Ephesians– overview of 3:1-9; The Secret of the Ages, part 26 (Overcoming sin and suffering).

Tuesday September 17, 2019

Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

Rom 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,

Christ did what the Law could not do – dethrone sin by condemning it to death.

Rom 8:4 in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Rom 8:5 For those who are according to [present participle - consistently] the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit [qualities of the Spirit], (set their minds on) the things of the Spirit.

Rom 8:6 For the mind set on the flesh [unbeliever] is death, but the mind set on the Spirit [believer] is life and peace,

Rom 8:7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so;

Perhaps no one text of scripture more completely sets forth the hideously lost state of man, all of whom are born after the flesh.

Rom 8:8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Rom 8:9 However, you [the believers in Rome] are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

No definite articles are used in vs. 9:

“You (believer) are not in the qualities of the flesh but in the qualities of the Spirit.”

If he is indwelt by the Spirit of God, he is not “in the flesh,” but instead an entirely different kind of being – one that is “in Spirit.” The lack of the definite article (vs. 9) emphasizes the power and guidance of the flesh as opposed to the Spirit, emphasizing qualities more than identity. It is the things of the flesh and the Spirit that are under the microscope here.

We are blessed to be made by God into the type of people who live and walk by means of the Holy Spirit within. No matter what, the believer is always this type of person. We must take full advantage of it.

The night before His death, Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit who was to come to the disciples and indwell them.

Joh 14:16 “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;

Joh 14:17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you.”

Joh 14:25 “These things I have spoken to you, while abiding with you.

Joh 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”

Joh 15:26 “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me,

Joh 15:27 and you will bear witness also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.”

Joh 16:6 “But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.

Joh 16:7 But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”

Joh 16:12 “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

Joh 16:13 But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

Joh 16:14 He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.

Joh 16:15 All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you.”

In our book, Ephesians, the emphasis is on the church and the life of the church universal. In that book, the dynamic of the church’s life is the Holy Spirit, who is the seal of acceptance (1:13), the means of access to God (2:18), the source of revealed truth (3:5), the secret of divine power (3:16), the bond of unity (4:3-4), the mentor of thinking and speech (4:30), the stimulus of joy (5:18), and the armorer for conflict (6:17).

It is knowing our frame, what type of creatures God has made us to be and our faith in that, that is going to bring success to the believer. The fear tactics of losing salvation or reward will not do it. These will motivate, but not very far. The riches of Christ are unfathomable and we have very far into the depths of their quality to travel. Our motivation must not be only sufficient to plumb shallow water. We must travel far, and the means of giving a constant drive towards that end is faith in knowing what God has made us to be, a type and a position in Him that cannot change.

Rom 8:16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

Rom 8:17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.

We are material and immaterial creatures. And something went wrong with us when we entered into sin and our fall.

Gen 2:7 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.

There is a wordplay here in Hebrew.

“man” – adam (man)

“ground” – adamah (from the soil)

But then God breathes into our nostrils the breath of life. Gen 1:26, God states His plan to make us in His image and likeness. We were made to rule the earth, which for us was the Garden of Eden and we were to till the earth, or as the Hebrew relates, to serve the earth and we were to watch it or protect it.

Gen 2:15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

“keep it” is a Hebrew word that means to watch over or protect. Protect it from whom or what? Soon we find the enemy lurking in the Garden, and it was from him that we needed to protect it. But then, after the iniquity, after our fall we were banished from the Garden and cherubim were stationed to protect the Garden from us.

Everything was turned upside down. But now, with the redemption accomplished by Christ, we have been born again and, if I may take liberty with the language, God has breathed the Holy Spirit, Himself into us. The corrupted breath of life was replaced with the Spirit of life.

And, we are again given something valuable to protect:

Born-again and given to protect the word, the gospel, the faith, and the brotherhood of the body of Christ.

And it is through the Spirit that we protect them, and make no mistake, you cannot protect them if you do not live them.

It should not be overlooked that unity is through love and love is a fruit of the Spirit within. Adam spoke a beautiful short poem after he had met the woman made by God from his rib.

Gen 2:23 "This is now bone of my bones,

And flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called Woman,

Because she was taken out of Man."

He had named the animals of the earth and God accepted those names. Now he names his wife: ishah. But then he does something else, subtle and often missed, he names himself. “She shall be called ishah, because she was taken out of ish.”

This is the first time that this name is used. It is almost as if Adam couldn’t name himself until he saw his wife. I will call her ishah for I am ish. It is not good for man to be alone. He was designed to be in a marriage, and to his neighbor, in a brotherhood, perfect in unity.

But the fall changed all that. The love of Adam turned to fear and he blamed her.

Gen 3:9 Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"

Gen 3:10 And he said, "I heard the sound of Thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself."

Gen 3:11 And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?"

Gen 3:12 And the man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate."

Fallen Adam cuts off the woman and God.

He had the chance to admit his sin to God and protect his wife, but fallen man’s first act is to look out for himself.

Unity in marriage and in the brotherhood of the body of Christ are to be protected by the love of the Holy Spirit. And this demands unity with God. Sin is to be repented of and also forgiven by one another, as God has forgiven it all.

The Greco-Roman tradition is one where there are individuals who are defined by their own souls. This gives rise to pursuits of individual greatness and the greatness of isolation or aloneness. But God shows us in the beginning of His revelation that Adam is not necessarily defined as ish until he is unified with ishah. It is also revealed that the first of the new humanity, the church, would exist as a body, a unified priesthood and brotherhood under the head that is Christ.

On a simpler level, a father is not one until his child is born. The child gives him that name “father” and changes him forever. In God’s tradition we are not alone defined as individuals, but individuals that are a part of a community united in perfect love. And this is something that Satan has always sought to destroy.

When God creates, He says that it is good, but when Adam is alone God says that it is not good. One could ask, did God make Adam a type that had a hard time being alone or is it that mankind is not a creation of isolation, but that to be human is to be united to someone in perfect harmony?

The Spirit is in us to minister through us that which is alive and of light and fully rejecting that which is dead and of darkness.