Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #11

Hallelujah, what a Savior!! Blessings on you in this Christmas time!

Jesus has lived this life for us in his 33+ years as a man on earth, making the way for those of us who are in Him to be able to live as He lived. I want to remind you from last week of what Tom Marshall says in chapter 12 when he explains how Jesus internalized the law of God, writing it on His own heart:

By obedience. By painstaking, persistent, perfect obedience, in every situation and in every circumstance, He wrote the law of God on His heart.

Now in chapter 13, our reading for this week, the author addresses how we, God's people, experience new covenant freedom as Jesus did (in contrast to living under the external law).

The work of the cross and the work of the Spirit is imperative in this.

The work of the cross:
"'Now is the time for judgement upon this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.' He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.' (John 12:31-33)...The context of the saying is His death and what is meant is this: when Jesus came to the cross, His individual personality became a corporate one. It incorporated all those who would believe in Him. Satan, the ruler of this world, is ejected from us and we are drawn into Him to become one with Him and part of Him.
...What does this mean? It means that the cross does away with (or makes of no effect) the line of authority that binds us to the law of sin and death. We are free of the authority that made us slaves to sin. The compelling and dominating effect of the inner values of the sinful nature is rendered powerless..."

The work of the Holy Spirit:
"'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him...Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.' (John 7:37-39) Why was the Spirit not yet given?
... He was waiting for something. He was waiting for Jesus to complete the perfected set of inner values we have been speaking about. To build into them every capacity and every resouce that we would ever need in this life: perfect love, perfect faith, perfect obedience, perfect forgiveness.
...He was waiting until Jesus came to the cross and His individual personality became a corporate one that incorporated us.
...He was waiting until the atonement was a finished work...
...He was waiting until Jesus broke the ultimate barriers of death itself and was raised to resurrection life..."

After Jesus completed His work of living in perfect obedience to His Father and going to the cross, the Holy Spirit did two things related to this subject:
1) His power liberates our will from the bondage of habitual surrender to the demands of the flesh.
2) He is the one who educates us in living by the internalized law.

Marshall says, "Walking in the Spirit means that the soul yields up its desire to rule, and submits to the authority of the human spirit, inhabited by the Holy Spirit...God will never force the human will. this means that the power of the Holy Spirit will never be released into the area of the soul without the free response of the soul. As far as the will is concerned, the response that bridges the gap from soul to spirit is obedience. When we reach out in a response of obedience, the power of the Holy Spirit is released into the area of the will and breaks the yoke of bondage."

Sanctification is the ongoing educating work of the Spirit, in which He applies "the law of God to our lives in such a way that we are not trapped into legalism or self-conscious spirituality."

So with every little or big obedience to God on our part, the Holy Spirit is doing in us what He did in Jesus: "He writes the law on our heart. And the law sets us free! (Romans 8:4 '...in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who so not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.')"

Praise the Lord! Because of the life and work of Christ on the cross and because of the work and presence of the Spirit in my life, as I believe in Christ's work and provision and obey God, the law of God gets written on my heart step by step; and the more the law is internalized in me, I enjoy greater and greater freedom because I am living according to the law (the values by which I was meant to live)!

Simply put, the believer's simple trust in Jesus and obedience to the Spirit of God will incrementally write the law of God on his heart; with this process comes increasing liberty to choose for God. We will fail along the way, but the pattern of living is that of obedience rather than resistance to God.

Father, thank You for the life and death of Your Son, Jesus; thank You for the grace and power of Your Spirit at work this moment in our lives. Thank You that there is nothing too difficult for You! We worship You in this time of celebrating Your first coming and cry out to You to come in Your fullness to Your people that those around us would taste and see that You are so good!

I will be at the Urbana 06 conference next week so may not be able to blog; we'll do chapters 14 and 15 for the next two weeks, starting Part IV about the "self."

A blessed Year 2007 to you! The Lord is with you always!

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #10

Blessings in the name of the Lord!

The two chapters we read this week are 11 and 12. I'll quote some key truths that the author gives in these two chapters...

Chapter 11: The Power Struggle in the Universe

• ...the power struggle between God and Satan...is not to find out whether God is more powerful than Satan...When it comes to a question of naked power, there is no competition with omnipotence!
• The conflict in the universe is over something quite different. It is a moral and spiritual struggle.

Tom Marshall presents some wonderful truths about the law of God, which expresses how God is; he goes on to say that the law of sin and death expresses the way Satan is. In giving man the freedom to choose, God "has allowed the scales to be weighted against Him to an incredible degree."

Why would we humans go for the law of sin rather than the good law of God? -

• The appeal of sin is founded on deception and delusion. Its end is hidden...Sin is presented to us as a matter of choice or preference...there is an "ought-ness" about the demand of (God's) law that is quite different from the question of liking or preference.
• Authority is power that we recognize as being legitimate...I recognize power as being legitimate when the norms (or standards) that it represents correspond with my inner value system.
• When external law and inner values are in conflict, inner values will, in the long run, win out every time.

Building off these truths, the author goes on to say that fallen nature follows '...the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.' (Eph.2:2) Satan uses his access to humans to "implant in human hearts a set of inner values" - this is what the Scriptures call "the flesh" or "the body of sin and death."

