We are pointing to the nature that we want to acquire. It is not that we condone what people do, but we are putting the focus on a different area. This is a shift away from the negativity. It is not that we do not have problems; but we see that the problems are not the problem. The real goal is to bring forth the mature sonship that God wants in the earth (Romans 8:18–23; Ephesians 1:5–8).
It is the objective that is the important thing, not the little things that manifest themselves along the way. You can be so busy putting out brush fires that you never get around to doing the one thing that is necessary. You can be so busy with the little thing, when it does not make any difference one way or another because it is just a symptom. If someone is sick, what can you do? You could put cold compresses on him and let him rest; or perhaps you could massage him, or put some pillows under him to make him more comfortable. All of these things you could do because he is sick. But comforting him is not the idea. If he is sick, find out what is wrong with him and heal him; get him into the thing that he has to be.
You see, righteousness is not so much actions as it is a state of being. And sin is not so much in what you do, but what you are. Therefore, we get rid of condemnation. The whole idea is this: we believe God for a state of righteousness (Romans 5:17–21; I Thessalonians 5:23–24). And we repent because we do not have it.
But we are fools if we let Satan point to any stumbling or any failure that occurs because we still have a condemned nature. The condemnation is not in what you did, but that you did not get rid of the state of being which allowed it to happen in the first place.
We are going to be able to get rid of the problems by a different method than what others try and impose upon us. They try and beat us down and restrain our actions. That never was the basic issue! The restraint of actions and the correction of conduct is never the true basis for what we are after. What we are after is a new nature—to be sons of God, mature.
I had a vision that the great flow of God’s Spirit is like water dammed up. The potential is tremendous. And the flow of God can come by some fool finding a stick of dynamite and blowing up the dam. He could say in his heart, “There are weeds in my vineyard,” so he creates a flood; but when he finishes, he doesn’t have any vineyard, either. He has washed it all away. Because condemnation is negative, while it is designed to condemn and suppress evil, it does not always promote or create true righteousness. So the flood is disastrous to everything. But a wise man says, “With all of this that God has, we will not create a flood, but we will channel it into the irrigation ditches and we will grow the vineyards.”
That picture is so vivid in my mind. We do not want a destructive flood. The Kingdom is not to be flooded by God but to be fed by God. And we are the ones who can channel it.
We can use the same Scripture to kill or to make alive (II Corinthians 3:6). It depends upon whether the motivation is filled with condemnation and unbelief, or if it is filled with faith and love. We read that those are the only two things that avail anything—faith that works by love (Galatians 5:6).
That is why some people can preach to you and they just kill you. Others will preach to you the same word and they bring you alive. You can see why Paul became really angry with those ones in Galatia who were laying restraints on the people again (Galatians 5:7–18). He told them, “That is not the way it is going to happen!”
What will we do with the multitudes of people that God wants to reach? Are we going to flood them or are we going to feed them? Everywhere you go the natural man sees so much to be condemned.
And Satan points out so many reasons why a man should be religious and disciplined, because Satan does not have any greater desire than to keep alive the venom and viciousness of the way of Cain and Korah and Balaam in what appears to be a very highly developed religious society (Jude 4, 11–13, 16). God has no enemy greater. And that is why Satan goes on this religious trip of condemnation on people.
Again, it is the intimidation, the fear of man. It motivates us to “search our hearts”—oh, what a religious phrase that can be! We have a lot to learn about the justification by faith (Galatians 3:11, KJV). That’s what it is all about. That is what Romans 4, 5, and 6 deal with so much. I have felt that when the days of the Kingdom came, there would be a new commentary on the book of Romans which we have not had before. And it will have to deal with this subject, because the real problem is that you cannot get into Romans 8 sonship until you go through all of the actions and reactions that we have to the old nature and to its ultimate demise.
This is a “present” dispensational truth.
Therefore, I shall always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you. II Peter 1:12.
Do not get so busy with other things that you forget this. It is so easy for us to carry a religious conditioning—something that builds up and builds up. A lot of the self-condemnation is accumulative, because we hold the memory of what the flesh is and what the flesh has done.
That is what we are saying. This third generation is more ready to take impartation by the grace of God than any generation that has come so far, because they see what they need, but they are not hung up over the little things that they do; well actually, they have been, but they are learning not to be. For example, one or two could be standing out on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes, but who is going to bother them over that? We are not as concerned about your going into a lot of disciplines over little things as we are concerned about God making you righteous in your heart.
And may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. Philippians 3:9.
He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. Titus 3:5.
And once that righteousness and the new nature come forth, then you will make a righteous decision in God over those other things. All of us will. Do you see that? The problem is not the little things that keep popping up; it is that old nature that is left. Whatever is left of it, get rid of it! Let’s not prolong the torture; let’s get rid of that “old man” (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:22–24; Colossians 3:9–10). That’s the whole idea, isn’t it?
