Phil Beach Jr. preaches about the sinlessness and unselfishness of Jesus Christ, emphasizing how Satan found no ground in Him and how He lived a life of selfless devotion to the Father's will. The sermon highlights the importance of embracing Christ's life as our true life, rejecting our own righteousness, and allowing Christ to live in us as the sum total of the Christian life.

I will not talk much with you now, for the prince (evil genius, ruler) of the world is coming. And he has no claim on me. [He has nothing in common with me; there is nothing in me that belongs to him and he has no power over me.] John 14:30 For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we may be made the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor. 5: 21) For we have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are , yet without sin” (Heb. 4: 15) And you know that He was manifest to take away our sins, and in him is no sin. Whosoever abides in Him does not practice sin…” (1 John 3: 18) Be ye therefore perfect even as your heavenly Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5: 48.) He that loves His brother abides in light and there is no occasion of being offended in him. (1 John 2: 10) Our blessed Lord Jesus was born holy (Luke 1: 35) and remained holy the entire time of His earthly life. He was the heavenly Man, the blessed High Priest who was touched with the feelings of our infirmities and was in all manners tested like we are, yet He was without sin. When Satan came to inspect Jesus to see if he could find ground in him in which to lodge something of his own nature, he was unable. Satan was always looking for something in Jesus that was like something in him, by way of nature, so that he had some legal right over Him, but never found any such thing. The Man Christ Jesus was holy from birth and Satan had nothing in him. There was nothing in Jesus that he could use to attract Jesus to commit sin. How important it is for us to ponder this heavenly Man and be able to see by the grace of God the kind of Man He is! When we see this Man, the One God has made both Lord and Christ, we see a Man in whom there is no greed, no lust, no selfishness, no ground to harbor any kind of feeling that would lead to unforgiveness towards his enemies, hatred toward those who hated Him, or resentment toward His Father in heaven because of the heaviness of bearing the sin of the world! (Luke 23: 34) In this Man we see a love that loved by giving of His very life for the sake of others, a life willing to bear the reproach of those who did not understand His mission, a life that blessed those who cursed Him, loved those who hated Him, prayed for those who abused and mistreated Him. At the end of the ages when the Son of God was made manifest, God was able to see in Him the kind of life, the kind of human nature that was pleasing to Him and exactly like His nature in heaven. Because of this, the Father was not hesitant to testify, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, listen to Him.” (Mat. 3: 17) As we inspect every aspect of the life of the blessed Man, our Lord Jesus, we see not only the kind of man God is pleased with but also the life He wants to reproduce in His church through the exchanging our life for His divine nature and moral perfection. (Eph. 4: 11-16) When we come to see that God will not accept our human attempts to try to “be like Jesus” and once and for all accept God’s verdict on our own human righteousness and appearances of Christ likeness, we can then ask God for a living faith that believes God for the life and righteousness of His Son to be imparted to us as our source to please Him. (Rom. 3: 10-31) THE UNSELFISHNESS OF THE SON OF GOD When we look at the prayer life of our blessed Lord we are amazed and challenged to see such a selfless devotion to His Father’s will. When Jesus taught us to pray he demonstrated what prayer looks like when it is ascending from a heart that is in perfect union with His Father in heaven. (Mat. 6: 9-15) Jesus introduces His lessons on prayer by telling us that when we pray we ought to start out by saying, “Our Father”. This brings us to realize that we approach God with the awareness that we are part of a family, as opposed to the idea that prayer is always all about ourselves and our own needs. When we approach God, we are to remember the family of God and learn to think of others’ needs and not just our own. Only as we possess a living faith and embrace Christ, as our life, His love working in us, His selflessness moving our hearts in prayers and compassion for others, can we ever hope to be free from the inbred tendency to pray with self’s interests in view. Again and again in His prayer, Jesus’ prayer makes much of God’s name and His honor, His glory, His kingdom, His power and authority and does not make much of His own desires. We are reminded in this prayer to ask God provide what we have need of and to keep us from harboring unforgiveness in our hearts and from evil. Everything else about this prayer is focused on an unveiling to our hearts of the person and character of our Father in Heaven. This is not only true about the kind of praying Jesus engaged in and taught us about, but is true in every area of His life. He blessed those who cursed Him, loved those who hated Him, prayed for those who mistreated and abused Him and served those who were unthankful and ungrateful. He never spoke a word that was untrue or unkind, but rather His words were filled with life and help, though at times hard to receive by the proud heart. Rebuke, reproof, and correction were also part of His counsel to those He talked with. However, anyone who humbled himself in the presence of Christ was healed and blessed. (1 Peter 2: 21-23, 4: 1,2) What is essential is that we come to see that this blessed life that belongs to our Lord Jesus is the life that has now been given to the church as our true life! Paul, when addressing the believers in Colossae stated to them that their real life was Christ and that they had died to their old sinful ways by entering by faith into the new birth. (Col. 3: 1-15) Paul states in another place that God’s highest intention is that the church--the body of Christ, the place where He has deposited the fullness of His divine life--is to grow up into a full grown expression of the adult manhood that belongs to Christ our Head! In this place of spiritual maturity, the devil will have no ground to work with since it is the very life of Christ that is in ascendancy--through a living faith that enables us to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed to sin and all its evil desires and alive to God. (Eph. 4: 27) This position of being dead to sin not only includes the obvious deeds of the flesh, such as lying, stealing, sexual immorality, drunkenness, and sins like these, but also the good side of the human nature