The Meaning of Life - 2. Where We Begin — Norman Grubb

Thank you, Lord, you have fallen. Long ago you fell at Pentecost, and you've remained where you always were, in the hearts of those who received Jesus by you. So as you said, you are the well in us, and you're the rivers through us.

So thank you. We're just along with you now in what you're saying, doing, working among us every moment of the day, not only in these sessions, but when we're eating and talking and praying and praising and enjoying together.

Thank you for your living self, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Now we're seeking to continue this morning from where we left off yesterday. As I say, the only way I know how to share what God has given me to share is by a process of continuity, moving from one session to another to another.

As I say to you, my usual calling is not the public ministry like this. I'm usually more in groups, because I like rap sessions. I say, hi, I'm sure you're wrong. And I say, of course I know you were, but I'll just prove it to you.

We'll just do that later on. I knew I should get complaints for being British and too quick. Well, I can't help being British. As for being too quick, I always understood God could do anything except slow me down.

The Unity of the Universe and God’s Loving Nature

So there we are. Now we were led yesterday to some, what I understand to be from God's word, some tremendous facts. The whole universe is one, because he is one. And the whole universe is he expressed in multitudinous forms.

One living person through multitudinous manifestations. And this further revelation, he's only love, so everything is love. Everything is forms of perfection. Even if we mess him up, he re-forms into perfection.

That's what he came by his son to do, moving into the ultimate perfection. But we're able to see perfection now. We're seeing him with perfect love, in perfect operation, in all forms, in all ways. So we saw this as our tremendous basis.

We deal with only one. But because, as the scripture says, he's eternal, immortal, invisible, he can't be manifested except by a manifested form. So from eternity, in his own trinity, he has his own son, who is the manifested father, the manifested God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He moves down to our level, he can move us up to his level. And we're able to know the Father through the Son. And as we saw further, he continues to complete his eternal purposes through his son and sons.

They become the agents by whom the Spirit reproduces. Father, Son, Spirit. The Spirit brings, through the word of faith of the Son, reproductions into being. This creation was the first we know of. And the marvel we saw is that it always had been his purpose.

Through his Son, there should come into being a family of sons, who'd level up with his Son. Fantastic! Created, levelling up with the Creator. And forming one in a million form of sons. Sons are persons.

Living persons, as the Father is a living person, who by their living personality would express him. Because of the tremendous significance of being on the manifested level, the agents of manifestation, is that the Eternal One, the Universal, is only seen by his manifested form.

It's never seen any other way. You never see electricity except by that. You never see it. You see it by its form. You never see the atom, you only see its forms. And you never see the living God, except by his sons.

By his Son, and then his sons. And in no other way will this living person ever be manifested in the world. That's why Paul said in Romans 8, the groaning creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God, not the Son of God, not the Father.

Waits for its deliverance, it should be brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God by the manifestation of the sons of God. Because the sons are the only means by which the Father manifests himself and reproduces his own love purposes.

It's a tremendous thing to be a person. And when, as we saw, our destiny is to be co-persons, to be co-owners, and therefore co-developers, and co-managers of God's universe. So it's a very responsible thing, as well as a very wonderful thing to be a person.

Becoming Persons Who Express Divine Love

And then we further saw that the key to be a God person is to be a love person, because that's all he is. John said the final word when he said, God is love. That's all he is, nothing else. Every single thing he is, has, does, is some form of perfect love.

We said yesterday, we always get out of tune when we question what kind of person God is, in situations. Why he does so and so. When we say, God, you're perfect, what you do is perfect, I can't understand what you're doing, but it's okay, the light's shining.

Therefore we saw, this is the necessary settlement, the eternal settlement of the character of the person. The person of whom the whole universe is in form, is nothing but love. The nature of him in his own deity-manifested form, the son, is nothing but love.

