The Spirit of God - Part 1

The Spirit of God can be very hard to comprehend. We know that the Spirit of God contains the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of the Son, and the Spirit of Holy Spirit, but even though they are listed as separate Sprits, they are really all of one Sprit and come out of one Spirit – the Spirit of God. There are also other spiritual qualities or sub functions of God Spirit that are released to us as a subset of God’s Spirit. There is the Spirit of Righteousness and the Spirit of Grace. Below you find a simplified table representing the hierarchy of the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of God

The Father – The head of God’s Spirit
* Pure agape love, pure righteousness, pure faithfulness, and pure grace and mercy.

The Son – A perfect replica of the Father. The perfect seed of the Father
* The fullness of Christ - being the Son of God, has all the same qualities of His Father.

* The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ that is sent into the sons of God to change their hearts and empower them for service. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit that totally cleanses a person of the sinful nature and gives the sons of God a new heart and the result becomes a person born again and totally Christ like.

* The Holy Spirit is under the Son because He is the Spirit of the Son

* The Holy Spirit is the power that accomplishes everything the Father or the Son speaks

The Spirit of Grace – A subset of the Spirit of God – not a different Spirit
* A subset of the Spirit of God released to believers to enable them to become the sons of God.

* Was made available to all people after Jesus was crucified on the Cross.

* The nature and characteristics are – the power of the Word, the knowledge of inheritance, the power of faithfulness, the power of justification, a knowing that the Word is true, the working out of God’s truth, honesty and straightforwardness, the power to circumcise the heart of man, the power to fully sanctify, gives the believer the wisdom and the understanding to serve God with love, fear and honor, brings eternal praise for God into our hearts.

The Spirit of Righteousness– A subset of the Spirit of God – not a different Spirit
* A subset of the Spirit of God released to people to enable people to honor God and live a righteous life with the limited faith released to them before the cross.

* Was available before the cross.

* The nature and characteristics are – praising God, realizing the greatness of God, seeking God diligently, repenting of evil ways, honoring God, recognizing the gloriousness of God, being gracious to others, having mercy to others, and eternal righteousness through the limited faith that was released before the cross – example: Abraham.

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Using the spiritual table listed out previously, we now can try to understand what is contained within the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God contains the full nature, characteristics, and power of God. The Spirit of the Father is the hierarchy head of the Spirit of God and contains all that is underneath Him in the hierarchy of the Spirit of God, while all the other Spirits only contain what is in them selves and what is underneath them in the hierarchy of God’s Spirit. For example: The Father contains the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Grace, and the Spirit of Righteousness. But the Son doesn’t have that which is only contained in the Father, but includes all that is in Him self and underneath Him including the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Grace and the Spirit of Righteousness. We know there are some things that are or have been reserved by the Father and only for the Father.

Acts 1:7 - And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

But we have to remember that Christ is the Son of the Father and that the Son retains the Spiritual Seed of the Father forever and ever. So this is why Jesus said that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father. This is also why Jesus could say that if you have seen me, then you have seen the Father. Also since the Son is contained within and under the Father, the Son cannot exist without the Father and likewise the Father cannot exist without the Son since what makes up the Son is also part of the makes up of the Father. For one to exist – they both must exist.

We can also now understand that the Spirit of Grace (a subset of the Spirit of God) doesn’t contain the Father, Son, or Holy Ghost, but does contain the characteristics of itself and the Spirit of Righteousness (also a subset of the Spirit of God). The Spirit of Grace and the Spirit of Righteousness are what God uses to sanctify us and to bring us to the Father and the Son.

The Spiritual table also can be used to understand the steps that are needed to take to become a believer and eventually become born again of the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit will lead us into the Spirit of Righteousness and lead us down the path of repentance and at the same time have us be justified through the Spirit of Grace that He provided by Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. It is the Spirit of Righteousness and the power of the Spirit of Grace that enables us to become the sons of God. To become the sons of God we must die to all of our sinful/selfish nature. It is the power of the Spirit of Grace that enables us to do this even though we don’t have the full power of the Holy Spirit within us yet. That is why the Bible says we are saved through Grace by faith. We must become the sons of God first before we can receive the Holy Spirit. We must show we have become the sons of God and our total love for God by our total repentance and total sacrifice of ourselves to God.

Matt 5:43-45 - You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

Luke 6:35 - But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.

