Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness, not with a casual desire, but with an intense, burning drive? Do you want to walk with God, not just to know about Him, or even to minister in His name, but to really know Him in a deep walk with Him?
The Lord circumcises our hearts so that we might appropriate a great ultimate experience in Christ, something God’s people have rejoiced in as only a provision, but have never really experienced totally. This is where unbelief enters in. Unbelief is the only factor that can keep us from overcoming everything that stands in the way of God’s Kingdom. There is nothing else to contend with, because if we believe God, everything else will be taken care of. It comes right down to how much we can believe. Can you believe for that great a change in your brother and in yourself? You must.
The Scripture in Colossians 2:9–10 tells you what you should believe. For in Him all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority. Do you believe that you have been made complete? You read it, but can you really believe to experience it? What does it mean to really believe that Christ is the Head over all rule and authority? This means that you do not have to accept any form of a diabolical oppression that comes against you.
Christ is the Head over all rule and authority. It is only in our unbelief that we accept the idea that there is other rule and other authority and other power over which we do not have dominion. This unbelief is contrary to the Word. We still live too much like unscriptural people in the earth. We still live as though Christ had not won the victory over all principalities and powers and made an open show of them in His cross (Colossians 2:15). We often approach problems as though this had not happened. We approach problems within ourselves as though we were not yet complete. We do not yet fully believe that we are complete in Christ and that He is the Head over all rule and authority. Our thinking and our reactions do not accept the truth of God’s Word.
When the enemy comes against us, we often pray a desperate prayer, yet all the while it is God’s pleasure to bruise him under our feet (Romans 16:20). The victory is assured and complete; and yet in our lives we accept the incompleteness of our experience in Christ. We fail to appropriate the full provision. It is abhorrent the way we approach the great provision, the unutterable precious promises of God, by which we are to become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (II Peter 1:4). We are to be totally, absolutely, perfectly more than conquerors in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:37).
Satan is always challenging us. Just as he said to Eve in the garden, “Hath God said?” Satan is saying to us, “Can you experience this Word of God?” We love the philosophical acceptance, “Yes, I am complete in Christ Jesus”; but we do not make war upon the incompleteness of our actual experience of it. If God said it, we must have it! The utterance of God alone must not rest upon us without our appropriating it and seeing it explode into our own experience.
When Satan comes against us, we should say, “Just back off! This is none of your business! This is between God and me!” It is up to God to speak it and we must be determined to prove that He tells the truth. A people of God must come forth in the world today who are earnest enough to put the promises of God to the ultimate test. They will either prove that the Word of God works in their lives or show that there is nothing to it. Does that sound sacrilegious? There has to be someone who says, “We will not only talk big; we are going to live it. We are going to have what You spoke, Lord. Loose it! You said it, and it must happen to us!”
You cannot carry limitations within yourself. God did not impose them by one Word that He spoke. Not one time did He impose limitations. The Scriptures tell you that you have an unlimited, perfect provision for every need until the whole man, spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. I Thessalonians 5:23b–24. What shall we do with these promises? We should hate every day that we live short of God’s provision! How can we enjoy life when it is so limited? No matter how successful we might be in walking with God, the restoration of His truths for this hour will not mean much if we do not appropriate the total experience that God has provided for us. Oh, how we should grieve in spirit before the Lord with deep intercession and crying in our hearts. God Himself is the only answer for meeting us now.
And in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Colossians 2:11. What is it that holds us under futility but the fact that our old flesh still has not been brought under the redemption? We are looking for the redemption of our bodies. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. Romans 8:23b. We yearn, not to depart out of this body, but to see the removal of that which we call the flesh. Who will believe that the carnal flesh can be removed? Such a statement would be regarded as heresy by most Christians. We must believe it. We can experience the removal of the flesh nature by the circumcision of Christ.
Let no one ever lead you into a discipline of the flesh, telling you that by some legalistic rigor you can overcome it. The second chapter of Colossians ends with this same truth. If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with the using)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. Colossians 2:20–23.
