Npg Radio 1980 #6 - Radio Interview — Norman Grubb

Christ as Life Expressed Through Believers

9, Program 1. This is David Ord with today's Union Life broadcast. We're interviewing Norman Grubb and talking with him about who we are in Christ, and we've come now to the place where we say, well, once we understand that Christ is our life, how do we operate in life?

And we're getting into the whole question of the part that faith plays in living the Christian life on what we might call the third level. We look first to the cross, where we see that Jesus died for us to forgive our sins, and then the second level is that we see ourselves as on the cross, dead in him, and now alive in the sense that he in union with us is our life.

Now, that's not where we stop, because God wants to move out into this world through us. He wants to operate in this world with us as his agents, and Norman is getting into this whole subject with us now of how that comes about through faith.

We move into the whole meaning of being a person, because the revelation of the Bible is the person universe is love. God is love. The whole universe is a reproduction of him in love action. So God is a person who moves out from himself in continual forms of love creation, love salvation, love fulfillment, all are expressions of a love which exists to perfect all those whom he's brought into being.

So he is outgoing love. Now, we've had so far had to see him rather as incoming love to us. Now, of course, that was his outgoing love, but to us it came as an incoming love. I mean, we understood that it's been he who has been in his son, reconciling the world as himself.

He's been fulfilling his love, salvation purposes in us by this love action through his son. God in Christ reconciling the world to himself. And we've been receiving the benefits of his love action, which is found its fulfillment in that he has for the foundation of the world this fixed purpose to have multitudes of sons by whom he could freely be himself again.

In the paradox of them being themselves, yet themselves really being expressions of himself. That's the paradox we're talking about, of union. And he's the outgoing lover. But so far we've only seen him expressing that love by the means by which he's restored us to be as he purposed us to be.

Humans in eternal union relationship with him, and as we say, functioning as humans, and it's really his functioning by us. And his functioning is the love functioning. We really move on to a whole new range of understanding.

We've seen to some extent who we are, if we moved into this recognition and realization of our union with him, to why we are. We have, in a sense, been too occupied in having settled for us who we are, and being settled in that love union, to be occupied in the outcome of why we are.

What we're now talking about is why we are. It's presented to us in a scripture in the form of three grades, or three levels, showing therefore that in the mind of the spirit expressed through the scriptures, humanity would enter into the recognition and realization of who they are in those three grades, on three levels.

I hesitate to use those words because it may give the impression of a kind of gradualness. It really is entering into the larger recognition of who the person is, who now re-expresses himself by us, and therefore is moving into his fullest expression of himself by us.

The simplest illustration used, most commonly used, is the one in John's letter, when he compares us to little children, young men, and fathers, and he explains in a few words the difference between the three phases.

The point of a little child is he's practically unconscious. He's helpless. He knows nothing but dependence. He's totally dependent on his parents. So John says, spiritually speaking, a new-birth child, a little child, is one who, knowing that he's a sinner, has moved into a whole-hearted reliance on redemption through Christ, which has brought him back to the Father.

The terms used are, he says, you watch out little children because their sins are forgiven for his name's sake. They know they're sinners. They know through the cross of Calvary they're forgiven, and therefore they know the Father.

They've entered into a relationship with the Father. A relationship, not a consciousness of themselves, but of the grace they've received through the Father and the Son, by the Spirit. He then, like just a young man, and the point he makes for the young man is they've found themselves.

A little child doesn't know himself. He only knows his parents upon whom he's relying. A young man has to pull away from his parents to find himself. So the description of a young man, which is equivalent to what we've been talking about entering into the consciousness of the union, is he finds inward strength.

He meets the opposite of life. So he meets the contrary of life, which is the wrong way of life, which is evil. And he knows how he's become, it's the conquest of evil. And it speaks of the Word of God abiding in him.

Now he's moved into an inner relationship. When we first come to God, the Word of God comes to us. Of course the Word of God ultimately is the Word which manifests to us. The Word is the living person.

The outer Word reveals to us the living Word, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we come to Him in outer form. Now in the second form, the Word of God abides in you, we've moved into now what we've been talking about all these times.