If God becomes our Father by us becoming His sons through the power of the Spirit of Grace that He has supplied to us, than we can ask Him for His Holy Spirit – which is the Spirit of His Son.

Luke 11:13b - how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

Before we can receive Christ’s Spirit we must be prepared by the Spirit of Righteousness and the Spirit of Grace. We must be prepared, tested and found worthy of this great gift. This great gift of the Holy Spirit (Christ’s very nature) can only be given to the ones that have been proven to be the sons of God.

John 14:23-24 - Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

John 14:15-17 - If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth (the Holy Spirit).

Acts 5:32 - We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.

Matt 7:21-22 - Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Matt 12:50 - For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

The Holy Spirit will testify of itself and of Jesus Christ when you have received Him.

John 14:20-21 - On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.

John 15:26-27 - When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.

John 16:12-15 - I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

1 Cor 6:17 - But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

When we have been united with Jesus Christ – we become one spirit with Him and reign along with Him to manage and promote His kingdom. This is why the scriptures say we are seated with Him in heaven. We are not seated beside Him – we are seated in Him, because we are now one in Spirit with Him.

Eph 2:6 - And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

All this is to say – God has reserved a wonderful full life in Him and for an eternity for anyone that gives up his/her own life in trade for a life with and in Him.

God’s servant and yours,
Michael Reid

Romans 7 – So misunderstood

I was not planning on writing a message on the interpretation of Romans 7 until I realized that the misunderstanding of this passage was deceiving many away from God's truth. This scripture is so misunderstood by most churches.

There is an epidemic of misunderstanding of what a true Christian is and everybody with this misunderstanding seems to keep pointing to Romans 7 for their justification for this misunderstanding.

The misunderstanding originates from Romans 7:14-20.

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Most have misunderstood this verse because Apostle Paul seems to be writing this about himself. Since Paul is a born again Christian at the time he wrote this, people assume this is what a Christian is like.

If people fully understand the rest of the New Testament, they would quickly see these verses could not even be remotely considered to be representing what a true Christian is. To say a born again Christian is still controlled by his sinful nature is an oxy-moron. The phrases “born again Christian” and “controlled by sinful nature” cannot exist in the same person. Either you are still controlled in part or in full by your sinful nature or you are a born again Christian where the sinful nature has no control over you.

To start understanding this scripture we must understand whether this person Paul is talking about is born again or not. One of the key verses that indicates this is not a Christian is in Romans 7:14.

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin..

When we are a Christian we are filled with God’s Spirit which has transformed our heart into a heart of love. Romans 7:14-20 is indicating a person’s life without the Holy Spirit in it. Without the Spirit in us, we have no hope of conquering sin on our own and we are still a slave to sin.

Apostle Paul is actually talking theoretically about any person, including himself, and how we are powerless with just our own human capabilities to get rid of sin. We learned throughout the Old Testament that we cannot obey God’s commandments on our own without the Holy Spirit’s power in us. This is what Paul is stressing in his letter. He is helping them understand what all of Israel already new before Christ came to die on the cross for us. The Jews knew the law was good but they were not capable of fulfilling the law.

Ever since the time when Adam ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, we have had the knowledge of good and evil in us. Remember it was the knowledge of good and evil, not just evil. The big problem ever since the original sin is not that we can’t know what is good, it is that we could not do any of the good we had knowledge of without the power of God in us. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 7:15-16.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

Paul goes on to say that it is the sin, or evil, living in this person doing the sin since this person is still under the law. It is evident that this person does not have the Holy Spirit living in him. Paul concludes in Romans 7:17-18 that the only thing living in this person is the sinful nature.
As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.

Now to keep this passage in context, let’s go back to the passages before Romans 7:14-20 to Romans 7:1.

Do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to men who know the law — that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?

We see here that Paul is addressing people that know the Jewish law and emphasize that all men are under the control of the law until they die. Another words, we have to die to be free from the law. To illustrate his point Paul uses marriage as an example in Romans 7:2-3.

For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.

So what Paul is emphasizing here is that we have to die to the law before we can be bound to another, which is Jesus Christ. We die to the law by believing in the perfect body of Jesus Christ dieing on the cross for us. In Romans 7:4-6 Paul explains this for us.