If you keep a log of all the things that you are repenting of, what you are doing is like saying, “Oh look, another leaf on the tree. I’d better pull it off.” Let’s get at the root. We are repenting that the roots are still alive enough to produce those leaves. The things that are coming up in our lives have to have some kind of cause. Everything has a cause and effect; and so let’s decide in all of this, “What am I doing that is the effect of a nature within me?” If you do this, you will have a lot better viewpoint. In the first place, you will understand that the greater percentage of what you are doing is the result of a divine nature that is coming forth (II Peter 1:4). But you do not think about that, because you are thinking of all that the devil is accusing you about, saying, “You’ve done this and this and that” (Zechariah 3:1; Revelation 12:10). So you wind up repenting of little actions and reactions and expressions of a nature that is on its way out anyhow. Just go back and put a few axe blows right on that root. Are you seeing what that means? There isn’t anything more important than this, because this is what will rid us of that condemnation.
Self-condemnation is not God’s tool; it is the devil’s tool.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Romans 8:1, 33–34.
As long as he can condemn you, and you are trying to be religious and put out little fires, trying to change little things, he has you tripped up. But when you say, “I am going to be a son of God, mature,” then the devil has lost, because you have broken through that. You deal with the nature then. You crucify the old flesh with its affections and its lusts and everything involved, and you reach up into God to become a new creature; and you live in that.
For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.
And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Galatians 5:6, 24, KJV.
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. Galatians 6:15, KJV.
In the meantime there is an ambivalence. Two natures are warring within you (Galatians 5:17; Romans 7:18–25), yet you do not credit yourself for the good that is in you; you just condemn yourself for the few times when you stumble.
Realize that what we are talking about is the answer for all that ineffective religious effort. How much of that is God, and how much of that is actually Satan trying to put you under condemnation and get you busy working at something that has no bearing at all on what you are to become? It only has a bearing on what you are trying to kill, on the thing that has to die; and it never succeeds because you do not reach into the real key of it. The key of it is in faith. It really is in faith.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to every one who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” Romans 1:16–17.
We cannot enter into the manifestation of the sons of God that Romans 8 speaks of, the glorious manifestation of a new nature, sons coming forth to maturity and releasing the world from futility, until first we cope with the battle that is described in the first seven chapters with the old fleshly nature that has warred against that manifestation. It is significant that Romans 8 begins, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. Verses 1–2.
All the other chapters are dealing with sin and the Law and righteousness and related various things. In fact, one of the most fascinating studies you could make would be found in about five or six passages in the book of Romans which show you how to cope with that idea of condemnation and how to deal with this problem of running back to old religious works and disciplines, which is Satan’s trick. It is interesting to see that Paul was still talking about it in Romans 10, where he spoke about the Jews and their legalism: For not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. Romans 10:3.
There are people who are so anxious to be righteous, but they do not seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). They go back to the religious way of trying to establish their own righteousness. That is what religion is all about—trying to be religious according to your own ideas or someone else’s ideas. There are thousands of religions all over the world—almost as many different religions as there are people. And it seems that everyone is always trying to be charitable and say, “All roads lead to heaven.” I don’t know what they are talking about when they say that; and I don’t think they know either. But I will tell you one thing that I do believe: there is only one road that leads to righteousness, and that is faith (Romans 1:17; 4:3; 10:4–11).
You can try to establish righteousness some other way, saying, “I feel condemned; this is wrong in my life. I’m going to get into a discipline; I’m going to go on a thirty-day fast.” A lot of people’s fasting did not get them anywhere because it was a religious work. They were self-condemned, and so they thought, “If I fast a while, I’ll feel better about it.” People throughout the world go to church, just because they feel better for having gone to church on Sunday. They may not get anything, but they feel better.
If Satan wants to restrict or restrain a person, he keeps prodding him to be religious. But when the Holy Spirit moves, He moves for us to reach out with faith and claim what God has for us, claim what Christ did for us. We can change!
We do not have to constantly try to suppress ourselves, thinking, “I’ve got this problem and that problem.” And the minute our guard is down, the enemy comes in some way and we are defeated. We are always failing, always repenting, always making resolutions: “We’re going to do better; we’re going to do better!” We are not going to do better! We may become more religious, but the nature is just a more refined, cultured old nature.
There is a popular philosophy, originating in the Orient, called “Self-Realization.” Someone who had been in that once came to me saying, “I have a serious problem. You talk about such things as perception in the spirit and discernment and about reaching a high level of awareness, but Self-Realization taught us that. This is the same thing as that mystical, Oriental philosophy.” I said that is not true.
