Women's Week Union Life at Hixton 1981 — Norman Grubb

Thank you Lord for the night, for in the night as in the day, and you give us sleep when we are in our beds, you give us sleep. And thank you for the day, and the provision we've already had, and the fellowship, and your living self, as you gather together here around yourself.

And in these special morning hours when we gather around you, what you've got to teach us, or what comes from your word, what you give us by your teaching, you give us your own teaching through your word, through your spirit, through each other.

So we're praising you, infinite blessing, together this morning, thank you, in Jesus name. I'm taking advantage of a decrepit old age to sit where I am, so I advise you to come as close as you can. I've no intention of reaching you people far out there.

I'm going to talk to those of you around me, and I advise you to get as close as you can. Get comfortable, I'm going to remain sitting, as you like, go around the corner, that's right. Get very comfortable in here, there's room enough here, put some more chairs in here if you want to, that's a good idea.

If it isn't too good, for those of you in the back, there's still more room you can come around, because I can't, I shan't make my voice lift beyond the first two or three rows. So if you stay behind, alright, but that's how it is.

The Twofold Ministry and the Completion of God's Word

I explained yesterday, that in a sense, that most of those of us who come, are those whom the spirit has given an interrelation between us. What he's revealed to us, is what we usually call human life.

Put together, the big majority of us, into the basic statement in the scriptures, which is our foundation. Which is in Colossians 1, where Paul speaks a two-fold ministry, and passing from the first to the second, in the first chapter 23rd verse, he spoke about his occupation in taking the gospel to the world.

Which was preached to every creature of the heaven, while I Paul had been a minister, that was his ministry number one. Now I said he had a second ministry, which he called also a ministry, and he said this cost him even more than the first.

Because he says in this one he has judged his sufferings for you, in giving it for the body's sake, which is the church, so it's a ministry to the church. Then in the next verse he says, while I've been a minister, so it's his second ministry.

And he said that ministry was to fulfill the word of God. Now that's the ministry around which God's called us, to fulfill the word of God, to complete the word of God. So we're talking about what is the completed life, and how we can transmit the completed life.

And we are here those, largely most of us here, in whom God has, or to whom God has made specific revelations along this line. Completion is given in that one phrase here, this hidden mystery, in 26 -27, to whom God makes known the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

It's the central word given when this life will first begin to be published, Christ in you, the hope of glory. And then Paul says, whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.

So this is the completing, completed ministry. Well to also our labour in doing it. So he's now speaking of being a teacher. 4, 5, rebuked God's people because they should be teachers and they weren't.

That's in 5, 12, when he says, when for the time being, when for the time being, you ought to be teachers, you need that one teach you again, what be the first Christmas of the oracles of God. So there are those who ought to be teachers, are not teachers.

Then he says, the objective of the teaching is that others may learn also and become teachers. That's in 2 Timothy 2. The things that thou hast heard of me among witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.

Now that's what we are. Glory to God we are not those in that first verse, who ought to be teachers, are not teachers, and therefore have to be re-taught the principles, the first principles of the oracles of God.

Here it says that the word has been committed to faithful men, who are then able to teach others also. So we guys are those who are able to teach others. Maybe we wanted a little more, a little more ability.

But that's what our level is. Not those first principles, but having been taught, able to teach others. And then we have the scripture we just read, where Paul said he is doing the teaching. And thank God many of us are also able to teach, but we are doing the teaching.

That's what Paul said, whom we preach one another and teaching every man in all wisdom. That we represent every man perfect in Christ Jesus. So there he talks about you completing him. So we are talking about those who by the infinite grace of God and revelation of God's word know our completion.

And knowing our completion in Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus in us, we are, we have begun to be teachers of others also. That they themselves may join the ranks of the complete. And then in their turn be able to lead others into the same completion.

That's the basis of what we are here for. And others we have had previously, which have been occupied stage by stage in a view to pursue the word of God by the spirit as the ministry. And years now my own commission and occupation has really been proceeding through those different stages of the revelation which make the completion.

Leading on to where they can become the experience completion in us. Now I think perhaps the best I can do this morning is a very brief way to run over the main stages of what God has given us to share.

