Npg Summer Session 81 Tape 2 - Union Life Women's Week — Norman Grubb

The Believer’s Offense at the Complete Christ-Life

Died out to its wrong manager and his operations on us and trouble out to the true manager and so even though you re a new self you know it isn t you yet it appears to be like you. It appears to be you and it isn t you.

So you move now into an affirmation of yourself which is bound to be offensive not so much to the world who probably think you re mad anyhow but to the believer it will be offensive because the believer is busy getting in thinking of himself better so it s the believer who will fight you.

Remember it s the believers who fought Christ. Christ never met the world. He never met Babylonians or Assyrians or Greeks or Romans to any extent. He met every Jew as a believer so the world of Jesus was believing.

It was the church who crucified Jesus Christ not the world. It was the church who crucified you and me. Because they retain their selves. They can t bear something which in this case appears to be too boastful that you can claim to be a spontaneous self.

Of course that is. It s blasphemy if you think you can be a better self. It s blasphemy. It s only when you learn you see that the thing is not in the self itself but in the God in the self you can see it.

We re now saying that this phase is what settlement into you re okay because you know the okayness is Christ in you. That s your hidden secret which the world doesn t know that s why they mistake you.

But you say because you ve been through a death. That s your safe person. I ve had people say to me, Do you think you re God? Of course my reply was poor God if that s all he is I m sorry for him. That s quite easy to answer.

And then I say when I do come along be sure you lie down and worship to me. Why? Because if you are this you know you can t be God. If a person says they think you re God it means they think they could be.

That s why I say it. You say you re God because they think they could be. You laugh could be a God that s finished. I m a human. I m a container of a God. Oh I don t mistake the container for that which I contain.

But I do contain him. You laugh you can t be a God. You re forever the container. And you ve found that out. You can t be kidding. You weren t a container of the false one you re a container of the true one.

Christ Operating Through Spirit, Soul, and Body

There s the resurrection of a self-competentness. It s a self-competence which must begin to stretch its faith out on yourself. I think it s pretty general. When we first have come into this total relationship Christ as I.

I know Christ operates in my spirit. I m not now going to believe because it s in the spirit soul body except as I mentioned in passing. I know Christ operates in my spirit. I m not so sure about him handling my soul and body.

I may be confident he s my spirit and suspicious of my soul and body. So there s got to be a spread out of conscience which I was confident in the operation of my soul and my body and trust my soul and my body as I can trust my spirit because he s the manager of the lot of them.

That s a stretch which may take some further consideration. So we neither fear our bodies nor fear our souls in our emotions. I m not going any further now into that s all part of this into the difference between soul and spirit and the cause of our spirits because they re all expressions of him.

And so you become bold in expressing your opinions, thinking your thoughts, willing your will, doing your stuff, using your bodies. You re bold. Know your reasons. You re going to be attacked on that one.

And you ve got to give a reason why I say because I m kept. Of course people say it reads to license. Yes I said I m well licensed by the Holy Spirit. I m glad poor me. I don t keep myself. I m too well kept.

I can t get out of it. You re glad. You see you begin to talk that kind of you must know your language. You must know why you say that and how you can say that. And I do say it because the Bible says so.

The Bible said so to me. The Spirit said so to me and I say so. And I will dare to say God s got my body and I m moving in free use of my body. And God s got my soul and I m going in free use of my emotion and reason and my will and I ll be myself.

It s on that level of course he says nobody can get the egotism of another than Jesus Christ. Total I am. And yet a total nothing of the total everything. So here you get the paradox. To some extent we have to go through a that middle stage when we have to get out of the scene.

We have to get it right. Because we have ourselves in a wrong position. As if we haven t got the self of Satan in its right focus and so we re in self-effort. We got it all wrong. So we go through a stage as if we kind of I don t like to say it because it didn t too lose ourselves.

The full truth is you regain yourself. In fact never lost yourself except by imagination. Now the only last one we say of this area before we pass into the major area where we re living which is the third area, the intersection, the fatherhood area is the temptation level.

