Lesson for October 22, 2017
The Doctrine of Spirituality vs. Carnality
The Divine Dynasphere
The Divine Dynasphere is a term coined by Pastor R.B. Thieme, Jr. to denote God’s power system for the believer in Jesus Christ. This series is based on his teachings. Dynasphere comes from the Greek word “dumamis,” meaning power, and the Attic Greek word “sphaia” meaning sphere. The power sphere is the area or boundary for the operational Christian life. The Divine Dynasphere is an interlocking system, having “gates” that a believer passes through on his way to spiritual maturity. It is God’s plan for the Royal Family of God (Church Age believers). It is God’s will, plan and purpose for the spiritual life of believers. If a believer is operating in Satan’s world system, he is not operating in the Divine Dynasphere. Satan’s rulership of this world is administered through his own power system, while God’s rulership of believers is administered through God’s power system.
The command for residence and function in the Divine Dynasphere is a command to be filled with God the Holy Spirit. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the initial entrance into the Divine Dynasphere at salvation. (Ephesians 5:18) After salvation, believers are commanded to reside in the Divine Dynasphere designated by Biblical terms such as, “walk in the Spirit” and “walk in the Light,” which are synonymous terms for the filling of the Holy Spirit. (Galatians 5:16: I John 1:5-7) God also commands believers not to grieve or to quench the Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 4:30; I Thessalonians 5:19)
The Divine Dynasphere is a system of love. The divine attribute of love is an absolute, not dependent on any object. God’s love does not have to be sustained by emotion, physical love, or human love. Mankind was not created so that God would have someone to love. Mankind often distorts God’s love by superimposing his own standards on God. For example, in time of disaster, “How can a loving God do this to me?” This blasphemy often results from misunderstanding what love is. Since the fall of Adam, man’s contact with God is through God’s integrity. The integrity of God is the sum total of divine attributes in operation, but three are functional in relationship to the believer and his spiritual life: righteousness, justice, and love.
The grace of God is an extension of divine love. As an extension of divine love, grace is both a characteristic and a policy of divine love. Therefore, grace is an integral part of divine love. Grace belongs to both the deity of Christ as a divine attribute and to the humanity of Christ as the pattern of His spiritual life. Grace is identified with God as a part of the integrity of God. (Romans 5:15; I Corinthians 1:4, 15:10; II Corinthians 6:1, 8:1; Ephesians 3:2,7) Grace has existed from eternity past. The integrity of God is part of the divine essence known as “holiness,” being composed of perfect righteousness and justice, and His love. Perfect righteousness is the principle of integrity and justice is the function. God’s righteousness is the principle of divine integrity, while God’s justice is the function of His integrity. Therefore, what the perfect righteousness of God demands, the justice of God executes.
The imputation of divine perfect righteousness at the moment of faith in Christ not only means justification, but it is the basis for God’s love toward man as something more than just an anthropopathism (assigning to God a human characteristic). God loves His own perfect righteousness in us. But He does everything for us because of His integrity, not His love. The source of every blessing we have in life is divine justice imputing that blessing to divine perfect righteousness. God’s integrity always takes precedence over His love.
Personal love is meaningless unless the one who loves has integrity. This precedence was established at the Cross, where God the Father loved God the Son eternally and infinitely. But God the Father’s integrity demanded that His justice impute our personal sins to Christ on the Cross and then judge His Son Who was bearing those sins. This demonstrated once and for all that divine integrity takes precedence over divine love in dealing with the human race.
Knowing this, we realize there must be a system whereby we as believers, with all of our failures, can still be sustained by God day by day. How can God provide our basic needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, transportation and Bible doctrine (logistical grace) when we are in Satan’s world system and continue to fail Him? He doesn’t do it because He loves us, but because of His integrity. So without integrity, human love has no virtue. God’s plan is a system of integrity. It is not surprising that God would invent for the Royal Family of God a system of integrity. The Divine Dynasphere is a place where you can live your life with honor, and actually glorify God in spite of having a sin nature.
Having God’s righteousness demands that we have a system for our spiritual life which is unique; one which is totally different from any system of spiritual life which has ever existed before. You have an opportunity that the greatest believers of the Old Testament did not have and would have loved to have. The Church Age is much more intense in this stage of the Angelic Conflict than any other dispensation. “To whom much is given, much is expected.” (Luke 12:28) Since obviously we’re not as good as God, He gave us His perfect righteousness. He did this in grace; we don’t earn or deserve it. We have a relationship with God because of God’s grace. When God gives us His perfect righteousness, then His personal love follows.
So in the Divine Dynasphere, integrity must precede love. Divine love doesn’t depend on your personality, sweetness, self-sacrifice; you must have integrity. Without integrity and virtue, there is no divine love, no execution of the commands of God. And the Divine Dynasphere puts the entire package together. Love is not love and life is not life for a believer without the presence of divine integrity resident in his soul. Both divine integrity and love stand without any help from man. We need God’s help and love, He doesn’t need ours. Because we possess the perfect righteousness of God, we are the objects of God’s personal love. However, God can never violate His own integrity just because of His love for us. What the righteousness of God demands, the justice of God executes.
