From Romans Seven to Romans Eight — Norman Grubb

The Human Person and God’s Purpose

Our Lord, you're the ever speaking person, you're always speaking and you give us ears to hear and so you will tonight again, by your word, by your spirit, by yourself, to our hearts. Thank you. Amen.

In the two times I've had with you in these previous days, we've been seeking to see from God's word what his revealed purpose always has been. That the lover father should have his own begotten son and through his son, many sons, who'd level up with him as co-sons and co-brothers, who'd all be lover sons, as his lover father, and by them he would develop and manage his universe.

Because his sons inherit a universe. For that to be possible, each of us has to find what it is to be a real person. Because we're to be real persons forever. Persons that express the persons. But we're to be the person, the human person, expressing the divine person.

So we have to know what it is to be a person. That has meant the history of the human family. We've had to come face to face with what is the fact of all life. All life consists of opposites. And we are those who make our choices between opposites.

But ultimately become fixed by our choices. And so it's been necessary for the human family to face a supreme choice of the universe. Choice which we might say that God himself made, where he said he can't lie.

Self-Centeredness, Self-Giving, and the Human Fall

The choice between being a self-centered, self-seeking, self-gratifying person or a self-giving person. Whether I express my self-love, my self-getting, or my self-love, my self-giving. Two fundamental forms, different forms of self.

One is heaven, the other is hell. One is Satan, the other is God. We've had to come face to face with both, because until we know both, and entered in some measure into both, and then made the final choice between them, we don't become fixed, successful, sacred people.

And so we saw it always was, in God's understanding, that the human race would go wrong before they go right. And the Satan was the agent which took us into the realm of being self-centered people. We were captured by the spirit of self-centeredness, the spirit of error.

Which caused us just to live for ourselves, out of which have come our living for our sins and all the rest of it, all the chaos in this world. And as a consequence, because of the fact that we are basically the being of God, come into a disillusionment with that way of living.

A desire to be out of it and in another one. This was where it always had been, from eternity, his purpose, that his son should identify himself with the human family, enter into his sufferings, bring its release, and when he had brought his release and redemption, bring up that human family and receive him into the new family, the new heavenly family of which he is the head, of whom he is the elder brother.

And that was what he did. As it says, he pleased the Father that it became him that the captain of his salvation should be very privileged with sufferings. So he entered into all our sufferings and took them to their final end, when voluntarily, for our sakes, representing us, he went into death and hell.

That was the shedding of his precious blood on our behalf, when he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. And by going himself into death, into hell, and rising again on our behalf, he left behind all that would come to us, of sin and guilt and wrath and diseternal consequences.

That's the shedding of the precious blood of Christ. There was also the dying of the body of Christ, which represents something different. The sins were the products in our lives. The sin is the speed of error which captures humanity, which lives in our bodies.

The satanic speed of error, which causes us to be self-centered, self-loving, self-gratifying, self-people. And therefore, it says that as his body hung there, he was made sin. That's different from bearing our sins.

That's a product. Made sin. Made in God's sight, this holy person, representing whole humanity, was like a body which contained the speed of error. That's what sin is, the speed of error. The principle of sin in us.

He died. When a body dies, representing us, it leaves its speed behind. So then, in that tremendous moment, when that body died for our sakes, out from that body, representing us, with that speed of error, which has captured all of us.

It makes it possible for all of us to become immediately freed from the dominion of that speed of error when we move into receiving Jesus Christ. And then by rising, he rose by a new speed in that body.

Into that same body came his own speed, the speed of God, the speed of love. And that body represents us, our bodies. So it says we're crucified with him, we're risen with him. So that when we receive Jesus, we both receive the blotting out of all the past sins, the guilt, the wrath, the judgment, the whole thing closed out forever.

God never sees them again. We're righteous in God's sight as Christ is righteous. But more than that, receiving him, being joined to him by faith, we have become freed from that speed of error which dominated us, which caused us to be self-centered people.

So a born-again person can never be basically self-centered again. You can move into self-centered act, you can't be self-centered. To be self-centered is to be a satanic person living wholly for yourself.

You can't do it. Because if you're born again, the spirit of self-centeredness has been replaced by the spirit of Christ, who is the spirit of self-giving love. And you begin to be a person of self-giving love.

And that's the revolution which took place in all of us who received the Lord Jesus Christ, who operated our royal potential, the ability to have faith. Faith is choice. To have faith, to choose, to relate yourself to something.