Temptation as Practice in Experiencing Christ

Now again to know how to see temptation as what it is and then utilize it. Now that s where we stress, yes it needs stressing, this whole world is a tempting agent. We live in temptation. You ll never be free from it.

We live in temptation. Now I m saying that secondary to the first thing we live in freedom. You don t live first of all in temptation you live in freedom. We live free. But temptation is always there and always will be there because the whole world is geared to temptation.

Temptation is pulling me back to Satan s self-centeredness. All this self-stuffing, self-reliance, self-seeking, self-gratification is Satan pulling me back to forms of self of course which is Satan.

Now on our level we feel those pulls. The first area there is to settle into the fact we re surely tempted people. The proof of that of course is the perfect person was sent to be tempted. And it says that s why he was tempted because he s to be like us.

And Hebrews 5 says he s a real high priest because he was like us and we can know what an us is. An us is tempted in all points like as we are without sin because that s the world we re in. That s on this level our practicing level.

It s also our reproducing level. That goes into the third area. It s our practicing level because temptation goes practicing and reaffirming who we are. So temptations take us off, take us off the spontaneity.

The spontaneity is you become an unconscious free self because you re yourself yet you know it s he and you re doing your own stuff and that s he. I didn t emphasize that more because that all comes under the new understanding of freedom.

We are ourselves that is he and that s the freedom. Temptation is to move you off from your spontaneity into acting as if you re self-responding to yourself, self-response, putting out. The first point is to recognize the continual onslaught of temptation.

Although our main line is liberated activity in the midst of it always coming in these streams of this world which divert us, which pull us out from spontaneity. The moment of self-response that s Satan of course.

This is Satan pulling himself out. Independent self is Satan. So the moment I have an independent self feeling in this direction that s Satan s feelings in me, pulling me to react in Satan s ways. So what we ve learned in this final area and again we can only pass on as we practice is first of all we have to learn to accept temptation as inevitable and not fight it, accept it, accept it as something because it s something that pulls on us.

It s something that pulls on us. It pulls on my soul. It pulls on my body. It pulls on my emotions. It pulls on my reasons. It pulls on my appetite. It pulls on me. It s in me. And therefore accepting I don t fight it.

If I thought I shouldn t be that, that s why I got on. If you think that, you re in trouble. If you thought I shouldn t be that, you re in trouble. If you say it isn t grabbing me for a moment, now you re conscious you re being grabbed for a moment which has diverted you into fears or hates or worries or all these things.

You re not ready for a moment. So part of this process is you re not fighting but recognising it. Now the moment you recognise it that you get it and it in a sense has the right to get you because this world is the world of the devil.

It s a beautiful world ministered by the devil for self gratifying purposes of course. Self elevating purposes. So there it is. So when you recognise that, well we just recognise it. Now the moment you recognise it and don t fight it, you freed it to be itself and you freed yourself to be yourself.

You re not denying its right to tempt you. So you re not fighting it. And you re releasing it to be itself and that releases you to be yourself. Watch yourself. Oh wait a minute. That isn t what I am.

That s just a temporary pull on me. I have Christ in me. I have Christ as me. Now then you re able to transfer your attention back to the thing that s bothering you to Christ of course who replaces the negatives with the fear with his courage and his hates with his love and his worries with his peace and so on.

So temptation becomes, that s how we speak of it, as an asset, as a constant fresh practice in experiencing Christ. Because when I experience a diversion into dislike a person, that gives me a new chance to experience Christ in love.

Following up the dislike and so on. We all know those things but I m again saying that s part of this migration and are now learning how to transmit to others. I think that covers the best I could stage by stage.

All these stages which culminating in me, you, being your true self and knowing you are. And able, now more than that, able to share with others why you are and how you are and how they can be. How to help them to be the true self which is Christ as they, which is yourself.

And that s been the main drive of our union life according to that message all this time. Myself years ago as a young missionary when I sought to bring Christ to Africans. Very primitive in those days, long before any civilization was there.

We had to go by foot into these forests and so on. And I saw a scripture, Christ may be formed in you. Paul Travelle said, Travelle that Christ may be formed in you. I said there s something more in the gospel than bringing Christ to you, Jesus to them.

