John 16. The intention of God in sending the Lord Jesus, and in sending the Holy Spirit—as Jim has already read in John 16:12—is something we need to understand in its context.
Now, I know it is hard for us to get back into the context of this, but you have to understand that the disciples really did not understand very much of this whole inward, spiritual side of their fellowship and life. They knew that they were walking with Jesus, but they had to learn a lot about what God was going to do inside of them.
Do not forget that Jesus was speaking this for us, but He was also telling Peter, James, and John, “Look, I have many more things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now. You cannot even understand them. But the Holy Spirit is going to come inside.”
I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
But when He, the Spirit of reality, comes—truth and reality, and John always equates them—He will guide you into all the truth, all the reality of the Christ life.
For He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.
And He will glorify Me; for He will take of Mine and disclose it to you.
All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and discloses it to you.
Is that not wonderful? You get a two-in-one package. The Spirit discloses the things of Jesus, and that is disclosing the things of the Father. This is a tremendous, eternal opportunity.
Now we have to go to Romans 8. I am spending quite a bit of time in Romans, but let us read the upside here in Romans 8:1-3.
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Then let us turn to one more passage, Galatians 5. As Paul is making a summation here, it is very important to understand.
It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
We are talking about the Christ life. This is the Christian life on a whole new level, on a higher level, because it is a life lived out of a living relationship with the living God and with living faith.
It starts with faith. We believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and then the Scriptures say, “If any man is in Christ”—there you go; that is what Jim was talking about—“if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things passed away; all things becoming new.”
So the first thing you have to do is change your address: from the world to Christ. Paul says, “I have been in Christ so long that I just canceled my newspaper in the world. I have been crucified to the world, and the world has been crucified to me. I am living in Christ.” That is it. He is living the Christ life.
He knows where the riches are. He knows where the boundaries are. He knows where the discoveries are. He knows where fruitfulness is. He knows all these things.
He is becoming a normal man, as was shown to us in Jesus Christ when He came to earth and, in the flesh, manifested the glory of God. He did what man was created to do: through His body and soul—His body, His mind, His emotions, and His will—everything He did looked like God.
Especially, He was full of grace and love. Very surprising. The Jews could not understand, and many could not receive, a loving God who could be called Abba. But when Jesus walked on earth, if you looked at Jesus, you saw God.
Now wonderfully, because Jesus died on the cross and rose for us, 1 John 5 says that the testimony is this: God has given us eternal zoe, and this zoe is in His Son. He who has the Son has zoe; he who has not the Son has not zoe.
We talked about it. I hope you all met Zoe. She is a nice woman. Zoe is, even today, a very popular Greek name for girls. But it means eternal life.
God brings eternal life into us. When you are born again of the Spirit, this life comes into you. He says, “I have come that you might have zoe, and have it abundantly.” What does His life do? It comes into you and quickens your spirit.
So now you are a man—spirit, soul, and body. But even more, now the Spirit is working inside in collaboration with your spirit, which is the actual powerhouse of a man’s life. In union with the Holy Spirit, He is going to shape you from life into conformity to Jesus.
This is a lifelong process. But as Paul says in Romans 8:29, we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. That life is going to be molded and shaped by the hands of a loving Potter, who is going to take you and mold you, build you up, squeeze you down. He knows exactly what you need.
But it is all by that life within, and you are going to experience more life and more life as it comes along.
That is what we were talking about. Then, last time, we mentioned that “Abide in Me, and I in you” is a love story. He is inviting us—indeed, He is commanding us—to come and abide in Him.
If you look closely at John 15, there are really two commands there. One is to abide in Him, and the second is to love one another. This whole abiding experience is a love experience. It is fellowship, and it is meant to be had in fellowship. You should talk to the Lord because you are abiding in Him.
Now, here is the wonderful thing. When you are in there and abiding, you meet Uncle Rhema and Aunt Pneuma.
All you knew was that you came into Jesus when you came into Christ, right? “Abide in Me.” But in John, what is Jesus’ name? Right: Logos.
You come into Him. As Jim said—and it is very true—you say, “Lord, right now I come into You,” and you can open the Bible and start reading. As you come into the Logos, you meet Uncle Rhema. That is spelled R-H-E-M-A, and that is the Greek word for the living word: rhema.
Why? If you come into Logos, Logos says, “Hey, meet my Uncle Rhema.” It is a word that says, “Do this. I am leading you here.” It is a word that comes alive.
