Our old man has been crucified with Christ legally on the Cross, the New Testament in Romans 8 says our body is dead because of sin.
But there is a difference between the legal and vital aspects of redemption.
The New Creation is basically being a divine human. So, in that sense we have two natures, the human nature and the divine nature. When Christ is born in our spirit our spirit becomes divine, we just have to be aware of it for it to be joining to the Lord, to become one spirit with the Lord.
I began to think of the reciprocal indwelling of Christ and the believer. That’s what it is called in theological terms. I don’t think that that is very good terminology, because as I began to study it with the idea of bringing it to you, something began to unfold to me that I have never seen before, and always I like to teach something that will help you grow spiritually.
Not that I want to be the kind of a minister who’s always bringing a fresh new revelation that no one has ever thought of before, but rather that all truth is capable of such expansion.
And where is the human being that has exhausted any one of God’s great truths? But when we find something new in the same old truths that we have preached before, it gives us a real blessing in our heart.
Now, the Gospel of John. You will find the promise that the Lord Jesus had made concerning our prayers that are made in His name.
There are some six times here in the Gospel of John, from that period of John 14 on, where we are told if we ask in Jesus’ name, it’ll be given to us.
Are you familiar with the fact that Johns 14, 15, 16, and 17 are all tied together in the teachings that the Lord gave in connection with what had occurred in John 13 the washing of the disciples’ feet the Last Supper, they betrayal, the journey over into the Garden of Gethsemane and the last intercession there, where he won the battle coming so heavily against him, concerning the cross.
All of this is taking place in this short period of time and so we realize that this is perhaps the most significant part of the Lord’s teachings to his disciples.
He finally says, Now the prince of this world cometh and he hath nothing in me. But he said just before that, Now I will not speak to you much more. Not much more would he have to say. This was to be the sum total of what he would say until he appeared before them in his resurrection power.
Therefore, the truths are significant. They are truths that are to launch the disciples into the ministry after Pentecost. They are truths that are speaking of future relationships between Christ and his disciples. And future abilities and authority that they will walk in.
He says, the works that I do will you do also, and greater works than these shall you do.
He gives them the six great promises of praying in His name. He speaks of many things, but the heart of the whole thing is the fifteenth chapter of John.
And in my opinion, of all the teaching that we can use in the New Testament that could embrace almost every aspect of the Lord’s dealing with us in the church or the believer, once we understand the Pauline revelation.
The 15th chapter of John is one of the most all-inclusive things. It is called, by Bible students, THE MASTER PARABLE.
It’s the last parable that the Lord Jesus Christ gave. John chapter 15, he says, I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that bears not fruit, he taketh away. Every branch that bears fruit he cleanses or prunes it that it may bear more fruit.
He said already you are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me and I in you, now this reciprocal indwelling of Christ and the believer is going to be amplified and you’re going to see us being in Jesus and Jesus in us, it is going to be a mutual identification based upon a merging of the essential being of each.
It is based upon a merging of the essential being of each. We are in Christ and Christ in us because of a merging of what He is and what we are together.
Now, we’ll get into that in a little bit, and you’ll see why. He said, abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, so neither can ye, except ye abide in me.
I am the vine ye are the branches he that abideth in me and I in him the same bears much fruit for apart from me ye can do nothing.
This is the first truth you must get in your spirit; it is impossible to live the Christian life. Only Christ can live the Christian life through you and when you learn to walk in the Spirit it is impossible to fulfill the lust of the flesh because you are on such a high level in God, total extasy that you are not even tempted to yield to the flesh because it will pull you out of the spirit down to the earthly struggles of a mere man or woman trying to do better.
The Christian life is not about trying to do better, but dying to the self-life, and experiencing transformation by tapping into a new life source, the flow of the Spirit in your life.
If a man abides not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. This is sanctification by fire, not conscious eternal torment, the loss of reward.
If ye abide in me and my words abide in you ye ask whatsoever ye will it shall be done unto you. Ask whatsoever you will and it shall be done unto you.
