Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P561 (08-13-20)
Synopsis
A common question asked by many believers is what about this flesh of mine? I do not understand what I do. Another common question is why are there so many denominations out there, and they all seem to have their own and different interpretation on different things of scripture? Why is that, if the Holy Spirit leads you into all truth? And, if the Holy Spirit gives you truth on something, how are you going to know?
First of all, when you are born again, you now have the Holy Spirit living in you. You have the mind of Christ living in you to explain spiritual truth. A person born into this world is not born with the Holy Spirit of God in him. He was born of mom and dad, with a human spirit alive to this world, but dead to God. He must be born again. Until then, he cannot discern the things of God, for they are spiritually discerned, requiring the Spirit of God, alive, living in you, to teach you.
Then you must understand that this flesh of ours, even as a born again believer, is still indwelt with sin. The difference now is that you do not have to listen to the flesh. You now have the input of the Holy Spirit living in you to renew your mind as to what truth is, to teach you to say “No” to worldly passions and desires that are in conflict with the Spirit living in you. You have the privilege to participate in the divine nature, living in you, to put to death the misdeeds of the flesh. You are a new creation with new desires to please the Lord, and it is your faith in what Christ Jesus has provided for you, that pleases the Lord. He has given you everything you need for life and godliness, and you walk by faith in that reality. You are no longer under the law of sin and death, but under the grace of God, and are dealt with as a child of God, for that is who you are now.
Listen to the audio, or read the transcript, as Bob explains Romans 8, where this battle between the flesh and the Spirit is, described by the apostle Paul. Other helpful scriptures are the book of Colosssians. Look also at 2 Peter 1:3-4 and 2 Corinthians 5:17.
Now the reason there are different interpretations, resulting in different denominations, is because people are leaning on their own understanding and not acknowledging God. By starting with a false premise, you come to a false conclusion. In many cases, people are not relying on the Holy Spirit to teach them what truth is, but rather are simply repeating what they have heard, and have not tested to see if what they have heard is true or not. It could also be that they have not been in the word of God long enough to have their mind renewed with truth, and therefore are teaching error. If they are humble and teachable, and you were to confront them with truth, then they will gladly receive correction and start teaching truth. I find that very rare in today’s world, for those in authority, to have such a humble spirit, but that has happened and can happen. In other cases, those who have graduated from a seminary or been a bible teacher for many years, have not even been born again, but are teaching by means of the flesh, which can only produce worldly wisdom. They cannot teach what they do not know, what has not been revealed to them, since they do not have the Spirit of God living in them.
When the Holy Spirit is living in you, and you are humbly reading God’s word, asking the Lord to reveal to you what it means, then the Holy Spirit reveals that to you. Your mind is being renewed as you are seeking to know the Lord better through His word. The grace of God wants to reveal Himself to you, truth to you. If anyone lacks wisdom, He gives to anyone who asks, without showing partiality. There is no favoritism with God. The Holy Spirit living in you validates what truth is. That is why the apostle Paul commended the Bereans as noble for testing to see if what he said was so. How did they do that? They studied the scriptures, relying on the Spirit to teach them, and the Spirit confirmed with them that what Paul said was so, and that was with the scriptures available to them in their day.
Transcript
Ed from Littleton, CO
Ed: For the first time this morning when I read, I read about the flesh and got further questions. You hear people talk about the flesh and you talk about it, but I get confused on it, about how the flesh and the Spirit and how they intermingle. I read Romans 8 that those in the flesh cannot please God. Then, the next verse, however, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. Does that mean we are in the Spirit? We are still in the flesh. How does these relate? The body, the flesh, and the Spirit? If you ask anything of the Lord, he will give it to you. But if you ask in the flesh, you ask for the wrong reason. How do I differentiate?
Romans 8:6-9
6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
Bob: I think, first of all, you get straight the difference between the old man, which is your old identity, which is dead without the Spirit of God living in you. That is when you were lost. You were still in darkness. You were still a lost person. You did not have the Spirit of God living in you. That is the old man. That guy is dead. There will never be another Ed from Littleton, CO, dead in his sins and in the uncircumcision of his sinful nature. That guy is gone. Who are you, today? Ed, a child of God, indwelt by the living Christ, born again into eternal life. That is your new identity.
Colossians 2:13-14
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you[a] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
Romans 8:10-12
10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation – but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it.
Bob: Now, when you were born again, the Spirit of God came to live within you. That is called His divine nature. That is not your divine nature. That is His divine nature. The only nature you had is your human nature. That is yours. That is what you got from mom and dad. But His divine nature in you is what you got from God. That is what new nature is. When you were born from mom and dad, that is not a creation. That is natural birth from the will of a father and a mother. When you are born again, you became a new creation.
