Lesson for January 8, 2023
The Victorious Christian Way of Life
Lesson 2
Romans 8:11, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” The Unique Life is characterized by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (I Corinthians 3:16, 6:19-20; II Corinthians 6:16) The indwelling of the Holy Spirit must be distinguished from the filling of the Holy Spirit. Church Age believers are never commanded to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit because this occurs automatically at salvation. But they are commanded to glorify Christ, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and to walk by means of the Holy Spirit.
The purpose of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is related to the character of Christ being formed in our lives, to Christ being at home in our hearts (our system of thinking), and to glorifying Christ in our lives. The Christian Way of Life is a life of thinking. Philippians 2:5, says, “Let this mind (thinking) be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” The mind of Christ is the doctrine found in the Word of God, the only source of absolute truth. In order to have the proper thinking, a believer must be consistently learning, believing, and applying the Word of God to every circumstance in life. (Romans 12:1-2)
The Christian Way of Life is a supernatural way of life, which cannot be lived apart from knowledge of Bible doctrine and the guidance and power of God the Holy Spirit. (Romans 7:6, 8:2; Galatians 5:25; Ephesians 5:18) This way of life requires thinking. All changes in our lives must come from the inside. The true character of believers is determined by what they think, not by what they do. God never forces us into any course of action. Each one of us determines the quality of our spiritual life, based on what we think. Divine Viewpoint Thinking equals a Victorious Christian Way of Life.
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not an emotional experience. You cannot feel it or see it, and it is not emotional. It is simply something provided by God at salvation to be believed.
The purpose of the filling of the Holy Spirit is to empower and guide us, which enables us to live our spiritual lives and glorify Jesus Christ. The enabling power of the Holy Spirit results in the understanding of Bible doctrine, because the Holy Spirit is the ultimate teacher of doctrine. Jesus Christ prophesied about this ministry in John 16:14, “When He [Holy Spirit] comes, He shall glorify Me.”
The Unique Life emphasizes living inside the Divine Dynasphere under the filling of the Holy Spirit. Experientially, the Unique Life is glorification of Jesus Christ in your life. Certain passages, like Ephesians 5:1 and I Corinthians 6:20, talk about “glorifying God in your bodies,” which is a reference to glorifying Jesus Christ in your life. In Ephesians 5:1, we are commanded to “become imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love.” In this verse, God refers to Jesus Christ as the only visible member of the Trinity. (John 1:18, 6:46; I Timothy 3:16; I John 4:12) With this understanding, it is obvious that the command to “become imitators of God” is a reference to Christ. We imitate Christ when we live inside the Divine Dynasphere and execute the Protocol Plan of God.
The Unique Life is living outside of Satan’s world system so that we are not “grieving the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 4:30) and “quenching the Holy Spirit”
(I Thessalonians 5:19). The Unique Life is the opposite of the life of the carnal Christian as recorded in I Corinthians 3:1-4. The Unique Life is not living under the Mosaic Law but under grace, according to Galatians 5:18-24 and Romans 10:1-4.
Jesus Christ in His humanity lived inside the prototype Divine Dynasphere. He was filled with the Holy Spirit from birth and remained filled His entire life. We are commanded to follow His lead by living inside our own Divine Dynasphere, under the filling of the Holy Spirit. In I Corinthians 6:20, we are told, “For you have been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.”
Romans 8:10 .“In fact, if Christ is in you [and He is], on the one hand, the body is dead because of the sin nature, but on the other hand, the [Holy] Spirit is life because of righteousness.” The Holy Spirit indwells your body to enable you to live the Protocol Plan of God and glorify Christ.
The Unique Life is the fact that each member of the Trinity indwells your body. The Holy Spirit is the teacher of Bible doctrine, according to John 14:26, 16:12-14; I Corinthians 2:9-16; I John 2:27, where the “anointing of the Spirit” is the teaching of the Word of God by the Holy Spirit. The communicator of doctrine is the pastor-teacher, but without the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit believers can never understand accurate Bible doctrine.
Galatians 4:19, “My little children [believers too long in spiritual childhood, now in legalism], from whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” “Until Christ is formed in you” means until the character of Jesus Christ is being produced and demonstrated in our lives as we reside in God’s power system (the Divine Dynasphere). (Galatians 5:22-23) Christ dramatically illustrated that He was living inside God’s power system in His prayer the night before the crucifixion. “Father, if it be Your will, let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not My will but Your will be done.”(Luke 22:41-42)
Ephesians 3:16-17, “I pray that He might give you on the basis of His riches in glory, that you might become strong [advance to spiritual adulthood] by means of His power through His Spirit [enabling power of the Holy Spirit within the Divine Dynasphere] in your inner being (soul) so that Christ may be at home in your hearts(your system of thinking) through accurate Bible doctrine when you have been rooted and grounded in virtue-love.” Since this passage makes virtue-love a prerequisite of “Christ being at home in your hearts,” this statement must refer to a believer in spiritual autonomy who has developed virtue-love – personal love for God (motivational virtue) and impersonal love for mankind (functional virtue). A believer in spiritual autonomy is already motivated by personal love for God. His impersonal love for all mankind finishes the principle of being “rooted and grounded in virtue-love.”
The Unique Life is related to spiritual maturity. Philippians 1:20 in corrected translation, “According to my intense concentration and resultant hope, that in nothing shall I be disgraced [failure to pass suffering for blessing], but with all integrity, even now as always, Christ shall be glorified in My body [spiritual maturity], whether by living or by dying.” Jesus Christ being glorified whether in living or in dying is the highest experience of the Unique Life for the Church Age believer.
Philippians 1:21, “For me, living is Christ and dying is profit” is the ultimate experience of the Unique Life, the attainment of spiritual maturity, the passing of evidence testing, all of which results in the glorification of Jesus Christ in your body. “Whether living or dying” refers to dying grace. Dying grace includes anticipation of even greater escrow blessings for eternity, which are distributed by Jesus Christ Himself at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
The Unique Life provides proper emphasis and determines priorities. The unique factor of every member of the Godhead indwelling your body provides a different emphasis. This means that you are not only a new creation in Christ Jesus, but it also demands a priority for the entire body of Christ: God-emphasis over people- emphasis. As long as you emphasize your experience with people over your experience with God, your experience in life will be characterized by self-induced misery and divine discipline in three stages – warning, intensive, and dying.
If God does not have number one priority in your life, you will never be a winner, an invisible hero, or a credible witness for God at Satan’s final appeal trial of the Angelic Conflict. And your relationships with yourself and others will be a continuous disaster as long as you live. When believers have poor relations with others, even with their friends and loved ones, there’s a very good reason for it! As a believer in Jesus Christ, having people-emphasis over God-emphasis creates poor relationships with people. The only way this can ever be solved is by placing God-emphasis over people-emphasis, which is impossible apart from applying accurate Bible doctrine.
As believers in Jesus Christ, we cannot pick and choose the principles of God’s Word that we are going to believe and live by because they suit us or because they align with our preconceived ideas of what is right. God and His Word are timeless, and His principles never change. Just because someone thinks that God’s principles are old-fashioned or outdated does not make it so. This doesn’t mean that if we believe and hold to these principles that we are “living in the past.” These are God’s unchangeable laws, so they never change, even under mankind’s pressure to do so!!
Let’s never allow political correctness or contemporary social practices to have priority over biblical correctness in our lives as Christians. If God says it’s wrong, then it’s wrong, period!!!