In this sermon, the preacher begins by discussing man in his innocence and perfection, as demonstrated by Jesus Christ. However, the focus of the sermon shifts to man as he is, highlighting the reality of human sin and failure. The preacher emphasizes the importance of understanding what happens when man fails in sin and how it affects the human spirit. He then references Ephesians 3:14, where Paul prays for believers to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit in their inner being, so that Christ may dwell in their hearts. The sermon concludes with the invitation for listeners to surrender their whole humanity to Christ and experience a revolutionary transformation.

Up till now, in these hours that we've spent together, I've been very kind to you. I've talked about man in his innocency, man as God had created him to be, man in his perfection as demonstrated in the person of the Lord Jesus. And that's left you sitting very comfortable. Hasn't hurt you a bit. I'm not quite so sure that today what I have to say will be as comfortable, nor maybe just as acceptable. Because I want today not to talk about man as God intended him to be, nor as man was demonstrated in his perfection in the person of Jesus Christ, but man as he is. That is to say, man as you are. And this will be rather a different picture. And to understand man as he is, or man as you are, we need to understand what happened when man fell into sin. Excuse this brief interlude. Might I borrow your watch? Remember that man was created by God for God. To be inhabited by God for God. To be a habitation of God through the Spirit. For remember that God's purpose in redemption is the restoration of man to his true humanity. When you are converted, when you are born again, this is not something new that God does for you. This is not an afterthought that God has added to his original intention. Your conversion, your new birth is designed to restore you to your original condition, from which, because of sin, man has fallen. So that the description given in the Bible of the true Church of Jesus Christ on the way to heaven is the picture of man restored to his true manhood. And when Paul to the Ephesians says, speaking of the Church that it is an habitation of God through the Spirit, he is simply speaking of a fellowship of men and women who at least partially have been restored to that supreme purpose for which they were created and now have been redeemed. To be a habitation of God through His Spirit. Anything less than that falls short of the purpose for which the Gospel is to be preached. So man was created to be inhabited by God for God. That he might express himself in terms of man's behavior. That the royal residence within the royal residence, the Holy Spirit within the human spirit, might have complete unchallenged access to the area of human personality, the music room of his soul, and there play upon the console of his mind, emotions, and will, that all that God is might be demonstrated, amplified to the world in which he was placed in terms of the behavior of his body, which is to be an instrument of righteousness. So all true righteousness has its absolute and sole origin in God Himself. There is no quality of righteousness that does not have its absolute origin in God. Any supposed righteousness that has not its origin in God is a pseudo-righteousness. It is a simulated righteousness. God Himself is righteousness. And righteousness in man is what God is in terms of man's behavior. God expressing Himself through the individual whom He created to be the human vehicle of His divine life. So that righteousness in you is what God is expressed through you. For God declared to man that only by virtue what God is in man could man function as man was created to function. What the oil is to a lamp, so the Holy Spirit is to the human spirit. And when the oil runs out, the light goes out. And when the Holy Spirit is formatted, that quality of life that alone makes man man ceases to be present. And man ceases to be man as God intended man to be. Now if this is true, that it is only God in you and in me that enables us to function as man, then quite obviously if I love God and want to be the kind of man that God made me to be, my love to Him can only be expressed by an attitude of dependence on Him. For only what He is in me enables me to be what He intended me to be. So my love to all will be expressed by my dependence on. Now this was the faith-love relationship that existed between man in his innocency in Adam and God. A faith-love relationship whereby Adam, recognizing the nature of his faith, that only what God was in him could enable him to function, took every step in an attitude of total dependence, faith, that demonstrated his love to all. And he recognized that in the day that he would lose God, he would lose everything. That was man in his innocence. But then the preacher came along, conducting a special series of evangelistic meetings. His name was Lucifer. And as a result of this evangelistic campaign that offered to man total emancipation from a theocratic tyranny, Adam was converted. And I want to talk to you for a moment about the conversion of Adam. Maybe you didn't know that he was converted, but he was. And when you and I are converted, in point of fact, although conversion is a legitimate term as it is used in the Bible, our conversion is a re-conversion. For our conversion is a repudiation of the Adamic decision. Conversion is a total change of mind. Conversion involves the fact that you have now taken a completely opposite attitude in a certain situation. I want to introduce you for a moment to the preacher. Turn to the book of Isaiah, chapter 14. The book of Isaiah. Pronounce the English way, of course. Chapter 14 and verse 12. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground which did weaken the nation? For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high. Where's the emphasis? I will ascend. I will exalt. I will sit. I will ascend. I will be like. Here is the I specialist at its very source. This was the fall of Lucifer. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit. This is the demon spirit that now still works in the children of disobedience, producing the spirit of this age. The spirit of this godless, Christless world. I will be like the most high. I will demonstrate that I can be what I am by virtue of what I am and not by virtue what he, God, is. Now that is the basic principle of sin. It is the satanic spirit of total independence. That is sin. And it was this philosophy that Satan perpetrated in Adam. God had said, Lose me, lose everything that makes you man. In the day that you will eat thereof, you will die. In the day that at the place of choice, where you demonstrate your love towards by your dependence on the tree in the garden, in the day that at that point, the tristing place of this, our faith-love relationship, in the day that at that point you repudiate your dependence upon me, you will forfeit what I am and losing what I am, you will become lifeless, you will die. The devil came along and said, As God said that you are what you are by virtue of what he is, that if you lose him you'll lose everything. It's a lie. It isn't true. He's keeping you in a theocratic tyranny. You are what you are by virtue of what you are. As I am what I am by virtue of what I am. And you, like myself, can be like God. If only you will have the moral courage to step out of this subservience and be your own size, throw out your own chest, stand on your own two feet, and recognize your total independence and self-sufficiency, you will not die. You can lose God and lose nothing. You can be morally adult without the need of being spiritually alive. You have an adequate capacity within you to be good without God. This was the satanic lie. And Adam believed. And he died by faith. For faith is acting upon what you believe. And he acted upon what he believed from the lips of a liar. And died by faith, stepped out of life into death, out of dependence into independence. And what happened? God said, In the day that you eat thereof, you will surely die. Did he die in the day that he ate thereof? Not physically. The next morning when he awakened, the skies were still blue, the sun was still shining, the birds were still singing. Physically he remained alive. He could think, he could react with his emotions, he could exercise his will. Body, soul and spirit, he still functioned. Physically alive, soulishly active, the animal part of him remained. But in the day that he repudiated his dependence on, he forfeited the presence of God. And God had, so to say, gone to the master switch and thrown it. And withdrew the Holy Spirit from the human spirit. And when the light went out, the light went out. And man's soul was plunged into the abysmal darkness of a fallen humanity. Uninhabited by God. And ever since Adam fell into sin, every child born in this world has been born in the Adamic pattern, since he fell into sin. Death interests us, isn't it? And death is simply the absence of life. Death does not destroy life. Death is the consequence when life has been destroyed. Darkness does not destroy light. Darkness is simply the consequence of light being destroyed. Death and darkness are simply the consequences of lifelessness and lightlessness. And Satan is spoken of in the Bible as being the one who has the power of death. The power of death simply because he can introduce that which forbids life. His is the kingdom of darkness because his is the power to infiltrate that which prevents life. And when Satan does his dirty work in the human soul, he prevents life and light and produces death and darkness. That's his kingdom. Godlessness, which is lifelessness, which is lightlessness. Death and darkness. And that was the consequence of man's fall into sin. Now that in itself would have been bad enough, for that in practice would have reduced simply man to the animal. Let me just interject this comment. Even in the absence of God, though it would reduce him in terms of behavior to the animal, this did not in itself simply reduce man to pure animal. Because there was still within him that which God had created, the human spirit. Empty now of that content for which it was created, but still latently, inherently there. To illustrate what I mean, supposing you were to hang a number of potatoes from the ceiling of this auditorium. How much