Ephesians 3:16b

October 16, 2022

Strengthening the Inner Man: Using Affliction to Make Us Strong

Part 1

Strengthening the inner man is not a process of self-discovery and empowerment, but it is a receiving of something outside of ourselves.

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being. So to begin, in this phrase here, Paul begins from verse 16. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you… Now that word ‘grant’ sounds like an asking of permission, or a giving of permission. If you grant someone something, you sort of give this permissive sort of thing? Yes, you may do this, or yes, you may have that, or yes, you may go there. But the word that Paul is using actually, is not a word asking that God may allow something, it's just the word ‘didomai.’ It is the word that means ‘to cause to make something happen,’ sometimes it's translated ‘to father.’ So Paul is stil―remember last week, we talked about how the first three chapters of Ephesians are Monergistic, meaning that God is the only actor, God is the only one doing the things in chapter one, two, and three. Now, chapter three, four, and five, I'm sorry, four, five, and six―if I can get my numbers, right―chapters four, five, and six, are us and God together us in the power of the Spirit, and God together. But the first three chapters are God and God alone. So see clearly how this is still in this section in which this is this is all God, not grant or not allow, but instead cause this to happen, may you according to the riches of your glory, grant or cause to be grant, or I'm sorry, grant or cause to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being. So this next word ‘strengthen,’ and this is the request: may You grant, cause, and here's the first request is the request of strengthen to be strengthened. And so we notice here that it's in the passive form, it's not to strengthen something else. But to be strengthened means that the action is being done to you. To be strengthened means that something is strengthening you, something from outside of you is acting upon you to strengthen you. So God is the one doing the causing, Paul prays that God would cause them to be strengthened, this passive form of this verb ‘to be strengthened.’ And the strengthening here has three components or three, I guess you could say subsets or three conditions to it. The being strengthen, has, first of all to do with power to be strengthened with power, secondly, through the Spirit, and then thirdly, in your inner being, or inner person, or actually, I prefer ‘inner man,’ because that's literally what Paul said. The he literally said, inner man―’anthropon,’ that's just a word―for not male―but humanity, mankind. So that works well for me. But if your translation has being or person, your inner person, your inner being is all getting at the same idea. So this strengthening that Paul's asking for has this threefold condition: strengthening with power, through the Spirit, in the inner being, the inner person, or the inner man, the inner humanity. So let's take these one by one: the strengthening here―actually, we'll come back to that―the strengthening with power. So the causing speaks of God during the acting, this being strengthened speaks of something outside of ourselves, acting upon us. And then with power, that also you see how the whole flow of everything is speaking of something Paul is asking for something to be done to them. He's not asking that something within them would be discovered, or something within them would be ignited or, some sort of fire would be lit. He's asking for something to happen to them, that God would cause them to be strengthened with a power that is not their power, but not the―Paul’s not asking that you would discover your own power or you that you would, you would find the light within yourself. You know that that is an idea that if you really grasp this idea of―of finding a light within you, or finding a power within you, or discovering your true self, or on and on, we could go―if you really get your mind around that, and you look for it, you will see that everywhere in our world. And you will see that that has absolutely infiltrated Christianity today. This idea that in you is some sort of light, or some sort of hope, or some sort of power, or some sort of something that you just got to discover it, you just got to figure out how to pray the right prayer, you just got to figure out how to read the right books or the right devotion or, listen to the right preacher, or do something in order to ignite the fire within you or discover your inner light. Once you train yourself to see that you'll see it everywhere. It's thoroughly pagan. Because the Christian worldview says nothing about finding something within ourselves. It says to us that something outside of us must come to us and must change us from the outside in. And so, this power that Paul asked to come to them, this is something that would have that would have really resonated with the Ephesian believers. If you can remember way back this far way back to chapter one, verse one, as we began talking about just the context of Ephesus, and the believers there, and their background, we talked about just how thoroughly―not just pagan they were―but thoroughly occult. The entire ancient world was wrapped up in the occult and dark magic and different things. The whole, the whole ancient world was that way. But nothing, nothing exceeded Ephesus in terms of their interest in the occult and black magic and dark powers and demonic things. You remember the story from Acts, when there was this revival taking place in Ephesus, you remember how invested they were in the cult of Diana. And you remember how all the magic books that they had in the city there, and there's this big revival and people are starting to believe. And so they'd have this big bonfire, where they bring all these books of magic words and phrases and everything, they have this big bonfire―Luke tells us it was 50,000 pieces of silver worth of books―and then people get all mad, and there's this big riot over it. So the city of Ephesus, much more so than the rest of the ancient world, was invested in dark things, in the occult and black magic. And so they would have had a real appreciation for power, particularly spiritual power. We all do. We all have, we all have that same interest. In our world today. There's no less the presence of dark things in the occult in our world today. It's just more sophisticated today. But the Ephesian world, the Ephesian culture was a culture that would have been enamored with supernatural power with spiritual power. So Paul says: that you may be strengthened with power, there's power from outside of yourself through the Spirit. Again, the whole flow of the context is speaking of something outside of themselves, that is