Tag: sin

To experience God today, we need to realize the Holy Spirit is leading us forward today. The Holy Spirit is establishing the Kingdom of God on this earth. It is a flowing river coming out from the throne. The current of the Holy Spirit is the one leading us onward today. God was placed in front of the children of Israel in the Ark of the Covenant leading His people to cross the Jordan and to defeat Jericho. “At the end of three days the officers went through the camp and commanded the people, ‘As soon as you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place and follow it. Yet there shall be a distance between you and it, about 2000 cubits in length. Do not come near it, in order that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.’” (Jos. 3:2-4). The Lord as the Holy Spirit leads us today. In defeating Jericho, the ark led the way in circling the city once for 6 days, then 7 times on the 7^th day. No longer were the children of Israel complaining as they did when they came out of Egypt. In fact, not a word came out of their mouth. “But Joshua commanded the people, ‘You shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth, until the day I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout.’” (Jos. 6:10) The children of Israel, transformed now by eating only manna, were to remain silent, with no expression of their flesh, no complains of why they were doing what they were doing, until they were to shout in unison, and the walls of the stronghold of Jericho fell down. “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” (Acts 2:4) The 120 in the upper room in Acts no longer spoke from themselves, but with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. This is the Holy Spirit today, leading the church onward so we are one in the current of the Holy Spirit.

When the body follows the Spirit, there is only one flow for it is only the one mind of Christ that is expressed in the body. “…But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor. 2:16) “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Php. 2:5) That is how God accomplishes His purpose so all things become headed up in Christ. “Making known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself. Unto the economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him.” (Eph. 2:20-22)

When Christ heads up all things in us, realize it is the Holy Spirit that is transmitting all the elements of Christ into us. The term “Holy Spirit” is used only in reference to the Spirit after Jesus resurrected. Before the Spirit of God was simply referred to as the Spirit. It was because the Spirit was not yet. Before Jesus died for us, with reference to time, the Spirit did not contain the elements of Jesus’s humanity, nor His death, resurrection and ascension. That is why the Spirit was “not yet”. “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’ But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” (John 7: 37-39 – Recovery Version) Before Jesus died for us, redemption had not been accomplished yet so the Spirit was not released for the disciples to receive. When Jesus’s Spirit was released to us after His death, resurrection, and ascension, He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) that could enter into man. He was one with the Holy Spirit now. That is why in Acts, the saints, forming his body, were led by the Holy Spirit. “And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” (Acts 16:6-7) Realize the “Holy Spirit” and the “Spirit of Jesus” are now interchangeably used in leading the saints. It is now the Ark of the Covenant before his people, the Christians forming His body, the church, today.

This Spirit of Jesus contains all the elements of Jesus’s humanity, with His forgiveness and forbearance, and is now the Holy Spirit within us, becoming a flowing river within the believers. “But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water gushing up into eternal life.” (John 4:14) The Spirit of Jesus not only satisfies us so we would never thirst again, but it will satisfy those around us, supplying them with life through the expressed humanity and divinity of Christ emanating from us. The expression of Jesus in His humanity emanating from us will flow out of us to others supplying them with life. That is the Spirit of Jesus becoming our constitution. “He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:38) This living water that flows out of us is for others to drink. That is why when Stephen was stoned, he behaved just like Christ when He was crucified. “But being full of the Holy Spirit, he looked intently into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, Behold. I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. But they cried out with a loud voice and covered their ears and rushed upon him with one accord. And they threw him outside of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man called Saul. And they stoned Stephen as he called upon the Lord and said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit! And kneeling down, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.” (Acts 7:55-60) As he was dying, with his last breath, Stephen was concerned about those stoning him to death. Realize he was one with the Spirit of Jesus. He uttered what Jesus said at His crucifixion, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) He was worried about the very men that were involved in His death. “And crying out with a loud voice, Jesus said, Father into Your hands I commit My spirit. And saying this, He expired.” (Luke 23:46) When our spirits are one with the Spirit of Jesus, we will forgive, forebear and genuinely love our enemies as ourselves. This is how the body supplies each other so we grow together as one. The expression of Jesus’s humanity through us knits us together into one, where Christ becomes the Head, and we become His body. “But holding to truth in love, we may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ, out from whom all the body, being joined together and being knit together through every joint of the rich supply and through the operation in the measure of each one part, causes the growth of the body unto the building up of itself in love.” (Eph. 4:15-16) “Being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone. In whom all the building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord. In whom you are also being built together into a dwelling place of God in Spirit.” (Eph. 2:20-22)

 

This is what the Spirit of Jesus is doing today.

That is the current of the Holy Spirit flowing today leading us onward to establish the Kingdom of God.

That is why we must be “diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” (Eph. 4:3-5) When we let the Holy Spirit lead us, forsaking all else and denying ourselves, then Christ, as the Holy Spirit, could be over all and through all and in all.

Holiness is a distinctiveness of God. It is what makes Him distinct from anything else. That is the very definition of God. He is holy. So how are we to be holy?

Jesus said to us, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mat. 5:48) What did He mean by this? In fact, all the people of God was supposed to be holy, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” (Lev. 19:2) Holiness is a distinctiveness only of God. Yet we are reminded by Peter, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Pet. 1:16) What does this mean? How are we to be holy?

Realize human beings can never be holy by themselves. No matter how hard we try, no matter how righteous we are, no matter how perfect we think we are, as human beings, we can never be holy, as it is a distinctiveness of God. The only way to be holy then is to let God express Himself through us. That is why God says, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Pet. 1:16) To be holy is a passive term. We do not make ourselves holy; we become holy for He is holy. The holiness of Christ having taken residence in us, dwelling within man, living within His believers, makes us holy.

This holiness dwelling in us needs to be expressed so God lives out of us. The only way to do this is to die to ourselves so Christ could live out of us. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) When we no longer live to ourselves, when we no longer cherish our soul-lives (Rev. 12:11), Christ can live out of us so we express His holiness. That is why those who find their lives will lose it, those who lose their lives will find it (Mat. 10:39; 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; 17:33). This concept is repeated five times in the Bible for emphasis. When we lose our soul-life, we will gain the divine life of Christ. Realize Christ will become our person and be expressed through our humanity. The love that is of God will be expressed in us to our brothers. That is how we love our neighbours as ourselves.

That is why Christ was incarnated to be a man, so He could experience what we experience in our humanity, and bring that back to God during His resurrection and ascension. Realize He brought humanity back to divinity. When Jesus resurrected, a new creation was formed. When He was born of Mary, He was the only begotten Son of God (John 3:16); when He resurrected, He became the firstborn Son of God (Col. 1:15; Rom. 8:29). As the firstborn Son of God, He had a humanity that has already been tested. So when He released the life-giving Spirit to us (1 Cor. 15:45), the Spirit has all the aspects of human living in Him. It had experienced all our temptations, all our needs and limitations of the flesh, all our desires to do things according to ourselves, and was victorious over all things, subjecting all things under His feet (Eph. 1:17). Realize this is the Christ that we have now received. It is victorious in all aspects of our humanity. In fact, the love we have for each other, the joy we share, the peace between men, the patience we show each other, the kindness we express, the goodness towards each other, the faithfulness we keep, the gentleness of our hearts, and the self-control we express, becomes a display of the fruit of the Spirit, of Christ Himself, lived out of us (Gal. 5:22-23). The two natures, Christ’s divinity and Christ’s humanity, has become one now expressed through His body, us. That is why whatever we bind on this earth will be bound in heaven and whatever we loose on this earth will be loosed in heaven (Mat. 16:19; 18:18). That is why “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Mat. 6:10; Luke 11:2)

Where do we get the power to do this? Realize it is only in the power of the Holy Spirit. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” (Acts 1:9) After the disciples received Christ and received the Holy Spirit as life to them, they were born again with an eternal life. “And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22) They were born of the Holy Spirit, but not filled with the fullness of the Spirit. They had the divine life, but had not recognized the divine power of this life that was in them. They still needed to be filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit. That is why, in His resurrection, Christ appeared to His disciples for forty days (Acts 1:3). This forty days was to remind us of the forty years the children of Israel spent in the wilderness. Having crossed the Red Sea, the children of Israel were all baptized and received the Spirit as life to them, in type. Yet all those that came out of Egypt had to die in the wilderness so the world (Egypt) could be left behind. They had to lose their life to gain it. Those that were born in the wilderness depended only on manna as their source of energy. They depended on the heavenly things, the manna, as their bread of life. “Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.’” (John 6:32-33) “I am the bread of life…” (John 6:35) When humans derive their energy purely on Christ as their bread of life and live this way, they don’t need to cut off their flesh. That is why the children of Israel that were born in the wilderness were not circumcised until they reached the good land and the manna stopped. “For all the people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised.” (Jos. 5:5) As we cross the Jordan to live with the inhabitants of this world, feeding on the produce of this land and eating flesh again, we need to be circumcised. When we gain our strength from this world, we need to cut off our flesh. “Now when they had finished circumcising all the nation…” (Jos. 5:9) “On the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day after they had eaten some of the produce of the land so that the sons of Israel no longer had manna…” (Jos. 5:11-12) Realize the source of our power to live this divine life must be a source that is divine. It must be of the Holy Spirit, the bread of life. That is why in crossing the Jordan, God’s people had a second baptism, in type. To cross into the good land and function in this world to win over its inhabitants, as God’s people, His ambassadors in chains (Eph. 6:20) must be immersed in the Holy Spirit. We must be inwardly baptized in the Holy Spirit. “For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” (Acts 1:5) In this baptism of the Holy Spirit, we will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us. Today it is simply realizing the power of the Spirit that is living within us to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4). “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Php. 1:21) We have died to our soul-life so we live Christ.

When we realize the power of the Spirit living within, we become witnesses of the Spirit that is living within us. We become witnesses of the Spirit today that is operating within us as Christians. When Jesus met Saul on the road to Damascus, He said to Saul, “But get up and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you;” (Acts 26:16) Realize the Spirit living in us not only gives us utterance so we speak the words of God as a minister who teaches, but we are appointed a witness of the Spirit living within us. A witness is one who provides testimony—testimony of the reality of the Spirit that is living within. The Spirit not only makes real to Paul the things which he had seen, it makes real to him things in the future that are about to come, when the Spirit will appear to Paul in “the things in which I will appear to you.” (Acts 26:16) Today as we live this life, the Spirit is appearing to us moment by moment in all things, bringing us into a heavenly way of living and behaving that is of the Spirit, of the Christ that is living within us. We live and walk by the Spirit. “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” (Gal. 5:25) As Christians, we become witnesses of this reality. That is why, “And they overcame him (Satan) because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their [soul]-life even when faced with death.” (Rev. 12:11) As witnesses of the Spirit, the word of our testimony is Christ’s reality lived out of us. That overcomes Satan. As Christ lives out of us, the reality of the fruit of the Spirit is expressed in us. “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,” (Gal. 5:22-23) all the reality of the fruit of the Spirit, Christ Himself, is expressed from us. We “belong to Christ Jesus [and] have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24) We did not love our soul-life even when faced with death (Rev. 12:11) and have presented ourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1). “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) “If we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit.” (Gal. 5:23)

This is how the body of Christ is built in one accord. We no longer separate ourselves according to what we hold as somehow “more righteous” in the church. There is no longer groups of Christians, but just one body of Christ. When we let the Spirit lead us, we are all one body. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling.” (Eph. 4:4) We no longer hold up ideas that separate, but we simply let the Spirit lead, just as the ark of the covenant led the children of Israel as they crossed the Jordon and as they defeated Jericho where the walls were shaken and came tumbling down. “And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness. And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all. For there was not a needy person among them…” (Acts 4:31-34) Realize the apostles in Acts defeated Jericho, shaking it to its foundations. When they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they were led by Christ living within them. They did not speak from their soul-life, but spoke only the word of God with boldness. They were witnesses of the Spirit, giving a testimony of what they saw of the resurrected Christ. They were now in one accord as a people, doing whatever the Spirit wanted and going wherever the Spirit led them. “They answered Joshua, saying, ‘All that you have commanded us we will do, and wherever you send us we will go.’” (Jos. 1:16) The congregation of believers formed the one body of Christ—they were of one heart and soul. They did not claim that anything belonged to themselves personally, but all things were common. Realize this implies that they had given up their soul-lives in this world. They had entered into the land flowing with milk and honey so “abundant grace was upon them all. For there was not a needy person among them…” (Acts 4:33-34) This is the reality of the one Spirit and one body of Christ.

 

May the Lord open our inner spiritual eyes to see this reality today so we would be overcomers in His church.

 

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling.” (Eph. 4:4)

Praising God is not asking God in prayer for something; it is declaring that Christ has won the victory. Our praising of God is a declaration of His victory. Our fervent praise of Him in unceasing prayers (1 The. 5:7) not only keeps us in the temple, bringing us into oneness with Him (1 Cor. 6:17), so we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) and move and function as His body (Eph. 4:12); but it declares God’s victory over heaven and earth. To gain this victory over the earth today, realize we don’t fight, we simply need to claim the victory in Christ.

Realize that the church is like Joshua today, entering into the good land to win its inhabitants over to Christ. When Christ is sown into unbelievers (Mark 4:1-20) and grows out of them so they have put on Christ (Gal. 3:27), we begin to enjoy the expression of Christ in His body. We enjoy the richness of the expressed Christ in each other. The reality of the Triune God expressed through the Spirit of reality (John 14:17) living inside each one of us is the milk and honey we enjoy flowing from this good land. This is the enjoyment of the all inclusive Christ expressed in His body today.

When Christ flows from us in our humanity, realize our flesh of sin is no more, we now express Christ in His holiness through the body. That is why when we are fed with manna, we don’t need to be circumcised in our flesh, just as the children of Israel, when they only fed on manna, remained uncircumcised. “For all the people who came out were circumcised; but all the people who were born in the wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised.” (Jos. 5:5) When the source of our strength in our life is based solely on manna, on Christ alone, we don’t need to be circumcised as our expression is only of Him and not of our flesh. So the expression of our flesh does not need to be cut, just like the hair on the high priests. “They shall not make any baldness on their heads; nor shave off the edges on their beards, nor make cuts in their flesh.” (Lev. 21:5) Realize when Christ is our all in all, and we only express Him, there is no expression of our flesh, so we do not cut it. When Christ is all that we express, we have “clothed ourselves in fine linen, bright and clean” (Rev 19:8). We have made ourselves ready as the bride for Christ (Rev. 19:7).

Unfortunately we are not there today. That is why we need to submit ourselves to Him. When we first believed, coming out of Egypt and being baptized in the Red Sea, we had lots of complaints about what will happen to us in the wilderness. But as we ate the manna daily, eating Christ as our daily bread (John 6:35), we were “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:17) so we could be built into His church. On stepping into the Jordon, when the ark of the covenant was leading the way, the waters dried up as the priests’ feet touched the water. “And when those who carried the ark came into the Jordan, and the feet of the priests carrying the ark were dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks all the days of the harvest), the waters which were flowing down from above stood and rose up in one heap, a great distance away at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan; and those which were flowing down toward the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off.” (Jos. 3:15-16) On entering the waters of death in this world, when Christ works through His body, all we need to do is touch our feet to the waters and it will dry up. Then in the midst of the waters, we stand firm. “And the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm of dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground, until all the nation had finished crossing the Jordan.” (Jos. 3:17) It is in the midst of the waters of death that Joshua builds the church. “Then Joshua set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan at the place where the feet of the priests who carried the ark of the covenant were standing, and they are there to this day.” (Jos. 4:9) God begins His church in the midst of the Jordan, but then His body, represented by the twelve tribes of Israel who are God’s people, are to select twelve stones from the midst of the Jordan and bring it out to Gilgal. “Take for yourselves twelve man from the people, one man from each tribe, and command them, saying, ‘Take up for yourselves twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests’ feet are standing firm, and carry them over with you and lay them down in the lodging place where you will lodge tonight.’” (Jos. 4:2-3) “Now the people came up from the Jordan on the tenth of the first month and camped at Gilgal on the eastern edge of Jericho. Those twelve stones which they had taken from the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal.” (Jos. 4:19-20) Realize the church as the body of Christ, which was built at first in the waters of death, has now come out of this world. Christ has sanctified it and placed it on the good land in victory. This good land Christ has already given to us. “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given to you, just as I spoke to Moses.” (Jos. 1:3) On this good land, we are to do nothing but follow Him. The ark of the covenant led the way to victory for Israel. The Spirit now leads us in victory over this world. That is how we possess this good land. That is how we win over the inhabitants of this earth to Christ .

On this good land, we are in one accord, following the Spirit. We don’t express ourselves, not to even let a word proceed out of our mouths (Jos. 6:19) until the Spirit within us gives us utterance, telling us to “Shout!,” because we are filled with the Spirit (Acts 2:4). “Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to who belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Pet. 4:11) When we speak, we must be filled with the Spirit and it must be the Spirit giving us the utterance. “And pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” (Eph. 6:19-20) When we talk to unbelievers, the Spirit speaking out of us will touches their spirit, so they will understand. Realize as a member of His body, we are only an ambassador of Christ in chains. We don’t speak from ourselves but from the Christ that is dwelling in us. That is how His body is maintained in one accord, speaking boldly as we ought to speak. There is no head but Christ. When we speak, it must represent Christ as we are ambassadors is chains. When we open our mouth, realize it must be Christ. We must be filled with the Holy Spirit so He speaks out of us. “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” (Acts 2:4) When the Spirit speaks out of us, we declare His victory.

When we use our mouths to declare His victory, we have shouted in unison. When the body speaks this way, the strongholds of the enemy will fall down. On the seventh day, the day of our Sabbath rest, the walls of Jericho fell. The strongholds of this world, no matter what it is, cannot withstand our shout of victory. No matter what circumstances in this world we find ourselves in, when we shout His praise in unison as His body, we have won the victory. That is why we simply need to claim the victory in Christ who has now sat down on the right hand of God and we are seated with Him. “These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” (Eph. 1:19-23) “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:4-7) Christ has already won the victory. We, as His body, simply need to claim it. Realize when all things are in subjection under His feet and we form His body, all thing are in subjection under His church. That is how we win over the inhabitants of this land to Christ.

Realize as Paul was praying, even in a prison cell by himself, he was one with the body. That is why he said, “And pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel” (Eph. 6:19) Paul never saw himself as being eloquent in speech or someone leading the way. “Now I, Paul, myself urge you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am meek when face to face with you, but bold toward you when absent.” (2 Cor. 10:1) In front of people, Paul is small. “For they say, ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible.’ Let such a person consider this, that what we are in word by letters when absent, such persons we are in deed when present.” (2 Cor. 10:10-11) Paul is very small in his flesh before the saints. That is why, “To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ.” (Eph. 3:8) Only when we are small, can God freely speak through our bodies. So to the smallest members of the body, be encouraged to “Shout” when the Spirit gives you utterance, to build up the body of Christ.

Through the Spirit, He is working in us, expressing Himself out of us for the enjoyment of all the members of Christ. Our testimonies of what God is doing in our lives is how we conquer the enemy. “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their [soul]-life even when faced with death.” (Rev. 12:11) What we say is not only our testimony, but our declaration of Christ’s victory in our lives and over the inhabitants of this land. When we claim His victory by our testimonies, we have unfurled our banners (S.S. 4:12), blowing our trumpets declaring our victory, and praising Him.

 

As the body of Christ, let us shout together in praise, for Christ has led us to victory.

 

In His victory, Christ has not only brought divinity into humanity, freeing us from sin, but the fineness of our linen that is bright and clean, is because He has brought humanity into divinity.

 

 

To mature in Christ means the Spirit has won the spiritual war between our flesh and the Spirit by our love for God, submitting our will to His will so He can do everything in us and Christ becomes our all in all. By taking God as our Sabbath rest, we have won the war. This is how Christ builds His church on this earth today. He does it actively in us when we are submissive to Him. This is typified by how Christ led the nation of Israel to conquer Jericho and take the good land.

When the nation of Israel was brought out of Egypt, they walked into the wilderness for forty years so they could be entirely transformed, by feeding on food from heaven, into a new creation that was ready to take the good land. All that was from Egypt, their former way of life in their flesh, had to die in the wilderness so the people who are transformed by the eating of the manna, now forming their very bodies, could cross the river Jordon and enter the good land. Just as Moses, the deliverer, who was a type of Christ, left the children of Israel to conquer the good land, realize Christ has also left us in His human form so we, the ones that are transformed inwardly, are to conquer this world and build His church. Because of Satan’s usurpation, this earth in entirely inhabited by the enemy at Moses’s time. No one else had received the manna but God’s people. The children of Israel were facing what seemed like an impossible task.

That was what the apostles were facing. After the day of Pentecost, the 120 transformed people of God that were filled with the Spirit and spoke as the Spirit gave them utterance, now faced a world usurped by Satan, that they needed to conquer, so the nations can receive the divine life of Christ by believing and form His body. The earth, occupied by the nations, had to be conquered and transformed into the good land, where Christ is produced. Christ has to become the reality of the good land in us so we express Him as milk and honey. That is why we are God’s field. “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Cor. 3:9) The seed, Christ Himself, is sown into us transforming us, so we become God’s field, and He grows out of us as the expression of the good land, flowing with milk and honey. Realize Christ Himself becomes everything.

When Christ is everything to us, and we solely rely on Him, we don’t need to cut off our flesh. The people who had been born in the wilderness, who were made of manna, were not circumcised. “Though all the people who came out had been circumcised, yet all the people who were born on the way in the wilderness after they had come out of Egypt had not been circumcised.” (Jos. 5:6) Their expression of the flesh was clean as long as the source of their strength is from heaven. But as they entered into the war over Jordon and were no longer exclusively fed by manna but fed by the produce of this earth, they needed again to be circumcised. Christ had been their food so long as they ate the bread from heaven. “And on the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. And manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.” (Jos. 5:11) When we base the source of our strength on the produce of this earth, realize our flesh needs to be circumcised so we have no confidence in the flesh. Only when Christ is the source of our strength, when He is expressed through us, do we not need to cut off our expression.

