NEW CREATION PART 6

EVERY real father desires to reproduce himself in his son.
The Father's dream is to reproduce Himself in us. You understand that the New Creation
Himself has received the nature and life of the Father. We invite the Holy Spirit, who has
imparted to us this Nature from the Father, to come into our body and make His home in
us, then as we begin to feed on the Word, practice the Word, live the Word, He builds that
Word into us.
The very genius of Christianity is the ability of God to build Himself into us through the
Word, so that in our daily walk we live like the Master. Eph. 5:1, 2 "Be ye therefore
imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and
gave himself up for us." As children of Love, we are to walk in Love as Christ walked in
Love toward the world.
The Father so loved the world that He gave His Son. Jesus so loved the world that He
gave Himself. Now I so love the world that I give myself. I don't allow my heart to grow
bitter toward it, no matter what the criticism or the persecution may be. Whenever I am
inclined to say, Well, I am wasting my time on them, I remember Paul and Silas at Philippi.
They had been arrested.
They had been whipped until their backs were a mass of bleeding flesh, then put into a
dungeon with their hands and feet in stocks. In the midst of that agony, that physical
distress, they prayed and sang praises. They so stirred Heaven that the Father had to
open the jail ; and when the earthquake had so frightened the jailer that he cried out in
agony of fear, Paul preached to him with that bleeding back, and the jailer found Jesus.
Then he washed the backs of both Paul and Silas, and a Church was formed in the home
of the jailer.
If Paul had any other spirit he could never have done it, but he was like his Master.
He gave himself up to the dominion, the Lordship of Love. The Father wants to reproduce
Himself in us. Gal. 4:19: "My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be
formed in you." The process of building Christ into one may be very slow, but it makes
Jesus men and women out of us. We are created in Christ Jesus. We are His Creation;
and until Christ is formed in us, the world cannot see anything hut religion m us.
Phil. 2 :13 : "For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good
pleasure." The Father is actually building His Love Life, His Righteousness, His strength,
and His Wisdom into our spirits. Years ago when I was the head of the school back in the
East, after an evangelistic campaign I would invariably ask some of the teachers, "Have I
grown any since you last saw me?
Can you see any marks of growth in my spiritual life?" I was so fearful that a month or two
would go by that I hadn't grown in Christ and in Knowledge of the Word. 2 Pet. 3:18: "But
grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Grace means Love
at work. The Greek word means "Love Gifts." The Spirit longs for us to grow in this Love
Life; to have the Love Nature of Jesus demonstrated in our daily walk.
I am convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt, that only as we yield ourselves to the
Lordship of Love, can He ever build Himself into us. It is not knowledge of the Scriptures. "I
may have a vast knowledge of the Word. That isn't it. It is the Word that is built into me and
becomes a part of me that counts. As you study the Pauline Revelation you become
convinced that the ultimate of every one of those Epistles is the building of the Jesus Life
in the individual.
His plan for building Himself into us is striking. We must take Jesus' place. We must learn
to act in His stead. There must be the conscious training of our spirits to be His actual
representatives. Col. 1 :9-12 gives us an intimation of the passion of the Father to make
Himself known to us in such a real way that we can enter into all the riches of the fullness
of His Life that belongs to us. Here is a prayer of the Spirit through the lips of Paul
"For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray and make request
for you, that ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and
understanding."
The word knowledge in the Greek is "epignosis." It means full knowledge, complete
knowledge, exact knowledge. We should have that kind of Knowledge, for it is in this
Revelation. We have the Holy Spirit who inspired it as our teacher. He has never left His
position as an instructor. He is here in my heart and yours, and He longs to fill us with the
exact knowledge of the Father's will in all Spiritual Wisdom and Understanding.
It will be Wisdom to use the knowledge of this Revelation in our daily walk. It will be
Wisdom to know how to use the statements of fact as well as the promises in the Gospels.
It will be Wisdom to know how to make this message known in an attractive way. We are
to have "knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom," a deeper insight into the very heart
of the Father. I Cor. 2:9, 10 may throw some light on this. "Things which eye saw not, the
ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God
prepared for them that love him."
