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THE SPIRIT INDWELLS AND CHANGES US
PERSISTENTLY Jesus’ Spirit works in us to change
our inherent sinful nature from something that is corrupt into the new nature
He has planned for us since the beginning of time [Ephesians 1:4, 5, Romans
We discover how the various traits
of our natural discontentment are turned miraculously into love and joy. Love not as the world promotes, but a love
that is modeled after God’s very nature.
This love is demonstrated in the example of Jesus’ life. This love is our reason for our joy. We touched on how in this life we are
naturally susceptible to embracing various deceptions about others and
ourselves, as in believing that we have an inherent right to decide our
destiny for ourselves or believing God is reacting to our desires. This arrogance is replaced when Jesus’
Spirit leads us into a peace that passes all understanding. Then we begin to find we have patience with
those who believe in their own self-determination. These identified changes are only a
small step towards the creation of the new nature, which is planned for
us. Awareness of theses changes helps
us to begin to believe all He has shown us in His word without fear about the
future or anxiety in our present life.
When we begin to understand what He is doing in this process of
changing us into the new nature brings with it a real appreciation for God’s
sovereign plan.
Galatians 5:22 … kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
… The replacement of our inherent
nature is why kindness, goodness, and faithfulness become the hallmarks of
the believer. These are not forced
characteristics or are they the result of good decisions; they are natural
products found in the harvesting process.
We are methodically trained in these characteristics as a part of
Jesus’ Spirit effort. These
characteristics are recognized when we see them. Understanding them or trying to explain
them in terms of their origin is much more difficult. Kindness is one of those traits we
are told we can develop through thinking positive thoughts, by meditation, or
by following a good mentor or role model.
It is common to claim we can become a better person if we train
ourselves in proper ethics and cultural mores. Some portend that under the right threat of
punishment people will learn to respect the “rights” of others. Social behaviorists preach that kindness is
dependent upon the proper moral education.
If any of this is true then it would follow that over time we humans
would make some headway in reforming our society, but unkind behavior
continues on, generation after generation due to a corrupt selfish natural
state. A sociology department in a large
university surveyed some 16,000 students and asked the question, “What is the
most desirable trait you wish to see in your prospective marriage
companion?” The answer was
overwhelmingly the trait of kindness.
We all want to be treated with kindness and yet we see so much
unkindness, thoughtlessness, and capricious cruelty in our world. There seems to be a disparity, in our
society, between our wants and our natural state. This is no surprise if we are reading our
Bible. However, Sociology, when
embracing the world’s wisdom, attempts to classify kindness as a teachable
trait. Philosophers tend to look at
unkindness as a symptom of our normal human nature that must be overcome
through moral and social constraints. The more we examine human nature
the more truth we see in the descriptions and delusions regarding the sinful
nature, our old inherent human nature.
Bad behavior, as marked by unkindness towards others, is not
introduced from the lack of any desire for being treated kindly or any
misunderstanding about what kindness is.
We are inherently prone to be unkind.
This unkindness requires a change in our nature before there is any
true kindness. Often we see various
forms of counterfeit kindness used to gain selfish advantage. In contrast, the believer is trained to
adapt, over time, to The Spirit’s training schedule, often without realizing
it. If we are not seeing changes in
our nature over time then we need to examine ourselves in prayer and study [2
Corinthians 13:4, 5, Galatians 1:6-9].
These are sobering passages worthy of our consideration. The Spirit encourages the believer
to love others as we love ourselves, and the response of love overcomes the
products of delusions, which are
replaced with kindness, goodness, and faithfulness. Being kind and good over time demonstrates
what faithfulness means. When we are
simply kind or good to someone and, if we are being motivated by The Spirit,
we are not thinking about some hypothetical agenda, with delusions of false piety.
