Spirit And Truth: The Integrity of God

Before you begin your Bible study, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, be sure you have named your sins privately to God the Father.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (Known, Unknown and Forgotten sins) (1Jn 1:9)

You will then be in fellowship with God, Filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to learn Truth from the Word of God.

God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth. (John 4:24)

The Integrity of God

The Integrity of God guarantees that His entire essence is completely involved in all He does or sponsors. All Divine attributes form one, consistent, indivisible whole; His total Person. (Deut 32:39) Thus, the love of God is not an isolated attribute. His love stands upon His integrity, composed of perfect righteousness and absolute justice. This marvelous Principle of Truth demonstrates that the God of love and grace is neither sentimental nor partial nor indecisive toward anyone. (Deut 10:17) Grace is Divine strength which expresses the love of God, but grace is also the uncompromising policy of the justice of God. We adjust to the justice of God, or it will adjust to us! This book defines the integrity of God from Scripture and portrays His integrity operating in behalf of each Christian. This panorama of Biblical Truth clarifies the purpose of our lives and explains our magnificent relationship with the God of righteousness and justice. (Psa 33:5)

LANGUAGE OF ACCOMMODATION

EARLY IN LIFE you became aware that God exists. When you wondered about the source, the cause, the nature, or the purpose of things, your natural curiosity pointed you toward a Supreme Being. But imagining that God exists is much easier than understanding Him. Everyone reaches God-consciousness — at least everyone above minimum intelligence and age. (Rom 1:19-20) But the herculean task of understanding God requires more than natural curiosity. It demands positive volition — an active desire to learn about Him, the willingness and self-discipline to submit to learning the Word of God. (Prov 8:17-21) Positive volition is a matter of individual choice, and most people turn aside long before reaching the goal of Understanding. (Prov 9:10) Even those who do want to know God are caught in the dark labyrinth of ignorance and human limitations. All kinds of religious and philosophical theories promise to lead us into the light only to dead end in falsehood and evil. (Mark 7:6-9) How do we find our way out of ignorance? How can we come to understand the integrity of God?

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways [My ONE Reality] higher than your ways [The many satanic and human realities] and my Thoughts higher than your thoughts. (Isa 55:9)

But just as it is written, THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the Thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining Spiritual Thoughts with Spiritual Words. But a natural man [Unbeliever and the Believer out of fellowship] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are Spiritually appraised. But he who is Spiritual [In fellowship] appraises [Understands] all things, [Spiritual Thoughts] yet he himself is appraised [Understood] by no one. [Who lives out of fellowship] For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the Mind of Christ. [To learn to Think with His Thoughts] (1Co 2:9-16)

At birth we are Spiritually blind. We cannot discover God’s nature or personality. But into our darkness shone the grace of God; (Matt 4:16) He has revealed Himself. When we respond positively to God-consciousness, God is responsible to provide Gospel information whereby we can believe in Christ and thus enter into an eternal relationship with God. (Acts 10:22) God has revealed Himself in the Bible, the Mind of Christ. (1Co 2:16) The Salvation message is one category of Truth. Toward unbelievers, And God has “magnified all His Word above His Own Name.” [God's Thoughts are more important to God then Who He IS!] (Psa 138:2) God is only as perfect as what He Thinks! The Truth of God's Word, resident in our souls, is more important, and more valuable than we are! And is the only means by which we can know Who and What God IS, and be able to learn and Think with Him in harmony on every subject! (Deut 4:6-9) And in this manner come to respect and love Him! Only through learning Truth can we accord Him the recognition, honor, and glory that He deserves! But how does God enable us to understand what is normally beyond our comprehension? How does He accomplish the seemingly impossible task of communicating His Spiritual, infinite, perfect attributes to our temporal, finite, imperfect minds? How does He give us the capacity to receive “the Thoughts which God has prepared for them that love Him?” Man's blindness is perhaps darker than you realize. The carnal believer, (1Co 3:1-3) and the unbeliever, are called the “natural man,” the unbeliever lacks a human spirit, and is Spiritually dead. (Eph 2:1) He is simply not equipped to understand Spiritual Thoughts. Even the simple Doctrine of the Gospel would elude him were it not for the convincing and convicting ministry of God the Holy Spirit: the Third Person of the Trinity must stand in as a Substitute for the missing human spirit in order to make the Gospel clear and understandable. (Gen 6:3; John 6:44-45; John 16:7-15) Only then can the unbeliever make his decision to accept or reject Jesus Christ as Savior. At the moment of faith in Christ, the new believer acquires a human spirit, (Tit 3:5-7; Jas 2:26) as part of Operation Z, which is the non-meritorious system by which every believer can learn the whole realm of Truth, and grow Spiritually regardless of his educational background or human IQ. God provides every step, from Truth resident in His own Mind to Truth resident in the believer’s soul!

OPERATION Z

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God has supplied us with everything for learning His Word: The completed canon of Scripture, a pastor-teacher, books, the MP3 player, the DVD player and now the computer, the filling of God the Holy Spirit, rebound, (1Jn 1:9) the human soul, the human spirit, physical life, Spiritual life and protection in the devil’s world. (Isa 41:13) These grace provisions are part of the grace apparatus for perception, which is “Operation Z” To summarize, the believer filled with God the Holy Spirit, (1Co 4:20) concentrates on the pastor’s message, resulting in gnosis, “Knowledge,” in the mentality of the soul. The mentality has two parts: the human spirit or right lobe, Spiritual Thinking and the kardia, “heart” or left lobe, human knowledge; (Jer 17:9) and is the home of gnosis; the right lobe is the repository of epignosis, “Full Knowledge.” (Eph 3:19) Gnosis in the left lobe is receptive comprehension: “academic knowledge” which is not usable for application in the Spiritual life. A believer may be able to quote many Verses or talk at length about many Biblical subjects, but if his knowledge is only gnosis, it is not edifying. Academic arrogance can exist in Theology as easily as in any other field of learning. (1Co 1:19-21; 1Co 2:14; 1Co 3:19-20; 1Co 8:1) If Truth is not believed, or not understood or not used, it is removed! (Matt 13:19-23; Luk 8:11-15) The application of gnosis Doctrine is misapplication, and the Word misapplied generates legalism, inflexibility, insensitivity, and intolerance, pride and arrogance. (Heb 3:12; Heb 4:2) The believer clearly perceives a point of Doctrine and now faces the issue of faith: does he, or does he not believe what he has learned? (Prov 3:5-6; Matt 7:7-14) If he believes: That Truth is transferred to the right lobe and becomes Spiritual Thoughts and Spiritual Words! (1Co 2:13) By means of faith, it becomes genuine understanding of Divine Truth. (1Co 4:20) Only God's Thinking can be applied as Spiritual Wisdom and Spiritual common sense. (2Co 10:5) Epignosis is also the building material for the edification complex, (Temple) of the soul. (1Co 3:10-14) The process of transferring the Truth from the heart to the spirit is faith-perception. Truth always has the merit; we who believe do not!

According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. [Salvation] Now if any man builds on the foundation [Growth to Spiritual maturity] with gold, silver, precious stones, [God's Thoughts] wood, hay, straw, [Satanic and human thoughts] each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, (Mark 9:49) and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. (1Co 3:10-14)

REBOUND, RECEPTION, RETENTION, RECALL, RESIST SIN, REPEAT!

Which is needed to convert Truth from something merely comprehended into something thoroughly understood and useable for both Spiritual advance and application to life. But even acquiring a human spirit does not enable us to understand God. God the Holy Spirit, who takes an active role leading up to our Salvation and who provides certain blessings connected with Salvation itself, must continue after Salvation in His imperceptible, behind-the-scenes work of glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ. (John 16:12-15) At Salvation the Third Person of the Trinity personally takes up residence in our bodies. (1Co 6:19-20) From His permanent headquarters in the body, the indwelling Spirit seeks to control the soul. (Instead of the old sin nature controlling the soul) The Bible describes the believer under the Spirit’s silent, energizing control as being “Spiritual,” (1Co 3:1) “filled with the Spirit,” (Eph 5:18) “walking in the Spirit.” (Gal 5:16) Learning Truth can function only under the filling of God the Holy Spirit. The filling of God the Holy Spirit is therefore the link between Salvation and the eventual Understanding of the Bible that establishes Spiritual maturity. The filling of God the Holy Spirit is mandatory for both the intake and the application of the Word of God. (John 4:24) God has provided remarkable assets so that we might learn the Truth about Him. But even with all of these, we are not yet out of the dark. God had to design in the Scriptures themselves a very simple approach to the basic, complex, and advanced Truths of His Thinking. For the sake of clarity, therefore, when describing the character and function of infinite God, the Bible often resorts to language of accommodation. In other words, to make certain that His Thoughts, policies, decisions, and actions are lucidly explained, God takes into account our inherent limitations and basic ignorance. He graciously describes Himself as having human feelings, human passions, human thoughts and human anatomy — even human sins — in order to communicate things to us for which otherwise we would have no way to understand. Of course, God possesses none of, these characteristics; He uses them as teaching aids, known as anthropopathisms and anthropomorphisms. Derived from the Greek anthropos, “man,” plus pathos, “a function of the soul with an outward manifestation,” an anthropopathism credits to God some human emotion, thought, or mental attitude sin. From morphos, “body,” anthropomorphism depicts God as having some physical characteristic of man. Both categories are figures of speech, not descriptions of God’s true nature or essence. God does not hate, even though the Bible declares that “You hate all who do iniquity.” (Psa 5:5) Nor is He jealous, in spite of the sobering idiom that His “jealousy will burn against that man” who turns away from the Lord. (Deut 29:19-20) For the “eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous . . . BUT THE FACE OF THE LORD IS AGAINST THOSE WHO DO EVIL,” (1Pe 3:12) true functions of God are described — He indeed blesses the mature believer and disciplines the carnal believer. But God is an immaterial, Spiritual Being; He has no eyes or face. God’s purpose in using these teaching aids is certainly not to keep us in the dark as to His true character, nor even to cater to our ignorance, but to enable us to learn. He comes down to our frame of reference when presenting what otherwise would go as far over our heads “as the heavens are higher than the earth.” The Word of God employs such imagery primarily to dramatize the Gospel to unbelievers and to make basic Truths vividly clear to immature believers. As we become aware of anthropopathisms and anthropomorphisms and of how they are used, our ability to understand the Scriptures greatly increases. Let us note several familiar anthropopathisms and see how they relate to the attributes that God actually possesses. Of the many examples, one that often confounds believers is the description of God in the days of Noah.

GOD’S REPENTANCE

     The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. (Gen 6:6)

     The translator evidently thought that the Hebrew word, which he rendered “sorry,” meant to feel sorry for sins, to renounce some obnoxious habit, or to feel remorse over some wrongdoing. Many believers today define repentance in such terms. But how can God repent? He does not sin. He does not have bad habits or make mistakes. The Hebrew comes right out with it: “And the Lord was sorry” When we stop juggling English syntax and look to the original language, we find no reference to sin or failure. The Hebrew verb nacham is equivalent to the Greek metanoeo in the New Testament; both are translated “repent or sorry,” but they mean simply “to change one’s mind.” Neither word has anything whatever to do with emotions or with feeling sorry for sins. The translator’s problem is laid to rest. But another problem rears up in its place. God cannot change His Mind! He is omniscient and immutable (Psa 102:25-27; Mal 3:6; Heb 6:17-18) There is no variation or instability in Him, not even a “shadow of turning.” (Jas 1:17) He knows perfectly and eternally all that is knowable; there is never a circumstance — personal, historic, or of any other kind — that comes as a surprise to Him or that could possibly require Him to change His Mind. God may appear to change, but He does not. When He seems to change, He is actually preserving His changeless integrity! He is simply expressing His character differently as called for by differences and changes in man or in history. He treats each person as an individual and every historical situation according to the facts of the case. (Psa 33:10-15; Psa 139:1-18; Psa 147:4-5) I do not want to leave any doubt in your mind. God’s “repentance” is an anthropopathism and nothing more. We will see that it is by noting a few details about how God actually Thinks.

Divine Thinking can be categorized under three headings: Self-knowledge, omniscience and foreknowledge. A note of caution about these terms: they do not mean what, at first glance, you might assume them to mean; they have technical definitions. First, God’s Self-knowledge is His cognizance of His own Person, essence, and attributes. Infinite and never changing, God knew all about Himself — and each Member of the Trinity knew the other two Members — when nothing had yet been created. God has that same information at this very moment, and He will always have it throughout eternity future! Second, omniscience is defined as God’s Eternal Knowledge of everything outside of Himself. Omniscience is related to creation and includes both actual Reality — past, present, and future — and all the other possibilities — which will never occur. Finally, the term “foreknowledge” applies to a very specialized subcategory of God’s Knowledge. Based on knowing (Omniscience) how each believer would use his free will, God decreed in eternity past that certain things would occur in that believer’s life. God’s awareness of those events, which He Himself decreed, before they come to pass in human history, is called foreknowledge. Only believers (And Christ Himself) are said to be “foreknown.” Let us concentrate primarily on the second category — God’s omniscience — in illustrating how He Thinks.

In His omniscience, He at all times perceives all events with all their causes, conditions, and relations — from the most vast to the most minute — as one indivisible system of things, every part of which is essential to the integrity of the whole. Not only does God know in complete detail what will happen, but He also knows what would have happened had He decided to adopt some course of action other than the one He chose. Try to visualize how awesome the mentality of God really is. If the “one indivisible system of things” were different in even one detail — if Alexander the Great had not cut the Gordian Knot, if the Apostle Paul had drowned in the shipwreck at Malta, if you had been born one day earlier, if ever the course of one single atomic particle were different — the entire system would be changed. One variation would lead to another and another and another in a vast, intertwining system of cause and effect. (1Co 14:33)

Now, God’s intelligence is such that He could take any event in all of creation at any moment in the history of the universe, change it in one of an infinite number of ways, and then tell you exactly what would happen differently because of the change. Without any strain He could carry out all the intricate ramifications of that one change throughout history to the end of time — and beyond time into eternity! He has all the possibilities and the one actuality clearly focused in His Mind at all times. His genius is endlessly vast; “His Understanding is infinite.”(Psa 147:4-5)

In reading about the past, we often indulge in “iffy history.” We wonder “what if” a certain person had done something other than what he did. “What if” this or that event had occurred instead of what actually did? What if Adam and Eve had never sinned? What if the Confederacy had won the War Between the States? What if Franklin D. Roosevelt had never been elected President? Things would certainly be different. We would not be in such a mess today. (Or at least we would be in a different mess) We speculate from time to time, but speculation is mere wishful thinking. To God, however, iffy history is not speculation; it is perfectly clear and exact. He knows precisely what would have happened, (Matt 11:23) and I imagine that He will have some fascinating stories to tell us in heaven about what might have taken place but did not. God knows the future as clearly as the past. His knowledge is not subject to development; He never needs to learn anything because He already KNOWS EVERYTHING! (Isa 44:6-8)

Furthermore, He always acts rationally, but He never needs to reason things out: He knows the conclusions and the premises at the same time, the end from the beginning. He knows both the good and the bad. He knows every terrible thing that we know, and many more besides, but His knowledge never causes Him to regret the past or dread the future. You can see that His Thinking is quite a bit different from ours! If you think you are keeping any secrets from God, relax and forget it. He knows your soul, your every thought, and He has always known them, and in eternity future we are with Him now! And have always been with Him! And we will always be with Him! His genius comprehends infinite, endless things, but He always finds the time to concentrate His full attention on you, past present and future. In fact, He is always totally concentrating on you! He foresaw your life from beginning to end and stockpiled everything you will ever need. (Matt 6:8)

Even if you cut off your intake of Truth and take a Spiritual nosedive into carnality, He has just the right type and right amount of Divine discipline ready to meet the need. He knows the best way to bless you; and in discipline, He knows exactly where it hurts most. In spite of everything that He knows about you, in spite of your yet future failures, (Which would shock you if you knew about them) God is perfectly relaxed about you. He faithfully supplies all the logistical grace necessary for you to advance day by day in learning the Word of God. The Word of God reveals the absolute Spiritual Thinking of the Mind of God, but His perspicacity extends infinitely beyond what He has chosen to reveal to mankind. (Rom 11:33) Whether in the Scriptures or in the undisclosed realms of Divine cognizance, the smallest mistake, miscalculation, or oversight would mean that God was not God. By His very nature, He cannot be complicated with ignorance or with absurdity.

It is absurd to suggest that omniscient God might run into a situation in which He would have to change His mind! (1Sa 15:29)

That is impossible and contrary to His infinite nature. But man — limited, imperfect, and often stupid — can change his mind every minute on the minute. The female of the species is renowned for her legendary accomplishments in this field. We can change our minds out of instability and indecisiveness or as part of flexibility and even moral courage. We revise our opinions as a routine, legitimate, and necessary human activity; we are all familiar with this human function. Thus, when (Gen 6:6) states that God changed His mind, we are looking at a strictly human function ascribed to God to make His functions clear to human beings!

God had Promised mankind a Savior, the “Seed of the woman.” (Gen 3:15; Gal 3:16) God always knew that such a Promise required Him to preserve the human race so Christ could be born as true humanity. But Satan, constantly on the offensive, conspired in the days of Noah to infiltrate fallen angels into the human race in an attempt to destroy the lineage of Christ. (Gen 6:1-13; 2Pe 2:4-5; Jude 1:6) Satan enjoyed fantastic success! The antediluvian population fell right into step with his plan. After a few generations of this intermarriage, true humanity began to disappear, and evil became rampant on the earth. God’s character was on the line. Would He welsh on an obligation? Would He fail to complete something He had begun? No. God always keeps His Promises. After giving man every opportunity to change his own mind, (Gen 6:3) God judged all but Noah and his family, the only growing believers of pure human descent. God did not change; God had not made a mistake; God did not learn something new. Man had changed; as God always knew he would; under a satanic conspiracy that God always knew would occur. The Flood came as an act of Divine justice designed to prevent the compromise of God’s righteousness and justice (Psa 89:14) and to protect and perpetuate His matchless plan of grace. In communicating it to man, God translated this policy of His justice into an anthropopathism: repentance. What more emphatic way to express His unswerving and just attitude toward evil men than to declare that He had just plain changed His mind about creating the human race? If anything could catch the attention of Noah’s calloused, unbelieving contemporaries, that would. This language of accommodation in which God “repents” is not unique to Genesis 6; it is common throughout the Old Testament. (Exod 32:14; Num 23:19; Jdg 2:18; 1Sa 15:35; Psa 90:13; Jer 15:6; Amos 7:3-6) Each time we find it, a different facet of God’s character has come to bear on a new situation in the human race, but God has not changed. God always controls the stimulus/provision, and the result, we control the response, (Jer 18:2-10) The perfect example of the sovereignty of God, and the free will of man!

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GOD’S ANGER

The anger of the Lord is another anthropopathism, and again God recruits a familiar human attitude into the service of expressing Divine policy. God is said to be angry toward carnality.

...For they have rejected the Law of the LORD of hosts And despised the Word of the Holy One of Israel. On this account the anger of the LORD has burned against His people... (Isa 5:24-25)

So it will be a reproach, a reviling, a warning and an object of horror to the nations who surround you when I execute judgments against you in anger, wrath and raging rebukes. I, the LORD, have spoken. (Eze 5:15)

God’s “anger” expresses the terrible harshness of the stages of Divine discipline against the reversionist or the reversionistic nation. Reversionism is the believer’s recession from any stage of Spiritual growth. It is a process characterized by indifference toward or rejection of Truth, an attitude which leads to various malfunctions of the soul. Reversionism is first brought on by a reaction to one of the many reactor factors that will periodically arise in any normal life. For example, there is no excuse for reacting to disillusionment, (Not to get what you had hoped for in: Self, things, people, or circumstances) (Jer 17:5) loneliness, boredom, self-pity, or a guilt complex by embarking on a frantic search for happiness which carries you away from Truth and leads to even worse disillusionment! Divine cursing toward the reversionistic believer begins with warning discipline, (Rev 3:20) continues through more and more intensive discipline, and culminates, if the believer does not recover, in maximum discipline — “the sin unto death.” (1Co 11:30; 1Jn 5:16) When a nation is saturated with reversionists, (Carnal believers) it is cursed and warned through five cycles of discipline. (Lev 26:14-39; Hos 4:1-6)

The fifth cycle ends in military defeat — the destruction of the nation and the enslavement of its survivors. (Jer 7:24-34) But does God do this out of anger? Emphatically not! Again, let us briefly describe His true attitude and thus underscore the fact that God’s “anger” is only an anthropopathism. God possesses only the ultimate in happiness. He is perfect; His happiness is perfect. He is eternal; His happiness is eternal. He is immutable; His happiness cannot be diminished or increased. He is justice; He is happy about always being entirely fair. He is perfect righteousness — this is part of His glory. He recognizes His own perfection and takes pleasure in His own glory. God enjoys claiming all glory for Himself simply in the interest of absolute Truth! Happiness is part of God’s character. It is impossible for Him to be unhappy or angry since He thoroughly enjoys every facet of His own existence. For example, God is satisfied and delighted with His plan of grace. In grace, He shares His own happiness with believers through Truth resident in their souls. God’s pleasure depends on His character, never on ours. In other words, regardless of any overblown opinion that we might entertain about your own importance, we are incapable of either adding to or detracting from His happiness. God cannot be happier than He already is, and nothing we can think, say, or do can make God unhappy. (Deut 28:63) This does not mean that He is overjoyed by our negative volition or by our failure to fulfill His will and desire for our life. Nor does it mean that He is indifferent toward us. It means that His plan calls for us to share His happiness, not for Him to depend on ours. In fact, God is the only Source of the spectrum of happiness — from orientation and tranquility to stimulation and ecstatics — which characterizes the mature believer through all the varied circumstances of life. (Psa 43:4; Php 4:4) God has provided for our soul everything necessary to develop capacity for happiness. This provision is Truth. We might as well come aboard through, Operation Z and enjoy the ride. The only hindrance is our own free will. If we utilize the Divine operating assets and grow up Spiritually, we will come into blessing. But if we reject Truth and go off on your own — as if we were the designer of happiness and knew more about it than God does — we will inevitably come under Divine cursing.

But this is what I Commanded them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I Command you, that it may be well with you. Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels [Thoughts] and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward. (Jer 7:23-24)

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel [Thoughts] of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, [Staying out of fellowship] Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! [I don't need to Think God's Thoughts, and do His will] But his delight is in the law of the LORD, [God's Thoughts] And in His law he meditates [Thinks with them] day and night! He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, [The filling of God the Holy Spirit] which yields its fruit in its season [Reaches Spiritual maturity] And its leaf does not wither; [Eternal rewards] And in whatever he does, he prospers! (Psa 1:1-3)

But even discipline from the Lord is designed to alert you to your need for Truth and to motivate you to return to the daily intake of your Spiritual food. Whether He blesses or curses, God is absolutely fair, and being fair, He is totally content. But the reversionist has no Doctrinal frame of reference; he does not understand God’s attitude; and he lacks inner happiness or true satisfaction of any kind. If God described His own fantastic happiness to such a person, would it make much of an impression? Would it slow down his subjective reactions? Would it instill a sense of urgency regarding the importance of Truth? Not likely. Therefore, God communicates through an anthropopathism. The message comes in loud and clear when God hits him with discipline and explains in no uncertain terms what is known in Latin as ira deum, “the wrath of God.” There are many other anthropopathisms in the Bible, such as jealousy, (Psa 79:5; Eze 39:25; Zec 8:2; 2Co 11:2) scorn, (Psa 2:4; Psa 37:13; Psa 59:8; Prov 1:26) grief, (Eph 4:30) nausea, etc. (Rev 3:16) Anthropomorphisms abound as well. For example, God is given hands, (Exod 15:6; John 10:28-29) arms, (Exod 15:16; Deut 5:15; Deut 33:27; Isa 52:10; Isa 53:1) to depict Divine guidance, protection, and provision. Each use of human attitudes or anatomy communicates an aspect of God’s Person or plan.