When Christ leads the way, our victory in this world is complete. “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses.” (Jos. 1:3) Realize though it seems like an impossible task, to build the church and win on this earth, Christ has already given us this land. This is why Jesus said, “…In Me you will have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) He has already overcome the world. When He leads us, we will say, “Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands. And also, all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us.” (Jos. 2:24) Even Rahab, a prostitute inhabiting the land, realized this. “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that the inhabitants of the land melt away before you…And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.” (Jos. 2:8-11) “As soon as all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the people of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts melted and there was no longer any spirit in them because of the people of Israel.” (Jos. 5:1) Realize this is how God builds His church today. We just need to let Christ lead us. When we speak to the inhabitants of this earth, the Spirit must lead the way. When Christ leads the way, realize the people we speak to will hear the Spirit speak to their spirit. Their hearts will melt and there will be no spirit left in them. That is how God won the war through Joshua and the nation of Israel.

Realize the Ark of the Covenant went before the children of Israel. The Ark led the way to victory. When the Ark walks before us, the waters of the Jordon will part. “Now then, take for yourselves twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one man for each tribe. It shall come about when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordon, the waters of the Jordon will be cut off, and the waters which are flowing from above will stand in one heap.” (Jos. 3:12-13) The world that is under the waters of death will part so we could cross. In taking down the stronghold that is Jericho the Lord has to take the lead. Realize not only in the commander of the Lord’s army with us, but the Ark of the Covenant leads the way. “And he said, ‘No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, ‘What does my lord say to his servant?’ And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” (Jos. 5:14-15) Realize Joshua is not longer the Christ figure as Moses was, the commander of the army of the Lord is. Joshua represents one of us, the body of Christ, and not the head, the commander. He is part of the body, a corporate Joshua who follows the Lord. The whole nation of Israel was with Joshua. “And they answered Joshua, ‘All that you commanded us we will do, and where ever you send us we will go. Just as we obeyed Moses in all things, so we sill obey you. Only may the Lord your God be with you, as he was with Moses! Whoever rebels against your commandment and disobeys your words, whatever you command him, shall be put to death. Only be strong and courageous.'” (Jos. 1:16-18) Realize the children of Israel is no longer rebelled against Moses, the type of Christ, as they did when they came out of Egypt. They had been transformed as a nation in one accord by the eating of the manna. They expressed the will of God in one accord. They have formed a corporate Joshua that follows the Lord. That is why they just followed when Joshua told them to simply walk around Jericho, blowing their trumpets and not saying a word, in doubt or in complaint. They simply let the Lord lead them to victory.

“Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out, and none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, ‘See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valour.” (Jos. 6:1-2) In winning men to Christ, realize the Lord has given them into our hands. Their hearts have melted, they no longer have the spirit to fight us. “You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seven day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. And when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight before him.” (Jos. 6:3-5) Satan has built strongholds in this world. “For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies.” (Eph. 6:12 – Recovery Version) To defeat this stronghold, realize we have to do nothing but walk with God. In obeying God to walk around the city, the children of Israel had to do nothing to defeat Jericho. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” (2 Cor. 10:4) They just had let God lead them to victory. That is why they blew their trumpets continually (Jos. 6:8-9) to proclaim their victory in the Lord. That is why it was on the seventh day, the day of the Sabbath rest when they were to do no labour that the walls of Jericho fell. To defeat the enemy, we are to make no noise, no expression from our flesh, nothing unclean that proceeds out of our mouth. “But Joshua commanded the people, ‘You shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth, until the day I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout.’” (Jos. 6:10) The expression from our mouths has to be in co-ordination with the body of Christ so oneness is kept within the body. God has a group of people on this earth for His possession. He has used various individuals through the centuries that are like the Joshua’s of our day to recover various truths (realities) within His Word. Presently, on this earth, He has a group of people for His possession, a corporate Joshua. If you see this matter of the one body of Christ, realize you need to join these overcomers and gather yourselves in a real way to be in the army of God. Only under the corporate Joshua of our time can the body be fully build into His bride as the New Jerusalem. The strategy of the enemy had been to divide us, having us head up so many ideas in church theology, separating the body of Christ into so many groups of believers. Of the seven different churches in Revelation, realize all the differences are negative. Realize Christ is calling us all to be the overcomers so we could be formed into the one body of Christ on this earth for Him to return to claim His one bride. Only when Christ takes the lead, when all things are headed up in Christ, can the body be unified into one (Eph. 1:9-10). In this world, only when we stand firm in oneness, with Christ leading us on, can His church be built. As the Ark of the Covenant led the children of Israel through the Jordon, the Lord said to Joshua, “Take twelve men from the people, from each tribe of man, and command them, saying, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests’ feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight.’” (Jos. 4:2-3) In building His church out of living stones taken out of the midst of this world, we have to stand firmly as priests to God with each other to form his body the church. Nothing of our flesh should get in the way as it is unclean. In co-ordination and co-operation with the corporate Joshua of our time, Christ will build His church. The church needs to be formed by people who overcome the pettiness of our different theological arguments, which hold no weight in reality before God. Realize only the Spirit is the common element that has been deposited in each one of us. The Spirit of reality has been given to each one of us in its fullness. There is only one Spirit. “For in one Spirit we were baptized into one body…and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:13) We are “…standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” (Phi. 1:27) This one mind is the mind of Christ. “‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor. 2:16)

The mind of Christ forgives each other unlike in the times of Joshua when those who did not follow were put to death (Jos. 1:18). [Realize it can be as serious as that with what happened to Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).] So we need to forebear each other (Phi. 4:5) so we become not only a chosen race containing Christ forming a royal priesthood to the world, but we become a holy nation to fight the war in one accord to claim the good land where all the inhabitants’ hearts melt and they no longer have any spirit in them to fight, so they receive Christ into their hearts and more people are made like us, a people for God’s own possession. (1 Pet. 2:9) That is why “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” (1 Pet. 2:9) This is the unity of the one mind of Christ, so the expression of the body proclaims the excellencies of Christ who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. Christ is the head who wills and works in us so the expression of the body is of Him.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mat. 28:18-20) To win the war today, we do not destroy the inhabitants of the land, we rescue them out of their death situation on this earth into the life of Christ in His heavenly kingdom. In His ascension the inhabitants of this land will melt before us. Realize Christ is timeless. In His ascension, everything has been accomplished already and Christ has sat down on the right hand of God. The land has been given to us. He has brought us into the heavenlies to sit with Him. However, we are temporal and just don’t realize it yet. We still think that we know better and need to do these various things to please God. As a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people for His possession, we just need to praise God for His accomplishments through Christ, taking our Sabbath rest. Our fervent praise of Him in unceasing prayer keeps us in the temple, bringing us into oneness with Him, so we have the mind of Christ and move and function as His body. Then Christ, living out of us, makes disciples of all the nations for Christ is within us always, even to the end of the age.

 

By allowing Christ to head up all things in us, the invisible God, made visible in Christ and His body, defeats Satan and wins the war, recovering man into Him. By enjoying Christ as the produce of the good land, man becomes holy in Him. Realize all this is because He loved us.

[Please read this very, very slowly in your spirit with His Spirit helping you understand. If you have been following this website, this will lead you into the inner sanctum of God to see His victory.]

For the Spirit to have victory over the flesh means we have to submit ourselves to God. Why do we need to submit to Him? Realize this is the original problem. When we took from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we took something in the realm of God. “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.’” (Gen. 3:22) We, who were made of the flesh, knew something that was of the divine. The problem is we only had the knowledge of good and evil but not the ability to carry it out. That is why Paul says, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” (Rom. 7:18) We gained a conscience but did not know how to handle it because we were not divine. This conscience became ours when it was suppose to be of God. So we add to it sometimes or subtract from it sometimes. We think we are the masters of it and sometimes ignore it all together. And other times we think we can be holy and enforce it on others. That is the state of mankind. That is why this world is full of afflictions. To maintain a good conscience, we need to submit to the living God dwelling inside our temples and not rely on our flesh to be able to do what we know is right. We need to rely on the Spirit dwelling within each one of us to live this life. To be able to carry out the good that we know requires God’s holiness. That is why we need the Spirit, returned back to us as our possession so we could be freed from the bondage of sin. As Christians who have the life of the Lord, we often think we can do things for God based on what we know in the flesh. But to do the right thing is a distinctiveness of God. Satan thought he could do it also and have the glory to himself. We are like Satan because after knowing good and evil, we think we can head up all things in ourselves. Only Christ living out of us can meet the righteous requirements of the law and make us holy in expression. That is why the Ten Commandments are all what we should not do. (Even honouring our father and mother is because we are not honouring them at present.) “Thou shall not…” the Lord tells us, because we are heading up all things in ourselves without God. Lev. 19 is full of things “Thou shall not…” do. That is why we need to submit our will to His will. We cannot do it ourselves. We cannot hold up the book indefinitely against gravity (sin) because we are finite. Only God is eternal and holy. We need to have a Sabbath rest in Him. We need to have no labour and have a complete rest in Him. The first day of our week is His Sabbath rest. When we submit our wills to His will and let God do everything for us, we no longer love our soul-lives (Rev. 12:11). Christ becomes the Head, and we become His body, fulfilling God’s eternal purpose. “Making known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, unto the economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him.” (Eph. 1:9-10 – Recovery Version) That is why He is the Godhead and we are the body that is the same as God in life, nature, expression and function but not in the Godhead. We become God’s people, a people for His own possession who are one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17). We become holy as He is holy in all our manners of life (1 Pet. 1:15-16). We become His bride and counterpart. That is why in Christian growth, the weaker we are, the more He has grown in us and can use us. This is true Christian maturity. It is not how good we are, but how much God is realized in us. Realize we are the feeble ones, the weaker ones, the women and children in Jacob’s camp. We have wrestled with the Spirit, and He has made us limp in our flesh so we could be transformed in the spirit, giving us a new name so we now depend on Him (Gen. 32:24-32) and His sovereignty to deal with our problems, so our anxieties go away.  Only to these weak ones can the Spirit truly express Himself. Paul saw himself as the weakest of all the saints. “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” (Eph. 3:8) Paul saw himself as the smallest one of all the saints; that is why God can use him to write most of the New Testament. He has lost his soul-life; he puts no confidence in his flesh (Phi. 3:3). The more we realize that we are nothing, the more Christ can live out of us. “…For apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) as God in holy. When we are submissive to Him in this way, with plaited hair (S.S. 1:11), having shaved off all our own hair (the expression of our flesh) we will be declared clean from leprosy (sin).

When we no longer express our flesh, we would be like the priests in the temple who are holy, expressing Christ alone. “They shall not make any baldness of their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts in their flesh.” (Lev. 21:5) The expressions in our flesh become Christ’s expressions as we no longer live to ourselves but Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20). That is why as priests to Him today, we don’t shave off the edges of our beards nor cut our flesh as Christ is expressed through us. To qualify us to be priests to Him, we cannot have any deformities in our flesh. That is why, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, “Speak to Aaron, saying, ‘No man of your offspring throughout their generations who has a defect shall approach to offer the food of his God.’” (Lev. 21:17) because the expressions of the flesh in the priests are spotless and without blemish as we express God Himself.

