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  LIFE INTO CHRIST
  by Michael And Davis George Clark
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Clark and Davis's collaborative work on the Christian life as a journey into
deeper union with Christ, exploring how believers grow in grace and knowledge of
the Lord.

  Chapters: 16

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 01 - Chapter 1: What is Salvation?
    2. 02 - Chapter 2: Saved by Jesus' Life
    3. 03 - Chapter 3: Christ's Body, "Bone of His Bone"
    4. 04 - Chapter 4: Identification in Jesus' Walk
    5. 05 - Chapter 5: Christ Crucified - the Logic of God
    6. 06 - Chapter 6: Identification in the Cross of Christ
    7. 07 - Chapter 7: The Cross of Christ, Our Cross
    8. 08 - Chapter 8: Identification into His Glory
    9. 09 - Chapter 9: Into All Truth
   10. 10 - Chapter 10: Power of His Resurrection - Identity in Jesus' Life
   11. 11 - Chapter 11: Let Us Go On
   12. 12 - Chapter 12: Christ's Righteousness is Our Righteousness
   13. 13 - Chapter 13: Identity in Christ, Our Wisdom and Knowledge
   14. 14 - Chapter 14: Power in God's Kingdom - Laying Down Our Lives
   15. 15 - Chapter 15: Thou in Me and I in Thee
   16. 16 - Appendix

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  CHAPTER 1: 01 - CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS SALVATION?
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Chapter 1: What is Salvation? By Michael Clark and George Davis

Salvation is not a static thing, but rather the beginning of a new life in which
we have become born of the Spirit. Being "born again" is not the end or goal of
salvation (any more than a child is a fully developed human on conception) but
rather this is the beginning of the process. The seed of the Spirit comes into
us and the life of Jesus begins to grow and develop into the fullness of the Son
of God within us. Just as the chromosomes of the male component combine with the
female chromosomes and the two become one new being, so it is with us in Christ
and Christ in us.

We are certain that we are of God, but all the world is in the power of the Evil
One. And we are certain that the Son of God has come, and has given us a clear
vision, so that we may see him who is true, and we are in him who is true, in
his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. My little children,
keep yourselves from false gods. (1 John 5:19-21 BBE)

What is true belief in the mind of God? Millions of people today say they
believe in one thing or another. Some believe in their riches; they believe they
will be kept from any suffering and need by their money. Others believe in their
weapons or fighting ability to keep them safe. Some believe in their country or
politicians to do that for them. Some even believe that they belong to the right
religion and that will keep them safe. But what does this word believe mean to
God? James wrote in his letter, "You believe that there is one God; you do well:
the demons also believe, and tremble." James 2:19 KJ2000 Many professing
Christians today believe in Jesus at this level. They believe that He walked
this earth 2000 years ago; that He did many wonderful works and miracles and
spoke with great wisdom; that He died on the cross and rose again from the
grave; and some even believe He is the Son of God who died for their sins. But
is that what belief is in the mind of God?

There is an often quoted verse in John that has been mistranslated and as a
result, misquoted as if the very words of Jesus about belief to Nicodemus were
no deeper than the belief that James is talking about. We see the address of
this verse on placards at football games and see it quoted on religious tracts
as if it were some magic potion that will convert the unbelieving immediately.
By now, you know which verse we are speaking of-- John 3:16.

There is one little preposition that we believe has often been mistranslated
that makes all the difference in God’s eternity--the Greek word for into. The
verse in question in our Bibles reads, "For God so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life." John 3:16 KJ2000 Two verses later we see this same
preposition mistranslated twice again, but this time it is translated on as well
as in. "He that believes on him is not condemned: but he that believes not is
condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God." John 3:18 KJ2000 Another mistranslated verse where on is used to
describe our salvation is, "Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we
might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work
of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent." John 6:28-29 KJ2000 So what
is wrong with all these important verses that determine our part in obtaining
eternal life? This Greek preposition eis (pronounced "ice") indicates motion and
more correctly should be translated into. On and in do not indicate motion,
though they are very similar in meaning. One is resting on and the other is
resting in. There is a sense of having arrived about their usage.

Here is a diagram that graphically shows the meaning of Greek prepositions. The
word for in is eÍn or en and is shown resting inside the object or circle. The
word for on or upon is eÍpið or epi (shown resting above the circle). But the
word for into, eiÎv or eis, is shown going into the circle. Here is a passage in
which both en and eis are used and translated correctly so we can compare them:
In [en] whom [Jesus] the whole structure is joined together and grows into [eis]
a holy temple in [en] the Lord; in [en] whom you also are built into [eis] it
for a dwelling place of God in [en] the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:21-22 RSVA) In
Jesus we who are living stones in the temple of God are joined together and grow
into the temple of God in the Spirit in the Lord. Once we have believed in Jesus
we have passed into Him, but we have not arrived. There is more. We continue to
grow into a temple fit for God to dwell in by the power of the Spirit of Life in
Him.

It is interesting that eis or into is depicted as an arrow penetrating a sphere.
This is exactly what happens when the male sperm goes into the female egg. The
result is a new life starts to form and grow. God has created all things in the
natural to show us how things are in the spiritual world. See 1 Corinthians
15:40-46 When Jesus was talking with Nicode’mus about salvation He said, "You
should not be marveling that I said to you, ’You must be begotten anew [from
above].’" John 3:7 CLV This is the literal translation of this verse in the
Greek. Unless Father begets our spiritual life, we will never have spiritual
life. What is begotten of the flesh is still flesh, but what is begotten of the
Spirit is spirit.

Eternal life begins with this act by the will of God. Paul, speaking of our
salvation wrote, "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his Son, that he [Jesus] might be the firstborn
[protokotos - first begotten] among many brethren." Romans 8:29 KJ2000 Jesus was
begotten of the Father in the womb of a virgin by the Spirit. He is the
prototypical Son of God and thus the only son begotten of God this exact way.
The Son of God had to become the Son of Man for there to be a perfect
sacrificial Lamb of God who could take away the sins of the world. Paul wrote:
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s
trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that
one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the effect
of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought
condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.
If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more
will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness
reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Then as one man’s trespass led
to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to
acquittal and life for all men. (Romans 5:15-18 RSVA)

Salvation is not a static thing, but rather the beginning of a new life in which
we have become born of the Spirit. Being "born again" is not the end or goal of
salvation (any more than a child is a fully developed human on conception) but
rather this is the beginning of the process. The seed of the Spirit comes into
us and the life of Jesus begins to grow and develop into the fullness of the Son
of God within us. Just as the chromosomes of the male component combine with the
female chromosomes and the two become one new being, so it is with us in Christ
and Christ in us.

Now let’s go back to our passage in John chapter three where the Authorized
Version reads: And no man hath ascended up to [eis - into] heaven, but he that
came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in [en] heaven. And as Moses
lifted up the serpent in [en] the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be
lifted up: That whosoever believeth in [eis - into] him should not perish, but
have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in [into] him should not perish, but have
everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into [eis] the world to condemn the
world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on
[into] him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already,
because he hath not believed in [into] the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into [eis] the world, and men
love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:13-19
KJV) The Son of Man ascends into heaven and is in heaven. Moses was in the
wilderness when he lifted up the brazen serpent. We believe into Jesus Christ
and it is here that eternal life, His life changing life, begins as we abide in
Him. We believe into His life and we are freed from condemnation because we have
seen the truth in the light of His life. In each case in the Greek we are
instructed to believe into His name and believe into Him! Faith into salvation
is growing into the fullness of the living Christ. From here on out in this
writing you will see "[into]" following every preposition that was not
translated with this living motion in mind and yet was intended in the original
Greek text to do so. Sad to say, there are many verses in our Bibles that were
not translated to show this living dynamic. All too often this important word
was translated, "in, unto, upon, to or among," thus watering down the impact of
the gospel message as a call into a living and growing walk into an ever deeper
relationship with Jesus and His Father. Are We to Believe On or Into Jesus?

How do you believe "on" something? We can understand believing "in" something,
but not "on." How do you have faith "unto" salvation? (See 1 Peter 1:5 KJV) Is
salvation something we only approach, but never enter into?

What does God desire when it comes to our relationship with His Son? Are we to
have a superficial, back-slapping, bar buddy in Christ or are we to have the
intimacy of a man and a woman who are married and are becoming one flesh? (See
Ephesians Ch. 5:22-32) Have you ever noticed that couples who have lived
together and become one flesh even start to look and act like each other after
many years? When one dies who has been united this way with the other for many
years, the other soon dies afterwards. They have become one flesh. In all too
many cases the translators chose to nullify the living dynamic of what salvation
is by choosing words that make it sound static instead of growing and alive.
Words like on, among, unto, even in indicate no movement or growth and were used
often for eis instead of into. This oversight is such a travesty and it
fortifies the Christian idea of what "church" has become. You go to a service,
you sit there, you listen and you leave. Growth into the fullness of Christ is
never demonstrated as a living dynamic. You said a "sinner’s prayer" and you
came to Jesus and that is that--another spiritual infant is destined to live out
life in, as one brother put it, "the perpetual babyhood of the believer." Yet,
the scriptures indicate that this life is not static, but rather a dynamic
growth into the fullness of Christ. And be not conformed to this world: but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good,
and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:2 KJ2000)

What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are
not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun! (2
Corinthians 5:17 NLT) And have clothed yourselves with the new [spiritual self],
which is [ever in the process of being] renewed and remolded into [fuller and
more perfect knowledge upon] knowledge after the image (the likeness) of Him Who
created it. (Colossians 3:10 AMP)

Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is
corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and
put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness
and holiness. (Ephesians 4:22-24 RSVA) Our lives with Jesus must become
intermingled. He gave His life for us and we are called to lay down our natural
lives for Him. If you go down to the hardware store and order a can of paint and
you want it to be tinted to a certain color, but tell the clerk to just put the
tint in a separate container on the top of the can, you have tinted onto the
paint. When you take it home and brush the tint base on the wall, it is not the
color you wanted at all. Now let’s say that you understand paint and painting
better than that and you allow the clerk to put the tint in the base paint, but
do not allow him to put it in the shaking machine. Then you go home and brush
this unmixed volume of paint on your walls. There will be streaks and blotches
on all the surfaces and you still won’t have the effect you wanted. Is it the
clerk’s fault? No, if you are to get the desired result, pleasing to your eyes,
the tint must be thoroughly mixed into the tint base or it is useless. In a
sense this explains why Paul wrote, "Everything that can be shaken, will be
shaken until only that which can not be shaken remains." God provides the
shaking in our lives that tears down our fleshly walls that isolate our spirits
and allows the blending of His Spirit into ours. Paul wrote: But now in Christ
Jesus you who once were far off are made near by the blood of Christ. For he is
our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of
partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of
commandments contained in ordinances; to make in himself of two one new man, so
making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the
cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you who
were afar off, and to them that were near. For through him we both have access
by one Spirit unto [pros- forward to] the Father. (Ephesians 2:13-18 KJ2000)
This important preposition eis in the Greek makes all the difference in the
world... literally! According to the Liddell & Scott Intermediate Lexicon eis is
used ... with all Verbs implying motion or direction...

2. with Verbs which express rest in a place, when a previous motion into or to
it is implied...

Motion is implied as well as the goal of that motion. The following scripture,
where eis was translated correctly, brings this out.

Then said he to Thomas, Reach here your finger, and behold my hands; and reach
here your hand, and thrust it into [eis] my side: and be not faithless, but
believing. (John 20:27 KJ2000)

Jesus invited doubting Thomas to put his hand into His wounded side and believe
that He had risen from the dead! If we are to be witnesses of the kingdom of God
that removes all doubts, we also must be thoroughly enveloped into Christ and He
into us. Now, let’s look at these very important verses many of us hang our
salvation on, once again with the right word inserted in them.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believes into him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

"He that believes into him is not condemned: but he that believes not is
condemned already, because he has not believed into the name of the only
begotten Son of God."

Yes, true belief is not just a mental assent, but rather a moving force that
causes a change of identity and life source. Believing into Jesus changes our
position out of our old natures and into the nature of Jesus. In the advent of
mankind upon the earth, Eve was tempted to have a life and identity separate
from her Creator. Satan told her if she would eat of the forbidden tree of
knowledge she would be her own woman saying, "For God does know that in the day
you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods."
Until she caved into the temptation, Adam and Eve were in unity with their
Father and worked and lived in the garden in unison with Him. His thoughts were
their thoughts, His works were their works and their desires were to please Him
alone. Since they fell away into their own self-wills, God has set out to bring
man back to this primary place of existence where we rest and abide in Him. When
we veer off course in God’s plan, He requires us to go back to the point where
we took the wrong turn and proceed again on the right path. This is true
repentance. Our starting point as His fallen creation is to get back into unity
with our Father and His will where we are not only created in his image, but we
may proceed with being transformed into His likeness. (See Genesis 1:26) He
requires a total transformation from our fallen Adamic state, in which we have
lived out life by our own desires, into the very being of Jesus Christ who lives
for the Father!

Jesus is the Pattern Son. Father only has one measuring line by which He judges
all mankind; are we walking in the obedience to and unity with His Son? The
first Adam must put on the Last Adam.

One Spirit with Him A brother from England recently wrote and asked, "Can I ask
how regularly you hear the ’still small voice of the LORD’? I only ask because I
long to hear it once again." To this George replied: As we live our lives in a
reverent posture before Him, seeking Him, waiting on Him, simply walking with
Him in the cool of the day, two hearts become one. We become increasingly joined
to Him. Isaiah prophesied, "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be
weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." The word wait here in the Hebrew is
a primitive root that means to bind together by twisting. Waiting on God is to
be so intertwined with Him that we feel what He feels and we know what He knows
and desire what He desires. We become so joined to him that when He moves, we
move. The Spirit rested upon the prophets and they knew "the burden of the
Lord." How much more attuned to the Lord’s burden are those who are so
completely intertwined with Him that He and they are one Spirit. Like John at
the last supper, we recline with our head upon His breast, listening to the beat
of His wondrous loving heart. This is our birthright! "He that is joined unto
the Lord is one spirit." There is a communication with the Father that is much
deeper than just hearing His voice, though that is very important. It is the
mystery of two hearts becoming so intertwined that they become one. You sense
His burden for others and speak His words to them. You can say, with the Son,
"the doctrine is not mine . . .I speak those things I hear the Father saying. .
.I do those things I see the Father doing. . . My Father works hitherto and I
work." So Joined! One Spirit! One heart! One mind! Without this glorious
intertwining we might hear God and not understand a word He is saying. When God
spoke to His beloved Son, those who stood by thought it thundered.

Hearing the Father’s voice requires resting in His arms and hearing His heart
beat with love for us as John did with Jesus. So many of us are all about doing
for God, so that we have not taken the time to first know Him as our loving
Father, but rather as a terrible demanding task master. Religious task masters
often instill this image on Him and it is such a travesty.

Everlasting Life In John 3:16 we read that we who believe into Jesus will have
everlasting life. What is everlasting life? Literally the Greek says, "life
without beginning or end." How do we who are finite get this kind of life? Only
by living our lives in the Son of God, because He alone is eternal in the
Father. In chapter six of John, Jesus says some revealing and remarkable things
that stumbled the Jews who heard Him. And this is the will of him that sent me,
that everyone who sees the Son, and believes in [into] him, may have everlasting
life and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:40 KJ2000) Verily, verily,
I say unto you, He that believes on [into] me has everlasting life. (John 6:47
KJ2000) Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures
to [into] eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God
the Father has set his seal." (John 6:27 ESV)

Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?
Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that you believe on
[into] him whom he has sent. (John 6:28-29 KJ2000) And this is the will of him
that sent me, that everyone who sees the Son, and believes on [into] him, may
have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:40
KJ2000)

I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread,
he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will
give for the life of the world. (John 6:51 KJ2000)

He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him. As the
living Father has sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eats me, even he
shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your
fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eats of this bread shall live
forever. (John 6:56-58 KJ2000) To eat and drink Jesus is to have Him totally
assimilated into us. He is the antidote to the venom of the Serpent’s bite that
brought death. Not only in eating of Him does He dwell in us, but Jesus says
that we also dwell in Him. We live in and by Him alone. Only here in this
reality is there any life without beginning or end. In his fine work, Bone of
His Bone, F. J. Huegel wrote: The job he [the Christian worker] is attempting to
do requires of him superhuman force. The merely human, however noble and strong
and cultivated, proves as insufficient and as inadequate as a handful of glowing
coals would be for the dissipation of an arctic blizzard. He must transcend the
purely natural, and immerse himself in the super-natural. He must experience the
power of the indwelling Christ, and, dispossessed of his own life, become in an
ever-fuller measure possessed of a Divine life.

Only "rivers of living water" flowing from his innermost being -- the promise
which the Saviour has made to His own -- can make possible the renewal of life
in those to whom he is sent.

Believing into Jesus’ Name

Let us look at that opening passage again. John quotes Jesus, "He that believes
into him is not condemned: but he that believes not is condemned already,
because he has not believed into the name of the only begotten Son of God." What
does it mean to believe into His name? His name is not a mere "handle" spelled
J-E-S-U-S that He was tagged with at birth. In fact His Hebrew parents named Him
Yeshua (from where we get Joshua or Savior), not the Greek Jesus. Many today
have gone back to using the Hebrew forms for the names of Jesus and God,
thinking that this will give us power when we pray, but that is not what it
means to pray or believe in His name. It goes much deeper than that. A rose by
any other name is still a rose. The word translated name in the New Testament is
onoma. W.E. Vine says of this word:

(II) for all that a "name" implies, of authority, character, rank, majesty,
power, excellence, etc., of everything that the "name" covers: (a) of the "Name"
of God as expressing His attributes.

Jesus is in His name! He told the disciples, "For where two or three are
gathered together in [into] my name, there am I in the midst of them." Do you
just believe in the name of Jesus or have you believed into His name? In
Fausset’s Bible Dictionary we read of the important significance of what it
means to believe into His name:

Name In the Bible [this is true in the Old Testament as well] expressing the
nature or relation for the most part. According as man has departed more and
more from the primitive truth, the connection between names and things has
become more arbitrary. In Genesis on the contrary the names are nearly all
significant... God, in calling His people into new and close relationship with
Himself, gives them a new name. Abram becomes Abraham; Sarai, Sarah; Jacob,
Israel. So the name was given the child at the time of circumcision, because
then he enters into a new covenant relationship to God (Luke 1:59; Luke 2:21).
So spiritually in the highest sense God’s giving a new name implies His giving a
new nature... Christians receive their new name at baptism, indicating their new
relation. They are "baptized into (eis onoma) the name of (the revealed nature,
2 Peter 1:4, into living union with) the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"...
[Emphasis added].

Baptized into His Name

Another verse we hear parroted often in our evangelical churches is what is
called "the Great Commission." Jesus told the apostles, "Go you therefore, and
teach all nations, baptizing them in [eis - into] the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit..." Yes, we are to be baptized [immersed] not
with just water, but immersed into the very character of the Father, Son and the
Holy Spirit; becoming one with God and His nature. Water baptism is supposed to
signify that this has happened to the person being immersed, yet today baptism
has become little more than a rite of initiation into a particular denomination.
Many of us have, with iconoclastic zeal, smashed our Catholic and Protestant
idols and have scrutinized and shed a myriad of meaningless ceremonies, rites
and rituals, but have we cast the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to
baptism?

While we don’t believe in baptismal regeneration, we do believe that God honors
our obedience and faith in this area. Repentance and baptism together are God’s
ultimate insult to the flesh. Repentance is first of all repentance from dead
works. True repentance is giving up on our fleshly lust of trying to fix it
ourselves or live life our way. The flesh has no qualms with trying to save
itself. Stopping this fleshly endeavor and acknowledging that there is none
righteous, no not one, is the beginning of a proper walk with God. The next step
in obedience to God is baptism. Repentance says, "I can’t do it! I can’t be
righteous of my self." Baptism says, "He can."

Paul wrote, In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without
hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of
Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him
through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. (Colossians
2:11-12 NKJV)

Baptism is our public circumcision. It is the circumcision of Christ made
without hands. We are buried with Christ and raised in newness of life, not by
virtue of any ritual, but by our faith in the operation of God. Baptism is our
public confession of our belief in God’s intention to bring about, by His mighty
power, all that baptism represents and prefigures. And so begins this operation
of God.

We are not promoting an elitist idea that by our great faith we are somehow more
into Christ than others. We are not in Christ because of our exceptional belief
but because of His great love and power. Even faith itself is a gift. As Paul
put it, "But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus . . . so that, just as it is
written, ’Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.’" With this in mind, consider
now the words of Peter to the Jews in Acts chapter 2:

Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name
of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that
are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. (Acts 2:38-39 KJ2000)

First repent, that is, turn about and take a new and living course for your life
and then be immersed into the very character and person of Jesus. As you can
see, Christendom has diluted the truth of what salvation is to the point that it
really means nothing like it did to the first century church. For most, the
transformation of our very life source has been missed and we are expected to
plod along trying to be good Christians in our own strength. What a frustrating
existence!

Praying and Living in Jesus’ Name In the modern church, the name "Jesus Christ"
has been also used as some kind of magic incantation to call down power over
demons and get things we ask for. We tack the words "In the name of Jesus we
pray, Amen" onto the end of our prayers. It means much more than that. The
"magic" is not in the words, but in the heart of the one who is praying.

Compare Paul’s abiding in the name of Jesus Christ and ministering from there,
to those who tried to use the name of Jesus Christ as some kind of magic: And it
came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain maid possessed with a spirit of
divination met us, who brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: The same
followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most
high God, who show unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But
Paul, being troubled, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name
of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour. (Acts
16:16-18 KJ2000)

Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon themselves to call over
them who had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you by
Jesus whom Paul preaches. And there were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and
chief of the priests, who did so. And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I
know, and Paul I know; but who are you? And the man in whom the evil spirit was
leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled
out of that house naked and wounded. (Acts 19:13-16 KJ2000) In the first
passage, Paul was speaking from and in the very character and authority of Jesus
and the demon obeyed and left the young woman. In the second, these itinerant
Jews tried to use the name as if it has some kind of magic and the demon in the
man thrashed them thoroughly. The demon knew who Jesus is and who Paul was
because of the very Nature in them.

Paul the apostle wrote often of this total transformation that went far beyond a
mere mental assent or "believing in." We quote, "For to me to live is Christ,
and to die is gain." (Php 1:21 KJ2000)

"For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is
our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with [in union with] him in
glory." (Colossians 3:3-4 KJ2000).

There is a difference between believing in and believing into someone. In the
into state the tint has entered into the paint and the paint into the tint. For
the paint to manifest on the wall is also for the tint to be manifest. For the
tint to be manifest is for it to be enveloped into the paint. Their identities
are one. The tint by itself is dead, but it is brought to life once it is mixed
into the paint.

