The fruit of the Spirit - producing divine good. John 14:12; Gal 5:16-23

/John 14:12 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me [the preposition “eis” shows us that this is not for salvation but post salvation faith in His word], the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father.\

 

The issue in the CWL is the glorification of Christ and not the glorification of the creature.

 

/Divine good: a thought, word, or action motivated by love for God, guided by the word of God, empowered by the Spirit of God, and chosen by you.\

 

/Human good: a thought, word or action motivated by love for self, guided by human viewpoint, empowered by sin nature, and chosen by you.\

 

Divine good is a blessing and glorifies God. Human good is a curse, accomplishes nothing of substance, and attempts to glorify the creature.

 

/Divine good is also called “fruit” in the word of God. Fruit can only be produced under the power of the filling of the Holy Spirit.\

 

GAL 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh [OSN = human good].

 

GAL 5:17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.

 

GAL 5:18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.

 

GAL 5:19 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident [evident - this is a typical list but not an exhaustive list], which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality,

 

GAL 5:20 idolatry [anything above God], sorcery [addiction], enmities [hatred toward others], strife [fighting, arguing], jealousy [wanting to be king of the mountain], outbursts of anger, disputes [organized division, cliques], dissensions [division], factions [division with your group at the top],

 

GAL 5:21 envying [jealousy], drunkenness, carousing [nocturnal riotous parties], and things like these, of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

 

/ “practice” - present active participle of prasso = habitual practice or lifestyle that produces wood, hay, and straw, which amounts to loss of rewards, but not loss of eternal life.\

 

GAL 5:22 But [absolute contrast] the fruit [in the singular because it is the production of the person of Christ] of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

 

Since this is the fruit of the Spirit, it has nothing in common with the niceties of man’s morality or the acts of the philanthropist who seeks the good in man from whatever motivation. That is the production of the flesh.

 

There is nothing wrong with philanthropy as long as you do not think it is spiritual. You may get involved in organizations or the government as a citizen in order to serve your country. That is not evil, unless you think that those things are a part of your predestination as a believer and are spiritual, then they become grave evils.

 

/The first three are what you think: love [agape], joy [chara] - sharing the happiness of God, peace [eirene] - tranquility or prosperity of the heart\

 

/Second three are directed towards others: patience [makrothumia] - control of emotions, kindness [chrestotes] - grace orientation in word, goodness [agathosune] - grace orientation in deed.\

 

GAL 5:23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

 

/Last three are directed toward God: faithfulness [pistis] - faith rest in action, gentleness [prautes] - humility or understanding grace, self-control [engkrateia] - controlling your heart with doctrine.\

 

“against such things there is no law,” means that human morality, human viewpoint, and human good, pale in comparison to these supernatural qualities.

 

/The Christian way of life is a supernatural way of life and it demands a supernatural means of execution.\

 

GAL 5:24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

 

This puts to bed any idea that I have to crucify or beat myself up or through some system of purging defeat my OSN. This was done on my behalf by Christ on the cross, and here in the aorist tense means that at the moment of salvation my OSN was crucified along with the lusts it brings.

 

This is positional. It is what we call retroactive positional truth.

 

/Retroactive positional truth - I am identified with Christ in His death, therefore my flesh has been crucified, ROM 6:3 ff.\

 

ROM 6:3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?

 

ROM 6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

 

ROM 6:5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection,

 

ROM 6:6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin;

 

ROM 6:7 for he who has died is freed from sin.

 

ROM 6:8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,

 

ROM 6:9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.

 

ROM 6:10 For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

 

ROM 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 

ROM 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts,

 

ROM 6:13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

 

ROM 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

 

ROM 6:15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!

 

ROM 6:16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

 

Go back to Gal 5:

GAL 5:24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

 

GAL 5:25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

 

GAL 5:26 Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.

 

Divine good is primarily the production of the mature believer, but it can also be the production of the growing believer.

 

It is the maximum and most effective production a believer can have in his life.

 

The production of divine good comes from the source of God directly, so then, as with everything in the plan of God, the origin of divine good is grace and therefore the believer takes no credit for it whatsoever.

