Watchman Nee Part 2 – False Teachings Do Not Sanctify

welcome to critical issues commentary the radio ministry of gospel of grace fellowship a non-denominational christian church in st louis park minnesota this is jessica krames your host for today and i'm talking with bob deway author of critical issues commentary and teacher and theologian at gospel of grace fellowship now last week we introduced watchmen knee and kind of touched a little bit on his teachings and how that influenced your life today we're going to talk a little bit more how this leads to a false system of sanctification now cic issue number 137 is true and false sanctification believing the promises versus mystical processing of the soul today we're going to show how the system from watchmen knee is a false system of sanctification i'm going to start with a quote from the article and then we're going to define a few terms and we'll show how this system just leads to confusion rather than sanctification so the quote from article number 137 is this in jesus prayer for the disciples recorded in john 17 he prays for their sanctification sanctify them in the truth your word is truth john 17 17 the primary means of holiness is the word of god we are made holy once for all when we believe the truth of the gospel for by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified hebrews 10 14. that's the end of the quote so that definition of sanctification in theology we would call positional sanctification is that correct yeah we need to distinguish between legal or positional that we are we have the imputed righteousness of christ we are considered holy we are saints okay which means holy ones and we are sanctified in christ by faith but you know there's also the progressive sanctification which i think most believers have heard about and the bible does address both we mentioned that that we grow in grace and knowledge of god and we grow more into the image of christ as he's carrying us along but both the positional sanctification and the practical sanctification we want to use that term are grouded into the same thing which is the finished work of christ that he's done on our behalf and it's received by faith through the gospel and we grow as we believe the promises of god and god is at work changing our lives and so what is our action in this progressive sanctification how what do we do to be further sanctified we put ourselves under the means of grace by faith okay and i think we've mentioned that but means of grace acts 2 42 can you have the word of god prayer fellowship of the saints the lord's supper and so on which reminds us of what god's done for us now we're not promoting some magical um substantiation version of the lord's supper but the lord's supper is about what christ did for us and his promises that he'll come again receive us to himself and that we will again uh have fellowship with him in the eternal kingdom it's all part of the lord's supper so one of the things we emphasize is sanctification is believe the promises of god and come to god on his terms and be part of the means of grace which are received by grace through faith that's right and those means of grace those are things that christians generally love and desire to do anyways we we love the word of god and we naturally cry out to god in prayer and we desire the fellowship of other believers these things aren't a chore to do they're a joy right and so that's very important and i think a lot of pop evangelicalism undervalues that uh i'm not sure what they're afraid of but they're assuming many times that we begin by faith and everybody would agree with that i would hope that we're saved by grace through faith but then they assume we proceed on some other means okay and it's just other means that causes all the trouble jessica if you think about it so many of the cic radio uh shows and podcasts and videos and everything else we do we're talking about all the things that come along that are the added on stuff that causes all the problems that's right it and that's exactly what we're dealing with here today yeah and so we talked about anya graham and christian quote-unquote christian yoga and all that we've been dealing with but now we're going to talk about watson knee okay so just for those who maybe didn't hear last week's if you can give us a brief recap of who watchmeni was and then let's dive into this false system of sanctification okay watchmen eve was a chinese christian teacher from the early 20th century and his material was copied down and copious notes were taken by his followers the only books he actually wrote directly were the spiritual man volume one two and three and we talked about that a little bit but there are all these other material out there and when i was a new christian i was reading mahajani and there was the normal christian life and there was many books one i remember was the latent power of the soul so they were publishing books based on the notes of the disciples of watson knee and those are still out there now with the internet they get they're being sent all around okay and i got a hold of that as a new christian early 70s and i was reading this and i so wanted to be a spiritual person and so i try to follow this and what we pointed out before in our last session and what comes up in that article about true and false sanctification his knee has this unique uh anatomical version of the christian life and it's divided into the body soul and spirit and he has diagrams in that uh the first volume of his book the spiritual man and so the body has these different functions the soul is divided in the mind the will and the emotions and the spirit is divided into parts uh one of which is intuition we talked talked about that a little bit and so his idea was that the reason christians are not