Lesson for September 30, 2018
The Doctrine of Spirituality vs. Carnality
The Doctrine of the Unique Life of the Church Age Believer
God’s plan for your life can be stated in three ways:
1) The Protocol Plan of God is the mode of operation of the Royal Family of God inside the Divine Dynasphere, utilizing your Portfolio of Invisible Assets prepared for you by God the Father in eternity past. The Divine Dynasphere is the means of utilizing God’s power for the execution of God’s plan. In other words, the Protocol Plan of God emphasizes mechanics, as taught by the eight gates of the Divine Dynasphere.
2) The Unique Life of the Church Age Believer emphasizes the fact that all three persons of the Godhead permanently indwell your body as a Church Age believer: God the Father (John 14:23; Ephesians 4:6; II John 9) God the Son (John 14:20, 17:22-23,26; Romans 8:10; II Corinthians 13:5; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:27; I John 3:24) and God the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:11; I Corinthians 3:16, 6:19-20; II Corinthians 6:16).
3) The Lifestyle of Wisdom emphasizes the believer’s perception and application of Bible doctrine after salvation. Primarily, it is the understanding of Bible doctrine resulting in momentum in the Christian life to apply the doctrine you learn. This category is very important because it emphasizes that I.Q. distinctions are erased at salvation. Any believer can learn Bible doctrine and learn how to properly apply it, if they have positive volition.
This study pertains to the Doctrine of the Unique Life. The study of the Lifestyle of Wisdom will follow this study. While all three members of the Trinity indwell the body of all believers during the Church Age, this study will mainly concentrate on the indwelling of Jesus Christ, and how it relates to the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit share all the divine attributes being co-equal and co-eternal and each has a specific function as it relates to believers to make your life unique. Never before in human history has this privilege existed.
The purpose of the indwelling of God the Father is to glorify His plan in believers during the Church Age. In times of testing, stress, suffering and difficulty the indwelling of God the Father reminds us of His work on our behalf in eternity past. The purpose of the indwelling of Christ is to be a sign of royal family status, a guarantee of your Portfolio of Invisible Assets, a guarantee of your eternal security, a guarantee of your escrow blessings, motivation for your momentum when facing undeserved suffering and/or suffering for blessing and the basis for God-emphasis over people-emphasis in the Christian life. The purpose of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is to provide a Temple for the indwelling of Christ as the Shekinah Glory inside your body and to provide a place for the glorification of Jesus Christ in your body.
Ephesians 1:3-14 teaches that we are sustained by the grace of God the Father, by motivation from Christ, and by power from the Holy Spirit to perform the task of glorifying God.
Three distinctions will be noted in this doctrine:
- The indwelling of Jesus Christ versus the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
- The indwelling of the Holy Spirit versus the filling of the Holy Spirit inside the Divine Dynasphere.
- The indwelling of Jesus Christ versus the glorification of Christ at the point of spiritual maturity. Distinction will be made between the non-experiential indwelling of the members of the Trinity and the experiential indwelling related to the Unique Life
The Unique Life falls into two classifications: 1) What is non-experiential, i.e., the status quo of the indwelling of the Trinity 2) What is experienced in spiritual adulthood as a result of knowledge about the indwelling of the Trinity. While the Holy Spirit indwells every Church Age believer, every Church Age believer does not take advantage of His indwelling.
The Unique Life is closely related to the three stages of spiritual adulthood: spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy and spiritual maturity. God the Holy Spirit does something unique for Church Age believers when they reach spiritual adulthood. This is done under the filling of the Holy Spirit as a believer advances through the various stages of spiritual adulthood. The Holy Spirit’s special ministry to believers in spiritual adulthood is related to the experience of glorifying Christ in your life. (Ephesians 5:18; Galatians 5:16; John 16:14)
The experience of spiritual self-esteem is mentioned in Galatians 4:19, which speaks of “Christ being formed in you.” The experience of spiritual autonomy is found in Ephesians 3:17, where Christ is said to be “at home (dwell) in your right lobes (hearts).” The experience of spiritual maturity is mentioned in Philippians 1:20, “Christ glorified in your body.” This is something that a believer experiences as a result of his spiritual advance under the filling of the Holy Spirit as he learns and applies Bible doctrine. This is not the same as the indwelling of Christ. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Holy Spirit are two distinct and separate ministries of God the Holy Spirit.
The indwelling of Jesus Christ is related to the concept of the new spiritual species or a new creation in Christ according to II Corinthians 5:17. The Unique Life of the believer is related to the indwelling of Christ, as taught in 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 (spiritual death resulting in physical death), but on the other hand, the Spirit is [eternal and unique] life because of [imputed] righteousness.” Though we receive eternal life at salvation, we still retain a sin nature, which continues to reside in us after salvation and seeks to control us through temptation. The three indwelling factors found in this verse which provide the basis for the believer’s unique life are: 1) The indwelling of God’s perfect righteousness 2) The indwelling of Christ and 3) The indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
The Unique Life is related to the fact that there has been no permanent indwelling of the Godhead in a human body prior to the Church Age, and never again will there be after the Rapture of the Church. Therefore, the point of this study is to discover from the Scripture why there exists the indwelling of the Trinity in our bodies. The indwelling of the Trinity indicates that believers in this age of the Royal Family of God have greater responsibility than believers in any other age in history. It also indicates that since this is the dispensation of the final settlement of the Angelic Conflict, the Church Age is the crossroads of human history. And, it is the intensified stage of the Angelic Conflict. Therefore, the Royal Family of God has been given unique spiritual factors that have never existed before and will never exist again. You have the greatest blessings ever given in the history of the human race!
