The Christian Life, 1968 — Norman Grubb

The Lord speaks in the same voice to us all, once again, as I said previously, I somewhat feel it's like you've had good, warm flesh, and now you've got to split the flesh open and find there's some bones underneath.

At least the flesh needs some bones to keep it in its proper shape. First about it, Tommy, Father Spirit, so wonderfully this morning opened up to us. The fact, which is the basis of this life we're talking about, using the various terms such as the, what's going on?

Thank you, thank you. The baptism of the Spirit, centering on the fact that it is a living union, unity, I'll let Ronald say why I prefer the word unity to union, between the person, and we as the liberated persons, and such a union and unity that we just live naturally.

And yet, deep down in the sense of our consciousness, it isn't we, but he. In a sense, perhaps, I'm saying this afternoon, one of the least interesting, perhaps the bias of the high talks we're seeking to give, because I only want to go over with you the why of the unity, or the union.

On what solid foundation can we say that? I'm only, as I say, opening up to see what lies behind. Therefore it is in this place, commonplace to us all, most of us here I hope, a just reminder, but as I say, I've always been one that feels I must have my feet on earth, solid.

I know the way is under me if I'm walking on it. I'm not going to get any questions with me, why it should be so and how it can be so. Looking at that this afternoon, we've seen, all through these talks, this one fact that there's this one person, and you can go over it again, we've gone over it again and again, this one person, this one person who is love, which means he lives other people's lives.

He really is other people, get down to it. Being a spirit, he must have his means of manifestation, or manifest him, as James and. But supremely, it doesn't manifest him because he's a person. Therefore, the reason for our creation is to be in such a natural unity that we are as he is.

That's pointed out so plainly, not by imitation, but impartation. And know how we live like that. So we are the eternal love. As he is, so we are the eternal love. We are other people. This is how it comes out.

I'll be underlining that again this morning. That whatever term we may use, Pentecost, Absolutist truth, self-identification, whoever it is, it only has one meaning to it ultimately. A union relationship between him and us.

A unity between us. So we are he and we, and yet such a relationship that it turns out to be just he, I beg your pardon, turns out to be just we. It's really he. This is the paradox we get onto. On what basis can we live naturally?

Never again questioning this basic fact of this unity. He and we. He by we. He by us. We as he, whatever phrase we like to use. Now we left it yesterday afternoon at the point of the fact that there's another he who's captured humanity.

It's not that he. He's only a created he, but he's a God, and he's called the God of this world. And John said it to us. There are two he's. And one he lives in the unredeemed and the other he lives in the redeemed.

So he said, greater he's in you, the redeemed, than he that's in the world. And gave them their names and said, hereby there we, the spirit of truth, that is the person who is the truth, in the believer, and the spirit of error, that is the person, the God who is the error, in the unbeliever.

So our relationship and the condition in which we come into this world is a wrong God in us. And a wrong God by us. The God of self-presence. The God of self-giving. The false one. And we discussed that yesterday, and we're going to discuss that again today, I take it.

But what we've got to find out is the means by which, and the grounds upon which, there's been a change of Gods. Because as always, always for humanity, the only possibility for humanity is a change of Gods.

The God in me, the person, so joyful that we spontaneously function as he functioned. How can the wrong one be out and the right one be in? There's a permanence. So we can forget it, and live. So you see, I'm going back in a sense to common places.

The foundations of the Gospel, but just to give, it's helpful, to give a re-examination of those foundations. We saw, yesterday also, that we're in a hopeless condition, we're captive, we cannot get out.

We're captives. One of the scriptural expressions is we're slaves. Slaves of the devil. Slaves of the spirit of self-centredness. We're captives, we can't get out of it. The only way we can be out is if somebody else gets us out.

Who can get us out? No man can get men out. Because we're one of us. And so we get the great revelation of the Gospel. Which is, of course, the perfect revelation, of course, what kind of person God is.

Love means it exists for need, it belongs to need. It's the possession of need. Need's the predator, love's the debtor. And where there's need, love belongs to that need. And the supreme need of the human race is that we've been caught up with the wrong God and going in the wrong direction.

And living, and it should be so, living eternally in the constant distortions. Therefore, the Gospel is this person, this living person himself being the one who rescues us. And rescue means, the means by which, as I said yesterday, he regains his total property.

God couldn't create higher than humanity, because you can't create higher than yourself. And he created us in his similitude, in his likeness. Because only can he as a person function through persons.

