Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 70 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; spirituality is productive; Gal 5.
length: 65:33 - taught on Apr, 19 2016
Class Outline:
Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 70 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; spirituality is productive; Gal 5.
Announcements / opening prayer:
Principle: Spirituality is productive. Spirituality is not the avoidance of sin so much as it is the outworking of the life that is Christ.
GAL 5:13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
To those who have been accustomed to regard law as the only controlling factor that stands in the way of self-indulgence and a free rein in sin, and to those who have not been accustomed to a high standard of ethics, the teaching of Christian liberty might easily mean that there is nothing to stand in the way of the unrestrained indulgence of one's own impulses. Paul often during his ministry had his hearers react in this way to his teaching of grace. The questions in:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
These questions were asked by someone who did not understand grace.
The immoral degenerate thinks he already has freedom, but his brief experiences of pleasure are in bondage to the lusts of the flesh. How can he be free if his happiness is solely based on satisfying the flesh, which never stays satisfied for very long? He is at the whim of his flesh and so, not free. The moral degenerate sees law as his only restraint and sees freedom as a path to unbridled sin and therefore he is in bondage to law. How can he be free when he can never act from self-determination? If he finds himself in a situation for which his law finds no command or ritual then he is lost and unable to act. The moral degenerate always lacks compassion, patience, grace, mercy, and love. Without these, how is he free? Neither the moral or immoral degenerate have any real inner strength. If they are believers, both of them have freedom given to them, but they have chosen to bind themselves to the flesh. Neither are restrained because they have failed to see the true restrainer, and neither walks in freedom since they have failed to understand grace.
For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.
True restrainer: The Spirit and the word with the result that love is manifested in the life of the believer so that he does not live for self but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Paul answers these questions in Rom 6, by showing that the control of the sinful nature over the individual is broken the moment he believes, and the divine nature is imparted, and therefore as a new creature he hates sin and loves the righteousness. With growth he will come to understand why sin is sinful and righteousness is good, and he will choose for the latter. He has both the desire and power to keep from sinning and to do God's will.
When God abrogated the law at the Cross, He obviously knew what He was doing. He did not leave the world without a restraining hand. He ran this world for 2500 years before the Mosaic law was enacted. He can run it again without the Mosaic law. He does not need the help of legalistic teachers and preachers in the Church who think they are helping Him control this world by imposing law on grace.
Indeed, it is the general ignorance and lack of recognition of the ministry of the Holy Spirit that is responsible for the tendency in the Church of adding law to grace.
The preacher does not enable power when he brings the congregant to the thunder and cloud and fire of Sinai; letting him smell the brimstone of hell in an attempt to scare him into obedience. Plus, this is no real restraint. The fear imparted from the pulpit doesn't last much longer than the trip home from church.
The preacher does not enable power through fear tactics of judgment. It is the truth that sets a person free and the Holy Spirit will reveal the depth of that truth.
GAL 5:13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
The word occasion in the Greek, aphorme, was used to denote a base of operations in war. Freedom in Christ has a base of operations and it is not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.
The base of operations of freedom in the Spirit deploys the fruit of the Spirit. We can imagine the fruit of the Spirit as nine divisions that are deployed in the believer’s life from the freedom base of operations of the Spirit.
Far too many Christians have nothing but fleshliness and worldliness going forth from their base of operations. The fact that every believer has such a base is a wonderful opportunity and its potential is unfathomable.
The base of operations is to be used to serve one another through agape love, which as we have noted many times, is the culmination of all divine virtues. This is every believer's opportunity.
When it becomes inconvenient to serve another, the believer should remind himself of that this is a divinely given opportunity and not a burden. When emotions fight against it, time and energy are profoundly not in favor of it, when other people and circumstances try to prevent it, the believer must fight the good fight of faith and choose love over self, trusting the Holy Spirit for power and wisdom, and serve the other in the love of God.
Paul now continues on the subject of love as the result of freedom, but in a curious light.
GAL 5:14 For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, " You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
All Christians need to learn how to discern on different levels. A believer who can only think linearly in one dimension will find this verse confusing. Paul has spent the entire letter dissuading them from the law. So why then is he referring to fulfilling it?
Paul is teaching what Christ taught. Certainly Christ knew that the Law would be fulfilled in Him and would no longer be the bondage of God’s people. But how was the Law fulfilled in Him? It wasn’t fulfilled because He kept it and never broke it, but because He completed the one sacrifice that the Law promised and called for.
Therefore, love fulfilled at Calvary fulfilled the whole law and that love also fulfills our law, which is not a legal one, but one of relationship, the law of the Spirit of life … in Christ Jesus.
The one word that fulfills the whole law is love. Christ loved His neighbors, and to the point that He died for them. Agape love, God’s very love, was quite limited in the OT due to their limited position as spiritual minors. But now that we are adult sons, we love with God’s love in freedom by means of the Spirit. Hence, the new command to love one another as Christ has loved us.
Love fulfills all laws, be they legal in nature as the Mosaic, or free and personal in nature as the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Our law is a relationship with persons. We put on Christ, we allow ourselves to be filled with the Spirit, we follow Christ, we God the Father our Father. We are not under a law of rules but a law of relationship, both personal and intimate.
God is love. God the Son revealed that love through His teaching and ultimately at Calvary.
MAT 5:38 "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'
MAT 5:39 "But I say to you, do not resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.
MAT 5:40 "And if anyone wants to sue you, and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.
MAT 5:41 "And whoever shall force you to go one mile, go with him two.
MAT 5:42 "Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.
This doesn't mean that we don't point out the injustice of the action against us, but that we do not return evil aggression.
Jesus answered him, "If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness of the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike Me?"
Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth is stated in the Mosaic Law, but in the context of legal matters and not personal revenge. A magistrate or judge was to adjudicate fairly; not handing down too strong a judgment or too weak. Yet in the matter of personal revenge, there was and is to be none. And here Christ brings this subject into the sphere of the heights of agape love. It is a reference to our own soul. The legal process in any free nation must enforce laws fairly, swiftly, and with force, but that does not mean that the victim has to have hate or revenge in his heart.
God had every judicial right to condemn the entire human race, but love gave a Savior. Yet He still judges those who have rejected that Savior and remain in their condemnation.
Christ further went on to say:
MAT 5:43 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.'
Nowhere did God say "hate your enemy." This was added by the Jews by oral tradition, and so it was taught as law.
MAT 5:44 "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you
MAT 5:45 in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
MAT 5:46 "For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same?
MAT 5:47 "And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
MAT 5:48 "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Christ fulfilled love at Calvary.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? "that is," My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? "
ISA 53:4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
ISA 53:5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
ISA 53:6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.
"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
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