Lord, we come to Thee this morning. And Lord, it is just on my heart that we would not come today merely to have a deep understanding, but that You might give to us, Lord, that we might enter into the truth—the reality—of what You have done at Calvary’s cross, Lord Jesus.
Oh Lord, our heart is that we might not just know about the things of the cross, but that the cross might be working in our hearts; that, Lord, we could come to that full place that You desire us to be in You.
Lord, we do pray for understanding and light. But Lord, most of all, I pray for revelation of what You have done at Calvary’s cross. Oh Lord Jesus, what a difference. Lord, it makes all the difference between life and death, heaven and hell.
Lord Jesus, we look to Thee today. Enlighten Your Word as we share it. We do ask for the anointing upon us to be able to hear and see, as well as share Your Word, Lord. May Your grace be upon us, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, as I begin this morning, I have to say, brothers and sisters, I will not finish by twelve o’clock. So, if those are here that need to leave when it gets around that time, you can do so. However, you will miss the secret that I will share at the end.
We have recently been sharing on this matter of the self-life. In Matthew 16, we have shared that the Lord’s outlook on this self-life is that we must deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him.
Whosoever shall love his soul-life on this earth shall lose it;
but whosoever shall lose, and is willing to give up, his self-life for the Lord’s sake shall actually find life.
And that is the Lord’s Word to us. In Romans 12:1, I shared and asked you to be meditating on this verse. It says that we are to give ourselves to Him a living sacrifice.
And then in Hebrews 4:12, it says that He, through the Word, is able to divide soul and spirit. Through the Word of God—it is sharper than a two-edged sword—He even gets down to the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
Because, brothers and sisters, we are old enough now, even you young ones, to realize that you yourselves do not always know the thoughts and intents of your hearts until the Lord reveals them to you.
So we have been talking very recently about this matter of the work of Calvary, and God’s way to bring us into His fullness is through Calvary. We have been sharing about this fallen self-life that we have.
Not only does this life have lusts and evil desires, but it also possesses a desire for the things of God. As long as we are willing to allow this life to be the life of our soul, it will, in order to maintain itself, seek the things of God.
But the Lord has already told us that the flesh is unable to really understand and grasp the things of God. So, brothers and sisters, if we are trying to understand God’s Word with the self-life that we were born with from our parents—if we just try to understand the Word with our mental understanding—it will actually end up creating a problem for us in allowing God, through the Holy Spirit, to reveal Himself to us.
Last time I shared that this self-life can actually appear to be very religious, very spiritual, and can actually do many mighty works in the name of God.
Brothers and sisters, when God created man, He created him spirit, soul, and body. The spirit is where we could communicate with God and where His life could come into us—the Holy Spirit—and dwell within our spirit.
But it was not God’s intention that only our spirit be filled with His life. It was His desire that our soul might be able to express that life. Actually, our spirit is kind of hidden, and our soul surrounds it.
He needs for our soul to be totally released so that it can reflect His life that is in us. It was His desire that the Spirit that was in our spirit be able to be released into our soul, that there could be a full expression in man of God Himself.
When Adam was created, he was created spirit, soul, and body. He was called, at that time, innocent. His soul was innocent.
In other words, he had not yet received the life of God, but his soul-life was not evil at that point. It was capable of receiving the life of God.
And God instructed him in the way that he needed to go, and that was to eat of the tree of life. By eating of the tree of life, his spirit would have been enlightened, and that light would have filled his soul and been able to reflect the life of God in his human life and human being.
That is God’s desire for you and for me as well. But we know that this desire was in man to be like God because, you remember, when Satan tempted Eve, that is exactly what he tempted her with.
He did not tempt her with a desire to do something intrinsically evil. He did tempt her to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And she did look at it and say, “Well, it looks good to eat.”
But there was something much more fundamental there. The enemy touched this desire in her to be like God. He said, “If you eat of this tree, you will be as God.”
Now, it was God’s intention that they be like Him, to have His life. And that desire was in them. But the enemy put a little bit of a twist on it. He said, “You will be as God.”
It is a lot different than being like God. To be as God means that you take the place of God in your life. And that is exactly what happened when Eve disobeyed God, and Adam disobeyed with her.
