The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 6 – 8
As you saw in the last lesson, everything a person does can be explained by the relationship of the three fractions. Yet digging deeper, what motivates those fractions? Why do different people, which have ostensibly the same basic natures, vary so widely in who rules their mind? To answer that, you have to understand the core motivation of all three fractions. The spirit wants something. The soul wants something. And the heart wants something. And who wants what, the most, determines who will be in charge in a given moment.
The beast is an external creature; what it wants are pretty obvious physical things. Fundamentally it wants what it wants at the time, and it really isn’t more complicated than that. It is fully and completely absorbed in the moment; it has forgotten yesterday, and tomorrow never comes. The spirit is supposed to review the past and draw conclusions and understanding from the experiences so we can avoid them in the future.
And finally the soul’s job is to decide which path will lead to the best future – making another tidy connection: The spirit thinks of the past; the heart thinks of the present; and the soul plans for the future. So in general, to see who is ruling someone’s mind, just find out: are they living for, thinking of, and worrying about the past (spirit), present (beast), or future (soul)?
We’ve all been so stuck on a past failure we couldn’t move forward; so hung up on a past relationship we couldn’t build a new one. So busy justifying our old mistakes that we made new ones. This obsessive need to rehash a dead past is something an unbroken spirit does – putting your hand to the plow and looking back.
If you can’t move forward, Jesus says, you’re not fit for the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:62) – of course, because it would mean your soul was distracted by your spirit, which means your soul is not yet in charge! This is why only Lot’s wife (a woman, symbol of the spirit), looked back (Genesis 19:26); she couldn’t let go of the past because her soul (or failing her own soul, Lot’s) couldn’t make her!
Then there are those who are so busy living in the moment, they can’t think of tomorrow; nor do they learn the lessons of the past. They simply exist in the present, just like any beast chewing its cud as its mind is a study in blankness. Just like clubbing – the music is turned up so loud specifically to drown out their spirit’s thoughts so the heart can live in the moment.
They dance, they sing, they eat, drink, and are merry – and, naturally, tomorrow they die (Luke 12:19-20, 1 Corinthians 15:32). Notice that Paul fought the beasts and that will only help him if the dead rise. Otherwise, the beast is right – we should just enjoy the present like it wants to (Ecclesiastes 8:15).
Then there are those who spend all their time dreaming of the future, and not learning from the past nor putting their nose to the grindstone in the present. And while this is a soul attitude, it doesn’t help if the soul dreams without the foundation of practicality and pragmatism which comes from the spirit’s understanding.
PRIDE OF LIFE
1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. Whenever you have a scripture about three things, especially when one of them is the lust of the flesh, you know they probably connect to the fractions of the mind. Obviously, the lust of the eyes is about the soul; and the pride of life can only be about the spirit, which is life (John 6:63).
The lust of the flesh is about the needs and laziness of the carnal nature. I think enough has already been said about that. The eyes – the soul – also lusts… but oddly, the spirit doesn’t; it merely has pride; I’ve scoured the scriptures looking for a place where the spirit desired something; where it hungered, thirsted, lusted, and so on. I looked really hard, because I had my own theory about the “lust of the spirit”. Unfortunately, that just isn’t what the Bible says – the epitaph of many a great idea.
So it isn’t so much that it wants something, as it is that it doesn’t want something: it doesn’t want to change: Proverbs 29:23. Proverbs 15:32 (BBE) He who will not be controlled by training has no respect for his soul, but he who gives ear to teaching will get wisdom [heart]. There is controversy over the last word, because the last word is leb, translated almost exclusively as “heart” in the OT. That makes little sense, so most translators say something like “he who listens to reproof gets understanding”, which I like better; it just isn’t what it says.
I honestly don’t know exactly what that last half is trying to say; and that’s fine for now, because obviously those whose spirit listens get something good for (or “in”, or “with”, etc.) their heart. But those whose spirit will not be trained has no respect for their soul… they are too full of the pride of life! The spirit’s only true desire is not to change; and this is, like I always say, a good thing; it shouldn’t be tossed about by every wind of doctrine… but it should give ear to the judgments of its own soul! And it is that pride of the spirit, the pride of life which comes not from God, but from the world.
