Marks of the New Birth — G.W. North

Let us turn to scripture, beloved. I believe that quite a few of us here know my great love for the epistle of John, the first epistle of John. I want to, without offering any apology, I want to turn to that epistle and bring to your heart something which came afresh to my heart, familiar truth.

It's a glorious thing when this does happen, and I do hope that you love your Bibles sufficiently to read and reread them, though not just have some sort of favorite passages that are the only ones that you read, nevertheless to go over the whole of the book until it's all familiar to you, and indeed as we go to some of the New Testament parts, I suppose these have a familiarity and a grandeur about them such as none other have.

And this epistle of John, I was reading it through the other day, and the old truths came sweetly to my heart again, and on this great line of thought that we find here in this epistle, some things that John says are in us.

The other day, I don't know quite where I was now, but recently I came into this epistle and we considered there the marks of the new birth that are therein. Now I know that some of you will know these very well, but there are those who have never gone into this epistle with this in mind so that they can assure their own hearts that they are truly the children of God.

That's why God sets them in the book. And for these dear ones to realize what these marks of the new birth were, was a complete revelation to them. And it may be that this afternoon, as we take on these new things, these old things in a new manner and dwell upon them, God may apply them to us in a very wonderful, loving, and full way.

You know, one never despairs if one is a preacher when one bears in mind the sort of natural and lovely things of God. For instance, if you go to a brook to drink water, well, the brook always has water in it.

It's the same lovely, clear water, but it's entirely different if you come tomorrow, for example, to what is today. It's the same water, but it's different. That's the whole part about it. It's fresh water.

And I don't know where it came from, the water I'm drinking today. The sort of water I was drinking yesterday, well, I didn't drink so long way downstream now. And so this is how we approach the glorious scriptures.

And when God, as you know, uses the figure of the river of water of life, for instance, or out of you flowing rivers of living water, perhaps we're not so far removed from the thought that's in his heart.

The Witness of God in the Believer

And in this epistle, on the line of things that God has said are in us, I would like you to start with me in the fifth chapter. In 1 John chapter 5, perhaps we'll read at verse 7, shall we? There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.

And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God, which he hath testified of his Son.

He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And the first thing I want to draw your attention to, beloved, is in this verse 10, that those of us that truly are the Lord's have the witness in ourselves.

We don't have to depend on anything outside of ourselves at all. God has devised it this way, and you see, the witness is a most powerful one, because in the end of verse 6 you read that it is the Spirit that beareth witness, the Spirit is truth.

Oh beloved, when we come to realize what God is saying, that this thing is something of Spirit, and it isn't of flesh, and it isn't of paper and ink, it isn't of anything outside of oneself at all, the Spirit beareth witness within us.

You have this witness in yourself. The Spirit is God. It is God coming into you and witnessing in you that you really are his. Now that is completely unshakable. That is unassailable. There are times in life when temptations are aimed specifically at it.

They're the subtlest of all temptations. There are gross temptations that are aimed at your flesh. There are worldly temptations that want to catch you up in physical and material things. But the subtlest temptations of all are those that are directed against this witness of God in your own heart.

But this, beloved, is absolutely fundamental. Every one of you here this afternoon must know that you have this witness in yourself. If you haven't got this witness in yourself, if you've never had this witness in yourself, then you are not a child of God.

God witnesses by his Spirit in all his children's hearts. Amen. So that each one of them knows infallibly, without a shadow of a doubt. I know that we, most of us anyway, come through doubting periods.

I know that all these kinds of things happen. But bless the name of the Lord, there comes a time when the Holy Spirit comes right inside and says, it's all alright. Of course, he won't use colloquial English.

But the thing is that he will witness inside you. That's where it's needed. And that's where it is most powerful. Glory be to his name. And the thing that he will witness to you is this, that, as we read in verse 8, we can leave out the witness or record in heaven.

The witness on earth is the Spirit, and the water, and the blood. And these three agree in one. Praise the name of the Lord. The witness of the Spirit to you is that there came a moment when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on this earth unto sin.

He died unto sin once. He died and in the act of dying, bore away the sin of the world. Put away the sin. Amen. And that's at the moment, you knew what had happened, that the soldier came along and he plunged the spear into the side of Jesus and forthwith came there out the blood and the water.

