The finished work of Christ has been little understood by the church. It is like the undeveloped resources of China and India.
We have not realized what it means to be a partaker of the divine nature.
SOURCE OF OUR ABILITY
2Peter 1:3–4 Seeing that his divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that called us by his own glory and virtue; whereby he hath granted unto us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature.
Notice carefully now, that He has granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness and that we have become partakers of His very nature. That nature is called eternal life: and Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
That life is the substance and being of God. Who knows what that might mean if it could be harnessed, utilized by every man who has received it?
The creative ability as seen in creation, is imparted to us in the new creation. Heathen nations do not have it.
That is the reason there have been no creative inventions in any of the heathen countries until Christ has been revealed to the people, until they have received the nature of God. The German, Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon peoples were not creative until this nature of God was given to them.
THE CREATIVE ABILITY IN THE RECREATED HUMAN SPIRIT
The reasoning faculties have no creative ability.
1 Corinthians 3:9 says, “For we are God’s fellow-workers: ye are God’s husbandry, God’s building.”
John 15:5: “I am the vine, ye are the branches.”
The branch is the fruit-bearing part of the vine. Now we are His tilled land where He produces, develops things. This tilled soil is the creative energy manifesting itself in inventions, art, and what we call the sciences. We are God’s fellow-workers. We are working together with Him. (See 2 Corinthians 6:1.)
You and God are working together. You are in a machine shop. You are developing, discovering, and creating new machinery. You and God are working, laboring together as partners.
You see, there is no limit where we may go with this. “Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
The old things of ignorance have passed away, and the new things of wisdom and God’s ability have been imparted to us.
Our partnership with Him enables us to utilize His abilities.
1 Corinthians 1:30: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God.”
He is made unto us ability to use knowledge gained through our contact with physical and mental things. Through the five senses, humanity has acquired an immense amount of knowledge, but that knowledge is of no value without wisdom to direct its use. So, Christ in us becomes wisdom to use this knowledge.
We should not omit Philippians 2:13: “Or it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.”
What is God doing in us? He is thinking in us, illuminating our spirits, illuminating our minds—renewing them so that they become responsive to His indwelling presence.
We all know that inspirations like poetry are not the product of cold reason. Poetry comes leaping, thrillingly touching our whole being. Where does it come from? Out of our spirits.
Where does that invention, that startling discovery in metallurgy or chemistry come from? We have been looking at it through cold reason, but it lay there cold and inert. The spirit now begins to reveal to us its secrets—not the Holy Spirit, but our recreated spirits are the mothers of every invention. And you have that ability in you.
Every person who has received the nature and life of God has divine prerogatives that thrill us.
EXACT KNOWLEDGE
Colossians 1:9–14 is a gold mine. “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray and make request for you, that ye may be filled with the [exact] knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (verse 9).
It will enable you “To walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the [exact or perfect] knowledge of God” (verse 10).
And you are going to be “strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joy” (verse 11).
And we have the background for a super-mind—a superman. You have perfect knowledge.
The Greek word epignosis means more than knowledge. It is a perfect, exact, and complete knowledge and spiritual wisdom that God gives us, so that we can understand how to use the elements around us to advantage.
Here is a new realm for serious men and women. We are really become supermen.
Notice the twelfth verse: “Giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.”
This word “light” here means a new type of mental efficiency—wisdom that can grasp the things that ordinary minds have never seen.
You remember in 1 John 1:5: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
And Jesus said in John 8:12: “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life”—or zoe, God’s nature.
That darkness is a spiritual thing that develops in a mental darkness—ignorance.
Since Jesus is the Light, and we have Him in us, we have this Light of life. In other words, we have God’s ability to face human needs and circumstances that surround us. It is just as though Jesus were here in person, actually superintending and guiding us.
DIVINE ABILITY UTILIZED
Few of us have realized that we have in us divine ability. You ask, “How can this be utilized?” It is suggested in Colossians 1:12.
He has given us the ability to enjoy our share of our inheritance of the saints that walk in this realm of light.
I am acting now upon His Word. I am taking, by grace, Him to lead me into all the fullness of my inheritance.
In the next verse, He says, “Who delivered us out of the power of darkness [that is, Satan’s dominion], and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love [the kingdom of light, this realm of revelation knowledge]” (verse 13).