All right, now why does he say this? Why does he say, if you ask anything in my name, I will do it?
Now, when you ask something in the name of another person, you’re never encouraged to do that at all in the Old Covenant, this is something NEW.
There’s not one time where you have a promise of coming to God and asking in anybody’s name, anything.
They exalted the name of the Lord, but while they exalted it and reverenced it, they were never able to use it. They were never able to apply it. They never had any authority or power because there was no promise involved. Why?
Because it was not until Jesus spoke this parable of the vine that the disciples would began to understand what a tremendous union was being wrought in them, so that the believer in whom Christ was coming forth, and they were coming forth in Christ, a dual action of growth and development would result in them being able to ask whatever in Jesus name and it would come to pass.
THIS IS THE SECRET, IT IS NOT YOU DOING THE ASKING, IT IS CHRIST IN YOU DOING THE ASKING!
Because the Christ in them became the petitioner when they were asking in his name. It was Christ in them that became the name of petition and because of that he was answered.
Now does this follow through in actual practice? Yes. There are illustrations of it later on in the nineteenth chapter of the book of Acts when The Lord Jesus had so anointed the apostle Paul that he was going about casting out devils, and there were seven sons of Sceva who decided that they would try to do the same. They were the sons of the “Jewish chief priest.”
So, they came to a demon-possessed person and they say, We adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preaches, that you come out of him. And the demons answered right back, Jesus, we know, Paul we know, but who are you? And the demons so motivated this man, they jumped upon these seven sons of Sceva, ripped their clothes off, began to beat them, they fled from the house screaming and it says fear fell on everyone.
The name of Jesus in you mouth is no hocus pocus, abra ca dabra, mystical magic when you are totally submitted to his Lord Ship.
That name accomplishes nothing unless Jesus has become incorporated in your life and you are assimilating him, and he is actually assimilating you until you are merging in identity.
Yeshua said that in as much as you do to the least of these, my brethren, you’ve done it unto me and he meant that.
They were doing it unto Him because of the merging of being. Christ is becoming us, and we are becoming Christ.
1 Corinthains 6:17 the one now joining himself to the Lord one spirit is- Greek interlinear.
The time is coming when this will be wrought so fully that you will hardly know where the human personality ends, and the divine personality begins.
We must decrease, and He has to increase, but it’s a mysterious way how He begins to enhance our personality and invade it.
Jesus said that He will fill all things. And we are to be the fullness of Him that filleth all things. So, the great work of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the most difficult, mystical truth to understand, is how He is invading us and filling us.
Christ is invading every realm and aspect of our being. There’s no facet of our personality that He’s not going to invade. He’s going to invade us.
He’s going to fill, just keep filling, keep filling, for the word says, He must fill all things.
Once this word is set in your spirit you are finally on the right path. The minute that you begin to read the New Testament, you’re aware of this paradoxical thing we’re talking about, when we talk about a reciprocal indwelling.
The great teaching of the New Testament tells us about how the Father and the Son dwelt in each other. Now, in John 14, verse 8 to 11, He says, I am in the Father, and the Father in me. And if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. Well, that was a hard thing to follow. What He actually meant was that all that the Father was, was coming into His being, and all that He was, was coming into the Father. So that there was a merging together of the basic personality.
This unity of God, I don’t believe, was the thing that just happened. But I believe that when Jesus Christ was born of flesh, he became a separate entity from the Godhead.
Jesus became a man so that we could be one spirit with him.
Therefore, it says all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt upon him bodily, but I don’t think that happened until the Holy Spirit came at the time when John, baptized him in water, and the Father baptized him in the Holy Spirit and fire.
And then I think he merged into the Father and the Father in him. And from that time on, it was so real that anyone who saw the person, Jesus, or his personality, or heard him, he could say, you’ve seen the Father. You’ve heard the Father.
Now the time will come, if you can believe that is true, the time will come in which you can so partake of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you can so open your heart to Him, that the world will see Christ when they see you, and the world will hear Christ when they hear you.
You say, now, we want to be careful. We do not want to take that too far. It is our unwillingness to accept the ultimate ends of truth that often keeps us from really believing. We must believe.
We can actually move into God to that extent, and God can move into us to that extent. That’s what He wants us to believe.
Now this may seem a little bit way out, and it may be a long time before we really appreciate the fullness of it, but this will chart the course that is taking place in us.
You can see many places where the Lord is actually invading your personality and your life. And you see how that what you are is slowly becoming modified by what He is.
And so that what you are isn’t quite the same as what you were before because you are more of God, and God is more in you than was before.
You’re still an individual, but it’s what God has become in you that is changing and modifying and altering the whole personality structure, and we thank God that that’s the way it continues.
That’s what brings us change. That’s why we do not change by willpower. We do not alter ourselves by carefully working at it, but it says we are all changed from glory to glory as we behold Him.
The more we open our heart to Him, the more we are changed automatically, for the revelation of Him to us becomes a revelation of Him in us.
And when He is revealed in us, the world sees Christ there. I know this may sound a little bit like double talk, But I’m trying to make this just as simple as I can so that it doesn’t seem like a play on words to you.
In John chapter six, Jesus said, He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwelleth in me and I in him.
Every time you come to the Lord’s table, and you eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, then he dwells in you, and you dwell in him a little bit more than it was before.
It is this continual feeding upon the Lord that alters and changes every one of us. And in this parable on the vine and the branches, he was saying, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, if he is living in us and we are living in Him, this begins to work something really wonderful.
Now, I don’t know how we could really illustrate this. I don’t know how we could really bring it out. There are a number of illustrations that could be used. But one of the real illustrations that we might point out is an unborn babe.
Now, the unborn baby is in the mother, yet the life and the vitality of the mother flows into the baby. That’s his food and sustenance, that’s by which the babe grows.
So, you say that the baby’s in the mother and the mother’s in the babe. And it continues like that until that baby is fully formed and ready for the hour of birth. That’s exactly the way it is with the Lord Jesus Christ, we are dwelling in him and he in us and this indwelling of God’s life continues to grow until God produces certain things in us in.
In John 15 he would say I’m the vine and you are the branches and if you abide in me, you bear much fruit. Why? Because the branch is incapable of bearing fruit by itself, if it’s cut off there’s nothing. So, he’s speaking of spiritual life.
The grapevine is formed when you go to prune it, you just have to cut it down just whack it off, why because you can’t find where the branch ends and where the vine begins. The deep entwining of them is so deep that you can’t, it is impossible to sever it, they are grown into each other so completely that the grapevine is capable of two things.
It can produce more sap than anything in the whole vegetable kingdom. At the same time, it can produce more wood than any other plant of its same size.
If you ever see those great big high oak trees and cypress trees and see these big thick wild grapevines whining up there, hundreds of feet up in the air.
The little seeds are about all that you see, just a little seed. Why? because it all went to wood, see it went to wood but if you prune and cut that back it’ll produce more fruit than you can ever imagine. Now that’s the way it is with Christ in us.
You see the thing that produces is God. God sends the sap into us, but he says my father is the husbandman, he says I’m the vine.
We can draw upon this life that is in Jesus Christ because we are in Him.
There’s an organic unity. There’s a difference between organizational unity and organic unity.
In an organization, people join it, but it doesn’t mean that they’re alive to it. People join the church. You never should join the church. You should be organically united to the church. It’s a life-giving thing until you are a part of it. You live in it.
So, we don’t say we join the church. No, we recognize the fellowship of the spirit that exists there, and we participate in it until God sets us in.
It is not an assemble of believers, it’s a life. It’s an organism. It’s not an organization. And that’s what it is with the vine. This vine and the branches dwell so completely in each other that the thing that produces the fruit in the branch is the sap that flows from the vine.
When we are united in Christ, we live in Him and He lives in us. What is produced in our life is not produced by anything inherent in us.