WORK FURLOUGH
I’ve led you to believe that the soul is a captive living in a dungeon with no voice in the mind. And that’s true, but not quite in the way you think. Consider modern parents; their lives revolve around their children. Yes, caring for your children is good and necessary. But obsessing over them and making them the center of the universe… not so much.
Who really runs the modern home? Surely the emasculated modern man is not allowed to be the head of any house today – as prophesied long ago in Isaiah 3:12. You might be tempted to say the woman, but that’s only true in a certain sense. To see who is in charge in a modern family, we simply find out who, in the end, gets what they want (2 Peter 2:19). So is it the mom who says “I told you, NO”, or the child who screams “but I want it!!”?
You’ve seen families in supermarkets; you’ve seen them at home. Does the mother ever really win? Yes, she is the titular head of the modern home. But it doesn’t matter whose name is on the lease. It matters who gets to say “I want” and have it happen (Romans 6:16). The child always wins any fight it cares about sufficiently. Thus, the child is the ruler of the home. Yet despite not having the ruling role, the man has a voice in the modern family.
It’s systematically ignored in the families I’ve known, but he does talk a big talk. And the wife and children often make a symbolic attempt to honor him, even as they know they’re going to do whatever they feel like in the end. So the voice of the father is often heard; his boasting, his planning, his vision. And yet he is ignored. And in the same way, the soul is often heard; it boasts, it plans, it thinks of the future. But when a decision is to be made, the beast pushes right over him; the spirit shrilly nags him into submission.
And so in a sense, he is in prison; for he is the servant of the family, yet has no real say in the decisions of that family. He doesn’t choose where his steps go – someone else decides that for him (John 21:18). This is the definition of bondage, and thus prison. The father is not the head of the modern house. The child/heart is; the mother/spirit is second, making all the decisions necessary and working to keep the house running for the child’s gratification; and the father/soul is a distant third, a servant who exists for the skills and power and protection he brings the family, but not for his judgments.
Likewise, your soul is meant to be the dad of the mind; it should judge, and tell the heart “no ,you can’t have that”. But the heart invariably whines, screams, and throws a tantrum. And invariably, your soul relents, compromises, does whatever it takes to placate the beast because it wants to please it – if for no other reason than when the heart is angry, there is no peace.
And thus, the soul is overcome by the heart. And thus, it is brought in bondage by it. And thus, it is in prison, as I said. But not a prisoner locked in a dim cell… a prisoner drafted into service of his jailer. A prisoner coerced into doing the bidding of his evil master. And when the soul sees something that would imply the heart is wrong, fearing the heart as it does, it would think “but if that’s true, my heart will throw a fit”; so rather than see what it looks at, it does its best to “see” something else. Thus it is blinded by the heart (Ephesians 4:18). So it really is in the dark… in a manner of speaking.
THE LUST OF THE EYES
As I said, the lust of the flesh is simple; I am hungry; I am thirsty. I am tired. I am in pain. And so on. It is not even complicated enough to look around and see what else there is to want, because desiring it would require thinking of the future! And it would require use of the eyes, which belong to the soul! When you see a pretty girl, you weren’t wanting her until your eyes saw her. The beast wasn’t particularly lonely until after your soul saw something it might enjoy! Thus the eyes awakened a desire in the heart which hadn’t been present until then. And then the soul and heart worked together to scheme a way to achieve it (Jeremiah 22:17).
And this is, of course, what the soul was supposed to do. For without thinking of the future, you’d be just like the beasts you’re supposed to rule over (Proverbs 6:6-8, 20:4, 13:22). Your soul should look about for ways to improve your life (1 Corinthians 12:31). And to do that, you use your eyes. “What would I like to have? Where would I like to be? How can I be happy like that person is? How can I achieve what they have?”
And none of that is wrong; it is not the blind lust of the flesh “I want”. It’s not the envy of the spirit, “I deserve what they have”. It’s a reasoned observation “I would like to have something like that”. “I don’t necessarily want his wife, but a wife like his is what I am looking for”. This is all exactly what the soul was meant to do, and this is not wrong… unless, of course, the soul doesn’t consult the conscience about the right ways to get these things. And unless, of course, the heart doesn’t listen to either one anyway and just does whatever it wants.