The Stages of Union Life and Areas for Clarification

In what we have called union life. In very short form and as I do so we are here together and I suggest that as we go along as I touch on some phase or stage. In which you say well now there is a little I would like to know a little more about that one.

I would like to have a little more clarification of that one or explanation or something like that. You make a note if you have got pencil and paper with you or if you have in your mind if you have got a memory well enough.

And as I complete that area right along what we usually take five days to run over I shall ask a bit different ones of you that we might consider a little further. Then we can consider in these further stages what can be most possible for us to turn our attention to.

We have already had one where I think I mentioned yesterday as we request that we go a little further into the differentiation between spirit, soul and body and their application. That is one of them.

I will do that stage by stage. It is an experiment for me because I have never done this shortly before to put them into paragraphs which usually take me hours to go into. And I hope to be able to do that as we go along as you say if you want to you can make a note about that.

I shan't therefore also to any extent give the biblical background to what we are saying. Because all we say is as long as it has been said by the spirit through the word and comes back to us from the word by the spirit back into us.

So we always go back to our foundations in what has been given us here in the scriptures. But I shan't do that in any detail this morning. The first is therefore the totality of God that there is only one person.

That is a strong statement. That the universe is only one person in self-revelation. Nothing else. Usually hang that in broad form around the two phases in the beginning God and in the end God is seen to be all in all.

So that is what we are first saying. And the basis of revelation if this is a revelation to you is you discover that all is one. Everything is some form of the one. Whether it is good or evil or whatever it is.

It is all some form of the one. Maybe negative form or positive form. Maybe misused form or rightly used form. It is a form of one. I only am. So that is the first. And that is radically more than we usually understand.

We usually talk about God and we are saying God only. We read together at our board meeting yesterday that Saba says my soul went down only upon God. Power only comes from God only. So you may ask yourself as we go along is this a basis which has become a real basis to me.

From my inner conscience I am always relating to the fact that I am relating to one person in one infinite variety of operation. Next stage of revelation is what the word of God has shown us to be the fixed quality of person he is.

The basis to his fixed personhood. We found that had to be by something which is only briefly referred to the word of God. Well if something God can't do he is almighty. That is a very strange thing. If he is the in the beginning he as only he.

And then the scripture says that something that he can't do something has happened to that person. And that is why we find the second stage of revelation is this. A person as a person must love himself.

He must be himself. He is himself. That is what the person is called by the Bible I am. He is himself. The Bible reveals that I am to be one who knows and desires and chooses. I know, I desire, I choose.

That is a person. I am. Himself means he is just a self for self. He is a self for self. All he has is himself. A self for self. The second phase of revelation is that this one person in the universe has not only made a self for self but become a self for others.

So in the place of being a self thinking, self centered, self seeking, self operating self he became a self giving self. That is where the second revelation is of God to Trinity. There is one yet the one is in the one.

One is the three. There is only one yet the three. This is the beginning of the paradox by which we live. Which means that the one who could, could feebly have just remained for himself a self for self.

Which when we go on we find out to be the cause of hell not heaven. From eternity he has been the one who came out in the form of his own son. So his first reproduction was the one with the expression of love.

That he brings into being one in love which will start a love relationship between the two of them. So the basis of deity is a love relationship. Father, son and then spirit. Father, son is love relationship.

That is why therefore it says he can't lie because a liar is a person self for self. A lover is a person of self for others. So when it says without again giving all the scriptural references. God can't lie means that in eternity there has been a death in himself.

You might say a curse in himself. When a self could be remained a self just centered on his own self interest and self expression. Has died to be a self that lives for self interest and self expression.

And come out in another his own son. God like himself into whom he can give himself in love. And so they become an outgoing love relationship instead of an encyclopedic relationship. The one is the three and the three is him coming out in this relationship reproducing his relationship.

Because all life then becomes reproduction. Reproducing his relationship out from the two through the third come all the reproductions of God. So he moves then from the one who has become the family of love.

Into the means by which he has reproduced himself in further forms of love. That is the creation. So the whole creation is basically of a being who is love and therefore has a love nature. So the only meaning of the creation or his forms is where it learns to become interacting love.

