Show Us the Father, Philip Asked

Now we're going to continue to dig tonight into foundations. Occasionally it's good to expose the foundations and be sure they're secure. Then you can build your superstructure to a point, having got firm foundations, we forget them, except for an occasional examination.

But we've got to be sure we've got them, then we can build securely. I suppose I pass this on because it was a deep concern to me to get firm foundations, nor did I find them in a day. Having found what appeared to me to be the foundations presented to us through God's Word, I feel I can go forward without a thought, as it were, boldly, unquestioningly, because through God's revelation, as far as I understand it, I feel I have a firm ground under my feet, foundations in my building.

They are maybe easy subjects to consider, and as our brother said, perhaps stretches, but we need that sometimes. Now last night I sought to present you with what appears to me to be, from God's Word, the foundation of all, and until we have that clarified by revelation, by the Word, by the Spirit, in mind and in heart, and we mustn't be afraid of having a thing in a mind, because that's the first stage into the heart. First approach of the Bible must be to the mind.

A pioneer missionary soon knows that, because until people can read, they can't have the Word, of course. So we sought to get a clear sight of that yesterday, and the sight we got was this, that the Bible presents to us this fact, that there's really only one person who functions in the universe. There's really only one.

The rest of us are mere details. We hardly matter. That's not quite true, but it's, uh, can be put that way to try and get things back into proportion.

They've got some outer proportion. In other words, it isn't we that matter, it's he that matters. And he matters so absolutely, that it's really only he fulfilling his purposes in his way, doing his own work, and living his own life from eternity to eternity.

In the end, that's all it is. It's so absolutely he, that until, until we've got, uh, uh, ourselves, uh, divorced and separated from himself, uh, and ourselves put in the very little, very little place which belongs to us, and himself into the, I shouldn't even use the word big place, I should say the entire place that belongs to him. We haven't got our, our relationship right.

I'm positive of it. We say I got beautiful as him tonight, which is beautiful, but ridiculous. Does Jesus care? Gee, the real you are, is Jesus.

The real you is Jesus. Jesus cares for himself, and you are his self. I tell you, we need our hymnology written, rewritten.

Beautiful, precious, because it's got a beautiful tune, but what poor words. What poor words for grown-up Christians. And if we in America can't produce grown-up Christians, what are we to say to the Indians and the Africans? As a matter of fact, they're more grown-up than us, I find.

It's because we've never had the real gospel really presented to us. And so we regard it as a question mark whether Jesus cares. There's nobody else but Jesus, and Jesus cares for himself, and we are his other self.

So he sure as hell cares for himself. Maybe what I say doesn't appear to be nonsense to some of you. Somebody today said to me, I can understand your books, but I'm sure I couldn't understand you last night, that's quite likely.

So probably there are more of you like that. So I'll go on being misunderstood and so on. But it's another concept, and I'm sorry to say, not a concept which is deeply presented to us.

It is, of course, has come to some of us, but so it hasn't become second nature to us. The second nature that has got to come to us is if really only one person lives in you. The real you isn't you at all.

The real you is not you at all. You have an other self, which is your real self, and that real self is Jesus Christ. Whether you call him Father, Son, or Holy Ghost, it doesn't matter.

The three in one. Such a weak gospel have we got preached to us, that we still regard ourselves as separate entities, and God is a separate entity with some relationship between us, and that's not the gospel. The gospel is as near as possible replacement of the human self by the divine self.

I say as near as possible because there is a profound paradox in this. Both of us are alive. We have to examine that.

But anyway, we have to overstress this, first of all, to get that stress, get it a little bit into place. Well, I presented that to you yesterday in the form of the illustration given us in the scripture, such as temple and vessel, because both are mere containers. Now, of course, it is true that we're more than containers, because we're neither buildings nor cans.

We're people. So we're a little more than both. But if God's Word presents us like that, to press home to us is a very basic truth.

So even though we're more than cans and houses, we're very little more. We're only living cans and living houses, that's all. And I sought to show you the shock I got, straight from God's Word in my early missionary life, when I discovered that the Bible says, not God has things he gives us, but God is himself everything.

Christ is all, and in all. So that life has not become life until some change of outlook has taken place by which we actually have come to, come at ease in the fact that another person is the person who lives our lives. And if we care for our own flesh, and the Bible says no man ever, ever didn't care for his own flesh, Jesus Christ cares for his own flesh, which is we, which is us.

There's been a great divorce, and there's got to be a great remarriage in the gospel. So we saw yesterday that in order to drive that homeward, at least those two illustrations, of course there are many other ways in which it can be put, are presented to us in the Bible. Vessels, temples, which are, their only function is to contain.