Only if we believe into His name and are taken into His very character. By an
exchange of His life source for ours, we have His power in our actions and
prayer to overcome the works of the devil. In order to have power in our
salvation, we must first be dead to that old Adamic nature within us and be
spiritually resurrected by the operation of God into the very life of Christ. To
the Corinthians Paul wrote, "And of him [God] are you in Christ Jesus, who of
God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption." This covers every aspect of life and godliness. Without Him we can
do nothing. Jesus Himself is our righteousness. Our ability to obey and keep
some set of "Christian" rules, "Don’t handle, nor taste, nor touch" may as Paul
put it, "appear like wisdom in self-imposed worship, and humility, and severity
to the body," but may we acknowledge once and for all that such things will
never be of "any value against the indulgence of the flesh." The same is true of
sanctification. Jesus is our sanctification. He is the only redemptive force in
our lives, not our good religious works or our determination and
stick-to-it-iveness.

If our life is manifest to the world; what we think, what we want, what we know,
what we feel, it can not be "hid with Christ in God." It is time that we take a
new appraisal of what it means to be "saved." There is a world of difference
between believing in as it is used in our culture and believing into as God
intended. One allows us to keep going in our separated lives from God and only
give a mental assent to His design and wishes. The other makes us come to a full
stop, die to our wants, likes and dislikes, our desires, goals, and all that is
of the self; self-righteousness, self-satisfaction, self-love,
self-centeredness, and downright selfishness. Not only that, to believe into
Christ is to become Christ centered in everything we do and think. He is All and
in all! He is the beginning and the end! He is the sum total of Righteousness,
Sanctification and Redemption! What a glorious truth! He is "the way, the Truth,
and the Life." All that pertains to life and godliness is ours in the gift of
Himself! In Him is Life! In Him dwells the fullness of all that life was meant
to be in the mind of our Father!

Abba Father

Paul wrote of this death and life in Christ to the Galatians. "I am crucified
with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the
life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who
loved me, and gave himself for me." It is the faith of the Son of God that is
ours in this crucified life in Christ, because this life within us is the life
of the Son and the Spirit of the Son within us cries, "Abba! Daddy, dear Daddy!"
The intimacy that Jesus has with His Father is the intimacy that is afforded us
also. All the issues of obedience, righteousness and sanctification are answered
by the Spirit of Him who, when obedience demanded unimaginable suffering, said
in the face of it all, "Abba, Father . . . not what I desire, but what you
desire." This is the very Spirit that Father God sends into each of us when we
believe.

Because we are His children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,
crying, "Abba, Father!" We have not been given a spirit of religious bondage
where everything is motivated by fear and implemented by mere willpower. We have
received the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of Christ "by whom we cry, "Abba!
Father!"

Jesus not only gave His life on the cross to take away our sins, but He gave
Himself to us that He might live his life through us. We are not doomed to live
out a life of sin in our own sin-prone weakness. Paul wrote to the Roman saints,
"Know you not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were
baptized into his death?" Notice the two into’s. These are that same word in the
Greek, eis. Yes, Christ died once for all who were placed by the Father into
Him, but that is not all. Paul continues, "Therefore we are buried with him by
baptism into death: that just as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory
of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" First we are dead
to our old Adamic lives and natures and then we are risen into the very
personage of Jesus Christ who is the expression of His Father.


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  CHAPTER 2: 02 - CHAPTER 2: SAVED BY JESUS' LIFE
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Chapter 2: Saved by Jesus’ Life By Michael Clark and George Davis So much of
Christian church teaching and belief falls so short of us being "more than
conquerors through Christ Jesus." Why? Because we are taught to be content with
believing in Jesus without first believing into Him as our life changing
dynamic.

What a profound and deep salvation we have been given! The very meaning of what
it means to be saved should take on a much deeper revelation to us than just the
saying of a sinner’s prayer, signing a "Four Spiritual Laws" tract, and having
our sins removed. He desires to "save to the uttermost." Here it is important
that we distinguish between reconciliation and full salvation. Paul wrote, For
if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,
much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10 KJ2000

Reconciliation and salvation are not the same thing. Together they represent a
much larger redemptive work. We are reconciled to God by Jesus’ death on the
cross, but we are saved by His life. "Therefore he is able also to save them to
[into] the uttermost [completion] that come unto God by him, seeing he ever
lives to make intercession for them." (Hebrews 7:25 KJ2000) The living
intercession of Jesus within us is salvation. Here is the sum of all God’s
provision and expectation. It is this fact that we are "saved by His life" that
we so often miss. The common message that we hear throughout Christendom today
is, "We are reconciled through the death of the Son." Rarely do we hear, "We are
saved by the life of the Son." What a wonderful truth it is! When I, Michael,
grew up in the Catholic Church, there were crucifixes everywhere; over the
church altar, over the classroom chalkboard, over the main doors, on the
steeples-everywhere you looked was the dying Jesus. Death, death, death-it
seemed as if death and Satan got the final word. There was no power over sin.
Sin and death had dominion. The Life that saves us from all that was missing.

It was not much better for my wife, Dorothy, who grew up in a "Bible Church."
Every Sunday an altar call was given for any new converts that might have been
persuaded by the pastor’s sermon to "get saved." Then an invitation was given to
the rest of the congregation to come forward and recommit their lives to Jesus
if they sinned that previous week. They were constantly having to get saved all
over again! Where was the abiding Life of Christ that saves and keeps one saved?
Like Dorothy said, "Jesus saved us, but after that it was up to us to keep
ourselves saved." We are reconciled through His death but we dare not stop
there. Reconciliation is only a ticket to ride - an invitation to embark on a
grand journey called Life in Christ where we are free from sin and death, living
by His righteousness and eternal life within us. Not only are we redeemed from
being bad sinners; we are also redeemed from the fruitless effort of trying to
be "good Christians"! We did not reconcile ourselves to God, neither can we save
ourselves. Christ’s death was required for reconciliation. His ever-present
intercession and empowering life is required for salvation. To view salvation as
a past event, something that happened to us years ago when we first believed, is
a shortsighted theological blunder. We are saved moment by moment by His life
within us. His life in us meets every challenge. "I can do all things through
[in] Christ who strengthens [empowers] me." Christ in us and we in Him is where
the empowerment to be sons of our Father comes from, just as it empowered Jesus
here on earth 2000 years ago. Jesus promised the disciples, "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, He that believes on [eis - into] me, the works that I do shall he
do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."
(John 14:12 KJ2000) We will and should be doing greater works than Jesus did in
the limitations of His earthly body. He told His disciples,

Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for
if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will
send him unto you. And when he is come, he will convict the world of sin, and of
righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on [into] me;
(John 16:7-9 KJ2000) Where He was limited to the ground He was standing on as He
preached, taught and healed for only the three and a half years while He worked
His Father’s works, He is no longer limited by time and space. He now has a body
made up of millions of members and because He has joined the Father in heaven,
the Father has sent the Holy Spirit upon all flesh, (See Acts 2:17) the very
Spirit of Christ, to work Jesus’ life into and through all who truly believe. It
was prophesied, "that Jesus should die for that nation; And not for that nation
only, but that also he should gather together in [into] one the children of God
that were scattered abroad." (John 11:51-52 KJ2000) We, both Jews and Gentiles,
are gathered into One, even Christ, as the children of God. We are His body
through which He manifests the love, desires and power of our Father upon this
earth. To live without this reality and vision of what it means to be "more than
conquerors through Christ" is to allow the enemy to oppose the will of God in
us.

I, George, shared this story in a previous article entitled, "The New Creation
Rule" but it bears repeating once again.

I had a conversation with a young college student recently that almost moved me
to tears. She, being a recovering agnostic, had now come to believe that there
is indeed a God and that He created everything but having done so, He left and
is now watching from afar to see how it will all turn out. All I could think to
say, initially, was, "That is so sad!" But as I pondered her words I realized
that they reflected not only the state of her life and mentality toward God but
were, from her perspective, the only reasonable explanation for the condition of
Christendom today. Thankfully, I was given opportunity to share with her what
makes true Christianity so exceptional. That is simply this: Jesus is Emanuel,
God with us! He is an ever-present help in time of trouble, a Friend that sticks
closer than a brother! The words of an old hymn come to mind. "He Lives! He
lives! Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me and He talks with me along
life’s narrow way. He lives! He lives, salvation to impart! You ask me how I
know He lives; He lives within my heart!" The earnest of our salvation is the
abiding Spirit of Christ within! He is the guarantee of all that is to follow
(See Ephesians 1:14), just as an earnest money agreement is the guarantee that
we are going ahead with the purchase of a home. This is the key to everything.
We have not been left to see how well we can pull things off on our own. Jesus
promised, "I will come to you." Christ’s Spirit in us is passionate to please
the Father. Think of it! God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of His Son who,
in the face of horrendous sorrows, cried out "Abba, Father." The Spirit of God’s
Son, in our hearts still cries, "Abba, Daddy!" The Spirit of the Son creates His
passion for the Father’s will within us. More than earthly comforts and
pleasures, more than physical life itself, the Spirit of the Son seeks Abba’s
will. This is true sanctification. This is what distinguishes Christians, not
only from the world but from all religions, and true believers from mere
religious men.

What we are talking about here is an exchanged life. Jesus took not only our
sins upon Himself on that cross, but He took us and our very sin natures upon
that cross to be put to death so that we could live in His resurrection power.
So much of Christian church teaching and belief falls so short of us being "more
than conquerors through Christ Jesus." Why? Because we are taught to be content
with believing in Jesus without first believing into Him as our life changing
dynamic. Muslims believe in Mohammad and they believe in Allah. But Mohammad is
dead and cannot be believed into. Only the Son of God has life that is unending
and that His creation can partake in. Of this John wrote, "In Him was life and
the life was the light of men." His life is the light that lights our darkness.
It is only as we experience the life of Christ that we see light (spiritual
understanding). As the psalmist wrote, "In your light we see light." Then by His
grace this same light becomes our faith in Him. Finally it becomes our very
Light (the Light of men) and Life as our lives are enfolded into His. What a
great salvation!

Believing Into Vs. Believing On But as many as received him, to them gave he
power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on [into] his
name: Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will
of man, but of God. (John 1:12-13 KJ2000) Where do we receive power to become
the children of our heavenly Father? Is it by becoming good enough? Is it by
imitating Jesus? No, a thousand times no. We become children of the Father by
ceasing from our own good works and believing into the very person and character
of Jesus Christ the Son. As we are in His name we are in the sonship of our
Father with Him. For us to live is Christ. We are born of the Father and it is
this that makes us His sons. We are not born into Him by being born into a
certain bloodline, or by our own wills or the wills of well meaning Christian
parents. We are ". . . born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God." (John 1:13) He is the progenitor of our heavenly
lives, the Father of life. Of this salvation Jesus said,

All that the Father gives me shall come to me; and he that comes to me I will in
no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the
will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will who has sent me, that of
all that he has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at
the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone who sees
the Son, and believes on [into] him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise
him up at the last day. (John 6:37-40 KJ2000)

Today we, with the help of some poor translations of the Bible, think that all
we have to do is believe upon or on the name of Jesus unto salvation, but being
born into Christ is the first step to becoming fully reconciled with our Father.
Upon and on are not good enough. Our very lives must be hid in Christ with God.
(See Colossians 3:3) This insidious watering down of the full implications of
our great salvation in Christ the Son is demonic to the core. Today’s prominent
Bible teachers with the help of poorly translated scriptures are keeping
Christians weak in their faith by their missing the deep meaning of what faith
really is! With a lack of faith, people are prone to do dead works (works not
born of the Father) out of pride and fear. These dead works are used to build
the churches and organizations of men. If we do not believe into the Son and
abide there in Him, we have a faith that will not stand the tests that are
coming upon this earth. Jesus is the only one who has passed the test and into
whom we can abide without being shaken. No wonder Paul prophesied that before
Jesus returns in His glorified body, there will first be a great falling away of
those who profess His name. (See 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17) Jesus warned:

Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and you
shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be
offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many
false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall
abound, the love of many shall grow cold. But he that shall endure unto the end
[preservers into the goal], the same shall be saved. (Matthew 24:9-13 KJ2000)
There Are Only Two Existences With all this in mind, let us look once again at
the scripture that was quoted at the very beginning of this writing:

We are certain that we are of God, but all the world is in the power of the Evil
One. And we are certain that the Son of God has come, and has given us a clear
vision, so that we may see him who is true, and we are in him who is true, in
his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. My little children,
keep yourselves from false gods. (1 John 5:19-21 BBE

John asserts here that there are only two existences available to man. We are
either in the world, the kosmos system, and living a lie under the power of the
Evil One or we are in the Son and of the Father living in truth and clear
spiritual vision.

Why does John go on to say, "My little children, keep yourselves from false
gods"? What are our false gods? In the modern world we do not make ourselves
carvings and bow down before them in worship. But the most prominent false god
that displaces Jesus of His place in us is just that-- us--the old self-nature
that thinks that the Christian has a third option to do as he wills and do "good
works" for God. Actually, the term "carnal Christian" is an oxymoron. If we are
led by our carnality, we are not led by Christ nor are we abiding in Him. This
is why John is so emphatic in his letters about the true saints of God not
sinning and following false spirits and false teachers and prophets:

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God:
because many false prophets are gone out into the world. By this you know the
Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come
in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, of which you
have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. You are
of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is
in you, than he that is in the world. (1 John 4:1-4 KJ2000) Did you get the
continuity of flow in this passage? It ends in a restatement of the two
realities once again, "You are of God, little children, and have overcome them:
because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world." By abiding
in Christ, abiding in His very being, we are overcomers. We overcome the false
gods, false spirits, false prophets, and the spirit of antichrist that is in the
kosmos system. Remember that the meaning of antichrist in the Greek not only
means "against Christ," but the more common manifestation, "instead of Christ."
Jesus is the Head of His body. When mere men rise up and start taking headship
of the ekklesia of God, antichrist is present. To be carnally minded, worldly,
believing false teachers, false prophets and false christs under false spirits
has this same outcome - it displaces Jesus from being Lord in your very being.
You cannot get bitter and sweet water from the same fountain. If you turn on
both your hot and cold taps on your mixer faucets you get lukewarm water and the
lukewarm Jesus has promised to spit out of His mouth. One of the greatest
delusions of modern Christendom is the teaching that we can have the best of
both worlds at the same time, having the kingdom of God and all His benefits and
the kingdom of the prince of this world, enjoying all his enticements that
appeal to our flesh natures; prosperity, success, notoriety, recognition by all,
etc. Remember Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.

Let’s look at our passage again, "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ
is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of
antichrist." What does it mean to confess that Jesus is come in the flesh? Does
it mean that if someone or some spirit does not say the words, "Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh," they are antichrist? Well, demons believe this and they fear
and tremble. It means much more than parroting a phrase as a proof of your
spiritual status. W.E. Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words says of this
word:

Confess <A-1,Verb,3670, homologeo> lit., "to speak the same thing" (homos,
"same," lego, "to speak"), "to assent, accord, agree with..." To confess not
only means to speak this phrase, but to be in the same reality with Jesus Christ
where we speak the same as He does, we give total assent to Him and are in one
accord with He who dwells within us. Literally, Jesus Christ has come not only
in His earthly body, but our bodies as well and we are in agreement with the one
who dwells within us not only in word, but in our deeds. This is confession into
salvation. We are saved by His life within. In 1 John 4:1-21, John set forth the
standard for testing whether particular spirits are of God. Everything hinges on
a single confession. "By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that
confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God." Even the world
might reluctantly admit that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh but only those
who are born of the Spirit can confess He is come in the flesh. Confessing is
more than a mere speaking of words; it is the effect of deep inner conviction
that brings our lives into perfect alignment with Him. Viewing this in the
present tense changes everything.

"Jesus Christ is come in the flesh - a twofold truth confessed, that Jesus is
the Christ, and that He is come (the Greek perfect tense implies not a mere past
historical fact, as the aorist would, but also the present continuance of the
fact and its blessed effects" (Jamieson, Fausset and Brown). The antichrist
spirit may dare to confess that Christ has (past tense) come in the flesh but it
will never admit, much less act upon, the fact that He is (present tense) come
in the flesh. In innumerable verbal and practical ways this great spirit of
error denies the present implications of Christ’s incarnation. In every way
possible he resists a viable manifestation of Jesus being alive in his body, the
ekklesia of God.

John went on to demonstrate what he meant by confessing that Christ is come in
the flesh, "Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world." The
antichrist spirit that is in the world system works on the body of Christ like a
neurological poison to paralyze the people of God and mold them into passive
temple-congregants. Those possessed or under the influence of this spirit can
neither discern nor accept (much less promote) that Christ is come in the flesh.
To confess, "greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world," would
be to tear down their power base. If we really believe and confess this reality
of the abiding Christ we can no longer clutch the reins of control as though
everything is dependent on our guidance. Nor can we any longer sit passively
under the controls of those who hold the reins. Neither can we build religious
systems and buildings after the style of the world systems of governments.
Instead we must act in a manner consistent with our beliefs (our confession) and
trust in the overcoming One who is in all true believers to lead them into all
inward truth, knowing that the church is not a building or system of control,
but a living organism that responds to the will of Jesus here on earth. Do we
really believe that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, so much so that when we
look at our brothers and sisters, can we confess with utmost confidence
confirming them in their walks and say with John, But the anointing which you
have received of him abides in you, and you need not that any man teach you: but
as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie,
and even as it has taught you, you shall abide in him. And now, little children,
abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be
ashamed before him at his coming. (1 John 2:27-28 KJ2000) The True Temple Can we
trust one another’s spiritual growth and development to the Spirit who dwells in
the saints of God? Christ is come in the flesh! He is in you! If we do not truly
confess this by our words and actions we can no more see the true temple of God
than the Pharisees could when they stoned Stephen to death, though his face
shown like that of an angel. (See Acts 7:1-60) Who is Jesus according to the
prophets? He is Emanuel, God with us, not God who was once with us! Jesus was
God with Israel only in the sense that He was the true temple of God in their
midst. God was and is in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. The author
of Hebrews goes so far as to say that Jesus’ flesh was the veil concealing the
holiest place - the place of God’s dwelling - from prying eyes. God was veiled
in Christ. Jesus’ body was the temple of God. When the Jews asked Jesus for a
sign, He answered, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
They thought that he was speaking of the temple on Mariah’s crest, but he was
speaking of the true temple, "the temple of his body." (See John 2:19-21) For
the most part, religion is antichrist in its expression because it focuses
almost exclusively on the wrong temple. The earthly temples of religion take
precedence over the true temple of God, the fullness, God in Christ in you. The
maintaining of holy sites, ceremonies, observances and a hierarchical priest
caste keeps them centered on earthly things. Religion refuses to confess that
just as Jesus came in the flesh or had a body for a temple, likewise Christ is
clothed with a body to this day here on earth. "A body you have prepared for
me." We have this treasure in earthen vessels. Christ in you is the hope of the
glory of God! Greater is He who is in us who believe than the prince of this
world. Unless we fully see Him dwelling in His body and respect Him, we are not
properly discerning the body of Christ. (See 1 Corinthians 10:16-17)

Paul asked the Corinthian believers, "What? Know you not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have of God, and you are not
your own?" (1 Corinthians 6:19 KJ2000) Paul asked this question in a way as if
to say, do you actually not understand this foundational truth? Don’t you know
that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? Have you forgotten that He is
in you? Have you forgotten that He is in all of you? How should this affect our
behavior? What should our confession be? Have you ever noticed that almost every
time the Spirit speaks or moves through a member of Christ’s body in a church
service, the leader of the service immediately captures the attention of the
congregation back to himself and puts the "service" back on his planned order?
This is what the antichrist spirit does. This is the nature of antichrist, to
displace Christ of His rightful place as Head of the body. It is all about
control. Satan possesses and controls, but the Spirit gently leads showing
respect for each member giving them place to function in the body. (See 1
Corinthians 12:3-11, 1 Corinthians 14:26; Ephesians 4:12, Ephesians 4:16) The
Head of the body manifests through all His members, not just a select few in
high prominence. In fact, He gives more abundant honor to the humble, lesser
members and gives them a chance to be strengthened by use and experience. The
current system that rules in the churches today does the opposite. The talented
and the beautiful get the attention and the positions while the weak remain
forever weak like infants in a nursery. This is job security for the leadership,
yet Paul longed for all the saints to come into the fullness of the body of
Christ. The time has come for us to go outside the gate of the temple system and
become fully drawn into Jesus and suffer His reproach with Him if we are to ever
grow up into the fullness of the Head. To remain under antichrist’s control is
death. Should we remain pacified observers of Christian rites and observances
like the church has become in these last days? God forbid! The temple of God,
through the spiritual neutering of its living stones, has been torn down. Peter
wrote that a day is as a thousand years in the calendar of God. We are about to
enter the third day since the founding of the church at Pentecost and it is
about to be raised up by Jesus once again. Hosea prophesied of these days
saying,

Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he has torn, and he will heal us; he
has smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: on the
third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Let us know, let
us press on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he
shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.
(Hosea 6:1-3 KJ2000)

Just as Jesus’ body was raised from the grave in the third day, so will the body
of Christ be raised from its spiritual grave. God is causing His Spirit to blow
once again upon all who confess that Christ is come in the flesh, that temple
made of living stones (not stones that have been fashioned with the hands of
men) and life is beginning to flow from their innermost beings. "There is a
river whose streams make glad the City of God."


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  CHAPTER 3: 03 - CHAPTER 3: CHRIST'S BODY, "BONE OF HIS BONE"
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Chapter 3: Christ’s Body, "Bone of His Bone" By Michael Clark and George Davis
As Paul found out, you can not persecute a member of Christ’s body without
persecuting Him. Paul even said that when one member of Jesus’ body suffers all
the members suffer. You also can’t bless a member of His body without it
blessing all members and Jesus as well. It was He who said, "What you have done
to the least of these, my brethren, you have done unto me." When Christ’s body
is in Him and He is in His body, the two become one. To persecute one is to
persecute the other. This is the mystery of the Body - many members - one body -
so also is the Christ. On his way to Damascus from Jerusalem this Pharisee of
Pharisees who was out to arrest and kill as many Christians as he could-- in one
blinding encounter with the resurrected Christ, learned about what it meant to
be in Christ as members of His body. And as he [Saul or Paul] journeyed, he came
near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:
And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why do
you persecute me? And he said, Who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus
whom you persecute: it is hard for you to kick against the goads. And he
trembling and astonished said, Lord, what will you have me to do? And the Lord
said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told you what you
must do. (Acts 9:3-6 KJ2000)

"I am Jesus whom you persecute!" Wait a minute! Jesus was dead. So was Stephen,
whose execution Paul witnessed. Now he finds out that Jesus is not only alive,
but that the Lord makes no distinction between Himself and His body. From
heaven’s perspective, the very believers in Christ whom Paul was out to kill and
persecute are Christ Himself! This became a lesson well-learned by Paul, who
later wrote, "For even as the body is one and has many members, and all the
members of the body being many, are one body, thus also is the Christ." (1
Corinthians 12:12 Wuest) The Christ and His body are one. Or as the first Adam
said of his bride, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh."
(Genesis 2:23)

Likewise, the ekklesia, the bride of the Last Adam, is "bone of His bone and
flesh of His flesh," spirit of His Spirit--members of His very body. Paul had a
lot to think and pray about during the next three years while he was hidden away
with Christ in the Damascus wilderness. He learned and experienced the reality
of an exchanged life as a viable member of our Lord’s body. He later wrote, "I
am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in
me."

