Spirituality, No. 2

RV68-01

Spirituality

Now we will take up the subject of spirituality. This is the eye salve that gives people spiritual discernment and gives them spiritual insight. This is one of the most valuable and important factors that any human being can possess. There are these basic requirements for applying this eye salve to your eyes.

Quench not the Holy Spirit

This verb "sbennumi" is in the present tense. So, when it says, "Quench not," it means, "Do not do it at any time." Constantly be in the position where you have not been negative to the Spirit of God. It is active, which means this is a decision that you yourself must make. No one else can quench the Holy Spirit for you. Only you can do it. Then it is very important to notice that this is an imperative. It is a command of God. We're always interested in: what is the will of God for me? What does God want me to do? Well, I can tell you that here is one thing that He wants you to do. Any time you find the imperative mood in the Greek language, you can just mark it down that this is something that God is telling Christians to do, and there are no options.

There is an area of weakness in the old sin nature that expresses itself in lasciviousness (in evil actions). There is an area of strength which expresses itself in asceticism and in legalism. In the old sin nature, there is this inclination to produce sins, and the inclination to produce human goods. These two are both acts of evil, because they come from the sin nature. That's why we say that human good is evil. Most of what happens in our society, under what people think is a good thing to do for people, is human good. It's an evil. Evil men have dominated the government of our republic for decades now. Today, we stand on the verge (on the precipice) of national disaster economically because evil men, productive of human good, have been so guiding the economy of our nation against scriptural principles, such that we have been on a course of self-destruction. Only the grace of God is going to enable us to have the time and the nerve (the capacity) to turn it around, with all the pain that that will involve.

The idea of quenching the Holy Spirit is resorting to this human good production from the area of strength. This strength produces this human good production, and that quality is quenching the Holy Spirit. In other words, quenching is saying, "No" to God the Holy Spirit. Quenching is soothing the old sin nature with human good. It is soothing the conscience with human good. The Holy Spirit is out of control of the life. The believer is out of fellowship with God the Father, and he remains so. Quenching takes the believer out of temporal fellowship and into carnality.

So, when we talk about the eye salve of spirituality, if we're going to apply it, the first thing that you have to face is being guilty of neutralizing God the Holy Spirit (saying "No" to Him). As you are open and sensitive to the leading of God the Holy Spirit, and as you have the Word of God stored in your human spirit, for God the Holy Spirit to put His searchlight upon and to pinpoint areas of divine viewpoint truth that you need to act upon, you have to make a positive or negative decision. You make a positive or negative reaction to that leading. This is the area in which we destroy our spirituality. When God the Holy Spirit burdens us to do something, and we say, "No," He is burdening us in the direction of some divine good production. We say, "No." That is quenching the Holy Spirit. We neutralize His control in our lives.

So, this is the first point of examination. Where, in your experience, do you honestly feel a tinge of conscience because you know that the Lord is leading you in a certain direction? You know that the Lord is directing you to do something. The Lord is laying upon your heart to do something that He has enabled you to have the capacity to do. He has given you the capacity to do it. You are able to do this thing. He has prepared you. He has supplied you in some way to be able to do this thing, and you refuse to do it. You may soothe your conscience by talking about doing it. But you never do it because there's a sacrifice that may be involved – because there's a price to be paid. There's something in your life that has to be set aside in order to perform this which the Spirit of God is laying upon you. Quench not the spirit.

Grieve not the Holy Spirit

This word is also present tense. So, again, the Bible is saying, "At no time are you to grieve the Holy Spirit." It is also active, which again indicates that the decision is up to you, and you will decide. Whether you do or not will be determined by some action that you take. Furthermore, it is again imperative – a second divine commandment. Here are two things that you know are the will of God for your life.

Walk by Means of the Holy Spirit

This is a very fitting word. "Peripateo" means to walk. You know what walking is like. Every time you put your foot out in front, you have put yourself into an incipient fall. You have put yourself into a potential fall. You've had that experience where you're walking on a sidewalk, and there's something high, and your foot hits that little ledge, and your body is moving forward. If you don't get that foot back out there, you go all the way down. Therefore, it is a fitting symbol to talk about a Christian walking in such a way that he is leaning on God the Holy Spirit for the guidance, such that, if it's not there, he will fail spiritually.