Adam could not give up Eve for the Lord’s sake. And we understand that, do we not, brothers? But understanding does not make it right. Adam failed.
And in so doing, the soul-life in man became darkened—no longer capable of receiving light from God. He could only receive light from the knowledge of good and evil.
And so he began to create his own light in his soul through knowledge, understanding, and the knowledge of things. He created his own life, and his soul-life became independent of God.
And man fell before God. His soul was in darkness. He did not know it because he created his own life to live by—through knowledge, through his intellect, through his mind.
Unfortunately, we inherited the same life of the fallen Adam. When you are born, you are born in the line of Adam, and you receive that Adamic life that has fallen in its nature.
But thank God, He did not decide to just destroy mankind. Brothers and sisters, you need to understand this: the Lord still loves man’s soul.
He did not love the self-life in man’s soul, but He had created something to express His life. By His sovereign will, He determined to redeem it, that it might fulfill the purpose for which He called it.
And on Calvary’s cross, He did just that. Often, we think of Calvary just in terms of my sins being forgiven.
And, brothers and sisters, I think that alone brings us to our knees every time we share this table: that He died for your sin and for my sin. But, brothers and sisters, may I say today, He did a work much, much greater than just forgiving us of our sins.
That song we sang just shows what God did do at Calvary. He took the sinner to Calvary as well.
And if we can believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—that He died for our sins—the Lord wants us today to rest on the fact that He has crucified you there as well.
Just rest in what God has done. When you come to take this table, and your conscience is before God because of the blood of Calvary, you can rest in that finished work that He has done for you.
Brothers and sisters, the Lord would call us today also to rest in the finished work of Calvary, where your old man—the Adamic life—was crucified in Christ: an eternal fact in which He calls us to believe, to have faith.
Sometimes, when we hear the word, “Well, you have got to have faith,” it really throws us because we struggle with having faith, or maybe understanding co-crucifixion.
May I ask you today just to rest in the finished work of Calvary and just accept in your heart that the old sinner has been crucified in Christ on Calvary. There is tremendous release when we come into that reality.
Now, what God has done in Christ on Calvary needs to be made real in your life personally. He died for every man—every man that has ever been born, He died for.
But only those who willingly accept His gift of eternal life, His forgiveness, come into the reality of that finished work of Him being the atonement for their sin. Those who do not believe in that never enter into the reality of what Christ has done for them, and they will perish.
May we not live the rest of our lives not laying hold of the truth that we have been crucified with Christ. It is a great foundation of the Christian life. You cannot live the Christian life without that truth being apprehended.
And it is apprehended simply by resting on the fact that He says He has done it. May God give us faith, even as we sit here this day, for this tremendous, magnificent work of Calvary’s cross.
Because, in reality, on this earth, it is done in Christ and it has got to be made real in you. When you were born, you were born with the Adamic life. Even though, before God, it is gone—that life is over—you need to come into the reality of it in your life personally.
But you have that Adamic life in you. It is called the self-life. It is the fallen life of the soul. It is what animates your soul, makes it alive, makes it real.
Ever since the fall, it is dependent on the light of its intellect and on its self-determination to get through things in life and to deal with things, even to be spiritual. That is the problem.
Brothers and sisters, when we become Christians, we still tend to rely upon this Adamic life in the things of God. But God has said, “No,” because He says, “I have crucified this thing in Christ. Now let it happen in your life personally.”
Brothers and sisters, thank God: not only were your sins forgiven when you accepted Christ, but He quickened your spirit. His life came into your spirit to reside there through the Holy Spirit.
And now, within you, it is possible to have the light of God. You still have the old light, the light that comes through your natural intelligence. But you have the life and light of God within you.
And God is not satisfied with that life and light merely being in your spirit. He wants it to come into your soul and to illuminate your soul, that the life by which your soul begins to live now is not the old Adamic life, but the life of Christ Himself.
Do you see the tremendous gift and opportunity that God has given to each man and woman? We are the only things that He has ever created that can actually contain, exhibit, and express the life of God Himself.
That is what He has called us to. When we speak of the salvation of the soul, often we just limit it to eternal life. But the salvation of the soul means that it finally becomes totally free from being ruled by the Adamic life and comes to be ruled by the life of Christ.
