and guidance from Him, as from the captain of the ship, who knows!

In the third, Paul instructs us that we should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind. Their understanding is darkened, alienated from the life of God, because of their intrinsic ignorance, of the blindness of their heart, Paul states. Your walk, manner of life and progress should be as far from this as light from darkness. This is a test, a challenge and an encouragement, with comfort, for we are all to meet the fires of test, and walk in the light as He is the light.

III THE SPIRIT OF THE WALK

1) Ephesians 5:2, 2) Colossians 2:6, 3) Colossians 4:5

In the first, we are instructed to walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, a sacrifice of sweet-smelling aroma. Not lust, but love; not unbridled desire, but duty; not overflow of lava but paths through pastures of peace, this is the nature of it, we find, as we move through the next few verses. Where mental or spiritual uncleanness rules, idolatry or grasping desire, we are not even to be partakers (5:7). That of course involves a Church change, for many, just as a beginning.

In the second, we are warned not to be deceived by 'persuasive words', such as the culture spits out like an oral machine gun, into the populace, with its dismal debates and blind controversies. Vain philosophy is deceptive: avoid it. Thus, as you have RECEIVED CHRIST, SO WALK IN HIM, says the apostle Paul. The reception is for onward dynamic as well as established status. In Christ is your paragon, your priority and your power. Use it, be propelled into action in and for Him, consistently with His commands, knowing that the contrary currents which try to overflow your path are to be expected, resisted and left mere reminders of former things, inept and vanquished. In Him is the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form!

In the third, we are told to WALK IN WISDOM toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. This is allied with continuing earnestly in prayer, and seeking that the Lord open for Paul "a door for the word". This pastor would appreciate the same prayer, and that for many others who need the opportunities to spread the word of God, meet the needy with this fare and speak as we ought to speak, boldly for Christ.

There is in all these things a SPIRIT. The Holy Spirit imbues the Christian, and his or her own spirit is thus moulded (II Cor. 3:18) in liberty (3:17), which is an adjunct of love. In the school, we hear of 'school spirit', the sense of belonging and not only being nurtured by but bringing nurture to the school, and co-operating with zeal and zest with the aims. In Christ, there is a spirit to the enterprise, one of zeal and love, care and concern, watchfulness and grace, freshness and purpose, goodness and mercy, and it is in this spirit that one works. It is this spirit which is to be seen, shown and valued. We are to be thus minded, moulded and dynamised, as we walk in the Spirit, even that of God.

This makes for progress, not regress; and this, unlike the all too visible “progress” of this world, is towards the beauty of holiness in the garden of grace.