Biblical Psychology

N. B. We deal here particularly with Spirit in the f< Natural" Man.

(a) Particular Form. Gen. 2:7; 6: 17.

(b) Personal Form. Num. 16: 22; 27: 16; Zech. 12: 1; Isa. 19: 3; Psa. 51: 10.

(c) Physical Form. Job 32: 8, 9; Gen. 7: 22; Hab. 2: 19; Eev. 13: 15; Job 34: 14, 15.

(b) Dependent. Psa. 32:2; 2 Cor. 7:1; Jas. 3:15.

(c) Death. Eom. 7:18, 23; 8:5-7; 1 Pet. 3:19.

We will deal first of all with "Nous." The best way to put it practically is — the moment of responsible intelligence, either in a natural man or a spiritual man. (That is not a definition in any other way than being a working indication of the thing for practical purposes.) Now the point when responsible intelligence begins in a natural life is very different, some people never seem to reach it at all, they live like children and die like children, or rather more like "simpletons" than children. They have impulses and imaginations and fancies, but never seem to come to a responsible intelligence. A child has no responsible intelligence to begin with. In the spiritual domain, the same thing is true. In the beginning of the spiritual life we have the "Spirit of God/' but not the "mind of Christ. M The "mind of Christ" means that we have formed the same intelligent, responsible outlook on things that the Son of God had, and one of the greatest benedictions of God's grace is this, that some people who do not seem tcf have any natural "nous" can construct one in the realm of grace by the Spirit of God, and the right use of it in the temple of the Holy Ghost. It is not something with which we can say we are endowed; to begin with, we have the capacity, but the formation of the "nous" depends on how we develop, and allow ourselves to be disciplined.

Spiritually, God always holds us responsible for being deficient in the matter of this understanding of things in a responsible way.

Let us look at the subject of "Nous" under three headings, the Natural Nous, the Spiritual Nous, and the Bewildered Nous. Jesus Christ is the responsible expression of the intelligence of God, Jesus Christ is called the "Logos/' We have the same thing in man, we have spirit, and immediately we form a responsible intelligence, our words are responsible, all the things we express, the statements we make, and the thoughts we form are all stamped with responsibility. A child's sphere is not responsible, but with persons of a mature intelligence, their statements are responsible; consequently God judges us by our words. It is quite true there are times in a man's life when he has to say "answer my meaning, not my words," but that is an exceptional thing. We have to remember that the words, the expressions in us, when we have a responsible intelligence, are responsible ones.

Take, first of all, the natural responsible intelligence. There is a capacity in man apart from the Spirit of God, to know that there is a God. (Rom. 1: 20.) I interpret the things outside me by my intelligence. I must come to the conclusion that there was an intelligence that made them, not less than my intelligence, therefore every man when he becomes responsibly intelligent, does know that there must be responsible intelligence behind everything there is. So you find that God holds every man responsible, and the writer to the Hebrews says, "A man must believe that God is, before he can come to Him." "We are talking apart from the work of grace, we are talking entirely novr in the natural way.

(Rom. 7:23-25.) Paul is revealing that in the natural make-up of a man the ordinance of God is placed, and when the man becomes responsibly intelligent he is able to discern a great many things, things he calls justice and right, and Paul states that heathen are judged by conscience. We are coming very near to the point where conscience becomes a responsible working power in a man's life. When we dealt with conscience we called it the eye of the soul looking out towards God. Well, this is very nearly the same thing. The nous, the responsible intelligence, begins to discern in the natural spirit the ordinance of God written, consequently the idea of people saying men are not responsible for doing wrong is not true to nature or to revelation. The Bible says that the man knows by the way he is made that certain things are wrong, and as he obeys that ordinance of God written in his spirit he will be judged.

(Heb. 11:3.) There again we have the bridge between the natural and the spiritual. This is not a question of swallowing a revelation of God, this is a question of understanding with a responsible intelligence how the world was made, and it is simply a new emphasis on the thing we have been emphasizing all along, the responsibility of those of us who are Christians in experience for being responsible Christians in intelligence. "We have no business to be ignorant of how the world was made. If we can form responsible intelligence as natural men, we have to form it also as spiritual men. The Bible does not only teach the way of salvation, but the way of spiritual sanity. The Bible world corresponds exactly with the natural world, and the Bible world explains the natural world, and it is the only one that does, and we are held responsible by God for not allowing ourselves to form that spiritual "nous," to understand that the worlds were made by the word of God out of nothing that does appear. That is a different thing from Romans 2: 20, which is simply that a man, by his natural intelligence, when he becomes responsible knows that there must be a mind behind the things that are.

