For me to live as Christ is not
a little option, or some airy reference to
some imagined reality, but the very heart of
the reality of that apostle, and needs to
become our heart, our reality, and that's the
subject for tonight.
Turn to the book of Colossians.
I have never before ever sought to explicate,
I've almost been keeping it as a private
secret, but I'll tell you this, nothing has
earned for me more reproach, more censure, more
opposition from Christians than my insistence upon the
Christ life.
It's almost like to cry, come down from
the cross and we'll believe you.
Come down from this presumptuous attitude, cats, that
for you to live as Christ, you sound
too much like for Brooklyn for us to
believe that.
You need to be where we are, live
and serve God in the same basis that
we are, out of your own humanity.
Then you'll not be a threatening alternative.
So can you understand that?
Especially a man whose marriage has been checkered,
I'm using the most discreet language, more likely
to say it's been a 40 year scandal,
and so many rush in with counsel.
If only you would do this, if only
you would do that, if only, only, if
you only act humanly, then the situation would
be resolved and you would be the marriage
at off.
But there's something in me, willing rather to
suffer the scandal of an unresolved marriage that
I should initiate out of my own life
of ability or wisdom, an answer.
Because the issue is not domestic compatibility, the
issue is the glory of God forever.
And if he wants to take 40 years
or more to bring his own answer, I'm
willing to wait on that and suffer the
reproach that is continually in our teeth because
of my prominence.
What?
You're a leader and your marriage is this,
yours is that?
How come?
Why don't you do, do, do, do?
Why don't you, you, you?
You understand folks?
I'm sharing private things because of my jealousy
for the life of God that needs to
be waited for and Paul sums up brilliantly
in a very great verse in chapter 3,
beginning with what if you then be risen
with Christ, all depending on those who have
first been crucified and buried with him, seek
those things which are above where Christ sits
on the right hand of God.
Set your affections on things above, not on
things upon the earth.
Isn't that remarkable?
The verbs of activation, of participation are quite
lucid and quite clear and yet we're called
to abide in Christ, dwell in Christ, his
life, and yet you seek, you set your
affections, you initiate you, but it's not you
independent of that life, it's you by that
life, for you are dead and your life
is hid with Christ in God.
When Christ who is your life shall appear,
then your marriage will become not a scandal
but an eternal praise to his glory.
When his life will appear, not when you
think it's time, not when you've had a
gutful of reproach or you're tired of the
strain, it's when his life will appear.
You can't come and fear his life.
You're dead until his life will appear.
And this is the whole nub and nexus
of the whole genius of apostolic reality, is
to wait upon the operation of that life.
It's an excruciating wait in which the synonym
for waiting is dying.
This is the heart of priestliness that waits.
And while you're waiting, you catch the reproach.
While you're waiting, there's a whole host of
critics who are living from their natural life
and succeeding admirably, whose marriages are showcase trophies
and are telling you what you ought to
be doing that you might be as they.
But why do you stubbornly resist?
Why do you insist upon waiting?
And so I say, for no other issue
have I suffered greater reproach than this insistence
upon being dead and hit with Christ.
But I tell you, dear saints, that when
his life is revealed, mamma mia, it was
worth waiting for.
So if you have any ambition, you need
to be seen, you need to be recognized,
you need to be admired, you're disqualified.
When he says dead, he means dead.
So this is a great maxim.
How shall I say it?
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear,
that is full of eschatological meaning, because in
his appearing and his actual second coming, we
shall be raised with him and appear with
him in glory.
But like every other eschatological promise, there's a
portent for a present application.
So any appearing of the Lord is the
issue of his glory.
And unless we're jealous for that glory, we'll
not be willing for the waiting and for
the dying until he appears.
Paul was willing.
The remarkable thing that Paul had ever and
always before him, an alternative, his own brilliance,
his own Talmudic and Judaic learning, his own
character, his own courage, his own erudition.
He could always have lapsed back and drawn
from this great source.
When Paul says, I am determined not to
know anything, but to Christ and him crucified,
he's declaring death on all of the options
that are continually available to him in the
natural, which had he availed himself, he would
have found a much greater acceptance among his
Jewish kinsmen.
The thing that vexed them so much with
Paul is that he was so ostensibly the
visible statement of the life of Christ.
If only he could have compromised, if only
he could have mixed a little bit of
the Judaic human life with the ultimate life,
they may have not been as vehement in
his death, but because he was so exclusively
the expression of that life that was so
totally unacceptable and threatening to them that their
conclusion was, this man is not fit to
live.
There's something about the life of Christ, however
much is the issue of glory, and we
rejoice in its expression, is equally an abomination
in the sight of the world.
