Where We Begin — Norman Grubb

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

So thank you. And we 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 wrapped sessions. I like to get back as much as I give. And so I welcome anyone to come and 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 Universe as the Expression of One Living God

Now we were led yesterday to some, what I understand to be, from God's words, 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 reforms him to 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 and 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 moves 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, reproduction into the being. This creation was the first we know of. And the marvel we saw is that it always had been his purpose, that through his son there should come into being a family of sons, who would level up with his son.

Fantastic. Created, leveling up with the creator. And forming one in a million forms of sons. Sons of persons. Living persons as the fathers of living persons, who by their living personality would express him.

Because of tremendous significance of being on the manifested level, the agent of manifestation. The eternal one, the universal, is only seen by its manifested form. It's never seen any other way. You never see electricity except by that.

You never see electricity except by heat. 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 would this living person ever be manifested in the world. That's why Paul said in Romans 8, the groaning creation which is the manifestation of the sons of God, not the son of God, not the father.

Which by its deliverance is to 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.

That'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 a Lover Person

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, 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're doing is perfect, I can't understand what you're doing, but it's okay, the light 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 from 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 with 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 another person, that which he manages, those who he manages move into harmony.

So this whole universe would be a harmonious universe because he has spontaneous images of us, co-lovers, co-manifestations 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 being.

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 Gordon was talking about yesterday, that new man. 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 to practical application to our daily lives until about tomorrow, but we're still laying the foundations.

The Necessity of Opposites and Spiritual Training

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 you 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've conquered no's.

You've, yes, conquered your no's. You started, no, no, no, I can't, I'm too busy. Finally you say, yes I will, and your yes swallows up your no's. You would only have a strong yes because you've had a good meal of no's, that's all.

So life cannot be any other way. That is the meaning of being, as I say. So we saw yesterday, we have to say that living God is a person who has 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, yes he cannot.

That's what choice does, it fixes you in the one, the one that swallows up the other. And that's the whole purpose of a person, to discover why 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 was in grace. And we are fixed if we know it now, if we are 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 first a negative. That's what training is, that's what graduation is. Nobody is fixed as a carpenter, or a plumber, or an electrician, or a doctor, or a lawyer, until he first says I don't teach that way.

I don't, I don't handle my electrical things that way, I don't handle my tools that way. It becomes fixed with, ah yeah, that's right, I've settled, I don't do it that way. In general speaking he's, he's, 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 confident we're able to handle our situations. That's being fixed. Always on the, 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 from the consciousness which is I am. I desire, I know, I will, all response.

So everything's 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's ever done from outside, because we're never outside people. That's why outside religion is no good. That's why God has destroyed it. There's a great deal of good came in communism by destroying external forms of ritualism.

God has used up the negatives to help the positives. Destroy external forms of outer gods, that's no good, it is no good either. It's only when the outer gods become the inner gods is any good. It's only when the outer Jesus is the inner Jesus is any good.

Only when the outer world is the inner world is any good. Because I'm only a person of a 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 the central being of the universe fixed is love and can be nothing else. It's tremendous. It has a purpose in creating people like himself, made in his image, spirit, spirit, united 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 development 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 fixed as a teacher.

We don't become fixed as a person without training. We've got to discover personhood and then get it fixed. Or, thank God, in this case have 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.

And that's the history of the human family. And it's always been in God's purpose. God wasn't fooled by the sudden discovery about the devil or fraud. He meant it to be. He had to be. Because we had to become unhealthily healthy.

You have to be unhealthy before you're healthy. So we had to be unhealthy sinners before we're healthy saints. 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, his tails he loses. We lose every time. So there we are. Praise God. So it's clear.

Eden, Satan, and the Discovery of Human Personhood

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. Rather naughty of him, wasn't he? He might have left the wrong tree in the serpent's house.

Just left in that tree. The right tree. We all need the 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 they're 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. So if there'd be one tree, it'd 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.

Add to me. 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 the person who consciously rejected being another lover and became a self-lover.

We're just so liberal about him. In Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, they're the two key passages, when he was made as probably God's highest creation. But as a free person, he was to be a light bearer. His name was 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. Lambs reveal lights. Now I'll not be there. I'm a free person. I'm beautiful. I have infinite capacity.

I'll be from myself. In fact, I'll kick him out and take his place. That's Isaiah 14 and 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 in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? We live in light and think it's light and it's only dark. That's the self-centered world. If the light within you is 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, sir. Satan's always God's convenient agent. God uses him for better purposes. Whenever you see Satan turn up, say, OK, Satan, you come in one way. 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'd better get... So you'd 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 man into focus on the negative. So he used Satan to...

Adam and Eve, we poor men always have followed women all our lives, we just do what the women do. So it starts with Eve, as usual. 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 can discover being persons.

See, to discover being persons, I've got to discover I have appetite, I have sight, I have mental ability. Tremendous. We, like God, we have tremendous potential. We have to discover we've got it. We should 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 appetite, I'd like to taste, look to me to taste, I've got appetite, 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 the point is, they had discovered they had a 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 sinful flesh, he came in the flesh.