And by the law of faith, by the law of choice, what you choose, what you relate yourself to, relates itself to you, takes you over. You come here, you're here. You take food, it takes you, and so on. And so the great moment, thank God, I hope many of us here have been, when knowing our lost condition, knowing it in our hearts, and our sin and our guilt and so on, and seeing through the word of God about the Lord Jesus Christ, what he did for us on earth by his death and resurrection, and now arisen again, we have by our inner choice attached ourselves to a person we can't see.

For the first time in our human history, we take our faith away from things of time and sense. We put our faith in a person who doesn't belong to the realm of time and sense, the passing realm, amongst the eternal realm, the realm of spirit, the realm of God and Father, Son and Spirit.

And every born again person has, by his inner choice, says, Jesus Christ, I have received you, the crucified, the risen Jesus Christ. And by the law of faith, what you receive, receives you, what you take, takes you.

Therefore, if we are born again persons that come into our inner consciousness, the witnessing spirit, that's the new spirit substance. When you take food, food becomes a substance to you. When you take him, the spirit substance comes to you.

The spirit substance is the inner witness, Jesus Christ is my saviour. He is alive, he did love me, he has taken my sins away. I am accepted, I am forgiven, I am a child of God, I am in the family of God, God is my Father, and I am in me.

It's become a spiritual substance to me, spiritual consciousness to me, that I am this new kind of person, not one that I took him, but he took me. I begin to live on this new level of this saved relationship.

From Infant Faith to Spiritual Maturity

Now that's what we talked about in the two previous talks we've had. We said also that the scripture tells us in many different ways, but one very clear way, subdivides our understandings of our relationship to Christ, our relationship to God, into the three grades of little children, young men and fathers.

Infants, adolescents, adults. This we are speaking about has been the infant stage. An infant hardly knows anything, is almost unconscious, just consciously relies on his parents. So when we first come to Jesus, we know practically nothing, that's not wholly true, but practically nothing.

We do know we are lost sinners, we only know he died for us, we don't know anything about the Christ living in us, we don't know that. We know a Christ who died for us and rose again, risen and ascended with the Father, and we, like a little child relies on his parents.

We as little children relied on him. The Bible description of a little child in 1 John 2 is, for his sins are forgiven, for Christ's name's sake, he knows the Father. That's the elementary description.

Sins, forgiven, for Christ's sake, you know your Father. But it's really a kind of external relationship. It isn't quite external because it's happening, you know it in your inner consciousness, but you regard it more as an external relationship.

Life isn't an external relationship. Life's an internal relationship. Life isn't separation, it's union. It's the false made us to see everything as separate conditions, appear like that, even including God, Father, Son and Spirit.

But truth isn't separation, it's union, now we don't know that. So that's our first stage, a precious stage. We're born again, we're new creatures, a new spirit operating in us, the spirit of God. The old things are passed away, the old and new, we love God, we love Jesus, we want to do his will, we want to bless people.

As we explained before, the first revealed fruits of the new birth are peace and love. Peace in my own heart which has given me harmony with God, since I'm accepted in love and part of God's worship, that's wonderful peace.

Love is, I begin to love, not with my love, because the revelation that Jesus loved me like that and that his spirit coming into me means the spirit of God begins to operate in me. And the scripture says, the love of God is shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Spirit.

And I begin to love, probably in my elementary condition, I think it's I love him. Humans love just themselves, this is God's own love. I've begun to express God's love, and it comes out, love for Jesus who died for me, love for my father, I want other people to know something about him.

I've begun to be a lover. I've told you, the eternal purpose of God is to have safe sons who are lover sons, therefore my motivation in life will always be to bless and fulfil those whom they're responsible for.

Not get people for their convenience, be for their convenience, other way around. So again, now we've made a problem, it has to be solved. See a young man has to find his inner resources, a little child doesn't, a little infant where he just arrives, of course he has inner resources, they'll come to him.

A young man has to find his resources, he's got to be himself, he's got to become physically mature, got to be mentally trained, he's supposed to have enough moral basis to live by, of course, if it wasn't for Jesus Christ, I'd do that.

We call a graduated young man, a young woman, a mature person who can now go out, having finished their maturing level, and begin to contribute to the world. Move out from being people who are recipients to people who are out givers.

That's the father stage. So the stage in which we have to become settled in ourselves, not just settled in relation to Christ who died for me and lives again for me and the father there, settled in myself.

