I don’t know if this matches your experience, but I find that I am most susceptible to sin or discouragement under these two circumstances: When things are going well and when things are not going well. When things are disastrous, I tend to pray more, study more and miraculously (by God’s grace) survive. When things are stupendous, I’m grateful and careful because I want things to stay that way. But anything in between is fertile ground for falling.
So, how does one retain spiritual life in the bulk of human experience when neither overwhelming crisis nor ‘living the dream’ are happening (which is most of the time)? Only one way – get outside the soul. That will take some explanation and a few definitions.
First, the soul is mind, emotion and will. Pretty standard definition. But the confusion comes in when we don’t distinguish between soul and spirit in our experience(Hebrews 4:12. Though everyone has a soul, only Christians have the option of living in the spirit. The soul is the earth-attached, sensual part of us. It is made up of intellect, emotion, reason, wisdom, experience, etc. It’s where we lived our whole lives before we came to Christ (and where many Christians still live their lives).
In 1 Corinthians 2:14-3:2 when Paul classifies humans he draws three distinctions: “carnal” (which is a Christian controlled by the flesh), “spiritual” (a Christian living and walking in the Spirit) and “natural” (or in some translations “soulish” or “animal”). This is the man outside of Christ with no spiritual capacity. Christians can also live in this realm of “soulish” or “animal” experience if they are controlled by the flesh (“are you not carnal, and walk as mere men?” 1 Corinthians 3:3; see also Romans 8:5-6).
So, again, how do we get outside the soul? Faith is a means of spiritual perception. When we attach by faith to God and His Word through the ministry of the Holy Spirit we aren’t attaching by our soul, but by our spirit. As an example, when we are taught things in the Bible, we can be taught in the soul (the human intellect’s grasp of Biblical information) or we can be taught in the spirit.
“Which things also we teach, not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches (soul-based) but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” (1 Corinthians 2:13).
The only way to be fed spiritually is to be taught in the spirit comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Information can stop at the soul, but when the Holy Spirit is involved through our faith (our determined dependence upon Him to teach us) then spiritual enlightenment and growth occurs, not just a soul-based accumulation of information. But if we don’t know what the difference is between a doctrinally sound soul-driven message and a genuinely spiritual ministry, or if we don’t how to depend on the Holy Spirit to teach us, all we will ever get is soulish knowledge of the Bible (“ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” 2 Timothy 3:7).
As a side note; this is why our churches are for the most part soul-based. They depend on emotion, doctrine, sight, practical instruction, videos, music, community (social interaction), etc. to draw and hold people. This is the world of the soul. Cults do the same, but not in the Name of Jesus. For the most part what we are doing is simply corporate soul life in the Name of Jesus. We think we are doing things better than TBN and the cults because our doctrine is sound. But the soul is still the soul, and nothing based in the realm of the soul can produce spiritual life. If one were to present a spiritual ministry of truth and life to a church operating in the soul, that person would be considered either incredibly boring or out of touch with the real practicalities of life (1 Corinthians 2:14; cp. 3:1-2). But for anyone in the church who is truly hungry for spiritual life, it would be a breath of fresh air (Luke 24:32).
Now, let’s apply this to how we live in the world of daily pressure. One of the things the soul can never achieve on its own is rest. The soul can experience rest if that rest comes from living by faith, but rest never comes by reason, logic, techniques (‘10-steps to rest’), etc. Deep, sustaining rest is not psychological; it is spiritual, though it may have positive psychological effects. It only comes to the soul though the spirit. Rest is only “accessed” by faith in God, Who is Spirit.
The things which characterize the soul life are fret, anxiety, uncertainty – all the things which are the opposite of calm assurance, quiet confidence, the spirit and attitude and atmosphere which says, 'don’t worry, it is all right.’ The latter comes through faith which is energized by spiritual growth and sight. Our enemy is always trying to disturb that rest, to move us from our spirit (faith in God) to the fluctuating emotions and self-examinations of our soul, to pre-occupy us with us, instead of the Lord; to take away our confidence in God, to destroy that, rob us of that, harass us, churn us up, anything to take away our rest or prevent us from entering rest.
