Apostle's Doctrine - Part 5 — G.W. North

Into our subject then for this morning, beloved, into the Ephesian letter, that is, to pick up our theme. And I'm sorry that I'm needing to inflict myself on you three times today. It's a bit of a job to get seven meetings, or seven themes, into about five days.

We shall be having, and doing this quite with John's consent, a meeting this afternoon and then again this evening. I don't know what Roger will be doing, but I shall be, by the Lord's grace, this afternoon taking one baptism, and this evening one God and Father of all to complete our sevenfold headings.

One Faith in Ephesians 4

This morning then, one faith, in the fifth verse of the fourth chapter, one faith. I suppose it will inevitably happen to me until I leave this world, that when I reach and read this great word of one faith, it will always flood back into my mind a statement made by a young man, I was then a young man, whom I met at a certain place under certain conditions, where we all lived and worked together for a time, and he said he had a book called The Faith of the World in One Volume.

It's always stuck to me, The Faith of the World in One Volume. I suppose it must have been a mighty tome, but the fact of the matter is, there's only one faith. Nobody else has got any. I understand that.

There's only one faith. The rest are beliefs. You say, well, they're the same. No, they're not. The Muslims believe this, certainly, and the Hindus believe this too, but they're not faith. That's the thing you've got to get hold of in life.

Flipshod thinking leads us into many errors. The accepted phrases always encapsulate or hide error, you know, in that sort of realm. We need to be more definite. That's what I think. We must have a breadth of understanding, but we must be more definite.

We must be able to comprehend, as far as our limited brains will allow us, all sorts of things, but we must be very definitive in our own thinking. And that's very, very wonderful. You have it in this list.

One body, one spirit. This is definitive, all right. Specific. One hope of your calling. One Lord. One faith. Only one. And either you and I have it, or else we do not. And that's the point. There are no approximations to it.

There are leadings up to it by that which we call believing. For instance, if you are a conservative, you will be believing you have four or five rosy years ahead. Let me disenchant you at the moment.

Not that I'm a labourer or anything else now. But you don't need me to disenchant you. Now, here's the thing. You see, beliefs on our part can change, but the one faith never does, nor can it. The one faith commits of no expansion and no diminution.

It is the faith of God. That's the one faith. It's in the scriptures. And if God didn't start out in one faith which would only be his, because there's only one God, which we'll take there probably sometime tonight, he thought these things, he did these things, and listen, he did them all by faith.

You keep that very clear. And that's why the Bible says the just shall live by faith. It isn't they can do or they may do. Now you listen to this positive word. They shall or else they shall not even exist.

That is what the Lord is talking about. And this, beloved, is what the gospel presents to us. Amen. I wonder if we have seen it. Because of the varying degrees of what we call faith in people's lives.

You know, that comes over. If you had enough faith, you could have come to this conference in a Cadillac and not in an old T4. That sort of thing. If you had enough faith. If you had enough faith you could have a palace with wonderful gardens.

You could have a heated swimming pool and all the rest of it, which leads us into the melodious area of prosperity thinking. And, hallelujah, a sort of a conservative position as opposed to Labour thinking.

You know what I mean. Excuse me, I don't want to be political, but I want to sort of bring the idea to your mind. And God wants us to get away from all that claptrap. These things can be made to work.

As when the Lord Jesus was on the earth. They said, you're casting out devils. Ah, the Prince of Devils, Princess, all right. By whom do your sons cast out devils then? Well, were they casting out devils?

Yeah, they were. They made it work. But they hadn't got the real faith. How did they do it? I don't want to raise a problem. I just mention it. I give you a principle of its operation. We leave the rest.

It may be a very good thing for another Bible. But here then is the wonderful thing for us to see. Now, it has been written somewhere that in this great list of ones, this one, that one, that, it's all one because it is one's.

It is one person's. One person's body. One person's spirit. One person's hope mediated or transmitted to us of the hope of our calling as well. It's one Lord, and you know who that is. It's one person's faith.

It's one person's baptism administered by that one person, of course. And it's one person's God and Father of our Lord, if we like to use that word. And He has to become our Father. His body must become my body in the sense that I am in it.

His spirit must become my spirit in that I have it. The hope that's in His heart, in what He was called Jesus, and sent into the world must be in mine. One hope of mine called heart, that I become a Christ Spirit.

Very little C now, not capital C. One Jesus, I must be a Jesus person. It's all the same. It's Him. It's He is the Lord. It's His Lordship. And the faith is His. Amen. Now we live in a world where we do hear these words about faith, faith, faith.

The Faith of Jesus Christ in Galatians and Romans

It lies really, beloved, in that which I was saying the other morning. That, I don't know whether it sank in, but let me say it again. We often do need it repeated, repeated. And sometimes, when are things repeated long enough and say, oh yes, I can see it.

Somehow you see, if not they're different from me. You're much superior to me. But sometimes, I hear and now I say, yes Lord. As a matter of fact, that's the art of what you call Bible study in preaching.

You read it, and all of a sudden I say, Lord, what will be if I see it? I remember when God revealed things to me in the beginning. In a flash I saw the whole situation. I thought, what an idiot I've been before this.

And that's the way it goes. It must come like that. You can't get into these realms unless it does come to your heart like that. Because we're so obtuse, normally. But we can believe a million things.

No we can't, that's too many. But we can believe a thousand things anterior to that, before that comes. And you say, well he's got faith for this, he's got faith for that, he's got faith for the other.

Ah, but this faith hasn't come. Let me show you what I mean. I'll go back to what I said the other morning, in a moment to truth. Come with me into the Galatian letter. Now, you must trigger this Galatian letter.

Really, you must. You must read it until it runs out of your ears, if I may say it that way. You must get it absolutely right. It's reckoned to be the first epistle that Paul wrote anyway. It's wonderfully foundational.

But see what he has to say about faith. It's in this great second chapter of Galatians. Right. Let's start. First verse fourteen, chapter two. When I saw that they, that is the Jews that dissembled with Peter's talking, teaching, whatever he was saying.

They were carried away, Barnabas. They were carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before the morn, If thou, being a Jew, why don't you use your common sense, Peter?

If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compelst thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? Most of us, when we're around, we're absolutely self-contradictory.

You check that out. We become absolutely self-contradictory. We can only stand off from ourselves and see ourselves. If only we could. But of course, that's not given to us. Because we are the sum total of what we think, really.

That is in the manner of our living. And therefore, because we are that, we can't stand off from it most times and see the thing. Objectively. You can't think without becoming emotionally involved in it, as much as you may think that you're a cool, calm professor.

You can't. And here, then, is the great sin. Now listen. We, verse 15, who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, you will understand that he's not sneering at the Gentiles. He's taking the Jews up in the position that they hold.

All right. And he says, we know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by having faith in Jesus Christ. Is that what your book says? It doesn't. It says, by the faith of Jesus Christ.

You thought you were justified by your faith, didn't you? Romans 5 and 1. But you see, this has been said, and let me say it again, that you should not read the Roman letter before you read the Galatian letter.

Because the Galatian letter was written before the Roman letter. And when you get instructed on the beginning of things, you call Genesis the seedpot of the Bible. Don't you? Well, it doesn't. You should.

Then Galatians is a kind of Genesis. You understand that? And you get the key thought of how to read the Roman or any other letter that follows. Well, I didn't think it was written on a schematic document.

That's because we're so hetero whatever we are in our thinking. That's right. That's because we're so humanly scatty, if I may say so. We don't think, although we say the Bible is inspired, we don't think there's any brains behind it.

We think there's a lot of hodgepodge, but do you really think that? It's reading the Bible properly that's the secret of everything. The secret of everything, once the Holy Ghost has come. You get that clear.

So that when you read in the Roman letter, oh, that's good, I think we've looked at it before, but let's just get it. You read in the Roman letter these words. Verse 1 of chapter 5. Therefore, being justified by faith, what a misunderstanding the translators had.

Even my beloved old English Bible. You see. You're told in the last verse of chapter 4 that Jesus Christ was raised for our justice. And you and I were justified by the faith of Jesus Christ. Therefore, being justified, comma, that's where you put the comma, because it's been done in the annals of history, because it's been done in the purposes of God, because the one all-sufficient sacrifice, the oblation and offering for sin, if you want to come on to the Church of England statement, has been offered, it's done.

The great justifying work has been done. Hallelujah. Now then. By faith let us, that's a better translation, by faith let us have peace with God. Come to peace, come to terms with God upon the fact that the justification has been attained.