The Unique Life means that God the Father indwells the body of every believer. God the Father’s indwelling is related to the glorification of Himself through the believer’s execution of the Protocol Plan. (Ephesians 1:3, 6, 12) God’s plan for the Church is absolutely unique; there’s never been anything like it in human history. Believers have equal privilege and equal opportunity to execute God’s plan and to fulfill their spiritual destiny as members of the Royal Family of God.
Documentation for the indwelling of God the Father is found in John 14:23; Ephesians 4:6; II John 9. The indwelling of God the Father of every Church Age believer is unique in all of human history. God the Father did not permanently indwell any believer in the Old Testament or the dispensation of the Hypostatic Union, nor will He do so in the Tribulation or in the Millennium. Therefore, the indwelling of God the Father is a part of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.
The indwelling of God the Father is the assurance and the guarantee of His personal ministry for every Church Age believer. His indwelling guarantees that we each have our every own Portfolio of Invisible Assets, which He prepared in eternity past. His indwelling guarantees that He is the grantor of our escrow blessings both now and in eternity. He indwells us to assure us of the existence of what He did for us in eternity past. His indwelling guarantees that He is the designer of your very own power system, the Divine Dynasphere. He indwells to remind you that everything necessary to fulfill His plan has been provided by His grace. His indwelling guarantees that He is the designer of the Protocol Plan for the Church Age. He indwells us to encourage us to fulfill His commands, and to execute His plan. (Ephesians 3:19-20)
The Unique Life is characterized by the indwelling of Christ. The indwelling of Jesus Christ is the sign that we belong to Him as Royal Family of God. The indwelling of Christ is a guarantee of the availability of divine power (omnipotence) to every Church Age believer who resides inside the Divine Dynasphere under the filling of God the Holy Spirit. This same power of the Holy Spirit was the power that sustained Jesus Christ in His humanity in the prototype Divine Dynasphere.
The indwelling of Christ is the guarantee of eternal security or of life after death since He was the One Who conquered death for us. Jesus Christ indwells our bodies even in death according to Psalm 23:4, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.” When we die, the first Person we see in Heaven is the Lord Jesus Christ, as stated in II Corinthians 5:8, “absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”
Since Jesus Christ is the depositary of our escrow blessings and the escrow officer, the indwelling of Christ is a guarantee of the distribution and the conveyance of our escrow blessings to those believers who meet the escrow conditions. The indwelling of Christ as the escrow officer is a reminder that every Church Age believer must fulfill the conditions of the escrow (reaching spiritual maturity) before there can be distribution of them.
The conditions for the conveyance of escrow blessings include the execution of the Protocol Plan of God, which means advancing to spiritual maturity inside the Divine Dynasphere. When you reach spiritual self-esteem, your personal love for Jesus Christ becomes the basis of awareness of His nearness to you. His indwelling is therefore the motivation for us to pass the test of suffering for blessing as we advance to spiritual adulthood.
No believer can attain spiritual self-esteem, the first stage of spiritual adulthood, apart from personal love for God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This means that the most important factor in your life is to learn about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. No believer can attain spiritual autonomy apart from impersonal love for all mankind. No believer ever attains spiritual maturity without understanding the indwelling of the Person of Christ, and how it becomes the motivator through the various categories of spiritual adulthood, which includes the test of suffering for blessing.
The indwelling of Christ is the basis for making your relationship with God the number one priority over your relationship with people. The pivot of spiritually mature believers is shrinking in our nation. Most believers never mature spiritually past childhood. This means that in the years to come there will be no replacements for the pivot, and our country will be disciplined by God as a client nation under the five cycles of divine discipline. Since a large majority of believers in this country never leave spiritual childhood, they do not receive the distribution of escrow blessings, although under logistical grace they are blessed magnificently while on earth. Therefore, their escrow blessings remain on deposit forever as a memorial to lost equal opportunity.
The trend today in mainstream Christianity is to emphasize experience and interaction with people over learning and applying Bible doctrine. Systematic accurate Bible doctrine is not taught in most churches today. Sound Bible doctrine has been replaced with programs, the power of positive thinking, prosperity theology or false doctrine based on making the Word of God match your experience instead of making your experience match what God’s Word teaches. Christians are basically lazy when it comes to studying God’s Word and they take the easy road of allowing some “preacher” to give them a feel-good sermon once a week.
This approach to God’s Word sets aside relationship with God as priority #1, which can be fulfilled only through the consistent perception and application of doctrine. To assign #1 priority to God and your relationship with Him requires a tremendous amount of understanding of Bible doctrine. It requires that you spend time every day, if possible, learning the Word of God. God is invisible, and you see Him only through the study of the Word of God. Neglect, rejection, and resistance of doctrine results in giving #1 priority to people (including yourself through self-absorption) rather than to God, and this destroys any chance of having a spiritual life. Relationship with people is not the major issue in the Christian life! The priority is personal love for God. Since the Trinity indwells the body of the Church Age believer, it follows that each Person of the Trinity is closer to you than all the people you know. God is inside of you; everyone else is outside of you.