That is why the Bible says even the animal creation is going to move into an interrelating love and each loves each other. Because the universe is a form of person who is other love. So basically everything is some form of perfect love, of other love.

Now the central revelation of importance in that fact is that in this process by which he has reproduced himself in infinite forms of creation. He from eternity purpose to reproduce himself in forms like himself again.

To have a son family. So here we have the coming into being in this outgoing process of reproduction. The heart of reproduction has been the beginning of a son family exactly like himself. Made in his image.

Human family exactly like himself. We then have to move on. As I say I keep repeating to you each of these things by themselves and take considerable more consideration than we are giving now. But that is why I expect you to say I would like to know a little more about this or that as we go on.

Humanity as God's Agency and the Meaning of Nature

The next central question to be answered is what then is the quality of the human person. We have seen the quality to use that word of a divine person. He is fixed in a process which has been as already eternal death and eternal resurrection.

Like in the deity himself. Which is died to be the kind of self which can be a self by itself for self. And come alive to be a person who is a self for others. In his central form of the three. Father, Son and Spirit.

And then out from him in his reproduced forms. What therefore is the quality of the human family made in his image. Now we come there to a truth of central importance. Fundamentally important because it is one which in some ways causes most difficulty to our understanding.

And that is that whatever is made out from him is the means by which he manifests himself. So it really is the negative to the positive. It is the means by which the one re-manifests himself in everything.

They are full of his glory. They are the agents by which he is manifested. Therefore the central truth of persons is our own existence is as agents for his re-manifestation. Only we are person-agents which is very different.

We are not unconscious but the sense in which the rest of the creation is what it is unwillingly because it hasn't got our level of consciousness. So it just is in a certain condition. We are not. We have consciousness.

But the first revelation concerning ourselves is we are basically although we are cells we are only agent cells. We are agency for the self. Concept settled in to the church of Christ. And if we understand the right it is a false concept.

And using a false term. And that is where the concept is that humans have a nature. That humans have a nature. And nature is what drives you. And we've slipped into the false concept that humans have a nature.

Now humanity, this is where we have to understand it. Humanity is infinite capacity. Nature is what operates the capacity. Nature is the capacity. Nature is what operates it. Your nature isn't the fact that you can think.

Or the fact that you can will. Or the fact that you can desire. Or the fact that you can act. That's not your nature. Your nature is what motivation lies behind your thinking. What kind of person are you through your creative potential.

You're not in the human. That's not as close as to be what we are. It's not in us. What we are as a human. What causes us to be where we are is not in the human. And therefore it's been a deceiving, a false teaching which the whole church gives as a nature in us which is our own nature.

It never was. The simple, quickly, I'm not going in detail, proves given by way of illustration of the Bible is where we are called vessels, or branches, or temples, or slaves, or bodies, or even the five and four wives.

In each case, the point isn't the nature of the vessel, it's the point of what's in the vessel. We can't say a branch has a nature. It's the nature of the tree expressed through the branch. We're not interested in the nature of the temple.

The temple is to manifest the nature of the deity in the temple. It isn't the body that has a nature, it's the head expresses its purposes through the body. The nature is in the head. And by that you're speaking in marriage and children.

The wife is the means by which the husband reproduces himself on a biological basis. And the nature of that sense is not in the wife but in the husband. Very briefly, they have given you half a dozen basic Bible illustrations because that fact is so important.

Therefore, the stage of revelation into focus. I understand that in God's properties, he has made people like himself. In his image, the same capacities are capacities of God's capacities. Wills, or shall I say, thinks, desires and wills.

And you, you think. You know, you think. You join your thoughts and desires together, you say, I'll do this. I know that, I desire it, therefore, I know I can go there, I desire to go, I'll go there. I know there's that nice fruit, I desire that nice fruit, I'll take it.

The I am is that which knows, desires and chooses. The nature is what kind of desires have I? What kind of knowledge have I? That's my nature, which isn't me at all. Therefore, nature is not in the human.

