We are not dealing with mysticism, philosophy, or metaphysics. We are dealing with realities. It is not something that the human reason has wrought out through observation or physical sensations; we are dealing with the basic laws of man’s being, the great spiritual laws that govern the unseen forces of life.
There are several great forces that emanate from the recreated human spirit.
They are to the spirit realm what iron, copper, gold, and other metals are to the mechanical realm.
Faith
The first force of the recreated human spirit is faith.
Faith is not the product of reason. It is the babe that is born in the human spirit.
God is a faith Spirit. He brought the universe into being by faith. He created the metals, gases, oils, and all that goes into making up the physical world by faith.
By faith, He brought the stars, sun, and moon into being, as an artist brings a colorful landscape to life upon a drab canvas.
He is a faith God. He works by faith. As recreated men and women, we are to work and live by faith.
Jesus said, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove” (Matthew 17:20).
We know that the sea, the wind, the fish, and the laws of nature obeyed the faith voice of the Son of God.
We know that reason did not govern Jesus, but His Spirit, which is above reason, ruled, for Jesus did the most unreasonable things.
He stood by the tomb of the rotting body of Lazarus and said to that body, “Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43), and the spirit of Lazarus came from paradise and entered into that physical body, which was renewed, made perfectly normal and healthy, by faith.
It was the voice of faith. Words filled with faith dominated the laws of death and subdued the forces that have ruled humans since the fall of man.
It was the same voice that spoke to the water and it became wine. (See John 2:7–10.) It was the same voice that said to the sea, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39).
When one realizes the source of faith, then he will be able to develop it. When one learns what produces faith, the kind of food and activities that are necessary to develop it, he has arrived.
Faith is a product of your spirit, just as wisdom is a product of your spirit; faith is developed and wisdom is enriched by meditation on the Word of God.
This Word came to man through the human spirit, with God communicating it to man’s reasoning faculties. Man’s spirit was governed by God’s Spirit, enabling him to bring God’s message to man’s consciousness through this revelation.
By the same token, faith is developed in the human spirit by the Word of God. It comes by acting on the Word.
That is your exercise. Every time you act upon the Word, faith becomes stronger. You could lie in bed until your limbs lose their ability to bear the rest of your body. So it is with faith; it must be continually exercised in order to develop it.
Righteousness
There is a second fact that must be clearly apprehended, and that is righteousness. Man remains a prisoner of sin consciousness until the righteousness fact becomes a living reality in his spirit.
There can be no development of faith as long as sin consciousness dominates the human spirit.
We will not be able to exercise God’s wisdom in our daily walk if sin consciousness dominates our spirit.
It is an unhappy fact that the church, instead of destroying sin consciousness with the truth, has developed sin consciousness by preaching sin.
If they had preached the cure of sin consciousness, if they had made clear the fact that man received eternal life, that eternal life was the nature of God, and that the nature of God is righteousness, man would begin to depend upon that new kind of righteousness that has been imparted to him.
He would say this: “If I am a new creation, created in Christ Jesus, I must be a righteous creation. If I am a new man, I must be free from the bondage of the old man. What He says about the righteousness of the new creation is true. Then my spirit is righteous. If it is righteous, then I can stand in the Father’s presence without fear of judgment or condemnation.”
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:1). That very fact solves the whole problem of our enjoying the riches of the fullness of our redemptive rights in Christ.
I am not afraid to act because I know that all that Christ wrought, He wrought for me. His entire substitutionary work, from the time He was made sin until He sat down at the right hand of the Father, was all for me.
He did nothing for Himself.
If the new creation is a result of the work that Christ wrought, the new creation must be satisfactory to the Father.
If God is able, on the grounds of the substitutionary work of Christ, to impart to man His nature, His very substance and being, and do it on legal grounds, then this man, who has received the substance and nature of God, can stand in God’s presence just as though sin had never been.
Now we can see the vast possibilities of this recreated spirit. It actually enters into a limitless life.
The human mind and body begin to lose their place of dominance in our consciousness, and the spirit comes to the front and actually begins to take over the rest of the man. It has been held a prisoner through all the ages; now it is set free.
Its blind eyes at last are opened. Its paralyzed limbs are at last filled with life. Its voice now becomes the voice of God.
Just as soon as you realize the reality of your righteousness in Christ, you are emancipated, for righteousness is the emancipator.
Righteousness is your redemption in Christ. Satan has no dominion over the man who knows he is the righteousness of God in Christ.
How masterful this makes Christianity!
There can be no perfect coordination between your spirit and your reasoning faculties until you recognize the reality of your spirit redemption, your spirit righteousness, and your spirit union with God.
Wisdom
It does not make any difference how much knowledge one has if he does not know how to use it.
