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First posted in July, 2006.
http://www.xanga.com/cookie_monster44/512369544/christ-in-you-the-hope-of-glory.html
This took me about a month to write but I've been glad ever since that I did so. Many times since then I have looked back on what I wrote and have been blessed in remembering who I am. I've also been blessed to see how many other people have been blessed by this post---for a long time if you searched for "Christ" on xanga, this post would be on the first page, and I had many such random visitors who dropped by and were blessed by the truth in this post. May you be as blessed in reading this as I was in writing it, and may your life be changed as mine has been since discovering who I am in Christ!
(Please feel free to print this entire post out and read it as you can find time, as that may be much easier than reading it all online, but please do read it. Discovering all that I've written about below has absolutely changed my life. I'd love to hear what you think of it. Enjoy!)
My prayer in writing all this is the same as Paul’s to the Ephesians:
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in this present age but also in the age to come. And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.” (Ephesians 1:17-23)
Boy, I’ll tell you, anybody who does not believe in heaven has never had their fill from a raspberry patch before. Mmmmmmmm *contented sigh* In fact, that sounds really good right now, excuse me for a moment……….ok, I’m back, with my point definitely proven. The only difference is in heaven I don’t think there will be any mosquitoes. At least I hope not. (At the time I wrote this, almost a month ago, we had so many raspberries it was difficult to think of anything else! Now they are all gone, and there is much sadness over this fact…)
Now that my stomach is rejoicing, let’s move on to some food for my soul, which, unlike my raspberries (we have mulberries too!), I can share with everyone. I’ve written little snippets here and there of what God has been revealing to me, but now it’s time to try to write it all in one place, to put it all together. Hopefully God will speak just as clearly through me on this as He has to me.
So here we go:
“I have become [the church’s] servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness—the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:25-27) (Notice how “the word of God in its fullness” = “this mystery” = “Christ in you” = “the hope of glory”)
I’ve heard it said that all of Satan’s lies are about one of only two things: who we are, who God is. Every single one of his lies falls under one of those two categories. Therefore, the more we understand who we truly are and who God truly is, the less Satan’s lies can affect us. It also would follow that the most important thing for us to try to understand properly is who we really are and who God really is. Most of my recent discoveries fall under the “who we are” category, although I’m beginning to believe that the two are so bound up together that you can’t discover something about one without gaining new perspective on the other.
I have long known that the path to holiness is one that Christ alone can walk, and that my only hope for holiness was for Him to walk that path through me. The question was how to let Him do that. I did not know how to surrender my life to Him, though there were times when I would verbally waive my white flag. My confessions of surrender could never quite translate into surrender in practice or actuality. I was stuck. Like Hudson Taylor, “All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how to get it out.”
But last weekend God revealed myself to me in a new way. When I prayed “Help me to see myself through my Lover’s eyes” a few weeks ago, I didn’t expect an answer to come so soon. But He is faithful. And He loves to reveal Himself to those seek after Him. “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.” (Jeremiah 29:13-14) For years Satan has enchained me in a lie about myself that has kept me viewing the fullness of Christ from afar at best, if at all.
I thought my true self, though I had accepted Christ into my life, was at its deepest core still a sinner. All the evidence seemed to point to it. Why else would I still be sinning once I trusted in Christ? Why else could there be bondage to sin in my life that I couldn’t overcome, even though in Christ I was supposed to be free from the slavery of sin? Even believers much farther along on their journey could not quite master sin. If Paul himself still had struggles--“For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who does it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” (Romans 7:19-20)—what hope had I? “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24)
But then, if Paul was stuck in sin, how can he tell us earlier that “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?…For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” (Romans 6:2, 6-7) So which is it, Paul? Are we free from sin or does it still live in us?
I have a section of my bookshelf where I stick books that I know God has something in them for me to discover, but I’ve either tried to read them and couldn’t understand them at the time or I know I’m not ready for them yet. God always directs me to them when He knows it is time for me to read them, when my heart is ready to receive what He has in them for me. Recently I was in Nashville, Tennessee for a business conference and I brought one such book entitled The Wink of Faith by Bill Volkman with me, hoping I would have some time to read part of it. It was a book that my mom had read and had told me it was life-changing for her a year or two back. I first tried to read it about five months ago but couldn’t understand it past the fifth chapter. God had not removed the scales from my eyes yet, so I stuck it back on my shelf until God knew my heart was ready. Last weekend, it was.
“The miracle of our new covenant union with Christ has brought about an actual change in our identity. Why is it that sinning should not be the norm for God’s people today? Because producing sin is totally incompatible with our essential nature. That person we used to be—our “old man”—was crucified, dead and buried with Christ. We are now actually alive to God. We are no longer “sin-producers” but “righteousness-producers.” To live in reality is to order our lives on the basis of this liberating fact; to live in fantasy is to assume we are still spiritual paupers destined to failure. No! We are members of His royal family, partakers of His very nature.” (David C. Needham)
Who am I? What is my essential nature, my true self at the core? “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20) The following portion is taken from The Wink of Faith, with the parts that God used specifically to remove my scales in bold:
But none of these writers adequately cleared up the eight “I’s” and “me’s” used in Galatians 2:20. What does it mean when it says, “I live, yet not I”? Am I responsible for my actions, or is Christ? Who is living my life through me—I or He?
Norman Grubb (the man who was God’s instrument in revealing all this to Bill Volkman, and the author of Rees Howells: Intercessor, the book that God used to change my life back in 11th grade) talked about Galatians 2:20 in terms of replacement and union, expressions which might not seem that different or significant (than “identification”, “positional truth”, “substituted life”, “exchanged life”, or “indwelling Christ”), but which were real eye-openers to me
Norman made it clear that the key to a liberated and fulfilling, productive life is recognition—recognition of who we are….How do you see yourself? As a fallen, independent being, separated from God—an “Independent I”? Or have you come to see your real self as a unique container and expresser of Deity—a “Unified I”? Our self-perception is extremely important, for the way we see ourselves dictates the way we act.
No wonder I had such a poor self-image. I had answered the question “Are you born again?”, but I had never answered the more fundamental question: “Do you know who you are?” I had not yet adequately nor correctly seen who I really was. The “real I” was more than the Bill Volkman I thought I saw when I looked in the mirror. Silenius’ words in Odes to Truth were true:
If you would seek to find yourself,
Look not in a mirror,
For there is but a shadow there,
A stranger…
But if a mirror does not reveal who we are, where are we to look? To our souls—the sum total of our human personalities? To our human spirits—that inner being that can somehow touch the divine? To the composite of our body, soul and human spirit?
