I’d like to begin this discussion by painting a picture of a first century church that we see reflected in many twenty-first century churches. Imagine you have moved into a new city and are checking out churches to see which one you’ll attend (or if you’ve settled on a church, you can compare what we examine in this writing with the church you’re already in; your choice). Here’s what the church in Ephesus looked like 2000 years ago based on the description given in Revelation 2:1-7;
1. Sound doctrine
2. Sincere and determined commitment by the majority of the congregation to love one another
3. Exceptional discernment – the leadership of this church could protect the sheep from false doctrine and false teachers
4. Aggressive and faithful ministry, outreach, and fellowship with enduring patience and creativity
5. A willingness to endure hardship to insure that the Name of Jesus was honored in all things
In Ephesus the saints were being cared for, protected and loved. The lost were being reached with the gospel. Everyone was experiencing the joy of fruitful, high-energy activity. They sang together, prayed together, laughed and cried with each other. They explored the Scriptures with extraordinary skill, consistency and accuracy.
If you were looking for a church and you found one with all these qualities, wouldn’t you give it serious consideration? Or, if you are now attending a church with these qualities, wouldn’t you want to tell everyone that you’ve found the best church in town? All these things we’ve looked at are what you would have seen if you walked into the church at Ephesus in AD 95. It’s probably similar to what you’d see if you walked into many of our contemporary evangelical churches today; and like the early Ephesians, you’d probably be pretty impressed.
However . . .
To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not given up. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
It appears that in spite of all the good things they had going for them, they were on the verge of losing everything in terms of true spiritual life and light. I doubt any of them saw that coming! This letter (Revelation 2:1-7) which was sent to them must have really freaked them out.
They saw what they saw – but the Lord saw what He saw. He was gracious in commending their good qualities, but completely honest about their true spiritual condition. Why didn’t they see what He saw? An equally important question would be: If the Lord evaluated our church, would He see something other than what we see? Is it possible that we could be like the Ephesians and not have a clue what’s really going on? Could we be so focused on the “seen” that we are completely out of touch with the “unseen”? Remember Paul’s words to the Corinthians who were having the same problem as the Ephesians?
We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
(2 Corinthians 4:18)
The things “not seen” are the ones which have eternal value – they have substance. They are more real and much more important to the Lord.
In the second and third chapters of the book of Revelation we have the Lord's survey of the seven churches. As those eyes that are as a flame of fire peer into the inner spiritual state and lay bare the condition - analyze, dissect, separate, place on the two sides of debit and credit, and form and pass their final verdict - we see one thing to be at issue with regard to them all.
There may be differences in them; the aspects may vary, but when all has been surveyed and gathered together it is to establish but one fact, namely, do they, or do they not, have that which, from the Lord's standpoint, justifies His continued Presence and activity within them?
T.A. Sparks (TAS)
In other words, do all those wonderful things we listed regarding the awesome church in Ephesus compromise what the Lord is really after? Apparently not. In the midst of their programs and outreaches and home groups and sound teaching, they were missing the one thing that matters most: “First Love”
It is vitally important to know what God considers essential for the continuance of His life and activity in an assembly. It’s not what we think but what He thinks that ultimately matters. It’s not what looks good to us that matters – it’s what looks good to Him. This is the question that is addressed in the seven churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3: The most essential qualities needed to have a living representation of the Lord in this world.
I am quite sure that those who have any knowledge whatever of the time, spiritually, will agree with me when I say that the crying need for our time is for (spiritual interpretation). There never was a time when there existed so extensively the need for a voice of interpretation, when conditions needed more the ministry of explanation. We must know the true spiritual condition of things.
TAS
If we were a part of the church in Ephesus and tried to objectively consider all we were doing in the light of the letter we’d received, our initial response to that letter would probably be: That doesn’t make any sense! Everything we have going for us proves that we haven’t left our first love! What better evidence could you ask for in a church to prove a vital and living relationship with Jesus than what you see with your own eyes in Ephesus!?
Apparently no matter how well a church (or an individual) is doing in all the impressive outward things, only one thing can insure Christ's continued support in regard to the testimony of Life and Light - First Love. We need to find out what First Love is because for us as individuals, or for the church we’re in, if we miss that, it appears we miss everything.
First, a comment from British theologian, Lance Lambert,
It is not a question of the time of love. When you are young, you have first love, when you are old you have another kind of love. No! First love is a quality of love. It is complete love - a love that possesses you, a love that masters you...