GOD’S LOVE

Perhaps the best known verse in the Bible is: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

This familiar sentence encompasses God’s entire plan of grace. The verse begins with eternity past when the destiny of the Second Person of the Trinity was established — to be born a true man (Literally, “His uniquely born Son”) that He might go to the Cross to be judged for the sins of mankind. It specifies the mechanics of our entering God’s plan — faith in Christ. And it concludes with one of the advantages gained from believing in Him —eternal life. A great deal of basic Truth is covered in, (John 3:16) because in it our Lord was presenting the plan of Salvation to Nicodemus, a religious unbeliever. (Who later became a believer) Jesus was explaining the Gospel to him in extremely simple terms, drawing such analogies as being born again or hearing the wind blow. But even with a picturesque, non-technical explanation from the greatest Teacher of all time, this intellectual Pharisee was still slow to catch on. If he was struggling with these basic Truths, certainly he could not understand the inner functions of God’s nature!

GOD'S REALITY

There is a vast difference, as we shall see, between Divine love and human love. God IS love. (1Jn 4:8) And God's infinite Truth, love, friendship, kindness, class, and style demand to be shared. God (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) chose to create: Angels and Man and that they must possess free will! God knew Satan would rebel against His authority, (Isa 14:13-14) and this is all part of His plan. (Isa 14:24; Isa 14:27) God has perfect integrity, and everyone who will live with God must have His righteousness, (Rom 3:22) and His Thinking, (1Co 1:30-31) because God is righteousness and justice (Psa 89:14) we must do everything His way! God the Son became a man and submitted to God the Fathers authority, (John 5:30) as a child and as an adult, when Satan tempted Him, and then death on a cross! (Php 2:5-11) Satan chose to worship himself, his beauty, accomplishments, thoughts, and desires. (Eze 28:12-15; Eze 28:17) And was removed as the covering cherub in God's kingdom, (Eze 28:16) and sentenced to eternal fire. (Matt 25:41) The reason Satan and the demons are not in the Lake of fire; is an appeal, that there is some another way to live in God's universe and to use free will apart from God's perfect authority. So that is why we see in the world, people trying to establish freedom without authority, this equals anarchy, and authority without freedom this equals slavery. God is allowing Satan, demons and humans to try to prove there is some other; any other way to live apart from God, while demonstrating God's glory and helping to bring many angels and humans to God's family! (Heb 2:10; Heb 2:13-14) God allowed the fall of man, so that all of us would start at total depravity; (Rom 3:10) and so that no man could boast before God! (1Co 1:27-29) God permitted all the angels to start in total perfection, (Eze 28:12-15) in the Millennium man will have perfect environment, (Isa 11:1-9) and Satan and the demons will not be there, (Rev 20:2-3) until after the Millennium, (Eze 38:8-11; Rev 20:7-9) to remove every excuse, and to show that free will is truly free! We choose to obey or not, starting in perfection or depravity, our decision! For this reason God has allowed Satan to duplicate his mental attitude in every member of the human race! (Rom 1:28-32; Rom 3:4; Rom 3:10-19) We as believers either worship God and His Words, (Mark 8:38) or we worship ourselves, our accomplishments, thoughts will, and desires. (Jer 18:12) We become proud of God the Father, Jesus Christ, God the Holy Spirit and their Thoughts, and accomplishments, (1Jn 2:2) or of our own. (Mark 8:33; Php 2:20-21) We seek money, pleasure, things or Truth! We cannot serve God and the old sin nature! (Matt 6:24-34; Matt 16:23-26) The world is Satan’s kingdom! (John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11; 2Co 4:4; Eph 2:2) This fallen super creature rules his domain according to a plan and policy called ‘‘evil.’’ (Gen 3:5; Gal 1:4) Evil is the sum total of Satan’s genius; it is the thinking of Satan as opposed to, Truth; the Mind of Christ. (1Co 2:16) Satan sponsors many different — even antithetical — ideas and false systems of thought by which he has gained control of the human soul (Matt 15:18-19; Rev 9:20-21) and hence of the entire human race! (Rev 12:9) When we understand Satan’s reason for revolting against his own Creator and recognize his current objectives, we have a frame of reference for understanding evil. (Satan's thinking) Satan revolted because of arrogance. And his objective both then and now is to be worshiped like God, and to usurp the throne of heaven. (Isa 14:14) He wants to prove that he is as good as God. In order to do so, the devil and man is determined to solve all the problems of life, independent of the design of God the Holy Spirit and Truth. In this manner; he promotes morality and immorality! (Psa 39:5; Rom 7:18) Anything accomplished apart from the filling of God the Holy Spirit and Truth, (John 4:23-24) is Satan's system of evil thinking, and leads to evil function, and such satanic truths as altruism, philanthropy, legalism, religion, socialism, and communism. Today the number one form of evil is: “Christianity” without the filling of God the Holy Spirit and Thinking with God's Thoughts! (1Co 4:19-20; 2Ti 3:5) This leads people to sincerely pursue “noble” ends, but God declares “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE.” (Eph 4:22-24) We are not to make Satan's world a better place to live; we are to change from the inside out, (Rom 12:2) and rule over our sin nature now (Rom 6:17-18) and with Christ in eternity! (Rev 3:12-13) Morality is not the Christian way of life! (2Co 11:13-15; Gal 3:1-3) Morality and giving up things for God, produces self-righteousness, at the expense of Spiritual growth. (John 8:44) Satan intends to prove God a liar, to supplant God’s perfect design, to win the angelic conflict, to expose God as unfair for sentencing so wonderful a creature as himself to eternal judgment in the Lake of Fire. (Matt 25:41) In short, the devil’s world, cosmos diabolicus, is totally, violently hostile to the essence of God, to the plan of God, to the freedom of man, to the Salvation of man, to the Spiritual advance of believers — to everything related to God! And God causes and allows this for His own glory! God is for us, (Rom 8:31-32) are we for Him!

For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You. (Psa 5:4)

Indeed, God judges evil and the primary characteristic of evil; arrogance.

Thus I will punish the world for its evil And the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. (Isa 13:11)

Not only is the world enemy territory, but since the fall of man when Satan usurped the earthly throne from Adam, every person born into the human race (Except Jesus Christ) is a natural citizen of’ the devil’s realm. We are all born under Divine condemnation, (John 3:18) physically alive but Spiritually dead. (Matt 22:32; Rom 5:12) Adam rejected God’s provisions in the Garden, decided instead to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, (Gen 3:22) Satan’s plan, and plunged the entire human race into Spiritual death under Satan’s new regime. We shall study this in depth when we examine the Truth of imputation; for now, we need to see only that we are totally incompatible with God. As fallen Adam’s progeny, we have his original sin imputed to us at birth. (Rom 5:18) Furthermore, we inherit Satan's nature (Called the old sin nature) which Adam acquired as a result of that first sin. (1Co 15:22; Rom 6:6) Further still, we exhibit our fallen condition by committing all categories of personal sins — mental, verbal, and overt. To say the least, we are not very attractive to God. We are Spiritual corpses infested with Adam’s sin, the old sin nature, (Rom 7:18) and personal sins. We are repulsive to God. (Isa 64:6) In this condition as an unbeliever; DOING “good deeds” like: loving everyone, praying, giving money, treating others as he wants to be treated; (Matt 5:46; Luk 6:32) is useless! (Rom 3:12) As a believer who is not living in the Spiritual life and Thinking with Truth, doing the same “good deeds,” is useless! (Luk 14:33-35)

The glory of God is His perfect essence with emphasis on His righteousness. There is absolutely no way that God could Personally love the world, or any unbeliever in the human race without first laying aside His own essence. God loves Satan demons and unbelievers based on Who and What He IS! He Personally loves only His own righteousness, wherever it is found! In God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the elect angels, and in believers. He loved the world, (John 3:16) based on His integrity! Not ours! What the righteousness of’ God rejects, the justice of God condemns. As we stay filled with God the Holy Spirit, and make Truth first priority in our lives the nature that Christ created in Himself, (2Pe 1:4) is created in us! And we start to love God Personally and Satan unbelievers, carnal believers and even ourselves, Impersonally based on the integrity of the new nature in our own soul! (Matt 5:44; Luk 6:27; Luk 6:35; Eph 4:24)

Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith [Spiritual life] of the same kind as ours, by the [Imputed] righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge [Spiritual Thinking] of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His Divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, [Spiritual Maturity] through the true knowledge [Divine Thinking] of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these [Imputed righteousness, the Spiritual life, Truth, and Divine power] He has granted to us His precious and magnificent Promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. (Eph 4:22) Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith [Spiritual life] supply moral excellence, [Spiritual Virtue] and in your moral excellence, knowledge, [Spiritual Thinking] and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, [Spiritual Maturity] and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge [Spiritual Thinking] of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, [Think these Thoughts] you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. [Full reward] (2Pe 1:1-11)

Recall that in (John 3:16) Christ was explaining Divine motivation to someone who had no frame of reference to understand anything about God’s essence, let alone about God’s true and magnificent attribute of Divine love. Nicodemus, for all his intelligence, religious education, and respectability, was an ignorant man regarding the attributes of God. We know that he was on the wrong track because as a legalistic Pharisee he had been striving all his life to impress God with human morality. But only a person who is misinformed about God’s nature — or who is too proud of his own accomplishments to recognize man’s total depravity — would expect Divine approbation for human morality! (Php 3:3) But don’t look down your nose at the ancient Pharisee — we all start out at below zero, Yet God is always fair to each of us in that He accommodates our stupidity long enough for us to learn basic Truth as a foundation for more advanced Truth.

Concerning Him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary Principles of the Oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the Word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses [Thinking] trained to discern good [God's Thinking] and evil. [Satan's thinking] (Heb 5:11-14)

This explains the existence of many passages throughout the Scriptures in which God is the subject, and we, fallen man, (The unbeliever) are said to be the objects of His (Personal) love. Actually, God’s motivation is the sum of His entire essence. But what does that mean to someone ignorant of Divine essence? Not a thing! On the other hand, “God so Impersonally loved the world [Based on Who and What God Is] that He gave” is perfectly clear to us as growing believers. For the unbeliever, Personal Love as a motive for giving registers in nearly everyone’s mind and permits unbelievers to comprehend the basic Principles of Salvation. (John 3:16)

LOVE FOR BELIEVERS

As it is written, I loved that Jacob, but I hated that Esau. (Rom 9:13)

In these contrasting statements, God evaluates a pair of twin brothers. Jacob had believed in Christ, and used his Spiritual life and reached Spiritual maturity. (Gen 28:12-22; Gen 32:24-32; Gen 33:10; Gen 33:17-20) but Esau did not want to use it and sold his Spiritual life, (Gen 25:34; Gen 26:34-35; Gen 27:38; Gen 28:1-9; Gen 33:9-11; Gen 35:29) by living according to the old sin nature. Therefore, if we waste our time and not reach Spiritual maturity, we can cry all we want; we will still not receive eternal rewards! God has a different attitude toward each, consistent with His own perfect essence. (Jer 18:1-17; Rom 9:11-24)

After Salvation.jpg

We chose if we are going to be personally rewarded by God or disciplined and judged (Hated) by God! (Deut 28:63; 2Ti 2:19-22; Heb 10:30-31) Hatred, then, is obviously a human characteristic which is ascribed to God to express His judgment against negative Esau.

Now look at the other half of the comparison, the description of Divine Thinking toward Jacob. Through faith in Christ, and Jacob’s relationship with God, using his Spiritual life and reaching Spiritual maturity! So he will receive Eternal blessings. In, (Rom 9:13) therefore, God has handed down a judicial opinion regarding positive believers and negative believers. His position is represented on one hand by carnality — hatred — and on the other Spiritual maturity, by legitimate Personal love. (Rom 8:12-18)

...For God is love. (1Jn 4:8)

Notice that John uses love in an intransitive sense; that is; it does not take an object. Never is such a phrase used of man. We might love someone or something, but we are never said to be love. God’s actual characteristic of love, however, is related directly to His Being; He possesses love, as an absolute attribute of His Divine essence. By “absolute attribute” I mean simply that God’s love is not a “relative” attribute; it is not related to an object of love; it is independent of anything that God has created. God's love functions today exactly as it always has and always will! God is absolutely independent. He is more than independent; He exists eternally, not created or sustained by any source outside Himself. He is the Source of all sustenance, but another of His absolute attributes, the attribute of Spirituality, includes the fact that He exists as an infinite Person who needs no sustenance, no maintenance, no help, no support, and no fulfillment from anyone or anything! He always existed, complete and perfect, long before He brought us, (Chronologically) on the scene; (Logically) we have always been in eternity with Him! In His love, like all of His absolute attributes, are totally independent of what He has made. (Prov 8:22-36) His Virtue love is so constant and so superior to our love that it does not require an object. Before we discover anything else about God's love, we know from its eternal existence that in whatever way it functions, it does so equally with or without an object, with or without a particular occasion for love. In spite of all the changeability within God’s creation, nothing can change the love in God’s essence. This is perfect love, so far above ours that were it not for the Bible; we would not know it existed. Every part of God's essence is infinite: Sovereignty, righteousness, justice, eternity, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, finesse, class, style, kindness, patience, unchangeableness, faithfulness, love, Truth, objectivity, humility, severity, sense of humor, and happiness; this is His Glory! He is not up one minute and down the next. He always focuses His infinite mentality on everything at once so that He is not subject to the variations we experience as our lives unfold in time. Because He is eternal, (No time in eternity) we have always existed with Him, never was there a moment when we have not existed! And He is free to love them Personally, and deal with us as son's (Heb 2:10-14; Heb 11:13-16) Since we do not possess the infinite and perfect attributes of our Creator; by staying in fellowship and putting Truth first, He is able to share His infinite attributes, with our ever increasing capacity to receive and use them! THE PERFECT LOVE RELATIONSHIP!

From the start, He has equipped us with emotion as part of the essence of our souls. And we can be glad He did! Through emotion we express our appreciation for the objects of our love. In other words, our emotions are designed to support and to respond to the contents of the dominant, Thinking portion of the mentality of the soul. When you see breathtaking scenery, for example, the sight fulfills the norm or standard in your right lobe that identifies beauty. Your vocabulary and categorical storage areas come into play, also through the memory center of your frame of reference, enabling you to recognize the scene for what it is. This is how an emotional response is elicited, along with whatever application might lift off from the launching pad — whether a comment, some type of artistic expression, or simply silence. Emotion is part of human capacity for love. If your right lobe is saturated with Truth, you as a mature believer have capacity for love, for life, for happiness, for prosperity, for adversity, for all the blessings that God has waited to pour out upon you. Because of the Truth in your soul, your emotions respond when you recognize certain Biblical Truths or Think with them in your daily life. For instance, you will be stirred emotionally when you hear so powerful an expression of grace and Truth as the fourth verse of The Star Spangled Banner: O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our Trust.” And the Star - Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

But emotion is a two-edged sword. When Truth which produces capacity for life, does not influence the soul, human emotion becomes the instrument, of misery — unhappiness to match any occasion. If your right lobe is saturated with evil, (Satan's thinking) your emotions will respond to and encourage evil, making you a misfit, completely out of touch with God's Reality. Likewise, if you respond to your old sin nature and thereby overthrow the inner authority of God the Holy Spirit, then instead of responding to the Truth in your soul, your emotion will dictate to the soul! God the Holy Spirit works through the Truth you know; (John 4:23-24) but when you “quench God the Holy Spirit,” by turning over control of your soul to the old sin nature, the Truth in your soul ceases to have its influence. Instead, you produce sins, morality and or degeneracy. (Or some combination of the three!) Without rebound (1Jn 1:9) to restore the filling of God the Holy Spirit, you eventually sink into reversionism, “grieving God the Holy Spirit.” Reversionism (Going backwards) always involves an emotional revolt of the soul. The emotion overthrows Truth; the responder becomes the initiator; the “emotion ” of the soul starts to give orders to the “mentality.” The early stages of reversionism are characterized by a frantic attempt to compensate for some reactor factor — frustration or loneliness, for example. Since emotion, (Controlled by the old sin nature) is like an “empty sack; koilia in the Greek,” (Rom 16:18; Php 3:18-19) has no content of its own — no character, no stability, no common sense, no knowledge, no Truth — it is incompetent to handle the authority it seizes from the Spiritual life. The believer who is controlled by his emotions likewise has no character, stability, common sense, or application of Truth. Emotion cannot think; and Divine Thoughts, not feelings, must dominate the soul! When a right lobe saturated with Truth, dominates the soul, the awareness of Personal love for God is intensified by emotion. Such response is noble, beautiful, gratifying. Emotion does not equal Divine love. Divine Personal love for God and Impersonal love for all mankind is a Spiritual mental attitude! WE ARE NOT HERE TO BE “GOOD” HUMANS! THE OLD HUMAN SIN NATURE MUST DIE, AND A THE NEW NATURE IS TO BE COMPLETED IN US NOW! AND TO LIVE WITH GOD FOREVER IN OUR NEW BODY! (2Co 5:17)

That, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, (2Pe 1:4) which in the likeness of God [The exact copy of God's Nature] has been created in [Imputed and Experiential] righteousness and holiness [Integrity] of the Truth. (Eph 4:22-24)

Just like a caterpillar starts as a worm, then builds a cocoon and becomes completely different! So we as humans start as a worm, (Job 25:6; Psa 22:6; Isa 41:14) then are born again, (1Pe 1:3) and starts to build a Spiritual life and becomes something completely different! (1Jn 3:2)

And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, [At Spiritual maturity] even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. (Rom 8:23)

Those who expound all-loving, all-sweetness “Theology” do not realistically portray the Truth of the Word of God. This notion of Christianity is divorced from the Truth. (Matt 10:34-39) The believer’s true relationship with God and people, is based on Thought and respect — the content of Truth in his soul. Truth enables the mature believer to know God and to stand in genuine awe of the Members of the Trinity. And to love all members of the human race Impersonally. (Matt 22:37-40) Emotion happily and contentedly tags along as a response to the saturation of Truth in his soul! (John 17:13-26)

PAUL EXPLAINS THE GOSPEL

By now we have developed sufficient frame of reference to proceed. We are about to examine a passage from Romans that will explain how the statement “for God so loved the world” works. Paul will give us the key to understanding how God can love rationally, without an object, without emotional variations, and without compromise to His Divine perfection. The Principle is so obvious that it is almost surprising! Paul will explain that perfect God loves a perfect Object. With Spiritual love, God loves Himself! Anyone can memorize “God is love” and quote it to justify all manner of imbecilic activity, but its true meaning lies in discovering what is worthy of God’s love.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for Salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, BUT THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. [BY WHAT GOD DECLARES TO BE REALITY] (Rom 1:16-17)

Paul was the greatest Jew who ever lived with the possible exception of Moses, and of course not considering the God-man, Jesus Christ. Without a doubt Paul was the greatest Roman. Both during his lifetime and century upon century thereafter, down to the present moment, his influence far exceeds that of any other citizen of SPQR. Through his intake of the Word of God, he exploited grace to the maximum, and God blessed him with the most complete knowledge of Truth, that any believer has ever possessed. His incisive mentality, his Occupation with Christ, his vigorous capacity for life as a mature believer made him objective, enthusiastic, and eminently prepared to tackle any situation life could offer. An aspect of his motivation is brought to light as he, the foremost apostle, reveals the mental attitude of a communicator of Truth. His attitude should be shared today by every pastor-teacher and, likewise, by every believer regardless of Spiritual gift. The Greek compound verb epaischunomai combines the preposition epi, “over and above,” with the verb aischuno, “to be ashamed.” With the negative, the compound literally means “to not be ashamed, to be above being ashamed.” In other words, Paul never hung his head regarding anyone or anything with whom or with which he was associated. Lack of such embarrassment means freedom from subjectivity, HUMAN FALSE REALITIES! When a person is so subjective, weak, or cowardly that he worries about the opinions of others — afraid they might ridicule him or think him a little strange — he does not know enough Truth to consistently live in God's Reality! (Just keep reading every day, and you will) Children, who are ashamed of their parents, and parents ashamed of their children, fall into this category; as does the person who is ashamed of his background, occupation, or lack of education. We all have something of which we could be ashamed, yet our lives are to be free from shame and guilt. The grace of God cures these cancers of the soul through rebound and the consistent function of Operation Z. Paul, therefore, is not describing the immature believer. Anyone with a guilt complex can work himself up emotionally to overcome his natural shyness and “do great things for God.” But only the mature believer knows what it means to be supremely blessed of God; only he has the poise from Spiritual growth to be truly relaxed, confident, and unashamed of the Truth in his soul! He knows that the opinions (Human Reality) of people are insignificant and inconsequential compared to God’s Reality expressed in the Word of God. He knows, furthermore, that he does not have to prove anything to anyone, that he is designed to live his life as unto the Lord! The noun euaggelion, “Gospel,” is often misunderstood. We Think of the Gospel as being the Salvation message of Jesus Christ and His work on the Cross. That is the technical meaning of the word, but that is only part of its overall connotation. Euaggelion means “good news; news of victory or good fortune,” “God's Reality” referring to something of intrinsic value. The “good news” includes the entire Word of God, only a small part of which applies to the unbeliever. Which aspect of the Divine Thinking that is in view will be indicated by the context. Paul is not ashamed of any Truth, but in (Rom 1:16) he narrows down the field to that information necessary to bring an unbeliever to the point of faith in Christ. We know this from the explanatory clause that follows. Paul explains why he is not merely unashamed of the Good News but is proud of it and even boastful (1Co 1:31; Gal 6:14) “for it is the power of God for Salvation to everyone that believes.” Paul asserts the dogmatic and unqualified fact that there is a certain portion of Truth that results in eternal Salvation, for those who believe it. The Gospel is therefore called “the power of God.” The Greek word for “power” is dunamis. Derived from the earliest Indo-European language and having a counterpart in ancient Sanskrit, this word’s oldest meaning was “ability” or “capacity.” As the noun passed through Homeric into Attic Greek, the idea developed that an individual’s Spiritual and intellectual life could be traced back to his dunamis or IQ. Therefore, in the classical Greek of the fifth century B.C., dunamis meant “ability, IQ, perspicacity, the capacity to learn, the ability to concentrate in learning.” Developing further into the Koine Greek of the New Testament, the word denotes power in the sense of competence or capacity. When linked with the possessive genitive of Theos, “belonging to God,” the phrase should be translated, “for it the Gospel; is the ability of God.” When you communicate the Good News to an unbeliever, you explain the simple message of Salvation. But without going into detail that would confuse the issue and confuse the unbeliever, you are actually declaring God’s ability to save, God’s ability to bless, God’s ability to provide. The meaning of dunamis throws Salvation back on the actual capacity and character of God Himself. This is exactly what Jesus was doing as He spoke (John 3:16) to Nicodemus! Our Lord was explaining the Gospel. But in Reality He was talking about “the ability of God” — God’s capacity, God’s essence. Could He come right out with an enthralling discourse on His own Divine attributes, which were the same as those of the Father and the Holy Spirit? Could He go into detail with this uninformed unbeliever about motivation within the Godhead? That might have been a feast for a mature believer, but it would have left poor Nicodemus starving! If the Pharisee was to be saved, simple language was needed. Both (John 3:16) and (Rom 1:16) teach the same subject, the Good News of Salvation. The Gospel is the “power of God” — the ability and capacity of Divine essence — to guarantee that believers “should not perish [In the Lake of Fire] but have everlasting life.” Paul comes out and identifies which attribute of Divine essence is involved, whereas Christ merely represented this Divine attribute in language of accommodation when evangelizing a religious unbeliever. And what does Jesus’ statement “for God so loved the world” point to in the actual essence of God? Which Divine attribute produces the action in saving us? After assuring both Jews and Gentiles of Divine impartiality — “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” — Paul gives us the answer.