less light would you get from those potatoes than from all these lights without electricity? Well you'd say no less light from a potato than from a lamp not lit. Then I might say to you, why don't you then hang potatoes? They'd be much cheaper than lamps. Well you'd say don't be so stupid. The fact that they don't produce light any more than a lamp without electricity is not the point. You can switch a lamp on but you can't switch a potato on. Now that is the essential difference between the animal man and pure animal. In behavior he'll behave as an animal and as we shall see in a moment, worse than an animal. But it does not reduce him to pure animal because there is still inherent within him the capacity to be relit, to be switched on, or what the Bible calls regenerate, restored to his original condition by the receiving of that quality of life for which he was created, by the restoration of the Holy Spirit. That would not have been so bad if man had simply been reduced in terms of behavior to the animal. But something infinitely worse happened than just that. For having forfeited the life content for which he was created, God, through the Spirit, having ceased to be a habitation of God through the Spirit, his soul, his human personality, was left available with vacant possession. The music room was wide open to any intruder. And it was at this point that Satan, having produced godlessness, lifelessness, lifelessness, intruded in the human soul, invaded the human soul, and usurped the sovereign position of the God who created man to live in him and express himself through him. And he established an agency within man's soul which the Bible describes as the flesh, or variously sin as a principle, or the old man, the old fallen nature. This was a sin principle of satanic origin which was established as an agency of the devil himself within the area of man's human personality. So that the mind that had been created for God to be monopolized by God was polluted, corrupted, abused and misused by the devil. So that the area of his affections designed to be the recipient of the very nature of God who is love in all its purity became the devil's workshop and love was turned into lust. And so Satan prostituted the human mind and prostituted the human affections and brought into subservience to himself the will of man now subject to the influences of a satanically polluted mind and a satanically polluted area of affections. Producing in terms of man's behavior and action sin or unrighteousness. So that the body which was created by God to be the instrument of what God is, righteousness, became the instrument of what the devil is, unrighteousness or sin. And that's man as he is. I mean that's man as you are. So that man became infinitely worse than just an animal. Emptied of his divine content his animal nature became the placing and the workshop of the devil himself. If there is an absolute source of righteousness, God there is also an absolute source of unrighteousness, the devil. And all human activity derives from one or other of these two origins. That is why the Bible says, Whatsoever is not of faith that which does not derive from your attitude of total dependence upon God that releases what he is in action through you whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Because it stems from an attitude of independence that makes you available to all the satanic prostitution by virtue of his usurping the divine authority. So the Bible says, Whosoever committed sin is of the devil. 1 John 3.8 Whosoever committed sin is of the devil. And whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Every step you take, every attitude you adopt, every decision that you make everything that you do, all that you hope to be that is other than independence upon the God who created you to inhabit you and to live through you is the by-product of the spirit, the demon spirit of this world who still works in the children of disobedience. Your attitude of independence is a perpetuation of the devil's lie which he first perpetrated in Adam when he told Adam that he could be what he was apart from what God is. He could lose God and lose nothing. Therefore he has a perfectly legitimate right to take every step in an attitude of Godlessness. Now this is called in the Bible the carnal mind. Romans 8. And verse 5. They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. But they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit. For to be carnally minded is death. But to be spiritually minded is life and peace. The mind of the flesh which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit is death. Death that comprises all the miseries arising from sin the spirit of independence both here and hereafter. But the mind of the Holy Spirit is life and soul peace both now and forever. To be carnally minded is death. What is it to be carnally minded? It is the exercise of your personality faculties other than independence upon the God whose presence alone imparts to you the quality of life that makes you man. You think Godlessly. In other words when you think Godlessly you think lifelessly. You take a step you make a decision you make your plans you assume responsibilities other