The justifying act has been done. And you won't be justified with God until you come to terms with God and you enter into it, and that's why faith is imparted to you. And you say, imparted? Oh, yes. Because faith, as Paul says in this Roman letter, chapter 10, comes by hearing.

And hearing by the Word of God. All right. Is that clear to you? Well, we'll go on papers and go over it, and do a microscope if you want, sometime. Here is the thing for us to understand and get it into our being.

Of course, you don't know how to understand these things in the beginning. I didn't. I don't know that I understand them much now. God is still at this place. But here is the glory of it. Time is an invention of God.

Everything is an invention of God. We're all whirling round on this old ball, beloved. And somewhere pivotal in the millions, beloved, Christ came into the world. God moved. He put up a cross in the centre of things.

It's okay. And it operates all around, and it's all been done. In the Old Testament they were justified because it was going to be done. In the New Testament we are justified because it's done. Hallelujah.

And when we talk about going to be done, it was only going to be done covering the Old Testament because in the heart of God it had been done from the foundation of the world. What a world of things. That's right.

Amen. But we are dealing with God, not the boss of a country. And it's so wonderful. I tell you the thing to do with this is to read it and then go and lie down on your bed and don't go to sleep and let it soak into you until everything says, Oh yes, Lord.

You know, like the dry barren land that hasn't had rain for three years. And it lies there under the rain when it comes and says, Oh yes. And up go all the shoes. Do you see that? Now I'm telling you a principle of understanding.

You think I may be raising smiles about you, but I'm telling you the truth from which if you depart you will never know. You will be merely people hanging on words of Scripture, favourite texts. But if you get soaked, you'll get the spirit from which the text came.

And then you will begin to understand. But if you won't give God time, give up hope of ever coming to know. And then you'll be dependent on preachers and things like that. What a marvellous truth then this was to understand.

We are justified by the face of Jesus Christ. I want to put my bars up and say, Hooray! If it had been on my face I'd have been on the way to hell. Justified by the face of Jesus Christ. I love it. Oh, I turn it over in my mind.

I don't know whether you do, but I suppose the trouble is that instead of putting the Galatian letter before the Roman letter, they didn't quite know where to put it in the Bible. But then you don't know what to do with things, the juxtaposition of things until you understand.

So when you read the Galatian letter first, when you approach these verses in Romans, you say, Justified by the face of Jesus Christ. Not by my face in it. You understand. What happens is, when you come at last to believe it, you throw the switch.

And all the power in those mighty atomic stations flows into you. That's all you do. You're wired for it. Hallelujah. And it's marvellous. This is why sin goes. This is why love comes. This is why everything comes.

Like you throw the switch and the light comes on. Of course, some of these, they bleed about a bit. But nevertheless, it comes on. Amen. It's His face. Good job, people. Looking at me, looking at you.

You know, somebody looks at you and says, Oh, she's a hopeless case. It's one poor little man talking about another poor little creature. But God doesn't look like that. He doesn't seem that at all. He seems that way with God.

The Synoptic Gospels and the Pre-Crucifixion Ministry

Now, the confusing thing about it, and here I'm coming back. If I'm galloping a bit this morning, it's because I'm wondering how much time I'll have later on in the day. We look back then into the Gospels.

Let me repeat what I said the other morning. This is most important for you to understand. I didn't understand it for years upon years upon years. And I'm afraid much of the preaching that was going about didn't enlighten me.

Here it is. That the first three Gospels, called the Synoptic Gospels, all right, they are about Jesus, the Jew's Messiah, coming to His own. Now, that's where Paul, John 5 says, He came to His own and then leaves it.

That's all he says. The other three Gospels, they're all complaining that He's coming to His own. And so all you have to do is to walk about, and sometimes you say, well, according to your faith, the answer is that their faith was coming out.

And that's why when you get the John Prophets, you never read the word faith. It isn't in the Gospels. You get the word belief, which is associated, of course, with power, with movement, with a personality going.

Now, here then, is the great secret. And that's why, reach out your hand, touch the hem of His garment, but you will find that there's always the things like healing, which is quite free in the land in those days.

They could just come and say, here's Armistice. Of course people needed Armistice. So it wasn't long before they changed their opinion. You know what I mean? It all happened in three and a half years.

They came, touched, it was theirs. Alleluia. But John said, he came to his own, his own received him not. That's in the first eleven verses of the Gospels. And he's now moving out to the world. You say, well aren't these things for the world?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. But they are all pre-crucifixion Gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke. The thing that happened before the crucifixion. And he said, but, but, but, but, yes, it's right. It's no wonder you splutter for a start.