No, my “real I” was something far different and far more than any of these. I finally found out that as a container and expresser of Deity, the “real I” was my human spirit in union with the Spirit of Christ. For too long I had been confusing the “real I” with an “illusory I”—primarily my soul feelings of separation and independence from God.
Now, how about the eight “I’s” and “me’s” of Galatians 2:20? What is Paul saying in this most important verse?
Using some of the foregoing expressions, I would paraphrase it something like this:
“’Independent I’ has been permanently crucified with Christ: nevertheless still I live, yet not I as a separated being, but the Spirit of Christ living in union with my spirit: and the life which the unified I now lives in the flesh it lives by His faith uniquely expressing Himself through my container”
The big breakthrough in my understanding came when I suddenly saw that the King James Version reads, “I live by the faith of the Son of God,” rather than, “I live by my faith in the Son of God,” as I had memorized it from the New American Standard Version. All along I had the impression that my spiritual success was related to my faith in Christ (which always seemed to be faltering!). Now I could relax. In my union with Christ I would live by His faith—His perfect faith was expressing itself through me!
Do you see the difference? As long as your perception of spiritual success is contingent on your personal performance as an independent self, sooner or later you will fall short of your personal goals and expectations. Once you see that Christ in You is more than a “positional” truth—that He, as a living Person, with the attributes of faith, hope and love, actually lives His life through you, as you—then rest and creative freedom is attainable. Finally I could relax and just be myself, because now I knew that the Real Me was He living in union with me. Because I could say with Paul, “I live, yet not I,” I was free to be my real self.
The “I live, yet not I” paradox is not only used in Galatians 2:20. In Romans 7:17 and 21 Paul makes the same emphasis. In these verses he makes an assertion which at first sounds ridiculous as well as heretical. He says that if he sins, it is not really he doing it, but sin that dwells in his flesh. He says, in effect, “I sin, yet not I.”
For years I never understood this “double-talk” of Romans Seven. Now it is wonderfully clear. The essential Paul, the inner Paul in union with Christ, had to be distinguished with the Paul that lived on the appearance level. God sees us as perfect in Christ, and that’s how we must ultimately see ourselves.
Indeed we are tempted, and as long as we live in our corruptible, fleshly bodies we may sometimes sin, but sin is no longer a ruling principle. Paul says that if he sins, it is because he is temporarily “drawn away” through his flesh by Satan. We are perfect in Christ, but in this world we still possess a mortal aspect—our flesh—which can slip into sin.
Happily for those of us who are born again, sin as a principle no longer has dominion over us. But what should be our response to those occasional slip-ups or sins of our flesh? We admit that the flesh is feeble and recognize our forgiveness in Christ, but we do not focus on the flesh. We do not try to improve it (its very nature is to wither away); rather, we live out of our essential person—our spirit joined to Christ’s—which knows no sin.
Though sins are still a possibility, by nature we are no longer sinners. On the contrary, “no one who is born of God sins” (1 John 5:18). In spite of all appearances, we heed Jesus’ warning: “Do not judge according to appearances, but judge with righteous judgment.” God has pronounced us perfect and sinless in Christ and that’s good enough for us. “Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar” (Romans 3:4).
Who am I, my true self at the core? My true self is my spirit united with Christ. And as such, every character trait, gift, talent, ability, fruit, blessing, etc. found in Christ is in my true self as well! As Hudson Taylor put it, “It is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Saviour, to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? or your head be well fed while your body starves?” Talk about a discovery that will change your life…wow!
In Christ:
~I am blessed with every spiritual blessing. (Ephesians 1:3)
~I am holy and blameless. (Ephesians 1:4)
~I have a spirit of power, love, and sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)
~I am healed by the stripes of Jesus. (1 Peter 2:24, Isaiah 53:5)
~I am delivered from the power of darkness. (Colossians 1:13)
~I am redeemed from the curse of the law. (1 Peter 1:18-19)
~I am sealed by God. (2 Corinthians 1:21-22)
~I am a new creation. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
~I am God’s child. (John 1:12, Galatians 3:26)
~I am clothed with Christ. (Galatians 3:27)
~I am forgiven and washed in His blood. (1 John 2:12 & 1:9, Ephesians 1:7, Hebrews 9:14, Colossians 1:14)
~I am a temple of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:19)
~I am a saint. (Romans 1:7, Philippians 1:1)
~I am the bride of Christ. (Revelation 19:7)
~I am the head and not the tail, I am above and not beneath. (Deuteronomy 28:13)
~I am dead to sin. (Romans 6:2&11, 1 Peter 2:24)
~I am God’s beloved. (Deuteronomy 33:12)
~I am more than a conqueror. (Romans 8:37)
~I am co-heir with Christ. (Romans 8:17)
~I am free from condemnation. (Romans 8:1)
~I am born of God and the evil one does not touch me. (1 John 5:18)
~I am God’s masterpiece. (Ephesians 2:10)
~I am an ambassador of Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:20)
~I am called by God to a holy life. (2 Timothy 1:9)
~I am the salt of the earth. (Matthew 5:13)
~I am the light of the world. (Matthew 5:14)
~I am God’s friend. (John 15:15)
~I am a member of Christ’s body. (1 Corinthians 12:27)
~I cannot be separated from God’s love. (Romans 8:38-39)
~I am a citizen of Heaven. (Philippians 3:20)
~I am a branch of the true vine. (John 15:1&5)
~I am one through whom Christ can do all things. (Philippians 4:13)
~I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 2:6)
~I am hidden with Christ. (Colossians 3:3)
~I am one spirit with Christ. (1 Corinthians 6:17)
~I am complete. (Colossians 2:10)
Since my true self is united with Christ, then my true self is every bit as: loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, free from jealousy, humble, forgiving, without pride, selfless, self-giving, forgetful of sins, truthful, compassionate, caring, protecting, trusting, hopeful, persevering, gracious, slow to anger, just, pure, solid, miraculous, permanent, sweet, fresh, vibrant, never weary, big, intimate, born of the heart, true, clean, electric, creative, excellent, passionate, respectful, graceful, fearless, Spirit-filled, gentle, dedicated, devoted, integrous, heroic, filled with love for the Father, and for other people, among countless other attributes, as Christ is!
Plumbing the depths of Christ is a journey for all eternity, but the more we discover He is, the more our minds can be renewed to realize we are in Him too. In discovering all this, we are never to forget that we are only the vessels and He is the treasure inside. “I live, yet not I.” But even as we remember that, we never forget that all is ours in Christ, and all is ours in Christ right now. Because the spiritual world is not bound by time or space, but exists outside of it (more on this as I discover it in a different post), then what is true of me in the future is true of me now, and has been true of me in the past as well, though I did not realize it then. On the flip side, what is not true of me in the future is not true of me now, and has been not true of me in the past as well. The eternal is truth, the temporal is not. And the truth is Christ in me, the hope of glory, the Word of God in its, His fullness.