So it's the very topmost of his creation is to be lost to him, and become a total property. And the whole of human creation, expressing all forms of the activity of self-centeredness, well they meant this, because all forms of activity of self-giving.

Self-love, self-giving. So there's no other purpose in redemption than that God should regain his total property. And be able, naturally and easily, through time and eternity, to express himself in infinite variety of self-giving love and self-giving activity.

Instead of humanity expressing the wrong God in all forms of self-seeking. This we know how it is done. By God becoming a man. The Bible leaves us no question about that. Because John says that this one who came was the Word, he was with God, he was God.

And the Word was made flesh. So he says this one on earth was God. John says, as differently as Paul says it. Paul says God was manifest in the flesh. Now this is a tremendous fact. A fact far beyond reason.

The one who is, it's fantastic to reason, the one who is, is in a sense the universe itself. The upholder, the universe, the one who expresses himself through the universe became a tiny part of it, a human.

I don't ultimately base my faith on trying to stretch my reason to believe things and not believe things. I base my faith ultimately, what I might call, in my instinctive ideal. In this. I can't conceive, I can't conceive, I can ever conceive anything more wonderful than a God whose real life is living the lives of the people he creates.

I can't conceive of one, a God whose only interest is to be us, to live our lives. So his life, his joy, his gaiety, his fulfillment is being us, being we. I can't conceive any higher than a love like that.

When that love has been exemplified on earth by a person who did that, I'll bet my life on that for God. I'll take all the rest in. So I never had any difficulty with liberalism and so on. I say, well, until you find me a better God, I'm going to have this one.

I'm waiting. That's all. She hasn't turned up yet. With all my being, I see in God my ultimate. I can't conceive a higher ultimate. All right, I'll bet my life on the ultimate. And I'll choose the right horse and I'll win in the end.

That's all. So I don't base my faith really on historic facts. Basically, I gather in all historic facts because if it's central on that person, I'll take the lot. So on that basis, I'll take the whole Bible.

If she took the whole Bible, I'll take the whole Bible. The way in which he completed for us a total deliverance, without one crack in it, is known to us. That's what the Bible presents. And all those who interpret Jesus Christ and him crucified to us on earth, bear the same message.

So if we turn one down, we turn the lock down, Paul says the same, and John says the same, and James says the same, and Peter says the same. That's all that's left to compute. It only goes about 30 verses, so it's the same group.

The whole lot's the same thing. So we're looking at this fact now. We must have a deeper faith unless, as I say, to you, this is the only conceivable God that could be. All I say is it's easy to take in what is said by faith.

This was God become man. As a man, to have been man. First of all, of course, he had to be one who couldn't himself become a captive to the wrong God. That had to be 4001. So he himself refused every kind of solicitation or entitlement to become captive to the wrong God which had captured the first Adam.

Therefore he was in a condition in which he was free from the captivity and its consequences which seized upon the human race from which he was a member. Now he went in, went through a process which could produce for us a deliverance without a crack in it.

An entire redemption, whatever we like to call it. This was, of course, through the process of Christ dying and ultimately Christ ascending, although we shan't touch on that. Last one this morning, this afternoon.

Christ dying, Christ rising. The Bible divides the effects of Christ dying and rising into two distinct areas. Presented in two distinct forms in the scriptures. Mainly by the Apostle Paul, who is the one who really opens up the whole metaphor.

The others do too, but he gives us the whole structure of salvation. You may speak of the two stages of redemption as Christ for us and Christ as us. With their different effects. Christ for us and Christ as us.

Pictured for us also in a little statement which kind of slips in to one of the comments on the Lord's Supper. Made by the Apostle Paul in the 10th chapter, 1 Corinthians. When he speaks about the Lord's Supper, it is just passing remarks.

So often great truth comes in passing remarks, as you know. He speaks about the cup of blessing which we bless. Is it not communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of Christ?

I'm just quoting. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of Christ? Now having said that, communion of the blood of Christ, communion of the body of Christ, he goes on saying, for we being many are one bread and one body.

He doesn't say one blood. You'd think he'd say, is it not communion of the blood of Christ? Is it not communion of the body of Christ? We being many are one bread, one blood, one body. He doesn't say that.

He doesn't say we being many are one blood. He says we being many are one bread, one body. The bread being communion of the body. There's reason for that, because there's one necessary, preliminary, necessary part of our redemption, which is something we couldn't touch, which he had to do for us, apart from us.

So we're not the blood. The blood is his life. We're not that. We're the body, which is not quite supposed to be the blood. We're not the blood, we're the body. And so it doesn't connect us that way with the blood.

