Personal from the Editor
Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong
November-December 1970 Tomorrow's World Magazine
Trials and Tribulations of a Christian Relate Directly to the Born Again Process
(Subject Added by site editor for clarity)
SOME of the teachings in the Bible are a little hard for the average
thinking mind to understand. James tells us to count it all joy when
trials, ordeals, reverses, beset us. Troubles a JOY? That's pretty hard
to accept, isn't it? And, for the average person, a lot harder to put
into practice.
Few find any pleasure, let alone JOY, in the obstacles and troubles
they encounter. Yet this Biblical teaching says we ought so to count
them. There is a reason, although few understand it.
In one of the Psalms you'll read that the righteous are going to have
to bear many afflictions. But, it promises, the Eternal will deliver us
out of them all - if we believe and trust Him!
Again, it is through much tribulation that we must enter the Kingdom of God. WHY? There's a reason!
Now consider another Biblical teaching hard for some to understand.
Several years ago I wrote an article, now available in booklet form, What Do You Mean - Bom Again?
In the fifth chapter of Ephesians you find a husband-wife relationship
pictured as corresponding to Christ and the Church. Scriptural teaching
assures us that, at His coming, Christ is going to marry the Church.
Also, the Scriptures teach that the Church will, at His coming, be born
of God, by a resurrection of all who have died, and the instantaneous
conversion from mortal to immortal of those then living (I Corinthians
15:50-53).
So one man reasons: Could a full-grown MAN marry an infant girl baby,
just born? If those in the Church are to be just then born of God, how
can they marry Christ before they grow up ?
This, too, seems difficult for some to comprehend. Yet the answer to
James' teaching - the UNDERSTANDING of what James really means, is also
the answer to this seeming inconsistency.
There is a third seeming inconsistency, hard for some to understand.
About a year and a half ago in this column I explained how,
contrary to the thinking of many, a Christian may - and too often does
- actually commit sin after he is converted. He should not, of course.
But too often he does, and yet he still remains a Christian. The true
explanation of James' teaching, first mentioned above, is also the
explanation of this experience.
So let's understand!
WHY were we born, in the first place? What is the real PURPOSE of human
life? God Almighty the Creator is reproducing Himself! As truly as we
mortal humans have been given power to reproduce ourselves - to bring
forth progeny in our own image, born with our very nature - even so the
Great God is bringing forth sons in His image, born with His very
divine nature!
The very PURPOSE of our existence is that we be begotten as God's children, and become BORN of Him.
And human reproduction is the very type of spiritual reproduction. What
God created at the time described in the first chapter of Genesis was a
physical creation. You'll find nothing spiritual there. In physical
man, made of the dust of the ground, God created the MATERIAL with
which He may mould, shape, form, and create the spiritual being. He
pictures us as the clay, Himself as the Potter - forming us into the
spiritual image of His designing.
Now human reproduction, I say, pictures spiritual reproduction. Each
human, since Adam and Eve, started from a tiny egg, called an ovum, the
size of a pinpoint. It was produced in the body of the mother. The egg
is incomplete, of itself. It has a life of only about 48 hours,
according to some authorities. Unless fertilized by the life-giving
sperm cell from the human father within that limited lifetime, it dies.
Each human, spiritually speaking, is like an egg. The average human
lifetime is said to be 70 years. Adam was created incomplete, and each
of us was BORN INCOMPLETE - that is, we were made to need the Holy
Spirit of God. And unless, within our limited lifespan of some 70
years, we are begotten of God - by His Spirit which is His IMMORTAL
DIVINE LIFE, entering to impart eternal life to us - we shall die - and
that shall be the end - except that God has appointed a resurrection of
all who have lived, and, for those who reject His gift of eternal life,
the final second death in the lake of fire.
But, in the case of the human ovum, once fertilized as a begotten
human, the egg - now called an embryo - is kept within the body of the
mother, and is nourished and fed material food through her and
protected by her. And there it must grow, being fed physically through
the mother, large enough to be born. After a number of weeks, the
embryo is called a fetus, and at birth it is a human baby.
In like manner, the Bible calls the CHURCH the "mother of us all." That
is, the mother of Christians - those begotten of God. It is the
function of the Church to protect and feed, spiritually, on the
spiritual food of GOD'S WORD, those begotten children of God, so that
we may GROW SPIRITUALLY, in the divine character, ready to be born.
Surely this is a wonderful comparison. Yet types and antitypes are not always alike in every detail.