The potential, like God himself is there. That's why God himself has a fixed nature. That's why he said he can't lie. Lying is a self-getting nature. He can't himself express that nature. He can't do it.

He can only express a self-giving nature. That's his nature. So all the beings are expressions of the nature of God, which is the self-giving of God. So therefore we see, we further see, therefore, that the marvelous purpose of God, through eternity, is to have beings like himself, by whom he can reproduce himself.

By which he can be himself in his nature, by beings like himself, who are free persons, operate as free persons, yet actually their freedom is expressing his nature, not theirs. That's the substance of it.

That, of course, is evidence to it, because God gives us the privilege of a perfect man. His own son left his deity behind to become a perfect man. And as a perfect man, we have the two elements there of a perfectly operating, perfectly spontaneous self, a totally liberated self, a total I am.

And yet his total I am did nothing by itself. Totally as an I am, thinking, willing, acting, he didn't ever act by himself. He acted by another person inside him, which is his father. His father operating through the son, yet with the son operating.

That's humanity. Now that takes some understanding. It takes some spiritual understanding for you to operate as such. So we see, again I haven't given any more scriptures of the revealed eternal purpose of the marvelous purpose of humans being walking gods.

Walking gods. They walk, it's God walking upon them. If they walk, it's God walking upon them. That's the hidden paradox. In a sense to be in God himself. In a sense that the God who could choose, took himself over to be love as it were.

So himself as it were had all his God capacities, and he himself took himself over to be of a love. So he's in God himself, because he has to principally work in operation. So that's the next very important stage.

You may or may not be clear on that, of course we are of those who have become mature, so hopefully we are clear on it. We have to face the fact that I almost would say 99 .9 of the body of Christ do not know that and probably would not accept it.

So you see therefore you have got to know your facts and your bible basic to those facts. If you are going to be a teacher of others, and if you are a teacher you are going to be what we understand to be what you call unity truth, replacement truth, whatever term we use of this fact.

You see that's why as teachers we must have enough in us to be able to confront people, oh I can't take that. We have to have sufficient bible basis to say well here it is, if you are willing to listen to me.

And of course before we are asking people to listen to things, we are saying we are what we are teaching. So we have to become the person in this relationship, which is a walking Christ. And then why and how are we a walking Christ?

The relationship between the Christ and the walker of the Christ, that's all involved in that important area. In which we are persons like God, but in that sense we are the negative person, where our personality is to express the one person, in his fixed as it is seen by Jesus Christ.

Consciousness, Satan, and the Fall

Now we move on from that to what might appear to be the confusing problem, which is really the clarifying problem of the reality of consciousness. That's where to that extent we differ from the other elements of creation, even to the animal world in what is highest forms.

Consciousness means a person is only conscious, and this is the basic truth of the universe, but vice opposite, you only know everything vice opposite. Even God himself couldn't know himself as other love, if he couldn't have been self love.

He had to die to be a self loving God, to know he is a self giving God, even God himself. That self giving love is expressed by him in the creation of his own son, in the being of his own son. He has the other love in action, and contrast to being another kind of person who might have been just a self loving person, self getting person.

So you see consciousness, in other words, consciousness is only consciousness, because it has the alternatives, everything has its alternatives. And all life has relative alternatives, because the basis of material life is positive and negative, in the atom and so on.

So therefore comes the fact, that I can't be the person I have been created to be and destined to be, without going through a process in which I have come to operate by consciousness. And consciousness is operating by alternatives, and knowing alternatives, light from dark, sweet from bitter, everything else, all life like that.

That's brought us to the mental consciousness, of the God of Eden. And the fundamental consciousness, I can't know myself as a person, unless I know myself as an alternative person. Like God couldn't.

I've got to know myself in alternative forms, or alternative possibilities, to be a person. That's why the Bible then reveals to us, not told much about him, but that there has been, in history, we don't say for eternity, but in history, a free being, who confronted by that consciousness, has chosen the opposite way to God.

The one we call the devil, Satan, this being, now again we get all our scriptures we are not going to give here, by which we know what kind of being he was. And notice he had the possibility of a free choice, in which he could have been a further expression of the love of God, but he chose to be an expression of the self loving self, which God never was.