And you also meet Aunt Pneuma: P-N-E-U-M-A, pneuma, from which we get pneumonia, because that is the Greek word for spirit. So you meet the rhema and the Spirit.
Now, John says this is amazing. He says in John 15:7:
If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Now notice: “My rhema abides in you.” What does that mean? As you are abiding in the Logos, something comes alive. A word comes alive.
Does “ask whatever you wish” mean, “Oh, Lord, I am so glad You are here and rhema is here, because I need that Mercedes-Benz”? No. It does not mean ask anything you want willy-nilly. If you are abiding in a living rhema, suddenly something comes alive to you, and you are supposed to claim it.
It may be something for you to do, a way you are supposed to bear fruit, somebody you are supposed to witness to, or some act of righteousness you are supposed to do. It is a living word that came alive to you.
God said to Abraham, “Leave Babylon.” Uncle Rhema spoke. But not only does Uncle Rhema speak; Aunt Pneuma, by the Spirit, enables you to do what has been spoken.
Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.
How do you prove that you are His disciples? “Why, I am going to do anything He says.” No. If He speaks rhema, then I say, “Holy Spirit, let us do it.” Then you bear much fruit.
Is that not wonderful, dwelling in there? You meet brothers and sisters who help you along the way too. I cannot get into that whole corporate side, because I love the corporate side. I will just go bananas. But there you are, living this Christ life.
There is a growing experience of abiding. You abide from the very beginning, at the very end of your life you are abiding, and when you die, you keep on abiding, because you have found your home. He built it for you on Calvary. Praise God. We have eternity.
We will sense His life in us as we by faith continue in Him during this short life that we live here on earth.
Now, I have been trying to present this in a positive way. Life comes in and bulges up and grows in you; you abide; you meet Uncle Rhema and Aunt Pneuma; you hear the Word and the Holy Spirit in you. It is a command. It is a command of love.
Now, why do I always have to tell the truth? Living the Christ life, for most people, involves a crisis.
We are going to talk tonight about Christ in me, the way to liberty. But that liberty goes through something of a crisis in order to discover this liberty.
What am I talking about? You have everything in Christ. In one sense, if you realized it, you would not go through a crisis at all. Remember what Paul says at the end of 1 Corinthians 1: by God’s doing, Christ has been made to you the wisdom of God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
You have everything in Christ. You are in Christ; you have wisdom. So if any man lacks wisdom, what do you do? “Lord, what do I do?” He is your wisdom. Do not try to do it on your own.
He is your righteousness. “No, I am not righteous.” You are clothed in His righteousness. He is the Sanctifier. Do not try to make yourself holy. He is also your redemption—your full redemption, body, soul, and spirit. He has been made to you all these things.
So it sounds like things should go pretty smoothly, huh?
In Paul’s letter to the Philippians—one of Paul’s most mature letters—he is at an older age, he is in jail, and he has written Ephesians and Colossians. He is writing deep things. But in Philippians, he kind of writes a testimony.
Can I tell you his testimony? Guess what he says: “Brothers and sisters, I want your joy to be full. Let me tell you how your joy can be full: Christ.”
In Philippians 1, Christ is my life: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” There is no downside. He is in Christ. If he dies, he just gets further into Christ. You cannot lose that one.
In Philippians 3, he says, “This one thing I do: I am in jail, but forget it. Forgetting everything behind me—whatever accomplishments, whatever mistakes—I press on for the goal, the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
His goal is to discover more of Christ. He is like running up the high mountains now. He is like those people who die up there trying to climb Mount Everest. He is up there where the air is thin, and he is discovering more and more of Christ. He runs and pursues after Christ, even while he is in jail, because Christ is not only his life; Christ is his goal.
Then in Philippians 4, he says, “I have been through tough times where I had no money, and there have been times when I have been prosperous. I have learned this: Christ is my provision.”
Whether in want or in plenty, whether in jail, whether sick or well, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Now there is a man who is coming to liberty, would you not say? His life is a liberated life.
But this is the same Paul who in Romans says, “O wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me from this body of death?” Paul had to go through a crisis.
This crisis basically comes to most people in one of two ways. Sometimes it is a crisis regarding sin, which keeps holding us from a full relationship of abiding in Christ—He in us and we in Him. Or it is a crisis of service, where we run out of steam because the Lord is calling us to things we can no longer do.
Why do we have to go through the crisis anyway? Let us look in 1 Corinthians 3. Paul has been carrying on a long discussion in 1 Corinthians 2 about the difference between the spiritual man and the natural man.