Back to The Wink of Faith:
Since we who are born again of the Spirit have acknowledged the God of the fifth dimension (the spiritual dimension) in our conversion experience, why do we find it so hard to recognize the truth of the fifth dimension in the Eternal Now of our day-to-day life? In Galatians 3:3, Paul asks, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now perfected by the flesh?” Using phraseology comparable to what I’ve been using, Paul might have said, “Having begun by the inner, fifth-dimension Spirit, are you now waiting to see yourself perfected by the outer, fourth-dimension flesh?”
Most of us have learned from bitter experience that the fourth dimension (remember that “time” is the fourth dimension) is powerless to perfect us, but God has arranged a workable solution. As born-again new beings in Christ, we are meant to live and operate in the consciousness of a new dimension—the inner, fifth dimension of Spirit reality. We do not have to work toward perfection. We are perfect in Christ. We do not have to overcome or become anything. We only need to stand on our awareness of who we are in the Spirit dimension—One with Christ. Then, as this awareness takes us, we can say with Paul, “We walk by faith, not by sight,” irrespective of feelings and appearances to the contrary.
The key to a walk of faith that is not constantly derailed by day-to-day events is a fixed, settled consciousness of our union with Christ. We need to be firmly convinced of our incarnation by the Spirit of Christ. We must finally and forever see ourselves as perfect expressions and forms of God. Though such terminology sounds a bit heretical at first, upon examination we find that is quite biblical.
It was Jesus Himself who asked the Pharisees this question: “Is it not written in your law that ‘I say you are gods’? (John 10:34, as quoted from Psalm 82:6.) These words were spoken to unbelieving Jews who were about to stone Him for blasphemy—because “You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God” (v.33). Those men were denying the Incarnation, the truth that God was in the man Jesus. In response, Jesus asserted His union: “The Father is in Me, and I in the Father” (v.38).
But why did Jesus say that they were gods? Because all of us are gods! (notice the small “g”) All humans are incarnations of deity. Webster defines incarnation as “any person serving as the embodiment of a god or spirit.” Each of us individually, as a unique body person, is a container of deity. The Bible calls us vessels—vessels of honor or dishonor. Before conversion we were in union with the spirit of error; now we are in union with the Spirit of Truth. This is the replacement that happens at conversion.
The Pharisees were of their father, the devil; Jesus was indwelt by the Spirit of His heavenly Father. Both the Pharisees and Jesus were containers, and they manifested the Spirit they contained. Sins flowed from the Pharisees because they were in union with Satan, who is sin. The fruit of the Spirit flowed as rivers of living water from Jesus because He was in union with His Father, who is love.
The glory is that “as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). Just as Jesus experienced the mystery of the Incarnation, we too can know the mystery of a personal incarnation—Christ in us and we in Christ. Because we are indwelt by the Spirit of truth, we too are love expressions of God…
…We cannot expect to experience the fifth dimensional world of God with our fourth-dimensional, human faculties. No amount of human effort will take us to the fifth dimension; rather we must acknowledge our personal incarnation by the Spirit of Truth. When we fail to focus on fifth-dimensional spirit reality, we end up with all kinds of confusion, especially in our understanding of apparently conflicting Biblical truths. The Bible is replete with paradoxes—statements that are seemingly contradictory, yet true.
How can one explain the patently contradictory statements in Philippians 3:12,15, where Paul says, “Not that I…have already become perfect…Let us, therefore, as many as are perfect…” On the appearance level, as long as we are “looking at things as they are outwardly” (2 Corinthians 10:7), this is a baffling paradox. But from the faith perspective, the fifth dimension, we have no trouble in understanding how Paul could write of becoming perfect in one verse, and then stress being perfect a few verses later.
In Christ, I am perfect, lacking nothing. This is an eternal truth and, as such, is true right now. At the same time, my human, fourth dimension experience is far from perfect and I have no doubt of this. How to reconcile the two? The Bible speaks clearly of growth we are to experience in Christ in many, many places, but how is growth possible if we truly are perfect already in Christ?
That actually reminds me of another question I asked back on Feb. 6th: If Jesus lived a sinless life (Hebrews 4:15), then how is it possible that He still had areas of growth in His earthly life (Luke 2:52) and had to be “made perfect” (Hebrews 5:8-9)? Isn’t all growth away from sin and towards holiness? And doesn’t “perfect” = “without sin”? Apparently it does not, though I didn’t really understand how that could be at that time. (I was later to find out that “perfect” is actually = to “having reached its end, complete, finished.”)
I think I understand it now and it has been quite a revelation for me. As mentioned above, “we do not have to work toward perfection. We are perfect in Christ. We do not have to overcome or become anything.” Since Christ has already been “made perfect,” and He lives in us, through us, as us, and all the work has already been done by Christ, there is nothing left for us to do. There is no change we can make to become more perfect, nothing we can add to be more complete, and nothing Christ can change in us or add to us that He has not already done! But, then, if there is nothing we can do, what kind of growth is the Bible referring to when it calls us to “in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ”(Ephesians 4:15)? If we are already perfect in Christ, why does Paul say he has not already obtained all he desires to or has already become perfect, and he still chooses to “press on to take hold of that which Christ Jesus took hold of for me… I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.” (Philippians 3:12-13)
All growth is growth in awareness of who we are in Christ and learning to stand daily in that reality! Following the above Ephesians verse, Paul writes: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self (Independent “I”), which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self (Unified “I”, united with Christ), created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24) And following the above Philippians verses, Paul reminds us that all that he desires to live up to “we have already attained.” (Philippians 3:16) Our new self is fully equipped with all that Christ is to live as Christ lives, since it is He who lives through us. There is nothing more we could possibly attain that we have not already attained, but it takes transformation by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2) for us to discover all that we have already attained.
Did you get all that? I’m still discovering all this for the first time myself, but I’m trusting that He is making Himself clear through me. Let’s go back to The Wink of Faith:
One sign of the new birth experience is the unflagging efforts of Christians to deserve the salvation that was freely given them. Their new nature within is the motivation behind their fervent endeavors. Surely, we think, there is something we can do to show God our appreciation for His goodness to us. So we set out to be “ideal” Christians.
Since the world we live in is performance-oriented, the idea of spiritual growth and change is especially appealing. When we discover that our experience falls short of our position in Christ, it only seems natural and right to try harder...
…We find that it is quite impossible to imitate Jesus Christ. Though we have a new nature within, we are easily lured by our flesh, with its propensity towards self-reliance, to practice the very evil we hate.
And yet we know the Bible clearly teaches the importance of spiritual growth and change. Paul speaks again and again of the Christian’s growth and renewal:
Ephesians 4:13—Until we all attain to the unity of faith…to a mature man.