In that case, the eyes wind up being only a tool for evil (Proverbs 28:22, Luke 11:34). The soul is supposed to provide for its beast (Psalms 23), which is a good thing – it’s how it does that which determines whether what happens next is right or wrong; “I wish that I had Jessie’s girl” is wrong; “Where can I find a woman like that”, is not; it is simply the lust of the eyes.
NEVER FILLED
The beast is like any animal; food tastes good. Therefore, the beast is motivated to eat all of it that it can, until it has a stronger motivation to stop – such as pain in the abdomen, the inability to swallow, or an urge to vomit. It doesn’t think of the future “what if I’m eating too much? Will I regret this later?” because to the beast, there is no later. There is here, now, and all the food you can eat. And this is fine, when you’re a wolf feasting on a deer carcass, knowing you may not eat again for weeks.
It’s not so fine for a person who eats three meals a day (Proverbs 23:1-2). And so your soul is supposed to “consider diligently” what you’re eating and tell your beast to stop BEFORE it physically cannot eat another bite. The beast will never stop on its own until it absolutely has to – watch a dog or a goose or a cow eat. So it your soul’s job to make it realize that it has enough (1 Timothy 6:6-9). Not just of food – but of comfort, of money, of beauty, of security.
When your soul loses the authority to say “no, you’ve had enough wine/money/women/safety”, then your soul has to keep looking for more to please its allegedly-hungry heart. Like a weekend dad trying desperately to win the approval of his child, the soul devotes its life to trying to make its beast happy. And because the soul is far smarter and more powerful, it does far worse things to feed the beast than a simple beast could ever do on its own.
For example, when I was a teenager, most of my friends, dominated by their beasts, did whatever they wanted and then got caught and tried to pick up the pieces later. But when I was doing something I shouldn’t, which, like all teenagers, was fairly often, I thought ahead. I learned that before I did something wrong, I would have already prepared an explanation for why I was doing it; an explanation which was completely true… but also not the real reason I was doing it.
I knew lying was wrong; and I didn’t lie. But I was a master at telling a misdirecting truth. So I was far worse, and far more dangerous than them… and far more evil; I was a soul who could think ahead so my beast wouldn’t get caught. Rather than the blatant lie of a dumb animal “uh, I didn’t do it!”, I would have a far more clever response from the soul that justified exactly why I had to do what I did.
And because I prepared it beforehand, it sounded spontaneous and therefore true. Thus, I almost never got in trouble. Because unlike my less-evil friends, my heart had harnessed the power of my soul to look ahead, to plan ahead, and while my soul was working to feed my beast, my spirit had enough control over the heart to prevent it from acting until the time was right… until it could enjoy whatever ill-gotten pleasure it was after without fear of getting caught.
LOVE NOT THE THINGS OF THE WORLD
I said above that there was nothing wrong with the lust of the eyes, and I stand by it; first, because right and wrong is not the point. But also because seeing someone’s house on the beach, and saying “I’d like to have a house like that someday” is not a sin… …it just shows God what your soul is trying to please: your own beast (1 Corinthians 7:29-34 comes to mind). See, all of these things are perfectly normal for a soul concerned strictly with the things of this life. Remember: That’s exactly what John said, “the lust of the eyes… is of the world” (1 John 2:16).
John didn’t say these things are a sin! Because they’re not necessarily sins. They are just proof that your treasure lies in pleasing your own heart, not in another country! Luke 12:22-34. That’s why, if you read the context of John’s statement, you see he says exactly that: 1 John 2:15-17. Your soul is supposed to lust after a way to make your life better! But if you lust after a way to make THIS life better, that’s all you’ll find! You should be lusting after a way to make your next life better!
Your soul should be looking farther ahead than the beast’s tomorrow, to the millennial “tomorrow”! The lust of the eyes – as long as it thinks of the things of this world – can never be satisfied (Proverbs 27:20). The beast might be content for a few moments, but if the soul is constantly seeing things that look better than what it has it never will be.
