Growth over purity

 

John the disciple of the lord said on one side “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not [tell] the truth” (1st John 1: 6) and added that “He that says, I know him and keeps not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1st John 2: 4). The question is who can keep the commandments of the lord, except lord himself? Does John mean we should not sin? But John again says “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1st John 1: 8)

 

We will never stop sinning because we will never be Jesus and that is ever. Even the Angels of Heaven are not perfect, and that is why the only Holy being is God. But we should live in light, not in darkness. There is darkness in us and around us. Our flesh which is accustomed to life on this earth is our darkness, the devil around us is darkness, earthly life and earthly structures are darkness around us and the Holy Spirit is the light in us.

 

The Holy Spirit guides us to all truth but does not make us 100% truthful at the point of contact. We will change at the point of contact, but what we are given is what we can handle at that time. Slowly, step by step the Holy Spirit will transform us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a spiritual growth process. We know God better over time, and we improve in essence with it.

 

In this process, we are born again but are not completely transformed. Our flesh and the earth are hanged on the cross, but they are still alive in us. If we are in light and live in the light, which means we are not only obedient to the Holy Spirit but are spiritually growing toward the image of Jesus, we will not live in darkness and the life of the lord will reflect in us. In this process, we will have the fruits of the spirit reflected in us and our lives.

 

Here is where most faithful find it hard to understand faith itself and the essence of faithful. People see life in black and white, where there are holy people and there are sinful people. Then they pick and choose a list of sins as abomination and anyone who does those things is not Jesus’s own and everyone who adheres to those principles is Jesus’s own. Just like the Pharisees of the old temple. They are interested in the appearance of faith not in the essence of faith.  

 

Some of us are truthful, honest, and honorable and Jesus can easily grow those things but not in terms of love of the enemy as we like to fight back. Can we say because he does not love his enemy, he is not Jesus' own? Our glass is wrong, what we have to see is if the person is growing in his virtues and improving in his sins. Is there growth toward Jesus is the question?

 

Some of us are good at most things but say we have pride. Can we say because he is proud he does not belong to God? After all, a domesticated lion cannot be like a domesticated cat. If a proud lion is slowly eroding his pride is more holy than the static humility of a cat. If a lion stops eating the cat, that is a good start and we should grow it rather than complaining about the prideful appearance and talk of the lion. He was a lion for all of his life and it takes time to change nature. Let us help the lion to be more humble through love, encouragement, and understanding than comparing the humility of a rat and a lion. Otherwise, it is hypocrisy.

 

Some of us have bad mouths because our mouths were in every trash of life for most of our lives. Even if we change, our ugly nature is still there, though it is slowly fading in us. However, with proper trigger points, sinful people and the devil can organize and sometimes that is with the help of people who call themselves people of God, the foolish mouth will be doing what it is accustomed to. Does this mean this is a sign of faithlessness? Is anyone among us without sin and failure? Why do we love hypocrisy? It is because there is the blood of the old Pharisees hanging in our blood. We need to be better than the old Pharisees if we are going to have any chance in the kingdom of heaven. We need to look down on the old Pharisees as the abomination of the faithful.

 

Some of us have money problems and we worship money. We are honest, kind, and very lovely people, but we love money. Does this mean we are an abomination? We grow up with that sinful mentality and even after being born again, it will not be easy to make us Barnabas, who sold everything he has to follow the lord in poverty. For many of us, money may not be the main temptation that destroys us but it may be pride, but for those fools, it is just fait-paper, money.

 

So what we should check is not if the mouth is speaking dirt or not, but if there is growth in it. What we should check is not if the lover of money gave all for the poor or not, but if the love of money is declining and sharing is increasing. What we should check is not if the pride of the lion is nowhere to be seen, but if the lion is becoming more and more accommodating and humble over time. Anything else is the hypocrisy of fools who delude themselves in their daydream.

 

Even though such a slow process will observed in our weak points, faithful will also show radical transformation in points of their strength. Born again faithful will change, but it is unbalanced growth. We will have part of our nature that grows fast, and there will be part of our nature that demands a lot of work to be transformed. Look to the assembly of the lord in Jerusalem and how hard it was to give up the Law of Moses.

 

There is light in us that will never allow us to sin, but we are not dead yet. We are hanged on the cross, but our breath is still with us and we are not taken into heaven. There is the old us still hanging in us, and Jesus is not fully manifested in our lives. Let us leave us behind and let us march toward the light, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In the meantime, however, the measure of faithful is spiritual growth, which is after being born again. Spiritual growth means slowly growing into the image of the lord.

 

It is not Holiness but becoming more holy. It is not being light, but moving toward the light. Yes, Pharisees of the temple will have several prostitutes they want to stone but God sees his children in those sinful people, not on the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The sinful women know she is sinful and it will be easy to follow the lord with his grace, the Pharisees however are clean on the outside but dead on the inside. They have the appearance of good and holy but not a life of good and holy.

 

It is about our species of heaven defeating our earthly nature to make us new beings. Slowly we will change and it is like growing up and looking to the world as a playground of children. Many childish plays were joyful and you still let your children giggle with them because they are children. Say toy, dance, music, and soon. At one point, you grow up, and it becomes very silly and childish to say those things, to do those things, or to play with those toys. It is the same feeling you will have with spiritual growth.