As far as I know, the Church at Ephesus will go on with its meetings. It will have its Bible studies; it will have its prayer meetings; it will have its evangelistic outreach; people will make decisions for Christ and get baptized; it will have all its elders, deacons, and workers and the apostles who come in and go out. Everything will continue. It will still, in one sense be a church, but the heart of the matter has gone. What a terrible thing it is that we can just rumble on with all our meetings and not realize that the lampstand has been taken away.
Compare Luke 14:26,
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.
“Hetton” (hate) – means, ‘inferior’, ‘less’, or ‘worse’ – it’s a term of comparison. In comparison to our love for Christ, all other loves are inferior or less. As a side note; love may or may not involve emotion. Abraham may have felt more for Isaac, but when he had to make his choice, he chose God.
According to Paul in 2 Timothy 3:5, the most powerful resistance to God’s testimony in the world “in the last days” is offered by those who have “a form of godliness,” but not “the power thereof” (If you believe the church you attend does have the "power thereof" rather than just a similar form, read the book of Acts again and make the comparison; does what you see in your church match what you see in Acts? Not even taking into account the signs and wonders, what about simply the life expressed in such passages as Acts 2:41-47 and 4:32-37? Is that happening?)
The reason this deception is so effective in our generation is because we have nearly no ability to discern between what is spiritual and comes from the Lord and what is carnal and is generated through the soul of man (mind, emotion and will). We don’t know the difference between Christianity at its best and the living, dynamic expression of Christ Himself in His people.
We believe, based on what we see, that the contemporary, cutting edge, authentic, relevant and enthusiastic Christianity expressed in our churches is the spiritual lampstand of the indwelling Christ. It’s not. Just like we often think the wonderful things we personally do for the Lord are the same as the works He would do in us if we were in a first love relationship with Him.
We are no longer a spiritual people. We are a busy, faithful, sincere, loving, doctrinally sound, compassionate, emotionally charged, creative people. And we have no idea what the difference is between that and spiritual life in Christ.
Many Christians, pastors and churches have replaced commitment to Christ with commitment to a particular form or version of Christianity. There is a major (and deadly) difference between commitment to Christ and commitment to Christianity. One is based on the unique relationship of first love (which it appears nearly everyone thinks they have) and the other is based on personal ambition and personal agendas (which nearly no one recognizes as such).
First love gives the Headship of the church to Jesus Christ without any strings attached – He is free to do as He desires. If He wants to do a “new thing” (as Isaiah spoke of in Isaiah 43:19), He is free to do so. If He wants to continue what exists, He is free to do that also. The ultimate issue is the sovereignty of the Lord, not the creativity, energy or desires of men. It’s not how much Christianity is being seen, how much work is being done, but how much of Christ Himself is present in it.
As I mentioned above, everyone thinks they are in a first love relationship with Christ. I doubt that any pastor or church is going to say they are an unfortunate example of a 21st Century Ephesus. As DeVern Fromke points out,
There are thousands of fundamental, evangelical churches who loudly proclaim that Christ is all we need, that He is completely sufficient, that Christ is our center and circumference. These have become very popular slogans. But perhaps many have only learned these nice phrases and echo them as a parrot would. It seems quite evident that the real significance of Christ as our all has not dawned, for in the very next breath they launch into extensive methods and programs for accomplishing the work of God; immediately they start to search out patterns and principles for doing things – all of which are simply good religious substitutes for Him.
The letters in Revelation 2 and 3, as well as Paul instruction in 1 Timothy 4:1 and 2 Timothy 3:1-8, warned us this deception was coming and yet we go on, business as usual, as if it could never happen to us. This is something we need to do more than just consider or contemplate as an interesting concept. This is life or death for the spiritual life of each of us as well as for our churches.
With that in mind, let’s look at some practical definitions of ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ to help clarify how this problem has come about and what we can do to move back to God’s original intent for us. We’ll begin with Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2:13-14
Which thing also we teach, not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God . . . neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.
The “natural” is the “soulish” (psuche) man who operates in the soul rather than the spirit. The unbeliever has no choice but to live in his soul because his spirit is dead. The Christian may walk either in the spirit or in the soul. If he chooses to live by the resources of his soul, his understanding of that which is spiritual is no different than that of the natural man (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). The carnal believer “walks as men”. His life is spiritually indistinguishable from that of the natural man. Regardless of how many Christian activities he may be engaged in, it is not coming from the Spirit, but from the flesh. Because of this, he cannot recognize the source of his ‘production’ because as Paul said, the believer who lives in his soul and not in his spirit cannot know the things of the Spirit of God because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).