The Oriental religions take the old nature and the mind and the emotions, and through disciplines try to bring them up to their highest development. But we say, “Crucify it!” (Galatians 5:24.) We start with a new nature; they try to perfect the old one. Forget it! Start with a new one. That is religion, to perfect yourself to the highest possible degree. Finally they develop a highly refined old Adamic nature—very religious, yet still Adamic. It is still the old nature passed down from Adam (I Corinthians 15:21–22). We don’t want that. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation (II Corinthians 5:17). We want to be new.
Let’s reach into something new. We are not about to refine the old; we just want to appropriate the new. Peter said, Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (that old nature). II Peter 1:4, KJV.
You can escape the corruption. You are into the new; you partake of a new, divine nature. That is what it is all about. That is where we start.
Why do we start in the Spirit and then as Paul warned the Galatians, “think to make perfect in the flesh what God began in the Spirit”? That is the problem.
People start in the Grace of God, and then they say, “Thank You, God. You gave me the boost; now I’ll work it all out by myself.” You cannot do it that way. That is where condemnation comes in. So then why are we always going back to that old nature and being condemned? The only condemnation we should feel is that we have not already gotten rid of that condemned nature.
Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Galatians 3:3.
We are not trying to eliminate our stumbling and our faltering. We are trying to learn how to live in His presence with an awareness that we are His sons and His prophets. Do you see it? This Word is imparting to you. If I can get you to think this way, then you will change the world as well as yourself.
Look at all the little things that people argue about. As an illustration, in the book of Galatians Paul was saying, “Some say you have to be circumcised and keep the new moons and the Sabbaths and certain things” (Galatians 4:8–10; 6:12). He was trying to tell them, “All of that is in vain. The only thing is a new creature.”
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. It is … faith which worketh by love. Galatians 6:15; 5:6b, KJV.
Two things—faith which works by love. That is the whole key. It is never our religious trip. And of course, the Galatians had become very religious. Some Jews had come up from Jerusalem wanting to circumcise them, and you have to be pretty religious to submit to that! (Acts 15:1–5, 22–30; Galatians 5:8–12; 6:12–13.)
The Galatians were caught in that religious trap, and so Paul tried to get them out of that. What good does it do to argue about circumcision and uncircumcision? That is not really the issue. “Do we burn candles, or do we not burn candles? Do we pray to Mary, or do we not pray to Mary? What do we do? What don’t we do?” When you begin to argue about all the religious dogma, you are in an argument about a multitude of things: “What kind of hats or bonnets should we wear?” Are those things significant?
We do not want to be religious; but we do want to be righteous. And we are going to be righteous. We are going to seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). There is no other rule for us.
There is nothing else for us to reach for. And anytime we take our eyes off of that goal, anytime we are not imparting His righteousness to one another, we are missing it.
We are imparting and drawing and appropriating; we are taking everything that can feed the new man, everything that can feed the Christ within all of us—we are the Kingdom.
“Well, I never heard that in the Scriptures.”
Then read them again, because Matthew chapter 25 speaks of that very thing: “Then shall the Kingdom of heaven be likened unto all of the sheep and the goats that will be brought together before the Lord” (verses 31–33). And we learn the difference between the sheep and the goats. The goats were quite religious. I am sure that they were better organized ecclesiastically than the sheep, because goats are more position-conscious. And I am sure that they were good defenders of the faith, because they could “but” so well: “I believe, but … Everything is okay, but …” Goats “but” you. The sheep had one thing going for them. They were not even aware of it, but they had one dedication: They were feeding the Christ in their brother. They were visiting the Christ who was imprisoned. They were visiting the Christ who needed to be clothed. They were ministering to one another, and they did not even realize how wonderful it was that they were only concerned about one thing (Matthew 25:34–46). They were not trying to be religious; they were doing a blessing, creating a blessing, imparting a blessing to one another.
This is all we should really be concerned about: “What can I give?” That is the difference with this third generation. They will come along with the real thing that we should search our hearts about: “What can I give? What can I do?” For you will appropriate and become strong and mature as sons the more that you take the responsibility to impart to one another, to give to one another, to bless one another. Then you have it; you are in it. If you do not, you will slip back into the day-by-day routine of work and services and the different things that you are doing. All of those things are fine, but you have to make this step forward. You must keep blessing one another. You must become so conscious that you have something to give and something that you can receive from one another.
The whole problem comes right back to what the book of Galatians is saying—the key to the whole thing is faith which works by love (Galatians 5:6). In almost every instance we could point to, we see that unbelief leads to condemnation and self-condemnation, but faith leads to righteousness. We are righteous by faith. We minister to one another in the Kingdom by love and by faith.
Faith with love—cry out for it! If you are going to repent, repent that you do not have more faith. If you are going to repent, repent that you do not have more love. But by no means stop and trip over some stupid little outcropping of the old flesh that you are going to get rid of anyway! It is death-doomed! You are going to get rid of it; you are going to crucify it. And the longer you bring it up, you are just nurturing the little thing along. You are petting it along and making that thing the objective of battle, and it isn’t worthy of it. Many of the things you condemn within yourself are not even worth the time and effort you put on them.