You cannot read the book of Psalms and
not see the continual references in David to,
they are out after my life, they want
to extinguish my life, because to extinguish the
life of God, the life of David, is
to diminish the life of God.
The world hates God, hates his life, and
we need to understand that the word life
is much more than biological activity or energy,
although it's supremely that, it's infinite in its
power, and your glory all the more when
it comes out of your weakness.
You couldn't put two cents together, you could
hardly remember your own name, your tongue sticks
to the roof of your mouth, and yet
when that life flows, you are energized, as
you guys have had occasion to witness, and
maybe even now.
So I don't want to deprecate the issue
of its power, but I want also to
remind you that it includes much more.
The life of God is the nature of
God, it's the character of God, it's what
he is in himself.
That's why humility cannot be imitated, there's no
more counterfeit thing than to seek to be
self-effacing, humble, it's so clearly a fraud.
Because humility is not an affectation, humility is
what God is in himself.
And we hope to take the subject of
servanthood as not something that Jesus took upon
himself in the fulfillment of his calling as
the son of God, but it was the
expression of what is ever and always intrinsic
to God by nature.
God is by nature a servant, can you
believe that?
The creator is by nature a servant.
And the only way that we will express
that true servanthood is not by imitating it,
but by expressing it, when his life will
be revealed.
Know this also, that when his life will
be revealed, it will not always be to
your liking.
I don't know how many Jews I've insulted,
I don't know how many Christians I've insulted,
not because I'm a mean old guy, but
somehow when the Lord jabs and reaches in
a way that's unsuspecting, it's salutary, it's a
life-giving thing, they gasp, so it's not
that I'm cleverly employing devices of that kind,
it issues.
I'm often surprised if not astounded or astonished
what comes out of my mouth, but the
thing is I will never suppress it, because
it offends my sensibility or my moral standards.
That's why the greatest hindrance to the operation
of this life is your spirituality.
The image, your image of your spirituality, and
so long as you want to protect that,
you'll find yourself in conflict with the issue
of the operation of this life, because you
can't know how far God will go.
Remember Elijah taunting the false prophets of Baal?
Where is your God?
Maybe he's on the john.
What we're reading is a King James domesticated
version of the scripture, but the naked and
the original scriptures are quite insulting.
Where did he get that?
Was it because he's that kind of a
perverse character?
He got it by the same God who
said, build an altar and saturate it with
twelve barrels of water, I'll consume it by
fire.
If I've done these things according to your
wording, oh God, he cried, then now come
and show these people that you're God.
By the same God who gave him that
pattern is the same God who gave him
that insult.
We mustn't limit the Lord, because the Lord's
great admonition and injunction against Israel, you have
limited the Holy One of Israel.
And in my observation, 42 years in the
faith, the greatest limitation that comes from the
church is its own image of itself, its
own concern for its spirituality, its own self
-esteem and acceptance on the basis of how
it likes to perceive itself.
So long as that's a criterion, you'll find
yourself not expressing the life if the life
chooses to be insulting in any particular moment.
I think I've done more for Jews with
insult than with any accommodation or compliment.
They flew me in once to some place
to meet with a Jewish businessman who's supposed
to be quite an opinionated and informed man
who has been reducing the local believers to
dust, and now he will have met his
match with me.
And so we met in the restaurant, and
he was continually blabbing, I was quietly eating,
I had not said a word.
Finally we came to the end of the
time, he says, Have you nothing to say?
I said, All I can say is that
I find this the most expensive lunch I've
ever eaten.
My silence was more important than my answer.
Another time a woman brought her Jewish husband
to a meeting, I saw his face as
we came to the end, turned off.
But lo and behold, I was taken out
to eat, and there they were at the
same restaurant.
So I took my plate, knife and fork,
and I moved right up to his table.
And we had a conversation, he was a
lawyer, a philanthropist, a humanist, telling me of
all of his good works and what he
had done for Israel, that if there's a
God, surely he recognizes his virtues.
And we went on like that, and finally
at the end when we stood apart and
shook hands, I said something like, So long
as I have breath in my body, and
have opportunity, I will contend against your self
-satisfaction.
For if you continue in it, you will
surely make yourself a candidate for hell.
The guy drew back.
One statement out of the life of God
will not return to him void.
But will you make that statement?
Or will you find it offensive?
Because you're more concerned to find approval and
acceptance among Jews, and not to excite their
disapproval.
Because you need that acceptance.
Why?
Because you're not yet quite dead, and hid
with Christ and God.
What's the Latin word for an absolutely essential
condition?
The sine qua non of the apostolic life
is to be dead.
Only death will free you from that inordinate
need to be recognized, to be admired, to
be approved, if not only by others, but
equally by yourself.
