Thursday’s Blog – Divine or Natural?

Thursday’s Blog – Divine or Natural?

Proverbs 6:12-13 – A worthless person, a wicked man, walks with a perverse mouth. He winks with his eyes, he shuffles his feet (gives signals). He points with his fingers. Perversity is in his heart, he devises evil continually; he sows discord. Therefore his calamity shall come suddenly; suddenly he shall be broken, without remedy.

Bible Challenges and Comments

When is the last time you checked your body language? For the world; communication can be as common as a wink and as understandable as a shuffle of the foot. One can even redirect the house pet with his or her fingers. Evil then is continual threat to the saint of God. Presently in our studies at church on Monday evenings we are reading through the book, “He that is Spiritual” by Lewis Sperry Chafer, a great help resource for understanding the gift of God and the absolute Spiritual nature of the believer. The saint is either absolutely filled with his or her natural mind of evil, or they are absolutely filled with the Divine mind of Christ by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

I need to share a quote from the book since I believe it may help us to understand the two natures that are very much seeking to control our daily activity. Mr. Chafer in describing the natural man and the spiritual man from 1 John 1:1-10 makes the following statement; Page 147 referring to 1 John 1:10.

(“The source of sin then, is the sin nature, rather than the new divine nature. This important truth is pointed out in this same epistle in a passage which primarily teaches that the Christian does not now practice sin as he did before he received the new divine nature, but which also teaches that sin cannot be TRACED to the divine nature as its source”.)

This is an important statement about the two natures that war for control in the life of every saint of God. If you are born-again; or more literally; born from above then the Spirit of God lives (not with you) but in you (Romans 8:8-11). So then! Sin cannot be traced to the New Divine nature of Grace. Sin can only be traced to the natural nature of our old self. Thus the Spiritual Person has no body language that is understood by the world around them. 1 Corinthians 2:1-16.

And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him."

But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 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. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For "who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ.