Countless believers fail to understand and rely on the grace of God. When they reject God’s grace in rebound and continue in carnality, their attention is gained only through the pain and suffering of divine discipline. God disciplines the believer as a father disciplines a child. He loves and desires only the best for every believer. Divine discipline alerts believers to the futility of human solutions. Human solutions are no solutions! Divine solutions are the only solutions!
The believer who receives divine discipline will eventually be motivated by the pain and anguish where, unfortunately, he is not motivated by grace. Homologeo, “to confess” or “to name,” is a nonmeritorious grace function. How do we know it is a grace function? Once we come to point X, the divine solution, we rebound by naming our sins and God takes over.
Our responsibility is to simply acknowledge sins to God. We never earn or deserve the wonderful recovery of fellowship God provides for us. Recovery is not based on how we feel, it is not based on how we agonize, it is not emotion (μεταμέλομαι, metamelomai, “regret”—2 Cor. 7:8), it is not to sorrow (λυπέω, lupeo—2 Cor.7:8), it is not “godly manner” or “godly sorrow” (wrong translations of lupeo plus κατά Θεόν, kata Theon—2 Cor. 7:9). All these are emotional gimmicks, signs that believers do not understand the grace of God. The believer who tries to recover through emotion and remorse is the believer who has misplaced the key to the spiritual life. Instead, he substitutes emotional human penance—“godly sorrow”—for God’s wonderful plan of recovery.
Two nouns in 1 John 1:9 describe God’s grace in rebound—“faithful and righteous.” The Greek word pistos means “faithful.” The faithfulness of God always forgives and cleanses the believer who names his sins to the Father. God always extends the same grace, even when we name that sin for the 1,385th time. He never tires of forgiving us because those sins were judged on the cross.
Dikaios means “righteousness”—God’s perfect righteousness. His righteousness is never compromised by forgiving our sins. No matter how evil we are, God never compromises His righteousness by forgiving us. Why? Our sins have already been judged on the cross. We receive the imputation of perfect righteousness at the moment we express faith alone in Christ alone. Nothing we can do extinguishes that judicial, forensic righteousness in us (1 Cor. 1:30).
Remember a basic principle: In eternity past, God isolated every problem in human history and God provided the solution to every problem in human history. All solutions for the believer are contained in the ten problem-solving devices. No believer will ever have a problem that cannot be worked out through the ten problem-solving devices.5 The first problem-solving device and gateway to the other nine devices is rebound.
First John 1:9 is a statement about the character of God when He confronts all our sins. Is He shocked? Does He revile us? Definitely not! He has already taken care of every sin we will ever commit—He took all our sins to court at the cross. In dealing with our sins God sees only the righteousness of Christ, His substitutionary sacrifice that blots out those transgressions. His work on the cross is the basis for salvation—“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31). Concurrently, the work of Christ on the cross is also the basis for forgiving the sins of the believer in rebound.
What does God do for the carnal believer, in every case, when a sin is acknowledged? First of all, God “forgives” (aphiemi) our sins. Secondly, God “purifies” (katharizo) from all wrongdoing. God’s grace does it all! Just as He provides thirty-nine irrevocable absolutes plus one the moment we believe in Christ, He also restores the filling of the Holy Spirit and fellowship with Himself at the moment a carnal believer rebounds.6
We can temporarily lose our spirituality—we can quickly recover our spirituality. We can fail in our spiritual life, but we can never lose our salvation. What we do lose through carnality are eternal rewards in heaven and temporal blessings in time (2 Cor. 7:9b; cf. 1 Cor. 3:15; Phil. 3:18-19; 2 John 8).
Despite his spiritual maturity, the Apostle Paul had entrapped himself in pain and emotions. He suffered anguish in Troy, then later in Macedonia. What Paul was experiencing, the Corinthians were also experiencing. Paul’s anguish is reflected in the Greek verb metamelomai which is used twice in 2 Corinthians 7:8. Metamelomai is regret, sorrow, feeling sorry for sins, being desperately sorry for wrongdoing. Metamelomai is strictly emotional, a penitence which is incompatible with the grace of God. Just like the Corinthians, Paul had allowed his feelings to supersede his knowledge of God’s faithful provision of rebound.
