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THE MESSAGE OF HOPE - IX
Titus 3:5b -7
Bob Bonner
July 26, 2009
Every day for the Christian can be an exciting adventure, regardless of circumstances, if that Christian understands what it means to be “spirit-filled,” or how to live life under the supernatural power and control of the Holy Spirit. Over the past forty years of walking with Christ, it has saddened me to come into contact with so many Christians who do not understand the role of the Holy Spirit in their lives, and, as a result, do not experience His supernatural empowerment to live the abundant life that Jesus Christ promised us. As I observe some Christians in their walk with Christ, they appear bored to tears with church, the Bible, and Jesus. Their relationship with Christ is far from being vibrant. For some, their relationship with Christ seems mechanical and absent of joy.
So what does a supernatural, Spirit-controlled life look like? What does it mean to live an abundant life? This expression, an “abundant life,” points to something that overflows with life, regardless of the circumstances that surround it. It is like a spring of water in the midst of a harsh desert, overflowing with water that comes deep from within the earth. This term describes a life lived with a deep sense of purpose, direction, meaning, and contentment, in spite of challenging and even unhappy circumstances. It’s not that one ignores or denies the harsh realities of life, but instead, sees that our good and sovereign God has a purpose and plan for our lives right in the midst of those realities.
Christians who live the Spirit-controlled life take prayer seriously and have an effective prayer life. They are sensitive to opportunities to speak of their faith with others and have set aside a regular time to study and even understand God’s Word. Their lives evidence that even in the tough and harsh times, they are determined to trust God and to obey Him. As Galatians 5:22-23 implies, when you are around them, there are expressions of God’s love coming from their lives. For instance, they are not easily upset when surprised by the unknown or when inconvenienced. Because they have kept short accounts with God, when they have sinned they possess an inner peace, patience, and kindness toward others. Even when the dark clouds of life’s foreboding challenges hang over their heads, there seems to be a positive outlook, an attitude of thanksgiving and praise on their faces, rather than the look of one who might have just taken a swig of grapefruit seed extract! The degree to which these traits manifest themselves in one’s life reveals the extent to which one understands and is experiencing the supernatural power and control of God’s Holy Spirit.
In contrast to this are those Christians who are not living by the control of the Spirit. According to Galatians 5:19-21, when the following traits characterize one’s Christian life overall, rather than as an exception, it is evidence of living under their own power, not depending upon God but on what the Bible calls “the flesh.” Here we see terms that describe non-Spirit-controlled people. They are hypersensitive, are judgmental, and possess a critical, divisive, and condemning spirit that places their own convictions, values, and agendas above those of others. These people are typically governed by jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, personal strife, and divisiveness. Further characteristics from Galatians 5 of one who is not controlled by the Spirit is a life governed by fear, guilt, impure thoughts, worry, discouragement, frustration, and aimlessness. These are evidences of one who has not only lost sight of Who God is in their lives, but what His overall purpose is for them.
In addition to the above traits, the following are true of those Christians who are not experiencing the supernatural power of God in their lives: they wrestle seriously with unbelief, disobedience, and a loss of love for God and others. They have little desire for investing time in prayer, Bible study, and fellowship with others. As a result of these things, it should be no surprise that their spiritual lives lack the pizzazz, the joy, the hope, and the excitement for living another day with the Lord.
Understand, I’m not referring here to the common, temporary, or occasional experience of having dark moments in life, where something seems to be out of whack. I’m not referring to those short-lived, selfish moments when we put our wishes above others. I am referring to a spiritual life that is characteristically lived this way week in and week out.
As a Christian, if your life seems to be missing something this morning and you want to know how you can experience the Holy Spirit’s power in your life, you will find that’s just what our text for this morning deals with. We want to show you how to make it a reality.
If you have your Bible with you, please turn to Titus 3, and let’s read together verses 4-7, which make up one long sentence. The Apostle Paul writes:
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind
appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done
in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of
regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out
upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified
by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal
life.