Death is that complete separation from that need,
where you can suffer reproach, indifference, rejection.
It's all the same.
And then, his life will be revealed when
he chooses.
And when it will be revealed, it will
be revealed unto glory.
For it's never given as an expedient.
It's never given to ease our distress or
our embarrassment, or to take us out of
a situation.
It's to serve his purpose.
It's ultimate.
It's the issue of his glory.
Can you imagine a whole church living like
this?
And living like this consistently?
Not just in the great issues that are
before it, but in the everyday issues that
are before it.
Because, listen, who's capable of being a father?
Who's capable of being a husband or a
wife?
Who's capable of being a brother in the
church?
Who's capable of being a minister?
Is there any aspect of that for which
we are called, for which we are sufficient
in ourselves?
Maybe yes, in a get-by way, but
the issue is not get-by.
The issue is the glory of God forever.
So we need to consciously desist from just
falling into responses and answers that are mediated
out of our own humanity.
Always there to be drawn upon, and convenient,
familiar, trustworthy, tested.
But to trust the life is the risk.
It's a death.
If it will come, when it will come,
what expression will it take at that time?
So it's a continual reiteration of death and
resurrection.
What happened to the waters today establishes for
all time the reality.
But the reiteration of that reality, the reckoning
of yourself dead, is the tension of faith
into which every baptized believer believes when he's
continuing to live.
For every issue before him is a choosing
of reckoning dead himself, dead alive unto God,
or falling back again on that very available
human sufficiency.
Okay.
I don't want to rush this.
We want to, what's the word, dwell or
juriate in this.
Let us sink in.
This is not a little patsy icing on
the cake.
This is really the cake.
So, if you want to look back at
the chapter one of Colossians, such a great
book.
How come great?
How come eloquent?
How come deep?
Because the text itself issued out of the
life.
The remarkable thing about Paul is that he
never ever dreamed that any of his epistles,
merely written to affect the issues of the
life of the church of his time, would
one day become part of the Holy Writ,
and be considered as valid and as holy
as any aspect of the Bible.
So that Paul's writing is completely, what shall
I say, spontaneous, unselfconscious.
And for that reason all the more glorious.
And yet the beauty of it, the depth
of it, the richness of it, you don't
feel a man who's deliberating saying, huge generations
will be pondering what I'm now going to
write.
This has got to be so expertly expressed.
It's just a man responding to the demands
of his apostolic life, giving answer to the
church out of the grit of the realities
that it has to face, and in that
answer, out of the life, making statements that
have illuminated and encouraged and inspired believers of
all generations, including our own.
The text itself issuing out of the life.
And so the scholars still debate whether the
book of Ephesians is written by Paul, because
it doesn't bear the conspicuous marks of his
authorship.
It seems perhaps someone else had adopted his
name.
In those days there were schools of Paul,
and maybe some disciples had composed a book
and attributed it to him, because they don't
see the same necessary evidences.
But what compels Paul to write always the
same?
Do you speak always the same?
Do you sound always the same?
Can Paul express himself one way in Colossians,
another way in the Philippians epistle, and another
way in Ephesians, as the life is expressed?
I believe that.
Paul is so much the expression of that.
So in chapter one, talking about the redemption
in his blood in verse 14, even the
forgiveness of sins, who is the image of
the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.
For by him were all things created that
are in heaven and that are in earth,
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or
dominions, or principalities or powers.
All things were created by him and for
him.
How does he know that?
How does he have so incisive a grasp
of the genius of the faith, as the
principal apostle?
Because what he's communicating is not just mere
opinion, this is definitive statement of the faith
for every generation, and it's written as artlessly
and unselfconsciously as a man who is just
dictating a recipe for something.
His statements are an astonishment.
His life is an astonishment.
His courage is an astonishment.
He faces every threat, whether it comes from
Jews, whether the vexations of the church, whether
in shipwreck or beatings, with the same magnanimity,
the same grace, the same life.
Because for Paul, for me to live is
Christ.
In him I live and move and have
my being.
I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet
not I.
So we mustn't look upon Paul as some
aberration.
How curious that a man has found this
distinctive pattern good for him.
No, we need to look upon Paul as
the paradigm for all the church.
What else is an apostle?
What else is the chief apostle, but not
only the one who foments and sets forth
the classic doctrines of the faith, but is
himself the very exploitation, the embodiment and the
expression.
He's the foundation.
So therefore we need to study, approve, agree
and desire to come into the same reality.
And it does not mean that you're going
to sound like some mock imitation of Paul.
You will be distinctly yourself.
You'll speak with a Brooklyn accent or a
French or whatever it is or the uniqueness
of your personality.
But what issues through that is not of
yourself.
Neither your thought nor the expression.