And God is at work within us, thinking through our minds, operating through our recreated spirits. He has actually taken over us. Let Him rule!
1 Peter 2:9: “But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Here is a gold mine. We are an elect people. We are a royal priesthood. We are a set-apart people, and we are for God’s own possession. Why? That we may unveil the hidden treasures of grace by God at work within us. He is illuminating us, leading us into all the truth and reality. Why? In Colossians 2:3 it says, “In whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.”
And He has given us light and ability to know what these treasures are. Notice that there are treasures of “wisdom and knowledge.” Knowledge of what He has done; knowledge of what He is to do in us; knowledge of what we are; knowledge of what we may do with His ability. And then there is wisdom to utilize all this varied knowledge.
It is a sin for us to be commonplace. It is wrong for us to be weak. It is a lack of wisdom for us to depend longer upon simple sense knowledge when we have the ability of God to put us over.
Colossians 1:27: “To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Note the language: the riches of the glory of the sacred secret that had been hidden through the ages, but now is unveiled to us in Christ. Christ unveils to us the ability of God we have in us.
BRINGING TO REMEMBRANCE
How few of us have taken advantage of John 14:26: “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.”
What is He going to teach us? All things. That would include mechanics and mathematics. That would include mineralogy, the treasures hidden in the earth. We become masters of the mysteries that surround us. What plastics we would discover! The plant life would unveil to us the hidden treasure there.
I don’t suppose there is a single weed but has within it something that is of benefit, something that we could use in life’s work. Every tree, every shrub, every rock, and the ground we walk upon, is teeming with unknown wealth. And He is going to be our teacher.
All the time I have been working on this, I have been conscious of this Scripture, Matthew 28:20: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”
He is here with us today, the Teacher of teachers, the One who knows every law of nature, every chemical. We don’t have to theorize with Him. There is no longer any hypothesis. We are walking on sure ground of absolute knowledge.
Much of what we call science is absolute conjecture, but when He leads us, we walk out of the realm of uncertainty to absolute certainty.
Jesus said, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).
This is not only the reality of Christ, but the reality of all that surrounds us—this great world in which we walk and live and move and have our being.
Ephesians 3:20: “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.”
There is ability that has never been utilized. There is mental strength and spiritual strength in us. Once more, “For it is God who worketh in you” (Philippians 2:13).
We have thought only of Him working to build into us the love nature and the graces of the Lord Jesus. That will make us beautiful in our spiritual life; but there is all that, plus the illumination of our mind and spirit, to know the mysteries of creation that were created for our special uses.
THE INWARD MAN
In Ephesians 3:6, it says, “That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man.”
This inward man is our spirit, and it is going to be strengthened with God’s ability, and the Spirit is going to take charge of the up-building, the strengthening of our spirits through the Word.
He has recreated us; now He is going to build that Word into us.
You remember that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
So, he is going to build this Word, this Logos, into your spirit, and it will so dominate your inward spirit that you become like the Master.
You remember in John 1:3–4 that it says, “All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”
Then the life that is within Jesus is God’s life, and that life is our light, our ability, our wisdom. It is God Himself becoming our tutor, leading us on from strength to strength; from success to success; from weakness into strength, and from failure into victory. It is God taking us over, building Himself into us until we can say with Paul: “It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).
You remember in our teaching on identification that we saw how God came down here in the person of His Son and identified Himself with man. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Now He is dwelling in our midst. He is dwelling in us. He became incarnate in the flesh. Now He is incarnate in our spirits.
Would it not be worthwhile to learn to utilize this spirit that is in us? Would not it mean to the church and to ourselves and to our loved ones if these things that we have been studying would become part of our lives, and we would use them as we use simple mathematics?
HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?
- Give Scripture and explain the source of ability.
- Tell why the heathen nations do not have these abilities.
- Show how God’s ability operates in the new creation.
- Tell what is meant by “You are God’s tilled land.”
- Explain Colossians 1:9–14, and give meaning of the Greek word, epignosis.
- What is the background for a super-mind?
- How can the new creation utilize this divine ability?
- What did Jesus mean when He said He would teach us all things?
- How is the inward man strengthened with God’s ability?
- What can His dwelling in our midst mean to the church?