It’s produced by that which flows from Him into us, and that’s the fruit. So, the fruit that the Lord is after is not what is produced naturally by the branch. It is what is produced supernaturally by its living connection with the vine.
So, it is Jesus that’s producing everything in us. So, after a while, when we look at the whole of our personality, the fruitfulness of our life, everything that comes forth is from the vine, the life source.
When we learn how to abide in Him and He abides in us, and we ask whatever we will be done, it is not us doing the asking, but Christ in us and people see the miraculous thing in our life. They know that this thing came from the Lord. This is God’s doing. This is a product of the Lord God himself.
Now, what does the father do? He’s the husbandman and keep’s pruning every branch. Because he doesn’t want it to produce wood, hay and stubble. He wants it to produce the fruit.
You see, it’s always a cutting back, cutting back so that there isn’t too much of the vine that is going to be produced, but there’s going to be a lot of the fruit produced by this energy and life that flows from Christ into us as we dwell in him, and we live in him.
This is a tremendous secret of how we become champions for God. We become more than conquerors, by just living in God, living in the Lord, and the Lord living in us.
And that mergence of the very essence of our lives and His life together, just starts flowing together.
After a while, you begin to wonder where one ends and the other begins. Where does the vine end? Where does the branch begin? The two become so intertwined.
I’ll go a little further because I’m trying to get at the whole key of the New Testament in this, that you can begin to study out a lot of theology and doctrine that’ll be a blessing to you because we can now see the practicality of it.
For instance, in the New Testament, over 130 times, we see this phrase described in different ways, in Christ, in Christ Jesus, in him, in whom, and so forth.
And in each case, it means an organic (living matter) union with Christ, a vital connection, just like the vine and the branches.
See, living in Him and Him living in us, becomes a very real thing. Now, I’m going to go a little bit further because I want to get something across to you here.
Let me give you the illustration first, and then I’d like to unlock the New Testament epistles to you to show you how each of them develops an aspect of what Christ is in us and what we are in Christ, that this is the whole key of all the Pauline epistles.
If a child is born into a family, the law of heredity entitles that child to all the history and all the tendencies, good or bad, the social and political rights, the privileges of the family, as far back as the lineage can be traced.
Another law, the law of inheritance, guarantees the child the future possession of the family inheritance so that what belongs to the family will come down to the child, or at least a portion of it.
And so it is true also, anyone who is born of YHWY into the family of God and becomes a partaker of the divine nature is not only entitled to the future inheritance of a child of God, but to all the past experiences and history and tendencies and rights and privileges of Christ in that family.
Stop and meditate on that, all the inherit abilities of the generational line of Jesus from the seed of the woman, and all the promises of God in the Bible are yes and amen in Christ.
When you are born into the family of God, you are not only entitled to the future inheritance of a child of God, but to all the past experiences of Christ.
Now, do you think that we can share in the past experiences of Christ? Yes. That’s exactly what it means.
The book of Romans tells us how we were crucified together with Him. We’re entitled to draw upon the experience of His crucifixion. It can be ours. We were buried together with Him; it says in Colossians. We were quickened together with Him, made alive in Ephesians.
Colossians talks how we were risen together with Him. Romans 8 tells how we were heirs together with Him and sufferers with Him and we’ll be glorified together.
All the past experiences of Christ are ours because we have come into such an organic unity with Him.
We are so one with Him that if we are heirs of God and join heirs of Jesus Christ, it’s all ours. This means that the potential ours, it’s ours when we are in Christ and Christ is in us.
Here’s the key to these epistles, we see in the book of Romans, the theme of being justified in Christ. The book of Corinthians both epistles follows that in Christ we’re sanctified. The book of Galatians follows the theme that in Christ we’re crucified. The book of Ephesians says, In Christ we have ascended, and been seated with Him.
The book of Philippians says, In Christ we are satisfied, made content. The book of Colossians says, In Him we’re complete. We’re complete in Him.
