The Second Sin Is Unbelief

I'm sure we were all tremendously thrilled and blessed with our early morning session and I think it's a thrilling indication of what the Holy Spirit is doing in the world in the new rising up generation because we know that what we heard this morning through lips of young folks here is only a fragment of what the Holy Spirit is saying and doing through thousands and some of us who come from other countries, better countries than yours like Britain and so on, we are watching the Lord go and do the same there, that's it, all over the world, all over the world. Now to continue from where we were yesterday, we were seeking to see that we are called, equipped, to be God's human agents, to be indeed God manifesting himself by humanity, by humans, because we are God's self-manifestation. In order to be that, there are certain understandings we have to have of how we humans function in this union, unity relationship, where it is we, yet it isn't we, it's he, where we fit, where we function, so the relationship between humanity and deity is in focus.

And we discussed that at some length yesterday, the obvious importance of it and the supreme exposition of it is in that remarkable chapter, I can't go into detail this morning, and that's the chapter called Romans 7. Indeed Romans 6 to 8 is the key to real living, the basis to real living in this Christ-I union relationship. There always has been the standard chapters to examine and absorb. Roughly speaking, Romans 6 is, in Christ's death we are cut off from that false indweller, dead to sin.

In Christ it says in that chapter we are dead to sin. Dead means we are cut off from that old dimension. The old dimension was the dimension which we were indwelt by the sin, which is the characteristic of the spirit of self-centeredness.

In Christ's death, as we come into Christ, we are cut off there. Romans 8 is we are joined to him in the new life. The Lord, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free.

Christ dwells in us, the spirit dwells in us, all those are phrases continually used in Romans 8. In between comes this curious chapter of Romans 7, and the reason is we have to know how self fits and how self operates, because self is the manifestation of Christ. It's self in action, released self, free self in action, which is the manifestation of God in action. So we have to know what released, free self is.

As I've said continually these days, we never know a positive until we know a negative. You never really know right until you know wrong. You've got to know how a thing doesn't work to be quite sure how it does work.

When you learn it doesn't work this way and you know that, you're quite confident in going this way and continuing this way, because you know it doesn't work this way. So you have to know the no's before you know the yes's. And Romans 7 is the no chapter.

It's the chapter in which we've carried over what I said yesterday, this false concept that the human becomes like a deity. Human becomes the person who loves, becomes love, becomes the power, becomes the peace and all this. And instead of recognising that the human is the manifestor, the vessel which contains, and so Romans 7 consists of all kinds of ways in which we try to do good and can't do it, and try not to do what we shouldn't do and go and do it.

Whole chapters, what I would do I can't do, what I should do I don't do. And right in the middle you get it, to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. To will, I'm a redeemed person, so the Spirit of Christ in me has caused me to will his will, wanting to be right, wanting to love God, love man, be peaceful, be patient, be victorious, be powerful, be fruitful, be all the rest of it.

But to will is present with me, how to perform I find not. And the chapter is based on the word law, and it gives us a second form of death. It says in Romans 6, in Christ we've died to sin, that is the spirit of self-centredness which motivates us and causes us to be spontaneously self-centred and so forth, we're out to that.

Romans 7 says we died to law, why? Because law was God's way, kind of interposing way, of facing us with who he is when we're out of personal relationship. Through the fall we had no personal relationship with the living God. Out of personal relationship, so in between him whom we didn't know as a person, and ourselves, he put his character in the form of law.

Because we originally come from his being, are in his being, we know what we ought to be, that's what God can always play on. As I've always said, the devil only stole us, he didn't make us. We're made by a being who is self-giving love, so we all basically know we ought to be.

That's why all philosophies and politics are always built supposedly on brotherhood, because we know we ought to be in brotherhood. And so the laws interpose say, well, if you ought to be that, be that. Well, if you ought to be that, be that.

And so the law hits us in two ways. You find it early in Romans 3 where it hits us, first of all, in outer form, saying, all right, then keep the commandments, don't lie, don't steal, don't commit adultery, don't do these things. And we're at last cowboys, so we say we do do them.

But that's the conviction of sin when we first come to Jesus, when we admit the law has spoken the truth about us. We are under guilty, under judgment, under wrath, because we have done the things the law said we shouldn't do. And there we find in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, shed on behalf of our sins, which he bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and the resurrection which evidences that God accepted the sacrifice, all the guilt that should come to us because of broken law is out.

The guilt and the consequences, the wrath and the judgment and the hell is out. In the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and in the fact of us being in God's sight as if we never sinned, because him raising Jesus from the dead means that the whole thing's finished. All the sin and its consequences have disappeared.

We're as if we never sinned. As I've said all along, it's more than forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't good enough.

You can forgive a person and not forget. This means the sin's no longer there. We're as if we never sinned.

Justification means in God's sight as if we never sinned. We're just perfectly free as eternal sons through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now that's the first operation of the law on us.

But now the law carries on in Romans 7. Romans 3 is the days when we get saved. That's the redemption chapter. We find Christ's atoning sacrifice.

We come and receive Christ's saving. Now we're redeemed. Now we've found, we've cut off this old indwelling Satan, Romans 6. And we're now, we have in us the Holy Spirit, Romans 8. We're being motivated by the Holy Spirit.