A believer may feel sorry for his sins but his feelings carry no merit with God. Emotion is never a criterion for the spiritual life. Emotion may be a grateful response to God’s magnificent care and provision, but emotion has no value in God’s forgiveness.
The solution is homologeo, the nonmeritorious act of naming your own sins to God the Father. To interject your feelings into God’s method of rebound is arrogance. As soon as you lean on emotions, you propagate arrogance. Only what God thinks about your sins is important, not how you feel. He despises our sins. However, He is faithful and righteous to forgive them based on the work of Jesus Christ. You cannot help God—that is anti-grace and legalism.
When I first came to Berachah Church in 1950, I taught rebound. Some people resented this concept of grace. They wanted to help God—to justify God’s forgiveness of them. Rebound is still resented, but the message is the same: Rebound results in the filling of the Holy Spirit and restores the spiritual life. You will never recover the filling of the Spirit by feeling sorry for your sins. If you have to hurt or be disciplined as a motivation for rebound, then the law of volitional responsibility takes over.
For they sow the wind,
And they reap the whirlwind. (Hosea 8:7a)
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption. (Gal. 6:7-8a, italics added)
You conclude, “I must help God to recover—I felt sorry for my sins! I regretted what I had done; I apologized to God!” This becomes your criterion for forgiveness by God. What arrogance; what legalism! How dare you have the colossal ego to attempt to bribe God with your pitiful sorrow! God never asks for an apology or regrets. He says only, “Name your sins!” You can do nothing about your past failures, but through rebound you can do something about your future, your spiritual life.
You make wrong decisions, you sin, and you hurt. You lose track of the grace of God. You must come back to square one. Do you know what square one is?
If we name our sins He is faithful [He always does it—never gets exasperated] and absolute righteousness to forgive us the sins we name and to purify us from all wrongdoing. (1 John 1:9, corrected translation)
When you get out of fellowship and you rely on so-called godly sorrow for recovery, you are a loser.
You find the same sort of problem today in lordship salvation—faith plus commitment. As a spiritually dead person you can never make Christ ‘Lord,’ or gain the approbation of God by making a dedication, walking an aisle, raising your hands, jumping through a psychological hoop. You can never invite Christ into your heart or into your life. When you invite Christ into your spiritually dead heart, you are inviting Him into a sewer; you are inviting Him into a tomb. Instead, God summons you to share His eternal life through faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Only the Holy Spirit can make Christ your Lord at the moment you express nonmeritorious faith in Christ alone.
Likewise, only the filling of the Holy Spirit makes the believer spiritual. Without rebound the Holy Spirit is grieved and quenched by carnality. No wonder believers have so little impact for Christ. Political activism and rigid morality are the only impression many unbelievers have of Christianity. Activism and morality are not spirituality. Spirituality is on a higher plane and is derived from the filling of the Spirit. The believer who substitutes human morality and political activism for the virtue of the spiritual life loses his impact for Christ in the devil’s world.
As a believer progresses in the sphere of Christian virtue, he develops a sense of responsibility. That sense of responsibility is not based on an emotional guilt trip, but on divine viewpoint from metabolized doctrine. Hence, the believer is no longer carried away with ephemeral emotional compassion as he watches television reports of unfortunate, starving people around the world. Such fervent sympathy fades when the momentary emotion subsides.
Instead, the compassion of a believer with virtue is permanent, a far loftier empathy than exists in fleeting emotional outbursts. This true compassion puts human tragedy in perspective. We live in a lost and dying world in which the Gospel and Bible doctrine must take priority.
The virtuous believer realizes the solutions to wretched human conditions in Satan’s world are not political activism, not well-meaning compassion, but spiritual regeneration and growth. Hunger, famine, starvation, and war will be present until the Lord returns. Only the Gospel and Bible doctrine can heal the misery of human circumstances. Those who accept the Gospel of faith alone in Christ alone will spend eternity with no more pain, sorrow, or tears (Rev. 21:4). For those believers who grow spiritually, peace, happiness, and contentment characterize their lives. Circumstances are not the consuming issue.