What matters is what they contain, of course. We know what we contain, who we contain. Now we move from that illustration, and what it presents to us, to another type of illustration, which is more living, which takes account of the fact that we're not inanimate cans, or inanimate buildings, we're people.

And also brings another aspect of this truth, vitally important, home to us. And it's this, a can may be full or may be empty, and therefore if we regard ourselves as containers, the question is, is he there always, or is he not? He may be in one day and out the other. And that's a little awkward when you want to find him, he's popped away, and you can't find him.

And the same thing with the temple. The occupant may be there or may not be there. So in that sense, it's not a complete illustration.

It's only a partial illustration. I think I said yesterday, no infinite truth can't be contained in any finite illustration. It's got to have a number of facets presented to us.

And so the other illustrations given us, are given us by the Saviour himself, and by the Apostle Paul. And that's where he speaks of it as vine and branch. Jesus does.

And Paul as head and body. Now in both cases they make one organism. Vine and branch are one tree.

Head and body are one person. Now that's the illustrative basis on which we say that Jesus Christ and I are the same person. And Jesus Christ and you are the same person.

In a larger sense, we all and he are one person. But I'm not talking about that larger sense now, I'm talking about the present individual sense to get that relation right first. That relationship right first.

Now in other words, both the Saviour and Paul are presenting us with the truth of unification. Indissoluble unification. Or almost indissoluble.

I say almost indissoluble because there is in the Bible a place of apostasy, where you can be broken off again. But that's apostasy, not backsliding. Apostasy means you've turned around and hated the one you once loved.

That's a very extreme place. We didn't discuss that tonight. I have to say that in order to give the balance of truth from the Bible.

But we can dismiss that from our thoughts and from our normal consideration. From a point of view of our normal consideration, we may say we live in an indissoluble union. I said last night again that it isn't safe to claim our place within those two illustrations, the organic illustration, head and body which make one man, vine and branch which make one tree, until we first of all enter into the reality of the former illustration, which is the vessel and what it contains.

Because unless we first of all grasp that the actual one, the one, is he, we are merely containers. When we move on to the presentation of unification, we may think in some sense we're kind of co-equals. And the two of us do it together.

So that illustration of union isn't safe until the first has got right inside us. So inside the union, I'm still just in the face of the channel, practically. He's still the thinker, wither, doer, actor.

I'm merely the means by which he manifests himself. Although in this sense I'm an active manifester. In that sense I'm a co-worker.

But I've tried to push that out in the present into a very minor place. When you've got it clear, it comes back to a good place. Because you become intensely active, you become a thinker, wither, feeler, and tremendously active.

But it's not safe until you first have all worn out before you come in again, if you understand. Perhaps you don't. So we are going to examine more carefully tonight our title to unification.

Now that's why I say it's good occasionally to dig up your foundation and look at them. Because if you're sure of them, you can to a sense forget them and move out on that basis, because you're sure of them. And we've got to be sure of our title to such a daring thing.

You see, I'm saying a daring thing to you. I'm saying to you, your real self is Jesus Christ. Your other self is Jesus Christ.

Not a separate person at all. The actual self, your self, is Jesus Christ, the real one. You're a kind of appendage, that's all.

You're a kind of appendage to yourself, that's all. Now that's a very bold thing to say, to bring right down to earth a unification between deity and humanity as a practical way of life. We leave Tommy to apply it.

So we need to have a good title. When you've got a good title, you can be free in it, you can have plenty of fun, because you're sure of your grounds, you're sure of your rights, until you are sure of your rights. A lot of our reverence in church is just because we don't know our foundations, we can't be free.

So we've got to put our piety instead, we call it freedom. The most perfect human illest presentation, testimony, to the reality of what I'm saying, actually was the Savior himself. It was a great help to me when I saw that.

I said to myself, the only person who's ever lived a perfect life on earth is Jesus. He became, for our sakes, a real man. Of course, there's a paradox if you like there.

He was real God, real man. He was real man, real flesh and blood man. And what he did, he did by the same person by whom we do it, which is the Holy Ghost.

He was born in the Spirit, he was killed in the Spirit, he died by the Spirit, through the eternal Spirit offered himself, rose by the Spirit. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth, who went about doing good, with the Holy Ghost, went about doing good. That was Peter's early description of him.

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power, went about doing good and so on. So he was a real man. So I said to myself, now, if Jesus was a perfect man, if I know how he lived a perfect life, I've got my key.

And I found that he told us how he lived his life. At least to witness to it was borne to us by the Apostle John. And I found it fitted exactly into those two sides I've been presenting to you, presenting to you because they did, because they are what he presents.

That's my authority. And the first was this. It's a very striking fact that whenever Jesus was challenged on earth by what authority, by what power he did or said this or that and the other, you find in the Gospel of John, he always answers this, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do.

