The Doctrine of Salvation 2

The Doctrine of Salvation 2

Let us pray.

We thank you Father that if we were to leave this earth at this moment and go into your presence, all our questions would be answered because we would see you face-to-face. We know our Father, that now we see through a glass darkly but then we will see you face-to-face. Then we will know even as we also are known. Father, we thank you for the wonder of your Holy Spirit who mediates to us now, as much of you as we can bear. Father, we would thank you for that.

Thank you Lord, that what we’re receiving of you is what is right for us at this time and that we need not be frustrated about how little we understand of you. We can take the precious things that we do understand and thank you for them, and thank you that that is as much as you know we need at this time. Father, so often we would love to understand it all, but you know that more than that, we need to walk in faith about some things.

So Father, we thank you that all our knowledge of you is kindly and graciously and lovingly controlled by your own hand and that it depends on the Holy Spirit who loves us as much as you do. Father, we thank you for this. We trust you for this afternoon that we will receive from the Holy Spirit directly, impressions of you, so that underneath the words that we use here together, we each may come to know you personally. We ask this for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Dear ones, if you look at the title on today’s assignment sheet you’ll see that it is “The Operation of the Holy Spirit.” And I’ll try to continue to list headings and some subheadings so that it’s easy for you to keep your own notes in some kind of order. Maybe I could mention again the whole subject of the transition to the work of the Holy Spirit. That is, the transition in ordinary theology to the work of the Holy Spirit, how we get to this.

We said that in our study of Christology, which is the study of Jesus and his life and death, we discovered that God had made certain provisions for us to be reconciled to him in Jesus’ death and in his life. What we also discovered was that the application of that to our own lives is what we talk about in Soteriology. And the application of what happened to us in Jesus to our own lives comes about through the mediation of the Holy Spirit.

It’s quite important to understand that because it delivers us from all the self-help experiences of the mystics, or of the Buddhists, or the Hindus because here we have a supernatural person called the Holy Spirit who will take what God did to us in Jesus and make it real to us. So I’d point out again to you that Christology deals with what God did to us in Jesus. That is, it deals with the objective work that God did to us in Jesus. But the subjective experience in our own lives of that work is what we talk about in Soteriology. So you can see that this is Soteriology: the subjective experience of what Christology is about which is the objective work that God did for us.

I’d like to use a couple of illustrations to nail it home in your own minds. You remember that we said last time that what God wanted us to do most was to receive his Holy Spirit, because of course the life that we had was only temporal and he knew it wouldn’t last beyond 70 years. Moreover, he knew we could never become like him and live with him forever unless we had the same Holy Spirit running through our beings that he had. So his will was for us to receive the Holy Spirit. That, you remember, is talked about a great deal in the references to the tree of life.

Then we said that we had refused the Holy Spirit and we had developed a selfish will of our own and that selfish will in its turn made it impossible for us to receive the Holy Spirit even if we had now wanted to. It got us into the whole problems of Romans 7, the good that I would I do not and the evil I want to avoid that’s the very thing I do. In response to that, God destroyed us and our selfish will in Jesus; destroyed the “self” in Jesus.

Now loved ones, when you talk about those three steps, you’re talking about Christology; that’s the objective work that God did to make us right with himself. But do you see that we will not enter into any relationship with him unless this becomes real in our own lives, so that’s where you begin to talk about Soteriology and about the work of the Holy Spirit. That’s why this first lecture in Soteriology deals with the work of the Holy Spirit; because Soteriology is the application to our own subjective experiences of the work God has done in Jesus.

If you will bear with me, I’ll use a secular illustration that I think is of some value. It is as if Brian was filled with an overwhelming anger towards me, and he needed a knife to do his work with. I wanted him to have the knife, but while he had that anger in his heart, I knew that he’d go for me first, so I can’t give him the knife while he has the anger in his heart.

Now that’s the situation there, you see; God wanted us to receive the Holy Spirit, but while we have that selfish will he cannot give us the Holy Spirit because we would use that supernatural infinite power to spread our own selfishness over the universe. So he has to do something. In the same way that I keep the knife from Brian until something is done about his anger, so God withdrew the Holy Spirit until he could do something about that self and he destroyed it in Jesus.

Now imagine that I have a little pill here that is called an “antidote to anger” pill and I put it here on the Bible. Then I say to Brian, “When you take that pill you can have the knife.” Do you see that until he takes the pill he can’t get the knife? This is what we’re talking about in Soteriology. Until you do what will enable God to make real in your heart what he has done in Jesus, he cannot give you the Holy Spirit. So Soteriology is the whole business of accepting into our own experiences what God has done in Jesus.