• The flesh...refers to the sinful principle of self-gratification that holds human nature in bondage to the law of sin and death...The inner values of the flesh are detailed in Galatians 5:19-21 (sexual immorality, impurity, idolatry, hatred, jealousy, selfish ambition, dissentions, etc.).
• The norms of the law of sin and death correspond exactly with the inner values of the flesh. Thus they reinforce each other. (Ephesians 2:3)
• No wonder Paul, in the face of this seemingly impregnable system, cries, 'What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?'

Bottomline is that the law of sin and death appeals to fallen human nature, so the inner values of the flesh within us win out over the external law of God.

Chaper 12 - God's Answer for the Flesh

Fundamentally, God's solution for the flesh is the new covenant, which is the law of God imprinted on the human heart; in other words, the law is internalized (Jer. 31:31-33). But to complete this, the "polluted human heart" must be cleansed from sin and a new set of inner values in harmony with the internalized law must be implanted in the heart. (On page 114, the author shows clear contrast between the old covenant and the new.)

This internalization of the law was accomplished by Jesus' perfect obedience to the Father in His earthly life. In this daily obedience to God, the law of God was being written on His heart. Marshall puts it this way:

...By painstaking, persistent, perfect obedience, in every situation and in every circumstance, He wrote the law of God on His heart. In times of stress, in times of boredom, against opposition and throughout misunderstanding, over small issues and great, always internalizing the law...(Heb. 10:5,7)

For the very first time in human history, a person lived in such a relationship with God that He was able to say in all honesty and in perfect truth, 'I always do the things that are pleasing to him.' ...In that one life the perfect law of God was perfectly internalized.

According to Marshall, Jesus created two things in His human nature that never existed before: 1) a perfect human hatred for sin 2) a perfect human love for righteousness.

And Galatians 5:22,23 lists the inner values of this new self (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.), and Paul goes on to say that the law of God is not against these values; in other words, they are in alignment with the law of God! So because there was in Jesus a perfect harmony between inner values and the internalized law of God, He was "free to do spontaneously and freely whatever He liked because the value system that guided His preferences or desires was in total harmony with the law of unselfish love..."

Praise the Lord! I believe it's this place of freedom that the Holy Spirit, through the work of the cross of Jesus, wants to bring us into increasingly...

So next week's final chapter on the will (chapter 13) will deal with how this works out in the lives of those of us who are in Christ.

Lord, send Your Spirit to create a desperate desire in us to live increasingly in this freedom for the sake of Jesus and for our sake and the sake of those who have yet to know Him in His fullness.

Living in the Freedom of the Spirit - Week #9

I trust you are well and maturing in the love of God...it's certainly a lifelong process, and even this morning as I was quiet before the Lord, the thought came to me that the Holy Spirit's relentless and unending work in the believer's life is to bring the soul (mind, will, and emotions) into alignment with Jesus, who is Truth. This can be very painful at times but He is with us in the pain and so it is bearable.

We've gotten through the sections of the book on the mind and the emotions. This week's chapter is the first on the will.

The longer I walk with the Lord, the more I realize how important it is that the human will be whole because, as Tom Marshall says, it's like the clutch in a car. You can have your hands firmly on the steering wheel (the mind aligned with truth), and be pushing the gas pedal (the emotions are awake and in agreement with truth), but if you don't engage the clutch (action taken in obedience to truth), the car will not move forward.

I find many Christians who have received prayer ministry and are being renewed in the spirit of their mind but are stalled out because they don't take steps of faith to walk out what the Spirit has done within them and for them.

It's possible that the will has been severely damaged through addictions of all sorts (this includes such socially acceptable addictions such as overworking, as well as the non-socially acceptable addictions), and a person who genuinely loves the Lord can find him/herself quite weakened in their will. Healing prayer is important for this. Then the person must listen to the Lord and obey whatever he believes the Lord is asking of him.

Leanne Payne writes so well on this topic in her book, Restoring the Christian Soul. I would also recommend the chapter on the will in The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith.

The will is that more "masculine" part of the human soul; in other words, it's that part of us that stands up and takes action in line with the Spirit of God. All of us need to be strengthened in our will. I'm not referring to natural willfulness and natural stong will but to the human will aligned with God's will. So anyone, whether a naturally strong-willed person or not, can stand upright before God, hear His word, and take steps of obedience (even if they are feeble and wobbly steps). A baby's steps are wobbly and feeble but grow stronger the more he walks.

Marshall finishes the chapter by saying that free will in a person "must always be expressed within the limits laid down by law...We call this obedience." And so true freedom is found obeying a higher law which is God.

Holy Spirit, come and strengthen us to will for You and with You. I ask that You would reach down and strengthen the feeble knees as we take baby steps of faith in the area that You presently are maturing us in. Thank You that You are the divine Helper who breathes the strength and life of Jesus into our being! We say yes to You and will obey Your word even in our weakness, by Your grace and power.


(For next week let's read chapters 11 and 12 which continue on the theme of the will. Have a blessed week!)