That's why we always know what the father's like, because he saw what the son was like on earth, thank God. And therefore the co-sons must be as perteniously the same kind of sons as the son. And the son is a pertenious expression of the love father.

So he's a lover son, as his father is a lover father. And therefore we are in tune, in focus down here, and for eternity, when we've begun to be lover people, and learn what it is to be lover people, our trouble is we don't understand who we are, that's our trouble.

Most of our trouble is misunderstanding. We are possessing our possessions. Knowing what it is to be and operate as and affirm we are lover sons on earth, in preparation for being, that would be our spontaneous being, because our being then is a union.

Our being then is God, joined to us, expressed by us. It's spontaneity. That's our permanent basis. So we're spontaneously expressions of him who is love, he's lover, so we're lovers. Then we're safe.

Just as the whole universe is safe because the thought that God is a safe God, because he's a lover God. Kings and rulers and people down here are not safe when they're, all through history, self-loving people, so you get chaos.

When the ruler is a lover person, that which he manages, those who he manages, move into harmony. And so this whole universe will be a harmonious universe because he has spontaneously millions of us, co-lovers, co-manifesters of what he is, co-developers, whatever that means, with his own son.

So we saw that the next stage of fundamental importance is for us to know what it is to be the person we really are and be him. What it is to be a person and to be that person, and then to function as that person.

So that's what we're talking about these days. What is it to be the person, be that person, and then function as that person. That's yourself, that's all, and yourself as the real self. That's all we're talking about is that new man.

Fixed Personhood and the Necessity of Opposites

Then we saw, we're really only, I'd say, talking still on foundations this morning. I shan't actually get on as far as I'm concerned the practical application to our daily lives until about tomorrow, but we're still laying the foundations.

We saw this perhaps usually unnoticed fact that you can never be a competent person in anything until you first learn how not to do it before we know how to do it. Because all life has this strange basis.

It's only manifestable, it's only a conscious fact because it has two sides to it, because it has its opposites. You cannot have light without knowing there's dark. You can't have sweet without knowing there's bitter.

You can't have yes without knowing there's no. As I said yesterday, you come here because you're a coggered nose. You're a yes-coggered nose. You started, no, no, no, I can't, I'm too busy. Finally you say, yes I will, and your yes swallows up your nose.

You would only have a strong yes because you've had a good meal of nose, that's all. So life cannot be any other way. That's the meaning of being, as I say. So we saw yesterday, we have to say that living God's a person who's conquered the opposite.

He cannot lie. If he's a person he could, unless some fixation has taken place by which something by his own free choice is he cannot. That's what choice does, it fixes you in the one. The one swallows up the other.

And that's the whole purpose of a person, to discover what it is to be a fixed person, and to be that fixed person. That's why I always love that cry of the psalmist, oh God my heart is fixed, my heart is fixed, I will sing praise.

And we are fixed if we know it now, if we're redeemed. We just haven't discovered how fixed we are, that's all. So it's phases, phases of rediscovery we need, that's all. But now, as I say, a person isn't fixed in the positive until he's fixed in the negative.

That's what training is, that's what graduation is. Nobody's fixed as a carpenter or a plumber or an electrician or a doctor or a lawyer until he first says I don't teach it that way, I don't handle my electrical things that way, I don't handle my tools that way.

It becomes fixed with oh yeah, that's right, I've settled, I don't do it that way. In general speaking he's discarded the wrong ways. We all can make mistakes, we humans, and we all have more to learn, but generally speaking we discard the wrong ways and we're competent, we're able to handle our situations.

That's being fixed, always on the inner level. Because to make consciousness, all you are is a consciousness. All you are is the spirit which is I am, all I am is a consciousness. And all operation is through the consciousness which is I am, I desire, I know, I will, all the rest follows.

So everything is your consciousness. A carpenter doesn't operate by his outer tools, he operates by his consciousness. Oh I know how to use that, his tools are the agents of his consciousness, oh I know how to do that.

