How Safe and Secure are we before God? Part 2 - Three Categories of Life: We now have all three!

Three Kinds of Life

We're looking at security with God and whether we can lose it. We've looked at God's foreknowledge, from eternity, of what we decide about Him and His Son, our Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Romans 8 tells us that once God knows we chose Him in Christ, our salvation progresses with certaintly.

Now let's look at what we mean when we talk of Christ's life in us.

When we are born again, we pick up a new and extraordinary 'flavour' of life, unavailable any other way. It's a free gift. How does the Bible describe this life?

For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself

For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.

John 5v26,21

Here Jesus refers to a particular type of life possessed by God. It is not a derived, created, life. It is a self-existing, self-sustaining, uncreated, indestructible life*. It is beyond our full understanding. Jesus possessed this same special type of life as the Father. He started to give that life to others. It's infinite, from eternity, so He in giving it away, He didn't lose some of it in the process. The widow's flask of oil from 2 Kings 4 is a type of this life. It doesn't deplete until the need is met.

For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for He gives the Spirit without measure.

John 3:34

So the Father gives this life to the Son, and the Son gives it to whom He will.

There are three Greek words all translated as 'life' in English Bible versions. They are, transliterated, bios, psuche, and zoe. They represent, loosely, biological life, the life of the soul, and the life of God, respectively. This is how the words are most often used in the Bible. We can see that the English words 'biology' and 'psychology' are derived from the first two. Bios represents the physical processes of life. Bios is impressive enough as far as it goes. When I look at a well-used guitar, someone has maybe played it regularly for decades. It is worn, the fretboard has hollows, the frets are grooved, the finish is eroded. Yet the fingers of the musician are just fine. Bios did that, the callouses may be there but the skin cells are renewed continually. The guitar may be great but it is really just dead matter. Psuche represents the functions of mind and emotions. The human mind is complex, nuanced, multi-facetted, different for each person. It is creative, it can imagine, it may be fragile and delicate. 

But beyond these, there's a further category of life. Jesus used the word zoe to refer to the life He and the Father shared**. The same word is used to describe the life which He gives to us. The verses from John above use zoe.

Now the word zoe was not invented for the New Testament: it was a pre-existing Greek word. Originally though, in Greek usage, it referred to what we might call vibrancy, vigour, productivity, freshness. It described the zing, the beans, present in addition to bios and psuche, infusing them with something extra. The New Testament combines zoe with aioneos, which means 'perpetual' or 'always ongoing'. We then get a phrase translated 'everlasting life' or 'eternal life'. This is the phrase used in the famous verse, John 3v16, for example. Permanence and quality of life are signified. The phrase zoe aioneos occurs about 47 times in the New Testament, most often in John's writings.

The exact interpretation of the phrase 'eternal', as found in the Bible, is subject to some debate amongst scholars. Interestingly, Strong's Concordance says aioneos indicates a past, present and future continuity of times. 'Eternal' has the sense of infinite times past as well as present and future. When we say God has no beginning and no end, we are attributing this kind of life to Him. And, when it is present in others, He is always the source of it. It is granted at His discretion. He has already granted bios and psuche to everyone born into this world. New Testament zoe aioneos, is only for born again believers. 

The full nature of eternal life, as it concerns time, remains, frankly, a mystery for now. It is usually held to be either the the continuation of time forever, or possibly the absence of time. Whatever the best definition, and we are looking through a glass dimly here, as we are trying to understand with our mortal mind God's very own realm of existence. All scholars agree it is a realm that has always been. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. God's name, according to Exodus 3v14, is I AM. He is present in all our times. We, in our mortal selves, are present only in one instant.

When we become believers, we cross over into this zoe aioneos. It is perpetual, it is not subject to birth or death, although we are born again into it from our natural life. 

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

John 5:24

'Life' here is, again, zoe, and 'eternal life' is zoe aioneos. But notice what Jesus says. He's saying 'he who truly hears and believes has already passed from death to life'.

A few English versions (e.g. CJB, EHV) use 'crossed over' for 'passed'.

If you have passed from death to eternal life, it is very, very hard to see how you can pass back again. You have passed into a realm of permanence. I would suggest this means you simply cannot pass back out again!

For me, the only question is, 'did you really pass over?'

