To me, the metaphor of flesh=sin, spirit=love is clear. Whenever I try to satisfy my flesh, I do things like steal, lie, lust, and I buy things that I don't need (but I want). But when I try to satisfy my spirit, I give money away, I volunteer, I love on other people in ways that my flesh can't imagine.
But the separation of flesh and spirit doesn't stop there. Here is a passage from Ted Dekker's "White." Note that the book is a metaphor, so you might not understand it at first.
"'I'm not saying that I understand it - Elyon is beyond my mind. But his love is boundless. Do you know that when you drown, he's made a covenant to forget your disease? He remembers only your love. Even when you stumble as William does now, Justin vows to forget and remembers only William's love, however imperfect it might be. To say that you humans have it made would be an understatement. I would set William straight, to be sure. Elyon is mostly thrilled. Yes, there is a price to pay. Yes, there is a drowning to be done, but he is thrilled with his bride and desperate to woo others into his Circle... If you were to glimpse Justin's love for Chelise, you would wither where you stand... This is the Great Romance.'"
In the book, Elyon is God, Justin is Jesus, and the disease is sin. People get rid of their disease by drowning, which is their form of repenting. Replacing a few words gets us this passage:
"'I'm not saying that I understand it - [God] is beyond my mind. But his love is boundless. Do you know that when you [repent], he's made a covenant to forget your [sin]? He remembers only your love. Even when you stumble as William does now, [Jesus] vows to forget and remembers only William's love, however imperfect it might be.'"
Thinking about this passage made me think. It says (paraphrased) "When you repent, Jesus makes a covenant to forget your sin. That means he only remembers your love." To me, this makes a lot of sense. If you have two sides of you (flesh=sin, spirit=love), and Jesus forgets your sin (
Think about it.
Matthew
6 comments:
That's true to an extent, but don't go all gnostic on us, now. Flesh is not inherently evil, so eating is still a good thing. I'm just saying. Matt will follow with the longer version of my comment later. ;)
Hehe, good start, baby.
No, God doesn't choose to see only our love. We have no love. Ever. All of our RIGHTEOUS acts are as filthy rags. There is no one who does good. The heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all else. There is no one who does good, no not one. Do you not know that even a little yeast leavens the whole loaf? Throw OUT the old loaf so that you may be made a NEW loaf without any leaven. If any man be in Christ, the old has passed away, behold ALL THINGS are made new. Love is from God and EVERYONE who loves is BORN of God.
Everything above is scripture. The Bible teaches that we are ENTIRELY sinful. We aren't as sinful as we possibly could be, but sin completely dominates every single aspect of our lives.
The Bible does NOT teach that our spirit is dormant, or that it has been "suppressed" by sin. Our spirit is DEAD in sin. We CANNOT do ANY good while we are dead.
This is important because you need to realize how HUGE the thing is that Jesus did for you. He didn't just open a door, He didn't just remove sin, He didn't "become sin for us" so that we could finally get credit for the little bit of love that we did have; it was so that we could be "MADE the righteousness of GOD" not of ourselves.
If God had saved Adolf Hitler at the very end and removed all of his sin, how much love would God have seen?
When God saves us, He doesn't see US. He doesn't see OUR love left over. He sees HIS OWN SON! Which is even better for you, because you can't change that. You might be able to change the amount of love that is left over when God removes sin, but you can't change the blood of Christ.
I pray that God NEVER looks at me, but that when He looks at me, He sees me covered by the pure blood of Jesus Christ because His is the only Name by which men MUST be saved. I must DECREASE (more and more) and He must increase.
I am confused by what you say, because it seams like you are contradicting yourself.
The way that I read what you say is:
"We have no love. Ever.", but "Love is from God and EVERYONE who loves is BORN of God."
When God gives us love, are we not able to love God back? Once we are born in God (IE: born again), are not infused with God's love, so that we ourselves may go out and love others? John 13:34 says "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." How can we "love one another" if (as you say) "We have no love. Ever."?
There are some points that I disagree with you, and some points that I agree with you. But there are also some things that you say that are not on topic from what I posted.
For example, you say "The Bible does NOT teach that our spirit is dormant, or that it has been "suppressed" by sin." I did not say that, and I agree with you. I guess I don't know if you posted that because you think that I said/believe that, or if you were just following your own train of thought.
Helen also said "Flesh is not inherently evil, so eating is still a good thing." I never said that "Flesh is inherently evil," I only made a metaphor between flesh/spirit and sin/love. I don't believe that every fleshly desire is evil, it was a metaphor, a way of expressing what I believe about sin/love.