This expression, “renewing by the Holy Spirit,” is the expression we want to begin looking more closely at this morning. Last time we were together, two different individuals came to me after the service to ask some very good questions. Apparently I failed to clearly communicate the answers to them last week as we were looking at these verses. So as we begin a quick review of what we learned last time, I would like to insert the answers to those two questions.
Last time we looked at an overview of the human experience as it concerns our relationship with God. In the beginning before the Fall, God breathed His Spirit into us, which not only made us alive physically, but, because His Spirit indwelt us, we were made alive spiritually, meaning we were able to live in a relationship with Him and experience His supernatural power in our lives. But after the Fall, even though physically we may have been alive, we were spiritually dead, because God removed Himself from our lives when He cast the human race out of the Garden of Eden, leaving a spiritual void where He once lived.
Now this is where the first question was asked from last week. Did we mean that being “spiritually dead” meant that our “spirit” ceased to exist? No. We still had a spirit, but it was not able to relate intimately with God as it had before, neither was it able to experience His power in the control center of our being, our spirit. In God’s Spirit’s place, the void was filled by the “flesh” (our limited human abilities and desires to live independently from God) and other “evil influences” from our world. These fleshly and evil influences immediately took control of our lives, leading us toward destruction.
But when we put our confidence in Christ, resulting in our salvation, God regenerated us by reentering our lives in our spirits, making it possible for us to once again carry on a relationship with Him and to experience His supernatural power in the running of our lives. At this point, for the first time since the Fall, each Christian is now free to choose to live either under the control and power of God’s Spirit, or under our own power, as we did when we were lost.
But God’s Word tells us that once God has saved us, He is then committed to teaching us and leading us to the point of voluntarily learning to depend upon Him so that He can finish the work He began in our lives, which is to make us more like His Son Jesus Christ. This work of God in our lives is performed by the power of His Holy Spirit, and in Titus 3:5 this process is referred to as the “renewing” of our souls. Another word for the process of “renewing” our souls is the Biblical term “sanctification.”
Here is where the second question arose from last week’s message. We briefly looked at 2 Corinthians 5:17, which states, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” The “new things” that were begun and have ongoing implications in our lives started with what theologians call “regeneration.” This “regeneration” refers only to the immediate and permanent change and work that takes place in one’s spirit, when God re-enters our spirit. It is not referencing what happens to the soul. There are consequences of regeneration that affect our soul, and those actions are what the “renewing” is all about.
Hence, both the regeneration and the renewing work in the Christian’s life come as a result of God, the Holy Spirit working in us. Or to put it another way, renewing, or sanctification, is the natural result of being born again, or regeneration. Now, this is important for you to hear and understand: This supernatural transformation, or the experiencing of the Holy Spirit’s work in one’s life, is not something reserved for the “super saints,” or those who are called to be missionaries or to be in full time vocational service for the Lord. The New Testament makes it clear that observable spiritual growth or transformation is the common or normal intended experience for all believers. In other words, if you are a Christian and you are not experiencing spiritual transformation in your life, if your personality, views, attitudes, morals, plans, perspectives, priorities, desires, outlook, goals, and so on are not changing, something is abnormally wrong in your Christian experience. There has been some kind of disconnect, because God’s Word makes it clear that His purpose in saving you is to change you while you still live here on earth.
So if there is no evidence of ongoing change in your life, there are four possible reasons for there to be no observable growth, and none of those reasons have to do with God’s failure to change you. So what are those four reasons?
The first reason is one we touched upon last week, when we looked at the Apostle Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 13:5. “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” The Apostle implies here that if there is not ongoing spiritual growth and transformation in your life, then there is a serious question as to whether or not there has been a new birth or regeneration or, in short, whether or not you have been saved.
If we have been saved, our passage in Titus and in other places such as Ephesians 1:13 tell us that the Holy Spirit gives us spiritual life, sustains our spiritual life, empowers our spiritual life, and guarantees that our spiritual life is destined to be with the Lord forever, because He is the seal, our guarantee of eternal life. But the outward proof of our salvation is that our lives are being changed. No change, and there may be no regeneration.