The natural man understands nothing of the Spirit. It is foolishness to him, because a natural man is just made up of soul and body. That is all he understands: soul and body. “But my mind understands. I understand.” That is it.
The spiritual man understands things of the Spirit. Look at 1 Corinthians 2:14-16.
A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
But he who is spiritual appraises all things.
For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
A spiritual man has begun to enter into unseen and spiritual things because he is allied to what the Holy Spirit is saying within. The Holy Spirit is producing a life within him that can understand spiritual things.
Paul makes the basic argument: only a man can understand a man. A dog cannot understand a man. A dog looks up and goes, “Hmm?” They do not understand because there is no correspondence. But a man has a spirit, so when we see each other, we understand each other, human to human.
Now we are supposed to know God. But how can we know God? We are man; He is God. But God places His Spirit in us so that we can begin to understand and have a relationship. There is spirit to Spirit, so that we can be true worshipers who worship God in spirit and in truth.
But when Paul addresses the Corinthians, he talks about a third phase, if I could say it that way. There is the natural man without Christ, whose spirit is dead because of sin. There is the spiritual man, whose spirit is alive and in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. But there is a stage in between: baby men.
But I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ.
I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly.
For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like natural men?
That is basically what he is saying. He does not call them natural men. Why? Because they are not natural men; they are born again. They have a spirit, a soul, and a body.
But babes in Christ are Christians who have the Holy Spirit and a living spirit, yet they are still living out of their soul and body. They are still making decisions using human wisdom. They have not learned to get hold of this resource in them. So they are babes. They still do not understand spiritual things; they just understand outward things.
Let us turn to Galatians 5 for context. We read this already: they have been called into liberty, and they are to remain free. But there is one thing that brings us into bondage, which is what Paul calls the flesh.
You were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
What is this flesh? Flesh is, once again, when you live out of your soul and body. Your body is directing you. Your body is telling you to hit the porno sites, and you are doing it. Your flesh is acting and usurping the normal you.
You should be body and soul controlled by the spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit. But instead, you have decided to take things into your own hands because the passions of your body, the desires of your emotions, or the strength of your will have decided you are going to do this or that.
For the rest of our lives, we realize that there is a conflict. There is a conflict between the flesh and the spirit in us, and they war against each other.
The Spirit does not like the flesh because every time you act out of the flesh, you are robbing God of being who you are supposed to be. It is as if you are cutting off and ignoring the Holy Spirit.
Paul has many phrases to describe this. Sometimes he says you grieve the Spirit. Can you imagine this? Let me put it in a way maybe you can understand: you have God inside of you, and you are using your own brain.
Something is wrong with that. It is decision time, and you use your own brain without even asking God. That is pretty stupid.
You have Almighty God in you, and He tells you to do something, so you try to do that thing in your own strength and wear out. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with all of us?
This battle of the flesh and the spirit begins to get us out of this abiding place. There is also a third factor working in our lives: the devil does not want you in your place.
Where is your place? Sometimes we say it is under the precious blood of Jesus. Sometimes we say it is in the house of God. But let us make the place this: “Abide in Me, and I in you.” That is where you belong from the day you are saved.
You had better believe the devil will do whatever he can to get you out of that abiding place: get you out of rest, get you into unbelief, get you to think, “I am not abiding in Christ. I do not even think I am saved. I do not even know if God is real.”
Then, before you know it, you find yourself slipping into unbelief, out of your abiding place. Then the enemy has you. He loves to do that.
You have these three things that are always in continual conflict: the world, the flesh, and the devil. You have heard of that, have you not? Look through the Bible and you will see it.
The world tries to draw you out of Christ. Your flesh tries to move independently of the Spirit. The enemy tries to get you into a place of doubt, where you are like the waves of the sea.
James says that when you believe, you should believe with singleness of heart—not a mind that doubts, tossed about like the waves of the sea. “I am up, and then I am down.” Get into that abiding place. That is where faith is alive, and you can meet Uncle Rhema there and all that stuff.
Here is a logical question: why not, when you get saved, automatically have God make you a spiritual man? Why does God not just save you, put His Holy Spirit in you, fill you with His Spirit, and from then on have you glorify God with your body?
Why does God not do that? It sounds logical. Ah, but there is a problem: because you are made in the image of God, He has to let you have free will.