That is the true salvation of your soul. It is a work that has to be made real in us.
The Lord Jesus, through the Apostle Paul, said that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord Jesus and are called according to His purpose, that you might be conformed to His image.
Think about that. As far as God is concerned, everything in your life that He works out, that He is working on, He is trying to bring you to the place that you can be conformed to His image.
And basically, that means, brothers and sisters, that when He looks at you, when He looks at your soul, what He will see is Himself in you, and not the old Adamic life.
That is what He means to conform you to His image. But, brothers and sisters, no one human being, no matter how spiritual, can ever express the totality of Jesus Christ and His life.
And that is why He says:
I am the head of the body,
which is the fullness of Him
who filleth all in all.
When you accept Jesus Christ, you are baptized into His body. What the Lord is saying—what God has designed for His Son—is that there would be this vessel of life called the body of Jesus Christ.
In that body, every member comes into the full salvation of his soul so that it might reflect the fullness of Christ.
That is why we need not only Christ, but we need to be in living union—not only with our Head, but with our brothers and sisters. That is why we need to be open to brothers and sisters.
That is why we should not form ourselves into sects and divisions, and into things focused around other things than Christ Himself and His purpose, which is to bring us into full union together with Him, that He might have a full expression of Himself.
And, brothers and sisters, He is going to do it. But we do need to cooperate with Him. Our brother talked about waiting. The Lord has been waiting all of these thousands of years for this to happen—for His bride to be made ready.
That full-grown man—it says that we might become a full-grown man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. What a goal that God has given to us and expects us to come into.
Christ desires to fill your soul with His life, but there is a problem: it is occupied by another life.
Let me say this. I have said it in every message, so I am going to say it again. Brothers and sisters, that is why you must be born again.
It is not good enough to have an Adamic life that is doing good things and even seeking after God. Just like Nicodemus—probably, obviously, a very good Pharisee—honest, sincere, looking for the way into the kingdom.
He came to the Lord, sensing something that the Lord had that he did not have, something that he needed. He thought maybe it would be some adjustment to his life. And the Lord said, “No, Nicodemus. You must be born again.”
That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
So, brothers and sisters, a tremendous thing has happened to you. God, on Calvary’s cross, has ended your Adamic life and has now brought you into the life of Christ, that His life might fill your life and fill your soul.
What an amazing thing God wants to do. May He open our eyes to see that that is what He wants to do, and that He has made every provision at Calvary to bring us into that very life that He has called us to.
Last time I mentioned that the self-life was an enemy of God. Why it is so dangerous is that it can appear to be so spiritual, but yet it is a substitute for the life of God.
To God, it is a repugnant life. I shared the story about the sulphur water last time. I will not repeat it, but it is repugnant. If you have ever had sulphur water, it is totally repugnant. It is just like trying to swallow rotten eggs, and you just cannot do it.
Andrew Murray says that the self-life is to be more feared than falling in a pit of venomous vipers. Here is a brother that ought to know.
What I would like to share with you this morning is the way that God will work in our lives to remove the old self-life, that His life might fill our souls.
Actually, it is pretty simple. The Lord says, “Deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow Me.” Deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow Me.
But we have two problems. First of all, we may not even recognize this self-life. That is part of problem one. And if we do, we really struggle with giving it up.
You might think that, “Oh, if I know what it is, Lord, I will willingly lay it down.” But we do not. And the other problem is that we want that life, but we want to avoid the cross to get there.
I would like to give you some illustrations out of the Word of God. First, we see this desire to cling to the self-life in the life of Abraham.
You know, Abraham, before he was promised that he would become the father of many nations and be a blessing—that through his seed would come a blessing to the whole world, speaking of Jesus Christ, of course—went out with this longing in his heart for a child to be born.
But Sarah’s womb was closed, and she could not have children. So, when Abraham was eighty-six, Sarah went to Abraham and said, “Look, Abraham, God has promised us a seed through which the whole world will be blessed.”
“Now I cannot have children, and we want to fulfill God’s purpose. What we need to do is, I want you to take Hagar, one of the servants, and have a child by her. That way, we can fulfill God’s purpose.”
Abraham listened, and he said, “Okay, that sounds pretty reasonable, as long as you are okay with it.” Of course, Sarah was. She proposed it, very confident that this was what was needed to bring in what God wanted.
