Matter, Energy, Spirit - The Trinity in Unity

I don't believe I ever said it wasn't Paul's experience. I certainly think it was. He was brought up under the tutelage of Gamaliel a great 1st century Jewish religious teacher. Paul was totally religious and would have lived the law inside out. He himself speaks of his righteousness under the law. He was pretty much blameless and followed everything to the tee. As it says, because he was so zealous for the law he was assisting in the killing of the new sect because they were blasphemers from his perspective. I don't think when Jesus met Paul on the road to Damascus everything dropped like water off a ducks back. It just doesn't happen that way. Paul would have to 'work it out' so that the reality of his new experience and changed mind/heart penetrated into the multi-decade trained soul of this Pharasaical law abider. I think it took years for Paul to align his new realities and die to his old self. I absolutely think he was talking in Romans in relation to his first hand experience. Nevertheless, the context of his expression is that that experience is not where we are to live and that is why he is testifying to the church in Rome. Living under the law is not a characteristic of a son but rather the slave. I think Paul speaks directly to your 'process' of sin, repent, forgiveness. That's simply not the way it is. "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" Romans 6:1-2

I think there is spiritual significance, as you say, to baptism. I'm impressed that demons go through 'waterless' places on their journeys after being cast out. It's like demons cannot handle water. Which kind of fits with the holy water as part of the exorcism ritual. That's why immersion fits because at that point the demons can't get to you. What I like about baptism is that it symbolizes a new birth, like out of the womb. Which fits totally with Paul's testimony about our new life in Christ. (and my views on Romans) I agree these things have more meaning than we know and we usually take it on Jesus word. Like Paul says about marriage, the two become one, and it's a bit of a mystery but it's for real. And what about John's whole deal with the three witnesses. "This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree." 1 John 5:6-8

I just don't buy your description of your experience. Which shouldn't be a surprise. Sin works in the subconscious. People don't know what they are doing. The sin I've heard people talk about never amounts to much in my book and they definitely don't display any conviction of sin which is how they would know it was. The Holy Ghost doesn't fuck around. It's normally some light weight rules they've put on themselves. I'd need some real examples to understand how you know what God's will is but I'm not sure that type of dialogue would be fruitful. If you're a serial killer or a child molester I might get on board. The guys who do that shit don't think they're really doing anything wrong.

I think eternity can be comprehended. In fact I think everything can be comprehended. We have the mind of Christ. If we can handle it he'll show it to us. I don't think we're limited that way. Although I'll agree we see in a mirror dimly, nevertheless I'm thinking the glass is half full. Later dude.

material vs spiritual

In reference to Romans 7 I see nothing to indicate that Paul is not speaking of himself. He constantly uses the personal terms me, my and I. There is no where he suggests that he is speaking of one who is under the law. It would have been easy to indicate this but such indications are absent. I can stand with the choir more firmly then ever that the plain interpretation of Romans 7 is true. I agree that he is not thanking God for letting him live in turmoil but rather thanking God that his sins will be forgiven. The process is predictable: we sin, we repent, and we are forgiven. We give thanks that we are still forgiven on the seventy seventh time. I see how this contradicts the absoluteness of some of the epistles but this is what I experience.

Something that comes to mind is that the spiritual realm is beyond sensation experience the majority of the time. We make contact with it – depending on how well tuned you are to it – but we are hardly aware of what is really transpiring. Take for example baptism. I consider it a symbolic act of death and resurrection. For some time I wondered what does it matter if you get baptized. Once you declare for yourself that you believe in Jesus that’s all that really matters, right? As I speak more and more with people who have been baptized I hear the testimonies of severe conflicts of faith due to spiritual warfare with Satan. Much like Jesus, after his baptism, it seems that for forty days those who have been baptized are tested. The Lord pulls back the hedge and allows Satan to make war on his newly baptized. It’s obvious that Satan hates this act. So while I may only see it as a symbolic ritual, the spiritual realm sees something different. I don’t see the absoluteness of the act of baptism but I hear these testimonies and I also have faith in the words of Jesus that you must baptized by water and fire and I am convinced of the spiritual significance.

I think the same goes for the cross. To on lookers it is a crazy man being nailed to a tree. In the spiritual realm everything changes. Chains are broken, curtains tear, and doors are opened. There is an absoluteness that happens here. There will be no more sacrifices. God’s love has released us from death. We are free. Now I have to be careful as I separate the material from the spiritual for when Jesus died the skies went dark. This man took something material like water and walked on it or made you drunk on it. I subscribe to Dave’s theory – and whomever he might have taken it from - that the spiritual is the governing force of energy which is matter. There is a relationship between spirit, energy, and matter yet our five God given senses are designed to detect matter. My point is that the truth of the spiritual realm doesn’t always manifest so clearly in the physical realm.

Case in point: my sinful nature. I know I’m a new creation and going to heaven because that has been promised me. That is the spiritual side. I also know my relationship is growing. Things I could ignorantly get away with last year I can not this year. I learn more, I am held to a new standard. The new standards are not easy and I don’t always want to follow. The hunger to do my own will is too great and I turn from God and say I will do what I want because it appears more pleasing to me. As I do this I know God wants me to follow his will. I also know that ultimately he is right and yet I choose my own will; I sin. This is the material. It is all to God's glory that I then humbly repent, I experience his grace, and I praise him. It has been determined, prophesized, that I am a new creation. It is what I am and at the same time what God is shaping me into being.

You remember how it says, to God a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. You remember how by biblical chronology we’ve been here for about 6000yrs and there will be 1000yrs of rest and how that is a lot like the 7 day creation story. What if the creation of man is the lifespan of man? What if creation is a seven thousand year journey? I tend to feel that a lot of confusion falls in trying to fit our time based existence into an eternal existence. Eternity can not be comprehended intellectually. This why there is always fierce debate over the contradictory doctrines of free will and predestination.