2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
Bob: That creation came from God and God alone. That is His divine nature that lives in you.
Bob: Now, what do I have a choice of? I have a choice to participate in that divine nature.
2 Peter 1:3-4
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
In other words, yield to the divine nature, just like a branch has the privilege of yielding to the life of the vine or to trusting the branch to do what you want to do.
John 15:4-5
4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Bob: So, Ed, to get back to where we were. When you were Ed, without the Spirit of God living in you, you only had one way to walk, and that was according to flesh. There was no way to walk according to the Spirit. That is the designation of a lost person, walking according to the flesh, under law. You had many people under the law. But now, He says this.
Romans 8:1-4
1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Bob: In other words, we are not in the flesh anymore. We are in the Spirit. We now have the Spirit living in us.
Romans 8:5
5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh,
Bob: Those are lost people. That is the only place they can have their minds.
Ed: That was my question. That does not necessarily mean when I want something my own way, and the flesh says I want it my way, that is then saying the same thing he is saying?
Bob: No. These guys are trying to be justified by works rather than faith. He is saying you have been freed from that law. When you are still functioning in the flesh, as religious as you are, there is your condition.
Romans 8:6-8
6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Bob: What does it say about pleasing God?
Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Bob: Without faith it is impossible to please God. How can you walk by faith under law? You have to walk by obedience.
Ed: If you are in business to make a decision, and you are planning, then can you walk to please God so His plans are your plans?
Bob: I do not think you need to worry about that. I think what you are doing is walking by faith. You are not in the flesh. You have the Spirit living in you.
Romans 8:9-11
9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
Bob: That is not who you are anymore. You are born again. If you are not born again, then you are still walking according to the flesh, even though religious.
Romans 8:10-11
10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. 12 So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh –
Bob: How come? You are not in it anymore.
Romans 8:13-14
13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
Bob: What are you dealing with? You are now a child of the living God. You go through life and your mind is now being renewed by the Spirit of God. He is teaching you as you are going through life, teaching you truth that is setting you free. That Spirit that now indwells you is still living in your human body. That body contains indwelling sin.
Ed: Right.
Bob: So that is the conflict now that you are going to continue to have. Your human nature wanting what human nature wants and the spirit wanting what Spirit wants. Am I going to walk now as a child of God, and am I going to walk in accordance with His instruction or my own understanding? When we lean on our own understanding, we are just the same as walking in the flesh. We are not lost. We are just walking according to the flesh, to our desires. So what you are dealing with is what I want is His will for my life. If that is my attitude, God’s will for me, then I walk by faith moment by moment and day by day.
Ed: I had a tape by a well known preacher. He sets the goal setting. He uses Genesis 24, where Abraham sent out to get a wife for his son Isaac. He uses that as a basis of how to set goals.
Bob: Well..
Ed: Totally ridiculous because I used to be in the motivation business at one time, early in life. That is exactly what we used to teach, which was all erroneous. “You must have a clear picture in your mind.” “You must have confidence.” “You must have a course of action.” He is tying that all back to Genesis.
Bob: “Plan your work and work your plan.” Again, Ed, you and I can sit down, and I can say that I am going to live a day at a time. I plan on being at work tomorrow, but that plan of being at work tomorrow is totally in the hands of God. What is going to be the result of that? That is totally in the hands of God. You cannot plan results. You can plan some function, but you cannot plan results. So when you are dealing with those things, you keep your mind off the results.
Bob: I am going to have a conference in Atlanta. I can plan that. I am going to have 9000 people. I cannot plan that. There might not be anybody there. That is planning results. I need to keep out of the results business. I can plan functions with an open hand. “Lord, I am planning this, but you can sure change this.” But the results you should not be involved.
Ed: There is nothing wrong with planning in business?
Bob: Plan function but not results.
Bob: As a salesman, I can plan to make eight calls. I am going to try to do my best and serve the Lord, and in the process I work unto the Lord. What are the results going to be of that? I have no clue. That is God’s business. That enables you to enjoy your work.
Ed: That simplifies it for me.
Bob: Okay, brother. I hope that helps?
Ed: It helps greatly for I was struggling with that. I did not know I was in the flesh when I wasn’t.
Bob: You are no longer in the flesh but you can get into it. Okay, brother.
Ed: I appreciate it very much. Keep going. Keep talking because a lot of people need this. It took me twenty years to come to this realization.
Bob: Thanks, Ed. I appreciate your call.