Many believers feel that they do have spiritual discernment – that they can see and differentiate between good and evil. But Hebrews 4:12 compared with 5:11-14 makes it clear that only those Christians who have moved far beyond infancy and have learned in experience to “divide” or distinguish between soul and spirit can recognize that which is from God as over against that which is from the soul of man or from a spirit of the enemy. Christian maturity is not a common characteristic among Western Christians in our generation (cp. Ephesians 4:14; 1 Corinthians 1:11-13; 3:1-4).
The kind of spiritual discernment needed to combat the subtle deceptions of the last days is much greater than the childlike discernment that can tell the difference between, say, Mormonism and Christianity. It must also be a greater discernment than that which determines what is and what is not sin – even unbelievers have enough “discernment” to know that murder is evil and compassion is good.
Mature spiritual discernment is the recognition of Christ (His presence or His absence). Spiritual discernment can distinguish that which comes from the Spirit of God and that which flows through the soul of man.
When a pastor has sufficient discernment to know the true spiritual state of his congregation he can minister to them according to their real need. Jesus didn’t talk to the woman at the well about being born again; He didn’t talk to Nicodemus about living water. He could see past any superficial conversation or body language that might have occurred and see clearly the spiritual need that was before Him. Jesus operated out from the spirit not the soul and could live and minister in the spiritual world, “The words I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63.
If a pastor is well-studied and intelligent, his tendency in living and ministering from his soul is to allow his mind to guide his work. If he is a compassionate person, the emotions control his actions. He may appear successful (people respond very positively to intelligence, sound teaching and genuine compassion) but he cannot address the deepest needs of his people because our deepest needs will always be spiritual first and then soul or body.
They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially . . . (Jeremiah 6:14)
The Lord has very serious warnings of judgment to leaders of God’s people who fail to minister from spiritual maturity and discernment, and who therefore have primarily their intelligence and emotion as resources to draw from in ministry. No matter how many people are “helped” by their ministry of instruction and compassion their deepest needs are not addressed. The woman at the well needed the Lord’s compassion but she needed living water even more.
Watchmen Nee writes,
When someone comes to us, we must discern his spiritual condition, his nature, and the extent of his spiritual progress. We must determine whether he has said what is really in his heart and how much he has left unsaid. Further, we must perceive his characteristics – whether he is hard or humble, whether his humility is true or false. Our effectiveness in service is closely related to our discernment of man’s spiritual condition. If God’s Spirit enables us through our spirit (not our soul) to know the condition of the person before us, we can then impart the appropriate word. . . Without such knowledge, a brother can only handle others by his own understanding. If he has a special feeling on a certain day, he will speak to everybody according to that feeling, no matter who it is that comes. If he has been learning and new subject, he speaks on it to all who come to him. How can such work be effective? No physician can use the same prescription for all his patients. (If we cannot spiritually interpret or diagnose) people’s sicknesses, we cannot cure them.
This problem of soul over spirit is evidenced in countless places in Scripture from Esau’s bowl of porridge to the conception of Ishmael. One classic example is in Acts 1:15-26. I won’t quote the extended passage here, but the story is this: Peter decided that since Judas was gone and the Bible made it clear that “another was to take his (Judas’) place” (Psalm 109:8), it was time to get another apostle on the team. So, following a time of prayer (in which, by the way, those praying graciously gave God two options to choose from: Barsabbas and Matthias), the church leaders “voted” and decided Matthias should get the honor. We never hear from Matthias again in the Bible. I wonder why. Probably because God had already chosen the twelfth apostle (Paul) but it was not yet His timing.
Think for a minute about how this played out and what the implications are for us. The leaders gathered together to have a meeting because there was a problem that needed to be resolved. They had a verse to back up their desire to move forward with addressing the problem and, of course, no problem should be tackled without a few minutes of prayer. When you have the Bible on your side; when you’ve prayed to make sure you’re in God’s will, and when you have a consensus of agreement among the church leadership staff, how can you go wrong? Addressing the problem was both reasonable and scriptural. Their rationale about why and who should be considered as numero twelve was also reasonable (vs. 21 and 22). No doubt Matthias and Barsabbas were awesome. So, they had Scripture references, prayer, a sincere desire to do the right thing, a great idea about how to solve the problem and group consensus on what to do. Does this sound at all like what happens in leadership meetings in our churches today?
With all that, they were totally out of line with God’s will. They didn’t know who God wanted for this role nor did they know His timing or way of choosing His apostle. They were operating purely in the realm of sincerity, reason and democracy (mind, emotion and will). Since they were good Christians they also added the Bible and prayer.