In Thessalonians it says, In Christ we’re glorified, our future glory is assured.
Well, I’m just kind of giving to you here, the whole New Testament approach. It’s what we are in Christ, what we have in Christ, what Christ is in us that becomes the basis of all our standing before the God.
Now, is this a practical thing or is it just something that we talk about. No, I don’t think so.
The Christian experience is making real in our life what is true as to our legal standing in Christ, and our provision in Christ.
What we have in theory, what we have in potential, we begin to apply it. And we make it a reality. That brings it right down to a very, very practical thing.
Believers say, well, I’m going to seek God until I have a real work of sanctification. You already have it. Now experience it. It’s already yours, now experience it.
Begin to see your privileges and rights and how that you participate because of your identity and union with Christ, how you participated in all his triumphs and all his experiences.
So, he says, if ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. So, you begin to open your heart and you begin to seek it.
Because in Christ, all these things happen to you. Now it’s up to you to go and make them the actual experience of your life.
Can we, do it? Yes, we can. It opens the door that there isn’t anything at all that you need in God that isn’t provided for, the minute that Jesus Christ comes into your life. That was all that was necessary.
When he came in, you had the basic promise and assurance of all these things. But you say, I don’t have it. But when you receive Christ, you receive the potential of it, the assurance of it.
Then you go on in the application of it, and it becomes yours. What do we do when we begin to move into these things?
If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Then comes the application.
We begin to ask. We do not ask as beggars, we are not petitioning as those who do not deserve it. But we’re asking on a basis that we have this privilege, we have this right we are possessors of the past experiences of Jesus Christ by virtue of his being one with us.
Therefore we can claim these things that becomes the technical, the technicality by which the Father has to recognize that’s why we got all of these promises ganging up here in one place.
Whatever you ask in my name, asking in the name of Jesus was going to open the door. That was the key to it because He was dwelling within you. If he is not dwelling in you and asking through you, you could ask in His name all day long, and would mean nothing.
But He was talking to those who by virtue were like the vines and the branches. They were dwelling in Him and He was dwelling in them.
That’s what the whole section of this book of John was all about. And because they did ask, because they did open their heart, the signs and wonders of many things kept taking place in their life.
They had the miracles, they had the power, they had the signs and wonders, everything just fell right in place, one thing right after another.
That wasn’t because they were worthy, or they were deserving. It was just because they were sensing their privilege in the Lord, and they were moving out in it.
And when they would call upon the name of the Lord, it was there. I don’t think that the book of Acts really does justice to this because I don’t think those Christians really realized the full extent of this until they’ve been walking in it for a long time.
I think they claimed it, walked in it, without realizing what it was. Later, the revelation that the Lord gave Paul which he shared in his epistles and to the other apostles really opened up the understand of what the whole thing was all about, and they began to teach it.
Christ in you and you’re complete in Him. And the epistles were nothing more than the establishment to the Christians of what they had, what they could do, their position, their relationship to the Lord. And that’s how they could move out.
Don’t forget these early Christians were many times people that had come in out of paganism, out of idolatry. They were sometimes barbarians of the worst sort.
And yet they came in and began to move into the righteousness and holiness of God. There’s only one answer. There was a merging of the personality of Jesus Christ into them.
They just opened their heart completely to Him, and they were aware that He was in them. And they would not crucify to themselves afresh the Son of God and put Him to an open shame.
They were going to glorify the Lord. Let Him be glorified within them. And that’s exactly what happened. The power of it was an endless thing.
Now this leads us to one real application. The fruit bearing that we’re talking about, if you abide in me, you’ll bear much fruit.
That fruit bearing should be understood that it’s something that’s produced in the inner life, in the inner nature.
It is not speaking just of the activities. People can be busy; they can do a lot of works and they mean nothing.
But this fruit is a result of the flow of his divine life within us and the outgrowth of it in our lives.
Of course, it’s something that other people can see, and many times there’s activities and works involved, but it’s more than that.
It’s an inner thing that’s reaching out into the outer life and manifesting itself there.
We’re going to come into the fullness of the Lord so that the Lord is going to be the one living His life out through us.
This was attained by the Apostle Paul. Some of the statements that he made border on either blasphemy or this very truth we’re talking about.
When he said, for me to live is Christ. He didn’t say it’s an imitation of Christ, or to work for Christ, or through Christ, or by Christ. He says, for me to live is Christ. Oh, that’s powerful.
I’m determined that Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or whether it be by death.
He didn’t mean just giving praise to God, it was Christ glorified in Him, whether living or dying.
I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.
If was not even His own faith, he lived by the faith of the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him.
Then a beautiful little expression, I do not frustrate the grace of God. He was living it out.
We’ve heard these scriptures over and over again, but we’ve never realized how completely these apostles claimed that they were in Christ. This had become an essential essence for them, a unified essence for them to live was Christ.
As the body is not one member but many members yet one body so also is Christ. So also is Christ.
Many members but just united together until they became one. Now in Christ there’s neither Jew nor Greek, bond or free, male, or female, barbarian, Scythian, but you’re all one in Christ.
You, see? They were talking about something that the church quotes and quotes and quotes and they don’t get it.
And I’m aware that we’re going to have to get on the trail of this truth and find out what he meant.
It says it was neither Jew nor Greek. Are we still Jews or Greeks? No, he meant Christ coming forth into us and he said, what are you? Are you an Irishman? Are you a Jew? Are you a Gentile? What are you?
Well, I’m Christ. Well, now he asked me what I am by lineage. Well, I’ve been anxious to let the Holy Spirit bring my new heredity to me and my new inheritance.
And I don’t like my past experiences, so those are cut off. And I will take my past now as Christ’s.
In Him I was crucified, in Him I was buried, in Him I was resurrected, in Him Now I’ve risen with. There’s a changing, a changing, a changing.
So, as I merge into Him, then His past is my past. His place is my place. And I merge into Him. And the Holy Spirit is the great force, of course, which brings us our new heredity.
So, slowly the old heredity disappears as the new heredity comes. You get the idea?
There is a slow way by which the Holy Spirit brings to us all that He is. And we say we’re sanctified, but we’re sanctified by virtue of the fact that His Word, His life, His love, begins to fill us and set us apart to God, and the old is crowded out, it begins to die out. That’s the only way it is.
Now, it can be a definite experience, but that experience is exhaustless. It’s a thing that grows and expands and finally just fills the whole of our life, where we know that by the Holy Spirit, we come into a new heredity.
A new heredity. Does that thing hit you? What was the old heredity? What did you inherit from your father and mother?
Have you ever watched Christians that you raise them from the time they’re children and you really teach them the ways of the Lord?
Have you ever noticed that the things of that old human nature that exist in their parents are minimized in those children?
Have you ever seen a family where they do not serve God and you watch those children grow and you see how that those things are emphasized, the bad traits come out? Why?
Because it’s a natural inheritance, a natural heredity. But in Christ, something’s modified, something changes. That’s why in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul was even comforting those that were in mixed marriages, where there was one Christian, one that wasn’t a Christian, and said how then, yet he said your children are sanctified, if only one is a believer.
Meaning that God set aside and made holy and brought a new heredity, just by virtue of one Christian parent serving God.
That means to quiet down, set aside, nullify, The old nature. Oh, I fully believe that the generation of the righteous are blessed. The generation of the righteous are blessed. Something holy begins to filter down. Because you see, it’s something else who’s within them.
How can this man or woman that take the place as a father and mother and they raise their children for God as they begin to do it, how can they help but believe and claim and minister to them part of the new heredity that’s coming into them, transmitting it to them. Amen.
Something rich is coming forth. All of this shows how we are to be swallowed up by God. He’s invading us. The Lord’s invading us. He’s invading every aspect of our personality, every part of our being, every part of our life. There isn’t anything that He doesn’t nose around and just but His nose right into and say, here, I’m taking this over, I’m taking that over.
