Spirit, soul and body(21) – The 2nd lecture on – Spirit, soul and body(13)
[John 3:5-7]
“Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.'”
[Introduction]
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it would be very hard to make a born-blind man understand about colors of things.
Even though we explain apples are red, the sky is blue, and that different things have different colors, it would be very difficult for that man to understand us.
In the same way, those who are in the flesh cannot understand spiritual things because it is like they are wearing very dark color sunglasses.
As said in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” those who are in flesh cannot even understand the meanings of spiritual things. They rather judge or condemn those who tell them spiritual things. That is why things of the spiritual realm were explained through parables in the Bible.
But since you have been throwing away sins and evil, and untruth and frameworks of your own thoughts, you can receive the things that belong to the spirit.
This is the 13th session of the 2nd part of spirit, soul, and body, and I will explain to you about God and His Word, and about heart and spirit.
I hope you will more quickly come into the spiritual world by keeping this message in your mind.
I bless in the name of the Lord that you will be able to understand more deeply the heart of God who is spirit and advance towards deeper spiritual realm everyday.
[Main]
Dear brothers and sisters, members who are attending the service through the satellite all over the country, members of branch churches, local sanctuaries, Light and Salt mission, Restaurant Mission, members who are attending the service on the Internet all over the world, [children of Sunday school]
The ultimate goal of our life as a Christian is to change our heart to resemble the heart of God.
In order to change our heart, we first have to know what our heart is. Before going into that I have to tell you something.
It is about the ‘Word’.
The knowledge of spirit that God gave to Adam is ‘Word’ and the book that records this Word is the Bible.
Mostly, they just think Word is the words written in the Bible and is truth.
But when we read through the Bible, there are many expressions of ‘Word’. It is said “The Word is God,” and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and it was Jesus.
Looking at these expressions, we can feel that the Word does not only refer to the words written in the Bible but there is deeper spiritual meaning in it.
What, then, does Word mean?
The Word is not just the words written in the Bible in alphabets but the heart of God including all the words written in the Bible.
This heart of God is also the power of God that created everything, and at the same time, is the unlimited, original entity of God who exists from before the beginning to eternity.
God’s heart is the light and truth itself, and spirit and life itself.
In God’s heart, love and justice is harmonized perfectly. It is the origin of boundless power, wisdom, and knowledge. God created the heavens and the earth with this Word. Jesus also calmed down the winds and waves, revived the dead with this Word.
John 1:1-3 say, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] He was in the beginning with God. [3] All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”
God does not need to have the concept of beginning and end because He is spirit and limitless. He exists from before eternity to eternity. Therefore, to explain the existence of God, we do not even have to say the word ‘in the beginning.’
However, this phrase ‘in the beginning’ was used to let us men understand.
It is because men have the frameworks of soul, so we can understand only when there is beginning and end to something. But if we just demolish our limit of soul and contemplate, we can easily realize that it is so obvious for God to have no beginning or end.
If there is beginning to God, something was there before that, and something else must have been there before that. We cannot help but doubt what was before God.
Therefore, it is rather strange to think that there is beginning to God who is the Creator of everything.
Also, Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But this beginning is different from that of the gospel of John.
The beginning of Genesis is not the beginning before the eternity but the time of God’s creation. Thus, it is actually a kind of beginning.
But in today’s passage, it says there was Word in the beginning, and the Word was with God.
I said the Word is the heart of God, and the passage seems to tell us the Word and God is two different beings. But the next verse says ‘the Word was God’ to explain that the Word and God are one.
Also, since it is not said, ‘in the beginning there was God,’ but ‘in the beginning there was Word,’ we can infer that the Word existed before God.
In sum, God and the Word is one, but we can call Him in a different way, and when we do that, the Word is prior to God.
Those who listened to the Genesis lecture would find it easier to understand.
When God existed alone in the beginning, He did not have the image or have the title ‘God’ like now.
In the whole universe, God’s heart, namely the Word, existed as light and sound.