Just before Christ ascended, He gave us one last teaching. In John 21, He said as a young man, we dress ourselves and walk wherever we want, but when we grow old in Christ, we just stretch out our hands and someone else dresses us and takes us where we don’t want to go (John 21:18). As we mature in our spiritual lives, Christ dresses us in fine linen, bright and clean and takes us to places where we don’t want to go in our flesh because we have submitted to Him and walk only by the Spirit. To grow in Christ to maturity, realize it is to become smaller and smaller so God can become bigger and bigger in our lives. “The priest who is the highest among the brothers, on whose head the anointing oil has been poured and who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not uncover his head nor tear his clothes, nor shall he approach any dead person, nor defile himself even for his father or his mother, nor shall he go out of the sanctuary nor profane the sanctuary of his God, for consecration of the anointing oil of his God is on him, I am the Lord.” (Lev. 21:10-12) For us to be the most mature among our brothers, we must have the Spirit as the anointing oil poured out on us, saturating our garments so our expression, what people see as our garments, is God Himself. Our head has to be covered because the headship is of Christ. We are submissive to His headship so He takes us to where we do not want to go. We do not tear our clothes as our expression is of God and we are not judged by anyone. We don’t defile ourselves by approaching anything that is dead in the old life that we have died to, even for our natural father and mother. We have become pillars in the temple of God and do not go out anymore because the Spirit has fully consecrated us as the Spirit has full control of our lives so we bear the name of God Himself on our being. “He who overcomes, I well make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore, and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.” (Rev. 3: 12) Realize this is why we are like God in life, nature, expression and function so He can put His name on us and we become the New Jerusalem collectively. Realize it is only in our weakness that He shows His strength. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9) When enough members of the Body of Christ, His church, realizes this in reality, Christ will come back to claim His bride. When He comes, it will be a manifestation of His coming (I The. 2:8) because He has already returned to us within the saints who have matured in Him and hold Him as their possession. The Christ within these matured ones will simply be manifested at His coming. Dear saints, we simply need to submit to Him so Christ will live out of us as the expression of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). That is the purpose of man. Then what we do physically in this life will be an outward manifestation of His inward coming. That is why when He comes back this time, unlike the brightest star that shone over the city of Bethlehem at Jesus’s birth, it will be the morning star that arises in our hearts (2 Pet. 1:19). This is the secret that the whole church must see within their hearts to make ready the bride for the Bridegroom. When the morning star arises in our hearts, the day is dawning and Christ is coming as the light to shine in the darkness of our night.

Our submission to Christ is this secret the whole church must see because the perfection of the bride is how God wins in this war with Satan. When the bride has made herself ready is when the warrior has won the war. That is why in Ephesians 5, as the bride, we are to be submissive to our husband, and in Ephesians 6, we are told how to prepare ourselves to dress as the corporate warrior of God. When the bride has made herself ready, she is dressed in fine linen, bright and clean (Rev. 19:8). Realize this is our warrior outfit, dressed in fine linen, white and clean (Rev. 19:14). When we have put on this outfit, which is Christ Himself, we have won the war. That is why the bride and warrior are linked together. As the bride of Christ, to be His counterpart, we must submit to Him (Eph. 5:22-24) because this wins the war. Realize we are the battleground. The way to make us submissive is to love Him. Realize when we love, we will do everything for our counterpart. The love that Jesus asks of us is a self-sacrificial, unwavering, absolute love, an “agape” love, that is of God. In His resurrection, Jesus asked Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (John 21:15) Notice Jesus refers back to Simon’s birth name in the flesh as the son of a man, John, and not as Peter, his new name as a rock on which Christ builds His church in the Spirit. The term He uses for “love” in the first two instances He asks this question is, however, an “agape” love. The “agape” form of love is the self-sacrificial unwavering absolute love that God has towards us in dying for us on the cross to save us. God is this love. It is this love for us that motivated Jesus to die on the cross for us. He asked Simon, who was a man in the flesh, does he have a self-sacrificial love for God. Simon, son of John, do you love me in a self-sacrificial unwavering absolute way. All Peter could say was, “You know that I love you.” This was not a straightforward statement of love because Peter knew he denied the Lord three times already. So the word Peter uses all three times for love was “philos,” a type of brotherly love in friendship. So when Jesus asked a third time, He used the word “philos” for “love” and settled for a human kind of love that is of man. When we are young, that is the only kind of love we could offer to God as we are still doing everything in ourselves. As we grow into maturity in Christ, more and more of Christ has been experientially realized by us and lived out of us, as we submit to Him so He dresses us in fine linen, bright and clean, expressing out of us and taking us to where we don’t want to go in our flesh. We love Him today because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). When we love Him through Christ in a self-sacrificial unwavering absolute way, God’s kingdom will be manifested on this earth. As we realize we have been brought into the heavenlies to sit together with Christ (Eph. 2:6), the realities of the heavenlies will be expressed on this earth. So whatever we bind on this earth will be bound in heaven (Mat. 16:19; 18:18). Realize that is how Satan, who has been cast to this earth (Rev. 12:9), will be bound by Christ living through us. And whatever we loose of this earth will be loosed in heaven. That is how the Spirit will bring freedom to all of creation and be victorious over Satan through us. “That the creation itself also will be set free from slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Rom. 8:21) Christ has won the victory by living through us. The body of Christ has reached full maturity. That is the consummation of this age. Then we will spend an eternity in one Spirit with our Lord.

“Draw me after you and let us run together. The king has brought me into his chambers.” (S. S. 1:4) “…I found him whom my soul loves; I held him and would not let go…” (S. S. 3:4), as the bride clings to her beloved. “You are as beautiful as Tirzah, my darling. As lovely as Jerusalem, as awesome as an army with banners.” (S. S. 6:4) Realize the bride and the warrior are again linked together. As the bride, we are the transformed stones that are the building blocks of the New Jerusalem, formed as the bride for Christ. “And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Rev. 21:2) When the bride has made herself ready, Satan is defeated, so the army unfurls its banner in victory. “Who is this that grows like the dawn, as beautiful as the full moon, as pure as the sun, as awesome as an army with banners.” (S. S. 6:10) Christ, who is light, shines forth from us as reflected light shines forth from the moon in the night of this age of darkness. He is hidden in us as the hope of glory but is glowing like the dawn until He shines forth fully from His bride as the sun, having burnt away all our dross (Isa. 1:25), so we are bright and clean. The problem God had in the beginning when “darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Gen. 1:2) is over as He becomes our light shining out of darkness (John 1:4), “because the darkness is passing away and the light is already shining” (1 John 2:8), until the bride makes herself ready, dressed in fine linen, bright and clean. We are as awesome as an army with banners as we have been transformed fully to the same image of Christ winning the war victoriously. That is why we will see Him, and He will put His name on our foreheads because we and Him are one. “They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night, and they will not have need of the light nor a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them, and they will reign forever and ever.” (Rev. 22:4-5)

 

“And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.” (Rev. 22:7)

“I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendent of David, the bright morning star.” (Rev. 22:16) See His Spirit shining within your spirits.

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come, let the one who wishes take of the water of life without cost.” (Rev. 22:17)

 

 

There is a spiritual war that is going on today. It is going on inside every one of us who are Christians on this earth. This struggle is more important then any struggles we can see physically with our external eyes in this world. This struggle is subjective and inside every one of us. Realize a spiritual war is raging inside every one who is a Christian that affects every aspect of our lives.

The opposing sides are the flesh against the Spirit. “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” (Gal. 5:17 – ESV) “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these oppose each other that you would not do the things that you desire.” (Gal. 5:17 – Recovery Version) In our day-to-day lives, practically these are the opposing forces, the desires of our flesh verses the desires of the Spirit. This is the battle that is raging inside of us today and we are the battleground.

We are the battleground that God and Satan are fighting over today. God wants to win us over Himself and Satan wants to win us over to Himself. This is the ultimate war occurring in all of creation. God wants us to be His possession and Satan wants us to be his possession. When we operate by our flesh alone under the old creation, we are under the power of Satan. We are doing things according to our flesh. When we operate by the Spirit in the new creation, we are under God through the power of the Spirit. We are doing things according to God. There are only two kinds of people in this world; those that are of the flesh under the old creation, and those that are of the Spirit under the new creation.

Realize those that are of the flesh include not only men who reject God, but also all men who rely on themselves to reach God’s holiness. They do not rely on the Spirit. As such, for those who reject God completely, they uphold the “I”, their individualism. That is why in society today, the only moral has become ‘anything that makes me feel good is right as long as it does not hurt others.’ The Lord calls these people as those who follow the lusts of their flesh. They want to do what is good for themselves. That is one end-point of the knowledge of good and evil. The second is ‘I can do all things that are good in myself and even be holy in my flesh without God.’ That is the Pharisees, the religious people who think they can live righteously without the Spirit. In fact that speaks to all those who follow religion apart from relying solely on the Spirit. These people base their righteousness on the fact that they can keep their conscience and be holy. Realize to be holy is an attribute of God that makes Him distinct from us. We cannot be holy, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil tells us we can be holy like God in our flesh without the Spirit. This is how Satan has usurped the world and tricked it. We think we can do all things, even being holy, in ourselves without God. So the flesh is opposed to the Spirit.

Those that are of the Spirit follow the desires of the Spirit (Gal. 5:17). They have put no confidence in their flesh (Phi. 3:3) but rather they walk by the Spirit (Gal. 5:16). They have been crucified with Christ and no longer love their soul-life (Rev. 12:11), so they no longer live, but Christ lives within them (Gal. 2:20). For them to live is Christ (Phi. 1:21). When you look for them, they are always found in Christ (Col. 2:17) because they have learned to pray without ceasing (1 The.5:17), praying at all times in the Spirit (Eph. 6:18). Their surpassing great power that makes them holy is not of themselves, but of God who lives in them (2 Cor. 4:7). God expresses His righteousness out of them so they become the expression of the very righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21). They have submitted their wills to His will becoming the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:22). So they have put on Christ (Gal. 3:27) and made themselves ready being dressed in fine linen, in Christ Himself, who has made them bright and clean (Rev. 19:7-8). They have become a people for God’s possession (1 Pet. 2:9; Tit. 2:14; Deu. 7:6; 14:2; 26:18). They have won the spiritual war with Christ and are His warriors, having put on the full armor of God (Eph. 6:11), clothed in fine linen, white and clean (Rev. 19:14). Winning the spiritual war means we have submitted to Christ and we are led as captives (Eph. 4:8) in His triumphal procession (2 Cor. 2:14), having triumphed over us by the cross (Col. 2:15), to present us holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1), without spot or wrinkle (Eph. 5:27), blameless before Him (2 Pet. 3:14). The Spirit of reality (John 14:16-17) expresses God’s reality through us making us a suitable counterpart to God Himself (Gen. 2:18) so we form His Bride.

This is how God wins His spiritual war within us. This is why we are Christians. The most important thing to learn is to submit to Christ and allow the Spirit to live out of us. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

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[The above is a synopsis of what God is doing in the entire universe today as it relates to man. To understand these concepts, God reveals it to us “precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little” (Isa. 28:13). The following is a more detailed understanding of the above, so forgive me if it seems to be repetitive. The Spirit in you will reveal a new precept to you each time an idea is repeated. The Bible is written in a way when you read the verses slowly, placing emphasis on different word and phases, more of God is revealed in your mind. That is why, “It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (John 6:63) That is why the website containing this blog is full of verses. Please read this slowly and prayerfully letting the Spirit give you understanding.]

