By Norman P. Grubb
What about you? You are Christ. You find your liberty, when you know that. You have suffering and tension, but you know your liberty and you know you are Christ in you, which gives you an opportunity to love, etc. So, you are now transmitting liberty. We don’t do it very much, we don’t know what it even means with the material creation. We are the agency by which the whole world is going to come into glorious liberty, but we are involved in the suffering. So, we accept that as the necessary part of our way of life. In a sense, even our faith ahs a suffering life. We can’t prove it. We live by faith. You can’t prove your faith, except by the changes made in you. You can’t prove God is a Spirit except by an inner spirit consciousness. So, there is a certain element of suffering even in our faith. It is built on a big question mark. We live in the consciousness. All life has an element of suffering and a question with this glorious liberty of the children of God. Part of that Paul says, is your body. Paul doesn’t speak about everybody being healed.
Now you have moved into an area where you are not free yet. You are not free in your body because your body binds you. And, so he says here we groan with the world. We know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together now. Not only they, but we have the first fruits of the Spirit—but not completely. It is wonderful enough, but it is only first-fruits. We groan with ourselves, waiting for the adoption, which is the redemption of our body. It said, “By hope” but hope which is seen is not hope. “What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” So, there is an area in which you are saved ‘in hope’ and not ‘by faith.’ Faith means that you have. Hope means you haven’t yet got it. So, the Bible says, “Don’t kid yourself, be balanced.” And, your body is part of that. You do not get total redemption of your body. You may get some temporary healing, but we are in a corrupt body which dies. So Paul is a very balanced person. So the whole point though is to be able to be in with God in any situation and to magnify God in any situation. There are some questions we can answer and some we cannot wholly answer. So, we have infirmities, not sins. We don’t know what we should pray for as we ought. Now, as a whole I don’t think there is very practical praying. Many of us know a good deal about operating faith. We do a lot of it and it operates. There are some areas we don’t know what to pray for, what the ultimate is going to come and how the world is going to come through, etc.
So, in those areas the Spirit in us shares His groaning with us and makes intercession and God has those groaning and we are able to get the total answer there. But, we are settled in the point “that all things work together for good to them that love God and all called according to His purpose.” So, that becomes, at least on a temporary condition, our answer to the groaning. We learn this principle of seeing God is His goodness through all evil—all things working together for good.
Then we are finally established in who we are, how we should regard ourselves, where we can be free to be ourselves. Paul says, that we are pre-destined to be conformed to His image. So, we are on that way in His perfection, forms which will be exactly like HIM. In the ultimate sense, we shall be this, when “we shall see Him as He is.” That is in 1 Jn. 3:2. He has foreknown us. He has predestined us here to be conformed to that image, that He might be the first born among many brethren. This is where faith comes in. “Whom He has predestined He calls, whom He calls He justifies, whom He justifies He glorifies.” This is why we see people as perfect. We see each other perfect in Christ—now. There are elements in which this is being fulfilled but we see it as such. Verse 30, “whom He has justified He has already glorified.” Then Paul says you are stable there. “If God be for you, who can be against you?” He has prepared you and gives you all things that are necessary. Who can condemn you? If God justifies you, who can bring a charge against you? No one. We don’t take it from other people. We don’t take condemnation. God doesn’t condemn. We are in God’s peace and light. You don’t take charge. You are doing what God means you to do. You are free. You have all resources at your disposal. He has given you The Son. He has given you all things with Him freely. Finally, Paul says, you are in an inseparable condition. He says that neither things human nor super-human could ever divide you. Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.
Then Paul says you will suffer all day long being killed for His sake, like lambs led to a slaughter. But, you are more than conquerors. This is the combination between joy and suffering. We go through tensions, all kinds of things, but you are on top of them. And, you are so on top of them that you are helping somebody else. “More than conquerors” means you conquered them and you have something to give other people. So, you are right in the middle o...f this thing where nothing can separate you, but you are in an area where all these kinds of pressures happen to you. And, then Paul says, nothing eternal, nothing temporal, nothing can separate you, “Neither death, life, angels, things present, things to come, height, depth, nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In other chapters, Paul will tell us the kind of person we are, how to live our life outwardly. It is based on how we live it inwardly. It is based on a positive consciousness of union, of replacement, of freedom. No, we are not taking what man says, not what the Law says. We are guided and led people. We are positively established that nothing can separate us.