And it needs to come forth because God
has uniquely intended it.
So, all things are created by him and
for him.
He's before all things and by him all
things consist.
He's the head of the body, the church,
who's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in all things he might have the
preeminence.
If we lapse into ourselves and speak out
of our own humanity because we're afraid of
the failure, we're faced with a new predicament
we've never been called upon to speak like
this before a congregation of this size or
a situation this critical and rather than take
the risk that his life would be made
available we rather opt for the security of
speaking out of our own religious and human
understanding and well-meaning intention.
And you know what?
People will find that acceptable.
You'll be saved from embarrassment.
You'll be acknowledged, but you'll have missed the
glory.
I was a seminary student for two or
three years in the Lutheran seminary and we
had a weekly chapel service.
I don't remember a single speaking either from
faculty or administrator in three years and yet
every one of those speakings were biblical.
Everyone knew the day in which they would
be called upon.
They had weeks and months to prepare themselves
and did so to the hilt.
Why?
Because their great concern was speaking before not
only the student body, but their own colleagues
who are theologians and so they have to
be letter perfect and they were so established
out of their own minds and will that
however biblical the message was, it was not
life-giving.
There was no room for the Lord because
man was too jealous for his own reputation
and acceptance than to take the risk of
trusting God in the spontaneity of the moment
that the Lord would form his own word,
his own expression that life might go forth.
What's the word for that, saints?
The word for that is religion.
That's religion.
Religion is the activity of men well-meaning,
well-intended, biblically Bible-employing but falling short
of the glory because it issues from and
has at its end not the glory of
God, but the advantage of men the acceptance
of men.
It's powerful.
Who could there be that resists it?
Who can survive the seminary environment and obtain
tenure and security as a professor of theology
if you're not playing the game?
If you dare take the risks of resurrection,
you'll come quickly to the attention of your
colleagues and you'll find yourself in an abrasive
situation in which they're looking a stance upon
you critically because you're upsetting the apple cart.
You're establishing an option that is threatening.
The resurrection life is despised.
And the church, let alone the world and
the psalmists are full as I've said they
are after my life.
They cannot abide my life because my life
is the life of God.
And if they can extinguish it through crucifying
me, they think that they have nullified Him.
So we need to be jealous for that
life because it's all-sufficient, glorious for it
pleased the Father that in Him should all
fullness dwell.
So how shall all the fullness of the
Gentiles come in?
Except by this fullness that dwells in Him
and which we access when we are in
Him.
Because what phrase is more reiterated by Paul
than the simple phrase in Christ?
Where else do you read that?
Peter doesn't refer to it like that.
If at all.
I don't know of any other apostolic writer
but Paul, I don't know how many times
you can count it in Christ, in Him,
in, we'll see it here, in, in, in,
in, in.
When he says in, he means in.
That there's a reality, there's a realm of
reality of an ultimate kind reserved in one
place only, in Christ, for those who are
in Him.
And dwell in Him and live in Him
and through Him and unto Him and for
Him.
There's a fullness.
There's no situation however unpredictable or demanding for
which His life will not be sufficient.
And yet He may not choose to answer
and leave you with your face sticking out
embarrassed.
What?
You've been a believer that long and you
can't answer this predicament, that question?
And it's not in me.
There's a wonderful example in Watchman Nee.
He was on his way walking past the
home of a believer who needed to be
encouraged in the faith, who's been going through
great trials.
And indeed, out of his own understanding of
Scripture, he could have brought that comfort.
So he came to the man's door and
raised his arm to knock and his arm
went dead.
He could no more knock than to turn
the world over.
The life had gone out of his arm
and out of his body.
Why?
Because the life of God was not in
bringing that word at that time.
Have you ever experienced that?
It's not comfortable saints.
Just when we think we should have something
from God because listen, our reputation is up
for grabs right now.
People are looking to us with expectancy and
there you are bereft without answer, without ability.
You're like a dead man.
But unless you're willing for that you'll forfeit
the great glory.
It's the suffering saints.
Faith is a suffering.
Trust is a suffering.
Waiting and dying is a suffering.
The only reason you'll bear it is that
when his life is revealed, it's revealed unto
glory.
Because in that life is all the fullness.
Not only for an answer but for the
character of God, the nature of God, the
sweetness of the Lord, the beauty of his
holiness.
I'd much rather forfeit trying to be a
nice guy and then look upon as some
kind of, I don't know what, ogre that
my sweetness when it comes is his.
I cannot boast of it, take credit for
it.
If there's any flavor of Christ, it's his
life.
It's what's intrinsic to that life.
That all-encompassing life.
So I'm grateful that people who have known
me over the years say, finally in your
42nd year I'm seeing a tenderness that was
not there before.