The Son can do nothing of himself. As I hear, I judge. My judgments aren't mine, they're his.

My doctrines are not mine, they're his. In other words, the basic self-consciousness of Jesus was the consciousness of his nothingness. That's exactly it.

Because Jesus knew humanity. He was himself the true human. The true human is the true empty.

The true human is the container of the divine. He's only there to contain and manifest the divine, the deity. And Jesus, being perfect human, therefore had a perfect, a constant consciousness, I haven't got a single thing.

That's why Jesus was always a relaxed person. Because he wasn't trying to pump something out of himself, because he hadn't got it in his pump out. So he relaxed, he didn't try, exactly what Tommy was giving us this morning.

But he always had another as his point of reference. And he said, what things wherever my Father doeth, those I do. What things wherever he saith, those I say.

Now the disciples before Pentecost, who only knew an external Jesus, that's of course why Jesus says, good I go. And leave you, because you can't find the real Jesus until I've gone. Even Jesus' body could be idolatry.

Paul said that. Paul definitely said, yea, though I know Christ after the flesh, yet though I know him no more. Strong statements, there are strong statements in this book.

He said, I have no interest in knowing a Christ after the flesh. He said, I know another person who's altogether, another, what shall I say, another quality of life, another person, I know another relationship. You'll never get far with Jesus Christ, while you're sitting down in the chair opposite to him and talk to him.

No, he won't. He isn't like that. And so the disciples of course, all they had was this objective, external idea of the Godhead.

So they were completely puzzled. And they said, how is it this man Jesus says, what I see the Father do I do. What I hear the Father say I say.

And they brought it to a head in that last conversation he had before he went to Gethsemane. I think it's the most important conversation ever recorded, because it was the first time in an official sense in which the basic truth of the history, the basic truth of the universe, the basic truth of the meaning of our creation was exposed. And that was when he'd been talking about going to the Father, in my Father's house in many mansions, I could repair a place for you and so on.

They were distressed, because the only Jesus they knew was an external Jesus in flesh and blood. And the only God they knew was a distant person they'd told about up there. And so Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father and that will suffice us.

Of course he meant open him and give us some revelation. And one of our troubles is we look upon God as an old man with a long beard sitting on a chair. You've got to get God destroyed and reborn before you get very far.

He neither grows a beard nor sits in a chair. Sorry for my blasphemy, but I tend to be blasphemous, because we need it. And so he asked him that question.

Jesus' answer was the key. He said, Have I been so long time with you? Yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Haste thou then, show us the Father.

Now if you stop there, and with our hindsight, as we look back, we say, Oh, well, of course, Jesus was a member of the Trinity, his deity. And so he was just saying, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Well, it's one and the same.

No, he didn't mean that. He most distinctly didn't mean that. He went straight on to say this.

Believe it or not, that I am in the Father and the Father in me. The word I speak unto you, I, the human Jesus, I speak not of myself, but the Father up here. No, the Father dwelleth in me.

He doeth the works of nothing. He said, You see, I have another person who's entirely distinct from me. I call him my father.

He is my father. He's an actual person. He's the person who is the all.

And I've become a human for your sake. I admit there's a mystery there. I've become a human for your sake.

Therefore, being human, I'm a container. As a container, I've nothing of myself. I've neither words nor deeds nor theories or anything.

But I have inside me a person who lives in me, and he and I are joined so much so that in two chapters before, we'll say two or three weeks before, if you like, at the time of his discussion on the parable of the sheep, he said, I and my father are one. So he said, they're one and two. That's the paradox.

That's it. They're one and two. He says, we're one.

We're one. And he meant what he said. We're one.

That isn't referring to the fact that he's part of deity, because he's speaking as a human. That's what they've called him, a blasphemer, because he's a human. He made that unification.

I and my father are one. Yet then he said, the words I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father dwelleth in me. We're two.

As I myself am the outer voice, and the Father in me is the inner speaker. And we're two, and yet we're one. That's it.

So you see, Jesus presented to us true humanity as being built upon a fundamental unity between deity and humanity. So humanity is only humanity when God is functioning in it. He's subhuman until then.

So there's our presentation in light of Jesus of this union, this unity, this oneness. And yet inside the oneness, Jesus is there as the detail. Just the outside clothing as he wears.

The person, the real person, is so much the Father, it is, if you've seen me, you've seen him. But that can be said of us. Then the interesting thing, of course, is that Jesus went straight on after that conversation to the diamond branch.

It looks as if, it says at the end of the 14th of John, where that conversation is recorded, it says, arise, let's go hence. They left the supper table and were moving to Gethsemane. And it looks as if Jesus was concerned that he hadn't quite brought home by way of illustration to his disciples what he really meant for them.