Yet, at the same time we are involved in the world in situations where we have different kinds of sufferings because now we have learned the process by which sufferings can be something through which God is coming. Paul doesn’t discuss that here. In other words, we learn how to see the suffering areas as stimulants to faith. God puts us there because He is coming through certain ways of deliverance.
So, I am a free person because I have what it takes to be myself and as I am understanding that I am in this union relationship by which He is expressing His self by myself. I act freely because it is He. A man or woman competent in their profession act freely because they know their stuff. They don’t have to consult; they just do it because it is part of them to do it. They have learned now to do it the right way, so they do it the right way. So, th...eir competency and themselves have become one thing. They function as competent this or competent that. Therefore, we boldly function as Deity in expression as Jesus Christ, Father, Son and Spirit because we have this basis of competency. We do not keep saying, “I’m competent, I’m competent.” I forget who I am and be it.
Yet, at the same time we are involved in the world in situations where we have different kinds of sufferings because now we have learned the process by which sufferings can be something through which God is coming. Paul doesn’t discuss that here. In other words, we learn how to see the suffering areas as stimulants to faith. God puts us there because He is coming through certain ways of deliverance.
So, I am a free person because I have what it takes to be myself and as I am understanding that I am in this union relationship by which He is expressing His self by myself. I act freely because it is He. A man or woman competent in their profession act freely because they know their stuff. They don’t have to consult; they just do it because it is part of them to do it. They have learned now to do it the right way, so they do it the right way. So, th...eir competency and themselves have become one thing. They function as competent this or competent that. Therefore, we boldly function as Deity in expression as Jesus Christ, Father, Son and Spirit because we have this basis of competency. We do not keep saying, “I’m competent, I’m competent.” I forget who I am and be it.
So we have come back to this remarkable life in which we are just ourselves and we are our free selves. We think our thoughts, make our decisions, follow our motives and act as persons. Yet, we live an inward secret consciousness, which is called the “mystery of Christ.” But, it isn’t really we; it is He. So, it does have the outer effect of us appearing egotistical. As I always say using that term, there is no bigger egotist recorded in History than Jesus Christ. No one used a bigger “I” than He. “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the door, I am the good shepherd, I am,” all the way through. But of course, when He opened up as to Who He was, He was always anything but Himself. “I have the Father dwelling in me. And when I am speaking the words, it is He speaking them through Me; when I am doing deeds, it is He doing them through me.” His hidden secret is the hidden mystery. Paul says in Colossians, “Our life is hid in Christ in God and Christ is our life.” That is our hidden secret that we operate as if we were just ourselves.
There are those who are bound to hold us in judgment. They are bound to say that we are proud, or self-sufficient, or holier-than-thou or whatever you like. They can’t help it, because we act freely as who we are and if necessary say so. They never understand the possibility of a human claiming to be an expression of deity. To them it is blasphemy or absurdity or conceit. That is part of the stigma we have to take and glory in the taking. We know that truth always bears its own witness. And, it is actually bearing its witness in those who oppose us.
Just as Paul saw in Stephen’s death when instead of being concerned with his being stoned to death, he was crying unto God, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” And, Paul was responsible for that stoning. He saw a quality, a reality of truth which met his inner being. Because our inner being comes from God and our inner being is to be for others, not for ourselves. Paul saw the contrast between him and his proud defense of his own religion, for his own reputation’s sake, compared to Stephen who was concerned about the needs of his persecutors.
There are those who are bound to hold us in judgment. They are bound to say that we are proud, or self-sufficient, or holier-than-thou or whatever you like. They can’t help it, because we act freely as who we are and if necessary say so. They never understand the possibility of a human claiming to be an expression of deity. To them it is blasphemy or absurdity or conceit. That is part of the stigma we have to take and glory in the taking. We know that truth always bears its own witness. And, it is actually bearing its witness in those who oppose us.
Just as Paul saw in Stephen’s death when instead of being concerned with his being stoned to death, he was crying unto God, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” And, Paul was responsible for that stoning. He saw a quality, a reality of truth which met his inner being. Because our inner being comes from God and our inner being is to be for others, not for ourselves. Paul saw the contrast between him and his proud defense of his own religion, for his own reputation’s sake, compared to Stephen who was concerned about the needs of his persecutors.
No comments:
Post a Comment