GOD’S STRATEGY FOR TRANSFORMATION
To be fair to both Jews and Christians, we must point out that, in a sense, God set them up for failure. We know, for example, that the Law is a Stumbling Block because God made it so. In part it was, and still is, a stumbling block because of the natural limitations of the written word to describe a spiritual God as we discussed above. As we said, the words are our introduction to God, but his spirit must be involved to bring full knowledge of God to people.

Another aspect of the Bible as a stumbling block is found in God’s admission that the Bible is full of mystery, parables and other confusing speech. But, in God’s defense, we must allow that God knows what he is doing so we can’t blame him for being so confusing and hard to understand. He made it difficult for people to understand him, but not impossible.

Our take on all this is that God knows how complex he is and he knows how simple we are by comparison. Therefore, he has his own problem to solve which is to transform simple, fleshly people into his complex, spiritual image.

This transformation process is not a simple task. It would be like trying to stuff a giant balloon the size of the earth into a thimble. It can’t be done using logic or any worldly, intellectual, physical means. The tools that people know and use so well will not work nor are they the tools that God would use since he is not of this world and he is not limited by time or space in what he can do. Not using worldly tools that man would use is one of the applications God had in mind when he said: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.”  In other words, knowing God and becoming like him cannot be accomplished by applying man’s fleshly, intellectual efforts. It is a spiritual phenomenon that God accomplishes by his Spirit. Here is why learning about God must be a spiritual process:

So it can be said that finite people have a problem learning about and becoming like an infinite God because he has a problem communicating truth to them in ways they can understand and apply. He could do it directly by his Spirit, and probably still does it by his Spirit just as he did before the written Bible  became available to most people. So, in these modern times, the Bible would appear to be God’s most visible tool for teaching people about himself so that he can transform them from earth-bound, fleshly humans to spiritual beings like him. That transformation is ultimately spiritual, but it begins in the mind and that is where the Bible is important to the process. His strategy, as we see it, goes something like this:

We readily admit that this is a terribly simplified explanation of an exceedingly long and complex process. We are compelled to present this history in such a way, however, to make the following points:

God’s solution to his problem is the New Covenant where the law is written on the hearts of men:

Jeremiah 31:31-34: “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

There is no way the significance of this scripture can be overstated. It is the nutshell summary of the Bible. It tells us what God is doing and how he does it. It mentions the law which relates to the mind and intelligence, and it mentions the heart which is what God uses to measure people and is the standard of a New Covenant relationship with God. This standard is confirmed in scriptures about King David and other shepherds who are men after God’s own heart.

Another very important truth in Jeremiah 31:31-34 is the principle of God teaching us directly by his Spirit. This principle is confirmed in the following scripture:

1 John 2:26-27:  I write this to you about those who would deceive you; 27 but the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him.

These promises tell us that New Covenant disciples will no longer need anyone to teach them about God. They will be able to learn about God directly from God through the anointing of his Spirit which teaches spiritually, unencumbered by words mistranslated by people who publish Bibles and misinterpreted by people who try to teach about God from their intellectual interpretations of the Bible. This spiritual teaching they receive from God directly, without a human mediator, might also be called a heart-to-heart connection where the stuff of the world and flesh do not interfere with communication between God and man.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The way we see it, the main obstacles to communication between God and man are religious leaders and religious institutions that have an appearance of godliness and authority that they use for their own benefit. We have discussed these issues in RELIGION.

There are some religionists who have the attitude that having access to heart-to-heart, or spirit to spirit communication with God somehow overrides the need to read the Bible. These people focus on spiritual manifestations discussed in Baptism of Holy Spirit and Tongues, Signs and Wonders and Music, Singing and Dancing. For them, the “touch of the spirit” is  what religion is all about. As long as their can get their spiritual “fix” they see little or no reason to read the Bible — except as a religious duty.