Any rigorous program of discipline will never deal with the body of carnal flesh. A thousand pushups a day cannot take care of that flesh nature. You could put yourself under all kinds of prohibitions, such as, “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle”; you could isolate yourself until you finally quarantined the fleshly appetite—but all of that would be of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh. A legalistic discipline upon the flesh is not the answer. It never was, and it never will be. That is not the way the flesh is eliminated.
The old flesh is not exactly what you see, though it dwells in what you see. We call it the flesh, but it is actually a nature. That is probably what the Lord really meant when He said, “If your hand offends you, cut it off” (Mark 9:43). Do not think that He meant literal mutilation. If the physical flesh that offends is cut off, the flesh nature is still there to pop up in another area. It is set on fire by hell itself. Paul saw the law of sin that wars through the physical members, and he saw the release from the flesh that comes through the Spirit. He said, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord… Romans 7:24–25. The time is upon us to experience a deeper measure of appropriating the release from the flesh than the people of God have ever known. There will be a lift of any ban (if there ever was one) upon the full appropriation of this passage of Scripture.
There are passages of Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments, which refer entirely to spiritual circumcision, and do not deal with the Jewish ritual of circumcision in any way. And in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. Colossians 2:11–12. How can we go through the motions of baptism and be satisfied with a limited experience, when the Scripture speaks about such a total change happening to us? Verse 12 says that we have been buried with Him.
Chapter three of Colossians begins, If then you have been raised up with Christ… This is to be more than an assumption of your mind; it is to become a spiritual experience whereby your faith reaches in vicariously actually to appropriate everything that Christ did, just as though you yourself had gone through it. Christ’s experience of burial and resurrection is to be as real to you as it was to Him. You are first to be crucified, then buried with Him, and finally raised with Him. In order to experience what Christ went through, your physical body does not have to die. But the effect within you from what you experience should be just as real as what Christ attained when He went through it.
Either we have a Word from God and Christ’s resurrection life as our reality, or we have a religious philosophy, a mental assumption that we do not believe will ever really work for us. Let us believe with faith. For instance, let us believe that it will be possible to see people baptized and brought up out of the water with instantaneous change worked in their lives.
Years ago some of the most blessed times were found in tarry meetings when Spirit-filled believers gathered and prayed through the night. The preachers declared, “This is that which Joel spoke of,” but it did not turn out to be quite that; something was missing. Although the people were baptized with the Holy Spirit, their experiences did not measure up to the account in the Scriptures. As we walk with God today, we are in a similar situation. We may think that we have more reality today than the Pentecostal movement had earlier, but we are also claiming greater blessings and quoting bigger Scriptures. We speak about the restoration of all things, about the Kingdom of God coming forth in this generation, and about total discipleship. Even if we had received a thousand times more from God than people ever have before, we are still talking much bigger than we are walking.
At this point we should be disturbed. We should not cease to be on our faces before God until our experience totally measures up to the Word we profess, the Word we believe. This would end the gap between God’s provision and what we experience of the provision.
Declare war upon the unbelief of your heart. Declare war on the satanic lie that sometimes calms and soothes you into accepting something short of what God has really said. To be half-healed, to be half-delivered, to have God touch your eyes and yet still only see men as trees walking (Mark 8:24), to have a taste but not really to know all that God has for you—that must end!
What we have received from God so far is not enough. We must not stop until we have a meeting with God—not a meeting where He pats us on the head and says, “You’re a good boy.” He must meet us so that we can be like Him and have His righteousness. Let us demand an end of partial fulfillment—of seeing through a glass darkly, of knowing in part, and of speaking in part. We must put away the childish incompleteness (I Corinthians 13:11–12).
And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Colossians 2:13–14. This means that we must recognize the fact that we are out from under the Law. Why have God deal with us as children who must be kept under a tutor until the time of our proclaimed sonship? Why not move into that sonship?
This is not difficult to put into action. Just picture Christ hanging on the cross, and the heavenly Father granting one wish. Picture the Father nailing to the cross all the ordinances that were against you which were designed for one purpose: to make you a sinner and to made sin exceedingly sinful. We are through having the knowledge of sin; now let us have the knowledge of righteousness. Let us know and experience it. Let us be loosed from every sin. Can we do this? Yes, we can experience His full provision.
