MUST READ: Spiritual Understanding by Alan Martin

Amen.

I was praying this morning, because I felt this burden on my heart that I was doing something wrong in my own walk with the Lord. This article just showed me what I was doing wrong - being caught up in the Law and avoiding sin on my own! :-? Where was my dependence on Christ alone?!

Thank you Brother Greg for posting this! May God bless you for opening my eyes this morning and Brother Alan too! :-)

Good article!

Jesus never judged by what He heard with His own physical ears or understood in His own natural mind - but He clearly stated that He judged nothing by Himself at all. Amazing, with all the wisdom and knowledge that He had, surely He could make His own sound independent judgment of any matter. But He obeyed to the fullest degree this admonition from scripture "and lean not upon your own understanding." Jesus lived in perpetual connection to His Head - THE FATHER. When we begin to learn to live in perpetual connection to our Head - JESUS CHRIST - we will truly walk in genuine spiritual understanding.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding" (Prov 5:6).

Thanks Greg :-)

Really good word! Thanks Greg.

I definitely appreciated reading this article, but wonder how you can escape concluding that the Word of God has not become less? This is basically saying that God gave his Law for no purpose. Or it is saying that judgment under the Law was arbitrary, some were put to death and some not? I tend to think that David was not put to death because (1) the land was so wicked that no Israelites were following the Law and putting adulterers to death, (2) who would have been the authority to stone the king?

If we even begin to open up that we don't need to follow the Word of God because we have some "special revelation" or "inner light" or "a message from God", then all of Christianity becomes subjective. If Bathsheba's neighbors had gathered around David and stoned him for his murder and adultery, not one of them would have broken a single Scripture nor been guilty one iota before God. I think this article has the right motivation, because we always need to look to our Father, but I am concerned about its conclusions.

Greg, thank you for bringing that up again. This is EXACTLY where I am. This thing of wisdom and God's deep understanding. Not wisdom to make a single early choice (as we often pray) but a deep UNDERSTANDING of God's ways & therefore continually acting out of that understanding.

As Alan says in HIS example, here seems to be one, too. Matt 12:3-5, Jesus said.
[i]But He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions, how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat nor for those with him, but for the priests alone?[/i]

Solely by scripture, who would've done this? (Don't know that I would have or would NOT have.) But I see the deeper understanding God wants us to have. This type of deep understanding is what I seek!

Very thankful for Alan Martin.

I like the spirit of this article, but I can't help thinking that it isn't very well thought out. After all, David, the man "after God's own heart" said that he LOVES God's law (Ps 1:2, 119:97, etc.) - I don't think many of us would consider this man to have been a "lawyer".

Of course there are many examples in scripture when the sentence of the law was not carried out: David eating the bread only for priests, Rahab lying and being commended for it, the woman caught in adultery who is not stoned - but these examples are not telling us that we should ignore the law and just do whatever the "spirit leads us to do". We are not the ones who will condemn for breaking God's law, that is a different matter - but as far a judging right from wrong by the Word of God, I think we must do this.

After all, the Word of God is living and active BECAUSE it is directly from the Spirit. Relegating the Word of God to a 2nd tier behind the Spirit of God would be a grave error, which was NOT the intention of the article, obviously.

I hope I am not being too critical, but something seems a bit off with this one...

i like the article.of course the Bible is highest authority for us.no doubt. but what i especially like about the article is that we are encouraged not only to know the Word of God(which is extremely important) but also to walk in constant connection with the God of that Word.Then we have true spiritual understanding.

At first sight it may seem like it, but when put in the context of what scripture says about the Law, perhaps not? Gal 3:19; Heb 7:11, 12; Heb 9:15; John 1:17; Gen 3:21; Gen 4:15

To begin, I don't think most of these Scriptures are relevant, because we are talking about the Old Covenant and not the New. There was no letter to the Galatians or to the Hebrews. The Old Tesament pattern was to "meditate on the Law of God day and night" and the Psalmist said, "Oh, how I love Your Law." The goal of meditating on the Law and loving it was not to get some course of action outside of the direction of the Law.

How could God's heart not melt at David's instantaneous confession of sin, when challenged by Nathan? Yet, both David and God knew that there had to be consequences. And once the price was paid, God laid it down, like He does with the sin of all who come to Him now.

We do not know if God's heart melted, only that he did not command Nathan to have David stoned. David's heart remained hard for a full year, so I don't believe God was impressed with that "immediate" confession. We have to wonder if David would have ever repented if Nathan had not come to him.

You mention a price that was paid. What was it?

I believe in Genesis, we see the beginning of God's outworking of the meaning of the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.

We do, but what does that have to do with David under the Old Covenant? You are mixing in elements from the New Covenant where they do not apply.

Good discussion, though. It seems there are many perspectives. I still hold that God did not necessarily approve of how everything with David was handled, unless we agree that he repented for giving the Law through Moses in the first place.