being brought to them that has been given to them, Paul is asking to be given to them. So through the Spirit. So the spirit is the actor here. Remember, we talked last week about how this the spirit is the Empower-er, the one who does the empowering. In chapter one, he was the one who did the sealing for our blessed hope. Now here in chapter three, he is the one who does the empowering, in fact, that's consistent with how the whole New Testament presents the Spirit: the Spirit is the worker, He's the Empower-er, He is the worker, he is the one who brings power to the children of God. In your notes. Here, there's just a few examples. This is by no means exhaustive, but some examples of how consistently the New Testament connects together: the Spirit and the power of the Spirit. Acts one verse eight, “you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Romans one and verse four, “In power, according to the spirit of holiness.” Romans 15, verse 19, “By the power and signs and wonders, of signs and wonders, and by the power of the Spirit of God.” Or First Corinthians two and verse four, “The Spirit and of power.” First Thessalonians one and verse five, “Our gospel came to you not only in Word, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit.” And it's just a small sampling of how the New Testament connects together―the Holy Spirit and His working, his power that he brings. So this this power that Paul asked for through the Spirit, and this power is going to be prayed for Paul to come upon the inner man or the inner person. So the spirit of the person, we said last week, that the very heart of who you are, the inner man. We talked about last week is that is what you are, when your body lies in the grave, the part of you that is that is alive and conscious that―that's your inner man, your inner humanity, your inner being. So that is the part that is that is the aspect of us that Paul was praying that this power would come to through the Spirit. So the Spirit, if you want to use that word, the spirit needs to be strengthened by the Spirit. It's only the Spirit that can strengthen the spirit of a man. The physical aspect of our world cannot strengthen our spirit, is the Spirit who strengthens the spirit of a man. So this is these components here the strength to be strengthened in our with power through the Spirit, in your inner man. So let's talk for just a minute about the inner man or the inner person, the inner self. Paul is the only one in the New Testament that uses this phrase, he uses it three times in talking here to, of course, the Ephesians, he uses it to the Romans, and he also, of course, uses it to the Corinthians. And by this inner man, this is in Paul's mind, again, the very core of who we are, and what we are, it is what we are when everything else is stripped away. The inner self, that which lives forever, our bodies will live forever, but they will have to be resurrected in order to live forever. So your body right now, in a sense, will live forever, you will live forever in that body, although it will be resurrected and changed―thank the Lord. But your inner being is what will live forever with continuity, without the interruption of physical death and a time in the grave. So the inner man, we talked about that last week, the inner man as opposed to the outer man. So there we have this outer man pause, we're gonna look at a passage of scripture in just a few moments in which Paul speaks about the outer man and he compares it to the inner man, the inner man is the one who lives for eternity without that interruption of physical death. And that is the thing that we said last week, really deserves the bulk of our attention, because that is the part of us that will live forever. And in that sense. And so it's interesting for us to think as Paul is speaking here about the inner man, he's asking for the strengthening to come to the inner man, it's interesting to think of our own life, and just how much attention we give to our outer person as compared to our inner person. So think about your outer person, and how much attention and how much energy and how much focus you give to your outer person. So all of us prepared our outer person this morning, hopefully, some of us prepared our outer person a little better than other people prepared our outer person, we'll leave some names off of that. But we all prepared our outer person in some way: we got dressed, we hopefully showered it, we fed it, we just fed it a little bit ago, we brought it down here. We may or may not have prepared our inner person to come here this morning, right. But nobody's here this morning who didn't prepare your outer person. In fact, there's not a day of your life, that you don't prepare your outer person to meet the world. But I guess it could be if you sort of do the pajamas thing all day, but most of us in most situations, there's not a day in which we don't prepare the outer person to engage the world. But I would suggest that there are many days that we don't prepare the inner person to meet the world. So we feed the outer person, we give attention to the outer person, how much time and thought and energy do we give to how the outer person looks to making the outer person look better and dress better and be presented better. There are so many today in our world that spend just incredible amounts of time and energy in physical fitness, in tuning their outer person to be the most fit and the most presentable possible, or to live the longest. And there's nothing wrong, of course, with physical health. Paul says that physical exercise benefits a little. However, in comparison to the amount of energy that we give to our inner person, it can be quite startling when we as believers who know in our hearts and in our souls, that the inner man is what lives forever. It's startling to consider just how little attention we normally, on a normal day, give to our inner person. But just beyond the whole, getting dressed and physical fitness and feeding your inner your outer person that, just think about how much of your life is involved with the outer person. So let me just throw a few concepts out there and think about these things in connection with your outer person and you will begin to see how the vast majority of your life is concerned with the outer person. Think about comfort. Think about success. Think about security. Think about pleasure. Think about entertainment. Think about purpose and goals. Think about your job. Think about, really, think about anything in your life. And you're really thinking about something that is most likely geared toward the outer person. Now, again, we are not just souls living in a body, that we're going to use this body up and be done with it. We are souls and bodies together. However, the scriptures, as I said last week, warn us