At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.

Part 28
Continuing with …Salvation:  Past, Future, Present…picking up the last thoughts from yesterday…..

This is the purpose of man, though lost through the ‘fall.’  And when I accept Christ as my Savior, the guilt that has separated me from God, and from the fulfillment of my purpose, is removed.  I then stand in the place in which man was made to stand at his creation.  Not just in some far-off day, after the return of Christ, nor in eternity, but now I am returned to the place for which I was made at the beginning.  I am immediately in a new and living relationship with each of the three persons of the Trinity.  

 Continuing today…..

First, God the Father becomes my father.  Theologically, this is spoken of as adoption.  But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…John 1:12 ESV.  When I receive Christ, on the basis of his finished work I become a child of God.  Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is uniquely the eternal Son of God,.  But the Bible declares, and it should be a joy to us, that when I have accepted Christ as my Savior, I immediately come into a new relationship with the Father, and I become his son, in the sense of the creature in the proper place for which he was made in the first place.   

Second, when I accept Christ as my Savior, I immediately come into a new relationship with God the Son.  In theology this is spoken of as our mystical union with Christ.  In the book of Ephesians we are told over and over again that when we accept Christ as our Savior we are ‘in’ Christ.  In Romans 7:4, we are told that Christ is our Bridegroom and we are the bride.  In John 15 we are told that Christ is the Vine and we are the branches.  In all these relationships there is pictured or related the mystical union of Christ and the believer.  And who is this Christ, with whom we enter into a relationship?  Not the baby Jesus, nor Christ when he was on earth, nor Christ as he hung on the cross, but the risen, ascended, and glorified Christ.  

Finally, the bible says we also enter into a new relationship with the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit.  When we are justified, we are also and immediately indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  In John 14:16-17, Christ is making a promise just prior to his death, which was fulfilled at Pentecost after his resurrection and ascension:  ‘And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you’. (ESV).  There was a then-present relationship, but there would also be a future one.  John explains this when he says that the Holy Spirit was not yet given, for Christ was not yet glorified (John 7:39).  In the book of Romans, it is again made very plain that now if we have accepted Christ as our Savior, we are in this new relationship with the Holy Spirit, and anyone who is not in a relationship with the Holy Spirit is not a Christian.  You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. Romans 8:9 ESV.  Paul, writing to all the Christians at Corinth, asks, Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 1 Corinthians 3:16 ESV.  This was written down through the ages to every man who has accepted Christ as Savior.  When I am justified, I am indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and have entered into this new relationship with the third person of the Trinity.   (con’t tomorrow)

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc

At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.
Part 27

Continuing in our study…. Salvation:  Past, Future, Present

Purpose and Relationship 

Salvation is a unity.  When I accepted Christ as my Savior, when my guilt was gone, I returned to the place for which I was originally made.  Man has a purpose.  In this beginning of the twenty-first century, one is constantly confronted with the question, ‘What is the purpose of man—if man has any purpose?’  And to that question the twenty-first century returns a great silence.  But the Bible says that man has the purpose of loving God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind.  And this ‘loving’ is not meant to be vague or ‘religious,’ in the modern sense, but a genuine communication with God: the finite person, thinking and acting and feeling, being in relationship with the infinite—not a bare infinite, but an infinite who is a personal God, and therefore communication is possible.  This is the purpose of man, though lost through the ‘fall.’  And when I accept Christ as my Savior, the guilt that has separated me from God, and from the fulfillment of my purpose, is removed.  I then stand in the place in which man was made to stand at his creation.  Not just in some far-off day, after the return of Christ, nor in eternity, but now I am returned to the place for which I was made at the beginning.  I am immediately in a new and living relationship with each of the three persons of the Trinity.  (con’t tomorrow). 

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc

At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.

Part 26

Salvation:  Past-Future-Present  (Con’t from yesterday)  

In sanctification there are degrees.  We have said that there are no degrees of justification, because the guilt is absolutely gone.  But in the question of our relationship to our Lord in the present time, there are degrees.  (Let’s say that again…our relationship to our Lord in the present time..)  There are degrees between different Christians, and we must also acknowledge degrees in our personal lives at different times.  The Christian life is not an unbroken, inclined plane.  Sometime it is up, and sometimes—we must all acknowledge if we are not deluding ourselves—it is down.  While it is not possible to be more or less justified, it is possible to be more or less sanctified.  Justification deals with the guilt of sin; sanctification deals with the power of sin in the Christian’s life, and there are degrees in this.   