Matt, you say that "If God had saved Adolf Hitler at the very end and removed all of his sin, how much love would God have seen?" My answer is that God would see the love that God himself gave Hitler.
From what I can put together, you are arguing against the idea that we are all born with both sin and love. You think that we only have sin until we are loved by God. I would agree with that. But I also believe that once we have God's love, we are able to have love ourselves, to show others love, and to show God love. Sin is still present in our lives, but it exists along side love.
"When God saves us, He doesn't see US. He doesn't see OUR love left over. He sees HIS OWN SON!" I interpret it differently. I see God as Judge, that when we die, he sees both the love and sin in our lives. If there is any sin, he is just and he condemns us to hell. However, Jesus has paid for our sins. He has already paid the price for the judgement for your sin, so when God looks at a Christian when they die, instead of seeing both our love and our sin, he sees our love and Jesus' love covering our sin, and because we have no sin (in his eyes), he lets us into heaven.
I am not a theologian, I am not a Bible scholar, I am hardly pretending to know what I am talking about. Thanks for challenging my thoughts, because I can talk myself into salvation if I have no one to challenge me. I would also say that a lot of what I believe is not Biblically supported, it is the religion that I have built around myself in leu of studying the Bible. That is why I am open to other ideas, but it has to be Biblically sound for me to change what I believe.
Matthew
(Sorry, I forgot to proofread, so I had to delete and re-post it. Yeah, I'm wierd like that).
Ohhhh, okay. I think I understand what you're saying better.
BTW, Helen was just saying "be careful." The gnostics believed that everything that was fleshly was sinful (like eating), so the path to salvation was to die (that's why they wrote the gospel of Judas, because they tried to say that Judas had actually helped Jesus, and that was his purpose, but the other apostles didn't understand). What you're saying is NOT gnostic, but it could go in that direction if someone tried really hard.
The problem that I was running into is that you use three different phrases to describe the same thing. You talk about "God's love for us" and "our love" and "Jesus' love" (meaning what He demonstrated on the cross.) the important thing to remember is that all of these are the same thing. All of these are God's love for us, and that's all. We are sinners and we cannot love unless God gives us love. God loves everyone, but God doesn't give love TO everyone. A sinner cannot love, only a Christian who has been remade can have love for other people (because God gives us HIS love that He has for other people and we show it to them, it's not our love). When He looks at a saved person He doesn't see the love that we have, He sees the love that He has for us. All love is from God and all love belongs exclusively to God.
When I was talking about the spirit not being dormant, I thought you were saying that we had a little bit of good (=spirit), and God just cleaned out the bad so that He could give us credit for the good parts. But now I see, that's not what you were saying. I should have listened to Stephen more closely, he knew what you were trying to say ;-)
A better way to look at it is the way that the Book of Romans looks at it. Romans 3:9-19 is a great summary of this topic. To summarize Rom 5:12-19, there was one man (Adam) and he failed, so sin came into the world, and through sin came death. In the same way, by one man (Jesus) life came into the world, and through life came redemption. Adam (and the rest of us) had a job to do, but he failed (and the rest of us with him). Now, we are all completely incapable of doing that job. So, Jesus came and did the job for us, and He gave us the paycheck the He earned. The paycheck (a spirit and love) isn't ours, it didn't come from us and we cannot claim it. The spirit is God's, the love is God's, and the glory is God's. He just allows us to enjoy the benefits of letting Him love us. It's really a very complicated win-win-win situation.
God wanted us to do a job, so He did it Himself and then let us enjoy the results.
I have a really big problem with quote from that book. The problem that I have is best stated by "Justin vows to forget and remembers only William's love, however imperfect it may be." William's (our) love is NOT imperfect, it is NON-EXISTENT. Ther IS NO love to remember, God has to give it to us first. But if God hasn't given us the love yet, why does He promise to forget our disease after the drowning? Because, and ONLY because He loves us. He has no reason to love us, we have nothing that is worth loving, but God loves us ANYWAY.
That's why He's so cool.
If you want to read scripture daily, start with Romans and just read it straight through. Paul waas writing it to a group of believers who he wanted to visit but couldn't. His point was to summarize all the most important parts of Christian doctrine so that they would know everything that they needed to know. For this reason, it's a great source for answers to "what does God want us to believe?"
You most certainly don't have to be theological in order to love God, but you should always desire to know Him better.
Oh, and I forgot to deal with that contradiction.
The way that I read what you say is: "We have no love. Ever.", but "Love is from God and EVERYONE who loves is BORN of God."
You're right, that's not the best way to say it. The reason that "everyone who loves is born of God" is because the love that they are showing is not coming from them, it's coming from God. The only way we can love is if God loves other people through us.
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