https://youtu.be/xZbibZ66pnc
In our verse-by-verse study of Romans we are between chapters 7 and 8 in a topical study of spirituality
When we stopped last time we noted that the mechanics for recovery from sin nature control of the soul is by confessing our known sins to God. This is also known as rebound that is a technical term that describes the recovery of the filling of the Spirit and recovery of fellowship with God after committing personal sin.
Every time a believer sins after salvation, he loses the filling of the Spirit and sin nature control of the soul and quenching and/or grieving the Spirit replaces fellowship with God.
Loss of the filling of the Spirit means the believer is outside of God's spiritual power system so the believer's soul is controlled by the sin nature. God the Holy Spirit indwells the body of the Church Age believer. The old sin nature also indwells the believer's body. So the major issue for the Church Age believer after salvation is: Will God or satan control the believer's life?
Satan wants you to do human good; God wants you to do divine good. When we are filled with the spirit the believer produces divine good, when the sin nature controls the soul the believer produces human good.
The guard at the gate of our soul regarding our choice in this matter is our volition. The old sin nature presents constant temptations to our soul, and our volition chooses for or against those temptations.
When first saved, the Holy Spirit enters us into God's spiritual power system through the filling of the Spirit, so initially He controls our soul so we are spiritual. The first time we commit personal sin, the Holy Spirit no longer controls our soul but instead the old sin nature controls our soul and we are described in God's Word as being carnal.
The origin of every sin we commit is our volition. It is not sinful to be tempted. It is sinful when your volition succumbs to that temptation and you choose to sin. So at any given moment your volition decides whether you are controlled by God Holy Spirit or by your old sin nature.
You must use your volition again to choose to recover your status inside of God's spiritual power system so that the Holy Spirit again controls your soul. You must use your volition to use God's recovery method described in 1 John 1:9.
Recovery of fellowship with God was the same in the Old Testament as it is in the New Testament.
Psa 32:5, "I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide. I said, `I will acknowledge my transgression to the Lord.' And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. How about that (Selah)?"
1John 1:9; "If we acknowledge our sins to God, He is faithful and righteous with the result that He forgives us our (known) sins and He purifies us from all wrongdoing (all unknown sins)."
All the sins of human history were imputed to Jesus Christ on the cross and judged by God the Father's justice so Jesus Christ's work on the cross provides salvation, and restored fellowship with God.
The way of salvation is faith in Jesus Christ. The way of spirituality is to keep on being filled with the spirit.
When we fail God's remedy is to cite or name the known sins in our life that took us out of fellowship with God. The only way we can reenter God's spiritual power system is to recover the filling of the Spirit,
Those sins we cite already went to court and were judged so 1John 1; 9; tells us to simply "homologeo" our sins that means to cite as in a courtroom case, to name or to acknowledge the sin or sins.
Every believer is a priest who represents himself before God. So in the privacy of his own priesthood, the believer simply names the sins he has committed, and "God is faithful (God always does the same thing) and righteous (because God already judged those sins in Jesus Christ) to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
That's the only way anyone can ever recover spirituality. Apart from this rebound technique, we would be carnal from the first time we sinned after salvation and there would be no spirituality, no divine good production, and no plan of God for our lives,
There has to be a grace system for recovering fellowship. Yet just as there are so many false Gospels being presented that add human works or gimmicks to faith in Christ, there are many erroneous ideas that involve human works regarding what we must do to be spiritual.
If you add anything to faith in Christ, there is no salvation. People want to help God, but God doesn't need our help. Just as He provided everything necessary for our salvation by grace He also provides everything necessary for the recovery of spirituality by grace after salvation.
Therefore, spirituality is a matter of using the rebound technique. As long as we live on this earth, we will continue to commit personal sins so we must learn what sin is in order to identify the we commit.
We do not reach sinless perfection in this life. The closest we come is positional sanctification, whereby we are entered into union with Christ at the moment of salvation on the basis current positional truth.
At salvation the Holy Spirit indwells your body, 1 Cor 3:16. The filling of the Spirit is the Holy Spirit controlling your life through your soul. Indwelling is permanent (1 Cor 6:19-20; 1Cor 3:16; regardless of your spiritual status.
The believer who is out of fellowship is described in 1Cor 3:1-3 and Rom 8:5-8 as being carnal. When we are carnal, we are also described as grieving or quenching the Spirit.
We Grieve the Spirit in satan's cosmic system of arrogance and we are commanded in Eph 4:30 to "not grieve the Spirit."
We quench the Spirit in satan's cosmic system of antagonism. We are commanded in 1Thes 5:19 to " not quench the Spirit."
So grieving or quenching the Spirit means being out of fellowship in a status quo of sin nature control of the soul or carnality that left unchecked by rebound results in reversionism.
You are either spiritual or carnal. Both are an absolute status that finds the believer either in fellowship with God or out of fellowship with God. In other words, there are no degrees of spirituality; it's either 100 percent or zero percent.
The relative status of the Christian life is related to spiritual growth from metabolized doctrine resident in the soul but spirituality is not relative so because it is an absolute there are no varying degrees of spirituality.