When a physical baby is born, it is not ready for marriage. When the
spiritual child of GOD is born he will be fully mature for the
spiritual marriage. How can this be? This is what one thinking man
could not see.
The unborn human fetus is only growing physically. At birth, the human
baby knows nothing. He is helpless. He must be taught. He must learn.
He is born merely with a mind capable of learning, knowing, thinking,
He is not yet of mature size physically or mentally. Many do marry who
are still entirely immature spiritually and/or emotionally. But we do
assume that one has reasonable maturity physically and mentally before
marriage. In the human, this development takes place in the human state
after the human birth.
Therefore, the human baby is not ready for marriage at birth.
But the spirit-born are different!
Just as the fertilized ovum - the embryo, which becomes the fetus -
must grow physically from material food, so the spirit-begotten child
of God must grow spiritually before he can be born. But there is a
difference!
The fetus does not attain to complete physical maturity before birth,
and has no mental maturity. But, in the spiritual rebirth, one must
attain reasonable spiritual maturity before he is spirit-born.
Now what is spiritual growth? Just as the physical embryo-fetus must
grow physically large enough to be BORN, so the Spirit-begotten
Christian must grow spiritually or he will never be born of God. But
spiritual growth is CHARACTER-DEVELOPMENT.
The Spirit-begotten starts out with a MIND from the beginning. God is
perfect character - divine, spiritual character. God is also LOVE. And
perfect spiritual character is THE WAY of LOVE! Such character is the
attainment of the ability, in a separate independent entity of free
moral agency, to be able to discern right from wrong - the true values
from the false - truth from error - the right way from the wrong, and
then to make the right CHOICE or DECISION, even against self-desire,
impulse or temptation; plus the WILL and self-discipline to resist the
wrong and to DO the right.
No human, with human nature, has the power - alone by himself - to do
this. But God has made the spiritual power and help man lacks
available. Man must desire to know - must hunger and thirst for truth;
man must make his own decision, exercise his own will, even against the
pulls of his nature. But without the help of GOD - without spiritual
POWER from God - man is utterly unable.
That is why truly converted Christians sometimes actually do sin. They
are like the Apostle Paul, £$ he describes himself in Romans 7.
With his mind he wanted to go the way of God's law, yet he found
himself unable. Another law - human nature - warred within him against
the good resolutions of his mind. But the sequel to Romans 7 is Romans
8 - the Holy Spirit chapter. WHO, Paul cried out, could save him from
this body of death he struggled against in vain? The answer is, GOD,
through His Holy Spirit.
A true Christian doesn't want to sin - should not. But sometimes he
finds himself caught in the vise of habit, or overwhelmed by temptation
or by circumstances from which he is unable to free himself. Surely,
had such a one been continually praying, keeping himself close to God,
and detached from the world or its lures or the temptations of the
flesh, he probably would have had sufficient divine help to have
prevented the sinning. But only Jesus Christ ever did keep that close
to God!
God looks on the heart. In such a case, the Christian does not sin
maliciously with malice aforethought. He is merely caught in the vortex
of a temptation which sucks him helplessly down into the sin. Then he
is terribly sorry. He is disgusted with himself. He repents. He goes to
work to overcome. He may not succeed', due to human weakness, at once.
But he remains determined and finally does, with God's help, overcome
completely. Many a true Christian has had such a struggle over a
particular human weakness and temptation, and after even several
setbacks, finally, through God's power, won the victory and fought his
way free.
God looks on the heart. God FORGIVES in such cases. The living Christ,
our High Priest, has compassion, is filled with mercy - as long as the
attitude is right, the desire of the inner man is to conquer the flesh
and overcome the temptation and be FREE from it entirely. In the end,
it is GOD who gives the victory. But, in such a struggle, the Christian
DEVELOPS CHARACTER.
Now character, I have said many times, is something God does not create
automatically. It is developed, against the opposing pulls of human
nature, with the decisions and wills and struggles of the individual,
and through EXPERIENCE.
The development of that CHARACTER is the very PURPOSE of our being
alive. Also the development of that character, unlike the purely
physical growth of the unborn baby, actually is growing toward
SPIRITUAL MATURITY, right now in the begettal stage prior to spirit
BIRTH - in this present mortal human life.
Notice how the "mother of us all," the Church, is to protect and feed
those in it, until they reach spiritual MATURITY. In I Corinthians 12
you'll read how God gives spiritual gifts for various administrations,
or functions of service. In Ephesians 4:11-14, Christ has given special
spiritual abilities or talents to certain ones
in a chain of authority
under Him in the Church - and notice for what PURPOSE :
"And his [Christ's] gifts were that some should be apostles, some
prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the
equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the
body of Christ [the Church], UNTIL we all attain to the unity of the
faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (RSV).