And I said to myself, if you ve got a formed Christ in you, there s not much left for yourself. A fully formed Christ in you. I got the glimpse then. A fully formed Christ means you re a walking Christ.

Yourself is some agency of which you are you, but it s really a walking Christ. I saw it then, in first glimpse. And I pursued that through the years. I pursued it until by the grace of God it came up with me within maybe three years after that.

And since then, expanding operations, expanding understandings. And gradually seeking to put together what appears to us to be this fulfilling the word of God, this completion of the meaning of Christ in you as you.

Until the magazine is a being and the fellowship has begun to grow among us now. What shall I call it? Completion. We move into the full purposes of our life. That s the third area which we won t take on now.

Lausanne s Monday mornings tape. I ve taken the liberty of filling up the rest of this tape with the Wednesday night experience of week five at Higston in 81.

Paul’s Progress Through the Three Levels

Comments on some of the things that we ve been talking about. That s the point. These last two days we ve been concentrating on the complete position into which the Spirit has brought us on the third level.

That s in some detail in these two sessions. And that may have aroused questions or comments as we went along. But before we have those, I had said that I would like to go through with you the perhaps the greatest personal statement in the Bible of the processes of Spirit in us humans, bringing us to our completion as intercessors by which others can be what we are by grace, walking Christ.

And it s given in that statement by Paul in the third chapter of Philippians a few sharp cutting statements with great depth in every one of them. We can only briefly run over them. He s first spoken about total sinnerhood.

What s a total sinner? He said this is a total sinner. First, that I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any man thinketh that he might trust in the flesh, I more. Circumcised the eighth day of the Sock of Israel, of the Tomb of Benjamin, and Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law of Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is the law, blameless.

And this is the one who said sinners who are chief, because sinnerhood is perfect self-centeredness, that s all. Sinnerhood is perfect self-centeredness. Paul never committed the kind of sins we call sins as touching the righteousness of the law blameless.

It will be none of those thou shalt not be useful to talk about, yet he is the chief of sinners. Because sinnerhood is Satanhood Satan is I to myself. I am a total self-lover, self-seeker, self-getter.

And a sinner is a person who is expressing a total Satanhood. A total Satanhood is total self-centeredness. And here is a man full of his own pride, full of his own self-sufficiency, that s sin. Full of his own self-sufficiency, that s sin.

So you see how deep sin goes. Sin is a mere product. It may take different forms. Sin is what we have expressed in our unsaved days, we ve been indwelt by Satan, expressed as Satan, who has missed a total self-centeredness.

And here s Paul. So he starts by saying here s final sin. Self-loving, self-seeking, self-gratifying, self-magnifying self. Really that self wasn t he. That real self was Satan s self expressed by his humanity.

But he being a cooperator he says therefore I m that. Because we are what the deity in us is. If we re expression of the deity of self-centeredness, I m self-centered, I m the sinner. If I m expressing the deity of self-giving love, I m the self-giver.

Like these wonderful songs we ve just been singing. So he s tried his progress, his spiritual progress, out from that. In the seventh verse where he said what things were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ.

You see we all come out of the being of a God of self-giving love. That s our basic being. It s the being of every man Satan s spiritually stole us. Satan stole our personality to express himself. But the being, the basic being of our personality has come out from God which is self-giving love, not self-magnifying love.

So underneath we know what we ought to be. And therefore when Paul saw that as a person, and the person he saw was the martyr Stephen, when he full of his self-centeredness, part of his self-love was of course loving his own temple, his own religion, which is only a form of self-loving self.

Satan s self-loving self expressed in the form of religion. That s why the worst form of self-centeredness is religious self. Self-loving self is a form of my God, my temple, my religion, my soul self.

And this was why Paul, full of that self which hated its opponent, hated Stephen. And he led the way in Stephen s stoning. And it says he was the young man around whom the ones who stoned him put their clothes down while they went on their purpose of destroying this man with a rock set through at him.