If I could take you to another illustration, and I apologize because prostitution is not the worst sin in the world, I know that. I know many of us have far worse sins in pride and envy, but prostitution seems a pretty obvious and stark thing to us. Do you see that in a deep way the prostitute in Paris at this moment that is committing fornication has already been placed in Jesus by God? God placed her in Jesus 1900 years ago, so as far as God is concerned, the pill which is the antidote to that selfish will has already been made available to her, and therefore God loves her with all his heart and has nothing against her. But until she enters into that, until she takes the pill, or until she enters into this death that took place in Jesus, she cannot receive the Holy Spirit.

Now I just think it’s so important to see that the dear prostitute will not be excluded from heaven because God hates her, but will exclude herself from heaven because she does not receive the Holy Spirit and she’ll die because she only possesses temporal life and does not possess the life of the Holy Spirit.

So loved ones, what we’re talking about here is this important need for us to experience in our own lives what God has done for us in Jesus. Now, if I could point out to you that there are two extremes in the approach to Soteriology. One is “nomism”, “nomas” is the law; you could call it legalism. I don’t know how many of you know about the moral rearmament, it was popular in England about eight years ago. I think it lost influence as they lost one of their important leaders, but moral rearmament is a variation of nomism.

Nomism says, “We don’t need God to do anything here. Let’s just obey him.” So nomism says Soteriology is simply exercising your will, that it’s not about entering into any supernatural experience. The nomist says all you have to do is exercise your will and be like Jesus and follow him; that God has not done anything here that you need to experience in your own heart. So the nomist says, “Soteriology, it’s just obeying God. It isn’t experiencing anything, or receiving the work of the Holy Spirit in any way, it isn’t having this objective work that God did in Jesus made real in your heart. I don’t need anything made real in my heart, I just have to try and be good.”

I suppose people who say they live by “the golden rule” say that same thing. People who say, “I live by the golden rule, I don’t do any harm to anybody that I wouldn’t want them to do to me.” They’re really nomists. They believe, “All I have to do is obey God by my own power.” And if you say to them, “But don’t you need a work done in your heart by the Holy Spirit” they say, “No. No, I don’t need any work done in my heart. I need to exercise my will over my anger and my greed, and I need to be good.” So that’s one extreme.

The other extreme loved ones, is the antinomian, and if you could follow that [thinking] round: the antinomian says, “God destroyed my old self in Jesus. That’s it. It doesn’t matter what I experience in my own life. It doesn’t matter whether that becomes real in my being or not. God has destroyed me in Jesus 1900 years ago and God regards Jesus’ death as my death. He doesn’t want to kill me again, it doesn’t matter what I do.” You say to him, “But you’re still angry, you still swear, you still cheat.” He says, “It doesn’t matter. I have been destroyed in Jesus, and God regard’s Jesus’ death as my death; he won’t kill me twice.” And that’s the antinomian or anti-nomist.

He ends up acting against the law and he regards the law as unnecessary to obey because he says, “Look, the work has been done there.” In other words, both of them say that soteriology is unnecessary. The first one says it because he says, “I can be good on my own power.” The second one says, “I can’t be good but it doesn’t matter because God has destroyed me in Jesus and that’s all he wanted. All he wanted was my death and it’s happened with Jesus and it doesn’t matter whether it’s happened in me or not.”

Now loved ones, maybe I should keep quiet for a minute to let you catch up, any questions?

That’s good. Gus is referring to the very beginning when they did not acknowledge God as God and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God came gave up to a base mind and improper conduct and they were filled with all manner of wickedness and evil. In a sense it is; they just didn’t acknowledge God at all.

But a better example of it would be in 1 Corinthians when Paul talks to them and obviously talks to them in terms of the gifts. They’ve received the gifts of the Spirit but then in 1 Corinthians 5:1, “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?”

That’s antinomianism and it seemed that the Corinthians had fallen into that. They had fallen into this business where somebody would come and say, “Ah, but you shouldn’t do that, you’re in Jesus.” And they would reply, “That’s right, I’m in Jesus. I’m not acting as if I’m in Jesus. I don’t need the thing to be made real in my own life, God has put me in Jesus and as long as I believe that in my head, whether it’s real in my heart or not, that’s all that’s needed.”