Ephesians 4:15—Grow up in all aspects into Christ.
Colossians 1:28—That we may present every man complete in Christ.
Philippians 1:6—He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it.
2 Corinthians 4:16—Our inner man is being renewed day by day.
Though Scripture certainly teaches growth and change, a close look at each of the growth/transformation/renewal verses shows that the real growth and change is not actually in us, as separated beings, but in our perspective of ourselves. Our recognition might change, our awareness or consciousness might change, our attitude and outlook might change, our acknowledgement might change, but we (the vessels) do not change.
In us—as independent, separated selves—dwells no good thing. In this sense, we cannot and do not “develop Christ-like qualities” in our lives. A vessel remains the same; only the contents change. Our only real change is our perspective of who we are in Christ. It’s not that I become more loving—it’s that I finally recognize that God is the Lover in me. I don’t develop more faith—“I live by the faith of the Son of God” already in me. As heirs we claim the inheritance which is already ours. The Treasure within us becomes to us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. (see 1 Corinthians 1:30)
Since the first issue of Union Life magazine (started by me in 1976), we have always used the following words on the front cover: “Dedicated to an expanded awareness of God’s mystery…which is Christ in you.” This is because words like “awareness” and “recognition” need to replace our human preoccupation with “performance” and “trying.”
My real growth and transformation has only been in the way I see myself—call it a changed perspective or focus. I won’t change by improving my performance; rather I am “transformed by the renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2). Renewal of the mind is a recognition, not an accomplishment. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). For Jesus, it took the form of a continuous consciousness of His Father within.
In renewing my mind, what happens when spiritual truth (5th Dimension) appears in conflict with physical reality (the other four dimensions)? When God tells me I am complete in Christ, but my eyes and experience can pick out fault after fault and broken places upon broken places in me, which one of us is correct? God is! As mentioned above, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” (Romans 3:4) If God says something is true of me, but it doesn’t appear to me or others that it is true of me, it is still true of me. There is not a promise He has made to me that He has not or will not fulfill. “Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. For we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain (the Holy of Holies), where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.” (Hebrews 6:17-20) It is impossible for God to lie! So when what He tells us is true differs from what our eyes tell is true, our eyes are wrong. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal…We live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 4:18, 5:7) Therefore, as I wrote above, what is true of me eternally is true of me now, and what is not true of me eternally is not true of me now. The eternal is true; the temporal is not, though it certainly appears true when our eyes are fixed only on what is seen. “But what of these bills I have to pay?” you may ask, “I’d love to believe that I don’t have to pay off my debt because it is not eternally true of me, but unfortunately, the truth is if I don’t pay them, my car will be repossessed. There’s your truth for you”
Good point, I suggest you pay those bills, as I do with mine. I also suggest you not wander into traffic just because the passing cars are not eternally true, unless you want to discover eternal truth without the encumbrance of the flesh that much sooner. But while the bills and bill collectors are certainly true enough in the physical world, they are not really true. How can this be?
More on that later, but first, to set the backdrop for the answer, a new voice chimes in on our identification with Christ: Paul E. Billheimer in his fascinating little book Destined for the Throne.
“In the mind of God every believer shares complete identity with Christ from the cross to the throne. According to the Word, we are crucified with Him, buried with Him, raised with Him, exalted with Him, and enthroned with Him (Romans 6 and Ephesians 2). How is this understandable? Consider the following:
The total cumulative sin of the world could not be laid upon Him independent of the sinner himself. There is no such thing as abstract sin, sin apart from the sinner. Not only was the sinner’s sin laid upon Him, but the person of the sinner as well. Therefore, when He went to the cross He carried the entire human race with Him. “We thus judge that if one died for all, then all were dead” (2 Cor. 5:14). “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20 NASV). “It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him” (2 Tim. 2:11). All mankind was identified with Him in death, but only those who believe are identified with Him in His resurrection and exaltation.
We are not surprised that He is exalted and enthroned in the heavens. What is difficult for us to comprehend is that we have been exalted with Him. Yet if “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17), it cannot be otherwise. We are not surprised that “all things have been put under His feet.” What we have failed to comprehend is that as part of Him, His Body, all things are also legally beneath our feet. What we do not realize is that He is “the head over all things to the church” (Eph. 1:22). This means that His headship over all things is assumed and held for the benefit of the Church and is directed toward His purpose for her. We have underestimated the supreme importance of the Church in God’s economy. She is the center and motive of all His activity from all eternity. He does nothing solely for His own sake. She is included as a full partner in all His plans. The church is His Body, the fullness of Him that fills all things everywhere. He is not full or complete without His church which is His Body. This is true only because of God’s voluntary self-limitation. In the absolute, God is wholly self-sufficient. He needs nothing and can be served by no one. Yet He has chosen voluntarily to limit Himself in order that the Church may become His judicial equal. It is true that the Body cannot function without the Head. It is just as true that the Head, by His own choice, cannot function without the Body. Both are equally important to the accomplishment of His plan.
The same truth is taught in the figure of the vine and the branches. While it is true that “the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine” (John 15:4), it is also true that the vine does not bear fruit without the branches on which the fruit appears. These are illustrations of God’s voluntary limiting of Himself so that He not only needs the Church, but, due to the nature of the divine economy, He cannot accomplish His chosen goal without her. Because of God’s free self-limitation, the Body is equally important as the Head for functioning, just as the branch is equally important as the vine for fruit bearing. His voluntary self-limitation is for the purpose of making room for the members of His “Bridehood” to realize their full potential as generic sons of God. His goal in His self-limitation is to inaugurate a process by which the members of His “Bridehood,” as judicial equals, may eternally approximate the character of the Son, thus implementing His plan to “bring many sons to glory,” to their highest potential as blood-brothers of the Eternal Son. He has taken us into His family as “His very own,” that is, as generated members of His household as distinguished from other orders of beings who are only created, not generated. Through the new birth we are the “next of kin.” We are organically a part of Christ. As a part of Him, when He conquered the forces of darkness and left them disarmed and paralyzed before He arose from the dead, we who believe were participants in that victory. When He snatched the keys of death and hell from Satan and burst forth from that nether abyss, we were sharers in that triumph. When He ascended up on high and took His seat in the heavenlies, we were exalted with Him. Because Satan and all the hosts of hell are beneath His feet, they are likewise under ours. When He defeated Satan it was our victory. He did not conquer Satan for Himself. The entire substitutionary work of Christ was for His Bride-elect, The Church. He became flesh and blood so that He could enter the conflict and overcome Satan as an unfallen human being for her benefit, not for His. Therefore, we are Satan’s masters. He can Lord it over us no more. His dominion over us ended at Calvary. Instead of his having power over us, we have been given authority over him. This is the meaning of our enthronement with Christ.