You have to choose where you want to belong. He will not force you. If you are made in the image of God, God has a will, a mind, and emotions, all directed in love toward His Son, toward you, and toward the universe.
Adam and Eve had free will. They could have eaten of the tree of life and all the great trees in the garden, but they had to go for those Chinese pears.
They made a free-will decision, and that free-will decision cost them the loss of their spiritual life. But man has to have free will. Otherwise, we would be this: “I am a grace-general robot. I got saved fourteen years ago, and Jesus lives in me, the Holy Spirit lives in me, and I do everything to the glory of God.”
Well, I think God may enjoy those toys for a short season, but after a while He just winds you up and says, “This is boring. How about somebody who loves Me for who I am? How about somebody who loves My Son just because he loves My Son?”
How about somebody who spends a couple of extra minutes in prayer just to say, “I love You, I love You, I love You, I love You”? Oh, God is a lover, but He wants to be loved by free will. He does not want to constrain you. He does not want slaves—love slaves.
Because of that, we have to go through what we would call a crisis.
Look at John 8. Wonderfully, Jim pointed us to this passage, but he quit just so that I could pick it up where he quit. Listen to this context. Here are the Jews, and I want you to see what they think and what the truth is.
So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”
Do you see it? They thought they had free will.
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.
The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever.
So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
What was the Jews’ problem? They thought they had free will. What is the problem with people in the world? They think they have free will. And what is the problem with Christians?
A lost person has a free will. They act according to whatever their soul wants, whatever their body wants, and they think that is freedom. But actually, they are just pawns of the devil, children—sons—of disobedience.
If the devil wants a lost person to commit suicide, he will pull some strings in that person’s life, get them depressed, and then show them a depressing television show—or even any French movie—and manipulate them like some kind of marionette.
People do not realize how the enemy uses them in their so-called free will. In their free will, they are destroying their lives. This is self-destruction: an overdose of riches, an overdose of sex, an overdose of some drug or narcotic. But they think they are free.
The Jews were keeping laws, and they said, “We are not slaves. Look, we keep the laws. Look, I have got the phylacteries. You remember? I have things hanging on my arm. I am a very religious person.”
Jesus says, “No, no, no. Sin makes you a slave.” “Oh, no, sin does not make me a slave. I can quit that habit any time. I have quit smoking a hundred times.”
When I was a young Christian, I quit smoking a bunch of times before I finally figured out how to do it. So anyway, Christians slip into the soul, and they end up having to go through a crisis in order to come out.
Let us talk about the liberation side first of all. Here is Paul’s testimony. He testified, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the bondage of this death?” But here is his testimony of liberation:
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me;
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me.
That is Paul’s liberation testimony. I know you have heard it, but let us look at it a little this evening.
We need to go back to Romans. We sang the song tonight: “I have been justified by faith.” In Romans, it is absolutely vital that we understand the basis of our salvation.
Paul is bold enough to say that when you get baptized, you should already realize three very important things. Mark them. They are in Romans 6.
The first is Romans 6:6: “Knowing this.” The first thing that, having been baptized, we should know doctrinally and believe as doctrinal truth is this:
Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.
Can you believe that? We are delivered and freed from slavery to sin because our old man has been crucified with Him. That is the first thing we need to know. It is a truth.
When you get baptized, that is what happens. You go down. When I baptize somebody, I hold them down in the water, symbolic that they are dead to sin. I hold them down there just as long as I possibly can, until I see there are no more bubbles coming up. Then, yes, bring them back up.
Why? Because now they are alive unto God—no longer slaves to sin, but alive unto God.
The second thing is Romans 6:11. I am using King James words because they are better—sorry—than modern translations. Modern translations say, “Consider yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.” Well, let me consider it. No. This is, “Reckon yourselves.”
This is an accounting term. Live out of this fact: you are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. You can live on that.
It does not matter how you feel. This is faith, not feeling. “I am crucified with Christ.” “I do not feel it.” Stand on it. “I am, and I know it is true. The Word says it. I believe it. I am there.”
“I reckon that I am dead to sin and alive to God. I do not feel that way. I feel like sin is talking to me all the time. But I am going to stand on that truth because it is true, because Jesus did this for me.”
Then the third thing is presenting ourselves. Romans 6:13 says:
Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness;
but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead,
and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
Present your body and soul as instruments of righteousness. Present them to God. Romans 12: present yourself a living sacrifice. These things we do by faith.