The new consciousness, the person who is the real one in our lives is Jesus Christ living in us. And then we know our strength because we've found the strength of humanity is in the Spirit, not our human spirit at all, in the Spirit who manifests itself by us, places itself by us.

And the false use of power by Satan has been replaced by the right use of power by Jesus Christ. And so we know the strength. And therefore we know in that strength how of course we overcome the wicked one because we are abiding in Him who has overcome the wicked one.

We've moved on the second level, the young man's level, to a equivalent to a graduation, to a child who's passed from being an independent child to becoming a self-sufficient person. That's what we say we are.

We've found our resources in life, in our union consciousness in Christ. So that has solved a problem that concerns our own selfhood, who we are and how we find out and how we are who we are. The problems are solved.

And we've moved in among those whom Jesus said when you have come into the living relationship inwardly conscious of the living relationship with me you'd either thirst or hunger again because He in us is our permanent living breath and He in us is our permanent living water.

So we live a life which has an inward sufficiency that leads us to for our attention now to be turned outside ourselves to God's love purposes in the world by His sons. That's the third level. That's the father level.

We see, we've read that as He deaths in us to be as with Christ as of all things, the day is coming when He will minister His own love purposes and love fulfillment by us in the whole universe. We can be His total agents of His outgoing activities, not His incoming establishment in us, but His outgoing activity from us.

And that's what John talks about as being a righteousness of fathers because where a little child and a young man, the concerns are about their own development and their own maturity. A father is occupied in his outer ministry to his family, into his world, taking his place in the world.

So the description given by John of the father is one who, it says he knows him as he was in the beginning. That doesn't seem to mean much by it stands until you understand knowing and the Bible always being mixed with the thing.

It's not knowing in the head, it's being part of something. Like you have your profession, you know your profession, it's a know-how. So it says now you're in a union consciousness with the father as what?

He isn't even called a father. I know Him just from the beginning John says. Why? Because He's beyond the fatherhood. He's the person whose eternal purposes are being fulfilled in the universe, not at the beginning, from the beginning.

So we're now in the conscious union relationship with him as fulfilling his perfecting purposes in the universe. Now this really is where the Christian life begins to get into gear because everything we've been talking about so far is to prepare us for Christ to go out and live that life through us as His agents.

Now if you'd like to understand this more thoroughly write for the booklet The Key to Everything to 4606 Lamar Avenue Memphis Tennessee 38118 or call area code 901 -795 -0121. Be sure to tune in next time.

We're on this station daily at the same time. Until then this is David Ord. Program 2. This is David Ord welcoming you to another Union Life broadcast with Norman Grubb. Norman has been talking to us about who we are in Christ and now moving into the subject of why we are in Christ and what God wants to accomplish through us.

The Three Stages of Christian Maturity

Now in 1st John the 2nd chapter John talks about three levels of experiencing the Christian life. The first of them he calls little children. The second is young men and then he talks about fathers and we're beginning to talk about what it is to be a father.

Norman what does John mean when he says to us that we become fathers? A father is a reproducer. A father's interests don't center around himself but center around those for whom he's responsible. Those who are in his realm of living and therefore we're saying the Bible says on the father level we are we're linking with God in his outgoing purposes.

We're mingled with mixed with him who's from the beginning who from eternity to eternity is in the process of fulfilling his eternal purposes and we are therefore expressions and agents of him who is fulfilling his love purposes in the world.

Outgoing promise as from him not coming into us. This is the third level when we have become linked to Jesus not as our savior but in his in his saviorhood rather. It involves a radical change another radical change in our in our understanding.

Just as we had to have the earlier changes and passing from our sin condition to our justified condition from our justified condition to our unified condition so we move another one and the importance of this is we're ceasing to be those who are dependent on God and becoming those who cooperate with God and we're becoming co-operators, co-laborers, co-saviors.

As the Bible says in John even co-gods. God in outgoing love actions. It's spoken of in other terms of the Bible. It's spoken of in terms of our our union relationship with Christ in his crucifixion and his resurrection and ascension and the Paul gives three three letters about it.

