Amen. Let’s pray.
Lord, we come to Thee this morning. What a marvelous work at Calvary’s Cross. Lord, we will forever not only be grateful, but enter into the depths of what You have done there on Calvary’s Cross.
Lord Jesus, not just for us, but for the Father’s sake, that He might fulfil His pleasures and desires that He has for His Son—that He might have a bride, a helpmeet. Lord, what You have done is truly amazing.
Lord, we come back to Thee and give thanks with great gratitude this morning that You have included us in Your magnificent plan and purpose.
In Jesus’ name, we would ask that You would bless our time together. Lord, that You would join us, that we might see with seeing eyes, hear with hearing ears, and have a heart able to receive what You have to say. Lord, anoint that we can even share in Your Word today. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, I have a lot. I’ve got about an hour and a half to do in twenty minutes, so we’ll see what the Lord can do with this Southern accent and keep it from drawing out so long.
Let’s read Matthew 16:21.
From that time forth Jesus began to show His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed,
and be raised again the third day.And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Lord, be it far from Thee: this shall not be unto Thee.
But He turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art an offense unto Me: for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it.
Now go to Hebrews 4. I’m not going to read all the verses I had, for time. Hebrews 4:12.
For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit,
and of the joints and marrow,
and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
In recent weeks, I’ve been sharing and have had this concern and burden down in my heart about the work of Calvary and the need to enter into the full work of Calvary—not just receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as your ticket to heaven, receiving what we call eternal life, but that we might be fully saved: spirit, soul, and body.
I’m going to have to do a quick review, but I think it’s going to be necessary to help lay the groundwork for what is on my heart this morning.
Man was created by God: spirit, soul, and body. When the Spirit of God breathed into the form of clay that He had formed man out of, he became a living soul. Man at that point had a spirit for communication with God; he had a soul, by which he could communicate with the world around him; and he had a body, by which he could move and carry out what the spirit and soul asked of it.
However, man fell. And when he fell, it says in the Word that his spirit became dead towards God. It was dead in trespasses and sin.
The soul-life—the life within our soul, the very life of who we are—became independent and took up its life and living without God, without His authority, and without His guidance. In other words, it was able to live on its own.
With our mind, our will, and our emotions, that life that permeates our mind, will, and emotions became independent and without God. It began to function on its own and took up a life of its own—a very strong life at that. Our body became the instrument of this fallen life, to carry out the will of the flesh and the sin nature that it obtained when it fell through sinning.
Therefore, instead of being an instrument in God’s hands for His purpose, we became an instrument for the enemy, for Satan, to be used for his purposes.
But thank God, God is merciful, brothers and sisters. He has provided a way of redemption through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have received of Him and of His redemption on Calvary’s Cross, that we might be redeemed from that kingdom of darkness and translated into the kingdom of life.
When Adam fell, that Adamic life was passed on to you and me. We are his descendants; we are out of the seed of Adam. In the Bible, it refers to that Adamic nature that is in you and me as the old man.
In Romans 6:6, we find that God did not adjust this old man, this Adamic nature. He did not try to reform it. He did not try to clean it up, dress it up, or do anything to alter it.
Instead, we find in Romans 6:6 that He crucified it on the Cross in Christ, which we shared on last time. The old man has been crucified in Christ. It’s a work done by Christ. It is a sovereign act of God.
God puts you in Christ, and what happened to Christ happened to you. In other words, that old Adamic life was crucified. In God’s eyes, the Adamic life—the whole creation that comes out of Adam—has been crucified and done away with.
It is an eternal fact. We’ll never be able to alter it or change it. Our lack of faith does not change or alter this eternal fact, brothers and sisters.
Today, we struggle with that old man within, but let me say this: in God’s eyes, it’s done away with. What God has done eternally needs to be made real in our lives, and the only way it can be made real is to have faith in what He has done on the Cross in crucifying you in His Son.
That is the only way you’ll ever find release from this old man. It is through the Cross.
Let me say it this way. Before you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, you probably struggled with this idea of redemption and the Cross, and of accepting Jesus as your sin-bearer.
But one day, God was able to get past this mental mind that cannot really understand the Cross. He was able to get past your mind, down into your heart, and somehow open your heart to see that you were a sinner, that He was your sin-bearer, and that He died for you on Calvary’s Cross.
That takes revelation from God, brothers and sisters. Man can talk to you till you turn blue in the face. I could stand up here and preach for days and days and days, and it would not make any difference. I could preach on Christ’s great sacrifice for you, but if Christ can touch your heart, in a flash, in a moment, you can accept Him as your Saviour, as your Redeemer.
Praise God, your sins can be forgiven, done away with, and completely forgotten in Christ, so that you are even justified before God.