 

Today, God has returned to dwell in us as our possession. We lost God as the divine life entering into man to be possessed by man when Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (Gen. 3:22) Man could not eat Him and assimilate Him, internalizing God as our possession. This escaped mankind until Jesus came (except for a few select individuals whom God entered based on their believe.) Only when Jesus died for us was the righteous requirements of the law met so God could come back into man as the Spirit. By believing in God, we can now live forever because we have the divine life now living within us. “For God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. “ (John 3:16) That is why we have eternal life. Having eternal life is because God has returned to make a home in our hearts as our possession. He is transmitted to us as the Holy Spirit. He has become the living bread now for us to eat and assimilate the very God Himself into us, resulting in the Father and the Son making a home in our hearts (John 14:27) as a new spirit that He has placed into our hearts (Eze. 37:26-29) as our possession.

When Jesus was on this earth with His disciples, the closest term He used was to call them friends. “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15) He spoke to them to make known what His master, the Father, was doing. Realize “friends” was His closest term He used in relation to His disciples. He could not get into us because we contained the nature of sin that was not yet forgiven. So God could not enter into us. “By this He spoke of the Spirit, which those who believed in Him were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7:39) He has not given us of His Spirit which transmits the Father and the Son into us, because the righteous requirements of the law was not yet met. So his disciples were friends. But when Jesus died for us, He met the righteous requirements of the law by paying the penalty for our sins. When Jesus resurrected, His relationship with his disciples made a radical and drastic change. When He met the first human being, Mary, in His resurrected form, He told her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (John 20:17) God has become our Father, and Christ is our brother! Realize mankind has become connected to God in the divine life by His indwelling Holy Spirit. We are no longer just friends, but we have become born of God so Christ is our brother and His Father is our Father! We have returned to Him as our possession. This is the single most important development in the history of mankind since our fall. God can come into us to transform us. We have come back to the Father as our possession.

This is the most significant step in our transforming from our flesh to the Spirit. God has entered into man transforming our earthly finite human beings into one with a heavenly infinite divine life. Christ showed us this by breathing His life into His disciples. “And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ’Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22) They could no longer die and had the divine life dwelling within. But they were told to wait until the day of Pentecost, when they were to receive the fullness of the Spirit. When the fullness of the Spirit came, the disciples “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” (Acts 2:4) Realize this is an example of the expression of the Spirit through man.

Today, many Christians are trapped between receiving the breathed-in Holy Spirit and realizing the fullness of the Spirit they have received as God gives His Spirit without measure. “…For He gives the Spirit not by measure.” (John 3:34) They know that they have the breath-in essential Spirit giving them eternal life, but they have not realized the power of the fullness of the Spirit that is in them. “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” (John 1:16) So we turn back to trying in our flesh to be holy. We try to do things based on our knowledge of good and evil. So “in church”, we just realize we need to be a good person. We see this in our own struggles to be good and in our view of how others, who are Christians, should be good but are not. But realize the struggle is not in “how” we should be good and not be evil, it is a war between our flesh and the Spirit.

“The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” (Gal. 5:17) “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these oppose each other that you would not do the things that you desire.” (Gal. 5:17 – Recovery Version) There is a spiritual war going on in every one of us on this earth. The opposing forces are God and Satan. Satan thought he could do all things in himself and he did not need God. (Isa. 14:13-14) That was the original rebellion. He brought this same rebellion into man when he tempted man and man took from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil is our conscience. Every man in this world has one. It is the thing that makes us know if something is better or worse, if it is right or wrong. If we choose to ignore it and disobey our conscience, then we commit sins. If we choose to obey it, then we do things that are right. We have taken control of our conscience and can choose to do the things that are right or wrong, as we please. It was not so clear to us as a child because we did not know the law. But as we grew and was taught the law, “sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.” (Rom. 7:8-9). As we grew and learned of this world, what we knew in our conscience was affirmed by the law. Not only were we judged from the inside, the law from the outside told us how much we have fallen short of the glory of God. Sin, taking the opportunity through the law which tells us what not to do, show us how bad we were in doing them in our flesh. We understood that we cannot actually do what our conscience told us on the inside to do. We were made of the flesh, unclean. We may not even see our sins. Our strength in upholding the law was finite. We might uphold it for a while but as finite creatures of the flesh, our strength gives out. That is why we need the eternal.

Today the entire world is dominated by this one thought that we can do the good without the Spirit actually doing the good in us. Sin became more powerful when the law came in because it told us we now know what is good or evil so we should be able to do the good and uphold the law in our flesh. Not upholding the law becomes sin. “For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” (Rom. 7:11). We are taught to follow the law, to do what is right as an individual, elevating us above God. We glorify the individual saying each one of us can be good in his or her own flesh so we fight for what is good. But we fail for this very reason because we are of the flesh. Realize we are the battleground for this warfare between the flesh and the Spirit. God wants us for His possession so we can live by our spirit so we can live out the good in practice and have no confidence in the flesh. Satan wants us to be confident in our flesh so when we fail, as we inevitably will, we become enslaved to sin so we become his possession.

Satan seems to be dominating the world today because we love our soul-lives. The things in this world are now dominated with “I”. The worldly moral is whatever “I” do, as long as it does not hurt others, is moral and right. We strive to do everything for ourselves. We strive to do what is good for us. We take everything that we feel we deserve in this earthly life. In the mist of all this, our knowledge of good and evil tells us to do what is good for others. It tells us to serve others before ourselves. “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’” (Gal. 5:14) That is why we are anxious. That is why we have no peace. This is the war that we are in. The conflict we are in is the desires of the “I” against the thoughts of God. These thoughts of what is good and evil are spelled out in our conscience. Yet we fail to adhere to them because we are of the flesh, mortal and unable to be good by ourselves. The subjective war within every single human being, our spiritual warfare, is between the desires of our flesh and the Spirit. “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” (Gal. 5:17) “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” (Rom. 7:18) “For I know nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” (Rom. 7:18) The war that is going on today is between the desires of our flesh and the Spirit dwelling within us. This is the warring battleground. The world draws us with the desires of our flesh; the Spirit brings us the contentment of God that we hunger for, resulting in peace within. That is why, “…in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Realize Christ has already won this war. “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) That is why Revelation says, “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.’” (Rev. 12:10) For believers who have the Spirit within them, Satan accuses us day and night before God that we still behave according to our flesh. Realize He is telling our flesh to try harder and harder to follow our knowledge of good and evil. When we fail within our flesh, as we inevitable will, he accuses us day and night before our God for not being able to follow our conscience. This cycle repeats day and night. How is this stopped? “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ has come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives (soul-lives) even to death.” (Rev. 12:10-11) To win this war, we conquer by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. We conquer first by the blood of the Lamb that Christ shed of the cross and apply it to our insufficiencies in our flesh for our salvation. When we do wrong, we repent and apply the blood of the Lamb. The blood of the Lamb washes us so the uncleanness of our flesh is cleansed. Our cups are cleansed on the inside so we could express His righteousness on the outside.

That is why the second aspect of our conquering of Satan is “because of the word of their testimony” (Rev. 12:11). The overcoming saints have put on Christ to become their righteousness in reality on the outside. Christ has brought God’s holiness inside of us to dwell within us, cleaning our cups on the inside. Then we use the power of the Spirit that dwells in us to manifest God’s holiness, expressing Him out of us. So the word of our testimony is God’s righteousness expressed out of us. Our testimony by what we do in this world is of the Spirit living within us expressing Himself out of us. We did not love our soul-lives even if we have to lose this life in our mortal bodies, for we have died to the soul-life with its desires of the flesh. “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mat. 10:39) We have lost our soul-life even unto death and have found the divine life in the live-giving Spirit. We loved God more and desire the Spirit within us as our possession. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son on God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) The “I” has been defeated. The desires of the flesh have been crucified. The Spirit conveying the Father and Christ Himself now dwells within me. So I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. This is how we win the spiritual warfare.

Everything else in our existence of this earth flows from this reality. Having the Father and the Son dwell in us as the Spirit is the single greatest reality that we have to recognize within. Why? Because the Spirit makes us holy and one with God.

Holiness if a condition that man cannot attain to no matter how hard he tries. In our nature, no matter how we behave, we are still of the flesh, finite beings. We do not have the strength in our flesh to uphold the law, to hold the book up against gravity (see previous 2 blogs). We are slaves to sin. Now God has come into man to become the reality of the righteous requirements of the law. He not only fulfills the righteous requirements of the law, He is the very reality of what the law dictates.

When we win in our spirits in this way, it will spread to winning is our souls and, in turn, solve our wars in our bodies (flesh) that we fight physically. To win our wars in this physical world, realize we need to win the spiritual war that is fighting within us first. We need to win the war in our spiritual or heavenly realm first in order to win the war in our fleshly or earthly realm so we will be cleaned on the inside first and express the holiness of God on the outside. “Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behaviour; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” (1 Pet. 1:13-16) We must prepare out minds by submitting ourselves to Christ. As Christ lives through us, His temples, we become holy as He is holy.

From our standpoint, we think that winning in this physical world is somehow more important to us. The good works we do are the proof of God’s work in us. This is how we think. Our goal is centred on how this physical world that we live in is changed through our belief in God. From God’s standpoint, winning in the spiritual realm is more important initially. “…For God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7) The cleansing of our cups on the inside initially is more important than the cleansing of our cups on the outside. In the Lord’s way, the good works that we do outwardly are a necessary consequence of His divine life living in us inwardly. As we grow in Christ and begin to recognize His holiness, the cleansing of our cups on the inside continues to lead us ever onward to run this race. We realize no matter what we do on the outside, we are still not holy. “No one is good but God alone.” (Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19) The only way is by faith, in the Son of God, expressing Himself in us. Realizing Christ deeper and deeper within us will allow Him to be expressed more and more out of us. This in “by the word of their testimony” (Rev. 12:11), the second aspect of how Satan is conquered by God. When we have these two conditions in Rev. 12:11, realize we do not love our soul-life unto death, and Satan is conquered.

Winning this warfare means “’…the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.’ It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.” (Rev. 19:7-9) The righteous acts of the saints are their testimony. The word of their testimony, which conquered Satan, testifies that they are the true words of God. “…These are the true words of God.” (Rev. 19:9) They live according to the Word that has been breathed into them (2 Tim. 3:16). God was initially alone facing the problem of Satan who was created by Him. In His righteousness, He has now used another one of His creations, man, to defeat Satan. God defeated Satan by coming in the form of sinful flesh, yet without sin. He came in the person of Jesus. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14) Then He died for us, condemning sin in the flesh. In resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit imparting this Word into us. This Word is now within us making us the true words of God. “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (John 6:63) This is how the Spirit wins the war against Satan.