It's a relation letter. It concerns our relationship to Christ in his death and Colossians our relationship to him in his resurrection and Ephesians is our relationship to him in his ascension and from his ascension the ascension means the first to have finished and essentially it says Ephesians we're seated with him in heavenly places.

Seated means something's finished. What's been finished is his redemptive purposes in the which brought us into this unified relationship to him where we can be expressers of him and so the processes of redemption are completed and when a man sits down to complete one job to pick up another one and so from the Jesus said when I ascend the Holy Spirit I'll ask the Father he said in the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit is the outgoer he'll now take the reality of redemption out to the world and gather in the millions of the elect that are saved and as we find ourselves as members of his body in the ascension we become agencies of his gathering of the company of the redeemed.

It is a another profound change of our inner consciousness that's why Jesus says and in very drastic terms that you can't be the commissioned purpose which is God's set purpose to all of us means by which he fulfills his purpose as a commissioned person we can't be a commissioned purpose unless we've been first apostles of our discipleship training.

We have to move from be a disciple to be an apostle. Apostle is one who's sent out and disciple is one who's been trained to send out. Now Jesus said that training consists in our being detached from anything human so we become people of one love one occupation and everything fits into that one love and of course the one love is where we are centered in Father Son and Spirit and we are operating as expressions of him and that's why Jesus said a disciple has to be cut off from his human love and uses those strong terms in Luke 11, Luke 14 which is unless a person hates his father and mother, wife and children, houses and lands and he has his own life also he can't be my disciple unless a man forsakes all that he has he can't be my disciple.

A disciple is a learner until he's completed his learning and then he can go out to fulfill his purpose in life and so Jesus says we have to go through this this discipleship period and he says we have to count the cost.

The meaning is the actual fact that none of us have anything except ourselves or we ever have in life as ourselves depends what kind of self we are. We have nothing in life all we really have is what life means to us it's the us we have not the life.

Therefore when it says when Jesus used drastic terms like amen, hate not, father, mother, wife and children in our unsaid is we haven't we it isn't our father mother we have it's ourselves it's the our it's my father my mother what I really have is myself love or that's my father that's my wife my love children it's the my my my I have interpreted to me certainly he's my father my mother my wife my possessions but the only really outer forms outer symbols are the real which is me and I'm then a me for me that's the old life.

Now redemption changes that because redemption means I hate being a me for me I found that certainly it is the is the character Satan should see to me. Now when I receive Jesus Christ the me for me is exchanged to be a me for others because as Christ comes into my life he's he's the self for others and on that level now it isn't they for us but we for them.

In the new life it isn't my father's for me my wife's for me I'm for them how can I help be what I can be to them to fulfill with their lives above all of course they they find the same sense of Christ that I have.

Now that's a radical change there but the the foundation of the radical change is that I don't I don't get that others. I get that God and others in God. That's why it's radical because the new life is he and he in the whole universe um and I joined him as such and all I have is he.

When I have him I have back for love services whom I I'm attached but in a certain detached form no longer are the the first claims of my life aren't my father my wife my children my possessions my health my life anything I have no claims.

I've been wrapped up in one person who possesses me and I possess him as the bride said in the song of Solomon I am my beloved his desire towards me I am my beloved and he is mine. Now this is the radicalness of of of discipleship that the Holy Spirit has a cutting-off workiness in which we are detached from a direct relationship anything on earth or any personalness it's replaced by by an attached relationship only to him and God is our all in all.

That's what discipleship is when God is my all in all. Of course God can be can be what he is by me. Um if any of you have read the the life of um uh Rhys Howells his assessor he takes you through his striking experiences when the Holy Ghost said I have nobody else in my body except you.

I have a total ownership. You have no affection no possession. You have nothing. You have only me and then only what I give you in my life. I have no rivals. And he went through an agonizing week until this become established.

That was his discipleship that uh to him then God became all in all. Um when you when God is all in all in God you get back as those who to whom we are linked in the second descent we're we're we're back to to serve and fulfill them.

And the main way in which you can fulfill them is that they may certainly they themselves might find that they're they uh um uh found him in them as a meaning of life as we have and so our our relationship to other people is um it's become loosened uh from being the primary the primary home in our lives.

And then Paul says um when you're Christ you have all. He says all things are yours all to even convect that the world is yours um and life and pleasure in second Corinthians. He says everything in first Corinthians everything is yours all because you're Christ and Christ is God.

When we're Christ in Christ we get back but on another level the whole world. We have to bless and serve and fulfill the world. We don't live for the world we don't even live for our loved ones. They're they're part of our Christ's heritage.

They're Christ's loved ones and we're loving him in the sense that they're part of the way in which where Christ can express his love. Love accepted by me and Norman. We're really uh grateful for the message you've given us here because I think this is what most of us as Christians are really wanting to move into is how we can live this life whereby Christ is expressing his love through us as us in this world as his agents.

Now we're on the same station five days a week at the same time. Be sure to tune in for the programs in this series on who am I and write to the booklet the key to everything in the meantime published by Moody Press.

There's no charge for it. We want to send it to you. Just ask for the key to everything and write to 4606 Lamar Avenue Memphis Tennessee 38118 or call area code 901 -795 -0121 until next time. This is David Ord.

Christ as the Outgoing Life

Program three this is David Ord with today's union life broadcast. We're considering together how God expresses his life in this world through us how we are his intercessors his commissioned vessels to express the life of Christ in the world we live in now.

Norman Grubb is a man who has been on the mission field for many years. He was the general secretary of the worldwide evangelization crusade and Norman has had a tremendous wealth of experience in living as a commissioned intercessor and catching God's purposes in his life.

Norman I want to ask you if you'll tell us more now about how this life has worked out for yourself and you've come to see this this top level of living as a father. Well we are considering the the totally revolutionary effect of being what we commonly call a Christian which means we're a human agent through whom Christ is reliving his life.

It's revolutionary because God is a total outgoer. He is nothing but outgoing love and there's nothing in God except his one eternal purpose which is the perfection of his whole universe. So everything in the universe is in his perfect harmony his perfect happiness perfect fulfillment of his being like from persons down to the mere things of life.

So he's a total outgoer. Therefore whether I am in a true sense what we call the Christian I'm an expression of him as a total outgoer now. That's not been what has occupied us up to the present because we we had to move into into first into into a condition in which it was a subtle fact in us that life is Christ within us that we are in this union relationship in which we are the agents in which he is himself in us.

It's only then we really begin to be confronted with the face that means he's. It's not Christ in us. It's Christ by us and by us as us that we therefore the outgoers which is he being outgoing person by us.

So not Christ for us or Christ in us but Christ by us. That's been the beginning of this of the streamers since we're born again. Because we said earlier on the first evidence of born again is the birth of an other lovingness.

It's a revelation first consciousness. As soon as Christ died for us and took away our sins and given us eternal life made us members of the family of God we begin to love not us at all. Really it's the spirit of love now has begun to be his love self in us acquires us to love the son who died for us to love the father and love people.

We've begun to be changed over from being geared to self loving self which is Satan's spirit in us the self-giving self which is Christ's spirit in us. So from the very beginning of our new birth the trickle the trickle of outgoing love and outgoing life has flown through us.

Evidences are desire and concern that other people may know they have the thinking of eternal life and peace that we have. We begin to be those who seek to reach other people with the the good news of salvation.

So the that's a trickle of the outgoing reality been moving we may say up into a stream in us from the days of our new birth. But we're now rising to the point where that's all there is about us. Now that's something different.

It hasn't been our total concern up to present because he first had to be concerned to find out what it does mean to be in consciousness of the person who's not I but Christ spontaneously living his life by me and I spontaneously living and that being he living it we've and we've gone into the radical basis of the new consciousness through faith into which we have to be be brought into this new reality.

Our main line of conscience has not been Christ outgoing through us so much as Christ being complete his complete self in us. As Paul said that Christ be formed in us fully formed now we've left that behind.

Now we move in and therefore the seriousness of it is to begin to be confined. It's the only meaning of life in each case it's the only meaning of life. The only meaning of life is a lost person must be saved.

And then the only meaning of life is salvation. Means that Christ really is his life by me not just that not just rescues me from hell but makes me a expression of himself in each case it's the only meaning of life.