           

/Mechanically, divine good is produced by a balance of Bible doctrine in the heart [right lobe] and the filling of the HS empowering the soul so that doctrine is applied from the launching pad of the soul, HEB 13:10.\

 

The balance of power in the soul cannot be repeated enough. Like a battery has a positive and a negative terminal and it will not produce a flow of energy to do work unless both terminals are connected, so metabolized doctrine and the filling of the HS must together balance power in the soul.

 

HEB 13:7 Remember [concentrate on] those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.

 

/ “led you” - your PT. “conduct” - grace lifestyle.\

 

HEB 13:8 Jesus Christ is [no “is] the same yesterday and today, yes and forever.

 

/ “Jesus Christ” emphasizes His humanity in the hypostatic union - true humanity and undiminished deity in one person forever. The verb, “to be” is omitted to emphasize His celebrityship.\

 

HEB 13:9 Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were thus occupied were not benefited.

 

/ “carried away” - to be seduced by false doctrines when a believer is status quo negative volition.\

 

The negative volition toward doctrine is characterized by several factors. The first of these is indifference or apathy toward Bible teaching.

 

The second is indifference or apathy toward anyone who is teaching Bible doctrine, having antagonism or personality hang-ups toward other members of the congregation, being too busy or too bored for face to face teaching, or failure to appropriate grace provision of metabolizing doctrine [assembling for Bible class face to face, or by other means], and failure to rebound.

           

Believers today have a lot of idiotic ideas which have come from reversionism but not from the Bible. So much so that today when anything is clearly taught from the Word of God people are shocked. They do not think that is Christian at all.

 

It has now become so bad that people assume that whenever something is said with regard to the laws of divine establishment or some principle of grace is clearly uncovered people immediately assume that that is not Christian doctrine. They think that Christian doctrine is becoming liberal and becoming involved in a lot of idiotic panaceas, like solving world hunger, ending all wars, rehabilitating criminals, all pointed at making the world a better place to live.

 

People, believers and unbelievers alike, do not understand grace. It is grace that needs to be taught from behind pulpits today.

 

HEB 13:9 Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were thus occupied were not benefited.

 

/ “heart” = the right lobe of the soul.

a. frame of reference (conceptual thinking)

b. memory center (storage for recall)

c. vocabulary center (clarity of thinking)

d. categorical doctrine (simplification)

e. conscience (norms and standards)

f. subconscious (recycle bin)

g. momentum (circulator)

h. launching pad (wisdom applicator)\

 

The frame of reference illustrates the principle that doctrine must be built upon doctrine, from the simple to the complex.

The memory center is the place of storage of doctrine that is ready to be recalled and applied. Reception, retention, and recall are the 3 R’s of divine good.

 

The vocabulary center provides clarity of thought in times of application. You cannot think beyond your vocabulary. After salvation a whole new theological vocabulary must be stored in the heart.

 

Your categorical doctrine is your very own systematic theology. It is the place where you encrypt doctrines in categories so that they are more easily accessible.

 

Your conscience forms your norms and standards. This includes your priority list in life as well as your own definition of right and wrong, or more aptly put, good and evil.

 

Your subconscious is the place where older thoughts, vocabulary, memories, doctrines you no longer believe etc. are dumped to. It lies just under the threshold of the conscious mind and so has nothing at all to do with metabolized doctrine or any of the other parts of the heart. It can affect the conscious mind without detection. It can easily be triggered open so that its contents can leak into the conscious mind, which are usually a negative event and an emotional event, but not always. With doctrine the subconscious can be opened and dealt with.

NY Times; 2007

Yet he and most in the field now agree that the evidence for psychological hot-wiring has become overwhelming. In one 2004 experiment, psychologists led by Aaron Kay, then at Stanford University and now at the University of Waterloo, had students take part in a one-on-one investment game with another, unseen player.

 

Half the students played while sitting at a large table, at the other end of which was a briefcase and a black leather portfolio. These students were far stingier with their money than the others, who played in an identical room, but with a backpack on the table instead.