It was out of this encounter and a further time of intensive discourse with the
living Christ in the Spirit over the next three years that Paul had an
increasing revelation of the workings of the cross and the body of Christ. He
saw this more clearly than any other apostle. None of them taught the truth of
the many-membered body of Christ like Paul did. No one emphasized the importance
of every member growing up fully into Christ like Paul did. The other apostles
knew Jesus after the flesh--they walked with Him in the days of his flesh here
upon the earth. But Paul probably knew Jesus after the Spirit better than any of
them. (See Galatians 1:15-19) It was from this experience he wrote, "Therefore
from now on know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ
after the flesh, yet from now on know we him no more." (2 Corinthians 5:16
KJ2000)

Paul also wrote, "For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his
bones." (Ephesians 5:30 KJ2000) One cannot truly know Christ after the Spirit
without discerning His body, because that body is spiritual. That body is His
earthly manifestation. He is His body and His body is Him. So Jesus, the Last
Adam, says of His bride, "You are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh and spirit
of my Spirit." As Paul found out, you can not persecute a member of Christ’s
body without persecuting Him. Paul even said that when one member of Jesus’ body
suffers all the members suffer. You also can’t bless a member of His body
without it blessing all members and Jesus as well. It was He who said, "What you
have done to the least of these, my brethren, you have done unto me." When
Christ’s body is in Him and He is in His body, the two become one. To persecute
one is to persecute the other. This is the mystery of the Body - many members -
one body - so also is the Christ.

Eve was made from one of Adam’s ribs, and Adam said of her, "This is now bone of
my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was
taken out of Man." The bride of the Last Adam, taken out of Him, is bone of His
bone and flesh of His flesh. These two are one. When the Roman spear was thrust
into Jesus’ side, water and blood poured out. This is also what happens in child
birth; lots of water and blood accompany the birth of the child. That day a
bride was born, just as Eve was taken from the side of Adam, bone of his bone,
flesh of his flesh, the bride of Christ was taken from the side of Jesus. In
chapter two of his book, "Bone of His Bone," F. J. Huegel wrote:

We must bear in mind that it is the office of the Holy Spirit to graft the
believer into Christ, as a gardener would graft the branch of a tree into the
main body of another. "By one Spirit are ye all baptized into one body" (1
Corinthians 12:13). Paul dwells upon this grafting process in the eleventh
chapter of his letter to the Romans, where he speaks of the breaking off of
Israel from the Root, Christ, and the grafting in of the Gentiles, to become
partakers of the Root.

True conversion in its deepest aspect is just this. If it fails to result in a
veritable grafting into Christ, it is spurious, and from the nature of the case,
unfruitful. Indeed, we must be born again. We must be rooted into the very Trunk
of the Eternal Godhead. We do not simply strive to imitate a Divine Leader;
exceeding great and precious promises have been left to us whereby we are made
partakers of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4). The Spirit itself beareth witness
with our spirit, that we are children of God: ... heirs of God, and joint-heirs
with Christ (Romans 8:16-17).

It was the Spirit who convicted us of sin, creating in us a deep antipathy for
sin, and a burning desire to be free from its foul dominion. It was the same
Spirit who revealed Christ to us as the only way out: our sin-bearer (John
16:7-15). It is the same Spirit who binds us to Christ, rooting our lives into
His Divine Life, and causing us to grow up into Him who is the Head. Madame
Penn-Lewis, in one of her books, points out that in the Greek the much-loved
John 3:16 conveys a very different meaning from that of our English versions. It
is not simply he that believeth in Christ, but rather he that believeth into
Him, who shall have eternal life. By the co-action of the Spirit (and the Holy
Spirit works so in conjunction with our spirit that we are often altogether
unconscious of His working) we have believed into Christ. He has become our
life. "But he who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:17).
To see how this applies to the Body of Christ, let us look at the larger context
of the passage in Ephesians mentioned above. Paul exhorted men to love their
wives as their own bodies, and then went on to explain the deeper purpose behind
this love mystery. "He that loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever yet
hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the
church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Then
Paul continues to delve into the greater purpose or cause behind it all. "For
this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his
wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak
concerning Christ and the church." (Ephesians 5:28-32 KJ2000) This is indeed a
great mystery! ". . . he that is joined unto [literally, glued to] the Lord is
one spirit." (1 Corinthians 6:17 KJ2000) Ezekiel saw this New Covenant coming; a
covenant not based on our old natures keeping God’s laws, but one based on the
Spirit of God being placed in us. He prophesied,

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: from all your
filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I
give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my
spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my
judgments, and do them. (Ezekiel 36:25-27 KJ2000)

There can be no true joining into Jesus without His first putting a new heart
within us. It is His indwelling Spirit that makes this joining possible. Jesus
told the disciples, For I am come to set a man at variance against his father,
and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that
loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loves son
or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that takes not his cross,
and follows after me, is not worthy of me. He that finds his life shall lose it:
and he that loses his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew 10:35-39 KJ2000)
Being grafted into the Vine requires certain things of us as branches. Like a
branch from a wild olive tree, we are grafted into the Spiritual root and
severed from our natural root. (See Romans 11:13-18) This often causes a rift
between us and those closest to us who are still of the wild olive tree. When a
young man was called by Jesus to follow Him, he asked if He could first bury his
father. To this Jesus replied, "Follow me. Let the dead bury the dead." With
this engrafting also comes the grace to obey our Lord in whatever He requires
from our new hearts filled with love for Him. Who Is Our Identity? But when it
pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace,
to reveal his Son in me... (Galatians 1:15-16 KJ2000) Who is our identity? As we
watch children, we see them dressing up as cowboys or super heroes and running
around acting out the part. As adults we find our identity in sports heroes,
movie stars, even political figures. Just watch grown men and how they act as
they watch a football game. Not so long ago a fan even ran out on the field and
tackled a player on the opposing team! Watch how parents yell and scream at
their kids as they play junior football or in little league. They are trying to
live out their youth again through their own kids. My (Michael’s) father lost a
leg in WWII when he stepped on a land mine in France. He walked with a wooden
leg and had a slight limp as a result. One day as a child I noticed that I also
was walking with a limp, though there was nothing wrong with my leg. My aunt,
his sister, later pointed out to me how I even laughed like him and smiled out
of the corner of my mouth like him. He was my hero and I emulated him in almost
every way. He was my identity. But as Christians who have been crucified to the
world, who should our identity be?

Often Christians emulate a great teacher or a denominational leader. I, Michael,
have known pastors in one denomination that even use the same gestures and voice
intonations as the founder. I found out later that this is partly due to them
being required to watch 5,000 hours of his video taped sermons in seminary. No
wonder! But is that who we are to emulate? Jesus warned His disciples about this
kind of hypocrisy. Eugene Peterson captures it well in his Bible paraphrase, The
Message.

"The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You
won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about
following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take
it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish
veneer. Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can
banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack
animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads,
and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual
fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next.
They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most
prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving
honorary degrees, and getting called ’Doctor’ and ’Reverend.’ Don’t let people
do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher,
and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life,
letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you
what to do. No one else should carry the title of ’Father’; you have only one
Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge
of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them--Christ. Do you want to
stand out? Then step down. Be a servant." (Matthew 23:2-11 MSG)

It should be evident by now that our only Teacher is to be Jesus through His
Spirit, (See John 14:26 and 1 John 2:27) and we are all students in the school
of His abiding Life under our One Teacher. It also should be evident that we are
to emulate only One Father--the one who is Father of us all in heaven and we as
His children are all brethren or siblings. "Don’t ever let anyone call you
`Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are on the same level as
brothers and sisters." (Matthew 23:8 NLT) Not only can we displace Christ of His
proper place in us by taking back control, but as we give others in our lives
the place that belongs to Him alone, this is antichrist. This is the real danger
of calling others our "Teacher" or "Rabbi" or even "Father." We begin to emulate
them and they become the one who is manifest to others through us instead of
Jesus. The title Reverend belongs to the One who has redeemed us. "He sent
redemption unto His people; He hath commanded His covenant for ever; holy and
reverend is His name" (Psalms 111:9 KJ21) We have yet to meet a "man of God" who
has the marks of Jesus in his body and has purchased us with his own blood. The
titles "Vicar" or "Vicar of Christ" mean "Instead of Christ." How blinded by
pride can we get? Our only identity is who we are in Christ! We who have
believed into Christ have also been crucified in Him. We have also been
resurrected in Him and we now live as members of His body in heavenly places in
Him as well as members one of another here on earth. Soon the word identity
should come to our minds as we understand these things and live them out. As
Christians truly born from above, His identity is our identity.

Christ identified with us in our fallen state and so "while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us." He so identified with us that He took upon Himself our
sins, but not only that, He took our sin-prone natures and nailed them to that
tree. The scriptures in both Old and New Testaments point to our
co-identification in Him. In Isaiah 52:1-15 we read, "For you shall not go out
with haste, nor go by flight: for the LORD will go before you; and the God of
Israel will be your rear guard. Behold, my Servant shall deal prudently, he
shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished at you;
so his appearance was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the
sons of men." Jesus has promised to go out before us and to be our rear guard.
He is not only before and behind us, but we are totally in Him. We don’t face
our trials alone because He said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." No
man can get to us except through Him. Have you been rejected, beaten, scarred
and maligned in this life? How much more Him? As many as were astonished at you,
so were they at Him. As many as marred you with their fists and attacks, so did
they to Him. Because of this have any been exalted and extolled above every name
that is named more than Jesus? If we abide in Him in His sufferings, we too will
be exalted in Him. We have not been left here on earth to go it alone. Jesus is
still acquainted with our griefs and sorrows. Notice the verb tense of this
passage. "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we
esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows."

He is still despised and rejected by men. They malign His holiness in movies and
books; they speak lies about Him and mock Him constantly. Is it any wonder that
we get the same treatment as He abides in us? He is still being despised by this
world daily as He makes His abode in us. Our griefs, our rejection and our
sorrows are His and His are ours. Christ is our identity and He identifies with
us. But know this, if all men are speaking well of you, watch out! You are not
abiding in Christ nor His cross. (See Luke 6:25) Has life dealt you a bad hand
and given you a hard row to hoe? So was the life of Christ. He was a tender root
in a parched land being rejected and assaulted on every front. The king sent out
a hit squad to kill Him while He was only an infant. Are you homely or
disfigured or not included among the beautiful people of this world? So was
Jesus. "He has no stately form nor splendor; and when we shall see him, there is
no beauty that we should desire him." Are you homeless and have been cast out of
society? Jesus said, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the
Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." (Luke 9:58 KJ2000) Again, identity! It
is all in the present tense. Has your experience in today’s church been painful
and full of rejection? The chief priests and rulers of His people, the Jews,
rejected Jesus at every turn and finally they plotted to have Him killed out of
pure jealousy. (See John 11:48)

He was not only despised 2000 years ago, but still is! He is still persecuted
when His body, the body of Christ, suffers vehement criticism, violence and harm
by those driven on by the spirit of the red dragon who always tries to devour
the manifestation of the man-child, the end-time body of Christ. Why is there
such similarity in the life that we have been dealt and the one that He had to
live? He identifies in every way with His body, the called out ones, the
ekklesia of God, and our lives manifest His presence. Identity!

Isaiah continues, "Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet
we did esteem him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded
for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of
our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep
have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the LORD has laid
on him the iniquity of us all." In Hebrews we read about Jesus total
identification with us:

Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not a high
priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our weaknesses; but was in all
points tempted like we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto
the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of
need. (Hebrews 4:14-16 KJ2000) In the Old Testament Law, there was a solemn
sacrifice in which two goats were appointed to take away the sins of Israel.
This was a shadow of what Jesus would do. One goat was sacrificed and his blood
sprinkled on the altar. The High Priest then laid his hands on the head of the
other, transferring to him the sins of the people in type. Then the goat was led
out into the wilderness to be left in a desolate place to die. He was the
scapegoat. This a type of the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins.

Men unwittingly do this today. They blame others for their own sins and accuse
others of things they are guilty of themselves. We saw this during the Vietnam
War. Those who obeyed the laws of the land were sent into combat, only to return
home and be blamed for all that went wrong in that war. Yet the elected
officials voted in by the people who were casting blame were the ones giving the
orders and controlling the war. Who was to blame? Who voted them in and kept
them in office? Also, those who called our soldiers "baby killers" went on to
practice and endorse abortion and the killing of millions of unborn children. To
commit a wrong and blame others for it is about the worst form of cowardice, and
the serpent who accuses the saints before God for what he tempts them to do is
the prince of cowards.

"And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death." It is
not only in the life of Jesus we see complete identity with and in us, but also
in His death. He carried all this rejection and suffering, but men thought Him
some kind of terrible sinner, because it had to be God that was smiting Him. He
died the death of a criminal. They could not see that He was suffering for and
with their sins so that all men could be free of sin once and for all, free to
live as the sons of God in His holiness. He was torn so we could be healed. Yes,
there is a physical healing available from God from time to time, but more than
that our very souls, the center of our beings, the motivating force behind all
sin, must be healed most of all. The flesh profits nothing. What is born of the
flesh is still flesh, even if it is healed by God. But what is born from above
is eternal and finds its counterpart in the very Spirit of God the Father.
Everything else is temporal and will be done away with. Jesus said, "Every
plant, which my heavenly Father has not planted, shall be rooted up." The flesh
of man, his old nature, cannot be fixed or improved on. You can take a pig into
your house, bathe him, put perfume behind his ears and even put a pretty ribbon
around his neck and let him eat at the table with you. But has he changed? In
his heart he is still a pig, and as soon as you leave the door ajar, out he
goes, back to his wallow. So is the uncrucified life in even the best of
religious men. Today we see men rising to high stature in their church systems;
they are even made leaders of their evangelical organizations, but what happens?
Those who have not had the deep work of the cross in their lives revert to the
pig within when given a chance. They are caught partaking in adulterous affairs,
homosexuality, pornography, embezzlement of the faithful’s money, you name it.
Just type in "church fraud" or "church corruption" on a web search engine and
you will find hundreds of cases where church leaders have been caught. God is
not impressed with our Bible knowledge, our high positions, or even our great
Christian works. What impresses Him is when He looks into us and sees His own
Son.

Such identity! Someone said, "Jesus loves you the way you are, but too much to
leave you that way." I, Michael, remember singing, "Just as I Am" at many an
altar call. I think that many of us get the idea that since we confessed our
sins and made a public show of our repentance, we get to go on just as we are
and live life in the same selfish ways as before. We have our "fire insurance"
paid for and don’t have to worry any more about hell. This is not the "so great
a salvation" that Paul was speaking of. Salvation is being saved not only from
our sins, but being saved from ourselves, from the very man of sin that abides
within, and being placed into the Son of Righteousness, the very Son of God.
"And as we have borne a resemblance to the earthy one [man], let us see to it
that we also bear a resemblance [image] to the heavenly One." (1 Corinthians
15:49 WNT) Just as Jesus could say to Philip, "If you have seen me you have seen
the Father," so can we who are in Jesus say, "If you have seen me you have seen
Christ." Those born from above have Him as their sole identity, not themselves
or their great works.


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  CHAPTER 4: 04 - CHAPTER 4: IDENTIFICATION IN JESUS' WALK
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Chapter 4: Identification in Jesus’ Walk By Michael Clark and George Davis

It is all so contrary to our human natures to be like Jesus. The harder we try,
the worse we do. We set our teeth and swear to do better the next time, all to
no avail. Just when we think we are doing pretty well at being a Christian, we
read Jesus’ words that to just hate a person is the same as murder, to covet
what another has is the same as stealing, and to just lust after a woman is the
same as adultery. Failure to be a Christian (i.e., living as Jesus lived) seems
inevitable. And yet, that is the point. The first and most important lesson
learned in this walk is that we cannot walk it!

Jesus taught His disciples a higher way than just knowing His words and
parroting them.

Whosoever comes to me, and hears my sayings, and does them, I will show you to
whom he is like: He is like a man who built a house, and dug deep, and laid the
foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon
that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that
hears, and does not, is like a man that without a foundation built a house upon
the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it
fell; and the ruin of that house was great. (Luke 6:47-49 KJ2000)

It takes both hearing and doing the sayings (the Logos) of Jesus if we are to
withstand the tests that life throws at us. True doing comes from the working of
the abiding Christ within-- a house that is built upon the Rock, not the sands
of self effort and religious works. We are to love our enemies, do good to those
who spitefully use us, and speak well of those who speak out against us just as
Jesus commanded. How are we to do this? Are we truly thankful in all things that
come our way as Paul said we should be? Do we live like we believe that all
things work together for our good?

It is all so contrary to our human natures to be like Jesus. The harder we try,
the worse we do. We set our teeth and swear to do better the next time, all to
no avail. Just when we think we are doing pretty well at being a Christian, we
read Jesus’ words that to just hate a person is the same as murder, to covet
what another has is the same as stealing, and to just lust after a woman is the
same as adultery. Failure to be a Christian (i.e., living as Jesus lived) seems
inevitable. And yet, that is the point. The first and most important lesson
learned in this walk is that we cannot walk it!

How will we ever become "more than overcomers" and lights in a darkened world?
As we look around Christendom today, it seems that we, the salt of the earth,
have lost our saltiness and have been cast out to be trodden under the feet of
men. This has been called the post-Christian era as we watch the rise of radical
Islam on all fronts and the decline of a moral church leadership. So what is
missing, and where has our mission in the earth failed? In Romans chapter 7,
Paul seems beyond despair. He says that the things that he would do as a
follower of Christ, he finds no strength to do them and the things that he would
not do, he finds himself easily doing these. He finally concludes that in
himself, that is, in his flesh dwells no good thing. He agrees with Jesus that,
"none are good, only the Father in heaven is good." So did he throw-up his hands
in defeat? No, he kept going until he found the answer. "O wretched man that I
am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus
Christ our Lord." (Romans 7:24-25 a KJ2000) In the closing verse of Romans
7:1-25, Paul mentions two laws that had held him in a constant state of
condemnation and defeat--the law of God and the law of sin. The law of sin is
served with the flesh. The law of God is served with the mind. Both are weak and
unable to walk as God demands. Paul, however, is about to introduce another law,
a higher law that is served by another faculty in man. Man is comprised of body
(flesh) soul (mind, will and emotion) and spirit. Paul is preparing to introduce
the reader to a higher law—the law of the Spirit of life. It is not enough to
serve God with the mind. That leads to the divided state or condemnation
described by Paul as having the desire for good with no ability to carry it out.
The good news of the New Covenant is Christ in you! Christ living! Christ
obeying! Christ loving! The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the
liberating law. It frees us from the law of sin and death, opening the way to
true worship, in Spirit and in truth. Paul found that exchanged life. He
continues:

There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2
KJ2000)

Again we see this phrase, "in Christ Jesus." The life of the Spirit is found in
Christ Jesus. How important is this two letter word! In Christ Jesus is our
victory. We believe into Him and there we abide. Paul wrote, "Faith comes by
hearing and hearing comes by the word of God." He also wrote that even the faith
that we have is of Jesus Christ--it is His faith. It stands to reason that our
understanding of spiritual things is from Jesus the Word of God as well. To the
Corinthians Paul wrote, "All things are yours and you are Christ’s and Christ is
God’s." We will always fail in and of ourselves, but if we are hidden in Christ
as He is in the Father, we can’t fail. The secret of a fruitful Christian life
is a twofold abiding. Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches: He that
abides in me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit: for without me you
can do nothing." (John 15:5 KJ2000) This speaks of the complete inundation of
Christ’s sanctifying presence in our spirits souls and bodies. The hope of
fruitfulness is our life in Him and He in us.The hope of glory is Him in us. We
fall short of His glory when Christ in us is not our hope of glory. We fail
because we trust in our own strength and righteousness. Paul wrote, "And he
[Jesus] said unto me, My grace is sufficient for you: for My strength is made
perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses,
that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in
weaknesses, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for
Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9-10
KJ2000) In Romans 8:1-39 we read about a great victory and a greater salvation.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to
them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he
also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be
the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he
also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified,
them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God is for
us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:28-31 KJ2000) For those who are hidden in
Christ, neither Satan nor their flesh gets the last word. In Romans 7:1-25 we
read about defeat, but in Romans 8:1-39 we read about a great victory. What is
the difference? In Romans 7:1-25, the personal pronouns of I, me and my are used
forty-seven times. In Romans 8:1-39, they are only found three times and these
are not pointing to Paul, but to Christ. Jesus Christ and the Spirit are
mentioned over twenty times in Romans 8:1-39 and only twice in Romans 7:1-25.
Paul is demonstrating to us the utter hopelessness of trying to obey God and the
commands of Jesus in and of ourselves, but the total triumph we have by
abandoning the flesh and walking after the Spirit. If you want to see if a
person is truly a triumphant Christian, just count the number of times they use
personal pronouns in their speech and letters and then compare it to how often
they speak of Christ and the Spirit. "Out of the abundance of the heart, the
mouth speaks." If a person is full of themselves, it will show. Love is the
utter absence of personal ambition. It selflessly desires what is best for
others. "Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his friends."
This is the love of Jesus who died on the cross and who continues to live in us.

Yes, Jesus takes away our sins. John wrote, "And he is the propitiation for our
sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John
2:2 KJ2000) But unlike modern preachers who mention only this part of our
salvation, keeping us forever weak against the wiles of the devil, John does not
stop there. He continues, "And by this we know that we know him, if we keep his
commandments. He that says, I know him, and keeps not his commandments, is a
liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him verily is
the love of God perfected: by this we know that we are in him. He that says he
abides in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." (1 John 2:3-6
KJ2000)

You might read this and conclude that it is our duty to imitate Christ by always
asking ourselves in each situation, "What would Jesus do?" But are we to be mere
imitations of the real thing, like some kind of cheap knock-off? Are we to be
content with being a plastic Jesus mounted on the dashboard of Christianity? So
many Christians today are like a toy made in China that was advertised before
last Christmas. It was a Jesus doll that can be activated and it speaks Jesus’
words out of the gospels. It came complete with a little New Testament, all for
$300. What a deal! But is that how the world sees Christians? I am afraid it is.
Just pull their strings and out comes a Bible verse.