Like all divine attributes, God’s love belongs to God’s essence. God is eternal, His love is eternal. God is love and always has been love. God’s love does not increase or diminish. God is perfect, His love is perfect. There never was a time when God did not love His own perfect righteousness. As of the moment of salvation, each believer possesses the perfect righteousness of God. However, since God’s love is a part of His essence, God’s love exists with or without an object. God’s love is virtuous; it is devoid of sin. Mankind fails to understand this and superimposes his own concepts of love. Divine love as an anthropopathism is divine love directed toward God’s policy. When Christ died for our sins, that refers to His impersonal love for the entire human race. Divine personal love is directed toward the Father’s perfect righteousness imputed to us at salvation. Divine impersonal love means giving logistical grace support. Divine personal love means the imputation of divine blessings. Divine impersonal love means every believer receiving a resurrection body. Divine personal love means special rewards for mature believers at the Judgment Seat of Christ. There are no shortcuts to spiritual maturity. Every believer must travel the same path to reach it. Some will sprint to reach and some will walk, but spiritual maturity is a process.
Pastor Thieme designated this path to spiritual maturity as a series of gates that we pass through on our way to spiritual maturity. The gates are as follows:
- The filling of the Holy Spirit.
- Basic Christian modus operandi.
- Enforced and genuine humility.
- The function of grace apparatus for perception or the metabolization of doctrine.
- Motivational virtue toward God, i.e., personal love for God.
- Functional virtue toward man and circumstances, i.e., impersonal love for all.
- Passing momentum tests; the momentum gate.
- Spiritual maturity.
Gate 1: The Filling of the Holy Spirit
The spiritual life includes the filling of the Holy Spirit, but it also includes spiritual growth, both of which take place only inside the Divine Dynasphere. When we accept Christ as Savior, we are first spiritual babies, then adolescents, and finally we become mature if we are consistent in our residence and function inside the Divine Dynasphere. When a baby Christian is filled with the Holy Spirit, it doesn’t have the same effect as when an adolescent or mature believer is filled with the Spirit. This will be explained shortly.
The filling of the Holy Spirit is an absolute. It comprises one-half of the spiritual life; spiritual growth is the other half. Spirituality is an absolute. It is the status of God the Holy Spirit controlling the soul of the believer inside the Divine Dynasphere. Spirituality is the status of the believer in fellowship with God and filled with the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit indwells every believer as long as that believer has a human body. But only a believer in the Divine Dynasphere is filled with or walking in the Spirit. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the power system for the Divine Dynasphere.
There are degrees of spiritual growth, but the filling of the Holy Spirit is an absolute. There are no degrees of the filling of the Holy Spirit, though obviously there are different manifestations. Hence, the filling of the Holy Spirit manifests itself to the degree that a believer has grown spiritually from babyhood to adolescence to maturity. The filling of the Holy Spirit has greater manifestation and production in the mature believer than in the baby believer. This is why tolerance is one of the greatest virtues in the spiritual life. You should have the ability to hold your tongue and say nothing to some new believer who doesn’t understand everything, and not seek to “straighten him out.” Lack of tolerance is a tragedy because it destroys the environment for people to grow spiritually, and to have a relationship with God. As we advance spiritually, it can become easy to be critical of new believers or older believers who are just beginning to live their spiritual lives and who don’t understand the Christian Way of Life yet. So these believers need time and patience for spiritual growth, just as we did.
The filling of the Holy Spirit is for every believer in Christ. The purpose of this filling is to empower the believer to live the Christian Way of Life. When a believer is living the Christian Way of Life, he brings glory and honor to Christ. All believers are immediately filled with the Holy Spirit the moment they trust Christ as their Savior. The first time we sin after salvation however, we lose the filling of the Holy Spirit and we are out of fellowship with God. In order to restore both the filling of the Holy Spirit and our fellowship with God, we must simply name our known sins to God. (I John 1:9) We are then commanded to move forward with the execution of the Christian Way of Life, which the Scripture calls “walking in the light.” (I John 1:5-10) The filling of the Holy Spirit is potential, depending on the volition (free will) of the believer. It is also a command and literally means “keep on being filled with the Spirit.”
To be filled is to be controlled by, empowered by and guided by God the Holy Spirit. We choose to allow the Holy Spirit to control our lives by allowing Him to control our thinking. This means we must have the Word of God stored in our souls. It is this doctrinal information that the Holy Spirit uses to control our lives. Divine Viewpoint Thinking produces divine production. (Romans 12:1-2; Philippians 2:5)
The Greek word for filling is “pleroo” and has four meanings, which all apply to the filling ministry of the Holy Spirit.
- To fill up a deficiency – Without the power and control of the Holy Spirit, the believer has no ability to learn and apply Bible doctrine. In other words, he is deficient of the doctrinal information necessary to execute the Christian Way of Life. (Colossians 1:25; I John 4:4)
- To be fully possessed – Since God the Holy Spirit indwells every believer in the Church Age, the potential exists for him to be fully controlled by God’s supernatural power. This means that the believer can reside in God’s plan by utilizing God’s system. (I Corinthians 6:19-20)
- To be fully influenced – When the Holy Spirit is allowed to fill the deficiency and fully possess the believer’s life, then every area of that life will be influenced by the power of the Holy Spirit. When the power of the Holy Spirit is rejected, the believer is going to be fully influenced by Satan’s cosmic system and Human Viewpoint Thinking. (Galatians 5:16; Ephesians 5:18)
- To be filled with a certain quality – The filling of the Holy Spirit inside the operational type Divine Dynasphere provides the use of God’s power — divine omnipotence, the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, instead of the use of human power and ability. God the Holy Spirit and Bible doctrine are the highest quality with which the believer can be filled. It is this quality that becomes resident in the soul of the believer as the Holy Spirit is allowed to control, possess and influence the soul. (Ephesians 3:19, 4:10; Philippians 1:11; I John 1:4; Revelation 3:2)