Billheimer introduces a new term--organic unity--which he illustrates earlier in the book with this example: “The members of a board of directors of a corporation have only functional relationship to one another. But an arm or hand or foot has an organic relationship to the body because each member draws its life from the life of the body. Just so, the born-again believer has an organic relationship to Christ because his source of life is in Him. The Church is not merely an institution ruled over by Christ as President, a kingdom in which He is the supreme authority, but an organism which is in vital connection with Him, having the source of its life in Him.” So the church is not only one with Him in spirit, we are organically united with Him, too. My real self was united with Christ when He overthrew Satan and “disarmed the powers and authorities”, making “a public spectacle of them” (Col. 2:15), my real self was united with Christ when He was exalted to the highest place in the universe and seated at the right hand of the Father (Eph. 2:6), and my real self is sitting there now!
But if all that is really true of me, and I actually have authority over Satan, and not the other way around, how come it’s so hard to exercise that authority? If I have already defeated him in Christ, how come he’s still fighting me? How could Jesus have won complete victory if Satan is still fighting? Why can’t I just proclaim my identity in Christ and be done with him?
One of our great difficulties, after we know who we are, (Billheimer continues,) is that under satanic pressure we so soon forget. For although Satan knows what Christ did to Him at Calvary and through the Resurrection, and realizes that as a part of Christ the believer is his master, he still carries on a guerilla warfare against the Church through the use of subterfuge, deception, and bluff. While guerilla warfare is illegal, it is still warfare and must be faced and overcome. God could put Satan completely away, but He has chosen to use him to give the Church “on-the-job” training in overcoming. Otherwise, there would be no more warfare of any kind. We are in the apprenticeship for our place with Christ on the throne following the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. The crown belongs to the conqueror—and without an adversary there could be no practice in overcoming. Thus, when God allows Satan to throw his black mantle over our spirits, we are in danger of forgetting who we are. We are like the man James tells us about, who looks at his face in a mirror, and looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like (James 1:23-24). Because we forget so easily that we have passed from Satan’s authority, we allow him to threaten and oppress us. We forget that we are actually a part of Christ and that Satan is subject to us. We unconsciously lapse into our old life of fear and defeat, seeing ourselves as we were and not as we are. We must constantly remind ourselves and affirm that we are in Christ—and because Satan cannot touch Christ, he cannot touch us. (Job 1:9-12 reveals that except by God’s permission Satan cannot touch us. He is entirely under God’s control. Only when divine love permits may Satan have access to God’s child. And the end result, for the tested believer, is always “twice as much” blessing as before (Job 42:10)) “No one who has become a part of God’s family makes a practice of sinning, for Christ, God’s Son, holds him securely, and the devil cannot get his hands on him” (1 John 5:18 LB). Satan wants the believer to forget that he is risen and exalted with Christ, that he is now, in his real person, that is, his spirit, united with Christ on the throne with all enemies under his feet. If he is held in bondage to demons of fear, sickness, disease, or limitation of any kind, it is only by ignorance of what Christ has done for him, or by forgetting who he is.
We need constantly to remind ourselves of our identity by affirming: “Because I am a part of Christ, ‘accepted in the Beloved,’ I hold the same place in the Father’s bosom as He does. Because I am a part of Christ, the Father loves me as much as He loves Christ (John 17:23,26). Because I am a part of Christ, I have His wisdom—because He is made wisdom to me (1 Cor. 1:30). Likewise I have His righteousness. My righteousness is as good as His in the eyes of the Father because it is His righteousness. Because I am organically a part of Him, because Head and Body are one unit, all that Christ is and has is accredited to me.”
It is the Father’s purpose to make all the sons as nearly equal with the son as it is possible for the finite to be like the Infinite. This equality is to be first in character and then in privilege and power. It is to be not only legal and theoretical, but in essential reality. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. And so we should not be like fearful, cringing slaves, but we should behave like God’s very own children…And since we are His children, we will share His treasures—for all God gives to His Son Jesus is ours now too. But if we are to share His glory, we must also share His suffering” (Romans 8:14,17 LB).
There are no spiritual defeats to a person living out of their true identity in Christ. None. It is only in forgetting who we are that we will ever be in a losing battle with Satan. As we discover our true identity in Christ and learn to live out of that identity, (as Leanne Payne puts it, “our true center”) we discover we cannot possibly have anything but victory, even though Satan does his utmost to convince us otherwise, and to get us to accept the defeat our fourth dimensional senses may even tell us has already happened. This is the meaning behind the quote from Praying Hyde I posted a few posts ago, “Then Hyde showed us that if united to Christ we too can shout triumphantly, even when everything points to despair. Though our work may appear to have failed, and the enemy to have gained the ascendancy, and we are blamed by all our friends and all our fellow-workers, even then we can take our stand with Christ on the cross and shout out, ‘Victory, victory, victory!’ From that day I have never been in despair about our work. Whenever I feel despondent, I think I hear Hyde’s voice shouting ‘Victory!’ and that immediately takes my thoughts to Calvary, and I hear my Saviour in His dying hour, crying out with joy, ‘IT IS FINISHED.’ As Hyde said, ‘this is real victory,’ to shout triumphantly though all around is darkness.” This is what it means to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen,” (2 Corinthians 4:18) to “live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)
There is still a battle, because God wants us to discover the authority we have in Christ, but the outcome is sure and our reward is beyond all proportion. “’Well done, My good and faithful servant!’ His master replied, ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’” (Luke 19:17) And who can measure the value of a soul added to the kingdom? The victory is sure—if we don’t give up battling before it is implemented. Notice in Daniel chapter ten, Daniel’s prayer was answered the day it was offered (v.12), but the answer did not reach earth until three weeks later, due to a battle raging in the spiritual realms. Likewise our prayers in Christ are answered as soon as they are offered, but we do not always stand firm in them until we see the answers through. As I heard somewhere recently, “we are to pray until something happens,” until His answer is evident.
A couple stories to that effect, the first from Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, about his wife’s depression:
Stasi lived under a cloud of depression for many years. We had seen her find some healing through counseling, but still the depression remained. We had addressed the physical aspects that we could through medication, yet it lingered still. Okay, I thought to myself, the Bible tells me that we have a body, a soul, and a spirit. We’ve addressed the body and soul issues…what’s left must be spiritual. Stasi and I began to read a bit on dealing with the Enemy. In the course of our study she came across a passage that referred to symptoms that sometimes accompany oppression; one of them was dizziness. As she read the passage out loud she sounded surprised. “What about it?” I asked. “Well…I get dizzy spells a lot.” “Really? How often?” “Oh, every day.” “Every day??!!” I had been married to Stasi for ten years and she had never mentioned this to me. The poor woman had simply thought they were normal for everyone since they were normal for her.