* This uncaused quality of God is called 'aseity' by theologians. It is possessed by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

** Jesus very probably spoke in Aramaic most of the time; so this is the Greek word used to record what He said.

How Safe and Secure are we before God? Part 1 - Foreknowledge and Predestination; did He choose or did we?

All Christians will say there is no security outside of Christ. We all know Christ is the only way; He is the Rock, and to build without Him as Lord is to build on sand. 

However there's a continuing discussion among Christian believers about whether you can lose your salvation. It's a deadly serious issue, literally. In our minds at least.

God, as the supreme Good Parent, wants happy, secure, resilient and stable children. He also wants children who behave honourably and show real kindness to their fellow men. How does He build His virtue and substance into us? 

Some think God will threaten us with total rejection based on our lapses in behaviour.

If you think you might lose your salvation, you will at times be on tenterhooks, wondering whether God has lost his patience with you entirely. This is judging by my own experience. We normally feel like this because of our sins and failures. If you have sinned in a way which seems obvious, unacceptable or unforgivable to you, this is particularly likely to be the case. Alcohol or drug abuse, watching pornography, inappropriate angry behaviour and language, are common examples. Perhaps as a Christian you have succumbed to these or other things. You are disappointed with yourself. The devil, the accuser, is very likely also on your case. 

Has God rejected and abandoned us? Will our fellow Christians? Perhaps they know what we have done, or maybe we fear they'll find out, not knowing how they'll react, which is probably even worse. This can be a horrible place to be, a place of both shame and insecurity. It is entirely possible to live much of our Christian lives bouncing between these episodes of failure, while having a constant background fear we will fall into them again. 

The reality is we all sin continually to some degree. But the fear of rejection and abandonment by God is not necessary. God loves us into wholeness, having adopted us as His children. Within the family, He doesn't terrify us into wholeness.  By saying all this I am not condoning or encouraging sin. It's just that, particularly if we have experienced a lot of rejection, especially early in life, we are inclined to expect harsh judgments and rejection from God. God is feeling none. If we turn to Him, He's there for us, forgiving and restoring us. It is His opinion we need to be firstly concerned with. Fear of harsh rejection will only ever succeed in getting us to behave outwardly anyway. God works through love, reaching the inner motives, winning us over from the heart with His mercy. 

We need to trust Him to the extent that we truly open our hearts to Him when we are tempted, and, if necessary, when we have just fallen into sin. He will receive us in love, and handle us with gentleness and patience. If discipline comes, it is corrective and will come in a timely, considered way. There will be no sudden angry disowning.

Eternal Calling, Yes, Eternal Falling, No.

Here's one of the verses sometimes quoted by people who say we can lose our salvation.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.

2 Peter 1:10

Peter tells believers to confirm their calling as sons of God. Certainly it's good to remind and reassure yourself of this calling. It should help you live better. But in view of the following Romans verses it's hard to see how you would confirm your calling in God's eyes. You don't need to. He has already predestined you. He has already called you to glory. All because you chose Him. In the thoughts of God, this passage applies:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Romans 8:29-30

We have here a straightforward statement of God's thinking and planning toward us. There's a chain of actions, each dependant on the last, each performed by God. It would be very easy to assume we had no part at all in this process. After all, God is performing every step. It reads as a highway to heaven!

That's not quite how it is. We are completely involved in the first, crucial, step. 

The only step in the chain of God's actions where He's passive is the first one. It's a knowing, not a doing. He knows the complete picture through from Alpha to Omega, beginning to end. Already. He's eternal. In particular, He had foreknowledge about whether we chose Him. 

I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’

Isaiah 46:9b-10

Let's look again at the first two verbs 'foreknew' and 'predestined'. Here's a simple illustration of the difference. Suppose I had a flatmate, and he kept a diary. He'd been very excitable recently. I knew he was always honest, and I knew he kept his word. One afternoon I came across his open diary. Curiosity got the better of me, or perhaps he had told me I was free to look in it! I saw the entry from that morning. There he had recorded his intention of proposing to his girlfriend later that evening. At that point I had foreknowledge of what he was going to do, but I certainly didn't predestine him to do it. 

God foreknew those who would come to Him. 

That foreknowledge God uses to determine what happens next. After His foreknowing a person did or will come to Him in Christ, the other four actions in Romans 8:29-30 are active actions on God's part. God is actively, continually supervising our salvation to ensure the outcome. 