what they should be is that they're soulish you'll hear that term solely shallot when you're talking to watch my knee followers or you read any of his stuff and he's claiming that the key to sanctification is to get rid of following the desires of the body and to get rid of the soulish aspect which would be the mind will and emotions that has to be laid aside and one has to become truly spiritual by following the human spirit which for the christian is joined to the holy spirit and so there is our source and that's what we should be following okay so one thing that was confusing to me when we were first talking about this is the difference between soul and spirit i think we tend to use those words interchangeably as if they're synonyms whereas watchmene seems to be claiming the soul as part of the flesh not so much as we would think of our spirit so then you're saying soul is more of body and mind and then spirit is separate from soul well he he takes the tripartite doctrine from first thessalonians 5 23 quite literally where it says now may the god of peace sanctify you entirely and may your spirit soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our lord jesus christ so his whole system depends on tripartite humans body soul and spirit but it's not entirely clear that paul is actually distinguishing between the soul and the spirit in this verse it sounds to me like paul is just wishing that the whole man was exhorting them and saying the whole man the whole person may the whole person be sanctified right i think that part is clear that though god's intent and paul's prayer wash is for the whole person to be sanctified but he made that really big distinction between the soul and the spirit not only does he say there's a distinction which is not entirely clear but even if there is normal persons born again christians don't have some inner capability of consciously knowing for sure oh my spirit is doing this but my soul is doing this other thing right that sounds very confusing well it's no it's totally it's totally confusing and as i said before i spent five years trying to do this and i took it very seriously and as as we mentioned before i was in this christian community where we had 24 hours a day to try to work these things out and finally i just gave up on it and uh but yet his entire sanctification system is grounded in this anatomical scheme that divides the soul from the spirit and claims that we need to follow our spirit and quit following our mind well and emotions okay so how do we know if we're following our soul or our spirit you know i never figured that one out he has all these claims about what's wrong with with christians in fact if you read enough me which i did and i just reread a bunch of it for this series we're doing you can only come to one conclusion and that is that it's hopeless because it creates a quandary and a confusion and dilemmas that are impossible to escape and i can illustrate that a number of different ways from some of his material but for now let's just focus on this sanctification scheme and then we'll get into some of the confusion okay so i would argue that god deals with us as a whole person and that for now sanctification is progressive it's positional we are sanctified there's progressive we are being sanctified and that the perfection comes at the resurrection amen okay and so the whole person is less than perfected whether you're considered a whole person body soul and spirit or you consider the whole person body and soul and as we've mentioned before the old testament sees the heart being the whole inner person right right and so this carefully broke down anatomical bringing each part of this so-called tripartite man and breaking those each into three parts and then describing in detail how they interact with each other is beyond anybody's real capability of living out or practicing it's really really confusing but we can get rid of that dear saints if you're not totally into this yet stay out of it run you do not want watch my knee ruling your life it is hopeless it will go on if you spend decades doing it it'll never work you'll always be confused because the reality is you don't know that your spirit's doing this but your soul's doing that you're not real i can't do that i wouldn't even know where to start nobody can but watch my knee is so um assertive in his writing that this is exactly the way it is and the fact that you can't make the distinction and live out the distinction is proof that you're a carnal man you're soulish that's why you got problems that's why you're not happy that's why you don't have victory that's why the demons are getting you he has all of this stuff including a demonology all based on humans not having the the necessary knowledge and understanding and application of what it really means to follow your spirit right that's everything i can say that was certainly certainty and i doubt any of these followers would even say that well i'm wrong that he made that claim that's exactly his clean yep okay now i tried to do it as i said before 24 7 living in a christian commune everybody there turned over their entire bank account they sold their homes they quit their jobs people that were students in bible college left and because bible college was only feeding the soul and the soul is what our problems are and so on and so forth now i'm not saying that the group we were in was totally following washington need that was just one of the sources there were many other ones charles finney i found out later when i got out was behind some of this this whole engineered revival and so on and how horrible everything is if you're just a normal person see dear saints what these teachers are going to tell you is if you are an ordinary christian you love god you study your bible you're