And what Paul, because Paul s deepest being is God, we know what we ought to be. God saw in Stephen what the person ought to be. He not only saw a glory which was in the face of Stephen, because he received it, he said behold I say is Jesus Christ standing at the right hand of God.

That was his glory, that faced like an angel. Well, that s wonderful. That might be real, might not be real. Of course this was real. What broke Paul down to the ground was when this dying man covered with blood, smashed to pieces, just committing his spirit to God, said Lord lay not this thing to their charge.

So the last thing he saw was this man was the lover of his enemy. That s God. And that s what got Paul. And that s what Paul here says what things were gained to me, those things were lost by Christ. When that same Christ turned up and appeared before Paul, the same Christ he had been persecuting, and had this vision of him, said why do you persecute me?

I m Jesus, I love you. His revelation to Paul was I m here to love you. Why are you persecuting me? And he saw the same love in Jesus which he seen in Stephen. And so he said what things were gained to me, I can t say lost, that self-loving self was offensive to me, that I might have the Christ self, in the face of the Satan self, the self-getting self, the Christ self, the self-giving self.

This is new birth, this is new birth. That s what started Paul. Then he went on to another phase, it s our middle phase, it s our middle level. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, to whom I suffer the loss of all things.

Oh he says, not only that he s accepted me and loved me and saved me, but I understand that I m the one in whom he s going to live. And I can take him and he s going to experience his own perfect love life by me.

The excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my living Lord, the one who expressed himself by me. So the one who first saw Christ for him up there, therefore Christ in him. And at this point he suffered, for whom I suffered the loss of all things.

So in the early moments it cost him to lose everything. He was a leading young Jew. We see how full of ambition he was and undoubtedly he was going to be the top Jew of his nation. And so for a time being, it cost him, all his earthly ambitions disappeared from him.

So there s a cost in the first stages of moving into union. Where union is replacement of the self governed by Satan s self loving self, by the self operated by the Christ giving self. The same self, same self, but changing its management.

And Satan has so infected the old self that of course we love to be something and become something and so on. Therefore there s the element of suffering. Therefore when we first get settled into Christ there s the element of suffering, for whom I suffer the loss of all things.

But it ended of course in this revelation that Paul had. Paul indeed had it three years after he was converted. He had it in Arabia. But there he said, not only is Christ my Lord, but Christ lives in me.

I m an expression of Christ. By humanity now I express the perfect self giving nature of Christ. That s put in the way it was revealed to him in Galatians. And he puts it in this form. With a certain element of suffering in those first stages, the youthful stages of becoming settled in Christ as Christ, in Christ as Christ.

Intercession, Suffering, and the High Calling

Now the third level, around which we say that I ve taken these last two days, has a startling change. And this is a change with the Holy Spirit wanting you, if you have a glory in the third level. The third level is that you may be the deaf people by whom life can come to others.

That you may share in forms in which your life as it were dissolves or other people may live. And here Paul turns around and he suddenly says the things that were precious to him became offensive to him.

That s a profound change. In that last area of that verse he said I suffered a lot of those things. Now he says I couldn t stand them. The things I once loved I couldn t bear to have them. They stink to me.

The things that were precious to him, it stunk to him now. Isn t that something? He couldn t bear to be related to the things that time had sent. He couldn t bear to think that things of time had meant anything when he inherited the universe and contributed to the universe for other people to find that they inherited it too.

See the change? Now this is a change in the third level. Where God does something, we ve been through it of course these last days, where God does this detaching work in which the one you have is God in his perfection and love.

This order of perfection is that this person is you. You are a part of this person in the universe and your passion now is that other people may find they are equally part of him. They may be through eternity expressions of this person in the universe.

So everything else has become offensive to him. That s wrong isn t it? So you can t be. Well it says that. I can t have done. I don t mean win Christ. No that s different. Not receive Christ, win Christ.

To win a person is to win a fellowship. To win an equality is to win a fellowship. To win a friendship. To win a person isn t I depend on them to get something from them. It s I become just their fellow and we re linked together in purpose in our life.

I have a co with him. Winning you become a co with the person. That is a profound change. Up to this moment he depended on Christ for salvation and for inner replacement to find out who he was and so on.