Because for this first part, there had to be someone who did something for us, apart from us, which he couldn't do for ourselves. Because we're caught up in a permanent condition of everlasting separation from God.

The scriptural claim is eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord. It must be. A race captured by a God of self-sacrifice cannot live side by side with a race captured by God of self-giving.

They won't work. They won't be too friendly up there any more than they are down here. It won't work. It's impossible. There must be an everlasting separation between the two. So we're caught up in this everlasting separation, which is consequences of death.

A story I read to us. Sin that loses death. And after death, remaining in whatever the consequences are of the everlasting separation. So remaining in the consequences of an everlasting separation means to be remaining in the consequences of self-centered life.

Well, we get a little of a hell you get from self-centered life down here. A faint shadow of what can be when there's no comfort. We can comfort our self-centeredness a little down here by nice food and nice things and nice shelter.

When there was sickness, nothing except our burning desires, there won't be a pleasant life. Hell starts inside here, but we get a little comfort up here. When we're sick, what comfort? So we're caught up in a separation which is everlasting, in which, of course, are involved the sins of which we are conscious, and the guilt as a consequence of them.

And all that we speak of is our lost condition. Now Christ, shaving his precious blood for us, means the infinite and eternal one, giving up his infinity and eternity for us. That's what he did. He was the one who would never have died.

He said so. No, I never mind taking it from me. I lay down my life on myself. This is the one who never needs to die. And he's involved in giving up his right to an unadulterated eternal life to be us, and for us to take upon himself a separation which has captured us all.

So the Bible presents us with him, uncharitably, in this aspect, as shadowed all through Scripture. If you eliminate the blood of Christ, you eliminate the Bible. The two side by side. We begin the equivalent of the blood of Christ being able.

The first person of Christ is there to be a substitutionary sacrifice for his sins, like the rest of the Bible. Until we come out of the final prophecy before Jesus Christ came. Behold the Lamb of God.

The scapegoat who took the sins into the wilderness and so on. The whole Bible says it on that. Eliminate the blood, eliminate the Bible. Eliminate the blood, eliminate redemption. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.

The blood means an eternal life, taking temporal death for our sins. That's not blood. Blood is the life. Blood is the evidence that life's gone out. And the blood means therefore an eternal life, giving up being eternal, and taking upon himself the temporal death which is the effect of sin.

Which would go on into death being separation from God, would go on eternally, taking upon himself. And causing him to use such expressions as, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The one who never was forsaken, he's actually God himself.

God forsaking God, as it were. And ending by saying, it is finished. All that he claimed to be finished would have been meaningless unless he'd been raised from the dead. The only proof that the sacrifice was efficacious was that the one who made it was raised from the dead.

That was evidence the whole thing was entirely accepted and entirely finished. That's why Paul said he would raise the game for our justification. Justification is a far, far profounder, more marvelous word than forgiveness.

Forgiveness is human. Can be. Justification is beyond. Forgiveness means, well, if I've wronged you, you might forgive me. I couldn't be quite sure to forget it, and I'm sure I shouldn't forget it. There's an element in forgiveness which isn't complete enough.

You might forget it or might not, I'm sure I shouldn't. Justification is immense. It means you are as if the thing was never there. That's blotting out. I'm always there. I've had 47 years of foundation on that.

I'm always there. It hasn't been a sort of, well, I suppose I've forgiven someone. No, there's a basis to this. And I don't pretend to understand it all. I dig and think, I don't pretend to understand.

But I understand enough for it to be limited to me. That all that would cause me to admit I'm a sinner, which I am. I'm guilty, which I am. I'm a rebel against God, which I am. And justified under condemnation as having broken the eternal law.

There's only one law in the universe. The law is a convenient term used for the way a thing works. Quite a simple word. You talk about a law of something when you catch the way it works. For instance, Newton thought he found the law of gravity.

Of course, Einstein tried to disagree with him, but if you understand Einstein, Einstein, God bless you. But at least the law of gravity doesn't mean, well, something works this way. If there's something that works the way, if you do drop a cup, it's great.

Well, the consequence of broken law are dropped a cup. Defy the law, and at least in China, cups, you get a great broken cup. So there's an effect of broken law. All those things require a very holy understanding.

Therefore, the whole of gravity is broken law. Why? Because there's only one law of the universe. The law of the universe is the way God works. How God works is love. That's all there is in the universe.