And so Abraham had a child called Ishmael. Now the problem is that Abraham, when he had Ishmael, was about eighty-six or eighty-seven years old. I cannot remember. I think God spoke to him at eighty-six, and he was near eighty-seven when Ishmael was born.
Now remember this. This is critical. What was really going on here was that the flesh was trying to do the things of God.
Man understood the thing that God was after and, by his own device, decided a way in which he could achieve what God wanted. The heart was right, but the method was deadly.
Actually, we see the results of the method even today in the Middle East, in the battle between the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Isaac. So do not think that you can take the works of the flesh lightly, brothers and sisters. They have dire consequences.
Well, anyway, the interesting thing is that Abraham went out, did this, and God did not speak to him for thirteen years. God left Abraham to his own devices.
He said, “If Abraham is going to do things his way, I am going to let him go his way.” And after thirteen years, unfortunately, Abraham was still not awakened to what he had done.
So God appeared to him out of sovereign grace. Brothers and sisters, there can be periods in our life when God is silent to us because there is something there, and we are not listening and we are not seeing.
Eventually, He just comes along in His sovereign grace and says, “I cannot wait any longer. I need to wake this person up.” So He appears to Abraham and says, “Look, you will have the promised seed, but it is not Ishmael.”
“Sarah will have a child, and you will call him Isaac.” In Genesis 17:18—you can look it up—do you know what Abraham’s response was?
You have got to remember that Ishmael was about thirteen years old now. Abraham really loved Ishmael. He said:
Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee!
Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you, that is in your heart too. It is in my heart. Whenever the Lord says, “No, this is not Me,” we say, “But Lord, I have been doing this for You. You know, Lord, it is not for me; it is for You.”
The Lord says, “No. The self-life, no matter how consecrated it is to Me, no matter how much it is given over to do My works, I will never accept.”
“I will only work through the promised Seed. I will only work through Christ in your life. That is the only work that is acceptable to Me.”
My brothers and sisters, we tend to cling to this self-life. Well, Ishmael and Isaac lived together for about four years, until Isaac was weaned.
He was three or four years old when he was weaned. Now Abraham, at the weaning, had a celebration. In other words, he was recognizing Isaac, and he had a celebration to recognize the promise.
In other words, it was recognizing the life of Christ in you. That is what the awakening was. That is what this celebration was all about: saying, “Hallelujah, it is Christ’s life in me that matters.”
“I see it is Christ. It is not me. It is not other things. It is Christ.” That is what this celebration is all about to us personally.
Interestingly enough, you do not hear anything bad about Ishmael until you get to this point. It says that Ishmael began to mock Isaac.
You have got to remember, he is about seventeen years old now, and he has a three- or four-year-old little brother. He has been around longer, just like your old self-life has been around a long time—ever since you were born.
And it will mock the life of Christ in you. It will resist the life of Christ in you. It will struggle against the life of Christ in you. It will never accept the life of Christ in you.
It wants to live. It wants to be number one. It will not give up its reign in your life. And that is really what this picture we see in the Old Testament is about.
So we see the flesh and the Spirit striving with each other. That is what you see here: the self-life and the Christ-life in you striving.
And Sarah comes to Abraham and says, “Abraham, you have got to put Ishmael out. The two cannot live together.”
Brothers and sisters, I do not know if you have ever come to that revelation in your life, that finally you have to put Ishmael out. They live together for a long time—sometimes for ten, twenty, thirty, forty years in us as Christians.
Finally, one day, God in His mercy and grace opens our eyes up: Ishmael has got to go. That old self-life has got to go, that the life of Christ might come in and reign in your life.
Abraham did not want to do it. He heard what Sarah had to say, but he did not want to. Brothers and sisters, he loved Ishmael. He was a seventeen-year-old son.
The Word goes on to say he was an archer, so he was a hunter—a man’s man, you know what I mean? He was dearly attached to Ishmael, to this self-life, and he did not want to give him up.
So the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, “Abraham, this time you need to listen to Sarah. The two cannot live together. Ishmael has got to go.”
I know Abraham’s heart was ripped apart. It was soul-wrenching to be able to put out a seventeen-year-old son. Think about it, you who have children, teenagers. That was what Abraham was asked to do.