The new spirits come into this, the body of Christ and into our bodies. We're united with him. Romans 7 is in between.

Because we still carried over this concept, this false concept, I become somebody. This false thing from the fall. I can do my own, I can run my own life.

I can develop. So I've got this sort of I can idea. And I pick it up in the new life, say, all right, now with God's help, I love you.

And I love my Bible. And I'll have power to witness. I have victory over my sins.

I'll have so and so. I've got a, I'm on the right track. I want to be right.

So Romans 7 says, it says, I delight in the law of God after the inner man. Because the inner man, now is Christ's spirit in me. So the inner man, I want to do the law of God.

But I have to will his presence with me. But how to perform, I find not. And there, the law says again, while I think I can do it, the law says do it.

It's to catch out all the time. The law says, all right, if you can love God, get on loving him. If you can love everybody, get on loving everybody.

If you can never be anxious again, get on never being anxious. If you can never be depressed again, get on being never depressed. If you can't conquer your impatience and your angers and your lusts, all right, conquer them, and go ahead and bless you.

And of course, we fall flat on our face a second time, second collapse. We can't do it. And the secret is, we're not meant to.

You see, we're not meant to. We've now become containers. We've got to recognize whom it is who really lives in us, of whom we're just manifesting.

And so we're just the negative reflectors. I said before, light must have a non-light earth to reflect through. Or a soft mattress must have a hard bedstead to reflect through.

And the sweet must have bitter to reflect through. And smooth must have rough to reflect through. A positive is only known because he swallows up and conquers the negative.

The great Bible statement is, his strength is made perfect in my weakness. The only perfection we have ever had is to be perfectly weak. There was one perfect nothing on earth.

That was Jesus Christ. The only perfect nothing on earth was Jesus Christ. He said, I am nothing, I have nothing.

Because he knew he was humanity. Humanity was to be the agency of a deity. So he said, if you receive me, you receive the Father.

And on the basis of that relationship, he acted as one who had all power, like our young men, our young folks tend to say. All peace, all power, I have because underneath this was a permanent unity. So out of his human nothingness, there was a continual, spontaneous expression of God-somethingness.

That's this new life. But you have to discover your nothingness first, because we've been torn up by the devil and distorted and deceived by the devil. The word used about sin in Romans 7 is deceives us.

Deceives, makes you think of things right but it's wrong. And sin is self-centeredness. Sins are the products.

One of the young folks yesterday, this morning, quoted that lovely verse, we cannot sin because we're born of God. Who are you to say you sin? Oh no, sin and sins are quite different. Sins are the products, sin is the producer.

I cannot sin means I have in me, if I sin, I have in me a spirit of self-love, self-gratification, self-seek, that's I, that's the old fallen I. Now that you cannot be again when you went to Christ and that old spirit of self-centeredness had gone out and the spirit of Christ had come in, you cannot live permanently continually only for yourself, you can't do that. So if you cannot sin, you can commit sins. Being a free person, you can slip out into forms of selfishness when Jesus isn't looking, as it were, and come back again.

But to commit sins isn't the same as sinning, as being a sinner. So they're quite right to say you cannot sin, but you can commit sins. So you see Romans 7 is this great self-education chapter, and you've got to go through it.

In other words, you come into Romans 6, prayers, God I'm free in Christ, so on. Then you find you can't make it work, because you've got this wrong concept, you must make it work. So you've got to watch that word try.

The worst sin a Christian can commit is to try to do good. For goodness sake, don't try to do anything. As I said yesterday, the moment you feel that binary, I ought to be, watch it, why aren't I different? Why aren't I more, why don't I shout joy more than other people? Why am I more quiet? Always trying to change yourself, watch.

The moment you compare yourself to other people, say why aren't I like so-and-so, why aren't I do so? Watch. That's this I coming up as if I can change. I doesn't change, you're meant to be the funniest self you are, so laugh at yourself and accept yourself.

Because if God accepts you, so he must laugh at you, I'm sure. So you'd better accept yourself. So there you are.

So this is Romans 7. Now it says dead to the law, why? Romans 7, dead to the law, why? Because when the law comes and says you ought to be, you say get out, I couldn't do nothing, no good telling me what to do because I can't do anything, get out. So you're saying no, he's dead to the law, when also you ought to become so-and-so, you're into so-and-so, don't talk to me, I can't do a thing, don't tell me that, I can't do a thing, that's the person inside me does it. They've cut off from this bugging of the law, but you've got to watch it all the time because he's an old bugger, he comes off bugging all the time to get at you.

And that's what this Romans 7 is. And as we saw yesterday in the Bible, now all the men of God had to go through this process which they hadn't got what it took. Devoted, consecrated, Moses, Elisha, Joseph, David, you find all, you watch the histories, Joshua, all of them you find the same, and the disciples, devoted wonderfully, consecrated wonderfully, holy for God or holy for Jesus as we would say in the New Testament, but hadn't got what it took to fulfil the life.

So they had to learn first how they don't function. Now when they learn how they don't function they can learn how they do function. Now how we do function is when we've been brought into a recognition of, and therefore a permanent consciousness of, a permanent unity which has taken place.