"And by this we know that we know Him..." Does keeping His commandments mean
that we scour the New Testament and make a new list of commandments to take the
place of those in the Old? How do we keep His word? Later in this same chapter
John wrote, "I have written unto you, young men, because you are strong, and the
word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one." Jesus is the
Word of God. John makes this very clear in the first chapter of His gospel. It
is the abiding Christ that keeps His commandments in us. It is the life of Jesus
as our life that gives us the power to do what is right by filling us with
Himself and His love. Against love there is no law. (See Galatians 5:22-25) In
First John we read the phrase, "He that says he abides in Him ought to walk even
as He walked." The translators arbitrarily put the last word in the past tense.
It should read, "even as He walks." Jesus still walks! He still conducts His
life in us! To the woman that was caught in adultery and about to be stoned to
death whom Jesus rescued, He said, "’Woman, where are those your accusers? Has
no man condemned you?’ She said, ’No man, Lord.’ And Jesus said unto her,
’Neither do I condemn you: go, and sin no more.’ Then spoke Jesus again unto
them, saying, ’I am the light of the world: he that follows me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life.’" (John 8:10-12 KJ2000) Later to the
Jews Jesus said, "While you have light, believe in [into] the light, that you
may be the children of light." (John 12:36 KJ2000) This word walk in the
previous verse is the same Greek word as the one in 1 John 2:6. Jesus did not
put this sin-prone woman under a new law. "Go and sin no more" was a
pronouncement of grace. What He said to that woman that day was, "Go and sin no
more for you have me and need no longer to walk in darkness, because I am the
Light of the world and your Light of life!" We will have the correct walk with
our Father if we believe into the light of Jesus Christ.

All too often the translators and church doctrines make it seem like we have a
relationship with the Christ who died and never rose again! Thus we read, "He
that says he abides in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." We
are to walk even as He walks within us. We are not left alone to follow His
example in our own strength. Satan would love nothing more than to have
Christians cut-off from the ever present life of Christ, trying to be righteous
without Him. When Jesus was about to be crucified He told the disciples, "I will
never leave you nor forsake you [leave you behind]."


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  CHAPTER 5: 05 - CHAPTER 5: CHRIST CRUCIFIED - THE LOGIC OF GOD
========================================================================

Chapter 5: Christ Crucified - the Logic of God By Michael Clark and George Davis

Nothing so vividly captures this principle of the exchanged life as the cross.
The cross was an instrument of death and shame. It was despised by the Jews, in
whose law it was written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." ...In spite
of the pain, suffering and open shame of Jesus on the cross, this act remains at
the center of all God’s dealings with men. IN THE beginning [before all time]
was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself.
He was present originally with God. All things were made and came into existence
through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into
being. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. (John 1:1-4 AMP) For
the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ
crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But
unto them who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the
wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:22-24 KJ2000) As in nature, the way to life in
the kingdom of God is through death. Jesus said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls
into the ground and dies, it abides alone." We see a vivid picture of this when
Israel crossed the Jordan River to enter the land of promise. Joshua put twelve
stones (one for each tribe) in the middle of the river in a figure of baptism
into death. Then they took twelve more stones from the bottom of the river bed
and placed them on the bank of the river in the Promised Land as a sign of
resurrection life, free of their old lives of unbelief in the wilderness. Then
the waters closed over the first stones as a sign that they were to leave their
stony hearts and the reproach of Egypt behind them to enter a new life. (See
Romans 6:3-11 and Joshua 4:9) In Hosea 6:2 we also see this principle of death
overcome by life just as Jesus overcame His own death and rose again on the
third day. "After two days will he revive us. On the third day he will raise us
up, and we will live before him." Yet, this promise is to us and not Jesus
alone! We died in Christ, but we also rose again in Him. After two days, our
Father revived us when He revived Jesus. Now we have been raised up and sit in
heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We live before our Father in heaven! Can we
grasp that? Just before He went to the cross Jesus told the disciples,

Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more; but you see me: because I
live, you shall live also. At that day you shall know that I am in my Father,
and you in me, and I in you. (John 14:19-20 KJ2000) The prophecy of Hosea was
fulfilled almost 2000 years ago. We who are Christ’s live in Him and He in us.
He has risen from death in us and we together with Him are in our Father. (Note:
In a sense this prophesy will be fulfilled again in the ekklesia of God rising
again from its religiously imposed death when it turns to following the voice of
God once again, "After two days I will revive you and in the third day I will
raise you up and you shall dwell in my sight." Many prophecies about Jesus also
apply to those who live in Christ as His bride.)

Nothing so vividly captures this principle of the exchanged life as the cross.
The cross was an instrument of death and shame. It was despised by the Jews, in
whose law it was written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree . . ." Even
the Romans who loved the brutality of the coliseum abhorred the gore of the
cross. The Roman statesman, Marcus Cicero, wrote, "Let the very name of the
cross be far away not only from the body of a Roman citizen, but even from his
thoughts, his eyes, his ears." It was forbidden for Romans to be crucified
because it was considered the death of a slave--a description that certainly
fits the servant-hood of Jesus Christ. His whole life was in service to His
Master, the Father, and finally to and for all who would be saved by faith into
Him. In spite of the pain, suffering and open shame of Jesus on the cross, this
act remains at the center of all God’s dealings with men. The Word of the cross
was central to the redemptive purposes of God. So much so that Paul wrote, "For
the word (logos) of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us
who are saved it is the power of God." (1 Corinthians 1:18) The King James
Version reads, "For the preaching (logos) of the cross is to them that perish
foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God." This is
somewhat misleading, because the Greek word logos is much broader in scope and
meaning than the word preaching conveys. When you hear the word preaching, what
comes to mind? Do you envision a man standing behind a pulpit expounding on a
Bible text? Although the Greek word logos means "a word," the emphasis is not
upon the utterance itself, but upon the inward thought, reckoning or reason
behind the utterance. The logos of the cross is the logic or reason of the
cross. But more, logos is the Divine thought, the heavenly principle of life,
power, witness and growth in the kingdom of God. When our Father said to Jesus
before the dawn of man, "Let us make man in our image and in our likeness," He
had all this in mind. Jesus, the Word, is God’s answer to man’s defects and
man’s imperfection. This is the power in Paul’s words, "I am determined to know
nothing, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." The prologue of John’s gospel
reads, "In the beginning there was the Word (logos). The Word (logos - not
preaching) was with God, and the Word (logos) was God. He [the Word] was with
God in the beginning. All things were made by him, and nothing was made without
him. In him there was life, and that life was the light of all people. The Light
shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it." (John 1:1-5
NCV) Jesus was in the beginning with the Father. Jesus is the very Word of God
that comes forth from His mouth with power. Everything was made by Christ as God
spoke it into existence. Jesus is the Life of God spoken into creation. Jesus is
that Light that God made to shine into the darkness that resulted from satanic
chaos and rebellion from where the Genesis accounts starts, "darkness (Heb.
choshec –chaos, destruction, wickedness) was upon the face of the deep." Jesus
is the power of God unto the salvation of the world. He is still overpowering
the darkness and wickedness in the hearts of fallen man as the Logos of God
speaks into their hearts. The translation of the New American Standard Version
of our verse in First Corinthians comes the closest. "For the word of the cross
is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is
the power of God." The author of Hebrews wrote, "In many and various ways God
spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has
spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom
also he created the world." (Hebrews 1:1-2, RSV) The prophets spoke about the
Word, but Jesus came as that Word, the very Oracle of the Father. Jesus is the
Logos, the Word, Father’s Divine thought. He is the Word of God who is alive and
powerful, able to separate soul from spirit, bone from marrow, discerning the
thoughts and intentions of men. He is God’s final and ultimate word from the
beginning of creation unto the end, the Alpha and the Omega! Jesus is the sum
total of divine wisdom.


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  CHAPTER 6: 06 - CHAPTER 6: IDENTIFICATION IN THE CROSS OF CHRIST
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Chapter 6: Identification in the Cross of Christ By Michael Clark and George
Davis So how does this happen? How do we get out of ourselves, that old Adamic
nature, and into the very nature of the Son of God? God’s surgical tool for this
is the cross. Suffering and the glory of God go hand in hand. Peter wrote,
"Since therefore Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves
likewise with the same mind: for he that has suffered in the flesh has ceased
from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the
lusts of men, but to the will of God." (1 Peter 4:1-2 KJ2000)

Paul wrote, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in [into] us."
(Romans 8:18 KJ2000) Regarding the mystery of the cross and suffering Madame
Guyon wrote in a letter to another believer:

I cannot but wonder at the virtue that lies in suffering; we are worth nothing
without the cross. I tremble and am in an agony while it lasts, and all my
conviction of its salutary effects vanish under the torture, but when it is
over, I look back at it with admiration, and am ashamed that I bore it so ill.
This experience of my folly is a deep lesson of wisdom to me. Whatever may be
the state of your sick friend, and whatever the issue of her disease, she is
blessed in being so quiet under the hand of God. If she die, she dies to the
Lord; if she live, she lives to Him. Either the cross or death, says St.
Theresa. Nothing is beyond the necessity of the cross but the established
kingdom of God; when we bear it in love, it is his kingdom begun, with which we
must remain satisfied while it is his pleasure. You have need of the cross as
well as I. The faithful Giver of every good gift distributes them to each of us
with his own hand, blessed be his name! Ah! how good it is to be chastened for
our profit!

We should point out here that asceticism is neither the self-denial nor the
suffering that Jesus set forth as a condition for following Him. (Matthew 16:24)
True self-denial denies both self-righteousness and self-torment. We have all
seen pictures of faithful Shiite Muslims marching down the street in unison
while they flog their own backs with chains in a public display as penance for
their sins, but this act of asceticism has no power to remove sin. It has no
more power to prevent its return than pulling up on your own boot straps. A
public display of our piety only serves to feed the flesh and make it stronger
with religious pride.

Self-righteousness must be crucified before we can be found in Christ. As long
as we labor to be righteous by our own energies, we cannot know the
righteousness that is of God. Paul wrote, But what things were gain to me, those
I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but rubbish, that I may win
Christ, And be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the
law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is
of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the
fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any
means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. (Php 3:7-11 KJ2000) The
things mentioned here by Paul that he had come to count as rubbish, were not
gross sins of the flesh. He was not referring to smoking, chewing or going with
the girls that do. So what were these things? The answer is in the previous
three verses, Php 3:4-6. Here we see that confidence in the flesh is extremely
religious in nature. "Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any
other man thinks that he has reasons he might trust in the flesh, I more:
Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a
Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal,
persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law,
blameless." Paul’s confidence in the flesh and those things that once
distinguished him above his fellows as righteous and blameless are the very
things he came to despise as worthless. All those things that were gain to him
are now viewed as hindrances to be discarded for a greater prize. Religious
prowess and exercise only builds up pride and separates us from God, for He
resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

". . . that I may win Christ . . . be found in him . . . That I may know him,
and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings . . . If
by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."

We cannot stand in our own righteousness and be found in Him. These are mutually
exclusive. The things that are gain to us must be counted loss for Christ. If we
are to win Christ, be found in Him, and know Him, we cannot have our own
righteousness, which is of the law. Only through the righteousness that is of
God by faith—the righteousness that is through the faith/faithfulness of
Christ—can we stand. Only then can we know the power of his resurrection, and
the fellowship of his sufferings, the sufferings that come upon us as we
fellowship in Him. Jesus told His disciples, "If the world hates you, you know
that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would
love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of
the world, therefore the world hates you." (John 15:18-19 KJ2000)

How are we delivered from self-righteousness to a living faith in the faith and
faithfulness of Christ? How do we move from a law-based righteousness to a
Christ-based righteousness? We find the answer in Romans chapter seven. Paul
begins: For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband so
long as he lives; but if the husband dies, she is loosed from the law of her
husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she is married to another man, she
shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband dies, she is free from that
law; so that she is no adulteress, though she is married to another man.
Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law by the body of
Christ; that you should be married to another, even to him who is raised from
the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the
flesh, the passions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to
bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, being dead
to that in which we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and
not in the oldness of the letter. (Romans 7:2-6 KJ2000)

Chapters 6 through 8 of Romans tell of our death, burial and resurrection with
Christ. In Romans 6:7 we discover that only he who has died is free from sin. In
chapter 7 Paul continues to explain the extent of this death as it applies to
the law. To be free from the old husband (the law) and the righteousness which
is of the law, someone has to die. The death that is required is our own as we
identify in Christ’s death. In chapter 8, with strong praise to God, Paul
describes that resurrection life that is known only to men rescued from death
into the resurrected life of Jesus.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For
the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of
sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not
do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he
condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might
be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the
Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4 RSV)

Death to the old man in us is the answer. In 2 Corinthians we read Paul saying,
"For as the sufferings of Christ abound in [into] us, so our consolation also
abounds by Christ." (2 Corinthians 1:5 KJ2000) Later he wrote, " For we who live
are always delivered unto [into] death for Jesus’ sake that the life also of
Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." (2 Corinthians 4:11 KJ2000)
We are delivered into Jesus’ death so that Christ’s life may become our life.
Paul again wrote about this death saying, "Yes, we ourselves have had the answer
of death in ourselves, so that our hope might not be in ourselves, but in God
who is able to give life to the dead." (2 Corinthians 1:9 BBE) Death is the
answer to life filled with sin and falling short of the glory of God. Paul could
unselfishly say without remorse,

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in
despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always
bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of
Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we who live are always delivered
unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest
in our mortal flesh. So then death works in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians
4:8-12 KJ2000) The ever present cross of Christ and suffering are the antidote
to the flesh and bring about the release of the Spirit of God within us and life
in others. Peter understood this when he wrote, "Since therefore Christ has
suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he
that has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin; That he no longer should
live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of
God." (1 Peter 4:1-2 KJ2000) The cross is God’s pruning instrument. It pares
away everything in us that does not produce fruit unto Him. Jesus put it this
way, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me
that bears not fruit he takes away: and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes
it, that it may bring forth more fruit." (John 15:1-2 KJ2000) Our Father prunes
us with sufferings sent into our lives from His loving hands so we can bring
forth eternal fruit unto His glory. In our culture we do all we can to avoid
discomfort and we do our best to run from suffering. Many religious people blame
all suffering on the devil. We have a pain and we run to the medicine cabinet or
the doctor. We avoid confrontation and discomfort at all cost. There is a pill
for every ailment, most treating the symptoms without curing the disease. We buy
insurance policies to hedge us in against anything that can strip us of our
wealth. We seek comfort at all cost, yet this was not the way of the early
church. They were witnesses of Christ’s life in them regardless of the cost and
counted it all joy to suffer for Him. (see Acts 5:41) James wrote:

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from
all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open
and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let
it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any
way. If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help.
You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. (James
1:2-5 MSG)

Trials are the work of the cross in our lives. They deal death to our old
natures and should be embraced because of it. Is your husband or wife hard to
live with and doesn’t seem to appreciate you the way they should? Then throw
yourself on the mercy of God and seek His wisdom on how you should handle it. Is
your boss an ogre that never seems to appreciate your work, no matter how hard
you try? Then cheer up, your self and ego are being crucified and you are being
taught not to find your worth in what you do, but rather in who Christ is within
you. Are you handicapped and bed ridden? Know that when you are weak, Christ is
being made strong within you as you offer your sufferings up to Him as a living
sacrifice.

Regarding suffering and pain C. S. Lewis wrote,

"We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told,
’Blessed are they that mourn.’"

"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it,
not without pain but without stain."

"But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse
a deaf world."

Even Paul the apostle was warned by Jesus that following Christ would involve
suffering. Jesus said of Paul, "For I will show him what great things he must
suffer for my name’s sake." It seems that this hard-headed Pharisee needed God’s
megaphone to rouse him out of his self-righteous deafness. Many of us are just
as deaf to the wishes of God in our lives and need suffering to wake us up. The
great missionary who died a martyr in Tibet, Sadhu Sundar Singh, wrote,

"A newborn child has to cry, for only in this way will his lungs expand. A
doctor once told me of a child who could not breathe when it was born. In order
to make it breathe the doctor gave it a slight blow. The mother must have
thought the doctor cruel. But he was really doing the kindest thing possible. As
with newborn children the lungs are contracted, so are our spiritual lungs. But
through suffering God strikes us in love. Then our lungs expand and we can
breathe and pray." In the letter to the Hebrews the writer tells us that
suffering has a divine purpose and is a sign of a healthy relationship with our
loving Father.

Looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith; who for the joy that
was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the
right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such hostility of
sinners against himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. You have
not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And you have forgotten the
exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children, My son, despise not the
chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked of him: For whom the Lord
loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure
chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father
chastens not? But if you be without chastisement, of which all are partakers,
then are you illegitimate children, and not sons. Furthermore we have had
fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not
much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they
verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our
profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the
present seems to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yields the
peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are trained by it. (Hebrews
12:2-11 KJ2000) When we are chastened by the Lord and suffer in this life it is
because we are His sons. Even in this, Jesus is the pattern Son. In Hebrews we
read, "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he
suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto
all them that obey him." (Hebrews 5:8-9 KJ2000) What makes us think that we are
above our Christ and can avoid persecution and suffering? What makes us think
that we will learn how to be obedient sons of God any other way?

Jesus told His disciples what they could expect. And you shall be hated of all
men for my name’s sake: but he that endures to the end shall be saved. But when
they persecute you in this city, flee into another: for verily I say unto you,
You shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man comes.
The disciple is not above his teacher, nor the servant above his lord. It is
enough for the disciple that he be as his teacher, and the servant as his lord.
If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they
call them of his household? (Matthew 10:22-25 KJ2000)

It is enough that we who are His disciples and servants be as our Teacher and
Lord. This is the high calling of the sons of God. "Behold what manner of love
the Father has given unto us, that we should be called the sons of God."

Suffering in this life is inevitable. It can’t be avoided. We can hedge our bets
and surround ourselves in opulence, but even then suffering breaks through. It
is the mercy of God that it does. What is important, though, is how we react to
these events for how we react determines whether they will have attached to them
a far greater weight of eternal glory. Our verse in Hebrews twelve is worth
repeating, "All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous;
yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have
been exercised thereby." (Hebrews 12:11 WEB) Oswald Chambers said, "We all know
people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to
live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It
only perfects one type of person... the one who accepts the call of God in
Christ Jesus."

Chip Brogden wrote:

It is not a question of God allowing or not allowing things to happen. It is
part of living. Some things we do to ourselves, other things we do to each
other. Our Father knows about every bird which falls to the ground, but He does
not always prevent it from falling. What are we to learn from this? That our
response to what happens is more important than what happens. Here is a mystery:
one man’s experience drives him to curse God, while another man’s identical
experience drives him to bless God. Your response to what happens is more
important than what happens. As Joy, the wife of C. S. Lewis, was facing death
due to terminal bone cancer, Lewis was angry with God because of her suffering
and the fact that he would be losing her. He had been able to write about
suffering with that English stiff upper lip, but when it hit him square on in
the suffering and loss of his wife, that was another matter. They had many a
joyful time together before she had a relapse and became totally bed ridden. To
his anger she said, "The pain then is part of the happiness now. That is the
deal."

Suffering in our lives has a greater purpose than just being an interruption of
our temporal happiness. To the Romans Paul wrote: Being therefore justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom we
also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in
hope of the glory of God. Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering works perseverance; and perseverance, proven character;
and proven character, hope: and hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love
has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
(Romans 5:1-5 WEB)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: 07 - CHAPTER 7: THE CROSS OF CHRIST, OUR CROSS
========================================================================

Chapter 7: The Cross of Christ, Our Cross By Michael Clark and George Davis When
God caused His only Son to be born of a woman into this world, He broke the
barrier between God and man, between the holiness and purity of the Father and
the fallen weakness of sin controlled humanity. The Son of God became the Son of
Man. Through His life, death and resurrection Jesus led the way and "took [our]
captivity captive and gave gifts unto men." As a result of having our captivity
to sin and Satan broken, we have received the greatest gift of all, the freedom
we have been given by the Father placing us into His Son, Jesus Christ. Anything
short of this is to remain in our bondage and sin as "only human." There is only
one cure for this kind of double minded and unstable Christian that says he
believes in Jesus, yet lives in the pleasures of this world system, and that is
the personal cross. Jesus stipulated that taking up one’s cross is a requirement
for following Him. (Mark 8:34, Mark 10:31)

How often do we hear the phrase in our churches, "Jesus paid the price for your
sins so you don’t have to." In a sense this is true, but is that all that our
salvation means to us—a free ride into la-la land where we live happily ever
after? There is much more to salvation than this. Are we to continue living in
lives filled with self will, isolated from the fullness of the abiding presence
of the life of God? So what work does the cross of Christ do in us as members of
His body? It severs us from the world and all its carnality through death. Paul
wrote, "But God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."
(Galatians 6:14 KJ2000) So are we left in death as the body of Jesus was left to
rot in that tomb? No, life in Christ overcomes death just as it did in Him. He
told the disciples, "This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down
my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it
down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right
to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father." (John
10:17-18 MSG) As we lay down our lives, we also are raised again in newness of
life. He lay down His life and even in that state of death, He took it up again.
Death had no power over Him. So it is in us as we lay down our lives in the
world and take up our lives in Christ. With Paul we too can say, "For me to live
is Christ."

Jesus went on to say, "And he that takes not his cross, and follows after me, is
not worthy of me. He that finds his life shall lose it: and he that loses his
life for my sake shall find it." (Matthew 10:38-39 KJ2000) The work of the cross
within us is designed to weaken our natural man until we are totally given over
to the life of Jesus in us. Jesus said, "The flesh profits nothing." Paul said,
"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwells no good thing...." (Romans
7:18 KJ2000) Apart from Christ we can do nothing of eternal value. We should
rejoice in the cross we have to bear for the joy that is set before us. (See
Hebrews 12:2)

Many of today’s Christians, like defiant spoiled children, would rather avoid
the chastening hand of their Father and so they avoid this passage of scripture,
too. I, Michael, once knew a brother who had a son named Danny. Danny was acting
up and being disobedient one day and Dave said, "Danny go get my spoon" (for he
was going to paddle the boy). Danny got the spoon and hugging it said, "It is my
spoon, too." This is the attitude in a son that warms the heart of a loving
father.

