Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 72 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; Following Christ's way, 1Jo 1:1-7; Gal 6:1-5.

Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 72 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; Following Christ's way, 1JO 1:1-7; GAL 6:1-5.

 

Announcements / opening prayer:  

 

 

There is little blessing for any Christian until he abandons the principle of living by rules and learns to walk by the Spirit in God-ordained liberty and in fresh and unbroken fellowship with his Lord.

 

The divine precepts will then be kept by the power of the Lord, in love of the Lord and the Father, like a brother and a wife and a son.

 

To follow a person is to follow their way and so our law is really the way of a person.

 

God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have a way based on the principle of righteousness, meaning that there is a reason why they do what they do and always that reason is based on righteousness.

 

A person may decide that he really admires another person and so wants to follow his way. He may know what time his hero wakes up in the morning, and so he does the same. He may dress like his hero and adopt his mannerisms and his phrases of speech. He might take up the hobbies of his hero or his profession. Does any of this make him like the hero? No. Unfortunately, this is a pattern among young people, and the further tragedy is that their chosen heroes are far from heroic or noble. The question has to be asked, "Why does my hero do what he does?" and with Christ, the Father, and the Spirit there is always an answer (if it has been revealed to us) based on righteousness. So we imitate Christ, but not in dress or profession, or even in speech, as far as using His exact words that are recorded, but we imitate his love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, and all by means of the Spirit. Our law is the way of a person. All of our commands are based on the way of a person, whereas many of the commands of the Mosaic Law were based on legality and ritual.

 

This is exactly why John opens his first letter with a desire that those who read would fellowship with Christ as he did, so that they may discern the light from the darkness and so walk in the light.

 

1JO 1:1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life — 

 

1JO 1:2 and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us — 

 

1JO 1:3 what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us [of the same kind as us - with Christ and the Father]; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

 

1JO 1:4 And these things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.

 

1JO 1:5 And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

 

We must come to know Him through fellowship with Him and His word so that we may discover what the light really is. The first thing to know about the light is that learning the word of God is a part of the light. So although a novice believer may only know that, while he learns in humility, he is walking in the light and in fellowship. As he continues to learn he will understand much more of the light and walk in that.

 

And because we have been reborn as new creatures, sons of light, we have a divinely natural desire for the light and seeing it we will love it and want more time in it and to know more of it. It is God who has made you like this. It is no reason to get arrogant and treat others with contempt whom you feel superior. If such an attitude develops in a believer who has just enough wisdom to be dangerous, he is superior to no one, and is a fool.

 

Knowing light means knowing darkness, and in the same manner, our salvation severed the old nature from us and we have a divinely natural hatred for the darkness, and we will hate it and desire less time in it.

 

1JO 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;

 

1JO 1:7 but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

 

The Greek preposition translated "with" is meta. It means to be in the midst of.

 

"with [Greek:meta] one another" = in the midst of one another. As such our conscience is clean since we always walk without guilt of condemnation. All believers are clean in position, but not all are in experience.

 

This fellowship in the midst of one another is about fellowship with Christ and therefore having the same mind, purpose, love, and spirit. There is a far deeper meaning to it than social life.

 

JOH 17:22

"And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one;

 

The new creature in Christ loves righteousness and hates ungodliness. He loves the light and hates the darkness. If he walks in darkness his conscience will convict him.

 

What the darkness walker does, if he doesn't recover from this warning, is to use any number of anesthetics that the world offers to deaden his distressed conscience, and although he may be satisfied with this sort of numb life, we can never say that his conscience is clean. A clean conscience is not the property of the sinless, but of those who thirst and hunger for righteousness. That sort of believer, the humble student and lover of the word of God, learns how to recover from failure without guilt or self-condemnation because he is always oriented to the blood of Christ. In a way, he is in constant fellowship with the work of Christ or, as may be better put, he abides in it. The believer who uses the birthright of freedom of the adult son of God as an opportunity for the flesh (and don't forget that this includes immoral as well as moral degeneracy), abides in his flesh rather than the work of Christ, and seldom thinks about the Lord's work, usually only when his guilt is soaring due to the pain he has inflicted upon himself.

 

The other aspect of this fellowship in the midst of one another is not only a lack of self-condemnation, but also that we don't condemn one another for failure.

 

A believer who walks or abides in the blood of Christ is quick to forgive and show compassion and is slow to judge and enter into strife. He is interested in bearing the sudden burden of failure rather than adding to its weight. He is interested in the recovery of the fallen and not the sin that caused the fall. His attitude is this because he abides in the blood of Christ.

 

GAL 6:1 Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted.

 

"caught" - detected, caught unawares. This is not a green light for believers to invade the privacy of others. The reference is to a believer who finds himself caught up in sin.

 

In the context of the epistle, this would be a call to those in Galatia who have not been caught up in the wiles of the Judiazers to help restore in grace their brethren, who were caught up in this mess through ignorance, back to a life of grace and walking by the Spirit.

 

It is interesting and instructive, that the Galatians who were trying to live by the Law actually found themselves falling into the deeds of the flesh in 5:19-21. Again, rather than being a successful restricting influence, this manner of living actually increased the presence of sin in their lives, since this deception brings no true inner power.  

 

If any man is caught unawares in a trespass.

 

Trespass is the word paraptoma, which means a false step or a blunder. This is the antithesis of:

 

GAL 5:25

If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk [in a straight line] by the Spirit.

 

The meaning of paraptoma would indicate that the Galatians had fallen into the cunning of the Judiazers in ignorance and so were sinning in ignorance in some way. We must be careful here since there is a popular but false teaching that sins of ignorance are less godless than willful sins. This is incorrect. All sin is sin to God. Plus, the Galatians are not fully ignorant. They began by the Spirit and by grace. They understood the grace of God as taught by Paul, the most qualified of teachers. Yet with time and deceit they rejected the grace of God and came to believe, in ignorance, that the Law was God's given way of restraint. And so, from this belief, they found that they slipped and blundered in the ways of sin more than ever. They were shocked to see that this way of law did not produce the fruit that is demanded by God for the church.