And at one point of time, for human cultivation, God put on an image like now and divided into the Trinity who has the same heart. Namely, He became the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
We can understand the meaning of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us as Jesus.
Because God the Trinity has the same heart, we can see that the origin of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Word.
The Son whose origin is the Word just like the Father, became flesh and was born in this world, and He is Jesus.
And all His words and deeds showed us the heart of God Himself completely. Therefore, Jesus could say, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
Dear brothers and sisters, it was after God planned the human cultivation that He divided into the Trinity and had the title ‘God’.
Before that, when God existed alone, He did not have to be differentiated from any body.
If there is only one person living in the world, he wouldn’t need any name.
But because there are many people, we need names to distinguish between different people.
Likewise, God was divided into the Trinity and because other beings like heavenly hosts and angels and human beings were created, there needed to be names to be distinguished from one another.
Now, if I ask you, “Which one is first? The Word or God?” you will be able to easily answer to me. The Word, namely the heart of God existed first, and the title and image of God were made later.
However, it is not that the Word and God exist separately. They are one after all.
When you call me, ‘senior pastor,’ you do not think of my spirit and image separately. You call me senior pastor referring to my spirit combined with my image.
We do not separate our spirit which is our essence and our image that is visible.
For another example, when there is the body of a man and his shadow, the shadow can exist because there is body, and we can understand that there is body when we see the shadow.
After all, the body and the shadow is one. They do not exist separately but together. But if we have to prioritize it, the body comes first.
Likewise, the Word is prior to God, but the Word and God is one. Dear brothers and sisters, I told you the Word is the heart of God, and what is the Word in 66 books of the Bible?
It is a part of the Word, which is the heart and original essence of God. It is the minimum contents from God’s heart that we must understand while we are being cultivated on this earth.
Therefore, when we keep the word of the Bible in our mind, the Word dwells in us. This means the heart of God is accomplished in our heart.
To the extent that God’s heart is accomplished in our heart, our heart becomes spiritual heart cultivated with spirit.
God’s wondrous works follow those who believe in God’s powerful Word and practice it so that the living God is testified.
Dear brothers and sisters, now, how about men? For men, is the heart first or the image? God who is the Word made Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Then the man became a living spirit.
Adam’s spirit was made in this way, and many kinds of knowledge of spirit were filled in this spirit. It was the heart of Adam.
Therefore, for God the Creator, the Word is first, but for men, who are creatures, the image is former and the heart is latter.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, from now on, let us look into the heart of men in more detail.
According to the Webster’s dictionary, heart of a man is one’s innermost character, feelings, or inclinations or the central or innermost part.
But heart defined by God is, as explained briefly above, the spirit itself plus knowledge contained in it. At first, the heart of Adam was like an empty vessel or a blank sheet of paper.
And just as we put something in a vessel, God planted knowledge of truth such as love, meekness, peace, truthfulness, humbleness, and so on in Adam’s spirit. Adam could now contain knowledge of spirit.
Adam’s heart was the spirit itself that had the seed of life and the knowledge of life contained in it.
This is same as Adam’s spirit, so we can just call it his spirit. It wasn’t necessary to use the word, ‘heart’.
However, after Adam’s spirit died due to his sin, the word ‘heart’ and ‘spirit’ did not have the same meaning any more. After Adam’s spirit died, his knowledge of life began to leak out from his heart.
Instead, knowledge of untruth from the enemy devil and Satan came in through soul and filled his heart. Instead of love, hatred, envy, and jealousy came into him. Instead of peace, quarrel came in.
Humbleness changed into pride. Seeking others changed into seeking one’s own and having desires.
Likewise, after Adam’s fall, the heart of men came to the state of untruth. And instead of truth, the untruth covered up the seed of life. If there is only truth in one’s heart, we do not need the word, ‘heart’. We can just call it spirit. But because untruth came in and we cannot call it spirit, we now have to call it ‘heart’.