How often have we heard the saying, "It is a great life if you don’t weaken"?
Paul saw his weakness as a God thing and something given him by Jesus, And he
[Jesus] said unto me, "My grace is sufficient for you: for my strength is made
perfect in weakness." Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my
weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure
in weaknesses, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for
Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong" (2 Corinthians 12:9-10
KJ2000). But God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
(Galatians 6:14 KJ2000)

God opposes the proud. He puts those who are His through many trials to get them
where they no longer put faith in their own strength and abilities so He can
give grace to them in their humility. We are made into His perfection in our
weakness. We also become instruments of grace to others in our trials. Paul
wrote of his own walk saying,

Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also
of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we who live are always
delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made
manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death works in us, but life in you. (2
Corinthians 4:10-12 KJ2000) Is our momentary comfort so important that we are
willing to sacrifice our eternity for it? Jesus said, "He that loves his life
shall lose it; and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto
[into] life eternal" (John 12:25 KJ2000) Straighten Up and Die Right! In Hebrews
we read, "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the
judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them
that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto [into]
salvation." (Hebrews 9:27-28 KJ2000) As it is in Him, so it is in those of His
body who are in Him. Our first death has already taken place in Jesus on the
cross. There is no second death for those who are in Christ. "He that has an
ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches; He that overcomes
shall not be hurt of the second death." (Revelation 2:11 KJ2000) Our judgment is
already in the works. We are being set in order, which is what judgment means.
Jesus not only bore our sins on the cross, He bore us. In Him we first descended
and then ascended, leaving all our load of sin behind. He bore us not only on
the cross, but bore us into everlasting life in Him. "Blessed and holy is he
that has part in the first resurrection: on such the second death has no power,
but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a
thousand years." (Revelation 20:6 KJ2000) The real shocker is that as the cross
of Christ goes ever deeper, it not only separates us from our families who are
outside of Him, but it eventually separates us from religious sects and
denominations we once belonged to. This is what Paul was alluding to when he
wrote, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision [the religion of the Jews]
avails anything, nor uncircumcision [the religions of the Gentiles], but a new
creation." (Galatians 6:15) We are cut-off from everything that is carnal and of
the flesh; from all the divisions of Christendom that have been built by and are
under the control of man as we are made into His new creation in the Spirit.
Does this mean that we can’t have Christian fellowship? Not at all, but what is
true fellowship? John wrote in His first letter to the saints,

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do
not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us
from all sin. (1 John 1:6-7 KJ2000)

It is all about walking with Him, the Light that lights every man who receives
Him. (See John 1:9-12) True fellowship is reserved for those who walk in His
light together as He is in the light, not those who belong to the same religious
club.

First death must come to our old man of sin, then resurrection life in Christ.
In this alone can we walk in the One who is the Light of men. In Paul’s letter
to the Romans we read,

Know you not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were
baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death:
that just as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even
so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him
in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his
resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the
body of sin might be destroyed, that we should no longer serve sin. For he that
is dead is freed from sin. Now if we are dead with Christ, we believe that we
shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no
more; death has no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin
once: but in that he lives, he lives unto God. Likewise reckon you also
yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. (Romans 6:3-11 KJ2000) [Emphasis added] The translation above does not
do verse eight any justice, nor do most other translations. The Greek does not
put our lives, after sharing His death, into the future (although this is true),
but rather the present. The verse should read, "Now if we are dead with Christ,
we believe that we also live -- co-survive – with Him." Vincent’s word studies
says: Shall live with (συνζήσομεν)

Participation of the believer’s sanctified life with the life of Christ rather
than participation in future glory, which is not the point emphasized. Compare
Romans 6:11.

Verses 10 and 11 get it right. "For in that he [Jesus] died, he died unto sin
once: but in that he lives, he lives unto God. Likewise reckon you also
yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through [in] Jesus
Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:10-11 KJ2000) All too often, the teachings of
Christendom relegate the most important things that apply to our lives in Christ
either into the future or to the past. We should now be walking "alive unto God
in Jesus Christ our Lord" as the original text describes. In Romans 6:1-23, we
see that the baptism of one who has believed into Christ is no mere sacrament
where our outer self gets soaked and prayed over by some holy man. It is to be
an outward sign to the world that we are baptized into Christ’s death and cut
off from the world, but not that alone. We are raised up out of our watery
graves just as Jesus was raised up into the glory of the Father that we might
walk here on earth in His life. "Now if we are dead with Christ, we believe that
we also live with him." This is the message of the cross which Paul preached --
co-crucifixion to sin and co-resurrection into the life of Christ from where we
can boldly say, "[He] has raised us up together, and made us sit together in
heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:6 KJ2000) "I am crucified with
Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life
which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20 KJ2000) Yes, our lives are now
hidden in Christ’s faith and in His life. (See Colossians 3:3) This is the true
gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what Paul meant when he said, "I determined not
to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." (1
Corinthians 2:2 KJ2000) To know the crucified Christ in co-crucifixion is also
to know a co-survival in His life. When we stray from this simplicity and start
teaching about other things, it gives place for the flesh and our carnal minds
to get into arguments and divisions. There is no place for endless theological
debates and receiving one another in doubtful disputes when the members of
Christ’s body are dead to the flesh and the lusts thereof. They have found the
sufficiency of Christ both in His death and resurrected life of the Spirit. They
walk in the light as He is in the light. And such confidence are we having
through the Christ towards God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to
evaluate anything, this evaluation originating from ourselves, but our
sufficiency has its source in God who also made us sufficient as those who
minister a testament, new in quality, not of the letter but of the Spirit, for
the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive. (2 Corinthians 3:4-6 Wuest)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: 08 - CHAPTER 8: IDENTIFICATION INTO HIS GLORY
========================================================================

Chapter 8: Identification into His Glory By Michael Clark and George Davis The
ministry of Christ, the Logos of God, is to take us up into the Glory of God,
living glorious lives in the glorious riches of the living Christ within. We
have been given the life of the Son and that same relationship that He has with
the Father. It is all ours. This is the glory of the Son as we share in Him the
glory of God.

Paul wrote to the Colossians:

I became its [the Church’s] servant according to God’s commission that was given
to me for you, so that I might fulfill the ministry of the word [Logos] of God.
This secret was hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been
revealed to his saints, to whom God wanted to make known the glorious riches of
this secret among the gentiles-which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
(Colossians 1:25-27 ISV) The ministry of Christ, the Logos of God, is to take us
up into the Glory of God, living glorious lives in the glorious riches of the
living Christ within. We have been given the life of the Son and that same
relationship that He has with the Father. It is all ours. This is the glory of
the Son as we share in Him the glory of God. Paul wrote to the church at
Thessalonica, But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren
beloved of the Lord, because God has from the beginning chosen you to [into]
salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: To which
he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of [into] the glory of our Lord
Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 KJ2000) When Jesus was praying before He
was crucified, He prayed, "Father, glorify your name." To this our Father
answered, "I have glorified it and will glorify it again." Then we read: The
people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others
said, An angel spoke to him. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not
because of me, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall
the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men unto me. (John 12:29-32 KJ2000) The voice came for our sake!
Father glorified His name first in Jesus, His obedient Son and He has been and
is glorifying it again in the ekklesia, the saints of God as they yield up their
lives to Him. The world has and is being judged (set right or made just). How?
By the power of God casting down the accuser of the brethren and making way for
Christ to abide in us as sons of God. When Jesus was lifted up on that cross,
the grip of Satan on mankind was broken, and a way was made for the glory of God
in His sons, the very life of Jesus Christ. This is the glory of God. In John
17:1-26 we read Jesus’ heart’s cry as He was about to be crucified. It was all
about the glory of the Father.

These things Jesus spoke; and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father,
the hour has come; glorify your Son, that the son may glorify you: even as you
gave him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you have given him, he
should give eternal life. And this is eternal life, that they should know you
the only true God, and him whom you sent, [even] Jesus Christ. I glorified you
on the earth, having accomplished the work which you have given me to do. And
now, Father, glorify me with your own self with the glory which I had with you
before the world was. I manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of
the world: they were yours, and you gave them to me; and they have kept your
word. Now they know that all things that you have given me are from you: for the
words which you gave me I have given to them; and they received [them], and knew
of a truth that I came forth from you, and they believed that you sent me. I
pray for them: I don’t pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me;
for they are yours: and all things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine:
and I am glorified in them. And I am no more in the world, and these are in the
world, and I come to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name which you have
given me, that they may be one, even as we [are]. (John 17:1-11 UPDV)

Notice that He did not pray for universal salvation of all mankind. He did not
pray for the world, but rather for those the Father had given Him. He prayed
that the glory of our Father and His salvation would rest in those the Father
had given Jesus, those that had kept His word. These are the ones who received
Jesus from the Father as the Son of God. "Keep them in your name." What name?
The name that Jesus always used when he prayed, Father. We are to know our
Father just as Jesus knows Him so we can be one in Him just as Jesus is one in
Him. True sons of the Father have an intimate relationship with Him, just as
Jesus has.

"Father, glorify me with your own self..." This is Christ’s inheritance as God’s
obedient Son and it is our inheritance as His obedient sons who abide in Him—the
very glory of God as the God of glory abides in us. Is it any wonder that the
face of Stephen shone like the face of an angel when He prayed to our Father as
the Jews were about to kill him? Stephen had just quoted Isaiah saying, "Heaven
is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will you build me? says the
Lord: or what is the place of my rest? Has not my hand made all these things?"
(Acts 7:49-50 KJ2000) As Stephen was about to die, we read, But he, being full
of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God,
and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens
opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. (Acts 7:55-56
KJ2000)

These self-righteous Jews who did not know God as their Father could take it no
longer. They were driven by their father the devil (see John 8:44) to kill this
son of glory who was filled with Christ’s Spirit. They were blind with rage, but
Stephen saw the glory and experienced the glory upon himself.

He also saw Jesus, the Son of Man, standing at the right hand of the Father. It
is interesting that Christ is always seen as seated at the right hand of the
Father in other passages, but in this instance Jesus stands. Why? He was
standing in recognition of this saint that was filled with the glory of His
Father and loved not his life unto death. Stephen stood and did all to stand
because he was standing in Christ Jesus. Paul wrote, "Therefore take unto you
the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and
having done all, to stand" (Ephesians 6:13 KJ2000) Stephen stood in Christ in
that day while surrounded by evil men.

How do we put on the whole armor of God? Do we, as many teach us to, pray for
each component, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and so on as if
they are separate commodities you can buy from the armory of the Spirit? No! It
is God’s armor. He is wearing it. Paul said, "For as many of you as have been
baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Galatians 3:27 KJ2000) You cannot be
immersed fully in the waters of baptism without "putting on" water. Here the
Greek word eis was translated correctly, into. We have been baptized into Christ
and thus have put on Christ. You cannot put on God’s armor without putting on
Jesus Christ, and you cannot put on Jesus Christ without putting on His armor.
We must believe into the Son of God as Stephen did if we are to stand against
that evil day that is coming upon us all. In Hebrews we read,

See that you refuse not him that speaks. For if they escaped not who refused him
that spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape, if we turn away from him
that speaks from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he has
promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven [the
heavens]. And this word, Yet once more, signifies the removing of those things
that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be
shaken may remain. Therefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let
us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly
fear: For our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:25-29 KJ2000)

Only as much as we abide in Christ do we dwell in His kingdom. Where the King is
found is also where His kingdom exists. Satan threw every temptation, every
false accusation, and every rejection from his own people at Jesus, trying to
shake Him and move Him off-course from His heavenly goal, but He could not be
shaken, even in death. The kingdom of heaven dwells in our midst, (Luke 17:21)
and only as we are enveloped into Christ and His kingdom will we also remain
unshakeable.

We are about to see all the kingdoms of men, their markets, and their man-made
churches come crashing down. Their inflated currencies are about to collapse.
Where will the faith of these shallow Christians be when the worldly prosperity
they have placed their faith in crumbles? The kingdoms of this world will be
shaken to their core. Only Christ’s kingdom and its King will remain
unshakeable. We must be hid in Christ if we are to stand in this coming evil
day.

If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where
Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on
things on the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him
in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4 KJ2000)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: 09 - CHAPTER 9: INTO ALL TRUTH
========================================================================

Chapter 9: Into All Truth By Michael Clark and George Davis

People by nature like to study truth and like others to think of them as
possessors of the truth, but avoid truth’s changing power in themselves, because
that requires a substantial change of Who is in control of their lives. For the
law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. (John 1:17
KJ2000) In the eternal reality of God, Truth is not only what is factual, but
much more. Truth is verity. The Encarta Dictionary defines verity as "the
quality of being true or real." This is not how we in the western culture use
the word. We tend to equate truth as some system of facts that can be held
separately in the mind of a person whether their lives represent that truth or
not. There are many Christian churches and cults that claim to know "the truth,"
and most of this "truth" is conflicting. Most of their adherents do not live
truth nor do they have hearts filled with truth. Yes, they have a lot of "truth"
in their minds, but it has not taken over in their innermost beings. Jesus found
this same kind of belief system in the Pharisees of 2000 years ago when He
warned, "You do well to do as the Pharisees say, but do as they say and not as
they do, for they say one thing and do another."

People by nature like to study truth and like others to think of them as
possessors of the truth, but avoid truth’s changing power in themselves, because
that requires a substantial change of Who is in control of their lives. Our
human nature wants to maintain control at all cost. Truth is not just knowledge
of what is true, but it is a quality of being which is true and real. Søren
Kierkegaard rightfully observed, "Truth has always had many loud proclaimers,
but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the
truth, allow it to permeate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and
not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the
consequence."

John declared in the first chapter of his gospel, And the Word [or, the
Expression of {divine} Logic] became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we
beheld His glory, glory as of an only-begotten [or, uniquely-begotten] from
[the] Father, full of grace and truth... For the law was given through Moses:
grace and truth came to be through Jesus Christ (John 1:14 & John 1:17 ALT).

Moses gave us the law and it contained truth, but God sent His only begotten Son
to us as the embodiment of Truth, not just a shadow of it. (See Colossians
2:16-17, Hebrews 8:1-6, and Hebrews 10:1) Jesus took our understanding of what
truth is a step further than the Law of Moses.

Thomas says to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going away. And how are
we able to know the way?" Jesus says to him, "I am the Way and the Truth and the
Life! No one comes to the Father except through [or, by means of] Me! (John
14:5-6 ALT)

Jesus came not only to teach us truth but to be our Truth! When the Samaritan
woman asked Jesus where she should worship God, either at their holy mountain
shrine or in Jerusalem He answered,

Woman, trust (believe) me; The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this
mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the father. Ye worship ye wot nere (not)
what: we know what we worship. For salvation cometh of the Jews. But the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the father in
spirit, and in truth. For verily such the father requireth to worship him. God
is a spirit, and they that worship him, must honour (worship) him, in spirit and
verity. (truth) (John 4:21-24 TRC)

Jesus came to inhabit our very beings and fill us with true verity, the very
life of the Son of God that dwells in us and worships the Father in the very
Spirit of Truth as only His Spirit can. With His Spirit alive in us worship no
longer has to be done in a special building or conducted in a special "worship
service." Worship is a product of having His life in our beings and prayer,
communion with our Father, is something we do without ceasing. True worship
comes from a Life Source within. To the Jews who sought to kill Jesus he said,

You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth... You search the
scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they
that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
(John 5:33, John 5:29-40 RSVA)

John the Baptist came preparing the way for Jesus to come and witnessed about
Him saying, "This was he of whom I said, ’He who comes after me ranks before me,
for he was before me.’" Many of the Jews and their leaders did not receive the
witness of John, but rather kept searching the scriptures for the truth. In
Isaiah 52:1-15 and Isaiah 53:1-12, Isaiah prophesied in great detail about the
coming Messiah, his life, suffering, ministry, even what He would look like, yet
the Jews were blind to His witness. In their blindness they cut themselves off
from God and brought about their own destruction. Jesus prophesied over
Jerusalem saying, "If you had known, even you, at least in this your day, the
things which belong unto your peace! but now they are hid from your eyes. For
the days shall come upon you, that your enemies shall cast a bank about you, and
surround you, and hem you in on every side, And shall lay you even with the
ground, and your children within you; and they shall not leave in you one stone
upon another; because you knew not the time of your visitation." (Luke 19:42-44
KJ2000) Will we also miss our hour of Christ’s visitation and not yield fully to
His abiding presence? If so, we can expect the same consequences to befall us.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." We must come to Him and not
just the scriptures to have life. Truth and life are in Jesus Christ. Unless we
take up our crosses and let them crucify our flesh, His life and His truth will
never be preeminent in us nor will it be manifest in us anymore than it was in
the scholarly Jews who sought to kill the Truth. (See John 5:16-18) The more
that Jesus’ life is manifest in us, the greater the persecution that comes from
those who have only a head knowledge of the truth. Paul was persecuted by these
same Jews that killed Jesus because he refused to put the Gentile believers
under the law. They loved their incomplete knowledge of the true meaning of the
Old Testament more than they loved truth in their inward parts.

David knew the truth of the scriptures in his head, but it did not keep him from
having an affair with Bathsheba or having her husband killed in battle to cover
his sin. It was after he was confronted about his sinful deeds by Nathan the
prophet that he prayed in true contrition,

Against You, You only, have I sinned and done that which is evil in Your sight,
so that You are justified in Your sentence and faultless in Your judgment.
Behold, I was brought forth in [a state of] iniquity; my mother was sinful who
conceived me [and I too am sinful]. Behold, You desire truth in the inner being;
make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart... Create in me a clean
heart, O God, and renew a right, persevering, and steadfast spirit within me...
For You delight not in sacrifice, or else would I give it; You find no pleasure
in burnt offering. My sacrifice [the sacrifice acceptable] to God is a broken
spirit; a broken and a contrite heart [broken down with sorrow for sin and
humbly and thoroughly penitent], such, O God, You will not despise. (Psalms
51:4-17 AMP) Are you proud of your knowledge of the scriptures and your high
place in the eyes of other Christians? How about your clerical robes and
ecclesiastical titles? Paul wrote that though you have all knowledge and
understand all mysteries, without God’s love in your heart it profits you
nothing. The sacrifice that pleases God is a broken spirit of humility and a
broken and contrite heart. David knew that he could offer thousands of rams and
goats on the altar for his sins, but he would still be stuck with his sinful
heart. He needed a new heart. He needed truth in his innermost being. Only then
would he ever walk in the wisdom and knowledge of our Father and be free from
the clutches of sin. Yes, the truth can be found in the scriptures and they
speak of Jesus from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, but the
question is, will we surrender to Him in His death on the cross and be raised in
His newness of life? Unless we know the living Jesus in our inward being, we
will never know the Truth and we will never be free of the man of sin within.

What If We Sin? But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us
from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth
is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not
sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:7-10 KJ2000)

First we must make it clear that there are sins and there is sin as a principle
of life within us. If Christ is in our innermost being as a result of our
believing into Christ, the principle of sin is dethroned and sin is no longer a
way of life, but Christ’s life is. Paul wrote in Romans:

If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now
then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in
me (that is, in my flesh,) dwells no good thing: for to will is present with me;
but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do
not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that which I would
not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law,
that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of
God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against
the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in
my members. (Romans 7:16-23 KJ2000) [emphasis added]

Here we have Paul describing his life as a Jew under the law. He knows the law,
but because of the life force (or should we say "death force"?) of sin being
alive and well within him, he disobeyed the law and sinned constantly. He had
not yet known the healing power of the cross and its death to the sin nature
found in carnal man.

I, Michael, was raised Catholic. I would sin and go to confession and communion
week after week and still go on sinning. It seemed to grow worse as I got older,
not better. So with each confession and communion I made a greater resolve to
not sin. I would pray more and study my catechism more thoroughly, pray the
rosary and take of the sacraments more often, to no avail. I shared my
frustrations with the priest and he just gave me more of the same as a solution.
I could pray the rosary and do novenas until the cows came home and nothing
changed. I was devout and religious, but I still had no power over sin. I had a
Romans 7:1-25 existence. I concluded that unless I went to confession and
communion and was struck dead as soon as the host landed on my tongue, I would
never make it to heaven. Leaving the altar rail and making my way back my pew, I
would see a pretty girl in the congregation and lust after her (a mortal sin)
and once again be on my way to the burner. I could relate to Paul’s own
confession, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of
this death?" (Romans 7:24 KJ2000) A most remarkable thing happened to me after
surrendering my whole life to Jesus, I could opt-out from sinning for the first
time. Yes, I could still sin, but I had the power not to and that has made all
the difference. This is what John was writing about where we read, My little
children, these things write I unto you, that you sin not. And if any man sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the
propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the
whole world. And by this we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
(1 John 2:1-3 KJ2000) When my father-in-law saw me for the first time after this
life changing faith came into me, he said, "What happened to Mike? He doesn’t
swear any more!" Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth
speaks." I had a new heart and it was His so I was no longer compelled to swear.
Now, that was a witness of the power of God to change a life. It was not until I
totally surrendered my life over to Jesus and His Spirit came into me and became
my new life that I was set free of the sin principle within. Have I sinned since
then? Yes, many times, but the principle of sin, that man of sin, no longer has
total control in me. I am righteous in the eyes of the Father, because of the
righteous Christ that dwells within me as my new Life Source.

David wrote from experience, "The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD:
and he delights in his way. Though he falls, he shall not be utterly cast down:
for the LORD upholds him with his hand." (Psalms 37:23-24 KJ2000) So if we sin
what do we do? John wrote to the church, But if we walk in the light, as he is
in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ
his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1
John 1:7-9 KJ2000)

Notice the if in that last sentence. Some Christians cling to a doctrine that
says that they can go on sinning because they are eternally secure and nothing
can take away their salvation. How is that any different than the Catholic that
intentionally sins and then runs to the confessional, knowing he can be absolved
there of whatever he does? I have known both Protestants and Catholics that have
had a flippant attitude toward their sin-filled lives. This is the sin of
presumption. David wrote, "Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;
let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be
innocent of great transgression." (Psalms 19:13 KJ2000) To presume on the grace
of God and Christ’s death on the cross by continuing in sin once you have been
given power over sin is a great transgression and no small thing in the eyes of
God.

There are also "Christians" that live like hell all their lives and think that
in the last moment before they die, they will ask God for forgiveness. In
Hebrews we read, For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and
have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit,
And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, If they
shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to
themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. (Hebrews 6:4-6
KJ2000)

Presumptuous sin in the life of the Christian is no game with God. This is not
the life of Christ or the power of His cross. John went on to write further on
this. My little children, these things write I unto you, that you sin not. And
if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the
sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we know him, if we keep his
commandments. (1 John 2:1-3 KJ2000) [emphasis added]

If we truly know Him (have an intimate relationship in Him) and have His life
within us, we will keep Jesus’ commandments, not by constraint, but by His
empowering life within. If we do fall short of His grace (life giving
empowerment), we have an Advocate that stands before and in the Father in our
behalf. Why? Because the enemy of our souls also stands before God accusing us
when we sin (fall short of the glory of God). John wrote in Revelation: And I
heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and
the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our
brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night.
(Revelation 12:10 KJ2000) As Christ has made His domain in our inward parts, so
has His salvation. Not only that, but His strength and kingdom has come within
us as well as His power over sin. His Life Force within us is what casts down
(and out) the accuser of the brethren. There is no greater advocacy with our
Father than when he looks upon us and sees His Beloved Son.