But it's true. I've got a baptism. I mustn't go on it now. I'll come this afternoon. I've got a baptism to be baptized. Oh, I'm so straightened. I'm shut up just to be Jews. Until then, all, don't you see.

So, it was the kingdom of heaven on earth. And that's what Matthew keeps saying. Kingdom of heaven, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of heaven, our Messiah has come. John says, you've got to be born again and then you'll get into the kingdom of God.

God loves the world. You see the concatenation of ideas. You join them together. You begin to understand what is this message coming through this Bible that I've loved and read for years. So, the Lord is speaking.

So, he's speaking today. Yes, yes, yes. It's in the package, if you know what I mean. Hmm. The great thing about the Lord Jesus is that he came to justify us by his faith. He believed. And he couldn't be off from believing except that as God manifests in the flesh, he was at liberty to think otherwise than God because he was a man.

And that is why the devil pretended the temptations to him always of his manhood aimed at his Godhead to destroy him. Here's the first temptation. If thou be the Son of God, you're hungry, aren't you?

Command these stones that they be made bread. Here it is. And the Lord, unthinkable to us, now we know the whole story. But they didn't know that he was God manifesting in the flesh. Now we know the whole story.

It's all unthinkable to us that the Lord should have said, OK, all right, I'll make myself some bread. But he who said at the end in gestimony, don't you know I could have twelve legions of angels if I wanted them?

Wasn't going to be tempted to make stones into bread just for his body. Poor, or I don't know, stupid. He didn't understand. He thought he did. Hallelujah. What I want this morning, beloved, and I'm more after your souls, though I've kept them approaching you through the mental processes this morning.

I don't want it to be too heavy. I want you. I'm not concerned whether you have these tapes and drum them into your mind. I'm not concerned with whether you understand up here the things that I'm saying.

I'm concerned that somehow power reaches your soul and you come into this grave. From here, the big thing. The saddest thing is that you should come to these meetings and then go home, thrilled and blessed perhaps, but virtually not changed so that in a month you're back where you were before.

That's the tragedy. That's the tragedy of all conferences, all churches anyway. Not that they shouldn't be. Don't go away from the church just because that's happened. You don't go away from conferences just because that's happened.

You don't go away. You keep on and on. You and I were justified. God did the justifying act at Calvary. That's why John, if I may, I know it's my favorite gospel. I hope you never tire of it either. That's why John tells you the real truth of the cross that none of the other gospel writers tell you about.

They tell you about the cross, the objective cross. It's there. God got it. Calvary. Whatever you want to say. But John says, Ah, you know what that cross was? It was an altar. The Lamb offered himself to God.

Matthew, Mark, Luke don't say that. You go into the third chapter, you see. You know what that cross was? That was a cross on which the serpent was dealt with. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.

That's where the devil was dealt with. That's where the devil's nature was dealt with. The other three don't say that. Because they're dealing with the revival, the greatest revival that Israel ever had.

That's what they're dealing with. But don't we take things from those three gospels? Of course we do. I take things from the Old Testament that we saw the other night. It's there. It happened. It happened today.

Not the exact thing. I don't expect to cross over the River Jordan and go paddling through and then find somewhere where I've got to do some fighting and all that sort of thing. No, no. But we get the lesson.

We get the truth. Because we understand the truth. Because the spirit of truth has come since the truth and the way and the life died on the cross, the rose again. Simple as anything. Once you'll allow God to change your basic carnal thinking.

I'm not accusing anybody. I'm talking to everybody. That's it. Do you see, not in vain does Scripture say the natural man does not receive the things of the spirit. That's why all of them in Palestine in that day did not receive the things of the spirit.

And they did not receive Jesus Christ. He crucified Him. And there are people like that. They can get healed. They can get blessed. They can hear the marvelous teachings. They can do everything. And yet they never passed in.

Completely over-believers. Chop out all that the great faith preaches and teaches, teaches and preaches. But you've got to live by faith. That's different. This means a change of the basis of all life.

Not just from truth, which came in of course through lack of faith, in what God said in Eden. You should know all about this. I'll just leave you with these things. It's a change of the basis of life.