You had to accept it by faith. Now, Christ died for you over two thousand years ago. It was an eternal fact. Calvary is an eternal fact. But until you accepted that by faith, it was not made real in your life.
That is the same way with this matter of your old man and the old nature. It was done in Christ two thousand years ago. But if we can, by faith, accept that fact, just as we’ve accepted Him as our Saviour, then we can experience the reality of it today.
And that’s the point, brothers and sisters. Sometimes, when we get into this matter of the old man, the flesh, Adamic nature, me, I, and all of these things, you’re saying, “You know, I don’t understand it.”
Don’t let your mind get in the way of what God has done. Open your heart up to Him and say, “Lord, You show me. Give me faith to believe in what You’ve done.” And He will do it. He will make it real to you.
Brothers and sisters, the mind always struggles with the Cross and with the work of the Cross. I can testify to it personally in my own life. Many, many, many years, I struggled with all of these verses dealing with crucifixion with Christ. I tried to get it all together in my mind and reason it out, and I never could quite seem to get it.
Then one day the Lord said, “Jerry, why are you struggling so much? Can’t you just accept what I have done for you in Christ?”
So I would encourage us all who are maybe struggling in this matter of understanding what we’ve been sharing on—and you sisters who have been listening to those tapes that have a similar subject—don’t let your mind get in the way. Just open your heart to the Lord and receive the work that Christ has done on the Cross.
So, in God’s view, the old Adamic nature is gone, and it needs to be made real in us. What we actually find today as Christians is that we do have two lives in us.
There is that life we inherited from our parents, the life of our soul, that life that has lived all of its many years on its own, independent of God. For those who have been Christians for many years—for me, it’s been forty-one—sometimes we operate with the Lord, and sometimes we don’t. We’re flipping back and forth between those two lives, and it is an excruciating life to live that way.
The Lord has called us to a life of living by the Spirit.
When it comes to the lust of the flesh and the sin nature, God has made provision by crucifying the old man. He took the sinner out of the way so that when the sin nature, which is still in you even after you’re a Christian, begins to move in you and wants to lust, if you will really believe in your heart that the Lord has dealt with that old man on the Cross—the old sinner—then lust has no one to operate on or to command the body to carry out the sin.
So He has taken the old man out of the way, and we can enter into victory over the lust of the flesh through believing in what Christ has done on Calvary for us.
But we also know that the flesh, as it’s referred to in the Word of God, has really two parts: not only the sin nature, but the self-life. That self-life is in us and can kind of live on its own without the Lord.
However, there’s a problem with most of us and our self-life. Once we enjoyed the pleasures of the world, and we enjoyed living in the world and doing all the things, just looking out for ourselves and being self-centred, basically.
Then the Lord one day showed us what we really were, and we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. All of a sudden, our hearts were touched, and now we want to live for the Lord. We want to live for the Lord.
And what do we do, brothers and sisters? Whether we may realize it or not, very often it is the self-life that now says, “I have a new goal. My goal used to be to live for myself, but now my goal, in order to exalt myself, is to be as good a Christian as I can—to live the Christian life.”
“Now I will use all of my energy toward serving God, doing good things and good deeds. I will be as righteous as I can. I will use the power of my mind in order to understand the things of God in this Bible. I will use my will, my determination, to overcome sin.”
“I will use my determination to follow all the rules that I can find in the Word of God that I need to follow, and do the right things. I strive to be morally superior—not in a prideful way, of course—but I want to be this most spiritual person I can possibly be.”
And that becomes the new goal of the self-life.
The self-life—I’ll say it this way—I think the self-life is far more dangerous to God’s heart, God’s will, and purpose than even Satan, because it deceives us into thinking it is spiritual and is striving after spiritual things.
The self-life is a substitute life for the life of Christ in you. Now, the theme verse is Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ;
yet I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
In other words, a replacement does need to take place in your life. That self-life needs to be replaced with the life of Christ operating in you.
I wish I could share with you exactly how repugnant this self-life must be to God. You know, Christ never used His self-life to perform any miracles or to preach any sermons. He never used His self-life. It was always through the Spirit and by the Spirit of God, which it should be for us.
The Lord, His whole life, refused it. Remember when He had been in the desert for forty days and He was hungry? The enemy tempted Him. He said, “Look, I know You’re hungry. Why don’t You satisfy Yourself and turn these rocks into bread?”
The Lord wouldn’t do it. He would not use His self-life. He would not satisfy Himself within His own power. No, He wanted to please God, so He refused.
His self-life is so repugnant. The best illustration I have for how repugnant it is comes from when I was a young boy. I lived in Florida, and if you ever got around Sulphur Springs, Florida, in those days, you could smell it, because that’s exactly what it was: sulphur springs.