What this is talking about is using the techniques of the Christian life under the guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Those are the techniques of the Christian life which you should know. If you don't, I'd suggest you get the studies on that: the technique of confessing sins; the technique of faith rest; the technique of Bible study; the technique of spirituality; the technique of thinking divine viewpoint; and, the technique of prayer. All of these techniques of the Christian life are an expression of walking in dependence on the Spirit of God. It means to walk by supernatural power instead of by human power. The Christian is tempted to depend on his willpower and on his sincere intentions to carry him through. A lot of Christians never know what it is to walk by means of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. They walk by sincerity. They walk by what they think that most Christians agree that they should do and they should be. They walk by means of the opinions of other people. They walk by means of their determined willpower. They do not walk by means of the supernatural enablement of the Spirit of God.

Walking by means of the Spirit, then, is appropriating His divine power through the Word of God that you have stored in your soul. Walking by means of the strength of the old sin nature will take you out of fellowship. Walking by means of the Holy Spirit will keep you in temporal fellowship. It will keep you in that inner circle.

So, here again, I should point out that this is in the present tense. Constantly you are to walk by means of the Spirit. It is active voice. You are the one who determines whether you do or not. And again it is a command. It's imperative. All three of these are part of the will of God for you as an individual believer.

From these three commands which go out to every Christian, relative to the Holy Spirit who is indwelling him, it is evident that personal sins and personal acts of evil, in the form of human good, are a hindrance to spirituality. They are hindrances to the filling of the Spirit. When you're cranking out human good, you're not filled with the Spirit. When you're cranking out acts of sin, you are not filled with the Holy Spirit. When you're walking under the control of the sin nature, you are not filled with the Spirit. When you are not filled with the Spirit, you are out of the status of spirituality, and your eyes are blind to spiritual realities.

The Solution is Confession

All of the cults teach their people that the only way they can be forgiven for grieving the Spirit; for quenching Him; and, for not walking by means of the Spirit of God is to produce some kind of personal penance – some kind of personal punishment. It's not a matter of how you feel. It's a matter of confessing; believing what the Word of God says; and, going on. We are to imitate God, as Ephesians 5:1 and Ephesians 1:6 commands us. We are not to be imitating the unbeliever, as 1 John 1:6 and 1 Corinthians 3:3 speak of. Only the Holy Spirit can enable us to perform that kind of imitation.

With that before us, there is another clarification on how to be spiritual. This is how you apply the eye salve. The Christian who is qualifying on all three of these points, is, of course, a Christian to whom the Spirit of God is ministering, and he is giving you understanding. He is giving you direction that you're not even aware of. He is closing doors that you would be foolish enough to go through. He is opening doors that you could not open yourself. He is directing your life so that He is bringing to cross into your path the things that bring blessing, and the people that bring blessing. The decisions that you are led to are the decisions of the Holy Spirit.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that because you're not hearing voices; that you're not having visions; and, that you're not having some ecstatic emotional experience, that God the Holy Spirit is not leading you. He doesn't lead that way. He leads with a gentle hand. When you are headed for sin, you will feel His hand on your back, pushing you away, but it's a gentle hand. You can shove Him aside, and then he will permit you to go. His leading is very definitely there when you are in the position for Him to be able to lead you. When you are in that carnality status, He can't lead. He has to be pleading with you to get straightened out.

Spiritual Maturity

Every now and then, some religious leader who has been effective is described as a great spiritual giant. Some religious leader has very often been a pioneer in Christian activity, and has indeed set in motion things that God has used in a very mighty way. People talk about him as a spiritual giant. That's blasphemy. That's nonsense. That is totally unscriptural. There are no spiritual giants. I want you to get over that intimidation that those of you who are sitting here are in some way second class Christians, or are in some way, some place down the line, far from being a quality kind of person. That is wrong. There are people sitting here who are in the position of spirituality to the same degree, and in the identical way, that the greatest Christian leaders have ever been, including the apostle Paul. There is nobody here who is in the status of spirituality, who is less spiritual than the apostle Paul, who was one of the greatest Christians of all times. So, spirituality is a state. It is a matter of relationship to God the Holy Spirit. It's absolute. There are no degrees.

However, when we come to the second factor here, spiritual maturity, that is relative. That is a matter of growth. The Bible recognizes varying degrees of spiritual maturity. In 1 John 2:12-14, we have a classification of spiritual maturity – people who are at different levels in their Christian life in terms of their personal maturity: "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name." These "children" are babes (beginners) – beginners in terms of maturity: "I write unto you, fathers, because you have known Him, that is from the beginning." There you have mature adult Christians. Then in between these two classifications, he says, "I write unto you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one." Here, he names a classification that's in between – those who have not become adult Christians (who have not reached adult maturity, so to speak), but who are moving. They are not just kids anymore in maturity. They have grown up some, but they have not grown up in their spiritual maturity structure to the degree that has carried them on to the super grace level. He says, "I write unto you, little children, because you have known the Father. I've written unto you, fathers, because you have known Him; that is, from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one."

