Across The Hedge Concluded

There were four indications that the Christians in Corinth were living anti-God lives. They were suffering from bouts of boiling anger. They were losing their temper and getting upset. They were quarreling with one another and wrangling over points of contention. They were doing what any Non-Christian might be able to do but nothing that revealed a legitimate dependence on God power. There was nothing unique about their actions that pointed to the supernatural handiwork of Jesus. In addition to all of this, these Christians were not able to recognize God’s hand in what was happening around them; they were attributing everything to some human explanation. In other words, there was not much about these Christians that looked, or sounded anything different than the Non-Christians surrounding them. Does this have a familiar ring to it?

I am not certain when a church crosses the line, goes across the hedge and has the look and smell of flesh but I think ours is there. What have we done lately that is supernatural, that only God could have made happen? What is there in us that indicates the Spirit of God is dominating our personalities and driving our actions? Do we have the fruit of the Spirit? Is there a craving for Jesus that is more fundamental than just doing what is right? Is Christian stuff one more chore of ours or are we filled with joy when we read the Bible, pray or do acts of service? What is there about me and you that could be pointed to as a sign that the Holy Spirit is dominating how we live and act?

If I said there was a way to get past flesh driven and man generated living and be truly driven by the Spirit of God and anointed by Him, would you bite? Would you be interested in having a Spiritual personality rather than a fleshly one? There are six basic steps to developing a Holy Spirit driven character. Each is as important as the other and not one can be lightly passed over. The first step to developing a Spirit personality is clear repentance. There are sins I have that need to be admitted and renounced. I must tell God I was wrong for my angry outbursts, wrong for my critical comments, wrong for my lustful thoughts, wrong for my refusal to forgive. No one lives Spiritual unless he takes a long hard look at his sins, particularly the ones others would dismiss as inconsequential and admits to them and renounces them to God as filthy and unacceptable.

I must decide to give up any sinful attitude or behavior I know I am doing. I must tell God I have been unable to give this up so far and need Him to crucify that part of me that wants to keep doing that sin. I must openly and publically make a profession of Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord. I cannot be filled with the Spirit of God if I am not a blatantly public Christian. I must surrender my will to that of the Holy Spirit and do whatever God says. A Christian once told me that God clearly told him that he was to be a missionary to China but never went. I cannot make these sorts of decisions if the Holy Spirit is to fill me and make me loving, kind and full of the joy of God. No Spirit filled Christian stays oppositional to God and His will for him. I must want to be filled with the Holy Spirit as much as a thirsty man in the desert craves water. "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39 NIV)

Not many Christians honestly want to be full of the Holy Spirit, anointed by Him. It is far too easy to just accept a rather superficial and incoherent form of Christian living. But honestly it is irrational to taste Jesus and then not want Him ruling over you and filling you with all of the joy and love and peace He has to offer. This is only possible by turning ourselves over to the Holy Spirit of God and giving complete control of our lives to Him. A hedge separates you from all of the blessings of God…a hedge of desire. How badly do you want the Holy Spirit filling up your life? How much do you crave His dominance over you? What are you willing to do for the fruit of the Spirit to actually be the nature of

Across The Hedge Part 1

1 Corinthians 3: 1-7 GJW
And I brothers, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual ones but as in the flesh, as to babies in Christ. 2 Milk, I gave you to drink, not solid food because you couldn’t handle it and even now you aren’t able to handle it. 3. For still you are fleshly ones for whereas there is in you boiling jealousy and contentiousness; are you not ruled by fleshly desires and walk just like men? 4. For when a certain one of you might say, “I myself am of Paul” but another, “I am with Apollos”, are you not just like men? 5. For what is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed and only as each one of you were given by the Lord. 6 I myself planted, Apollos watered but the Lord was making the growth happen. 7 Consequently, neither the one planting nor the one watering is of any consequence but only the one causing the growth, God.


In our local paper the other day was a front page story about a set of neighbors who live in a peaceful little cul-de-sac, neighbors who have been friends for years. Their property is separated by a hedge one of them planted long ago as a decorative upgrade. They have watched each other’s kids reach adulthood, gone to one another’s parties and looked after one another’s homes during vacations. One of the neighbors recently put up a yard sign calling for a “no” vote on proposition 8. His neighbors in turn put next to the hedge in their yard a sign calling for a “yes” vote on proposition 8. Last week while his neighbors were gone, the one with the “no” sign went over and cut down the part of the hedge on his neighbor’s side and forced them to move their “yes” sign from where it had been placed against the hedge.

Now what could engender such rage and frustration that a friendship lasting two decades could be ruined by dueling lawn signs? The Apostle Paul would say it is just people being people. He uses a term that that is often found in his letters to describe the part of us that just won’t do what God wants, the flesh. Some refer to the flesh as our “sin nature”, others call it our “anti-Christ personality”. We all have it. The flesh is what pushes us away from God’s character and avoids anything that smacks of real holiness. Now it is not just Non-Christians who can be ruled by their anti-God personality, Christian people also are left leaning here. Paul calls us babies when we let our flesh take the lead in how we act and live.

Paul said that many of the Christians in Corinth were acting like babies because they were forming alliances and choosing sides. Some were for Apollos, others for Paul. The points of contention were irrelevant. It did not matter why they were disagreeing, the fact that they were clearly marked them as babies. Paul uses two terms to describe the approach these Christians had to their faith. The first is “sarksinoi” and simply means that they were flesh people; in other words, the tendency to think and live outside God was part of their character. But Paul takes his diagnosis a bit further by insisting that the Christians in Corinth were “Sarksika”; they were dominated by their flesh instincts. The anti-God personality was the operating system making these Christians who they were.
This created quite a problem for Paul as he tried to lead them. He was unable to speak to them through the Spirit of God. Now how does this sort of communication work? A person dominated by the Holy Spirit can talk of anything the Spirit directs and it is made clear to the person both in how they think but how they begin to act by means of the Holy Spirit. Coercion, guilt tripping and begging are not needed to bring about the needed change. The Spirit gets the message across and coordinates the new direction. Without the Spirit of God, there is almost no Godliness, little Christian love and peacefulness and not much interest in pursuing hard after Jesus. The fruit of the Spirit described in Galatians 5: love, joy peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are anything but actualized…important maybe and desired but not rooted and grounded in the person.