against the predominance, the preoccupation with the outer. It's the inner that the scriptures are concerned mostly about, and it is this inner that Paul is pleading with the Lord, that God would strengthen them in their inner man. You know those videos, probably all of us have seen those little videos, they're, they're funny, they're cute, in which they usually go the same sort of way―there's somebody who maybe had a wisdom teeth pulled or something like that, and they're on the way home from getting the wisdom tooth pulled. And they're just they got the gas. And they're just sort of saying these crazy things―you know, those videos? What are those videos about? What are they demonstrating, they are demonstrating a person for whom the norms of society the social niceties have been laid aside. The anesthesia, the medication has caused them to set aside sort of the niceties that we normally go about our life with. And they're just sort of saying what comes out of their head, right. And that can be funny. But that can also be really sad when you think about it. Because I don't know about you, but one of the things that strikes fear into me is that maybe there's a situation in which I'm under anesthesia or something like that, or here's a worse case scenario: and this is a scenario that really hits home for me―so many of us, when we reach a certain age, we have a state of mental decline that is faster than our state of physical decline. And so we reach a stage in which our mental facilities―and you don't need to elbow anybody over there, Jim―in when which our mental facilities are no longer capable of maintaining the social niceties and the politeness that's expected of us. And so what comes out of us, well, really has no more filter. I have been quite aware of people in that situation in life, you probably have to, and can be a really, really painful thing that strikes fear into me into which that that time that most likely will come from me―in which the filters of social niceties are gone and what's left? Nothing but the inner man. What comes out at that point is the inner man. And that scares me to death. I don't know about you. But what I want is when that time comes, that God has so prepared my inner man, that even with the social niceties stripped away, what comes out is still Jesus. I'm so far from that. And maybe this is something that you can meditate upon to that if the social niceties and politeness is were stripped away, would we see Jesus? Would we hear Jesus? That's what I want for me. Do you want that for you? That's what Paul wants for the Ephesians he wants their inner man to be so strengthened that whatever else is stripped away, they still hear Jesus and see Jesus and talk to Jesus because their inner man has been so strengthened and so this is the heart of what Paul is asking for God to do, to strengthen with power through the Spirit in the inner man.

Part 2

What does it look like to receive strengthening in our inner man?

Often, when we ask the Lord for strength, what we're really asking for is we're asking for Him to make me strong enough that I don't need Him. What I want is when that time comes, that God has so prepared my inner man, that even with the social niceties stripped away, what comes out is still Jesus. I'm so far from that. And maybe this is something that you can meditate upon, too, that if the social niceties and politeness is were stripped away, would we see Jesus? Would we hear Jesus? That's what I want for me. Do you want that for you? That's what Paul wants for the Ephesians. He wants their inner man to be so strengthened that whatever else is stripped away, they still hear Jesus and see Jesus, and talk to Jesus, because their inner man has been so strengthened. And so this is the heart of what Paul is asking for God to do, to strengthen with power, through the Spirit in the inner man. So now let's go back to this word strengthen, and let's talk about the word strengthen just a little bit. There's nothing magic about the word, it's not some sort of overly-spiritual word that we could sort of look at some Greek meaning of the word and say, “Oh, that's such a spiritual.” It's just the basic word for strengthen―to be made strong. It's used just in a physical way, many times and it just, it just means what you think it means. It means maybe a muscle that's becoming stronger, that's being made to be a greater lifting power, a greater carrying power, or maybe greater endurance, or greater stamina. It’s just the basic word for ‘strengthen.’ So let's think about what Paul might be getting it here when he's asking that God would do this work. Remember, this is the main request of the first section here, that the work of strengthening will be done in them. So what could Paul be asking that God would do for these Ephesian believers when he asked that they would be strengthened with power through the Spirit in their inner man? So strengthen, what would it mean if it was just used in a physical context? We know this is a spiritual context, obviously, what would it mean in a physical context. It might mean something like ‘to make a muscle stronger, that's capable of lifting more weight to be strengthened means that you used to lift 100 pounds, now you lift 125 pounds.’ So you, you can lift a greater burden. Strengthen also might mean something more akin to endurance, or stamina, to be strengthened might mean that when you were exerting yourself, you could exert yourself for 30 minutes instead of 25 minutes that, that when you previously came to a point of weakening, and a point of exhaustion, to be strengthened means that that point of exhaustion doesn't yet come―that you have greater stamina and greater endurance. So that's just what strengthening would mean, if we're just talking about strengthening our outer man. But we're talking about strengthening our inner man. So in a spiritual context, let's think of this in the same way. Because I don't think that Paul is shifting…he’s not taking this word and importing a whole new meaning into it. So in a spiritual context, what might it mean to strengthen ourselves, I think it means the same thing. To be to have the capacity to lift greater burdens, and to have the capacity to endure greater exertion to weaken at a at a far slower pace, to last in your spiritual exertion for longer. So you follow what I'm saying? So I think that what Paul's praying is that they would be strengthened that their spirit, their inner man would be able to do two things: lift greater spiritual burdens, and possess greater spiritual stamina. So these spiritual burdens and the stamina for lifting these spiritual burdens. What could Paul be talking about there? Well, he tells us, if we follow the rest of the prayer, the rest of the prayer is basically going to have two requests that follow after this. They're