Do you ever wonder if there is something drastically wrong with your walk with God? Do you feel like crying, “O God, just send an angel to kick me and wake me up to what I am supposed to be! If You are trying to tell me something, make it plain. Get it over with. Talk to me!” God is talking to us, and we are saying, as Job said, “I abhor myself” (Job 42:6).
When the Lord disarmed the principalities and powers, He also nailed to the cross every decree against us. In other words, we shall not only be dead to the flesh, but dead to every restriction that was ever made concerning the flesh. We shall be alive in the Spirit and walk in total righteousness. Believe that this can be done. Because we cannot even trust our deceitful, unbelieving hearts, we cry, “O God, help our unbelief. Do not let it coexist with our faith that rises to believe that we can be what You say we are.” We can have what God says He has done for us. We can walk with Him as He proclaims it. Barriers can be broken, restrictions can go, and these limitations upon our lives can end!
When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. Colossians 2:15. When Jesus died on the cross, He won a victory and He disarmed the satanic forces. How can we possibly talk about the harassment of the devil against us when the Scripture says that the principalities and rulers were disarmed? Satan is a paper dragon. He has no authority. He cannot do anything to us that we do not allow him to do. We should be disgusted with the acceptance that we give to the devil, with the force that we give to his lies.
How can we believe that Satan still has any kind of weapon at all, when the Word says that rulers and principalities and authorities were disarmed, and that Christ made a public triumph over them? On the cross it was all done; Christ finished the war and won the victory. I do not know what was in the mind of Satan when Jesus was resurrected, but I can imagine the shrieks and wails and screams from the demonic world while Satan was shouting, “Watch Him, watch Him! He has the keys! He beat us!” Jesus rose from the grave with the keys of hell and the grave on His girdle. He has the keys. He won the victory for all time.
Too often we fight Satan as though he were to be fought all over again. We come against Satan as though he were to be defeated again every day, as though each day that the sun rises, there is a new devil to be defeated. No, it is the same old devil that was defeated nearly two thousand years ago. God is waiting for a people who believe in the defeat of Satan. Speak positively. God is waiting for a people who will believe in the total victory of Christ.
You can try to convince yourself of this fact from now on, but you have not believed it until your life shows that you have experienced it. If you believe it is to be done on the physical level, you will experience it on the physical level. If He takes away the body of this sin, then He takes away the body of this sin. Do not keep on sinning and assume that the sin in your life is not really valid. If you sin, it is valid. If you walk in unbelief, it is valid. The victory of Christ is valid when you walk in the victory of Christ. Sin is valid when you walk in sin. You either walk in sin or you walk in righteousness. These are the days to really seek His face. Do not stop until God has met your need.
The Jewish requirements, such as the new moon, the Sabbath day, the festivals, and the ordinances were a mere shadow of what was to come, but the substance of them belongs to Christ. All that a Jew was required to observe in the Old Testament just pointed to the fact that there was a reality behind the Law which was to be fulfilled in Christ. In the Old Testament each family killed a little lamb to commemorate the first Passover when all of Israel marched out of Egypt. Now the Lord, who was crucified for us, is our Passover. What do we do to appropriate the provisions of Passover? We gird our loins, take our staffs in hand, eat His flesh, drink His blood, and walk right out of every form of bondage that has ever held us. Every time someone opens his heart to partake of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, a greater miracle should happen than happened to the Israelites in the days of the first Passover. It should be an unbelievable miracle of walking completely and forever out of the domain of the devil.
If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come, and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices (get rid of the old and put on the new), and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him,—a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all. And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against any one; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. And beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Colossians 3:1–15a.
What is the underlying theme of these verses? Take Christ’s provision for you and make it work. Experience it now. Do it. Put to death the old carnality. Get rid of it; you can dump it. If these words have any meaning to your heart, you can experience them. God is saying, “I have done it all for you. I have made the provision.” Now, away with the old and on with the new life and the new nature. You can put on all the attributes of Christ, right down to the last bond of perfection and the love that girds His people. You can grab onto a whole new being, a new expression. It can work if you believe it to work. It is not necessarily an instantaneous experience, but you should have enough violence of faith so that every time some evidence of the flesh rises up, such as temper, you put it away; you kill it.