But this Biblical reality is not understood by everyone. Many Christians believe that they can be saved and live any way they want, because they prayed a prayer and believe they have a “get out of jail free” card. They think they can live any way they want to. That belief is not true on two accounts. It demonstrates either a lack of understanding of the following verses or, more likely, a total disregard for what God says in these verses. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 tells us:
Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the
body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not
know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom
you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been
bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
One of the points of this passage is that when we are saved, we have a new Master, Jesus Christ. We are not free to live any old way we wish. We are to live according to His directives, of which one is “flee immorality.”
The Apostle John, near the very end of his life, writes these corrective words to those who claim to be Christians and think that they can practice sin as a lifestyle, wanting still to be assured they are saved. To correct this error, he writes in 1 John 1:5-8:
This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that
God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. [Darkness here is a
reference to evil.] If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet
walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth [meaning that
if this is our lifestyle, then our lifestyle does not reveal that we are living our
lives based upon the truth of God’s Word.]; but if we walk in the Light as
He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another [God
and us], and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
In 1 John 2:3-6 the Apostle John continues:
By this we know that we have come to know Him [meaning having a
personal relationship with God as a direct result of salvation], if we keep
His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,”
and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in
him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been
perfected. [The idea here is that of maturation--that one has been born
again and one is being transformed or perfected or matured in Christ.] By
this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him
ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.
Now clearly, the Apostle John is not intending that we never sin, nor does he mean that if we do, it is a sign that we are not saved. When John uses the expression, “walk in the same manner,” he is speaking of a way of life, a lifestyle, not those momentary lapses or spiritual failures in our lives. We can be sure that this is what John means, because later in this same letter, in 1 John 3:4-6, John more clearly states, “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared [Jesus] in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins [practices as a lifestyle sin]; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.”
And just so we know that the Apostle John knows of what he speaks, let’s remember those words of Christ I pointed to last time in Matthew 7:21-23..
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will
enter. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in
Your name perform many miracles?” And then I will declare to them,
“I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”
So, it is very clear from the Word of God that no spiritual change, transformation, or ongoing growth in one’s life could possibly be due to the reality that the individual has never truly trusted or turned his life over to Jesus Christ. In short, they have never been saved.
The second possible reason for not experiencing spiritual growth and Christ’s supernatural power could be the result of a temporary situation. It is not an ongoing state, but one of struggle that from time to time every Christian has had to do battle with. The Apostle Paul writes about this in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. He says, “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ.” Please notice that Paul is writing to believers, born again Christians, who he expects to be living like spiritual men, people who should be living lives filled or controlled by the Holy Spirit. But they are not there yet. Instead, they are acting like new born babes in Christ who are living like they have not understood the basic truths or principles of the Christian life.
Hence, Paul goes on to say, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food [That is a reference to basic primer theology in comparison to the deeper teachings of God’s Word]; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly.” This means that either they are still living in direct disobedience to what they know is right, which the rest of the book appears to suggest; or they are trying to live a religious life independent from Christ. Either way, he goes on to give the evidence of a fleshly life, one that is not the expected normal life of a Christian but has become such for the Corinthian Christians and many Christians today. “For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?” The point is “mere men” rather than spirit-empowered men.
The bottom line is this: These Christians, like many today, were living in a temporary state of rebellion. They are not fully submitted to Jesus Christ. That needed to be corrected, challenged, and rebuked, so Paul did this through his letter to the Corinthians.
The third reason Christians today are not experiencing the joy of living an abundant life in Christ, one where they experience the Holy Spirit’s life-changing power in them, has to do with pure ignorance. In other words, people don’t know any better because they either have not been taught the Word of God and/or have done very little personal studying of the Word of God. We can see this reason spelled out in the verses we just read in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 as well as 1 Peter 2:1-3. Peter writes, “Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” And that last, “if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord,” is Peter’s subtle reminder to his readers that if they refuse to study God’s Word and they continue to deliberately speak evil of others, treat others deceitfully, and act in other ungodly ways, then those people need to rethink whether or not they are saved. Because when someone is saved, they don’t immediately grow up and change, but they do change in direct proportion to their minds being renewed (Romans 12:2) as a result of the study of God’s Word.