going to be the request of comprehension, the request of faith, they may have this faith, that Christ may dwell on their hearts through faith. And that they may have the strength to comprehend the incomprehensible, which is to say, to know the love of Christ, the width, the depth of height, the breadth, and the extent, the magnitude of the love of Christ. So those are the two things that will follow. And I think that what we what we should do is look at those two things as spiritual burdens. Not that not that faith is a burden. And not that knowing the love of Christ is a burden. But what Paul's talking about here is strengths to lift and carry further, and to not weaken, but to be able to hold these burdens for longer. Okay, so if we think of faith, not as so much as a burden, but as a weight, okay, so a weight may be previously you could lift 100 pounds of faith. Now, Paul says be strengthened, so that now they can lift 200 pounds, or maybe previously, you could carry this burden for a half a mile, now to carry it a mile. Okay, so you see where he's going. So the burdens―so to speak―of faith, greater weight, more stamina and comprehension of the love of Christ that has been poured out for them the height, depth, breadth, width, the measure of the immeasurable love of Christ, that which surpasses knowledge that they may know this. Okay. So this is the strengthen that Paul was praying for. So now, if we think about strengthening, here's where the paradoxes begin, here's where the counterintuitive part of this begins. Because when we think about being strengthened, you always think about being strengthened in the context of something happening to you, or something being given to you to take what you already have, and make it stronger, or make it with greater endurance, right? That's what strengthening means. If you were to go and join the local gym, and go there and sign up for a personal trainer, and you'd say, “I really want to some strength training.” He's not going to say, well, let me look on Amazon, see if I can order you some biceps, and maybe a few deltoids and have them shipped to you, he's going to take what you have, and attempt to make that better. This is where the strengthening of the Lord is counterintuitive. Because when the Lord strengthens us, he doesn't take something you have and make it better. He has to do something altogether different. So I think that often, when we ask the Lord for strength―follow me closely here―when we ask the Lord for strength, what we're really asking for is we're asking for him to make me strong enough that I don't need him. You follow what I’m saying? I think that oftentimes, if you were to search your heart, to the bottom depths of what you're really wanting God to do, and you ask him for strength, that what you're really wanting him to do is give you the strength, that you can then do it on your own, that you don't have to remain so dependent, and so reliant upon Him. In other words, if we had a muscle within our inner man called the muscle of faith, what we'd be asking God to do would be to make our muscles so strong, that it can last another three months, and I don't have to come back to you to ask for more. I think that's what really, if you're honest with yourself, and I was honest with myself, I think that's really what's in the depths of our heart, when we want God to strengthen us spiritually is we want him to make us strong enough that we can then handle this. However, the strengthening that Paul is praying for something that is paradoxically different from God doing something to some sort of endurance or muscle within us to make it better, and to make it let me use this word―less reliant upon him, or more independent of him. Okay, so let's sort trace this thought through. How is it that God strengthens the inner man? So Paul prays here that you would strengthen the inner man and he goes on to say, what the strengthening is going to be needed for―it's going to be needed for greater burdens of faith and greater burdens of comprehension. But how is God going to do that? What is God going to do? Is he going to put us on a spiritual treadmill? Is he going to put us on some sort of spiritual workout program? How is God going to strengthen with power through the Spirit in the inner man? And to see this I think that if we look at a few parallel paths, I think it's going to become so clear that it's just literally going to leap off the page at you. And you're going to see that Paul has a very clear idea how it is that God goes about the strengthening, strengthening work to strengthen the inner man. So Paul is going to say some similar things to at least three other groups of Christians, he's going to say some similar things to the Romans, he's going to say some similar things to the Corinthians and to the Philippians. So let's follow his train of thought, as he talks in parallel to other believers about the strengthening of the Lord for them. And specifically―here's what I really want to get at―is the strengthening that the Lord has done in Paul because that's what he can really talk authoritatively about, is how God has strengthened him. So the first one to look at this is a rather lengthy passage, but is so worth our time. It's Romans chapter seven and chapter eight. Those two chapters, right there, really the second half of chapter seven and the first half of chapter eight, that's a section of Scripture that has often puzzled a lot of people. It's been sort of a riddle and an enigma for a lot of people. Because the end of chapter seven seems to be so discouraged. Paul seems to be so downhearted, and the beginning of Chapter Eight is just like a light gets flipped on and now everything is different. So what in the world happened between Romans seven and Romans eight? Well, I think this will become obvious for us when we take a look at it. Romans chapter seven, the end of the chapter is a picture―if you'll think of Romans seven in this way, it will really make sense to you, I believe. Romans chapter seven is a picture of the man who is a child of God, who is trying to live as a child of God, without a reliance upon and a dependence upon the Spirit. So here we see, I think this fleshed out, take a look with me from the beginning from verse 16. Now, if I do what I want, what I do not want, I agree with the law, that is good. So now it's no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me, you hear this conflicted nature is going on? Already, there's a conflict within Paul, he has a desire to live a certain way. But he seems unable to actually live that way. But this is the sin that dwells within me, verse 18, for I know that nothing good dwells within me that is in my flesh. In other words, I know that I can't do this without God, for I have the desire to do what's right, but not the ability to carry it out. I have a heart that has been made alive to God. Because if Paul didn't have a heart that had been made alive to God, he would not have a desire to do what's right. He would have his own desires and his own passions, but he's been made alive to God. So he has this desire within him to do what's right, but he lacks what?