I remember we went to visit a family in Sulphur Springs, Florida. When you went in the house, you could smell it. If you’ve ever smelled what sulphur water smells like—rotten eggs, exactly—that’s what it smells like: rotten eggs. It’s pretty repugnant.
You could go in the house and smell it. Of course, they offer you a drink of water. You wanted to be polite. I did try it, but I didn’t get very far with it. I’ll put it that way.
But to me, it was very obvious that it just plain stunk. It was awful. You could smell it all over everybody. They washed in it; they washed their clothes in it.
But you know what? They had no idea that it smelled. Why? Because they grew up in it. They lived with it daily. They drank the water daily. They washed their clothes in it. It was a smell very familiar to them, and it wasn’t repugnant at all to them. In fact, it seemed fine.
Brothers and sisters, that’s a poor illustration, but it is an illustration. When the Lord sees your and my self-life, it’s repugnant. But because we’ve lived with it, operated with it, and done the things of God with it for so long, it seems good to us. It seems right. It seems even spiritual, because it can do so many good things.
But to the Lord, it’s repugnant. I would say that I think it takes a real personal awakening to see how God looks on that self-life that is in you and me. And may He do that, because I think that’s what it takes in order to be delivered from it.
Well, actually, there are three types of life, and three types of power for each life.
The first is spiritual life: the power of the Spirit working in you. You have a spirit; the Holy Spirit is there, and He works in you.
It says that the Spirit prays with groanings you can’t understand. The Spirit is deep within you, and it manifests itself into your soul, that you can understand what the Spirit is saying, see what God is doing, and carry out His will.
It is like a wellspring. Remember, the Lord said, “If you drink of the water that I’ll give you, it’s like a wellspring from within.” From within.
Then there’s the soul-life, this independent life that we’re so used to and familiar with. It too is from the inside. It’s capable of doing very many good deeds and capable of imitating the spiritual life. It learns the lingo, learns what’s expected, and it’ll carry it out.
But it is a substitute life, and Christ will never acknowledge that life.
Last week I read out of Matthew—I think it’s Matthew 7:24—where He says, in that day, speaking of the judgment seat of Christ where He judges His own, and where there will be rewards concerning the kingdom age for that thousand years, some will come to Me and say, “Lord, Lord, look. I’ve done many wonderful works. I’ve cast out demons. I’ve done all of these marvelous healings. I’ve done all of these wonderful works for You.”
And the Lord will say, “Well, I don’t recognize you. Who are you?” Why will He do that? I mean, we are His own, aren’t we? Because what He will be seeing is a self-life, and He doesn’t recognize it.
So, brothers and sisters, it’s extremely important as Christians that we learn to live by the Spirit and in the life of the Spirit, and not in the life of the soul.
The self-life can be very righteous, but it’s self-righteousness. It can be holy in the sense of outward things—the way it dresses, what it refrains from doing, or what it does do. It can be very holy in appearance. It can appear to be a sanctified life.
Brothers and sisters, what it really is, is sanctified flesh: the old man being used in the things of God.
Then there’s a satanic life, the life of Satan himself: the life that is rebellious, the life that turns against God. It is a life that is oppressive.
That satanic life—the enemy is able to oppress you. He’s able to inject thoughts into your minds and hearts. He’s able to stir your emotions and feelings and work in the area of your senses.
It can usually be detected because it is like a force from the outside. At least, that’s been my personal experience. It manifests itself a lot of times in fear, panic attacks, or sudden depression.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had that, but you wake up in the morning. It’s bright, it’s cheery outside, the birds are singing, you’re walking along, but all of a sudden you just feel depressed. No reason necessarily to be depressed, but you are. That’s most likely just the oppression of the enemy.
I’ve always said every time I have at least been attacked by satanic forces, it’s always in an oppressive nature. It’s like a force from the outside, not the inside.
And what has the Lord said to do in these cases? In James 4:7, He says:
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
All we have to do is just resist. Lift up the name of Christ. Speak of His blood. The enemy’s ground is gone at the sight of the blood. Remember, the angel of death could not touch the children of Israel who had the blood over their doorposts. When he saw the blood, he couldn’t touch them.
In a lot of ways, the satanic life is easier to detect than the self-life, because it’s mostly something that hits you from the outside. But the self-life, just like the life of the Spirit, is from the inside, and it is very, very difficult to detect. But it is a substitute life.
My main heart right now in what I’m sharing with you is to open our eyes up to see that this self-life is so repugnant.
Jessie Penn-Lewis had been serving the Lord for many years. Jessie Penn-Lewis is a tremendous sister in the Lord. I want to say a special thank you to Jessie Penn-Lewis when I meet her, because the Lord really used her through her books deeply in my life to spare me from destruction. So she’s a special sister in my heart.
