Spiritual Warfare – The Transforming Power of the Gospel: Personality, Character and Discipleship – Part 1

Pastor Ray Choi (https://raychoi.org/2011/06/28/the-book-of-romans-under-new-management-pt-3-of-3/) :

“I understand the gospel. I understand that I have been freed from sin and I am trying my best to obey God. But something is missing. I made a clear decision to accept Christ many years ago, but if I peel back the layers of my religious lifestyle, I am still the same person at the core that I was years ago. I am still selfish, I still struggle with the same sinful habits and addictions, I still lack love. I thought Christians are supposed to be different. I thought that the gospel was supposed to transform me. Christianity doesn’t seem to work.

“Maybe you changed in your first year as a believer, but after that, you hit a plateau and you are about the same person today that you were last year, or 5 years ago or 10 years ago. Or maybe you are worse off.

“When we are saved, there is such clarity. I am a sinner, there is nothing good in me and we are flooded with such thanksgiving that Jesus would die on a cross for my sins so that I can be called a child of God. And I repented, I died with Christ and He gave me a new life, a life of the Spirit, not a life bound by the flesh. And so with joy, I surrendered my life to Him and said to him in 1993, Lord, my life is yours, lead me. When we are first saved, we know we did nothing. Zero percent. And God did everything. He did 100 % of the work. That was a moment of such clarity. But a funny thing happens along the way. We mature a bit and suddenly that clarity is lost and we put all of the burden on our shoulders to mature and to grow and to lead others. OR, we forget that we are free, and we resign ourselves to an enslaved, defeated life.

“How do we prevent these two things — everything depends on me for my spiritual growth OR I am enslaved and I will never change — how do we prevent these from happening? How do we keep reminding ourselves that we are under new management? Answer: Gospel repetition. Jesus began the work of salvation and He is the one who is going to carry it to completion. But the gospel is not a one-time event; for the believer, we need to live out the gospel every day,

• repenting
• dying to self,
• crucifying the sinful nature
• and then placing our faith in Christ,
• surrendering to Him,
• trusting Him,
• following Him.
• allowing the Spirit to control us.

Define Discipleship

This is what I mean by Discipleship – our key verse for this section of Spiritual Warfare will be:

Luke 6:40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

Or as Matthew records it:

Matt. 10:24-25 A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for a disciple to be like his teacher, and a servant like his master.

Two goals:

1. Be like Jesus (we will be asking, in what way?) Eph. 5:1
2. Trained to reign with Him Rom 8:17-19

Scope: It’s a Gospel work – for time and for eternity. As Paul puts it in Titus 2:11-14

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone. It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age, as we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

What’s the purpose of Discipleship?

Mustn’t confuse purpose with process! Here’s a list of some of the things that Christian writers have identified as the purpose(s) of discipleship (courtesy Philip Jones, PWMI – much of the material regarding personality and character in these sessions will be drawn from a series of articles he wrote in the Prophetic Witness magazine July – Oct 2016):

• Evangelism
• Personal development / maturity
• Developing new skills and competencies
• Discovering our calling
• Learning
• Living a more ‘spiritual’ life
• Following Jesus
• Living a more disciplined life (routines / habits)
• Having a mentor (or spiritual guide)
• Being obedient to God
• Submission to authority (of church leadership)
• Being part of a community

It would be easy to assume, from this very diverse list, that the church is rather confused about the purpose of discipleship – and it probably is. What contributes to this confusion is the fact that discipleship does indeed involve all of the things listed in the table and more. However, the table contains what might be termed the ‘activities’, or ‘processes’, of discipleship, and many people confuse these with its purpose.

Remember our key concepts

• everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.
• It is enough for a disciple to be like his teacher

Gifts, Power or Fruit?

How often is it that, when considering Discipleship or growth in the Christian life, we are pre-occupied with finding out what our gifts are, and then the pre-occupation turns to having more power – we want, rightly, to be more effective in Christian service, in using whatever gift(s) we have. But I have just come to see that that is the wrong pre-occupation. God is much more interested in developing our character with the Fruit of the Spirit (i.e. being like Jesus!) and from that, the Gifts of the Spirit will flow in the Power of the Spirit.