The only law of the universe, the law is the way a thing works. How the universe works, that person is love, nothing else. So everything which isn't self-giving love is broken law. And there's only one who is self-giving love, and that's God.

So only so far as God is operating by you, is there unbroken law in you. All the rest is broken law. It's a poor ass. We're poor. And that simply is made of the fact that our effects are broken law. Now, I couldn't mount all those up.

What real foundation do I have? It's entirely out there. Unless I presented with this gospel, this way of redemption, worked out by God. It would mean that he himself became a person. You see, he could represent humanity, but he wants humanity.

That's the deity, he wants humanity. He's the base of humanity. So he has the right to represent humanity. I'm glad he took the name son of man as a good term, sort of general term. He didn't call himself something else, just son of man, or Jesus, or whatever it should have been.

But he wants humanity. All right then, he could be human. This is the leap of faith. God is very Christmassy. And this person, giving up what was his normal, normal relationship, normal condition, eternal life, giving it up.

Becoming what we are, a person under death. In other words, he had, he took it upon himself, the curse. The curse of, he said, everyone hanging from the trees. Cursed everyone hanging from the trees and so on.

The condemnation, the judgment, took it upon himself. Well, I may not understand it all, but I understand that enough. That in the resurrection, God's saying, this person is perfectly righteous. What he went through isn't there any longer.

And therefore, if I related him by faith, he's not there with me any longer. Look at this, he's not there. It's as if he never was there. He never can't be this. I'm out. I'm as sinless in God's sight as his own son is.

Righteous in God's sight as his own son is. That is the care of righteousness. That is the foundation there. I find the freedom in it. So I don't jump into a vague thing called forgiveness, not quite sure how it comes.

The basis of our freedom. And ultimately, of course, the basis of our continual cleansing. That doesn't quite come up now. But when we know this fact, we've also learned in our daily lives, it's a quick thing, a quick cleansing.

Because God's attitude never changes. Actually, it never did. Because in God's sight, the man was saved from the foundation of the world. Indeed, God's a queer person. Because he provides remedies before there are needs for him.

The Bible says, before there is Jesus to be saved, before there is sin for us to save us from. That was a bit funny. We usually have the need first and then the supply afterwards. He has the supply first and digs a hole for the need and puts the supply into it.

We're the holy dog. So God's doing his own business. I like that. I hadn't heard that before, Tommy, the devil's wrath. I think it's a great one. I hadn't heard that before. I agree with you. Yet more important for us, and thank God, wonderfully realized by so many of us here, that's not enough.

If that's all redemption is, that's not enough. I told you that the Bible presents us with, peculiarly, Paul, the process of redemption, Christ's crucified Christ, in two distinct stages? Phases? What word do you use?

Departments? What word do you use? Why isn't it enough? Because my ultimate problem isn't the sins I commit, it's the sin I'll commit them. It's the sin's spirit which motivates me is my problem. The sins I produce, which have caused me to be an express society of self-service, are a product of a sin's spirit which has got me.

The heath is in the world. The spirit of the world. The spirit of hell. Jesus said, they play. Jesus said some things we don't always like. He said to the Pharisees, but we also are Pharisees until we are saved.

Perhaps we'll get a little Phariseism every now and then as well, so after we are saved too. But he said this. He said, Pharisees, year of your father the devil, and the lust of your father you will do.

He didn't say yours. He said, year of your father the devil, lust of your father, because in this spiritual relationship, your father is inside you. Just as there are heavenly powers inside Jesus, there are the wrong powers inside the unredeemed.

And you are expressing his lusting through you. This was a comment, it was made in 1 John 1, 1 John chapter 3 I should say, where it spoke about loving a brother and not being like Cain. Listen to what he says.

He says, love of a brother, don't be like Cain, who is of that wicked one, and slew his brother. Why put those words, of that wicked one, in? Why not just say, don't be like Cain, and slew his brother, because why can't Cain have slew his brother?

There was a hater and murderer inside Cain, who merely used Cain as an agent. That's what humanity is. The wicked one was the one who hated and murdered through Cain, and Cain was the agent. So you see, I'm getting at this.

Devotion is hopelessly incomplete, if it merely removes the consequences of my sins, which has separated me from God, and removes the motivator, and replaced it by a new motivator, the spirit of holiness, instead of the spirit of sin.

The spirit of self-giving love, instead of the spirit of self-loving love. That's just that, it's incomplete. I was saying, I think I moved off at the moment. I was saying in the middle there, and I find at my age my memory sometimes gives me a jump or two, so if you pardon me if I miss a point or two, but I was saying about that quick thing, quick cleansing.