Believers who reject rebound reject the only means of gaining and maintaining spiritual momentum. They say, “I cannot just rebound; I need to feel remorse. I do not feel forgiven unless I regret my sins.” But how you feel is inconsequential!
The issue is not your feelings; the issue is the cross where your sins were judged. The issue is the righteousness of God the Father. Countless millennia ago God the Father isolated every problem in human history and provided a solution based on grace. There never has been a divine solution that was not based on grace.
Unbelievers have access to divine solutions through the laws of divine establishment, the four divine institutions that deal with individuals and nations. These institutions are the individual, marriage, family, and the national entity. For the believer—the child of God; the priest indwelt by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the ambassador for Christ—the divine institutions are just one aspect in a myriad of significant principles and doctrines inherent in the Christian life. The virtue of the spiritual life includes the principles of divine establishment.7
The believer has access to all divine assets—the filling of the Holy Spirit, Bible doctrine, ten problem-solving devices. The function of the spiritual life depends upon the filling of the Holy Spirit, the great equalizer. The filling of the Holy Spirit converts even the lowest human IQ into spiritual IQ. Every believer now has equal opportunity and equal privilege to perceive and understand Bible doctrine. With spiritual IQ the believer is capable of understanding and metabolizing doctrine and forming problem-solving devices in the soul.
Metabolized doctrine also provides a mirror in the soul for objective self-evaluation. When the believer sins and fails, he can look into the mirror of his soul. The quicker the believer sees his reflection in the mirror of divine viewpoint, the sooner he rebounds and avoids hurt and discipline.
Until you understand grace in rebound, you will have an emotional hangover. You will be emotionally wrung out from all the attempts to help God forgive your sins. Hangovers originate from a lack of grace orientation; from believers who do not understand what God can and will accomplish.
You must recognize that divine solutions are the only solutions; human solutions are no solutions. In spiritual death the divine solution is faith alone in Christ alone. Anything you add to faith is a human solution and salvation is not yours. Faith accompanied by human works is invalid. The only faith that is valid is faith without works. Then, God takes over and provides thirty-nine irrevocable absolutes plus one. That one is the filling of the Holy Spirit—spirituality. Spirituality is obtained through the gracious auspices of God’s provision at salvation. Spirituality is maintained through the gracious auspices of God’s provision of rebound. Spirituality dispenses spiritual freedom, the power to determine one’s own destiny in the Christian life.
God gives every believer a system of freedom based on metabolized doctrine circulating through the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness.8 With this spiritual freedom we can fulfill His plan. God provides the time and the means to fulfill His plan. When the believer perpetuates spiritual freedom in his life, he moves into the sphere of virtue.
If your happiness depends on people, if your happiness depends on your love life, if your happiness depends on approbation, you are not free. If certain people can upset you, you are not free. You are a slave to whatever ruins your peace of mind. You do not know spiritual freedom or true contentment.
Paul was a slave to fear, worry, and anxiety as we have noted in 2 Corinthians 7:5. His fear made him unhappy. Ask yourself, Who makes me unhappy? What makes me unhappy? Who does things to hurt me? What gives me the ‘blues’? If your happiness depends on people or circumstances, that is slavery. When you have a happiness that does not depend upon people or circumstances, but rather your well-being is based on Bible doctrine in the soul, you share the happiness of God. God has never been unhappy.
In eternity past, Lucifer, the highest angelic creature created by God, revolted against Him. Satan, as he is now called, persuaded one-third of the angelic creatures to join the mutiny. Nevertheless, God did not become unhappy. The defection and loss of those supercreatures could not make God unhappy.
When Adam sinned and died spiritually, God never became despondent. God has eternal, infinite, perfect happiness that does not depend upon people or circumstances. This same magnificent happiness can be yours. Yet, you will never attain His happiness if you operate on unstable, pseudocompassionate, emotional binges instead of Bible doctrine.