It goes without argument that there is enough knowledge given in a Bible institute or theological seminary to make any minister a success. It is a self-evident fact, however, that the majority of them are failures. Their followers are not instructed in righteousness. They are continually seeking to be made holy and to have faith.
First Corinthians 1:30 tells us that Jesus was “made unto us wisdom.”
You see, wisdom is the ability to use knowledge so that it will be a blessing to the hearer.
Colossians 1:9 gives us a sample of Paul’s prayers, “that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”
That is a remarkable statement. No college can give wisdom. There is no chair of wisdom in any university.
There are but two sources of wisdom: God or Satan.
Of the latter, James tells us, “This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3:15).
The other wisdom, God’s wisdom, comes down from above and has all of the characteristics that adorned the life of Jesus. This wisdom belongs to every child of God.
In speaking of it, James said, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God” (James 1:5). He is speaking of the babes in Christ.
Paul is writing to the full-grown believer.
This wisdom is available for every crisis of life, just as His strength, His grace, and His love are available.
This wisdom really grows out of love. It is love at work in your daily life. I look upon wisdom as the rarest gift that love brought with redemption.
Love
Christianity is love in our daily contact with people. It is my acting as Jesus would in my place.
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (1 John 4:7–8)
Jesus brought a new kind of love. He demonstrated it in His daily walk.
If He had control of us, love would dominate in all that we said and did. It would be the Father actually taking us over, living His own life through us.
The Holy Spirit’s real ministry is building the Father’s nature into us.
If we were doers of love, we could never be failures. We would never injure anyone knowingly. It would eliminate selfishness from our conduct. It would make us Jesus-like in our thinking, planning, and doing.
There are no broken homes where love rules. There are no broken hearts and wrecked lives.
This new kind of love brings Him on the scene, making Him one with us in all that we are and all that we do.
We have caught a glimpse of the big four of the fruits of the spirit: faith, righteousness, wisdom, and love.
There are many other fruits of the spirit, but I am convinced that they grow out of love. They are a part of the Father’s love nature imparted to us in the new creation.
Let love have its perfect work in your life. Measure all ambitions with this yardstick of love. Plan your life with the love nature of God dominating it.
Our Union with the Deity
It is thrilling to know that man is in the same class of being with God, and that he may become a partaker of His divine nature. He may actually become a child of the Creator of the universe.
The Father’s nature, imparted to a man, brings him into vital union with the Deity.
Man is a spirit being, he has a soul, and he lives in a physical body. God calls this body His temple. It is His holy of holies now on earth.
We have never focused on the fact that a man becomes a partaker of the divine nature. There has been no serious attempt to cultivate this recreated spirit.
We know that the part of man that is recreated and receives the nature of God is his spirit. You remember that Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:5). That statement goes with Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” We grow out of Christ.
Ye are of God, little children. (1 John 4:4)
Beloved, now are we children of God. (1 John 3:2 ASV)
These Scriptures prove that we came out of the womb of the Omnipotent, and that our spirit, the real man, is born of God.
God imparts to this man His own nature. I believe that this is the genius of Christianity.
You see, when one is recreated, it does not mean that his mind is changed. His reasoning faculties may be governed by the same forces as before.
You understand that all the knowledge that the brain receives comes through the five senses. If a man is governed by his senses, his spirit is held captive.
The new creation should be ruled by the spirit, making it possible for him to have fellowship with the Father. His recreated spirit should rule his reasoning faculties.
Here are some facts: it is our spirit that is redeemed; the redemption of our bodies comes at the return of our Lord; Satan’s dominion over the spirit of man was broken; man has been freed from Satan’s thrall; and the senses are to be dominated by the recreated spirit.
When the senses are brought into subjection, it means that the body is brought into subjection.
The term flesh, as used in Paul’s epistles, should almost invariably be translated as senses. If this were done, it would clear up much that we have failed to understand.
The combat mentioned in Galatians 5:16 would be a combat between the recreated spirit and the senses. He says, “Walk in the Spirit,” referring to the recreated spirit, “and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”
You see, the recreated spirit and the senses are constantly warring.
“But if ye be led of the Spirit”—referring not to the Holy Spirit, but the recreated spirit— “ye are not under the law” (Galatians 5:18). The men under the law were led entirely by their senses.
In the new creation, the spirit is made righteous; it finds a new freedom in the presence of God and the Word. The Word no longer condemns, but it comforts. The Holy Spirit no longer convicts, but He leads the recreated spirit into the realities of His redemption in Christ.
This recreated spirit now finds joy in the Word, and it finds joy in fellowship with the Holy Spirit and the Father. It begins to feed on the Word. Before it was recreated, it could not do this. The Word becomes spiritual milk for the new creation.
Fruit-Bearing Branches
Now we come to one of the most remarkable features of the new creation’s life, the fruit- bearing of the recreated spirit. The fruits he is to bear are the fruits of the vine.