This is a fascinating group of three verses that we won't try to exposit now, but the main point here is to establish that there are different grades (different levels) of spiritual maturity. Every believer is supposed to be building a spiritual maturity structure in his soul. You're acquainted with that in its five basic facets. But not every Christian has moved to the degree of development in each of those facets, as have other Christians. You move from spiritual infancy to the fully developed spiritual maturity structure at the super grace level of living. Those of you who have reached super grace – you're the fathers in the faith.

This is why it is such a tragedy what we do sometimes when some public personality in the entertainment world; in the sports world; or, in the political world becomes a Christian. What do Christians want to do? Here is this baby who doesn't know how to do anything but babble in terms of spiritual things because he's so immature. The first thing they do is they have a banquet, and have this character out to speak. All he knows is the doctrine of salvation. He has just barely stepped across into the Christian life. As he is under the control of the Holy Spirit, he is as spiritual as the most mature believer around, but he does not have spiritual maturity, because it takes time to develop it. Spiritual maturity is something that is on a sliding scale. You can go up to super grace, or you can come down to complete babyhood. You go either way. A person enters the Christian life at babyhood. When he enters, he's got very little to say.

This is fascinating. I made a sort of a study over the years as I've had opportunity to listen to public personality types who are brought into Christian groups to speak, who have just come into the Christian life. I have listened to what they say, and, boy, they give themselves away every time. They are often disorientated to spiritual truth, and the people who promote them often get burned, because they find that, in time, these people go off the deep end into the charismatic movement, or else they discover that these people have only had an emotional experience, but they have not had a salvation experience. So, suddenly they're embarrassed because they had somebody up here that was being promoted. Other men have looked back and have given testimony of how, because they had a name that was known, they were manipulated, and they were exploited by Christian groups, often in order to raise funds. They look back upon it. They didn't know what was happening. They didn't know enough to say, "No." They resent it. They have a hard time with bitterness over being treated in that way.

Mature Christians should have said, "Look, you've just come into the Christian life. You have a lot of learning. You've got a human spirit that is an empty warehouse. Start putting the Word of God into it. Start storing up divine viewpoint. The time will come when the Lord will have something very important for you to say, and you will know how to say it in such a way that God the Holy Spirit is leading you, and people will be blessed, and they won't be hurt by what you say." Thousands of Christians are hurt by people who are trying to say something, but they do not have spiritual maturity.

Spiritual maturity doesn't mean that you've been a Christian for many years, and it doesn't mean that you've been going to church for many years. Spiritual maturity is entirely the degree to which you have developed a maturity structure in your soul through the doctrinal intake into your human spirit. There are a lot of people who sit in church, and they get very little out of the service – not because there's not substance given, but because they're not capable or interested in taking it in. So, there's a difference between spirituality and spiritual maturity.

Now, there is a relationship between these two. There is a relationship between spirituality and spiritual growth. The Christian who spends maximum time in a status of spirituality is the one who is going to grow most rapidly toward spiritual maturity. You don't make forward progress in maturity if you're in carnality. But both spirituality and spiritual growth are commanded in the Word of God. Let's read Ephesians 5:18 again: "And be not drunk with wine, which is in excess, but be filled with the Spirit. That is in the form of an imperative (a divine command) to be spiritual. But the Bible also commands us with equal forcefulness to develop spiritual maturity. We have that recorded for us in 2 Peter 3:18, which says, "But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." So, there again, in the Greek, you have a command to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What Peter is talking about is spiritual maturity.

There are certain sins against God the Holy Spirit which will affect both spirituality and growth. These sins will fall into two categories. There are certain sins that unbelievers commit which affect their spiritual condition in a very definite way. One of these is described for us in Matthew 12:31-32. It is a thing that is performed by an unbeliever, and it is blasphemy against God the Holy Spirit: "Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven men. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven Him, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in the age to come."

It is very important to understand these two verses, because the charismatics love to take this passage and use it in the form of a scare tactic against those who have studied the Scriptures, and we have seen that what the charismatics do is a violation of what the Bible teaches. Therefore, whatever they think is happening to them, the Word of God says that they are deluded. Therefore, we are aware of the fact that Satan himself is the one who is giving them the impression that they are dealing with God. These two verses apply to the dispensation (the era of time) when Jesus Christ was here on this earth. It is the rejection of Jesus Christ during the dispensation of the Law. Those who were present, at the time that He was ministering, had an opportunity to listen to what He was saying, and they had an opportunity to watch His works of healing, and to watch His miraculous acts. All of these things were the credentials that He was setting forth to prove that He was the anointed (the promised) Messiah to Israel. They sat there; they listened to him; they watched what He did; and, then if they said blasphemous things against Him, which they did, it would be forgiven them.