than in an attitude that relates every situation to what he is in you. In other words in this particular situation you behave as though having lost God you have lost nothing. You are adopting a lifeless because Godless attitude. That's the carnal mind. That is the carnal mind as much in the unbeliever as it is the carnal mind in the believer. This is the carnal mind as much in the unregenerate as the carnal mind in the regenerate. And a carnal or fleshly Christian is simply one who has been regenerate by the restoration of the Holy Spirit to the human spirit but who in the area of human personality still repudiates the legitimate right of the Holy Spirit to reestablish the Christ rule in the area of mind, emotions and will. Although you profess to accept Christ as your redeemer every action you take, every step you take every decision you make is made by virtue of what you are and its interest so far as you are concerned and apart from what God is and his interest. Now that of course is the condition of many of you here this morning. What was the purpose of God in Christ? The Lord Jesus said I am come that you might have life. Did he come that you might have forgiveness? No. You can only have forgiveness because he came. But don't confuse the means for the end. He came that you might have life. He came that there might be restored to your human spirit the divine life which alone enables you to function as man has God enabled you to function. But in order that the Holy Spirit might be restored to the human spirit and the lamp be switched on it was essential first that God's demands concerning sin by virtue of his absolute righteousness should be fully met. So the death of the Lord Jesus Christ in his atoning vicarious sacrifice was designed simply to satisfy the demands of God's holiness that on the grounds of redemption there might be restored to you that quality of life by the Holy Ghost that would enable you again to function as man. In other words Jesus Christ came that you might have life but before you could have life you had to have forgiveness. But forgiveness was the means to the end that you might have life. Now there are a great number of Christians who have received forgiveness but have never begun to walk in the power of the new life imparted on the grounds of forgiveness. That is what is called a carnal fleshly Christian. That is why some of you here although you have received Christ as your redeemer on the basis that he died for you 1900 years ago historically that you might be reconciled to God have never yet begun to live the Christian life. That is why although the Holy Spirit has come to indwell your human spirit your human personality has never yet been brought under his jurisdiction so that your mind is still the plaything of the devil. Still prostituted by him to produce every kind of evil unclean thoughts. That is why the area of your affections is still prostituted by the devil. And that is why your body has become the plaything of the devil even though you're a Christian. Because you're a carnal Christian. For you can see what happens. If when the Lord Jesus died he died that you might be reconciled to God that he by the Holy Spirit might come and re-inhabit your redeemed humanity for God. The Holy Spirit comes to re-enter the human spirit and the lamp is switched on. That is not your soul. That does not immediately affect the area of your human personality. That changes your state in relationship to God and makes you fit for heaven but it does not necessarily make you as a man fit for earth. For just so soon as the Holy Spirit has come to indwell the human spirit his first office is from that moment on to re-invade the human soul. To re-capture the mind for the sovereignty of Christ. To re-capture the affection for the sovereignty of Christ. To re-capture the will for the sovereignty of Christ. So that you may become a redeemed body wholly filled and flooded with God himself. That Jesus Christ may be able to express himself in terms of your redeemed humanity as once the Father was able to express himself in terms of his sinless humanity. And it is this of which you have been robbing Jesus Christ since you were converted. For this good reason that just so soon as the Holy Spirit who has been restored to your human spirit comes to re-invade the soul he discovers somebody arms akimbo standing on the door of the music room saying Oh no! This is where I belong. I've had this mind to pollute it ever since this kid was born. I've had these affections to pollute ever since this kid was born. I've twisted this kid's will around my little finger to serve the devil's end ever since he was born and I refuse to became. And you discover therefore after your conversion that the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and there's war in the soul. And every step that the Holy Spirit takes to re-enter your mind and re-capture its thought is opposed by the devil through his agency called the flesh. That your mind might still be his workshop. That your affections might still be his workshop. And that your will might still be subservient to self-interest in the spirit of independence that keeps you outside the jurisdiction of