In other words, to full spiritual maturity!
Now WHY should we count the troubles and problems and temptations that beset us as all JOY?
Simply because; we cannot hurdle these obstacles successfully in our own power.
They drive us to seek help from God. To go to God for the wisdom to
know what to do, and the power to be able to do it, requires FAITH.
This is a living faith. It is ALIVE. It is active.
When we meet such trials, we often do not know what to do. We lack the
WISDOM to make the right decision. So open your Bible to the first
chapter of James. Notice verse 5.
If you lack wisdom, in such trials, GO TO GOD for it! But ask IN FAITH
- no wavering - no doubting. Be SURE God will not fail, but will give
you this wisdom. Depend upon Him for it. If you waver, you are like a
wave in the ocean - tossed back and forth - going nowhere! So, instead
of wavering, BE STEADFAST. And if you don't get the answer immediately
from God, have PATIENCE. Don't give up. Trust Him.
Now notice verses 2-3: "Count it all JOY, my brethren, when you meet
various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces
steadfastness" (Revised Standard Version). These trials force you to
your knees. You must have FAITH to meet them. They test your faith.
They develop spiritual CHARACTER!
In the King James Version, it says the trying of your faith produces
patience. It produces that kind of patience that is steadfastness. THAT
IS CHARACTER!
Sure, it may be unpleasant for a while. But, Paul assures us that
if we suffer with Christ, we shall REIGN with Him - and the GLORY to be
revealed in us is so incomparably greater than anything we now are,
that this promised future for eternity is something to REJOICE over!
Yes, count it all JOY! Even if unpleasant. It is maturing you, now, for
the marriage to Christ. The CHURCH of God shall be BORN into the
KINGDOM OF GOD ! The Kingdom of God will not be composed of spiritual
know-nothings and infants.
When we are born again - born of God - resurrected in spirit bodies,
those bodies will not be small, like a human physical infant which must
grow to full physical size. We shall look as we do now, so far as form
and shape and features are concerned. But the resurrected body will be
a different body - composed of SPIRIT instead of flesh and blood (I
Cor. 15:35-44).
The original twelve apostles were Christ's witnesses. That is, they
were actual eye-witnesses that Jesus rose from the dead - that the
living resurrected Christ was the same Jesus who had been crucified.
They were with Him forty days after His resurrection. But nobody will
be foolish enough to suggest that when Christ was BORN very Son of God
by the resurrection (Romans 1:4) that He was resurrected in a tiny
infant's body composed of spirit. He was resurrected FULL GROWN, as He
had been when crucified. How did the apostles know He was the same
Jesus ? Because they knew what Jesus had looked like -and in His
born-again resurrected body He looked the same, except He now was
composed of spirit instead of matter!
The resurrected Christ was PERFECT- He was very God! But He did not
grow up into perfection after He was resurrected. It was during
His human lifetime, setting us the example, that He was made perfect,
as you read in Hebrews 2:10 and 5:8-9.
Thus it is plain that we must develop spiritual character, growing to
spiritual adulthood, during this life - not after our resurrection in
GLORY! This is the spiritual growth, of which the physical growth of
the unborn child, from tiny embryo to a size and weight of some six to
eight pounds at birth, is a type. The physical growth of the unborn
human is a growth of physical size and weight. The spiritual growth of
the begotten but yet unborn spiritual child of God is a growth in
spiritual CHARACTER, not of physical volume, size or weight. The human
baby merely grows large enough to be born prior to birth - NOT TO
PHYSICAL OR MENTAL
MATURITY. But he does grow. And this physical growth is the
TYPE of the spiritual growth by feeding on the Word of God, and prayer,
and Christian fellowship, and participation in the Work of God in the
life of the begotten child of God.
The difference is merely the difference between matter and spirit. One
is a material growth. Material growth is measured by volume, size,
weight. The other is spiritual growth, measured by character
development.
Jesus was BORN very Son of God by His resurrection (Romans 1:4). He was
born fully mature. He was born in a spirit body, which was manifested
to His apostles in the same apparent size and shape as when He died.
When He appears on earth the second time, in His spirit glorified body,
we shall be resurrected, or instantaneously changed, to a body that
will be like Him (I John 3:2) - full grown - adult!