Joining Him in Eternal Life

God is not constrained by time in the way we are. The verses from Romans chapter 8 quoted above read as a fait accompli, a done deal. When God has the foreknowledge that we will accept His offer of salvation, He ensures everything else follows. It is predestined. Even the glorification of the saints is done. He knows who chose Him and who rejected Him. Based on that knowledge, He predestined us to follow through on a track, a road, leading to justification, to conformity to His Son, and eventually to glorification. The last happens when we receive our eternal body and environment. He knows the end from the beginning**. 

He foreknew some would step out of the temporal realm and enter the eternal realm. This happens at the new birth; we enter the eternal realm, and so our true inner self is established forever (Ephesians 2v4-6, 2 Corinthians 5v17). 

So can our 'true self' drop back out of eternity? I don't believe so. Please read on.

* Predestination without the condition of foreknowledge leads us to the hard Calvinist theology where we have no active part in our salvation. Hard Calvinism developed a doctrine known by the acronym 'TULIP'. The 'I' represents 'irresistible grace'. God chooses us, we can't choose Him. This leaves us a robots, and leaves those not chosen as damned without recourse. However, including the foreknowledge of God in our concept of predestination resolves the dilemma.

** Yet He is also able to experience and understand human life lived within the constraints of time. This is how Jesus experienced life; the same as we do.

What is real freedom?

'...if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed'.

John 8v36

Christ and Freedom

Everything a man can have in Christ is the real article. The fresh, vibrant, complete, full, satisfying and abiding version!!

Christ came to bring us freedom. God knows what freedom really is. Man has his counterfeit; it holds false promise, we'll discuss that. But we are set free. (This blog is called flowoffreedom.blogspot because God spoke to me 20 years ago about Him using me to bring freedom. First I have to have living in me in good measure! I'm getting there).

If we have come to Christ for salvation, if we have been born again of the Spirit, we have also been set free! The freedom is an integral part of the package. With Christ, we get everything or we get nothing. You don't choose which bits you want. If you're forgiven, you get new life. If you're righteous, you are free. And so on. You'll get provision. And persecution! We get the whole bundle or nothing.

His freedom is the only true freedom there is, and it's truly wonderful.

Maybe you don't feel free. Often I don't either! But there is hope. God has promised us freedom. What does He mean? What has He actually done? How do we benefit from it?

Human Ideas on Freedom

Most people probably define 'freedom' as 'liberty to do what you want to'. 

Many people are looking for freedom. They don't feel free, and they want to.

The world contends for freedom. Freedom from rules and constraints. Freedom to be who you want to be, to do what you want to do. Anarchy is the idea that your urges are right and should not be supressed. Human freedom, if granted fully, is likely to end in anarchy. But that really won't be good.

Naturally speaking, your freedom to do as you wish will only work for you, if indeed it does work for you, and it won't for long.

My freedom might be your bondage. My freedom to buy what I want may put many factory workers in the East in bondage to long hours and low reward. It might be worse. My freedom to have intercourse when I want may result in the murder of the voiceless, helpless unborn child, a sacrifice to lifestyle preferences as freedom. The loud self-justification of those who pretend otherwise is deceitful and irrelevant in God's light.

Some think money brings freedom. South Africa has a party called The Economic Freedom Fighters. But the rich are not free. They look to money and are insecure about relationship. Everyone might be after your pile. And things do not satisfy for long. There's an illusory running after anything which purports to thrill and satisfy. Nothing is ever perfect enough or exciting enough. They are chasing delusions. No amount of wealth can bring peace, happiness, or indeed, as the Liverpool lads sang, love. It can buy a lustful encounter, but not real love. Love wants the best for the beloved, not some pleasure or status from them.

I could go on. Perhaps for some the motives and goals are higher. Perhaps the freedom fighter wants the poor liberated from exploitation, disease and squalor. Political parties and thinkers may imagine they have the keys to freedom. Che Guevara, the Argentinian-Cuban revolutionary, in an iconic image taken by Alberto Korda, looks like the essence of masculine resolve to bring real societal freedom from oppression. He has spawned millions of trendy t-shirts and caps. Yet he executed many of his opponents. He was unfaithful to his first wife. He stated that he would've provoked nuclear war and billions of deaths to destroy the imperialism he hated during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The champion of the oppressed very often becomes a ruthless oppressor. Guevara always claimed his motives were of love. This only shows self-righteousness as well as self-delusion in an ideology not of Christ. That is always the case.