From the knowing comes the operation. Nothing is ever done from outside because we're never outside people, that's why outside religion is no good, that's why God has to destroy it. As a great deal of good came in communism by destroying external force ritualism.

God has to use negatives to handle positives. Destroy external force, outer gods, that's no good, it is no good either. So only when the outer gods become an inner god is it any good. So only when the outer Jesus is the inner Jesus is it any good.

Only when the outer world is the inner world is it any good. Because I'm only a person of my consciousness. So on every level of life you operate, not from your tools, not from your outer knowledge, you operate by that which has become you, now you are operating from the inside you, expressing it through your tools and agencies and so on.

So we saw that the central inner consciousness of this central being universe fixed is love and can be nothing else. Tremendous. Has its purpose in creating people like himself, made in his image, spirit, spirit unites his spirit, possible spirits like himself, who can be co-fixed with him, and as the Bible says co-gods with him, co-operators with him, in whatever there is to be done, in whatever there is in the eternal developments of the universe by his sons, that's it.

So you see, it's the same as, you don't become fixed as a carpenter without training, or fixed as a doctor, or fixed as a lawyer, or as a fixed teacher, we don't become fixed as a person without training.

We've got to discover personhood and then get it fixed, or God in this case had it fixed for us, and then only can we move on confidently from the whom I am to being who I am, and functioning as who I am.

The Fall, Satan, and God’s Purpose for Redemption

That's the history of the human family, and it's always been in God's purpose. God wasn't fooled by a sudden discovery about the devil or fraud, he meant it to be, he had to be, so because we had to become unhealthily healthy, you had to be unhealthy before you're healthy, so we had to be unhealthy sinners before we're healthy saints, had to be.

It's all part of eternal purpose, I proved it to you yesterday, I said the Bible said he foreordained his son to be a sacrifice for a lost world before there was a lost world, so he knew all about the lost world coming before it started, that's the perfect God, you can't fool him, his heads he wins, tails he loses, we lose every time, so there we are, praise God, and so it came in.

So there had to be a Garden of Eden, there had to be alternative trees, and that naughty God stuck a serpent in one of them, that was rather naughty of him, wasn't it? He must have left the wrong tree and the serpent out, just left the right tree, we all need a right tree to be a bunch of babies.

God doesn't want a bunch of babies who just know things unconsciously, he wants people who know consciously who they are and function as such. You only know consciously by finding out, that's why there are the three stages you have to pass through, what John says, we discuss as we go on, from infancy to adolescence to adulthood, little children, young men, fathers.

A little child is unconscious, a little child is very precious because he can't manage the world, and so if there had been one tree it would be useless, we should just be unconscious beings. Consciousness came by the opposite.

Consciousness came by all is yours, Adam and Eve, all is yours, I'm your father, it's unconscious, like a child automatically receives from his parents, it's all yours, but one thing, don't touch that one, Adam and Eve.

And behind the don't touch that one was this person who did that kind of thing, Satan. Now we don't know any much about him except he's revealed to us that he was a person who consciously rejected being another lover, became a self-lover.

We're just told a little about him in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, those are the two key passages, where he was made as probably God's highest creation, but as a free person he was to be a light bearer, I say, but lucifer, which is the Latin for bearing light, he was to be expression of him who is a light which reveals him who is a love, that's what we are, lamps that reveal lights.

Now I'm not being there, I'm a free person, I'm beautiful, I have infinite capacity, I'll be for myself, in fact I'll kick him out and take his place. That's Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. Ezekiel 28 is his beauty, Isaiah 14 is his purpose to take God's place.

So he did take God's place as a false god. That's the blindness in which we live. If the light knew his darkness, how great is that darkness? We live in light and think it's light and it's only dark, that's his self-centered world.

The light which knew his darkness, how great is that darkness? So self-centeredness has become a false light, where we've been living until we've been disillusioned, thank God. So that's what started, and God used him.