Ed: I just want to make one comment. You were talking about the government and Russia and all that. Isn’t that always how religion and government gets together?
Bob: I think so.
Ed: I was in Croatia. I see the same thing. Catholic church is prevalent. People used to be Communist and now Catholic.
Bob: It is a sad situation but is all a part of tribulation.
Ed: We will overcome.
Bob: We already have, brother. See you. Thanks, pal.
Jack from Queens, NY
Jack: I am a new Chrisitan. I have been a Christian a year and a half. I guess that is a new Christian. I have a question about the Holy Spirit leading us into all truth, and the interpretation of scripture. If that is so, how come there are so many different accounts of scripture? Someone says it means this. Then you go to another church, and he says it means this. It seems everyone has a different interpretation. If the Holy Spirit gives you truth on something, how are you going to know?
John 16:13
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the 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.
1 John 2:27
27 As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit – just as it has taught you, remain in him.
Bob: Your question answers the question. If the Spirit of God is leading a person into all truth, yet they are teaching error, it means they are not being taught by the Spirit. There are a lot of people who teach who have not been taught by the Spirit. They have been taught by man but not by the Spirit. Your understanding of the word of God, individually, is not dependent on what man says it says, what I say it says, or anyone else who says what it says. If you have the Holy Spirit of God living in you and you approach the word of God with humility, God will teach you the truth about His word. And the whole word of the New Testament is about the grace of God, then God is going to. Any man who comes to Him by faith, He will reveal the truth of the Son to him. Then He will reveal that to you, not necessarily through another man, but to you directly. The only thing you need to do as a Christian is to check out who you hear by what the Holy Spirit is teaching you and not vice versa. The criteria for truth is not another man’s teaching. The criteria for truth is the Holy Spirit teaching in your own individual life.
James 4:6
6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”[Proverbs 3:34]
Proverbs 3:5-6
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight[direct your paths].
Jack: In other words, it is best to open one’s own interpretation?
Bob: The Holy Spirit of God validates and the Spirit of God within you validates it. That is why God gives grace to the humble. He resists the proud. The order of god is pretty clear when you let the Holy Spirit interpret it, Jack. When you are relying again, coming from different premises, you are going to get different interpretations. If a person is approaching the word of God from a premise, for example, that Jesus is not God, he already built that in his premise. Guess how he will interpret all scripture? He will interpret it around that premise. A person approaches the word of God, “No, Jesus did not die for all our sins. He just died for some of them.” Guess how he will approach the interpretation of scripture?
Bob: Your premise is very important. Of course, you establish your premises out of the word of God. There are conclusions we come to. You read enough passages of scripture, of Jesus proclaiming Himself to be God, you will have to put a therefore there sooner or later. If Jesus claimed to be God, he was God, a maniac, thinking he was God when he isn’t or he is a liar, an imposter who knew he was not God who claimed he was anyway. So you have a trilemma, he is a liar, a lunatic, or he is God.
Jack: He fulfilled prophecy in scripture hundreds of years before he came on the scene.
Bob: Exactly. So what I am saying to you is the Holy Spirit reveals that to you to enable you to rest in that fact. It would not matter if he revealed that to anyone else on the face of the earth. He revealed it to you. What is interesting and exciting in the Christian world is when you have allowed Christ to reveal to you the word of God and you run into Christian from Australia some place, and you start talking about how he was also depending on the Spirit of God to reveal the truth to him. As you start talking to him, the same thing is revealed to him. That is exciting to see the Spirit will testify to you that something is true.
Jack: I guess that is why there are so many different denominations. One group will believe one thing. Another group, another. Some believe you can lose salvation and some do not.
Bob: That is why you have to search the scriptures and see what it says and come to that determination on your own. In the final analysis it is an individual choice. Someone says, “I searched scripture and I do not believe he is God.” If he comes to that conclusion then he will remain in hell.
John 3:36
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
Jack: I do not see how people can lose salvation when His purpose is to give us life. I am a new Christian and I know that. I see what sacrifice he did to die for me. That is the difference right there.
Jack: That was the thing that was bothering me. I go to church not because I have to. I like to learn but I do not want to learn something that is going against what the Lord is teaching me. Sometimes I just want to walk out but I do not want to disrespect the pastor. I was just wondering.
Acts 17:11-12
11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.
