Three Divisions of Humanity, Our Lives, and God

I've heard a good number of people, including pastors, say that the Bible is divided into two parts for a reason: because there are two divisions of humanity and our lives, under law and under grace. There is life under God the Father and then under Jesus the Son. There is a life that you have to live perfectly to get to Heaven and a life where you can get there based on faith.

I understand the division, but I don't think it goes far enough. To me, there is life under the law, life under grace, then life with God actually in us. This third part corresponds with the Holy Spirit and is, unfortunately, a part that few Christians ever seem to reach.

When Jesus promised the disciples the Holy Spirit in John 14:15-17, "If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you," He was promising a new sort of life.

Let's start with the beginning: God creates Adam and Eve and they are without sin. They are able to talk with God in the garden with no sin separating them. Then they eat the fruit and God's justice and purity can't allow sin in His presence, so there is a gulf created between God and man. That gulf is bridged through sacrifice, but sin must be atoned for and laws are enforced rigorously, either by people or by God.

Then Jesus comes and fulfills the law for all of us, the law that we could never fulfill perfectly. No more sacrifices are necessary, no more perfection is required of us, no more works, simply faith. It is a faith that will produce works if it is in earnest, true, but it is not salvation by works as it was under the Old Testament. There is salvation through faith in Jesus alone. We are forgiven and allowed to come before God again. There is restoration and a relationship, but that seems to be where most Christians stop.

In the beginning of Acts, the Holy Spirit comes into the upper room and everyone seems to preach the Gospel in a different tongue. It is not some gibberish tongue, but an actual language and each of the passers by hears the Gospel in their own language. By the Holy Spirit, Stephen, who was an uneducated man, was able to confound the Jews, perform miracles, and forgive those who were stoning him. By the Holy Spirit, Peter, who was an uncouth fisherman and blustering coward, was crucified and the only objection he was known to make was that he did not want to be crucified right-side up because he felt unworthy to die in the same way as his Lord. Paul said, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me," in Galatians 2:20.

There is more than a faith in God here and adherence to a set of laws here. There is more than a human desire to serve out of gratitude and love. There is a presence, a great power and sense of peace, in these men that fundamentally changed who they were. It took over them in a way that even the disciples had never been taken over when Jesus was with them, which says to me that it is not through Jesus that this power came. Jesus was the restoration, the sacrifice that gave us the right to come before God again without sin in the way; the Holy Spirit takes it one step further and allows God to actually come live in us.

There was still some human nature in these men. The verse in Galatians above is part of Paul's correcting Peter for eating with Gentiles, but spurning them when Jews were in town. Peter was still afraid at that point of what people would think of him. Paul, at least as I read his letters, seemed to have a few lingering pride issues throughout his life. But these men, "count[ed] it all joy...when [they met] trials of various kinds," in James 1:2. Paul sang in prison and even got up after being stoned and left for dead, went to the next town, and taught the very next day. All of the disciples except John the Beloved (and, of course, Judas Iscariot) were eventually killed for their faith. Where they went, miracles happened. Their faith in God's goodness and power isn't questioned. They seem to rarely sin.

It is, to me, the third part of humanity, our lives as Christians, and God. I pray that I am more filled with the Holy Spirit and that each of my fellow Christians are, too. For those who are not Christians, I pray that you become Christians, as much so you can experience a life truly with God as so you can go to Heaven.