He's expressed what his relationship was, as if it wasn't quite clear that he made clear to them. And they passed through a vineyard. That's it, he says.

Now he says, this is this unity. He says, I am my Father of one tree. He's my vine, I'm his branch.

And he's been bearing his fruit through me on earth. Now he says, you now are to be my branch. I'm your vine, you're to be my branch.

And just as we've been in unity, and yet in that unity there's duality, I'm there, the human, and he's there, the deity, the divine. Yet we're unity, and we function as unity, so now you're going to function as unity. And then Paul took it up, as I told you, in that head-body illustration.

And there are two statements Paul made, which seem to me settle it for ourselves. In this sense, I don't suppose we would do so, but it is possible for people to say, well, of course, Jesus Christ was different. He was God manifest in the flesh.

Can I really equate myself with him? And you can say, well, it's all right if Jesus says I'm nothing and the Father's all and I'm one with him and all that, but that doesn't quite give authority. You might say that. But then Paul comes along and uses exactly the same language himself, and us.

Because Paul says, in a verse which always is to me very wonderful, in 1 Corinthians 6, 17, he says this, he, as he joins to the Lord, is one spirit. Now, I haven't had time to discuss that. I'd like to, because of its importance later on.

The differentiation between spirit and soul, because to understand how to run this life, that's a very important understanding. The Bible tells us this. The Bible says you enter into the relaxed life, the restful life, when you can discern between soul and spirit.

But all I'll say, just a personal, I think I mentioned it yesterday, spirit is self. The inner ego is your spirit. The proof is, God is spirit and God is the first ego.

He's the ego of all egos. I think you said ego, but you're quite wrong, it should be ego. You Greek scholars ought to know that, don't you? So you'll understand my strange emphases.

But I'm just saying now that the real I is spirit, God's spirit. He's the real I, the I Am. And I told you yesterday, I think he's the father of spirits, that's the real I in us.

I only stress that for the moment, because Paul's actually saying, the real I of God and the real I, you become one. That's the authority. He, the sinner, saved by grace, is joined to the Lord, is one spirit, not two.

And we can go right into that, to the permanent recognition of an indissoluble unity. The second illustration I'd like to use with that, one of you asked at the meeting last night was mentioning to me the beauty of that verse, because it's a great favorite of many of us. That's in Galatians 2.20, where Paul, as you were, puts it into language, rather in the same way Jesus puts it into language concerning himself.

And Paul said, I am crucified with Christ, we need to discuss that further, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ is in me. Now the wonder of that statement to me is the phrase, yet not I. You see, he said, I'm crucified with Christ, that means the old self-centered Paul, we'll discuss that as I say in a moment. That's out, I've been crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless I live, I'm a real person. Thinking, willing, acting person, feeling, battling and the like, I'm a real person. Nevertheless I live, and that's an absolute fact, of you and me.

Yet not I, but Christ. Now the whole point, he didn't say, and Christ lives. If he said, nevertheless I live, and Christ lives, well here are two of us, how big is the gap between us? But he replaced his self with Christ's self.

That's it. Nevertheless I live, excuse me, excuse me, it's not the real I at all, the real I is Jesus Christ. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me.

That's my authority for saying that Jesus Christ is your other self. Now you see, when you can get that, the point is this, you can never get away from yourself, can you? It's an awful nuisance, I'm sorry about it, but you can't. Wherever you go, you are.

When it can dawn on you that Jesus Christ is your other self, you can't get away from him however much you like to wriggle out of it. And he can't get away from you, I'm sorry for him, but he can't. You become one.

And so it's just the same as you never think of doubting where you are. You never think of doubting you're here if you're here, so you never think of doubting if Jesus is here, that's obvious. There can be no question about that.

And not here in the sense of an observer, but in the sense of the person who's living the life. Well, as I say, you care about your own life all right. If you're hurt, you're hurt.

And if Jesus Christ is your other life, if you're hurt, he's hurt. It's his hurt. You see, the question of, any conception of, any question of what God's attitude isn't in with him, because he's the real self in you.

That's the point I'm getting at. And your whole concept of life changes, because you move out from that. Therefore your affairs are his affairs.

You don't ask if they're his affairs, of course they're his affairs, because he's you. You see my point? Of course your affairs are his affairs. That's why you use the authority of faith.

Because you say, well, if God's the one who's living this life, God's got sufficiency to handle that show, all right, then carry on and handle it, Lord. And you just put your hand in your pocket and say, carry on, Lord, it's all right. That's a great life.

I mean it. That's what the Bible says. The only real victory you've got to win is not the victory of the change of circumstances or change of person, it's the victory of the change of the heart of your faith.