To win this war, realize we do nothing in our flesh. We need to take our Sabbath rest and do no labour. God conquered Satan first by the blood of the Lamb, then He lived in us as the Spirit expressing Himself out of us as the word of our testimony. The Spirit becomes the reality of our righteous acts so we are the true words of God. That is how Satan is conquered. The saints, God’s called out ones, “loved not their soul-life even until death.” (Rev. 12:11 – Recovery Version) That is why we need to have a Sabbath rest in the Lord where we do no work according to our flesh. When we rest on the Lord, we wait on Him. “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isa. 40:31) When we wait on the Lord and rest in Him, we are protected from Satan’s darts. That is why to win this battle, God does not teach us how to parry and thrust with our sword. He teaches us how to wear our armor. As the battleground is ourselves, what we do is teach each other, through the Spirit who gives us utterance (Acts 2:4), how to defend ourselves from the enemies attacks. The only offensive weapon is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Eph. 6:17). Realize it is God as the Spirit who defeats the enemy Satan. When we apply His written Word as the breathed-out word to make Him real to us as life in the Spirit, Christ Himself defeats Satan.

To do this, we need to pray at all times in the Spirit. “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit…” (Eph. 6:18) Realize to pray at all times in the Spirit is to love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our strength and with all our mind. When we love Him with this intensity, we will set our minds on Christ, thinking about Him all the time so we are one spirit with Him.

 

Loving God is the key to realizing Christ’s victory and Satan’s defeat in our spiritual warfare.

The question of what the Spirit is seems mysterious to our minds. You cannot see it with our eyes, hears it talk out loud, smell it in the air, taste it as a flavor, or touch it physically. However, if we ask a Christian is there a Holy Spirit, most Christians will say yes. It is what makes us realize that a man who died over 2000 years ago was able to save us from our sins so we are forgiven by God. It makes them realize man in not God, but he is subject to a higher power that is God. As we grow in Him, more and more of His reality are realized by us. More and more of His Word, written in the scriptures, become real to us. This is the function of the Spirit that is living in our spirits. The Spirit is what God has given us for our possession in this age of grace, the jubilee…

God’s Spirit transmits the reality of the Father and the Son into us. God is one and unchanging in His dimension (realm) of the heavens. But in our 4D world (3D + time) on this earth, the earthly realm, God relates to us as three persons. That is why man has coined the word “triune” meaning 3 in 1. In time, we have God the Father as the source of all things, God the Son as a person whom God the Father entered into and was born at a point in time, being incarnated and having a human living. He died for us and was resurrected by God the Father and ascended back to God’s dimension in the heavens. In our earthly thinking, He is sitting on the right hand of God in the heavenly places. In God’s dimension, He is one with God and in fact is God in the heavenlies. When He resurrected, He released the life-giving Spirit that acts as a ladder that bridges the two different realms. This Spirit is the person of God that transmits Christ into us. That is why the angels are ascending and descending on the Son of Man (John 1:51). That is why we pray to the Father and the Son rather than to the Spirit. The Spirit becomes the ladder that the Son released to connect the two realms transmitting the elements of the divine into mankind and bringing mankind into God. “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21) That is what the Son has done in releasing His Spirit when He died for us. Christ satisfied the Father’s righteous requirement of the law (Rom. 8:4) and resolved man’s problem of the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:2) releasing the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) into us as the Helper, the Spirit of reality (John 14:16-17), bringing God’s holiness into the born-again man forming a new creation that contains both a divine nature and a human nature, spanning both realms of heaven and earth. [Realize although we are temporal, God is not. He exists outside our dimension of time. He is the Alpha and the Omega. As such, realize the Christ and the Spirit existed at the time of creation. In the beginning, Christ was there with God the Father, “He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:2); the Spirit was there, “…And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Gen. 1:2); and of course God the Father was there. In fact, Christ is the Eternal Father, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest of His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” (Is a. 9:6)] 2 Corinthians 13:14 defines the roles of God’s three aspects as it relates to our earthly dimension. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2 Cor. 13:14) Grace is from the Lord Jesus because He died for us returning us to God to fills us with His fullness; love is the original essence of the Father that motivated (is the source of) why He came to save man eventually forming a union with man as His bride to defeat Satan; and the Spirit acts as the ladder released by Christ to connect the two realms of heaven and of earth so it acts as the “fellowship” between God and us. That is why the Father is the source, the Son is the way, and the Spirit is the fellowship. That is why the only unforgivable sin is if we blaspheme the Holy Spirit. By our blaspheming of the Holy Spirit, we break the connection, the fellowship, between the two realms and Christ cannot save us. However, by our calling on His name, the Spirit forms the connection, the fellowship, between our spirit and God’s Spirit, forming the link between God and us. That is why it is “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” (2 Cor. 13:14) That is why “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (Rom. 6:18) The Spirit makes it real to us that we are His children connected to God in the divine life so we not only have His eternal life but His holiness. Realize this is the same as saying: We are His possession and are freed from sin. This is jubilee.

In God’s dimension, He is timeless. That is why God can be timeless and unchanging on the one hand, and changed by being processed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and returning back to us for our possession on the other hand. That is why certain humans can be approached by God, like Abraham, prior to the rite of circumcision or to the offerings of sacrifices for their sins, because they believed in Christ and it was accounted to them as righteousness. “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” (Gen. 15:6) God applied the death of Christ, in time, to forgive Abraham before Jesus actually died. In God’s dimension of the heavens, He is timeless and sees time from end to end so Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” (John 8:56) Abraham saw the day of Jesus because of Christ’s timelessness, and realized the Spirit within. Today, in the age of grace, in His jubilee, we can all apply the death of Christ to not only deal with our past sins, but to free us of future sins, by believing to receive the Spirit as our possession. “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened…how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:10-13) The Holy Spirit is a gift to us today. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Rev. 3:20) The Holy Spirit is knocking today. He is the free gift that God has sent to us for our possession. To receive this free gift, we simply need to open the door and ask Him to come into our lives.

When the Spirit comes as a free gift into us by our calling on Him, He conveys the reality of the Father and the Son into us. “When the Spirit of truth (reality) comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:13-15) The Spirit is the one that will guide us into all the truth. He guides us into all the realities of God, making all that Jesus did real to us. That is why we realize that Jesus died for us and forgave us of our sins. It is the Spirit’s doing. The Spirit does not speak on his own but acts to transmit the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection and the Father’s love into us. In fact, the Spirit brings the realities of all of God into us. He brings God’s love, God’s light, and God’s holiness into us so we express His righteousness. That is why “…you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses.” (Eze. 36:25-29) When we are “filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18), we are “filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:19) Like the disciples in Acts waiting until the day of Pentecost, when “they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:4) It is the Holy Spirit in us that gives us utterance expressing Him. When people see our expressions, they will be amazed, as we would be speaking the Spirit into their spirits making the Spirit real to them. That is why “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” (Acts 2:11) Their spiritual eyes will be open (John 9:10), their spiritual ears will be unblocked (Isa. 35:5; Isa. 29:18), the aroma of God will fall upon them (2 Cor. 2:15), they will taste that the Lord is good (Psa. 35:8) and touch Him and be healed (Luke 8:46). This is how the gospel is spread by the church to establish the kingdom of God.

As Christians who possess God, we are all called to bring the good news to others of our jubilee. “Do not quench the Spirit.” (1 The. 5:19) “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going, so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) When someone speaks in the Spirit, the meanings are often not clear to our logical minds alone. They are only understood by the Spirit working within our spirits. “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” (1 Cor. 2:6-10) Within us God has imparted a secret and hidden wisdom which is the Spirit revealing Himself to us. He has given us the Spirit which searches even the depths of God. That is why, ”No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11) who is living within us. “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.” (1 Cor. 2:12-13) God has freely given us of Himself as our possession. As we are filled with the Spirit, the Spirit will give us utterance (Acts 2:4) to speak spiritual things to others. When we speak, realize it should be of the Spirit. The natural man doesn’t understand this. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (2 Cor. 2:14) Only within our spirits, where the Spirit dwells do we understand God Himself.

If you want to know the depths of God, present your natural man as a living sacrifice to God so you no longer live but you let His Spirit live in you, expressing Himself through you to make you holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:2; Gal. 2:20). Here you will “taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Psa. 34:8)

The Lord’s jubilee is the age of grace that we are presently in. Christ has returned us to God so God could now be our possession. We are now all his prodigal sons who have lost our possession and have returned to Him. Having sold ourselves to sin because of our poverty, we now have come home. We realize that in our own strength in the flesh, we cannot meet the righteous requirements of the law. It leaves us only in poverty. It is demeaning and senseless, like feeding pigs. However, because we have sold ourselves to sin, we are now under the bondage of sin. Sin had taken us captive. Sin tells us we can hold the book up in the air against gravity ourselves because we have the knowledge of good and evil. (Please refer to the previous blog and blogs for the references. I have deliberately left the common references for this passage out as it could be placed after every phrase in this passage.) Sin tells us we can keep the law by our own strength without God…But we can’t. No matter how hard we try, eventually we fail. That is the law of sin within us all. You see, keeping the law was not something we were supposed to know. The knowledge of what is good and what is evil is something for God to discern in His holiness. It is distinct from us who are made of the flesh. We don’t have the ability to carry it out, to follow the laws in our flesh. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. We need to return to God as our possession.

When God is returned to us as our possession, we have been filled to all His fullness. As Christ comes to dwell in us, He holy nature becomes a part of us. He dwells within us with His divine life and gives us His life so we may have it abundantly. We had all been blinded by sin thinking we could reach holiness ourselves without His divine life dwelling in us. He came “to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” (Isa. 42:7) Sin had blinded us to think we could do all things in ourselves. We were enslaved to sin, imprisoned sitting in darkness. We were blind but now we see. For the life in us “is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint; and to him who has no might He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings of eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.’ (Isa. 40:28-31). When we rely on our flesh, even youths will faint and fall exhausted and drop the book. But when we rest in the Spirit and wait on Him who dwells within us, our strength will be renewed and we shall mount up on wings of eagles and take flight in the resurrection life as the dove flying into the open field. We are freed by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death. We can run and not be weary; we can walk and not faint.

When we walk based on the strength of our flesh, we faint and are powerless against sin. It is a law. In our flesh, realize we are one of “a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed” (John 5:3) who are waiting to be healed (see John 5). We have been here for a long time, lame and unable to walk according to the laws of God based on the efforts of our flesh. Then in the age of the jubilee, Jesus said to us, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6) “Get up, take your bed, and walk.” (John 5:8) When Christ tells us to walk, we walk by his Spirit within us. Jesus equates this ability to freedom from sin. “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.’” (John 5:16) We were lamed in our ability to keep the law. Christ has set us free when we walk by his power, the power of the Spirit. This is how Christ is working today. “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” (John 5:17)

God is very busy today. The Father, the Son and the Spirit are working to transform us into His image. He is working within us to express Himself out from us. That is why we can all say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) Realize He came by being incarnated as a man, lived a human life on this earth and went to the cross to die for us so our sins could be forgiven. By dying for us, He met the righteous requirements of the law so He released the life-giving Spirit and returned to us to be our possession. When we possess God in our spirits, He expresses Himself through our bodies (flesh). Just like the bronze serpent lifted up on a cross, He was made like sin, in the form of flesh, yet He had no sin, no poison within Him. We today are like Him, in this body of flesh on the outside, but with God and His holiness on the inside. Realize our lameness and weakness in our flesh has been healed. The lamed man, in his flesh, was healed so he could walk by the Spirit who is the reality of the laws of God. All our deficiencies of our flesh are healed when Christ comes to be our possession. “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become like a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water…And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness, and the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way, even if they are fools, they shall not go astray…but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, everlasting joy shall be upon their heads, they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Isa. 35:5-10) We have found the Way of Holiness. It is Christ as our possession. Christ heals the brokenness in our flesh restoring our bodies to holiness. We are on the highway of Holiness. Realize we have been ransomed by the Lord and have return to Zion, to the house of God, singing with everlasting joy upon our heads, obtaining gladness and joy. We have Christ as our possession, our jubilee.