So he opened up that quality of God, that potential qualities there was. It's put in the Bible, there is a difference between consuming fire and light. Fire consumes itself, when fire dies it comes out as light.

It dies to being a fire and comes out as light. It's the same fire becomes a light. It dies to being just a self consuming bunch of coal or something, and comes out the other form which is light. Consuming fire burns itself, light blesses.

And that's therefore why we see the necessity of the human race, having been confronted by the opposite to the God of Eden. Until Adam and Eve were confronted by the opposite, they weren't conscious selves.

You are only conscious of when you know the opposite, and you are one and not the other, or one has replaced the other and so on. Therefore before Adam and Eve were confronted by the two trees, they weren't really conscious persons, they were just automatic persons you might say.

And that's why the creator put the humans, who were to be his operating sons, in a condition where they were confronted with the basic opposites of which all life consists. But the basic opposites, what kind of person I'll be.

Revealing the fact that there has become a being, whom the Bible calls God, because he brought this into, he opened up this kingdom of darkness, the God of this world, and this being was a being God never was.

The God of self getting, self seeking, self gratifying in place of self giving. So we see then, as we proceed, we move into the quality of the fall, and we see that the reality of the fall, in addition to the quality of it, or should I say quantity of it, which is between the fallen deities, the one we call the fallen deities, Satan, and humanity.

Satan purposed from his center to be what he was, humanity were tricked into being what they were. It didn't come from a total purpose, but enough to relate them to the God of the fall, Satan. So we then move into the next stage, which again contains a hidden truth of great importance.

And that is, that when we understand, as we do by the word of God, that the human only operates by a deity, never operates by itself. What happened at the fall, was we became possessed by and operated by the alternative deity.

But the alternative deity, Satan, entered into us, in the same sense as we are redeemed, people say Christ enters into us. But the human is always operated by the God in him. And that's why, in all those illustrations we gave, you find it makes us an alternative.

You can be a vessel of wrath, you can be a vessel of mercy, you can be a branch of the true vine, you can be a branch of the false vine, you can be a temple of the living God, or you can be a temple of the idol.

You can be married to the false husband, or married to the true husband. You can be slave to the wrong owner, sin, or slave to the right owner, righteousness. So in each case we see, the Bible makes plain to us that there has been an alternative, and that we humans have been caught up in that alternative.

And that we have been caught up in the wrong relationship, the fallen relationship. Now, all of us, just those who are seeking to be teachers, all redeemed people knew we were fallen. That's not new truth, that we were fallen.

And therefore all redeemed people knew we were, what we like to call, children of Satan, belonged to the family of Satan and so on. What we didn't know was, that the real operation of Satan on us had been a vast defeat.

And that's the point, as teachers, that we have to become alive to. Please turn your tape over. Now, that we may understand. What we haven't understood is, that's how to see humanity. And that's the lost truth.

The Great Deceit and the Replacement of the Indwelling Deity

Therefore, that's why humans, we humans and we teachers, don't get this thing clear, unless we cut out the idea that humans have a nature. If you think humans have a nature, you think, somehow Satan influenced me to become something, and my me becomes selfish, and my me becomes nasty, my me becomes evil.

That's his lie. A me can't feel nature, a me can only express a nature. So it never expresses, there isn't such a thing as a human nature, it's a lie. It only expresses a deity nature, which deity? Now that's the next stage of hidden truth.

You may say it's a hidden truth that we haven't got a nature, and that we're all operated by, of course created to be operated by a divine nature, or by the false deity nature. Unless we've got that clear, we don't get it, therefore, that the form is radically greater than we think, symbolized by partaking of a fruit.

A fruit goes inside you, and becomes a thing which operates you. And therefore the taking of fruit meant, this false deity, given the name of deity, who operates by his self-centered nature, occupied me, and expressed his self-given nature by me, it's not me.

You have to be very plain on it. The piece is, what nearly all God's precious people are taught. I suppose every day I talk on this, suddenly, oh I see, but I've been for years taught the other, how am I to get rid of what I've been taught for years, and I'm still taught, that something in me, a me which needs changing, it never did.