The real victory is the victory of faith. The change of circumstances or change of people is the outcome of your faith. We don't get through on the faith.

We want to get through on the circumstances. It won't work that way. And the faith merely means this.

The faith means that you deep down do say, you're running this thing, you're sufficient for it, carry on, Lord, I'm going to watch you do it. It's faith. We'll talk more about that another time.

All right. Now, what I want to give you for the remainder of my time tonight is the title to that. You may not perhaps think it necessary, and it may be something you forget, but you need to, if you have your feet solidly on spiritual earth, you need to know it, because it's the title of redemption.

And I present it to you in this way. I mentioned it in brief way to the ICL this morning, but I can be a little longer about it now. I want to suggest to you that we've come into this life, I'm not talking about the redeemed life, I'm talking about our natural birth, our first birth.

We've come into this life, and from our earliest days we have a wrong concept of ourselves. And that wrong concept is, we're just independent people and we'll carry on. And we think we're independent.

And we think we make our own choices and run our own life and so forth. Now, because we've got a wrong concept, which I'll touch on again in a moment, the consequence is, when we get to the redemption point, and we move over into Christ, it's a bit of an effort to us to start a dependent, unified life, or if we're used to an independent life. You see, it's a new sort of way of living, and it doesn't sort of easily fit.

We've not been used to a unified life when somebody else is living in us. We haven't had that. Or, I mean, we don't think we have.

We think we've had a life where we've just been ourselves and run it, and thought our own thoughts and planned our own plans and what not. Like Harold was telling us, we're all telling us about ourselves this afternoon. In the picture of himself, I mean.

And, as I say, from that angle, it isn't easy for even the mind, still less the heart, to move to a new situation in which I'm no longer just myself. Somebody else is joined to me, functioning through me. It's a new kind of way of life.

And the tragedy is, it's put by many of our gospel preachers as a kind of optional way of life. The gospel often preached as if justification is a necessity, and union is an option. As if we have Christ as a saviour, not as ordinary, putting it in a crude way.

Because of that very point, we've not been used to being run by somebody, and having somebody live in us. So we tend to preach gospel again. You ran yourself before.

Well, now you get saved. You won't go to hell now. You've got your sins washed away in the blood of Christ.

And now, it's not quite so good to run yourself. You've got somebody to help you run yourself now. Come on.

You'd better give him a place. That's the way we preach. As if we still can run ourselves if we like.

Ridiculous. But I think we'll find it gets less ridiculous if this truth from God's Word is brought home to us. We never were independent.

We always were unified. It depends to whom. There isn't a single human being on this world who ever has been independent.

Every single human being born into the world, the moment they're born, they're born unified. It depends to whom. And thus we get the statement in 1 John, the first letter of John, 4th chapter, 4th verse.

I remember how this struck me when I saw it. I'm just reading the section of the verse which concerns us tonight, the last part. Because greater is he that is in you.

Now we understand that, of course. The he that is in us, of course, is this person, this living God, he who in infinite grace has come to live his life in us. That's the he that is in you.

The explanation. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. I sat up when I saw that.

It doesn't talk about it. It talks about he. So the world has a he in them as well as the redeemed.

Both sides, of course, have a he in them. It depends which he in them. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

And then they're given their names. In the 7th verse. No, 6th verse, last phrase.

Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Remembering the spirit is a person. Spirit is the person.

Here we have two personalities. In other words, really, the whole history of the universe centers around two personalities. One is the truth and the other is the false.

The spirit of truth and the spirit of error. One is the true God, the other is the pseudo-God. And the Bible tells us this, that the human, the human personality has, from the moment he's been born, is unified to one or the other.

And, of course, all human races start unified to the one. Now, when we get that a little more in place, we then learn that it's only an exchange of unions. It isn't a new concept of life.

It's a change of union. The gospel's a change of union. It's a replacement of the false indweller by the true indweller.

Of course, we all know who the false indweller is. I think it's, well, of course, the devil, Satan. He likes to smear himself so he can be laughed out of court.

He lives incognito when he can, in disguise. And one of the tragedies of even our Christian approach to the Bible is laughing the devil out of court. The devil is the spirit of self-centeredness.

He's the author and source of this terrible thing in the universe, which is self-love. You see, God is the first self, but the wonder of God is that he's never been one. He's always been three.

And from eternity, God's always been a self-giver. From eternity, he's been one who gives himself for his son, and his son responds to himself, and so on, and they move up as a spirit in their creative activity. But God is pure self-giving love.

There isn't one thing about God which isn't pure self-giving love, because that's the original self. Of course, we can't—there never has been—we have to say this as best we can say—there never has been a choice in God, because God, from eternity, has been like that. But potentially, we will say there's a choice in God, because a self is free, of course, free to choose.