When I think of the people who have most impacted me in my Christian life, they were people who demonstrated the Fruit of the Spirit. Gifted people can make me feel inadequate, powerful people can make me feel impotent, but fruitful people make me feel accepted, loved, cherished – and that is the environment where I can grow.

A lot of church activity is focussed on Gifts, as the organisation needs people to work to keep it going. The Holy Spirit needs, and produces, people who are the aroma of Christ, exuding His character, who will impact all those around them – leading them to Christ, either initially, or leading them on in their own growth in Discipleship, so that “we all attain oneness in the faith, until we all experience the fullness of what it means to know the Son of God, and finally we become one perfect man with the full dimensions of spiritual maturity and fully developed in the abundance of Christ” (Eph. 4:13 Passion)

The New Testament is filled with encouragement toward, and teaching regarding, the transformation of our character –think of the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:2-12). You can trace them all through the epistles, but how often do we focus on the theology, structure and organisational threads of the epistles?

And this contrast between gifts, power and fruit is very interesting.

• Gifts are bestowed by the Spirit – we have to receive them  – seek and exercise them 1 Cor. 12:31 in the ability which God supplies 1 Pet. 4:11
• The power finds its source in the Spirit – we only contribute our weakness 2 Cor. 12:9

So these are, in effect, external to us and not dependent on us.

• But we have to create the environment for fruit to flourish 2 Pet. 1:8

Note how the passages about the gifts of the Spirit are more focussed on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’:

• Rom. 12:5-8 – all about using the gifts to serve others, in a spirit of faith, waiting on God, simplicity, mercy and diligence.
• 1 Pet. 4:8-11 – using your gift(s) in a self-controlled manner (spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets 1 Cor. 14:32), with love, generosity, faithfulness, grace, faithfulness, in reliance on God-gifted ability.
• In 1 Cor. 12, the major passage on gifts, the emphasis is on the benefit of others in the body, caring for one another, and exercising them in love – the ‘more excellent way’

Of course, we should use our gifts with diligence, and live lives through which the power can flow – God only uses clean vessels. But developing the fruit of the Spirit is particularly something in which the Spirit wants to involve us and over which we do have some control.

Discipleship Develops Fruit

I know it’s often said that fruit develops unconsciously – the tree is not aware of its fruit, it’s just doing what its DNA says – the sap flows upward from the root and the leaves and fruit are literally pushed out. So that is one picture.

But Peter tells us to build on our faith with all diligence so that we won’t be barren or unfruitful (2 Pet. 1:8). And look at Gal. 5:22-23. The passage about the 9-fold fruit of the Spirit is wrapped with 9 instructions:

• Walk in the Spirit v.16
• Do not fulfil the desires of the flesh v.16
• Be led by the Spirit v. 18
• Crucify the flesh v. 24
• Live in the Spirit v. 25
• Keep in step with the Spirit v. 25
• Don’t seek your own glory v. 26
• Do not provoke others v. 26
• Do not envy others v. 26

All things that we are to do, to create an environment where the Fruit of the Spirit can grow! Producing fruit is not by osmosis. It’s not a process in which we are passive recipients

The Fruit of the Spirit is the expression of Discipleship

Our commission is to go into all the world and make disciples who will make disciples (Matt. 28:19-20). There is a fundamental principle built into the whole of Creation, found in Gen. 1:11-12 – built into the creation of the first living things – three times is it stated “fruit after its kind” and God saw that it was good! Then again twice in v. 20 re the animal creation. And if we haven’t got the point yet, it is a principle on which God works! In v. 26-27, it is stated 3 times that God made man ‘in His image’ – after His kind.

It follows that you reap what you sow (Gal. 6:7; Hos. 8:7) and you reap where you sow (Jer. 2:19). Our lives will produce fruit after our kind – in keeping with our character. And we will reproduce that in others that we influence in any way! You can teach people what you know, but you will reproduce in them what you are.