In Proverbs 20:27 we read, “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord . . . “. In the original creation of man, God indwelt the human spirit to provide spiritual life to and through man. This is what formed the basis of, “Let us make man in Our image . . .” (Genesis 1:26). Man was intended to be the lamp or vessel through which the indwelling God would become the Divine Source of His own image or likeness.
A lamp is totally dependent on oil for light. The lamp is worthless without light-producing oil within it. In the fall Satan convinced Adam and Eve they could be like God (like Christ) within the resources of their own souls. He appealed to their souls to cause the fall. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food (lust of the flesh), and that it was pleasant to the eyes (lust of the eyes), and a tree to be desired to make one wise (pride of life) she took of the fruit and did eat. . . (Genesis 3:6; compare also 1 John 2:16). Mind, emotion, will.
Satan convinced Adam and Eve they could be like God without God.
God knows that in the day you eat thereof, your eyes will be opened, and you shall be like God . . . (Genesis 3:5).
They were deceived into believing they could be like God independently of the Lord. Their soul took ascendancy over their spirit. They died spiritually. The Divine life left and the light went out, because a lamp without oil can’t function.
At the cross the Last Adam (Who in His death represented this entire race of fallen humanity) took the soul-dominated or natural man into the grave. When the Lord was resurrected the barrier of sin that kept God out of man was removed. Through the Second Man in resurrection a new race of humanity began in which Jesus was the First Born (see 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45-49; Romans 8:29).
A Christian is simply a person restored to what humanity was meant to be by design in creation – a vessel in which God can clothe His Divine nature and express His image outwardly in a visible form (1 Peter 1:4). Jesus was the perfect example of this as the Son of Man (John 14:7-9; Hebrews 1:3). To see Jesus was to see a perfect, exact image of the invisible Father Who indwelt Him. When a Christian is living in spiritual normality, he or she is simply a visible expression of the indwelling invisible Christ within (2 Corinthians 4:10-11).
Where does “Christianity” fit into the above? It doesn’t. Christianity is a soul reproduction of what can only happen by God in the spirit. The soul can imitate what it learns from the Scriptures about what it believes should be happening; but it can neither produce nor recognize the presence or absence of spiritual life. Sincerity plus ‘doing our best for Jesus’ equals Christianity. Christianity is the soul’s best effort to reproduce what it sees in the Bible, but the early church was the result of spiritual life - which only God could do. God may indeed intervene in a soul-based church to accomplish His will in those genuinely seeking Him, but it will be in spite of rather than because of the church.
In Matthew 16:21-23 we see the story of Peter rebuking the Lord for His expressed intent to go to the cross. There is no doubt about Peter’s sincerity, love and commitment to Jesus. He had all of that and more; as did Ephesus. But he was operating in his soul not in his spirit. If his spirit would have had ascendency over his soul (the divine order of things) he would have understood, or at least trusted, what Jesus told him. Note that after this conversation with Peter, Jesus immediately makes a transition in Matthew 16:24-25 to explain why it is so important that we not operate in the soul or self-life. He says we must lose that life in order to find another – the spiritual life in Christ. Our souls are placed in their proper servant-relationship to our spirit which is in union with the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17).
Before we finish our discussion of Peter conversation with the Lord in Matthew 16, we need to take a brief tangent.
Spirituality is not a life of suppression. That is negative. Spirituality is positive; it is a new life, not the old one striving to get the mastery of itself. . . Whether we are able to yet to accept it or not, the fact is that if we are going on with God fully, all the soul’s energies and abilities for knowing, understanding, sensing and doing will come to an end, and shall, on that side, stand bewildered, dazed, numbed and impotent. Then a new, other, and Divine understanding, constraint, and energy will send us forward. . .
TAS
When a person climbs aboard a plane that person trusts the plane and crew to get him from point A to point B. He doesn’t try flying without the plane or the law of gravity would overpower him; and he doesn’t sit on the plane struggling all the way to “die to gravity” so he can stay in the air. He simply gets on the plane, abides there, and lets the plane to what it has committed to do.
The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). Our fight is not a fight against sin and death (trying to “die to gravity”); our fight is a fight of faith – staying on the plane; abiding in Christ by childlike faith. As we trust in Him in all things, the higher law of the Spirit will keep us above the lower law of sin.
The brokenness we experience through suffering is God’s hand of love freeing us from the dominance of the self-life (the soul in ascendency) so the spirit can be released to express the glory of the indwelling Christ.
We who are alive are always being delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus might be made manifest through our mortal flesh.