You remember where James deals with the fellow who says, “Here’s my faith.” Let’s look at it in James 2:18. “But some one will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” In other words, there were some dear ones trying to show their faith apart from their works saying, “I have faith. I have faith.” Then of course James really gets at the heart of it in verse 19, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’” Verse 24, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

So those are the two extremes and the tragedy is that dear ones fall into one or other of these traps today and I think we need to ask the Holy Spirit to guard us ourselves from that. You could go on with endless illustrations, but I think you see the point of it.

The second point that needs to be made in connection with the transition to the work of the Holy Spirit (and this is all under heading A: Transition to the work of the Holy Spirit and these are points to be made and I will try to number them from now on and make some order.) So this would be the last point: that there is an economy in the God head. That is, there are certain works that Jesus does, and certain works that the Father does, and certain works that the Holy Spirit does, you see. And you can’t go too far in this, but someone has said that God the Father is God existing, and God the Son is God revealing. You have to be careful how you carry this, you can’t carry it too far because in this real sense where one person is, the other two persons are present. But yet there is an economy and God the Spirit is God communicating.

In other words, there is an emphasis in ministry in the three persons of the Godhead. So God the Son made provision for reconciliation in his death, but it is God the Holy Spirit that actually reconciles. Someone has said that the Holy Spirit is really the successor of Jesus, that in a way Jesus died and his will was made, and the Holy Spirit is the executor of that will; he brings to us the benefits of Jesus’ death.

Jesus himself lays that emphasis in John 16:13-15. “When the Spirit of truth comes,” the Holy Spirit, “he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” And the word “declare” is actually the Greek word which means share, or communicate.

He will share those things with you or he will make them real to you.

So it’s the Holy Spirit that will make real to us what has happened to us in Jesus. That’s why you can experience a new birth without understanding all the details. That’s why I’d urge you, if any of you are beginning to deal with God over your selfishness, and your anger, and your envy, and your jealousy, and the need to be crucified with Christ, I’d point out to you loved ones, that it’s only the Holy Spirit who will make that real to you. I see a number of us get ourselves into all kinds of introspective contortions because we try to make this real inside ourselves. We try to say, “I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.” Or, “I want to be crucified, I want to be crucified” instead of seeing that the Holy Spirit alone can make that real to us. That’s what Soteriology is about; the work of the Holy Spirit making real to us the destruction of ourselves that took place in Jesus. And where you get a body of Christians who honor and respect the Holy Spirit, you get great riches being made real among them.

You can get other churches that are full of right doctrine, but they have not this honoring of the Holy Spirit among them. So although they all seem to have the right doctrine, they’re uptight all the time and they don’t have any of the sweetness or the joy of Jesus in their lives. I think I’ve told you before that in Ireland we had coalman because we burned coal in our open fires. When I was five or six years old they still used horses and carts to bring the coal around. So the fella that rode the horse and cart brought the bags of coal into the coal shed on his back and he was covered in the coal dust -- he was black, the poor fellow. So we always regarded coalmen as the lowest of the low, the dear fellows, because they were always so dirty and had such a miserable job out there in the Irish rain with the black coal dust streaming down their faces as they sat on that old cart.

So we had a coalman’s mission and we “sophisticated intellectuals” at seminary thought that it was one of the worst places ever to preach. The coalman’s mission was filled with dear fellows that could hardly read, but who had a beauty of Jesus about their lives and it was because they honored the Holy Spirit. And it is true that the Holy Spirit will make these things real. It is exciting when you think of the practical out workings of this. But loved ones, that’s what we’re talking about in Soteriology you see; the application of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does many, many works and we’ll go on now to talk about some of the general operations of the Holy Spirit. We’re going to zero in on the works that he does in bringing repentance, in bringing regeneration, in bringing sanctification, in bringing glorification (or sanctification). I can’t emphasis enough to you loved ones, how important it is for us to honor and expect the Holy Spirit to work among us. The working of the Holy Spirit is the key to everything.

If you’d forgive me I’d like to use one other illustration that was very real to me and that is that the earth is surrounded by a certain depth of atmosphere. Without that atmosphere the sun can burn down and without that atmosphere there would be no growth of plants and there would be no life at all. And it’s the same with the knowledge of God; you could have all this knowledge of what God has done, you could have it covering the earth miles and miles thick, but if there weren’t the light of the Holy Spirit to light it up and give life, none of us would experience any life. And that’s what you experience so often, you experience dead doctrine and dead truth and no honoring of the Holy Spirit, so none of it is made real in our lives.