So the Bible description 1 John 2 given of a young man, an adult, is he's strong, he's overcome the wicked one, and the word of God abides in him, not didn't, the word of God didn't come to him, abides in him, the word of God abiding in you is a person of course, it's Jesus Christ, you become strong, you overcome the wicked one, and the living Christ is indwelling in you and you know, you know that fact.

The Failure of the Born-Again Christian

Now that's not the condition of us when we get saved. We're up against a problem, which is the failure we have as Christians. Why are we born again, love Jesus, new people, yet with such failures? Why are we always battling against things which beat us?

Why are we always having dislikes and fears and hurts and resentments and depressions and physical lusts and unclean thoughts and not the love of God I ought to have, not the love of man I ought to have, not the love of the Bible I ought to have?

I want to but it doesn't operate somewhere. I'm dissatisfied with myself, now I'm a born again person, I'm not talking about the unborn again, I'm a born again person, honestly I'm dissatisfied with myself.

And I'm more concerned with self-dissatisfaction than Christ satisfaction. I'm more conscious, self-conscious of a failing self than I'm Christ conscious of an enabling Christ, what's wrong? That's a condition all of us go through.

For this reason, I've got to find what it is to be a real person forever. I'm to be a functioning person forever, we'll talk about that in the last two sessions I have. I'm to be in the foreground functioning, actually I'm really only, I should be the lamp through which the light shines.

You see, I don't say turn on the lamp, do I? I say turn on the light, but that's not a light, it's a lamp expressing a light. See, the lamp gets lost in the light, that's what we are. We are lamps expressing a light.

See, this is what we are to be eternally. We are to be real people like lamps, but actually what's shining on us is always to be God in his purposes, Christ in his purposes, this is the eternal purpose of God in having sons.

I haven't got that yet. There's a further stage I have to go through. In order to become a real person, I've got to find out how a real person functions, where he fits, where he fits. So I start by being a failing Christian, a disappointed Christian, a defeated Christian, I don't mean to be, I'm not altogether so, but I have a trouble with my hates, my fears, my likes, dislikes, my depressions, my lusts, my lack of power, lack of peace, I have trouble with them.

And don't know how to handle them, all the problems that come in life, something missing. I can't say I'm an effective person. Now these people in the Bible, like Paul, were effective people, they had what it took.

I'm born again, I have Jesus Christ, but I haven't got what it takes to live a present day effective life, something missing. That's made very plain to us in the Bible. It's actually made very plain to us in all the great lives that we have got time to trace.

If you trace the life of Moses, or David, or Joshua, or Elijah, or Peter, you'll find all the way through these men, but we won't do that now. There's a special scripture which specially exposes this to us, and those are the famous chapters for growing Christians, Romans chapter 6 to 8.

It takes some reading, it takes some understanding. Rowling will talk to us about the need for deeper understanding of the scripture, but here it is. They're basic chapters for effective Christian living, and they're curious chapters because one goes down in the middle.

Romans 6: Freedom from Sin’s Dominion

Now Romans 6, I'm going to put it roughly, is a chapter which tells us that in Jesus Christ dying, his body dying, when we have taken him by faith, we've died with him. He died as us. If he died as us, when he died, we died.

That doesn't mean self-died, it means he died representing us to sin. Sin is the spirit of self-certainness which causes us to live this wrong life and produce the wrong products. He says he died to sin.

Now therefore the Bible says we died to sin. We didn't die, we're alive, but the grip of spirit of self-certainness which causes us to live for world, flesh and devil, that's out. Never that again. If you received Jesus from Jesus Christ, that's the symbol of baptism, you died to that.

In Jesus Christ, yes. So Romans 6 is mainly on the negative side, get it, you're never again under the grip of that spirit of error. You may visit there, I'll talk in a moment, you may be tempted, you can't live there again.

If you slip, you'll be guilty and come back. Now Romans 8, it's a chapter, in other words, oh it isn't you living, it's the living Christ living in you. You're a new person, not just a new person in yourself, that self of yours which was captured by a spirit of error, you're a vessel containing the God of wrath.

You're now the same vessel containing the God of mercy, Christ. But your self is under new management, it's in a new relationship, it's in a conscious relationship of the living Jesus Christ, living God, living you is as you in you.

That's Romans 8. Christ dwells in you, the Holy Spirit dwells in you, you're not in the flesh, you're in the Spirit. In between is Romans 7, that's to go down. Romans 6, oh you're out with the old in Jesus Christ's death.