Rest is actually the practical outworking of our belief that Jesus is Lord. The Lordship of Christ is discounted in expression by the unrest of God’s people. When we spiritually apprehend Him as He is and respond by trusting Him, we are in a sense expressing or proclaiming His Lordship. But to rest in Him as Lord we must know Him and believe in Him as Lord. He is “head over all things to the church” (Ephesians 1:22). Not some things, all things. Our lives are not too big a challenge for Him. Our circumstances, failures, weaknesses, or the mountains we face are not beyond God’s ability to address. If the little things of life are what trip us up and steal our rest then those little things are big things to God and we can give them to Him. The things themselves may or may not change, but faith establishes the glory and Lordship of Christ in a world that denies both. What matters most is the inner man, the spirit, and that issue must be settled first. The rest of faith must be our position, our stand, in His Lordship.
The Lord wants us out of our soul life where we evaluate everything, whether related to the church or related to personal issues, by that which the soul has the capacity to evaluate. Again, soul life is an appeal to our intellect (the academics of theology, not the spiritual content and depth of the Truth) or an appeal to the emotion (the energy of our worship music). Our excitement, our rational mind, and our social and relational needs and experiences; all that is soulish and sensual (i.e. of the senses). None of these things will line up with ultimate spiritual reality until the spirit, not the soul, is their source. There is spiritual community, spiritual understanding of the Word, spiritual emotion (“Jesus rejoiced, Jesus wept”, Jesus worshipped”, etc.) but though these experiences impact the soul, they did not originate in the soul or world or body, but in the spirit. For most of us our senses and our soul are the source and basis of our so-called spiritual life. It is the life of faith, the life in the spirit that is to form the basis of our experiences in the soul and body, not the other way around.
We are facing extreme difficulties in life. We are up against constant tests which will determine whether we live by faith or by our soul resources. Faith trusts in God alone, whereas the soul simply considers God, or factors God in. Faith takes us outside the soul, above the soul, and places us in the spirit. So, as I said at the beginning, whether we desire to experience spiritual reality in the church or spiritual reality in our own lives as individual disciples of Christ, we must get outside the soul and live by “comparing spiritual things with spiritual”. The answer to the question we consistently ask (about the church or about our personal circumstances) is, “What is Truth”. This is not answered in the soul, but in the spirit.
“But the natural (or soulish) man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritual discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
For the person outside of Christ or the Christian who lives in his soul, spiritual reality is unreality. It is neither understood, received or sought. So, rest is lost since rest comes only by faith, and faith if it is to be effectual, must detach from the world and attach exclusively to the spiritual realm of the Lordship of Christ. Rest is found “above” where we have been placed in Christ, seated at the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1-3). We are always seeking to bring Christ back to earth so He can do in our lives what He did in the lives of those in Palestine 2000 years ago. But He is seeking to bring us spiritually to where He is, so we can experience the inner rest that comes from living in the resurrection power of the Lord – the power that emanates not from earth but from the throne of Heaven through the Holy Spirit Who was not given until Christ had ascended (John 7:39).
We access or appropriate the power of God’s Spirit in regeneration by faith in Christ through the hearing of the Gospel. When we trust Him at salvation He brings all the power of an eternal life into our innermost being and we are “born from above” (John 3:7-8, 16). We access/appropriate the power of God’s Spirit for resurrection life after we are saved by taking a stand in faith regarding our position in Christ above, where He (and we, Ephesians 2:6) are “. . . that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.“ (Philippians 3:10).
We are born from above by faith and we live above by faith. We are introduced to our home in heaven at salvation and we are occupied throughout this life with our home, our source of life in Christ in spiritual growth, having our “affections set on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2). The soul will merely respond to that which our heart is set upon. If our desires are earthly, our soul will be in unrest; if our desires are above, our soul will experience the spiritual realities of the kingdom that cannot be shaken.
No comments:
Post a Comment