I jumped off there, I was saying now, of course, in God's sight, we always were reconciled. He never needed to be reconciled to us, oh no. He had to fulfill a purpose which could reconcile us to him, which could make it possible for us to come back to him.

So we'd always reconcile. I mean, therefore, there's never any need for us to remain in guilt when we do fall into sin. As quickly as we fall down into sin, we can get up again into faith. Because the Bible speaks of the continual cleansing of the blood.

It speaks for you in the Hebrew Bible. How much more shall the blood of Christ keep cleansing your conscience? Now that's not talking about the underdone. It's talking about the redeemed. Keep cleansing your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Dead works, of course, are self-effort works. Living works are God-effort works. How much more shall the blood of Christ keep cleansing you? Because, in other words, always is this fact that in that act 2 ,000 years ago, everything that ever could be is finished.

The whole lot's up. Past, present, future. So in a second, when I become consciously guilty again, quite right, I should be guilty as a conscious person. But the moment I'm there, I'm able to move over and say, ah, it's not there.

It's not there in God's sight. It's not there in my sight. It's a quick, serious, quick cleansing as our basis to continue freedom from guilt. So I'm moving on now to this second aspect, which must give us basis of a complete redemption and renewal.

If Paul put it into focus for us, I think Paul got a shock. We'll see a little later on. I think that very few of us find what we're talking about now in the one step when we first enter into a relationship with Christ.

It's usually the second step which involves here. I think it was with Paul. Because if I read it right, Paul made the second great discovery when he went to Arabia. Because he speaks a great deal about the second discovery in the Galatian letter.

He opens it up in its fullness in the Roman letter, but he applies it in the Galatian letter. And in the Galatian letter he says he went on a journey into Arabia. He went to Mount Sinai. The shock he got was he didn't find Mount Sinai there, he found Mount Zion there, which is much more convenient.

Because he speaks of both of them. Mount Sinai is law, Mount Zion is grace. And he saw right into it. The Son of God commanded him to go right through with it. And he saw right through the implications of Christ crucified and Christ risen.

And he saw here the implications as us. Now in one sense we have nothing to do with it. In one sense all of us come to the foot of the cross and see this person who took our place and went through a certain process of burying our sins in the body of the tree, being made a cross for us, having the judgment of God upon us for our sins, in our place, and removed, and purified by resurrection.

We don't touch them. We just come there and all the conditions of the sinner disappear. And we are in God's presence. The devil wasn't there. The devil was there. But that's coming to the foot of the cross.

But we've got to go beyond the foot of the cross. We've got to get on the cross. Now Christ saw us. We don't touch. That's the blood of Christ. Christ as us is we. That's why that second statement about the Holy Communion says we are one bread, one body, because the body is part of you.

And this statement requires us, like when Christ was on the cross we are there, like a body is part of you. One bread, one body. Now what does Paul say in that statement? He says get this clear. If this person was humanity, humanity was there.

Now you don't really come through the cross and say he died for me. You say no, if he was humanity, I would say therefore if he died, I died. And if he was buried, I was buried. And if he rose, I rose.

And if he ascended, I ascended. We're getting a little closer in now. But this is the logic that he might conceive. God is in all thoughts. It's interesting to get out his great, apply his great revelations in the two dispensations.

He was too trained minds. Most of the old dispensations, Paul knew. So God is fooling the wise. And he can only get much real wise. No, I won't. Sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. I want to protect the wise, not run down too much.

Please don't. Sorry. I'll make peace with you afterwards. I like people. Sorry. But I'm saying Paul could see the total structure. And he said this. Now watch that, he says. Therefore, if this person was we, it was we.

Now what does that mean, therefore, it was we? What are we? We're a people with a sin-spirit inside us. Actually, as I said before, you never get the Bible right where it remains letters and words to you, or things.

You only get the Bible right where it dissolves and becomes a person. And so even sin, it took me, it's a great revelation I've studied this word, sin, the spirit. Sin is the character of the sin person.

Sin, mind you, is just a spirit of self-centredness. You know that. It's just formed of self-egocentricity, that's all. It's a satanic person. So sin really means it's the character of the satanic person.

So sin, the spirit, really, is the same as using the Bible as holiness. He's a holy spirit. He's the spirit of love, the spirit of the product of self-giving love, of the fruits of the spirit and so on.