Ours is to be holy (free from sin) even as Jesus is holy. Andrew Murray wrote in
his book, The Two Covenants:

It is for this the Holy Spirit has been given in our hearts. He is the "Spirit
of Holiness." His every working is in the power of holiness. Paul says : "God
hath chosen us unto salvation, in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth." As simple and entire as is our dependence on the word of truth, as the
external means, must our confidence be in the hidden power for holiness which
the working of the Spirit brings. The connection between God’s electing purpose,
and the work of the Spirit, with the word we obey, comes out with equal
clearness in Peter: "Elect, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience."
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the life of Christ; as we know, and honour, and
trust Him, we shall learn and also experience that, in the New Covenant, as the
ministration of the Spirit, the sanctification, the holiness of the Holy Spirit
is our covenant right. We shall be assured that, as God has promised, so He will
work it in us, that we "should serve Him without fear, in righteousness and
holiness before Him, all the days of our life." With a treasure of holiness in
Christ, and the very Spirit of holiness in our hearts, we can live holy lives.
That is, if we believe Him "who worketh in us both to will and to work."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: 10 - CHAPTER 10: POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION - IDENTITY IN JESUS' LIFE
========================================================================

Chapter 10: Power of His Resurrection - Identity in Jesus’ Life By Michael Clark
and George Davis

Many a Christian lives his whole life in that old life of Adam while waiting to
die and be raised again in Christ at the last resurrection. But is this all that
Jesus, the resurrection and the Life, has for us? No wonder the visible church
is racked with sin and scandal if that is what it believes! Jesus came that we
might have life and that more abundantly, not some "hang in there" existence in
our flesh.

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believes in
[into] me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever lives and
believes in [into] me shall never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25-26
KJ2000)

"I am the resurrection and the life." What was Jesus saying to this woman of
Bethany? He did not say, "I am the life and resurrection afterwards if you
believe in me," though in a sense this is true. We are given a new life in trade
for the old one, just as Lazarus was given a whole new life. Jesus waited until
Lazarus was dead before He came and prayed over him. Why? There was an
interesting exchange between Jesus and Lazarus’ sister before he died.

Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom you love is
sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for
the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. (John 11:3-4
KJ2000)

Jesus then stayed where He was another two days waiting for Lazarus to die!
Jesus let him die so He could raise him again to accentuate what His mission to
mankind is about. Our sin sickness is not unto our death, but by the power of
the life of the Son, it is a step along the path to eternal life so our Father
might be glorified in the Son.

He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. In what order does
that life come? Many a Christian lives his whole life in that old life of Adam
while waiting to die and be raised again in Christ at the last resurrection. But
is this all that Jesus, the resurrection and the Life, has for us? No wonder the
visible church is racked with sin and scandal if that is what it believes! Jesus
came that we might have life and that more abundantly, not some "hang in there"
existence in our flesh. In Christ, the Life and the Resurrection, there is so
much more to our reality here on earth than just going through the motions of
our old Adamic life. Jesus told Nicode’mus, "Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God... Except a man be
born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit." (John 3:3-6 KJ2000) These words set this leader of the Pharisees on his
heels and it went right over his head. To this Jesus said, "If I have told you
earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe, if I tell you of
heavenly things?" (John 3:12 KJ2000) Being born of the flesh and of the Spirit
speaks of earthly things! These things must happen here on earth if we are to
move on to the heavenly things. A person must first be born of water, born of a
woman, and then he must be born of the Spirit or he will never see the kingdom
of God. He will never have spiritual eyes and move with the wind of the Spirit
in this life unless he is born from heaven. Once we are born from above we will
then be given spiritual sight and then we can start to see and understand
heavenly things. We not only are resurrected from the dead in Christ, but live
in Him by being born into Him here on earth.

Yes, He is the Life we live and not only that, He is the Light of Life by which
we see our Father and His kingdom. (see John 8:12) Nicode’mus had a vast
knowledge of the Old Testament like most Pharisees, but Jesus’ light exposed his
darkness. Head knowledge of the Bible is not enough. We must have the Light of
Life or we are doomed to walk in spiritual darkness. None are so blind as those
who falsely think they see. The Bible scholars of 2000 years ago, the
fundamentalists of the Jews, had knowledge of the scriptures but they were blind
and dead. To them Jesus said, "And you have not his word abiding in you: for
whom he has sent, him you believe not. Search the scriptures; for in them you
think you have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And you will
not come to me, that you might have life." (John 5:38-40 KJ2000) There is
nothing more dead than a student of the Bible who does not have the Light of
Life abiding within. Unless the Word, the Logos of God, is abiding in us and we
abide in Him we will never see and understand heavenly things no matter how much
we read the Bible, or how many classes we take, or how many sermons we listen
to.

After the first birth, born of a woman, must come the first death to that
natural Adamic life. The first life is terminal in Adam. But there is more. The
second life we are given is eternal in Christ. There is a resurrection into
Life, the very life of Jesus. "Though he were dead, yet shall he live." The
unregenerate man is dead in the eyes of God because God is a Spirit (see John
4:24). When man sinned he became only flesh, severed from the life of his
Father. "And the Lord God said, My Spirit shall certainly not remain among these
men for ever, because they are flesh, but their days shall be an hundred and
twenty years." (Genesis 6:3 Brenton) Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome,

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came
through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— sin was indeed
in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet
death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses... But the free gift is not like the
trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely
have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus
Christ, abounded for the many... If, because of the one man’s trespass, death
exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the
abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life
through the one man, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:12-17 NRS)

Adam had life until he sinned. He was in the goodness of God Who created man and
he walked in His light. But when Adam sinned he was cast into spiritual
darkness. He saw himself as naked and hid himself from his Father. His
connection in the Spirit was severed. Jesus came to the earth and said to the
descendants of Adam, "The thief [the Serpent that tempted Eve in the garden]
comes not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might
have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10 KJ2000) In
one moment Satan stole man’s inheritance as sons of God. He killed the life of
God within man and destroyed what was to become the kingdom of heaven on earth,
many sons unto the glory of God. Jesus came to restore that kingdom and life in
the Father by dealing with the blot of sin and giving us a new nature that is
lead by the Spirit of God once again. Our inheritance has been restored. Paul
wrote: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have
received the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit
himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if
children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that
we suffer with him, so that we may be also glorified together. (Romans 8:14-17
KJ2000)

Why didn’t the Father just send us life through Moses or the prophets? It is
because the abundant life promised us is only found in the Giver of life, the
very Creator of life, that Being who is the Life. To have this life we must
believe into Jesus because He is our Life. Paul wrote to the Ephesian believers:
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, Even
when we were dead in sins, has made us alive together with Christ, (by grace you
are saved;) And has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-6 KJ2000) And to the Colossians he wrote,

If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where
Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on
things on the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him
in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4 KJ2000) Our old man (the carnal nature) is dead. To
dwell on that nature borders on spiritual necrophilia. We are raised with and in
Christ. We are spirit beings having an earthly experience. Most Christians see
it the other way around, but we should have our affections set on the kingdom of
God where we dwell in the Son of God, not the desires of the world. The fallen
state of the church is so well portrayed by its numerous dinners, potlucks and
the fashion show every Sunday morning. Just listen to the content of the
conversations outside after the service. Do men and women revel in their lives
in heavenly places in Christ or do we hear them speaking about their interests
and affections in this world? Out of the abundance and affections of the heart
the mouth speaks.

Glory Where did we ever get the idea that glory is heaven and something off in
the future? Colossians 3:4 in the Concordant Literal Version translates it
better. "Whenever Christ, our Life, should be manifested, then you also shall be
manifested together with Him in glory." Where did we ever get the idea that
glory is the same as heaven? Of Jesus John wrote, "And the Word was made flesh,
and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten
of the Father,) full of grace and truth." (John 1:14 KJ2000) John beheld Jesus’
glory on the mount of transfiguration where the Father spoke and said, "This is
my beloved son in whom I am well pleased; hear you him." Later in John we read
where Jesus prayed: And the glory which you gave me I have given them; that they
may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and you in me, that they may be made
perfect in one; and that the world may know that you have sent me, and have
loved them, as you have loved me. (John 17:22-23 KJ2000) When Simeon beheld the
infant Jesus in the temple he prophesied, "For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the
Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel." (Luke 2:30-32 KJ2000) Jesus is
not only our light, but he is also our glory. The glory of God is given to those
who believe into Jesus and it is not just something we get in the future. It is
given us that we might be one with our Father and with one another. Our lack of
unity shows our lack of His glory abiding in us. It was when the disciples
beheld Jesus’ glory that they started to believe in Him. (See John 2:11) Without
this glory in the body of Christ, the world has not had a witness of Jesus
presented to it.

We must appear with Him in glory in the here and now or we will not have it in
the future, either. In this life if we seek our own glory we will not have the
glory of God. Jesus said, "He who finds his life will lose it, but He who loses
his life for my sake shall find it." Jesus sought the glory of God, not his own,
(See John 8:50) so should we seek to glorify Jesus on this earth and not
ourselves. Jesus went on to pray:

Father, I will that they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am;
that they may behold my glory, which you have given me: for you loved me before
the foundation of the world. (John 17:24 KJ2000)

He did not pray, "that they may be with me where I am going," but "where I am."
It is by our believing into and abiding in Jesus that we behold His glory. This
is our inheritance in Christ in this life as we abide in the Vine.

True and full eternal life is found hidden in Christ Who is in the Father. He is
without beginning or end and if we are hidden in our Father, we have that same
life within us. This revelation should make us jump for joy! His life is our
life without beginning or end. We have a state of being that is timeless. Here
death has no power and the grave has no victory. This is why Jesus could say to
the Pharisees, "Before Abraham was, I am." As we are in Christ, we are also not
subject to the limiting constraints of time. The further we go in this walk in
Him, the less we think in the terms and limitations of time and space. We see
that eternal life is a life of power over not only sin, but sickness and death.
The same power that the obedient Son had on the earth two thousand years ago is
also found in the many obedient sons who live in and unto their Father’s glory.
The more we dwell in our hearts in the eternity of God, the more we see that all
things are possible in Christ. Philip was in a revival in Samaria and the next
thing he knew he was in the desert talking to an Ethiopian eunuch. Time and
space did not limit him. Paul was stoned to death, yet he got up and walked
away. The dead were raised, demons were cast out, the blind and the lame were
healed. Why? Because the early church sat in heavenly places, walked in Christ
and stood in Him against the wiles of the devil that were the results of the
fall of man.

"Set your affections on the things above, not on things on the earth." That
includes leaving earthly limitations behind in the way we think. Many in today’s
church would love to have these same powers that were common in the early
believers, but why? Most often it is so they could stand out in the crowd or
even use them to become rich and famous. As a result they are not setting their
affections on the things that are above, but on earthly things. Only as we are
totally taken in body, soul and spirit with our relationship with Jesus and our
heavenly Father will we know the life giving force of God. Those who are in
Christ, like Jesus, will only do the works we see our Father doing and speak the
words we hear our Father saying. This is what true spiritual sons do. "And
whatsoever you shall ask in my name [character, excellence and authority], that
will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask
anything in my name, I will do it." (John 14:13-14 KJ2000) True sons of God live
for one reason--that their Father might be glorified in the earth and wherever
His Son dwells. This is why they ask anything of their Father, not for
themselves, but for the glory of God. As with Jesus, we seek to glorify our
Father in this earth.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: 11 - CHAPTER 11: LET US GO ON
========================================================================

Chapter 11: Let Us Go On By Michael Clark and George Davis

First we must fully go on into Jesus and being fully into Him we go with Him
into the Holy of Holies into the presence of our Father where the goal of our
spiritual maturity lies.... Many want to know resurrection power in their lives
like the early believers walked in, but are not willing to go through the
suffering and death of their old natures to get there. The writer of the letter
to the Hebrews wrote,

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto
maturity; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of
faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of
resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:1-2 KJ2000,
emphasis added)

How many times have we heard these same six doctrines rehearsed over and over in
our church gatherings? We have even seen this passage used as an outline to go
on teaching these rudimentary things yet again. So how do we get on beyond them?
By following Jesus. The author of Hebrews goes on to describe where we are to go
on to saying,

Now we are yearning for each one of you to be displaying the same diligence
toward the assurance of the expectation until the consummation
[conclusion]...that by two immutable matters, in which it is impossible for God
to lie, we may... lay hold of the expectation lying before us, which we have as
an anchor of the soul [pneuma – spirit] both secure and confirmed, and entering
into the interior beyond the curtain, where the Forerunner, Jesus, entered for
our sakes, becoming Chief Priest according to the order of Melchizedek for the
eon [forever]. (Hebrews 6:11-20 CLV)

First we must fully go on into Jesus and being fully into Him we go with Him
into the Holy of Holies into the presence of our Father where the goal of our
spiritual maturity lies. Only there will we no longer walk in our carnal dead
works, because we do only the works we see our Father doing. This is the true
meaning of "faith toward God." We no longer speak of faith toward God, but
rather abide in the faith of Jesus Christ who is in the Father. We no longer
argue over different forms of water baptism or just what words to use because we
are immersed in the presence of God. We lay on our hands as He does it through
us. There is absolutely no question in our minds that the dead live because we
remember from where we came and where we have risen in Christ in the presence of
our Father. We have been judged to have fallen short of the glory of God, but
now we know Him as Father and walk in the light of the Son in His presence. We
know no condemnation because we live and move and have our being in Him. Yes, by
all means, let us go on!

Paul in a heart searching moment wrote of His life in Christ when he penned:

[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively
become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and
recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more
clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from
His resurrection [ which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His
sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even]
to His death, [in the hope] that if possible I may attain to the [spiritual and
moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the
body]. (Php 3:10-11 AMP) This is what going on is all about! There are limestone
caverns in the east and mid-western US that are so huge that they have not yet
been fully explored. Paul found himself in such a search, trying to explore the
depths of the Father in Jesus. The power that came to us when we were raised up
into heavenly places in Christ is unsearchable. That was not all; Paul wanted to
know a deeper fellowship with Christ in His sufferings, for they are part of
Him, too. Many want to know resurrection power in their lives like the early
believers walked in, but are not willing to go through the suffering and death
of their old natures to get there. Paul wanted to be so like Christ in his
relationship and grow into Him that he could be conformed to Jesus in his death.
God granted that wish and Paul died a martyr for his faith. He wanted to attain
the fullness of the riches that are ours in the divine Pattern Son in whatever
form the Father chose to reveal it in him. This is true faith, faith that does
not limit God for fear of its own fleshly discomfort.

How many of us at the first sign of difficulty and suffering are so easily
turned away from our commitment to fully know Christ? In our immaturity, many of
us have a fairytale mentality that God will send down Tinker Bell with her magic
wand and make us into super-Christians without having to go through hardship and
sufferings. Paul and the early church knew full well that this was not the case,
yet they pressed on through persecution and death that thy might attain to the
fullness of Christ. In Hebrews we read of Moses who walked by faith and rejected
the wealth of the house of Pharaoh as a Prince of Egypt, "choosing rather to
suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for
a time; esteeming the reproach of the Christ greater riches than the treasures
in Egypt." (Hebrews 11:25-26 KJ2000) He goes on to write, "Women received their
dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance;
that they might obtain a better resurrection." (Hebrews 11:35 KJ2000) There is a
"better resurrection" for those who embrace Jesus’ sufferings in themselves, but
how many of us just want the power without all that?

I, Michael, once heard a story of a traveling evangelist that came to a church
to hold some meetings. On the last night he had an altar call and asked the
people to form two lines. "I want all you who want the power of God to line up
on the left side of the church and I want all of you who want the sufferings of
Christ to line up on the right side." About 95% went for the power line and only
5% went to the sufferings line. After they were all through lining up the
evangelist said, "Now, I am going to pray for these people on my right side that
they may know the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and these are the ones that
will know His power." When the writer of Hebrews wrote in chapter five, "Let us
go on," this is what he was talking about. Read the rest of the book and you
will see it. These true believers were found "looking unto Jesus, the author and
finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the
cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of
God." (Hebrews 12:2 KJ21) Paul wanted all the saints of God to know and explore
the depths of Christ in this way. To the Ephesian church he wrote: That he would
grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might
by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith;
that you, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all
saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the
love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the
fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19 KJ2000) Yes, let us go on and fully know the
fullness that our Father has for us to walk in.

Repentance from Dead Works

Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?
Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that you believe on
[into] him whom he has sent. (John 6:28-29 KJ2000) What is the connection
between repentance from dead works and faith toward God? Jesus put it this way:

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it
abide in the vine; no more can you, except you abide in me. I am the vine, you
are the branches: He that abides in me, and I in him, the same brings forth much
fruit: for without me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5 KJ2000) When a farmer
prunes his grape vines, he cuts off the growth that is wild and untrained. He
trains the vine to grow along the grape arbor by pruning it. Branches that do
not produce fruit are also severed. The severed branches still want to cling to
the arbor or other branches, so they have to be removed by force. This is a
parable of the nature of the church and how Father deals with it. Jesus said
that unless the branch abides in the vine it cannot produce any fruit. His
Father prunes back the productive branches so that they will bring forth more
fruit. All fruit bearing trees and vines have to be pruned or they will put most
of their energy into making fruitless branches and leaves. This is the nature of
our natural flesh. Our Father is a good husbandman and knows what has to be
pruned away in each of us. He is after fruit. Where does the Father’s fruit come
from? It comes from pruned branches abiding in the Vine. Jesus is that Vine. He
said, "Without me you can do nothing." When we go out and do something for God
instead of abiding in Christ our Vine and letting Him bring forth the fruit in
and through us, we are doing dead works. So many of us read something in the
Bible as all the authority we need to run out and start doing "good works" for
God. But this is not what it means to abide in the Vine. Paul was doing what he
thought was commanded by God while he persecuted the church. After a life-giving
encounter with Jesus, he repented from his dead works and lived in obscurity for
most of fourteen years as he was being pruned by the Father! Finally, Barnabas
had to go get him and bring him to Antioch where after some more time, the
Spirit spoke and sent the two of them out with the gospel. Paul’s dead works
were pruned, but the Spirit was alive in Him and the fruit that he bore was
ordained by God.

A. W. Tozer once said that God seems to be more interested in what He can put
into a man than by what He can get out of him. So many of us in our youthful
zeal want to give Jesus our best efforts and make fruit, but most of our efforts
end up making rotten fruit at best. No one in the church has ever had such a
broad and powerful impact on the world as Paul. Why? Because he was learning an
important lesson during all those years of isolation, being pruned by Father. He
was learning to abide in Jesus and to only do the works he saw his Father doing
and to only speak what be heard his Fathers saying.

If we fail to learn what Paul learned, any fruit that we do produce will not
remain. Pollsters found that less than five percent of Billy Graham’s crusade
converts were still going to church a year later. Bill Bright’s campaign,
"Here’s Life America," found that only three percent were still going to church
a year later. Jesus had twelve disciples that His Father gave Him, and eleven of
the twelve went on to live and die for their faith in a hostile world. The one
that was lost was foreordained and prophesied to betray Him. Jesus was able to
pray, "While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name: those that
you gave me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition;
that the scripture might be fulfilled." (John 17:12 KJ2000)

Shotgun evangelism is very hit or miss, but those called forth into the kingdom
of God by God’s design will abide in Christ forever. Of his conversion Paul
wrote:

Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the
Father, who raised him from the dead)... But I make known to you, brethren, that
the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither
received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus
Christ... But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and
called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among
the Gentiles; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: Neither went I
up to Jerusalem to them who were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and
returned again unto Damascus. (Galatians 1:1-17 KJ2000)

Here is a changed life. Paul once persecuted the church and was a bloody man who
learned his Jewish faith from the best teachers in Jerusalem. This all meant
nothing to God. Paul himself went on to count it all dung. What does Paul glory
in? Christ in him whom the Father revealed by placing him into Christ. Paul knew
first hand that he need not that any man should teach him . (See 1 John 2:26-27)
Have you ever wondered why there is no record of John, Peter or Paul going out
and building church buildings everywhere they preached as is the habit of church
missionaries today? It is because they knew that the things of this earth are
temporal and will not cross over into the kingdom of God so they put their
energies into building a living temple made of living stones. When he was
describing his heavenly vision, John said, "And I saw no temple there." All that
money poured into the church building funds has no eternal value to God. More
dead works. Only the souls of men go on for eternity and only the souls and
spirits of men who are in the Son go on into the glory and eternity of God. The
greatest time of church growth recorded in history (the first three hundred
years) harvested millions of souls without the help of one church building. The
early church was not about an endless calendar of scheduled meetings as is the
case today; they were about Christ’s life in them whether they were gathering in
a home as the family of God or they were at the market place shopping. They knew
that apart from the Vine, they could do nothing.

Paul walked and ministered by the direction of the Spirit. Once he was going
into Bithynia and Spirit prevented him, so he took another route and finally the
Spirit gave Paul a vision of a Macedonian man saying, "Come over into Macedonia
and help us." On another occasion in Thyatira Paul and the brothers were hounded
by a woman possessed by a demon, yet he did nothing about it, though being
troubled by her for many days. Why? He waited on his Father to act in his
behalf. When the Father did act through Paul it was decisive. The spirit came
out of her in that hour. He did not shake a bag of bones or wave garlic at her
or scream and holler. He just said calmly, "I command you in the name of Jesus
Christ to come out of her."

Faith toward God The secret to success in the work of God is to abide in the
Father just as Jesus abides in Him. We abide there in His rest. In Hebrews
4:1-16 we read:

There remains therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into
his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us
labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same
example of unbelief. (Hebrews 4:9-11 KJ2000) To cease from our own works is to
cease from dead works. God rested on the seventh day and He still is resting
because His works have been finished from the foundation of the world (see
Hebrews 4:3-4). To do the works of God is to do His completed works and abide in
His foreknowledge. He knows who are His and who are not. The writer continues in
chapter 4 to declare, For the word of God is living, and powerful, and sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his
sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we
have to do. (Hebrews 4:12-13 KJ2000)

John wrote in his gospel that the Word of God, the Logos, is Jesus. Jesus in us
divides our soulishness from our spirit, His abode, that His Spirit might be the
life source within us. He discerns the thought and intents of the heart and then
shows them to us. He lays all things naked before Him and then shows us the true
need of the person He wants us to minister to. Paul wrote to the church at
Corinth, But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believes not, or one
unlearned, he is convicted of all, he is judged of all: And thus are the secrets
of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God,
and report that God is in you of a truth. (1 Corinthians 14:24-25 KJ2000) The
Logos, the Son of God, desires to speak through us to the hearts of men, not
their heads. Most people speak from their heads, posing hypothetical question
and evading the issues like the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar did with
Jesus. A sinner’s sickness is a heart condition, not a head problem. Too often
we try to argue and reason with their heads instead of letting that two-edged
sword of the Father speak to their hearts through us. If we are to bear fruit
that remains, it will only come through Christ who searches the hearts and
speaks from His place of rest in the Father. It is the faith of Jesus in us that
is true faith toward God. This faith believes in Father and Father’s works and
not in the works of the flesh.