Romans 8, you're in with the new in the resurrection joined to him. In the middle you can't handle it. The middle is a big eye, a human eye. It's full of a failing eye. It says in Romans, it says we've been deceived, we're deceived, I'll tell you in a moment how.

And that big eyes, I want to do right and can't do it. Romans 7 is always talking that kind of language. That which I do, I allow not. What I would, that I do not. What I hate, that do I. In me, in my flesh, there's no good thing.

The will is present with me, but how to perform that, we're just going to find out. So here's a believer, a born again person, confused because he wants to do right. It says here, the will is present with me.

I delight in the law of God, doctrine of man. My will is right, but I haven't got the power. What I should do, I shouldn't, I don't do. What I shouldn't do, I do do. And I'm conscious of a law giving me to tell you ought to, you ought to, you ought to, you ought not to be impatient.

You ought to love everybody. You ought to be pure. You ought not to have fear. You ought not to have depression. You ought to have power. You ought to be, you ought, you ought, you ought. And we say, I haven't got it.

I want to, but it doesn't work. It's full of I. Now the point I've got to learn, I've only learned by painful way, is that's a deception. That's a deception. That's why it says in that chapter in verse 11, sin deceives you.

The Independent Self and the Second Collapse

What it means is this, you see, that's the independent I, which I got through the fall. The fall separated me from the living God. If I'd gone to the tree of life, I should never have had a year of separation.

But I became, through the fall, an independent I am. An independent normal girl when you are an independent I am. The independence is the fall. The independence means I'm running my own life with my own strength for my own ends.

It's self-love at bottom. It's independence. The independence is a false thing. That's what the devil deceived me into thinking. I didn't even know he was running me. I didn't even know that. I just was actually an independent person.

Now our snare is this. We're so used, oh life is running your own life. You've worked it, worked it. Even when you're born again, you think, well I still run my own life. That's the snare. Well I'm a born again person.

I love Jesus. I love myself. I get the snare. Beware of saying God will help you. He doesn't help you too much. He takes your place and does it for you, which is quite different. God doesn't help you to do a thing.

He does it for you. He takes your place and does it for you. That's different. Beware of saying too much about God helping you. Because God helps me. I'm a person. I'll do it. God will help me. No he won't.

That's the snare. Because you see, the real reason is self can't conquer self. Self, independent self, is all it really is, loving itself. Independent self, I myself can't conquer my hurts and my hates and my fears and my lusts.

I can't do it. So I try to do it. I beg God to help me and I can't make it work. So I have to come. You find every failure of God comes with a second great failure, a second collapse. His first collapse was he found he was a lost sinner.

And he was done for, going to hell. When he finds a lost sinner, couldn't do a thing about it, oh Jesus Christ did it for me. When he knew he had got to the bottom, he was a lost sinner, he could take Jesus Christ to his place.

There's a second collapse, a helpless saint. He's not only to be a lost sinner but a helpless saint who can't make it work. Now that may seem easy cliche to say, you've got to find out. You won't find out in any easy way.

Job had to go the hard way, Moses had to go the hard way to learn their tremendous selves, their tremendous selves, but they've got to get back to the right place and then function as a self. Not function as an independent self, sort of trying to get God's help.

Won't do. So he had a broken self, had to be broken as sinners and broken as selves. So Romans 6 deals with our sins out, Romans 7 our self out. To come back, but broken from this sense of independence.

You won't get through any other way. When you do see it, you cry like at the end of this chapter. This chapter says, Oh Paul said, Oh wretched man that I am, who can deliver me from the body of this death?

Well this is a very beautiful body, it's got life in it, but where it's been handled by sin is the body of death. Oh, hold her low, who un-miserable, who actually had to have a second misery, you see?

His first misery was a lost sinner, his second misery was a helpless saint. So may you all have a thorough good misery if you haven't had one. Because you won't come to the end of the independent self until you've been a well beaten up self.

You can't do it. You can't do it. When you are beaten up, then you're capable of saying, Oh. Then you're capable of saying, when you were a lost sinner, Oh he did it. You couldn't see it while you could save yourself.

When you as a sinner, you seek to build yourself by your own righteousness in your chest, you couldn't see Jesus. When you were done for and lost, Oh I see Jesus for me. You're able to see him replacing you.