THE THINKING OF A JUDGE

The Apostle begins, (Rom 1:17) with the Concept of righteousness; the development from the specific “One thought” to the abstract “Many thoughts” are reflected in the change from dike and dikaios into dikaiosune. Dikaiosune was first used in the fifth century B.C., the historian Herodotus used it in telling the story of Solon, the farseeing statesman who’s Laws had saved Athens over a hundred years before. In Solon's day, the government leaders had woven a web of decrees that oppressed and exploited the citizens of Attica, the city-state of which Athens was capital. These rulers under Satan's influence, tried to play God. They coveted power; they poked their noses into the business of Law-abiding citizens; they continually passed new Laws. Without regard for freedom, or free enterprise. They attempted to remove the problems of mankind through legislation, especially through Laws designed to solve the problems of one percent of the population with “solutions” imposed on all. Solon witnessed this abuse of authority, which was all too similar to what we see in the United States today. As an aristocratic member of the ruling assembly, he eventually became the archon, and while serving his term, he persuaded the Athenians to adopt a new code. The old tyranny was set aside. Solon’s new system guaranteed freedom for every citizen. Privacy and property were protected; free enterprise became the order of the day. Solon was confident. He knew he had the right answers, and he did a very clever thing. He convinced the Athenians to pass one final statute decreeing that no one could add to or subtract from the Law — except Solon himself. Did he then wait around, wringing his hands, wondering which new Law he would have to enact in the face of the first crisis? No! Remember that Solon was a brilliant man. He immediately set out on a ten-year sabbatical, and simply left the Athenians to live by the excellent Laws already in force! Even today his code is considered to be one of the best legal systems of all time. It helped the city-state to eventually become one of the powerful empires of antiquity. The legislation of Solon greatly influenced the development of the meaning of dikaiosune. With Solon absent, his Laws could not be expanded or rescinded; the people of Athens had to adjust to what he had left them. Under this system of Law, Herodotus first coined dikaiosune as a legal term, meaning “the thinking of a judge in allotting to each one what is due him”; in other words, good, clear, objective thinking that gives everyone a fair shake before the Law. The abstract Concept of fairness indirectly included those under the Law so that the citizens who adjusted to the justice of Solon were said also to possess dikaiosune or “civil virtue.” The connotation of the word, however, is not the justice of a people but the justice of the person in authority, the judge in a court of Law. Many classical writers, including Plato, used the term in this sense. Dikaiosune, therefore, means “adjustment to the Law,” and that is the sense in which “righteousness” is a correct translation; but “justice” is an equally accurate rendition. In 280 B.C., over a century after the Golden Age of Greece, the Old Testament Scriptures were translated from Hebrew into Greek by seventy-two scholars in Alexandria, Egypt. In their amazingly accurate version called the Septuagint, dikaiosune stood for the Hebrew words tsedeq and tsedeqah, which can mean either righteousness or justice. The Concepts are so inter-related that sometimes they cannot be distinguished, and the Hebrew does not attempt to separate them. Whenever God’s justice or righteousness is mentioned in the Old Testament, dikaiosune appears in the Septuagint. God, instead of Solon, becomes the norm; and believers, instead of the citizens of Attica, are called dikaiosune when they observe the will of God, that is, when they have adjusted to the justice of God! There are three main adjustments to the justice of God. Salvation, (Rom 1:16) rebound, (1Jn 1:9) and Spiritual maturity. (Eph 4:13) Dikaiosune as adjustment to the Law, hence, “legal righteousness” for believers at each stage of growth. At Salvation imputed righteousness, (Rom 3:22) at rebound experiential righteousness, (1Co 11:31) at Spiritual maturity experiential righteousness and approval! (Heb 11:1-6)

Dikaiosune emphasizes the judge’s sense of justice, his ability to pronounce a fair verdict by scrutinizing all the evidence in the light of his expert knowledge of the Law. It does not refer to the judge’s own personal “morality” or “immorality” because the issue is not his private conduct but whether or not he can think in court! Josephus also notes that failure to adjust to the Law brings legal retribution or judgment; therefore, he recognizes dikaiosune as the source of both blessing and cursing. By the time it entered the Koine Greek of the New Testament, dikaiosune carried a wealth of meaning. It is therefore frequently mistranslated. It means “justice” as a characteristic of a judge, as the legal Thinking of a judge, as the professional integrity of a judge. It means “righteousness,” not merely in the sense of being good, but as a Principle motivation leading to correct Thought and action. It means “to be fair and equitable in dealing with others”; it means “Virtue, justice, integrity!”

Both Philo and Josephus applied this word to God, using the same phrase we find in, (Rom 1:17) dikaiosune Theou; “Righteousness of God.” But these writers possessed a limited or erroneous concept of God’s nature, whereas the human authors of the New Testament, under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, gave the term its full, Doctrinal meaning. In Scripture, “the dikaiosune of God” means three things: 1) the overall “integrity” of God, 2) His “righteousness” as the motivation of His integrity, and 3) His “justice” as the function of His integrity. God’s integrity in motivation is His righteousness. Whatever it’s specific translation, however, dikaiosune Theou is an abstract term; it always in some way connotes God’s integrity set against the background of all His attributes. Divine integrity is, therefore, infinite, perfect, eternal, unchangeable — and incomprehensible apart from its Revelation in Truth. As a motivation, dikaiosune Theou involves God alone, apart from man; but as Divine action, it can include man. In this sense, dikaiosune is sometimes used as a synonym for eusebeia, “godliness” and becomes a technical term for Spiritual maturity. Maturity is the believer’s maximum adjustment to the justice of God or total relationship with the integrity of God! Yet another technical usage encompasses not just the Spiritually mature but all believers; even the carnal believer is included. In this legal or forensic sense, dikaiosune means “justification.” God is the expert Judge; He has all the evidence and can pronounce only a fair, objective verdict. When a person believes in Christ, God is free because of the Cross to credit to that person His own righteousness, the very Principle of Divine integrity. Immediately, from the bench of the supreme court of heaven, God recognizes this new piece of evidence in the case. Since the believer now possesses God’s perfect righteousness, God pronounces him “dikaiosune” — justified, righteous! This is the essence of Salvation. In due course, we shall study both legal justification and maturity adjustment to the justice of God. Both of these applications of dikaiosune Theou to the human race include the Concept of vindication by grace. Grace means that God does all the work and receives all the glory. At Salvation we are justified by possessing His imputed righteousness; at Spiritual maturity we are vindicated by having Truth and Virtue in our souls, the Thinking and Virtue of His integrity. So at Salvation when we adjust to God's justice, we receive from God the father, His Spiritual life, and imputed righteousness, by this we are justified, (John 4:23-24) as we stay in fellowship and make Truth first priority, Christ shares His Thinking, with us, (1Co 2:16) and God the Holy Spirit shares His fruit (Virtue) with us. (Gal 5:22-23) In eternity we will Think with God the Father's unlimited, infinite Thoughts, and share His nature, (Virtue) and live in a new body! And these three are one! Soul, spirit, and body after the likeness of God; God the father is the soul, (John 5:30; John 7:16) God the Son is the body, (Col 2:9) God the Holy Spirit is the spirit! (2Co 13:14)

Our human righteousness and personal achievements have nothing whatever to do with our justification before God.

Dikaiosune Theou was the unmentioned subject of the conversation when Christ spoke to Nicodemus, and said; you must be born again! (We must adjust to the justice of God, or it will adjust to us!) (John 3:7) The power, ability, or capacity of God to save mankind is a matter of God's Justice; As (Rom 1:16-17) tells us, the Word of God reveals the function of His integrity from the Gospel, to basic Truth to advanced Truth. The Righteousness, Justice, Truth and Lovingkindness (Virtue love) of God truly represent His Divine essence, and these attributes cannot be separated; they are Who and What God IS! This is why they are put together all through Scripture! These are just a few:

Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and Truth. (Exod 34:6)

Then Solomon said, You have shown great lovingkindness to Your servant David my father, according as he walked before You in Truth and righteousness and uprightness [Right in His eyes: Spiritual Maturity] of heart toward You; and You have reserved for him this great lovingkindness, that You have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. (1Ki 3:6)

All the paths [Thoughts] of the LORD are lovingkindness and Truth To those who keep His Covenant [Stay in fellowship] and His Testimonies. [Think with His Thoughts] (Psa 25:10)

Lovingkindness and Truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. (Psa 85:10)

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Lovingkindness and Truth go before You. (Psa 89:14)

For Your lovingkindness is great above the heavens, And Your Truth reaches to the skies. (Psa 108:4)

But let him who boasts boast of this, that he Understands and Knows Me, [From learning Truth] that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things, declares the LORD. (Jer 9:24)

First, Truth is provided by the Holy Spirit and we believe it, (Eph 1:13) second, we receive God's righteousness (Rom 3:22) as a target for future blessings, from third, the justice of God, (Luk 18:7) and fourth, God is free to love us personally (John 15:12-14) without compromise to His integrity! (Psa 89:14)

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This opens the door. We can now begin to see how God can bless the totally depraved, Spiritually dead citizens of the enemy’s kingdom without destroying His own perfection. Love does not descend to our depraved level and thus cease to be love. Salvation does not mean that God must love the unlovely; that would be a fatal contradiction of Truth. Salvation means that God treats us in justice. He does not condescend to save us. He never condescends to do anything! The unbending strength of every facet of His absolute essence is fully behind everything He Thinks or does toward us! That is Divine integrity. He never makes exceptions. He does not act on emotion. He never feels sorry for the “poor, lost sheep” so as to be overcome by sentimentality. Nor is anything He accomplishes done on impulse. His works are never tentative or short-sighted, and therefore His plan never needs to be revised, undone, or corrected. Nothing He does can be undone. No loophole will ever have to be closed because no loopholes exist! Therein rests our security, our comfort, our blessing.

You are My witnesses, declares the LORD, And My servant whom I have chosen, So that you may know and believe Me And understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after Me. I, even I, am the LORD, And there is no savior besides Me. It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed, And there was no strange god among you; So you are My witnesses, declares the LORD, And I am God. Even from eternity I am He, And there is none who can deliver out of My hand; I act and who can reverse it? (Isa 43:10-13)

GOD LOVES HIS OWN INTEGRITY

He loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the LORD. (Psa 33:5)

Virtue love becomes the focus of our study. We find that it brings together both types of love that the Bible credits to God, Personal and Impersonal Virtue love. With Personal love God loves His own integrity. God loves Himself. God's love is internal! God needs no object to love because He is the Object! God’s Self-love should not surprise you. In His infinite knowledge, He knows Himself to be totally beyond comparison, to be totally worthy of admiration to an infinite degree in every possible sense. He claims all glory for Himself simply in the interest of absolute Truth! If He did not recognize His own incomparable greatness and demand all glory, something would be wrong; He would have to be either ignorant of His own attributes or unimpressed with the most tremendous of all Truths, the fact of His infinite glory. If He did not love Himself, there would be no reason for us to love Him. But He does love Himself, and through the accumulation of Truth in our souls, we must do the same. In fact, He Commands us to learn what He already knows and has always known about His own essence.

And you will swear, As the LORD lives, In Truth, in justice and in righteousness; Then the nations will bless themselves in Him, And in Him they will glory. [Be evangelized and grow to Spiritual maturity] For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem, [Believers] Break up your fallow ground, [Unused Spiritual life] And do not sow among thorns. [Carnality] (Matt 13:22) Circumcise yourselves to the LORD [Rebound] And remove the foreskins of your heart, (Jer 9:25; Rom 2:28-29; Php 3:3) Men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Or else My wrath will go forth like fire And burn with none to quench it, Because of the evil of your deeds. [Thoughts] (Jer 4:2-4)

God’s subjective love for Himself is not narcissism but recognition of the facts. He is truly worthy of love; His integrity of Thought, Word and Action is most important to Him. He respects His own integrity, honors it, and loves it. (Prov 21:3) In particular, He devotedly loves the Principle of His integrity, His perfect righteousness. God is righteous, and He expresses His righteousness in every act of His will. This is clear revelation of how much He loves His integrity.

I will vindicate the Holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when I prove Myself Holy among you in their sight.

(Eze 36:23)

A Psalm of David. Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, And I have trusted in the LORD without wavering. Examine me, O LORD, and try me; Test my mind and my heart. For Your lovingkindness is before my eyes, And I have walked in Your Truth. I do not sit with deceitful men, Nor will I go with pretenders. I hate the assembly of evildoers, And I will not sit with the wicked. (Psa 26:1-3)

A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean [Unbelievers] will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools [Carnal believers] will not wander on it. (Isa 35:8)

Perhaps we are beginning to see that what truly impresses God, and what we may have assumed impresses Him are two different things. Imperfect, sinful man has nothing to offer God that is worthy of His love. Even after Salvation, we cannot earn Divine approbation or blessing. The only things we have that please God are what God Himself has given us, first at the moment of Salvation and subsequently through the filling of God the Holy Spirit and the intake of Truth. (John 4:23-24)

Sooner or later we must learn two things, so you might as well be prepared for the shock. WE have to learn, first of all, that God is not impressed with us. He is not pleased with our self-righteousness, with our personality, with our talent, with all the “morality” and human good deeds we perform. (Matt 5:46-48) He is not excited even a little bit about what we were, are, or plan to become. And that is the second thing: not only is He unimpressed with us now, but He never will be impressed with us. It is an absolute impossibility for us to make any kind of positive impression on God. You and I have no ability to attract His love. We lack the talent, the brains, the personality, the righteousness; not even our very best can make the grade. (Psa 39:5)

But when Christians today read “God is love,” They immediately assume that they must be the objects of God's love. Without a moment's thought or hesitation they rush to the conclusion that somehow God deeply appreciates them, that He is charmed by their little ways, that He sees all the “good” in them, that He could not quite get along without their “Christian service,” that He truly respects the “dignity of man,” that He cannot contain Himself from showering them with fatherly approbation. “God is love,” they say, with deep conviction. “Surely He will bless me!” But in the next breath, after carnality and Divine discipline have knocked them flat, they whine and complain, “How could a loving God let this happen to me?” What is wrong? Why the disillusionment? Answer: these people are ignorant of Truth. They are maladjusted to the justice of God. They have no idea that justice, not love, is their point of contact with God. They have been rationalizing human sentimentality into Divine love. They do not understand that God demands that we do things His way, not ours, and what is His way: Truth resident in the soul through the filling of God the Holy Spirit — Truth taken in today, tomorrow, the next day, and every day! They are totally in the dark regarding the absolute, infinite, perfect character of God. All the good deeds you perform do not inspire God to love you. His righteousness rejects “morality” and immorality in unbelievers and carnality and “morality” in believers, and His justice will judge it. (1Co 3:11-15; Rev 20:12) Nor does He put any stock in our great personality. Our personality is how you relate to people, not to God. Others see us as a face, a body, a personality, a person of some accomplishment and with a certain amount of intelligence and human integrity. That is fine. We certainly should not renounce these wonderful assets simply because they do not relate us to God. Value them in their proper human place, but never attempt to superimpose the way people form an opinion of us over the way God evaluates us. The Latin proverb, the voice of the people, is not the voice of God. There is no point in playing games with God or in trying to make deals with Him. He knows better than to fall for that, so between you and God, who are we kidding? No one but ourselves. (And perhaps a few impressionable friends) God does not suddenly like us because you stop doing this or that and stop going with the girls who do. God does not reward us for being good! He set up the Laws of Divine establishment, including the Principles of freedom, to protect free will and to provide prosperity within the nation where establishment is observed, but God is not bribed by your good deeds. Nor does He revel in your emotions, not even in those experiences that you associate with being “near to God.” We are not even in the ballpark! God is in another league! He is not swept off His feet by our wonderful old sin nature, but He is mightily impressed with His own integrity!

We simply do not have anything of ourselves that pleases God. (Psa 39:5) On the other hand, this does not mean that we are to grovel in the dust. We would be just as arrogant to think that self-abnegation satisfied God as we would be to assume that He was impressed with our “morality.” We need to understand the Truth and to see ourselves in our true relationship to God’s immutable, impartial, unimpeachable perfection. No human gimmicks apply; we must learn how justice operates.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2Co 5:17)

We are on planet earth to be born into God's family, and grow up Spiritually! (Matt 22:21) Not with “morality,” or immorality, religion, being a democrat, a republican or a liberal, not with self-condemnation, or self-exaltation.

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BUT BY DEATH TO THE HUMAN OLD SIN NATURE! (John 12:24-27)

That, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the Truth.

(Eph 4:22-24)

And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, [His will, desires, thoughts and plans] and take up his cross [The human old sin nature] and follow Me. [We follow Christ's example by Spiritual growth to maturity, in the Spirit of Truth] (John 14:17) For whoever wishes to save his life [His will, desires, thoughts and plans] will lose it, [Die the sin unto death] but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? [The new self] For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me [By not doing the will, and desire of Christ, by reaching Spiritual maturity] and My Words [By not Thinking with His Thoughts] in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him [No reward] when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8:34-38)

GOD’S ESSENCE, THE ULTIMATE SOURCE OF INTEGRITY

Several basic Principles give us a running start at understanding God’s integrity. We must realize, first of all, that everything God does or sponsors, comes from His essence, from Who and What He IS. Whether the Law of gravity, or the work of the Cross — every Law of nature, every Principle of the Divine institutions: Free will, marriage, family, and nationalism; If there is a pivot of mature believers, these institutions will prosper. But if there are very few, or no mature believers, these will be attacked. As go the believers, so goes the nation!

It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. (Deut 28:63)

FAR FROM BEING SENTIMENTAL, God’s grace toward mankind is rooted in His essence. Every jot and tittle of the Bible is based on the attributes and essence of God. Since His attributes are perfect, nothing He does for us in grace is never less than perfect, nor does it ever compromise His Divine nature. Let us point out this characteristic in every category of grace. Saving grace removes the condemnation of Spiritual death under which we are born and places us into a permanent blessing relationship with God. The Doctrine of propitiation explains how the work of Christ on the Cross satisfied the uncompromising justice of God on our behalf and shows how God provides salvation without compromising His essence. Logistical grace keeps us alive and enables us to grow Spiritually even though we live in the devil’s world. Based on Who and What He IS, God has established certain objectives for us in the angelic conflict. In general, He keeps us on earth after Salvation to learn Truth, which gives us the capacity to possess and enjoy fantastic Divine prosperity. Blessing is the objective. If we are to seize this objective, this tactical victory in the Spiritual combat of life, we require a great deal of provision and support — Bible teaching, air to breathe, food, shelter, clothing, transportation, friends. Logistical grace is indispensable in fulfilling the plan of God; thus, it is totally consistent with the essence of God. Spiritual maturity includes the basic stages of Spiritual self-esteem, and is that wonderful, tranquil period upon reaching Spiritual adulthood — the Christian soldier on “rest and recuperation.” From the testing of adversity, opposition, and distraction — like crossing “no man’s land.” — Spiritual self-esteem is the tactical victory in the angelic conflict: Upon the adult believer God pours out Spiritual blessings, temporal blessings, blessings by association, historical impact, and blessings related to undeserved suffering. Because God is glorified when He blesses us, His essence is not only uncompromised in providing extra grace, it is emphasized! Spiritual autonomy is the advanced stage of Spiritual maturity, attained by the believer who continues and even intensifies his intake of Truth after reaching Spiritual self-esteem. God does more than derive glory from blessing the Spiritual autonomous believer; God is pleased by him and accepts him into His friendship! Abraham and Moses, for example, were called the friends of God. (2Ch 20:7; Jas 2:23; Exod 33:11; Rom 4:20-22) Maximum Truth in the soul gives the mature believer the capacity for blessings even under concentrated satanic opposition. (2Ti 3:8; cf. Exod 7:11; Job 1:6-22) Thus God demonstrates His perfect essence in a special, concentrated way, proving again that:

You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; [The demons] because greater is He [Christ] who is in you than he [Satan] who is in the world. (1Jn 4:4)

The mature believer’s capacity frees the essence of God to pour out intensified blessings without compromising any Divine attribute. Like all other categories of grace, dying grace is also furnished by the perfect essence of God. God transfers the mature believer from time to eternity in such a way that dying becomes the most relaxed and wonderful blessing of his entire life. God expresses His changeless nature even in how He calls the mature believer home. Finally, Reward blessings are awarded in heaven to the believer who learned enough Truth on earth to develop the capacity for Spiritual self-esteem, Spiritual autonomy, or Spiritual maturity and received mature blessings in time; in the devil’s world. (Matt 13:8) What God gives is permanent, and the blessings of time are multiplied into greater blessings in eternity! Such blessings and rewards bring unending glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as happiness and vast prosperity to the one so rewarded. The fact that some believers will be rewarded more richly than others is further proof of the uncompromising nature of God’s perfect essence. (Mark 4:3-21) From sustaining the universe to blessing believers, everything God does is based on the attributes of His essence. Therefore, before you can appreciate what God gives you; or what God is tapping His foot waiting to give you, (Isa 30:18) you must first come to appreciate God Himself. Thus the importance of understanding the Doctrine of Divine essence, and thus the importance of distinguishing attributes, from anthropopathisms.

GOD’S PERSON, NEVER DIVIDED

Not only do all God’s actions reflect His attributes, but since He is a Person, (Exod 3:14) all His actions always involve His entire Person. Certain things He does exhibit only this or that attribute, but actually all His characteristics always function together in perfect coordination and harmony. An analogy to light will help you see. When sunlight falls on a blue dress, blue is the only color seen; when on a bright red shirt, only red. A yellow object shows only yellow while, say, a Highlander’s tartan would boast many colors, each in its own order, in the set. How can one beam of light suddenly be a different color every time it strikes a different spot? The differences occur because a ray of white light contains all the colors of the spectrum, and whenever it strikes an opaque object some colors are absorbed while others are reflected. The blue dress is blue because it absorbs the reds and yellows; it reflects only the blue we see. The red shirt absorbs yellows, blue-greens, and blues, reflecting its specific shade of red. If a dress absorbed no color, it would reflect the entire contents of the white light and would obviously be white. The opposite, a black dress, would absorb all colors and reflect none. Even though each object shows its own color, the entire visible spectrum is still present in the white light shining upon it. The difference is not in the light but in the selective absorption of the object. Likewise, God’s essence might manifest certain characteristics in one situation but others in a different situation. The Lord Jesus Christ displays His awesome omnipotence as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. (John 1:3; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2; Heb 1:10) Omniscience and sovereignty come into prominence when we study the Doctrine of Divine decrees. (Rom 8:28-30; Eph 1:4-6) The existence of the canon of Scripture emphasizes yet other attributes, especially His Veracity. (Psa 138:2) And when He sustains us through all the uncertainties and instabilities of life, His immutability stands out. (Deut 31:6; Heb 13:5-8) In every case, no matter which attribute is reflected, God’s total, indivisible Person is completely involved. In other words, no Divine attribute can be bypassed, overlooked, or violated in anything God does; God does not put aside His sovereignty when He manifests His Veracity. He does not switch back and forth between omnipotence and omniscience. He does not ignore His righteousness and justice in order to deal with us strictly out of love.