It's only the sinful part of the flesh, not the flesh which is wrong. So the appetite factor is a mind. Satan said, you've got a mind. Yes, my, I have. And 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 judges them. He just told them they're silly, that's all. He didn't judge them, he judged Satan. When Adam and Eve of hell, 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 a guilt in us, we project it onto God. It wasn't God who hid in the garden, Adam and Eve hid. Adam, God called him out, came in the cool of the day and called him out.

And he said he was hiding, God said, come out you silly fellow, I'll talk to you. So he got him out. He never said one judge, a man or woman, he judged Satan, he said, you, you're the curse, you eat dust, you're, you symbolically, that's, spirit of self-sacrifice, that's hell, that's, that's the curse.

Spirit of self-sacrifice, a few dear people, you'll have some sorrow, that's all he offered us, 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 you weren't first uncomfortable, we shouldn't get comfort in Jesus. So he said, you'll be made sorrowful, as all he said, you'll get sorrow, because certain things in life will happen you 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 that was made from the foundation of the world, Romans 11, Revelation, 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 will find you found Christ, it may have known to come out of the way he became.

That's the way you see it, 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-certainty. You see, humans are captives, humans are manifesters.

We're never anything by ourselves, we're manifesters of a deity. 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. The container doesn't change. All the gospel is changing Gods inside, that's all.

It isn't a change of us, it's a change of the God that motivates us, that's all. Because we're always God motivated. What happened in the beginning, 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 the mission in Africa, I know in the Africans there's always a spiritual response.

Everybody, you around the world, you know about the role of the world, that's 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.

Redemption from Slavery Through Christ

And so, in that slavery, we went the self way, the self-centered, 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 wrong. Not outside you, 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 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 to it again.

You see, if you've been in a thoroughly wrong way, and you've been torn to pieces by it, and you go out and say, I'm not going back there again. Of course, we may visit when there was looking, but we won't live there again.

Difference, you see what I mean? 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 there was 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 basically a disillusioned person.

You've had to be wrong, and known you're wrong, and be disgusted with it, and cried for mercy, and whatever form it may take, whether towards yourself, towards other people, towards God. That somewhere, if it likes to mean anything to you, you've got to find a change.

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

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 we've long decayed. Slaves have little freedom to express what they're saying.

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 a bit of misuse. It's 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 universe. Look at this world. Marvels come out of fallen men.

Look at the marvels of invention and investigation. If that comes 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, he who we belong to, 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, who created our souls and bodies, who is some way to represent us and get us out of our bondage.

That's what Jesus Christ did. Our history and glory and our song of eternity is the Lamb that was slain. The Lord Jesus Christ 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 said in Romans 15. In 1 Corinthians 15. The last Adam. Why? Adam's head of a race. Adam's a progenitor. We're all reproductions of the flesh Adams, and we're flesh people.

Came under the slain slavery our father had, for good purposes. We had to learn the slavery before we learned the freedom. That's all right. But this, he's the last Adam. He's taken the place, that was, 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.

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 one John. That's the key test of a person. 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 the, I don't want to call us, because we move migration onto the level, the above level, that's the best I can say.

Christ’s Temptation, Death, and Resurrection

Now we all know what he did. The first time he 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 was never getting inside him.

You are in their 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 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 was, he always was a vessel of his father, not 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 out of the earth, hurry them up to heaven. In our mission we always have a congratulation when someone dies for Jesus.

We sing, we sing your dance and people, well people die because they've gone on to being 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 spirit enjoyers.

And don't take too much trust about your body, praise the Lord anyhow, as long as the spirit shines out, that's 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, death is the point. Death is part of this corruption, ended in death, that's not the point, death is the point.

This dies, where does this go? And that's why the Bible again says we're spirits. Because the Bible says there are two ways. For the unredeemed, the spirits in prison, to whom Jesus went to preach. The redeemed, spirits have just been made perfect.

Hebrews 12. So you see, now that's seriousness, that's the seriousness of the blood of Christ. 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 in it, they saw a king up there. You see, faith transcends suffering, and 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, those 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 people out there should have their 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 by their misery, we should make it a praise, not the Easter Sunday.

Because that teaches us, praise in your sufferings, that's our glory, we won't be able to praise in our sufferings, that's our glory. No one's thinking 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 represented the whole sins, the products, the consequences, the sins of the world.

The consequence of the sins of the world is our guilt, and the wrath, the judgment, the eternal destiny. That's the point of our sins, the things we've done. He bore our sins, that's not our sin, that's different, I'm talking about our sins.

Sins are the product, sin is the producing principle, that's different. He bore our sins, and our sins take us into guilt, into judgment, into wrath, into hell. And the Bible simply says, if you are fixed in that condition, that's why it The blood of Christ was, the blood symbolized outpoured life, as he really did die.

When your blood's gone, you're dead. So it's a symbol to us, he really did die. He didn't die physically, I mean he did, 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 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 some 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 it's sin stain, it's sin guilt, it's sin wrath, it's sin's judgment, it's sin destiny, it's all those sins he represented.

He came up, left them behind, he shut that door of hell for all who received him. For the whole human race, the world was reconciled to him. As soon as they hadn't found out, that's all. This gospel had been a world gospel, it had never been a little bit, few Christian gospels, but a world gospel.

Let the world through him not be saved. Reconcile 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, our 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 as 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, and they're having a hard work. The strong terms of God, 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.