I said, oh praise God.
It's not by any self-conscious intention on
my part.
In fact, I'm all the more delighted to
hear it when I'm not aware of it.
Because self-conscious spirituality is our undoing.
So let his life have its working.
Paul prevailed that Christ be formed in you.
And it's not an overnight quickie.
And until he's formed in you, you're going
to exhibit other things that are embarrassing.
But as it's formed and comes forth it's
the very fragrance of Christ.
It's the knowledge of him in every place.
Something of the substance, the spirit, the quality
of that uniqueness of the life of God
that was raised from the dead and has
ascension glory.
Somehow that life was passed through crucifixion suffering,
takes on its marks, its coloration its experience,
was raised from the dead in the uniqueness
of resurrection and ascended to the throne and
it was that life poured out by the
spirit on the day of Pentecost.
It's the sum and substance of all for
which he has passed as son, both in
his suffering and in his glory.
To have an option like that and to
discard it and choose to live from our
natural life is hardly short of insult.
It's presumption, what shall we say, it's impertinence
that I insist upon living out of my
humanity so I can count on that rather
than take the risk of waiting upon his
life and yet we have that freedom to
choose that option for Paul there was no
option I'm crucified, it's no longer I that
live I've determined not to know so easy
for me to know.
My mind is very accessible to knowledge, there
are things of a sophisticated kind that are
always at my fingertips if I would but
condescend to it.
Now listen you dear saints if the enemy
can have your mind he's got you and
though you're no longer poring over what's the
magazine, sexy magazine Playboy or sport magazines or
whatever it was before or other material if
he can still occupy your thoughts still engage
your mind as your thoughts then it's nothing
for him in a moment even to move
from what seems to be legitimate religious or
spiritual thoughts into realms of thought that will
shock and embarrass you so what's our safety
that we're dead even to our own thought
let the wicked man forsake his way Isaiah
55 and the unrighteous man his thoughts, his
own thoughts and I will receive him sayeth
the Lord well I always thought unrighteous thoughts
must be perverse sickly, sensual, earthly, carnal, no
if the enemy cannot engage you at that
level you've graduated, he'll engage you with spiritual
thoughts so long as he will engage you
and have your mind to race and to
run as your own operation to forsake your
thought is death because our esteem, our self
esteem our appearance has so much to do
with our ability to think and to be
clever, to be original, to say the last
thing to be forsaken is the operation of
our minds but if you'll forfeit, forsake and
ask him for his thoughts which are higher
than our thoughts he'll give you something else
to deliberate upon and you'll be uniquely different
so maybe I'm an extremist in this regard
but it's my position so verse 27 famous
familiar scripture to whom God would make known
what is the riches of the glory of
the mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ
in you the hope of glory whom we
preach warning every man and teaching every man
in all wisdom that we may present every
man perfect in Christ Jesus not alongside, not
drawing occasionally as the moment may require but
in, in abiding and dwelling that you might
not, it's not an exaggeration to say for
me to live is Christ, we're careful to
insist upon this in the place of ministry
but when we get home after three months
of giving ourselves out incessantly and seeing the
glory of God being made manifest we relax
and don't feel that it's imperative now as
much to be in Christ as home as
it was at the University of Bielefeld or
Geneva or wherever we were before and then
we fall back again into our own humanity
we fail to maintain the consistency of abiding
in Christ thinking that it's only a provision
for ministry but it's rather than a provision
for all life so it needs to be
a consistent abiding and dwelling a consistent awareness
that for in me is no good thing
at all, without him I can do nothing,
I have no value when you open your
eyes in the morning your first breath is
his blood the renewing of his life communion,
I was a dead man, Lord I can't
even open, as I said the other day,
spiritual chambers, I have not even the stamina
the spiritual energy to enter into your devotions
until your life has first been renewed and
revived in me by the taking again of
your body and blood, but in my opinion
nothing less nor other than the power of
the life of God reiterated and renewed every
day in eating and drinking at today's very
commencement the very infrequency of our coming to
the Lord's table in the church today once
a month once a year is a statement
of how little we see the necessity for
his life and indeed in most church services
what do you see a human religious production
from the preaching, to the singing to the
fundraising, to every activity it's a human phenomenon
we had a relationship in Brooklyn, you can
pray for it it's momentarily snapped, why?