Reach into the compassion and long-suffering of God. Start putting away and mortifying the flesh. When the Scriptures say to mortify or crucify the flesh, that means to kill it. It does not mean to kick it in the tail; it means to kill it. It does not mean to stomp on it; it means to put it to death and get rid of it. You have to put an end to the old nature.
We need a brainwashing from God in our minds, where we have accepted our faith as being limited, where we have accepted ourselves as being all right with only a limited experience of what God has provided, and where we have become smug and satisfied with taking gradual steps into a limited experience. When God’s ministries of authority lay hands on a person and prophesy a word of wisdom from God, there should be a greater impartation. Prophecy should electrify and slay people before God. Anything short of this means that someone has taken the guts out of it. Let us believe to see the power, the authority, and the total level that God said His people should have. We must repent for the smaller portion we have accepted, when the whole Word of God should be active in our lives. If the provision is perfect, God intends that our appropriation and our experience of it be just as perfect. He will be honored and glorified as we become more than conquerors.
There is no other route than repentance. As God chastens you, hold on to Him, demanding as Jacob did, “I won’t let You go until You bless me. I can’t beat You, God; but I’m going to hang on to You anyway.” God does not ignore you, no matter how much it may seem that way. Jesus tested the faith of the Syrophoenician woman, saying, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and give it to dogs.” But one way or another, you must get the children’s bread from God’s table, even if you have to sit there and bark. Contend for God’s greater promises and refuse to live in less. Do not cease to trouble yourself and God and one another until you walk in those promises. When your spiritual level is down, you will be troubled by emotions and problems that have no bearing or significance, even though they seem tremendous. Problems always seem to arise when your spiritual level is down. You know that your spiritual level is down when you become disturbed by them. You do not argue with a flood, with rivers of living water. It is not enough to thank God that you once were filled with the Spirit; you must drink continually of the Spirit, of the rivers of living water that are flowing from God. You will not have many problems, unless you walk in much less than God has provided for you.
Maybe it is in God’s will that some of us die, but I would like to see the dead raised. We rejoice that we have authority over headaches, but we should see the ministry of Christ fulfilled in seeing the dead raised too. Why be content until we really believe the Bible in its fulness? Sometimes we go through deep disappointments when we expect God to work a miracle and it does not happen. Maybe we must wake up to face the fact that we must be through with living on a limited level of appropriation.
Pastors who are tired of ministering to the same old needs within a church had better stop and analyze the reason. When the energies of a church are dissipated among a few who never rise high enough to stand on their feet and walk with God, there is something wrong. There is also an answer for it. Some Christians have a few more problems than others, but their situation should not be any more difficult for God. When they are rid of their old human flesh, they will have divine flesh. God does not have to start with a higher grade of flesh before He can produce the army of the Lord. Flesh is flesh, and all of it will have to go. Unless we experience more from God within our spirits now, there is no point in expecting that the gospel of the Kingdom will go forth like a tidal wave that nothing can stop.
If the devil can stop you in your personal walk with God, he surely will stop you as you try to carry the gospel of the Kingdom to others. It starts with you. It is time to seek the Lord and say, “Pardon me, Lord. I was misunderstanding things. I was letting You get by with doling out tokens. This is not going to happen anymore. What You said is what will be. What You set before me is what I am going to experience. I shall no longer settle for anything short of entire sanctification—spirit, soul, and body!”
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” He takes away the sin of the world. He takes it away! And He is going to take away the flesh. The Passover experience is the experience of salvation, but the atonement experience is yet to be given in its fulness. It will take away sin from the camp. No more iniquity shall be found in the house of God. There is not to be a lame or a feeble person in God’s tribes. The banquet is being set; and as it was in the days of David, so it is in the days of the King of kings, the son of David. King David abhorred any crippled or lame individual sitting at his table (II Samuel 5:8). He wanted every man to be healed. That was a foretype. God is saying now, “We are going to feast, but the lame of the flock are going to be healed first.”
We shall not limp into the Kingdom; we shall strive into it. We shall not be half-sick, half-healed, half-delivered. We must see God’s purposes accomplished. Instead of merely existing, let your faith anticipate resurrection life. Go after the life that God has for you.