--the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good that I want. But the evil that I do not want is what I keep on doing. Does that sound familiar to anybody? Now, if I do not do what I want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law, that when I want to do right, evil as close at hand, For I delight in the law of God, that is a regenerated person. To delight in his heart in the law of God means that he knows God. His heart has been made alive to God, and He desires God. I delight in the law of God in my inner being, there's that same two words again, but I see in my members, another law waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells my members, wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul says, what way out is there? I have a heart that desires the things of God. But I just daily, constantly fail to do any of those things. Who's going to deliver me from this conflicted trap that I'm in? And then with chapter eight and verse one, it's literally like a light got get flipped on. I mean, Paul's making this as an example. He's not relating to him one particular day in his life when he just made this discovery, but he's relating this to us as though it is this discovery. Chapter eight, verse one is like the discovery of what?--the Spirit. It's like, like Paul, again, not literally, but it's like he's making this illustration of this man who's trying to live for the Lord, but just does not have the strength to actually live that way in his life. And then the light comes on. Chapter eight, verse one, four, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of Life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death, for God has done with the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending His own Son in likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walked not according to the law, but according to the Spirit. Now, the…chapter eight, through about halfway down in Chapter Eight is just a fleshing out of―the Spirit. That's where Paul is going to say, Those who walk by flesh, you cannot please God. But those who walk by the Spirit, who, with the power to spirit are killing sin, those are the ones who please God, those are the ones who have the spirit testifying in them, causing them to cry out, Abba, Father. So we won't go through the rest of the passage, but you could follow the train of his thought, halfway through chapter seven, through halfway through chapter eight. Paul is saying, this way, is the way of spiritual frustration of spiritual dead ends, then, the reliance upon the spirit comes. So the takeaway here is, when we looked at this picture, we see we see the strengthening of Paul, because this is what happens. Paul is trying to illustrate for us a type of strengthening that occurs a spiritual strengthening in his inner man. What do we see, in the strengthening? We see the spirit, the spirit comes, the spirit activates, the Spirit empowers. The Spirit is the one who causes Paul to walk by the Spirit, thereby pleasing the Lord. So it is the Spirit, the giving of the spirit, the coming of the Spirit, in fact, more so than that it is the focus upon the Spirit, the reliance upon the spirit that makes the difference between Romans seven, and Romans eight. So that's the takeaway there is when we look to see what that spiritual strengthening looks like, it looks like a renewed reliance upon the Spirit. So now let's take a look at another passage. This passage comes to us from Second Corinthians really, I don't exaggerate to say that nearly the entire letter of Second Corinthians is really about this topic. We could do a chapter by chapter study of Second Corinthians and it would teach us so much about the strengthening of the inner man, because this is largely what Paul wants to talk about in Second Corinthians, but we won't go through obviously, the whole book. But let's take a look. First of all, at chapter one, verses eight and verse nine, this will be a passage that's familiar to everyone here. Paul says this: For we did not want you to be unaware of brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength, that we despaired of life itself, indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. So there is some type of affliction. There's some type of trial, there's some type of suffering, there's some type of unpleasantness that indeed is so unpleasant―Paul doesn't tell us exactly what it was if it was something that was of an entirely physical nature, or something that was of a spiritual nature, or most likely, as most things in our in our life are, it was a combination of the two―he doesn't tell us what it is. But it was so desperate, it was so poignant. It was so acute, that Paul said, we literally thought this was the end of us, that we weren't going to make it through this, that we weren't going to live through this. But, Paul says, that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. So if we look to this passage in Second Corinthians and we and we ask ourselves, what does this show us? What does it look like in Second Corinthians one to be strengthened in the inner man? What does that strengthening look like? It looks first of all, like Romans chapter eight, looked, it looks like a reliance upon the spirit, a focus upon the spirit, a cognitive, purposeful, intentional, look away from self to the Spirit to say, that is my strength. That is, that is my strength. That is my reliance. They're not on me. But there's something else the Second Corinthians shows us. And it's something that Romans eight didn't show us. What causes or what is the occasion you could say, of Paul in Second Corinthians one, looking from self to say, this was this the purpose of this was to make me not rely upon self but upon God. Paul says the context of that was affliction. Trials, suffering unpleasantness, difficulties, dangers, losses, depravations, starving, hunger, beatings, whatever it may have been in that particular situation. It was something that falls under the heading of affliction. So spiritual strengthening, in that context, looks to us like someone who intentionally cognitively focuses upon the Spirit to say that is my strength. That is my power and the instance in which that occurs the occasion in which that occurs, is the occasion of affliction, of suffering of trials of physical unpleasantness. The outer man becomes hurting, the outer man suffers. The outer man is in difficulty, and it causes the inner man to look to the Spirit for his help.