Now get this into, Satan's a convenient agent, don't fuss about Satan, thank God for him, Satan. Satan's always God's convenient agent. He God uses him for better purposes. Whenever you see Satan turn up, say, okay Satan, you come in I'm going to watch you go out seven ways now.

Have fun, have faith, don't fuss about Satan, he's God's convenient agent. We shall see what useful things God's done in the world through Satan, and it still is. He got you saved through Satan, if Satan hadn't got you lost, you wouldn't get saved, would you?

So you better get in praise meeting with Satan. And this is the first way he used him, to get man into focus on the negative, to get married to focus on the negative. So he used Satan to endorse Adam and Eve, we poor men always have followed women all our lives, we just do what the women do, and so it starts with Eve as usual.

Yeah, you didn't clap that one. And so Satan got her, oh this tree is very nice, what, this tree is very nice, the tree they shouldn't have. Oh there's something in it you see, I shouldn't have it, but it's very nice.

Now that's the only way in which we could discover being persons. To discover being persons, I've got to discover I have appetites, I have sight, I have mental ability, tremendous. We, like God, we have tremendous potential, we have to discover we've got it.

We can only discover it by being tempted to be something for ourselves, so it had to come that way. It had to be somebody who said to us, hi, you should be able to eat that tree. Oh, I'd like to, I've got appetites, I'd like to taste, look to me, it'll taste nice, I've got appetites, come on, let's taste them.

And beautiful, I've never saw beauty before. Oh, my eyes are open, endless beauty. Of course, for self-reasons, but point is, they had to discover they had the capacity of art and science and what comes through the eye gate, and through what comes through the flesh.

Oh, the flesh is beautiful, don't run flesh and eyes, it's only misused is wrong, it's God's precious agent. Jesus Christ came in the flesh, he didn't come in, he came in the likeness of sinful flesh, he came in the flesh.

It's only the sinful part of the flesh, not the flesh which is wrong. Oh, so the appetites, faculties, a mind, Satan said, you've got a mind. Yes, my, I have. So they began to discover personality, had to be.

So they couldn't discover personality except to be for themselves. Now, we had to be for ourselves, but put ourselves back into focus, and then be ourselves on a new level. That's what life is, to be for yourself is what it is, in the right relationship, and then you can't be yourself under new motivation.

And so they had this temptation, and then they went all the way. They didn't know much more, it was mainly ignorance. You know, God's so beautiful, God doesn't throw sticks and bombs at his precious people, he never judged them, he just told them they're silly, that's all.

He didn't judge them, he judged Satan. When Adam and Eve fell, it wasn't God that hid, it was they that hid, God never hides, there's no wrath in God, there's no judgment in God, it's that they are guilt in us, we project it onto God.

It wasn't Adam, it wasn't God who hid in the garden, it was Adam and Eve who hid. And Adam, God called him out, came in the cool of the day and called him out, he said he was hiding, God said, come out you silly fellow, I'll talk to you.

But they got him out, he never said one word to judge a man and a woman, he judged Satan, he said, you're the curse, you'll eat dust, you symbolically, that's spiritual self-sacrifice, that's hell, that's the curse, spiritual self-sacrifice.

As for you dear people, you'll have some sorrow, that's all he offered, sorrow. Sorrow is a reaction to suffering. So he says, things will go wrong, and those things go wrong will make you feel uncomfortable, thank God you'll be uncomfortable.

If we weren't first uncomfortable, we shouldn't get comforted in Jesus. So he says, you'll be made sorrowful, as all he said, you'll get sorrow because certain things in life will happen to you we don't like.

That's all God gave. He's always on the side of man, the same time he says, already there's a hidden seed you can find, which is Christ, Christ was always there. Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, Romans 11, Revelation says, he was always there.

Like a seed form, and so you can find Christ, Abel found him, probably Adam found him, Seth found him, they found him, he was there to be found. Lots of you will find you've found Christ with me and have known to come out the way we came.