And that signified the death, the real death of Jesus Christ. The purposeful death. Jesus died purposefully. The two thieves died lingeringly, not wanting to die, clinging on to life. But Jesus, once he made the atonement, he dismissed his spirit and hung their dead.

And when the soldier came along, he plunged the spear into his side and outwith came the blood and water. Praise God. And the Spirit witnesses that the sacrifice is over. That you needn't bother about your sin in that sense.

There's no atonement to make for it. You needn't try to get rid of it. You needn't do anything about this because it's done. Amen. The Spirit, beloved, and the water and the blood agree that it's all over.

Amen. It's all past. Now, you should have the witness of the Spirit in your heart that it's all over. It's all over. Praise God. That there's a time in your life when, as we read, or as our brother, I remember, prayed so meaningfully this morning.

We've passed from death unto life. Amen. It's all done. Now, have you got this witness of the Spirit in your heart? It must be in you. You must not be trying to prop up your life on your Bible readings or anything like that.

It must be in you, beloved. I don't need the testimony of another man. Although, if we believe the testimony of men, it says if we accept the record or the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.

There's a multiplicity of it all. It's in my mouth. It's in your mouth. It's in her mouth. It's in his mouth. Praise God. And we get a great build-up of this glorious, positive testimony. Now, may God bring all our hearts to this.

Out of peradventures and out of hopings and out of seekings and out of everything else to this glorious, positive, wondrous ground when God is witnessing, witnessing, witnessing in your own heart. Now, one of the glories, I'll tell you this, of being a preacher man is that the more you preach the truth, the more consolidated you become that God witnesses in your own heart.

Praise God. You see? That's why you want to open your mouth and start the witness. Because when you do that, let me testify to it, God keeps on. It builds up and it gets stronger. You get bolder. You get bolder.

You make the great assertions for God. You come off the ifs and perhaps and buts and you move on into this positiveness that grants assurance unto other men and women that they can take for granted what you say and know that somehow God is laying a foundation upon which they can build their lives.

This is what God is wanting. Amen. Not just loud, self-assertive, this kind of thing, mere dogmatism, but he does want this glorious assurance going out through men and women. And you know, beloved, you can always tell whether the person that's speaking really believes what he says.

And more than believing what he says, there's something in it that can sort of wrap itself round your consciousness and you know perfectly well it's true. It's the Spirit that bears witness because the Spirit is true.

Amen. And what God is wanting to do is bring us all to this place that we can say I have the witness in myself, a witness of God. All right, have you got that? Deep down inside. Then the next thing that you will find in this epistle, I'm not merely taking them in the order of Revelation.

The Seed of God and the New Birth

It's in the third chapter. In the third chapter we have this told us. Let's read from verse 7. Little children, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he, God, is righteous.

Let's get this quite square. He that committed sin is of the devil. For the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.

Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his that is God's seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil.

Amen. Now this is very, very wonderful beloved. So beside the witness of God being in us, we have the seed of God in us. Praise his wonderful name. That we have God's seed in us. What a precious thing this is.

Beloved, let us get this very clear in our hearts that this whole matter of salvation is a spiritual thing. It's a spiritual thing. That you and me, if we are the children of God, we've been conceived of God.

We've been brought forth by God. And God's seed being placed in us, in our spirits, so that we've been born out of that deadly state of death and sin. Now that seed, when God puts it there, has come to stay.

That's right. It's remaineth. Glory be to the name of the Lord. Is that true? Do you know this in your experience? Now the result of this, when this seed is in your heart, you won't have understood this from the beginning.

But this is the way God does it. He doesn't try to keep us from sin and sin from us by laying down a legal code. He did that for the old covenant, if I was going to say that was good enough for them. But God has superseded it.

He's not sort of said, no, this and that and the other. He's done it in this great masterpiece of wonderful love. He has brought his seed into our heart and this seed will not combine with sin. It won't do it.

He's gone ever so much farther than under the old. This seed will not join itself with sin. It will say, I can't. That's it. Isn't it marvelous? It finds a glorious inability in itself to go sinning. Now this is the masterpiece.