A self is only a self because it's intelligent, and it can see this aspect and that aspect and choose between them. That's what an intelligent self means, of course. But God, of course, has been eternally fixed in self-giving love.

But when God created selves, he creates selves, you may say, in that neutral position, if you can put it that way to begin with. And so, what I'm getting at is this. We're presented right in the Bible with this tremendous event—we may say it's the most important event in the Bible—till Calvary.

And that is the moment when the first created being in history—now remember, the created self is made to be dominated by the creator self, whose love. So he picks up the created self and uses all the powers of the personality in his self-giving love, expresses his self-giving love through the powers of the personality. Without that creator self, that spirit of lovingness, the created self turns into a self, loves itself.

It's a question, of course, of self-loving or self-giving. Now, the Bible opens to us, it gives us a history of the first created being who, as a created being, therefore being intelligent and being free, said, thank you very much, I've got a self and I enjoy myself, now I'll run myself. I don't want to be run by anybody else.

And that's the one we call the devil. So the devil is, next to Jesus Christ, the most important person in our history because he's the epitome of self-love. He's the spirit of self-love.

He's the personality of self-love, self-seeking, and all that comes out of it. Out of self-love, self-seeking, comes everything—envy, hatred, jealousy, and all the sins of the earth, all the list of sins. He's the one originally called Lucifer.

And we're given his history in Luke, we're given a flash of his history in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Those are the two chapters when we're given a backflash into the origin of sin. And then the Bible tells us, it says in 1 John 3 verse 8, the devil sinned from the beginning.

So sin was a person sinning. The Bible says so. Here is the origin of sin, a person sinning.

What is sin? Self-love. Sin is the first self, which instead of being a container of the self-giving self, said, I'll just be myself and run myself for myself, and turn himself in to self-love and self-seeking and self-magnification and all forms of self. That's what sin is.

What we call sins are the by-products of these sins, which is self-love. It isn't that self is wrong, it's that self-turned-into-self is wrong. Self-caught up by the Spirit of God and made the agent of self-giving is self-coming to right gear.

Now the marvellous further presentation given us is this. That's exactly where Adam stood in the Garden of Eden. Nothing could be more perfect than the history of the Garden of Eden.

It's a tragedy when you think of people who doubt and question the historicity of these basic facts. I think it's safe to say that the creation of man can give us a very good idea of the original history of the creation of Satan. Satan must originally have stood in very much the same positions as man stood.

I needn't go into that. That's only a mere speculation. The Bible doesn't tell us that.

What the Bible does tell us about the history of man is this simple fact, couldn't be simpler, that man was put into a garden, and among many of the blessings God gave him in the garden, God gave him two peculiar blessings, presentations of facts, which were two trees which are symbolic. The tree of life, and the tree which we may call for convenience to say the tree of death, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. There's a profound depth in that statement of good and evil.

We can't go into that now. Wonderful balance of truth there. But we may say for our own purposes, the tree of life and the tree of death.

Being symbol. Being symbol for this reason a tree hasn't got life. Of course, a human can't get life from a tree instead of spiritual life, that's obvious, it's symbolic.

And it's a symbolism which is carried right into the New Testament, because to this day we take bread and wine to symbolise spiritual facts. Exactly. The products of the ground, bread and wine, we take to symbolise the blood and body of Jesus.

So the symbolism is all right through the history of mankind. In other words, our forefather, in his human self, was presented with the necessity of being either the container of the wrong spirit or the right spirit. We know what he took, the wrong spirit.

That's why every single human being is born self-centred. We needn't debate typically about original sin. We needn't debate typically about total depravity.

Do you know what total depravity is? Anything which isn't the pure love of God. You can't do it. Therefore, everything you do which isn't God-in-use is total depravity.

Because the only thing which isn't total depravity is God-loving. That's all, not we-loving, God-loving. God is pure self-giving love.

Untraditional love. That's the only love in the universe. God is love.

Anything which isn't God-loving in use, therefore, is total depravity. So we needn't discuss whether total depravity is the reality. The first newborn baby is totally depraved because he's self-centred and self-seeking.

Whatever sentiment we like to put round it, that's the fact. And any mother and father knows that pretty quick. Because, you see, why? Because humanity has been born with a false spirit working through it.

Now do you see why I say that's an unknown fact to us? Humanity doesn't recognise that. Of course, it's true that the Bible says the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness unto him. Look at this statement, again, which comes from the letter of John.

John gives us a little word on the first sin committed after the fall of Adam. Of course, by Cain, who murdered his brother. And in chapter 3 of the first letter of John, 1 John 3, 12, we're told this.

Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, as slew his brother. Do you see the simplicity of the statement? It wasn't Cain that slew his brother, it was Satan in him that slew him. Don't you see the point? Just the same as we say we love people because we're of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

We Christians have come to learn that. If we do good things, it's because we're of the Spirit, not of ourselves. We know it's the Spirit of God expressing His goodness to us and His love to us.

We've been talking about that all these days. Here it says that evil is of another spirit. And that Cain committed hatred and murder because he had the spirit of hatred in him and the spirit of murder.

That's not his own spirit, that's another personality. So the whole human race actually has another personality in dwelling and expressing itself to it. The personality of self-love, self-loathing, the satanic personality.

That's what the Bible tells us. So that one of the great accounts given of the descriptions of the fall of man, in Ephesians 2.2, where it says that we're dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past we've walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit of doubt. Well, isn't it true? Do you see the same thing? We walk according to the course of this world, we fulfill the desires of our flesh and mind because we're motivated by another personality, not ourselves at all.

The personality of self-love and self-seeking and self-gratification. That's the spirit that functions in us and makes us selfish, self-centered. He has kept to himself his stolen property.

His stolen property is the human personality which is a container of another spirit. There's an interesting paragraph, a whole paragraph in Romans chapter 6. It's interesting for this fact. It's the last part of Romans 6 from the 14th chapter to the 14th verse at the end, to the 16th verse at the end, when about eight times over it says this, "...ye were the servants of sin, ye are the servants of righteousness.

Know ye not, to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin and of death, or beings of righteousness. Ye were the servants of sin, ye became the servants of righteousness." And it goes right that way down. Now the point I'm stressing is this, the Bible tells you for granted that we're always servants.

Now don't you see silly, foolish humans who think they're bosses? We silly, foolish humans think we run our own show, whether it's the UNO or the Senate or the Congress or the House of Parliament or industry or anything else. We think we're silly, chuckle-headed fools we are, we think we're bosses. We're servants.

We're made on the servant level of life. That's why we always stray when we try to make ourselves superior when we're born inferior. The only superiority I could ever have is a superior person inside us, that's Jesus Christ.

You see we're made inferior to contain a superior person. So we're always servants, it depends whom we serve. Are we controlled and lived in by the spirit of self-love, or are we controlled and lived in by the spirit of self-giving? Now the process of what the Bible speaks of as redemption is the process of replacement of a false unification by the true unification in the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

It had to take two forms. I must give it briefly, we will say only roughly in a few minutes, unless I stop, you're a bit weary by now, but perhaps I'd better complete this. Perhaps I can take it home again tomorrow or repeat it again if necessary.

I'll just go through it because it's important, otherwise it leaves the talk unfinished. Redemption had to take two forms because God had to solve two problems. And there are two presentations of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and its effects in the Bible.

We're reminded of it every week by the Holy Communion, because the Holy Communion speaks of the blood and the body of Christ, two distinct phases, the blood and the body. It may remind us of the blood and the body of Jesus Christ. And the interesting fact is that we're informed in the Bible that we participate in the body of Christ but do not participate in the blood.

It says, the cup of blessing which we bless in 1 Corinthians 10, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? 1 Corinthians 10. Then it says, the bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? 1 Corinthians 10, 16. Then it says, for we being many are one bread, one body.

It doesn't say we're one blood, because we're not one blood, because the blood was Jesus Christ himself. The blood is uniquely our life, all the way through the revelation of history we're told the life is in the blood. And therefore the blood was Jesus Christ himself, separate as it were, something which is more internal than the body.

We participate in the body, not in the blood. Now what I mean by this, taking it a little further, is that, as I said before, God has two problems which have to be solved. The first problem is the problem of judgment.

Because God's all law, because love is law, it's the basic law of the universe, is the law of love. And we've done nothing, all our lives, every breath we've breathed has been breaking that law. Because it hasn't been the pure love of God to us, it's self-love expressed in different forms.

Even love to God is self-love. It's all in that same category. Therefore we've got a constant history of broken law.

Broken law brings its consequences, because that's the meaning of law. When you break it, it has consequences. We all know that.

So God's first problem was how to eliminate the necessary consequences of the broken law which has come to us, presented to us in those tremendous statements all through the Bible, the wrath and the judgment and the tribulation and the fires of hell. And these things, you know, are worse, not better, than their symbols. A symbol is only a weak presentation of a tremendous truth.

And they're worse, not better. We can't fool with the wrath of God, can we? And that is an inevitable outcome of the broken law. It was the shedding of the blood of Jesus, which is God himself manifesting in the flesh, which solved that problem.

