perfection of His spiritual principles, so that we can have an understanding of how His spiritual laws work, as we compare them to the physical laws of nature that we understand.

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Spiritual principles are the spiritual laws that govern the invisible spiritual universe; and the physical laws or principles, govern the visible physical universe. Our understanding of them engenders us with the ability to be transformed in our thinking, they, the spiritual laws, have the power to convert our soul, our spiritual make up, and to make our simple ways of understanding nature into a powerful tool that helps us to understand the invisible qualities of God Himself.

 

Acts 4:13 “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”

 

Everything that Jesus taught revolved around spiritual principles, and He often used parables, simple physical imagery, to portrait how spiritual laws worked. We can see from the verse in the book of Acts the powerful influence that Jesus’ teaching had upon His disciples, they understood spiritual laws/principles, just as well or better than those men educated in matters of the practice and principles of the law itself.

 

What is a spiritual principle and how can we compare it to a physical law of nature? Gravity is a physical law of nature, our discovery of it has helped humanity tremendously to understand how our physical universe works, and most of us have a basic understanding of it. The spiritual counterpart of gravity could be found in our next Scripture verse.

 

Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

 

Here we see the connection between spirit and gravity, pride always precedes the fall, now that is a spiritual principle that has a tremendous effect upon our physical world, just like gravity, yet very few understand its workings, because most people do not understand that pride is a spirit.

 

Proverbs 16:19 “Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.”

 

We naturally understand that if we jump of a cliff we are going to fall and hurt ourselves, but how many of us know that if we walk in pride we are certain to fall and hurt ourselves. See, you might be spared somehow if you jump off a cliff, because natural laws deviate, but not so with spiritual laws, for they are perfect. There are no trees to cushion your fall in the spiritual realm, your only protection is to reject the spirit of pride and humble yourselves before you fall. But you see, we would do that only if we really believe that pride and gravity have the same effect, they both will cause us to fall, the only difference is that in the physical realm the consequences are sometimes mitigated by other factors, but not so in the spiritual realm, because, once again, God’s spiritual laws are perfect, they never fail.

 

Psalm 19:11-12 “Moreover by them (our understanding of God’s spiritual principles) Your servant is warned, and in keeping them (God’s spiritual principles) there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults.”

 

A humbled heart goes a long way into helping us to see ourselves from the proper perspective, and that is where the great reward is, for who can understand his errors, unless someone with a different perspective as theirs points them out to them, but if we walk in the spirit of pride we would never listen. And when we are willing to listen to wise counsel and deal with our known errors in a biblical way, them even our secret faults, God is more than willing to cleanse, because of another spiritual principle that walks hand in hand with those who walk with a humbled heart.

 

Proverbs 3:34 “Surely He scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble.”

 

To walk with a humbled spirit is to walk with God’s grace.

 

How can a metal airplane that weighs tons, loaded with hundreds of passengers, with tanks full of fuel, and hundreds of pieces of luggage on board fly and defy gravity? Because of the law of aerodynamics; for thousands of years humans could not mechanically fly, until the law of aerodynamics was discovered, and now we can even fly into outer space.

 

For thousands of years humans languished under the heaviness of sin, and could not rise above God’s perfect law that declared that the soul that sinned shall surely died and be confined, until the more perfect law of God’s grace was revealed on Calvary’s hill to release mankind from the burden of sin that kept us down.

 

Not everybody flies, and not everybody is saved. Under the natural law not everybody might be able to fly due to physical limitations, but in the perfect spiritual realm of God’s grace, everybody can be saved no matter what their physical limitations might be, because God’s grace is perfectly adequate for all humans to avail themselves with.

 

Right, pure, clean, true and righteous altogether, those are the qualities that the perfect law of God’s grace brings into the soul that understands God’s mercy and makes these qualities of grace its habitation.

 

Psalm 19:8 “The statutes (spiritual principles) of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.”

 

The understanding of right begins within the human heart having experienced the power of God’s grace, being humbled by the manifestation of God’s great mercy and forgiveness.

 

Having the right perspective of our standing before God is a humbling experience that opens our eyes to the purity and perfection of Jesus’ sacrifice for us and what He accomplished for the entire human race.

 

Psalm 19:9 “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

 

The fear of the Lord is having a clear understanding of how spiritual principles work, that they are more real than the physical laws of nature that we dare not violate because we naturally understand the consequences of such violations, that is what keeps us clean.

 

When we understand the judgments or consequences for violating God’s spiritual principles, how true they are, we make every effort to avoid violating them, and that in essence is what makes us to walk in righteousness altogether.

 

Psalm 19:10 “More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”

 

Here we see how the soul is converted by the testimony of the Lord; once we understand the reality of these spiritual laws, we naturally desire them more than any physical thing, more than gold and riches, even more than our necessary food as Job declared about God’s statues.

 

Psalm 19:13 “Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression.”

 

Assumptions and presumptions: In the natural or physical realm we tend to believe, based on assumptions, that friends will be true, that others can be trusted to work for our betterment, that life will be normal, and if we are young, that old age is something that happens to others, not us.

 

To assume is not a great transgression because when friends betray you, and when others put their own self-interest ahead of yours, and when life treats you like a toilet, and wait until you start getting old, Ha! Ha! All that does is make you stronger if you understand spiritual principles and are living by them.

 

But to presume, now that is a different type of sin, for those who presume on the grace of God, which is spiritual, fall under the dominion of the sin they ignored and presumed would not harm them.

 

So that no matter what we think we know and understand about spiritual principles, it is always desirable to keep a humble heart and an open mind, lest we fall into the sin of presumption and forfeit the grace that sustains us.

 

Psalm 19:14 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.”

 

Now that is great advice, let’s take advantage of it and put it to good use.

 

Amen!