The Believer's Part in Remaining Spirit-filled # 8

Life on the Highest Plane

The Word of God is the Medium in Regeneration

The instrument used to implant in the human spirit the divine seed of the uncreated life of God is the Word of God. Through the Word we are brought out of death into life.

1 Peter 1:23, "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever."

The Word of God is the Medium in Revelation

Life requires light. Regeneration presumes revelation. The newborn soul has been "called out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9) and the light of God cannot be concealed from the one to whom the Life of God has been communicated.

Illumination is absolutely essential to the new life in Christ. To maintain the life, light is imperative.

John 1:4, "In him was life, and the life was the light of men."

John 8:12, "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

Illumination is absolutely essential to the new walk in Christ.

Ephesians 5:8, "For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light."

1 John 1:5-7, "God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth; But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

When the Holy Spirit enters the human spirit He bestows a spiritual nature which has the capacity to perceive and an appetite to know. An insatiable hunger and an unquenchable thirst for the knowledge of God possesses a Spirit-filled, Spirit-controlled man. He cries with the Psalmist, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for the living God."

One of the sure marks of a spiritual man is his ever increasing knowledge of God.  Spiritual perception and spiritual enlightenment stamp a man as a growing Christian. God puts no premium on ignorance. Paul prayed that his converts might have spiritual understanding, Heaven-born wisdom, divine enlightenment.

Ephesians 1:17-18, "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints."

Colossians 1:9, "For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding."

God expects every child of His to be growing in the knowledge of Him. Paul did not pray that the  Colossian Christians might be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding that they might be equipped to fill a chair in the theological seminary or to go as a missionary to some foreign field, but that wherever they were and whatever their task they might "Walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing." "Be fruitful in every good work," and "Be strengthened with might, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness."

The Apostle Paul constantly said "Know ye not?" Again and again in the letters to the Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians he speaks of the things we should know. The words "We know" are almost the key words of the first Epistle of John. Count for yourself the number of times they are used and write out the things the Christian should "Know." In the realm of the spiritual it is the man who knows who does.

Daniel 11:32, "And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall be flatteries; but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits."

In Romans 6 God's divine order is "Know" (v. 6); "Reckon" (v. 11); "Yield" (v. 134); "Obey" (v. 17). It is the man who really knows God who believingly reckons on the great facts of salvation, who voluntarily yields himself to the Saviour, and who gladly obeys Christ, the Lord. Growth in grace and growth in the knowledge of God are simultaneous.

2 Peter 3:18, "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 9)