June
1, 1989
|
Naiveté
(Ignorance) |
Discernment
(Perception) |
Release
(Forgiveness) |
|
"But
I would not have you ignorant
brethren—
Be
not children in
understanding” |
“In
understanding be men—
filled
with… knowledge—
wise
as serpents…
have—senses
exercised to discern both good and
evil” |
“We
all have knowledge—
knowledge
puffs up, but love edifies. If any thinks he knows
anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to
know…
Love
covers a multitude of sins…..
Forgive
one another…
Love
one another.”
|
Look
at these three columns carefully. They describe the progression
through which God takes us on our journey to Christ-likeness. We
begin in ignorance. From there we move to an illumination and an
awareness of right and wrong regarding all things. Our
personality is disciplined through perception. Finally, we are
led to release from legal perception of right-wrong into the
grace of pure knowing of God. Herein is found freedom, joy, and
forgiveness of others over their transgressions against our
knowledge of good and evil.
I.
Naiveté - Ignorance
I
want to comment on these three columns more thoroughly, but
especially the last two. The first column, ignorance, is fairly
obvious to us all. Most of us are already fairly discerning people (2nd
column).
Naiveté
toward right/wrong, wise/unwise, is the most basic form of
lawlessness and evil. We recognize this already. So that is why
we have ministry. That is why we have teaching and study— to illumine, to create
awareness---of what is right and what ought to be changed to
become right.
Every
time we speak, teach, write, or preach, we are illuminating
awareness and perception of right from wrong. We are addressing
ignorance and converting it to understanding. This is all we
will say about ignorance.
II
Discernment - Perception
As
ignorance is the basic form of lawlessness, perception of good
and evil is the most basic form of law. Mankind became subject
to the knowledge of good and evil at the Garden of Eden. So he
became subject to law.
Law
presents us a picture, an image of God’s Life. But it can
produce no life. Knowledge of good and evil only presents us an
image of the way life ought to be. But knowledge can't produce
life. It only shows us how separated we are from true Life. This
is the curse Adam brought us under when he gave us out knowledge
of good and evil.
Everything
we come to understand about right and wrong is law that presents
us an image of life, but can produce no life. Everything true
about law is true about all understanding, for all understanding
is based on the law of knowing good versus evil.
All
our knowledge is legal. All knowledge therefore carries the
weights and bondages that all law carries. The knowledge of what
ought to be carries a certain spirit of heaviness and
condemnation with it because we are powerless to effect it
ourselves, either in our own lives, or in the life of the
church.
The
more we learn from God about what is right, wrong, and what
ought to be, the more prone we are to heaviness,
self-condemnation, and an unspoken spirit of judgment toward
others who walk outside the bounds of what we have come to
discern as right. Discernment produces de facto judgment
against others because all understanding is legal and law works judgment.
I
think all of us recognize the evil of this judgment. We want to
be free from it. We don't want to judge others based on our
discernment of life. We hate Pharisaism and have made every
effort to be free from all manifest legalism toward others.
The
fact remains however, that the spirit of
pharisaic legalism is intrinsic to our power to
understand right from wrong to any degree at any
level. So, to the degree we are functioning based on our
discernment of right from wrong, we carry a hidden, latent
spirit of legalism in our bosoms that automatically issues
judgment against all people walking outside our judgment of
righteousness. This judgment is unconscious, but it is there.
As
a result, all our understanding works separation and division among us. The
more refined our legal understanding, the more particular and
minute our points of separation with others become (no matter
how kind-spiritedly we may part paths.)
This
brings me to comment briefly on the nature of the Word of God. I
alluded to this in my February letter and
bring it up here again. What people throughout Christendom fail
to realize is that the Word of God comes to us through the veil and filter
of our finite personality which functions through the legal
perception of right and wrong.
We
see through a glass darkly. We do not hear the same way God
speaks. God speaks in grace. We hear through legal discernment,
through the filtering power of the knowledge of good and evil.
This makes everything we hear from God a law, a law by which we
latently judge others. We are all silent Pharisees to some
degree as our image
of God's word forms the basis for our judgment against the
directions and activities of others.
Every
time we preach saying, "The word of God says..,"
we are speaking based on an image of the word
through the legal filter of our personality. When men affirm,
"I stand on the
WORD..," what they really mean without realizing it as that
they stand on their present image of the word. Can you see these
concepts together now?
|
IMAGE: |
veil
filter
law
human
personality
knowledge
of good and evil
|
|
yields
|
|
|
BONDAGE: |
condemnation
judgment
division
legalism
Pharisaism
work
of the flesh
|
Yes,
"the law is good."