This is the wonder of God. This is how he's done it. When I look at God, when I start to really think about God, I'm lost, you know, in amazement how he does it. Praise God. You see, I've been born of a human being.

My wife never has to me now, stop, say to me, stop eating clinkers. Why? Because pigs eat clinkers. I don't. There's something in me that won't unite with it. Don't you see? She hasn't got a list on our dining table or, well, you know, where we eat.

She hasn't. You should see the conditions we live under. Perhaps that's why I've got an extra very often. I don't know. But she hasn't got a list up saying, now you mustn't do that, and mustn't do this, and thou shalt not, and all the rest of it.

Praise God. Now this is like, like it is, beloved. You see, the human soul, until it's saved, feeds on sin. Feeds on it. Lusts after it. Loves it. Indulges in it. Glories in it. The bigger the sin, the worse the sin.

You know this. In the last ten years, who in this room will deny the fact of the great moral landslide. They're glorying in it now. Things that ten years ago wouldn't have been mentioned. Now am I right or wrong?

I'm not Victorian at all. I wasn't born as long ago as that. But this is the tremendous thing, beloved. Now God has devised a marvellous way. You know, I adore him. I think he's wonderful. He just comes, and he brings us to a place, and he puts his seed in us.

And when that dawns on the consciousness, would God it had dawned on everybody's consciousness, would God, there were a million, million preachers going through the world preaching this. Instead of keep saying, come and get your sins forgiven, say, say, God has put his seed in you.

God wants to put his seed in you. Would God that people ministered life instead of just forgiveness. Andra, you can have forgiveness because the law has been fulfilled in all this. Oh, if only there would be a revolution of preaching.

To make people say, is this right? God's put his seed in me. Well, I can't go and do things like that anymore. I can't unite with this. I can't do it. Plenty of room, beloved. Come and find a seat. You might have to split up.

Sorry to have to split you up, but you're mine, whatever. You'll be like me. I always have to let my wife sit down there and me stand alone. And the tremendousness about it, beloved, is that God says, now once this seed's in you, now will you take this in your heart?

It remains. And it's this that makes the distinction between whether you're a child of the devil or a child of God. And there's no middle ground. You're either a child of the devil or a child of God. By first birth, natural incomings into the world, you're a child of the devil.

Not just a child of a man named North or South or East or West or Black or White or Brown or Pink. It doesn't make any difference about that. It's a matter of whether or not the seed of God is in your heart.

Until that's in your heart, you've got the seed of Satan in you. And it will fructify and it will love and lust after and indulge in all the sin and filth of the world that it can. Or if you've been sort of corrected by sort of a legalistic kind of neo-Christian background or a professing Christian home, you will have been shielded from a lot that's vulgar.

But it's only because you've been shielded. That's all. Understand that. And the seed of God in you is there and it says, Lord, I can't do that anymore. If you haven't got that can't in you, if you've got in you the great big I can, I want, I love it, you've never yet become a child of God.

I, as some of you must have heard me say before, I love this epistle of John. It just about sets me where I need to be. It doesn't allow me any fancy vaporings and vague ideas. It tells me in the plainest of plain language.

It brings me out of all the mental fogs and doctrinal difficulties. It sets me down, plonk, four square on the truth of God. I'm glad that our salvation isn't a method of pulling the wool over your eyes.

I'm glad that it's a glorious declaration. And that's why the writer said, little children, don't let anybody deceive you. That's where we started our writings, our readings. Don't be deceived about this.

God's method is this. Now you see, of course, why? You have the witness of God in your heart. You see how it is. God comes on this ground. He just witnesses, witnesses, witnesses. Bless the name of the Lord.

Jesus Christ as the True and Faithful Witness

Let me ask you a question. Who in this book is called the true and faithful witness? Jesus. Who was Jesus? I'll answer that one. The son of God. I know which way my mind's going. I don't expect you to read that.

And who was the son of God? The seed of God. He was the promised seed. Is this right? He's the faithful and true witness. There it is. It's as simple as A, B, C. And what he actually was in the flesh, it all is and ever was in the spirit.