I see that I'm not justified by reaching out the hand of faith. I see I'm justified by the death and the blood and the sacrifice of faith. Jesus Christ. Amen. This changes everything. I'm back in Galatians now.

Justification by the Faith of Jesus Christ

I just want to follow it through. This great thing. So that I read this. In the end of chapter four, it says this. Verse twenty-two, chapter three, I beg your pardon. Chapter three, verse twenty-two.

The scripture hath concluded all under sin. There. The promise by faith of Jesus Christ. Again, not by my faith in Jesus Christ. Just notice it. By faith of Jesus Christ. It's to project your mind to that person saying, all this greatness of faith, the person of his very being on earth, of his very presence, everything he did by faith of Jesus Christ.

All right. It's a bittersweet life for us at the moment, but that's the whole realm in which your mind must go. Faith of Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. It says this. Actually that word is faith-born. It's a very marvellous thing.

Out of or out from Jesus Christ. All right. The promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them. Yes, indeed. But before faith came, what do you mean? He's talking about the Jews here, not just himself.

We. We talking about the Jews. What do you mean before faith came? How about Hebrews 11? It says Noah had faith. It says Sharon had faith. Abraham had faith. Sarah had faith. What do you mean before faith came?

That's right. That's what you're supposed to start thinking. What does it mean? Just keep that in your back of your mind. We'll pass on. Before faith came, we, he's not talking about you, he's not talking about just an individual, but it has a reflected position in each believer's life.

Because here in Christ, everything is gathered up. The partial faith of him, the spark of faith there, the flashing through of faith somewhere else, that's whose history. It's all in Christ. We'll see it in a moment.

Here we go. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up under the faith. Didn't they exercise what we call faith before then? Yeah. Because we believe this. We believe the other. We believe something of yours.

We shut up under the faith. What a tremendous thing. I'm glad that God shut me up under the faith. He said, Oh, but this is for Jews. But don't you understand, God gave the law, not only to a nation, which he did, but he gave it to a condition which was the same in every nation.

You must understand that. And you were shut up under this faith that you've asked of Jesus. Hang on. I believe this. I believe, gosh, you've saved my prayers. I believe I should go to church. I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.

I believe, well I believe, a lot. Hallelujah. I'm very grateful I did. But I saw that I was kept under that because it was directed to the law of human beings. What do you mean by that? The law of human beings, which is the same for Jews or Gentiles.

Just the law of human beings. And it was directed under that. The law of human beings is this. We may not be conscious of it. Most of the great things of life are beyond our consciousness and lie deeper.

We all were believers. You say, what do you mean? We all were believers. There's no life of any kind, even human life, without faith. You know, very little faith, little air. You couldn't believe. You believe in your mother, don't you?

You believe in your father. You believe the truth. They gave you what was poison. Sure, but that's sort of natural. It's natural. It's what I'm talking about. The law of beings. It's there. And that, bless God, is expected by him to shut you up unto the faith.

Hallelujah. And when you come and you see the faith, Acts 2, verse 16, the faith of Jesus Christ, when you meet him by the power of the Holy Spirit, because nobody can until then, you say, oh, Lord. And this is why you get the extravagant, almost, language of the Wesley.

Confound or power me. There it is, you see. These are the thoughts. These are the words. Not that we've got to say the right words. They're nicely, nicely said. This is why we say, the faith, come. Hallelujah.

Shut up unto the faith, which is after the speed of deal. That's why when you read the Hebrew's letter, the famous faith chapter, you go right down to it. You say, Abraham's faith, Noah's faith, Enoch's faith, Sarah's faith, Mulder's faith, and all that they're cheated by.

They say, you come down to the bottom of the chapter and you say, Amen. Well, you don't. And then you pass the chapter, about chapter 12, and you say, Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of the faith.

You've got the word our in, isn't there? Just take it away. It isn't just the author and finisher of our faith, when it's all finished, you understand this. Our faith is being started and lived and completed and it's finished.

And you've got to come into that faith, the completed, if I may put it this way, faith, that God's prophesied. So that you're not just sort of reaching out and getting a little bit of the air. Oh, I can believe this morning for sanctification.

Or I can believe, I'm not mocking, I can believe this morning for justification. I can believe, do you know why we use that language? Because we're talking human beings. That's what we're talking. The limitations of our humanity.