The Christian’s life is just a matter of slow encroachment (to enter by gradual steps or by secretiveness into the possessions or rights of another) by the Lord Jesus Christ, because he’s going to reign until everything is subdued, everything is made his footstool, and all things are made subject to him.
And he’s ordained that the church shall be the fullness of him. And he’s going to be the fullness of the church, which is his fullness. So, in other words, to do that, he must invade us. He must fill us. He must crowd out everything else.
He must keep on invading us like the old vine keeps shooting the sap and the life into that branch while the fathers are clipping off everything that should be clipped off.
Oh brother, that’s a painful thing. But everybody’s in that old branch just filled with fruit, filled with righteousness, filled with him. Isn’t that a marvelous thing?
He just keeps invading. Well, I want to show you, here, I want to take this too. And he begins to invade it, so you submit to it, yes Lord. Until every aspect of your life is invaded by the Lord. And he begins to fill it, just fill it with himself.
Now, that’s why I believe that at the latter end of Paul’s life, when he began to speak those great statements about Christ in him, that they were true. They had become reality.
At the beginning of a person’s Christian experience, I believe that they have accepted Christ, the potential of it is there.
But as they go on, they begin to draw and claim all these tremendous things that are theirs by virtue of what Christ has become within them. When it says we’re crucified with Christ, it didn’t mean that we were right there put up on a cross beside him.
It just meant that when we become identified with him, we’re entitled to claim in ourselves all the past experiences that he has gone through.
So, we were risen with Him. We’re glorified together. If we suffer with Him, we’ll reign with Him. If we’re identified with Him in every way now, we’ll be identified with Him in every way in the future.
There’s no end to this great way that the Lord is going to bring to us the wonderful life, the wonderful peace, the wonderful victory.
Every branch that bears fruit, what does He do to it? He begins to purge it. What do we have to do if we want to see all this work in us?
If he abides in us and we’re abiding in him, his words abide in us, what’s the next step? Ask what you will. Begin to petition him. Begin to pray. Begin to reach out and claim the thing that’s yours.
Don’t look as though that you’re a stranger to this thing or that you’re not entitled to it. Of course, in yourself you’re not, but look upon it as just something that God provided, He planned it, it’s right there.
If you heard that your father and mother had left a will and in that, will they provided for you to have a million dollars, you wouldn’t sit home wondering about that million dollars, praying for that million dollars, asking for it, what would you do?
You go right now to the lawyer, and you bring your papers and say, I’m the boy, it’s mine. Make that claim. You take the steps until you, in a practical way, experience the thing that was legally yours.
When we see that legally, by virtue of what we have become and what Christ has become in us, this is all ours.
Then that’s why we’re told many, many times, ask in my name. Come make your claim and understand the legality of your claim and you’ll receive it.
Gods concerned about giving it. The best way to stay sick is come to the Father and say, Oh, Father, I don’t know whether you want to heal sick people or not. You don’t want to heal sick people, but if it be thy will, I’d like to have you heal me. It’s the quickest way to die. That’s slow poison.
But if you come there and you look, by his stripes, ye were healed. And then you say, I’m sick, but legally I’m well. Actually, it’s mine, it belongs to me. I began to claim, I began to believe that I’m going to be well. You step out of the thing, you get well.
When you see that I was crucified in Him, I was buried in Him, you see, I was circumcised in Him, I was risen again, I’m exalted, I’m glorified, it’s all mine in Him, and begin to claim it.
Everything that we get from God is based upon the completeness of what He has provided. And He has not only provided it and paid for it, but now in His indwelling within us, in the new nature, He has made it our inheritance, our heredity, our privilege, our legal position.
And from there on, using the name of Jesus, because of His indwelling within us, is the thing the Father recognizes.
Now, you say, why it hasn’t worked for me before? Well, I think in every case, it must be understood. I know the word says, the fool need not err therein. I know that he says that. Nevertheless, it seems like it takes a little bit of intelligence and a little bit of understanding.