God gave his life on our behalf. The blood's the life. And that's uniquely the outpouring of the life of God on our behalf.

We all know that the whole Bible is based on that. The first person ever to be justified through blood was Abel. If Adam was, we're not told.

But somehow Abel knew, so likely his parent was told, that there has to be a sacrifice for the blood of another as an atonement for sin, and that's why he was murdered. Because instead of building up his own self-righteousness, he said, I'm just a wretched sinner, I've got to have the redemption through another to atone for my sins. So there's been the presentation of the shed blood right through the Bible, culminating in the revelation we see in glory of the lamb as it had been slain on the throne.

And forever we shall worship the Lord Jesus Christ, because uniquely he gave his own life in the place of ours, and by doing so satisfied the wrath of God. Even though the consequences of our sins have been removed, because Christ died in our place, bearing our sins in his own body on the tree, even though the consequences of our sins are removed, the control of the sin spirit has not been removed. The second problem is the removal of the sin spirit, this spirit of self-love, the satanic person who lives in us, the casting of him out of the human race, and the replacement of him by another.

It's in that aspect of the going of the Lord Jesus Christ into the cross and the resurrection, and ultimately ascension, that we participate in. That's where we partake of the body, because we are the body of Christ. And the Bible presents us with the fact that when Christ went to the cross, humanity went to the cross.

So there are those two aspects. In one sense he went alone, and he shed his own blood, which is his life, in our place. In another sense we went with him.

And the Bible thus says, if we thus judge, if one died for all, they were all dead. There are many scriptures at the same time. So now we begin to enter into this participating outlook, that actually humanity, although it only works out for believing humanity, because we are free, so it only actually functions for believing humanity, receiving humanity, but that when Jesus Christ, representing humanity, went, the whole of humanity went to the cross.

That's why he's called the last Adam. Now there are those striking phrases. Why is Jesus Christ suddenly called Adam? Because the Adam of a race is the progenitor of a race, he's the forefather, and the forefather has the whole seed in his loins.

So when our forefather Adam let in the control of the false spirit, all his seed had the control of the false spirit, so every child in sin did my mother conceive me. Every child born has in it this spirit of self-love functioning, unknown to him. Jesus Christ is the last Adam, and he's the progenitor of the new race, the race which is the God-indwelled race, the race in which God expressed himself in his perfections of love and wisdom and so on.

And Jesus Christ was the progenitor, therefore he had in his loins the seed of all those who believed in him, and they all went to the cross with him, therefore all of us who are believers went to the cross with him, and we participated in the cross, and in the resurrection. That's why he talks about we were bathed with him by baptism into death, raised with him, and so on. Therefore the last thing we have to say is, what then did Jesus Christ affect for us in this sense? When he went and we went with him, what happened? Well the Bible gives us three statements.

The first is that God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin. That's not bearing our sins. That's not shedding his blood for the consequences of our sins.

This is being himself made, impersonating sin. What is sin? Sin is indwelled humanity, indwelled by the spirit of sin. When Jesus Christ went to the cross, he was satanically indwelled in God's sight.

He was humanity satanically indwelled by the spirit of self-love. He became that. He was made sin, 1 Corinthians 5.21. That's the profundity of that statement.

And then it says that when Jesus Christ was at the cross, when he died, it says, in that he died, he died unto sin once. In that he died, he died unto sin once. That was the moment when representing us, that holy body was cut off from the false spirit.

That's the glorious moment for all humanity when, there's our title, there's our foundation, that in that death in which we participate if we are believers, Jesus Christ in death was cut off from the false control because the body is cut off from its spirit. When a body dies, you don't bury the body, you just bury the spirit, you just bury the body. And Jesus Christ was cut off representing us, died to sin.

There, we, he representing us, became one who no longer was controlled by this invader who got in the garden of Eden. And then, in the resurrection, it says, he was put to death in a place quickened by the spirit. Not his own spirit, because it was his own spirit, I mean, it came as another person into him.

The spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead. That is representing us, the moment when the holy spirit took the place of the false spirit into believing humanity. Well, we'll stop at that, and begin tomorrow with this.

That's why we waste our time when we say we wish we were unified. You can't represent you being unified if you believe. Redemption is unification.

It isn't, I must talk tomorrow about the question of condemnation, it isn't, oh, I'm such a failure, it's not a question whether you're a failure or not. That's not the point at all. The point is that the redemption which is in Jesus Christ is a redemption which has replaced the one who expressed himself through you by the other.

The one who expressed himself through you through the spirit of self-love has been replaced by the spirit of Christ, the spirit of self-giving. You may think by condemning yourself that you see myself loving, don't mind that, that's not the point at the moment. The point is to get your foundations right, and understand by faith that actual historic fact of unification.