the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ. Isn't that true? Have you? This is what Paul meant when he wrote to the Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man that is to say the Holy Spirit in the human spirit that Christ may dwell in your heart your human personality by faith. Now there's not an unnecessary repetition there. He's not saying that you might be strengthened with might by God's Spirit in your heart that Christ may dwell in your heart. He's not saying that. He's saying that you might be strengthened with might by his Spirit in your human spirit that he from the area of your human spirit may so successfully invade the area of your soul, your heart that Jesus Christ may dwell not by his Spirit alone in your spirit but dwell, make himself at home in your whole human personality because Paul recognizes that a man can have the Holy Spirit in his human spirit without Christ reigning in the heart. Now you say glibly, I have Jesus Christ in my heart but even though you may be converted truly regenerate and your name written in the Lamb's book of life that may not be true. You may have the Holy Spirit in your human spirit but Christ has never yet been allowed to take supremacy in the area of your mind, your emotions and your will. In other words, you're a carnal Christian. Although you have begun in the Spirit to live you're still acting in the area of your flesh. This was the reason why Paul wrote the epistles to the Galatians. He said you foolish Galatians you have begun in the Spirit. There has been restored to you the quality of life which allows you to function as man. And in spite of the fact that you have received nothing less than God himself by his Holy Spirit to your human spirit you repudiate his plans to enter and exercise sovereignty in the area of your mind, your emotions and your will. But instead, although having received the Holy Spirit you yield yourself to the dictates and the demands of the flesh. Having begun in the Spirit you try to be made perfect in the flesh and thereby cheat Jesus Christ to that to which his blood was shed and rob God of your humanity in spite of the fact that he has redeemed your soul. We can see therefore that salvation, conversion involves infinitely more than knowing what your sins begin. Infinitely more than looking back academically to a date on the calendar when you registered a decision for Christ. That isn't salvation. Salvation is not only your redemption from the punitive consequence of sin through the atoning death of Christ but the re-establishment of his totalitarian sovereignty in the whole orbit of your human personality, mind, emotions and will by the fullness of his indwelling Spirit that causes you to become a body wholly filled and flooded with God himself. So that you now no longer walk after the flesh but you now walk after the Spirit. This is salvation and your salvation will not be determined by whether or not you have registered a decision for Christ. So far as God is concerned your salvation is determined by the way in which you walk now for you may have been reconciled to God by his atoning death but you will be saved only by his indwelling sovereign life. So you can be reconciled to God by his death period without ever having been saved by his life and you can enter into the presence of God a heap of ashes with empty hands downright ashamed of the fact that in spite of professing conversion you never repented for if by virtue of his conversion Adam stepped out of dependence into independence allowing to be manifest in him the Spirit that owes already work in Lucifer the fallen angel what will repentance do? The fall of man stepped out of dependence into independence Repentance which is a repudiation of the Adamic attitude and decision will be a stepping out of independence back into dependence. You can therefore this morning measure the measure of your repentance for the measure of your repentance will be the measure of your restored dependence and if as a professing Christian you are not walking in total absolute unrelenting unquestioning dependence upon the Christ who has come to reoccupy your humanity by his Spirit you may be converted but you've never repented and there are many of you who have never repented because you still claim the right to exercise your own jurisdiction making your own decisions making your own plans choosing your own pathway that's what it means to be a carnal Christian and you will be useless to God and useless to man though one day maybe you'll get to heaven as by fire now the issue that we need to face in these days is simply the kind of Christian you want to be inevitably there will be some of you who want to be this kind of Christian who remains outside the jurisdiction of the risen Lord God himself can't help you you will leave this college to go into spiritual oblivion never to be heard of again but there are some of you who are saying in your heart I want to be nothing less than all that to which the blood of God's dear Son was shed I want to rob him of nothing he must have everything and for some of you there's going to be a discovery that will be calculated to revolutionize completely for time and eternity your whole humanity now let us pray