We often quote Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen." It is a statement of spiritual fact that is
defined by what follows. The important thing about understanding verse one is
found in the examples given of those who walked by faith. These were men and
women abiding in God, while He did miraculous things in and with them. Enoch was
translated, Abraham saw Jesus’ day and rejoiced, Noah believed that the world
would end by a deluge even though it had never rained up until that time and he
prepared for it. They did the humanly impossible. They shut mouths of hungry,
veracious lions and lay down with them. They received their dead back to life
again, closed wombs were opened, and they sought the invisible city of God.
Jesus’ Hebrew linage has a long line of barren wombs! How could this be? These
women were able to conceive by faith in their God who acted in their behalf.
Faith believes in God, waits and acts in concord with Him. Faith prays and waits
until God acts, acting in accord with Him. Men go out and do dead works because
of their lack of faith in God. Faith is not inactivity, but a cessation of the
human origin of all activity, trusting in God to act. Herein is true rest in Him
and abiding in the works that He has ordained from the foundation of the world
for us to walk in. Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus: For by grace are you
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of
works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in
them. (Ephesians 2:8-10 KJ2000) When Satan was trying to get Jesus to act on His
own initiative, turning rocks into bread for His hunger, Jesus replied, "It is
written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out
of the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4 KJ2000) He did not say "that has proceeded"
(referring to the Old Testament) but proceeds in the present tense. Do
Christians today live by every word that the Spirit is saying to them? Most that
we have met try to live by the words they read in the Bible, but too many are
oblivious to the voice of the Spirit speaking to them in the here and now.

Paul had to correct the foolish Galatians for going back to the written works of
the law. He asked them a series of questions: Who has bewitched you? Did you
receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you
so foolish?

Having begun in the Spirit are you now made perfect by the flesh? Have you
suffered so many things in vain?

He sums up these questions with, "He therefore that ministers to you the Spirit,
and works miracles among you, does he it by the works of the law, or by the
hearing of faith?" (Galatians 3:5 KJ2000) What is "the hearing of faith?" Church
teachers say that if we hear the Bible over and over, that finally some of its
principles will rub off on us and we will start to walk by faith. But is this
really "the hearing of faith" or more hearing of the letter? We could believe in
this methodology except for one thing. Those faith walkers listed in Hebrews
11:1-40--Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca (all barren women
that conceived)--all had no Bible to walk by, but they did have a faith that
caused them to walk by every word that came forth from the mouth of God. God
spoke it, they believed it and God acted in their behalf according to His divine
will.

Paul continues, "Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for
righteousness. Know you therefore that they who are of faith, the same are the
children of Abraham." (Galatians 3:6-7 KJ2000) We are the children of Abraham,
the true Israel, if we believe and walk as he walked, by obeying that ever
present Word of God that still speaks to our hearts today.

"Even as Abraham believed God" is what is important here. It is no coincidence
that while speaking to the seven churches in John’s Revelation, the Spirit of
God has to repeat Himself over and over with one common phrase, "Let he who has
ears hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches." The church by the end of
the first century had for the most part gone stone deaf to "every word that
proceeds from the mouth of God." Many of them had gone back to being good
bibliolaters like the Jews, forsaking the voice of God among them for the
written law. Before long the scripture was canonized. To these texts men added
creeds, doctrines, books of prayer, and the writings of "the church fathers,"
all which are not necessary if we walk by every word that proceeds from the
mouth of the Spirit as Abraham did. But because the church had ceased to walk by
the Spirit and became an organization created by men by the beginning of the
fourth century, it needed these things and many more to prop it up.

Jesus promised His Spirit would be with us to lead us into all truth. He did not
promise to leave us seminaries full of dead scholars. Through the endless
teachings of men who emphasize the importance of what they teach instead of our
ability to hear the voice of God, we now have over 200,000 Christian sects and
denominations, all teaching that what they say about the Bible is true. Recently
a young college student wrote, "All these different denominations teach that if
you don’t belong to their church, you are going to hell. Being that not everyone
belongs to the same denomination, it only stands to reason that everyone is
going to hell!" This might be humorous, but it shows the witness that fractured
Christendom really has in this world. Jesus prayed, "That they all may be one;
as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that
the world may believe that you have sent me." (John 17:21 KJ2000) Through all
this division, carnal Christianity has handed the world to the devil on a
platter. We can only know the unity of Christ as we each walk in the light of
the Spirit as He walks in the light of the Father.

We thank God for the scriptures. God uses them and brings them to our memory
often as we listen to His voice. But we are to walk by the Spirit and not by the
letter. Reading the Bible without the Spirit’s enlightenment can make you
religious, but it can also make you deaf to the Spirit when He does speak if you
limit Him to your carnal mind’s understanding of what you have read. To the
Pharisees Jesus said,

"You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal
life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that
you may have life."

(John 5:39-40 RSVA) Jesus said that He was sending us the Spirit in His place to
lead us. How many of us have shut our ears to His leading by putting our faith
in what men teach about the scriptures, making void the commandments (the inner
voice) of God by their traditions? The Spirit can speak to us through the words
recorded in the Bible and often does, but He is not limited by that alone. How
did the early church know that there was going to be a famine in the days of
Emperor Claudius that would cover the world and prepare ahead for it? One of
their members, Ag’abus, foretold it by the Spirit, not by reading the Bible.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus and the disciples were always breaking the
letter of the law and in trouble with the Jewish law keepers, yet we know that
Jesus never sinned, but lived perfectly before His Father? He lived by every
word that proceeded from the mouth of God and obedience does not get better than
that! Go ye and do likewise.

Pray that the Spirit’s voice would lead you in everything you say and do, just
as Jesus walked in obedience to His Father’s voice. If you are steeped in
religious teachings, the first thing God will probably do with you is demand you
sit in silence for a few years like Paul had to. This quiets our hearts and
numbs our minds to all the teachings of men. Then after we are still long enough
before the Father, we will be able to hear His voice more accurately without the
din of the voices of our religious teachers interfering. Do you remember what
Peter said to Jesus when he had a vision on the rooftop in Joppa? He was
commanded to kill and eat unclean animals in his vision. To this he said, "Not
so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean" (Acts 10:14
KJ2000). Now that is an oxymoron if we have ever heard one, "Not so Lord"? Since
when do we as believers tell God what we will or will not do and call Him our
Lord? The traditions of men make us deaf to the voice of God. In the days ahead
hearing His voice will be imperative to our survival as Christians.


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  CHAPTER 12: 12 - CHAPTER 12: CHRIST'S RIGHTEOUSNESS IS OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS
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Chapter 12: Christ’s Righteousness is Our Righteousness By Michael Clark and
George Davis

First we live as natural men and women, subject to the nature of Adam and all
its weaknesses without the Spirit of God. But when we are born from above
another life principle takes over, the very life of Jesus into Whom we have been
born. Have you ever tried to share Jesus with a person and they came back with
the excuse, "I can’t be good enough to be a Christian"? Or have you even said,
"I can’t do this! I just can’t be a Christian. I give up!" There is both truth
and hope in these statements.

God never intended for us to be good enough or keep a set of laws or generate
our own righteousness. He knows that we can’t! He knows that we are but dust in
our natural state, so God sent Jesus to live, die and live-on in resurrection
life in us and us in Him. Paul wrote,

We know what the message of the Law is, to those who live under it - that every
excuse may die on the lips of him who makes it and no living man may think
himself beyond the judgment of God. No man can justify himself before God by a
perfect performance of the Law’s demands - indeed it is the straight-edge of the
Law that shows us how crooked we are. But now we are seeing the righteousness of
God declared quite apart from the Law (though amply testified to by both Law and
Prophets) - it is a righteousness imparted to, and operating in, all who have
faith in Jesus Christ. (For there is no distinction to be made anywhere:
everyone has sinned, everyone falls short of the beauty of God’s plan.) Under
this divine system a man who has faith is now freely acquitted in the eyes of
God by his generous dealing in the redemptive act of Jesus Christ. God has
appointed him as the means of propitiation, a propitiation accomplished by the
shedding of his blood, to be received and made effective in ourselves by faith.
God has done this to demonstrate his righteousness both by the wiping out of the
sins of the past (the time when he withheld his hand), and by showing in the
present time that he is a just God and that he justifies every man who has faith
in Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:19-26 J.B. Philips N. T.) For hundreds of years the
Jews proved themselves miserable failures in keeping the laws of Moses. They
broke the covenant that God had made with them so He set out to make a new and
lasting covenant for all mankind to walk in. Jeremiah prophesied,

Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that
I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them
out of the land of Egypt; my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband
unto them, says the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with
the house of Israel; After those days, says the LORD, I will put my law in their
inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they
shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and
every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from
the least of them unto the greatest of them, says the LORD: for I will forgive
their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34
KJ2000)

God wanted to prove to mankind that only One is good, even our Father Who is in
heaven. God also had a plan to redeem weak and fallen man from himself. He would
put His goodness within us. The prophet Ezekiel also prophesied, "A new heart
also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." (Ezekiel 36:26
KJ2000)

Jesus told the disciples that He was going away, but that He would not leave
them alone. He would send His Spirit to dwell within them. He has given everyone
who puts their trust in Christ alone a new heart and a new spirit - His heart
and His Spirit! To put our trust in keeping the old law or even a new
"Christianized" law is to make void this New Covenant promise of a new heart
being put within us. This is the good news of the gospel, Christ in you the hope
of glory, not a new list of rules to keep. We cannot perfect in our flesh what
God has set forth in the Spirit. (See Galatians 3:1-3)

Paul wrote, The first man is of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the
Lord from heaven. As is the one made of dust, such are those who are also made
of dust; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. As we
have borne the image of those made of dust, let’s also bear the image of the
heavenly. (1 Corinthians 15:47-49 WEB)

First we live as natural men and women, subject to the nature of Adam and all
its weaknesses without the Spirit of God. But when we are born from above
another life principle takes over, the very life of Jesus into Whom we have been
born. The old Adam cannot please God and he can never live righteously in the
eyes of God. God has one standard of excellence, His own Son Jesus. God measures
righteousness by Him alone and only Jesus can be righteous as we live in Him.
Righteousness comes by living an exchanged life in Christ. Outside the life
force of Jesus there is no righteousness. Walking by faith is not about doing
good works! It is all about resting in Christ and His righteousness. He does the
work in us and we rest in Him. (See Hebrews 4:1-16) This is true righteousness.
To do our own works, trying to be good enough, or a good Christian is really an
act of unbelief. Like the Hebrews in the wilderness, we are failing to enter
into the promise by our unbelief. Faith is not doing good works or living a good
life. Faith is Jesus doing the works as only He can. Only He is the Way we are
to walk in, because it is Him walking it out within us in His life. John wrote,
"If you know that he [Jesus] is righteous, you know that everyone that does
righteousness is born of him." (1 John 2:29 KJ2000) Just as He is righteous, we
who dwell in Him are also righteous. His righteousness is imputed into us. As
John went on to write, "Little children, let no man deceive you: he that does
righteousness is righteous, even as he [Jesus] is righteous." (1 John 3:7
KJ2000)

Like the Hebrews, we fail when we insist that we can be a Christian or that we
must do something for God. Both are out of that old self nature of Adam, also
called the flesh or our old man. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai and gave
the Law to the Hebrew people, they with one voice said, "All the words which the
LORD has said will we do." (See Exodus 24:3) In short order they proved
themselves liars. Paul had no illusions about his own righteousness, either.
Until this issue is settled and we completely accept that we are totally
bankrupt when it comes to living in righteousness or pleasing God, we will
continue to fail and fall short of a victorious life in Christ.

Doing "great works for God" is no longer in our vocabulary. We know that only
the Son can do works that are eternal and we rest in Him even when criticized by
church task masters. Doing just one "good work" under the influence of the flesh
takes us away from our place of peace and rest in Jesus and our Father. With
Paul we must believe, "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered
the loss of all things, and do count them but rubbish, that I may win Christ,
And be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but
that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by
faith." (Php 3:8-9 KJ2000)


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  CHAPTER 13: 13 - CHAPTER 13: IDENTITY IN CHRIST, OUR WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE
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Chapter 13: Identity in Christ, Our Wisdom and Knowledge By Michael Clark and
George Davis Are you looking for spiritual wisdom and knowledge? You won’t find
it in a seminary or Bible school. They are hidden in Christ and we must be fully
enveloped into Him if we are to have this treasure. For the foolishness of God
is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider
your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards,
not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is
foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to
shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things
that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might
boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus,
whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption;
therefore, as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord." (1
Corinthians 1:25-31 RSVA)

Fallen man prides himself in his wisdom and knowledge (mostly book learning) and
lives like these will save him. The common attitude is, "Before things get too
bad, our scientists will figure something out." Yet, God scoffs at it all. Men
cry out against their Maker blaming Him for everything that goes wrong in their
lives, all the while they boast in themselves when things go right! God gets the
blame and sinful man gets the glory. No wonder God sees man’s wisdom as
foolishness. Of those who God calls, not many are worldly wise or powerful in
the might of the world’s ways. Not many are called from "the beautiful people"
that are honored and admired by the world.

Jeremiah prophesied the coming of this New Covenant we are part of today: But
this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After
those days, says the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it
in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they
shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying,
Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the
greatest of them, says the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will
remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:33-34 KJ2000) In effect Jeremiah said
that there would no longer be need for teachers in the New Covenant, for they
shall all know Me. The truth of God would be in each one of us. Andrew Murray
wrote about this passage in The Two Covenants:

"And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his
brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know Me, from the least of
them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord." Individual personal fellowship
with God, for the feeblest and the least, is to be the wonderful privilege of
every member of the New Covenant people. Each one will know the Lord. That does
not mean the knowledge of the mind,—that is not the equal privilege of all, and
that in itself may hinder the fellowship more than help it,—but with that
knowledge which means appropriation and assimilation, and which is eternal life.
As the Son knew the Father because He was one with Him and dwelt in Him, the
child of God will receive by the Holy Spirit that spiritual illumination which
will make God to him the One he knows best, because he loves Him most and lives
in Him. The promise, "They shall be all taught of God," will be fulfilled by the
Holy Spirit’s teaching. God will speak to each out of His Word what he needs to
know.

John agreed with Jeremiah when he wrote, "But the anointing which you have
received of him abides in you, and you need not that any man teach you: but as
the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and
even as it has taught you, you shall abide in him." (1 John 2:27 KJ2000) Ezekiel
also prophesied of this new and better Covenant saying: A new heart also will I
give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put
my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My
judgments, and do them. Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace with them: it
shall be an everlasting covenant with them. (Ezekiel 36:26-27, Ezekiel 37:26) In
the Old Covenant, men had a head knowledge of the will and laws of God, but in
the New we are given new hearts that want to obey Him and hearts that know Him
intimately, not through mediators like Moses, but the one Mediator between God
and man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only this, but we have placed in us when we
believed into Jesus, a new Spirit, the very Spirit of Christ that seeks to
please our heavenly Father. It is no longer up to us to please Him and keep His
laws. His Spirit in our new hearts does what those under the Old Covenant could
never do by sheer will power. Jesus in us does it all! Andrew Murray went on to
write: But is it really possible, amid the wear and tear of daily life, to walk
in the experience of these blessings? Are they really meant for all God’s
children? Let us rather ask the question, Is it possible for God to do what He
has promised? The one part of the promise we believe—the complete and perfect
pardon of sin. Why should we not believe the other part—the law written in the
heart, and the direct Divine fellowship and teaching? We have been so accustomed
to separate what God has joined together, the objective, outward work of His
Son, and the subjective, inward work of His Spirit, that we consider the glory
of the New Covenant above the Old to consist chiefly in the redeeming work of
Christ for us, and not equally in the sanctifying work of the Spirit in us. It
is owing to this ignorance and unbelief of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as
the power through whom God fulfils the New Covenant promises, that we do not
really expect them to be made true to us.

Paul wrote, "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of
the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ." (Ephesians 4:13 KJ2000) More correctly this should be
translated, "Till we all come into the oneness of the faith and knowledge of (to
fully observe) the Son of God, into a complete man, into the measure of maturity
of the completed Christ." Notice that our word eis or into is used three times
in this verse. Perfect knowledge is found when we come into the faith and
knowledge of the Son who gets His knowledge by observing His Father. We become
completely mature when we completely pass into Christ who is completely in our
Father.

Jesus has been made unto us wisdom and knowledge. Paul wrote to the church at
Colossi, "in whom (Christ) are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge." (Colossians 2:3 ALT) Are you looking for spiritual wisdom and
knowledge? You won’t find it in a seminary or Bible school. They are hidden in
Christ and we must be fully enveloped into Him if we are to have this treasure.
Paul wrote: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God. But we speak wisdom among them that are mature: yet not the wisdom
of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nothing: But we
speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained
before the world unto [into] our glory: (1 Corinthians 2:5-7 KJ2000) When we
rest in Christ, His wisdom and knowledge can pour into and through us. Have you
ever noticed that when asked a question, Jesus’ answers were made to shed light
on the heart of the one asking? He more often answered the heart of the person,
bypassing their heads and religious shackles that held them captive. This is the
wisdom of God at work. Spiritual sickness is in the heart. We can attack a
perverted way of thinking by answering questions and wrangling with the mind and
never bring anyone to the healing waters of Christ. When we abide in Jesus,
taking every carnal thought captive, we won’t be drawn into religious arguments.
The knowledge we need for every situation comes through and we can be used of
our Father as Jesus was to bring about a real healing to sin sick hearts.

Michael Faraday was a great English inventor, scientist and chemist of the
nineteenth century. More importantly, Faraday made his abode in Jesus. The
Faraday experiments led the way to such inventions as the fluorescent lamp, the
electron tube, electric motors, generators, electric transformers and artificial
refrigeration. He was a praying man and a close friend said that his prayers
were the "... petition of a son into whose heart God had sent the Spirit of his
Son, and who with absolute trust asked a blessing from his father." Another
associate of his said that he "... was continually pressed to be the guest of
the high and noble, but he would, if possible, decline, preferring to visit some
poor sister in trouble, assist her, take a cup of tea with her, read the Bible
and pray." As an elder in his church he once preached, "The law of God required
perfect obedience, which man could not render, and it was in the room and stead
of guilty man that Christ fulfilled it... And therefore, brethren, we ought to
value the privilege of knowing God’s truth far beyond anything we can have in
this world. The more we see the perfection of God’s law fulfilled in Christ, the
more we ought to thank God for His unspeakable gift." Jesus was Faraday’s All in
all. A contemporary writer wrote that there was, "... a comparatively little
known phase of his character, viz., his belief in a still higher means of
reaching truth than by scientific investigation alone, namely, as laid open for
the instruction and hope of mankind by Divine Revelation." Michael Faraday knew
Jesus as the summation and source of all his wisdom and knowledge.

Paul wrote, "And if any man thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet
as he ought to know. But if any man loves God, the same is known by him." (1
Corinthians 8:2-3 KJ2000) All real knowledge is based on whether He knows us and
that hinges on whether we love Him. Knowledge in the economy of God is not just
knowing something in our heads, but a knowing relationship with Him in our
hearts. God’s knowledge is relational. This is also the basis of the final
judgment, not what we did for God, but whether He knows us in intimacy. (See
Matthew 7:21-23) Who is wise in the sight of God? Jesus said, "Therefore
whosoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will liken him unto a
wise man, who built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for
it was founded upon a rock." (Matthew 7:24-25 KJ2000) The wise are those who not
only hear Jesus’ saying, but do them. Paul said of the wise,

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seems to be wise in this world,
let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is
foolishness with God. For it is written, He takes the wise in their own
craftiness. And again, The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are
vain. Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul,
or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or
things to come; all are yours; And you are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s. (1
Corinthians 3:18-23 KJ2000)

If we are truly Christ’s, if we live and move and have our being in Him (Acts
17:28), all things are ours. Why? All things are His because He is in the
Father, the Creator of all things. Everywhere in western society we see men
trying to improve on what God has created or done. Each time they make a change
"for the better," it ends in disaster whether it is through wars, pollution or
wiping out whole species of animals and plants in the march to "civilize" and
"improve." The wisdom and knowledge of man in action always ends in chaos. The
same wisdom that can be used for peaceful purposes more often is used for the
development of weapons and carnage. In Genesis before God judged the world by
flood we read, "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled
with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for
all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth." (Genesis 6:11-12 KJ2000) This
is the wisdom of man outside the life of God and it all started when Eve was
tempted by the serpent to become "wise" by eating of the tree of knowledge
instead of abiding in her relationship in God.

Satan was also corrupted by his wisdom. Is it any wonder that he uses that sin
to try and corrupt us? He has perfected it! Of his fall Ezekiel records:

You were in Eden, God’s garden. You were dressed in splendor, your robe studded
with jewels: Carnelian, peridot, and moonstone, beryl, onyx, and jasper,
Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald, all in settings of engraved gold. A robe was
prepared for you the same day you were created. You were the anointed cherub. I
placed you on the mountain of God. You strolled in magnificence among the stones
of fire. From the day of your creation you were sheer perfection . . . and then
imperfection--evil!--was detected in you. In much buying and selling you turned
violent, you sinned! I threw you, disgraced, off the mountain of God. I threw
you out--you, the anointed angel-cherub. No more strolling among the gems of
fire for you! Your beauty went to your head. You corrupted wisdom by using it to
get worldly fame. I threw you to the ground, sent you sprawling before an
audience of kings and let them gloat over your demise. (Ezekiel 28:13-17 MSG)
[emphasis added]

Jesus did not come to the earth to demonstrate worldly wisdom and take control
as a world leader, though Satan tempted Him to do so in the wilderness early on.
And He did not come to impress men with His beauty. As Isaiah prophesied, He
grew up in a spiritually parched field, Nazareth. All the Jews knew that no good
thing could come out of Nazareth. Isaiah describes Him as a homely "ninety pound
weakling." He was passed over like the kid who is the last one to be picked for
a sandlot baseball team. God only knows how many times He was beaten-up by the
town bully as He was growing up. You can be sure that the presence of God in Him
made Him a target of the worldly. Years later He preached from Isaiah in the
town synagogue, and they dragged Him out and would have thrown Him off a nearby
cliff if His Father had not saved Him. Jesus learned obedience to the Father by
the things that He suffered.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: 14 - CHAPTER 14: POWER IN GOD'S KINGDOM - LAYING DOWN OUR LIVES
========================================================================

Chapter 14: Power in God’s Kingdom - Laying Down Our Lives By Michael Clark and
George Davis

Ministers who make themselves of no reputation are a vanishing breed these days.
Everyone seems to be grasping for greatness in the eyes of their fellow
Christians. How rare it is to find just one who is so willing to be obedient to
their Father to the point of death! He who finds his life will loose it.

