In our study of the doctrine of the integrity of God when we left off we were discussing the fact that God's love is the point of reference for the unique spiritual life of the dispensation of the Church so the source of both divine discipline and divine blessing for the believer is God's love. God's love therefore sponsors the greatest life that ever existed. God's love is completely compatible with God's integrity.
Integrity is defined "as a state or quality of being complete, undivided, unbroken, entirety, unimpaired, soundness, or uprightness."
Upright means to be righteous, to be in accord with what is right before God, therefore to be in harmonious rapport with God resulting in compatibility with the postsalvation spiritual life provided by God that maintains an honorable relationship with the integrity of God.
The integrity of God is made up of God's righteousness, justice, and love. The Hebrew word that Moses invented to describe this is "Jeshurun".
Moses coined this word and took it from the verb "Jasher" that means to go straight to an objective, to be upright, to be blameless, to be righteous, and to have integrity. It refers to believers whose spiritual life is compatible with the righteousness of God.
The noun "Jeshurun" literally means "righteous ones" and from that comes the concept of the fraternity of "upright ones." It is found in Deut 32:15; Deut 33:5; Deut 33:26; and Isa 44:2.
Moses used this word to describe the concept of the integrity of God because of how God dealt with him when he committed the sin of striking the rock in anger instead of simply speaking to the rock as God had commanded. Numbers 20:8-12;
The purpose of Moses in inventing this word was to focus attention on the integrity of God and the believer's relationship to God's integrity.
Since divine integrity is the basis of our so-great salvation, it is the significance of our spiritual life, it is relationship to rebound, it is relationship to momentum in the spiritual life after rebound and it is the unique impact of believers who parlay positional righteousness into experiential righteousness as witnesses for the integrity of God during the course of human history that serves as the appeal trial of satan.
When you see a sentence in the Bible where any person of the Trinity is the subject, that subject represents either the essence of God or is an anthropopathism or an anthropomorphism. God as the subject always has perfect holiness or righteousness; justice, and love with His integrity.
Out of this comes the principles of our life as it is related to the justice of God:
What the righteousness of God demands, the justice of God executes. It is the righteousness of God that always activates grace. The righteousness of God indwelling the believer demands logistical grace blessing to keep the believer alive long enough for the believer to execute the spiritual life during the time he provides on this earth.
What the righteousness of God condemns, the justice of God judges. The justice of God judges the believer from love and always provides a grace recovery procedure in the mandate to rebound and keep moving, because righteousness condemned all sins and justice judged all sins in the person of TLJC on the Cross.
What the righteousness of God approves, the justice of God blesses through the grace of God, James 4:6; Eph 3:19ff; James 4:10."The fullness of blessing from God" is a love gift to the believer who Moses describes as "Jeshurun" because of their compatibility with His righteousness.
Without divine righteousness the believer cannot share the happiness of God or enter into occupation with Christ where the fullness of blessing exists. In His blessing, God is cognitive not emotional. When any form of emotion is ascribed to God, it is an anthropopathism because it is not an accurate description of the function of the essence of God.
The grace of God is compatible with the righteousness of God because the righteousness of God is compatible with the justice of God. They are always in complete synchronization and harmony with each other. All divine solutions to the problems in life go through the grace of God. Even divine discipline comes from the grace of God.
There is a sense of responsibility that comes with integrity. Integrity is manifested as sensitivity to those who don't understand, but this sensitivity towards others does not imply any compromise with God's perfect righteousness and justice.
Love and grace are just as much a part of spiritual integrity in the believer as the righteousness and justice of the believer.
With integrity your life has meaning, purpose, and definition as a witness for God against Satan in the prehistoric angelic conflict.
The love of God for the believer is not compromised because at salvation every believer receives the imputed righteousness of God that frees God to love every believer without regard to their personal sins and failures with personal love without destroying his perfection.
The grace and love of God are part of the spiritual life principle of harmonious rapport with God. But they are more than that, they are a part of the "Jeshurun" concept in the spiritual life. They are a part of the integrity of God.
As we have seen, this principle is stated in 2 Cor 13:14; "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you."
The righteousness of God cannot be compromised or contradicted by any decision of the sovereignty of God nor can it be compromised by any decision of the volition of mankind. When man chooses against God, the punishment is severe, but love and grace are still present and always available because of righteousness and justice. Heb 13:5c; Rom 8:38-39;
This is why the righteousness of God condemned all of the sins of mankind in all of human history so that the justice of God could judge each and every one of them at the Cross. It was the love of God extending through the grace of God that provided the solution to the personal sins of all mankind.
The integrity of God not only condemned and judged man's sinfulness but simultaneously offered the solution to the problem of man's sinfulness through the work of TLJC on the cross that is enabled for each individual who expresses Faith alone in TLJC alone for salvation and eternal life. John 3:16; Acts 16:31;
Love functions through grace, righteousness functions through justice, and all these function synergistically as part of the perfect uncompromising integrity of God.