And in a unity which has taken place, so basically you are never just yourself again. But there's a kind of paradox in it, as near as we humans can get, it's to kind of preserve the humanity of deity. So the Bible never fuses humanity into deity totally.

The Bible always says, abide in me, I in you, keeps the I's always, abide in me, I in you, always the two I's. So Paul for instance says, I'm crucified with Christ, that's my own independent fallen self out. Now I live, ah, ah, no, not I but Christ.

The nearest you can get in humanity is to correct yourself. You see you have to keep both I's. Nevertheless I live, I do live, no it's not I, it's Christ.

Now that has to be a permanent fixation. You don't find fixations, you are fixations. It has to be something in you which is permanent fact, and just is fact.

So at any moment you say, I live, ah, I didn't die, it's Christ. You don't say, please come and be me. You don't say that.

Please, where are you? You don't try and find yourself, do you? You don't stop every half an hour and say, am I here? Well, if your other I is Christ, you don't say, is he here? You, you are he. Ooh, you are he, this is the point. Now this has to be an inwrought fact, becoming a consciousness.

So Paul says, nevertheless I live, no, no, it didn't die, Christ lives. Now he says, I live by the faith of the Son of God. You see, faith is realisation, and when you've once taken a step into realisation, you just live realising.

I mean, a typical little example, for instance, faith starts with a step of freedom. Now take a tiny little example, I said before, by freedom you sit in that chair. Now that's a step in which you attach yourself to what is available, which is the chair.

You aren't working hard to keep the chair, to keep sitting. You're sitting, faith becomes being. Faith is not becoming, it's being.

You are in a relationship. You step into a relationship, and then faith produces a substantial realisation, you're sitting, the chair's holding you, you forget it, and you forget it and sit. You see, you're being, you aren't working at it, it's not working out your way, you're being.

So Paul goes on to say, I live, no, no, it didn't die, it's Christ, I live by the faith of this fact. By the continuous realisation of the fact that the Son of God loved me, gave himself for me. And I've become the expression of a lover and a self-giver.

That's how it works. Now, at that spot, you always find, the Bible shows, the men of God, they came to another phase of consciousness. Moses, all these men came to another phase of consciousness.

Moses came to it as a burning bush. Up to that time he couldn't make out why, he couldn't work it out. He was, as I told you yesterday, he was a judge in the labor Israel, he couldn't do it.

And here he was, messing about with sheep in the desert, forty years. So poor you, you may have fifty, you never know. Of course, it might only be fifty minutes, because there's no time we've got, or even fifty seconds.

So, but however, God knows his business. Mind you, the longer you know a thing, the better you are afterwards. We aren't living for a little bit of time.

I say, by the way, people say, oh I've taken so long. I say, for goodness sake, you're not here fifty years, you're a fifty million year person. What do fifty years mean out of fifty million years, or fifty trillion years? You need a good few years to get a good old education.

So be thankful it takes you a few years to find what a fool you are, and then to find the Christ somebody to you. Excellent. So take time.

Time, there's no death. Watch this death business out. I can't take quite this healing business of people trying to run away from death.

I can't take that. The highest, best kind of healing is to die quick and go to Jesus. We ought to congratulate people.

In our mission, we always have a congratulation when a person dies for Jesus. We hang the flags up. Praise the Lord somebody's got there.

Praise God for the honor to die for Jesus. Death is nothing, it disappears in resurrection, and it's just getting to the fuller life, that's all. So we fuss about too much.

Now I forgot my point. I was only talking about Moses. You see, he couldn't make out why.

Now at the moment he did. It comes in different ways. He saw something, and you wouldn't see it if your eyes weren't conditioned.

He saw a bush which didn't go out. Now human people don't see bushes that burn and don't go out in the wilderness. They burn and go out.

So this was an inner vision. You don't really see it if you had eyes to see it. Moses was conditioned, ready.

You've got to be conditioned before you can see anything. Conditioned means you're prepared and ready for it. And then you can see what is the answer.

And he saw this thing. What is it? Why didn't it go out? Just a common bush. And then when he got near, a voice came, a flame was coming.

And it was the voice of a person. The flame was a symbol of God. The voice was the voice of God from this flame, saying, take your shoes off, it's holy ground.

And then Moses saw something. He saw that the bush is a common bush, a common human, and the common human is the fuel for the deity. And out of the common humanity, through the common humanity, is expressed the deity.

And the deity, God, in his voice, in his flame, in his fire, in his love, is expressed through the common human. And while his fuel, he refuels us all the time. So the more you give out, the more you get in.

So the bush is always refueled. He saw it. Now Moses never had any trouble with God after this.

He lived in the fire. Those Israelites who had self in the way, they didn't dare touch the fire, they'd get burned or something at Mount Sinai. Moses lived in the fire and came up with it shining over him.

He lived in the fire, he was part of the fire. He was called a friend of God. I love that, you know.

I think God wants friendship. I'm not sure that God wants awe and worship, A-W-E. I don't think he does.

I think he wants friendship. God's a person who wants love. No love like the freedom of friendship.

You're a pair, you're a buddy. And God's proud to call some people his buddies. He said, Abraham, my friend.

And Moses, my friend. And Jesus took it right up to us. Said, don't call yourself, call your friends.

We're God's pals. I think we're going to have fun with God on earth, up there. I think he wants fun.

He wants love. He wants, not fear, but people, the basis of it is fear, but it isn't fear, it's a love. I mean, the real relationship between father and son, you have to start by respecting early days.

You've got to learn under law. But your hunger and thirst is when your son becomes your brother, and your daughter becomes your sister. And you've just fell together, and worked together, and prayed together, and lived together.

Then you've found, you've come home. Underneath always remains the thankfulness and respect of the child and the father. But it doesn't, that isn't the observable fact.

The observable fact is friendship and freedom. Jokes. Wondrous.

Isn't it? We hunger for that. God hungers for that too. Friends, friends.

Well then, Moses was like that. Now, from that time onwards, Moses could bring into being the manifestations of God. He could bring the manna, he could bring the water out of the rock, and bring this.

He found the secret, got the trick. Something happened there. And you find with all these men, something happened.

Elisha found it. Elisha, I told you, couldn't, Elijah had some power he hadn't got. And he got desperate, you've got to get desperate.

And four times over they'd said, the school of the prophets, he apparently announced to them he's going to be taken up, Elijah. And they're watching. They couldn't see, because they're only watchers, they're not the seers.

And Elisha, four times over he said, leave me Elisha, I'm going over here. The Lord said, go here. I won't leave you.

You're the only link I have between God and man. He hadn't got the Bible or the Spirit, in the sense we had, because we had the Spirit, all right, but not the sense we had, through the Bible. And so, I'm going to leave you.

You've got what I want. All right, Elijah says, you'll see me when I go. You'll get what I've got.

He's a double portion, greedy fellow. God likes greedy fellows. And what happened? We get it a little wrong.

Actually, if you read the event, Elijah wasn't taken up in a chariot. Elijah was taken up by whirlwind. But as he went up, Elisha cried out, my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen there were.

In those days, the revelation of God to his people was the Lord of hosts, a sufficient God with sufficient power, sufficient to fulfill the fulfillment. Now, Elijah's always, my Lord of hosts. Oh, he's always there.

Up to that time, some distant person, where is he? Oh, this was it. Elijah could operate on the basis, the Lord of all sufficiency had come through him, as he said, there'll be water, fire, there'll be fire. As this happened, there'll be rain, there'll be rain, and so on.

And Elijah caught the trick and did it. I can't stop telling you how. See, he entered into something which was a permanent consciousness of relationship, instead of a kind of distance between himself and the God of Elijah.

And at Pentecost, the same thing. Pentecost, exactly the same thing. This, Jesus had something about him they hadn't got, and it was proved for them.

It had to be proved by the negative. Proved, because they couldn't do it. The cross proved to the disciples they couldn't do it.

So it was a sort of reflex blessing on them, because they ran away. So there they saw they hadn't got what Jesus had got. They couldn't die royally like that.

So they said, through Jesus, the Son of God. They couldn't do that. There was something they hadn't got.

Now, so they thought, something must happen to them, which must be a conscious unification, so that they're humans now. They've learned. They're humans.

They don't change. They don't change. But into this relationship, it's overwhelmed by the fact that human isn't the foreground now.

You are human, but in your inner consciousness, your foreground, it's not I. It's Christ. It's Christ. It's God.

It's God operating by me. I'm an I in me. I'm an I in me working.

If it didn't I, it's Christ working. It has to become a consciousness. May I just say one thing as I pass, as I slip over it there before I get on to this other point to sort of finalise it for a moment this morning.

That is, not to mistake the negative for sins. Now, I kept saying a negative is a normal human reaction. Now, I'm a weak, poor thing.

So my reactions, I fear, and I dislike, and I'm hurt, and I'm worried, and I get impatient, and I'm depressed. I can do anything. That's normal humanity.

It's the effects of things on my normal humanity, really, on my soul, not my spirit, but I think we'll discuss that now. But now, that's not wrong. It is not wrong to feel negative.

Jesus felt negative at Gethsemane, but he didn't stop there. He said, it should be possible. That has come past for me.

What you will, I'm after. But in his soul relationship, he felt negative. But now, the point is, sins are a misuse of negative.

Instead of replacing our negative reaction, I fear, I'm worried, I'm disturbed, I say, Christ, you're in me. Go ahead. Instead of recognising Christliness, we step off and do the thing we shouldn't do.

That's the sin. I mean, a little illustration. I can use this myself.

My wife isn't here, so I won't tell her about her sins when she isn't here. I have a precious wife. We've been married 50 years.

She'd love to be with me. But we went out to Africa together. She isn't very strong, and she can't do all this running around you folks do here.

She's an English lady. So she'd love to be with me. She's in spirit.

But as you might observe, I'm somewhat quick, and she's somewhat slow. And so there are room for clashes. And of course, the fact is, I'm exactly what I need, a slow person.

God's given me the responsibility of 35 years for this mission. There's about 1,200 missions, and thousands and thousands have believed in Christ all over the world. If I hadn't had a steady one behind me, they never would have trusted me.

They trusted my wife, not me. But I escape every now and then. That's why I come here, to escape every now and then.

But what I'm saying is this. Now, because I'm quick, I say, look here, we meet at 11 o'clock and do this at 11 o'clock. Well, then me, at 20 past 11, she hasn't turned up.

Well, I say, I'm a busy person. Well, now I'm impatient. It isn't wrong to be impatient.

If we say at 11 o'clock, it's quite wrong for me to feel disturbed. She comes at 20 past 11. Now, if I'm right with God, everything is God's operation.

I should say, sure, I feel impatient. A little chance for your patience, God. It's all right.

You love her. You're doing something for her. It's all right.

I accept it. And when she did come, I'd just say, oh, glad you're here, darling. Give her a kiss or something.

Instead of giving her a kiss, I give her a blowout. Now, the blowout is the sin. You see the point? The impatience isn't the sin.

The blowout is the sin. The impatience is a normal negative reaction. Instead of taking it into Christ, I take it into a little bit of flesh.

Why don't you hurry up and come when you should? That's the sin. Then I need to get forgiveness. And so I'm saying there are the daily sins.

Don't mistake the negatives, but we do slip from our negatives into sins. But that's why there's a permanent provision of the precious blood. This is why the Bible puts so much emphasis on walking, walking step by step.

The Bible's full of walking, walking step by step. Now, in those walks, when I am conscious, now I must be honest, always. I must be honest.

And therefore I must accept guilt when I know I've done things I shouldn't do. It came out of those little choruses we sang just a little before. Now, when I'm honest, I admit that.

Now, the point I have to learn is this. I learned this from, actually, I learned this among the Africans, from the Africans. They are very pragmatic, simple, lovely people.

I love being a brother with them. And they taught, I'd learn more from them than they did from me. They really taught some things.

Those Africans knew how to walk as you, I tell you. If you want to get a revival, let's get a bunch of Africans over here. They can teach us a thing or two, I tell you.

Well, one of the things they said is this. Now, brother, they said, be sure when you commit one sin you don't commit the second. Now, that might mean don't repeat the same thing.

They don't mean that at all. Because they mean they say this. Now, look here.

If you commit a sin, like losing your temper. Now, be honest. You've done something you shouldn't do.

You're guilty. The guilt isn't with God. There's no change in God's attitude to us.

But there's a rightful change in my disturbed attitude towards Him. No change in Him. Change in me.

Now, you've got that. Now, they said, the Bible said 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ blotted out all the sins of all the world with His precious blood. The whole one thing went for 2,000 years ago.

That whole lot was blotted out. Now, your second sin is this. If, having committed a sin and feeling guilty, you don't exchange your guilt for praise because you're cleansed, you commit the second sin of unbelief.

And not to believe the precious blood is worse than to commit the sin. That's the second sin. So, mind you, move quickly from the first sin of what you've committed to not repeating the second sin, oh, dear, why I'm so guilty, and so on.

Say, oh, God, I'm a poor old thing. Praise God for that precious blood. Praise God I'm forgiven.

If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Come up again. So, it's as quick sinning as quick cleansing.

Get up again. Go on. And when you do go on, for goodness sake, don't slip back into Roman 7th Ephesus and say, oh, now, God, I'm always doing that thing.

Now, with your help, I really resolved and I won't do it again. You're going to do it in 10 minutes' time. Because you don't go back and say, I won't do it again.

What you do is say, God, I shall do that again in 10 minutes' time. I'm always doing it. I'll do it again.

Unless you keep me. You'd better keep me now. So, you see the point? You're sort of keeping on God.

Don't say, oh, I committed and I shall commit it again in half an hour's time. Don't say, I shan't or I wish I didn't. Say, I sure shall.

That's what I am. But you're in me now, Lord. You get on keeping me now.

So, you transfer even the keeping of the next steps to Him. If you slip again, get up again. Praise God.

Get on with your keeping job, Lord. You're here to do it. Go ahead.

Well, now, to move in to this very important issue. You see, we live by consciousness. Consciousness is spontaneity.

You're an inner person, not an outer person. You live by a consciousness of what you are and your reactions to things. Now, we started life by a consciousness just of being selves.

Before we were redeemed. Well, you're just a self. You're a conscious self.

Now, you've moved. When you come into Christ, you move into a new consciousness. Oh, I'm redeemed.

I'm forgiven. I'm accepted. I'm cleansed.

Christ has become a saviour to me. To a Lord, maybe. But there's still a certain sense of separation.

I can't see far enough. My sins are gone. Praise God.

He's my saviour. My sins are brought out. He loves me.

He lives in me, if you like. God's my Father. So, you've moved into a new consciousness.

Now, faith produces witness. Faith, as I say, always makes something real to you. What you take, takes you.

Now, in this case, as witness comes to you, you are forgiven. You are accepted. Now, your natural value becomes spontaneous on a new level of consciousness.

You don't have to try and keep saved, or try and keep forgiven. You just say, thank God, amazing grace, amazing grace. He's got me.

What he gets, he keeps as part of all my deviations. And we live in this new freedom, where our children of God, we are forgiven. We can praise Jesus, and so on, like we had this morning.

Now, that's a second level of consciousness. But it's not a total consciousness, because there's still a certain element of separation. Here's you, and there's he.

That's because you haven't yet learned this operation of the self. You haven't learned the self doesn't become something you do with things. The self isn't the vessel it contains.

You've got to go through a period, end of this Romans 7, recognition. Now, when you've got this right, you've got this clear, you haven't always got to get things in your mind. You can step in without it, and it becomes clear afterwards.

Now, I'm saying there's a second step of what we call faith. Faith is attaching yourself to something available. Now, it's not a new thing.

The moment you receive Jesus Christ, you enter into eternal unity. You've been unified in Christ the moment you're redeemed. You're eternally one with God, but you can't see so far.

The reasons I've given you, it's too far for you to see in one step. All you see at the moment is you're forgiven, accepted, reconciled, a family, and so on. You haven't seen unification.

You haven't really seen it's not you but Christ. Now, there's a second step. Faith attaches you inwardly or outwardly to what is available.

Now, this means you're going to attach yourself to this fact. And what I'm saying is why it's a much more serious step or, as we say, it looks much more difficult for this reason. The first step you took was concerning the faith for the past.

There were your sins, God's judgment on you. There was what we call eternal life. Eternal life isn't really future, but we may say it looks like going to heaven, like that when you first start.

So there's the past and the future, and there's Jesus Christ dying for you. They're all a little away from you. So it isn't too hard.

That's a step to say, all right, Christ, I do believe I'm forgiven. I do believe you are my saviour. I do believe I have eternal life.

It's a little far away from you, so it's not too hard. It is a step, but not so I take that step. Now, it's one thing to say Christ died for me, Christ my saviour.

Another thing to say Christ is me. How? To say I'm just a form of Christ. This is Christ walking about.

That takes some saying, because your human heart, the Bible says if your heart condemns you, God's greater than your heart. Don't go by your own human heart. That'll fiddle around with you.

So don't go by your human heart, because then you'll condemn yourself, and your relatives shall condemn you. Everybody else condemns you. And to say, to set something to say.

Nevertheless, it isn't I living, it's Christ living. It actually is a unity in which this is God walking about in a human form. That takes some saying.

That hits your present day, and if, as I say, if you have the wrong concept of the self, you think, oh, I ought to be different. You can't take it. If you find you are meant to be different, then you're in a position in which you can take it, you see.

But you do step into actual taking of it. So there's a step somewhere along the line, where I've come into a specific, code word it if you like, recognition, a consciousness, of this unity as a permanency. You see, your redemption is a permanency.

You don't doubt that. Once you're saved, you say you're saved. You don't regard it as something in and out.

It's a permanency. Now, I'm not talking about something which Christ is here today and where he is tomorrow. I'm not talking about a relationship, oh, I feel so dull, Christ must have left me.

No, you can't leave yourself, can you? You're yourself. Christ is your other self, he can't leave you, he's there. It's entering into a realisation which is deeper, because it becomes a fixture deep in your centre that is eternally so, and then you begin to operate from that.

Now, I'm saying that that takes a second step, in whatever way may of, of, of, whatever term you use, affirming it to be so. There it is in the word. He, as he joins the Lord, is one spirit.

What stronger word can you get than that? 1 Corinthians 6, 17. He, we, as he joins the Lord, one spirit. Your human spirit, divine spirit, made one.

That's a unity, isn't it? Of course, the great illustration of vine and branch in John 15. A tree, I've said before, makes a unity. When I see a tree, I don't say, that's a trunk and that's branches.

I say, it's a tree, because the branches are part of the tree. And so, we're part of Christ, and Christ's part of us. We're, we're the branch form of the vine.

A unity. Now, I'm saying to you, search yourself. It's a deeper thing to be able to say, boldly, confidently, well, this just is a fact.

It looks like me, it isn't, it's Christ, it's Christ, it's God. I'm an expression of God, a permanency. Now, when you get that, you see, your, your consciousness, your negative, has gone into the background, into the foreground, comes Christ.

Now, that has to come as a consciousness. Now, remember, faith produces a substance, faith produces experience. And, like I said, you sit in the chair, you experience the chair, you eat food, you experience food, all the way life.

What you relate yourself to, relates itself to you, and you experience it. Now, it did it when you were redeemed, I told you. You took Jesus, you experienced him.

So, there's an experience, an inner witness to this fact. Now, that goes on in many terms. All the Church of Christ has been after this.

Now, the Holy Spirit will call it entire sanctification, beautiful word. The Keswick people talk about full salvation, or second blessing. The Pentecostal people talk about the baptism of the Spirit.

Although, actually, all people officially, at one point in history, are all baptised by one, into one body by one Spirit, but they use that term. Other people use second rest. Wesley used second rest.

Doesn't matter about terms, except you can see all the way through the Church of Christ, they're seeking for something which is more than just being redeemed, just being saved, just being just, something more that has fixed you. So, the term doesn't matter, but the experience does matter. And the experience is a product of faith.

Now, let me get this clear. Faith is not the experience. The experience comes from the thing you trust in, not from you.

Now, that's the important point. I say again, when you sit in a chair, you sit in a chair, it's the chair that makes you feel it. It's the chair that says, here I am, I'm holding you up.

The chair produces in you the experience of a chair. That isn't your job. You attach yourself to the chair.

The chair produces the experience of a chair. You eat food, and the food produces the experience, pleasant or unpleasant, inside you afterwards. It works on at you.

And so all life is, you attach yourself to something available. Like as I say, you attach yourself to coming here by faith. Now, you experience it here, here you are, in a company.

It's producing experience, you're in a company, you're part of a company. This is experience produced out of your attaching yourself to coming here. See what I mean? So, faith doesn't produce the witness.

The witness comes from that, the object which you believe in. So, the witness comes from Jesus Christ, whom you attach yourself. Now, do I get the plain, this is no new thing.

He is already that to you. He is, you know, you are in eternal, permanent, eternal unity with God. You're one, so that you're just a form of human, from the moment you're redeemed, you're that.

When you're entered into, all people are to accept it. Only it doesn't come real true, it doesn't accept it. But it's another thing now.

Now, so there's a second step, and I'll give you the reasons why. When you take this second step, your second step is, I did in Africa. Quite cool in a way.

My wife and I both felt our need along this line. I've told you about how we felt we needed to be more powerful and loving and so on. Then we learned we never should be, there's God in us, we got this into focus with the vessels.

Then we were in a little village, just visiting one, there was one bright living African in a little village, way out in the forest. And he gave us his little cookhouse to sleep in. We put our two camp beds down there.

But we never got to our camp beds until about 4am, because we had this burden to get everything settled. Now if he'd understood faith more simply, it might not have taken so long. We wasted about three hours of good sleep.

But it doesn't matter. You get to learn in a laborious way. So we sat out in our little camp chairs, in the banana plantations, full moon, with one bar of mosquitoes there.

And there we said, we struggled with this. What were we struggling with? To say, Christ does live in me fixed. To say it.

To say it. We settled this now. It's not Christ for me, it's not Christ by me, it's not Christ near me.

I wouldn't at that time have even said those, I wouldn't have understood those words enough to say, it's really Christ is me. Christ lives in me. I meant by that that he is not I, it's he.

The actual person living is he. I'm just the human form of which he is. Now we did that.

It was about 4am, we signed up on our Bible, on that great verse, which has remained a key verse ever since Galatians 2.20. I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, Christ lives in me. We signed our name against that. Now, note, that wasn't the moment in which the consciousness became real to us, the fact was there.

We were immediately afraid, oh it had been a fact, it had become a fact to us. Now, what matters is the fact. If you never get the witness, that's not the business.

I'll say this, I'm not talking now about more activities of faith, we'll get on to another session. But you never look to see how the faith operates. Your business is to say God's doing it.

The way God does it is his business. Because if you look for him this way, he'll sure come this way and trick you up. So you never know.

So you don't look to see how he does it. Your business is to say he's done it. Now that night we said he's done it.

Now my wife, who is closer to the Lord than I am, about two weeks afterwards, we were sleeping in a little African hut, just inside a little hut, and apparently that night the Lord really revealed it. I never had visions. She had, the person was there, she never saw him, touched him on the shoulder and said, this is it, I'm with you, I'm in this relationship with you.

She got a confirmation. And when he came out of our little camp table outside to eat a banana or whatever, have a breakfast out there, she was about to say to me something happened. I said, you needn't tell me, dear, I can see something's happened.

Her face had changed. Now with me it took two years. I'm a poor, laborious person.

So it wasn't until two years. But now, many of you have these days, some of you are coming quick. Now the gift to the tongues has been one way through.

But don't mistake the gift for the giver. The gift is of me, to say, oh, I'm one with Christ. You can't live on the gift.

You'll find that you can't operate the gift. But you can always operate the gift because he's you. So the gift has to indicate to you, oh, I'm one with him.

And he's given me this channel of vocal expression by tongues in which I can worship and glorify him. But the point is, I am here one. And he's operating by me in common daily life.

We could discuss that another time, not discussing it now. So you've got to come through, back from the joy and the glory of operating a gift, to what really is a personal operation to expressing his love life and witnessing life through you in thousands of different ways. And the gift may fit in.

Now, I never had that gift. But in my case, okay, it's two years afterwards. I was talking to somebody about a need, a person who's very precious to me.

She's Penn Lewis. Her books are a very great blessing to me. I was talking about problems, and she spoke about baptism of the spirit.

She hadn't had this tongues, but she had what she named the baptism of the spirit, how God had mightily come upon her and fallen on the people, had been a great blessing. As she spoke, oh, I say, saw himself. That's what happened.

That was two years afterwards. That's what it is. The inner light was there.

Oh, that's what it is. We really are one. I've never had to raise an eyebrow on that ever since.

As I say, he's got pretty poor taste. That's up to him, not to him. That's it, that's it.

You see, it's become a consciousness. Now you live from a consciousness. Now you live out a new life on that basis.

Now, I'll say a little word more. You see, this produces spontaneity. You see, you always live by being, not becoming.

Now the glory of the gospel is he did the becoming for us. We merely enter into his becoming. He became the sinner on our behalf, made sin.

He went through death and resurrection, removed the guilt, removed the false god, put the right one in. He brought us up. Our becoming isn't our stretching up there.

It's our recognising he's picked us up and taken us up. So there's all the progress by faith. But you see, the being of the product is that we're in this relationship.

Now you live by being. Now, I want to take you to the much more serious consequence, where we really end up with this whole business. We'll do that next time I talk with you.

But at the moment I'm saying, one delightful consequence of this is a spontaneity in which when there's a settling, the point of life is to forget yourself and be. That's the point of life. Life really is self-transcendence.

You run into rhythms. You run into these things. You forget yourself and be.

You become part of something which your self becomes expressed in something. That's the meaning of being. Now, I'm only saying now, in this new level of spontaneity, this doesn't mean you're continually thinking of Christ.

At any moment you think of yourself. Most of the time, you see, he's you. Just the same as I say, you don't stop every half an hour and say, am I here? Let's make sure.

You don't stop every half an hour and say, is Christ here? Let's make sure. He's you. You go and live.

So there's a whole level of living where you're a perfectly natural person. And forget yourself, forget God, and get living. And that is he, because you are he now.

This is the basis of spontaneous living. Involve yourself in your conversation. We do it anyhow.

When we're in conversation, eating these lovely meals and so on and so on, we're not thinking, is Jesus here all the time? We're enjoying our conversation, enjoying our meals. You see, in the background now, all the time it's Christ. It isn't finding him at certain times, all the time it's Christ.

In the old life, we kind of lived in a red light, thinking we're always wrong unless we're sure we're right, just occasionally the green light came up. No, you live in a green light and the red light's up occasionally when necessary, that's all. You live in the freedom.

I don't know if you get my point. So the beautiful basis of this life, as someone quoted, we are the light of the world. Now, that's what I think I mentioned before, that's one of the greatest evidences of unity that the Bible can give.

Why? Because specifically, you're not light. The Bible specifically says he's light. Jesus Christ says I am the light, you are darkness.

Now, how is it he is light and we are darkness? How can you say you are light? Now, you notice he didn't say have. Have makes a separation. If you have a thing, it isn't you.

I have those glasses, I better hold them or they'll drop. There's a separation between the glasses and me. I hold them, means they're separate from me, I've got to rather hold them.

Now, if Jesus said that, we'd be in a poor way. And lots of Christians kind of live like that, as if I've got to hold on to him, if not he'll slip. As if he's here and I'm there.

When he says you are light, our isn't having it, our is being. That means he so fuses himself to you, you are light. All right, go and be yourself, and that is light.

Run your business, run your home, run so and so, that is light. And dare to believe through your cooking, through managing the children, through your running your business, you may feel the surge, that's Christ coming through. That's light, you're the light of the world.

I personally think, among the evangelical folks with whom I live and from whom I've drunk so much in the word of God, I think even in the coming of the Lord we have negative ideas. We think if the Lord's going to come, when he comes we're going to be before his judgment seat, we're in for a tough time, there's a big stick there waiting for us. But I don't find that in the Bible.

I find the Bible says this, 1 Corinthians 4, chapter 4, verse 4, verse 6, it says this, Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, that's the Lord's coming, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsel of the hearts, because of our hearts are new in Christ, we knew former counsels, and then shall every man have what, a beat up from God, praise from God. God loves his kids, and that's going to be a delight day, not a terrible day. He's going to say, and I think a lot of it is this, he says you didn't know, you were in a tough world, you were living in a home where there were discords, or you were living in a business where people were cursing and telling rotten stuff and all around you and so on, you were in a tough spot, I'm pleased with you, you may not have thought that yourself, you were there, you were light, your very attitudes was different, they were seeing something, your attitudes, your actions, you were shining, you didn't know it, but I know it, I'm pleased, I'm pleased, you were a light in a dark place.

I think we're going to get pats on the back, not beats over the head if we meet Jesus, he's going to be delighted with us. And where we're wrong, he'll just say, you're a little wrong there, come on, let's get that right. He's very nice when he does those things, the devil makes the wrong a bad thing, the devil, Christ makes the right thing and the wrong thing even nicer, he says alright, let's put that right, get along a little better.

So what we need is adjustment, we just get the adjustment, that's all. So I believe that. Well I'm going to stop for a moment to take the other point up a little later.

I just want to give one little illustration, it came to me recently. I was in a conference, a paperwork conference in Georgia about a year or so ago, and there was a lady there, she caught hold of this union relationship, entered into this union with Christ, not she now but Christ. She went home, she lives in a little place, she's the sister of that new governor who's a very good fellow, it's Jim Carter, he's quite a good witness, this is his sister.

And she got this union relationship and she wrote me a letter, and she said, in a little town called Plains in Georgia, she said I belong to the garden club, I want to tell you this she said, I belong to the garden club. When I went home, I found a notice saying would I give a lecture on herbs. She's supposed to h-e-r-b as herbs, we English keep our h's, so we say herbs, you say herbs, because you're any better.

That's up to you. We'll leave that. Well whatever, however you pronounce it.

But she says I knew nothing about herbs anyhow. So he said, oh I better get studying up. So he said each evening I spent that evening studying up my herbs to give the lecture.

I presume lecture's alright. When she came back from lecture she said this, she said I went to my room, I got my knees, I said oh lord do forgive me, I've been so busy thinking herbs all week, haven't had time to think about you. He said you're silly girl, I was co-thinking with you all the time, it wasn't your lecture.

I was coming through on a herb level, that's all I was doing, it wasn't on your level. Don't you take yourself what belongs to me, god bless you.