Union with Christ and the Replacement Life

Now, when you, somehow it dawns on you that life isn't, I try to run, to battle these things out for myself. Independent self is the wrong thing. I say, Oh, I'm not independent self at all. I'm an indwelling self.

I'm not, it's a lie. I'm a united self. From the moment I was saved, Jesus Christ and I became one person. One person. Not a Christ up here, not a Christ there. He, as he joined to the Lord, is one spirit.

You're human spirit, a divine spirit, one that's 1 Corinthians 6, 17. And Jesus said, Why look, he said, you're vine and branch. Vine and branch are one tree. The branches are the vine in its branch form.

A branch is the vine. It's just its branch form. You're a branch form of the vine. You're a form of Jesus you see. You're part of a vine and you're the branch form of the vine. Or you're the body form of the head.

You're one person. You're one person. Now that's another revelation. That's supremely put by the Apostle Paul. Well he really put it. He said, I've been crucified with Christ. That's Romans 6. I've been crucified with Christ.

In Christ I've cut off from that old proud, self-seeking, murderous old Paul. I'm out. Oh, I didn't die. The spirit of self-centredness is where I'm at. I'm alive, he says. He goes on. I've been crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless I live. I live. Wait a minute. Then he stops. It's a wonderful verse. Galatians 2 .20. Wait a minute. I'm alive. No, no. It's yet, I live. It is not I, but Christ is in me. He replaces self by Christ.

Now, that's a replacement. Your real self is Christ in you. You are Christ in human form. It isn't Christ for you, Christ by you, Christ is you. Listen. Paul says, I, Paul, I've been crucified with Christ.

Oh, I'm alive. Wait a minute. Yet not I, but Christ is in me. He replaces self by Christ. That's the secret. Where it can settle into me, I'm not really I. It's always a joke to me to think that that is true.

I'm not really I. I'm Christ in my human form. So are you. Now I've got a new centre. Now when I've got a new centre, I begin to, I can begin to change my attitude, this is important, towards those things that bother me.

Accepting the Flesh and Living by Christ’s Sufficiency

You see, they bother me because I can't conquer them. Flesh is always there. Now, we are bothered by our flesh because I can't conquer my hates, my fears, my lusts and so on. They get me so often, my perverse, I can't conquer them.

So flesh is horrible to me. When I, but really flesh isn't horrible. Flesh is that which God comes through, Christ comes through the flesh. Now, when I can begin to get this fact, it isn't I don't manage flesh, I accept myself.

Now this is part of the secret, to accept yourself with your temptations, accept your flesh, don't fight your flesh. Nearly all our troubles are, oh I must fight that hate, I must fight that unforgiveness, I must fight my lack of love, I must fight my wrong thoughts, I must, the more you fight, the more there's resistance there.

See, when you resist a thing, you're affirming it. When I resist you, I'm saying you're there, you're there, you're there. So my very resistance makes you worse. So see, this great secret, don't ever fight.

If you feel afraid, fearful, don't say you shouldn't be fearful, say of course my flesh is fearful, but that's not I, it's Christ in me. When you know Christ in you, you replace your first temptations with fear, of course I'm a human, I fear.

You don't keep against it, you don't deny it, you don't condemn yourself, you accept it, sure I fear, but that's just my outer self. That's just my soul and body, my flesh, but Christ is in me. And when I see Christ in me, His courage overflows my fear.

This is the secret. See, when you don't know you're really Christ, you're fighting, you're in trouble, you try and fight your flesh, it'll beat you. And the more you fight it, the more it's got you, the more you hate it.

We ought to be flesh lovers, not flesh haters, because our flesh is going to be something God's going to use, we'll be right back in the focus. So, you see, part of this revelation is to learn to grasp the fact that your flesh won't change.

You don't fight your flesh, you accept it, and He's the changer of it. There'll be the fears, the doubts, the resentments, the hurts, the lusts, they're there, don't kick at them, just recognise they're there.

Let's say, ah, that's not I, I'm not fighting that. Christ is fighting that. Christ is the purity, Christ is the peace, Christ brings, Christ overflows the other. That's the secret. But that's got to be changed with the independent self in Christ.

You've got to recognise the independent self is a false thing, it's not there, it's a lie, there's no independent self. Your independent self went out at the cross. Satan deceives you into thinking you're still independent, you're not.

It's now Christ in you. Now, that's what has to sink into us by different ways. If I may just give a little word of my own witness there. I found this out as a young missionary. Now, of course I was dedicated to Jesus Christ.