That just shows, brothers and sisters, how much God despises the self-life. He said, “He has to go.” So Abraham, thank God, obeyed, and Ishmael was put out.
And God said, “I will bless him, Abraham. I will take care of him. He will become a great nation too,” which they have.
I hope you see: it is not easy. It is a sword to your soul. But Abraham yielded.
Later, we know that God challenged Abraham once again with Isaac. Isaac became a young man, and God one day appeared to Abraham and said, “Abraham, you take your son Isaac, your only son.”
He only recognized Isaac. He said, “Take your only son. Take him up to Mount Moriah. I want you to sacrifice him there to Me.”
Now, the Israelites were against human sacrifices. This was totally outside of anything that you would expect God to ask. I want you to know that.
And this was the promise, see—something from God, something blessed, something pure, something that God had given. It was not something Abraham had manufactured, but something God had given as He had miraculously opened the womb of Sarah and this promised seed came.
Brothers and sisters, you must know how much he must have loved Isaac. It was something from God. And what God said was, “You have to put it on the altar.”
The most precious things in your life, even the ones that come from God, have to be put on the altar.
Think of it in these terms: with Ishmael, God said, “You have got to put him out.” With Isaac, He said, “You have got to put him on the altar.”
Why did God want that in Abraham’s life? It was not good enough, brothers and sisters, just to have the life of God in us, the life of Christ even actively working in you. You also have to have His heart.
And God’s heart—God the Father’s heart—is, “I will give up My only begotten Son.” That is God’s heart for you, for me, for His own Son, that He wants to have the bride. “I will give Him up.”
Abraham had to have the same heart. That is what I am saying. We need a heart like God’s heart. It is different than our heart, brothers and sisters—much different.
Because in our heart, in our natural love, we cling to the things of self. God’s love and God’s heart are far above man’s love and man’s heart.
And that is the heart—the life, the heart of that life—that is within you and has to be expressed. For Abraham, he took his son and put him on the altar.
Think of it in these terms: Abraham was given the privilege of being able to show the whole world, and all the principalities and powers, God’s heart.
Can you show God’s heart, brothers and sisters? Our tendency is to cling to the flesh and not let it go.
With Peter, we see this matter of wanting to avoid the cross. We want to get to glory, and we want to be spiritual, but in reality, we do want to avoid the cross. We need to see that.
In Matthew 16:21-25, I think we are going to have to turn to it—Matthew 16.
The Lord Jesus had just talked to Peter. Peter had been given a revelation of Christ:
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Christ then gave to him the revelation of the church, of the purpose of His heart—what His heart was really after—which was the bride.
Then Jesus, it says in verse 21, from that time began to show His disciples how He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised again the third day.
Notice, it says, “From that time.” Jesus began to give revelation of the cross of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, we need a revelation of Christ. We need to know the Christ, not just from our mental understanding or from the One our parents have taught us about, but to encounter the Lord Himself.
We need a revelation of Christ. And if we have a revelation of Christ, He wants to give us a revelation of the church: that it is a living body of Jesus Christ; that it is to be the full manifestation of Him when it is matured; and to be His bride, through which He will walk in union throughout eternity.
For whatever service and desire He will have for that—I guess it would not even be called time anymore—just throughout eternity.
We not only need revelation of Christ, and we need revelation of the church, but we need revelation of the cross. It can no longer just remain a doctrine that we can expound upon. It has to become reality.
It has to be something the Lord shows you: the deep, deep meaning of the cross and all that He has accomplished there. Brothers and sisters, may it become a living reality in our lives.
Well, the Lord began to share that, and we know in verse 22 Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him, saying:
Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee.
And He turned to Peter and said:
Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art an offence unto Me:
for thou savourest not the things that be of God,
but those that be of men.
At the mention of Calvary as God’s way, Peter reacts, even to the point that he grabs hold of the Lord and says, “No.” How many of you have said no to the Lord? Well, probably many times.
That was Peter’s response. Until the cross becomes revelation, you will resist it. Until the cross really begins to do its work, you are going to resist it.
But there will come a time when you will see that it is God’s way, and you will begin to accept it. Really, it is only by the Spirit of God and God’s grace working in you that you can accept the cross and take it up.
