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A Christian without the indwelling Holy Spirit is an absurd impossibility as Scripture affirms (John 3:3-5, 14:15-18, 15:5; Acts 1:4-5, 8; Romans 8:8-9). Yet, in the ignorance but mostly arrogant pride of sinful men since the first century, many have tried to do Christianity without the Holy Spirit. Christianity the religion of men in all of its many forms to this hour and doomed to destruction is the wicked and tragic result. In this edited 2013 blog repost, the Spirit of the Lord leads me to examine the sobering encounter of the apostle Paul with would be Christians devoid of Him, His life, fruit or empowering gifts as instruction, rebuke and a call to repentance in the churches that need it.
Originally Posted January 27, 2013
What made the apostle Paul begin to question the band of men described as “disciples” he met at Ephesus about whether they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed (Acts 19:1-2a)? We do not know for sure which is why, no doubt, there are many opinions. However, one certain thing we know about the apostle Paul is that He took his calling seriously and was not given to spiritual sensationalism or adding anything to the divine requirements for salvation in Christ (Galatians 1:1-10). Surely it was something deficient in the conversation or walk of these men that triggered the apostle’s query.
Contrary to the arrogance of many impostors and willfully sinning weak believers, it does not take maturing, Spirit-filled Christians very long at all to discern their spiritual condition (Matthew 7:15-20). If there were no other fruit lacking in a professing Christian but divine love that would be enough information to send off spiritual alarm bells. However, there is more; much more of the fruit of the Spirit that maturing, discerning Christians are able to see is present or not in one claiming to be a fellow born again believer. After all, truly born again Christians partake together of the same Holy Spirit and divine nature.
On the apostle Paul’s “fruit of the Spirit” list after love in Galatians 5:22 is joy followed by peace. Let us be clear that any of the great apostle’s lists of divine fruit are not intended to present any sort of hierarchy. God is who God is in nature and fullness all at the same time! Nevertheless, in complete contrast to the inabilities of our fallen, sinful flesh to deliver anything like what man most inwardly yearns for by God’s design (Galatians 5:19-21), the apostle immediately lays out the three attributes of God’s nature that satisfy the yearning of our hearts and are experienced exclusively by born again believers as fruit of the Holy Spirit. This is the life of God He offers freely and brings to every soul that will seek Him through faith in Jesus Christ (Isaiah 55:1-3; John 7:37-39, 10:10)!
The joy of the Lord through the agency of the Holy Spirit has consistently attended the lives of God’s faithful from ancient times as recorded in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Unlike human happiness that depends on the right circumstances to cause it, the joy of the Lord is His eternal nature. God is joy! As a result, everlasting joy naturally radiates out of the Holy Spirit as well as into and back out of the lives of the faithful like light and heat from the physical sun that will someday expend all of its energy (Psalm 16:11; John 15:9-11). This is also true concerning peace. God is peace! The peace of God is not like the world’s peace which depends on external factors (John 14:27). God’s peace is of His eternal nature and beyond human understanding (Philippians 4:6-7).
As should also be true for the faithful today, the lives of faithful 1st century Christians were characterized by the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of the promises of Christ and as taught by the apostles (Acts 2:46-47, 8:36-39, 9:31, 13:52, Romans 5:1-2). So, was it the lack of the Spirit’s fruit that the apostle Paul noticed in those disciples he met at Ephesus? Was it the lack of the Spirit’s mighty power pictured at work in the faithful as “fire” leading to the out breaking of spiritual gifts (Jeremiah 20:7-9; Acts 2:1-4, 10:44-48, 11:16-18)? Whatever the exact case may be, when those men said that they had not even heard of the Holy Spirit, Paul pressed them to discover what they had been immersed in.
Finding out it was the baptism of John the Baptist, he immediately instructed about and water baptized them in the name of Christ. Then, after Paul laid hands on the men, the Holy Spirit came upon them and “they spoke with tongues and prophesied,” (Acts 19:2b-7, NKJV). If the apostle Paul could ask supposed disciples had they received the Holy Spirit when they believed as a means to ascertain whether they were truly Christians, we can do no less today. Rather than spiritual gifts which the Holy Spirit in sovereignty may or may not immediately display in a new believer, as a first priority let us look for evidence of His work beginning with repentance from sin to a heart of faith and obedience toward God.
After this, our Lord taught we can know the true from the false by their fruit. Since the fruit of God; the very life of God in nature and character is brought to every soul that has believed on Christ and been baptized into and born again of the Holy Spirit, this is the next positive affirmation of their genuineness. Finally, after evidence of the Spirit’s fruit starting with divine love, look for His fire displayed in spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 13:8-13). The foregoing will mean having mature believers spend some time as Paul did talking to those that present themselves as disciples seeking not only for their right understanding of the Gospel but evidence of new birth before extending church membership to them.
Many pastors and churches fear to do this, of course, because Satan has deceived them into believing everyone’s experience with the Lord is so personal, no matter how unbiblical or outlandish it is not to be questioned. However, if assemblies of genuine believers are to minimize their infiltration by impostors as wolves in sheep’s clothing, they must be spiritually proactive in looking for the mark of a genuine Christian in those seeking formal membership. Also, a weak believer willfully sinning against the Lord must not be invited to serve in any capacity much less leadership in the churches and should be subject to discipline (another New Testament teaching being rejected today) until their repentance is forthcoming.