You see, he is the holiness in us. You see what I mean? Jesus Christ has laid down those words of righteousness, sanctification and redemption. The word dissolves. These tough, dry words. While the Bible remains dry to you, you can be sure it hasn't broken up to you yet.

It lives. Oh, there he is, there he is. Through the words you find a person. Words, I think, give you their spirit, their life. The letter gives the spirit, gives life. And so I'm only saying this now.

I'm saying this for a reason. Therefore John is saying, look at this. Paul is saying, look at this. This is a whole humanity hanging there. A humanity is a human race which has got a love of God inside it.

It's got the spirit, the sin spirit, which is the spirit of selflessness inside it. Therefore Paul made the remark. He said, God made him to be sin for us. That's a change on. He's also about bearing our sins and our sins upon us.

Sins which have the wrath of God upon them and separate us from God, the judgment and the consequences and all that. That's what he's done. That's why he dies in our place and took the curse upon himself.

That's the other one. That's Christ dying for us. He hasn't gone about sinning here. But sin is the sin principle. Sin spirit, sin person. Now if somebody says to you, 2 Corinthians 5, 24 or some other day, there's no sin for us.

Why? Look, Paul says, look, if he was humanity, he was a whole race which was being motivated by the love of God. And he was motivated by the love of God, producing all the natural products of self-love, self-seeking, self-manifestation, natural egocentric.

See what he says. Here he is in God's sight, this was humanity. In this person, hanging on Calvary. And therefore he, in God's sight, as it were, he was a hero with this one spirit. Then he said he died.

Now it's very clear in the Bible, he really died. That was the evidence of the soldiers. They wouldn't break his head. Because he died, it's a pierced body. Out came the blood and water, which is the evidence of death.

And a dead body was taken out. Why is that important? Because a death is separating the body and spirit. That's why. That's what death is. And therefore he says, look here, if this person represents humanity up there with sin spirit, when he died, that separation, that humanity was separated from sin spirit.

Exactly. Exactly. This was what separated the whole of humanity from the inner dwelling of control and outworking of this wrong spirit of self-sense which entered through the wrong tree. All those years ago.

This was the negative liberation. If we question about that, we'll go on to the problem a little later and see how it works out. It works out when you see the fix. The scientific hypothesis is proved by the fix, isn't it?

But it works so much, we'll see. Now you get Paul's answer. Here's a dead body. It was we. This was humanity. This was humanity lying in a tomb. Buried with him. Buried with him is a scriptural expression.

There you are, in that tomb. A dead body. Now Paul says, what can raise a dead body? Well, obviously only a spirit. A new spirit. And therefore it says, Jesus Christ has put the death in the flesh quickened by the spirit.

Quickly, like the new birth in the womb, the new life in the womb. Quickened by the spirit. Here was his own spirit, God, the spirit of self-giving love, coming to this body which was we. This is the new unity.

Now this is the completed foundation for a permanent, perfect, indissoluble new unity taking place between God and the human spirit, the redeemed human spirit, in the place of the old one, the old one which was out in the dead.

And the new one came in the resurrection. There's our foundation. That's how we can, authoritatively, daringly, funnily, enjoyably, be in this relationship. It isn't something we vaguely got and hope itself.

It's given us a great historical foundation. It should have a historical foundation if sin's in history, because then who's been in history? That doesn't mean we live by historical Jesus. Paul is pretty bold.

Paul went on to say, yeah, if I knew him after the flesh, now I know him no more. I'm not joined now to a Jesus in the human flesh. I'm joined now to a Jesus who is spirit, and yet that spirit has a body.

There's a resurrection body. That's the basis for us having a resurrection body one day. So we ought to argue that just now. So there we are. So now we're saying this. I take this time to remind you of this total, square, historical foundation for us who are sinners in history.

God provided in the person of his time, which was himself, this complete redemption, which is a unification, I'm not going to say a reunification, but there was a unification of God and man. Now we have to ask this question, if I'll get time.

Difficult in a way, a bad aspect, not so much to a company like you, but to many, is that's the monasteric type of thing. They say, oh, well, I don't know. That sort of thing happened 2 ,000 years ago.

It wasn't there to me anyhow. I wouldn't say it was so much, but we've passed through a phase now in which we look back on something which happened. Now what really matters, of course, is how does a general fact become a personal experience?

How does a general fact of life become a personal experience? Because what matters most is the personal experience. There is a perfectly simple law, Glenn has been emphasising the simplicities to us, a perfectly simple law in the working of the whole of the universe, I suppose, at least in this world, because as we've had perfectly clear up, there's no spiritual sector.