because I brought a caustic word that the
wife of the pastor and the other leading
spiritual woman found so offensive that it parted
the relationship, but it's a congregation smack dab
in the heart of a growing Jewish community
in a certain neighborhood of Brooklyn and the
Lord had given me a precious relationship with
this Pentecostal French, Italian, Canadian pastor and I
listened to him one day speaking out of
Hebrews on the rest of God and we're
walking to the restaurant after the service and
I turned to him on the sidewalk and
I said, did you speak the message on
the rest of God, out of the rest
of God the guy staggered and choked and
spluttered, because he had not he'd spoken out
of his own incessant drivenness to succeed and
so the conversation continued over the Italian lunch
table, the waiter came to bring us coffee,
I said, let's go to your place I
said to his wife, you make a good
cup of coffee I knew the Lord wanted
something more that could not be publicly expressed
and over his own table in his t
-shirt he acknowledged that there came a moment
when he was preaching that morning when the
Lord said, let go let go of your
notes, let go of your trust your confidence,
take a risk and let me be, I
said what did you do in that moment,
nothing he said I continued on, I was
afraid to let go, because ever since the
beginning of my ministry, I had a Pentecostal
uncle who said, you don't have what it
takes, you'll never make it, you'll never be
a success, I'm haunted by the drivenness and
necessity of proving myself and performing it, I
was afraid to let go he cried, and
that scene is replicated a hundred thousand, ten
hundred thousand times over in churchianity throughout the
world of people listening to correct biblical messages
that lacks the life, because men are unwilling
to risk and trust ok, chapter
3, verse 2 Paul speaks of the riches
of the full assurance of understanding to the
acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of
the father of Christ in whom are hid
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge so
what condition can we meet however unforeseen, however
unpracticed, however unknown in our experience in which
his wisdom and knowledge will not suffice if
he chooses, this I say lest any man
should beguile you with enticing words speak action
to the flesh with you in the spirit
and so forth observing your steadfastness of faith
as you have therefore received Jesus Christ the
Lord, so walk ye in him if you
remove these references in Christ and in him
from Paul, you remove Paul if we only
sink into an attitude of casual condescension that
this is a stylistic device, this is Pauline
rhetoric it's a phrase that he uses, we
will have lost the game, this is the
issue, in Christ that's where the wisdom and
the treasure is to be found that's where
the courage is, that's where the humility is
that's where the sweetness is, that's where the
power is in him, in him, in him
but if you're in yourself you forfeit that
prospect, but rooted and built up in him,
this repetition this insistence, established in the faith
you have been thought about it with thanksgiving,
lest any man should spoil you through philosophy,
faith, deceit and the tradition of man, and
the rudiments of the world but after Christ,
for in him dwelleth all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in
him which is the head of all principality
and power, in whom also you are circumcised
in the circumcision made without hands, and coming
off the body of the sins of the
flesh, by the circumcision of Christ bearing with
him, in baptism wherewith also you are risen
with him, through the faith of the operation
of God, who hath raised him from the
dead and you being dead in your sins,
the uncircumcision of the flesh, as he put
it together with him having forgiven you all
trespasses I'm just reading this by faith, I
don't have any clever commentary, I don't have
any commentary maybe in a certain sense it's
in a realm beyond bringing anything additional but
just to dwell on the weight of these
statements, as only Paul knows them in the
depth of his own apostolic experience in life,
and warning the believer not to lapse back
into philosophy not to lapse back into your
humanity not to play the game that is
acceptable to men, to ruthlessly distance yourself, let
alone to make that a dependency, and to
be confident and trust in the life, in
which is all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily because you're buried with him in baptism,
wherein also you are risen with him, through
the faith of the operation of God who
hath raised him from the dead.
I would suppose the operation of the power
that raised Jesus from the dead this is
the single distinctive event in the history of
the world is the power that raised Jesus
from the dead we can't even begin to
estimate, it's much more than it's voltage, it's
the primal act of God, the impartation of
that life, that indestructible life that broke every
fetter of death a death that was so
apparent, so depressing that the two disciples on
the road to Emmaus were dejected and crestfallen,
and Jesus had to tease them and say
why are your faces so fallen, why are
you looking so dejected, what are you estranged
around here, don't you know that this Jesus
of Nazareth, a prophet, mighty in word and
deed who did great works, was taken by
the wicked hands of men and slain, and
we've seen his cadaver if you've ever seen
the great Holy Ghost masterpiece of the crucified
Christ that is in Colmar, France you haven't
seen our true depiction of the crucified Christ
you've never saw a more ugly, gnarled twisted,
broken piece of death than the figure of
Jesus, you wonder are you looking at a
man or some animal, his bones are so
distended his feet are, his jaw is agape,
the lips are white, there's things impaled in
his flesh from his flagellation, it's an utter
picture of the desolation of death can anything
come out of that?