trying to understand what the bible's telling you about how to live you're praying to god asking for grace to do the things the bible tells you to do they will convince you that you are unenlightened and there's something seriously wrong with your spirituality because you're soulish right that's exactly what make sure this definition is clear when watchmeni or some of these people are saying you're soulish today we would call that a carnal christian which is really an oxymoron but it you hear that out there these people are carnal christians what is a carnal christian really well if you look at first corinthians which was one of the key sections of the bible that we misinterpreted when i was in that movement okay carnal christian they thought was one who followed fleshly things or their own mind or their own abilities and so on and a spiritual christian was gaining intuitive spiritual knowledge directly from the holy spirit who's infused with the human spirit but the carnal christian according to paul is really an oxymoron right and what i failed to understand back in those days was that paul was using irony yes now i hope our listeners realize that if you take irony literally you get a false idea right you'll come away with the opposite meaning of what was intended yeah you always get the opposite meeting if you go outside here in minnesota in the middle of the winter and it's 15 below zero but you just call somebody in florida and send out to your friends in florida boys you're hot here in minnesota you're saying it ironically right you don't really mean it because it's 15 below zero yeah and that goes that's just how the english language works or all language works so what the false teachers did using watchmen e and other sources was they took a ironic statements that paul made in corinthians first and second corinthians and decided to take them literally yeah he said you are that can create a mess yeah so you are carnal you're not spiritual that was an ironic rebuke because the corinthians were convinced that they had a higher order spirituality and they thought paul was carnal right and they they laughed at his message of the cross and the crucified jewish messiah they had a higher order and and so on and so that was an ironic rebuke the carnal christian is actually an unbeliever who thinks he's a christian right i'm going to show us some scripture here because i actually heard this one um recently so we're going to go to galatians 5 and i'm going to read 19 through 26 because this is going to give us a contrast the person i heard talking about these verses was saying the first group was the carnal christian and the second group was the more spiritual more elite christians so let's listen to this and see if that actually makes any sense galatians 5 starting at verse 19 now the works of the flesh are evident which are adultery fornication uncleanness lewdness idolatry sorcery hatred contentions jealous jealousies outbursts of wrath selfish ambitions dissensions heresies envy murders drunkenness revelries and the like of which i tell you beforehand just as i also told you in time past that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of god wow there's the first group that are the carna so the carnal christians are the murderers they're murderers and they won't inherit the kingdom but they're christians right oh my god only the higher order christians inherit the kingdom now here's the second group of elite christians but the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace longsuffering kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self-control against such things there is no law and those who are christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires if we live in the spirit let us also walk in the spirit let us not become conceited provoking one another and being one another okay so i was stunned as i heard this because how do you have a christian who does not inherit the kingdom of god but that's what this class system does it breaks up the two but but reality is the first group those are unbelievers they might think they're christians because they raised their hand or said a prayer or went forward at an altar call or were baptized as an infant or because they've gone to church and their parents went to church and their grandparents went to church there's all kinds of reasons people might be false converts but they're not christians right and they're the reason they're acting that way is because they're unsaved right but watch when they would say they're soulish right well the problem is i mean the problem is they're unsaved and the remedy is the preaching of the gospel not some sort of introspective processing of the soul to determine if we're working through our soul or through our spirit right or some higher order experience we've talked about that i've written articles about it yeah that if you give mental assent to facts then jesus is your savior but if you decide to be really dedicated then if you make jesus your lord right spirit the two-class system right so the lordship of christ is optional it's for higher order christians wow so what we see here are actually believers and unbelievers right let me jessica since we're dealing with it this way and i haven't i've got a whole bunch of quotes from me but we'll get to that eventually let's just stick with the bible to start with okay and convince people that there are these various classes of christians the soulish one versus the spiritual one is in these classes right that's how he describes the soul as christian the spiritual christian the pop evangelicalism has the carnal christian and the spiritual christian yep and so if you want to read about this i wrote that article about pietism that just rejects all of this yes that's all you can find that at cicministry.org