The Spirit lets us see situations as they are, without superficial
distortions of reality. Goodness is more difficult to
comprehend than kindness because it is seen as being relative to an undefined
standard while kindness is relative to a personal behavioral standard. We think we know what is kind, but we have
trouble defining what is good. One
action may be good for business but unkind to someone else. Since only God is good, the only meaningful
definition of good is acting as God would act. This trait of goodness in The Spirit’s
harvest is pertaining to developing God’s nature into the new nature, in both
performance and attitude. Faithfulness is relating to the
capacity to trust in God’s promises no matter the circumstances. This trust is consistently found in all
actions large and small. Faithfulness
indicates an awareness of God’s Sovereign plan and a sincere respect for His
power and His judgment. Conversely,
unfaithfulness leads to open defiance of His will and exhibiting the delusion about the human will. Defending our so-called “rights to decide”
is a form of this delusion. Even Jesus did not lay claim to any
inherent “rights” when He clearly stated, “For I have come down from heaven
not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me [John Therefore, faithfulness comes from
God’s Spirit, and not from desire, discipline, decisions, or duty. Faithfulness does grow and becomes more of
an evident product of The Spirit’s harvest as does the other components of
the harvest development. These three components identified
as part of the developing harvest, produced by The Spirit, are most effective
tools to fending off our tendencies found in the sinful nature. These can be identified as various forms of
delusions about others and
ourselves, which cause the responses that are given as examples in the acts
of the sinful nature as: hatred,
discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, and factions
[Galatians 5:20]. Each of these acts
can be seen as misunderstandings, or delusions,
regarding the offending party. All of those ugly acts of the
sinful nature, seen in the anger and discourse between individuals, are
products of the sinful nature’s delusions
manufactured for evil causes in the wisdom of this world. These attitudes are calmed and eventually
will be destroyed in the presence and the work of The Spirit, taking the form
seen in a development of such characteristics as kindness, goodness, and faithfulness.
Galatians 5:23 … gentleness
and self-control. Those that are truly gentle are
self-controlled and are made that way by Jesus’ Spirit. Those that are self-controlled are also
gentle. These components of The Spirit’s
harvest are opposite from the inherent tendencies of the sinful nature
exhibiting such behavior as drunkenness,
orgies and the like [Galatians Therefore, these characteristics of
the sinful nature are not allowed in any form in the new nature, which
becomes free from all acts of rebellion or defiance of societies mores.
The nature The Spirit develops never participates in such defiant behavior. These characteristics represent an extreme
of the extremes, where all restraints are reduced to the most basic forms of
self-consumptions. In this state, “my
will” becomes more important than God’s will or His word. This can be defined as defiance against God. Jesus’ Spirit moves against such
open defiance with the installation
of gentleness and self-control. Such a modification to an inherent nature
requires a radical change from the old nature into the new nature. Our sinful nature resists this change with
clever divergences from the truth.
Among the escape mechanisms is an avoidance of reality through various
forms of opiates, another is the promotions of various forms of the theme,
“We only go around once in this life, so we should enjoy the trip,” and
various forms of the “it is my right” theory.
The installation of gentleness
and self-control by The Spirit
spoils the sinful nature’s resistance through a forced change in attitude
towards others and us. We become
Spirit-oriented. The component of self-control is
most often confused, as a ploy of our sinful nature, with self-discipline,
which is actually driven by our survival instincts and peer pressures. The secular definition of self-control is
different from the contextual scriptural meaning of this self-control. Self-control as a part of The Spirit’s
harvest is dependent upon the crucifixion of selfish desires and independent
of any self-determination. “I
have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in
me. The life I live in the body, I
live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”
[Galatians This is vastly different from being
lead by selfish motivations and wishful thinking. The Self-help routines and Existential
theory harps on the assertion that we have inherent powers within us that can
be called up to help us in our temptations.
Such assertions are blatantly defying God’s word about His plan and
His ways, a type of defiance. We can do nothing without Christ’s Spirit. These two components, gentleness and self-control, are last in the list most likely because if the
other characteristics were present then these two would be natural
bi-products. All the characteristics
of The Spirit’s harvest are dependent upon the first item, love. In a very real sense, this list defines the
meaning of love. The development of
love is the ultimate product in this harvest of The Spirit. “No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning”
[1 John 3:6]. “No ones has ever seen
God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made
complete in us” [1 John This series on the indwelling of
Jesus’ Spirit can be summarized in just three important concepts. These concepts are attacked by our sinful
nature with compromises and disbeliefs.
They are attacked by our society with ridicule and fuzzy
theology. They are attacked by various
religions and honored doctrines as old “disputable matters” derived from
misguided interpretations. None of
these attacks can stand the scrutiny of the light, the new nature, and the
truth found in God’s word, as interpreted by Jesus’ Spirit.
Now
you're dressed in a new wardrobe.
Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with
his label on it. All the old fashions
are now obsolete. Words like Jewish
and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized
and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing.
From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in
Christ [Colossians |