So it's the spirit that comes and bears witness to you. Physically, I wasn't born the son of God. Physically and materially, Jesus Christ was. Spiritually, I've been born a son of God. Spiritually, the blessed Holy Ghost comes and witnesses in me.

I'm the seed of God. Must have it, because I wasn't born of Mary. Nobody will ever write a Bible about me and say, G .W. North of Bethnal Green was born the son of Mary. Nobody will ever do that. They can't.

They'll never write a book about me. So God sends the Holy Ghost to witness to me. I've got to know. I do. Praise God. Because God knows. He lets me know. He doesn't let me know till he knows himself.

That's right. When he's begotten me, when the seed's in my heart, he lets me know. Amen. Isn't it wonderful? Of course, it's so simple, really. I'd do the same if I'd have been clever enough to have thought it all out.

I would have done the same. Mind you, I'm learning to be sensible. I used not to be. I wasn't at all clever. Had no intelligence at all. But God, beloved, this is the way he does it. I don't fall down and worship and praise God because somebody stands up and says, God wants you to praise him.

God wants you to worship him. You see, here comes the prophets and the prophetesses. I don't need that. I'm never ready to do it. Glory. I'm on the face. You see, I've got the witness in here. The prophets come.

Amen. The prophet's here. Hey, it's glorious. It's marvellous. The seed's here. The son's here. He's prophet, priest and king. He's everything. He's here. Mind you, I like to hear the prophets and the prophetesses.

Praise God. I always know whether they're talking truth or not, you see, because it's all in here. It's marvellous. He's got great discernment. No, of course he hasn't. It's common sense. I mean in the spirit.

And God wants you to have the common sense of God, the sense that's common in the Godhead. That's why he sent these glorious revelations. And he comes into our hearts. Amen. And then there's something else that we need to see.

The Abiding Anointing and the Holy Spirit's Teaching

Familiar truths, of course. But let's go to it, shall we? This time it's in the second chapter. And the great 27th verse. The anointing which you have received of him abideth in you. The anointing doesn't abide in a little glass bottle ready to be poured out like oil.

It isn't in a prophet's pot set up on the shelf. For you remember that that's what the old widow, the widow woman of old had. She had dice. She said, dice, serve and have nothing else but a pot of oil.

It was an anointing pot. It belonged to the prophet. Ah, that's something you didn't know. So next time you read that story, that's what it is. But you see, the anointing is not in a pot or in a little bottle.

Hallelujah. The anointing's in here. Praise God. You know, God wouldn't put any seed in your heart but the anointed seed. Now would he? You just think. When the seed died on the cross, he was the anointed seed.

He's the one that comes into your heart. He's not the babe that was born in Mary's womb. He was unanointed then. He had to wait till Jordan before he was anointed. Is that right? That's right. Let your mind work.

Hallelujah. When he died on the cross, he was God's anointed seed. Amen. The seed I've got in here is the seed of my life. The witness I have in here is the witness of God. And the anointing that I have in here is the anointing of the seed.

Hallelujah. Every one of the seed of God is anointed. The anointing is here. I want to tell you the anointed one is here in this room. And if you're claiming to be a child of God, he's in your heart. The anointing which we have received of him abideth in you.

And you don't need any man to teach you. You need not let any man teach you. You shouldn't have needed me to teach you that. You should have known it was there. John didn't write, say, now I'm teaching you that it's there.

He says, it's there. Should be teaching you that what I'm saying is right. Oh. Oh, you see, that's rather reversed it, hasn't it? But that's the truth of it. There's no excuse for anybody going wrong.

Say, don't you go and listen to that man, he'll put you wrong. No excuse for going wrong. You're not anointed, that's all. The anointing teaches you. You'd be surprised how many people are told to avoid me.

I can't put you wrong. And I can't put you right either. The anointing is there, beloved. This is one of the things you're told to avoid me about, because I preach this very thing. Did you know? Because I won't have anything to do with this rubbish of, oh God, anoint him to do this, and oh God, anoint him to do that.

Making us move under the old covenant. That's what they used to get under the old covenant, to have a fresh anointing about. I said, oh, the house anointed my head with fresh oil. Well, of course, that's right, he needed it.