which is equally unable to please God. Remember, the totality of the creature’s attempts to please God, including the goodness and righteousness that spring from our own nature is rejected by God. Only what corresponds to Christ in us by the power of the Spirit of God producing the exact kind of character that belongs to Him and originates from Him is pleasing to Him. Paul said that the Israelites who were living at his time had a zeal for God but it was not enlightened and according to correct knowledge. They were ignorant of the way that God makes a man righteous and went about trying to establish their own righteousness by doing good and thereby refused to submit to God’s way of becoming righteous in His eyes. Christ condemned the believers that lived in Laodicea for this very reason. They had become blinded to a living revelation of the Lord Jesus, as the Head of the church and the life of each believer, that they were filled with confidence in their wealth, prosperity and in their sense of self-sufficiency. Such a state blinded them from seeing the truth about their spiritual condition and prevented them from hearing the Lord tell them that they were spiritually blind, naked, the wretched ones and most desperately poor! Perhaps most disturbing is that they were self-deceived and were unable to see their true state before God! God’s Word to this assembly was a warning to repent. This spiritual condition that was represented by this group of believers make the Lord sick to His stomach so deeply that He threatened to vomit them out of His mouth! This is the danger that ever lurks should we begin to lose sight of the Lamb of God and begin to trust in our own works and self-righteousness. When such a condition occurs it results in an outward form of godliness but the absence of the power of the living presence of Christ in the heart to please God and do what is right in His eyes. OUR OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS IS REJECTED BY GOD For Christ is the end of the law as a means of trying to be righteous in God’s eyes for all who trust in Christ and rely on His atoning death as the means of their forgiveness and right standing. (Rom. 10: 1-4) This same error was seducing the believers that lived Galatia. They were seeking to be brought to spiritual maturity by works instead of trusting in the finished work of Christ and letting the Spirit of God produce in them the moral perfections of the Son of God. Paul was so opposed to this error that he said this teaching was under a curse and those who taught this “other gospel” cursed! (Gal. 1: 6-9, 3: 1-7) Our eyes need to be flooded by the light of God so that we may clearly see the spotless Son of God and make His glory and beauty the treasure that our hearts are forever seeking after. John declared, “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1: 29) As we are beholding Him we are being changed into His moral likeness, by the Spirit of God. How needy we are to receive an ongoing and continual unveiling of the glory and moral majesty of the Son of God. Our ailing hearts can never find the deep rest they long for or peace they pant for except in the person of Jesus Christ. (Mt. 11: 25-29) Steven being stoned by those who hated the Sinless Son of God was able to turn his eyes from the stones being hurled at him to the standing Son of God in heaven, getting ready to welcome his servant into heaven! This man was filled with the Spirit of Christ and lost in the love of God so deeply that he could pray for those murdering him by uttering, “Father forgive them and do not lay this sin against them.” How amazing this is! Corrie Ten Boon was able to look into the eyes of the man that murdered her sister in a Nazi concentration camp and forgive him by the power of the love of God working in her life! Peter, according to church history, when sentenced to die by hanging on a cross asked if he could be hung upside-down. He stated that he was not worthy to hang upright as his Lord. Peter knew that the little sins being committed against him by those who were putting him to death were not to be compared to the huge sins that Peter committed against His Lord. This was because at one time Peter’s eyes beheld the Sinless purity of his Lord and he cried out saying, “Depart from Lord for I am a sinful man.” This vision of his Lord and the subsequent revelation of his own sinfulness forever changed him and the way he viewed his life. Keeping our own sinfulness before our eyes by keeping the Sinless beauty of our Lord before them will keep us from stumbling over the sins of others. All these examples and so much more demonstrate the victory of the life of the Son of God that works in those who renounce their own, and by a living faith live in the good of His spotless love and life! CHRIST LIVING IN ME—THE SUM TOTAL OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE Let’s remember in closing that our Lord Jesus secured in Himself a holy and pleasing kind of life that is morally pure. This life was manifested in His life on earth and now is the life He brings to us by the new birth. We cannot put confidence or trust in the life we have by natural birth as a source to please God and must accept the verdict of God upon it. This includes not only the obviously sinful works of the flesh but the beautiful side of the flesh too, which includes all our human qualities--love, patience, acts of goodness, etc. Though these nice works of the flesh may appear righteous, they originate from the creature and are therefore flawed. We must guard against embracing a gospel that tries to mix the righteousness of Christ together with our best works, somehow creating a life that will please God. Paul called this “another Gospel”, other than the gospel of grace. This false teaching must be rejected. Only Christ, as our redemption, our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification, being received by a living faith in His shed blood can satisfy God and produce the righteousness that is pleasing to God. In Him we have a perfect Savior, a perfect righteousness, and perfect interceding advocate who ever lives to pray that we may come into the full participation of all His perfections by the power of grace working in us. So let’s agree with God today and renounce all that God has renounced and disown all that God has set aside at Calvary and embrace by an ever increasing faith that entire provision God has made Christ to be for us and in us, for the glory of His name! Then we can know in a practical and living way the victories of the life of the Son of God as He lives them through our mortal bodies. This frees us from the trap of unforgiveness and reminds us that our sins against our Lord and others are far greater than the little sins others commit against us and this keeps us hungry and available to receive His fullness every moment of the day!