is that issue 101 i think pietism i it's one of my favorite articles but let me uh go to another section where you run into the same issue and that's in romans eight it talks about the flesh and the spirit so i'm gonna read romans eight and i'm gonna just start with verse four and we'll just kind of walk along here and see who this is about okay romans 8 i'm going to start with verse 4 so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in house do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit now hold on just say that's romans 8 4 at first reading somebody might look at that and say see there's two types of christians the ones who walk according to the flesh and the ones that walk according to the spirit now watchmen he said the latter would be the ones who are following in their internal human spirit as joined to the holy spirit okay okay fleshly ones are following their soul which includes your mind in your rational intellect and all of that now let me read on romans 8 5. for those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh but those are according to the spirit the things of the spirit maybe i should just read some watchmen need to show you how this all works out okay okay um let me just read me this is available on the internet it's called the dangers of the soulish life watch for me now let me just after a bunch of this stuff about the soulish life he summarizes this he calls it a summary knee quote we may summarize by saying that the tendency of the fallen soul is to set believers notice he's talking about believers to walking by their natural power to serve god by their strength and according to their ideas to covet physical sensation knowing god or experiencing the lord's presence and to understand the word of god by the power of their minds unquote so the problem with the soulish believer is to understand the word of god by the power of their minds is there any other way to understand the word of god according to me there is okay i would not even know how to try and understand the word of god through any other means other than opening it and reading it and thinking about it and using my mind well this is absurd as the emergent church post-modern mysticism all of this stuff we've talked about they do the same thing remember silence your mind so you can experience god so do you say the the carnal or soulless christian is trying to understand the word of god with their minds here's the problem if you're going to read watts beneath books the only way you can evaluate what these claims are is to read them and it goes into your mind where you process his ideas right that's the only way we can think and understand anything i know and so he's really fighting against us even being ordinary humans so i need my mind to understand me and he tells me if i use my mind to understand the bible i'm soulish well and i as i was reading through this last night i was thinking it's really an attack on the gospel too because okay listen to this is this quote is from the same article the dangers of the soulish life keeping in mind that soulish is fleshly as he's using the words and he says the most prominent indication of being soulish is a mental search acceptance and propagation of the truth so if i go out and speak the truth i'm gonna add on myself of the gospel i'm being soulish yeah if you search out the truth which we're commanded to do you're being soulish yet he's making a truth claim that makes you a carnal christian yeah well by his own definition that makes him a carnal christian because he just made a propositional state statement a truth claim that doing that makes you soulish yeah it's absurd it's self refuting right it's it's absurd and will just totally confuse anybody trying to follow it but we're in romans 8 so remember i quoted romans 8 5 for those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh and what that means is orienting your life and your beliefs and the whole person away from the cross and the things of god correct okay yeah and even the implications of the cross are things that people see and know and understand by your mind because it's the only way you can understand anything it's the way god made us we're creating his image but let me read on so there's thee and others are saying they're soulless you're carnal christians but paul's talking about those walking according to the flesh we want to find out are those people christians okay lesser christians let's read on that verse five verse six romans eight for the mindset on the flesh is death but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace so in these categories well if you follow your intuition and you you're attuned to the spirit then you get the life and peace otherwise you get uh yeah verse 7 romans 8 7. it gets worse it's just like jessica what you saw in galatians look at verse 7 romans 8 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward god for it does not subject itself to the law of god it's not even able to do so now in these categories the the psychic cast is the greek the soulish one is captivated by this mind that's used to being in charge of everything and you have to get away from that you gotta get rid of it and start following the spirit if you don't want to be a carnal christian so the mind using your mind to evaluate things as you saw just getting his article is the big problem right all right let's go on we want to know if these are cardinal christians or not okay romans 8 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please god so they may say well see you're trying to please god but you're failing because you're trying to do it with your mind okay you're trying to your soulish your mind your will your emotions which nieces are the faculties of the soul are getting in the way and you're not really