If you don’t believe you’re like this, go to an amazing place for vacation – say, Italy. And while you’re there, read a travel brochure for France, extolling the awesome virtues of the Eiffel Tower, or the cuisine of Marseilles. Then see how your heart feels about Italy, now that it knows France is there. Once the heart knows there’s grass on the other side of that fence, it will never be happy with the garbage on this side (Ecclesiastes 1:8, 2:10-11). And even if it gets on the other side of the fence, it will still not be enough – it will miss Italy as soon as it’s gone.
Likewise, nothing that you think will make you happy will make you happy. Like all of us, you’re thinking “if I can just get married/a degree/a better job/have kids/beat my nemesis/understand the Bible/etc., I’ll be happy!” But you never will be. If anyone would have been, it was Solomon. The lust of the eyes prevents you from being happy, because no matter what you have, you always see something else you don’t have. And the beast, being stupid, thinks “Yes! That’s the thing that will finally make me happy!” But it won’t. No THING ever will.
Happiness will not be found in having more of anything. Whether that’s knowledge, money, fame, power, truth, anything. None of that will make you happy. Yes, knowing the truth might help you… but if knowing the truth is, itself, the goal… it never will. The only solution is in Philippians 4:11-12. The beast must be taught that what it has is enough – that it doesn’t need anything else (Genesis 33:9).
It needs to be trained to look inward for satisfaction, not outward. So every time you catch your beast being impatient to be elsewhere – when here is just fine – grab your bit and jerk the reins and remind it to enjoy what it has. And when your soul sees something it thinks the heart might want, it needs to judge the lust before it gets the heart all excited about getting it. Read James 1:14-15. Temptation comes when you are tempted by your lust. Either lust! The lust of the flesh, or of the eyes!
But it only becomes a sin if that lust conceives. That is, if the thing you see, and the plan you ponder to get it, is approved by the soul (or whoever is ruling your mind in that moment). And the end result of that is death. Because all of these lusts, even the ones that are not a sin, are of the WORLD! And can only be expected to get you worldly things!
I’ve said many times in the earlier lessons in Series 4, that needing attention or lusting over things was of the flesh. And that was true. But it implied the soul was a passive observer, rather than the truth; which is that it is a quiescent servant. When you want attention, it is your soul which is trying to call the attention of people it sees to look at your flesh and praise your strength, speed, skill, or whatever.
So it is of the flesh – but it is done via the eyes which are seeking to feed the flesh’s insecurity. When you want your neighbor’s wife, it is your soul which saw her, and thought “if I could get her for my beast, then it would finally be happy!”
And so it does whatever it can to provide her to your flesh for enjoyment… even though it began as the lust of the eyes, it always ends up being sacrificed on the altar of the flesh.Because in a sense, the beast cannot lust after another man’s wife, because your beast has no eyes; the eyes belong to the soul. So the beast can’t see her to desire her unless and until the soul brings her toits attention.
THE SOUL SPEAKING FOR THE BEAST
Likewise, the beast has no ears or tongue; so it can’t hear or process anything you say without the spirit hearing for it; and it can’t say anything, without the spirit doing it (Romans 8:26). What this means is that everything a person says is said by the spirit – because all words are spirit. It also means that every action anyone ever takes, and every word they ever say, is a result of a decision by the soul… even if the decision was just to let the lesser fractions say whatever they wanted.
Because even if the soul is captive, someone has to open their eyes to see the steps they’re taking – even if those steps are in service of the heart, the soul must still be the one to make them. And even if the spirit services the heart, the spirit still has to form the words. Because it is your tongue, therefore your spirit, which actually forms the words; and the fact that the words made it out of your body means that your soul allowed it.
It’s usually pretty easy to track down the original speaker, whether in yourself or in others, by asking which of the fraction-specific words they used (want/should/will); or which time-frame the thoughts are about (past/present/future). The things most people say are simply a conversation they’re having with themselves, and you’re more a witness than a participant (“well, I want to do this, but I really should do that, I think I will go and do this… but no, I had really wanted to do that…”).
We all know people who don’t have a filter on their mouth. They say whatever pops into their heads. These people have tongues which are purely operated by their heart; there is no “we shouldn’t say that”, the chain from the heart’s feeling to the lips’ expression has no delay because their heart is too dominant.