The truest and most genuine compassion is based solely on Bible doctrine resident in the soul. Such compassion motivates people to witness for Jesus Christ. Such compassion inspires noble kindnesses. Bona fide Christian compassion reveals divinely influenced contentment and happiness in your soul to a lost and dying world.
According to 2 Corinthians 7:5-6 Paul was “comforted,” he was back in fellowship by the time Titus arrived in Macedonia. As a born-again believer in the adult stage of the spiritual life, Paul recovered his fellowship with God through the rebound technique. His comfort came from his confidence in the faithfulness of God. He was, therefore, prepared for either a good or bad report from Titus concerning the Corinthian problem.
The nature of the report was not the issue. Rather, the issue was the status quo of Paul’s spirituality after he confessed his fear and trepidation to the Lord. After rebound God took over and solved Paul’s anxiety problem.
God is faithful. God is righteous. God forgave Paul’s sins. God purified Paul from all unrighteousness. At the point of purification Paul was again filled with the Holy Spirit, restored to fellowship with God, and had resumed his spiritual life. Paul was relaxed and ready for anything by the time Titus arrived. The report from Titus was excellent and Paul “rejoiced” (2 Cor. 7:7). It is interesting to note that while Paul was out of fellowship in Troy and Macedonia, and the Corinthians were also carnal, Titus remained spiritual.
THE FOLLY OF EMOTIONALISM
For though I caused you sorrow [lupeo, severe mental anguish] by my letter, I do not regret it; though I did regret it [metamelomai, extreme emotional anguish]—for I see that that letter caused you sorrow [lupeo], though only for a while—I now rejoice [after Paul utilized rebound], not that you were made sorrowful [lupeo], but that you were made sorrowful [lupeo] to the point of repentance [μετάνοια, metanoia, “change of mind” that brought them to rebound]; for you were made sorrowful [lupeo] according to the will of God [kata Theon, idiomatic usage meaning “as God would have it”], in order that you might not suffer loss [as a loser believer] in anything through [because of] us. For the sorrow [anguish of divine discipline] that is according to the will of God [as God would have it] produces a repentance [change of mind, the motivation to rebound] without regret [ἀμεταμέλητος, ametameletos, without any emotional remorse], leading to salvation [deliverance from the anguish]; but the sorrow of the world produces death [sin unto death]. (2 Cor. 7:8-10)
Under the filling of the Holy Spirit, Titus had delivered a now lost letter from Paul to the Corinthians. The epistle was a severe reprimand. It caused the Corinthians severe mental anguish and agony (lupeo). Paul matched their agony for a short time with his own emotional torment (2 Cor. 7:8). When Paul recognized his emotional folly and realized that the Corinthians had responded positively to his letter, he stopped emoting, rebounded, and rejoiced (2 Cor. 7:9). The anguish the Corinthians suffered from the letter also brought them “to the point of repentance,” metanoia, “a change of thinking” that induced rebound. Paul’s triumphal rejoicing occurred not because the Corinthians “were made sorrowful,” but because their sorrow and anguish caused the change in their thinking.
Lupeo, “sorrow,” has a number of meanings in the passive voice: “to become distressed, to be sorry, to be grieved, to be hurt, to be sad, to be insulted, to be irritated, to be offended, to be in mental pain or anguish.” The passive indicates that the carnal Corinthians in verses 8-9 were acted upon by the divine laws from the Supreme Court of Heaven. Two laws were operational: the first was the law of volitional responsibility and the second, the law of divine discipline.
The carnal Christians of Corinth were disturbed by Paul’s lost letter delivered by Titus. Titus was face to face with hostile Corinthians full of iconoclastic arrogance and evil obsession. They were resentful of him at first, but through doctrinal teaching and explanation he finally straightened them out. They saw the issue clearly and came around to rebound and began to spiritually advance.
I now rejoice, not because you were distressed [lupeo], but because you were in pain [lupeo] to the point of repentance [metanoia]. (2 Cor. 7:9a, corrected translation)
The first appearance of lupeo in 2 Corinthians 7:9a connotes outright emotional anguish. The second use of the verb lupeo follows the adversative particle “but” and sets up a contrast with the emotional grief of the first lupeo. Metanoia distinguishes the unsettling distress of the first phrase from the encouraging distress of the second phrase. Metanoia does not connote an impulsive action based on emotion.