JUSTICE GUARDS DIVINE ESSENCE

God never has the slightest trouble keeping His attributes straight. One never compromises another. Even when He deals with imperfect, sinful, fallen man — and especially when He blesses us — He is not lowering Himself to our imperfect level thus destroying His own perfection. The reason He can bless us is that one of His attributes stands guard, as it were, over all the rest. The justice of God, the function of His integrity, is the guardian of God’s essence in all that He does toward imperfect creatures. Where one Member of the Trinity is concerned, with Himself or with the other Members of the Godhead, there is no need for a guardian. There is never a possibility of compromise because all three Persons are perfect, coequal, and coeternal; all Three possess the same integrity. Thus, in Himself, God is free to regard His personality — the fact that He is a Person — as most important. Related to man, however, there is almost unlimited opportunity for compromise. Here God must keep His integrity first and foremost. Thus, God’s point of contact with us can be only His justice. Let me emphasize this: our point of contact with God is His justice.

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He is the Lord our God: his judgments are in all the earth. (1Ch 16:14; Psa 105:7)

But the LORD of hosts will be exalted in judgment, And the Holy God will show Himself Holy in righteousness.

(Isa 5:16)

The integrity of God's righteousness, justice and Virtue-love is the origin of everything we receive from Him, both blessing and cursing, this is true of unbeliever and believer alike.

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. (Luk 6:35)

God functions toward all mankind from His integrity, both now and forever. The carnal believer’s discipline comes from Divine justice, but then, so does the mature believer’s blessing. Both the unbeliever’s eternal agony in the Lake of Fire and the mature believer’s Ultimate sanctification, and reward in heaven come from the same Source! Everything God does toward us from any of His attributes goes through His justice. Justice is the half of God’s integrity which functions or acts; justice is the final source of all Divine action related to mankind. Think of the essence of God as a box with an opening in the bottom. Inside the essence box are all of God’s attributes, and right over the hatch is His justice. Whatever comes from God to man can come only through that opening. God’s justice is also our point of contact with Him; therefore, when we come to God, His absolute fairness is the attribute to which we must adjust. This explains why, (Rom 1:16-17) dogmatically states that God’s ability to save man is not His love, not His sovereignty, not His omnipotence, not any Divine attribute but justice, and that is how His righteousness and integrity are revealed! If God’s point of contact with us were His sovereignty, He would choose who would go to heaven; He would program us to mechanically enact every detail of our lives on earth. We would be automatons; human freedom would not exist. If, on the other hand, God’s point of contact with us were His omnipotence, He would be a tyrant. It would be impossible for us to fulfill the will of God because He would do everything Himself by direct Command. He would force people to believe in Christ. Again, there would be no freedom, no volition, no Divine institutions; human history would not be permitted to run its course as part of the angelic conflict. As perfect as these attributes are, they are not the basic frame of reference in God’s relationship with us. We have already diagnosed the plethora of human sentimentality, instability, compromise and emotionalism that develops from the false assumption that love is God’s point of contact with us; instead of His motivation. For we have been created to love God! And to be loved by God,

He who has My Commandments and keeps them [Learns His Thoughts and Thinks with Them] is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him. (John 14:21)

In order to love God, we must know God! And we cannot know God without knowing what He Thinks!

And while they were going away to make the purchase, [The Word sold] the bridegroom came, and those who were ready [Spiritually mature believers] went in with Him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut.”Later the other virgins [Carnal Believers] also came, saying, Lord, Lord, open up for us. But he answered, Truly I say to you, I do not know you. (Matt 25:10-12)

If we have an intimate relationship and fellowship with God, and know what He wants us to do, where and when to do it? Then we are in the game!

O continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You, And Your righteousness to the upright in heart. [Spiritually Mature believers] (Psa 36:10)

For how then can it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth? The LORD said to Moses, I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name. (Exod 33:16)

Of all the attributes in the essence box, justice is the only one that protects His entire essence. For this reason, and for other reasons that we shall see, God’s justice is our point of reference with Him.

Good and upright is the LORD; Therefore He instructs sinners in the way. [His Thoughts] He leads the humble in justice, And He teaches the humble His way. [His Reality] (Psa 25:8-9)

RIGHTEOUSNESS GUARDS DIVINE JUSTICE

In the exercise of His justice, however, God is never arbitrary or capricious. His justice has a “guardian” of its own. Divine justice can never be corrupted because it always functions according to the standard of goodness found in God’s perfect righteousness and fairness in His justice.

But the LORD abides forever; He has established His throne for judgment, And He will judge the world in righteousness; He will execute judgment for the peoples with equity. [Fairness] (Psa 9:7-8)

In the same way that justice is the watchdog over God’s entire essence, righteousness is the watchdog over His justice. Whereas justice is the function of Divine integrity, and righteousness is the Principle and motivation of Divine integrity. What the righteousness of God demands, justice executes! Absolute righteousness is the key to the essence of God; all else depends on it!

If He did not have absolute righteousness, and integrity. We would never have the Bible, He would never try to reach us, or explain anything! In fact Christ was judged on the cross to satisfy His own integrity! He did not go through all this to prove anything to Satan, or to us! He did this to allow us to live with Him forever! And He could and would not compromise His own integrity! If our point of reference with God were His sovereignty He would say I like you, and I don't like them, all the ones He likes go to heaven, all the others go to hell! This alone shows how important our freewill is, and that it is all up to us where we end up! Christ used His freewill to submit to God the Father, and complete Salvation! We must submit to God the Father, and reach Spiritual maturity! (Mark 3:32-35)

Holy and perfect righteousness is at the very core of His Being; (Isa 6:3) God cannot tolerate less than His own perfection! Again, what the righteousness of God demands, the justice of God must perform; if righteousness rejects something, justice condemns it; if righteousness approves, justice blesses. Righteousness rejects sin; therefore, justice condemns sin. Righteousness also rejects our morality, because being a condemned sinner, whatever we do in the power of the old sin nature is hostile to God!

Because the mind set on the flesh [Thinking by means of the old sin nature] is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the Law of God, (John 4:24) for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh [Carnal believers] cannot please God. (Rom 8:7-8)

And it falls short of the absolute Standard of Divine righteousness; therefore, justice also condemns all our legalism, religiosity, human works, and self-righteousness. Righteousness likewise rejects evil; (Satanically inspired human thinking) justice totally condemns it!

Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and Truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. (Exod 34:6-7)

So just as we have seen how the righteousness of God is revealed. So we will also see how the wrath of God revealed.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. [What is believed, the Mind of Christ] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness [Unbelievers] (Rom 4:5) and unrighteousness of men [Carnal Believers] (Rom 2:8-9; Rom 6:13-16) who suppress the Truth [The Mind of Christ] in unrighteousness, [Staying out of fellowship] because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and Divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, [Both believers and unbelievers] (Psa 19:1-4; Rom 10:18 ) so that they are without excuse! For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, [Thinking] and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. (Rom 1:17-22) Read from (Rom 1:1) thru. (Rom 2:29)

But he is a Jew [Spiritual believer] who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; (Rom 7:6) and his praise is not from men, but from God. (Rom 2:29)

On the positive side, God’s righteousness approves of the perfect God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Righteousness also approves of His perfect work on the Cross in payment for our sins. Therefore, justice blesses anyone who believes in Christ. Justice, not love, accomplishes this. It is the fairness of God that bestows upon every believer the forty amazing blessings, that we call eternal salvation.

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Here is a definition to note and remember: grace is the policy of the justice of God for blessing mankind.

Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you [God constantly desires to bless believers, and He is on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of blessing and justice. [All the blessings He waits to give come through His justice] How blessed are those who wait for Him [The daily function of Operation Z] (Isa 30:18)

Perhaps you are wondering why you have never before heard of the “integrity” of God. “Where is that found in the Bible?” you ask. The Authorized or King James Version of the Bible calls the combination of righteousness and justice the “holiness” of God. But the word “holiness” fails to communicate; it is anachronistic, antiquated, about as useful as a Model T Ford. The meanings of words in any language change over a period of time, and in the past 350 years, the English language certainly has been no exception. If someone today were described as being “holy,” people might picture asceticism, being straightlaced, self-righteousness, or some other form of pseudo-Spirituality. When the Bible says, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” (Isa 6:3) what does it mean? Well, we might observe the repetition and say that it speaks of the Trinity, which it does. We might sing it with great vigor, but responding emotionally does not add to our understanding. I’ll tell you what Isaiah 6:3 means to most believers. Not a thing! And it never will until explained in other terms. Today, if the word “holy” is not ambiguous, it is vague; if not vague, imperceptible. We need not tie ourselves to an obscure, emotion-tinged word, especially when an excellent, meaningful, twentieth-century term is available. “Integrity, Integrity, Integrity.” That begins to communicate! God has always possessed integrity as part of His eternal, infinite, perfect essence. It is a quality of His unchangeable Self so basic to His character that He does not have to sustain it by His will or sovereignty. God does not have to continually decide to perpetuate His integrity; He simply has it. His integrity is totally superior to ours. We are not perfect. Nor are we immutable; we are likely to change at any moment. (In fact, we continually change) You can see that whatever integrity we can achieve comes only through a continuous series of decisions, through the proper and honorable use of volition. And in the same way that we gain Spiritual integrity, we can also lose it. We must constantly decide to do the right things, and not to do the wrong things. For example, we must daily decide to expose ourselves to the teaching of Truth and not to be distracted from concentrating on it. In that way, we develop correct Norms and Standards. (A new conscience) As we saturate our souls with the Word of God to the point of Spiritual maturity, we must also make decisions to apply Truth to the circumstances of life. We have integrity if we make enough decisions in favor of what we know to be right. But if we make too many decisions in violation of what we know to be right, we have no integrity. Human integrity is not natural to us, but perfect integrity is natural to God! It is the sum total of His perfection. The integrity of God is not merely the absence of evil; it is the very quintessence of His nature. Thus, everything God does toward mankind is a reflection of His perfect integrity.

For the LORD loves justice And does not forsake His godly ones; (Maximum adjustment to His justice, at Spiritual maturity) They are preserved forever, But the descendants of the wicked will be cut off. (Psa 37:28)

I will also praise You with a harp, Even Your Truth, O my God; To You I will sing praises with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. (Psa 71:22)

The LORD reigns, let the peoples tremble; He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake! The LORD is great in Zion, And He is exalted above all the peoples. Let them praise Your great and awesome name; Holy is He. The strength of the King loves justice; You have established equity; You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the LORD our God And worship at His footstool; Holy is He. (Psa 99:1-5)

But the LORD of hosts will be exalted in judgment, And the Holy God will show Himself Holy in righteousness. (Isa 5:16)

His sovereignty decrees only what is consistent with Divine integrity. His omnipotence accomplishes only what integrity has endorsed. His perfect attribute of love is directed only toward what meets the Standards of integrity. And what meets that perfect Standard? What qualifies as an object worthy of God’s love? Does fallen man? Does Satan? Does the devil’s world? Certainly not! These are proper objects for condemnation and judgment. God can love only what is perfect: Divine integrity itself. Because God loves His own integrity He does not require an object in order for His love to function. Love is internal. But God’s love is not merely internal. There are three Members of the Trinity, each with the same integrity; therefore, love is external as well. Divine integrity in each Member of the Godhead is the object of God’s love, so that God the Father loves God the Son and God the Holy Spirit with the same infinite love which He has for Himself. Likewise, the Lord Jesus Christ loves the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. Subjectively, God’s love is rational, perfect, and internal; but objectively, it is rational, perfect, and external from one Person of the Trinity to another. God’s love, we might say, is rather exclusive. We cannot intrude on it. But God has not abandoned us.

INTEGRITY TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER LOVE

The Truth of Divine integrity fires a powerful broadside against our pride, but it does not leave us shipwrecked and alone. We may feel like clinging to the flotsam of the false ideas we have served for many years — ideas built on the assumption that God cannot quite do without us or that He is somehow obliged to show us undying affection. But no, when Truth clarifies God’s love, and sinks our arrogance in the process, we are not cast adrift. Although you and I do not merit God’s love, He has something for us that is greater than love. Now, that’s a shock! You never thought that anything could be greater than God’s love! But something is, and God has it toward you, Integrity. The tremendous value of our relationship with Divine justice will become clear once we see that, when dealing with mankind, God’s integrity takes precedence over His love. This precedence is proven at the Cross. God the Father loves God the Son with an eternal, infinite love. The rapport between the Members of the Trinity has never been less than total. They have enjoyed the most magnificent relationship since eternity past, and nothing changed in that relationship when Christ became a man through the virgin birth. In both His impeccable humanity and His perfect Deity, the Lord Jesus Christ was acceptable to the righteousness of God; the Father deeply loved Him. Yet in spite of this great love, of the Father for His Son, God overruled love, at the Cross. When Christ hung between heaven and earth, the justice of God the Father poured out upon Him all the personal sins of the human race. Justice came before love! The Father judged the Son. No punches were pulled. Jesus Christ suffered the unmitigated full measure of judgment, and Spiritual death as the penalty for sin. (Isa 53:11) Our Lord was insulted, abused, and virtually skinned alive. His back was a mass of lacerations and exposed nerve endings; His face was barely recognizable. His great physical strength was so debilitated that He stumbled in the road. Nailed to the cross, He had to force His feet and wrists against the spikes to relieve the weight on His lungs so He could breathe. From the time of His arrest, through long hours of mental abuse and physical torture, never once did He cry out. (Isa 53:7; Acts 8:32-35) But when the Father imputed our sins to Him and executed Divine judgment upon Him, He screamed in pain. From the justice of the Father, who kept on loving Him, our Lord suffered an excruciating agony that will never be felt by any other human being. For three hours He repeated, “My God, [The Father] My God, [The Holy Spirit] why have you forsaken me?” His mind was perfectly clear, and from the Truth in His soul He knew perfectly well why He was being forsaken. He was quoting (Psa 22:1) to express the agony of Spiritual death. He knew He was being “made. . . sin for us . . . so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2Co 5:21) Christ died twice on the Cross: first Spiritually, then physically. His Spiritual death and judgment paid the penalty for sin. (Lev 4:33-34) (The lamb's blood was literally poured out, and the lamb was symbolically judged for the sins, “And literally died” the sins of the world were literally poured into Christ, and He was literally judged for the sins “And Spiritually died”) (Isa 53:10-11) His physical death indicated that His work in the First Advent was complete. (John 19:30) Furthermore, His physical death set the stage for His resurrection, ascension and session, which complete both our Salvation and His strategic victory in the angelic conflict. But during the entire three hours in which He suffered Spiritual death, Christ was still physically alive. We know this because as the darkness covered the hill, He kept screaming under the unspeakable pain of the judgment that should have come to us. Only a living person can scream. During those hours He paid for our freedom from the slave market of sin, (Redemption) (Rom 3:24) broke down the barrier between God and us, (Reconciliation) (Rom 5:11) and freed God to take us in and bless us without compromising His essence. (Propitiation) (Rom 3:25-27) When our Lord’s work was complete, He shouted, “It is finished!” Salvation was accomplished, and He was free to die physically. Nothing remains to be done in Salvation but for us to accept it. (Gal 2:16; Gal 3:26) At the Cross the Father faced a choice between love and justice: His love for Jesus Christ versus an act of judgment against Him. The Father’s attribute of love never dimmed or went out — it never even flickered. With His love still infinitely bright, He decided to overrule His love and judge Christ for our sins. Christ was sent to the Cross because when God deals with sinful mankind, Divine integrity always takes precedence over Divine love. When that first sin struck our Lord and His body was shot through with the pain of Divine judgment, when the Father heard that first cry from the One He loved, admired, and esteemed so dearly, did He call off the judgment? Did He revert from justice back to love? He did not! He was totally impartial in the function of His integrity, and the judgment continued until the final sin of all human history had been judged. God’s love never interferes with His justice. We generally think that Christ alone provided Salvation, but actually the entire Trinity was involved. Both the Father and the Holy Spirit had to forsake Him while He was identified with our sins. (Psa 22:1) But the Father had, as it were, the most nightmarish job of all. He had to deliberately pour out the full wrath of His justice upon the One He loved so perfectly. For infinite eons before man was formed out of the dust — long before even the dust existed — the Father had loved Christ, and He continued to love Him while judicially imputing our sins to Him and executing judgment upon Him. The closest the Father could come to expressing His love was to blanket the hill in darkness so total that neither man nor angel could watch our Lord’s ordeal. The way in which God treated His Son on the Cross demonstrates conclusively that when God deals with us, Divine integrity has higher priority than Divine love. When He deals with Himself or with the other Members of the Godhead, His integrity is not challenged. But our imperfection sounds an alarm in the essence of God. If God had to design a coat of arms to represent Himself before fallen man, the motto would read, “Integrity Before Love.”

THE IMPARTIALITY OF GOD

God’s integrity is perfect; He is never better or worse. He is immutable; never has He varied in the least since eternity past, and never will He throughout all eternity future.

Jesus Christ, is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Heb 13:8)

The Being of God is unalterable, absolute, and totally consistent. If God is fair in anything He does, He is necessarily fair in all His dealings with us. This is a Principle: God is impartial and unprejudiced.

In (Rom 1:16) Paul interjected a theme which he pursues throughout the book of Romans: (Especially in chapters 9 through 11) “to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” The Jew is mentioned first because Israel is God’s chosen people, having been given special responsibilities and accompanying privileges related to the custodianship and dissemination of the Word of God. The Principle, however, is that both Jews and non-Jews — that is, all people — have access to the same opportunities and blessings in this dispensation. No race or culture has greater privilege than another in the royal family of God, nor is any race or culture excluded. No individual is treated with special favor, and no one is ignored. Race, culture, personal traits — none of these are an issue in the plan of God. The issue is: either we adjust to the justice of God, resulting in blessing, or the justice of God will adjust to us, resulting in cursing and discipline. The impartiality of Divine justice is a Concept you must understand before you can get even a good start in the Christian life.

For there is no partiality with God. (Rom 2:11)

Since we deal with the justice of God we must get away from certain misconceptions. Because of culture, background, or some practice advocated by legalistic religion, many people think they have a special “in” with God. Perhaps they grew up in a Christian home where certain taboos were observed; perhaps they faithfully worked around the church or witnessed or prayed every day or read the Bible from cover to cover. At some time in life they followed some procedure that they know impressed God. They have never learned; or have rejected the Truth that we can do nothing to impress infinite God, God is impressed only with what God does; that Divine righteousness and Divine justice demand no less than Divine righteousness and Divine justice! From their blind arrogance comes self-righteousness, and from self-righteousness the erroneous assumption that God is partial to them. After all, they insist, we have been good, clean, respectable people; we have sweet, pleasing personalities; we smile; we do a good turn now and again; we contribute to charitable organizations; we have spoken in tongues; we have been baptized or circumcised; we have kept the Law. (At least the Ten Commandments) All these “letters of recommendation” are destroyed by the impartiality of God’s justice. He never gives special consideration to anyone. He has set up His own system, consistent with His own essence, to which everyone must adjust; and no other system can compete — not yours, not Satan’s, not anyone’s! Blessing from God is a matter of Divine integrity, and the plan of God states that all direct blessing to you depends entirely upon your consistent, daily adjustment to the justice of God. The verb in, (Rom 2:11) is the present active indicative of eimi, translated “there is.” The customary present tense, with the negative ou, means that there will never be a time when God makes exceptions for anyone. God is totally wise, totally fair, totally unchanging. (Mal 3:6) He wrote the rules for His own creation, and His rules are always in force in every case. There is no slack anywhere. He treats us in grace, but grace is the policy of His justice. Grace is not a sloppy program of sentimentality. God is not some huge mass of love. He is a Person of incorruptible, awe-inspiring integrity, and His grace is an efficient, well-run plan. The word “partiality” connotes bias, an inclination to favor one person over another, a predilection or fondness toward a certain person. Divine justice is completely free of it; human relationships abound in it. A man who loves a woman and thinks she is entirely wonderful is partial to her. A woman in love who thinks her man is the noblest person on the face of the earth is definitely biased. Parents are partial to their children; friends are partial to friends. People in any category of love are partial, and something would be wrong were they not. Sometimes bias goes too far, and people are left with no ability to judge objectively. But God is not that way. He deals with us in justice, and in every instance without exception, justice demands justice. For example, God does not look down on shining white faces and say they are best; nor does He say that black, yellow, or red faces are best. No race is best; no individual is best. There is no preferential treatment. God is unbending and impartial. Your special “in” with Him fades like a mist; the light of Divine justice illuminates Reality! That ought to startle you and, at the same time, please you above all else. Startle you because you have been on the wrong track! You have been nice to people you couldn’t stand just to get God’s attention; you have tithed so that God might bless your business; you have toed the line so God might drop your right man or right woman in your lap. The light of Divine justice should sober you because here you are trying to bribe God, (Acts 8:19-23) and suddenly you see that He cannot be bribed! Just think of all the time and energy you have wasted trying to stay in God’s good graces! But life is not designed to be a strain; you cannot work your way into God’s favor, nor can you work to stay there. Grace is extended through His justice. You simply adjust to the justice of God. If you entertain any other idea; don’t worry; the justice of God will adjust to you —with punishment and discipline. On the other hand, the light of Divine justice ought to delight you — you are assured that God always treats us fairly, that when He demands something of us He has already provided the means of execution, that whenever God does something for us or promises us something, it is absolutely guaranteed forever! There are two approaches to understanding God’s freedom from prejudice. First, from the viewpoint of salvation, we all start out at minus zero. As of the moment of physical birth we are all Spiritually dead, and God simply does not care to pass the time with a bunch of rotten corpses. God is obviously impartial because in His estimation we all start at the same level — the absolute bottom, Divine condemnation. Furthermore, He provides identical Salvation for each of us “zeros” who believes in Christ. The second approach to a realization of God’s impartiality begins on the other side, not with man but with God Himself. Go back to the essence of God; perfect righteousness stands guard over Divine justice while justice guards God’s entire essence. If justice played favorites it could not properly protect God’s character. The very definition of absolute justice precludes any possibility that God ever makes exceptions for anyone. Every great believer understood God’s incorruptibility. Many of them — Abraham, Moses, David and Paul — discovered it the hard way. You can repeat their mistakes by assuming that God somehow treats you as a privileged character; or you can learn it the easy way by submitting to God’s system: the consistent intake of the Word of God. If you choose to learn the hard way, you will discover that no believer anywhere — me included — is exempt from being destroyed, disgraced, instantly recalled to heaven! Any punitive action that God can take against any believer He can take against you! On the other hand, if you choose the easy way, you will not only come to understand and appreciate His perfect justice but in that justice you will also discover His system for blessing you. The same rules apply to all. If you take in Truth and crack the maturity barrier, you will be blessed by God in such a phenomenal way that it can be described only as “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” (Eph 3:20) To the extent you think you are a privileged person, you are divorced from God's Reality. If you consider yourself to be great in God’s eyes because of something you have done or refrained from doing, if you think that keeping the Ten Commandments makes you a special case before God, if you imagine that your sweet personality means you are close to Him, you have lost contact with Divine Reality. This basic disorientation is what makes the study of Divine integrity difficult for so many believers. A steady diet of devotional sermons, sentimentalism, sweetness and light, morality, and church programs, have dulled, and hidden the Truth. (Luk 17:26-30) Only by learning Truth can we orient to God's Thinking and Reality, and in doing so advance to Spiritual maturity! As mature believers, we have resident in our souls what God has revealed of Himself; we are read in on His plan of grace; we are Occupied with the Person of Christ; we are fully adjusted to the justice of God. Orienting to the justice of God is orienting to God's Reality. That might be a completely new Thought: Reality is the justice of God. Reality is more than the overt events of history or of our own daily lives. We might be enjoying prosperity; we might be under intense pressure. We might be happy or unhappy, in maturity or carnality; but no matter what our attitude or situation today, that is only the surface. To orient to life we must Understand God's Reality, and live in it, not our own, the worlds, Satan's, or anyone else’s! We must understand the Principle that gives meaning to the things we see: Reality is God’s righteousness put into action by His justice. Here our study turns from defining and describing the integrity of God to delineating the plan of God based on that integrity. God is continuously working in our behalf; we must see His integrity in action. To discover the link between God’s justice and God’s plan, let us brush the dust from a basic category of Doctrine.