When you do this, God gives you grace—not only to be delivered from many sins, many things that bothered you and bothered you. The Lord delivers you from them by His precious blood.
There is victory over this sin and that sin. You find your vocabulary changing and your attitude changing. His precious work of transformation in you is a wonderful thing. You begin renewing your mind and conquering many various sins as you progress in your Christian life.
But you get delivered from sins, yet there is sin—S-I-N, singular. There is something called sin. It is like a living presence, Paul calls it. It is something in me, the principle of sin. My sins are because there is this sin thing in me.
Paul went through a crisis because there was nobody who wanted to be more righteous before Jesus than Paul. He wanted to keep all the commandments and do everything right. He wanted to be squeaky clean and righteous.
But there was something working inside that he could not understand. Something was at work. It sounded like sin was getting him. It sounded like he was being defeated in life. No. Actually, the Holy Spirit was leading him into this crisis to bring about liberation.
There was something going on deep in Paul’s life that was wrong. He was a Christian, and he had overcome many sins, but he could not overcome covetousness.
What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be!
On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law;
for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind.
Then that little red thing goes, “Beep, beep, beep. Paul, you messed up.”
This is very interesting, because most Christians have no idea why the law is even here. The law is a great friend of ours now that we are Christians. The law is not just for Jews. The law is your friend. It is good. It tells you what you should do.
But what it does is expose that there is a wrong basis inside of us that enables sin to get us. For you, it may not be coveting. But the devil knows that something inside of you is weak, and there is something you cannot get victory over.
Whenever you start growing in Christ, something comes along. You try, you fail, and you get discouraged. Like Paul, you begin to say, “O wretched man that I am! How am I ever going to go on as a Christian? I have got this problem, and it just will not let me go.”
“I try to let it go. I say, ‘I will not think about it. I will not think about it. I will not think about it.’ I am thinking about it. I am thinking about it. I am thinking about it.” Just by saying, “I am not going to think about it,” you are thinking about it.
What is the law doing? It is unearthing the sin of sins. We have a sin that came to us from the Garden of Eden. What is that sin? It is at the very heart of us:
I can do independently of God.
“I can be free of coveting.” So God says, “Okay, do not covet.” I say, “Okay,” and I immediately covet.
The law exposes the sin of sins in us: “I can do this independently of God. Oh, I can do this. I can please God.” Romans 7 has “I” forty times. It is in the I-zone.
When you are in the I-zone, you are not living in victory or liberation. You are in the I-zone: “I, I, I. I try, I cannot. I do this. I do not understand. I, me, me, me, me.” That is a Jewish opera singer.
What is your sin? It is that little train that says, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.” Every human has that in them.
In your deep insecurity, you are trying to find some shred of self-respect and value. “At least this is my value: I can do this myself, thank you very much.”
And you are pitiful and hopeless. In you, there is no chance. But the Garden has left a lie in you. Satan put it there: “You can do this. You can be wise.” You say, “I think I can. I think I can.” Right on the way into bondage.
Paul had this thing rooted so deeply in him that he just could not get free. He was such a legalist that he believed somehow there had to be at least one law he could keep. So God said, “Okay, do it.”
Paul thought coveting was not much of a law. That is all God had to say: “Okay.” Immediately, he went down for the count.
Paul agonized over this. “Is there something going on? Is this civil war? I want to do what is right, but I cannot do what is right. As soon as I say, ‘Let us do this,’ I do that. I do not understand.”
“There is something going on in me. There is a battle going on in me. It is the flesh and the spirit. The flesh, the spirit. Who is going to win, the flesh or the spirit?”
Finally Paul came to a place of complete exhaustion. He said, “I cannot do it, Lord. I wanted to be a man of sinless perfection. My righteousness exceeded the righteousness of the Pharisees. I was blameless.”
“And now I have been saved, and I am a failure. I was better as a Jew. When I was a Jew, I could keep all the laws—or so I thought. But now that I see what the law really is, there is something inside of me. I cannot do it. I give up.”
“Lord, I failed. Take me out of the ministry. Do not make me an apostle; just make me an epistle. I failed.”
What did the Lord say? “Well, it is about time you came here, Paul. You were never meant to do anything independently of God.”
Did you hear what I said? You were never meant to do anything independently of God.
When temptation to covet comes knocking on the screen door and says, “Hello, my name is Covet, and I want to come into your life,” Paul used to say, “You are not going to do it. I am going to bar the door.”