“Repentance,” metanoia, is a vastly misunderstood term. Many people think repentance means to feel sorry for sins, an emotional repudiation of sin. What does repentance actually mean? It means “change of mind”—serious thinking, not temperamental emoting.
Serious thinking repudiates emotion as part of the solution. How do we know that? Because 2 Corinthians 7:10 abandons emotion: “repentance without regret [emotion].” Emotional reaction is the source of countless sins. Emotionalism actually functions as a catalytic agent that locks in the arrogance and emotional complexes of sins.9
The carnal believer in an emotional state cannot think accurately. Therefore, the emotional inclination must be rejected if the believer is to start thinking correctly. When the believer sets aside emotional activity, he can then recall what is hidden in the recesses of his mind. If he has been taught rebound, he will remember the divine method of recovering the filling of the Holy Spirit, restoring fellowship with God, and resuming the spiritual life.
The Corinthians had to endure mental agony to overcome their emotional reactions. They needed to think, not emote. They needed to search the recesses of their minds for the divine solution—the doctrine of rebound.
If the carnal believer does not rebound, he will “suffer loss” at the judgment seat of Christ (1 Cor. 3:15; 2 Cor. 5:10). He loses his eternal rewards but never his eternal salvation. Therefore, the Corinthians must change their minds. Nonemotional thinking motivates their change of mind. A change of thinking results in their accepting the divine solution of rebound.
However, emotional garbage in the soul must be eliminated. Hangups, defense mechanisms, denial—all the psychological garbage must go! That is the reason for “repentance,” metanoia, being introduced in a prepositional phrase. Metanoia is the result of eliminating all the refuse of emotional activity. Garbage includes feeling sorry for your sins, going through penance, pleading with God for forgiveness, agonizing, feeling guilty to get back in fellowship. All of these false principles preclude rebound. Rebound requires no emotional activity.
If you add emotion, regret, penance, guilt, you have not recovered your fellowship with God. You are not filled with the Spirit. You remain in a state of carnality, only now you are worse off than you were before. The divine solution is simply to “name” or “admit” your sins to God in the privacy of your own soul.
The arrogance of those who believe they must do something, feel something, or renounce something to effect a divine solution is appalling. Some believers are going to stand at the judgment seat of Christ in a resurrection body in a state of shame. Why? Because they never could get it through their heads that you only do something one way—God’s way!
The Corinthians had been taught God’s solution to sin. Rebound instructions were given by Paul in 1 Corinthians.
For he who eats and drinks [at the communion table], eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly [through rebound]. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly [rebound], we should not be judged. (1 Cor. 11:29-31)
But the Corinthians were still doing things their way—what seemed right to them. Human ways are never God’s ways. Because of their perpetuation of carnality, the Corinthian believers were losers. God had to get the attention of these carnal, loser believers.
For you were made sorrowful [lupeo] according to the will of God [kata Theon], in order that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. (2 Cor. 7:9b)
The third use of lupeo in verse 9 is in the aorist passive tense, which reveals unequivocally the nonemotional content of the word “sorrowful.” It was God’s intention for the Corinthians to feel pain, not to wring a passionate apology from them but to induce rebound. The pain caused objective self-examination which brought on a change of thinking that resulted in a decision. The carnal Corinthians chose to acknowledge their failures and sins to the Father. That decision was the solution, the only solution. Divine discipline pressured these believers to comply with God’s grace method of rebound.
Lupeo is followed by the prepositional phrase, kata Theon. I want you to notice that Theon is the accusative case of the proper noun for “God.” This noun is never an adjective to be translated “godly.” To make an adjective out of the proper name for God is heresy and blasphemy. Theon is never an adjective.
What does the preposition kata plus the accusative of Theon mean? Kata Theon can legitimately be translated three ways:
A literal translation is “according to God” which actually means “according to the will of God.” There is a problem with this translation. The believer is in a state of carnality, “out of fellowship.” The will of God cannot be associated with carnality.