Not just amelioration not just resuscitation, but when
you walk around this larger than life painting
in Colmar, France as I've had the privilege
to do, the other side is the resurrection
and in every place in the body of
the crucified side, where there's been impaled, stricken,
pierced beams of light and glory are pouring
out as Jesus breaks forth out from the
tomb and the Roman centurions get a skill
to guide him are toppling over, their helmets
falling off the artist had captured this moment
and so the answer to Simon's question something
came in that moment in the power of
God, as powerful and perhaps, what shall I
say, eclipsing in significance in terms of his
eternal glory, even the initial acts of creation,
it's God, very God in his essential power,
defeating death through life and it's that life
and that moment vivendi, modus vivendi that is
our enablement but how many are availing ourselves
will you do it before 4,000 people?
and when I spoke the holocaust message before
2,000 people after 5 days of fasting
for one having spoken on the holocaust I
myself suggested this subject and they gave it
to me at this big charismatic full gospel
conference and I was brought into my room
upon arrival and I had a table from
window to window and I strew out my
pieces of envelope, my papers, my scraps my
articles, accumulated for years waiting for the first
occasion somehow to assemble and make a statement
and when I saw the breadth of all
of this I staggered, who's capable of summing
up and finding the essence of this issue
to communicate in such a conference where the
tape of the message will circulate worldwide and
subsequently become a book and so I didn't
eat that morning and I was at that
table for 8 hours, no lunch, no dinner
and I realized I'm not to eat and
for 5 days I fasted for that message,
came back every evening from the conference, picked
up my yellow legal pad, looked at my
bare outline it was pitiful and it was
dead I couldn't add a word, waiting for
the lord to embellish this skeleton of a
framework until the final Saturday morning came when
it was time to speak and the man
with whom I was to share the speaking
occasion his wife had a baby 4 o
'clock that morning and he was required to
fly out, so I was given the entire
speaking part and stood up when my time
came with my yellow pad you never saw
a more pathetic figure talk about death and
the heck of it was, I read it
I read it in a monotone and a
man who was used to liberty of utterance
and unction, it was not there to be
had the lord kept me in such a
place of death that all there was was
this mechanical, monotonous reading of a skeleton of
an outline before 2000 people and 200 messianic
Jews who looked at me at that time
as being the principal mouthpiece among the Jewish
believers, and here comes this disappointing, stunted, mechanical
monotonous, red presentation I sat down there was
a dead silence, well it's clear that silence
was the statement of massive human disappointment and
you're eating this every moment death is not
a little rhetorical word death is an experience,
we suffer multiple deaths, I still remember the
death Reggie was there, I was sitting on
that platform and listening to the silence that
clearly condemned me and the evil one at
my elbows you really missed it, look at
this not a whimper, not an amen not
a sign of anything, and while I'm waiting
there two men are coming down the main
principal aisle of that auditorium and beckoning me
to the apron of this platform, and one
brother I know is Ern Baxter's young man,
he said, Art, this man with me is
a Jewish prophet, he has a word for
you from the Lord, I said, oh yes
he said, yes, thus sayeth the Lord you
have missed the mind of Christ you have
done incalculable damage to the body of Christ
you need to go back to the microphone
and recant your message, and it was like
a knife into the heart with the hilt
being twisted, how would you like to experience
that, you manby-pandy sissies nice for you
to observe but don't want to be the
participant why am I taking pains to elaborate
all this, not to make myself a focus
of attention, but because I know that to
one degree or another, before this age concludes,
you will be faced with ultimate issues of
this kind, and I want to encourage you
by the experiences through which I have passed
that there's a death that's really a death,
and you have to taste it it comes
as humiliation, is there anything more painful than
to disappoint Christians is there anything more doubly
painful than to disappoint Jewish Christians, who look
to you especially as the leading mouthpiece, and
all you've brought come up with is this
little stunted mechanical marathon and now you're being
accused, even in speaking it of having made
a mistake and done grievous damage to the
body of Christ, exactly the same words that
I received in Washington D.C. when I
spoke on UNED for Christ's sake another Jewish
prophet, where did they come from to tell
me exactly the same thing with a knife
in my heart and he might have been
right that's the heck of it you dear
saints you can't say, hey, I'm a Catholic,
I've got a history with God I've been
led by the spirit, you may have been
until then, but what keeps you from erring
five days of fasting is no guarantee of
anything, he may well be right and unless
you're willing to consider the prospect that he's
right you yourself are in danger of becoming
false, and so there's an anguish I went
from Washington D.C. to Denmark and lived
in Inge's country for months and the Lord
had not said, forget it, don't be anxious
you obeyed me, that was my word a
complete silence, you want to be a bearer
of the word of God in the last
days you'll be so through a baptism of
fire to handle the word of God God
is no cheapie, he'll test you and you'll
pass through humiliations of this kind that he's
not quick to alleviate and he'll allow you
to languish in it like a dog licking
his wounds because this guy was not content
just to accuse me in Washington D.C.
long distance phone calls to Denmark telegrams, you
need to use the voice magazine and to
nullify the statement you made because your statement
on unit for price was offensive but one
day, three months or so, I don't know
how much longer I was up there in
that little loft in Denmark saying Lord I'll
never again want to speak to you who
am I?