That's the way you see, he's always like that. So you see, this tremendous, this world, we had to go wrong, thoroughly wrong. We had to become captives of the spirit of self-centeredness. You see, humans are captives, humans are manifestors, we're never anything by ourselves, we're manifestors of a deity.

Slavery, Vessels, and the Need for Redemption

That's why the Bible calls us vessels. The Bible says every human being is either a vessel of wrath, you say wrath or something, but I say wrath, the best I can get, a vessel of wrath or a vessel of mercy.

The vessel is a container, we are containers of a God to whom wrath comes, or we're containers of a God to whom mercy comes. A container doesn't change. All the gospel is changing God's inside, that's all.

It isn't a change of us, it's a change of God that motivates us, that's all, because we're always God-motivated. What happened before was we became motivated by the false God, he didn't make us, he only stole us, he was only a thief, we always did belong to God.

Our very being was in God, that's why people know how to respond to God, thank God they do. The being of every person, I've been in a mission in Africa, I know in the Africans there's always a spiritual response, everybody, you around the world, you know that, but the role of others, the spirit everywhere, because we're in his being, so basically Satan simply stole us and distorted us, that's all, but he captures, made us slaves, and so in that slavery we went the self way, the self-centred, self-seeking, self-gratifying, self-affirming way, and thank God, gradually, by this way, by this knock and that knock, we find it doesn't work, we get disillusioned.

If you're a redeemed person here, you've been a disillusioned person, haven't you? It's been a rock-bottom disillusion, you found that old life's wrong, not outside you, not, it helped by being told, being fired inside, inside you find, I'm a wrong person, I'm away from God, I'm in no peace, I'm living a rotten life, I'm doing rotten things I shouldn't do, there's something wrong with me, God have mercy on me.

There isn't a person here who's been redeemed, who didn't first say, I'm a wrong person, have mercy on me. Not because of outer forms, may have come through outer forms, but by inner consciousness. So that's been the whole purpose, thank God, because we couldn't be right unless we'd first been wrong, because we might go do it again.

You see, if you've been in a thoroughly wrong way, and you've been torn to pieces by it, and you've gone out for juice, I'm not going back there again. Of course, we may visit when they were looking, we won't live there again, difference, you see what I mean?

Yeah, if you're born again, you will never go back, you can't go back, you can't go back, I'll tell you why later on. As I say, you may visit when they were looking, but you won't live there any longer.

I don't mind paying visits as long as I don't live. I can see my English doesn't get a course, so you don't get the point, but it's a pretty good point. So you see, if you're a redeemed person, you've been a basically disillusioned person.

You've had to be wrong, and known you wrong, and be disgusted with it, and cried for mercy, and whatever for it may take, whether towards yourself, towards other people, towards God. Somewhere, if life's to mean anything to you, you've got to find the change.

Christ as the Redeemer and the Last Adam

Now, how can the change take place? That's what sends us everything in the sun, the sun, everything. Because slaves can't redeem slaves. Slaves can't redeem slaves. We're a captive race. Slaves can't receive slaves.

A slave may express little freedom in trying to be somebody else, like we, in our unsaved days, tried to be good. That didn't make us good. We just tried and came back where we belonged again. Slaves have little freedom they can express with their slaves.

They can't get out. Slavery. This has been the eternal purpose of the father from eternity, that his son should be the head of the true race, the head of the eternal family, the founder, source, and head brother of the family of the spirit dimension.

Because the old family is a flesh dimension. Flesh is good, only misused. It's been a misuse. It is a precious flesh. It's to be redeemed flesh now. We'd have redeemed bodies. But it's been a misused flesh.

And so our flesh, and so our agreement with our flesh, we've gone these other ways. So we've been a flesh people, and after that, marvels come. Look at this world. Marvels come out of fallen men. Look at the marvels of invention and investigation.