Now if you will look at “General and Special Operations of the Holy Spirit.” There is of course talk about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. He is talked about often as the breath, the “ruach” in Hebrew which is “the breath of God”. So the Holy Spirit, even in the Old Testament, is talked about as the life principle that fills God and that fills his creatures.

If you’d like to look at Genesis 2:7 it is the life principle that brought our bodies and our souls into existence. “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” So the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is regarded as the life principle that makes creatures live. So you might call it the natural life principle, that might help us a little. It’s the life that fills our bodies with physical life and fills our souls with mental and emotional life. So it’s a natural life principle and in the Old Testament, that’s one of the meanings of the Holy Spirit.

Now another meaning in the Old Testament is that it is the power that enabled people to do extraordinary things; it was the power for supernatural actions. Now that’s going a little further, you can see, than just the ordinary physical and mental and emotional life; it’s the power for supernatural actions. Sampson had physical life, but the Holy Spirit came upon him and gave him a supernatural physical strength. Also it’s the power that was given to the Judges, for instances, people like Sampson; people who had to judge Israel. He gave them tremendous power to do supernatural deeds, and you find that emphasis in Judges 3:10. You can check those references afterwards.

So it’s the power that comes upon people to do supernatural things, or that enables them to do supernatural things even intellectually, because that’s the emphasis you get in Job 32:8. “But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand.” So it’s the supernatural power that enables Gideon to know what to do in battle and enables Moses, among others, to know what to do; it’s the power of supernatural actions. It’s the power that also is given to the Judges for ruling and judging the people and you find that in Numbers 11:17. So it’s power for supernatural action; it’s the power that comes upon Kings for their position. David had the Holy Spirit come upon him and qualified him for the task of being King over Israel and you find that in 1 Samuel 10:6-10. And lastly, the last one I’d like to bring to your attention is the power that came upon the prophets in the Old Testament and enabled them to prophesy. In 2 Samuel David said, “The Spirit of Jehovah spoke by me and his word was upon my tongue.” So you do get a doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament.

Now I’d like to mention thirdly, the relation between the general and the special work, or operations, of the Holy Spirit. Actually, it’s very easy; the general is man’s natural life. The Holy Spirit is responsible for the Creation. You remember, the Holy Spirit brooded upon the waters at the beginning of Creation and originated man’s natural life. God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.

The Holy Spirit’s general work refers to the creation of man’s natural life; the holding of all the atoms together. We all know that all the atoms would split apart if there were not a supernatural power holding them together. So the Holy Spirit is the one that sustains the whole universe, he is the one that holds the earth in its position so that we can shoot space shots up and know that they’ll touch a part of space at exactly the same time as another planet. It’s the Holy Spirit that keeps the plants growing regularly and brings the seasons forth and it creates and sustains man’s natural life. His special work is the creation of spiritual life in man and the sustaining of that spiritual life, so that’s the distinction. The general work of the Holy Spirit is to create and maintain man’s natural life while the special work is to create and maintain man’s spiritual life.

Dear ones, maybe I should keep quiet for a minute and ask if there are any questions.

I think that’s true. But Ken, you do have to make a distinction. 1Thessalonians 5:23, says, “May the God of peace sanctify you wholly and keep your spirit, soul and body blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus.” So you do have to make a distinction between soul and body and it seems that in Genesis 2:8, the soul and the body were created but not the spirit. The spirit capacity was there, but the Spirit himself had to be received from the tree of life.

If you’d like to look back to it I’ll just touch it very quickly, but Genesis 2:7 dear ones, “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” The word breath there is “ruach” which is the same word for Spirit, “Breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” The King James is nearer because it’s soul, a living soul, and the Hebrew word is “nephesh”, which is soul. So the truth taught there is that God made man of dust and then he breathed into him a capacity for spirit, and the spirit and the body joined together and man became a living soul. So the soul was the result of the joining of that spirit capacity with the body.

But the Holy Spirit was what God wanted man to receive into his own spirit. So Ken, what God did was plant a spirit in man, gave him a body, and the result was a soul. So he has spirit, soul, and body, but then that was so that man would receive God’s Holy Spirit into his spirit and that’s the meaning of Genesis 2:9, “And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden.”

Now the tree of life we reckon from other things in Revelation was the Holy Spirit. And man had to opt to receive that Holy Spirit. He received a spirit, soul, and body indiscriminately whether he wanted it or not. But then he had to exercise his will to receive the Holy Spirit in, so that his own spirit would become alive to God.