Now you can understand John 15:5: “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” We are the fruit-bearing part of the vine. Jesus does not bear fruit. The Holy Spirit does not bear fruit. The branches, enabled by the Holy Spirit, bear the fruit.
Now we come to Galatians 5:22: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love.” I always thought that to mean the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the translators evidently thought the same thing, but that is not true. The word spirit should not have been capitalized, for it is the recreated spirit that is the fruit-bearer. It is the branch of the vine that bears the fruit.
Romans 5:5 tells us the nature of these first fruits: “the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (ASV). This means that the love of God comes with the new birth to the human spirit, which is called the heart.
The first fruits of the recreated spirit is love.
The strange new word that Jesus evidently coined, agape, is used.
You remember in 1 John 4:8 that God is called agape: “God is love.”
Now the recreated spirit is bearing the fruits of love.
“We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). Agape is used here also. In this same chapter, John uses agape again when he says, “Let us not love in word…but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).
You remember that the law of the new covenant, which takes the place of the old covenant and its law, is this: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love [agape] one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34).
The law of the first covenant was summed up by Jesus: a man should love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself. (See Matthew 22:37–39.)
Natural man could not love God. He might love some idea he had of God, as some of our modern preachers do today. The natural man cannot love or know God.
He was also to love his neighbor as himself. This too was an impossibility.
The new covenant law says we are to love even as Jesus loved us. Jesus loved my neighbor enough to suffer the torments of the damned for him. I am to love him the same way.
Jesus loved the world enough to go to hell for it. Speaking of his relations, Paul said, “For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake” (Romans 9:3 ASV). In other words, he said, “I love my brethren enough to go to hell for them. I would willingly be lost eternally if I could only lead them into the joy of this union with Christ.”
You see, Paul had received this revelation truth of love, and it had taken possession of him. His heart was captured by it.
This revelation of the Father’s nature being imparted to man is the genius of redemption.
This new kind of love is the solution of every problem.
You understand that there was no love before Christ came. Women were bought and sold among all peoples. A woman had no standing until Christ gave her one. Up until 1840, men questioned whether or not a woman should have an education.
Slavery could not be abolished until love gained the supremacy in a man’s heart.
The great forces in the world today are spiritual. They are greater than the atom bomb or the hydrogen bomb. They are greater than any of man’s organizations. These two forces are the new kind of love and the old kind of selfishness.
The labor and capital problems can only be settled by the law of the new covenant. You see, this new law of love is the nature of God in practice. It is eternal life dominating the reasoning faculties. That is the reason it is so difficult to put it over in our land.
Selfishness has arisen to its supreme heights in both the economic and political worlds. The church has lost its dominion. No one cares much for its voice anymore.
Our broken homes proclaim aloud that selfishness is the goddess of the divorce court. Many parents look upon children as a hindrance to their selfish happiness.
Few have ever recognized the lordship of Jesus. His lordship is our ticket into God’s family. That lordship really means the lordship of love. It is love gaining the ascendancy over the recreated spirit.
When a man receives eternal life, love becomes supreme in his life.
The recreated spirit is a product of love. It is born of God, and God is love. When it came forth, fresh from the womb of the Spirit, it was filled with the love nature of the Father.
If one allowed love to dominate him, we would see Jesus men and women facing selfishness, hatred, and jealousy as the Master faced it during His earth walk.
Joy
Perhaps one of the richest fruits of the recreated spirit is joy. Joy is the good news to a selfish world.
Joyful Christians have always been a challenge to a brokenhearted world.
Selfishness never gives joy; it gives only limited happiness. Happiness is the product of our surroundings. It is the satisfying of our senses. The material things that bring happiness to a man may be taken from him in a moment and he is left desolate.
Joy belongs to the spiritual realm just as happiness belongs to the sense realm.
Jesus said, “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11).
Jesus could have had but little happiness. His joy in people must have all been by faith.
He believed that He could meet the claims of justice and conquer Satan. He believed that He could make the new creation a possibility and restore this lost and broken man to the heart of the Father. Thus, He could say, “that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
I linger over that sentence. What would it mean if a man could have his joy made full? It would be necessary that he become Jesus-like, so that he could say, “For I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29), meaning the Father. He could say, as the Master said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34 MOFF).
Joy would be in knowing the Father’s will and doing it.
John 16:22 says, “And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” That was a promise and a prophecy.
The disciples had no joy. They could not have it until their spirits were recreated.
In verse 24, He says, “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”
This then is the secret. He speaks of a fullness of joy. The first was that it might be made full. The means to make it full had not yet come into being. Here again, He uses the strange expression, “that your joy may be full.”
He has given you the right to use His name. It is really the power of attorney. We are to receive things from the Father; He is going to do things for us as sons because we are using the name of Jesus.
In verse 23, we read, “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.”
