What’s the Matter With the Mill?

If you know that He is righteous, you know this as well: everyone who does what is right has been born of Him. – 1 John 2:29

This is the last verse in chapter two, but it is also the main theme of a major part of the third chapter. Doing right or not doing right gets thrown at us repeatedly as we move forward in John’s letter.

Paul said, “In me, that is, in my flesh dwells no good thing.” This is not a view that is appealing to modern man. Of course there is good in us, we argue. We merely need education and enlightenment, the benefits of a proper diet, the right kind of exercise and entertainment. It might be a good thing, too, if we could wean people off that “old time religion” and their various superstitions.

Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit.” This poses a problem for me. All of human culture -- education, economics, government – all is born of the flesh. There are stand out exceptions – Van Gogh, Mozart, the Kawasaki KL650, Tina Turner, Toy Story 2, the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, Dune, but by and large the world system is born of the flesh. It is all a corruption of the ideal, a derivative of the Truth, a shadow of the Real. That does not mean that it is “evil” as a whole, and it does not mean that some things are not better than others. Maryanne is better than Ginger. The Articles of Confederation may be better in many ways than the Constitution. Sure, it might be that by now we’d need a passport to go from Kansas to Missouri, but is that really a bad thing?

The spirit and the flesh strive one with another. The spirit is willing, as the Man said, but the flesh is weak. We recognize and home in on those flashes of truth that break through upon us like lightning out of the storm, but we will never be able to really grasp the truth and make it real and manifest in this world.

Or will we? What if we were able to stop operating out of the flesh and began to build by the spirit. Pentecostals frequently quote Zechariah: “Not by might nor by power but by My Spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.” Look again at what John says, “If you know He is righteous”. What if we could trust Him perfectly and completely in every situation? We could if we knew He was perfectly righteous and trustworthy. What if we always walked and worked and lived by Kingdom principles instead of the second-hand rules of the world system?

To be born of Christ is to do right, not in some legalistic way – though doing right is better than doing wrong, even when the motive arises from the flesh. That is, the world was a better place when we were more polite, decent, hard-working people, but I don’t think we were that much closer to the Kingdom. To do right as Christ did means to shut the old man down, ignore the world system, and walk according to the dictates of the Spirit. Spiritual direction arises out of studying Scripture, praying, and meditating – not out of analytical thought.

Now, at this point, I’m supposed to say there is nothing wrong with analytical thought. I would normally say that, except that I know it is not true. There is something horribly wrong with it when we think it will deliver us from evil or lead us out of bondage.

I wish I had a simple dictum to follow, an elegant epigram that I could impart. Don’t shop WalMart downwind from the Amish (wonderful, good-humored people just deodorant-challenged). But I don’t have anything like that. What I do have is that the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, able to divide soul from spirit – as we’ve talked about before.

The world system is organized and Satanic, opposed to God and hostile, in particular, to Jesus Christ. Yet the sad thing is that the world is always trying to mimic God, fake righteousness. Satan is attempting to create an imitation of God. It’s called the state. He imitates the grace of God; they call it welfare. He imitates salvation; they call it wealth. He imitates deliverance; they call it education. He imitates healing; they call it medicine.

I wish I could say that by rejecting politics – an ersatz religion for some, or not watching television, not listening to popular music, not going to doctors, being uneducated, or whatever – I wish I could say that would make us spiritual. It won’t. Discernment, dividing soul from spirit is as much an external necessity as an internal one – if there’s any real difference.

We can’t operate the way world does. We can’t fall into their traps, but there may be two working in the field then one will be taken and the other left. Two will be grinding at the mill, and one will be taken while the other is left. We will look like we are doing the same thing as the worldling many times, but we are doing right because we’re born of Him.