Some believe that knowledge is power. They glean any tidbit they can and try to
get the goods on their competition at all times. Satan tempted Jesus to use His
power for His own gain and notoriety, but He refused. Jesus did not come to rule
over the earth as a king, though He could have used His power to bring that
about easily. He came, rather, to die as a sacrificed lamb for the sins of all.
When John saw Him in resurrected splendor, what did he see? And one of the
elders said unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah the Root
of David, has prevailed to open the scroll, and to loose the seven seals
thereof. And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four
living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had
been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of
God sent forth into all the earth. (Revelation 5:5-6 KJ2000)

Yes, John saw a lamb that had been slain. The angels saw a Lion. Why this
difference? God knows that man can’t handle power, so He provided us an example
of His power in a life that is denied and laid at His feet. A slain Lamb is not
a powerful sight to our normal way of thinking about power. We would expect to
see a powerful Lion that could pounce and kill in a single bound, especially in
the One who rose again from the dead. But power to God is made perfect in
weakness. Paul prayed for strength and God answered, "And he [the Lord] said
unto me, My grace is sufficient for you: for my strength is made perfect in
weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the
power of Christ may rest upon me." (2 Corinthians 12:9 KJ2000) When the
disciples were arguing over who would have positions of power in Jesus’ kingdom,
Jesus said, "You see that the rulers of the Gentiles are lords over them, and
their great ones have authority over them. Let it not be so among you: but if
anyone has a desire to become great among you, let him be your servant; And
whoever has a desire to be first among you, let him take the lowest place: Even
as the Son of man did not come to have servants, but to be a servant, and to
give his life for the salvation of men." (Matthew 20:25-28 BBE) Servanthood for
Jesus was laying down His life for others in humility, having faith in His
Father alone to do the work even when it cost Him His life--this is the wisdom
of God.

Jesus exemplifies the logic of God. Christ’s every word and action revealed the
logic of God -- logic that defies human logic, death and hell itself, thus
breaking the hold of Satan’s corrupted wisdom (Ezekiel 28:17) on mankind. It
makes the death of our old man on the cross the door to our victorious entry
into the bosom of the Father. "And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is
come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his
Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before
our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by
the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto death."
(Revelation 12:10-11 KJ2000) Power, strength and overcoming in weakness; in
loving not our lives unto death, this is the power and wisdom of God.

Yes, we more than over come when we abide in Christ Jesus, following the example
of the Pattern Son. The Principle of Decrease and Increase

Jesus’ teachings go totally crossways to human thinking. He said, "For whosoever
exalts himself shall be abased; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted."
(Luke 14:11 KJ2000) This is the life that Jesus lived out before us for our
example. He came to the earth not in a display of His heavenly riches and
prowess, but rather He took on the form of a human servant. Paul wrote of Him:

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be grasped to be equal
with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a
servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a
man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is
above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in
heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Php
2:6-11 KJ2000)

Ministers who make themselves of no reputation are a vanishing breed these days.
Everyone seems to be grasping for greatness in the eyes of their fellow
Christians. How rare it is to find just one who is so willing to be obedient to
their Father to the point of death! He who finds his life will loose it. We say
unto you, they have their reward.

It was not always this way. When John the Baptist’ disciples saw that his
popularity was swinging over to Jesus they were quite upset and complained to
him. To this John said, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30
KJ2000)

It is interesting, this principle of decrease that God takes His people through.
Jesus speaking of Himself said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground
and dies, it abides alone." John the Baptist ministered in this law of decrease
and he meant it, pointing his followers away from himself to Jesus. John still
had followers that would not turn to Christ out of loyalty to him. Just before
the oft quoted verse above, John told them, "You yourselves bear me witness,
that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that has the
bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears
him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore
is fulfilled." (John 3:28-29 KJ2000) Have you ever wondered what picking a fight
with Herod had to do with being the forerunner to the Messiah pointing the way
to Him? John was determined to see all who followed him turn to Jesus. The one
sure way to end his own cult following was to die. He knew what the outcome
would be if He spoke against Herod and Herodius’ (his brother Philip’s wife)
love life.

Even Jesus had a loyal following He ministered to throughout Israel, but they
all knew Him after the flesh, a healer, a man of wisdom doing miracles, feeding
the crowds. They almost always sought after Him to meet their temporal needs and
desires. Can you think of anyone in the gospels who came to Him wanting to be
delivered from their sin nature? They did not know Him after the Spirit (they
wanted to make Him king because He fed them). These were what you might call
"loaves and fishes Christians." Paul wrote, "Therefore from now on know we no
man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet from
now on know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2
Corinthians 5:16-17 KJ2000) To follow the Spirit one must be centered on those
things eternal and the temporal things of this life must lose their appeal. In
the gospel of John we read about Jesus telling the disciples that He must leave
them to make way for the Holy Spirit, His Spirit, to come and abide in them. The
grain of wheat must die or it would abide alone. The disciples were quite shaken
because of this. Even after Jesus rose from the grave, they still didn’t get it.
Their thoughts were summed up in the words of Cleopas who spoke with him along
the road to Emmaus, "But we hoped [that He would save Israel]." It was after
receiving the Holy Spirit and being severed from His fleshly life that disciples
could come to know Him after the Spirit, and worship the Father in Spirit and in
Truth. So what did Jesus do to bring this about, He headed for the temple and
sacked Annas’ (the high priest) animal market and chased out the money changers.
He touched their idol, money, and that will always get you killed in a den of
thieves.

Paul also understood the need to decrease or else become more harm to the
kingdom one preaches than the good you were sent to do. He had a personality
cult following as did Peter and Apollos. (See 1 Corinthians 3:1-23) He rebuked
the Corinthians for claiming to be of one of these three, saying that they
themselves were nothing but laborers in God’s vineyard. He ends the chapter by
pointing them to Jesus saying, "Don’t you know that all things are yours and you
are Christ’s and Christ is God’s?"

Then there was the time when Paul and Barnabas were walking through Lystra and
they prayed for a lame man and he got healed. Well, the next thing you know the
people were calling them gods, Mercury and Jupiter, and the priest of Jupiter
dragged out the fatted calf and garlands of flowers to offer sacrifice to them.
How did the apostles handle this? They tore open their garments and ran in among
the people and said, "Sirs, why do you these things? We also are men of like
passions with you, and preach unto you that you should turn from these vanities
unto the living God." (Acts 14:15 KJ2000) All too many of today’s ministers are
taken with the adulation of men and refuse to come down from their pulpit and
stages and affirm to their congregations that they, too, are mere servants like
them.

Finally, after many years of establishing the ekklesia among the Gentiles, Paul
came up with a solution to the cult following problem, he headed for Jerusalem
saying, "It is not right that a prophet should die, except in Jerusalem." On the
way three different church prophets warned him what would happen to him if he
persisted, yet Paul went on obeying His Lord, praying, "That I may know Him, the
power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering, and be conformed
unto His death." His prayer was answered. His trip to Jerusalem was the
beginning of the end of his earthly stay. He was taken prisoner and finally
delivered to the court of Caesar and executed in Rome.

Paul would preach Christ and see the people were filled with the Spirit and
would not hang around, but moved on. He did not want them dependent on him or
anyone else save the Spirit of Jesus who is our only sufficiency. The Judaizers
and the Gnostics on the other hand did all they could to bind people to them and
their teachings and raised great havoc among God’s people. The last god to go
(if it ever does) in most who call themselves "ministers" today is "My
Ministry." Even the Holy Spirit does not speak of or elevate Himself, but gives
all glory to Jesus. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you
into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears,
and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking
from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is
mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it
known to you. John 16:13-15 The Spirit of Truth is our guide. He speaks what
Jesus gives Him for us to hear. And Jesus gives the Spirit what the Father has
given unto Him... all things. The goal of the true gospel is all about putting
us in relationship with the Father (of whom Jesus said, "call no man father, for
one is your Father who is in heaven"), not a bunch of human fathers and mothers.
When we loose site of that goal and see ourselves as mentors, fathers and
mothers in the faith and permanent fixtures in the lives of the saints, we have
robbed the very life of God from the people and that is why the churches are
dead today. Being established in the Spirit of Jesus was why the early church
was alive unto God and grew and became as those who turn the world upside down.
Are we going to settle for anything less? In chapter 16 of Andrew Murray’s book,
The Two Covenants, we read: The ministry of the Spirit! What a glory there is in
it! What a responsibility it brings! What a sufficiency of grace there is
provided for it! What a privilege, to be a minister of the Spirit!

< blockquote>What tens of thousands we have throughout Christendom who are
called ministers of the gospel. What an inconceivable influence they exert for
life or for death over the millions who depend upon them for their knowledge and
participation of the Christian life. What a power there would be if all these
were ministers of the Spirit! Let us study the word, until we see what God meant
the ministry to be, and learn to take our part in praying and labouring to have
it nothing less. To minister in the Spirit is to serve in compliance with the
heart of our Father. We do not act or speak from our own wills, but His. We
don’t seek our own glory, but along with Jesus we seek the glory of our Father
who is in heaven. This is the principle of decrease in lives that seek His
increase among men.

We pray with Paul for all who seek to live in the fullness of God in Christ,

[For I always pray to] the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation [of insight into
mysteries and secrets] in the [deep and intimate] knowledge of Him, By having
the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand
the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in
the saints (His set-apart ones), And [so that you can know and understand] what
is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power in and
for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of His mighty strength,
(Ephesians 1:17-19 AMP)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 15: 15 - CHAPTER 15: THOU IN ME AND I IN THEE
========================================================================

Chapter 15: Thou in Me and I in Thee By Michael Clark and George Davis

Unless the world has seen the reality of us living in our Father and His Son, it
has not seen the living reality of the gospel. ...If we are not living
demonstrations of that heavenly union, "Thou in Me and I in Thee," we have
nothing to say to a lost and dying world.

Jesus’ last prayer for us before He was crucified was recorded by John. "That
they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may
be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me." (John 17:21
KJ2000) Unless the world has seen the reality of us living in our Father and His
Son, it has not seen the living reality of the gospel. Satan tried everything he
could to derail the witness of the Son in the Father and the Father in His Son
and he continues to raise havoc in the church to derail our witness in them as
well. Jesus and the Father were one in perfect unity. Jesus said to his
disciple, "Have you been so long with me, Philip, and you have not seen the
Father?" The real witness of who Jesus is--the One sent by the Father to
demonstrate our divine callings--depends on us being one in Them. If we are not
living demonstrations of that heavenly union, "Thou in Me and I in Thee," we
have nothing to say to a lost and dying world.

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on [into] me
through their word; That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I
in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you
have sent me. And the glory which you gave me I have given them; that they may
be one, even as we are one: I in them, and you in me, that they may be made
perfect in [into] one; and that the world may know that you have sent me, and
have loved them, as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23 KJ2000)

If the true gospel of the kingdom is preached, then the full reality of what it
means to be "saved" must accompany such preaching. Believers in Christ must have
a faith that transports them into Jesus and our Father. Believing in Jesus as
the Messiah is not enough. True belief is a life changing force that transports
us into the fullness of the Son of God and His relationship with our Father. It
is a new identity.

Jesus told a parable of the final wedding feast of Himself and His bride saying,
"Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them who are bidden, Behold,
I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things
are ready: come unto [into] the marriage. But they made light of it, and went
their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise." (Matthew 22:4-5
KJ2000) They were not just called to come to His wedding feast, but into the
marriage! They, like so many confessing Christians today, had other things that
interested them more than their own wedding. They were invited unto the feast,
but did not go into the wedding. The writer of Hebrews spoke of this daily feast
that is ours in Christ saying, "We have an altar, of which they have no right to
eat who serve the tabernacle." (Hebrews 13:10 KJ2000) The worst enemies of the
best are things that are good. Church (tabernacle) attendance can be a stop that
falls short of the true spiritual altar of our Father.

Yes, there will be a future marriage supper of the Lamb, but we also now eat
from the King’s table in the presence of our enemies. Those who have been
willing to go outside the camp unto Jesus, bearing His reproach, feed on
spiritual food that is rarely found in the tabernacles of men. We know that here
we have no continuing city, but we seek a heavenly one whose Builder and Maker
is God. So much of what is preached and taught today is topical or superficial
at best. Faith that get us up to the very edge of spiritual reality and stops,
allowing us to maintain our own self-existence and inoculates us against any
further growth into the Father and the Son. Satan does not speak only lies. He
actually speaks 99 percent truth. Like a poison that cannot be smelled or
tasted, it is that one percent which lies hidden in a good and true broth that
kills us. Where there is the life of Christ who abides in the Father, there is
always unity. Where that life is lacking, you will only find discord and
confusion, the true meaning of Babylon. We often talk about church unity and
think that if we all believe the same doctrines and go to the same church, we
have unity. Of this A.W. Tozer wrote, "One hundred religious persons knit into a
unity by careful organizations do not constitute a church any more than eleven
dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always."

Some would trumpet the slogan, "What would Jesus do," as the answer to our
conduct in everyday life, but are we to imitate what we read of Him in a 1900
year old book or is there something more? F. J. Huegel wrote in chapter one of
Bone of His Bone:

We are not what Christ would have us to be; the Sermon on the Mount does not
find expression in our attitudes; sin as a principle is still rampant in our
lives; we are not free from envy, pride, self-love, and lust of pleasure; the
mountain of secret selfishness still crushes us and in spite of all our efforts
remains immovable; there is little joy, so little freedom of spirit, none of
that rapture which so characterized the primitive Christians; we agonize, and
bleed, and struggle --but failure dogs our footsteps. What is the matter? We are
proceeding upon a false basis. We are attempting to do what the Saviour Himself
never expected us to do. The Christian life is not an Imitation. The great
dilemma of which we have been speaking resolves itself into most simple terms
when we grasp this distinction between Imitation and Participation.

For, what is impossible to me as an imitator of Christ, comes perfectly natural
as a participant of Christ. It is Only when Christ nullifies the force of my
inherent "self life," and communicates to me a Divine life, that Christian
living in its true sense, is at all possible for me. I must be born again. "The
flesh profiteth nothing." (John 6:63) Without Jesus I can do nothing. I must
live in Him and, renouncing my own life, find in Him a "new life."

Now to this "new life," the Christian requirements, so incomprehensible and
unattainable while we move in the realm of the "flesh-life," are all simple.
They are nothing more nor less than statements regarding its modus operandi. The
Sermon on the Mount, so far from cramping in any way this new life, is simply a
statement of the way it operates. The trouble is, we have not listened to Jesus.
He tells us that we must abide in Him as a branch in the Vine. Matthew 5:1-48;
Matthew 6:1-34, Matthew 7:1-29, without John 15:1-27, would be like so many
freight cars without an engine, or like a whale without water, or a bird without
air. In that upper-room interview, the Master, knowing that it was His last
opportunity to impress fundamentals upon His disciples, places the supreme
emphasis upon this mystical union, this spiritual oneness with Himself of all
believers -- this sublime fact of Participation. "Abide in Me and I in you."
(John 15:4) Our failures only confirm the Saviour’s Word, for He said: "Without
Me ye can do nothing" (John 15:5). Where is our perfection in the mind of our
Father? It is found in our becoming perfected into the One, the Son of God. As
we are each found to be one in Him, we will be found in that unity that the
church so miserably lacks today. Unity does not come with a common doctrinal
structure or a common membership in an organization. Men have tried this kind of
unity for years and it always ends in schism. The division comes over doctrinal
hair splitting, the shape of the church altar, the color of the church carpet,
the songs sung or the instruments played in "worship." Only as we lose our likes
and dislikes that are part of our self-identity by being totally enfolded into
Christ and He into us will we ever know unity. Unity is only found in each of us
having the mind of Christ within. Herein is perfection in the eye of our Father.
John wrote:

Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him, and he
in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is
love; and he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him. In this is our
love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as
he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts
out fear: because fear has to do with punishment. He that fears is not made
perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:15-19 KJ2000)
Being made perfect in the One is where we find an unending source of love that
will keep us in unity. Without Father’s unconditional agape love flowing between
us, unity is impossible. But if we are in Christ and He is in us, love is made
perfect like the love that Jesus and our Father share with One another. We have
not passed fully into Christ if we have not been made perfect in love. We cannot
be made perfect in love without being totally enfolded into Jesus and the
Father. God is love and love is that mystical force that binds the Father and
the Son together. Just as they are bound together in love, so are we bound
together in them. It is this same mystical power that draws us into their
fellowship. We love our Father because He first loved us.

He Who Has the Son, Has the Father To truly know Jesus is to know our Father in
Heaven. To see Jesus is to see the Father. But how about those of us who are one
in Christ? What is our place in this relationship? Jesus said, "He that believes
on [into] me, believes not on [into] me, but on [into] him that sent me. And he
that sees me sees him that sent me. I am come a light into the world, that
whosoever believes on [into] me should not abide in darkness." (John 12:44-46
KJ2000) You cannot believe into the Son without also believing into the Father
because they are one.

He who has the Son has the Father. To believe into Jesus is to believe into our
Father. To see Jesus is to see our Father. Paul wrote, "So let no one boast of
men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apol’los or Cephas or the world
or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are
Christ’s; and Christ is God’s." (1 Corinthians 3:21-23 RSVA) All things are ours
if we have believed into Christ who is in the Father. A.W. Tozer wisely wrote,
"An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not
distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of
Himself as fully as if there were no others." John wrote to the infant church:

Whosoever denies the Son, the same has not the Father: [but] he that confesses
the Son has the Father also. Let that therefore abide in you, which you have
heard from the beginning. If that which you have heard from the beginning shall
remain in you, you also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. (1 John
2:23-24 KJ2000) [emphasis added] To confess Christ is not just paying Him lip
service. Confessing the Son is to be in one accord with Jesus, speaking what He
speaks, not out of our own will. Paul said of those who truly confess Christ,
"You have the mind of Christ." Just as Jesus could say, "the words that I speak
unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwells in me, he does the
works," so it is true of all who are in Christ.

Whoever transgresses and doesn’t remain in the teaching of Christ [doesn’t
confesses Christ], doesn’t have God. He who remains in the teaching, the same
has both the Father and the Son. (2 John 1:9 WEB)

Let us walk in the Son and the Father in true faith and confession. When John
saw Jesus knocking at the locked door of the Laodicean church in Revelation
chapter 3, Jesus was asking any man to open the door and that He would come in
and sup with him. It was the door of the smug Laodicean church that had closed
Him out! As long as we say in our hearts that we have all we need by living
lives separate from Him unto ourselves, He remains outside and we remain in our
delusion of prosperity. But if we overcome that self-reliant smugness so common
to the western church today and fully open our hearts to Him, He says, "To him
that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also
overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne." (Revelation 3:21 KJ2000)
This is the goal of the gospel of Christ, complete unity in our Father with
Jesus. Jesus overcame all the temptations to live for and serve Himself. The
last temptationwas to save His own life from the cross. The world has a saying,
"No guts, no glory." Is the glory of sitting with Jesus on His throne enough for
us to "love not our lives unto death" as He did? It is up to us to open our
hearts to His upward call and embrace whatever Father has for us to walk in.

Father invites many sons into His glory for the very next thing that John saw
and heard was...

After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first
voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said,
Come up here... (Revelation 4:1 KJ2000)

Today, with the sound of a trumpet the call goes forth to whomsoever will, "Come
up here!" Jesus has a high calling. He calls us out of carnal, lukewarm lives to
join Him in His Father’s kingdom within. Remember, the kingdom of God is only
found where Christ is King. Come up here!

We are called into His glory. Again the translators missed it. In Hebrews we
read, For it befitted him [our Father], for whom are all things, and by whom are
all things, in bringing many sons unto [into His] glory, to make the captain of
their salvation perfect through sufferings. (Hebrews 2:10 KJ2000) The people
went out of Egypt unto God’s glory at Mount Sinai, but they refused to enter
into it because of fear. Only Moses went into the glory of God. They failed to
enter into the glory of the Father because of unbelief, but chose instead to
make an idol to worship in a most sensual and devilish way while Moses was gone.
But because of the perfect life and death of the Son of God we have a better
hope.

Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless
before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our
Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.
(Jude 1:24-25 KJ2000)

Father has His great grace waiting for us. Paul wrote, "Therefore, being
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by
whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice
in hope of the glory of God... For if through the offense of one many be dead,
much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one Man, Jesus
Christ, hath abounded unto many... For if by one man’s offense death reigned by
one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of
righteousness shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ." (Romans 5:1-2; Romans
5:15-17 KJ21) And in Hebrews we read, "Since then we have a great high priest
who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our
confession. For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without
sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may
receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:14-16 RSVA)

Don’t settle for coming close without fully entering into Him. God wants to
share His glory with His sons and we should pray without hesitation, "Father,
take me into your glory and do whatever it takes to get me there. Don’t listen
to my begging and whimpering when you chasten me. Don’t let me fall short of all
that you have for me in your Son, Jesus. Amen."

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his
abundant mercy has begotten us again unto [into] a living hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3 KJ2000)

Amen!


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  CHAPTER 16: 16 - APPENDIX
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Appendix By Michael Clark and George Davis

"The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss
it, but that it is too low and we hit it." - Michelangelo

Appendix Other into verses where the Greek eiÎv or eis was used:

Because narrow is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads unto [into] life,
and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:14 KJ2000) But go and learn what that
means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the
righteous, but sinners to [into] repentance. (Matthew 9:13 KJ2000)

Then said He unto them, "Therefore every scribe who is instructed unto [into]
the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth
forth out of his treasure things new and old." (Matthew 13:52 KJ21) But whoever
shall offend one of these little ones who believe in [into] me, it were better
for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in
the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6 KJ2000) This beginning of miracles did Jesus
in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed
on [into] him. (John 2:11 KJ2000)

Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in
[into] his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. (John 2:23 KJ2000)

He that believes on [into] the Son has everlasting life: and he that believes
not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36
KJ2000) But whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water
springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14 KJ2000)

Say not, There are yet four months, and then comes harvest? behold, I say unto
you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to
harvest. And he that reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit unto [into] life
eternal: that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. (John
4:35-36 KJ2000) And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on [into] him
for the saying of the woman, who testified, He told me all that ever I did.
(John 4:39 KJ2000)

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that hears my word, and believes on him that
sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is
passed from death unto [into] life. (John 5:24 KJ2000)

Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto
him, Do you believe on [into] the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he,
Lord, that I might believe on [into] him? (John 9:35-36 KJ2000) And after
certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewess, he sent
for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in [ into ] Christ. (Acts 24:24
KJ2000)

Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound: That as sin has reigned unto death, even so might
grace reign through righteousness unto [into] eternal life by Jesus Christ our
Lord. (Romans 5:20-21 KJ2000)

How then shall they call on him in [into] whom they have not believed? and how
shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear
without a preacher? (Romans 10:14 KJ2000) [More correctly this should read
"without it being proclaimed openly" - this word khru/ssw - Kerusso, translated
"preacher," is a verb in the Greek, not a noun!] For of him, and through him,
and to [into] him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:36
KJ2000)

Now this I say, that every one of you says, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and
I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? or
were you baptized in [into] the name of Paul? (1 Corinthians 1:12-13 KJ2000) But
to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in [into]
him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. (1
Corinthians 8:6 KJ2000)


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/clark-michael-and-davis-george-life-into-christ/
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