There is a real spiritual truth here. How you picture an idea in your mind relies on a number
of reference points. If these reference points are set one way it makes sense to you, and
if set another way it means something different.
It is not unreasonable to be convinced ones own set of reference points is the definitive and
only conclusion. It is why it is difficult to actually see things as they are before the Lord.
The Lord is not like us. The issues at stake are not ours but His. We empathise, excuse, relate,
struggle through our existence, victims of our circumstance and emotions.
Pauls emphasis is always upon the journey of transformation, of the point of starting is very
different from the point of arrival.
So if you look only at an equation, I am safe or I am lost, you are looking at the wrong things.
In a family relationship, you ask, am I on good terms with these people or not. Do we get on
or are their subjects and things I cannot do?
There are things that will get you thrown out and expelled from the family, and things that will
encourage, build up and bring about encouragement.
There will always be some, who get expelled, a minority but they exist.
The focus is always on working things through.
Now if you have no life, and there is no relationship, then nuance, emphasis are irrelevant.
The language is am I safe, or am I lost. And the language becomes I am saved, these are
the words that hold me tight, and you are lost and doooooomed.
It is almost as if the stronger you try and grasp that which is not fully known or seen, the
more it evades.
Jesus put it like this
Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
John 12:25
Where is your heart? Where is your desire and struggle?
STRANGE, most of us see it the way the Scriptures describe it with the SAME spiritual under standing as a result of comparing Scripture to Scripture. And the one's who do not see it with spiritual understanding have pronounced heresies.
1 Corinthians 2:6-14 (NIV)
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6 [/SUP] We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
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7 [/SUP] No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
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8 [/SUP] None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
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9 [/SUP] However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"--
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10 [/SUP] but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
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11 [/SUP] For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
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12 [/SUP] We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.
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13 [/SUP] This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
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14 [/SUP] The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.