I'm a high school teacher, where do I
come off to make major addresses and I've
had it, forget it, and I'm not qualified
and look at the debacle of this situation
at a time like that I was reading
Watchman Me a spiritual man and I came
to a reference where he uses exactly the
same verses that I had cited in that
message in Washington and he goes on to
say if you miss this by the spirit
it is the greatest source of offense and
all of a sudden the burden was lifted
it just went off of me as if
you were right and be at peace you
have served the Lord, though you have paid
for it in an anguish of soul until
now and so he gave me that message
at the holocaust theater you have missed the
mind of what you have done you need
to recant your message right now over the
microphone this guy might well be right and
before I could go further all of a
sudden a shriek Rachel will document what I'm
saying if anything I am understating what happened
that afternoon in the 1970s, a shriek a
cry, a breaking, a bellowing like nothing I
have ever before heard or have heard since
the deepest repentant expression in the body, people
were toppling out of their seats the message
was a delayed action bomb and at the
very moment where I was excruciatingly having to
face the issue, I had missed the Lord
here was the confirmation that it was the
Lord and it was his word and was
now having its effect breaking and crying at
such depth as I have not before ever
seen somebody sent up water for foot washing
and we were washing one another's feet and
throwing the wet towels out into the congregation
and people were putting them in their bodies
and receiving healing it went on until two
o'clock in the afternoon it was a
historic occasion, we went home with that cassette
tape in our hands like a pulsating thing
that has subsequently become the book which is
now in a third edition in German, French,
Bulgarian, Russian Hebrew is it Hebrew?
it's translated but not published that book is
yet a potential blockbuster, Mike Snyder who was
the first one to publish it has an
esteem for that book as one of the
most epical, potent statements ever made about the
Jewish history's condition of the issues of the
faith represented in the Holocaust that has ever
come to print and I believe that his
estimation is a true one born out of
that fast born out of that excruciating context
of feeling yourself having missed the occasion disappointing
many and eating the death of that terrible
silence until the breakthrough of the cries came
forth will God go that far?
stretch out his servants to breaking allow them
to eat death and suffer the humiliation of
it and not being able to explain and
even the humiliation of the prospect that the
so called Jewish prophet might well be right
and that he has to live in detention,
always no matter how much he's prepared himself
no matter how much he's sought God, no
matter how much he thinks his own heart
is earnest but sincere, he can be in
error he can be deceived, he can miss
it and he has always to live with
that possibility that indeed he can and will
that's a suffering saint, the word of God
is not a chibi it's an event and
it requires this matrix of suffering to bring
this forth verse 19 of chapter 2 not
holding the head from which all the body
by joints and bands having nourishment minister increases
with the increase of God wherefore if you
be dead with Christ why is there an
if?
because it's not automatic you could have gone
down even into baptism but without any intention
of dying you just wanted to fulfill a
religious ordinance you felt it would be an
advantage but you never intended to forsake your
life but if you went down unto death
if you let go, if you forsook any
intention for yourself or the future if you're
willing to be a candidate for the kinds
of things that I'm describing it was indeed
a death from the rudiments of the world
so Paul says don't be subject to its
ordinances about touching tasting, handling the commandments and
doctrines of men which have a show of
wisdom and will worship in humility in honor
to the satisfying of the flesh this is
religion, always a seductive prospect so attractive and
you'll be applauded for it men will pat
you on the back and you'll be honored
and acknowledged because you're on the ground that
they themselves occupy what they're saying is come
down from the cross cats and we'll believe
you come down from this presumptuous thought that
for you to live as Christ that you
could have the same essential reality that distinguished
Paul and that you're willing to wait for
that in your marriage and suffer the reproach
not that it should finally be a reconciliation
unto domestic satisfaction or the resumption of your
sex life but unto him a glory forever
come down cats, live like us serve like
us but your insistence is an offense it's
the same cry that came to Jesus come
down from the cross come down from this
place of faith that is jealous to insist
upon remaining and dwelling in him until his
life is revealed if you then be risen
with Christ chapter 3 coming full circle seek
those things which are above where Christ sits
on the right hand of God set your
affection on things above not on things on
the earth you couldn't even begin to have
contemplations of this kind above would have no
meaning unless you're out from that place of
death for you are dead and your life
is hid with Christ in God when Christ
who is our life shall appear then shall
you appear with him in glory when Christ
who is our life