“Stasi, I have never had a dizzy spell in my life. I think we’re on to something here.” We began to pray against the dizziness, taking authority over any attack in the name of Jesus. You know what happened? It got worse! The Enemy, once discovered, usually doesn’t just roll over and go away without a fight. Notice that sometimes Jesus rebukes a foul spirit “in a stern voice” (see Luke 4:35). In fact, when He encounters the guy who lives out in the Gerasenes tombs, tormented by a legion of spirits, the first rebuke by Jesus doesn’t work. He has to get more information, really take them on (Luke 8:26-33). Now if Jesus had to get tough with these guys, don’t you suppose we’ll have to as well? Stasi and I held our ground, resisting the onslaught “firm in the faith,” as Peter says, and you know what? The dizzy spells ended. They are history. She hasn’t had one for seven years.
That is the next level of our Enemy’s strategy. When we begin to question him, to resist his lies, to see his hand in the “ordinary trials” of our lives, then he steps up the attack, he turns to intimidation and fear. In fact, at some point in the last several pages you’ve probably begun to feel something like Do I really want to get into all this super-spiritual hocus-pocus? It’s kind of creepy anyway. Satan will try to get you to agree with intimidation because he fears you. You are a huge threat to him. He doesn’t want you waking up and fighting back because when you do he loses. “Resist the devil,” James says, “and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). So he’s going to try to keep you from making a stand. He moves from subtle seduction to open assault. The thoughts come crashing in, all sorts of stuff begins to fall apart in your life, your faith seems paper thin.
Why do so many pastors’ kids go off the deep end? You think that’s a coincidence? So many churches start off with life and vitality only to end in a split, or simply wither away and die. How come? Why did a friend of mine nearly black out when she tried to share her testimony at a meeting? Why are my flights so often thwarted when I’m trying to take the gospel to a city? Why does everything seem to fall apart at work when you’re making some advances at home, or vice versa? Because we are at war and the Evil One is trying an old tactic—strike first and maybe the opposition will turn tail and run. He can’t win, you know. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Today John Eldredge and his wife Stasi have a wonderful ministry that has helped millions of people find their true selves again. Through them God has freed many people from the lies that Satan had bound them in and Satan tried to prevent it all by intimidating them with power he didn’t really have. Thank God they didn’t let him continue to bluff them. Thank God that through that experience they discovered spiritual authority and have been able to teach so many others how to fight Satan.
The second story is from Leanne Payne’s book The Healing Presence, and it’s her personal experience of how she discovered spiritual authority.
[After months of Satanic oppression], I then cried out to God, “Take it away, Lord. Send this filthy, horrible thing away.” But the Lord said, “No, you do it.”
It was then that I learned spiritual authority. Centered in God and He in me, I took authority over the evil spirit when it manifested itself and commanded it to leave. After several months of this, a concentrated training in moving from the center where Christ dwells, I was utterly free of this harassment. In the line of duty, I’ve been oppressed in different ways since that time, but the Evil One knows better now than to try to bluff me in this way. He is much more subtle in his attacks now.
As stated in an earlier chapter, there is an illusory nature to evil. Satan hopes to deceive us. He was at the time seriously bluffing me, and I was terribly afraid and intimidated. Many people, including Christians, lose this battle and are robbed of their minds and all spiritual progress (the exciting and demanding life in Christ) simply because they do not understand the spiritual realm and the provision fully made for us in the Victor. When the forces of evil come against us in this way, they have only the power we grant them, which we do through failing to understand the authority the believer has to rout and send them away.
If, in either one of these stories, they had given up the battle before the deliverance came because it “didn’t work,” where would they be now? Stasi’s depression would probably be even more hopeless than before and Leanne might have been placed in a mental facility. And if God had simply delivered them from their state without teaching them spiritual authority through a battle, they could not have been used to show countless other people how to have spiritual authority in Christ. The battles were necessary to train them for the ministry He would eventually call them to. If the battles had been bypassed or aborted the Eldredges and Leanne could not and would not have been used so greatly in God’s service. It is the same with us—we cannot be used by God as an instrument for setting captives free until we are firmly fixed in acknowledging our freedom and identity in Christ, a confidence that only comes through being tested in the fire. As I quoted from Volkman earlier, “The key to a walk of faith that is not constantly derailed by day-to-day events is a fixed, settled consciousness of our union with Christ.”
But most of us have never really been free ourselves; much less have been able to call others to freedom. We have never really won the battle for ourselves, over our own sins, to say nothing of going into battle effectively for other people. How can I help somebody else defeat something I have never defeated? How can I tell others of a freedom available in Christ that I myself am not partaking in? Praying Hyde faced this question early in his days as a missionary:
“On one of the first few days spent in India, while I was staying with another missionary, a brother of some experience, I went out with him to an open-air service. The missionary spoke, and I was told that he was speaking about Jesus Christ as the real Saviour from sin. When he had finished his address, a respectable-looking man, speaking good English, asked the missionary whether he himself had been thus saved. The question went home to my heart; for if the question had been asked me, I would have had to confess that Christ had not fully saved me, because I knew that there was a sin in my life which had not been taken away. I realized what a dishonour it would be on the Name of Christ to have to confess I was preaching a Christ that had not delivered me from sin, though I would be proclaiming to others that He was a perfect Saviour.
I went back to my room and shut myself in, and told the Lord it must be one of two things: either He must give me victory over all my sins, and especially over the sin that so easily beset me, or I must return to America, and seek there for some other work. I said I could not stand up to preach the Gospel until I could testify of its power in my own life. I was there for some time, facing the question, realizing how reasonable it was, until the Lord assured me that He was able and willing to deliver me from all sin, that He had planned work for me in India. He did deliver me, and I have not had a doubt of this since. I can now stand up without hesitation to testify that He has given me victory, and I love to witness to this and to tell all of the wonderful faithfulness of Christ my Lord, my Saviour.”
So we need to be free from our sins own before we can truly preach Christ as the Savior from all sins to the world. This sounds impossible, but remember, it has already happened! We already are free from our sins, our minds are just so accustomed to living in them for so long that our minds have to be renewed, retrained to think differently about ourselves. How do we renew them? Well, I actually posted my notes from the first two tapes of a series of sermons by my pastor on renewing the mind back on March 25th and March 31st, and I think I’ll try to type up some more notes from the same series in future posts, but for now I think I’ll just start with a couple of verses for you to consider.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think on such things.” (Philippians 4:8)
Our mind is to be fixed on eternal realities, all that which is good and lasting, rather than the temporary and often illusionary fourth dimensional “realities.” Volkman explains:
As long as we are deceived into thinking that we are still under Satan’s control, we will experience a frustrating struggle and periodic defeat on the separated-self level.