Today, God is building His house through us. Each one of us is a temple containing God, possessing Him. Collectively, we form the house of God. That is why, “In my Father’s house are many abodes; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you to Myself, so that where I am you also may be. And where I am going you know the way. Thomas said to Him, Lord, we do not know where You are going; how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the reality and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:2-6 – Recovery Version) In the Father’s house we are the many abodes. He went to the cross to prepare a way for us so He could abide in us as our possession. In turn, we are His for His possession as He was preparing the place for us to be received into Himself. He is the only way to the Father because we cannot be one with Him unless we are holy. So no one comes to the Father except through Christ.

Through Christ, the Father does His works. “The Father who dwells in Me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in My name, I will do it.” (John 14:10-14) Realize it is the Father who dwells in the Son that is doing the works. Today, the fullness of God has come to live within our spirits. Christ is no longer limited in time and space. He has multiplied Himself into a vast number of people by entering into man to make those who believe all sons of God because they contain Him. From one Son, God now has many sons like the sand of the sea. “Yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it is said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ it will be said to them, ‘You are the sons of the living God.’” (Hos. 1:10) The covenant He established with Abraham and the sons of Israel has now reached the Gentiles in His second covenant when Christ returned to us as our possession. Realize though God established the first covenant with Abraham, the Bible refers to the children of Israel, and not the children of Abraham, as God’s chosen people. The reason was that the sons of Hagar, the bondservant of Abraham, was not counted as God’s chosen people. Because Sarah was so old, they thought that she could never conceive and tried to help God out so Abraham would have children through Hagar. Realize man’s efforts to help God through the flesh created immense difficulties for himself…even up to this day. We need to rest in God on His Sabbath and learn to do no labour in our flesh relying solely on His promise. This promise today is the Holy Spirit. “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.” (Eph. 1:13-14) The Spirit in us has gone through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and now has come back to us to be our promise sealing us in Him. He sealed us with the Spirit as a pledge that we will inherit God as our possession. “So much the more also Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.” (Heb. 7:22) We are in this better covenant that is opened to all people including Hagar’s descendants. “For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.” (2 Cor. 5:4-5) While we are in the flesh, in this tent that the Word “tabernacled” in (John 1:14 – Recovery Version), we groan and are stilled burdened. We do not divest ourselves of these mortal burdens, that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed. We need to do all things well still in our bodies through the Spirit, but the desires of the flesh no longer hold us as captives. We no longer have idols. An idol is anything other than God that holds us captive. We are no longer enslaved to the things of the flesh so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by the divine life. Things on this earth no longer enslave us as we rest in Him, taking Christ as our possession. Realize the Spirit has become a guarantee of this.

The Spirit in us lives out God’s holiness in our bodies. When we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we internalized a knowledge that was in the realm of God. We knew what is good, but we were not given the ability to carry out what we knew. With Christ as our possession making a home in our hearts, we have gained the ability to follow our conscience through Christ living in us. That is why we need to do everything to the best of our abilities in this world. His holiness inside makes us righteous outside so we can follow our conscience. We no longer add new laws to our knowledge of good and evil. Knowing better or worse is no longer important, as we have learned to be content, learning the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. (Phi. 4:11-14) We no longer struggle to obey our conscience. “Pray for us; we are convinced that we have a clear conscience and desire to conduct ourselves honorably in all things.” (Heb. 13:18) That is why the law is spiritual. “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.” (Rom. 7:14) Obeying the law now does not come from us, but from Christ living in us. That is why disobedience is equated with unbelief.

After the children of Israel were delivered out of Egypt, through the many signs God showed Pharaoh, and having crossed the Red Sea in such a miraculous way, they continued to complain and rebel. “For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.” (Heb. 3:16-19) Disobedience is equated with unbelief. If we don’t belief that Christ is now our possession, we will work in our flesh, becoming disobedient so we will not enter into His rest. Realize triumphing over sin is believing He is living inside of us.

In the jubilee, we have gained Christ as our possession and we have been freed from sin so Christ lives out of us. As Christ lives out of us, realize His righteousness will abide by the commandments and follow our conscience. If we sin, realize it is because of our unbelief.

 

“Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” (2 Cor. 13:5) Christ in you is the most important reality for man to recognize. It makes Him our possession and us His possessions. That is how the house of God is built.

Humans have the ability to experience a joy that is higher than anything this world can offer. This joy will make you “exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. 1:8 – Recovery Version) so that you are beside yourself in joy. Our inner beings hunger for this. The emptiness that we all feel, our thirst for contentment, can finally be fulfilled. We have come to the age of the jubilee.

In the Old Testament, after the children of Israel (God’s people) were delivered by Moses, the deliverer (Christ), out of Egypt (the world), passing them through the Red Sea (baptizing them separating God’s people from the world of sin), they rejoice and sang a song to the Lord (Exo. 15:1-21). The lambs that had shed their blood, painted on their doorposts, had spared them from God’s judgment which passed over them. (Christ became the lamb shedding his blood for us as our Passover.) The bitter water they endured in Egypt became sweet (Exo. 15:22-26) as they were brought into the wilderness (the world, sin, no longer keeps us in bondage as its slaves). In this wilderness, they were fed by God with the bread from heaven (Exo. 16:4) (“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” – John 6:35), transforming them intrinsically so they could enter the good land (the foretaste of heaven itself). While in the wilderness, God gave them his laws defining for them what holiness really is. They needed sacrifices for whatever they did, before they could approach God because in their flesh, they were all unclean. Every expression out of their flesh was unclean. But God was holy. So God purifies them with his burning fire on the altar, burning up the flesh of the offerings, terminating the life of an animal to pay the penalty as a substitute for their own sins. The animals gave their lives for the children of Israel as Christ gave his life for us. They were to rest in God, so every seven days, they had a Sabbath day of complete rest. Every seven years, they had a Sabbath year where they were to do nothing. “For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord.” (Lev. 25:3-4) Then in the fullness of time, “You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years…And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all your land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the land.” (Lev. 25:8-12) On the year of the Jubilee, not only did the children of Israel celebrate with ecstatic joy, but two things happened. All the property you had lost, because you were poor and sold it off, was returned to you. If you had even sold yourself because of your poverty, you were freed to return to your own clan. Every fifty years, on the jubilee year, this was to happen. Again during this year, they were to do no work but only enjoy and celebrate. Today, in the fullness of time, realize we have entered his jubilee.

Repeatedly God tells us there is nothing we could do on his Sabbath. Every multiple of seven, we are to rest and do no labour. On the fiftieth year, we are to have a year of jubilee. Fifty is the Pentecostal year. It foreshadows the day of Pentecost, fifty days after the day Christ resurrected when the Spirit came like a mighty rushing wind. “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one on them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:1-4) In this Pentecostal year, this year of jubilee, liberty has been proclaimed to all the inhabitants of the land. What they had loss of their possessions, it was returned to them (Lev. 25:13, 23-34). Because of their poverty, if they had sold themselves to another clan, the children of Israel were to return to their own clan again (Lev. 25:35-55). What we have lost, is found (Luke 15:32). What we have been enslaved to, we are freed (John 8:34). In Luke 4:16-19, Jesus refers us to Isa. 61:1-3 which says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19). Jesus adds, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) Realize we had been sold to sin as a slave of sin. “Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.’” (John 8:24) “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold into the bondage of sin.” (Rom. 7:14) He has come to proclaim the good news to the poor who have sold themselves into the bondage of sin. He has come to proclaim liberty to those oppressed by sin, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of jubilee.

The loss of our possessions was returned to us on the year of jubilee. What is the greatest possession that man lost? Realize man was created with a God-shaped cavity that was supposed to be filled with God. We were created like a cup, an earthen vessel (2 Cor. 4:7), to contain God on the inside, and to express him on the outside. We were supposed to take from the tree of life so God would be the content filling every human being on this earth. God was supposed to be our possession filling our God-shaped cavity so we would hunger and thirst nevermore. The possession of any earthen vessel is its content. When we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we lost our possession. “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever’—therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Gen. 3:22-24) We where driven out to till the ground ourselves, apart from God and not yoked with Him, and guarded from taking God as our content. We could no longer eat him and assimilate him intrinsically into our inner beings as the tree of life. We lost God as our possession.

When Christ died on the cross for us and resurrected as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), He could enter man once more. Meeting the disciple in the upper room, “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22) God could enter into man once again providing them with the eternal divine life of God saving them, cleansing them on the inside. Then on the day of Pentecost, He came as a mighty rushing wind and filled the 120 disciples with His Holy Spirit. “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:4) God entered into man as the Spirit of power, expressing Himself through man, becoming man’s expression on the outside. God has come back into man as his life and life supply. We can eat Him and assimilate Him intrinsically into us, transforming us to the same image of Christ. God has returned to us as our possession.

This is jubilee.

When we realize this, our spirit will shout with joy. We will be beside ourselves in ecstasy. “Whom having not seen, you love; into whom though not seeing Him at present, yet believing, you exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory.” (1 Peter 1:8 – Recovery Version) Our joy is so great it is unspeakable, inexpressible. The whole problem of man’s fall has been resolved! God can come back to us to fill our God-shaped cavity! We have been transformed into the same image of God. We no longer hunger and thirst as Christ has become our possession!

Realize the jubilee is mutual.

God is celebrating with us.

In the parable of the prodigal son, we have “squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him any.” (Luke 15:13-16) When we lose our possession of God, there is always a need inside, a hunger and thirst that this world cannot provide. The world today is in a severe famine because it tries to fill us with everything except God. It cannot fill our God-shaped cavity so we begin to be in need. We sell ourselves to sin in an attempt to fill our God-shaped cavity. We even long for the pods that are given to pigs. This is the extent of human depravity. We become its slaves, living in the bondage of sin and without God.

When we came to our senses, we realized that in My Father’s house, “How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!” (Luke 15:17) When we finally say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” (Luke 15:18-19), we arose and came to the Father. Then, “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20) When we return to our Father and realize we “have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” (Luke 15:21), we have realized how empty and worthless we are in this world without God. Once we realize this about ourselves, the Father comes into us, coming back into mankind, to be our possession. So the father said, “’Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.” (Luke 15:22-24) When we realize our worthlessness within our flesh, that we can do nothing apart from Him (John 15:5), and seek the Father’s face, we were made alive in Him. “Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:5-6) Today, we are celebrating with Christ who has come back into our beings as our jubilee. Not only have we received Christ as our possession, but we have come back to the Father as the lost prodigal son, as his possession. “He was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:24) “Abide in me, and I in you.” (John 5:4) “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:23) The prodigal son has returned home. We have God as our possession and God has us as his possession. This is the most momentous occurrence of any event in the history of mankind. Let us “bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate” (Luke 15:24) with God in his jubilee. For today, we who were dead in our flesh have been made alive in God. We who were lost to this world, have been found in Him (Phi. 3:9). This is jubilee.