However, everything that Jesus Christ did was the same way that you and I do things. He did these things in the power of the Spirit of God. He, in His humanity, ministered the same way that you and I must minister. That is the significant thing about the temptation in the wilderness. He met every one of those temptations on the basis of a human being who is working by means of doctrinal information, and by the power of the Spirit of God. He did not resort to His deity to meet the temptations of Satan. You and I have no deity to resort to. We can only meet Satan on the basis of our humanity. This verse is talking about Jesus Christ performing miracles by means of the Holy Spirit. It was a demonstration, and it was a testimony from God the Holy Spirit.

For you to stand there in the presence of Jesus Christ; to see these things performed; to hear His word; and, then to say that He was performing these works by means of the power of Satan, was a sin which doomed that person to the lake of fire. It was an unpardonable violation of God's will and of the moral code.

You can see that this sin cannot be committed by anybody today, because Jesus Christ is not here on earth. We cannot see Him performing His miracles; we cannot listen to His words directly; and, we cannot, therefore, make a decision – positive or negative toward His works. This was only possible during the era of His ministry on this earth. These who saw Him in action, and who attributed that to Satan, doomed themselves. They could have no spirituality. They could have no spiritual growth because they were unbelievers to begin with.

Resistance against the Holy Spirit

So, in the time that Christ walked this earth, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit was one of the things that doomed a person spiritually. Today, resistance against the testimony of the Holy Spirit relative to the gospel, as John 16 describes for us (the convicted work of the Holy Spirit) – a person dying after that negative act will go to the lake of fire.

Lying to the Holy Spirit

Today, you and I may lie to God the Holy Spirit in a variety of ways. God's grace has readjusted His ways of dealing with us when we lie to the Spirit of God. We don't have instant death, or the preachers would be a lot busier with funeral services. But lying to the Holy Spirit has just as disastrous results to you personally and spiritually in your relationship to God the Father – to lie to the Holy Spirit in a variety of ways.

When was the last time you said that you were going to do something that you felt God wanted you to do, and then you didn't do it? You lied to Him. When was the last time when you personally were guilty of some deceit – you who represent the person of Jesus Christ, in effect, lying to the Spirit of God that indwells you? Lying is a very devastating thing to a person's spirituality. It is a devastating thing to spiritual maturity.

Quenching the Holy Spirit

However, we exercise all kinds of energy; we lay all kinds of plans; we exhaust ourselves; we run around; we maneuver; and, we try to get everything lined up. But the one thing we don't do, for whatever we're pursuing, is to pray about it, and to ask God to give it to us. When we have a personal problem, it is not a small thing to neglect praying for that personal problem. These moral problems you may struggle with, and these mental attitude problems you struggle with – one of the best things you can do for solving that is prayer. And when you don't, it's quenching the Spirit of God, and it's hindering your spirituality and your spiritual maturity.

Grieving the Holy Spirit

You can see then that spirituality is not a feeling. This is a thing that is often misrepresented about being a spiritual Christian: "Don't you just feel spiritual?" We joke about that sometimes because it is so ludicrous. When we got these soft chairs, I promised you that you'd feel more spiritual. Some of you have been coming up and telling me that you do. Well, you may feel something, but it's not spiritual that you're feeling. I'm sure it has improved your feelings, but it is not a matter of your relationship to God the Holy Spirit. It is not an emotional thing. It is pseudo spirituality. That is something people drum up, and it is always emotional. Pseudo spiritual (the fake thing) is emotional.

Walking in the Spirit

You're not spiritual because you have some kind of external exuberance. There is always somebody who thinks that he can be spiritual because he gets really hot. He loves to say, "Praise the Lord;" "Thank God;" "Amen;" and, "Hallelujah." That's OK if you want to do that. Just be sure you don't think that that's giving you a closer walk with the Lord. There are some people that think they should walk around grinning like a baboon all the time, and that that is going to prove that they are spiritual, because they're just pleasant people. Christian should be pleasant.

I've already told you that I went through that once when I was a teenager. I was riding home from high school on a Chicago street car. I thought, "You know, Christians should be very pleasant people. It would show that they are spiritual people, and they should sort of have a smile on their face." So, I decided I was always going to be a little smiley. So I went around smiling. The conductor looked at me suspiciously when I got on. The motorman looked at me suspiciously when I got off. I got a cramp in my jaw and my face muscles, and I've never smiled since. It has nothing to do with spirituality. It is a totally stupid personal deception. But there's always somebody that thinks these externals are going to make it for you with the Lord.