We also know those who must ponder an answer for a long pause before they say anything. What finally comes out is never what they truly feel, but rather a carefully edited expression of what they think they should feel. This is, of course, spirit-dominated people, paralyzed by fear of a mistake. Finally, there are those, even in the world, who can reason and discuss, at least as long as the topic doesn’t hit “too close to home” and make them get emotional, thus causing one of the other fractions to take charge.
Thus, it is always the fault of your soul – and your spirit – which is why Jesus said what He did in Matthew 12:36. The fact that the soul meekly said “yes, sir” to whatever your heart wanted to say, does not mean it didn’t have to agree to say the words!
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
When you make judgments, what we’re really saying is that you’re making choices. And when you make choices, you do so with a particular goal in mind; I’m choosing this so that I can get that. This is better because it will avoid that. And so on. And so at the end of the day, whomever runs your mind on a daily basis, all your choices truly come down to what does your soul want… and how badly does it want it. Yes, your heart pushes for things; your spirit pushes for other things; but every decision has to have at least token approval from your soul.
And the decision, even the decision to let the heart or spirit do whatever they want, is still the soul’s decision. And that means your soul ultimately decides every action, every word you say, based on what is most important to it. Based on what it wants. When the heart says to the soul “if we do the right thing, our friends will hate us”, the soul that loves being a part of a family more than it loves the truth will make the wrong choice.
If the spirit says “we shouldn’t worship that other god”, and your soul says “but he promised me eternal life and all I have to do is say ‘I give my heart to Jesus’”, then the soul will make the wrong choice. And yet, is it really the wrong choice if it leads to what the soul wants? See, we tend to judge all souls by the things God says souls should want, but what if all your soul truly wants is to eat, drink, and be merry with its heart? What if the soul really doesn’t want to be a part of God’s family… are its choices really the wrong choices… for it? (Proverbs 21:10).
Sure, they’re the wrong choices to be a part of God’s Kingdom. But if they hate God’s Kingdom… the choices they make are exactly the choices they should be making! (Isaiah 66:3). And if a person just wants to be part of a happy family right now, and never feel alone for even a moment, then they shouldn’t follow the true Jesus. If that is what you truly want, then true Christianity is the wrong choice.
YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT
Because that’s the great secret: ultimately, we all get what we truly want. You may not believe that, but think about it; you’ve no doubt said something like “I want to learn a foreign language”, or “I want to play the piano” or “I want to get married” or “I want to be a better person”. But as time passes, you make choices, for even refusing to take action is an action, and refusing to make a choice is a choice. So you watch TV instead of practicing the piano; you go to bed instead of going on a date; you go to a bar instead of studying French.
You made these choices based on what you truly wanted. If you had truly wanted to be a better person, what would you have done? Matthew 13:44-46. If you truly want something, absolutely nothing will get in your way. If something does get in your way, it simply means that you truly wanted that other thing – even if that other thing was nothing more complicated than pleasing your own heart, or appeasing your spirit. You get want you want, because every choice you make is based on what you truly want! And that’s not wrong! Because this is not about right and wrong; if you want peace in your own mind, then make those choices.
That’s absolutely what you should do. But if you want to become an Olympic-class figure skater, every single decision you make must be in service of that goal. You must wake up in the morning thinking about the ice, and go to bed at night only when your soul realizes that there is nothing else that can be done tonight to get you closer to that goal without borrowing from tomorrow. There is literally nothing you cannot accomplish if your soul truly wants it badly enough.
But the reality is, what we mean is “I want to learn to play the piano, but not more than I like watching reruns of ER”. “I wish I could be a better person without having to change”. Because your actions will show you, and the world, and of course God, what it is that means the most to you (Proverbs 13:19). And if that leads to your own death… that’s still not wrong. Nor is it unfair. It’s just the fruits of pursuing what you believed would make you happy. If dying doesn’t make you happy, then, maybe you wanted the wrong thing in the first place?
HOW WAS JESUS PERFECT?
Of all the questions I’ve raised in these lessons, probably no single one has been more divisive over the centuries than this one. More people have studied this question, more different conclusions have been raised, more churches started and destroyed over this issue than any other: the nature of Jesus.
Yes, we studied this in Lesson 2-5, but I left something unsaid because you didn’t understand enough to understand the answer. As with all truth, line must be upon line, precept upon precept (Isaiah 28:9-10). And the reason no one has ever solved this question is because they hadn’t built the answer upon a stable foundation.