But Jessie Penn-Lewis had been serving the Lord for many years, and one day the Lord appeared to her in a vision. He had a bright light in one hand, and in the other hand He had a handful of dirty rags.
Jessie Penn-Lewis looked and said, “What is this about?” The Lord said, “Jessie, these dirty rags are your service. That is your service to Me. They’re filthy, dirty rags.”
Jessie Penn-Lewis said, “But Lord, I have consecrated my life to Thee. I have served Thee faithfully. I don’t understand. I’m a consecrated Christian.”
She said the Lord said to her, “It is consecrated flesh, consecrated self-life, that you’ve been serving Me with, and your works are filthy.”
It touched Jessie deeply, of course, to have the Lord appear to her in such a way and to see that all that she had been doing for the Lord, and all of her service for the Lord, was just filthy rags. But she humbled herself before the Lord.
The Lord gave her light on Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live,
but Christ liveth in me.
She saw that it is Christ who has to live. It is Christ who has to serve, and not Jessie Penn-Lewis with her consecrated flesh and self-life.
As Christians, we often want to be able to share with power and things. I think, like Jessie Penn-Lewis, we need to learn, brothers and sisters, that actually we’re powerless. And that is the secret.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul said:
My strength is made perfect in weakness.
“I glory in my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest on me.” What a great day of deliverance to see that we can’t. We really can’t. And that He can, though, when we can’t. When we’re weak, then God can work.
In 1 Corinthians 1:24, it says, “Christ, God’s power.” Christ, God’s power. Christ, God’s power. We want to live a powerful Christian life. Christ is your power, brothers and sisters.
Somehow, we want that power to be operating in us. But very subtly, what happens is we begin to take that on as something for us—something that we are—that now we’re becoming stronger Christians, more powerful Christians. And what we do is end up separating the power from Christ.
When we do, we’re in deep trouble. Because Christ, His life in you, is the power to live the Christian life.
So I would say that if you are struggling with the Christian life today, what you need is Christ—God’s power, His life. Turn away from the self-life, that substitute life, to Christ.
It’s so dangerous because it is a substitute. It is the most useful tool of the adversary to use against us and against the Lord. It is an instrument in his hands.
A brother once shared, “Great is the day when we see what the flesh really is, what the self-life really is. That will be a great day. Then we will willingly accept that Christ-life in us. Then we will willingly set aside the self-life, take up the Cross, and follow Him.”
Without seeing that, brothers and sisters, we will go on in our own deception, walking in the self-life, using it for God’s purpose, we think. But God says, “Filthy rags.”
Now, I don’t know where to stop at this point, nor where to go on. I do want to share how, brothers and sisters, we can discern the self-life from the spirit-life. I do want to share how we can be delivered from this self-life.
But I don’t think I have time today. I think it’ll just take too much. So it’s all right if I wait, okay?
Well, let me just quickly end with this. In the next week or two, just ask the Lord to give you light. I’ll give you two verses to consider, and we’ll start there next time.
The first is Romans 12:1:
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
And then Hebrews 4:12:
The word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword,
dividing asunder soul and spirit,
even to the joints and marrow,
discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart.
This is the way to salvation. You know, Peter—we’ve been studying 1 Peter and 2 Peter—and in 1 Peter it speaks of the salvation of the soul.
Brothers and sisters, that is not the salvation that you receive when you accept Jesus Christ. That is salvation of the spirit, because your spirit is quickened and made alive to God, and you do receive eternal life.
But the salvation of the soul is a process that takes all of our lives. It is basically denying the self-life, taking up the Cross, and allowing the life of the Lord to work in you.
And remember: deny self, take up the Cross, and allow the life of the Lord to work in you. You cannot eliminate the middle step. You can’t just deny self and all of a sudden have the Lord’s life working in you. You’ve got to take up the Cross. Then His life will be able to work in you.
Well, we’ll go into more on that next time. But brothers and sisters, may you remember my little illustration about the sulphur water. Ask the Lord in these coming weeks to give you light on this matter of the self-life and the Spirit.
Lord, we just come to Thee today. We thank You. We praise You for the marvelous work of Calvary’s Cross.
Lord, it is in our heart to be a spiritual person, to be a living stone in the house of God, to be part of that bride that will satisfy Your heart.
Lord, it says, “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” Lord, that is our desire, and yet we know, as we struggle through these many years, that it’s not within us to do it. Lord, we just can’t live this Christian life.
And so today, Lord, I pray that You will give light and revelation on this self-life, and that You will give light and revelation on Christ, the power of God—on Your life, the life that can really live the Christian life, the life that can be consecrated to God.
Lord Jesus, we pray in Thy precious name. Amen.