Now let us take the spiritual nous. (1 Cor. 2: 16.) That is a wonderful passage, it is much more than the' Spirit of Christ, it is the responsible understanding of Christ, "We have the mind of Christ.' ' You will find every now and again that the Spirit of God within us, when we are born again, is struggling to get ua to understand as God understands, and we are very stupid, very dark and very silly in the way we mifftake a great many things the Spirit of God is trying to lead us to, but in entire sanctification, when the Son of God is formed in us, we understand with this responsible intelligence, we understand just like Jesus Christ did, and the consequence is this, that I am held responsible for doing through my body the things that I understand God wants me to do. Jesus Christ spoke the things that He knew His Father wanted Him to speak, and He spake nothing else; I must do the same if I have the mind of Christ. Jesus worked with His hands only those works that He knew were the exact expression of His Father. I must do the same. Spiritual nous, then, does not only mean the Holy Spirit energizing my spirit; it means my allowing that Spirit to work out in a responsible intelligence in me.

(1 John 5:20.) That word "understanding' ' does not mean " necromancy,' ' it does not mean a great big flashing "spiritual intuition," it means that we understand with a perfectly responsible intelligence that which comes from God; and God holds us responsible for not knowing it. It is not the question of an uncanny spiritual influence, it is not the question of getting some tremendously wonderful insight from God, it is the question of having the understanding, the nous, so absolutely obedient to the Spirit of God that we can understand what is of God and what is not.

(Heb. 8:10.) That embraces everything, the full, mature understanding intelligence of the people of God, not being driven about by every wind of doctrine, not being at the mercy of spiritual impulses, but being mature, vigorous, understanding people who know the will of God and do it.

(Rom. 8:6.) " Carnal mind," in this sense, is what we all call " common sense.' ' If you ask yourself what common sense is, it simply means the mature, responsible intelligence of a responsible being, and you will find that over and over again (we are bridging now between spiritual and bewildered nous) you will begin to find how those two things clash before they harmonize. The soul gets thoroughly bewildered. We are not dealing with the "carnal mind,? in the deep moral sense, but only on the responsible intelligence side, it sets itself against the spiritual understanding, it won't be reconciled to it, just as it won't be reconciled to it morally, and until the " common sense' ' becomes " sanctified sense" (not sanctified common sense, that is not a Bible phrase or a Bible meaning), until the responsible intelligence of my mind becomes reformed by the Spirit of God, the antagonism goes on. We are all perfectly familiar with the "carnal mind" in the moral way, it is wrong longings, and seekings and antipathies to God, but it takes a good deal of courage to confess and to face that it is absolutely wrong in its responsible thinking, and it will give verdicts against Jesus Christ as the Pharisees did, it will decide straight off that Jesus Christ 's mind and responsible intelligence are the responsible intelligence of a madman, or the irresponsible intelligence of a mere dreamer. You will find, when you begin to think along God's line, an amazing clash with certain things that were accepted as being inalienable "rights" for everybody, and you will find that Jesus Christ's teaching works from another standpoint, and the clashing brings confusion and bewildering for a time, until we are resolved to remove from ourselves altogether the old habits and ways of looking at things, and look at everything now from the "mind of Christ" standpoint. "If any man is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation," not only spirit and soul, but in every other way, and we slowly see the new creation all through.

Bewildered Nous. Jesus said He came to send a sword, and this always happens; when His Spirit comes in it confuses the responsible intelligence of a man, turns him upside down. This is different from conviction of sin.

(2 Cor. 11: 3.) There is the responsible intelligence of a devil being allowed entrance into Eve by subtlety, and bewildering her straight off from understanding God's will or obeying it, and Paul says here he hopes that none will be bewitched in that way. He said to the Galatians, "Who hath bewitched you?" This conflict of responsible intelligence goes on at the beginning of Christian life when people are in danger of becoming "legal." Paul said, "I am afraid of you, lest my labor is in vain," lest you get all wrong, you are now going back again to the old ways of making yourself perfect; the old legal notions; and that is the way sometimes the subtlety of Satan takes away from the power of God, the life that was coming under the dominion of the Spirit of God. Our Lord alludes to the same thing when He says the "cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things bewilder you, choke wThat I put in." So no wonder the first law of a born-again soul is concentration. (We hear a great deal about consecration, but we do not hear so much about concentration.)