He practically forbids you to pray to Him, but we are to address our prayers to the Father in His name, then our joys will be made full. How? By the answers that the Father gives.
And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. (John 17:13)
Once more, He uses this strange term of our having a fullness of joy. This time, He is asking the Father that it might become a reality in us, and we know that His prayer was heard. We have a right to expect joy. It is something that the world cannot take from us.
Neither persecution nor torture could rob the disciples of their joy. Every martyr that we know anything about met death with a joy-filled heart.
Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. (1 Peter 1:8)
This must ever remain as the masterpiece of descriptive truth of the new creation who has “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” That is a joy beyond words.
This joy belonged to those early saints. It was because of this joy, so apparent in the lives of the Christians, that Radama II, the prince of Madagascar, accepted Christ. His mother the queen had ordered all those confessing Christ to be flung to their death off a high precipice. The crown prince stepped forward, bowed low, and made his confession of faith in Christ. It was the unmistakable joy of the Christians that had touched the heart of the young prince. He could not resist it. He accepted Christ and offered himself as a martyr.
For the joy of the LORD is your strength. (Nehemiah 8:10)
Isaiah 35:10 is another picture of joy: “And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Psalm 16:11 is a picture of the Master Himself after His resurrection: “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”
This is a photograph of the Master on that first Easter morn.
When a believer is not joyful, it is either because of broken fellowship or a lack of knowledge of what he is in Christ and what Christ is in him. He does not know what he is to the Father and what the Father can be to him. He has never entered into his inheritance in Christ.
It is vastly important that we know about our inheritance—that is, our present tense inheritance.
It is this unspeakable joy that makes you triumphant over the petty trials of life and a victor over the trials that may come up.
Peace
My heart looks upon this fruit of the new creation as one of the most valuable.
You remember that Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).
John 16:33 says, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
What is peace? Why, it is the child of love.
When one comes to know his Father, know his place in Christ, and know that Jesus is what the Word declares Him to be, he can repeat, “Jesus is my Shepherd Lord; I shall not fear what man may attempt to do to me.”
In the quietness of his heart, he whispers, “My Father is greater than all. He loves me as He loved Jesus in His earth walk.”
Then he whispers that marvelous promise of Jesus in Scripture:
If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:23)
Can anything equal that promise?
When the heart knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Father and Jesus are making their home in your home, you have a feeling of safety that no earthly or demonic power can destroy.
You have the “peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).
You are anchored in the spirit realm of love now.
Philippians 4:6 becomes a reality: “In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (ASV).
I have been invited to come boldly to the throne of grace, the throne of love gifts. I know that whatsoever I ask of the Father in Jesus’s name, I will receive. Because of this, I have no anxiety.
I have entered into His rest. Why? The next verse tells us: “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus” (ASV).
Your heart is safeguarded. Your thoughts are safeguarded.
First Peter 5:7 says, “Casting all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for you” (ASV).
Where there is anxiety, there is no peace, and where there is no peace, there is no rest. Now we have entered into His protective care; it is the realm of His rest. This belongs to every believer.
When one fails to have peace, quietness, and rest of spirit, he has either broken fellowship with the Father, or he does not enjoy the riches of his relationship with Him.
He has not taken advantage of the Holy Spirit’s ministry. That ministry is to build the Word into your spirit consciousness until you lose all sin consciousness. He will build into you a Father consciousness and a child consciousness. You will become aware of His protective care and love.
Now you can understand what the psalmist meant when he said, “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them” (Psalm 119:165).
Here is a beautiful prophecy of this strange thing called peace:
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. (Isaiah 26:3)
Long-Suffering
This fruit of the spirit in the heart of a believer is really love’s nursery. The believer is now suffering with the selfish ones, perhaps loved ones. You see, we are living in a world dominated by selfishness.
We are the Jesus folk, and we are to love those selfish ones as He loved them. We are taking His place and acting in His stead. He came to destroy the works of the adversary.
The long-suffering believers are partners of the Master in this great work.
You will never be free from selfish men and women; they are the burdens that you have to bear. They are always crying for their share. They want, they demand, and they will fight to gratify their senses. The long-suffering ones must bear with them. We must suffer for a long time with the babes.
This is love’s ministry: suffering with the babes in Christ.
Paul tells of them:
And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? (1 Corinthians 3:1–3)
This is an unhappy picture, but it is true, and the deeply spiritual men and women must bear the burdens of these babes.
Here is another picture:
For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. (Hebrews 5:12)
Notice the phrase “when for the time ye ought to be teachers.” They should be grown up in the Word and helping others, but they are still babes.
You who are strong must bear the infirmities of the weak. You must take the Master’s place.
They will be selfish. They will criticize you. They may lie about you. They are often the scandalmongers of the church. They see evil instead of good. Their ears are open to the senses.
But you have grown to the full stature of a man or woman in Christ and must bear with them and be patient and kind.