“In accordance with God” is also a legitimate translation. The phrase literally means “in accordance with the standards of God.” “Standards of God” presents the same problem as the first translation, “the will of God.” Carnality is no more compatible with the norms and standards of God than it is with the will of God. The norms and standards of God in the believer are related to the filling of the Spirit. The norms and standards of God are related to the spiritual life—fellowship with God. These standards are irreconcilable with carnality.
These first two phrases would ordinarily be sufficient as translations, except we are discussing a believer in carnality. No carnal believer is in the will of God or functioning under the norms and standards of God.
The third literal translation is “on the basis of God.” “On the basis of” is an unusual rendering of the preposition kata. This usage often denotes a combination of norms and purpose: “in accordance with” and “because of.” The same problem exists. Carnality is never in compliance with the will, standards, and purpose of God.
The three previous translations are all legitimate when the believer is in fellowship. But 2 Corinthians 7:9 describes believers out of fellowship. So what translation remains? The idiom, “as God would have it.”10
What does “as God would have it” connote? The idiom simply states the divine purpose to stimulate thinking in the carnal believer and to set aside emotion. Thinking brings the believer to a decision about rebound, God’s way of dealing with carnality.
I now rejoice, not because you were distressed, in pain, anguish, sorrow and grief, but because you were distressed resulting in a change of mind; resulting in thinking that led to a decision to rebound, for you were distressed as God would have it. (2 Cor. 7:9a, corrected translation)
This translation avoids the blasphemy of making an adjective out of the proper noun for God. “As God would have it” is the correct translation of kata Theon in 2 Corinthians 7:9 and 7:10.
The King James Version of 2 Corinthians 7:9 is translated, “after a godly manner,” and verse 10 is translated “godly sorrow.” The New International Version translates the phrase correctly in 7:9, “as God intended,” but inaccurately in 7:10, “godly sorrow.” Three of these translations are blasphemous. Theon should always be translated as a noun.
Metanoia is a change of thinking that results in a change of mind. The change of mind is not the solution but leads to the solution, the decision to rebound. The believer changes his mind by rejecting all of the emotionalism which has no bearing on forgiveness and cleansing by God.
You must understand that emotion has no faculty for cognition. Emotion is a responder, not a thinker. You must set aside emotion as a spiritual criterion. You must start thinking according to Bible doctrine!
Emotion is no gauge of salvation—you are never saved because you feel saved. After salvation you are not restored to fellowship because you feel restored or feel forgiven. There is only one way to recover fellowship with God after you sin and that is God’s way. God’s way is to name your sins to Him. God takes over from there.
The carnal believer loses fellowship with God and the Spirit’s power for living the spiritual life until he rebounds. At the judgment seat of Christ the consistently carnal, loser believer feels shame when he is evaluated (2 Cor. 5:10; cf. 1 Cor. 3:12-15; Phil. 1:20; 1 John 2:28). He will not receive greater blessings which were set aside for him by God in eternity past but can never be conveyed to him. What a tragedy!
“I now rejoice” is Paul’s legitimate emotion after the rapid employment of rebound. He continues his spiritual life with great contentment. When Titus came from Corinth with a good report, Paul was already in fellowship, and, therefore, he was already rejoicing.
THE LAWS OF VOLITIONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND DIVINE DISCIPLINE
I now rejoice, not because you were distressed but because you were distressed resulting in the thinking that led to the decision [the decision is the divine solution], for you were distressed as God would have it, in order that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. (2 Cor. 7:9, corrected translation)
Paul adds a clause at the end of verse 9—“in order that you might not suffer loss in anything through us,” which indicates the carnal Corinthians will “suffer loss” but not because of Paul. They will suffer from their own bad decisions, the law of volitional responsibility, and from distress “as God would have it,” the law of divine discipline.
What is the law of volitional responsibility? Scripture states the law:
For they sow the wind,
And they reap the whirlwind. (Hosea 8:7a)
The longer you stay out of fellowship, the greater your misery and pain becomes.