Not knowing what God might be doing to communicate directly with people by his Spirit, we assume that the Bible is still the first and best source of knowledge about God for most people. But that knowledge does not come through the  written words on the pages, it comes through the teaching of the Holy Spirit that illuminates the written word with spiritual understanding to our hearts.  When that illumination comes to by the power of God’s Spirit, we are no longer limited by the understanding that the written words impose on us. God discussed these limitations in the following scriptures:

These confusing scriptures cry out for interpretation:

Scriptures do not imply that there is no value in the written letter of the Bible. They do say, however, that when the written, literal letter of the Bible is compared to the spiritual understanding of what is written in the Bible, the written letter is nothing.  The following scripture communicates this truth best.

2-Corinthians 3:1-11 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; 3 and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, 6 who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses’ face because of its brightness, fading as this was, 8 will not the dispensation of the Spirit be attended with greater splendor? 9 For if there was splendor in the dispensation of condemnation, the dispensation of righteousness must far exceed it in splendor. 10 Indeed, in this case, what once had splendor has come to have no splendor at all, because of the splendor that surpasses it. 11 For if what faded away came with splendor, what is permanent must have much more splendor.

COMMENTARY: This scripture says clearly that we have no inherent competency in our flesh which is equated here to tablets of stone. Thus it can be said that whatever we try to store up in our fleshly, intellectual minds is of no more value than words written on stone. Even God’s words are not life-giving if they are written on stone.

In other words, scripture read and memorized as a mental activity is of no spiritual value. The written code kills regardless of where it is written, whether on paper or in the mind. The ability to quote scripture does have value to men, of course, because fleshly people place high value on whatever can be done with the mind and body. In God’s view, however, these are fleshly works without lasting spiritual value.

What has lasting spiritual value for God is whatever is spoken by God and written on the hearts of men by God. This is consistent with Jeremiah’s prophecy about the law being written on man’s hearts by God himself without the aide of a human teacher — even when man tries to teach himself.

1-Corinthians 2: When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. 6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,” 10 God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For what person knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. 14 The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

COMMENTARY: The Apostle Paul confirms that learning about God does not happen as a result of intellectual wisdom and fine-sounding speech. He understood full well that whatever he had to convey came directly from God through his Spirit and not the kind of wisdom that other religious teachers were using to gain followers.

Paul does not cringe from revealing that God’s wisdom is secret and has always been hidden from religious rulers. When he says Paul is not referring only to future, public,  miraculous events on earth and in heaven such as man is likely to imagine that God would do. He says that these are present things (i.e. gifts) that God has revealed (i.e. given) through the Spirit. These are the deep thoughts of God that are particular and appropriate for each person — not general and universal words that pass for human wisdom and are  taught to the masses through religious leaders.

These spiritual truths are all spiritually received  and discerned by those who possess the Spirit. Those who do not possess the Spirit are unspiritual. Since the Spirit is associated with the New Covenant, discernment is available only to New Covenant disciples. Old/First Covenant religionists are unspiritual rebels who only discern with their natural eyes and ears. They do not have spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear the deep things of God because they only read and interpret the Bible literally — not symbolically.

Those who have the mind of Christ understand that they cannot even teach themselves through rigorous Bible study, devotions and memorization because they understand that knowing God is not an intellectual exercise and that religious leaders cannot competently teach through human words what God’s teaches through the Spirit. They say they have faith, but the faith they have does not extend so far as to trust that God would teach them directly, by his Spirit. Instead their faith is in their own ability to teach themselves or in the ability of a religious leader who represents himself/herself as one competent to teach. This is not New Covenant faith. It is Old/First Covenant religion. And it is idolatry.

Those who do not have the mind of Christ continue to work at teaching themselves and learning from religious leaders. They are in the great population of religionists who are ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. They know about God but do not know him intimately.

If knowing God through intellectual study and by listening to religious leaders was the way to know God, more people would be abandoning their Old/First Covenant religious They would also stop seeking spiritual truth from religious leaders.