Salvation is not just justification and then a blank until death; God never meant it to be so.  Salvation is a unity, a flowing stream, from justification through sanctification to glorification: 

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.  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: 28-30 

It is made plain, in the tenses that are used, that salvation is to be seen as an unbroken stream.  There are examples of the same truth: 

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5: 1-5 

Or we may take the keynote verses of the first half of the book of Romans: 

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.  Romans 1: 16-17 

Now the word ‘salvation’ here is not justification.  The word ‘salvation’ encompasses the whole:  justification, sanctification, glorification.  ‘For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.’  This is not just the ‘once for all’ faith at justification, but faith ‘from faith to faith.’  ‘As it is written, the just shall live by faith’—not just justified by faith:  the just shall live by faith. 

In certain ways, sanctification is the most important consideration for the Christian now, because that is the point where we are.  It is the present portion of salvation, and in this sense it is the most important consideration of the Christian now.  Justification is once for all; sanctification is continuous, from our acceptance of Christ right up to our death.  This study of the Christian life and ‘true spirituality’ falls within the present portion of our salvation.  That is, this whole study is, in reality, a study of the biblical teaching of sanctification.   (con’t tomorrow)

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc

At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.
Part 25
Salvation:  Past – Future – Present

Continuing from yesterday…. 

Justification must be understood to be absolutely irrevocable, for Christ took the punishment of all our sin, not just our sin up to the moment when we accepted Christ as our Savior.  Nothing is left to be charged to our account.  Seeing it this way, which is the biblical way to see it, there are no degrees of justification.  One cannot be more or less justified.  In this sense one cannot be more or less Christian.  One is a Christian, or not a Christian, on this basis.  Just as one is born or not born, married in God’s sight or not married, so one has accepted Christ as Savior, and thus is declared justified by God, or not.  There is no halfway, no degrees.  Guilt is totally gone from the Christian, and gone forever.  Therefore, for the Christian, justification is past.   

But we must not make a mistake here.  Salvation, as the word is used in scripture, is wider than justification.  There is a past, a future, and a real present.  The infinite work of Christ upon the cross brings to the Christian more than justification.  In the future, there is glorification.  When Christ returns, there will be the resurrection of the body, and eternity.  But there is also a present aspect of salvation.  Sanctification is our present relationship to our Lord, the present tense.  (We will drill-down into ‘sanctification’ tomorrow) 😊 

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc

At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.
Part 24
Salvation:  Past-Future-Present (Con’t)

Christians are to demonstrate God’s character, which is a moral demonstration, but it is not only to be a demonstration of moral principles; it is a demonstration of his being, his existence.  What a calling, and how overwhelming!  Surely anyone who has been at all honest, and not just romantic or idealistic in a bad sense, must understand that any such demonstrations would be totally meaningless by his own effort, in his own strength.  So again, the biblical teaching of Christ the Bridegroom, bringing forth his fruit through us—the power of the crucified and risen Christ and the agency of the Holy Spirit by faith—is seen to be no isolated teaching.  It should not take us by surprise.  It fits into the unity of the Bible’s teaching about the calling of the Christian in this present world.  This is the second of the biblical unities we have considered.  The first was the unity of the Bible’s teaching in regard to the supernatural nature of the universe.   

(Friends…absorb and embed the wording and content…the meaning…of this next paragraph into your hearts and minds…it is the essence of your identity ‘in’ Christ.)  A third unity of the Bible’s teaching is the unity of what salvation is.  When I truly accept Christ as my Savior, the bible says God declares me justified at once.  God, as the Judge, judicially declares the guilt gone upon the basis of the substitutionary work of Christ. It is not that God overlooks the sin.  He is holy, and because he is holy, all sin results in true guilt.  But when I accept Christ as my Savior, my sin has been punished in Christ: in history, space, and time, upon the cross.  And God declares me justified as far as guilt is concerned.  It is as though I had never sinned.  On the cross Jesus took all of our punishment, which means there is no punishment left for us to bear, either in this life, or hereafter.  Because Christ is divine his death had infinite value—value enough, in substitutionary fashion, to cover all of the individual sin, and all the guilt of all those who will ever come to him.  (more on this tomorrow 😊) 

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc

At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.
Part 23

The Bible says that man fell at a specific point in history, and as man fell, both man and the world over which he had dominion became abnormal. It would seem, looking at subsequent history, that God’s creation of rational, moral creatures was a failure. 

But then Christ came, died, and rose—also in history—and the necessary victory was won.  When Christ returns, the evidence of his victory will be completely obvious.  Yet on the earth today there is neither universal peace for the individual nor for mankind.  Indeed, the twenty-first century world is not basically very different from the Assyrian, the Babylonian, or the Roman world…and in many ways…it is more severely corrupted and broken.   

Does that mean that between the victory on the cross and the present day, and to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, God did not intend that there should be any evidence of the reality of the victory of the cross? 

