How does the self-life respond to truth when it hears it? The spirit of a man, if made alive by God, will rejoice in truth, will love the truth, will delight in it. It is manna to his soul and it is a blessing to his whole being. But how does the flesh hear and respond to truth? The self-life does hear the truth, contrary to what you might think. It is clear that the flesh responds in an entirely different way to the truth. It will engage with the truth for it knows that to let it stand unopposed will mean the end of the self-life: the conscience will revive and respond to God. The flesh cannot allow this to go unchallenged. It has to reason it away; it has to cause the will of man to dismiss it, otherwise the play of self-deception might shatter. It has to somehow render the offence innocuous, irrelevant, inaccurate or pernicious; there are always grounds for this when the truth arrives, for the truth does not arrive in its 'purest' form - it is often encased within and through a human being - the Word always becomes flesh - either in someone we know or in Jesus Himself. Truth is not an abstraction, a creed, a doctrinal statement, though it is never less than these. Truth must be spoken out of the life that gave them birth with the authentic voice of the One who speaks. His Words are Life and Spirit and they are Truth. He is the One who is Faithful and True. Therefore Truth can never be separated from the Spirit of Truth from the person who is true, just as the breath of a man can never be separated from the voice box, instructed by the mind, if the voice is to be heard: if the voice box ceases then all that is heard is an unintelligible rasp, if the lungs cease to breathe out then we mouth soundless words and eventually we suffocate.
The flesh dons a wig and gown and argues it out, reasons it out and toughs it out in the technicality of words that sit upon the page. The Word is judged and our perspective reversed to what it should be. The flesh becomes an advocate to get his client off on a technicality. He sees the surface of the words and no deeper. How can I get around it? His only consideration is the desire of his client, and the flesh life is vain enough and blind enough to think its words will change truth. Everything is negotiable. The mind controlled by the flesh cannot submit to God's law nor will it choose to do so. There must be some kind of exception, some kind of precedent! So we argue, we test and probe and invariably ask more questions under the guise of clarification. We are looking for a loophole. The woman you put here with me made me do it! We must be set free to pursue our desire, nothing must get in our way. We are willing to betray those closest to us for really they were never close at all - not compared to the desire of our own hearts - for our self-gratification. We sell everything to get what we want; we sacrifice and we spend the last dime until we are all alone with ourselves. And this is the cause of loneliness: the pursuit and exaltation of our own personal desire above all else, to the exclusion of everyone else.
If grace abounds because of sin then let me sin more to make grace abound even more.This perverse simplistic logic persuades us that we are doing God's bidding; we are giving him glory. We think we can achieve God's end through our own means, without reference to how that grace was won, attained and paid for. I can still have my cake, I can still do as I want and still glorify God, in fact the pursuit of my desire gives God glory. We think we are so complicated, that somehow sin gives birth to righteousness: if I do evil, good will result. We dissolve it to a law, a mere dehumanised principle: if I do this, this will happen. It is mechanical; it experiments with God's grace; it plays with grace. Lets see. If I do this, what will happen? When the flesh engages with truth it always distorts and warps - it fuses and mixes. When the flesh apprehends truth, it produces religion. When the spirit confronts truth it begets life - after the death of repentance - while the desires of man are always ensconced within a religious form. Truth does not reveal itself by reading ink marks upon a page or by reading a bible dictionary or learning Greek or Hebrew; it only comes when the Spirit of Truth breathes out the words Himself when He chooses to reveal it. The words without the author is a ship cast off from its anchor without propulsion. It will soon dash itself upon the rocks. The exaltation of the words over Him who speaks those same words is another idol worthy of destruction.
The flesh dons a wig and gown and argues it out, reasons it out and toughs it out in the technicality of words that sit upon the page. The Word is judged and our perspective reversed to what it should be. The flesh becomes an advocate to get his client off on a technicality. He sees the surface of the words and no deeper. How can I get around it? His only consideration is the desire of his client, and the flesh life is vain enough and blind enough to think its words will change truth. Everything is negotiable. The mind controlled by the flesh cannot submit to God's law nor will it choose to do so. There must be some kind of exception, some kind of precedent! So we argue, we test and probe and invariably ask more questions under the guise of clarification. We are looking for a loophole. The woman you put here with me made me do it! We must be set free to pursue our desire, nothing must get in our way. We are willing to betray those closest to us for really they were never close at all - not compared to the desire of our own hearts - for our self-gratification. We sell everything to get what we want; we sacrifice and we spend the last dime until we are all alone with ourselves. And this is the cause of loneliness: the pursuit and exaltation of our own personal desire above all else, to the exclusion of everyone else.
If grace abounds because of sin then let me sin more to make grace abound even more.This perverse simplistic logic persuades us that we are doing God's bidding; we are giving him glory. We think we can achieve God's end through our own means, without reference to how that grace was won, attained and paid for. I can still have my cake, I can still do as I want and still glorify God, in fact the pursuit of my desire gives God glory. We think we are so complicated, that somehow sin gives birth to righteousness: if I do evil, good will result. We dissolve it to a law, a mere dehumanised principle: if I do this, this will happen. It is mechanical; it experiments with God's grace; it plays with grace. Lets see. If I do this, what will happen? When the flesh engages with truth it always distorts and warps - it fuses and mixes. When the flesh apprehends truth, it produces religion. When the spirit confronts truth it begets life - after the death of repentance - while the desires of man are always ensconced within a religious form. Truth does not reveal itself by reading ink marks upon a page or by reading a bible dictionary or learning Greek or Hebrew; it only comes when the Spirit of Truth breathes out the words Himself when He chooses to reveal it. The words without the author is a ship cast off from its anchor without propulsion. It will soon dash itself upon the rocks. The exaltation of the words over Him who speaks those same words is another idol worthy of destruction.
