Title: 13
Author: Joe G
Last saved by: Matt Lawson
Company: GDC

© 2004 Joe Griffin		04-05-11.CC02-283 /

The Prototype & Operational Spiritual Lives; Key Component: Agapaō, Personal & Impersonal Love; Imputations: Real & Judicial; Executing the Plan, Rom 7:20
13.	The word is abstract until it is understood from its biblical use and application.  First of all we learn from:
1 John 4:8b -	God is love.
14.	This love is both subjective and objective.  God the Father is able to personally love all that is righteous.  Consequently, God loves His own righteousness as well as that of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit.
15.	Personal love can only have integrity when it is directed toward an object that is righteous.
16.	This means that God cannot love unsaved mankind personally since unbelievers are spiritually dead and totally depraved. 
17.	For example, God’s love for the “world” in John 3:16 is impersonal love.  Because of His integrity based on His perfect righteousness, God loves the “world” unconditionally.
18.	However, when a person identifies God’s grace gift of Jesus Christ as his personal Savior through faith alone then the justice of God imputes divine righteousness to that person.
Genesis 15:6 -	Abram had been caused to believe in the Lord and God kept on crediting Abram’s belief in the Lord to his account for righteousness.
19.	Therefore God has personal love for His own righteousness that has been imputed to those who believe in Christ.
20.	In this same fashion, the believer has personal and impersonal love.  Since personal love demands that the object possess perfection then the believer must direct his personal love to the three Members of the Trinity.
21.	When it comes to members of the human race, the believer may have personal love for another person but such love has no virtue.
22.	Personal love for another person requires this person to be perfect.  However, if he fails in some way, as he inevitably will, then personal love loses it meaning.
23.	Love for another person requires that the believer express impersonal love for his fellow man.  In this way the emphasis is placed on the integrity of the believer not the object being loved.
24.	Therefore, the key to dealing with people is unconditional love.  You deal with them based on your integrity.  How they think and behave is not an issue with you but rather a matter for the justice of God.
25.	In this manner we are able to maintain fellowship with God.  When people fail we are unaffected.  We do not bear a grudge, seek revenge, or express anger or hatred through mental, verbal, or overt sins.
26.	Instead we maintain soul tranquility by allowing the Supreme Court of Heaven to prosecute the case.
27.	The Christian way of life is to be executed by the Church Age believer in the same fashion demonstrated effective by our Lord during the Incarnation.
28.	When we utilize this system and advance within it all the way to spiritual maturity we have become a witness for the Prosecution.  We testify that the plan of God works in the hostile environment of the devil’s world.
29.	Thus we may conclude that when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, function under the three spiritual skills, and fulfill the mandates issued by God in Scripture, we live in the same perfection enjoyed by our Lord during His earthly ministry.
30.	Conversely, when we let temptations motivate personal sin we begin to imitate the character of the unbeliever who is spiritually dead.
31.	We can be lured by the lust patterns of the sinful nature; we can be distracted by the momentum tests offered by people, thought, system, and disaster; we can be deceived by the duplicity of demon influence.
32.	And when these things occur we may have a sincere desire to serve God.  But instead of executing the spiritual life designed by God to please Him we find that we perform the deeds common to the spiritually dead unbeliever.
33.	When we practice the deeds of the flesh we cannot accomplish the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, we find ourselves agreeing with Paul:
Romans 7:20 -	Now if, as a result of my personal volitional decision, I am performing what I do not desire (and I am), I am no longer the one accomplishing it but the sinful nature which continuously resides inside of me.

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