Divine and Human Personality
Personality
has always been to me very interesting.
Yet, thinking about this has changed so much in the Church. More and more pastors are coming to think
that they can change a person by human logic.
However, many pastors still hold to the fact that a more biblical Christ
logic is still the answer. That person’s
pre-Christian recognition of personality was still imperfect.
We
are not fully masters of ourselves. Our
self-determination is as limited as our self-consciousness. However, the divine will is absolutely
without hindrance because God’s activity is constant, intense and infinite.
As
to the ministry gifted individuals, God’s revelation, access, and power to them
is immanence to work against the forces of darkness. Self-knowledge and self-discipline are the
dignity of man. They are also the
dignity of God. Self-reverence,
self-knowledge, and self-control lead to sovereign power.
Our
personality is incomplete. We reason
truly only with God helping; our love in higher love endures; we will rightly
(using our will with God’s wisdom) only as God works in us to will and to do to
make us truly ourselves. We need an
infinite personality to supplement and energize our own. We are complete only in Christ (Colossians
2:9-10). The Holy Spirit will keep a
steady supply of power, knowledge, healing and health to the believer that
desires to make a difference.
On
the idea of personality as applied to God, self knows itself (soul), and what
is not self as related to (God's Spirit and your spirit), just because both alike are embraced within the
unity of its experience, standout against this background the apprehension of
which is the very essence of that rationality or personality which
distinguishes us from the ones who have not had the revelation of who they are
in Christ Jesus. The spirit-filled life
is the only way to go.
We
find that background, God, present in us, or rather, we find ourselves present
in it. However, if I find myself present
in it, then it (being the Holy Spirit), is more complete and simply more
personal that I am or could be.
Our
not-self is outside of us, so that we are finite and lonely, but God’s not-self
is within Him, so that there is a mutual inwardness of love and insight of
which the most perfect communion among men is only a faint symbol.
We
are hermit-spirits, and we come to union with others only by realizing our
union in the Body of Christ.
Let
me expound on the divine nature in terms of infinity. The divine nature is Infinite and has no known
limits or bounds. The
infinity of God implies that He is in no way limited by the universe. He is transcendent as well as immanent. This transcendence, however, must not be conceived
as freedom from existing space restrictions only, but rather as unlimited
resource, of which God’s glory is the expression. God is the vastness of the universe.
Infinity
can belong to but one Being, and therefore cannot be shared with the
universe. Infinity is not a negative but
a positive idea. It does not take its
rise from an impetus of thought, but is an intuitive conviction which
constitutes the basis of all other knowledge.
As
God is spirit, you as possessor of that same spirit conceived by the same
intensive power must begin to act on the Word as a gifted vessel that Jesus in
His dealings with humanity can use. You
have no fear of being rejected or disappointed.
You
rise above that which acts up to the measure of its power, simply natural
and physical forces, only in God the reserve is infinite. There is a transcendent element in the Holy
Spirit, which no self-revelation exhausts, whether creation or redemption,
whether law or promise. God Is.
See
you soon,
Pastor
Norman
Artesian Well Church
6031 Linden Avenue
Long Beach, Ca
Pastor James P. Norman Jr.
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