(2 Corinthians 4:11)
When the natural is broken, the spiritual can come in. So, if your desire for success is your natural ambition, then God will insure failure to free you from this natural obsession so the Lord may be your “First Love”. Once He is established in that position in your soul, then you will be free to experience success (if that’s His will) without success sabotaging your inner peace and spiritual life in Christ - success without anxiety.
If having a perfect family or good health or anything else in the realm of the natural world is keeping your from a full experience of the indwelling Christ and the life you can have in Him, God will touch that so it will no longer be the thing you want most. When He has your heart He can give you what you desire, or replace it with something even better, and you will not be moved either way, because you are now experiencing the greater life of inward rest in Him. You are also beginning to move into the new life promised as you lose the old life (soul-life). “He that loses his life (self-life) will find it (new life in Christ)”.
It feels like a great loss, even a death, when the things we want most are taken away. But that is so we will can learn not to trust in ourselves, but in God Who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:9). We can learn faith so we can enter life. A creature sharing the fullness of the life of his Creator. Who wouldn’t want that? But one life must be lost for the other to be found. We can’t enter life in the Spirit until our life in the soul comes to a complete end. We can glimpse it, taste it, but never know the full reality of it until all that is not of Christ in our affection and ambition has been removed by the gracious application of the cross to all that binds us to this world.
I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh (my body), I live by faith (utter and complete dependence) in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.
(Galatians 2:20)
How can this life be entered? How we exercise the kind of faith that moves us from the old man to the new man?
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God
(Romans 10:17)
If we give God time enough to talk to us long enough our faith will grow strong enough.
Ian Thomas
We must learn of Him to be able to trust Him fully. God has given us the way of learning that achieves this goal. As shown in Ephesians 4:11ff, we are “equipped” by coming under the authority of the communication gifts God has provided for the body of Christ to come to full maturity.
When in Acts 8:26ff Philip was sent to a eunuch from Ethiopia was reading and trying to understand the Bible, Philip asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The eunuch replied, “How can I unless someone explains it to me?”
Exactly!
Daily personal devotions are good, but they will not open the deep things of God in His word to us. To move forward in our spiritual advance we must have “someone explain it to us” – thus the provision of the teaching gifts cited in Ephesians 4:11. Coming under the authority of these gifts prevents us from ignorance and from misinterpreting what we read (Ephesians 4:14). The Holy Spirit works through His giftings to lead us into all truth. The ear cannot say to the mouth, I have no need of you.
In addition we must be learning from men who are living what they are teaching. It would be foolish for me to try and sell hair restorer. If the teacher doesn’t in his own experience know the difference between soul and spirit; if he isn’t experiencing the life of Christ beyond theology, he can’t communicate that life to others.
Now, back to Peter’s rebuke of the Savior in Matthew 16. Peter was completely sincere and fully committed to the Lord, yet Jesus said, “Get thee behind me Satan”. In his soul Peter loved the Lord intensely and wanted nothing more than to protect Him from harm. His rebuke of Christ was an illustration of unenlightened enthusiasm – the single most predominant characteristic of contemporary Western Christianity.
In a sense our soul is neutral ground, meaning that it is a responder not an initiator. The soul can respond to the world, the flesh and the devil or it can respond to the human spirit indwelt by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17; Romans 8:16). When the soul responds to our three enemies, when we come under their sway, we are “carnal” (1 Corinthians 3:1-4).
When the soul is responding to the spirit, we find ourselves in the process of having “Christ formed in us” (Galatians 4:19).
Christianity as it is currently expressed in the Western church is not just an unfortunate misunderstanding of God’s intent or a tragic perpetuation of spiritual infancy or carnality; it’s a luciferian deception. The original lie has made its way into the hearts of all who would heed it from the beginning of time. This, I believe, is the foundation of the final apostasy or “falling away” of the church prior to the coming of our Lord (1 Thessalonians 2:3). For those of you who believe “this can’t happen to us” – it’s already begun.
Satan has always sought, from the beginning time, to move us into a place of independence, self-reliance and soul-based living. That which we see in modern evangelicalism is merely a poor imitation, a caricature of the real thing. As I mentioned earlier, the fact that within this “Christian” religious system we have developed, the lost are reached and the saints are ministered to is simply evidence of God’s faithfulness to those seeking Him in spite of, not because of, the spiritual condition of the church.
What we are seeing in our generation is the increasing ascendency of the soul over the spirit. It is true both corporately in our assemblies and meetings, and it is true in our own struggling attempts to live a life only Christ can live. Unless we can see with our inner eyes the division of soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12); unless we can move from soul to spirit in our perception and sufficiency, we will never know the life we have missed by selfishly adopting a form of godliness without the power of true spiritual life.
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