The consequence of a bewildered soul is that of doubleness. (Jas. 1:8.) " Switherers, " that is a very apt description of a bewildered soul. Eesponsible intelligence of the world pulling, and the responsible intelligence of the mind of Christ pulling too, and you do not know which to take. "Don't let that man think he shall receive anything" because he will not, he is a "switherer." He has to decide whether he will be identified with the Lord Jesus Christ to the crucifixion of the old type altogether, and to the turning out, not only of the "old man," but of the old responsible intelligence, the old bondage, the old legalism, the old thing that used to guide the life before, and get in the totally new mind. It works this way, in your practical life you will come now and again into crises where there will be two distinct ways before you, one the way of ordinary, strong, moral, common sense, and the other waiting on God until the mind be formed to understand God's way. You will find any amount of " backing' ' in the first line, you will find the backing of worldly people, and the backing of semi-Christian people, but you will get the warning, the drawing back of the Spirit of God, and if you wait on God, study His Word and watch circumstances, you will be brought to a new decision so that your worldly backers and your semi-Christian backers will fall from you with disgust and say it is absurd, you are getting fanatical. That is the way we begin to form a responsible intelligence, and we must not grieve the Spirit of God in these lines.

"We are now dealing with Man's Universe, the Particular Form, the Personal Form, and the Physical Form. Remember, the whole meaning of my soul life is this, to express what my spirit means, and the struggle of spirit is to get itself expressed in my soul. Take it in the natural line, you will find when an immature mind tries' to express itself, there are tremendous struggles and all kinds of physical exertions and efforts. It has not the power of expressing itself, it has not a responsible intelligence, it has not a vocabulary, and you get the exquisite suffering of young lives trying to express the spirit that is in them. Music is run to, theatres are run to, literature is run to, anything to get the power of expressing what is in "longing"; and if I go on too long on the music line, or the art line, or the literature line of things, I will never form a responsible intelligence, I will be the most unpractical of all beings on the face of the earth, and the discipline of the machinery of life is to get the power to express what is in you. That is what language is. The difference in the histories of languages is very wonderful. Take the language of our authorized Bible and the language we use to-day, the difference is enormous. The old Saxon words that the Bible is translated into are the words that express the inward soul for the first time, the words we use now are nearly all technical, borrowed from something else, and our words, our most modern words, are not.those that express the spirit at all, they are those that cloak it up cunningly, no expression. In the natural person, the young person, this kind of thing is often heard, "Oh, I don't understand myself, nobody else understands me!" Why, of course you don't, but you are responsible for not having a responsible intelligence to know where you can be understood. (Read Psa. 139.) If it is true in the natural world that a mind trying to express itself gets all these kinds of turmoils, it is just as true spiritually.

That is the meaning of education, education is not to pack into me something that is alien, but something that gives me the power to "draw out" what is in me. One of the greatest benefits to a young life trying to express itself is to give it something to work with its hands, to model in wax, or to paint, or write, or dig, or form; the power of expression. Take it on the spiritual line, when the Spirit of God comes into me, the same struggles go on, He trying to get me into line, out of the "natural ruts," He tries to get me to obey Him so that He can express Himself through my responsible intelligence, and you have the throes and the pains of the spiritual life when you are Spirit-born, till the mind of Christ is in you, and the old carnal antagonism is no more. That is why we find the value, as Paul says, of spiritual teachprs and helpers, because they express to us what we have been trying to express for ourselves, and could not, and immediately some book or person has expressed for me what I have been trying to learn how to express for myself I feel unspeakably grateful, and that is the way I begin to learn how to express for myself. Tribulation will teach you, your circumstances will teach you, difficult things will teach you, temptations of the devil will teach ypu, all these things will develop the power of expression all through until we get in our words and works to be as responsible in expression of the Spirit of God as Jesus Christ was the responsible expression of the mind of God Almighty.

(a) Particular Forms. All the particular forms of nature — rocks and trees, animals and men — are the outcome of the breathing of the Spirit of God. There is a true law of correspondence between the things we see and the mind behind them. When we have the mind behind the things in us, we begin to understand how these things manifest it, but if we have not the mind behind them, we will never understand them.

Then (b) the Personal Form. That means a man has a distinct responsibility of his own, and he can express in a responsible way either by the spirit of the devil or by the Spirit of God; he can express the spirit of the "prince of this world" in a responsible, intelligent way, or he can express the Spirit of God in a responsible, intelligent way. That is what we mean by a man showing "soul" in his writing, "soul" in his speaking, "soul" in his praying, "soul" in his manner of living; the man has power to express himself and you can feel all the time the personal note coming out. Now, God is called a Person, therefore by His creation He expresses the peculiar stamp of His personal outlook, and when we have His Spirit within us and are forming a responsible intelligence, we begin to think His thoughts after Him, we begin to see what His meaning is, not by our natural intelligence, but by the Spirit of God when we allow the Spirit to form in us "the mind of Christ."