1John 4:16; "And so we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love; and the one who remains in that love remains in association with God, and God remains in association with him."
God relates to us through His integrity with emphasis on His love. The integrity of God establishes a permanent relationship with the believer that is classified as eternal security, and the integrity of God establishes a relationship with the believer through the postsalvation spiritual life that is fellowship with TLJC.
Through the residence and function of Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness the believer relates to God on a daily basis as they advance to spiritual maturity. But even for the believer who rejects Bible Doctrine after salvation, God's love remains because of the imputation of God's own righteousness to them at salvation.
We start from total depravity in our relationship with God. Since we have nothing to recommend ourselves to God in the state of depravity we cannot relate to God so He relates to us. When God relates to us, He relates to us through the revelation of Himself in the person and thinking of TLJC. John 1:14;
His revelation of Himself is found in the vocabulary, thoughts, and concepts of Bible doctrine contained in the word of God. Unfortunately, there are a lot of believers trying to relate to God based on their emotion or good works. There is no spiritual life in the attempt to relate to God based on emotion or good works.
You cannot do anything that is acceptable to God until you understand how God relates to you. God related to you in eternity past before you ever existed. God dealt with us in eternity past with the same integrity with which He deals with us now. He only deals with us through his policy of grace.
1John 4:16; indicates with the words "come to know and have believed" that we now have a personal sense of destiny from the process of listening to the teaching of a pastor, and we have an understanding of the integrity of God through an understanding of God's love and how it is uncompromisingly and irrevocably enabled by his righteousness and justice.
The love of God is just as much a part of the integrity of God as the justice of God. The grace of God is just as much a part of divine integrity as the righteousness of God. They all function together. God never disciplines apart from divine love. God loves with a far greater love than any human being is capable of.
The statement "God is love" means that love was an eternal part of His integrity and has always been a divine attribute of the essence of God.
God in his love relates to us through His integrity. We try to instruct God when we try to assign to God some human characteristic such as emotion that we think He has but that He actually does not have.
We must not superimpose on God anthropopathic or anthropomorphic statements and assign them to the essence of God. The fact that God deals with us in compassion is wonderful as language of accommodation, but compassion is not a characteristic of God.
What we see as compassion was made possible by the righteousness and justice of God in his uncompromising judgment TLJC on the cross.
Integrity is infinitely greater than compassion because integrity not only recognizes the problem as compassion does, but in addition provides the solution to the problem.
We profit from understanding anthropopathic and anthropomorphic statements; but do not use these statements to instruct God regarding what His are.
As we have seen in previous studies, there are four categories of divine love.
Love is part of the essence of His divine integrity.
God has personal love for His own perfect righteousness that is divine self-esteem.
God has personal love for the other members of the Trinity. God has personal love for all members of the human race who believe in Christ and share the righteousness of God.
God has impersonal love for all members of spiritually dead mankind from His integrity.
1John 5:11-13; "And the witness is this that God has given to us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life, and he who does not have the Son does not have this life. These things I have written to you who believe in the person of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life."
1John 4:17; "Because of this; virtue-love has been brought to completion with us; that we may have confidence in the day of evaluation ( at the judgment seat of Christ); because just as He is (the unglorified humanity of Christ executing the prototype spiritual life); so also are we in this world (by advancing to maturity in the operational spiritual life)."
The phrase "with us" means in the company of other positive believers who persist in the execution of the unique spiritual life. It denotes the company with whom you advance. You have the opportunity of maximum glorification of God as no one else ever had it. You have the opportunity to execute the greatest spiritual life that has ever existed.
The phrase "bringing to completion" includes the believer's salvation, the believer's execution of the postsalvation spiritual life, and the believer's resurrection.
Those who advance to maturity and take on the objective of maximum glorification of God can have confidence in what is going to take place at the judgment seat of Christ after the exit resurrection or rapture of the Church.
1John 2:8; "And now my children; stay in fellowship with Him that if He should appear (the Rapture); we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His presence."
This requires consistent use of rebound to remain promotable in the spiritual life. None of us advance in the spiritual life or execute the spiritual life without rebound. Rebound is not a license to sin, it is the utilization of the grace necessary to make the changes that are required for the advance in the spiritual life.
1Cor 15:34; "Come to your senses in a righteous manner (rebound); for some believers have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame." Rebound is compatibility with the integrity of God. Believers who are ignorant of the plan of God and the use of rebound will have shame at the evaluation of the Church.
Phil 3:18c-19; "that you are enemies of the Cross; whose destiny is loss (of escrow blessings); whose god is their emotion; and their glory came to be associated with their shame."