These are revealed to us today in this Revelation through the Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is
able to search all things, yea, the deep things of God, and our recreated spirit is enabled to
follow the Holy Spirit in this searching of the Riches of His Grace. Most of these riches are
in the Pauline Revelation. In Eph. 3:8 we catch a glimpse of where Paul said, "Unto me,
who am less than the least of 'all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles
the unsearchable riches of Christ."
These unsearchable riches belong to us, but, like pearls, we have to search for them.
1 Cor. 2:11, 12 "For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the
man, which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God."
Now note carefully the next verse: "But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the
Spirit which is from, God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us f God.
Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the
Spirit teacheth."
We are learning to grasp this exact truth by the aid of the Spirit. We find that in Col. 1:9, 10
this knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding is to enable us to walk
worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing. Our walk is before the world. We might say that it is a
two-fold walk. One phase of it is before the Father, and the other is before the world. I am
to walk worthy of the Lord before men so they will recognize this New Life in me.
I am so Jesusized (if we could coin the word), that they will become Jesus-conscious in my
presence. I knew a woman that found Christ through my ministry over the air. Her husband
was a godless man and she had been a fit companion in his worldliness, but now she had
found Christ. It went on for several weeks until finally one morning before he went to work,
he said, "Do you know, woman, that I have been living and sleeping and eating with Jesus
Christ for the last two weeks."
She was a keen-minded woman, and she said, "How do you enjoy it?" Tears filled his
eyes. He said, "I wish I was like that. I wish I had that something that has come into your
life." You see, Jesus had so lived in her that the man could feel the presence of the
Master in her. Two young men were working in a shop. One of them was studying the
Word in our classes. The fellow working on a lathe next to him said to him one morning,
"Harry-. I would like to ask you something that is personal. What have you in your life that
makes you so different from all the other men here in the room?"
The boy answered, "Jesus." "Oh," he said, "that is religion; I don't believe in that. And the
young boy said, "It is not religion, it is the Living Christ." Christ magnified in my body, said
Paul; Christ made large in my daily walk. In Phil. 1 :20, 21 he said, "For to me to live is
Christ." Once those words burned in my heart for months. The Master was saying to me, "I
want to be magnified in you. I want to absorb your personality. I want to take possession of
your dreams and ambitions. I want the first place in your life." I was afraid of Him. I spoke
out, "Lord, I don't dare let you have control of me for if I do I will never achieve the things
for which I am so ambitious.
And I shall never forget, a voice in my heart said, "I love you more than you love yourself. I
am more ambitious for your success than you are. I have the ability to put you over."
I said, "Lord, don't make me preach on the streets. You will send me down into the slums. I
don't want to go there Lord." I struggled again, but He was tender with me. His `Wisdom
became so apparent. Often in my extremities He had helped me. When I would get into
difficulties He would lift me out.
One day I said, "Master, I will go with you. Here I am ; take all of my ability. Swallow up my
ambition with your own, but give me Love like your Love. Help me to so live that men can
see you in me, feel you, that when I speak it will be your voice. When I lay hands on the
sick it will be your hands." And then I heard a Scripture in Gal. 2:20: "I have been crucified
with Christ; it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in
the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in your Master, who loved me, and gave himself up
for me."
Then I said, "Now Master, I trust you and I give myself up to you." You see, when we come
quietly in our heart-life to the place where we say "Yes" to Him, then He reveals Himself in
us. It is not forced upon us. He doesn't drive us. He doesn't force us with sickness or the
loss of property. The sickness comes because we are not aware that He can shield
us. We have gone the way of our inclinations. We have gone the way of our own desires
and our plans have been worked out, reasoned out with sense knowledge.
How it must hurt His heart when we are so unwise; when we do so many foolish things.
When His Wisdom is at our call, His Ability awaits us, we are almost limitless.
All that He is at our disposal, but sometimes we choose a road that leads to heartaches
and disappointments. You see, it is this forming of Christ within us. That is the secret that
is the genius of the New Creation.
"Wherefore, if any man is in Christ, there is a New Creation." It is perfect as far as it has
gone, but He wants to build Himself more fully into that New Creation, and so He takes
the things of Christ that are unveiled to us in the Word, and the Spirit builds them into us.
We admired the strength and courage of Jesus in His earth walk. W e were thrilled at the
ability that Christ manifested as He met every difficult situation.
