Living the REAL way, person to Person

A seminal word from Paul’s epistles is “access.” He writes in Ephesians 2:18: [18] For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Ephesians 3:12 says, [12] In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.

“Our access to God is based on the shed blood of Christ, not our activity,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan. “We have access because we are accepted in the Beloved; He’s the one who gives the access. We don’t do something to earn it, gain it, merit it.

“People tell you you need to grow in self-awareness and all that. Listen, the more you grow into an understanding of the mind of Christ, the more you understand your own unworthiness and how it absolutely has to be Him, not you.

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“Ephesians 4:30 says, [30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. You see how that word ‘holy’ is not a first cap? That’s not a proper name; it’s an adjective describing His function. He’s the spirit who’s to produce holiness in your life.

“The issue is verse 29: [29] Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. God the Holy Spirit’s living function in this passage is to produce godly edifying in you that then produces the capacity in you to minister that edification, that grace, to others.

“He’s grieved when that doesn’t happen. When the edifying and ministering of grace to others doesn’t take place, it affects Him. It doesn’t cause Him to cut you off and turn away from you, but it distresses . . . He has a relationship with you where you COUNT.

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“II Corinthians 7 talks about ‘sorrowing after a godly manner,’ having the attitude about things that God has. If you’re accepted in the Beloved, how do you grieve the Holy Spirit? He’s talking about putting on your identity in Christ.

“The word ‘grieve’ means to cause sorrow, pain or distress, and sometime when you read that, you think, ‘Well, how am I making the Holy Spirit angry with me?’ But he’s not talking about anger. You never have to face the angry face of God; that’s what being accepted in the Beloved is all about.

“Talking about Jesus, Mark 3:5 says, ‘And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.’ The Lord Jesus Christ looked on some people who saw God working and healing a man and yet they rejected God’s Word.

“They professed to be serving God, but then rejected Him so He looked at them with anger, being grieved. You see how both anger and grief are there? The grief produced anger but the grief wasn’t anger, and my point is the two are not the same thing; it’s a different issue.

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“The Holy Spirit is a real person; the third person of the godhead. Sometime people have the idea that the Spirit of God is sort of like an impersonal influence, like you go to the ball game and there’s a great spirit. Or when people sing the song, ‘There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place.’ You could sing that in the church or down at the local pub, either one, because it’s the same kind of spirit. It’s an influence, an attitude.

“The Holy Spirit describes Himself in the Bible in terms of possessing real sentiment and real responses to things He actually experiences.

“Romans 15:30 says, [30] Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.

“Notice Paul describes the Holy Spirit as someone who has the capacity to love. When you talk about the love of God, that’s God loving us; the Spirit loving us.

“I Corinthians 2:10-11 says, [10] But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
[11] For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

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“The Spirit of God KNOWS things; an influence or impersonal attitude doesn’t know anything. Jesus says to His disciples in John 14 that when the Spirit of truth is come, He will teach you. That’s something that a person does. The Holy Spirit has a will; a capacity to decide things.

“Romans 8:16 says, [16] The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. He can testify. Verse 26 says, [26] Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

“People say, ‘Well, see, your King James Bible is wrong because it says ‘it’ and we all know the Holy Spirit is a he.' The problem with that is, if it’s wrong to say ‘it’ in the English language, it would be wrong to say ‘it’ in the Greek language. In the Greek language it is ‘it.’

“When the translators translated ‘it,’ they did that because the word ‘spirit’ in the Greek language is neuter and it requires a pronoun that is of the same gender. The reason it’s ‘it’ is because that’s what the translation is literally.

“So if it’s wrong to say ‘it’ in English, it’s wrong to say ‘it’ in Greek and that means God the Holy Spirit made a mistake describing Himself when He originally wrote it in Greek. That’s cuckoo, but when people complain about it, they’re cuckoo because look at the verse! It says, ‘The Spirit itself make intercession.’ Can an ‘it’ make intercession?! A thing can’t make intercession, so the ‘it’ is obviously describing a person.

“Look at the next verse and it gets even better: [27] And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

“The Spirit’s got a mind. So there’s nothing in the text denying or questioning that the Holy Spirit is a person. It’s got a mind; He can make intercession. Those are activities of people. But keep reading. When it says, ‘because he maketh intercession,’ who’s the ‘he’? It’s the ‘it’ back in verse 26.

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“In Isaiah 63:9, talking about the nation Israel, is a verse that matches Ephesians 4, and notice how Jehovah God enters in to the afflictions of His people: [9] In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.
[10] But they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit: therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them.

“Even though God extended His love toward them they rejected it; they did just what Mark 3:5 is talking about and the Spirit was vexed. When you’re vexed, you’re grieved.

“When God describes the Holy Spirit as having real emotions, real sentiments, real human capacities, it has to do with what it means for Him to be the living God. The Bible describes the God of the Bible as ‘the true and living God.’

“I Thessalonians 1:9 says, [9] For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God;

“He’s not like the dead, dumb idols of the world who can’t do anything; He literally enters in with you into a living functional relationship. He’s a person and you have with Him a real living relationship with a living creature who works, relates, responds, reacts.

“Numbers 19:23 says, [23] At the commandment of the LORD they rested in the tents, and at the commandment of the LORD they journeyed: they kept the charge of the LORD, at the commandment of the LORD by the hand of Moses.

“God’s counsels are certain because His truth is absolute and He is absolute truth and He adheres to His truth absolutely, hence we say that He has veracity. He has dependability.

"He’s unalterable, unchangeable truth. If God says it, that’s it. He’s not like you and me who vacillate and change our mind and turn from truth to error. He lives within the certainty of His absolute truth and His unchangeable truth.

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“Genesis 6:5 says, [5] And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. [6] And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

“People look at that verse and say, ‘Now wait a minute, He’s the God of truth so He does not repent; He’s the living God so He does repent.’

“By the way, that verse tells you that the definition of ‘repentance’ people use so often, telling you it means 'to be sorry for your sins’ and ‘to turn from you sins,’ is wrong. Do you think God had sin to turn from? Did He have sin to be sorry about?

“Repentance is not all that religious hoo-de-lee-doo you hear out there among evangelical preachers who tell people what they’ve got to do to get saved is ‘repent of your sins,’ meaning 'turn from you sins,' which is just adding works to the gospel. Romans 3:10 says turning from your sin is a work.

“ 'Repent' in the Bible simply means 'to change your mind' and when it comes to truth, and when God says something, He never changes His mind about what’s true.

"Who changed in Genesis 6? When man moved away, God thought about man differently than when man was where he ought to be. As the LIVING God, He does respond to the change in man and He describes it just like you would describe it.

“The way people usually defend Genesis 6 is to say it’s an anthropomorphic expression, meaning you’re taking human sentiment and applying it to God. But that’s a shallow understanding and a failure to appreciate the godly sentiments associated with a God who can have a LIVING relationship with His creation and be affected by what we do.

“Jesus took upon Himself our humanity so that He could be touched by the feelings of our infirmities. As Hebrews 4:15 says, 'For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.' ”