Freedom of Spirit - Part 5 — Norman Grubb

Christ as the Perfect Expression of the Father

If you see me, you see the Father. He says, you see, a human expresses God. Now, I'm the human, I'm number one human, and Satan never got in, so Satan never got inside him. For forty days, Satan tried to get inside him with an amount of temptation, come my way, get my self-spirit into you, have your life run to self-ends.

God gives himself for other people. I'm an expression of a God who gives, not makes other people die for me, I die for them. That's me. So he says, I've always, you see me, you see the Father. Do you see, therefore, when people see us, they see Christ?

They see the Father, they see that's the Son. Our life is a common life when we know we are actually expressors of the deity expressed to us. All right, but then I found this. I said all along, yes, but that's an alternative deity.

The Human Choice Between Self-Getting and Self-Giving

There's an alternative God, because I must be free. A person must be free. Communism shows us that. Bondage, whether it's put upon you to be free, we're free. So therefore, as humans, we had to be free to make a choice, and the great choice a human can make, because it's a choice God made.

Shall I be a self for myself, self-loving, self-getting, self-gratifying self, or shall I be a self for you? Shall I find satisfaction in getting all I can for myself into hell with you, or shall I find my satisfaction in getting anything for you and going to hell for you?

Oh, which way? And I thought, Jesus, God himself settled that. I found the scripture instead of God, the original God, in the beginning. He cannot lie. Now a liar is the expression of self-getting self.

A liar gets his own ends. Well, it's as God can. I want to talk with him. He showed me that number one person in the universe could have been a self for himself, everything just for his own advantage and to hell with the rest of us.

The Father-Son Relationship and Divine Self-Giving

But there I saw what the truth is. I saw that number one person, instead of saying just for myself, I bring my son into being, I love my son, I'll be a lover. I'll start a love relationship, father-son.

Now from father-son will come the whole family later on. I'm going to be a lover person, not a self-getter. My self-love will be in self-giving, not my self-love in self-getting. So, you see, every person, a person like God, that has to be settled with you.

Lucifer and the Origin of the False Kingdom

Now, you see, there's come into being, right in eternity, somewhere in heaven, a false god, a person who was free, apparently the person most created near the throne of God. In those days it was called Lucifer.

Lucifer meant he was the bearer of light. He was the bearer showing God, a self for others. No, he said, he really saw it, no. I've got full of beauty, full of power, I'll be for myself. I'll run my own life, I'll be my own God.

So he brought into being a false kingdom, that's why he's God of it, of self-loving self. He's the God, the spirit of error, of self-loving self, self-getting self. Now, you see, it's in the Garden of Eden.

The Two Trees and Humanity's Deception

We have to be free, we have to learn our freedom, so we're confronted by the alternatives, by the two trees. And we're told that if we take the other tree of life, it says, which means the fruit goes into you, you'd have eternal life.

Well, I read that and I said, I know it's only a symbol, because eternal life isn't a fruit, eternal life is Jesus Christ, as our brother already has said, Jesus Christ. So it symbolizes, if you take the right fruit, Jesus Christ comes into you, and he begins to live his quality of life by you.

Therefore, if you take the wrong fruit, the spirit of self-sadness gets into you. That's what happens. And we were tricked by Satan, and we received that fruit, we received into us this spirit of error.

Satan came and dwelt in us, and began to express himself in us. Now, I've got to get this straight, because this is a difficult point. See, something happened then, which has made a vital difference to us.

Until you get this difficult, I had to get cleared up. If you get cleared up, you won't get anything clear. The vital difference is, Satan himself is self-deceived. He thinks he runs himself. I'm independent.

He's not, he's God's servant, because he's made by God. God uses Satan, and we'll talk about that tomorrow. God uses Satan and evil for good ends. He used Satan to crucify Jesus so he might get resurrection.

Satan's Deception and the Spirit Behind Human Actions

So God uses the evil person for his own ends. He's God's agent, but Satan doesn't know that. I'm myself. I'm my own God. I run my own show. I'm independent. I'm self for self. Now, he is a deceiver. The Bible says, in one statement in Revelation 12, which gathers all the names of Satan together, it says, that old serpent called Satan and the devil.