In men’s heart, there is seed of life given by God, the knowledge of untruth given by Satan, and, though little, knowledge of truth.
It is not that Adam’s knowledge of truth leaked out completely right after he sinned, but as time passed, the truth went out to the extent that knowledge of untruth came in. To make it easier, let us say heart of untruth is dirty heart and heart of truth is pure heart. The pure heart began to get stained with dirt, and now the heart is the mixture of pure heart and dirty heart.
The worldly people are mostly evil, but with their remaining knowledge of truth, they can have or act out something good.
But the remaining knowledge of truth is very little, and because people get more stained with untruth as time passes, they get more evil going towards the end of time.
But even though knowledge of truth remains in one’s heart, it does not mean that his spirit is alive. For example, let us say we plucked some flowers while they bloomed on the tree and put them in a vase.
Some flowers wither soon but there are other flowers that can last for a week or even longer. Then, are the flowers in the vase live or dead? For some time, they have the scent and are fresh. But because they were cut off from the root that is the source of life, they are already dead.
In the same way, men’s spirit was disconnected from God who is the source of life at the moment Adam sinned.
He could not receive the knowledge of life from God any more, and even though there is some knowledge of life remaining, it will finally disappear completely.
The Satan keeps on planting untruth in men’s spirit, so that they will completely have dirty heart.
You have heard many times how to revive the spirit that died in this way.
If you accept Jesus Christ as the Lord and receive the Holy Spirit, your spirit will be reactivated by the power of the Holy Spirit, and He will plant in us knowledge of spirit.
So as we continue our life in Christ after receiving the Holy Spirit, our heart that has been stained since Adam, begins to change into pure heart. The dirty heart disappears to the extent that we pray fervently to struggle against sin to bloodshed. To the extent that we practice God’s Word and accept knowledge of spirit and truth such as love, goodness, truthfulness, meekness, humbleness, we gain more pure heart.
As we keep on doing this, we can finally have only pure heart without any dirty heart.
It is the process of getting sanctified.
But some people do not try to change their heart even after receiving the Holy Spirit.
They profess they believe in God but still live in sins with dirty heart.
Or they try to throw away sins in the beginning but become lukewarm at some point and stop struggling against sin.
Then, what kind of state is this? Before, their hearts were becoming purer, but since they stopped the struggle against the sin, their hearts become dirtier again.
If they stay in dirty heart, namely untruthful heart, their seed of life cannot gain strength from the Holy Spirit.
As said in John 3:5, “Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” we cannot be saved just by receiving the Holy Spirit but when the water, namely the Word dwells in us.
Also, 1 Thessalonians 5:19 says, “Do not quench the Spirit.”
Even though we accepted the Lord and received the Holy Spirit, if we do not change our heart but remain as dirty heart, the Holy Spirit can be quenched. Then, we will not be saved.
Even if we received the Holy Spirit and changed, if we just stay at one point and stop changing, we have a name that we are alive, but we are dead, as said in Revelation 3:1.
Therefore, we should not stay at one point after receiving the Holy Spirit but get rid of sin diligently and fill up the knowledge of truth.
We have to keep on endeavoring without stop until we completely recover the pure heart.
[Conclusion]
Dear brothers and sisters, 2 Timothy 3:15 says, “And that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
God recorded the knowledge of truth in God’s heart on the Bible so that we may learn and understand God’s heart.
After receiving the Holy Spirit, if we keep this word in us, namely if we learn, hear, and accomplish it in our heart, we will resemble God’s heart.
To the extent that we resemble God, we will be prosperous and healthy on this earth, and in heaven, we will dwell closer to God’s throne.
Those who have accomplished pure heart having no blemish or spot and are faithful in all God’s house will enter the city of New Jerusalem which houses God’s throne and live there forever.
God the Father, who wants to give the best to His children, would like all of you to come in there.
I bless in the name of the Lord that you will become God’s true children who resemble the heart of the Father completely and dwell in the glory of New Jerusalem.