Integrity in Action

IMPUTATIONS: THE FRAME WORK FOR UNDERSTANDING THE WORD

THE DOCTRINE OF IMPUTATION is an undeveloped area of Biblical teaching. It is almost completely ignored. Rarely is it lifted down from dusty seminary shelves, and then only to fill in a gap here or there in the Doctrines of sin or Salvation. As a separate category, the full scope of the Truth of imputation is not understood, let alone communicated from pulpits. Yet imputations are the outline of our lives. Imputations erect the framework upon which is built all other Doctrines pertaining to our relationship with God; they are the bones of the skeleton; they give structure and strength to every Principle and Concept related to the Christian way of life. The outline of imputations is the story of grace, the story of how Divine justice accomplishes the purpose for which God created mankind. We are alive to be blessed!

All blessing from God to man revolves around the fact that the justice of God imputed human life to our souls at birth, also Adam’s original sin, was imputed to our old sin natures, which provides potential for Salvation, and the first hope/confidence in the Christian life. And all of our personal sins were imputed to Christ on the Cross, and His Divine righteousness was imputed to us at Salvation, which provides potential for the second hope/confidence of reaching Spiritual maturity and receiving our imputed escrow blessings. And eternal life is imputed to the human spirit at the new birth, which provides potential for the third hope/confidence of receiving eternal rewards. A study of these six basic imputations will permit us to see the phenomenal implications of Divine justice as our point of contact with God.

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Did you ever wish that a single Doctrine might pull together your understanding of the Word of God? Have you ever wanted a categorical peg on which to hang all the diverse details of God’s plan for your life? Here it is! The Doctrine of imputation provides a relatively simple series of pegs which will bring order out of chaos in your Doctrinal closet. The Truth of imputation presents the integrity of God in action throughout the full history of man. Let us therefore begin at the beginning, in the Garden of Eden with the original man and woman. From the first couple we can trace the policies and actions of God’s justice down to our own lives today and on into eternity future.

THE AGE OF PERFECTION

Adam was perfect as he came from the hand of God; so was the woman, (Gen 1:26-27) who was constructed from Adam’s rib. Not only were the first two people perfect, but so was their environment. Perfect persons plus perfect environment equals a perfect age. (Gen 2:22-25) They attended Bible class every day taught by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. (Gen 1:28-30; Gen 2:16-17) Theirs was an age of perfection, not of innocence.

Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight (Soul provision) and good for food; (Body provision) the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, (Spiritual life provision) and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Evil is the thinking of Satan's nature, and our old sin nature) (Angelic trial provision, test of free will, not to violate God's Command) (Gen 2:17) (Gen 2:9)

Here a Principle comes into play: God's love can be directed only toward perfection. In its internal sense, love does not take an object; God loves His own integrity. But in its external sense, the love of God goes toward the other two Members of the Godhead — and toward the perfect products of Divine creation. Nothing imperfect can come from perfect God; therefore, the man and the woman came under the Divine attribute of love. In the Age of Perfection, man’s point of contact with God was love, not justice. Their situation was very different from ours. Everything we have from God comes via justice; everything they had come thru love. Since Adam and the woman were created as adults who did not have to grow up, love even supplied them with instantaneous capacity to appreciate their life in the Garden. They acquired this capacity of soul simply by eating the fruit from the tree of life. This tree represented the Teaching of Christ, and positive volition toward God’s plan for them in the Garden, (Obedience) and this gave them capacity in many categories. They had a perfect right man — right woman relationship. They had leisure. They did not have to work for a living. They thoroughly enjoyed their surroundings. They dominated all the rest of creation. And every evening, Christ came in the cool of the day to teach them Truth. (Gen 3:8) Love blessed them in every way — body, soul and spirit — and supplied the capacity to enjoy all these things.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good... (Gen 1:31)

LOVE AND FELLOWSHIP

     All the blessings of the Garden came from the love of God, but there were several things Adam and the woman did not have. Two things were missing because they were not necessary. First, there was no justice in the Garden in the sense of being man’s point of contact with God. As perfect individuals, still sinless, the first two human beings offered no compromise to the essence of God. As the guardian of Divine essence, justice was not challenged and, as it were, had nothing to do. God was free to provide for them strictly out of love. They were simply the perfect work of perfect God, and they would stay that way as long as they did not reject God’s authority. Now remember, their situation was different from ours. Since the Fall, God has dealt with us through His justice, (Gen 18:19; Matt 12:18) only one reference to the justice of God existed in the Garden. This was a warning that justice would become their point of contact if they ate from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The nature of this tree, like that of the tree of life; has been long misunderstood. Some have gone so far as to say that God opposes knowledge! That is ludicrous. We know that the greatest Virtue in the Christian life is maximum Understanding and application of the Word of God. (Prov 1:1-9; Hos 4:6; Rom 10:2) What, then, does this tree represent? In contrast to the tree of life, which gave the man and woman an opportunity to express their positive volition toward God’s plan; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil embodied Satan’s plan. The sum total of Satan’s policy for ruling the world and for proving himself to be as good as God; to eat from this tree was to acquiesce to the Prince of Darkness. Satan did not rule the world during the Age of Perfection. His usurpation of the throne and his tyranny of evil were merely potential. Adam was the sovereign of the earth and of all that was in it, including his wife. They were placed on earth to resolve the angelic conflict, they were therefore insulated from the Spiritual warfare which already had been raging for an unrevealed length of time, and which was being waged unseen all around them. They would continue to be protected from Satan’s influence as long as they stayed on positive volition toward God and His Command. The two trees in the middle of the Garden represented the opposing sides in the angelic conflict. Today, Satan is the sovereign of the world, and he rules through the policy which he naturally calls “good” but which God calls “evil.” (Isa 5:20-21; Matt 6:23) As we study past history or look around us at contemporary history, we see that the satanic system pervades every aspect of life. The United States is being destroyed in the name of “the greatest good for the greatest number!” We face many temptations to “get involved” in doing “good,” but in the Garden, only one issue was at stake: God’s prohibition of that one tree. This was a test of perfect man’s volition; he could become imperfect only through disobedience to the Divine command. As long as he accepted God’s authority, he would remain in perfection, and would enjoy all the blessings that Divine love could lavish upon him.

NO ETERNAL LIFE, NO STABILITY

     Here again, the implications of a principle come out: as always, integrity is greater than love. Man lived under the love of God in the Garden, God's love, like all His attributes, are immutable, eternal and perfect; but man, with his free will could change at any moment and become imperfect. All he had to do was eat the forbidden fruit. God’s love could not guarantee that man would never sin, and therefore God’s love could not guarantee that man would be qualified to live with Him forever. Today, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, under the justice of God, we have the tremendous blessing of eternal life. Not so for Adam. Every day when the Lord came to the Garden at sundown, He provided all the Truth that Adam and the woman needed; and He warned them of the results of disobedience. And if our original parents had gone through that particular day without violating His Command, He renewed the contract with them for another twenty-four hours, never more, never less. In perfection, man was given one day at a time. (Gen 2:17) They enjoyed a wonderful mental, Spiritual, and physical relationship. Love was unable to provide Adam and the woman with eternal life, but moreover it was unable to stabilize them even a day at a time. Divine love provided Truth, and Truth does sustain, if it is used. But Divine love itself cannot sustain even perfect mankind in the face of temptation, human volition is the reason, we always have a choice to obey or not. When the woman was tempted, she failed to resist, and use the Truth she had learned! She had rejected all authority but her own; this is the same today. Are we going to submit to God's authority, or are own; Satan and the demons failed this test as well! (Isa 14:13-16) Adam was not the only authority over her, however. The other authority designed to protect her was the Lord Jesus Christ and the Truth that He communicated. She apparently thought the tree was poisonous, not that she should just obey the Lord’s Teaching, especially His prohibition of the tree. The Lord never said they could not touch it!

The woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; But from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die. (Gen 3:2-3)

The LORD God Commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die. (Gen 2:16-17)

The Hebrew verb muth, “to die,” is doubled so that a literal translation would read, “dying, you will die”; as an idiom it actually indicates the intensity of the death. Spiritual death is in view — the “wages [Subsistence pay] of sin” (Rom 6:23) —which includes total condemnation from the justice of God, and Spiritual death for Adam and Eve; (Gen 2:17) because they were created perfect with a Spiritual life, but all the rest of the human race are born Spiritually dead. As believers when we sin, we are in temporal death, (Eph 5:14; Rev 3:3) and this equals carnally. (1Co 3:1) The women was tempted by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; the same things Christ was tempted with, (Luk 4:1-13) and overcame them! Now we as Christians are tempted by them, (1Jn 2:15-17) and we must overcome them, by Spiritual growth to maturity, (Rev 3:21) or there will be no reward!

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. (Gen 3:6)

For forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He became hungry. And the devil said to Him, If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, It is written, MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE. (John 6:27) [Not to live for human reality alone; Food] [Lust of the flesh] And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. [Lust of the eyes] And the devil said to Him, I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours. Jesus answered him, It is written, YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY. [Not to worship Satan or ourselves, our plans, will or desires] And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; for it is written, HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU TO GUARD YOU, and, ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE. [Pride of Life] And Jesus answered and said to him, It is said, YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST. (Luk 4:2-12)

Satan tempted Christ to use His Divine power as God, to solve His real problem of human hunger, (John 4:34) instead of trusting in God the Father and His Word to give Him food when it was time! We are tempted to solve our real human problems by using our sin nature's power, instead of trusting God and His Word to solve them, in His time! Next He was tempted to take an “easy way” to rule the kingdoms of the earth without dying on the cross. We are tempted to take an “easy way” to prosperity in life, without dying to our will, and desires. (Mark 8:34-38) Christ was also tempted to be proud of who He was, and His accomplishments as the God-man; and jump. We are tempted to proud of who we are, and our accomplishments; instead of being proud of Who and What God IS; and knowing Him and what He has done for all of us! (Jer 9:23-24)

DIVINE LOVE CAN ONLY BLESS

Throughout her temptation by the serpent, the woman’s point of contact with God was His attribute of love. Why could not love sustain her in the crisis? The answer to this question will emphasize the superiority of justice as our point of contact. Love can do only one thing: it can only bless. It has no dynamics in a negative situation. It provided Truth in the Garden, but where negative volition rejected the authority of the Word of God, love was helpless. But justice is a different story. The justice of God is free to bless or punish. Justice is a much stronger motivator to resist temptation than is the love of God. Love, required Adam’s and the woman’s positive volition; justice can function equally well toward positive or negative volition, toward believer or unbeliever, for blessing or cursing. The Bible frequently communicates this dual function of Divine justice.

FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES. It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. [At Spiritual maturity] (2Pe 1:4) (Heb 12:6-10)

The parent-child relationship which illustrates the two functions of the justice of God, both the discipline and the security involved in belonging to the royal family of God. The human parent’s integrity overrules his natural love so that he does not spare his child the pain of discipline and proper training. Divine integrity also takes precedence over Divine love. Indeed, we shall see that because of what justice has done for us, in both cursing and blessing, we are much better off, even though we live in the devil’s world, than were our original parents under love, in the Garden!

THE FALL OF MAN AND THE GRACE OF GOD

The woman rejected love, as her point of reference with God; she disregarded every system of authority that God had designed to protect her. She succumbed to flattery; she was deceived by Satan; she ate from the forbidden tree. Immediately she became Spiritually dead. The warning, “dying, you will die,” came true; her personal sin had instantaneous results. “Dying” meant that she acquired a sin nature; “you will die” signified her Spiritual death — her condemnation from the justice of God. As the first Spiritually dead person in the human race, she naturally wanted to share her new-found situation with her husband. So she took the fruit to Adam. There he stood, the ruler of the world, the original perfect man, the man of genius intellect, the man whose soul was saturated with Truth. He faced the choice of perfection with God in the Garden versus Spiritual death with the woman outside the Garden. In full knowledge of what he was doing, he took the fruit from her hand and deliberately sinned. His wife may have been deceived by Satan into disobeying God, but not so with Adam. Just like her, however, when he ate of the fruit he too immediately acquired a depraved nature, which we call the old sin nature, and became Spiritually dead. At the Fall, Adam and the woman came under a new system No longer perfect, they ceased to be objects of the Personal love of God. Their new, depraved condition demanded something greater than love. Justice was called for, and justice immediately went into action. Remember that justice is one half of the integrity of God: righteousness is the Principle and motivation of His integrity while justice is its function. Justice is always taking action in one of two ways: it is either blessing or cursing. And the policy of Divine integrity is quite simple: righteousness demands righteousness; justice demands justice; what the righteousness of God demands, justice executes. Under this policy, righteousness demanded something at the Fall of man. Let us stop and Think this over for a moment. The Garden was characterized by perfection; the period after the Garden is characterized by justice. Under imperfection, justice becomes imperative. Sin brings man to the point where he needs condemnation and judgment, God’s immovable righteousness sees sin and demands that man be condemned. Justice immediately condemns us. This is the action that qualifies us for grace, an action performed not by us at all but by the justice of God. Grace is designed for the undeserving, and once condemned by the justice of God, we are totally undeserving! That is how we come into line for grace. This becomes a Principle of God’s justice: Condemnation precedes Salvation. God offers saving grace only to those who need saving. He would never send His Son to the Cross unnecessarily! Therefore, at the Fall, God immediately condemned Adam. He did so by imputing Adam’s original sin to his newly acquired sin nature, resulting in his Spiritual death. This is what we call a real imputation. The word “sin,” hamartia in the singular, can mean one of three things: Adam’s original sin, the old sin nature, or the Principle of personal sin.

Therefore, just as through one man sin [Violation] entered into the world, and death [Spiritual death] through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin [Personal sins] are not imputed [Symbolically sins were imputed to animals, to show sins would be literally imputed to Christ] when there is no law. [A list to declare what sin is] (John 15:22; Rom 7:13) Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. [Christ] But the free gift [Salvation] is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions (2Co 5:21) resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace [Spiritual Maturity] and of the gift of righteousness [Experiential] will reign in life [Over the sin nature] through the One, Jesus Christ. So as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness [Being judged in our place] there resulted justification of life to all men. [Who believe in Christ] For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; (Rom 7:13) but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin [The sin nature, Satan's thinking] reigned [Over our soul] in death, [Spiritual death, and carnality] even so grace [The Spiritual life, The Mind of Christ] would reign [Over our soul] through righteousness [Imputed and Experiential] to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom 5:12-21)

REAL AND JUDICIAL IMPUTATIONS

     Imputation is the function of the justice of God in ascribing, reckoning, or crediting something to someone for cursing or for blessing. Imputations fall into two categories: real and judicial. A real imputation credits to a person something which belongs to him, something antecedently his own. There is in this manner an affinity between what is received and the one who receives it. A real imputation must have a place to go, a target ready and waiting. What is given in a real imputation goes where it rightfully belongs. Stated even more simply, a real imputation must always have a home. On the other hand, what is judicially imputed does not have a home in the person to whom it is given; it is not antecedently his own. When something is credited where it does not rightfully belong, where there is no affinity, where there is no target or direction, God must immediately take some form of judicial action to rectify the situation. In other words, to complete a judicial imputation Divine justice must immediately pronounce a verdict, whether of cursing or of blessing. A judicial imputation emphasizes the Source, the justice of God, rather than any affinity between the giving point and the receiving point. There are six great imputations related to Salvation and the Spiritual life; three are real, three are judicial. We must examine these Divine operations if we are to understand how the justice of God functions toward us and if we are to see the tremendous advantage of having justice as our point of contact with God. Each believer, whether he knows it or not, has already been involved in five imputations, one is only at Spiritual maturity.

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IMPUTATION OF HUMAN LIFE

The first two imputations from the justice of God — both real — occur at the moment of physical birth. Human life (Which we also call soul life) and Adam’s original sin is imputed to every member of the human race. A distinction must be made between biological life and soul life. Biological life begins at conception and is the means of transmitting the old sin nature. Soul life is created by God and imputed at physical birth as the means of transmitting the human soul. The combination of biological life and soul life becomes a physically alive human being. In the fetus, the sensory, intermediate, and motor nerves stimulate muscular action, called reflex motility. Because the fetus is mother-dependent, its movement is often in sympathy with the mother’s metabolism or emotional state. But the developing body within her is not a human being with life of its own until God sovereignly imputes “the breath life,” or soul life. (Gen 2:7; Job 33:4; Isa 42:5; Acts 17:25; Rev 11:11) Only God has the power to create a human being. You are not a biological accident; God personally created you. This first imputation occurs when the fetus emerges from the womb. Human life begins when God imputes the breath or spark of life. This neshamah, in the Hebrew, is the same “breath” that God breathed into the nostrils of Adam, whose body He “formed from the dust of the ground.” (Gen 2:7) Human life always comes in the same way, directly from God, whether to Adam as an adult or to Adam’s progeny as infants.

     For I will not contend forever, Nor will I always be angry; For the spirit would grow faint before Me, And the breath of those whom I have made. (Isa 57:16)

Life can be imputed only where it has a home; whether human life to the soul at birth, or eternal life to the human spirit at Salvation, the giving of life is always a real imputation. Furthermore, this first imputation at physical birth — like all imputations from God — is a permanent arrangement. The breath of life resides in the soul forever. This in the case of the Two Witnesses, (Rev 11:11) to demonstrate this Principle; God always controls His plan. The only part or parts God does not control, is our free choice to believe in Christ, and to believe His Word and to Think with It!

(Matt 7:24-27) Even when your soul leaves your body in physical death, your life is still in your soul; your life is never separated from your soul. Do not confuse the immaterial with the material. If your body were destroyed as part of your death — even if you, as a soldier, took a direct hit square in the middle of your forehead from an enemy shell so that your brain was vaporized and sprayed all over the battlefield — your soul would still be uninjured, and your life would remain intact in your soul. You have no choice as to whether or not you remain alive forever. YOU WILL! We might call this “human security.” Your choice lies in where you will spend eternity. If you refuse to believe in Christ, your soul will depart from your body into the fire of Torments when you die. (Luk 16:23-25)

If, on the other hand, you believe in Christ, the moment your soul departs from your body you will be “absent from the body, face to face with the Lord” until the judgment seat. (2Co 5:8-10) We call this “eternal security.” What you do with the human life, and or Spiritual life which God permanently imputed to your soul is strictly up to you.

They said, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved... (Acts 16:31)

IMPUTATION OF ADAM’S SIN

THE GENIUS OF DIVINE JUSTICE

In the same moment that human life is imputed to the soul, the second real imputation occurs as a result of Adam’s deliberate sin in the Garden. Adam’s original sin is imputed to its home, the old sin nature. This is a real imputation because there is an affinity (Connection) between Adam’s sin and Adam’s trend, (Or sin nature) between his act of disobedience, and the corruption that it caused in him. The result of this imputation is that we are born physically alive, but Spiritually dead. (Jas 2:26) “But,” you ask, “what does Adam’s sin have to do with me? I’ve hardly even heard of it! I’m certainly not responsible for what he did! How is it fair that I am born condemned? I’m not even given a chance! You say justice is God's point of contact with me. What kind of justice is that?” I'll tell you what kind of justice that is. That is the most brilliant stroke of justice possible! While fulfilling to the letter the total condemnation demanded by the righteousness of God, the imputation of Adam's sin lays the foundation for every advantage you will ever enjoy in time or eternity. It makes the Cross possible; it makes your Salvation possible! Before the fall, man was a perfect creation, and that was all we could ever be, because of the fall, and then condemnation, Salvation was provided, so we are able to be born into God's family. In order to live with God, we have to be as perfect as God is, in righteousness and justice. This was His plan from the beginning! Never has there ever been a different plan, angels and men have free will, this is the reason for all the “trouble” but no trouble for God! (Isa 52:10; Isa 59:16) He did all the work Himself, He created heaven and earth, (Col 1:15-18) angels, and man, He was the only perfectly born human, without a sin nature; and perfect in body, soul and spirit, and He lived a perfect Spiritual life, grew to Spiritual maturity, defeated Satan and all the demon's, was judged for our sins, will put unbelievers in the lake of fire, and believers in heaven, and some in dark pits, He will rule forever! And never asked us for our opinion, help, or guidance! We either adjust to God's plan, or it will adjust to us!

SPIRITUAL DEATH

Adam’s original sin plus Adam’s sinful trend equals Spiritual death. But these two factors come to us in different ways. Adam’s sin is directly imputed by the justice of God at the moment of physical birth; Adam’s trend is passed down genetically through the male in copulation. The genetically formed old sin nature is the home for the imputation of Adam’s sin, and the result of this affinity is Spiritual death. Spiritual death has been defined as separation from God, because of a dead human spirit. With our soul and body, we can have a relationship with other people, with our sin nature we have a relationship with Satan and his demons, (John 8:44) at Salvation we receive a regenerated human spirit, so that we can now have fellowship with God! (Tit 3:5)

The first function of the justice of God toward fallen man is condemnation. Therefore, our initial relationship with the justice of God is Spiritual death because justice must condemn before it can bless. God condemns sin. Hence God is not the author of sin; Adam is. To implicate God with sin is blasphemous. God is neither the source of sin nor does He sponsor sin, tempt to sin, or ever fail to judge sin. A perfect God could create only perfect creatures; therefore, no sin and no old sin nature existed in the human race prior to the Fall. Moreover, He gave the original man and woman everything they could ever need, to remain in a sinless status like the original status of angelic creatures. Adam and his wife had decided of their own free will to eat from the forbidden tree. Although Satan was the first sinner among all of God’s creatures, Adam was totally responsible for the Fall of man. We must be absolutely clear on this point: God is not the source of sin. The immaterial soul that God prepares as the home for human life is perfect. Whether in the original couple or in us, the soul and its human life are flawless and sinless as they come from the hand of God. The soul is tainted only because it comes under the corrupting influence of the old sin nature. In Adam, this contamination occurred at the moment he sinned; in us, at the moment of birth. Thus, at birth, we become facsimiles of Adam at the Fall, at Spiritual maturity we become facsimiles of Christ. (Rom 8:29) During the Age of Perfection, we all became slaves of the old sin nature! (John 8:34) Adam was the ruler of the world and the authority over the woman. He was the head of the human race as it existed in the Garden and consequently was the federal head of all mankind. We were seminally in him when, through his own choice, he fell under the sovereignty of the old sin nature. (1Co 15:21-22) Even though the woman was the first to disobey, it is Adam’s sin, not hers, that plummets mankind into condemnation. There was a difference between the sins of the first two human beings.