 

The mere presence of the briefcase, noticed but not consciously registered, generated business-related associations and expectations, the authors argue, leading the brain to run the most appropriate goal program: compete. The students had no sense of whether they had acted selfishly or generously.

 

In another experiment, published in 2005, Dutch psychologists had undergraduates sit in a cubicle and fill out a questionnaire. Hidden in the room was a bucket of water with a splash of citrus-scented cleaning fluid, giving off a faint odor. After completing the questionnaire, the young men and women had a snack, a crumbly biscuit provided by laboratory staff members.

 

The researchers covertly filmed the snack time and found that these students cleared away crumbs three times more often than a comparison group, who had taken the same questionnaire in a room with no cleaning scent. “That is a very big effect, and they really had no idea they were doing it,” said Henk Aarts, a psychologist at Utrecht University and the senior author of the study.

 

The real-world evidence for these unconscious effects is clear to anyone who has ever run out to the car to avoid the rain and ended up driving too fast, or rushed off to pick up dry cleaning and returned with wine and cigarettes — but no pressed slacks.

The brain appears to use the very same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious one. In a study that appeared in the journal Science in May, a team of English and French neuroscientists performed brain imaging on 18 men and women who were playing a computer game for money. The players held a handgrip and were told that the tighter they squeezed when an image of money flashed on the screen, the more of the loot they could keep.

 

As expected, the players squeezed harder when the image of a British pound flashed by than when the image of a penny did — regardless of whether they consciously perceived the pictures, many of which flew by subliminally. But the circuits activated in their brains were similar as well: an area called the ventral pallidum was particularly active whenever the participants responded.

“This area is located in what used to be called the reptilian brain, well below the conscious areas of the brain,” said the study’s senior author, Chris Frith, a professor in neuropsychology at University College London who wrote the book “Making Up The Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World.”

 

The results suggest a “bottom-up” decision-making process, in which the ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious regions later, if at all, Dr. Frith said.

 

In several studies, researchers have also shown that, once covertly activated, an unconscious goal persists with the same determination that is evident in our conscious pursuits. Study participants primed to be cooperative are assiduous in their teamwork, for instance, helping others and sharing resources in games that last 20 minutes or longer. Ditto for those set up to be aggressive.

 

This may help explain how someone can show up at a party in good spirits and then for some unknown reason — the host’s loafers? the family portrait on the wall? some political comment? — turn a little sour, without realizing the change until later, when a friend remarks on it. “I was rude? Really? When?”

 

Mark Schaller, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, has done research showing that when self-protective instincts are primed — simply by turning down the lights in a room, for instance — white people who are normally tolerant become unconsciously more likely to detect hostility in the faces of black men with neutral expressions.

 

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones,” Dr. Schaller said, “because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

 

In one 2006 study, for instance, researchers had Northwestern University undergraduates recall an unethical deed from their past, like betraying a friend, or a virtuous one, like returning lost property. Afterward, the students had their choice of a gift, an antiseptic wipe or a pencil; and those who had recalled bad behavior were twice as likely as the others to take the wipe. They had been primed to psychologically “cleanse” their consciences.

Once their hands were wiped, the students became less likely to agree to volunteer their time to help with a graduate school project. Their hands were clean: the unconscious goal had been satisfied and now was being suppressed, the findings suggest.

 

Many times our unconscious or subconscious mind will suppress very negative and hurtful things. God’s word will cleanse these things over time.

 

/Prov 20:27

The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord,

Searching all the innermost parts of his being. \

[back to previous heart slide]

 

Nightmares will turn to pleasant dreams and pleasant sleep.

 

The momentum department is the forward force of growing in grace and knowledge. This is a place of knowing that you are growing up with positive results to the health of your heart. This causes momentum through love for God and this momentum keeps doctrine circulating round and around in the heart, like well oxygenated blood in the physical heart.

 

Finally the launching pad is the place where all the other parts of the heart have contributed to that moment of application. As will all compartments, volition is the key. Wisdom is metabolized doctrine from the frame of reference, from memory, from vocabulary, from the right category, priority, and momentum all in an instant working together to apply the proper doctrine to the proper situation; a right thing done in a right way.