Jubilee is not just a year as in the Old Testament, it is an age, from the day of Pentecost in Acts, through to the fullness of our celebration of Christ at his wedding feast as his Bride in the millennial kingdom, and likely extending to all of eternity.

Jubilee is not just a celebration, it is Christ in us. Realize God has returned into man, into us, as our possession. When that happens, God has filled our God-shaped cavity with Himself. We are not hungry or thirsty anymore because we have been “filled up to all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:19) We are contented because now we possess what we were created for. “But godliness with contentment is great gain.” (1 Tim. 6:6) Realize possessing God within is contentment within which is of great gain to us. It leads us to “Be anxious for nothing…” (Phi. 4:6) in this world. We have God as our possession and He has us as His possession. “For you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” (1 Pet. 2:9) That is why we can “Be anxious for nothing…” (Phi. 4:6) “For I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Phi. 4:11-13) Paul’s secret in living on this earth is Christ in him as his possession. That is Jubilee.

 

At the end of his journey through Egypt, the Passover, the Red Sea, and the wilderness, as Moses reflected on his entire life as he approached the end of his existence on this earth, he said, “For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?” (Deu. 4:7) Call on Him, and make Christ your possession.

(Please read this prayerfully asking God to reveal it in your spirit. This will not make sense to those who have not believed so I apologize. But for those who love Him, his Spirit will enlighten, encourage and empower you. The previous blogs, index on the home page, will provide a clearer understanding of this passage starting at “What is God?”)

 

To be transformed into the same image of Christ, realize we have to die first. His expression cannot become our expression when self still exists. We have to realize we can do nothing for God. “For apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) Only when we completely rest in Him can He exert his will maximally through us. Only in our weakness, does He show us his strength. “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:10) Only when we are last, can Christ become first. “So the last will be first, and the first last.” (Mat. 20:16; 19:30) Only when we die, and no longer live, can Christ live out of us. “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) But when Christ lives as first in us, realize that He becomes our holiness. The God of peace Himself has sanctified us completely. (1 The. 5:22) We no longer walk with a human life, we walk with Christ in his divine life. That is what the resurrection life is.

When Christ was crucified on the cross, at “about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ … And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.” (Mat. 27:46-50) When Jesus died on the cross, the weight of the sins of mankind was so heavily laden on Him that God left him. Whether the divine life that he was born with, or the Spirit of power that descended on him as a dove at his baptism, left, the Bible does not say. Nevertheless, Jesus gave up his spirit so he could die. He gave up his divine life so he could die for us. “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.” (Phi. 2:8) His death not only paid the penalty for our sins, but freed us from the power of sin which is in us. It freed us from our original rebellion that says, “We know how to be righteous in our flesh and we don’t need you God.” It freed us from our thought that we, in our flesh, have the knowledge of good and evil and can function to keep the law independent of God, without his divine life and its divine nature that is distinct to God. It freed us from sin. His death broke down the separation between God and man.

“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.” (Mat. 27:51) When Christ died, the curtain that separated God from fallen man was torn in two. God can reach man. Man can touch God. This is radical. The earth shook. Realize the separation between God and man, between heaven and earth, exists because we think we can do all things in ourselves, in our flesh, and not need God. We think we can be holy without Him. That is the origin of sin. This is over. The curtain of the temple was torn in two. His holiness can come into us to make us holy. When Jesus died on the cross, he condemned sin in the flesh. “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Rom. 8:3-4) Sin was condemned because it was not suppose to put to death anyone without sin. It was not suppose to put to death anyone who submitted his will to the Father’s will absolutely. So death loss it sting. God could come back, in his righteousness, according to the law, to raise Christ from the dead.

When Christ was raised from the dead on the third day, God came back to Jesus. He “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom. 1:4) By resurrecting Jesus Christ, God declared Him as His Son, “Who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (Rom. 4:25) Raising Christ from the dead means God accepted the sacrifice of Jesus for our sin(s). By accepting the sacrifice, realized we are justified before God. Being justified before God allows him to enter man once again as the fruit from the tree of life.

Man was supposed to take from the tree of life, a life he was not created with. It was God’s life, the divine life. It was God’s holiness. When man fell, he could not take hold of God’s distinctiveness. “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—‘” (Gen. 3:22) To take from the tree of life is to take of God’s life, his distinctiveness, his holiness that is beyond time. When Jesus died of the cross, he paid the penalty so we could take God into us again, as the bread of life, to assimilate God into our beings intrinsically, transforming us into his image so we could be one spirit with him. This is the power of his resurrection.

“So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” Jesus was crucified as someone perishable in the flesh with a human life, as someone dishonorable in man’s eyes, as someone in weakness in his natural body. In resurrection, Christ was raised as a new creation imperishable in the Spirit, as a new creation expressing God’s glory with eternal power in a spiritual body. As the life-giving Spirit, Christ was able to come and make a home in man’s hearts giving him His divine life, a life full of His distinctiveness, His holiness that was eternal. “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Cor. 15:47-49) The power of the life-giving Spirit being released was so strong over death when Jesus was resurrected that “The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” (Mat. 27:52-53) In resurrection, the punishment of death for sins we committed is over when we believed. “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:54-55) “…The perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality…” (1 Cor. 15:54) In his resurrection, as we “shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (I Cor. 15:49), we have finally fulfilled the will of God through Christ living in us. “…According to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite (head up) all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Eph. 1:7-10) “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Cor. 15:49) Today, in the realm of our spirit, we have already unified heaven and earth.

Within our spirits where the Spirit dwells, God has already unified heaven and earth today because the holiness of God is already living within our bodies, the temples of God. As Christians, we must realize through the Spirit, that we have been crucified with Christ, and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us in resurrection. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) All the things of this world, we need to let go of, if we deal with it in our flesh. We need to live within our spirit with his Spirit expressing though us. To do this, realize we need to eat of Him. We need to assimilate Him into our beings so His life intrinsically becomes our life. His thoughts become intrinsically our thoughts. “But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor. 2:16) To keep our spiritual life alive, realize we need to breath Him in, just like we need to breath to keep our physical body alive. That is why “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Tim. 3:16) The breathe that God breaths out, we need to breath in. That is how God makes us alive in our spirits. When we immerse ourselves in his words, the Spirit within us will give us understanding. “These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” (1 Cor. 2:10) Realize “…the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” (1 Cor. 2:11-14) That is why we need to “Let the word of Christ dwell in [us] richly, teaching and admonishing each other in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in [our] and and’s hearts to God.” (Col. 3:16)

When we let his word become a reality to us, we become a kind of firstfruits of his resurrection. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (Jam. 1:18) Christ was the firstfruits of the resurrection. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Cor. 15:20) “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:22-23) When Christ resurrected, He secretly ascended to the Father to present Himself as the firstfruits to God for His enjoyment. This is foreshadowed in the festival of the firstfruits waved to God.

“Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf after the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.’” (Lev. 23:9-11)

The children of Israel were to offer the firstfruits of the harvest to the Lord. Immediately following his resurrection, before Christ’s public ascension (Luke 24:50-53), Christ secretly ascended to present Himself as the firstfruits to the Father. The firstfruits were people who have died to themselves in the flesh and made alive in God in his holiness, just as Christ was. Realize one human being saw Christ in his resurrected form and touched Him even before He presented Himself to the Father as the firstfruits.

That person was Mary Magdalene. “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.” Mary loved the Lord so much that, while it was still dark, she got up and ran to his tomb. She was the first one to see that the stone had already been taken away. “So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.’” (John 20:2) Her concern was only for the Lord and where they may have laid his body. She did not understand the Scripture, that Christ must rise again. When Peter and the other disciple came to the tomb, they did not understand that Jesus had resurrected. “For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. So the disciples went away again to their own homes.” (John 20:8-10)

“But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping, and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying.” (John 20:11-12) Because of her great love for the Lord, Mary just stood at the tomb weeping. She was so overwrought with emotions because of her love for the Lord that when she saw two angels in white sitting in the tomb, she did not recognize them as angels. Her only concern was for the Lord. “And they said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.’” (John 20:13) Even when they spoke with her, her one desire was to know where the Lord was. “When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, ‘Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.’” (John 20:14-15) She was so distraught, she wept continuously at the tomb and now just wanted His body. “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means, Teacher).” (John 20:16) Realize this is the most poignantly touching moment recorded in the entire Bible. Man demonstrated his own free will to love God so intimately that God reveals Himself. She loved Him with all her heart, with all her soul, with all her strength, and with all her mind. When we love Him in this manner, Christ reveals Himself fully to our Spirit, filling our spirits with the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19).

If you do not fully feel this kind of love for God, realize you have to humble yourself. Love cannot be manufactured. It is simply there. It comes with time as we walk with the Lord. As a first step, we have to humble ourselves. When we love someone, realize it is their will we want to please and to do, not our own. We want to do everything for them, and not us. They take precedence, not us. They consume our thoughts. That is why Paul said, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith is Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Phi. 3:7-11) When we present ourselves as a living sacrifice to God (Rom. 12:1), realize we love God. Everything we do is not for ourselves, but for Him. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) We are dead to everything in this world so Christ can live within us.

To see the Lord in this way, we need a severe turning within our beings. Mary had to turn twice to finally see the Lord (John 20:14 and 16). We heed to humble ourselves and get down on our knees, and pray to Him. “Lord, show me how to love you. Show me what it means. I give you my all, all my power, all my strength, all my abilities. That you would be Lord to me.” Only when we can truthfully call Him Lord in our lives, do we have faith in Him. Only when we say, “Lord, you control everything in my life,” do we believe there is a God living within us, doing everything. When we took from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we thought we could do everything without God. Only when we take from the tree of life, will we know the power of his resurrection.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and you God.’” (John 20:17) Because of her love for the Lord, Mary touched the Lord in His resurrected body even before He ascended to the Father. Jesus in turn revealed to her the most important reality of being a Christian—that God had come back into man as his life and life supply in His resurrection. Before His resurrection, the dearest term the Lord used to call His disciples was friends. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:13-14) After His resurrection, we are related to God as sons. Jesus was the only being born of the Father God, now God is our Father making us brothers with Christ. Through His crucifixion and His resurrection, the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) was released to bring God with His divine life and nature back into man to dwell in our spirits. Humans that are of the flesh can be freed from sin and be holy like God Himself. We can be transformed into the image of God through His indwelling Spirit. That was the revelation that Mary was rewarded with because she loved Him so much.

Today, if we love Him that much, with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, and all our minds, realize we will be a kind of firstfruits to God. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (Jam. 1:18) The firstfruits are offered as a wave offering first for God to enjoy, then for us to enjoy. The Christ within us, as the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), transforms us to be holy, first for God’s enjoyment, then for us to enjoy each other.

 

To love God means to put His will first, and not our own. As we rest in Him as our Sabbath, we have surrendered our will to his will. We live by faith and not by sight. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) When it is no longer I who live, but Christ expressing out of us as the fruit of the Spirit, collectively, we become the firstfruits for God’s enjoyment and for man’s enjoyment. This is how His Body is formed. This is the power of His resurrection life lived out of us.