If they come out of fallen men, what's going to come out of unfallen men? When the whole son family is in full redemption. So this is the situation. Now this is where the only person who could redeem us was a person who had a claim on us, who had a basic relationship with us, and could do something for us we couldn't do for ourselves.

And the one person who could do that was our creator. He who created us, after all we belong to him, he could do something for us. That's the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's no way in which the human race could be redeemed from slavery unless there was one who was our basic creator, created our spirits and our souls and bodies, who in some way could represent us and get us out of our bondage.

That's what Jesus Christ did. Our history and glory and our songs for eternity is the lamb that was slain. The Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and risen. So that's why, to my mind, the supreme title for him is the last Adam.

It only comes in that form actually once. It's implied in Romans 5, it's stated in Romans 15, in 1 Corinthians 15. The last Adam. Why? Adam's the head of a race. Adam's the progenitor. We're all reproductions of the flesh Adam, so we're flesh people.

Came under the same slavery our father had, for good purposes. We had to learn the slavery before we learned the freedom. That's all right. But he's the last Adam. He's taken the place. The first Adam in the Bible is only called a figure, only a shadow.

The last Adam's a real Adam. Spirit is real. This is figure, this is shadow. We've got to get out of living on a shadow relationship to reality, spiritual relationship. This is this one. He came to bring the human family on his true spirit dimension, God dimension.

He did that by becoming one of us, becoming an ordinary human. That's why we always preserve the incarnation. The Bible never says the key to your faith is the cross. The key to your faith is did Jesus Christ come in the flesh?

That's 1 John. That's the key test of a If he's a believer, he says Jesus Christ, God's son, became a flesh Christ, a human being, incarnation. So we're faced with a unique person. He was us, but he wasn't us.

He was a unique son. So he never touches uniqueness. He's the creator's son. We're the creator's sons. He's the deity's son. We're the, kind of, I don't know what to call us, because we move migration onto the level of brotherhood, I suppose that's the best I can say.

Now we all know what he did. He first of all had to prove himself as a true human. He had to be hit by all humanity as a hit. So he was hit by the devil. Not only in the 40 days, all the time. But the devil kept getting inside him.

You are inner consciousness, not the outer person. Anybody can do anything on the outer. It's how you take it matters. We'll talk about that later on. All life is how you see it and take it, not how it happens to you.

You manage life because you manage it as you see it and take it from within. That's just all you are. And so Satan could never get Jesus because he couldn't get him inside. When he attempted Jesus, oh no, my mother, my father, he always was a vessel of his father, not a vessel of wrath, a vessel of mercy.

He always had the living God inside him. So Satan could hit him every way outside, couldn't touch him inside. But he was a real man and went through everything we go through. Then he came to the final end.

We call the final end death. The real final end is hell. Don't be too body minded. Don't be too much of a body fusser. Who cares about your body? Get a new one quick. Don't be so busy keeping people on earth, hurry them up to heaven.

In our mission we always have a congratulation when someone dies for Jesus. We sing your dance when people die because they've gone on to be real people. We don't say, oh dear, dear, dear. We say, praise God you've gone, may I follow you quickly.

So don't be body fussers. Be spirited enjoyers. And don't take too much fuss about your body. Say, praise Lord Anyhow, as long as the spirit shines out, that what matters. As long as the spirit shines out.

If a person's sick, help them to be sure one thing, they're praising Jesus. If they get praising Jesus, they'll probably get healed quicker too. Death, physical death isn't the point. Destiny is the point.

Death is part of this corruption, ended in death. That's not the point. Destiny is the point. This dies, where does this go? And that's where the Bible again says we're spirits. Because the Bible says there are two ways.

For the unredeemed, the spirit in prison, to whom Jesus went to preach. The redeemed, spirits have just been made perfect. Hebrews 12. So it's destiny. Now that's seriousness. That's the seriousness of the blood of Christ.