 

When you were a child, you sang foolish things and they made no sense but you enjoyed them. As you grow up, your music matures. Now you cry about the love of a beautiful girl who left you, though you are just 16 and you never have a crush let alone a girlfriend. Then you sing “Even though I am married, I will be wrong with you”. But you are 19 and not in love with married women. The music does not make sense. You are not as foolish as a child but not that mature at all. You kill, robe, fight, and rebel in music, though you are just a kind and good person. How can a good man enjoy music that says I am a killer and a murderer? It is called spiritual immaturity. Now see how you dance and how that makes you joyful, it is childish. At some point, it will become a joyless children's game. Even when you see some old duds showing their swag off, it makes you wonder how an old man can be such childish. 

 

At some point, life will become more serious because you are part of a serious kingdom. What comes out of your mouth cannot be foolishness because you are not part of the foolish world but the wisdom of heaven. You will use your mouth not to spit vulgarism but to be salt and light of the faithful. Your music will not be about some girl who does not exist but about the heavenly father’s nature, identity, and ways. Now what you sing has meaning and what you say has meaning. It is called maturity, spiritual maturity.

 

As bees are attracted to flowers and flees are attracted to dirt, earthly dirt will not attract you but only heavenly flowers. This is because you are a different species, a species of heaven with the heavenly seed of the Holy Spirit inside of you. But does this mean a person who drinks wine, listens to music, or does earthly things is an abomination? No. It is a growth process, some people drop the wine fast, and some take years to drop it. Some drop the music fast, others take years to drop it. Some leave the dance fast, others want to dance even in the assembly of the lord.

 

We should not see things as black and white, otherwise, Jesus is white and we all are black. Growth is what matters. Slowly you have to move from those trash things like music, drink, dance, and earthly life toward the kingdom of heaven. At a point, your nature will not allow you to do them because they will become childish things to do. There is a time when a butterfly will enjoy dirt before it has wings, but after those wings pop up flower is her choice.

 

You don’t stop drinking for people, but because they are not joyful anymore. You don’t listen to music, because you cannot listen to the garbage of a child. You cannot dance, because it is a childish thing to do. This will be the real transformation of nature. But you will have failures in some directions of your life that need further growth and this process is an eternal process that will continue even after death in heaven.

 

If a person has political inclination and nationalistic inclination, which makes him idolize political and national identity to an extreme level, can we say he is not a child of God? If a person loves communism or some ethnic nationalism to death, can we say this idol is evidence of a lack of heavenly seed?

 

Looking back to our history and the current reality of many faithful will prove this is a mistake. We were supporting many things, and many are still supporting many things, yet all of us are children of God. If God grows us in our failures, he will grow others in their failures too. The measure is not purity, but growth, as nobody is pure. The real question is: are we becoming more nationalistic or heavenly? The real question is whether our communism dying and Jesus rising in our lives or is Jesus increasingly redefined as our communist God. The real question is whether our nationalism dying and Jesus rising in our lives or if Jesus is redefined more and more as our national God. Yes, Jesus has to be at the top and everything else second, but this is also a process.

 

In simple words, the hope is we become less and less earthly and more and more heavenly. This process is different for different people. Some people have problem with nationalism, ethnocentrism, political ideology, Economic ideology, and every human garbage that dominate their life, which includes love of money, power, respect, popularity, and soon. Others have problems with pride, bad mouth, and soon. Others are hypocrites, as children of the OLD Pharisees, pointing to the sin of the sinners, while God smiles on the redemption of the sinner and rejects them and their hypocrisy as children of viper.

 

Since except for Jesus, we all have problems, the real question, therefore, is not purity but growth, spiritual growth. Let us find better conditions and environments for the proud to reduce his pride, for the thief to work, for the liar to speak the truth, for the lover of power to sever the weak, for the rich to share, for the poor to work harder, for the Pharisees to accept Jesus as lord, for the communist to replace Des Capital by bible, for the capitalist to replace invisible hand of market by invisible hand of Jesus, and for nationalist to be citizen of bigger nation of heaven. Let us help them to be better as we grow with them rather than looking for non-existent perfection in anyone. Nobody is perfect except God.     

 

In this process, faith has a center and periphery. The center has to be more pure than the periphery. Jesus started his work by making his disciples pure and clean. His dense light shines through his disciples, though the light of the heavenly father is in the heart of every faithful. As the nature of the heavenly father is witnessed by Jesus, the nature of Jesus is witnessed in our lives and especially in the lives of persons of God. That is why those persons of God, as the center of the Heavenly Embassy on Earth, do need to be more like Jesus.

 

The center of the faith cannot have ideological luggage, nationalistic luggage, materialistic luggage, or ethnic luggage, and it should have exceptional purity compared to the periphery. The center needs to be heavenly-centered like Paul and Jesus. What they think, live, and dream about should be the kingdom of heaven and its work, just like Jesus. That is why if you are going to work for God, especially in the future, you need to have most of your major foolishness behind you. That is why Jesus spent adequate time to sharpen his disciples, as he spent adequate time to sharpen David, after all, Jesus is the root of David.