Covet says, “Well, I am going to huff and puff, and I will blow the door down.” Jesus says, “Do you not realize, Paul, your old man cannot go to the door anymore? When you get old, you just cannot get around.”
Covet knocks on the door. “Who is there?” “Covet is here. I want to come in and eat you with my chinny chin chin, or whatever.”
What does Paul say? “Well, I sure want to covet. Yeah, especially because, oh man, she is a chick. But I am sorry. I have no say in the business. I have got a new Boss inside. Let me ask my Boss if I should come and covet.”
Then Covet says, “Oh, I must be at the wrong door.”
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
But you cannot do that in your own strength. Here is what Paul realized: my old man has been crucified with Christ. My old man was me—my soul and my body working together without any help from God—and that thing was crucified.
When Jesus died on the cross, my old man was done. Then He rose again, and a new man was created in me. This new man is body, soul, and spirit, with Christ living in me.
That is the new definition of who you are. Every Christian here is no longer just body and soul. The reality is that every Christian here is body, soul, and spirit, with the Holy Spirit inside.
If you realize who the new man is, then a whole new walk is involved. He calls it the law of liberty of the Spirit.
You notice how we read in Romans 8: “There is now no condemnation.” That is the first thing that happens when you realize your old man died.
If people say, “Diana, you are an old, rotten sinner,” I say, “I totally agree with you. Yeah, thank God he is dead.” Dead men cannot complain. They cannot argue. They know they are sinners—corrupt.
But there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.
There is so much to say about this, but I have no time at all. Just this: there is a new law for your life. Let the Holy Spirit help you and lead you. Say, “Lord, I need Your help in every matter, every temptation.”
Do not try to face temptation by yourself. Face temptation abiding in Christ, and you will see that He gives you strength to overcome.
No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man;
and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,
but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.
That is Christ living in you. That is Christ helping you. Do not forget: the Holy Spirit in you is your best Advocate. He is your Strengthener. He is your Holifier, your Sanctifier. But you have to let Him respond to these temptations and things that come into your life.
Paul was liberated because he realized there are two “I”s in the Christian life. “I have been crucified with Christ”—that old I, the old man, is done. “Nevertheless I live.” Wait a minute, I thought he was just dead.
But as an “I” lives—yet not I, but Christ lives in me. Now the new I, the new you, is Christ living in you. He is a wonderful Person. It is a new person.
That is why when Paul said in Romans 7, “There is nothing good in me,” he corrected himself: “That is, in my flesh.” Why did he say that? Because there is nothing good in his flesh, but the Spirit dwells in him. Christ dwells in him.
Now it is time to let Christ rise up by His Spirit and help you overcome the things that have held you down and defeated you. This liberation is liberation from sin, and it comes out on the resurrection side in a very wonderful way.
It began so negatively: “Wretched man that I am.” It ends up in resurrection life. Basically, Paul says this: set your mind on the things of the Spirit, not on the things of the flesh.
If you set your mind on the things of the Spirit, you will experience resurrection by the Spirit, enabling you to overcome and mortify the deeds of the flesh and live on higher ground: the Christ life.
There is resurrection. There is a lot of resurrection there. There are so many great men of God whom I hope you have heard of: Oswald Chambers, George Müller—the wonderful man who ran that orphanage—and Frances Ridley Havergal.
Frances Ridley Havergal wrote:
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Frances Havergal was a great poet and a Christian, but she was continually defeated by inward sin.
Oswald Chambers came to a place of desperation. He was teaching in a Christian school, and he came to a place where he knew his inner life was a sin life. He was desperate. If you read his biography, you will see.
F. B. Meyer, that great man of God who influenced many in England, including T. Austin-Sparks and others, was a Christian and a minister. But his life was going up and down. There was no victory in his life until he met C. T. Studd, a missionary going to China, and that changed his whole life around.
Watchman Nee was likewise a real servant of God who gave us one of the most precious books of all time, The Normal Christian Life. But that book was the result of coming through a crisis, where he came to the end of himself as a complete sinner and realized that he was resurrected.
I do not know if you have heard the story. Watchman Nee ran down the street when he realized it, knocked on everybody’s door, and said, “I am dead! I am dead! I am dead!” Everybody thought he was crazy.
But he also discovered he was alive, and he was liberated.
Can you say that? Do you know that?
I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ lives in me;
and the life which I now live I live by faith in the Son of God.
Which way are you looking? A lot of times, we get so turned in on sin. We get so condemned. “I am so condemned.” As long as you are looking at yourself and your belly button, more lint accumulates. It just gets worse.
