When a person is born again by confessing Jesus as lord and believing God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9 and 10), he receives the gift of holy spirit. But can this gift be taken back by God? Can holy spirit be lost? John 3:16 tells us that we have everlasting life when we believe in Jesus Christ. Can “everlasting” life become only temporary life? Some people think so. What does the Word say? Can God’s gift of holy spirit be taken away?
II Timothy 2:15:
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
God’s Word must be rightly divided to have the true Word of God. There are Biblical research principles, as taught in the foundational class on The Way of Abundance and Power, that allow the workman of the Word to come to an accurate understanding of the truth. Some of those principles include understanding Biblical administrations, figures of speech, and to whom the Word is addressed.
Why would some believe that God’s gift of holy spirit can be taken away? One reason stems from not understanding Biblical administrations. Biblically, an administration is a period of time in God’s historical and spiritual timetable governed by certain policies and spiritual truths. Today we live in the Grace Administration. This means that all the benefits that Jesus Christ paid for by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension are available to us. We now have what others in former times could only look forward to in anticipation of his first coming.
Prior to the Grace Administration, it was available for a person to lose their spiritual connection with God. This is what happened in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.
Genesis 2:17:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
In the Original Paradise Administration, Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command and lost the spirit that God originally created in them. They did not physically die that day; it was their spiritual connection that was lost.
After the fall of man, God continued to do all He could to communicate with His people. From the records in the Old Testament, we can see that God at times would put holy spirit upon some men and women. King David was one of those men. As in the Paradise Administration, God did not give His spirit unconditionally in the Law Administration either; and David knew this. After David committed serious offenses against God, he deeply repented of his actions, and the Lord “put away” David’s sin (II Samuel 12:13). The following psalm shows David’s heartfelt prayer.
Psalms 51:9 and 11:
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.
Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.
David prayed that God would not take His holy spirit away, and God answered David’s prayer. God’s Word declares that David later received revelation concerning the pattern of the Temple (I Chronicles 28:12 and 19). II Samuel 23:1 and 2 record David’s last words, calling him“the sweet psalmist of Israel.” There David says: “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue.” The Companion Bible says that seventy-three psalms bear the name of David. He was a holy man of God who spoke as he was moved by the holy spirit (II Peter 1:21).
In the day and time in which we live, the Grace Administration, when someone confesses and believes according to Romans 10:9 and receives God’s gift of holy spirit, that spirit is given unconditionally—they are born again of His seed, which can never be taken away.
Understanding Biblical administrations is an important key to rightly dividing the Word of God. Another important Biblical research principle is understanding figures of speech used in the Bible. In a figure of speech, words do not literally mean what they say. An idiom is an expression peculiar to one’s own language. In the Hebrew language, there is an idiom of permission, where active verbs are sometimes used to express, not the doing of the action, but the permission of the action.
For example, some may think that God’s gifts can be taken away based on the statement from Job 1:21: “…the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away….” On the surface it seems that the Lord had taken away from Job, until we understand this idiom. This phrase could be understood as “the Lord gave, and the Lord permitted it to be taken away.”
Job, chapter 1, clearly shows that God loved and blessed Job, but it is also clear that the Devil hated God and Job. When Job allowed fear to dominate his life, he received the results of his negative believing. Job’s fear was the hole in God’s hedge of protection that was about him. God then had to permit the Devil to take away almost all that he had. Understanding this idiom helps us see that it was not God Who took away what He had blessed Job with, but that it was the Devil who took it away….
This is an excerpt from the May/June 2017 issue of The Way Magazine.
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