He who sows iniquity will reap vanity [trouble]. (Prov. 22:8a)
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. (Gal. 6:7)
Paul wrote to the Colossians the effect of both laws as they work in combination.
For he who does wrong [volitional responsibility] will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done [divine discipline], and that without partiality. (Col. 3:25)
When you stay out of fellowship and fail to rebound, you extend carnality indefinitely. You can be revived in only one way from a state of carnality and emotional revolt. The consequences, “as God would have it,” become increasingly miserable. God uses the law of volitional responsibility and the law of divine discipline to remind you of spiritual priorities. He allows you to wallow in the pain of your own making, and if that does not remind you to rebound then He applies divine discipline to hasten your recovery. The justice of God makes you hurt! But remember, His laws are compatible with His perfect righteousness.
At some point you must recognize reality. You must realize the consequences of your sin. Do not blame the torment from your sin on someone else. The ultimate self-deception is never taking responsibility for your own thoughts, decisions, and actions. You always do things because you decide to do them. Only when you reverse bad decisions can you reverse stress. The trend-reversing decision is homologeo, name your sins to God the Father (1 John 1:9).
Prayer for the forgiveness of your sins is not the means of recovering fellowship with God.
Too often prayer for forgiveness is substituted; but prayer for forgiveness is not an adjustment to the Light which God is. Prayer for forgiveness really assumes that God Himself needs to be changed in His attitude toward the one who has sinned.11
If you just pray for the forgiveness of your sins, you are not forgiven. The only efficacious prayer in carnality is the one that names your sins to God the Father.
You can feel perpetually sorry and guilty and you are not forgiven. You can apologize, you can try to make it up to God, you can go through all the penance in the world and you are not forgiven. That is not God’s way. If you will not acquiesce to God’s way, the alternative is suffering under the law of volitional responsibility and divine discipline, “as God would have it.” You will reap what you sow.
Divine discipline is administered in three stages. First is warning discipline, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (Rev. 3:20a). Knocking is God’s warning. “If anyone . . . opens the door” is addressed to believers only. What does “opens the door” mean? Name your sins to God. What happens next? “I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev. 3:20b). Fellowship is restored! If the believer ignores warning discipline and keeps the door shut, he then moves into the second stage of divine discipline called intensive discipline, a more potent form of warning discipline.
Believers who are out of fellowship and ignorant of doctrine exist on how they feel, on their emotions. Feelings are subjective and irrational. Such believers are spiritually blind. A physically blind person must feel his way through life. Likewise, a spiritually blind person feels his way through the Christian life. And if you are feeling your way through life, you have had it!
Spiritual blindness is a dangerous condition which may lead to the third stage of discipline, a dismal departure from life under the sin unto death (1 John 5:16-17). The loser believer will still go to heaven and be absent from the body and face to face with the Lord. He will be in a place of “no more sorrow, no more tears, no more suffering” (Rev. 21:4, corrected translation). Why no more sorrow, no more tears, no more suffering? Are these not loser believers? Yes! Don’t they suffer in heaven? No! The purpose of certain earthly suffering is to encourage rebound; rebound is unnecessary in heaven.
Whether you are a winner or a loser believer, when you die you are in a place of perfect happiness. When I conduct your funeral service, or the service of any believer, I can say with certainty that you are surrounded by the greatest happiness in heaven. The law of volitional responsibility is no longer operable. Sin is no longer a factor. Whatever suffering you incurred from volitional responsibility and from divine discipline is finished.
However, inequality will always exist for believers while in this life. The only equality in life is the freedom to use volition. Persistent positive volition toward Bible doctrine advances the believer to become a winner. Persistent negative volition minus rebound generates a loser. Thus, freedom spawns inequality. Where freedom reigns, winners and losers coexist.
The Ten Commandments are a freedom code. Destruction of freedom is caused by violating that code. “You shall not steal” affirms the right to own property (Ex. 20:15). When someone steals, they are the enemy of freedom. The Bible asserts that property is sacred—“you shall not steal.” Scripture also says, “you shall not [commit] murder,” not “thou shalt not kill” (Ex. 20:13 KJV). Homicide is the ultimate deprivation of freedom. The criminal who kills should be executed. Otherwise, the victim is forgotten. The Law demands death for a murderer, so he will never again despoil the freedom of another victim (Lev. 24:21; Rom. 13:4).
