Rom 13:8; Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
In our continuing study of the doctrine of love, we are presently discussing virtue love that is based in humility as compared with pseudo love that is based in arrogance.
Last time we saw that impersonal love is a major problem solving device in the Christian way of life. Contradictions cannot exist in the Christian way of life, and believers must account for their thoughts, decisions, and actions in definable terms.
This establishes the priority of the Word of God that defines every part of God's will, plan, and purpose for our lives.
This means that when the rate of learning of Bible doctrine exceeds the rate of forgetting Bible doctrine, the believer advances in the plan of God for the Church Age. When the rate of forgetting Bible doctrine is greater than the rate of learning, then the believer retrogresses and accumulates garbage in the subconscious of the heart or the right lobe and enters into the three stages of Christian degeneracy.
Ignorance is the disaster of the Christian way of life. Ignorance results in the malfunction of impersonal love and is often the source of many of the problems that believers encounter in the Christian life.
Very few people are loved the way they want to be loved or treated the way they want to be treated. Because of this, people develop a subjective arrogance. This creates frustrations that distract from Bible doctrine and destroys one's personal love for God and occupation with Christ that is to be the true focus of the Christian life.
This, results in the destruction of human relationships, whether friendship, romance, or marriage. As long as people react to others it is impossible for any virtue to exist and the reaction inevitably leads to eyes on self, eyes on people, and eyes on things. The resultant fragmentation causes the believer to become involved in the arrogance and emotional complex of sins.
Eyes on self is arrogance. This makes you selfish or self-centered.
Eyes on people is lust. This is where you become frustrated by comparing yourself with others, thinking that others are getting better treatment, and are the recipients of a better category of love.
Eyes on things is covetousness. This is a source of sins related to arrogance. This is why people in relationships with other people become jealous, bitter, turn to self pity and become implacable. This is why they slander and malign other people.
Preoccupation with self, people and things also creates role model arrogance.
Role is defined as the proper or customary function of a person. Society and people in general have assigned certain customary functions to certain activities in life. These people are then expected to function in a certain way.
When anyone departs from their assigned role model, they are condemned, rejected, criticized, and maligned. Yet those who criticize are also sinning and operating under a double standard.
Such criticism implies that certain sins are worse than others, when from God's perspective all sins are the same except for the seven sins described in Prov 6:16-19.
People like to see everything in its proper place, and resent any deviation in assigned thought, action, or personality. This is especially true of legalistic believers who function in self-righteous and crusader arrogance.
When someone deviates from their " proper place", society rises up and condemns and destroys the person who stepped "out of line", but in reality, this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, because one sinner is just condemning another sinner.
This means that society has developed a double standard, one standard for the role model, and one standard for self. Of course, self always remains uncondemned while there is the constant criticism, slander, and maligning of others.
Individuals excuse themselves for their own sins and failures, while simultaneously condemning the role model for the identical sins and failures.
Among Christians, role model arrogance manufactures hypocrisy and legalism, two of the characteristics of self-righteous arrogance.
Role model arrogance causes believers to fail because of lack of personal love for God and occupation with Christ that enable impersonal virtue love for others.
Role model arrogance manufactures hypocrisy in church leaders and legalism in the congregation. Role model arrogance ignores the basic doctrine that all believers after salvation continue to have an OSN and continue to commit personal sin that is compatible with the lust pattern of their OSN and their ignorance of Bible doctrine.
In the role model arrogance and the feet of clay syndrome, you cannot impose impossible perfect standards on others while you ignore the fact that you have also sinned and are possibly committing worse sins than those who you condemn.
This is the principle that TLJC was discussing in Matt 7:1-5;
In role model arrogance, both the church leaders and congregation are distracted from the cognition of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age and the execution of the PPOG as the priority of life.
Without consistent perception of Bible doctrine under the mentorship of God the Holy Spirit that results in the development of impersonal love of all mankind, the freedom of self- determination is destroyed, and both the privacy of the priesthood and the tranquil environment for cognition of Bible doctrine are replaced by some form of spiritual tyranny.
Role model arrogance often distracts congregations from doctrine by emphasizing the personality of the communicator rather than the message. The principle in the communication of Bible Doctrine is that it's not the man; it's the message.
No one is perfect and God's word teaches us how to handle our sins in the privacy of our priesthood by simply acknowledging any known sin to God alone. 1John 1:9; Psa 51:4;
With Bible doctrine as the number one priority in life, you learn to love God the Father, and you learn to insert the virtue of impersonal love into human relationships. From knowledge of Bible doctrine you find your true perfect role model, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
When unrealistic expectations are combined with role model arrogance, you have established false standards for your life. You have developed an arrogant system of mores that hinder the execution of the PPOG and create spiritual failure.
The purpose of the PPOG for the Church Age is to create mature believers who are invisible heroes and who are winners in life; not people who are involved in unrealistic expectations and role model arrogance.
As we have seen, role model arrogance plus unrealistic expectation always has three inevitable results.
With eyes are on yourself. You have a double standard that is used to justify yourself and to rationalize your sins into a system of relative rather than absolute concepts.
With eyes are on people, results in legalism, gossip, maligning, slander, and the whole area of arrogant reaction, such as bitterness, vindictiveness, and revenge motivation.
With eyes on things, the believer resents and criticizes others because they possess things or prosperity that they do not possess. In this case the believer may become a Christian socialist because they resent those who have been blessed with material prosperity.
One of the results of having eyes on things is the arrogant frustration of seeing the wicked prosper. The Bible answers the question of why the wicked prosper. However, when this question remains unanswered, it can distract believers from the PPOG and their very own unique blessings that are part of their portfolio of invisible assets.
The prosperity of another person should never distract the believer from Bible doctrine, from personal love for God the Father, from occupation with the person of Christ or from impersonal love for all mankind.
The Bible reveals the reasons why the wicked prosper. They may prosper because in some way they are identified with an invisible hero such as a father, mother, brother, sister, boss, or someone with whom they have a relationship, who has advanced to spiritual maturity and became an invisible hero.
Association with an invisible hero while alive and even after death down to the third generation means that a very wicked person can prosper.
The wicked believer may also prosper because of logistical grace, sent down the grace pipeline from the justice of God to the indwelling righteousness of God in every believer.
The wicked may prosper because there are evil people in an evil society.
The prosperity of another person should never distract any believer from Bible doctrine as first priority.