The question is, at its heart; was Jesus really a human? Let me clearly define that: did Jesus have a better heart than we have? Was He born with a spirit that knew more truth than ours? Did He have a special miraculous teacher? Did He remember His Godhood? Were things easier for Him in any way?
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then He was not a fit savior and He did not, in fact, judge the devil for his belief that man cannot obey God. He would have cheated, and that is unacceptable. Besides, the Bible plainly says otherwise in Hebrews 2:14-18, 4:15, Philippians 2:5-8, etc.).
And yet if that’s really true, if Jesus really was exactly like us in every way, HOW was He able to keep the law perfectly when none of us ever could? If He wasn’t different, then how could He do something that the rest of the human race considers so impossible? In fact, it seems so impossible, that the only way they can reconcile the belief that He was without sin is by concluding He was never human in the first place. That He was not truly “come in the flesh”, which is, as you know, the doctrine of Antichrist.
Yet the question is fair: how did He do it? What are the odds that He alone, of all the billions of humans who ever lived, managed to live a perfect life unless He had some secret weapon we don’t have? Remember, this can’t be something He learned as an adult, it had to be something that the baby Jesus knew when He refrained from stealing His brother’s milk and avoided sinning for the first time.
Which of us could have been expected to do such a thing? It seems, in the literal sense of the word, incredible. And yet it must be true. So what was different about Him? How did He keep the 1-2-10 law perfectly, in every side, in every sense? Armed with the understanding you’ve learned in the past few dozen lessons, we’re finally ready to give a real answer to this, perhaps the hardest of all questions.
GETTING WHAT YOU WANT
Remember, His heart wanted the same thing your heart wants. His spirit was just, like yours, full of more-or-less good statutes from His good-but-not-perfect family and friends. But His soul was different, because He was HIM and not you or me! Our soul makes us who we are. Strip away the soul, and we become a vegetable. Put our soul into a spirit body, and we’d be like the angels.
Swap our souls, and we’d be the same people – except for the fact that we’d have to work things out with the unaccustomed beast and spirit that each other’s soul left behind, which might change us a bit. But through it all our soul’s desires, its judgments, our self would be the same. Otherwise, what are we? Remember too, the challenge Satan cast was not “no soul could keep these laws”.
The challenge was “no soul could keep these laws while fighting against a heart like this and a spirit like that!” The challenge was never that God’s soul couldn’t keep the law. Obviously, it could and did. The challenge was that God’s soul couldn’t keep the law from inside a body of flesh with an unbroken spirit and a selfish heart! So that’s exactly what the heavenly Jesus did; He ceased to exist as an Elohim and let the Father attach Jesus’ soul onto the egg in Mary’s womb, and in that moment became in all points like unto His brethren.
But His soul didn’t change. What He wanted, as a soul, wasn’t altered – otherwise, He would have ceased to be Himself! And so how did Jesus keep the law? Simple. He did what His soul wanted to do: Hebrews 1:8-9. He kept the commandments because His soul loved righteousness more than His brethren… more than us! What did His soul love? David, a type of Christ, answered in Psalms 119:20, 167. Why was Jesus wiser than other men? Psalms 119:97-104. What would have happened if Jesus hadn’t loved this above all else? Psalms 119:92-95. We get what we want. Always.
So can we really call “foul” if what our soul wants is to please its heart, and what Jesus wanted is to keep the Golden Rule? If a soul wants to take a nap, who is surprised if it goes hungry? Proverbs 19:15. And who then, is surprised if he dies in the end? Proverbs 21:25. How is it unfair if Jesus wanted to keep the Golden Rule, which leads to life, and we wanted to sit on the mental couch while our heart and spirit made choices for us, which eventually leads to death? (Proverbs 16:25).
We both got exactly what we wanted, and exactly what the choices we made inevitably led to. That’s actually the definition of fair! So yes, we failed to please God… but not because the test was unreasonable! Not because we couldn’t have pleased God. But because we just didn’t really want to that much! If we had, we’d have done it! (Isaiah 26:8-9).