So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

If we believe Jesus Christ died for us, then we believe through the cross we also died and are no longer bound to the law and are now under God’s grace and no longer under the control of the sinful nature. We are given a new heart from God which does not have any selfishness or sin in it, but only love for God and love for all of God’s creation. True love cannot contain any selfishness or sin of any kind. Because this new heart that is from God has only love, it cannot willfully sin. Through this new heart we now have control of the body instead of the sinful nature in the body controlling us. Only God can do this and everything is possible with God.

Matthew 19:26 - Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Today Romans 7 is falsely preached from many pulpits with the idea that Christians can’t keep from sinning. This has been another deception from the devil that a lot of people have believed because it supports people believing they are born again when they truly haven’t had a total heart transformation yet. Don’t let yourself be fooled by this lie of the devil. The truth is, when your born again you can, through God’s Spirit’s power in you, conquer all the sins that His word or His Spirit convicts you of.

Remember God’s grace is His Spirit working in and through you – Michael Reid

Don't Count Your Chickens Before They're Hatched

Most people think salvation unto eternal life is a one stop fixit shop of God that we only have to visit once. Don’t be fooled by your desires to have it the easy way.

God’s Word says we must be obedient and do our heavenly Father’s will to enter the kingdom of heaven. See the verse below.

Matt 7:21-27 - "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!

We must be obedient to God’s will before the Father gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 5:32 - We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him."

But since we are not saved by works – but by grace, how can this be true? Aren’t all good works (obedience) done by the Father’s Spirit and not of our own accord? The answer to this question is an emphatic YES. So how does any of this make sense? Doesn’t God’s Word say that we can be sure of our eternal salvation by the deposit (installment) of the Spirit? See the verse below.

Eph 1:13-14 - Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession — to the praise of his glory.

So if we can only be obedient by the works of the Spirit, doesn’t that guarantee our inheritance of God’s heavenly kingdom - since any obedience we have towards God’s commandments can only come from the Spirit working inside us? The answer to this question is NO. You are now probably saying to yourself – what is this double talk.

I will explain this mystery to you. It is really very simple. There are two main Spiritual fillings that happens to every born again believer. The first Spiritual filling we receive is in measure of God’s Spirit. This Spiritual filling is what allows us to become obedient and grow in faith through the gifts of the Spirit that are measured out to us by God.

When we receive this first Spirit fulfillment - we then start receiving the gifts of the Spirit in proportion to our willingness and the Father’s will. These gifts of the Spirit are what gives us the ability to grow in faith and be sanctified by God’s Spirit. If we are willing to die to our self, we will come to a full faith in Jesus by the power of the God’s Spirit inside us. When we come to this full faith, by turning all our love and dependence towards God (the Father and Jesus) – we
will then want to be totally obedient to His commandments because of this love for God. It is upon this full faith which is demonstrated through our willingness to be totally obedient that we receive another Counselor (the Holy Spirit - Jesus Spiritual nature). This Spiritual filling is permanent. See the verses below.

John 14:15-17 - "If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.

Only after we love Jesus and obey His commandments (which are also the Father’s commandments) does Jesus ask the Father to give us His Spirit of truth, which is Jesus’ Spirit. Jesus is the truth (the Spirit of truth) and the way. This is the second main Spiritual filling.

John 14:23-24 - Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.

It is only upon this second filling that the Spirit of Jesus and the Father make a home with the believer.

It is at this second filling of the Spirit, that the seal unto eternal salvation is realized. If there is a specific point in which a person cannot loose their eternal salvation it is at this point or anytime after this second filling. Most or all of the many scriptures about falling away from the faith are referencing the times before this filling of the Holy Spirit (Jesus’ nature imparted in us).

Jesus says He is the only way to the Father. It is only after we are converted with Jesus’ very nature (the Holy Spirit) that we have access to His heavenly kingdom and will be able to see (know) the Father. Jesus’ Spirit living inside us is the key that unlocks the doors of God’s eternal kingdom.

Matt 16:19 - I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven

So to put it as plainly as I can – It is the Father’s Spirit that calls and brings us to a full saving faith in His Son and it is by the Father depositing His Son’s Spirit inside us that we are eternally saved.

Please don’t let yourselves be fooled by the teachings of scholars that have not yet entered the kingdom. These people may even have a doctorate degree in theology, but if they haven’t been given the key to God’s heavenly kingdom, it is impossible for them to teach the truth about the kingdom of God.

Luke 11:52 - Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.

God Bless - Michael Reid