Some of you do not even have pocket belly buttons. For me, I can carry a lot of lint. I need a vacuum cleaner once a week. Some of you have no belly-button space at all. But you understand what I am saying.
As long as you are looking at your sins, you are looking at what? Your old man. You are looking at you. You are supposed to look away to Jesus and see your resurrection life. You are living by Him.
Forget all your failures. Forget all your weaknesses. Look at Jesus and ask Him for help in all these matters.
The second matter of liberation comes many times to people who are serving the Lord. They serve, but they make a mistake: they serve and serve until their server wears out.
They are trying to do things, especially duties laid upon them. Now you are the pastor of a church, and you have pastoral duties. Believe me, pastoral duties are onerous. There is too much to do.
You have to visit the sick, the poor, and the rich. You have to solve all arguments, preach a sermon on Sunday and Thursday and Tuesday, visit everybody, baptize all children, and marry everybody.
After a while, the sincere servant of God—even somebody who truly is a full-time servant—burns the candle at both ends, trying to please God, trying to serve God, getting weaker and weaker and weaker. The more he serves, the less fruit he has.
He comes to the end of himself. “I am trying. I am trying. I cannot understand what is going wrong. I serve God. I tried everything.”
This is the experience of many. Read biographies: John Wesley, D. L. Moody, Andrew Murray, Hudson Taylor, A. B. Simpson, Margaret Barber, Jessie Penn-Lewis.
All these people were servants, Christians serving God in the church and worn to a frazzle. Sometimes they busted their physical life. They knew no rest. All they knew was anxiety, striving, struggling, trying to be pleasing to God.
Every one of them was trying to be pleasing to God, but something underneath was wrong. What was wrong? “I think I can. I think I can.” There is the choo-choo train again.
Many Christians start trusting in the Spirit. Many servants start trusting in the Spirit. They do some things started by the Spirit, and they end up in the flesh. They take things over. We take things into our own hands.
That is why so many churches and servants go from a Christ life to Christianity. There is no more life. My soul life has taken over. Self, self, self at the center.
I love it when I meet servants of God. I meet some ministers in New York City, and some are wonderful men of God who serve in churches of various kinds. I do not need to comment on it; I just say many are real servants of God who have learned this liberation truth.
But there are also many who are proud and arrogant. It is all about numbers, outward show, how many people are coming, how many buses are in the ministry, how much money they raked in, how much money they make, how big the parsonage is, how big the pastor’s house is.
For some people, it is all about that. Some people are successful ministers entirely by the strength of ego. How strong is ego? Real strong. Real strong.
Some people have very strong egos. They will split up anybody. They will kill somebody to succeed in the ministry. Serious.
But sincere servants find that their fruit is lacking. The laws of ministry are dragging them down. They come to a place where there is nothing left.
The secret of liberation for all service—whether you are teaching Sunday school or whatever—is repentance: a devastating repentance and faith that brings one through liberation.
This is the devastating repentance:
I cannot do it.
And here is the act of faith:
You can do it.
It does not matter what the Lord tells you to do. I know there are many burdens that we have. Think of Jesus when He looked over the multitude and had compassion. He began weeping because He saw sheep without a shepherd.
The temptation of Jesus was to go out and minister to all those sheep without a shepherd. But He said, “No. Lord, I cannot do it. What do You want Me to do?” The Father in heaven said, “Pray for workers to be raised up for the harvest.”
Even Jesus wanted to do so much. When He walked into that pool where there was a whole group of lame and sick people, He went and raised up and healed one man. Do you not think He wanted to heal and raise up everybody in the place?
But no. “That is not My business. What do You want Me to do, Lord? I cannot, but You can.”
Some of these great men of God whose names I mentioned—men famous for their fruitful, Spirit-filled service—began with a conscious double statement. Whenever they felt called to do something, whenever somebody said, “Would you speak next Sunday?” in their hearts they said, “I cannot. Lord, You can.”
Major Ian Thomas was a wonderful man of God. He passed away a few years ago. He really had hold of this whole matter of the Christ life in him.
He was active in a youth evangelism work in England, something like Young Life today. He was a minister on staff, preaching all the time to young people’s gatherings. Nobody was getting saved, and he was wearing himself out.
He discovered this thing. The Lord said, “Quit.” He said, “That is it. I quit.” The Lord said, “Good.”