Human ideas of freedom are subjective, unbalanced and misguided. They do not bring personal or societal freedom, just more strife. The problem is man himself. Man is a sinner, under the power of sin. The problem is deeper than even his emotions, his mind, his capacity for self-reform. Very often it is beyond his self-awareness. 

Guevara was a sinner. He succumbed to self-promotion, vanity, infidelity, vengeance, cruelty, ruthlessness. He was actually an oppressive tyrant. The world would not be free if he prevailed.

Jesus Christ was not a sinner. He was the only man born of woman who never sinned. He was a revolutionary characterised by genuine and prefect love. He showed no vengeance on his enemies. He died for our freedom. In his Deity, He created the World, the elements, the fundamental particles. He worked with wood from the trees he made, and probably with iron from the stars he made. He was, in dreadful irony, nailed to a cross by angry, jealous, vengeful men. He chose the death, and also took up His life later. He cried in pain, but he never cried in vengeance. He said 'Father forgive'. His death and resurrection are supremely empowering for those who understand it and partake of it. He does impart freedom, and his Kingdom will be perfect for all who come to Him.

Christ's Freedom

Christ has set us free from sin. It is sin which keeps us from experiencing real freedom. Men without Christ are under the power of sin and death. God is spring-loaded, by disposition, to love, to live, to give, to share of Himself, to the absolute maximum, to the limits. He is love. He is life. He is the resurrection. He conquered death. And he wants us to be living in this same spiritual place, actually living out of heaven. He reaches out to all mankind with these things.

He wants us to grow in wonder, in glory, in new life, in freshness, eternal freshness, eternal giving, eternal freedom. He wants to grant us a new heart, aligned with His purposes and yet leaving us fully ourselves, not suffocated or suppressed to any degree.

He has solve the freedom equation, and only He has. He want us to have this life, He doesn't need to be persuaded or nagged into this, it's His passionate desire. Sin gets in the way. Sin poisons everything to the very depths of our being. But He has provided the answer. Sin has been dealt with completely and totally. The price has been paid for all men. The answer, as always, is to believe. Accept the problem, agree with the answer. Again and again, as necessary.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2 Corinthians 5:17

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21

So reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:11

By faith, we can truly say we have died to sin. We have moved into freedom. We are free indeed, as the opening verse quoted tells us. The word 'reckon' in Romans 6v11 just quoted is an accounting term. It means 'ascribe correctly as true', and not 'try to persuade yourself and this might work'. To reckon, here, flows from believing. God has done it. To the uttermost.

Real freedom means you feel the sunlight of God's presence within, along with the messages of love He has left even in the present fallen creation. It means you have a supernatural love for God and others. Live from this; if you return to practicing sin these feelings will die and you will struggle to find your way back. When I got born again, I first experienced the freedom and presence of God. It was the most intense and yet the most restful experience I had ever had. Totally different, totally new.

How does our freedom work in relationship, in community? Before God? How can we do what we want and it still be right and good for everyone? 

God is community. It's His idea. God the Father and Christ are one, of one essential nature. To speak of the will of one is to speak of the will of the other. The same with the Holy Spirit, He is along fully too. Jesus in his mortal flesh had to complete and perfect this association on behalf of humanity by surrendering to the Father, in Gethsemane. Even Jesus struggled with this, when faced with what lay before Him. And He came through for us. Our freedom is that important to God. His love for us is that strong. He gave His Son. His Son yielded.

How, in outworking, in community, can Christ offer real freedom, freedom for as many as would come to Him?

The New Birth brings us into a God-orchestrated harmony with Himself. The astonishing thing is that He has also brought about a complete harmony with others, who have also been made new. He is author of a new societal peace and consonance. The Old Man where unbridled and selfish passions and conflicts reign, dies with Christ. We rise new with Him. The New Man is baptised into love, and into a community of love. Christ is the rightful King.

In each of our natural selves is someone like Guevara. A self-glorifying, self-absorbed, self-justifying, self-centred soul is in there, pretending to be pure and good. That soul is inflamed. It is self-righteous and hypocritical.