“As God would have it,” then, relates to the principle of freedom and the law of volitional responsibility. Every believer will be accountable for his decisions both on earth and before the judgment seat of Christ (Rom. 14:10; 2 Cor. 5:10). Those who regularly utilize the rebound technique in life remain in fellowship with God, grow to spiritual maturity, and will not feel shame at the judgment seat of Christ (Phil. 1:20).
For the distress as God would have it [divine discipline] produces a change of thinking without regret, resulting in deliverance [rebound]; but the distress of the world produces death. (2 Cor. 7:10, corrected translation)
“Distress as God would have it” produces a change of thinking that brings on a decision. What is the decision? Rebound, which results in “deliverance” (σωτηρία, soteria). What is deliverance? When you rebound, you are forgiven and cleansed. God takes over. God forgives your sins; God purifies all your wrongdoing.
Notice the phrase, “a change of thinking without regret.” The alpha prefix on the Greek word metamelomai denotes a negative. Ametameletos means feeling no remorse, having no regret—hence, the word has no emotional connotation. The deliverance of rebound requires no emotional activity. If you bring emotion to rebound, it is no solution. Ametameletos abrogates rebound through guilt, penance, or feeling sorry for sins.
God’s plan is never fulfilled by emoting. When you do fulfill His plan, you may feel some emotion as you respond to the wonders of His grace. But the great enemy, the worst arrogance in the world, is to believe that you have to feel saved to be saved and that you have to feel forgiven to be forgiven. How you feel is of no consequence! Ametameletos, “no emotion,” contributes to this vital knowledge.
As Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer clearly taught, God always forgives and cleanses the sinner from sin “regardless of emotions respecting the sin which may continue.”12
Great emphasis is placed on the fact that the one condition to be met for restoration of fellowship with God is confession of sin.13
Verse 10 reflects the law of volitional responsibility. “Distress as God would have it” are the three stages of divine discipline designed to eliminate emotion as a criterion for the spiritual life and elicit a change of thinking. A change of thinking evokes rebound and results in the restoration of fellowship with God, the recovery of the filling of the Holy Spirit, the grace method of resuming your spiritual life.
If you stubbornly prefer to trust your emotion, a false standard for the spiritual life, then worldly sorrow and stress bring “death.” If you rely on feeling forgiven, feeling sorry for your sins, or a system of penance, you will never return to fellowship and may die the sin unto death. God alone forgives and purifies.
THE SOLUTION TO SIN—REBOUND
In this study of 2 Corinthians 7:5-10 we learned of Paul’s failure, his anguished decline, and then his recovery. At the same time, we studied the source of Paul’s unhappiness, the Corinthians. Paul’s distress over these carnal believers developed into an emotional reaction. The effect is depicted by the Greek word metamelomai, “to have great regret, to feel sorry, to enter into guilt reaction.” We also studied kata plus Theon plus lupe, mistranslated “godly sorrow.” Godly sorrow would erroneously involve God in the emotional reaction of Paul and the Corinthians.
Emotion is not necessary for rebound recovery. In fact, emotion inhibits the function of the rebound technique. Therefore, in the same passage there are other Greek words that signify to the believer the divine method of recovery.
Ametameletos signifies the absence of emotion, the state of mind which promotes rebound. Metanoia means a “change of thinking,” remembering Bible doctrine and picturing the true concept of rebound. Once you decide to rebound, soteria is the “deliverance.” You are delivered from sin and restored to fellowship with God.
Rebound as a problem-solving device is not victory over sin. The rebound technique is recovery from sin and carnality. Victory over sin occurs from the modus operandi of the spiritual mechanics of the protocol plan of God. Spiritual mechanics include utilization of the two power options—the filling of the Holy Spirit and Operation Z; also the three spiritual skills—the filling of the Holy Spirit, Operation Z, and all the problem-solving devices.14