Clapping of the hands is another one. Dancing in the aisles – oh, that is a great expression of spirituality. Song leaders are always like this. They like to get people to smile so that they're more spiritual, and they talk to these people: "You don't look very spiritual. I want you all to smile. Some guy is sitting there. His wife made a terrible supper. He's got gas on his stomach. And so he's smiling, but not because he's spiritual. It's the grimacing of the pain on his face, and it has nothing to do with his personal life with the Lord.

There's no end of this stupidity that is imposed upon Christians by the professional preacher. The only way you're going to escape it is that you understand what the Bible sets forth in these basic qualities of: grieve not the Spirit; quench not the Spirit; and, walk by means of the Holy Spirit. That's the eye salve that gives you spirituality; that's what gives you real discernment; and, that's the thing that counts with the Lord. It isn't what kind of a person you are in personality type. All personality types can be spiritual, and all personality types can move forward in spiritual growth. You will all express it in a different way, according to the personality type you are. Some of you are the hand-clapping type. Some of you are not. It doesn't matter. The issue is being rightly related to God the Holy Spirit.

That's why we say it's the most important verse for an unbeliever to know in the Bible is John 3:16. And the most important verse for a Christian to know is 1 John 1:9. If you have those two verses, you're on the right track. You've got it made, because that gives you salvation on the one side; and, it gives you the basis of spirituality on the other.

Furthermore, we should stress that spirituality is not human capacity in action. In 1 Corinthians 10:3, the apostle Paul said, "And did all eat the same spiritual food." He was speaking about Israel in the wilderness: "They did all eat the same spiritual food." It was not their human capacity. It was the spiritual food that they had that enabled them to enjoy the victories that they enjoyed in that wilderness experience, because they all had the same spiritual food. Moses was teaching them the Word of God. It is not because you are a talented person. It is not because you hustle for the Lord. It is not abilities that you have. It is not your desire to be a meek and humble person. It's not because you're some great personality. None of those things have to do with making you a spiritual person. It is a result of the Word of God; your positive volition response; and, the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes Christians feel that the way they are going to become spiritual is if they read the biographies of great missionaries, or they read the biographies of men who have made an impact in the Christian world, like D. L. Moody and Billy Sunday. But that also is nonsense. You may read these biographies, and you may enjoy to see how God has worked in the lives of these men, and it may be an example of what God can do. But to try to emulate (to imitate) something in their pattern is not what is going to make you spiritual. Those are all externals. Spirituality is not a system of works. It's not a system of self-humiliation. It's not a system of even sitting and meditating – practicing the presence of God. It's not positive thinking. It's not reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, and then acting upon it. All of that confusion is out there among Christians.

Spirituality is never human energy. It's never your drive. It's never what you do to impress God or to please Him. Christians easily become mutual admiration societies, because they put up phony fronts of spirituality, and suddenly somebody in the congregation becomes highly esteemed because he seems to be a spiritual person. You can't tell it by looking at him on the outside. His level of spirituality is what God can tell. His actions are all you can tell. Indeed, the actions of a spiritual man should reflect certain qualities that are ennobling to those about them. But you can't really tell whether he's spiritual or not. You have to get that from his testimony. You can tell something about his spiritual maturity. That you can spot.

Legalism

So, let's sum it up. The Christian life is entirely a matter of being filled with the Spirit. This filling of the Holy Spirit is spirituality. It is secured by the technique of 1 John 1:9 of confessing known sins. The only thing that God blesses and values is what is done in this status of spirituality. What is done outside of that, He does not bless.

So, Romans 8:8 says, "So then, they who are in the flesh (they who are controlled by the sin nature) cannot please God. But those who are controlled by the Spirit of God – they are the ones, and they alone, who can please God. This provision that God has made for us is a wonderful thing – that we can have this eye salve; that we can apply it; and, that we can thereby secure the enlightenment and avoid the blindness that was characteristic of the people in Laodicea.

In the Old Testament, in Zechariah 4:6, the prophet, in speaking on this same principle says, "Then he answered and spoke unto me, saying, 'This is the Word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel saying, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,' said the Lord of Hosts.'" That, folks, is how all of us are going to make it– not by human might, and not by human power, but by what God produces through us. The spiritual Christian is the one who has the eye salve of spirituality on his spiritual eyes. He's the one who's savvy. The one who does not have this on his eyes is like the blind Laodiceans: smug; arrogant; and, completely out of touch with reality. Thank God for the provision of the eye salve of spirituality.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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