It is inflamed like yeast or leaven inflames bread. The leaven of the Jewish teachers was hypocrisy, as Jesus warned in Matthew 16. They taught what they did not do, and could not do. The world does that. Leaders demand their rules be honoured, but do not comply themselves. The whole world system of thinking is like a leaven which inflames people. The leaven with the Pharisees was hypocritical self-righteousness. But our natural desires are inflamed in many ways, this being just an example. Greed is natural appetite inflamed. Parts of us are too big, but not in a good way, like an inflamed internal organ. Less functional, not more. We are all, by ourselves, jostling for attention and resource in an insecure, strife-ridden, anxious way.

This utterly corrupt, inflamed soul is not a trivial problem, and so our soul, susceptible to the yeast of this world, must die. But we die in Christ when we come to Him, expressed in Baptism. He died on our behalf. He incurred the necessary penalty for us. Because He was God and Man, He could pay the price for everyone. He paid in kind, in quality, in His humanity. He paid in quantity because He was infinite God. The old man of sin is left behind, at the Cross, and in the waters of baptism. We rise with Christ to a new life, freed from sin!

So God has fixed absolutely everything for the meek, for those who come to Him. They shall inherit earth and heaven, because only they are genuinely worthy, fitted and suitable. Because they have allowed God to orchestrate the community of the redeemed, on Earth as in Heaven, and to perfect their salvation.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:5

The soul, as we have said, needs to die and to be reborn. Then God is in control. He is building a Kingdom. He is including you. He is fitting you in. He is working on your life, your desires, your thoughts, your emotions. The task has been completed in heaven, in our lives on Earth there is a process involved.

Which bit of you, in the here and now, still needs to change? You have already been born again (or need to be). But your mind needs to be renewed by changed thinking. You need to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The intention of this blog is to help with that, acknowledging it is the Word of God which is the central part. If we are truly born again, we have been changed eternally into a new creature. Our body is the same though, for the remainder of the age, though God may heal and restore it. To reflect who we really are now, our minds need to function differently.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1-2

In verse one, Paul tells us we must yield our bodies to God, to serve Him. In this life, that will require a conscious decision at times. In the age to come, it will be entirely natural. In verse two, he tells us how that is going to happen. We renew our minds, so we think how God thinks and not how this world thinks. There are profound differences. We go to the written Word, the Bible for the necessary input, and change our thinking according to the revelation and doctrine in it.

To use the crude analogy of programming an electronic device, when God programs everything there is harmony. If not, there is incompatibility, driver conflicts and suchlike.

God will not program our desires so those desires are unachievable. Neither will he do so in a manner which causes problems and frustrations for others. We may have to be patient, but He will not disappoint. God will not set our desires in a way which causes another believer to fall short or go short.

God has both abundant love, and intimate knowledge, fully encompassing the big picture. He has the means, the wisdom and the power. He will build His Kingdom how He wants it, and the citizens will be truly happy forever. Only pride keeps us locked out. Those who stubbornly resist God and stay in their prideful ways, refusing to repent and believe the Good News, will be in a disharmonious condition forever.

There is indeed no rest for the wicked, and without Christ, we are evil. Jesus didn't mince words. He told us our natural condition here:

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Matthew 7:11

There's common grace, we all do some good. Hitler was nice to his dog. But we are, without Him, evil. 

Once we are in the Kingdom, and once we have stayed the course and gone to Heaven, we will find the perfect completion of this freedom. Our desires will be our actions, our actions will be righteous. The inner conflicts will be gone, and so will the outer conflicts. We will experience the unity, joy and fulfillment the Father and Son experience.

We can taste these things now, if we walk closely with God, even in the presence of our enemies (Psalm 23).

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Galatians 5:22-24

The virtues Christ won for us come as a package deal. I said this at the start. We can't pick and choose, and stay with the program. We have to continue, surrendering more and more of our lives up and letting Him have His way. The end is rest and peace, true freedom, true joy. It won't always feel that way on the way, but it will start to manifest more and more and if we continue there will be a final consummation into the perfected Kingdom. There's really nowhere to go back to, as Peter realised.

Those who reject God, God will give over to the disharmony, the turmoil, the regret, the frustration.

Like the Father and the Son, we the redeemed will still be individuals. In fact we will have the only truly clear and solid personalities and identities among men. At the same time we will be harmonised within the community of the redeemed, constrained by love. We will do as we please, and yet it will please God and others! That is wonderful. It's life, love, peace and rest.