4
‘Holiness’ means both separation from as well
as separation unto. The positive things we are
separated unto are to dominate our thinking.
Israel were brought out from Egypt through
the Red Sea (cp. baptism) that they might be
brought in to the land of promise (Dt. 6:23).
Abraham was told “Get out...” of Ur; and
obediently “they went forth to go into the
land of Canaan: and into the land of Canaan
they came” (Gen. 12:1,5). The New Testament
preachers urged men to turn “from darkness
to light, and from the power of satan to God”
(Acts 26:18); from wickedness to God, to the
Lord (Acts 3:26; 15:19; 26:20; 9:35; 11:21). In
Nehemiah’s time, the people “separated
themselves from the peoples of the lands unto
the law of God, their wives, their sons, and
their daughters…they clave to their brethren”
(Neh. 10:28,29). Close fellowship with one’s
brethren arises from having gone out from the
surrounding world, unto the things of God’s
word. The life that is consumed with care for
others, with the Lord’s service, will have no
time for other things. I once asked a once
alcoholic brother how he managed to quit. He
shrugged and smiled, and said: “I guess after
I was baptized I just didn’t have time to get
drunk. It takes time, you know”.
The Way of the Spirit
God can work directly on the human mind. And
that’s just what we need. There are plenty of
examples; God sent a bad spirit between
Abimelech and the men of Shechem (Jud.
9:23); opened Lydia’s heart to be receptive to
the Gospel (Acts 16:14), faith itself is a gift
“not of yourselves” (Eph. 2:8). There’s a
higher hand in our lives and thinking; hence it
was “of the Lord” that Samson fell in love with
a Philistine (Jud. 14:4). The balance between
human freewill and God’s sovereign action is
impossible to define; but in the Divine-human
encounter, for sure we are not just left with
our own strength of will and intellectual abil-
ities. He earnestly wants us, and wishes to
indwell us with His Spirit. And so the New
Testament speaks often of the gift of a new
spirit, a new psychology, a different pair of
eyes, another worldview, the ways of provi-
Editorial | “To be spiritually minded ...” continued ~
dence acting on our hearts [if that for some is
a more comfortable and familiar terminology].
Peruse 2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13; 4:30; Rom. 5:5.
They all speak of how we can be given the gift
which means “that you may be strengthened
with power through His Spirit in the inner
man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts…”
(Eph. 3:16,17). He wants to live in us, to think
in our thinking, to walk in our shoes. So as we
sing: “Drive out our sin and enter in / Be born
in us today”. Don’t think that any reference
to the Holy Spirit always refers to miraculous
gifts. Those have long ceased, but this isn’t to
say that God isn’t active by His Spirit in our
lives. “John did no miracle” (Jn. 10:41), but
he was filled with the Spirit (Lk. 1:15). The
new covenant which we are under includes
God writing His word upon our hearts (Jer.
31:33; Heb. 8:10). The blessing of Abraham is
not simply forgiveness, but to be “turned
away from our iniquities” (Acts 3:26).
We pray for forgiveness for sins, arising from
our knees not doubting we are forgiven; but
still something seems lacking. And that ‘some-
thing’ is the sense that “I shall likely be here
again”, failing in the same area. What we
subconsciously yearn for is the power not to
sin; not simply forgiveness for when we fail.
God’s provision is exactly what the spiritual
man needs, desperately. This very ‘thing’ that
we yearn for is met in the gift of the Spirit.
We have been given that Spirit, but we need
to consciously be open to God’s usage of it,
surrendering every area of living and thinking
to His influence. The Corinthians had received
the Spirit (1 Cor. 1), but were “not spiritual”
(1 Cor. 3:1), because they like Israel resisted
or grieved the Spirit. If we want to be spiritu-
ally minded, to overcome the flesh in thought
and action, then we have to accept that we
cannot do this in the strength of our own
willpower, nor by dint of our own unaided
intellectual ability. Once that crucial
surrender is made, in totality and from the
core of our hearts, then God’s power and
willing, His Spirit, is able to work- making us a
new creation, in which all things become new.
The natural creation was creation by a word;
God spoke, and it was done. The existing