He was under the old covenant. He never knew what it was to be born again. Jesus hadn't died then. Risen again, the Holy Ghost hadn't come. Not in the way that he came at Pentecost, and has been here ever since.

Praise God. Hallelujah. You see, the anointing's in you. And it teaches you everything, and is truth, and is no lie about death. That's right. And even as it hath taught you, you shall abide in him. Amen.

Now, you'll only abide in him as it hath taught you. That's all. Read your Bible. That's what your Bible says. You're supposed to read it and believe it. You will abide in him as it hath taught you. Praise God.

This is why you have such trouble with people sort of nipping in and out, and up and down, and round about. Because they've never let themselves be taught. The Holy Ghost has come to teach you the difference between right and wrong.

Between sin and holiness. Between what's of self and what's of God. Between what's worldliness, and what is proper natural behavior as men and women. What you may have in your homes, and in your handbags, and on your backs, and on your bookshelves.

He's come to teach you. But you won't let him. You let Chanel, or some dress designer, or somebody else teach you. Because of some fantastic thing you read in a colored glossy magazine or something. Got to do with it.

The Holy Ghost has come to teach you the habits of heaven. You want them. They're gone in God. The way God would live here if he was you. That's why the Holy Ghost has come to teach you. That's why people never get anywhere.

They want the Holy Ghost to sanction all kinds of things that they have, and he won't have it. Praise him. He loves Jesus. He's come to see about the seed. That's what he's come for. He's come to be the instructor of the foolish.

A guide of babes. He's come to abide in your heart that none need go wrong. Hallelujah. Isn't this a precious thing? So I'm all cut off from fellowship where I am. What, with God the Father and God the Son?

What fellowship have you been cut off from? Amen. You're there in your loneliness, if you like, to learn the contours of heaven. The glory of the face of Jesus Christ. The way they speak to one another and love one another.

Up there. Amen. That's why you're put in lonely places. Sometimes if you get too much with these people you call your fellowship, you might get like them, so... That's right. You don't want to get like me, for instance.

More about this before we're through. In about an hour's time. I was talking to a young man the other day. I was asked to go to a certain place to meet this young man. And the young man, I don't know whether you may have met him, I won't tell you his name, but he was a guardsman.

He got saved about two years ago. Baptised in the Spirit. I had to look up to him. There aren't many men I look up to, but I had to look up to him a bit. And his wife. And as we talked and talked and talked, he said, you know, some of us have been listening to your tapes and we've all tried to be little Mr North.

I said, brother, don't you do that. Don't you do that. You be yourself. That's all I am. I'm me. And you're to be what God wants you to be. Hallelujah. And the Holy Ghost has come to develop all those lovely little things about you.

He's come to make you glorious. And if you keep neglecting them because you're aching after what somebody else has got, you'll become ugly and perverted. And you'll become a... And do you know what the Lord says?

I'll spew you out of my mouth. Make me feel sick. Fancy God feeling sick. You'd never think God would feel sick, would you? I always thought God enjoyed perfect health. Well, he says, I'll spew you out of my mouth.

That's feeling sick. The Holy Ghost has come to teach you. And he's teaching you. You must not move off that ground. You've got to stop there. And so, two references this time, beloved. In the third chapter and in the second chapter.

Love for the Brethren as a Mark of New Birth

The third chapter reads this. Verse... Oh, where shall we start? Verse 14. We know that we have passed from death unto life. Because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

So, you believe God. If you haven't got really uprising, active, moving, flowing love to your brethren, you're dead. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.

Now, you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. You haven't got it. You're kidding yourself if you think you've got eternal life. You're a murderer. Perhaps you think we ought to stop now and examine, see how many people we hate.

You know how dead you are then. But man, I'm baptising the spirit. What kind of a spirit? That's what I want to know. Murderer spirit? Well, obviously it was the wrong one then, wasn't it? You say, well, I can speak in tongues.

Well, I know lots of devils can speak in tongues. I've heard them I don't know how many times. More times than I'd like to tell you. I can prophesy. Well, I've heard devils prophesy. More times than I could like, I could remember.