What was Peter saying? He was saying, “Lord, save Yourself. You do not need to go to the cross. You are going to be the King. You do not need the cross. This does not make sense.”
“What has the cross got to do with this? You are going to be the King, and we are going to be those sitting on the throne with You.”
The Lord said, “Get behind Me, Satan.” Why did He say that? Because self-life, self-love, self-seeking, self-pity, self-centeredness—all these selves, self-creativeness—the principle behind self is Satan.
That is exactly what Satan did. He said, “I looked at myself. I see how good I am. I am not satisfied. I want to be as God—not like God, but as God.”
“I want the place of the Son. I want to rule my own life and all that will submit themselves to me.”
Brothers and sisters, outwardly, if you think about it, you would think that this is love, would you not? I mean, after all, Peter was greatly concerned for the Lord.
It was love. It was natural love. It was natural love that comes out of that self-life. And, brothers and sisters, natural love will always consider the things of man before the things of God.
Natural love wants everything. It wants all the goodness. It wants all the love. It wants all these things. But it does not want to go to the cross in order that all these things might be manifest.
After the Last Supper, once again, the Lord began to share with His disciples that He was going to the cross. And He said, “All will forsake Me.”
What was Peter’s response, brothers and sisters? “Oh no, Lord, I will give up my life for You. I will die for You.”
Have we not at times said that and really been convinced that we would do it? I do not know.
The Lord turned to him and said, “Peter, Peter, you are going to deny Me three times before the cock crows tonight.” Peter said, “Never.”
And then the Lord said, “Peter, I am going to have to let Satan sift you, but I am going to pray that your faith fail not.”
Brothers and sisters, I want you to know there are times in your life—and mine—when this self-life is so strong, so determined, so sure, that the Lord has to say, “Okay, I am going to let Satan sift you.”
“He will bring you to your knees. Then maybe, on your knees, you will turn back to Me.” And he does.
Before the cockcrow, and before Peter denied the Lord, the Lord was in the garden with Peter, James, and John. We remember that story of Gethsemane.
But you remember, after the Lord got up and woke His disciples back up, the guards came to get Jesus. And what did Peter do?
All these Roman guards—Peter drew his sword and hacked off the guard’s ear. Now surely this is love.
Surely this is that divine love that says a man will lay down his life for his brother. That is love. It is what the Bible says. Was this not love? Was this not divine love?
No. It was still Peter’s natural love, the love that came out of his self-life. How do we know it was natural life? Because what did the Lord do?
He took the ear and put it back on. He actually put the ear back on the guard.
And then He said to Peter:
Put up thy sword:
the cup which the Father hath given Me,
shall I not drink it?
Natural love did not want the Lord to go to the cross. If Peter had succeeded with his natural love, we would all have been lost.
But thank God, Jesus did not let natural love—the love that comes out of the self-life—prevail. No matter how sincere, brothers and sisters, that natural love is, it will fail when it is challenged by the cross.
Why did Peter fail? Why did he deny the Lord after that incident? Because his natural love had blinded him, brothers and sisters, to who he was and what he was.
He really thought that he loved the Lord. But in actuality, Peter loved himself. He did not want to give up the Lord.
He did not want the way of the cross. God was saying, “It is the only way,” but he was saying, “No,” even up to the last moment. And so he was deceived by his natural love, and it blinded him. He rejected the cross.
Well, after the resurrection, the Lord came to the disciples, revealed Himself, and met them on the beach.
When Peter came to Him, immediately He challenged Peter. He said, “Now, Peter, do you love Me?” And we know that that word is agape. “Do you love Me with the love of God?”
And Peter says, “No.” Now he says, “Lord, You know I love Thee.” That is what it says in your Bible. The Greek term is, “Lord, You know I am attached to You.” It is a different level of love.
Peter had been shaken. He realized that his natural love was really only an affection for the Lord.
The Lord challenged him three times. Twice He said, “Do you love Me with God’s love?” The third time, finally, the Lord met Peter right where he was, and He said, “Peter, do you have affection for Me?”
Peter said, “Lord, You know I have affection for You.” Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Look, feed My sheep. Feed My lambs, Peter.”
And He said, “I want to tell you something else, Peter. When you are old, you will be taken where you do not want to go,” speaking of the death by which he would glorify God.