It’s interesting that you bring up quantum mechanics here. I tend to lean with Einstein. There must be a better theory that explains light phenomenon; we just haven’t got all the facts. I also know that Einstein’s reaction is very similar to the writer of ecclesiastes, Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless! It’s funny that Einstein would make such a statement about God rolling the dice because everything in Ecclesiastes states that God does role the dice. “As it is with the good man, so with the sinner . . . the same destiny overtakes all.” But the light and wave theory phenomenon is similar to my difficulties in what the word says I am and what I experience. It seems that both happen at the same time. But again I would like to reinforce my agreement with Einstein and possibly Nygren - that there are no contradictions. And this is why I struggle with 1 John as I do.

In reading over your last post I came across this, “but that doesn't mean it's us, it means we have to drag this shit around until physical death releases us from it.”

I’m not sure this is consistent with your previous arguments. I thought I brought up a statement like this and you said something to the point that the body is renewed as well? I’ll have to look back to confirm this. Still have read the first chapter about Body, Spirit, and Soul by Nee.

Life in the Holy Lane

I think this validates the freedom perspective because it meshes. If you are at all under the law then this stuff from John cannot make any sense. I have never heard anyone discuss this or attempt to deal with it. I had heard the Nygren wrote commentary's on a lot of the New Testament but we only had Romans. I looked for more but never found any. Perhaps they were never translated from his native tongue. I was primarily looking for John's letters because I thought Nygren could deal with it.

I've never claimed to be without sin. I have sinned and lived in it until I met Jesus.
Have I sinned since then . . . mmm . . . good question.
Most Christians would have an instant answer for this, of course, yes...of course.
The rub is what's the Christian's life in relation to the nature of sin.
Surely it cannot be our new nature. Our new nature cannot have anything to do with sin.
Nothing of our sinful nature will be passing through the gates into heaven.
Paul says we are dead to wrath, sin, law and death.

Neither do I think there's a dichotomy or split personality going on. I think that's where those under the law reinterpret the New Testament to fit that view...their life. Nygren's Commentary takes that view apart quite nicely and their interpretation is shown to be inconsistent with all of Paul's testimony and therefore false.

It's especially telling at the end of Romans 7 because I think it to be a description of the life of a Christian who is living under the law. Since all commentators I have read are in that zone, then it's impossible for them to properly illuminate Paul's words, because Paul is criticizing that life which they are all living in. They soooooooo identify with Paul's description but he's absolutely not saying that's how we are to live.

They totally identify with "For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Ahhh, that's home baby. But Paul is not stating a zone where he lives, he thanks God profusely in verse 25. And he's not thankin him for letting him live in turmoil.

He declares totally victory with the start of Chapter 8 "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus". Yep, noooooo condemnation. Doh, where did that come from? They much prefer "we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions . . . " They gravitate to the Christian under the law because that's what they know. But that is not what Paul is saying. He discusses it because the law is for real but he never ends there, it's always part of a conversation where in the end we are really free from sin and free from the law. Which makes total sense with being born again and having the mind of Christ.

The RSV is my preferred version because I think it's a little less watered down from comparisons I've made. That translation goes "No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him . . . . No one born of God commits sin; for God's nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God" and on the other side of the coin (or the same side) "if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

For starters they aren't written side by side. For seconders everything is about context. My view of John's statements or better said, mindset, is that as born again Christians we are truly God's children who live in the Spirit of the Holy Ghost and do not sin. That's what makes us unique and identifiable from the unsaved who live in Satan's lies. Loving your enemies cannot exist in a non-Christian and can only be driven by the Spirit of God in his people who have aligned themselves with his mindset. When he states that no one who sins has either seen him or known him I think he's talking about those who live in sin not those who are dead to sin. In the translation you use it says "continue in sin" which may be added or be a better interpretation of the original Greek, but I do consider it to be non-Christians who simply live in sin. And when John says Christian's don't sin it's the same tone and meaning as Paul who says we are dead to sin . . . "How can we still live in it". We don't sin. We're dead to it. Thanks be to Jesus for becoming it on the cross. John isn't wrapped up in the theological technicalities, he's painting a reality picture.

Paul says "now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me." This is the same sentiment. Sin is the enemy and we are seen as apart from it. Christ work has separated us from it although it's still looming because we still have decaying bodies housing our souls. But that doesn't mean it's us, it means we have to drag this shit around until physical death releases us from it but at no time does it dictate who we really are. It's passed away and all has become new.

I'm not sure whether this addresses your issues. John also states in Chapter 2 "My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" So he doesn't preclude the potential that Christians sin. So that is the context, Christian's sin, but they are not sin. They've died with Christ and live in the Spirit. It's simply the way it is. God is reality and I think Paul and John simply testify what they see and know; that is the Spirit of a prophet.

Even at the essence of physics you see exactly the same thing. Scientists have to describe light as both wave and particle, which even though is contradictory, is the only way to render the truth accurately. And as I've mentioned before, the behaviour of particles at the quantum level had Einstein balking with the statement 'God doesn't play dice with the universe'. He couldn't handle the seemingly unconnected but better described 'personal' behaviour of particles. I loved it because it matched how I'd come to know the strange essence of our creator. He is that he is which is hands down my favourite outcry.

What the ...?

"And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him . . . 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.

These words come from chapter 3 but if you look back to chapter 1 John states this.

"the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives."

My problem here is that these two statements appear contradictory and yet they are stated in same short letter. I remember you stating that there are no contradictions and this only means that we have to dig deeper (you quoted someone else with this statement, maybe Nygren?). I was curious if you had an explanation for what appears to be a blatant contradiction in John's letter.