Now, push me if you’d like, but I think that’s how you make sense of that. Otherwise, you’re in real trouble if you say, “Why did he breathe life into man’s nostrils in verse 7 and then he gave him a tree of life as well? Was it just to get refills?” Well no, obviously not. Obviously, it has some other meaning; it was because we didn’t eat of that tree of life so we didn’t receive this Holy Spirit so we began to die and we became temporal beings.

Several of you will know of good books to read on that, but Erich Sauer’s Dawn of World Redemption is good. The early chapters go into the creation in great detail. I know that a number of you have heard me speak a little on it so I don’t want to talk too much because I’ll bore you to tears!

It was because there were two trees; it was wrong for Adam to touch it because there were two trees and you can see that if you look in Genesis 2:9, “And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” And so it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was wrong, you see. I’m with you, but you’re right I cannot point to a thing and say, “Regarding the tree of life, God says the tree of life equals the Holy Spirit right here.” But if you look in Revelation you’ll find there is a tree, the leaves were offered for the healing of the nations and it is set in the middle of the river of life. And it seems that the river of life flows from the throne, and the throne is where Jesus is and of course Jesus said “He that hath the Son hath life and the letter of the law killeth but the Spirit giveth life.” So that’s how you get into it.

You take the tree of life and then it says, “The Spirit giveth life.” And then it says, “He that hath the Son hath life.” Then it says, “Jesus says you must be born of the Spirit.” So it’s that rationale. And I’m happy if some of us even say that the tree is Jesus, but the tree is certainly the source of the uncreated life that God wanted us to receive.

Loved ones, it’s really important that I move along here, but I think it’s important for you to stop me and question because I’m going to continue on because I want you to have lots of food for thought. Looking up the references together with your notes makes it interesting and enables you to reflect and think it through yourselves, so that’s why I try to keep moving to cover some ground.

So maybe we have done plenty for today.

The Armenians are regarded as a school of theology. Armenias himself was a man, I think in the second or third century, and he went to one extreme. He was saying, “You can obey God if you want to. You can do it if you want to.” And then the Armenians came along and they did not really say that as much as, “There’s some of it in your hands. The Holy Spirit can be made available to you but you must be willing to let him into your life. You must do something to let him in.” Now some others carried it to Armenias’ extreme where they say, “Let him in, but even if you don’t let him in you can save yourself.” So that’s it.

So I find myself in a difficult position because I hate labels. I think we’re all bigger or smaller than our labels and I would imagine that people who wanted to pin me to the wall would call me a Wesleyan or Armenian because I would believe that God has done something for us, but for that to be made real in us we have to be willing – he can’t make it real. Augustine would have said that the grace that God gives through the Holy Spirit is irresistible, you can’t resist it. God just looks down, picks the ones he’s going to save and makes the grace of what he has done in Jesus irresistible to them so that they can’t resist it, they have to be saved.

Now, I have great difficulty with that. I would say, “No, you can resist the grace. If a person doesn’t want to be converted they don’t need to be converted.” Now some Calvinists, not all of them, would tend to say, “No, you can’t resist it. If you’re one of the elect you can’t resist it.”

That’s right. I mean it’s the whole predestination thing Gus, and it might be good – it’s two minutes to six so it might be good for me to do a little section on predestination next time.

I think of saying yes or no. I don’t think we’re capable of anything more, but it seems to me Kathy that we can say yes or no to God’s Holy Spirit.

I think the Holy Spirit can whisper within our hearts, “I can give you the patience of Jesus in this situation” and we can say yes or no. I don’t think we can produce patience ourselves. Now of course, it’s the old thing, you know; we all set up “Aunt Sally’s” (situations or examples) that we can knock down and so I set up a Calvinist “Aunt Sally” that I can knock down. Berkoff sets up a Wesleyan and Armenian “Aunt Sally” that he can knock down and really we’re silly because we’re over exaggerating. It’s like the communist,; we set up an absolute extreme of communism so that we can show that undoubtedly it is wrong, instead of trying to look at the thing as it really is and seeing some good things and some bad things.

So there’s a tendency for Berkhof to say that an Armenian says, “You can be like God without God’s power, without God’s grace.” I’m against that because it leads to Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking and brings the whole burden back on your own shoulders and drives you crazy and into frustration. But I would say that what we can do is say yes or no.

Now I haven’t read a theologian who has said exactly that, but that seems to me that’s what we’re able to do and I don’t think it’s much more than that. Maybe we should end here and pick it up again next time.

Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us now and evermore. Amen.