For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. (1Ti 2:13-14)

These verses come from a context describing authority. The statement that Adam was created first refers to his position of responsibility as the federal head of the human race. But he is further responsible for our condemnation because when he sinned, he knew exactly what he was doing. The woman, completely taken in by the smooth line that Satan handed her, did not know what she was doing. Of course, ignorance is no excuse before God; she was just as guilty and just as Spiritually dead as Adam. But the only sin that can be imputed to mankind for condemnation is a sin of cognizance; therefore, even though Adam was not the first sinner in the human race, his sin, not the woman's, is imputed to us for condemnation. These Principles related to what is imputed — Adam’s sin — also hold true of the target—the old sin nature. Adam’s old sin nature, not the woman's, because he was the head of the human race and because he sinned in cognizance. The sin nature, however, is not transmitted to us by imputation; it is transmitted genetically. This is why Christ is born without a human father, (Gen 3:15) because the sin nature is handed down through the male.

THE GENETIC PERPETUATION OF THE SIN NATURE

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We must recognize that the old sin nature is not part of the soul but that it resides instead in the cell structure of the human body. That is why this inherent distorter of life is called the “flesh” (Rom 7:7-18; Rom 8:3-8) the “body of sin” (Rom 6:6) and the “sin” that “reigns in your mortal body” (Rom 6:12) reflecting its ancient origin, it is also known as the “old self” (Eph 4:22; Col 3:9) or, as we call it, the “old sin nature.” While not part of the soul, Adam’s sinful trend, from its command post in the body, influences the soul. It sponsors mental attitude sins and causes the mentality of the soul to become the area of motivation for evil. (Jer 17:9; Matt 12:34-35) The old sin nature or Adam’s sinful trend is both material and immaterial. The material part is its residence in the cell structure of the body. The immaterial part is the function of its specific trends toward sin, toward morality and immorality; and toward the lust pattern, (Matt 15:18-19) and this is Satan's nature and or “evil thinking” in us. We refer to these specific trends collectively as “Adam’s trend” or, in keeping with the Biblical nomenclature that emphasizes sin, as “Adam’s sinful trend.” Everyone’s sin nature includes all of these specialized trends, which function in different combinations at different times.

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But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man. (John 2:24-25)

The specific trend toward sin tempts you to produce all categories of personal sins: mental, verbal, and overt. The trend toward morality tempts you to produce human old sin nature good, which includes all attempts to earn Salvation or the approbation of God, even in immorality, we are still tempted to perform “old sin nature good,” (Matt 5:46-48) all production must be from the filling of God the Holy Spirit, and Truth; which is Spirituality! (John 4:23-24) All the misguided efforts to improve the world through the betterment of man, is the trend toward evil and is the intensification of the other trends — sin and morality — with emphasis on “old sin nature good.” “Morality and immorality called evil” is not only the policy of Satan as the ruler of the world; it is also the function of the old sin nature as the sovereign of human life! (Rom 10:2-3) On the material side, the old sin nature resides in the human body, contaminating every cell. The one cell in the female, which is produced every month and (If not fertilized) discharged in menstruation, is the only pure cell in the human body — indeed, the only pure cell since the Fall of man. In this normal biological process God made the provision to fulfill the Promise that Christ, “the Seed of the woman” (Gen 3:15) would become the Savior. In female meiosis, God paved the way for the virgin birth by which the Second Person of the Trinity entered the world as perfect, uncontaminated Man, qualified to go to the Cross as our Substitute. (Rom 8:3) Both male and female are carriers of Adam’s trend, but because Adam, not the woman, sinned in cognizance, only the male transmits it.

For this reason, just as through one man sin entered the world and so the [Spiritual] death through the sin, [Of Adam] consequently death spread to all mankind because all sinned. [When Adam sinned] (Rom 5:12)

The entire passage from Romans 5:12 to the end of the chapter is elliptical. Paul is excited, stimulated; his Spiritual life is running full throttle. He wastes no words. When something is already understood in context, he leaves it out; when already comprehended, he brushes it aside. He breaks off sentences; he shortens them to their barest, most dramatic structures to focus on some of the most vital Principles in the entire Bible. Driving straight to the point, he leaves as much as possible to implication. This does not mean that the implied words and phrases are unimportant, just that they are already understood or are reserved for later explanation. Such Principles of ellipsis as brachylogy (Leaving out words) and aposiopesis (Breaking off sentences) which he uses throughout this passage and which must be accounted for if we are to understand the Doctrines at hand. (Rom 5:12) tells us not only that Adam was the original source of sin in the human race but also that sin “enters the world” for each individual when Adam’s sin is imputed at birth. As Homo sapiens, we all sinned when Adam sinned, (Rom 5:18-19) because Adam was the federal head of the human race; in fact, along with the woman, who was built from his rib and whom he ruled, Adam was the human race. The physical result of his transgression spreads genetically from generation to generation of his progeny, and because of the Principle of affinity, the justice of God must directly impute his sin to his old sin nature in us at the moment we are born. The formula holds true for every individual: Adam’s original sin, plus the old sin nature, equals Spiritual death. And, again, the result: the first two imputations mean that we are born physically alive but Spiritually dead. (Jas 2:26)

The word “sin,” hamartia in the singular, can mean one of three things: Adam’s original sin, the old sin nature, or the Principle of personal sin. Here, based on the development of the context; (Rom 5:16) personal sins are in view — our mental, verbal, and overt violations of God’s Standards. In (Rom 5:13) Paul explains that our personal sins were not imputed to us — indeed, they had not yet been committed — when we were condemned. All mankind was condemned in one fell swoop, seminally in Adam before any of us sinned personally. We were totally condemned at the Fall, long before personal sin was defined and categorized for the Jews at Mount Sinai. The Mosaic Law is an indispensable part of the Word of God; it includes far more than the Ten Commandments. It defines human freedom and obedience, to the laws of Divine establishment. The Mosaic Law also defines personal sin, in terms of man’s failure to match up to the essence of God, and relates sin to its original penalty, Spiritual death. The Law reveals man’s condemnation, denounces man’s ability to be holy in the flesh, and points to Christ for Salvation; (John 1:29) Spiritual Thoughts and the filling of God the Holy Spirit as the means of reaching Spiritual maturity. (Isa 59:21) This excludes human righteousness as a claim on Divine blessing. (Rom 7:14) Human morality and immorality produce self-righteousness, Spirituality produces experiential-righteousness, (Spiritual Maturity) humility and Virtue-morality! (Gal 5:22-23) The Law has a limited role; it is a minor actor that entered the stage to play a minor part. (Rom 5:20) In the role of a marriage counselor, it tells us in no uncertain terms that we have a “bad marriage” to the tyrannical old sin nature. It points the way to “divorce” (Rom 6:4-7) and to “remarriage” to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith at Salvation. (Rom 7:1-6) In other words, the Law exposes sin, (Rom 3:20; Rom 7:7) shows us we have a problem, and reveals the solution in a detailed outline of the Gospel. But the Law itself is not the solution to sin. Before the time of Moses, everyone sinned; after Moses, everyone still sins. (1Jn 1:8-10) The coming of the Law made no difference. Likewise, the Mosaic Law has nothing whatever to do with our condemnation. Before the Law came on the scene, we were already totally condemned. Personal sins, so clearly defined by the Law, are not imputed to man for condemnation. This has always been the case, long before and long after Moses climbed Mount Sinai. Paul defines the Gospel specifically in terms of the non-imputation of personal sins.

Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. (2Co 5:19)

David, who lived in the Age of Israel after the Mosaic Law had been given, rejoices in knowing that personal sins are not imputed to anyone. (But Christ) This is the Doctrine of unlimited atonement from the standpoint of personal sin.

A Psalm of David. A Maskil. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit! [At Spiritual maturity] (Psa 32:1-2)

Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: BLESSED ARE THOSE WHOSE LAWLESS DEEDS HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN, AND WHOSE SINS HAVE BEEN COVERED. BLESSED IS THE MAN WHOSE SIN THE LORD WILL NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT.

(Rom 4:6-8)

Apart from Adam’s one original sin imputed to Adam himself, sins are never charged to the one who commits them. Does that sound as though people were getting away free from obligation? We are, The Lord Jesus Christ paid our price, and we just have to except it! And after Salvation we just have to judge ourselves rightly. (1Co 11:31; 1Jn 1:9) Don’t worry; this is not a miscarriage of justice. It is proof of God’s justice! In His omniscience, God found a way to save man without compromising His own integrity. Although we deserve the full fury of His wrath, His plan demands that we not be charged for our own sins. If we were, we would go immediately to the Lake of Fire with never a hope of Salvation. Adam’s first sin falls into two categories. It is an original sin because it was committed by a previously sinless and perfect man. It is also a personal sin, committed only by Adam himself as an act of his own negative volition. We cannot commit a sin like Adam’s. That is strictly impossible. Our own first sins were not original sins because we were not perfect when we committed them! We are born with old sin natures; we can commit only personal sins. Our sins fall into only one category, and the justice of God handles all of them in one way. (1Jn 1:9) But because of the uniqueness of Adam’s first sin, the justice of God could handle it in two ways — a different way in each category — without violating Divine integrity. As an original sin, Adam’s transgression was imputed to his newly acquired sin nature. In this way, God brought Spiritual death upon the human race, which then consisted of only Adam and his already-fallen wife. As their progeny, we are born facsimiles of Adam; we immediately have the total condemnation necessary for our Salvation. As a personal sin, however, Adam’s first sin is treated like all other personal sins. It was imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross and judged. Were it not, Adam could never have been saved. If Adam’s sin, as a personal sin, had been imputed to Adam, he would have gone directly to the Lake of Fire. End human race! If our personal sins were imputed to us, we would go to the Lake of Fire. We cannot bear our own personal sins and survive! Only the impeccable Person of Christ, totally acceptable to the righteousness of God, totally undeserving of judgment Himself, could pay the penalty for personal sins. Only Christ could rescue us from the brink of eternal Divine judgment. The genius and perfect integrity of God is revealed in the way He handled Adam’s original sin. By relating it to us, and our sins to Christ, God condemns us yet preserves us alive to believe in Christ. In this way, God gives us the potential to enter into an eternal relationship with Him, of blessing. All the personal sins of mankind were set aside for the greatest moment in history, those three hours on the afternoon of the Passover in AD. 30 when Jesus Christ bore the sins of the world and was judged in our place! As we shall see, that was the imputation that turned cursing into blessing, condemnation into Salvation. One sin, and one sin only, therefore, condemns the entire human race. If you think God condemns you for your own sins, you have listened too long to the legalist who is shocked by half a dozen kinds of overt sin. You are not that important! No human being is capable of committing a sin whose repercussions, even in his own life, can come close to matching the effects of Adam’s sin. There is no need to get on our high horse about this; we must get down to what the Word of God says. Our condemnation before God came at the moment we were born! God did not ask our opinion; He did not wait around for us to personally violate some Divine rule; He did not offer us a chance to get into the act. He took the initiative and condemned us when you were a completely unremarkable infant. This hauls down our high-flying opinion of ourselves, but it does more: it runs up the magnificent colors of God’s wisdom. Observe His colors. All glory belongs to God. In His plan, He does all the work, has all the merit, and receives all the credit. Grace, as the policy of His justice, can be extended only to the undeserving, to the totally, helplessly, hopelessly condemned. Condemnation must precede Salvation. There are no loopholes in the plan of God. Total condemnation at birth guarantees that He treats everyone fairly. If a person had to sin before being condemned, no infant who died prior to committing his first sin could ever be saved. This becomes a major issue in how Divine justice handles the human race. If God were unfair in even one case, He would not be perfect and would not possess all glory. We might speculate as to when a human being commits his first sin. But there is absolutely no speculation as to our point of contact with God! He treats us in justice; He is always fair to every individual. Thus, the infant who dies in his first minute, week, month, year, or whatever the period might be, is already condemned; he is already qualified for grace and is taken directly into the presence of the Lord. (2Sa 12:23) Born Spiritually dead, we are born candidates for grace. For us to be alive for one moment as the progeny of Adam without being totally condemned would be a disaster! God could have no plan for us were there no potential for Salvation. He therefore gives us the potential by immediately imputing to us Adam’s sin. In condemning us at birth, not for our own sins but for Adam’s sin instead, God demonstrates and proves His justice — and gives us our first break. The repercussions of God’s wisdom in this matter go yet further. God is not only able to save us before we sin, but He is also able to save anyone who dies prior to reaching God-consciousness. Gathered up in the grace of God are those who fall below a minimum level of mentality. The moron, the imbecile, the person unable to make a responsible decision, is automatically saved. This aspect of grace is possible only because both our condemnation and our Salvation are provided by the justice of God, totally apart from any meritorious action on our part. God is free to save, because He alone has already accomplished everything necessary for our reconciliation to Him. You can see that the greatest thing that ever happened to the human race was to come under the umbrella of the justice of God. Love, furnished wonderful blessings in an age of perfection, but love, could only turn us over to justice. When blessings come now, they come from the motivation of love, but through the justice of God — with no strings attached. Our own sins have nothing whatever to do with our condemnation. When we sin, all we do is manifest Adam’s sinful trend which has become our sinful trend by a process of genetics. Of course, our volition is always involved — you sin only because you want to — and you are responsible in terms of Divine discipline in time. But even when we express our own old sin nature in personal sin, human morality or evil, we do not add to our condemnation. Our personal sins augment Adam’s original sin, but the imputation of all personal sins to Jesus Christ indicates that the increase of sin is more than matched by the increase of grace. (Rom 5:20) Man cannot create a problem that God has not already solved. We are not Spiritually dead because we sin; we sin because we are Spiritually dead! We produce human morality and evil for the same reason. (As unbelievers) Total condemnation at birth means that our personal sins are never imputed to us and do not contribute in the least to our Spiritual death. In other words, we do not earn the “wages of sin” by sinning — Adam did! (As believers, our “wages” become carnality and discipline) Now do not go off the deep end with false applications of this point of Truth. Do not get the idea that except for Adam we are wonderful people. We are not! (Rom 7:18) Nor should you ever assume that personal sins are overlooked or condoned. They are not! (Heb 10:30) We are held responsible for our sins in time in the sense that Divine discipline always follows personal sin. (Without rebound) (1Co 11:31) Such punitive action from the justice of God makes sin never worth committing!

Through rebound, the discipline may be removed or reduced, or turned from cursing into blessing if it continues at full intensity. But as painful and miserable as Divine discipline is, it is not the same as condemnation. Imagine the mess we would be in if we were condemned for our own sins. The trends toward sin, morality and evil are present in each of us, but we develop these impulses in different ways. Not all of us manifest Adam’s old sin nature along the same lines that Adam did. One person might lean toward asceticism. Another might have a naturally timid personality. These people would never dream of doing anything rash, so they confine themselves to mental attitude sins and sins of the tongue. Someone else might like to live it up. He would be more outgoing in the expression of his trend toward sin and would tend to produce overt sins, rather than the mental unsoundness of the ascetic, religious moral legalist. But who is more condemned by God? Is the stuffy, self-righteous “pillar of the church” better in God’s eyes than the lascivious rounder? Does God think the legalist with the shockable personality has any right to look down his nose at the person who commits obvious sins? (Rom 2:1-3) (Criticizing is doing the “same things” in Rom 2:1-3) (Matt 7:1-5) Does He think the live-it-up type has a right to gloat about hypocrites in the church? No! Relativity of sins, variety of sins, or quantity of sins has nothing to do with our equal, total condemnation. Some personal sins carry more severe discipline than others, (Prov 6:16-19) but that is strictly a matter between the individual and the Lord. (1Jn 1:9) The order of the day is mind your own business, live and let live. (1Th 4:11) The Principle is not to compare your sins with the sins of others, but to respect the rights and privacy of others. Many churches today emphasize sin, (Or trying not to sin) but this emphasis is totally misplaced. God emphasizes the filling of God the Holy Spirit, and Truth — the Word of God — the Mind of Christ, as the means of Spiritual growth to maturity! (1Co 2:14-16)

Rebound, reception, retention, recall and resist sin, in the power of the Spiritual life; this is Spirituality! This is a supernatural life, and it demands God's power to live it, NOT HUMAN POWER!

For though we walk in the flesh, [Human body] we do not war according to the flesh, [Old sin nature] (2Co 10:3)

So that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom 8:4)

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. (Gal 5:16)

If you insist on sticking your nose into other people’s business, trying to reform them, trying to bring them into line with your “superior” standards, you merely add human moral degeneracy to your sins of arrogance, judging and bullying. (Jas 3:14-16) By your misplaced emphasis, and your preoccupation with yourself, and with others, you will have put yourself in a Spiritual tailspin! Neither the sins of others nor your own sins are ever an issue in condemnation. The emphasis is never on what you do, but on what the justice of God has done. And what has God done? To anticipate where Paul is leading us, the justice of God, as the function of Divine integrity, condemned all of us alike for Adam’s one sin, and transferred all our sins to Christ on the Cross. And, to anyone who believes in Him, God imputes His righteousness and eternal life. The futility of human morality is exposed. We can do nothing to earn Salvation, just as we did nothing to earn condemnation. Keeping the Law cannot bring a soul to Salvation, or to Spiritual maturity, any more than breaking the Law brought Spiritual death. These are antithetical functions, but both condemnation and Salvation are handled in the same way: God does all the work. The justice of God is the source of both cursing and blessing. Consequently, anything we might add to simple faith in Christ in order to gain Salvation is blasphemous beyond description. The issue in condemnation is Adam’s original sin; the issue in Salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ! The issue in Spirituality is the Filling of God the Holy Spirit and Truth! Our personal sins do not count in any area. But that does not mean that God overlooks our sins. They were an issue on the Cross — a terrible, agonizing issue to our perfect Savior who paid the penalty for them. (2Co 5:21) Personal sins are also an issue in our lives after Salvation because they get us out of fellowship with God and temporarily cut off the filling of God the Holy Spirit. (Jude 1:19-20) Where there is no filling of God the Holy Spirit, there can be no Operation Z. Where there is no intake of Truth, there is no Spiritual momentum. The rebound technique is designed to neutralize sin as a factor even in our daily lives! The person who denounces rebound as a license to sin does so out of ignorance. God’s justice provided the simple mechanics of rebound to enable us to advance in His plan despite the continued presence of the old sin nature in our bodies. (Psa 32:5; 1Co 11:31; 1Jn 1:9) When rebound is ignored, or buried under legalism, our status of carnality soon degenerates into reversionism and evil. On the other hand, with rebound, and resultant Spiritual growth, we will outgrow some sins and develop different patterns of sin. We may “refine” our sins. (We will not be sinless, but we will sin a lot less) Sin is a factor in yet another area. Some sins are also crimes; they violate human freedom and therefore are prohibited by the laws of Divine establishment. Murder, rape, theft, slander etc. — and others are cited in the Mosaic Law as being within the province of civil law enforcement. Where sin destroys the freedom, privacy or property of others; attacks Divinely delegated authority — severe punishment must be meted out. But no matter what we do or fail to do, no matter in what area our sins are an issue, God does not impute them to us or condemn us for them. We can only thank God that in the matchless genius of His justice He condemned us for Adam’s first sin. We can only stand in awe of Him for this magnificent action in our behalf. Far from being unfair to us, God’s imputation of Adam’s sin to our sin natures at birth is totally to our advantage. We are qualified for grace from the start; the condemnation that must precede grace is brought down on us with our first breath. We were in Adam when he sinned, (1Co 15:22) but before you belittle Adam for his failure, remember that God in His omniscience knows all iffy history. What if you had been in Adam’s shoes? “Oh,” you say, “I would have walked with the Lord every evening, and never; never would I have stooped so low as to eat that forbidden fruit!” What do you take yourself for? If you think you’re in a mutual admiration society with God, you are in for a little surprise: God does not share your enthusiasm. He is not impressed by your good intentions and pharisaical promises. He knows that if you were in the Garden, eventually you would have done what Adam did. The action of the justice of God is fair, not only because you were seminally in Adam but also because you personally would have done the same thing in his place. In His absolute wisdom, God found a way to totally condemn us as fallen, depraved mankind and yet avoid condemning us for our own sins. Indeed, He has condemned us for a sin that has already been judged on the Cross! He has put us in the clear to decide our own destinies — for or against Jesus Christ — without leaving any room for arrogance. By imputing Adam’s sin to its genetically formed home in our bodies, God preserves us alive and gives us a chance to be saved. The Cross could have no significance apart from the Doctrines of the imputation of Adam’s sin to us, and our sins to Christ!

Before the fall, man was a perfect creation, and that was all we could ever be, because of the fall, and then condemnation, Salvation was provided, so we are able to be born into God's family. In order to live with God, we have to be as perfect as God is, in righteousness and justice. This was His plan from the beginning! Never has there ever been a different plan, angels and men have free will, this is the reason for all the “trouble” but no trouble for God! (Isa 52:10; Isa 59:16) He did all the work Himself, He created heaven and earth, (Col 1:15-18) angels, and man, He was the only perfectly born human, without a sin nature, and perfect in body, soul and spirit, He lived a perfect Spiritual life, grew to Spiritual maturity, defeated Satan and all the demon's, was judged for our sins, will put unbelievers in the lake of fire, and believers in heaven, and some in dark pits, He will rule forever! And never asked us for our opinion, help, or guidance! We either adjust to God's plan, or it will adjust to us!

TWO RULERS: SATAN AND THE OLD SIN NATURE

Paul illustrates a Principle that applies equally to all ages: Spiritual death rules in every generation of human history.

Nevertheless, the [Spiritual] death ruled from Adam to Moses even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a type [A representation] of Him [Christ] who was destined to come. [Christ’s First Advent] (Rom 5:14)

Actually we are born under two rulers who came to power when Adam sinned. Satan is the “god of this world,” ruling through a policy of moral and immoral degeneracy, this is “Satan’s thinking, of evil,” (2Co 11:13-15; 1Ti 4:1-3; 2Ti 3:5) the old sin nature is the sovereign of human life, ruling through Spiritual death and carnality. (Isa 29:13; Mark 10:18; Rom 10:2-3) Under both of these tyrannies we live, “moral and immoral degeneracy” and this is the order of the day. (Normal everyday human life) It is the policy of Satan; it is the function of the old sin nature!

SinNature.jpg

We have already been introduced to Satan. (In the book Satan and demonism) Since his powerful, multifaceted strategy has been detailed elsewhere, we need draw only a thumbnail sketch of his plan. His arrogant ambition is to become, by his own efforts and great intellect, like the most high God. (Isa 14:12-14) He promotes the improvement of his kingdom, the world. He seeks to displace God and to create a counterfeit “one world order; named in the Bible; Babylon,” this will happen before Christ returns at the Second Advent! (Isa 47:7-15; Rev 18:1-24) We are not surprised to discover in the Bible that a revolutionist such as Satan, whose world policy is both moral and immoral, (Evil) talks out of both sides of his mouth. Satan is a brilliant chameleon, an ingenious counterfeiter, able to present himself as all things to all men. On one hand, he favors sweetness and light — prosperity for all; a chicken in every pot. Personally, he is the most beautiful creature ever created; he is eloquent, smart, entertaining, personable, persuasive — just the kind of company you would enjoy. His attacks often come in the guise of this calm, engaging, drawing-room type of attractiveness. (Neh 6:2) He knows that life depends on how people think, and he sponsors “good” anti-God thought.