Now the final only meaning of life is I'm the expression of God whose only meaning in life is other love to the effect that when the when the final issue is made he himself goes to hell out my heart to say let's go to hell because the ultimate living of self-giving I've been laying his own life in a person with son to go through what would be our eternal destiny but for him that's outgoing love.

So we know the kind of person he is. Therefore that's the kind of person I am now that that confronts me with something for me to say. That's the only kind of person I am. And that's why we began to say that the the background to apostleship it's a partnership.

Apostle means you're sanctified now all of us when we know who we really are we said because the saint person is the ascending person is Christ in us who's moving out by us in some form without going out going laying down of our lives for others in the in the on level of the epistles of Romans which is a great planetary epistle that's the third area when we present our bodies as living sacrifice we've had to go through periods where we've had to be um justified and unified in the Romans 1 to 3 in Romans 6 to 8 and 12 in the 12th chapter when he begins to talk about Christ going out to us to the world.

So the potential of the issue therefore potential body is living sacrifices. Lay down your bodies out of your body the others may have life. Now we're moving not uh talking about the body as his dwelling place.

The body is laid down uh in a in a a an outpoured light and others may have life. And we were saying the background of this is that God himself in his wonderful faithful ways uh has a full fulfilled a further operation in us.

The operation is loosing us from our attachments to people and things of this life even to our nearest and dearest. That's a very radical fact until we're so loosened that uh um uh our attachment has a doubt in us that it is only to him i say it's getting very radical.

One of the great writers of years ago made a phrase which has always used the phrase he's always talked to me he said in a million letters the flight of the alone to the alone. Basically i'm a lone person in myself myself i'm myself the alone person universe is he the self of the universe the flight of the alone to the alone.

So there is in our center an area where we've come into a into a justice this this inner union. You get it again the Solomon the bride and bridegroom the marriage up of the lamb where we where we're all we're joined two of the one and in fire says he's the only one that matters.

Now as i say again that's radical that nobody else really matters our whole being. He said there's one perfect person who is the all in all and he's the all in all to us and we don't talk about for instance going to heaven i'm going to meet my relatives or or i'm going to a place i'm going to person because eternity is a person life is a person.

Universe is a person one person who's come out in these forms. Our privilege isn't just to be a form. We are persons too. We are derivative persons. That's our privilege. We're we're co-gods. That's different but everything is there's only our expression of this one person.

And we in a particular way are that um but the therefore all the universe is a person in different forms of marvellous expression of himself. Therefore we only are in the heart universe when we are part of that one person.

And we as persons are conscious of being expressions of one one with the person the fact of the alone to the alone. Now where we have to be careful about this is we've thought so seen all along uh the illusion we lived into is that we should better ourselves.

This false lie we got from satan which is what he is a self self supposed to be self-acting self. And we caught up as we said again and caught up by that lie. So we tend or go back to say well i should become something.

No i don't become something i i i am what he is in me. And then uh i'm only saying because he's my saviour. I'm only in fact because he's the one living his life in me. Not i and i haven't changed. I've just been the deeper expression of full expression of what he is as a saviour.

And then there's my all in all and so on. Now i'm saying that because therefore it isn't that i get about cutting myself off to anything. The best thing is cutting yourself off to nothing. But if this if he is uh your heartbeat uh if he's living his life in you as he is if you're unified with him now his purposes his beautiful purposes to cut off from any any kind of um claims uh which in any sense are rather his own and that's very drastic.

He does it in his own way. But as we move through discipleship father son speaking we know what i mean god's done something in us which somehow we become detached. We have a precious wife maybe a precious husband precious children parents.

We have possessions we have securities we have valuable things in our homes. Uh we have our own physical lives. But somehow we detach. We don't care. Uh we don't care. We don't care. Our main care isn't them.

Because we sense that they're in higher hands than ours. My wife isn't my wife he she's god's precious person. Then we begin to see everything's part of god's precious property. Only the second century alone to me.

So i become in a strange way which is very offensive to the world and may be very offensive to your partners in life. If they don't know what you knew there may be a cost of sacrifice to pay for it because you become kind of attached.