Discernment is good. The image of God's word through our
personality is good. Good is better than evil, than lawlessness,
than ignorance, than naiveté.
But
goodness is not life. The knowledge of good and
the knowledge of God
are not the same. The knowledge of good cannot save us. The law
cannot save us. The limited image of God's word through our
legal personal perception cannot save us. They only work
condemnation and show us how far short we come of God's glory.
They only work division among us. They only place a heaviness on
us through on obligation and expectation we are powerless to
fulfil through our personalities!
We
must come out from under the law of our personalities into the
grace and Life of God. We have to come to see with the "living
seeing" that transcends knowledge. We have to come to see as God
sees!
This
brings us to the third column:
III.
Release - Forgiveness
Once
we have discerned what is right and wrong according to our
perception of God's word, our discernment has completed its
task. Our discernment can't work the righteousness it points us
to — either in our own lives or anyone
else's.
So
what do we do? We have to move from discernment to release! We have to
release what we see into the hands of God so He may work the true
righteousness behind what we have seen in our lives and in
the church.
By
releasing our discernment into God's hands, we release ourselves
from the bondages that attend our legal perceptions. We
come out from under the spirit of heaviness over all the evils
we have come to see in ourselves and in the church. It is God
who delivers us from these spiritual bondages.
As
we release to God our knowledge of good and evil. He brings true
healing to us over all the evil we taste because of our refined
perceptions. In releasing our power of perception to God, we release others from the
bondage of accountability to our
perceptions.
This
is what forgiveness is all about.
Through release to God of discernment, we are able to forgive
others for their perceived evils toward us personally, or
theologically, or however whatever it is we perceive about them
that is wrong according to our spirit through our image of God's
word.
This
is the love that covers a multitude of sins.
Sins against what? Against the laws of our perceptions of right
and wrong. As we release our perceptions to God, He works the
healing we need in our own hearts, and in our relationships with
those who have offended us. We suffer from many hurts and
bruises because of our faithfulness to our discernments. But if
we release our discernments to God, He will bring us healing. He
will restore wholeness to us. He will bring life to us out of
broken or lost relationships.
This
is what love, grace, and true unity are all about. Love and
unity are not based in ignorance, naiveté, and turning a blind
eye to the faults of others so as not to offend or confront.
Love and unity are based in taking our discernment and
releasing it to God.
Love
is not blindness to relational injustice or a burying of the
truth. Love is seeing
beyond to the way God sees once we have seen the truth. Love
is not ignorance of faults. Love is the supernatural
transcension of perceived faults, losing those perceptions in
the sea of Who God is, committed to His mediation and outworking
for correction and reconciliation. By this we are enabled at the
right time to reach out our hand one more time to those who
hurt, offend, or differ with us — each time gaining a greater
vision of the person through the eyes of Jesus
Himself.
Grace,
love, and spiritual unity: these three go together and are
collectively based, not on the commonness of our perceptions,
but on our release of all our perceptions to the Lord. It
is for us to cede up to God the law of our personality and find
the deliverance from our legal awarenesses that sets us and
others free into the pure love of God.
But
if we don't do this--- if we come to some place of latching onto
our perception of what is right--- whether over a
non-consequential doctrine, or the way something should be done
in the church, or over an interpersonal conflict--- then we come
to the "end of the line" of spiritual growth.
We
remain under legal bondage to the power of our awareness of
right and wrong. We remain under "house arrest" within the
confines of our own small personality. We become subject to the
"tormentors" of which Jesus spoke (Mt 18:34-35), tormented by
the gnawing awarenesses of others who have offended us or who
are going in what we perceive to be a wrong theological
direction. We've got to get free from this is we ever hope to
finding lasting fulfilment in God.
**********
Perhaps
this is why, when you boil it all down — all the scriptures, all
the teachings (mine included), all the ordinances, all the
practices of mice and men, all the issues— Jesus, and Paul, and
John concluded that everything is ultimately fulfilled according
to the "law of love."
And
what is it? It is the release into God's grace out of the power
of our discernment according to the knowledge of good and evil.
This is the true Knowledge of God, eternal Life, and the one
Truth that makes us free.