God was saying, “You are going to the cross, Peter. You are going to die on a physical cross, and that death is what is going to glorify Me.”
What was Peter’s response? Brothers and sisters, that natural love, that self-life, it just clings and clings.
Peter looked at the Apostle John and said, “Well, Lord, what about John over here? This does not seem to be quite fair that I am being chosen to go to the cross. What about John?”
The Lord said, “You do not have to worry about John. You just follow Me.”
Remember, the Lord says, “The death by which you will glorify Me.” Peter was really saying, “Lord, I will feed Your sheep. I will feed them. Will that not glorify You?”
“I will feed Your lambs. Surely that will glorify You, Lord.” The Lord said, “No. It is the cross which will glorify Me.”
“Through the work of the cross in your life, Peter, you will glorify Me.”
Well, we know the story, brothers and sisters. According to historical accounts—and I do not know that it has ever been proven—the story is that when Peter was crucified, he asked them to crucify him upside down because he did not want to have the same honor as his Lord had had.
Peter did see, brothers and sisters. But you see the struggle the Lord had in Peter’s life in dealing with his natural love and affections.
I hope you have grace for about another fifteen minutes. Brothers and sisters, it is difficult to take up the cross. It is difficult to deny self. It is precious to you.
Jessie Penn-Lewis said that your soul-life, your self-life, consists of basically three things: my family, myself, and my possessions. I thought that was a pretty good summary.
If you want to summarize what your self-life is about: my family, myself, and my possessions. And the Lord deals with all of them.
In Matthew 10, the Lord speaks. He says:
He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me:
and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.
He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.
But he that findeth his life shall lose it.
Speaking of the cross working in your soul-life, He says you have got to hate mother, father, son, or daughter. I do not know, brothers and sisters, but if I had heard that for the first time out of the mouth of the Lord and had been there, I do not know whether I could have accepted that teaching or not. It seems pretty strong.
The Lord will deal with your affections and your natural love, particularly in the area of your family. It could be your girlfriend or boyfriend. It could be your friends—things or people that you are affectionately attached to.
The Lord will say, “Your affections have to be purified. I have to deal with them. You cannot put any of these ahead of Me.”
The cross usually comes in when someone in our family who is dear to us wants us to do something that is counter to the will of God in our lives, and we have to make the choice: will it be the Lord, or this precious member of my family?
It could even be your wife or your husband. But I have got to follow the Lord. It could be your child.
All of these, just like Abraham, have to be put on the altar. Your family, your wife, your husband, your children—they are much better put on the altar than you are clinging to them, because then God can work in their life.
But as long as you are clinging to them—clinging in the sense that you put them above the Lord—it is wrong, and the Lord will have to deal with it. And He will.
Actually, in Luke, the Lord changes His word. He emphasizes it even more. He says:
If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also,
he cannot be My disciple.
In Matthew, He is saying, “I will have to deal with your affections, and you are going to have to make a choice.” In Luke, He is saying, “This needs to be your attitude towards the self-life.”
It is not that you personally have to hate your mother and father. But the self-life—the self-life that is opposed to God in them—you have to hate it.
Not only the self-life in them, but the self-life in you: you have to hate it. And, brothers and sisters, I do not know what it takes to get us to that point, but it certainly takes the revelation of God.
In the matter of myself, Peter said it so well. We just talked about it: “Save yourself. Avoid the cross.” That is Matthew 16.
Take up thy cross, and follow Me.
He that will save his life shall lose it;
but he that will lose his life for My sake shall find it.
It is the same thing, brothers and sisters. The Lord says, “Get behind Me, Satan.” Why did He say that? Because it was the self-life in Peter. It was a self-life.
And the Lord worked on Peter, and worked on Peter, and worked on Peter, and worked on Peter until He got to that issue: my family, myself.
And then, in Luke 17, the Lord deals with our possessions. He says, “Remember Lot’s wife.”
Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it;
and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.
Remember Lot’s wife. We remember Lot’s wife, do we not? Sodom and Gomorrah were going to be destroyed. God had told them that.
And God, in His mercy and grace, actually had them pulled out of Sodom and Gomorrah. They did not want to leave it, even knowing that it would be destroyed.