Part 3

The strengthening of the inner man represents a growth in dependence. As our inner man is strengthened, we grow increasingly aware of our dependence upon the Spirit.

So, spiritual strengthening in that context looks to us like someone who intentionally cognitively focuses upon the spirit to say, “That is my strength, that is my power.” And the, the, the instance in which that occurs, the occasion in which that occurs, is the occasion of affliction, of suffering of trials of physical unpleasantness. The outer man becomes hurting, the outer man suffers, the outer man is in difficulty, and it causes the inner man to look to the spirit for his help. Okay, so that's what we see in Second Corinthians. Now let's look at the next one. Which comes also in the letter to the two SEC, the second letter to the Corinthians, chapter four, verses 16 through 18. This again will be very familiar to all of us here. But as we read this, let's also ask yourself the same question. What does it look like in this passage for Paul to be spiritually strengthened? What does it look like when we see Paul's inner man being strengthened? So we do not lose heart. So losing heart, we talked about that a couple of weeks ago, losing heart we could think of that as discouragement. We do not become discouraged we not do not become downhearted. So in other words, Paul's saying we weren't weakened in our inner man. Though our outer self is wasting away there, there's the opposite right there. There's ‘exo anthropos,’ that's outer man. So our outer man is wasting away. But Paul says this doesn't cause us discouragement. This ‘doesn't cause us down heartedness. Why?--Because our inner self, our inner man is being renewed day by day. For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory, beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen or passing away, the things that are unseen are eternal, okay? So spiritual strengthening in that context looks like this. First of all, there is the same purposeful, intentional, look to the spirit in trust. “This is my strength, my reliance is upon the spirit, not upon myself.” Secondly, there's the context of once again, affliction, Paul says, specifically there, my outer man is afflicted, my outer man is dying, my outer man is wasting away. We were talking before church this morning about outer man wasting away and how, you know, that's not necessarily the most fun thing in the world. So there's the context of affliction. But then there's a third thing that comes to us here. And that third thing is a purposeful, intentional focus upon the eternal, over the temporary, the spiritual over the physical. So three things are happening here. There's this intentional focus upon the Spirit. That is my reliance. That is my strength. That's my source. There is the context which causes us to look to the Spirit for strength, and that context is affliction, suffering trials, unpleasantness. But also, Paul says that there's this intentional―as we look not to the things that are earthly, physical, passing away―but as we look to the eternal truths. Okay, so that's the third thing. Now, take a look at the next passage. Also, once again from Second Corinthians this time, chapter 12. Once again, everybody in the room is going to know what Paul is saying here. So verse seven, here's what we're looking for. Once again, just as a reminder, what does it look like for Paul to receive spiritual strengthening in his inner man? So to keep me from becoming conceited, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, in other words, to bar the way of pride from my heart, to prevent conceit from taking root in my heart to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh. So the outer man receives affliction. The outer man receives some sort of painful sort of thing. Paul says, in the flesh, so I'm going to take that to mean some sort of physical malady, some sort of sickness, or some something about his body that hurt. A thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from becoming conceited again. Verse 8, Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness.” Hold that will come back to it. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me for the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. And here it is, for when I am weak, then I am strong. So let's think about that last phrase, and let's connect it back with the previous phrase―My grace is sufficient for my power is made perfect in weakness, and then Paul finishes by saying, For when I am weak, then I'm strong. Do you want to read that last sentence? And do you want to say, Huh? When I'm weak, I'm strong. What does that mean? Was that some sort of riddle? When I'm weak, I'm strong. That doesn't make any sense, Paul, you contradicted yourself? How can you be weak and strong at the same time? Therein lies, the paradox of the strengthening of the Lord. For the strengthening of the Lord is never intended to make something about you self-sufficient, or―to use maybe a more pointed word―stronger. Instead, the strengthening of the inner man from the Lord is intended to make you what?--weaker? Isn't that a counterintuitive paradox? That the strengthening of the Lord is intended to actually make us weaker. Because the paradox is that when we are weak, then we're strong. Why are we strong?--because when we are weak, then the Lord's strength rules in our hearts, finds a home in our heart, put that into the back of your mind, because that will really come into play next week. But when we are weak, that is when the inner man is strongest. So the strengthening of the Lord is not intended to come along and to make you less dependent upon Him. It's intended to make you more knowingly dependent upon him. It's intended to make you weaker in your ability to stand on your own, or to make you, use a phrase that, that if you follow this phrase, it's really helpful to make you ‘grow in dependence.’ And that's three words not two; grow in dependence. Have you ever thought of it that way? That as you grow as a Christian, you're not growing like every other type of growth is―every other type of growth is growth in Independence. That's what it means to grow, to become less dependent. Our kids, as they get older, they become less dependent upon us. And then one day we become dependent upon them. That's what growing means it becomes more independent, except when it comes to the matters of the Lord. Growth in the Lord is not becoming more independent. It's becoming more dependent and in fact, more knowingly dependent. So you see how the picture of spiritual strengthening is becoming clearer for us? When Paul is praying, that God would do this work of strengthening in the Ephesians’ hearts. What's he actually praying for?--in a indirect sort of way. He's actually praying that affliction comes to them. Oh, he’s not asking for affliction, because we're not sadist. We don't enjoy affliction. But Paul, of all people knows, as he prays for strengthening in the inner man of the Ephesians, he knows that the method by which that comes. That strengthening God, God can strengthen our inner man in a number of ways. But the picture that Paul shows to us is that at the very least, we could say, God's central way of strengthening the inner man seems to be by the method of affliction that causes us to despair of our own efforts, and to turn from our own efforts, focusing upon the eternal, and looking to the Spirit, who is the strengthening power, right back to verse 16. It is the power, it is the Spirit, who is the one who empowers he is the worker, he is the Empower-er. So this strengthening by the inner man is not adding something to the Ephesians or to us, it's not adding something to us that makes us stronger. It's adding something to our life that makes us weaker. It's, you could look or think of it this way: the strengthening of the inner man normally comes in the context of the weakening of the outer man. What strengthens the outer man―listen carefully to this―normally weakens the inner man. Not always. God blesses the outer man, everyone in this room, your outer man has been blessed by God tremendously. And not all of that was to your spiritual detriment. So God can, and does, bless the outer man, however, it seems that the very least that we could say is this: strengthening of the outer man always comes with at least the potential and the danger of weakening the inner man. Would you agree? Strengthening the outer man always comes with at least the danger of weakening the inner man. So let's think about strengthening the outer ma. What sort of things strengthen the outer man? Well, let me throw three words out there: comfort, security, success. Aren’t those things that strengthen our outer man? Aren't those things that make this world more like home for us? Aren't those things that make life here, the outer life that we live, just more pleasant: comfort, security, success. Those three things, at the very minimum, represent a potential danger to the strengthening of your inner man, at the worst, they represent a weakening of the inner man, because oftentimes we see the two of those things work in reverse. As the outer man is strengthened, the inner man is weakened, as the inner man is strengthened, he's strengthened because the outer man is weakened, causing him, or her to look to the spirit for power. Causing them to despair of their own facility or their own faculties, their own abilities, and instead, looking to the Lord for His power for his strength. So it's comfort, security and success. I'm going to use one phrase that I think wraps up all three of those and that's self-reliance. Would you agree that all three of those things kind of fit under that self-reliance category? Comfort―aren't you relying on yourself for comfort there? Or security, once again relying on self, or success. Okay, so we can take all those and put them under that umbrella of self-reliance. And I want to say this: if you are a child of God, God is actively at work behind the scenes in your life, to strip you of your self-reliance. There's no other way to see that. Hebrews chapter 12―If you are a child of the Lord, He disciplines all his own. If you're his, He disciplines you. And if you are a child of the Lord, he seeks to strengthen your inner man. And what works directly against your inner man is your self-reliance. And so if you are a child of God, God is actively at work in your life to strip from you your last remaining sources of self-reliance. Let me say this in a really provocative way, and listen closely. God does not want you to be comfortable. God does not want you to be successful. God does not want you to be secure. If those things mean the weakening of your inner man. Because God is after your inner man, He wants your inner man to be suited for eternity with Him. He wants your inner man to be suited for maximum joy and maximum happiness with Him for eternity. And He wants your inner man to experience some of that now. And self-reliance works directly against that. And so if you are a child of God, He does not want you to be comfortable, to the point that it makes you comfortable in your outer man, forsaking your inner man. He does not want you to be secure to the extent that your security in your outer man causes you to neglect your inner man and causes you to look from the Spirit for power and strength. This is the strengthening of the Lord. He's not like, remember Winnie the Pooh? And how Roo would always everyday take strengthening medicine, as though, you know, there is such a strengthening medicine. There's not something that you take that makes your body physically stronger, right? I mean, there's something you can take that that nourishes your body and you can use that to become physically stronger, but you don't take something that makes you feel physically stronger. Not so with the spiritual world. What strengthens our inner man is something God must give to us―his strength, his power. And we see that and we rely upon it to the degree that we forsake our self-reliance. Jesus says, I didn't come for this for the righteous, I came for the sinners. Now