And that says he was feeding on Christ. He was what he was because of that relationship with Christ. That s dropped now. That s dropped. So in the third level you drop the level of dependency and you become a co-Christ, a co-saviour, a co-priest and so on.

That s winning him. The winning means you get the sense you are that. Yes you are that now. You re with me to lay your life down for the world as I laid mine out. And out of my death came resurrection of the world and out of your death the same.

And you begin to get a passion for another quality of life in which self-preservation stings to you. Self-giving is glory to you. Self-preservation I suffer a loss. Oh it costs me a bit. Self-preservation stings to you now.

I couldn t help myself. My joy is to be laid down as I live. Now that s the Holy Spirit does that. In each area the Holy Spirit reveals the false self of Satan and the true self of Christ which Paul sided with.

And then the Holy Spirit reveals that you re a real person and you know you re a total Christ expresser. It says in the knowledge of Christ Jesus is my Lord, my expresser. And so your drive, your passion, your purpose, your ultimate change is caught in your home.

Because those who aren t this way see their change in their home. You ve lost your interest. Your main use isn t to keep your home perfect or do this and do that. It s how you can be used for God. Probably trampled on by many people yet Christ.

You ve got another sense of glory. The glory of other people may have what may themselves have of course this secret eternal life that you have. So it is a change. And that s where Paul says that he warns you now this is grace imparted.

You don t get that change. You say my friend I ve got that change. Because the change is this changed person expressing his outlook on you didn t do it all. This is the outlook of Christ. Self giving isn t yours, self giving.

Self getting wasn t yours. Self getting was Satan. Self giving is not yours, it s Christ. And so it s Christ imparting to you what his nature so it becomes your nature. So don t try and get it. Say you ve got it.

If you ve got Christ you ve got him. And again and again I say it doesn t depend on that working it up. So here this is the verse I read to you before where at this moment it says and be found in him not having mine own righteousness working something up is the law.

I should be like this. I should be like Jesus. You can t be like Jesus, you can only be Jesus. You can t be like Jesus because that means you have a separate self. And your self can t become like Jesus.

Your self doesn t have a nature. Your self expresses the nature of the deity in you. And you weren t like Satan, you were Satan. You were Satan walking about in human form. That s why when he died he said he was made sin because I ve went through that before because we were sin.

And you weren t like Satan, you were made Satan. You could express yourself as Satan but self getting love. And in this new life you re not like Christ, you re made Christ. And your expression is self giving love.

And so if you say well yes I can t say I have that sort of can t be bothered with the things of time and sense except for using them for God. I can t be back to hanging around little personal possessions.

I can t be bothered with that stuff. In fact it offends it to me. If it hinders me being poured out for God it offends it to me. Well you may say that sounds good but I m not like that. Don t say that.

You re not like that but Jesus Christ is like that. He s the you. He s the you. So don t say it isn t like that. Don t beat me up for your own righteousness. That s me working by the law again. Self effort.

You say Christ you are that in me and if I don t recognize that you re on the go making me. You make me recognize it. Okay. You re all I need. You cause me and know who I am. So it s okay. So put a further statement of faith on that level.

So that s why it says be founded in not having my own self effort trying to become something but everything through the faith of Christ. The faith that that s what Christ is in me and will manifest his complete self in and by me which is the self giving self.

The righteousness that s the right way. The right ways of God which is my faith. Then he just says that I may know him. You see knowing is at home with a person. Now at home with a self giving or home with a person who by us is fulfilling purposes by which other people find him as we found him.

So you re knowing him in his saviorhood now. You ve known him in salvation long ago. You ve known him in a replacement maybe. Knowing him now. Knowing always means knowing his heart. You re in saviorhood.

Co-saviorhood. And what s that mean? It means I begin to see that I have the authority of God to operate and to have the resources when necessary. I have the power of resurrection. Not just his resurrection.

His resurrection that was something of his own. The power was the power by which the impossible takes place. The works of God take place in our human rights. We operate the power. That s the power. That s the authority of faith.