How can I get rid of it? The change isn't in me, the change is in the occupant of me. The occupier of me is the change. How can I get rid of the idea, I should change, I'm nasty, I'm selfish, I'm hasty, I'm this, I'm that, but I've been taught that way.

And so you get the kind of hard cry, I don't know, take me some time, I see what you're saying, I see the truth by the word of God, if they get the revelation. But how, how can I settle into that one?

So there again, it's an area which we have to be very clear, that we know, and have our scriptural basis to it, and know it in ourselves, and can explain it to others. That area is the area of the great deceit.

And that's why, if you like it, in Revelation 12, it says three or four times, Satan deceived the world. That old serpent, that old dragon, the serpent, called the devil, deceived the world. Now deceived is a very important word, deceived means you're tricked, you're made to think you are, but you're not.

You're made to think you're the self-acting self, but you're not. And therefore what you do bad is you bad, and what you do good is you good, which is a lie. Now you're bad, no good is you. So you see there's a whole area in which our deception has to be removed.

That I was in some sense a self-acting self, in the nature of my own, never was. That's the importance of the fall to us. I didn't go into further details, although it is very important, in which we are not fixed in the fall, because it didn't come from our central spirit, it came from our soul reaction, so we're caught, but not from our centre, we can become devils, but we don't start as being devils, we start as being children of the devils, we become devils.

But that's a further choice. It isn't sensory for us so much, rather the history of the fall, we know that. It's this fundamental key to the fall, secret of the fall, which means the wrong deity got into me, and nothing happened to me except a misoperation, a misuse.

All that happened to us humans is misuse. It isn't this is wrong, it's misuse. By the misuse, the spirit of self-sacrifice, the place of the spirit of self-giving. If we could have come to some clarity, and some bible basis, to that, what I would call fundamental area of revelation, in this total truth.

I like the word total, because I can't have more than a total god in me. This total truth. If we moved over through that area of that revelation, we then have to be very sure we understand by what means are we delivered from the false god, and him replaced by the true one.

Because that includes an area of the completion of the work of Calvary which isn't largely taught. For instance, a very simple illustration is, the operation of Calvary, the infinite grace of God is symbolised to us in the Lord's Supper, the bread and the wine, the blood and the body.

And when folks participate in the Lord's Supper, pray over it, they nearly always pray the same prayer for both. That we got atonement for forgiveness, remember Christ and so and so. Very rarely do they differentiate between the significance of the bread and the body relationship, and the blood and the body relationship.

Now you may have that correct, but you need to. What I say of it at this moment is, we haven't got to become teachers like this to know the efficacy of the blood. Every redeemed person knows that. And this is Christ set forth, taking away the consequences of what happens inside us.

The outside sins, the sins and the consequences of what happens inside us, the sins. Which are the first level of revelation we have through the law, the sins. And the blood represented Christ taking upon himself what should come to us under the curse of being sinners.

The death of him and so on. Hopefully we understand that. Even though we have to understand the death of Christ, the shedding was not the physical blood, it was the going to hell. We need to know that for one reason, that we make so much of body death.

Because death isn't body, death is spirit. When you die, it isn't this dies, it's where you go. If Christ is life, it's self centred life is death. Self centred life hell is death. We call it death, or we go into the self giving life of God and life.

So we have to understand even there, what we speak of as the shedding of precious blood included more than the dying of that body and the proof he died by the body being shed and the spirit going in. And the totality of the removing of the consequences of our sins is what he went to hell.

Peter quoting that of course in his speech and so on and we are not led by someone to hell. Because that's the completion of the ultimate destiny of us caught up in this life of sins committed and broken law and so on.

And the resurrection meaning therefore all that area has been blotted out. So we say with God your sins and iniquities are remembered no more. You may need a little clarification there even in what was involved in the outer physical death of Jesus.

Because it helps us to be less body minded. A little later on in our thinking we need to have something to say about health and handling health and healing. The first of course is not to care too much about your body anyhow.

It's only a detail. Death isn't body death. In actual fact we have died in Christ. We don't die again we just slough off like a self serpent that's all. We just slough off and get a better one. A little later on.