You felt secure in your wickedness and said, No one sees me, Your wisdom and your knowledge, they have deluded you; For you have said in your heart, I am, and there is no one besides me. (Isa 47:10)

For he sees that even wise men die; The stupid and the senseless alike perish And leave their wealth to others. Their inner thought is that their houses are forever And their dwelling places to all generations; They have called their lands after their own names. (Psa 49:10-11)

For when he dies he will carry nothing away; His glory will not descend after him. Though while he lives he congratulates himself--And though men praise you when you do well for yourself-- He shall go to the generation of his father’s; They will never see the light. Man in his pomp, yet without Understanding, [Truth] Is like the beasts that perish. (Psa 49:17-20)

And he began reasoning to himself, saying, What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry. (Luk 12:17-19)

Instead, there is gaiety and gladness, Killing of cattle and slaughtering of sheep, Eating of meat and drinking of wine: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die. (Isa 22:13)

Perhaps, you have never before understood this point; God is interested in what we Think. (Rom 2:15-16) But many categories of sin (Mental, verbal and overt) only set back Satan's Utopian objectives. The system which Satan has constructed includes all the “good” which he can incorporate into it and be consistent with the thing he aims to accomplish. A serious question arises whether the presence of gross degeneracy in the world is due to Satan’s intention to have it so, or whether it indicates Satan’s inability to execute all he has designed. The probability is great that Satan’s ambition has led him to undertake more than any creature could ever administer. (Job 2:1-10; Zec 3:1-7; Rev 3:9-10) Man is truly a free agent; human volition (Free will) and the old sin nature can prove to be just as unruly to Satan! (Dan 2:41) But Satan does not appear always as an angel of light. The dark side of his strategy calls for terror, violence and confusion. (Neh 4:11) If he cannot control mankind by one tactic, he always has another. (Acts 16:16-17) No depravity or treachery is beneath him. (Jdg 16:15; Jdg 16:21) The rules of the angelic conflict call for each man to exercise his self-determination on the earth until God removes him! (2Ti 2:4) But Satan never plays by the rules unless doing so happens to further his own ends. He is the original murderer, determined to destroy man’s volition if unable to control it. (John 8:44) periodically God judges the accumulated results of all his varied activities. (Gen 6:1-7; Gen 15:16; Lev 26:14-30) Satan’s antithetical methods of operation are employed not only by his human world leaders, (Luk 6:26; Rom 16:18; 2Pe 2:1-3; Jude 1:16) but also by his vast, highly organized, well-led army of angelic subordinates, known as demons. (Eph 6:10-12) Satan does not lead a mob. He understands authority; in fact, he is a tyrant who wants to superimpose his authority over God’s. Satan orders some of his demons operating on the earth to be eloquent and magnetic in order to deceive people of culture and enlightenment. (Col 2:8) Many smart Germans who were not impressed — who were even repulsed — by the emotionalism of Hitler’s National Socialist Party were nonetheless drawn in by his demonic charisma. Other demon organizations are appointed with confusing and enslaving the simple, the emotional, and the ignorant. (Acts 14:11-13) Such people are impressed by the weird, extra natural phenomena of telepathy, mind-reading, and disembodied spirits associated with certain Hindu sects; by the voodoo victim’s ritual sacrifice of himself without any symptoms of pain; by the Sudanese dervishes who with bullets in their heads and hearts continued to charge the British formations; by the human sacrifice of children in the phallic cult; by the ecstatic manipulation of the vocal cords among the modern day holy rollers. Demons can unlawfully isolate the dormant faculties of unbelievers, and of believers in carnality, who permit the mentality to lapse into disuse and who are therefore ruled by the old sin nature. (John 8:37-38; John 8:44; Acts 19:26-28; 1Jn 3:10) We are all born into Satan's world system.

And you were [Spiritually] dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course [Thinking] of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit [Satan's false spirit] that is now working in the sons of disobedience. [Unbelievers and carnal believers] Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. (Eph 2:1-3)

In order to get out; as unbelievers we start by faith in Christ. (John 3:18)

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that [Salvation] not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph 2:8-9)

All believers in carnality are under demon influence, and or demon obsession in which the demon controls the soul. We are born again, but still think according to the false spirit and the old sin nature's thoughts we were born with. In order for us to change into the new self God wants us to be, (Eph 4:24) we must be transformed!

And do not be [A Command] conformed to this worlds, [Way of thinking; moral and immoral degeneracy] but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom 12:2)

Satan has ruled the world since the Fall of man, but he has never yet succeeded in controlling his own domain. Whether through the drawing-room type of demon activity or through the more startling types, Satan’s ultimate objective is to conquer, to control. Believers are at a great advantage if they understand the strategy and tactics of the enemy. (2Co 2:11) Unfortunately, many Christians seem to gravitate to the strange, to the weird. Any mention of the devil and demon activity risks bringing such impressionable people out of their cracks and holes. It is not wise to delve into the realm of demonism; The Bible warns us not to get involved. (Lev 19:31; Lev 20:6; Deut 18:10-12) We should be curious about Truth, not about demons. The point here is that we are born enslaved to a system of satanic moral and immoral degeneracy, more brilliant, complex, and powerful than we can possibly resist in our own energy! Our one defense is the Spiritual life in fellowship with God, (1Jn 1:9) Thinking with the Mind of Christ, Truth resident in our souls; this is God's power, (1Co 2:12-16) we learn God's system, (John 4:23-24) and this is the solution! We submit to God's will, Thoughts and desires or to our own. (John 12:24-26)

The LORD knows the thoughts of man, That they are a mere breath. (Psa 94:11)

For My people are foolish, They know Me not; They are stupid children And have no Understanding. [Spiritual Thinking] They are shrewd to do evil, But to do good they do not know. (Jer 4:22)

Our confidence lies in knowing that Jesus Christ controls history. (Rev 1:5) Satan does not control the kingdom he rules; he cannot produce perfect environment; never will he be like God. Satan and his demons are doomed to ultimate failure. The plan of God, executed by perfect Divine justice, will inevitably prevail. The great demon conflict that has so ravaged human history will be won by the Lord Jesus Christ at the Second Advent. (Rev 20:2-3) We might as well get on the winning side! Either we adjust to the justice of God, or the justice of God will adjust to us — by rolling right over us! Not even the greatest intellect of the greatest creature, Satan, can compete with the integrity of the Creator. If we try it, we haven’t a chance. While the sin nature’s trend toward sin does not always fit in with the main thrust of Satan’s scheme, its trends toward morality and immorality are readily pressed into the devil’s service. While still in the Garden after the Fall, Adam’s slavery to his newly acquired sin nature was first manifested, not in an act of sin, but in a program of satanic morality —Operation Fig Leaves. The nakedness that had been a wonderful part of Adam’s relationship with his wife was suddenly denounced by Satan as being a social problem. (Gen 3:11) The new ruler of the world insinuated that nakedness between husband and wife was wrong, that clothing was “good,” that no one was going to run around naked in his kingdom! Adam’s trend picked up the innuendo right away, and he and the woman got busy making “loin coverings” out of fig leaves. (Gen 3:7) Behind their social action, their “betterment” of mankind, their work to make everyone equal; is the thinking of Satan! They were vainly attempting to improve the devil’s world, and, once clothed, they had more “moral thoughts.” “If we are right with each other, we must be right with God.” If only we adjust to our fellow man and do well by one another, certainly God will not condemn us.” This satanic lie still carries deadly venom. It has poisoned Christianity in our day and is on the verge of destroying our nation. It represents a thorough maladjustment to the justice of God. Man’s good deeds cannot come close to earning the approbation of God; (Psa 39:5; Isa 64:6) to assume that they do is to insult His infinitely perfect character. (Rev 4:8) Even toward man, we are required by the laws of Divine establishment to respect each other’s freedom, privacy and property, but not to remold society, to lift up the downtrodden, to make people equal, or to enforce the ideas of a satanic socialist. The many applications and examples of the “social gospel” being broadcast into the world today are merely repeated evidence of our slavery under Satan’s evil system. By following human moral degeneracy as national policy, both foreign and domestic, the United States is setting herself up for overt slavery to another form of evil, a more predatory form known as communism. And even communism has a “good” goal — a “new vast world order” of universal prosperity! This was the same goal in Nimrod's Babel, as well as in Babylon, Tyre, the United Nations, and Hitler’s Berlin, and in our modern day, a one world system named Babylon, (Rev 17:18; Rev 18:10) it represents the best that Satan and man can do apart from God, and the Bible gives many descriptions of what this system has looked like in the past, (Eze 27:1-36) and in the future. (Rev 18:11-24) And the judgment of the “city” (Eze 27:33-36) and its ruler, (Eze 28:1-10) as well as the judgment of Satan. (Eze 28:11-19) And what will happen to them in the future, the city, (Rev 19:3) the ruler (Rev 17:12; Rev 17:16-18; Rev 19:20) and Satan. (Rev 20:1-3; Rev 20:10) In this “one world order” there is a description of what evil thinking is, and what the rulers and citizens will be thinking evil about. This is just an example of what the Great City of the “one world order” might look like;

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Do not love the world [A Command] nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. (1Jn 2:15-17)

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, [Or “the world project”] and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:36)

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The distinguishing mark in Tyre was a sail. (Eze 27:7) So it is with this city, so if this is not the city, it looks just like it! And this is due to the grace, and kindness of God to make Truth, and what is false so clear for us! (John 7:17)

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Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Gen 6:5)

The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. (Gen 8:21)

And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. (Luk 17:26-30)

These are human moral thoughts, and activities and this is man putting his thoughts, will and desires before God's. Unbelievers are moral, nice, giving, serve their country, take care of their family, Etc. But they are going to the Lake of fire, for not believing in Jesus Christ the Lord. (John 3:18) This passage is directed to believers. (Luk 17:32-33) Anything an unbeliever can do is not the Christian way life! (Matt 22:32; Luk 14:16-35)

Even in Satan’s kingdom, (Prison) the volition of our souls are truly free to make one choice over another, but we are not free from the influence of the old sin nature resident in our bodies. (Isa 25:7; Isa 42:7; Matt 4:16; Luk 1:77-79) This second slavery is much more intimate and hence much more dangerous than even our slavery as citizens of Satan’s domain. Although Satan is brilliant and powerful as the archenemy of both God and man, he is still only a creature. He can be in only one place at a time, and he does not have time to waste on us personally, his demons are used. (Eph 6:12) In contrast, the old sin nature resides in every cell in your body, including every cell in your brain. More often than not, therefore, you are your own worst enemy. When you run into pressure or difficulty in life, it is not the devil after you; he does not need to intervene when you do such a nice job all by yourself. Remember that your brain is not the same as your soul. While the soul is immaterial, the brain is part of your body, and as such, it is corrupted by the old sin nature. In other words, the sin nature resides in the brain but not in the soul. The brain, however, influences the soul. Indeed, under Spiritual death, and carnality the brain rules the soul since the old sin nature has its headquarters in the physical body and controls the brain as part of the body of corruption. The brain is the mechanical expression of the soul’s consciousness. Note that I said mechanical; there is no consciousness in the brain as a physical organ. Self-consciousness is a facet of the soul. The self-consciousness of the soul acts as the go-between; it is where the immaterial links up to the material. But having resided in every neuron since the moment of physical birth, the sin nature uses all the brain’s mechanical functions to control the soul. In particular, the old sin nature programs the brain with human reality; thus, the brain naturally prints moral and immoral tendencies into the soul. (Matt 16:22-23) Garbage in; garbage out. The mentality operates on human reality; the volition makes decisions, the emotion is stimulated by the old sin nature. In contrast to the “newness of life” commanded of every believer, (Rom 6:4) the “oldness” of life is the computer program of moral and immoral “human reality” which enslaves us to the old sin nature. Satan’s plan also has a part in this programming. From birth, we live in the devil’s world, and his ruling policy inevitably works its way into the computer. In spite of Christ’s work in freeing us from the power of the old sin nature, many believers continue to operate on the old program. They are full of human morality as they serve their sin natures and sincerely advocate the various programs for making Satan’s kingdom “a better place to live.” They talk about equality, brotherhood, health and prosperity, education, removing poverty, abortion, world peace and using the Bible as a “moral system,” (2Ti 3:5) without the filling of God the Holy Spirit. (Rom 8:4) Although determined to “do great things for God,” they fall right into line behind Satan, the greatest genius and deceiver of the whole world. (Rev 12:9) The motto of this “new world system” of unbelievers, believers, moral, immoral, religious, and non religious is: Treat others as you would have them treat you! WITHOUT THE SPIRITUAL LIFE!

But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit [The filling of God the Holy Spirit] and Truth; [The Word of God] for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and Truth. (John 4:23-24)

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the Words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. (John 6:63)

Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the Law of God, [Spirit and Truth] for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh [Carnality] cannot please God. (Rom 8:7-8)

As the only solution to this tyrannical dilemma, we are Commanded to reprogram the computer.

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, [The sin nature] but alive to God in Christ Jesus. [The Spiritual life] Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; [Staying out of the Spiritual life] but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, [Alive from Spiritual death and or carnality] and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. (Rom 6:11-13)

Placing the members of your physical body under orders to God includes reprogramming your brain. At the new birth, the power of your old sin nature was positionally broken through the imputation of God’s righteousness and eternal life. (Eph 2:6) Add to this the simultaneous baptism of God the Holy Spirit, and for the first time your soul is in a position to break free from the influence of the corrupted physical computer. By the intake of Spiritual Thoughts, new information is fed into your Spiritual life, so that it is programmed in accordance with the plan of God for your life. Only Truth in the soul can fulfill experientially, (Rom 6:17-18) what was accomplished positionally at the moment of Salvation. Through perception of Truth, we can be free from both rulers, under which we were born!

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free. (John 8:31-32)

Truth makes all the difference! Works will not reprogram the old sin nature. Witnessing, quoting verses, memorizing Scripture, prayer, giving — in carnality, will not do the job. They are legitimate — under the filling of God the Holy Spirit (Eph 5:18) with the proper motivation, at the right time. But they do not change the old sin nature. There is only one way to change the computer (Our mind) so that it becomes a weapon of righteousness to God; feeding it something greater and smarter than Satan; and the old sin nature! We must consistently feed it the Spiritual Thinking of Christ, in the filling of God the Holy Spirit — The Living Word! (John 3:34)

IMPUTATION OF PERSONAL SINS TO CHRIST; GOD’S UNIQUELY BORN SON

We are born facsimiles of Adam after the Fall. We share his original sin by real imputation and his sin nature by genetic transmission. Thus, we share his Spiritual death. His sin becomes our sin; his sin nature, our sin nature; his condemnation, our condemnation! But, (Rom 5:14) tells us that Christ was born a facsimile or “type” of Adam before the Fall. Adam was created perfect; our Lord was born perfect, without the corruption of the old sin nature. (1Pe 1:19) Like all members of the human race, however, the mother of Christ’s humanity, the virgin Mary, was born Spiritually dead. She was not immaculate, sinless, or perfect. Nor was she — in the most ludicrous blasphemy of all — the mother of God. Eternal God has no source, no origin, and no mother! Mary was a sinner in need of a Savior; her body was a body of corruption; her genes and chromosomes carried the old sin nature, as do everyone’s. Personally, she had her good and bad points, and like all of us, she committed many sins. But because fornication was definitely not among her sins, she was truly a virgin. She and her betrothed husband were descendants from the two branches of the royal family of David — she, through Nathan; (Luk 3:31) Joseph, through Solomon. (Matt 1:6) Both were Jewish aristocrats; both demonstrated their Spiritual maturity, in the way they handled this surprising pregnancy, which undoubtedly raised many eyebrows. Through the centuries, religion has abused Mary, elevating her far above her rightful position. She is often overrated and even worshipped as the embodiment of ideally pure womanhood (In contrast to Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus, and others who are also worshipped — but as ideally sensuous womanhood. Just because religion has abused her is no reason to overlook this woman’s noble character and personal Spiritual integrity. True, Jesus had to reprimand her on several later occasions, (Luk 2:48-50; John 2:3-5) and He deemphasized her role in His Incarnation; (Luk 11:27-28) but in many ways she was an admirable woman. Even the “finest people”, however, are condemned from birth, and Mary entered the world as a carrier of the old sin nature. But as a woman, she could not transmit it to her progeny. After Christ was born, she bore at least six other children by Joseph through normal procreation. (Matt 13:55-56) All were born Spiritually dead, but not because of their mother’s sin nature; they received the old sin nature from their father. In Mary, as in all normal women, approximately once a month that one egg cell was purified through meiosis. Her sin nature’s presence in an immature reproductive cell had crossed over into polar bodies, leaving the mature ovum uncontaminated. In other words, the physical basis for the virgin birth can be found in any good biology textbook. Isaiah prophesied that the virgin birth would be a “sign,” a miraculous event, (Isa 7:14) but Mary herself was not the miracle. The miracle was that God the Holy Spirit provided twenty-three perfect chromosomes to fertilize her normal, pure ovum. She conceived apart from the contamination carried by the male sperm. Her pregnancy was, therefore, a virgin pregnancy — parthenogenesis — and the blastocyst, embryo, and fetus that developed within her was totally free from the corruption of Adam’s sinful trend. The virgin pregnancy is the true issue. And as beneficial as virginity is, even her virginity fades in importance when compared to the miraculous work of God the Holy Spirit, which is the true emphasis in conception. Both the Hebrew word almah and the Greek parthenos call Mary simply a “young woman,” recognizing the fact that every ovum in every woman is pure by the Divine design of human physiology. Mankind gets no credit at any point in the plan of God! If God had so chosen, (Which He did not) He could have brought the Savior into the world as Mary’s fourth or fifth son as easily as her first! Even though virginity was her actual status, God did not depend on Mary. Needless to say, this Principle of grace has gone unnoticed in the glare of “Maryolatry.” At the instant when, in the Bethlehem stable, the fetus emerged from Mary’s womb, God the Father imputed human life to its Divinely prepared home; Christ, God the second Person of the Godhead or (Trinity) in a human soul. The result; is the same as it is, with any other member of the human race. Execpt He was the ONLY perfectly born human; body, soul and spirit! (Rev 4:8) God physically alive! (Isa 9:6) Our Lord was born true humanity, qualified to represent mankind before God the Father! But at the same moment, when the justice of God would normally impute Adam’s original sin to a newly born infant, no such imputation was possible. Christ had no genetically formed old sin nature; Adam’s sin had no home in Christ. There was no antecedence or affinity between Christ and Adam’s original sin because, through the virgin pregnancy, Christ was not seminally in Adam. Unique, Jesus Christ was born both physically and Spiritually alive. The Greek word monogenesin (John 3:16) is not “only begotten” Son but “only born” or “uniquely born” Son. The only other perfect human beings had been created perfect, but the unique Person of the universe was born perfect in the midst of totally depraved mankind. Christ was the only free Man ever to enter Satan’s world. He was free from the devil’s rulership, from the sovereignty of the old sin nature, from the imputation of Adam’s sin, and from the condemnation of Spiritual death. In order for the justice of God to judge our sins in Him as our Substitute, Jesus Christ had to be acceptable to the righteousness of God. He was perfect at birth, but He also had to be perfect when He reached the Cross! Thus, our Lord could not commit any personal sins during His life on earth. Remember that Christ in His humanity could be tempted and could have sinned. In His Deity, however, neither could He be tempted nor could He commit sin. If you add up these characteristics, the God-man in hypostatic union, in the power of the Spiritual life, was temptable but impeccable. In other words, through His volition, (Free will) filled with God the Holy Spirit and Thinking with Truth, He was able to avoid sin when He was tempted as a man; (And so are we able to) The Latin maxim is therefore true: posse non peccare, non posse peccare; He was “able not to sin and not able to sin.” Like perfect Adam, who could sin only by an act of negative volition toward God’s prohibition of the tree, Jesus could fail only in one way, by committing an act of negative volition to the Father’s plan for the Incarnation. Therefore, Satan intensified his efforts to prevent the Cross by putting the free will of our Lord’s humanity repeatedly to the test. (Matt 4:1-11; Heb 4:15) He was tempted far beyond anything we will ever face! The recorded temptations are but a few of the traps and snares that Satan ruthlessly and incessantly laid in His path. But unlike the woman in the Garden, whose ignorance of Truth made her vulnerable to Satan’s subtleties, Christ remained on positive signals all the way to the Cross. Whereas Adam was created Spiritually alive and through one deliberate act of negative volition became Spiritually dead, Jesus was born Spiritually alive and by unyielding positive volition remained impeccable and deliberately submitted to the Cross.

Saying, Father, if you are willing remove this cup [Spiritual death an judgment on the Cross] from me: nevertheless not my will, but Yours be done. (Luk 22:42)

THE LOGIC OF A FORTIORI

Condemned at birth, we are facsimiles of Adam after the Fall. But, perfect at birth and throughout the First Advent, Christ on the Cross was a facsimile or type of Adam before the Fall. This typology of the first and Last Adams is important but limited. As soon as Paul draws the analogy in, (Rom 5:14) he suddenly turns away from the similarities and begins to cite distinctions. The results of Adam’s negative volition are completely opposite from those of Christ’s positive volition. Nor is the typology carried into the persons of the two Adams. The first Adam was unique as a perfectly created man, but Christ, the Last Adam, was unique as the God-man. Adam fell, but Christ remained impeccable. Each was the federal head of the human race: Adam through our physical birth and Spiritual death, Christ through our new birth and Spiritual life. That is why we must be born again: born in Adam, but born again in Christ. The first Adam brought condemnation upon the entire human race; the Last Adam brings Salvation. Because of the first Adam, the justice of God condemns man; because of the Last Adam, the justice of God is free to bless man. Still excited, still writing elliptically, Paul develops the contrast between Christ and Adam in a brilliant tour deforce of logic. He sets up a system in the next three verses of Romans 5. He begins in verse 15 with a short comparative clause followed by a conditional clause. He repeats this pattern in verses 16 and 17: another quick comparative clause in verse 16 (This time expanded upon by a sentence that stockpiles Truth) followed in verse 17 by a second conditional clause. (Which uses the build-up of Truth to reach a fantastic conclusion) Paul was a Spiritual genius. And Paul was always able to apply his Spiritual genius to life. Apart from Christ Himself, Paul learned and understood more Truth than has any other human being of all time. Even Peter said that if you want to learn the most advanced Doctrines, “hard to be understood,” go to Paul (2Pe 3:15-16) Well, that is where we are — with Paul, studying the most pivotal subject in the Bible, the Integrity of God.The two comparative clauses compare Christ and Adam. But the conditional clauses, through the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, fully express Paul’s genius; (The Mind of Christ) in them he outlines the entire plan of God. A conditional clause has two parts: “if such and such, then such and such.” The “if” portion or premise is known in grammar as the protasis, while the “then” portion or conclusion is called the apodosis. In the first protasis, Paul sets up something well known as a basis for explaining something in the first apodosis that is virtually unknown to most believers. He goes from known to unknown in such a way as to make the unknown clear and understandable. He does the same thing in the second conditional clause. This time, however, the familiar ground in the protasis is no less than the Concept just developed in the previous apodosis! He turns the “unknown” into a “known” then turns right around and launches from it into a further “unknown!” In this way, he leads us into a realm of Truth that nowhere else in Scripture is it so clearly revealed. Salvation is an accomplished fact for every believer; therefore, Paul uses it as the “known” in the first conditional clause. Most of us are aware that we are eternally saved from the Lake of Fire. We are at least somewhat familiar with the Cross and with what Christ accomplished there. We have a fairly good idea that it is something wonderful. What is generally unfamiliar to many believers is Divine prosperity in the Christian life. Perfect happiness, Occupation with Christ, Grace orientation, temporal success, blessing to others by association, historical impact, stability under pressure — these blessings are the great “unknowns” in many believers’ lives and often seem remote and out of reach. But by pure brilliance of Spiritual logic, Paul makes them thoroughly understandable and familiar. Then from this new “known” of Divine blessings in time, Paul strikes off into an area that is never described in specifics anywhere in the entire Word of God. It cannot be; it is beyond human comprehension. But by force of reason, he gives us an inkling of eternity’s blessings, based on our knowledge of how God blesses us in time. The limitations of human language and frame of reference obscure our view of the splendors of eternity face to face with the Lord. We know that heaven exists, but its special blessings can be defined in Scripture only through language of accommodation. The Bible pictures the prosperity of heaven as a harvest. (Matt 13:8) From the standpoint of authority, vast estates are the mature believer’s reward as ruling cities. (Luk 19:17) Abraham and all Spiritually mature believers will receive entrance into “the city.” (Heb 11:8-10; Heb 11:16; Rev 22:14) The stephanos — the military hero’s “crown,” the athlete’s “victory wreath” — furnishes an analogy to the Roman Army’s highest decorations with their vast stipends and to the symbol of victory and reward in the athletic games. (1Co 9:24; Rev 2:10) Language of accommodation tells us that something real exists beyond the fog, but such analogies cannot begin to convey the fantastic details. The closest we can come to describing the Realities of heaven is not through parallels to life on earth but through the Apostle Paul’s development in this passage. In each step, from “known” to “unknown” to “unknown,” Divine justice is always our point of contact with God. It was our point of contact at birth and at Salvation, and it will continue to be so throughout time and eternity. But Paul does more than simply go from known to unknown regarding the function of God’s justice toward us; he does so using a fortiori logic. A fortiori a Latin phrase meaning “with stronger reason.” In our two conditional clauses, (Rom 5:15-17) the “greater” is found in the protasis and the “less” in the apodosis. A fortiori logic states that if God can do something that is extremely difficult, it only makes sense that He can do something that is much easier. If God has already done the “greater,” it follows a fortiori that He can do the “less.” Let me give you an example of a fortiori logic in the human realm. Suppose I can do one hundred push-ups. If you had seen me do one hundred push-ups, you would know for certain that I would have no trouble at all if called upon to do ten! One hundred push-ups is the “greater”; ten, the “less.” Stated in terms of a fortiori logic: if I can do one hundred push-ups, it follows a fortiori that I can do ten. In the same way, if the more difficult function of the justice of God has already been provided, then “much more” or “with stronger reason,” the less difficult will not be withheld. Using a fortiori logic, Paul gets down to specifics regarding what required the greatest effort on God’s part, what requires less, and what requires even less. In doing so, the great apostle sketches out the entire plan of God with a few quick strokes of the pen. Salvation, the first “known” point, is also the “greater” in the first a fortiori. Why is Salvation so difficult for God to provide? The next two basic imputations will give us the answer. Both are part of the Salvation package: the imputation of personal sins to Jesus Christ on the Cross, and the imputation of God’s righteousness to the believer at the point of faith in Christ.