The Concordant Literal New Testament states it clearly: “Now if what I am not willing, this I am doing, it is no longer I who am effecting it, but Sin which is making its home in me” (Romans 7:20). As Christians, our hearts are for God (we “joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,” v.22), but the father of sin, Satan himself, deceives us into assuming that he still has a claim on us. When we finally recognize that Christ alone is our life, and that we are absolutely dead to the law and its demands, we will find that we no longer serve the law of sin in our flesh…
…But what about feelings and appearances? What about the flesh, sin, law, Satan, sickness, death and the world? Are they reality, or mere illusion (as some Christian Scientists and other mystics label them)?
My daughter Val and I are magic buffs. We love to watch Bill Bixby, Doug Henning and other magicians on television, as well as go together to live magic shows. We often look at each other in disbelief at the magician’s skills in the art of illusion. Most professionals are careful to call their tricks “illusions.” The tricks may look impossible and hundreds of spectators may be oohing and aahing, but we all know that the pretty, young assistant is not being sawn in half.
The flesh, sin, law, Satan, death and the world are all “look-alikes.” No matter how many people agree that these things are real, their actual effect on us as spirit persons is illusory and temporary. Sin and Satan might seem very real as they touch our soul life of feelings and appearances, but they cannot touch our real selves—our inner beings in union with Christ.
Is darkness real? It is and it isn’t. Turn on the light and darkness cannot exist. Darkness has no substance; it is the absence of light. In the same way sin, flesh, law, Satan, sickness, death and the world are here, but are not. Just as light swallows up darkness, so “The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” sets us “free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2) as well as the flesh, Satan and the world.
We know that if we walk in the Spirit, all these things are swallowed up by the Spirit, and can properly be called illusory. But because we do not always feel that we are in the Spirit, we still put ourselves under the law and so experience condemnation. At this point we must deny the illusions of our feelings.
God said: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Romans 8:9). Does the Spirit of God dwell in you on a continuing basis? Then you are in the Spirit on a continuing basis, irrespective of what you feel and see. The magician speaks the truth when he says his tricks are illusions, even though members of the audience think they are real.
The Old Testament prophet Elisha taught his servant the importance of distinguishing eternal reality from temporal illusions. Because the King of Syria saw Elisha’s prophetic powers as a threat to his military dreams, the King decided to capture Elisha. So his superior army surrounded the city of Dothan where Elisha was living.
Elisha’s servant was understandably distressed when he reported to Elisha that enemy horses and chariots had circled the city. But the prophet’s calm answer was, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 Kings 6:16). At that point I doubt Elisha, with his physical eyes, saw anything different from what his servant saw. But Elisha saw something with his spiritual eye of faith that no one else saw. He then prayed that the servant’s eyes might be opened to see what Elisha was already “seeing” in the unseen world of eternal reality.
“And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of firs all around Elisha” (v.17). Imagine the surprise of Elisha’s servant when he had that revelation of the true reality of the situation! Elisha, who had an eternal perspective of God’s protective hand, then spoke the word of faith; “Strike the people [the enemy] with blindness.” The battle was over before it began, because Elisha saw by the permanent reality of the unseen rather than by the temporal illusion of appearances.
Basic to a changed perspective of life is a proper understanding of the difference between reality and illusion. Reality is unity. Illusion is separation. Reality is the composite of all God’s pronouncements as to our Oneness with Christ. Illusion is all that we see and feel and believe in our soul which differs from God’s eternal pronouncements. It is imperative to acknowledge as reality all that God says is our inheritance in Christ. We must learn to deny as illusion all that we subjectively experience, if it is at variance with His pronouncements.
Even if we and everyone else “feel” or “see” or “experience” something, we must say it is an illusion and a lie if it contradicts any of God’s inner revelation to us. If there is a seeming contradiction between reality-God and sense-man, we have no alternative but to conclude that God is right and man is wrong—or at least that man is seeing things temporarily.
At first this strikes us as unfair or unreasonable, but Hebrews 6:18 sheds some interesting light: “It is impossible for God to lie.” Even though God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, we find that because of His nature He has an inherent limitation—He cannot lie. Therefore, no matter what our senses tell us, or how many agree with us, if the manifestation—what we see or experience—varies from God’s inner word to us, you can be sure it is best to believe His word and recognize the manifestation as temporary illusion.
Whenever we discuss the difference between reality and illusion, questions always arise about the seeming reality of illusion, questions run like this: “Are you saying that the imminent repossession of my car is an illusion?”; Are you saying that my headache doesn’t hurt?”; “Are you saying that the affair that my spouse is having is not real?”
These sorts of situations are certainly real enough on the level of our physical senses in this temporal world. But the good news is that we don’t have to operate on this level! We were not saved merely from some future hell; we were saved from having to center our existence in this fragile, problem-filled world. Of course, as long as we continue in the flesh, we must face into plenty of mundane matters, but we can operate on a higher, eternal level, where all the “problems” are seen as God’s perfect process.
Try to imagine a higher dimension in which time and space no longer exists, where all is one in God, and where the flesh, sin, law, Satan, death and the world are all distortions. That is Eternal Reality, where our spirits, united with Christ, now reside. That is our inheritance right now if we are only aware of our union with the Spirit of Christ.
Yes, we still have to deal with worldly matters, but we no longer need to agonize over them, for at center we dwell in the Spirit. So if our spouse is having an affair, we may wish to take some action and we are likely to feel initially upset, but we can wink in faith, knowing that this too is part of God’s perfect working.
If your car is scheduled to be repossessed by the loan company because of a substantial delinquency in your payments, that is certainly a reality in the physical world. But it is still an illusion on the level of Eternity. God has said, “Having nothing, yet possessing all things” (2 Cor. 6:10); “My God shall supply all your needs according to the riches in His glory” (Phil. 4:19); and “All things belong to you” (1 Cor. 3:21). We must see through this world’s appearances to the higher reality of God’s pronouncements. Even if the repossession materializes, we respond like those Christians about whom the writer of Hebrews said, “You…accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing [inwardly] that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34). All our battles, limitations and needs are temporal illusions based on a two-power focus, not true reality.
Houdini, the master of illusion of yesteryear, boasted that he could get out of any jail in one hour. He accepted a challenge by some men in England who had just completed a supposedly escape-proof jail. Houdini’s only stipulations were that he could wear his regular street clothes, and that no one could watch him while he tried to escape.