Hence, if you want to grow and you want the Lord to transform your life quickly, make it a priority of your life to understand His Word and how it applies to you.
The final reason for which many Christians are not experiencing the Spirit-controlled, Spirit-empowered, abundant life has to do with a common enemy we share, Satan, whose goal is to deceive and destroy us. Look at what God’s Word has to say about this. In Ephesians 6:11-12 we read:
Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm
against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh
and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world
forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the
heavenly places.
Right there, the Apostle Paul identifies that we have a scheming enemy who is after us.
Now if that raises some concerns in your heart, how would you like to hear Jesus promise you this? Jesus tells Simon Peter in Luke 22:31-32, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Now what is Jesus saying to Peter after He promises to pray that Peter’s faith may not fail? He says, “When once you have turned again.” What does that mean? It can mean only one thing. Peter hit a bump in the road that temporarily knocked him off track in his spiritual walk with Christ, but his faith, his understanding of God’s grace and forgiveness, enabled him not to give up in defeat but to humbly return to serving the Lord. Likewise, Jesus was telling Peter that once he got back on track he was to strengthen other Christians who too would fail in the days ahead. He would help them to understand that failure is not the end and that forgiveness and returning to service is always possible.
After years of stumbling, seeking God’s forgiveness, and continuing to serve the Lord, Peter instructs all the Christians in the future with these words concerning living the Spirit-empowered life. He writes in 1 Peter 5:8-11:
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls
around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him,
firm in your faith [truth based on the Word of God], knowing that the
same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren
who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God
of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself
perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be dominion
forever and ever. Amen.
In the end, Peter tells us that God will finish His work in you and through you. But in the mean time, be alert. There is a very real enemy out who wants to ruin your life.
Where does this leave you? Do you know that the Spirit of God is in charge and empowering your life? How does a Christian maintain or turn back to the Spirit’s control of his life? It’s not that difficult of a thing to do. First, as we talked about last week, Romans 12:1 suggests that it is something you have to desire for your life.
Second, we need to keep short accounts with God. What do I mean by that? Typically, we know when we have been ignoring God, disobeying God, or simply living as though God had no right or involvement in any area of our lives. When we live that way, the Bible calls it sin. As a Christian, 1 John 1:9 instructs us, “If we confess [or admit] our sins [to God], He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So when we know that we have been living as though God doesn’t exist or in deliberate disobedience to Him, we are to admit our wrong doing to God and, by faith, thank Him for His forgiveness.
Next, we return to Romans 12:1, which suggests that we present every area of our lives to God as our logical service, as an act of worship.
Finally, we know, that Ephesians 5:18 says that it is God’s will that His Spirit control our lives. In addition, 1 John 5:14-15 tells us:
This is the confidence which we have before Him, that if we ask
anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He
hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which
we have asked from Him.
Therefore, since we know that His will is for His Holy Spirit to control our lives, and if we ask Him to control our lives, then He will do it. Understanding this then, we confidently, by faith, claim His will for us, that He indeed will be in control of our life.
As a result of our time in the Word this morning, maybe some of you realize that you need the Holy Spirit to empower and control your life. If that is something that you desire, then I invite you to join with me in the following prayer:
Dear Father, I need Your Holy Spirit to empower and lead my life. I admit that I have been directing my own life, and that as a result, I have sinned against You. I thank You that You have forgiven my sins through Christ’s death on the cross for me. I now willingly submit my life to the direction and control of your Holy Spirit, as you commanded me to. And because You promised that You would do Your will in my life if I asked You to, I by faith thank You for taking over the controls of my life. Amen.
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