He Abolishes the First in Order to Establish the Second

I’ve read the same view (soul/actions), which was around even when I was in college, and I never saw the validity of the separation. If you judge someone’s actions you are judging his or her soul. Jesus didn’t say your actions are a “brood of vipers” he said those people were. All spiritual judgment is a head to head confrontation between souls. The Bible is a litany of face-to-face judgments without separation. (Nathan to David – “Thou are the man”) Their actions simply indicate the type of soul you’re dealing with (you’ll know them by their fruits) then the judgment is rendered to the soul.

Christians have just thrown in some psychobabble in an attempt to eat their cake and have it too. Dan’s phrase “hate with a mask” comes to mind. So you can rip someone’s actions apart but you should go on being happy Christian friends because I’m not judging YOU. Right. The world hates judgment and that’s what the Church should be all about. The world has simply laid their view on the Church and they’ve bought it, like in so many other areas. And the separation between actions and soul doesn’t soften the blow one whit. In fact it’s magnified because now you’re supposed to think it doesn’t hurt. “What are you getting uptight about, I’m not judging you.”

The church presses everything to obtain and retain membership. Not every church is the same but generally the church seeks to drag people into their numbers by establishing marriage, baptism etc as requirements for eternal life. Indulgences of the Reformation period were a straightforward extension of this attitude. You need to pay the church to stay out of purgatory. (a complete fabrication from end to end) The spiritual people whom I’ve know and read about never do this. They simply preach the gospel and people are drawn to Jesus through them. Marriage, baptism and confirmation all take a back seat to the person who gives them significance, Jesus.

My questions regarding Brittany are not because I don’t think she’s having sex with Dave. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t. But Christian interaction with anyone is a “plugging in” to where they’re at. To do this requires the plugger to know what they’re plugging into. That’s why cold testimony to complete strangers is so valuable because you learn to do it on the fly. At first you blunder into their worlds and they rightly tell you to go fuck yourself. But after some banging around you learn to tie into any and every shred they give you without turning them off. I probably mention Jesus 5-10 times per day at F&P. Mitch calls me Jesus and I call him Moses. Mitch sat me down in a room the other day and wanted to know everything I knew about the Magi, which wasn’t much, but we’re engaged. And without that engagement of the other party I don’t believe there’s honour in what’s being done and it will not serve to raise Jesus up. I don’t believe Jesus engaged with people who didn’t do the same. He may knock once, but if no one comes to the door he leaves… wiping the sand off his feet. In this day and generation very few people engage because it’s all explained to them. This generation’s heart has grown cold. It doesn’t stop me knocking but it determines what happens next.

So if Brittany isn’t biting then she’s not interested. And if she’s not interested then she’s not interested. She will answer to Jesus for she how she responded to what she was given and you will answer for the same. People are at where they are at. You can feed them but that will not cause them to eat and grow. And if you feed them when they don’t want to be fed it causes things to go sour. When Jesus went to a town and saw little response he didn’t do much and quickly left. He went and stayed where the receptivity was the strongest.

When Nee says “You will do nothing more for God”, as I remember it, there were no qualifications. Nygren says the same type of thing in his Commentary on Romans. It doesn’t mean you can’t do anything to help him. It means don’t do anything for him, period. I think when you say that he invites us to work with him it’s just a backdoor for doing things for him. When Jesus said it is finished, it really is. He did all the work that was necessary. I’m only quoting one phrase while Nee writes one of the best treatise’s I’ve seen on it. Chapter 9 in The Normal Christian Life is called the “Meaning and Value of Romans Seven”. I haven’t read it in a while but it was an initial corroboration of Dave’s unique testimony. You can read the complete version here: http://www.planetholy.com/books/normallife_9.asp

You won’t be able to see in your own words what I am saying I see in them. I simply say what I think, you say what you think and if Jesus chooses to show something to us then so be it. It’s also difficult, given the context of our relationship that we would learn well from one another. The phrase “a prophet is not without honour, except in his own country” applies to our entire family. It’s simply that natural familiarity can sometimes hinder the normal objectivity you’d give a complete stranger. Not that we can’t keep taking shots off the bow.

Paul didn’t struggle the way you suggest although a great many commentators would agree with you. Nygren would be a big exception. Since his book is a commentary on Romans he dissects this passage word by word. Paul is talking about a Christian who is attempting to live by the law. I wrote an essay on this in college and read reams of Biblical experts who interpreted this a number of ways but were pretty much the same, except Nygren. His was the only interpretation that made sense. And some just simply excluded what follows after this cry of anguish because it didn’t fit with their version of life. Paul calls himself wretched but in the end thanks God for delivering him from his body of death. His life experience was not doing the very thing he hates and my statement to those who would suggest so is to reread the gospels. Paul served God in the spririt and the struggle he describes is hardly his day to day condition. It is the situation a Christian seeking to serve God via laws and rules will find himself in, whether they’re Holy or not. Through death with Christ he is freed from the law and serves in the new spirit of life. If you glance backward and say, “well the law is a reflection of God’s spirit and now that I have the Spirit in me I can fulfill it” you drag the law back into your life and sin will use it to make your life more sinful. I analogize it to Lot’s wife turning around just to have a peek and boom, pillar of salt. It’s just a way of thinking to bring the law back in but has nothing to do with what Paul is testifying.

When you say people still sin and ignore the voice that tells them it’s wrong, it resonates with me that it’s the law you are referring to. And I’ll grant you it’s an interpretation but it’s based on my experience of the Spirit. He’s not like that. You give the inner workings of a human being a level of consciousness that can only come via the law. (external criteria for lifestyle) The law is as plain as the nose on your face and you talk about sin as though it’s a kind of common knowledge that’s to some degree quite obvious. I don’t believe the Spirit is like that. He’s very subtle and exceptionally personal. He puts his finger on the strangest things that in the end turn out to be what’s dear to your heart but didn’t even know. The law is a joke compared to him. The spirit once told me I didn’t need to look in the mirror after I got ready in the morning. It was a habit I’d developed that I wasn’t even aware of until he pointed it out. It was amazing difficult to drop but amazing freeing to do so. And it drew me much closer to Jesus who I now relied for the security I lost with my mirror checks. The Spirit separates between bone and sinew not crunch you on the head with a log. The law is like a written paragraph of who someone is as opposed to meeting him and living with him. The law is a minimum snapshot and if you glance at it, sin will use it. “The law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” Hebrews 10:1

I’m not saying Brit is free from the law. At this stage in her life it’s not even on the table. It’s completely irrelevant to her. I deal with Brit from how I see her. She’s not interested in what I’m about. She likes the benefits and does appreciate who I am but isn’t interested in how I came to be this way or whether she should be digging into the same things. Ruth is much closer, has all the more opportunity, but has never made it her business to dig into what Jesus is about. (Brit comes by her aversion naturally, as everyone does) So I don’t excuse or condemn her. She will answer to Jesus for everything she is doing and I will answer to Jesus for everything I am doing. I’ve made it exceedingly clear what I’m about and have never ended a conversation at my end except in a couple of circumstances which I can count on one hand compared to the thousands I’ve had in my life. (And in those cases I know any more discussion will do harm rather than good) Dave was like that for me until I found the bottom of the well. But I wanted to know.

I may have missed this but did you ever come down on when you think someone is married and what exactly causes that to happen? You jumped to what Brit thinks in her last post, which is speculation, but I don’t see where you’ve qualified your position. And really, if you’re criticizing others, it really matters what you think because you’re seeking to convince them of the wrongness of their position and the rightness of yours. It’s especially relevant in your criticisms of me because I don’t have an issue with it based on my understanding of what constitutes marriage.