Get into the Word that reaches into God. Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Love your brother and your sister as yourself, and minister to them (Mark 12:30–31).
Just give yourself to seeking God. And if your problems really get you down, then have the brothers talk to you or lay hands on you and get you out of it.
This is why our Lord Jesus Christ told the disciples, Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. John 20:23, KJV.
Sometimes people become so bogged down with a thing that they cannot forgive themselves or even understand forgiveness. Then they need someone to lay hands on them and say, “That’s enough! You’re forgiven! Get on and walk with God.”
Just determine, “I’m through with that problem!” And if it begins to pop up, say, “You’re dead. I’m not believing that. I’m not accepting it. I’m reaching into something else.”
Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts. Romans 6:11–12.
I am not saying that distraction alone is the answer; but I am saying that as long as you concentrate on your faults, you will keep them. They will become healthier by the day because they are getting so much attention. But when you begin to concentrate on the Lord and behold Him, you will be changed into the same image from glory to glory (II Corinthians 3:18). If you want to change, do not meditate on your sins or the sin nature. Meditate upon the new creation of God that you are becoming. Meditate on the Lord; that is what will make it work.
Come on, move into it! Recreate yourselves—not as a people who are struggling to overcome a few things, but as a people who are filled with the joy of the Lord, reaching into the wonders of everything that God has for you! This will be your goal! This is what God is setting before you.
If there is a cardinal sin to be repented of, it is the sin that we have not had more faith to become. This we repent of!
What bothers me is that we have known this; but we forget and get drawn back into condemnation. We forget that the real focus is the appropriation of His righteousness.
What makes you forget? Is it all your fault, or is it that people revert back to that level until everyone around you is talking so negatively that they pull you down? We have to be pushing upward, rather than pulling one another down by the negativity of religious discipline. We must help one another. This could be really renewed and relived constantly if we would just do it all together.
We have to crucify the fear that has been passed down from generation to generation. It is a religious thing—the fear in communicating or in relating, and the fear about being exposed before each other or before the Lord. Now, the Word has opened the door to see those fears really dealt with, crucified once and for all. We do not have to live with a fear in relating to one another because of a conditioning to position, etc., that has been passed down the line for so long. We are breaking that.
What is happening to us now is the same thing that happened in the New Testament. Paul wrote to Timothy, saying, For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. II Timothy 1:7, KJV. This is what one generation tries to teach another, and maybe one day we will all learn it. We have to be loosed from fear. Perfect love will cast out that fear (I John 4:18). Unbelief and faith, or intimidation and love—these seem to be the extremes. We are trying to get into faith and love, and so we have to get out of unbelief and fearfulness. This is the course that every one of us goes through.
I am going through this all the time. And I have never made as much progress in my life as I have made in the past two or three years. I have made so much progress that I am beginning to realize how far I have yet to go, and it is very humbling. I have learned that when we are not moving, we do not see the panoramic view that we see while we are moving. As we accelerate, suddenly everything comes alive because we are moving so fast. Then we think, “Now I know what it’s all about! I wish I’d known before what I know now. Things would have been a lot different. I would not have languished. I would not have let myself come so close to falling over the brink.”
Do you see how fast we can move? In one week we can live a spiritual year; we can be different. We are going to be anything but religious. We will be what God can create us.
We are breaking into something that is truly Kingdom. We have talked about the Kingdom, but we are getting right down to the practical way of breaking in and becoming, because the Kingdom is not a discipline. The Kingdom is a creation of God. He is creating us.
Do not think that because you are young that this is unattainable. Young people are bothered by two things which suppress them. One is an ambition that they are afraid to let go of which torments them. The other is a feeling of insecurity and inadequacy that is difficult for them to overcome. So these two things conflict within them. It would be wonderful if we all could say, “Young or old, I have to live with one thing: I am what I am, only by the grace of God. And the grace that He gives me will not be bestowed upon me in vain (I Corinthians 15:10). I am going to believe it. It will not be by my fleshly effort, but I am going to believe for grace and receive it.”
The only road that leads to righteousness is faith.
Those whom Satan would restrict and restrain, he prods them to be religious.
The Adamic nature, though highly refined, disciplined, and religious, must still be crucified with Christ. The sons of God start with a new nature, a new creation.
The only condemnation we should be feeling is that we have not already rid ourselves of that condemned nature.
The goal is not to eliminate stumbling, but to stand in His presence.
I don’t want to be religious. I want to be righteous.
Unbelief leads us to condemnation and self-condemnation, but faith leads us to righteousness.
Concentrate on your faults and you will keep them. Focus on the Lord and you will be changed from glory to glory.