JUDICIAL IMPUTATION AT THE CROSS

But not as that transgression, [Adam’s original sin] so also is that gracious gift; [The Incarnation and substitutionary work of Christ on the Cross] for if by the transgression of that one [Adam’s original sin] the many, [The human race] died and they did — Spiritual death at birth] much more the grace of God and the gift of grace by the one Man, Jesus Christ, who has provided superabundance for the many. (Rom 5:15)

Jesus Christ is God’s Gift of grace to mankind. Obviously, our Lord was acceptable to the integrity of God. Adam’s original sin was totally foreign to our Lord and thus was not imputed to Him at birth; our personal sins likewise had absolutely no place in Him on the Cross. Thus, when the justice of God the Father imputed our sins to Him, it was a judicial imputation. Remember that a judicial imputation emphasizes the function of Divine justice rather than any connection between what is imputed and where it is imputed. There is no connection or antecedence, no home for what is judicially imputed. When God attributes or credits something where it does not rightfully belong, you might assume that He is being unfair. That is definitely not the case. Such a false assumption might arise from failing to see the complete judicial imputation. (Or from failing to see the total picture, for judicial imputations always travel in pairs) Each judicial imputation is incomplete until God takes action to complete it, and in order to complete it, the justice of God must render a decision. A judicial imputation is therefore always followed by a judicial verdict. For this reason, when the sins of mankind were charged to the impeccable humanity of Christ, the justice of God had to take action: He judged the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s judgment of our sins in Christ, including Adam’s first sin, wiped our slate clean; we need only to accept this Divine action in our behalf through nonmeritorious faith in the One who took our place. God the Father loved the Son on the Cross with a love beyond anything we can imagine. Since eternity past, their love rapport never diminished; but our contact with God is not based on His love. In relation to the fallen human race, the justice of God always takes precedence over the love of God. For our sakes, God forsook Christ on the Cross. The Cross was an act of justice, motivated by love! Justice imputed our sins to Christ; justice judged them. The work of the Cross was therefore stronger than any act of love that could ever be. Indeed, it was the greatest act that God could possibly perform in demonstration of His matchless essence! Following the short comparative clause which reiterates the contrast between Adam and Christ (Rom 5:15) that shows that God did not hesitate to do the just thing in condemning Adam and the entire human race in him. Nor did He stop short of total justice in judging His own Son on the Cross. It follows logically and in Reality that His justice will never hesitate to execute the demands of His righteousness. Therefore, we have absolute confidence that justice will always pursue its policy of grace in blessing us whenever righteousness approves! If God did the most for us when we were His enemies, He can only do much more than the most now that we are His sons. (Rom 8:14) Restated in a fortiori logic: if God did the most difficult in providing Salvation for us, it stands to greater reason that He can do what is far less difficult, namely, bless us in time! (Rom 5:17) The condemnation of the entire human race by the transgression of that one was the essential preliminary; cursing must precede blessing. But Salvation is provided by a cluster of two imputations — both judicial — one for cursing, the other for blessing. The Divine judgment on the Cross of “the one Man, Jesus Christ,” plus the initial blessing to the new believer — Divine righteousness imputed — together add up to form the “greater” of Salvation. The “less” is Divine blessing to the Spiritually mature believer on earth. Translated “has provided superabundance,” perisseuo means “to make overrich, to cause to superabound.” The culminative aorist tense views Christ's work on the Cross in its entirety but emphasizes the existing results: as a result of accomplishing the “greater,” God is now able to provide the “less difficult.” If God has already saved us, it follows a fortiori that He will not withhold blessings in time. Satan thought he had scored a resounding victory when man sinned in the Garden. The devil did seize the scepter of the world, but the justice of God finessed him out of every advantage by condemning the entire human race in Adam! This was the greatest finesse in history: by it we receive “cursing, and great Salvation” and God demonstrates the remarkable, fascinating wisdom of His justice! But much more, under that same point of contact, we are now in a position to be blessed in a phenomenal way, even in the middle of the devil's world. You should be delighted that your point of reference with God is not His love or His omnipotence or His sovereignty or His Veracity or any attribute other than what it is; His magnificent justice! Everything we have studied so far concerning His justice is about to fall into place.

IMPUTATION OF DIVINE RIGHTEOUSNESS; JUSTICE CAN BLESS ONLY RIGHTEOUSNESS

    Immovable strength of character backs up all God’s dealings with us. Neither sentimentality, concession, nor altruism has a place in the nature of God. The inviolable righteousness of God stands guard over the justice of God, and justice protects God’s entire essence from compromise when dealing with sinful man. Without exception, righteousness demands righteousness. Justice demands justice. And what righteousness demands, justice executes. Because both the Principle motivation and the function of God’s integrity are immutable and impartial, His attributes are never violated. No imperfection in us escapes ultimate judgment; (Mark 9:49) and no blessing comes to us apart from grace. In grace, the justice of God does all the work, carrying out the dictates of perfect righteousness. God receives all the credit while we reap the benefits in a totally nonmeritorious way. What righteousness accepts, justice blesses, but what righteousness rejects, justice condemns. Both cursing and blessing, therefore, comes from the same source, (Deut 32:39) and the inevitable, final result of every function of Divine integrity is the glorification of God. When we face the Reality of God’s integrity, we can only say with Paul, “God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31) But there is only one way in which God can be “for us.” Avoiding inconsistency and compromise, He acts according to a Principle of Truth that becomes an axiom: Divine justice can bless only Divine righteousness. God’s Standards are so infinitely high that no one can meet them but God Himself! Only what God does reflects absolute righteousness. He cannot approve of or accept less than His own righteousness; certainly He cannot bless less. That is the meaning of “righteousness demands righteousness.” God designed man to be prospered and blessed and to share God’s own happiness. He wants to bless us, but He cannot. From His point of view, we are totally condemned; He cannot prosper us no matter what we do! But where any opportunity remains of fulfilling His objective, God will exploit it to the last. He stops at nothing except what would compromise His essence. His genius is limitless; He never overlooks a chance to bless us. And in His genius, God found a way: His integrity demands that He must bless His own righteousness. So He decided in eternity past to credit or impute His righteousness to us at the moment we believe in Christ. As that fact sinks in, it becomes an astounding Revelation! The righteousness of God is the very root and center of God’s essence; it is the Principle behind every action God has taken toward every human being since the Fall of Adam! We now discover that we have this very righteousness! The function of God’s integrity has imputed to us the Principle of God’s integrity. You should begin to sense that there must be absolutely fantastic implications. The most striking implication: at Salvation you were suddenly dropped in the middle of the most exclusive relationship in the universe — the relationship within the Godhead: between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Each Member of the Trinity infinitely esteems His own incomparable Person and totally loves the other two Persons of the Godhead. The love in God’s essence loves God’s essence. We saw justice supersede love, at the Cross, but that does not mean love, is weak. Like all the attributes of God, His love is always maximum. The Cross showed that Divine integrity is greater than even maximum love! Indeed, the integrity of God is the magnificent object of God’s love. And now we have half of His integrity! This is how we enter the picture, as far as the love of God is concerned. We cannot work our way in or force our way in or ever deserve entry, but once we possess God’s righteousness, He has made us the eternal objects of love. God loves His integrity; we have the Principle of His integrity; therefore, God loves us. We are amazed and comforted to know that God actually loves us. But even so, His love is never the source of our provision and blessing. Justice is the source. Justice can do much more for us than love could ever do. Love, must remain constant, but the justice of God can bless or discipline us. Justice is stronger than love, and our point of contact with God continues to be the acting, operating, functioning half of His integrity. Justice saves us through grace; we will always be under grace. We never earn or deserve what God’s justice gives us in grace; there is no affinity whatever between the absolute righteousness of God and our status of total depravity. What, then, is the home for this imputation? Where can it go? There is no home in us! As with the imputation of personal sins to Christ, Divine righteousness is credited where it does not rightfully belong. Therefore, it comes to us in a judicial imputation. Indeed, that first judicial imputation at the Cross makes possible this second judicial imputation when we believe. (Rom 3:22) Together they form the “greater” of Salvation. This cluster of two judicial imputations might be considered an exchange: man’s sins go to Christ; the righteousness of God goes to man. (2Co 5:21) Again, to complete this second judicial imputation, God must pronounce a judicial verdict; He must take action to rectify a situation where no affinity exists. He looks at us as possessors of the very Principle of His integrity, and what does He do? From the bench of the supreme court of heaven, He pronounces us “justified.” From one man’s sin in the Garden, the entire human race is condemned; from one Man’s work on the Cross, the entire human race can be justified. (Rom 8:30)

JUSTIFICATION

You will recall that in one of its technical uses dikaiosune is applied to human beings and translated “justification.” This is the judicial act of vindication that occurs at the moment of Salvation when God the Judge sees His own perfect righteousness in us. Paul explains justification;

But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. (Rom 5:15)

Remember the structure of Paul’s argument. Here he gives us the short comparative clause to reiterate the contrast between the first and Last Adams. Paul then expands on this contrast, stockpiling information to be used in the second a fortiori which will come up in the conditional clause of the next verse.

For on the one hand, the judicial verdict came by one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand, that gracious gift [Christ’s incarnation and atonement] because of the many transgressions resulting in a judicial act of justification. (Rom 5:16)

Because of our total condemnation at birth for Adam’s one sin, plus the blotting out of our many personal sins at the Cross, the justice of God is now free to bless any member of the human race who believes in Christ. The first blessing we receive, the factor that turns everything around, is the imputation of the righteousness of God. The last phrase in, (Rom 5:16) “resulting in a judicial act of justification,” is the preposition eis plus the accusative singular of dikaioma. In the plural, dikaioma refers to “Statutes, Ordinances and Commandments.” But by using the singular, Paul emphasizes to both Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome, many of whom had distorted the Mosaic Law into a system of legalism, that Christianity is not a series of Commandments. Instead, Christianity is a relationship with God based on one Divine pronouncement; one order from God is the basis for His entire relationship with the believer. In the singular, dikaioma means “a right act in the fulfillment of a legal requirement, a sentence or pronouncement of justification.” From the judgment of many sins at the Cross comes one act of justification. At birth, justice acts against us to pronounce us condemned; at Salvation, justice acts in our behalf to appoint us righteous. (Rom 5:19) This one judicial verdict gives us the potential for all other Divine blessings. God does not call us righteous because we obey a set of Commandments or adhere to a system of taboos that supposedly honors Him. He never evaluates us as righteous because of our self-righteousness. He justifies us because we possess His righteousness. This is forensic justification, or justification in its legal sense. The Judge who possesses perfect righteousness acknowledges His own righteousness wherever He finds it — even in so unlikely a spot as a human being. Justification occurs instantaneously, but its mechanics follow three logical steps. For analysis, we consider them separately although all three are actually simultaneous. According to the Standard of Divine righteousness we are “nothings”— less than nothings — who become “somethings” only when these steps occur: first, we believe in Christ; second, the righteousness of God is imputed to us; third, God recognizes as valid His righteousness in us and pronounces us justified. Abraham is the model of justification. His vindication not only demonstrates the mechanics of Salvation but proves as well that Salvation follows the same pattern in both Old and New Testaments, both before and after the giving of the Mosaic Law. We in the Church Age receive the righteousness of God at the point of faith in Christ, but so did Abraham in the Age of Israel — and so does every believer from Adam after the Fall to the last believer in the Millennium.

And he [Abraham] had believed in the Lord, and He [the Lord] counted it to him for righteousness. (Gen 15:6)

Abraham had said yes to the Gospel while residing in the city of Ur, before he moved to Haran and then into the Land. Over five hundred years after Abraham’s death, Moses wrote the book of Genesis and under God the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, explained Abraham’s Salvation in context with his reaching partial maturity! In, (Gen 15:6) Abraham was over eighty years old; he had been a believer for more than fifty years. The account is, therefore, not chronological; instead, it describes something that occurred half a century earlier when Abraham, a Semitic, Akkadian Gentile, lived under the Third Dynasty of Ur. The Hebrew verb amen, “believed,” in the perfect tense, describes Abraham’s nonmeritorious positive volition toward the Gospel information that God provided for him. The perfect tense indicates an action completed in the past with results that continue into the present; in this case, the results will continue throughout eternity. Faith in Christ secures Salvation forever. When Paul quotes this verse in, (Rom 4:3) the perfect tense of amen is translated by the Greek constantive aorist tense of pisteuo, again meaning “to believe.” The constantive aorist gathers into a single whole the entire action of the verb, the instantaneous act of believing in Christ. We all enter Salvation in exactly the same way, through faith in Christ. Abraham knew Him as Adonai; Moses writes that Abraham believed in “Jehovah” because that was the name by which God revealed Himself to Moses. In each case, the revealed Member of the Godhead is the Lord Jesus Christ. (John 1:18; John 6:46; 1Ti 6:16; 1Jn 4:12) Whether Iesous Christos, (As His name reads in Greek) Jehovah the Second Person of the Trinity, or Adonai; Christ is the only Object of faith for Salvation! (Acts 4:12) The Hebrew verb chashab is translated “counted,” but it means “to impute or credit something to someone.” This meaning is underscored by Paul in the Greek verb logizomai, which was used as an accounting term meaning “to impute or credit something to someone’s account.” This time we have a culminative aorist; that is, the entire action of the verb is again considered, but now the emphasis is not on the action itself but on the existing results: Abraham eternally possesses one half of the integrity of God. What God credited to Abraham’s account nearly four thousand years ago is the same thing that is credited to each of us today. Tsedeqah, as we have noted, is the same as dikaiosune, “righteousness,” the Principle of God’s integrity. God is a perfectly fair Judge. His justice must conform to the demands of His righteousness. Divine justice is, therefore, caught between the righteousness in God and that same righteousness in us! He can do nothing but declare us justified. And when the justice of God, the highest authority in the universe, calls you “righteous,” that is the final word — your status can never be challenged. (Rom 8:33-34) God Himself cannot be less than perfect righteousness; He cannot fail. You have His perfect righteousness; He cannot fail you!

Now do not suddenly forget from whence you came. There is no personal merit in placing your trust in Christ, and there is no merit in possessing God’s righteousness. It is God’s righteousness imputed to us as a gift of God’s grace, provided by the function of God’s integrity. None of it is our doing, and although we have it forever, never during all that time will we for one moment deserve any part of it. Both before and after Salvation, the justice of God excludes from His grace plan all categories of human righteousness. (Rom 3:20; Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16) God is not in the least impressed with us, but He is deeply impressed with His own righteousness. The righteousness of God is the one thing we have going for us. Because justification is not an experience, your feelings are also ruled out as something that can impress God. You do not feel the imputation of Divine righteousness or the judicial verdict that follows it. How you feel at the moment of Salvation has nothing whatever to do with your relationship with God. You might feel great, but then again you might have just been jilted; you might have the flu or a hangover. Apart from being influenced by your state of health, your emotions are related to what you have in the mentality of your soul. Hence, what you feel when you believe in Christ cannot be based on more than an infinitesimal amount of Truth. The only Truth you then knew is just what little Gospel information that is needed for an instantaneous act of faith. (Mark 4:31) In short, your salvation “experience” has absolutely no Spiritual significance. You become aware of your Salvation only through consistent positive volition toward Truth and the gradual buildup of Truth in your right lobe. You do not (In fact, you cannot) see Salvation’s importance all at once. But as you fill in more and more categories of Truth you come to understand and appreciate the implications of possessing Divine righteousness. Indeed, the fact that we have His righteousness is so rich and profound a Truth that we will never know all of its ramifications until we get to heaven; as long as we live and take in the Word of God, we can continually grow in our appreciation of the tremendous fact of justification. Forgiveness is subtraction; justification is addition. Forgiveness is a wonderful Doctrine that tells half the story. Forgiveness takes us out of the minus column by removing at the Cross our debt of sin. We are out of the hole, but we still have nothing to offer God but a big, fat zero. In contrast, justification credits to our zero account the infinite righteousness of God's personal integrity, giving us the final stamp called “justified” in recognition of our new, permanent, and total riches. Justification is the completion of the believer's Salvation and the logical consummation of the Salvation work of God. (Rom 5:1; Rom 8:29-30; Gal 3:24; Tit 3:7) Moreover, justification is a down-payment on the believer's ultimate sanctification in heaven where-minus his old sin nature, minus human morality and evil; he will possess a resurrection body exactly like that of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Php 3:21; 1Jn 3:2) Our resurrection comes as a result of justification. No resurrection is possible until everything related to justification is completed. That is why (Rom 4:25) states that Christ was “raised again because of our justification.” The preposition dia plus the accusative case is always “because of,” All the work for justification was completed on the Cross. Although it follows His finished work on the Cross, Christ's resurrection is part of the Salvation package (1Co 15:1-4) because it sets the stage for us-already justified-to live on earth in the “newness of life” of Spiritual maturity. (Rom 6:4-18)

Justification is the solid foundation for all the a fortiori logic in, (Rom 5:15-17). It is the first “greater” that God provides. It requires much greater effort on God's part, than do the blessings of time and rewards of eternity. A cluster of two judicial imputations is much more difficult to provide than are the real imputations that follow as a result. Nothing could be more spectacular than God's justice meting out cursing and blessing where they do not belong and still not violating His perfect character in the process! (Rom 5:16) states that justification is also greater than that superb demonstration of God's infinite genius; the very condemnation that made justification necessary in the first place. Our condemnation deals with one sin, while justification deals with all the sins of the world. In a brilliant display of perfect wisdom and integrity, God has rescued man from the irreversible judgment brought on by man’s own negative volition. (This was always God's plan before creation) Justification is the summit of the plan of God; all else can be only a relatively easy downhill jaunt!

THE GRACE PIPELINE

http://thinkingtruth.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/pipline.jpg

You may have noticed that God did not take you to heaven the moment you believed in Christ. Why didn’t He? You were just as saved in that first instant as you ever will be. You were fully qualified. You possessed His righteousness and were pronounced justified. (Rom 4:25) So, why the delay? Why are you left in the devil’s world? God has a purpose for your life. He imputed His righteousness to you with a particular goal in mind. The ultimate objective is God’s own pleasure and glory, but the immediate objective is your blessing. You are alive to be blessed! Indeed, both objectives are one: God is glorified by blessing us. Imputed righteousness is the believer’s first blessing from the justice of God because it is the basis for all subsequent blessings; it is the foundation for superabundance, over-riches, and advantages beyond imagination! (Matt 6:33) When God pronounced us justified, He meant, among other things, “qualified for blessing.” Thus, in giving us His righteousness, He constructed a pipeline through which to bless us: its origin is His justice; its terminus, His righteousness in us. The giving and receiving ends of the pipeline are the two halves of His integrity. The grace pipeline is completely insulated or encapsulated by the integrity of God. Even though we live in the devil’s world and have the old sin nature resident in our body, the pipeline still runs through friendly territory all the way. God’s justice does all the work, and Divine righteousness has all the merit: we never earn or deserve anything that God pours through the pipeline. All Divine blessing are a matter of grace. God does not need our help! We do not join His cause, we cannot lend Him a hand. No human being, no angel, no system, no organization can ever break through that encapsulation and take credit for what God does. The devil and all the forces of evil cannot penetrate the screen nor can the lusts and trends of our old sin nature. God blesses us only because His perfect standards are met; that is, because we possess Divine righteousness. He never blesses us for what we do. He does not bless us because of our scintillating personality, talent, or our human energy. He does not bless us because we tithe memorize Scripture, or witness to ten people every day or “speak in tongues” or give up “for the Lord’s sake” something that we enjoy. To do so, He would have to throw away His absolute integrity, lower Himself to the level of mankind, and stop being God. When God blesses us, He has to do all the work. He, not us, must be glorified in the angelic conflict. He built the pipeline; He makes it work! When He blesses us, it is always for the same reason; we possess the principle of His integrity, Divine righteousness. Divine justice is free to bless only Divine righteousness. Anything you might possibly do is outside the encapsulation and always bounces off. Legalism certainly has no place in the plan of God, but even when you do what the Bible commands—prayer, witnessing, giving, Christian service, our works are still outside the channel for blessing. Not even legitimate production can earn us an ounce of Divine blessing in time or eternity. True production is itself a blessing! Bona fide Christian function simply consists of the opportunities that God gives us to fulfill our royal ambassadorship after we reach maturity, growth precedes function! We do not do things for God to grow; we grow so God does things through us! (2Co 3:4-6; Eph 6:20) Here we must “rightly divide the Word of Truth” (2Ti 2:15). Every member of the royal family of God wears two hats—he is both a royal priest and a royal ambassador; he must know when to wear which hat. Confusion on this elementary issue leads to a false modus operandi that makes Spiritual advance impossible!

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Sunday, February 26, 2017

The Integrity of God

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