His Wisdom, gentleness and forbearance we admired, and now the Spirit wants to take all
of those things that we have admired in Jesus and build them into us. Can't you see what it
means? It is the Father's ambition to make us successful and to enable us to enjoy the
riches that belong to us. I don't know whether you have noticed it or not, but in one of the
prayer Scriptures in john 16:23, 24, Jesus said this: "And in that day ye shall not pray to
me. (This is literal).
"But verily, verily, I say unto you, if ye shall ask anything of the Father, He will give it to you
in my name. "Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name : ask, and ye shall receive, that
your joy may be made full." Joy is something that comes into the Recreated human spirit.
The natural man doesn't have it. Hear Jesus speaking again in John 15:11: "These things
have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your JOY may be made full."
That is a miracle, that Jesus' joy may be made full in me.
That not only will I make Him joyful, but He imparts to me His joy. That something that
makes the evangel irresistible, now fills my heart . When I speak my face will glow, my
voice will be filled with the melody of heaven. You see, when He builds himself into us and
we begin to labor together with Him, we have His Life, we have His Love, yea, we have
Himself. Christ then is being formed in us. Now it is no longer I but Christ.
The men who have grown deeply spiritual, are the men in whom the Word has had full
control. John 15:7, 8 may throw a little light on this: "If ye abide in me, and my words abide
in you." Every believer is in Christ, but His words are not in every believer. What does it
mean to have His words abiding in me, gaining the absolute ascendancy, dominating me
in every phase of my thinking and my life. As Jeremiah said, We feed upon the Word of
God. Now I am feeding. I am living in that Word. I am practicing it. I am what James (1 :22,
23) calls, "a doer of the Word."
Jesus said that the doer of the Word dug deep and built his house upon the rock, and it
made his house able to stand against any storm that might beat against it. He not only said
that, but He said "If ye abide in me, and my words have found their place in you, then you
can ask what you will and it shall be created by the Father for you,"--brought into being.
Oh, I see it now. I cooperate with him.
In that fifth verse he said, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." Now I can understand it.
As a branch, I am going to bear His fruit. I am laboring together with Him. He and I are
operating together, are identified one with the other. He is finding a place for His ability to
energize and act here on the earth again. It is like a wealthy man that finds an intelligent,
young man that he can set up in business, and the young man has ability to use this
wealthy man's money.
Now He and I are laboring together and the Father is glorified because I am bearing much
fruit, and I prove by my life my discipleship. I prove that I am growing in Grace. and I am
growing in that "exact knowledge of God, in all spiritual Wisdom and Understanding, to the
end that I may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing." I am bearing fruit now in every
good work, and I am increasing in that exact knowledge, that perfect knowledge of the
Father.
You have noticed in Jesus' life that there was always a sense of sureness, a sense of
certainty. There was no vacillating. He never stopped and said, "Now pray that I may have
wisdom." He had it. Into our lives comes that same quiet sureness, that certainty that we
know the Father's will. We are walking in it. And we are made fruitful with His ability that is
at work in us. It is according to the might of His glory, and it has given to us steadfastness
and long-suffering, with joy.
Col. 1 :12: "Giving thanks unto the Father, who has given us the ability to enjoy our share
of the inheritance of the saints in light." This is a climax of the heart desire of the Father
that we should so let Him live His Life in us, that we begin to enjoy our share
of our inheritance in Christ. We are drawing dividends on what He has done for us and in
us. We are coming to enjoy the riches of His Grace.
LIMITING GOD IN US
THE Spirit speaking through Paul in Phil. 2:13 says, "For it is God who is at work within
you, willing and working his own good pleasure" (Literal). How hard it has been for some
of us to become God-inside-minded, to daily remind ourselves that we have Him in us, and
that He is there to build Christ into us, to build the Living Word into us.
Just as a mason builds a house brick by brick, so the Holy Spirit will take one truth after
another and build it into us until we become Jesus-minded, Love-controlled, Fatherpleasers. You remember in John 8:29 Jesus said, "For I do always the things that are
pleasing to him." For years that was my heart's slogan. I sought to make Him happy.
You see, He has done a perfect work for us in the great Substitution. There is not a thing
left undone.
If we accept that work and let God work in us, it makes us j stand well pleasing before
the Father. We become beautiful to Him because His Nature was not only given to us, but
now He has built into us through the Spirit the new habits that belong to the Family of God,
the new language that belongs to the New Creation. We never talk doubt or fear or
sickness or want. We have almost forgotten that language.