if we take that word righteous, and we think about that for just a minute, righteousness, and self-reliance are not the same thing, are they? They're not. They're different things. Righteousness and self-reliance are not the same thing. But aren't they getting at the same idea? Wasn't Jesus, when he said that I didn't come for the righteous, wasn't Jesus talking to people who were self-reliant for their own righteousness before God? Wasn't Jesus talking to people who lived in a culture that placed a much higher value on righteousness before God than our own? Right? Today, people don't care a whole lot about righteousness before God. In Jesus's day, that was a big thing. And so Jesus was talking to people―they're just like us today―they were relying upon himself for righteousness. So could we take Jesus's words and put self-reliance in there, and it also still come to us as the same basic truth, I didn't come for the self-reliant. You can't hold on to your self-reliance, and also follow me. The strengthening of the Lord comes to us, as God brings into our life, these things that cause us to despair of our own faculties of our own abilities, and instead look to Him. Sometimes God will run the car of your life into the ditch. Because he's too loving, and he's too merciful, to allow you to continue careening down the highway of self-reliance. And so sometimes God will bring things into our life that are intended to make the wheels come off. Because his goal is our heart, His goal is our inner man. And he knows that the enemy of trust in the Lord is self-reliance. This is really summed up in what we call ‘dying to self,’ isn't it? Now that phrase, dying to self is not in your Bible, if you look into concordance is this not in there, but the truth, the concept, the reality of dying to self is all over the Bible. I've been crucified with Christ, it's no longer I who live but Christ lives in me OrJohn the Baptizer, saying he must increase and I must decrease. Or what Jesus says that to take up your, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me up. The concept is all over the scriptures, this concept of dying to self. And this is really the root of what Paul is saying,, this is how spiritual strengthening occurs. The strengthening with power that comes through the Spirit to the inner man is the result of this dying to self. So two final things about this dying to self that that we need to see. The first thing is this, you can't do this on your own. You can't say to yourself: I want to be more surrendered to God, I want God's power in my life. And so here's what I'm going to do, I'm going to bring some affliction into my life so that I'll turn to the Lord and trust. You can't do that. Paul says: through the Spirit, it is only the spirit that can do this. Misunderstanding this, or maybe I should say, understanding this halfway. Understanding that spiritual strengthening comes to the inner man through affliction, but not understanding that that's God's work and not ours, has led to centuries and centuries of people doing foolish things, like taking whips, and whipping their backs, and fasting for weeks upon time, to the point that they've permanently damaged their bodies, and just doing all sorts of self-denial kinds of things, thinking that through that they're going to become closer to God. I mean, he still continues on today with the whole―and if you do this, this is nothing personal―but the whole was is it, Lent? Where you’re supposed to give up something for Jesus, and that's gonna make you closer to Jesus, it’s coming from the same idea. But Paul says: it is the spirit that has to do this. You can't decide on your own, oh, I'm going to afflict myself in this way. Or you can't, you can't go down to the hospital and go into the room of some sick person and inflict yourself with some sort of sickness, thinking that through this, I'm going to be afflicted and I'm gonna be strengthened…this has to be the work of the Spirit. He does this. God is the wise one. God is the powerful one. He is the One who sees into your heart and into your life, and he's the one who knows what affliction will be brought into your life that will cause you to look to him. Okay, so that's the first thing to see. But the last thing to see is this. And to see this, just think with me for just a moment about one of the most powerful miracles in the Bible. It’s the miracle―the only miracle outside of the resurrection―that shows up in all four Gospels. So powerful that Jesus did it twice, it was the, you know, I'm talking about the bread and the fish. Okay, so I'll just sort of relate this story, we all know the story, so I'll just kind of relate the story to you. This story is so helpful. And I think this is why every gospel has it, because this story is so central to how it is that the inner man is strengthened. Alright, so you know how the story goes. There's this huge crowd Jesus is teaching, the day’s getting late, there's no food truck there, you know, and, and there's the people, don't have anything to eat, and they're all getting hungry and, and faint, and almost don't have the energy to make it home, that kind of thing So they come to Jesus, and they say, Jesus, you better dismiss all this crowd so they can get home before they all faint on the way home. And what does Jesus respond? You remember? You feed them, you feed them. To which they say, you’re kidding, we can do that! Now, if I use my imagination, I can imagine Jesus in his mind saying, bingo, you got it. That's the whole point. You can't. And then Jesus says, well go, go see what you got. So they go and bring this meager little rations to Jesus and prays breaks it and everything. But then here's the point. Jesus takes that and gives it to the disciples for them to distribute. They get to distribute what he did. Isn't that one of the most beautiful analogies in the Gospels? They get to distribute what Jesus did. God is calling you to do what you are unable to do, with an ability that you don't have, because he wants you to distribute the resources of his kingdom.