You get a new quality of love seeing the old quality of what i get from them. I like my wife my husband because they give meaning to me. I like because i there's a basic self-element in it. I don't reckon out that i made.

I may make out time for them. It really is a very large delay for me. Now this is in its attached touch so totally for them are another level that they may have the best they should have. And the best they have isn't you.

The best they should have is that god do it with them eternally and they become re-expressed as the god fraternity. So the best you can do is to be a mature loved one themselves become again christic presence as you are.

So you have a new detached operation and you lay down your life for them. You won't do less. We do more for them on a new level. They won't like it so much because you don't have perhaps perhaps the same sentimental attachment used to have.

There's a difference because you become detached. Now i'm saying to you don't try and get detached. The spirit is a detacher. If you are one in whom christ does live and your whole purpose is that he should be holding himself by you now not for you.

You say god by faith. I take it. You're doing the detaching job. Maybe he's done some already. I take it on faith. You're doing a detaching job. So somehow i come to say well uh i love my but i'm not.

I love you. You're my total and all other love which is taking a secondary place there really a primary place because my new love for me to serve them. It's really a higher love. It'll appear secondary because my total love is first to all my my god.

Now it is in god. I get back my world on another level. This is discipleship. This is a tremendous message that we want to share with you not only on this radio broadcast but also in print. I want to invite you to write for the booklet the key to everything.

It's published by moody press. There's no charge for it. We want to send it to you. And when you do we'll also send you a copy of union life. It's a bi-monthly magazine 36 pages and it's a magazine that is going to show you what this life of christ really means in practical terms.

Now you can have these things the key to everything. And union life magazine. You won't be asked for money if you'll write to 4606 lamar avenue memphis tennessee 38118 or call area code 901 -795 -0121.

Intercession as Spiritual Reproduction

That's 901 -795 -0121 the address again in just a moment until next time. This is david ord program 4. This is david welcoming you to another union life broadcast. We've been talking with norman grubb who wrote the book reese howells intercessor.

And many of you have read or heard of that book. It's a book which has had tremendously wide circulation all over the world. And reese howells was a man whom norman grubb knew personally and he tells how reese was led into a life of intercession.

Now we are in the series of programs which we've entitled who am i. And we're considering why we are. Why have we been called as christians. What's the purpose of it all. Why is christ manifesting his life in us.

What is he trying to accomplish. And we're dealing with this question of how he commissions us and he moves out through us into the world that we become uh joint with him in his saviorhood for the world that he is moving the message of salvation and of who people are in him out through us.

He's loving through us he's reaching people through us. And norman i'm going to ask you if you'll just pick up with this whole thing now of the intercessory life and take it from here. We shan't get very far yet into it.

It is it is actually into intercession. We can approach it. But uh of course intercession really it only is a may be a queer terms. I mean it's really the means of reproduction. The meaning of life is we we are we reproduce.

That's why my father's now we're saying that uh uh seeking to lower the the foundation for this which is the the final meaning of being a person. The person is the outgoer in the world called the living god.

The reproducers reproduce himself in marvelous ways in it as we can only know him for full eternity in the perfection of the whole being of eternity um the outgoer. And we've understood that his eternal purpose has been to uh operate his outgoing in person first in his son and then through his son his sons.

And therefore we're the um we are the outgoers which is really he being himself by us. And so we've begun to uh confront this this um only uh total means to be a person uh that i'm an outgoer uh he's he that he's going out in outgoing love and fulfillment of purpose of power by me.

And we're we're facing the fact that its basis is a um uh an acceptance uh of the um the total detachment of ourselves um as a basis to our being attached by him in the fulfillment of his fruitful purposes in life.

We had to be detached and come attached attached to outer outer callings of of intercession reproduction. But we had to be detached first um and we had to face the fact that to us negative humans who have such negative ideas even god himself it may even same seem fearful but um the actual fact is i never find myself until i only have him.

I've never found my true self until i'm an expression of the of the one i am the one in in in expression of the one which we said before means it's been the flight of me the alone to him the alone and we found our perfect fulfillment very marvel in fact.