In the absolute status of carnality, there is also the concept of relative retrogression that is related to the production of satanic evil from negative volition to God's Word of Truth.
Just as positive volition to God's Word leads to more positive volition negative volition to God's Word leads to more negative volition.
So there are three different categories of status for each believer: the filling of the Holy Spirit, grieving of the Holy Spirit, or quenching of the Holy Spirit. Each is the subject of a mandate in God's Word of Truth.
The misunderstanding of spirituality is the reason many believers do not advance to spiritual maturity because without the filling of the Holy Spirit a believer cannot advance to spiritual maturity. Spirituality is the link between positional sanctification at salvation and experiential sanctification in spiritual maturity.
A believer who is not controlled by the Holy Spirit cannot be distinguished from an unbeliever because when the old sin nature controls the believer's soul, a believer can do and does do the same things that unbelievers do.
There is a great danger in not rebounding immediately when you sin because carnality is perpetuated and perpetuated carnality, entangles you into satan's cosmic system, and enters you into the stages of Christian degeneracy.
The ministry of God the Holy Spirit to Church Age believers is described as enablement. This enablement is only functional when we are filled with the Spirit inside of God's operational spiritual power system that becomes our very own beachhead in the spiritual battle we are engaged in during our biological life in time.
Enablement is the availability of the power of the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit after salvation for every believer in Jesus Christ.
The same omnipotent power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is the power available to every Church Age believer.
Eph 1:19-20, "And what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who have believed for the working of His superior power toward us who believe as displayed in the function of immense strength.
v20 This power that made operational by means of Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in heaven.
So to be spiritual the believer must consistently deploy the power of the Holy Spirit and to do that the believer must consistently execute the mandate of Eph 5:18, to " stop sinning and keep on being filled with the Spirit."
We see from this that the believer who reaches spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, or spiritual maturity, and glorifies God does so from the use of spiritual resources that are only revealed and explained in God's Word of Truth and understood under the filling and teaching ministries of God the Holy Spirit.
This means that as long as the believer is alive on this earth in a biological body, there is no substitute for Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, and there never will be a substitute for the problem solving devices.
Problem solving devices have limited application until your relationship with God is established through metabolized doctrine that is resident and circulation in your stream of consciousness. This is your spiritual life.
This brings us to a brief look at the doctrine of the heart of the soul.
The Biblical nouns for heart always refer to the right lobe of the soul. The Hebrew word "lebh" and the Greek word "kardia" are both translated "heart" in God's Word. Outside of the Bible both are used for the physical heart, but the Bible does not use them to refer to the physical heart.
The usage of the words for heart is based on an analogy because just as the physical heart is the pump that circulates blood throughout the body thereby enabling and supporting physical life, likewise the right lobe of the soul circulates metabolized doctrine in the thinking that enables and supports the spiritual life of the believer.
The doctrine is actually first understood in the left lobe that is called the "nous" in the Greek, but it is in the right lobe or heart where it is actually understood and deployed.
In the analogy what the biological heart does for the body the soul's heart does for the soul. The biological heart pumps blood, the soul's heart pumps data.
God designed the right lobe to be dominant and to control the entire soul. Whenever you are logical, analytical, or categorical in your thinking, you are using your heart.
We see this in 1Sam 16:7. Since the heart is designed to dominate the soul, all other parts must be subordinated to it, especially emotion.
God's justice tests and evaluates the believer's heart. Jer 17:10, "I, the Lord, search the heart (for metabolized doctrine) and test the emotions (to see if they are subordinate to that doctrine).
The word translated "mind" in these verses in the NASB is the Hebrew word "kilyaw" that refers to the emotions. The KJV translates it "reins" which is better.
Jer 20:12, "Yet O Lord of armies, You who have tested the righteous, who sees the emotions and the heart."
Psa 26:1-2, "Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, because I have trusted in the Lord and I do not slide into reversionism.
v2 Examine me, O Lord, and test my emotions and my heart." We see here that one of the major considerations in the function of God's justice is the relationship between the heart and the emotions.
Prov 23:7, "As a man thinks in his heart, so he is." The Lord looks at your heart so he can evaluate how much doctrine is circulating through it.
Prov 17:22, "A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones." Having a joyful heart means you share God's happiness as a problem-solving device in the thinking of right lobe (heart) of the soul.
Prov 15:13-15, "A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but when the heart is sad, the spirit is broken.
v14 The heart of the intelligent seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly.
v15 All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast."
God's happiness in the heart from metabolized doctrine resident in the stream of consciousness of the heart makes for a cheerful face, a marvelous life, and animation. But the spirit is broken when the heart is sad, depressed, or complaining.
The believer's motivation for learning more doctrine comes from the doctrine that is already been stored in the heart. The continual feast is the result of Bible doctrine feeding the heart.
Prov 18:12, "Before his downfall, a person's heart is arrogant; but humility leads to honor from virtue."
This tells us that arrogance controls the losers right lobe (heart) but humility that is teachable from grace, doctrinal and authority orientation controls the winners right lobe (heart) because there can never be any true honor a person learns understands and deploys God's Word of Truth. 2Cor 13:8;