He said, “Well, now what do I do, Lord?” The Lord said, “You see, you are a failure.” He said, “Okay, I admit it.” The Lord said, “Now do what I tell you to do.”
He received an invitation to speak at a youth meeting in a house somewhere. He said, “Well, I cannot go. I have got nothing to say.” The Lord said, “It is okay. You go. I have something to say.”
At the beginning of that ministry, he had to say every time, “No, but Lord, You can.” He went by raw faith. “I cannot, but Lord, You will have to speak.”
The Lord says, “I want you to love somebody.” “I cannot love that person, but You can.” I know this may sound like some kind of little trick. It is not, when you understand that you really cannot.
Ian Thomas said, “I cannot, but You can.” He stepped into that meeting. It was a test case for him. He just let the Lord speak.
Of course, it was not as if he had not prepared anything. He simply said, “Lord, I cannot.” Kids got saved left and right.
He said, “I did not feel anything more powerful. I did not feel the earth shaking, something coming down, my hair standing up—nothing. But it was Christ through me.”
He just wanted me out of the way. There is so much self. All of us have so much baggage, so much self. We have to get out of the way and let Christ come through.
What a liberating thing that you hear in the lives of people who have discovered this liberation.
When the Lord calls on you to serve, He is not really asking you to serve. He is asking you to give Him an opportunity to serve through you.
Do not just always fall for it and say, “Okay, I can do that. Now I will have some self-respect. People will see I can do this.” That is a disaster waiting to happen.
How about letting Christ be at the center of your life? But that involves a radical repentance.
A lot of times, because we serve God, servants of God are usually very stubborn people—dense, stubborn, stupid. That is why God compares the servant of God to donkeys.
But once you have made enough mistakes, you begin to catch on: “Hey, I really cannot do this.”
Here is a stupid example. Last week, I was out at WCCC—not on the West Coast—and I had such vertigo and dizzy spells that I could not get up out of bed.
People started asking me, “Are you going out there to Toronto next week?” I said, “Lord, I cannot, but You can.”
My life is in His hands. What can you do? I have to rest and not be stupid.
At that conference, I found out there were twelve hundred Chinese out there. I found out that more than four hundred were part-time doctors. Back home, I have a truckload of remedies.
I am glad I have the Great Physician, because I do not think any of that stuff worked.
But dear friends, our life is in the Lord’s hands. It comes to a place where we cannot do it. When you see it, you just slide over and say, “Lord, Your life is in me. Why do You not?”
So often I think, “What am I going to say to those young people? What am I going to say?” That often gets me nowhere. I start looking through the Bible, and I look through teenage magazines. I do not really, but you know.
But here is the question that provokes an answer deep in my heart: “Lord, what do You want to say to them?” The whole thing shifts.
I start to get some little something to go this way or that way. I speak as a fool. I am not somebody who speaks well or perfectly, or who is always on target. But I am saying that this is the beginning of understanding.
It is not a question of what you want to say to somebody. It is a question of what He wants to say. Do you understand? Something bigger is involved.
What does He want to say to whoever you are speaking to? What does the Lord want to say in that Bible study next week? It is a whole new angle. People do not think about it until they have worn out all their own stuff.
This liberation is part of the whole matter of abiding in Christ and letting Him abide in you. It is really allowing Him to begin to live through you.
It comes experimentally as we make many mistakes, try to do things out of our own strength, and find a dead end. In the midst of the dead end, we give ourselves over to the Lord in repentance.
He says, “Okay, let us do this.” You start to do this, and there is life—zoe. There she is.
The one thing you need, if you are going to serve God, is life. May the Lord bless you and help you.
I know tonight’s message is way over the heads of babes, and some are babes here. You have to grow some to understand that there is this conflict going on within you.
But for those of you who understand, take heart. Liberation is where He is going, and He is going to make you a glorious son in whom His life can be fully expressed.
But He has to work in these crisis areas of our lives until we understand: we do not live; He lives in us.
Lord, we thank You so much for that gracious life. Especially, we want to thank You for the patience of the Holy Spirit, who waits and waits, even when we grieve Him, when we quench Him, even when we ignore Him.
He is still waiting and waiting for us to turn things over. What a wonderful God we have—so merciful, so gentle, so caring for us.
For every one of Your saints, You want to bring them to glory, until Your life moves fully through them and they look like Jesus. May that be the goal and end of all our lives.
We thank You for the liberation in Christ. He is holy. He is worthy. He is faithful. Amen.