Once inside, he removed a steel wire that he had concealed in his belt, and used it to try to trip the tumblers in the main lock. But for ninety minutes he was unsuccessful. Finally, in frustration and semi-exhaustion, he leaned against the jail door. It slowly swung out with just the dead weight of his body. The men had fooled him by not even locking the door! He had been locked in the jail only by his own negative belief, not by the reality of the facts. The master of illusion had been defeated by his own mental illusion.
Suffering is all too real at the level of our senses. Our emotional responses to all human suffering—be it pain, loss, separation, or limitation—are valid, and need not be suppressed. These responses are God’s way to remind us that we are earthen vessels with His treasure in our inner being. At that inner level we can rejoice in faith, even though we are hurting and crying on the outside. But as we operate at this faith level, we recognize the outer appearances as illusion, for they have no effect on our true inner selves in union with Christ.
As persons of faith who know who we are, we can label temporal realities as illusions, and embrace the unseen as true reality. To us, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1).
All my life I’ve been imprisoned by the belief that even though I am a Christian and have accepted Jesus into my heart and His Spirit into my life, I still am by nature a sinner. Though my spirit came alive in Christ and with Christ the moment I partook of the kingdom of heaven, my mind never understood this and continued in its former patterns. I still believed I was and felt like an “Independent I” so I acted like one, even though I was now a “Unified I.” My mind had been given bad information, but it was unfortunately working wonderfully well with that information, so well that it believed and operated on the information it was given, causing me to have fears, weaknesses, frustrations, angers, bitterness, apathy, pain, etc. that I no longer had any need for. In Christ I was (and am) truly free from all those things, but I never knew that so I continued in them. I did what I could not do because I never believed I could not do it, and I rarely or never did what God has given me the power to do because I rarely or never believed I could do it. My negative beliefs about my essential nature had imprisoned me in a prison of sin and death that I, as a part of Christ’s Body, had witnessed the destruction of at Calvary. No more! In the past month as I have been discovering more and more of the depths of the riches of my inheritance on Christ, my life has certainly been changing.
A friend asked me recently about all this, “When theory hits reality of a sinful world, what happens?” To this I can only offer my experience and testimony thus far in learning to live out of my true center and what has ensued, and to question her view of what is really reality. Yes, the world is sinful, but she no longer belongs to that world! (John 15:19) She lives in it, true, but she is no longer of it. “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules?” (Colossians 2:20) She died to that “reality” and now belongs to Christ and Christ’s reality alone. “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature…You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.” (Colossians 3:1-5,7) Whatever belongs to her earthly nature, her flesh, is to be put to death since they are no longer part of her life. Her life is now hidden with Christ and He is her life. And how is her old self, her earthly nature put to death? It already has been! But some of the traits that belong to it still remain, even though it itself is no more. “Since you have taken off your old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (Colossians 3:9-10) So allow your mind to be renewed, my friend, in the image of its Creator!
As for me, I am not finding it easy by any means this past month to retrain my mind to think differently after twenty years of faulty thinking, but I am definitely making progress. Already I have discovered power to live differently than before in areas of years of “stuck-ness.” Since that power is not of my own effort, but comes solely from Him who will never leave me, I have no reason to believe I will ever be stuck in those areas again. I may momentarily forget that I am free from them and dabble in them again, but I need never be stuck in them again. “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36) I also experienced when I first began to discover the truth of my identification with Christ something very hard to describe. Something deep inside of me felt a sinking, like I was exhaling after twenty years of inhaling, and I discovered what it’s really like to rest in Christ, rather than striving to rest in Him, the very act of which makes true rest impossible. Rest in Christ is not something you can ever receive by striving after. It felt like my body discovered an entirely new gear and downshifted to it. My mom told me she experienced a similar feeling when she discovered that Christ really lives in her and through her, that His presence is nothing abstract and remote but very real and immanent. And once discovered, if my body ever slips from that gear and revs up its own efforts, I know where the gear is found and can choose to return to it as soon as I discover I’m living in my own efforts again. To be sure, I have slipped from it more often than not since its discovery, but the more I practice the easier it will become until I am completely accustomed to it and would be surprised if I ever found myself off it. This is what Hudson Taylor meant when he said, “We should never be conscious of not abiding in Christ." It is the gear Christ lives through me on.
My prayer for you all in this is the same as it was in the beginning: that Christ would reveal to you the hidden gear of resting in Him in which holiness alone is found. I am praying with Paul
“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in this present age but also in the age to come. And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.” (Ephesians 1:17-23)
Father, thank You for everything You have done for me and are doing in me. Thank You for the finished work of Christ on the cross, that You left nothing undone that could be done and nothing missing that I might need. Thank You for taking my sins and self upon the cross with You and dying for them. Thank You that You could not remain in the grave but burst forth from it and brought me with You, seating me with Yourself on the throne of the universe. Thank You that my life is now hidden in You, that You are my life, that my old nature no longer has any right to my life since it never left the grave with Us. It remains there to this day. Thank You for Your victory over the evil one, that he no longer can touch me and has no more rights to my life. Thank You for being so faithful to me even in my blindness to Your truth. You knew all along that one day I would see, and when that day came You did not fail to reveal Yourself to me, to open my eyes to the fullness of your Word, Christ in me. Now that I can see, let me be an instrument in Your hands to open other blind eyes to the reality of Your presence inside them. I pray for and thank You for all the good You have planned to do and will do with all this writing You have been doing through me. I pray that as much of it as is from You would not return empty, but would go forth and bless Your people in every way. Keep me aware of and protected from the enemy’s attacks. Guide me as I grow in awareness of the authority You have given me over the illusions the enemy attempts to blind me and my brothers and sisters with. Keep my eyes fixed on You and You alone. Thank You for Your immeasurable love for me.
I love You,
In the Name of Jesus, the Name above every other name, at Whose Name every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
Amen
“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)
This has taken me almost a month to write up and has grown from my initial thought of 5-8 pages to over 22 on my word processor! God kept revealing new things to me that I felt I had to write about, so it grew longer and longer and longer…I know it’s an awful lot to read for many of you, but I believe it’s worth it. Please take some time to think and pray on it and listen to God for anything He may be speaking to you on in it. Feel free to print it out and read through it a few more times, highlighting or taking notes or whatever method of studying you prefer. When you have some thoughts, please leave me a comment, even if it’s just telling me you’ve read it and considered it. I’m going to try to leave this up as my foremost post for a while so people don’t miss it, but even if I have more recent posts up, please continue to leave comments on this one. I’ll be sure to find them.
If you have taken the time to read all of this, I pray He reveals to you what you are searching for as He has for me. To quote Hudson Taylor again, “The Holy Spirit never creates hungerings and thirstings after righteousness, but in order that Christ may fill the longing soul.”
Ever Beloved,
Joe
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