I'd been saved some years before, I'd been a witness to Jesus Christ in World War I, and I got a call to go to Africa, a wonderful call, it was a thrill, it didn't cost me any sacrifice to go to Africa, it was a thrill to go and take Jesus to those who'd never heard of Him.

That wasn't my problem. I lived for Jesus Christ, I lived to get Jesus Christ to the Africans. But I hadn't got what it took. I wasn't at any time where I thought I hadn't the love which identified myself, I had sort of white man's love, I hadn't got the love which made me brotherhood, I hadn't got a brotherhood love.

I hadn't got the faith which made me believe God could really do something in those simple people in the forest many years ago. I hadn't got the power to see what would happen. So, I was consecrated, brought to Christ, but I had definite lacks in my life.

And of course I had my usual critical attitude to all the mysteries and sins of the flesh and things we all have. So, I felt, well, I belong to Jesus Christ for now, I'm a pretty miserable representative of Jesus Christ.

I'd better go out or get changed or something. So, I began to say, well, God, you must have power and love and faith and holiness you can give to me. Of course, like anybody would do. You know what he said to me?

God as Love, Christ as Power, and Christ as All

Two things which were revealing to me. The first was that little verse came to me just suddenly, God is love. Now, what struck me? God is love. Oh, I thought love was some power which came out of God and came to me and I'd have it.

If God is love, God's the love. It isn't something I have, it's something he is. It was, I needed love, you see. It was as if God stood in front of me and said, love isn't a thing I give you because love isn't a thing.

Love's a person. I am that love. I said, how does that help me? I need the love. What's the use of you standing there and saying you're the love when I need it? I needed power. Suddenly, there are lots of them like this in scripture.

I found a verse in scripture which says, Christ is the power of God. We're talking, you know those things now, we're talking about them. Oh, I said, Christ is power then. Power isn't an atomic something or something else.

Christ is the power. Power really is a person expressing himself, a person. That struck me again. It's again as if Christ stood in front of me and said, power, I, Christ, I'm the power. It isn't something I give you.

I'm the power. Again I said, how does it help me to say you're the power when I need it? Of course, this is putting things into focus for me. What happened was, just a flash of a little verse, in Colossians 3 verse 11 where it says this, now Christ is all.

I began to catch it, Christ is all and in all. Oh, I said, I see it. Christ is all and in all. It isn't, I've got to become something. I contain someone. That's quite different. I was sweating away to become loving, become believing, becoming powerful and I've given up sweating long ago now and to become patient, to become something.

I've stopped trying to become anything. In a human I don't become anything. I'm just a human vessel. I'm just a human. But I don't become something, I contain someone. It was at that moment also, the Holy Spirit put into my mind that this illustration which comes three times in the New Testament where they call vessels.

Oh, vessel just means old pot, that's all. He said, you're a vessel. And the Holy Spirit said, that's all you are, an old pot. What, the point isn't the pot, the point is what's in the pot. Ah, and the pot doesn't become what's in it.

That's where I got it. A cup doesn't become the coffee. The cup contains the coffee. You're just the old cup. I don't mind being a cup when it contains Jesus Christ. Not a bad cup of course when it contains Jesus Christ.

It's only a cup. It isn't Jesus Christ. I got it. I then saw, I don't change myself. That's the secret. Our trouble is, we think we ought to be different. You ought not to be different. The only difference in you is Jesus Christ living in you and through you.

He is the difference, isn't you? Your humanity never changes. It's just a vessel. And your humanity has amazing abilities which God begins to use, and we'll talk about that probably tomorrow, how God begins to use our humanity.

But our humanity is also open to the flesh of course, and so we get these temptations and so on. Now we don't change it. So you see, you don't try and change the pot of a vessel. You accept the pot. You say, it's a pot.

But that's not the point. The point is what? Who is the person in the pot? And you turn your attention from the pot to the person in it. That's the secret. That's the secret. So really I only have one battle in life, to move off from my self-reactions.

Self-Reactions as the Source of Life’s Hells

You watch. All your hells in life are your self-reactions. Why do I feel like that? Why am I like that? Why, why, why, why, why? That's what curses us in life, because it's a false thing. You're not an independent self.

But being human, you'll be tempted that way to feel, oh, what shall I do with this? What shall I do with that? I feel this. You see, I, what's that? That's your problem. Now that, the point of temptation is a spark of faith.