Christ’s Death, Resurrection, and the Meaning of the Blood

That's the blood of Christ and the body of Christ. That's where they're subdivided in the Lord's Supper. The blood of Christ and the body of Christ with two vitally important meanings to them. The blood of Christ was his own blood.

That's himself. That person uniquely risked hell for us. That's where he went. Suffered on the cross? I think we make too much of the sufferings of Christ. We should see the glory there. He saw glory in it.

They saw glory and they saw a king up there. You see, faith transcends suffering. Jesus never acted as a sufferer on the cross. Think of a person in that agony, considering, did they mean it? Isn't that beautiful?

In that agony say, they didn't mean it Father, they were soldiers, didn't know what they were doing. They didn't mean it, forgive them. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that seeing God's beauty in everybody?

Forgive them Father, they didn't know what they were doing, they just did their duty. It wasn't his crucifixion bothering him, it was those that God shouldn't, those people, they should have forgiveness.

Isn't that beautiful? See, it wasn't his physical, he transcended his physical in the glory. So I think we shouldn't make Good Friday a misery, we should make it a praise, not the Easter Sunday. Because that teaches us, praise in your sufferings.

That's our glory, when we're able to praise in our sufferings, that's our glory. Know the secret of how to do it. And so he went, that wasn't the problem, the problem was he went to hell. Now I don't know, but he had to walk by faith as we did.

And he might, might he well be, he might have said he might remain there. See, he represents the whole sins, the products, the consequences of the sins of the world. The consequences of the sins of the world is our guilt, the wrath, the judgment, the eternal destiny.

That's a part of our sins, things we've done, the, we've, he bore our sins. That's our sin. That's different, I'll talk about it in a moment, it's our sins. Sins are the product, sin is the producing principle, that's different.

He bore our sins. And our sins take us through, into guilt, into judgment, into wrath, into hell. And the Bible simply says, if you are fixed in that condition, that's why it says, that's the blood of Christ.

The blood of Christ was, the blood symbolised outpoured life, that he really did die. When your blood's gone, you're dead. So it's a symbol to us that he really did die. He didn't die physically, I mean he's dead, but physical body died, he went to hell.

That's the first thing Peter said in the great speech after Pentecost. Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell. So he must have been in hell if he wasn't going to be left there. See the point? Jesus Christ went to hell.

He went where you and I are destined to go. That's the risk he took. I took quite a risk, he had to walk by faith. Could it be he'd be left there? On our behalf. Of course he couldn't be, he didn't belong there.

Satan had no control over him. So as representing a sin race, with his sins stained, it's sin, guilt, it's sin, wrath, it's sins, judgment, it's sin, destiny, it's all those sins, he represented us, he came out, left them behind.

He shut that door of hell for all who receive him. For the whole human race, the world was reconciled to him. He said they hadn't found out, that's all. This gospel had been a world gospel. There's never been a little bit, a few Christian gospels, but a world gospel.

That the world through him might be saved. Reconciled the world unto him. I love the world-mindedness you get in both the Gospel of John and the Epistle of John. And so in that one act, he wiped out all that would come to us out of our guilt, condemnation, wrath, judgment, hell.

Don't have any of it. You sin by retaining any sense of guilt or wrath or judgment about you. Your fast is out of sight, it's out of God's sight, it's out of your sight, we'll leave it out of sight. If it's as far as from the east is from the west, that's a pretty good distance I reckon.

If it's the depths of the sea, they're trying to find power or something down there, now they're having a hard work. These strong terms, God's wiped the thing, it's wiped out. That's the precious blood of Christ.

Sometimes people sort of squirm at the blood, they don't understand, they don't mean it. Like a Mohammedan, I worked among Mohammedans, they don't understand, they've got a prejudiced idea of Jesus Christ, they spit on him, they're not to blame for that, they don't understand the perfect Jesus we mean, they've got distorted images.