following your spirit because your spirit is joined to god and so people in that movement i notice word of faith people talk like this oh my spirit says this my spirit does that right have you heard it i've heard that yeah okay so that was verse eight so now it's getting even worse you can't even please gob so you better read more wattsman ebooks well don't use your mind while you do it yeah but i don't know what to do yeah how am i going to read his book without my mind i don't get that romans 8 9 let me read on okay however you are not in the flesh but in the spirit if indeed the spirit of god dwells in you now that's just the first part of the verse let's but let's stop right there now knee is claiming that many christians are defeated christians or demonized christians or soulish christians or carnal christians because they don't know that they're following their soul and they haven't yet learned how to tap into the spirit part of them the human spirit joined to the holy spirit so they're defining that is a lack of technique ability knowledge dedication to somehow this intuitive connection to the spirit but it says here you're not in the flesh but in the spirit if the spirit of god dwells in you but he is saying correctly that the holy spirit draws every christian so he's writing his book to fleshly christians but paul is saying you're not in the flesh with the spirit if the spirit dwells in you right so the indwelling spirit means you're not really fleshly like they're claiming like d claims now let me read the rest of the verse okay but if anyone does not have the spirit of christ he does not belong to him so the spirit of christ the holy spirit is synonymously parallel there and so paul says that if you're fleshly you don't belong to god right and so we go back again to the two categories are the unbelievers and the redeemed of god right but knee makes three categories the unbelievers the believers who are slushly and the spiritual believers wow and we just don't find that and it isn't just wasping these problems it's it's this whole deeper life movement it's the lordship thing where you have this total surrender you haven't yet experienced total surrender and there's even popular songs that come from that entire movement i heard one song the other day at a baptism i'm not i don't think the guy's singing and even realize it's a pieta song i surrender all that was the way they sang that at alder calls so people could go experience trolls surrender and quit being carnal okay this goes back in the 20th century pietism that american evangelicalism is been afflicted by now it says if you don't have the spirit of pressure not belong to him so knee has all of those materials the christians say the spirit your spirit is joined to the spirit of god but you don't know it because you're following your mind and you've got to get rid of that you've got to just be rid of soulishness okay let me close on this one okay here's something i did i love uh the technology be able to search my greek bible and find every time a word is used and there is a word uh presoles it's tsukikos it's an adjective that could be translated solely and he knows that he uses it but one of the places the word solish is used is jude 19 which is jude 1 19 there's only one chapter now let me quote jude 19 where we find the world word solation numerical standard says worldly minded let me let me quote it these are the ones who cause divisions worldly minded or soulish devoid of the spirit period all right jude 19 says the soulish are devoid of the spirit they don't have the spirit romans 8 9 says that if you don't have the spirit of christ you don't belong to him and therefore you must be in the flesh because if you're not in the flesh you're in the spirit so me is yours to describe inadequate christians whereas the bible uses it to describe the lost that's right and you know the remedy the remedy as i was reading those verses anyone who's out there listening right now if i was when i was reading those verses out of galatians 5 if anything in you said boy i really think that first group applies to me the answer is repentance turn from your sin turn from whatever you're trusting in other than jesus and put your trust fully in him the the answer to turn from those things to go from that group to the group who are filled with the spirit is is to hear the gospel and respond to it in repentance and faith and at that point we're given the holy spirit we need to turn from our sin and turn to christ and that's the only way we're ever going to go from being fleshly to being spiritual it's what god does in us right and we're not claiming that all christians have total victory all the time no and we are these all these things in this first list we're gonna struggle with at some point yeah even if it's just at the desired level yeah but we believe god and we ask him to give us victory and we don't agree with living that way right and god unbelievers aren't worried about their sin unbelievers aren't worried about looking no they don't like they're being fleshly knee is convicting us of the sin of using our minds right yeah and that's not a sin as a matter of fact in romans it uh romans 12 be transformed by the renewing of your mind right but he would say that's anatomical you got to learn how to have your mind follow the spirit oh it gets complicated and we're going to talk more about that next week so for critical issues commentary this has been jessica krames and bob we want to remind all of you out there as it says in philippians 1 27 stand firm in one spirit with one mind and strive together for the faith of the gospel we'll talk more about this next week [Music] you

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Length: 40min 5sec (2405 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020