Bob: Well, Jack, again, you have people who, and that shocks some people, but you have people who have gone all the way through seminary and everything else, but do not know the Lord and have never been born again. All history records that. John Wesley who founded the Methodist religion was a man like that. He was a missionary and a pastor for fifteen years before he came to know the Lord, to know Him personally. Martin Luther was a man, high up in the Catholic denomination before he ever understood justification by faith. I knew pastors here in Dallas who gave such a stirring gospel message one Sunday that he answered his own altar call. He was not saved. He knew how to preach but he wasn’t saved. I knew another friend of mine who had been a pastor for about ten years, taught in a bible college, and then came to the Lord. He was a good, moral person but he had never been regenerated. We have to understand that natural man cannot understand spiritual things. It is foolish to him. So when he is trying to teach out of the word of God and is unregenerate, he will choose worldly wisdom which is foolishness to God.
1 Corinthians 2:13-15
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,
Bob: What you are going through, I know it is frustrating, but it is also healthy in one respect, because that is what forces you back to your bible. When you hear things that seem contrary to what truth is, you go check it out.
Bob: I have read the New Testament, hundreds upon hundreds of times, because I literally had a policy that when someone really challenged what I was teaching, I would go back to the beginning, not just the verse, but the whole book, to check out if what I was teaching is true. You keep depending on the Spirit. He is the one who saved you, the one who lives in you, the one who reveals truth to you and the one you can depend on to reveal truth to you.
Jack: Thank you. That is why I listen to you because that agrees with what I am learning.
Bob: Thank you. You keep in touch. Thanks, Jack.
Vivian from Saratoga, CA
Vivian: I met you in a conference in Mt. Vernon.
Bob: That was a ball.
Vivian: I have been set free from forty years of guilt because of your work. I have been writing articles about this in our church monthly paper, the finality of the cross, grace, and law versus grace.
Vivian: However, I was told I had been repeating myself. I was told I keep repeating myself because I keep repeating the theme but I bring out different points from the bible along with them. So they do not accept my articles any more. If I could tell people how I am aware of Christ living in me, I would have more to say. The problem is the lack of awareness of Christ living in me. I do believe He is living in me, but I do not hear “fasten your seatbelts.” I do not witness or help the poor or I do not do a lot of things that I see Christians do, but I have an overall desire to do His will and get His message out. I feel like I am one the shelf and I do not know what to do about it.
Bob: I think the awareness of Christ of being alive, living in us, that there is an awareness in our life of Christ is alive, living in us, that comes by faith and faith alone, that that is true. I think that it does not depend on feelings. It depends just on that by faith the awareness that He is there. If Christ is alive living in us, and you are available to Him, why then He is going to do in and through you individually whatever He wants to. The one part of the body, He might have fed the poor. The problem of it is, all Christians ought to be feeding the poor? If all people are feeding the poor, there would not be anybody to feed. That is not how the body works. The body works in different ways. You are a very unique person. You are a unique part of the body. He may have you doing something totally different than someone else might be doing. If He has got you, maybe writing, doing articles, doing teachings, and you are doing, perpetuating the gospel, in that way, praise God for that. Everyone is not going to do that. The body, although its parts are many, it forms one body. So it is with Christ. He is our head and we are the body and each part has a different function to do.
1 Corinthians 21:15-20
15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
Bob: So, keep your eyes off of other people in what they are doing and even in what other people are telling you what you should be doing. Merely, keep concentrating on the Lord, who is alive in you, and be sensitive to His voice, who is going to be leading you to do what He wants you to do. Sometimes it may just be resting when I am a doer.
Bob: You are a human doer instead of a human being. That is one of the things I believe is a plague on Christianity today, because we have been human doings instead of human beings. God just called us to be. You stop to think and ask, “What is a human being?” It is a human being being loved by God every day of His life. He is a human being forgiven every day of his life because of the blood of Christ. It is a human who is being accepted by the love of God every day of your life. You are a human that is being completed in the work that He began in you every day of your life. You are a human that is being conformed into the image of Christ every day of your life. How are you going to beat that? That is a lot better than being a human doing, isn’t it?
Philippians 1:6
6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:29
29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
2 Peter 1:3-9
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
Vivian: Yes. I feel like I have not been able to get the message out to people, witnessing this type of thing. The opportunities do not seem to come to me and I just thought they would.
Bob: That is when you say “Lord, I am not going to do anything for you. I am very serious. I am waiting for you to do something through me.” Then you watch Him work.
Vivian: Okay. That is great. I like that.
Bob: Yes. That is what you have to come to. I had to do that in my life. “I am through. I am not going to do anything else, period. I am not doing anything else. I am through doing. Lord, if you want me to do something, you have to do it through me. You have to be the initiator.” He was and He is.
Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
Vivian: That is a big help. Thank you so much.
Bob: Okay, talk to you later.