And if we’d shown God that we loved that, He would have made sure we found a way to get it (Psalms 107:9, Psalms 63:8). You always get what you truly want… and if your soul truly wants to keep the Golden Rule, the heart and spirit combined will not be able to topple it off the pyramid. Which is not to say it’s not a very close battle… that’s why it’s the great test.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Our life, from earliest childhood, is a succession of choices. Some children hear music for the first time and think “Wow! I have to learn how to create that”, and so they spend their lives making choices in pursuit of that goal. Some children hear about astronomy and then can’t talk about anything else for decades; some find that sort of clarity through dance, or poetry, or farming, or karate.
But by far the majority of us drift about from one wish to the next, one passing fad to another, hoping that this next hobby, this next girlfriend, this next book will bring us the meaning our soul knows our life is lacking. But when the baby Jesus first heard the law, sitting in His mother’s lap at synagogue perhaps, His soul would certainly have thought “Yeah! That’s what I was looking for!”, and would have immediately made every choice in His life based on what it said… just as you did for your own soul’s deepest desire!
You sinned – no, not that word because it connotes right and wrong and that really isn’t the point here. You failed to live up to God’s requirements for His reward because when you were told as a child “don’t do that, other people don’t like that” (the Golden Rule), you heard it, processed it, and decided “who cares? I want it!” So instead of seeking God’s reward, you chose a different path, one which seemed to be easier to walk, more fun, leading to a better life with a more immediate reward – one “to be desired to make one wise”.
And yes, that is a failure… but only if you actually wanted to be like God offered to make you. Otherwise, you made the all the right choices to become exactly who you are right now. And yet you’re here reading this lesson because that person isn’t good enough for you. And their life is not what your soul had thought it would be like, when it chose its first easy sin. The path hasn’t been as smooth as you were led to believe by the other fractions, wide though it is.
It’s hardly God’s fault that what you wanted was stupid. You can’t blame Him if what you were convinced you wanted wasn’t what you thought it would be. It really isn’t God’s fault that what we thought would make us happy will kill us, because He told us so, a lot. But you were too stubborn to listen when He said so. But now, after you’ve experienced a few decades of the fruits of your way of life… maybe your soul is tired of it? Maybe it’s ready to receive a love of the truth? 2 Thessalonians 2:10.
See, none of us were born loving the truth, as Jesus was. That is one leg up He had over us; but not because it was unfair, but because that’s who He is. And yet… what we want, what we love, that can change. It can change when we’ve acquired what our soul thought it would love, and realized that we were lied to… and that we actually hate that! After we’ve seen the fruits of our doings (Isaiah 3:9-11), we might be ready to receive the love of the truth that makes Jesus who He is!
God could have told us that, but we were too arrogant and proud to listen. But after you’ve achieved some of your goals, and seen that the view from the top wasn’t what you expected, you might be in a better frame of mind to hear about another way of life… if that’s what you want (Psalms 37:4-8). You might be ready to replace the lust of the eyes with the desire of Jesus’ soul. To try substituting the pleasures of this life with the pleasures of the next; working towards a good future then instead of a good future now.
Because clearly, what you’ve been doing hasn’t achieved what your soul wanted, not now and certainly not for the next life. And that’s exactly where you need to be to learn the truth. Because it is only into such people’s hearts that the Father places His Son’s spirit, to see if, without their heart shouting their soul to silence, they saw anything in that spirit their soul did want (Psalms 14:2-4).
If it can see that slender ray of hope down a different, much rockier and less comfortable way of life. Something better to teach their souls to lust after. His offer is to teach us how to love the same thing He loves, step by step; to help us compare the fruits of the things we’ve already tried with the fruits of the one thing our heart is certain wouldn’t make it happy: thinking of others before itself.
All of this, of course, is summed up in one passage: Romans 6:18-23. You get what you want. And the ultimate test of that will be using the love of the truth He has taught us to convince the spirit and the heart that loving the truth is not only what our soul wants, but what they want too. And if we can do that… if we can put a love of the truth into those two fractions that are now our enemies… we can teach it to anyone. And such people are exactly what God needs in His Kingdom – people who have learned, by experience, how to convince anyone that God’s way is the right way, so He can use them to instruct all those lost souls who oppose themselves (2 Timothy 2:25).