It's the only scripture where the three are put together. That old serpent, the God of Eden, called Satan and the devil. What did he do? He deceived the whole world, you see. Now, deceit makes you tricked.

It makes you think what you are. Now, he's deceived. He thinks he's independent. Now, I want to say this. What he did in the God of Eden, he tricked. You didn't know he occupied you and expressed himself by you.

He made you think it was yourself. You run your own life. A human never runs his own life. A human is a computer who has a programmer. He's a branch that has a vine. He's a vessel that has a liquid. And the running is the, what kind of liquid?

What kind of vine? What kind of programmer? It's the God in you that runs his quality of life through you. Now, Satan hid that. Satan made, you're the one who does it. You do the bad things, you do the good things.

You never did. See, that's why we've been tricked. See, you and I never did good or evil. The evil was Satan expressing himself, getting himself through you. The good is Jesus Christ expressing himself, giving himself through you.

Now, we're free people. Because we're free, we cooperate. We chose to be with Satan, so we cooperated. We didn't do the sin. Satan did the sin. Now, Jesus saw this. I'll try to explain the importance of it.

Jesus' Teaching on Two Spiritual Fathers

It's in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John. When the Pharisees, unborn again people, were attacking him. That's like we were. We used to be self-righteous Pharisees. Attacking Jesus Christ, refusing him.

He suddenly said, Here, there are two fathers, not one. Aren't we? Two fathers, not one. He says, I do the things I see with my father. You do the things you see with your father. Well, these were indignant Jews.

Jews are monotheists. What do you mean? They said, we were unborn at fornication. God's our father. He said, if God had been your father, you'd have known the father, but you'd have known the son. Then he said it.

Underline this scripture in John 8, 44. You, of your father, the lusts of your father you will do. Now, I thought I did my own lusts. No, I didn't know I had a deity, and he's a self-loving, self-getting, self-gratifying, selfless God in me.

And he operated selfless by me. So those lusts I have, he's putting his lusts through my desiring faculty. He puts his hate through my love faculty. He puts his jealousy through my jealousy faculty. He takes my faculties, puts his lusts through his.

They aren't my sins, they're his. Now, I cooperate with him, so I'm staying with him, because I'm cooperating with him. But I'm going to cooperate with the sins of Satan. Now, you see, I never had a nature.

The Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Error

I expressed the nature of this period of error. I found that also through a scripture in 1 John 4, which speaks... I got it suddenly then. It suddenly says, O redeemer, greatest heeding you. All right, you're a saint.

That's through the Holy Spirit heeding you. But it says this, greatest heeding you, then heeds in the world. Oh, I say, I didn't know something for that. Who heeds then? There's a he in the redeemed and a he in the unredeemed.

And then two verses later on, John gives them their names. He says, hear by the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit in the redeemed, and the spirit of error is called the unredeemed. So, you see, we've had in us the wrong deity, the wrong God, expressing his self-sentence, lust stuff, through us.

And we thought he was, he killed us. Makes you think it was us. It wasn't. We cooperated, so we evolved in the sin. And where Satan goes, we go, but for the grace of God. But we cooperated. We were the real person doing Satan by us.

Salvation Focuses on the Producer, Not Merely the Product

Why is this important? Because, well, now you're saved. If you're saved, your sins are out. You know the sins you did, which you thought were your sins. They were sins, and you cooperated. They were sins.

They were taking you to hell. In the precious blood of Christ, they went out. And you're here at peace with God because he took your sin, by himself, rose again, and all that's clear. Took away your sins.

But the point isn't the product. It's the producer. It isn't the sins. It's a sinner matter. It's the person doing it. Now, your sins came out of a spirit of self-loving self. Every sin has come of self-loving self.

Every sin, I agree, it's because, you see, self wants its own way. But it's Satan's self wanting its own way by us. We combine Satan's self. Now, we didn't know that. Now, what's the consequence? Here's our trouble.

We come into Christian life. We think, I should be better. Why do I have jealousy? Why do I hate? Why do I lust? Why do I get angry? Why haven't I more peace? Why haven't I more power? Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.

This never went wrong. It was stolen property. It's God's beautiful property. Misused it. There always was a beautiful property. Your appetizers were always beautiful.