As we examine Scripture, we surely find that this is exactly what he did not mean.  But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. I Peter 2:9-10 (ESV)

This passage says that in this present life, Christians are called for a purpose, called to show forth the praises of God.  In other words, God did not mean that there should be no evidence of the reality of the victory of the cross between Jesus’ ascension and his second coming.  God has always intended that Christians should be the evidence, the demonstration, of Christ’s victory on the cross.    

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc

At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.

Part 21  The next chapter…

The Supernatural Universe 

Our generation is overwhelmingly naturalistic.  There is an almost complete commitment to the concept of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system.  This is its distinguishing mark.  If we are not careful, even though we say we are biblical Christians and supernaturalists, nevertheless the naturalism of our generation tends to come in upon us.  It may infiltrate our thinking without our recognizing its coming, like a fog creeping through a window opened only half an inch.  As soon as this happens, Christians begin to lose the reality of their Christian lives:  that while we say we believe one thing, we allow the spirit of the naturalism of the age to creep into our thinking unrecognized.  All too often the reality is lost because the ceiling is down too close upon our heads. It is too low.  And the ceiling which closes us in is the naturalistic type of thinking.   

All of the reality of Christianity rests upon the reality of the existence of an infinite, supernatural, personal God, and the reality of the supernatural view of the total universe.   

What does this mean…naturalistic view….supernatural view?  According to the biblical view, there are two parts to reality:  the natural world—that which we see normally—and the supernatural part.  When we use the word; supernatural,” however, we must be careful.  The supernatural is really no more unusual in the universe from the biblical viewpoint, that what we normally call the natural.  The only reason we call it the supernatural part is that usually we cannot see it.  That is all.  

Schaeffer suggest that his may be illustrated by two chairs; or two halves.  And there are men who sit in each chair.  The men who sit in these chairs look at the universe in two different ways.  We are all sitting in one or the other of these chairs at every single moment of our lives.  The first man sits in his chair and faces this total reality of the universe, the seen part and the normally unseen part, and consistently sees truth against this background.  The Christian is a man who has said, “I sit in this chair.”  The unbeliever, however, is the man who sits in the other chair, intellectually.  He sees only the natural part of the universe, and interprets truth against that background.  Let us see that these two positions cannot both be true.  One is true: one is false.  If indeed there is only the natural portion of the universe, with a uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, then to sit in the other chair is to delude oneself.  If, however, there are the two halves of reality, then to sit in the naturalist’s chair is to be extremely naïve and to misunderstand the universe completely.  From the Christian viewpoint, no man has ever been so naïve, nor so ignorant of the universe, as is twenty first century man.    

Schaeffer goes on to say….however, to be a true, Bible-believing Christian, we must understand that it is not enough simply to acknowledge that the universe has these two halves.  The Christian life means living in the two halves of reality; the supernatural and the natural parts.  I would suggest that it is perfectly possible for a Christian to be so infiltrated by the ‘thinking’ that is prevalent around us and pounded into our educational systems, the media, the ideas expressed within the world of entertainment, that he lives most of his life as though the supernatural were not there.  Indeed, I would suggest that all of us do this to some extent.  The supernatural does not touch the Christian only at the new birth and then at his death, or at the second coming of Christ, leaving the believer on is own in a naturalistic world during all the time in between.  Nothing could be further from the biblical view.  Being a biblical Christian means living in the supernatural now—not only theoretically, but in practice.  If a man sits in the one chair and denies the existence of the supernatural portion of the world, we say he is an unbeliever.  What shall we call ourselves when we sit in the other chair but live as though the supernatural were not there?   

This means, as a Christian, that we must understand–intellectually, with the windows open–that the universe is not what our generation says it is, seeing only the naturalistic universe.  We must live in demonstration and belief in a personal God who objectively exists and who is Creator and sovereign Lord over ‘all’ aspects of life and existence.   

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc

At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.

Part 20

Conclusion of the chapter, In the Spirit’s Power.  We continue with the ‘how’ of true spirituality in the Christian life: 

Third, this is not to be merely passive on our part.  As we have seen already, it is not to be on the basis of our own works, or our own energy, any more than our justification is on the basis of our own works and energy. But again, as in the case of justification, I am not a passive stick or stone. 

The illustration which brings this to me with force is Mary’s response to the angel in Luke 1:38. The angel has come to Mary, and says, in effect, Mary, you are going to give birth to the long-promised Messiah.  This was a unique promise, and unrepeatable.  There is something totally unique here, the birth of the eternal second Person of the Trinity into this world.  What is her response?  The Holy Spirit, we are told, is to cause a conception in her womb.  It seems to me that she could have made three responses.  She was a Jewish girl, probably seventeen or eighteen years of age, and in love with Joseph.  There is no reason to think of him as an old man, as the painters love to paint, no reason whatsoever.  They do that because this was a Roman Catholic mentality, as though Joseph and Mary had no children of which they were both the parents, after Christ’s birth.   