If Christians by the command of Christ are to be known by our love for one another, then it is plain for all to see that in the main historically, there has been a great failure on the part of the many who have professed to be Christians to obey. This sobering reality check cannot just be shrugged off as being due to the fact that Christians are saved, but remain imperfect. Nor can it be said the commandment to love one another by Christ is so hard He could not have meant it literally (as many say for any number of biblical imperatives they do not want to obey). Our Lord would not give us a command that could not be obeyed consistently if it were not possible.
No, failure to love one another in disobedience to Christ has largely attended the history of Christianity on earth since the first century because its assemblies have filled more and more with impostors devoid of the Holy Spirit and weak believers quenching His fire through willful disobedience (1 Thessalonians 5:19)! In the same way Gentiles came to dominate Christianity before the close of the 1st century making Jewish believers a tiny minority, so impostors and rebels have dominated professing Christian assemblies rendering the faithful from all backgrounds a minority. From these loveless impostors and rebelling weak believers came formal layers of authority foreign to New Testament Christianity including eventually, a religious priesthood and educated elite to support it.
Utterly devastating to the true faith with Christ’s command to love also was the emergence of Christianity the religion; a counterfeit, spiritually dead harlot of corruption and ostentation created by the impostors and rebels that has become a monolith in the earth with many daughters. They have also introduced many heresies and worldly compromises destroying the faith of some and on their hands is the blood of faithful saints and prophets that have cried out against their spiritual adultery and wickedly concocted religion (Acts 20:29-31; 2 Timothy 2:16-18; 2 Peter 2:1-3; Jude 3-19; Revelation 17:1-6).
What? Did they not know Christ condemned the corruptions of religious Israel that included their evil press to murder Him, the Son of God (Matthew 23:1-36, 26:1-5, 14-16)? How could they create a Christian religion and expect God to be pleased? Satan, the great deceiver is good at what he does so that smug Christian religionists as impostors and rebels look back on and hold Israel in contempt for their faithless, loveless rejection of Christ, but hypocritically overlook the fact they do the same thing (John 5:39-47)! Because of them biblical Christianity is tarnished and maligned. Our God is blasphemed around the earth; bumper stickers declare “God save us from your people” and they as ancient Israel are proud (Romans 2:17-24)?
Even so, my God has not been thwarted in His purposes. Again in a blog and for eternity I praise the triune God for being able to work to save and keep a faithful remnant of saints in every generation down through the centuries to this hour in spite of the clever opposition of Satan carried out by his legions of carnal impostors and captive rebels in the churches (1 Kings 19:11-18; 2 Timothy 2:20-26)! Truly, God has accomplished much to the divine glory through the faithful remnant who as aspiring strong men and great women have been His witnesses winning souls and servants par excellence shaking kingdoms, bringing down evil schemes and very importantly, putting the Lord on full display in their obedience to His command to love one another.
Every Christian martyr willing to die rather than assent to heresy and corruption is among them. So is every Christian apologist and church reformer that remained true to God’s Word as well as every abolitionist and black preacher from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement who stood to challenge America’s manifestation of Christianity the religion that would not only enslave the black brothers it made in ostensible Gospel evangelism, but also brutally, thoroughly and perpetually oppress them. Towering amid all of these in American history is the 20th century’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preacher, pastor and prophet felled by an assassin’s bullet and whose life our nation remembers as a national holiday.
As with most everything related to doing right by its black citizens, the King Holiday was a matter of reluctant acquiescence on the part of many white Americans including of course, a number professing to be Christians and their churches. Still, to this day many will not honor their Christian brother that gave his life calling them and their segregationist forefathers of a generation ago to obey the commandment to love by the Lord they claim to love in loving their black brothers. Now, we know why loving as Christ commanded has been so hard for the many professing white Christians and keeping it real, those who are black as bitter victims. It is the failure of human love in both as impostors and weak rebels filling churches of Christianity the religion that are incapable of loving and defiantly refuse to love as Jesus commanded through the Holy Spirit. 1
Therefore, in the divine love and mercies of Christ who desires that none should perish, I am calling every professing Christian who believes you are doing great things for God without the fruit of His love through the Holy Spirit to repent since you are irritating noise, nothing and gain nothing for your efforts in His sight (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). You also face the terrifying reality of His judgment for your treachery as impostors and willful rebels (Matthew 7:21-23; Hebrews 3:7-19; 10:26-31)! Finally, with certainty the religion of confusion you love with all of its pageantry, outward splendor and ornate buildings will be destroyed by the Lord as He did the former houses of corrupt harlotry in Israel (Jeremiah 7:1-15; 52:12-14; Matthew 23:37-24:2; Revelation 14:8, 17:15-18:24).
1 Read Dr. King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail if you never have and again if you have not done so for a time. His assessment of black and white churchmen in 1963 is tragically still current.
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