Thank God for His mercy and His pity. Amen. That's what we do. And you can even find the verse in Scripture to support it. Bless God! For there are stepping stones of mercy and there are, for those that are needing it, hallelujah, God is not like this sweeping neocognitive creature.

He's got it all there in the Word. And you can come and if you're coming in a limited way, give me a hand and we can walk step by step and I'm not mocking. You know, here a little, there a little, so on, so on.

That's God coming down to our limitations. And then God came down into our limitations and floated forth as God in Christ. Reconciling not me but the world unto Himself. Hallelujah. The great sweep of God.

I think most of us ought to really be on our knees at times of begging God to forgive us for putting limitations upon us in our thinking. Out of this comes all the squabble of doctrine. Wrongly. They come out of the little thinking of men.

I'm a man too, so you say, that means you're yes, that's right. Wonderful it is. You know, the other morning, the other, the other day I said something. What you discover is that you really get it all in the beginning and the rest is a, that is more an enlightening of your understanding and rendering your understanding.

And I saw something going like this. Yes, I saw something going like this. I put in the Word and that's what you really knew inside. It may not have come as clear as when I said it, but that's the truth.

And here then is the thing. The faith of Jesus Christ. Shut up. I'm not prepared to shut up. So now, I heard this, I heard that, but you see, you shut my ears first. Oh, I heard, but this is what my teacher said at school.

North it goes in one ear and out the other. All right, okay, I shut that. But somehow the spirit of God grabbed it and put a lot of it down in here so I didn't lose it. Here, which is the thing you see, don't you, don't you, now shut up, and then I heard a word.

He read everything and he said, yes, I said this. It's in the Bible. You only ever see anything in retrospect. You must understand that. You don't see anything in prospect. No, you don't. You may think to do, but you don't.

Hallelujah. And you look back and say, what an idiot I've been, Lord. Glory be to God. Someone's got some furrows down their forehead. Here, then, is the thing. You just open and drink. If the drinking sets your mind working, that's okay, but don't you try and take what I'm saying from the tip of your mouth.

Open your spirit. Beloved, I've come here. Look. The law, he says, verse 24, chapter 3, was our schoolmaster pedagogical, I won't stop on that, to bring us unto Christ. That we might be justified by faith.

But after that faith had come, see, that was the faith that was to be revealed. Shut up under the faith that was to be revealed. After that faith had come, we're no longer under the schoolmaster. For ye all are the children of God.

Amen. And I don't need the law. Now, you understand why I talk about the new covenant and preaching it and not the old. I don't need that. We're no longer under that schoolmaster. That's what Paul's writing.

This is why Paul is constant preaching from the Old Testament. We don't need it. Oh, it's beautiful. Of course it's beautiful. But don't you see, you don't need it. It's that we're not under it. I can learn from it, which I do.

I'm preaching the New Covenant really. The whole truth is there. I feel our God is in salvation. Oh, not always by sin, but by our persistence along the old line. In the early church it was persistence along the old line of, I must be circumcised and keep the law and believe in Jesus Christ.

Now Paul is invading against that because we do not need it. We are not under it. Hallelujah. That isn't the same God and prophets and great men of the Old Testament. But in our, if you like, specific thinking, we must see that everything has come to us through the faith of Jesus.

That's why He must be the precious one. That's why we have to live in His adoration of us. But listen beloved, only as being shut up, my, excuse me for using this word once, I've used it about a lot, as being shut up unto Christ.

You say, what do you mean? Well, everything in my body is shut up unto me. Is it? You haven't got it, have you? That's what the body does. It keeps all that's inside in. You see, here's the point. We are shut up unto Christ.

What do you mean? Well, objectively, my head is what it's all about. But we've never, never been directed to it. I'm speaking quite generally now. We never, never understood it. We use terms like the body, we use all these kinds of things.

But in the body, I don't know if I said living, not doing it, what a tremendous thing. We'll come into it when we get to that. But here is the great truth, that we see what it's all about, and allow it all to happen.

And, of course, it goes on then. Here are all the children of God by faith in Christ. And so he goes on. Because he is a being of faith. Coming back now to chapter two. We know, said Paul in the sixteenth verse, that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.

That we have believed in Jesus Christ, he says, sixteen, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ. Twice he said it in this verse. Justified by the faith of Christ. Hallelujah. And not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

But, if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found ministers of sin, we are found sinners. Is therefore Christ the minister of sin? No, he isn't, God forbid. If I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.