We have the new language of the overcomer; the language of the man who is tied up with
Christ. It is the language of the branches of the Vine. That Vine Life has so developed in
us that we become Jesus men and Jesus women. In our assembly in Seattle, we speak of
them as the Jesus men and Jesus women. We have Jesus men and women who are
going out into the world, touching it, blessing it, illuminating it with the Life of Christ in
them.
Why can't this spread over the land until there arises a new race of men known as the
Jesus Folks. They will be Love in action. They will be living in the Word and the Word will
be living in them. They will be doing the works of the Master. As Jesus did physical healing
and ministered largely in the sense realm, these Jesus folks will minister very largely in the
spiritual realm. 2 Cor. 9:8-12 "And God is able to make all grace abound unto you; that ye,
having always all sufficiency in everything, may abound unto every good work."
How slow we have been to realize that it was God's Ability that could make Grace abound
in and through us, and that we were being so perfectly supplied by Him that we were
having all sufficiency in everything. He is our sufficiency ; He is our ability ; He is the
strength of our lives. We have ignored sense reasoning and cast it down and have given
our Recreated spirits the right of way and the Word the first place.
Notice this tenth verse: "And he that supplieth seed to the sower and bread for food, shall
supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the fruits of your righteousness: ye
being enriched in everything unto all liberality, which worketh through us thanksgiving to
God." There has been little majoring of the fruit of Righteousness. I have been asked again
and again, what does it mean?
(It means that same kind of fruit that we saw in Jesus' public ministry.) You see,
Righteousness means the ability to stand in the Father's presence without the sense of
guilt or condemnation or inferiority. It means the ability to stand in the presence of Satan
and his works without timidity or fear, without any sense of inferiority.
Really, it means that you have become superior to Satan. You have a superiority complex
rather than an inferiority complex. You have come to reckon on the ability of the God inside
of you. You have at last arrived at the place where you reckon on Him. You plan your work
with the idea that He is there to enable you to put it over. We must not omit Eph. 1:19-23. I
want this Scripture to become so familiar to you that it will be a constant source of comfort
and strength.
He said : "I want you to know what the exceeding greatness of the ability, of God is on our
behalf who believe. That ability is according to the strength of his might, which he wrought
in the Christ when he raised him from the dead." (Lit.) You can't over-estimate this.
This is God working within you.
This is the one who raised Jesus from the dead.
This is the one who Recreated you.
This is the Spirit who has all the ability of the God-head that is necessary for you to enjoy;
so that you are not afraid of the enemy in any field. You know He put all things in
subjection under His feet, and He gave Him to be head over all things for the benefit of the
Church. Remember, this is the One who is at work within you.
Take Eph. 3:20 "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we
ask or think, according to the ability of God that is at work within us."
When this Scripture is understood, put into daily practice, you can know that you have
arrived. At last you are a worthy member of the Vine. You are actually bearing fruit to His
glory.
In my notes I have written this: Becoming God-inside-minded, knowing that the Allwise
One is in me now. That the God of all ability is in me now. That the God of all Love is in me
now. That God and I are linked up together, laboring together with Him. We are becoming
one in our thoughts and in our actions.
He and I are laboring together to carry out the great dream of Grace. The God of all Grace
lives in me, and so I say it over and over again, "God, my Father, in the person of the Holy
Spirit, through the Living Word, is living in me." Now I can do all things in Him because he
has become my strength and my ability.
The Limitless One is in me.
The Love God lives in me.
At last I become God-inside-minded. I John 4:4 is not only a Scripture, but it is a Living
Reality : "Ye are of God, my little children, and have overcome them: because greater is
he that is in you than he that is in the world." The God of Abundant Life is in me. He is no
longer with me to convict me, but He is in me to guide me into all the Realities of His
mighty ministry.
Now I can understand what He meant when He said, "Laboring together with Him." I can
understand what it means when He said in I Cor. 3:9: "For we are God's fellow-workers: ye
are God's husbandry, God's building." I know what it means now to be a fellow-worker. I
know what it means to be God's tilled land (margin). My heart and my life are the soil
where He sows the seeds of Love and they are growing now in me. I am a part of God's
dream and plan. I am coming to appreciate what it means to have real, intimate fellowship
with Him