As you read this, you may be in the midst of turmoil. Man may have failed you and God may seem too distant to help. You may have grown up not feeling loved in a way that met your needs. You may never have accepted or loved yourself.
The sense of inadequacy a person can feel in coping with life may run the gamut from mild depression to thoughts of suicide. Because of this, your relationships with those you love may be at the breaking point – or may already be broken seemingly beyond repair. If you are at the point of mild despair or utter desperation, this message is tailored to your situation.
God loved you enough to send a Person – His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ – to die on the cross for your sins, to raise Him again and to provide through Him all that is necessary for a victorious, abundant life. Today you either trust that His death met God’s condition for the free pardon of your sins or you do not. If you do not, this simple message, and the diagrams to illustrate it, could transform your life as you receive His Life – the Life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It may be that you have trusted Christ for your salvation but now you are a struggling, defeated believer who has yet to find the way to victory in the Christian life.
If either of these situations describes your condition, please studythe following thoughts with an open Bible and a prayer that God will illuminate these truths for you.
Your Design
The Wheel Diagram depicts man as a three-part being consisting of spirit, soul and body (I Thess. 5:23). With the body, through the senses, we relate to our surroundings. The soul, or personality, consists of the functions of the mind, will and emotions. The soul enables us to relate to one another. The spirit enables us to transcend our abilities, limitations and circumstances as we are regenerated or reborn and indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
The spirit is either related to Adam – Satan’s family (see Line Diagram [below]) – or to Christ, God’s family. We are born into the world as descendants of Adam and partakers of his nature. That means our spirits are dead to God and alive to Satan. We are in the wrong family! Since our lives came from our first father, Adam, and go back in an unbroken chain to him, we were actually in him when he sinned. Thus, we became sinners before we were physically born. Thisbeing the case, we are only doing what comes naturally when we commit sins (Rom. 3:23). Every life that remains in Adam will eventually end in Hell, as shown in the diagram (Rom. 6:23). Even though we may live very good lives, humanly speaking, we are separated from God unless and until we are born into His family by a spiritual rebirth.
Your Needs
The word “salvation” (1) in the Wheel Diagram means we must have a spiritual birth. Only in this way can we leave the life of Adam and be born into the life of Christ, which is an eternal life, as depicted in the Line Diagram (John 3:3). To be born spiritually, we must recognize or confess that we are in the wrong life and therefore born sinners, with the unavoidable result that we have committed sins. Then we must accept Christ into our lives, because he died for our sins.
In being born spiritually, those who receive the Spirit life of Christ into their spirits by faith become one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6:17). If they are to have victory over temptation and experience the peace of God in their lives, however, they must have assurance of their salvation. Assurance (2) must be based on the absolutes of God’s inerrant Word or it will be fleeting at best.
Many who know (with their minds) that they have personally trusted the Lord Jesus Christ still lack genuine assurance because they have never felt saved. Due to emotional conflicts, many of which stem from childhood rejection, a person’s feelings (or emotions) are seldom in harmony with the true facts, either as those facts are described in the Bible or as they exist in the physical world. How we feel things to be is likely to differ from how they really are until Christ becomes central in our lives and heals the damaged emotions.
The believer, old or new, must know that he enters into a secure, eternal spiritual relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ (John 5:24) and that he can rely upon and enjoy that security (3).
Though many believers know they have accepted Christ, few understand and experience the fact that they are accepted in Him. Most have been forced to earn acceptance on a human basis and feel they also must earn God’s acceptance (4), though they have already been accepted entirely through their Christ Life (Eph. 1:6). Every believer is accepted, but many never accept their acceptance, or righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21), by faith.
Few, too, are those who make total commitment (5) or total surrender of their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is an irrevocable decision in which we give God our permission to do anything He wishes in us, with us, to us or through us. We give up all our rights.
Frequently, circumstances degenerate into near chaos after we make such a decision, because God honors our request for Him to take complete control of our lives. If He is to take control then we must lose control, and that is a process that seldom gives us joy! The circumstances or persons God uses to bring us to the end of our control of our lives are often not in themselves spiritual. They sometimes inflict undeserved suffering, but it is just such suffering that accomplishes God’s purposes in our lives (I Pet. 2:20-2 1; Phil. 1:23-30). At the time of the suffering or chastening (Phil. 3:10; Heb. 12:11), it seldom seems a cause for rejoicing, but it is the crucible that produces the holiness we long for.
God’s purpose for the believer is to conform him to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). Such conformity involves suffering. The “all things” of Romans 8:28 which work together for good are rarely seen as good in themselves, except in retrospect.
Your Inner Conflict
The “S” at the center of the wheel [above] represents the self controlled life or “flesh” (KJV). The flesh is in ascendancy in the lives of most believers for their entire Christian experience. It seeks differing forms, depending upon the individual, to get its needs met by some thing or person in either a negative or a positive way. Money, material things, success, fame, sex, power or any of countless other things can drive or motivate a person and become his central focus when he is dominated by the self-life or flesh. Thus the “flesh” is merely the believer’s attempt to live the Christian life in his own strength.
The “flesh,” therefore, is a very serious problem for the Christian – as serious as idolatry. For when we replace the centrality of Christ with anything – even ourselves whatever we install on the throne of our lives becomes an idol. God must deal firmly with the flesh. And He does, usually by revealing the self-centered life’s inability to cope until the believer, finding his situation unbearable, gives up on himself and becomes interested in exchanging the self-life for the Christ-life.
So long as self (flesh) remains in control, the conflicts depicted in the “soul” (personality) part of the Wheel Diagram will continue. They may become worse with age and increasing responsibilities. Occasionally, a psychologically well-adjusted self-life can cope with circumstances for most of a lifetime, but the results are far from fulfilling.
The psychological deficiencies, along with the guilt (both real and imagined), combine to produce varying degrees of frustration in the self-controlled life. The frustration must be dealt with. Some choose to dump it on others in the form of blows-physical or verbal-while some are more fearful of retaliation and suppress their hostility as best they can. Others suppress anger and frustration because they blame themselves for every problem and annoyance they encounter. When hostility and frustration are suppressed, for whatever reason, they will have an impact in the mind or emotions or both. Internalized hostility or anger often results in depression and/or anxiety in the emotions. Some persons can use their minds to implement various distortions or denials of reality. This enables them to escape the necessity of dealing with the real problem, the self-life.
When the psychological conflict drags on without remedy, however, it commonly results in somatic complaints, as illustrated in the diagram. The physical ailments, though real, actually are symptoms of a deeper problem-the self-life. So are the psychological problems depicted in the “soul” area.
[In part two we will consider God’s solution–exchanging the self-life for the Christ-life through identification with Him.
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).
“You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.
Trust in the LORD forever,
For in YAH, the LORD,
is everlasting strength” (Isaiah 26:3,4).
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).]
Part 1 of 2. The Wheel and Line is also available as a free online course. This is a summary of chapter two of Dr. Solomon’s Handbook to Happiness (Tyndale) and available from GFI. Bracketed content added.