We operate the faith by which God brings this to pass and this to pass and this to pass. Like we had this morning. Operator of the faith which produces a substance. But then he says that s only a side issue.

The main issue is that through my dying others will live. Because self has to die that the spirit self can come to us. Because the self, the human self has been in wrong hands. It s been in Satan s hands.

So it s been expressing self-loving self. And we re all part. That s the product of this world being caught up by this self-getting, self-ratifying spirit. Therefore the only way in which there can be revelation of self-giving self is by his death for us or our death for others.

There s a death in this now. His death for us and then we share in that death or our death for others and then we share in that death. So you see, now I know the fellowship is suffering. Now the fellowship is joy.

The fellowship is suffering. You see this is God fulfilling something. Oh it hurts. But this is God fulfilling something. So Paul said, my, Paul listed his enormousness in 2 Corinthians 11. He pours out all his sufferings.

He said, which is for a moment, works for me a seeding in the eternal weight of glory. When I look at all the things that are seen, the things that are not seen and so on and so on. So you see, you are sharing in suffering but this is the way to glory.

This is the way in which glory comes. This is the way out of death life comes. So I accept this. So we went into that today. And now you move into the intercessional level where you are a commissioned person.

Like Jesus was a commissioned person. Paul was a commissioned person. And you operate the resources of God. You get some of the protections of God, the provisions of God and the miracles of God. That s operating the power of resurrection.

You know how to operate faith and bring God into situations. But that s not the greatest thing. Healings and miracles are not the greatest thing. Dying and rising is the greatest thing. Other people may rise who are dying.

That s not the greatest. So although there is the power of resurrection, the heart of it is that I m involved in something which has caused tensions and difficulties and all kinds of things. This is it.

This is it. You put me here. I don t make these things up. I just live my ordinary life. But in my ordinary life everything that s happening now is geared to this purpose of God to fulfill through me.

And in it you will find the ways of the cross. The fellowship with suffering. And you find fellowship means you say that s it, that s it. It hurts but praise God this is the way. I m privileged to be a co-sufferer, a co-dier with Jesus Christ.

This is the highest, that s the central glory. That s our central glory. And he, even at the end, he said that I may, it says here, a fellowship with suffering is being made to fall unto his death. And there may be something about me which, really my life is laid down as I may live.

Now you, there again you see you, these realities which you can see and then you can say God, I m expecting you to fulfill this in me. See you expect the Lord to fulfill it in you. That s a very high thing.

That your life may end in a death out of which life comes, whatever form that takes. That s very high. So not to be kind of preserve old age and get pensions and stuff. You know, in whatever form you take that your life may be involved in becoming a death that allows me life, may live.

You can t tell what forms it takes. They take a million different forms. And this is for, this is, this is the spirit in, the spirit who s in Jesus and we read, we read yesterday how, who through eternal spirit offered himself as father of the Lord.

So the spirit calls us to offer ourselves as father of the Lord. To me to fall unto his death. If by any means I m entertained at the resurrection of the dead. Now the resurrection of the dead was that the whole new, the new family.

The resurrection of the dead wasn t, doesn t say just this of my days you see. He s not saying resurrection of my life. He s got that long ago. When you re a sage you get resurrection of your body. So he s not talking about resurrection of the body here.

Resurrection of the dead, that this may be millions come alive. Millions come and have the Jesus life in them. And they have the eternal resurrection. That s what I die for. And I obtain that resurrection, not your resurrection.

Resurrection of the dead. As I was one myself. So ambition of the people may live again through you. So you see you, this, this, this, as the Lord works it on you, this quality of dedication comes to you.

Somewhere you fit. Don t try and make it. It s nothing to do with your, with your position, but that s not to do with, it s a spirit thing basically. But somehow you accept this as the meaning of life for you.

You can do that. You can say I accept this. I accept this turn in which these things of time and sense will have no hold on me. Beyond just convenience of using them for God. And I accept that I, somewhere my life will be involved and in this involvement whatever form it takes, they ll be coming out of this, the life of Christ to others by which they rise from the dead.