Brothers and sisters, this whole world is going to come under fire and be destroyed. Why do we still cling to it? I have to say, brothers and sisters, in saying that, “Forgive me, Lord, but I still cling to things of this world.”
But in His grace, may He cut those love-strings to the things of the world.
Well, actually, Lot’s wife did leave Sodom and Gomorrah. It looked like she was doing the right thing. Outwardly, she was performing the right thing. She left with her husband, Lot.
But on the way, she glanced back, and she immediately turned into salt—back to the earth from which she came, back to the earth to which she clung.
In other words, it was her heart. The Lord saw her heart. The outward actions were right, but in her heart, He saw that she was still clinging to the things of this earth.
So, brothers and sisters, everything has got to be put on the altar: your family, yourself, and your possessions. You have to willingly give it all up for Christ.
I gave you two verses last week to think about: Romans 12:1, “Present yourselves a living sacrifice,” and Hebrews 4:12, that the Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword, dividing soul and spirit.
I hope, brothers and sisters, the Lord has been able to give you a little light into the repugnance of the self-life—how it is totally rejected by God and can never be accepted.
I hope, in some small way, the Lord will give each one of us light in our hearts about the depths of evil and destruction that this self-life can cause. Even this natural love that we have, left unchecked, will do more damage in your life and in the body of Christ than anything else.
But do we not sense also the inability to even know when it is self or when it is spirit? We cannot even recognize the difference sometimes in our life. “Is this soul, or is it spirit? Is it my self-life, Lord?”
“I know it is repugnant to You. I do not want anything to do with it.”
I hope you have, because until you see how depraved the self-life is, you will have no desire to be free from it.
Until you do, you will not realize there is a greater life—the life of Christ in you—that can fill you, because you become so occupied with the self-life and doing things for the Lord that His life cannot come through.
So I do hope that the Lord will show us these things, or we will never turn to His way of salvation. And what is that?
First of all, you have to see what the self-life is about and how opposed it is to God, and be willing and wanting to give it up. And, as these verses imply, lay yourself on the altar.
And helplessly—I wrote this down because I wanted to say it correctly—brothers and sisters, in helpless dependence on Christ, we need to put ourselves on the altar.
In helplessness, in other words, “Lord, I do not even recognize self in me sometimes. Lord, I see how opposed it is to You, and I need to be rid of it that I might have Your life working in me.”
“And Lord, I cannot seem to do anything about it.” The Lord says, “Yes, you can. You just need to get on the altar, helplessly and in helpless dependence upon Me. Just put yourself on that altar.”
Now, what was the altar for? That is what Hebrews 4 is all about. In the Old Testament, the priest would open the sacrifice. They would cut down even to the marrow of the bone and expose everything in the sacrifice.
Everything exposed. If we will, in helpless dependence on the Lord, put ourselves on the altar, He will begin to show you the self-life.
And in His grace, and by the power of the Spirit, you will be able to take up the cross. Because only if your eyes are fixed upon Him as you put yourself on the altar.
If you turn your eyes back inward, or on the things that you may have to suffer, or on this or that, you will not stay on the altar.
Brothers and sisters, you have to put yourself on the altar in helpless dependence, with your eyes fixed upon Jesus. That is the way in which He can expose what is self.
That is, in a way, only if you see Jesus are you going to be willing to take up the cross. Only if you keep your eyes on Him will you be willing to take up the cross.
Look at Him, and by His grace and Spirit in you, He will do it. I think a brother even mentioned this verse earlier:
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
Your soul will never find its rest until it becomes the vessel of the life of God.
Lord, we come to Thee today. We thank You for Your love and great mercy that You have shown at Calvary’s cross.
Lord, my heart is still that somehow You could open our eyes to see the magnificent work of Calvary and the One who died there.
That, Lord Jesus, we would willingly lay ourselves on the altar in helpless dependence upon Thee; that, Lord, this self-life in us might be denied and replaced with the life of Christ.
Oh Lord Jesus, it is the way that You have ordained. And it is the way to the throne. It is the only way that our souls can come into full salvation.
We desire that, Lord, so that we might reign and rule with You during the kingdom—but not for ourselves, Lord, for Thy sake. I pray that You will do it, in Jesus’ name.