The human spirit of the apostles and prophets, a spirit regenerated and indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. It can be considered the mingled spirit, the human spirit mingled with God's spirit. Such a mingled spirit is the means by which the New Testament revelation concering Christ is revealed to those who seek God and his Kingdom. We need the same kind of spirit to see such a revelation. We must accept the fact of Incarnation -- God's Spirit mingled with man's spirit regardless of all evidence and all feelings and all thoughts to the contrary, for it is God who is doing the Incarnation out of His love for mankind.

The grace of God is God Himself, especially as life, partaken of and enjoyed by us; the gift of grace is the ability and function produced out of the enjoyment of the grace of God. Grace implies life, and the gift is the ability that comes out of life. The resurrection of the dead, which Jesus represents, is going from the denial of the Incarnation of God into mankind to accepting the fact of Incarnation by faith alone.

God's mystery is His hidden purpose, which is to dispense Himself into mankind. This mystery was hidden in God, but now the New Testament believers, having been enlightened by Jesus's example, are able to see it.

Through His indwelling, Christ imparts the fullness of God into our being that we may be filled with fullness of God and bring glory to Him. The spirit of God is poured into us; then it returns to God for His glorification -- for example: Isaac's wealth was first given to Rebekak for her beautification; then all the wealth came back to Isaac, with Rebekak, for his glorification.

The Bible teaches that Ruth was the result of incest, for she belonged to the tribe of Moab, the fruit of Lot's incestuous union with his daughter; the Moabites were forbidden to enter the assembly of God, even to the tenth generation. Ruth, however, not only was accepted by the Lord but also became one of the most important ancestors of Christ because she sought God and God's people. Regardless of who we are and what our background is, as long as we have a heart that seeks God and His people, we are in the perfect position to accept the fact of the Incarnation of Christ, God, in our lives by way of faith alone.

Man is slow, cowardly slow, to accept union with God as a living fact, for it involves great, great responsibilities; it deflates our great pride in our own efforts to attain union with God. Union, Incarnation, with God is a gift achieved by God's love for mankind. Man can realize this fact when he ceases his proud effort to be God and completely accept his humanhood; In this sense only is he one with God; Jesus is our perfect example of Incarnation and retaining one's own personhood -- personality.

Man is scared to death of this living, ungraspable mystery, and is always trying to have it securely boxed up in some intellectual formula, where its vitality is destroyed because it tries to kill God's excitement, joy, laughter, fun at being alive and free -- as He expects to be in every individual person: God, in man, wants to be free and joyful; man, in God, wants to hide in darkness and cry until he accepts on faith the fact of Incarnation, and then God and man not only walk together, but laugh together as well, and as one.

"Spirit lacks all gravity and in so far seriousness. Seen from Spirit, nothing is heavy; it takes all things lightely. Not only the concept of toil, even that of sufferng finds no object in it. There is only toil from the viewpoint of Gana (the flesh); and man knows pain and sorrow only as a creature of feeling and emotion....Thus, in the first place, spiritual man must needs impress man of the earth as wanting in seriousness. This is true already of the man of courage, for he puts his life to the stake; that is to say: he plays with his life....But the believer, above all, must appear most sadly deficient in seriousness to the man of heavy earthliness. Consciously, he stakes on what is uncertain. He trusts most rashly despite the opinions of the sententious and the objections of the grave."--Keyserling in SOUTH AMERICAN MEDITATIONS. London, 1932,p.373.

What about evil in man: "Resist not evil." Evil has to receive feedback to continue, and if evil tries to continue on its evil course without feedback, evil always destroys itself.

Life is not only a natural process, but it is even more a great mystery that unfolds for man, one spark at a time in God's own good time.

Insha Allah: God bless God and all our children


AMEN

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Rev.Lewis Atchley, D.Th., Msc.D., Ph.D.
*******DOCTOR OF THE SOUL*******