Here she is, a Jewish girl in a normal historic situation, with normal emotions, planning to get married, and suddenly she is told she is going to give birth to a child.  She could have rejected the idea and said, “I do not want this; I want to withdraw; I want to run.  What will Joseph say?” And we know what Joseph thought later.  Humanly, we could not blame her if she had felt this way.  But she did not say this. 

Second—and this is our danger at such a point as we now are in the study of the Christian life—she could have said, “I now have the promises, so I will exert my force, my character, and my energy, to bring forth the promised thing.  I have the promise.  Now I will bring forth a child without a man.”  But with this response she never would have had the child.  She could not bring forth a child without a man, by her own will, any more than any other girl could do.   

But there was a third thing she could say. It is beautiful; it is wonderful.  She says, “I am the Lord’s servant, May it happen to me according to your word.” Luke 1:38.   

There is an active passivity here.  She took her own body, by choice, and put it into the hands of God to do the thing that he said he would do, and Jesus was born. She gave herself, with her body, to God.  In response to the promise, yes; but not to do it herself.  This is a beautiful, exciting, personal expression of a relationship between a finite person and the God she loves.  Now this is absolutely unique and must not be confused; there is only one Virgin Birth.  Nevertheless, it is an illustration of our being the bride of Christ.  We are in the same situation in that we have these great and thrilling promises we have been considering, and we are neither to think of ourselves as totally passive, as though we had no part in this, as though God had stopped dealing with us now as men; nor are we to think we can do it ourselves.  If we are to bring forth fruit in the Christian life, or rather, if Christ is to bring forth this fruit through us by the agency of the Holy Spirit, there must be a constant act of faith, of thinking, Upon the basis of your promises I am looking for you to fulfill them, my Jesus Christ; bring forth your fruit through me into this poor world.   

So now we stand before two streams of reality:  those who have died and are with Christ now; and we, who have the ‘earnest’ (2 Cor 1:22) of the Holy Spirit now and so, upon the reality of the finished work of Christ, have access—not in theory, but in reality—to the power of the crucified, risen and glorified Christ, by the agency of the Holy Spirit.   and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us 2 Corinthians 1:22 NLT) 

True spirituality is not achieved in our own energy.  The ‘how’ of the kind of life we have spoken of, the true Christian life, true spirituality, is Romans 6:11: “So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.”  This is the ‘how,’ and there is no other.  It is the power of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ, through the agency of the Holy Spirt by faith.   

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc

At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.

Part 19

Now we move toward the end of this chapter ‘In The Spirit’s Power’…the basic considerations of the Christian life and true spirituality.  We will do this over the next 2 days with three points in mind.   

Point 1 and 2 today:   

First, the answers of the how we are to grow in the Christian life:  It is not to be done simply in our own strength.  Neither is it only acting in practice upon the reality that in God’s sight, as we are in Christ, judicially we are already dead and raised, as wonderful as that is.  That must never be minimized.  It is a real thing that must be comprehended.  Judicially, this is a reality, because Christ has died, and Christ has paid.  We are not trying to make something that does not have a reality.  But it is more than just acting upon this fact, even though it is so wonderful and should fill us with adoration.  It is much more.  The how is that the glorified Christ will do it through us.  There is an active ingredient:  He will be the doer.   

Second, though we will enlarge on this point later, there is the agency of the Holy Spirit:  and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  Romans 5:5 

What he is saying here is that you will not be ashamed experientially when you begin to act upon the reality, upon the teaching, as it has been presented.  Why? ‘because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.’ 

Paul writes further, But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. Romans 7:6  

What makes the difference?  This is the Holy Spirit, not just a ‘new idea’:  It is not to be in our own strength.  There is a Holy Spirit who has been given to us to make this service possible.   

In Romans chapters 1-8, at the end of the section, on the development of the Christians’ sanctification, the work of the Holy Spirit, the agent of the whole Trinity, is brought into full force in the eight chapter.   

In Romans 8:13 this is drawn together in this great central chapter of the work of the Holy Spirit for and to the Christian:  For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  The Holy Spirit is specifically introduced to us here as the agent of the power and the person of the glorified Christ.  There is not enough strength in ourselves, but placed before us is the power and the work of the glorified Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit.  Surely this is exactly what Christ meant when he said:  I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. John 14:18 

Friends…we are not left to work-out God’s plan for our life on our own…we have more than adequate provision to accomplish God’s purpose for our life…..Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 1 Corinthians 3:16 

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc