Sons can change their world; the key is to come into sonship, to grow up into the full stature of Christ (Eph 4:13). Babies can’t do a thing. We need to be clear about what is a son and what is a babe spiritually.
Eph 4: 11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying (building as a process) of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man (complete growth, of full age), to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
The problem is the five-fold ministry at large (with a few exceptions), hasn’t the faintest clue, how to bring the saints entrusted to their ministry into maturity.
Gal 3: 22But the scripture hath concluded (1-together with 2- to shut together. In the first Adam we are all under sin) all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
We all start out in the first Adam after his fall, being in the fallen image and fallen likeness of Adam (Gen 5:3).
John 1: 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children (teknon- offspring, a child) of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
We must be born from above, the seed of God must be conceived in our spirit, being born a spiritual baby in the Lord.
Gal 3:26For ye are all the sons (huios–full grown, mature) of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
We must learn how-to put-on Christ, to put on the new man. To put on means to be clothed with. We learn how to do this through every day life experiences, looking unto Jesus, who he wants to become to us and in us, a specific characteristic of His divine nature, in the current circumstances we find ourselves in. We then partake of the divine nature, we appropriate (take possession of) a divine attribute of God, that the Holy Spirit is leading us to develop in our life. So that through practice this attribute of God, is developed in our life and we become it, it becomes written on our heart. What the New Covenant is all about, being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith.
The Greek language is a rich language when it comes to describing the parent child relationship. The English language hasn’t got enough words to convey the truth properly. We can be related to the Father at all sorts of different levels of growth. There are ten words in the Greek language to describe the parent child relationship, the bible uses all of those ten words. They are all teaching us different dimensions of important spiritual truths.
The reason why many Christians never come into their inheritance, never see God working in their families, is because they are not in the right kind of relationship with God, although they are genuinely born again. It is possible to be a born-again babe and never come into our inheritance.
We need to see the process of how we come into sonship, and what happens when we do. It doesn’t just affect us, although it will change us completely. It will change our family, if we are an adult leading a family, our family will be totally different.
This is why Christian fathers have so many problems in their family, because they themselves have never grown up into sonship.
Sons trample on the devil, they keep the devil under their feet. But the devil can still harass babes. If we come into sonship we can change our church.
Some churches are a large gathering of babies that cannot affect their city. When a church becomes a gathering of sons, they can chase the devil out of their city, out of the state and out of their nation.
God wants to change our cities and it is the sons that are going to do it. Sons come into their inheritance; babies are not even aware of their inheritance.
Part of our inheritance is that we are going to reap a mighty harvest, we are going to see multitudes saved. America is ripe for harvest.
We have the Authority to change cities. Cities have been saved before.
In 1859, Charles Finney went to Rochester New York. In the winter of the great awaking, he went to Rochester, a city with a population of 120,000. He preached for a week there, he had great intercessors with Him which is part of the package.
We will never be effective in evangelism until we know how to pray. Father Nash was the prayer leader. He moved with Finney everywhere, he would break through the principalities and powers and open the way for the evangelistic message to have its effect.
And the end of that one week, in Rochester New York, 100,000 people were saved and became members of the church. Suddenly there is an evangelistic move of God and 5/6 of the population want to come to church and don’t want to go to the beach on Sunday.
Gal 3:26For ye are all the sons (huios–full grown, mature) of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27For as many of you as have been baptized (Immerse, submerge, to overwhelm, saturate) into Christ have put (endyō) on Christ.
Endyō– means to sink down into something, then what you sink down into comes all over you, becomes part of you, and it becomes such a part of you that it becomes impossible to get it off of you again. You and Christ to which you are immersed into become intrinsically one. And this is not just talking about our spirit, but also our soul. It is talking about being transformed into the image of Christ. And we are transformed by the renewing of our mind, will, and emotions, which are functions of our soul.
I heard someone talking about the sun going down into the sea until the sun and the sea are all bathed in the same red color, referring to the sun set over a large body of water. I never saw one, so I do not know.
When we were baptized into Christ, the Holy Spirit overshadows us and baptizes us into Christ, we are born again. And this can happen when we are baptized in water and baptized in the Holy Spirit at the same time. But most people experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit at some time after they were born again.
When we were baptized into Christ, Christ came all over us, and it is impossible to tell now who is you, and who is Christ because you are one. And now the baptized believers have become the corporate Christ on the face of the earth-what a calling.
It is not a matter of race, of social position, it has nothing to do with our gender. All these Greek words don’t have any gender in them.
Galatians 4: 1Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; 2But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. 3Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: 4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 6And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 7Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Jesus was born of a woman not only to get our sins forgiven; it was in order that we might receive the adoption as sons. God is not just content to get us born again, he is determined to bring us into sonship. But it is possible not to be a son, although you are truly born again.
Nepios- what it literally means- is without the power to speak. Not yet talking, that is the root meaning of the word. It is used to describe a child that is older than a babe at the breast. It describes a toddler, a little kid about 20-24 months running around in his dippers, going da da, but not yet talking. It is possible to be born again, but that is what we are spiritually.
Growing up spiritually has nothing to do with time, it has everything to do with faith. We become God’s son by faith, not by the passing of time.
There have been people coming to church for forty years and spiritually they are still a babe. There are others who have come to Christ and in one or two years, they have so got hold of what God has given them by faith that they are in sonship although they may only be twelve years of age naturally.
When David, called and anointed to be King, he took on goliath, he was not more than fourteen years of age. This little kid came against that mighty giant, he took his head off. How could he do this.
He knew who God was for him. He was anointed to be king, he was not the king yet, but he had a word from God. The anointing of a king was upon his life, who does this uncircumcised philistine think he is, defying the armies of God. Besides he cannot kill me, I have a word that I am going to be the King of Israel, I have a destiny to fulfill.
We are going to find a wave of young people who are going to be taking off the heads of fallen angels who have been ruling our nations. It is not a matter of time; it is a matter of faith. If we don’t move in faith, we get nowhere. If we move in faith, we can come to maturity in Christ in a matter of months.
The heir, if he is a babe, does not differ from a slave although he is the owner of everything.
You have to go back to med evil Europe when kings ruled in castles. He had a domain and was a total despot, and in the palace grounds he would have gardeners who worked on the garden.
This king has a little child of twenty months of age, running around the palace grounds going dada; he doesn’t know who he is. He is the only son of the king, and he is the heir of the whole kingdom, some day he will inherit that kingdom. But when you are only 20 months of age you have no idea of who you are or what your inheritance is.
The gardener has a little child the same age and they are fighting over their toys, the child of the king is fighting over something, when he owns everything.
Babes get upset over little things when in reality they are heirs of the kingdom. Babes are carnal; they have natural appetites and have natural reactions to their circumstances. They are no different from the world, they react in the same way that the world does. You can’t tell the difference between the babe of a king and the babe of a slave. Because he doesn’t know who he is, though potentially he owns everything.
We get a letter from a Swiss bank, dear sir we have been trying to trace you for a long time, you are not aware of this but one of you relatives has left you a vast fortune and has deposited it in this bank. And his will makes the whole fortune available to you, we have millions of dollars of yours and we are waiting for your instructions.
But here is the problem, you have no idea how to access it. So, you just have to manage on your own human abilities, your own salary.
Vast resources have been made available to us in Christ, we read about them in scripture, we believe them but not enough to seriously go and get them.
If we got that letter and really believed it, we would not rest, we would be doing everything to get access to it. Spend all our money to fly to the bank to make a withdrawal. We would not rest until we got access to what we are being told is our inheritance.
Most believers read about their inheritance and shrug their shoulders and say well I will just have to go on living in defeat. I will just have to go on living in poverty because I don’t know how to get this stuff off of me. This is what a babe says and how he behaves. Although all the vast resources of God are available, they are not living in the good of it. It is just a potential.
Galatians 4: 3Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: 4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 6And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 7Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
When we were toddlers, we were in bondage to the elemental spirits of the world. When we are a babe the same bondages that people have in the world, the Christians have them to.
A common problem for a man, because of the world we live in and a problem with women these days is that we are bombarded with sexual lust, until it gets right into us.
There is hardly a man, until he has come into his inheritance that can live holy in his mind, but in Christ we can.
We get married and think that will fix it and we have all sorts of habits that we would be totally ashamed to tell someone about. We become driven by these horrible lusts. We have done physical things that we don’t even want to think about.
When our spirit gets saved the physical things can stop, but the battle of the mind continues. When beautiful women are around, we cannot look at them, we hate what is going on inside of us, but we are powerless to do anything about it. When we get baptized in the Holy Spirit by crying out to God to have a visitation. When we become hungry for God we are prepared to die to these things.
When we are baptized in the Spirit, one of the first things He shows us in scripture is that part of our inheritance is to have the mind of Christ. It says it again and again in the word of God. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ.
Put on the new man and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Jesus didn’t struggle with lustful thoughts. There was a way for the humanity of Jesus to live in perfect victory over these things. He was tempted in all points yet without sin.
When we struggle with all kinds of unclean thoughts we need to claim the mind of Christ. We need to take authority over Demon spirits that have had access to our mind, have to leave. In the name of Jesus Christ go from me. You have to make the devil obey you, but make sure first that you are submitted to God. By the prayer of faith through the revelation of the Holy Spirit in the word, the power of that thing is broken in our life. We will never be a prisoner to that thing again, but we must be very careful with our mind, we have to be careful if we watch television. We need to make a covenant with our eyes (Job 31:1).
Having the mind of Christ, we want to take care of it. Babies are in bondage to the elemental spirits of this world; they are prisoners to the same things that people in the world are prisoners to.
God made a covenant promise to Abraham, that we should serve him without fear all the days of our life. Perfect love casts out all fear.
Babies still live in all kinds of fears, fear of the future, redundancy (the state of being not or no longer needed or useful), what to do in old age, all sorts of fears drive people in the world, and the babies still live in those bondages.
Babies only know how to cry; babies are not able to feed themselves. Spiritual fathers and mothers must put a bottle in their mouth, feed them with milk to comfort them. I could only feed you with milk because you are still babes. They can only hear the word of comfort, that God loves them.
The baby is not ready for the meat of doing God’s will, they just want to feel God. God has other things for us to do, than just be comforted all the time.
The English word comfort has radically changed in its meaning. It comes from two Latin words which means to make strong. The root is to make strong for the purposes of battle.
If all we want to do is feel God, we have missed the reason why the Holy Spirit has been sent. There is a famous tapestry in the British museum and on this tapestry, there is a picture of troops going into war, there is a picture of a bishop in the church with a pitchfork in his hand and he is prodding the troops into battle and he is saying get into battle, underneath it says in 15 century English that the bishop is comforting his troops.
The Holy Spirit is the comforter, but he is saying get into battle. We don’t send babies to war, that would be criminal, but sons know how to fight, they know how to conquer the devil.
If we grow up into sonship, it is going to be powerful, not only in our own lives, but in our family, church, in our city and in our nation. We need to come to the place where we are as much a terror to the devil as Jesus was in the days of his sojourn on the earth.
Huios- describes a full-grown adult son who has come to maturity. In the culture of the bible, it would be the age of 30, when you came to maturity you were recognized as an adult, you could vote in an election, you could sit on the Sanhedrin, you could be an elder.
When you came to the age of 30 it was a very important birthday, until then you were not given full adult rights in society.
It had to do with father likeness. Contained, implicit in the word huios is the idea that have grown up to be like your father, your just like your dad, when you come to maturity you become exactly like your father.
Jesus said if you have seen me, you have seen my father. I and the father are one. The perfect son exactly reflects the father. This is a claim that we have by faith. We become the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. We have been called to be like God.
1peter4: 6For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh but live in accordance with God in the spirit.
This sounds almost blasphemous; sons live in harmony with God in the Spirit.
2peter1: 3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
In our bank account already credited to us are all the vast resources that God is and that God has. He has held nothing back; he has given us our total inheritance.
In the N.I.V. the word huois is sometimes translated as heir, because this is a very important dimension of it. Implicit in the idea of being a son is that you come into your father’s inheritance.
In the culture of the bible, when a father had children at some point he would designate them to become his huous when they grew up, it wasn’t automatic, he had to select them.
If the father wished he could go outside the family and take a child that was not his and adopt the child as one of his huios and when he did that he went through a special ceremony involving seven witnesses and when that child was adopted as a huous it had exactly the same rights of inheritance as the natural children did. There would be no distinction between the adopted huous and the natural huous.
Under the law it was necessary for a huious (it was neither male nor female) to serve his father faithfully. In order to qualify the selected huious had to serve their father faithfully for the growing up period until you came to the age of 30. You could go to the father, I have served you faithfully for 30 years, can I have my inheritance please. And the father was required to give it to you. You didn’t wait for dad to die, you just had to come to maturity to get your inheritance.
For the believer it is a matter of faith, not a matter of time. But for Jesus under the Law, it had to be according to time. But the babes can’t inherit, it says
Gal4: 4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
God did something in Christ to make it possible for us to become sons by faith. For us to become sons by faith, Jesus had to fulfill the law. In his deity, the second person of the Godhead, he will always be God the son.
God gave the rule of this world into the hands of man, Adam sinned and fell, and Satan came and in and took over the rule of this world because man fell into sin. Man gave the devil the kingdom of this world.
Man gave the devil place and man has continued to do so ever since. The rule of darkness in the world is the fault of man.
God became man to seek and to save that which was lost, to give his life as a sacrifice for sin, but he also became a man to do something about the devil
Heb 2: 14Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 15And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
1john 3:8 For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.
There is a devil destroying dimension to the incarnation of Jesus Christ that we haven’t emphasized the way that we should.
Jesus for 33 and half years lived in the parameters of his humanity. He never stepped over the boundary of his humanity or he would have made his humanity and his savor hood illegal. Every minute of every day he lived as a man drawing his life source from the Holy Spirit just like any other man.
He knew who he was the same way that we do, by what the word and the Spirit said. Every moment of the life of Jesus was a moment of faith. But it was also necessary for him to fulfill all the just requirements of the law. It was a life of faith, but it was also a life that was fulfilling the law in order that we might be free from that requirement.
For thirty years Jesus lived within a humanity that was the same as ours, apart from the adamic nature tempted like we are, dependent like we are. Drawing his life by the constant assess of the grace of God through faith and waiting upon the Father in prayer.
For thirty years watching the activity of Satan on the earth not being able to do anything about it, because as a man he was earning the right to become God’s son in his humanity. He served his father for 30 years as a man in order through the law as a man to be the first human being to ever qualify to earn the title, you are my son. Every other man had failed. He never found anyone to who he could confer all the treasure of heaven legally and righteously.
For 30 years he watched the devil and couldn’t do anything about it, because he had to fulfill the law in order to open the door for all of us to come in by faith, he had to fulfill the just requirements of the law. He was born under the law to redeem those who were born under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. It was a frustration; he had a baptism to be baptized with and he was longing for it to be over-Luke 12:59.
Luke 3: 21Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 22And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. 23And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph,
By baptism we are immersed into Christ, by baptism he was immersed into Adam. It was a baptism of identification, it completed the identification so that he could become the sin bearer, the represented man who took upon himself the whole weight of Adam’s sin.
Jesus was the first manifested son, but he opened the door for many to follow. Now the son had earned the right in his humanity through 30 years of obedience, to now access his father’s treasure, all the angels, all the power, all the resources of heaven could now be taken a hold of by a man and loosed upon the devil to destroy his kingdom upon the earth, we need to see the glory of this thing. Jesus could stand upon the earth and say devil get off my property. Jesus at this time in his life had all authority over the earth. After his resurrection, ascension and being seated at the right hand of the Father. He now has authority over the heaven’s and the earth.
How did Jesus function as a son of God in his humanity? He had to do it by faith. Even though he earned it through the law, he had to function in it by faith. So, the devil had to try and make him doubt who he was, because those who do not believe cannot be sons.
The devil went before the father and said he wanted to test this son of God. So, Jesus did not immediately start moving in power, but was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. What does the devil say, if you are the son of God, the devil always tries to bring us to doubt.
Jesus applies it is written, he lived by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of the Father. Jesus went into the wilderness full of the Spirit but came out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit. We too must qualify to have the anointing of Power upon us, we have the anointing in us, but this anointing of power comes upon us.
Then Jesus returned from the wilderness in the power of the Spirit and began to destroy the works of the devil upon the earth. For three and ½ years he gave a demonstration of what it is like to be a human son of God who has come into his inheritance, who is wisely using his inheritance upon the earth to destroy the works of the evil one.
Jesus’s purpose was to bring many sons to glory-Heb 2:10. We are to look to Jesus the author of our faith (the word literally means the trail blazer, the one who goes ahead and opens the way for others to follow, he cut a way through the jungle of the devils power to make a way for us to come and follow him) he earned the right for us to be sons, by living under the law for 30 years in perfect obedience waiting to qualify. We come into sonship by faith.
The reason Christians have no power is because they have never fought and won the battle of the wilderness. The Apostles all came into a total new dimension of living. Sons speak a different language than babies. Babies do not speak at all. Babies do not know how to pray. All they know how to do is to holler to get someone else to meet their needs. If they are hungry, they expect someone else to feed them. Babies do not know how to keep themselves clean, so we must clean up their mess. Spiritual babes who are natural fathers cannot keep the devil out of their family.
When the fullness of the time had come-that word means a particular moment in God’s purposes. The Holy Spirit comes to show us the father, the father produces sons. Many people only know God as mother, they live on milk, the word of comfort. There is a discipline side to the father, which brings us into sonship, and brings us into our inheritance. Sons know how to pray, how to witness. Babies cannot resist the devil. Sons live in victory over sin, babes are overcome by sin.
Let us ask Our Heavenly Father to father us. The father will reveal himself to us in a new way. He will reveal to us the glory and power of sonship. He will send the spirit of adoption into our hearts. We will cry out to the Father in a way that we never have before. Or we can just have the Spirit come as a mother, feed us with milk, treat us as a baby because we cannot take the more mature word.
We can choose to stay a baby, or we can choose to become a son. We want the spirit of sonship to fall upon us. If there is an area of our life that we do not have victory over, it is because we have not come into sonship. Sons live free, they live like the firstborn of many brethren (Romans 8:29).
It is wonderful to be a babe, to know the comfort of God, to drink the milk of the word is a wonderful experience, but the time has come to grow up into sonship. The Spirit of God cries out in our heart in a new way. It is the holy Spirits job to bring us to sonship. Let us partner with the Holy Spirit today to bring us into sonship. Amen.