Just the same, because we’ve got to understand there are legal aspects to this thing, and when we understand, that the Bible is like a book of law it tells you what God has done, what the Lord Jesus Christ is to you, what he can become to you and what you can have in him.
From that time on it’s just a matter of opening your heart and saying amen, I claim it, faith isn’t so much begging God faith is taking from God, recognizing what he has done. If you gave your children a gift, a birthday present.
When they sat at the table for that birthday present, they began to ask and beg you and say, please daddy, can I have the present? You say, I’ve already given it to you. And they kept on, please daddy, can I have the present?
After a while it would exasperate you because it would imply that you were teasing them, you were tormenting them, that you put a present beautifully wrapped in front of them, but they still had to beg you for it. And you said, It’s yours. They would still ask you for it.
When we come before the Lord, we whine like beggars. Instead of taking our position as children, accepted in the beloved, having the promises, having the covenants, having all the things that belong to us, begin to claim those things.
I don’t think any of us claim ask largely enough. We don’t know. Even when we ask largely, we begin to think, well, now, do I deserve this?
Well, who deserves anything, you see? None of us deserve anything. But we’re not coming on the basis of what we deserve in our human righteousness.
We’re coming on the basis of what He has become in us. You see, we’re coming before the Lord. When we come boldly to the throne of grace to find help in the time of need, we’re not coming because we deserve anything, but because we’re standing in His righteousness.
And He, in us, has taken that position. That’s why we have the right to it, the privilege to it.
Now, can you apply it to yourself? Can you go a little bit further? Are you doing that in your own mind? Are you beginning to realize that many things that you just said, well, I wonder if God has a future for me. I wonder what God has for me.
You just assume that you walked into all of that when you became a Christian. When Christ came into your life, all of that was there. Potentially, legally, the privileges, the rights, all those things were there.
The only way that you could describe that is how some girl would get married. I would say that, that girl’s a very poor girl. And she marries a fellow that’s very rich. In fact, he’s more than a rich man, he’s nobility. He has a title and all the rest that goes with it. He has mansions, he has everything.
Now, she may be a little Mary Doe before she’s married, but after she gets married, she becomes Mary Smith. Well, Lady Mary Smith, no less.
Now she can go into the department stores and all she has to do is sign her signature, Lady Mary Smith. That great thing’s taking place just one day’s time.
After she’s married, after she becomes legally the wife of that man, she can charge anything she wants to.
Just think, the day before, the day before, she couldn’t charge a tin whistle. The next day, she can go in, she can get anything she wants just by signing her name. Just saying who she is.
Now, when you come before the Father, begin to understand what the basis of your union with Jesus Christ is, the thing that opens the door to all these privileges.
In Christ, the promises are yea and verily. All these things are ours. Now, it’s our unbelief, it’s our doubt, it’s our lack of acceptance of this that keeps us spiritual beggars.
Our place in Christ requires that we reach out, we be more audacious, we sense our inheritance, he’s invading us, he’s filling us, and he intends that as his words abide us in us and we abide in him we ask what we will. Begin to ask things. This life of faith is not a reckless thing it’s based upon reaching out in your privilege, reaching out in your blessing, reaching out in him that is within you, let the Christ within you be omnipotent. Amen. Let him be powerful. Sounds good. Will it work? It’ll work.
Let’s try it. Let’s start asking. Let’s ask for some bigger things. Do you want a better walk with God? Do you want more? Well, you won’t get it by sitting back saying, well, I don’t deserve anything.
You’ll get it by stepping out in the faith and claiming a little more. Claim a little more.
Let God invade you a little bit more. Let Him fill some more of your life. Wait on Him. After a while, you see, yes, it pays.
Progressive thing to learn to really launch out in God and understand the full potential.
Many people, as the song goes, are just on the shoreline, but others launch out in the deep. And that’s where all these fishes are, you know, launch out and let down the net. There’s a whole net full of them out there. But there must be that launching out experience. Amen.