Children learn by copying – mimic – imitate. Parents come together with sets of good and bad habits – who knows that children seem to first copy our bad habits despite what we try to teach them!

So we need to focus on the Fruit of the Spirit rather than Gifts of the Spirit. The gifts will not be required in Heaven, but you will take your character to Heaven! Gifts are to do with earth and the ‘good deeds’ that they produced will be rewarded in Heaven – and we will place those rewards at Jesus’ feet, as it was all His work in us that produced them anyway. Fruit equates to character – the aroma of Christ to a dying world! And fruit multiplies – as we’ve seen, fruit after its kind is a principle of Creation.

While there is a vast difference between being a biological child and a spiritual child, the general principle of reproduction is the same. Seed containing a genetic blueprint for physical development is required for the beginning of a new life. And, likewise, a spiritual blueprint of character information must be imparted to us before we can begin growing in Christlikeness. It’s in our DNA! Through the Word of God (1 Pet. 1:23) but he goes on to say that we must lay certain things aside, desire to grow, come to receive and offer s[ritual sacrifices.

And there’s also the family likeness. We are encouraged to change through the lives and testimonies of God’s people (Eph. 5:1). What other people see in your life helps determine what will be reproduced in their own spiritual lives.

Which leads us on to consider Christian character. What does that look like, or rather smell like?

What is ‘character’ and how does Discipleship affect it?

Each of us was born and reared in the kingdom of this world. Because of this, we have absorbed, largely without realising it, the beliefs and values of this earthly kingdom. However, we are now citizens of another kingdom, one with a very different set of beliefs and values. The questions we have to ask ourselves are:

• if we died tomorrow, or if Jesus returned, would He find us ready to take up full residency and responsibility in His Kingdom?
• or would we experience a clash of cultures?
• And while living here, if we hold on to, and live by, the values of this world, how can we demonstrate to our friends and neighbours the nature of God and the aroma of Christ?

The impact of the Gospel on our lives is not just to share Jesus’ beliefs and values, but to make them our very own, and to think like He thinks, thus shaping our character and healing our personality where needed, a.k.a. Discipleship.

Discipleship is about building in us a Christ-like character. This may mean, by implication, that we need to change our existing character in some way. The idea of changing our character is difficult for us to accept, largely because we equate our character with our personality (we use the terms interchangeably) and we tend to think of our personalities as fixed by the time we reach adulthood.

Our personalities probably are largely fixed by adulthood, or even earlier, but happily for us Jesus does not ask us to change this aspect of our inner selves. If Jesus required us to have personalities conformed to some particular template (i.e. his), why would he have selected a core group of disciples (the twelve) with such a wide range of personality types?

We’ll probe a bit deeper into this as we go through these studies, but top level, useful to see that your character consists of your personality, beliefs, attitudes and values. We cannot re-shape our personalities, but we can re-shape our beliefs, attitudes and values so that they are consistent with Jesus, so that we become more like Him. And that is the goal Rom.8:29, 2 Cor.3:18, Col.1:27-28, 1 John 3:2

Jesus did not require his disciples to change their personalities, and so we see these people retaining their widely varying personalities throughout their time with Jesus, and I have no doubt that their basic personalities remained largely intact right up to the day they died. Therefore, if Jesus is happy to accept, as his disciples, such a range of personality types as this, we can be sure that our personality types are acceptable also. After all, God gave us the diversity of personalities that we have, so why would he now want to change them? So, if Jesus does not need us to change our personalities, what does he want us to change? Because we equate our character with our personality, we often miss the fact that our character consists of more than just our personality – it also includes, amongst other things, our beliefs and our values (or attitudes).

We may not be able (or need) to re-shape our personalities so that they are the same as Jesus’ own, but we can re-shape our beliefs and attitudes/values so that they are consistent with his. This is something that we can do regardless of our personality. Personality type need make no difference to beliefs and values.

We will go on next week to discuss personality and character. For now, let’s note:

• Personality is who we are
• Character is how we present ourselves to others.