Then (c) the Physical Form, or expression. That simply means that this physical life is meant to express all that is in the spirit. The soul has been struggling in travail of birth, and when it is expressed in the body it has reached its zone of expressions "When children get into "tempers," remember, often it is an attempt to express themselves, the soul has not the birth-pangs strong enough, the spirit cannot express itself. Paul says, "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, to reveal His Son in me." That is stating just this idea. To begin with, we have not our "own bodies, " probably we have a body very much like our grandmother's or grandfather's or someone's else, but every few years these physical forms alter, and they alter into the shape of my ruling spirit, and slowly and surely we will find a beautifully moulded face may take on a remarkably unbeautiful moral expression as it grows older, or we may look on a very ugly face and see it, as it grows older, take on a remarkably beautiful moral expression. The physical life must express, sooner or later, through the turmoil in the soul, the ruling spirit, and we grow exactly like what our spirit is. If our spirit is the spirit of a man, then we will grow further and further away from the image of God. If we have the Spirit of God in us, then we will grow more and more into "the same image from glory to glory."

In this expression of the spirit in my flesh, we have three things. Where it is independent of the flesh, to begin with, you find the divorce between a person who is spiritually born again and the fleshly expression. (Beware of that phrase, we hear over and over again, that there is no difference between the external life of a Spirit-born person and a sanctified person. It is untrue, there is a tremendous difference. It is untrue to God, and untrue to experience*) When a person is born again of the Spirit, the flesh does not express anything like to the same degree that it does when sanctification has been reached. Why? Because it has not yet learned obedience to God. When the soul is brought into harmony with the mind of God and is willing to enter into identification with the mind of Jesus Christ, something like the following happens: in the first place, the Spirit works (a) in independence of the flesh and you get the conviction of sin. The Spirit of God produces very great darkness and difficulty in the soul when He comes in, He produces the discernment of the wrong mind, He produces the discernment that makes the spirit pant and yearn and long after being made like God, and there is nothing that can comfort the soul that is born of the Spirit, but God, and the only hope for that spirit is concentration on obedience to the Spirit of God. (2 Cor. 2:11-14.) So when the Spirit of God comes into me, He does not express Himself straight off in my flesh; He works independently of my flesh, and I am conscious of the divorce. I gain slow, sure, steady victories, but I am conscious of the turmoil. The soul is the birthplace of the new spirit and the soul struggles while the spirit tries to express itself through the body.

Then take (b) Dependent. This is quite true but the other thing is true also, that if I won't obey the Spirit, my spirit will become enchained to my flesh and absolutely dependent on it, and clamoring of the flesh through the avenues of the flesh, and the clamoring of the old mind, will gradually crush and grieve the Spirit of God away. (2 Cor. 7:

1.) The Spirit of God is independent in me, just as my spirit is, to begin with, but it is also true, that the insistence of my " flesh,' ' the insistence of the "carnal mind," if I don't obey the Spirit of God, will gradually defile everything the Spirit of God has been trying to do. The Spirit "lusts against the flesh and the flesh against the Spirit," and we can, when the Spirit of God is in us, slowly and surely and victoriously claim the whole territory for the Spirit of God, until, at entire sanctification, the only thing there is the Spirit of God, who has enabled me at last to form the mind of Christ, and now I begin to grow, and manifest that growth in grace which expresses the life of Jesus in my own moral flesh.

Then (c) Death. (Rom. 8:5-7.) That last verse is very direct, it puts an end to all absurd squabbles as to what is spiritual death. "To be carnally minded is death," to be given over to an ordinary, responsible intelligence that has not been reformed by the Spirit of God, is death, and it will grow and develop further and further away from God in its manifestation, until the man who has the mind of death can sink so low that he is perfectly happy without God. Psalm 73 describes it, "No bands in his death, he is not troubled like other men, his eyes stand out with fatness, he has everything heart can desire," and the extraordinary thing is he is the only man the worldly people call alive. If you get persons who have the Spirit of God in them, slowly manifesting by sanctification the mind of Christ in their life, then the world says they are "half dead." Peter says they "think it strange that you do not go to the same excess of riot." No wonder Paul states that, "If any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation, old things have passed away, and behold all things have become new."

"Where are we with regard, to this responsible intelligence? How many of us, as Christians who are in the definite experience of spiritual life, are forming the responsible intelligence and realize we have to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and for what purpose? That we may be able to discern with a responsible intelligence what the will of God is for us, the thing that is perfect and acceptable and good and right. All the childish clamor of being driven from "pillar to post" by every wind of doctrine must cease altogether, and the mature, sensible, strong, stable life come. Nothing can upset it, neither things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation. Every power it comes against, whether it be material things, or human things, or diabolical things, or spiritual things, simply means another occasion for forming a deepen and more intelligent grasp of the mind of God. As the only way we develop intelligence in the natural world is by coming in contact with things that are irrational and unintelligent, so in the things of God we form the mind of God by subduing all to a, spiritual understanding.

N. B. We deal here particularly with Spirit in the t( spiritual' ' man.