Thousands of times I should have said, no, don't exaggerate. I mean it. That happens to be the way the Lord's brought me. These things are no guarantee. Glory. We've got to see what's got to abide in you, beloved.

Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. You know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we the love of God. Because he laid down his life. He didn't take somebody else's.

He wasn't a hater. He was a lover. He let somebody else take his. Glory. Don't you see? He laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Hallelujah. And this is what John is telling you in case you've got some Jehovah Witness sort of ideas about you.

It was God that laid down his life. It says in verse 16. God. Amen. Glory. We're right down on the ground. But whosoever, verse 17, hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

Chapter 2, verse 5. Whoso keepeth his word in him, verily, is the love of God perfect. Alright. The next thing then, beloved, is that in me, in me, I have the love of, not love to God. I'm not saying I have great love to God in my heart.

I have great love to you because I have the great love of God in my heart. That's what John's telling us. And, and, uh, praise God. Now all I've got to do is to keep his word and that love will be perfected in me.

I just keep his word. I don't mean I sleep with the Bible under me pillow or always carry it in my pocket or anything like that. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not what God means. It's, it's, you keep his word.

And the only way you can keep his word, I'll tell you, is living it. If you don't live it, you've lost it. Anything you hear here today that's the word of God to you, if you don't go out and live it, you've lost it.

You might say, Oh, I remember going to Stanley Hall, so and so, so and so, you see, if you haven't lived it, you've lost it. Say, Oh, I can remember it now. It was as clear as anything. Doesn't make any difference.

Doesn't make a scrap of difference. The tremendousness about this, beloved, is that, that you've got to have the love of God in you. Now you can always tell if someone's got the love of God in them. They love the brethren.

And they love the brethren to good effect. That is, that they wouldn't think of having something of this world's good if their brother was in need, without sharing it with them. Even to the impoverishment of their own selves.

But you know, I've got to think about my wife and children. Yeah, but God thought about all the other wives and children in the world when he gave his son. Stop your nonsense. You're not better than God with all your so-called ethical approach.

Stop your nonsense. You'll damn your soul if you carry on like that. You've got to love. This love of God has got to live in you. It's got to have its home in you. It'll have gone forth, but its home will still be in you.

It's a marvellous thing, beloved, to love with the love of God. To have this world's good is a test of it. Not whether you say you have the other world's good. That is, the power of God to heal people.

That's not what he's talking about. John's very practical. See, we want to put it... I've got the love of God in me and I stand up and I use my gift. I could tell you lots of things like this. I can tell you of times, beloved, when all sorts of things have taken place.

They... I was telling one of the stories last night in the meeting of things that have happened. I remember once standing in a bus queue in Bradford, where once I had a church. I stood in a bus queue there and we were waiting at the end of one of the long...

I don't know if even my wife knows this one. I can't tell her everything. Don't have to tell your wives everything, do you? I was standing in this bus queue and whilst we were standing there I heard a little voice start to cry.

You see? And it rose to a scream and I looked round and the bus wasn't anywhere in sight and there was Mother. This child had gone as white as a death and it was... She was absolutely in a wit's end. She didn't know what to do, you see.

And I looked up the hill. I got an appointment to keep, you see, but something in me moved. I just took that child from its mother and clasped it to my breast and I didn't say to its mother and it was all lovely and right and I got on the bus and went.

She said, That's the other world's good. Yeah, but John says this world's good. If I'd have done that for her and she needed a pound note and I wouldn't give it to her, what? All this highfalutin talk.

This is the thing, my beloved. Let's keep our feet down on the ground, shall we? People need this world's good. And I want to tell you this, beloved, it's a wonderful thing that the good of the other world came into this world.

It's a marvelous thing. You might enter into the good of that great world and live in the power of it in this world. But oh, you've got bowels of compassion. Now listen, here's a good guidance. When your bowels of compassion open up to people, give them everything you've got.

When your bowels of compassion are moved inside you to meet need, meet it! The love of God has got to dwell in you. It's got to be perfected in you. You wouldn't have thought the love of God needed perfecting, would you?

It does need perfecting. It needed perfecting down on this earth. Praise Him. It still needs perfecting down on this earth. Men and women are in desperate need. They are, beloved. Glory be to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.