In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of the baptism of the spirit as a living union and unity with God. They explain that this baptism provides a basis for freedom from guilt and a complete redemption and renewal. The speaker also discusses the incredible fact that God, who is the upholder of the universe, became a human in the form of Jesus Christ. They highlight the significance of this event and how it should impact our personal experiences and faith. The sermon concludes by emphasizing the importance of personal experience and how it is through this experience that a general fact, such as the incarnation of God, becomes meaningful to individuals.

...the Lord God is with us, glory be to the Father, glory be to the Son, glory be to the Holy Spirit, glory be to the Father... It's a quiet moment. We only need Lord officially to, as you were, to thank you as you, as ever, the living one among us, in us, through us, as you always are, and to thank you as a fellowship, as we meet you for this hour. Once again, you will unveil yourself in whatever ways you know you will meet. So here we are, thanking you, anticipating the words you speak, which are spirit and life. Thank you, Lord. Amen. I seem to have fallen among thieves. Tommy steals all I want to say, and I've got little to say. I'm sure you're all blessed to our depths this morning, and Jen too, on the same line, the one person coming to all. And evidently the Lord is speaking by the same voice to us all. Once again, as I said previously, I somewhat feel like you've had a good, warm flesh, and now you've got to split the flesh open and find there's some bones underneath. At least the flesh needs some bones to keep it in its proper shape. That's about it. Tommy, by the Spirit, so wonderfully this morning opened up to us the fact, which is the basis of this life we're talking about. Using the various terms, such as the baptism of the Spirit, centering on the fact that it is a living union, unity. I'll later on say why I prefer the word unity to union. The union between the person and we as derivative persons, and such a union and unity that we just live naturally. And yet deep down in the centre of our consciousness it isn't we, but he. In a sense, perhaps, I'm saying this afternoon will be the least interesting, perhaps the direst, of the five talks we're seeking to give, because I only want to go over with you the why of the unity, or the union. On what solid foundation can we say that? So I'm only, as I say, opening up to see what lies behind. Therefore it is in a sense commonplace to us all, and most of us here I hope, a just reminder. But as I say, I've always been one that feels I must have my feet on earth, solid. I know the way is under me if I'm walking on it. There mustn't be any questions with me why it should be so and how it can be so. So we're looking at that this afternoon. We've seen all through these talks, this one fact that there's this one person, we can go over it again and again, this one person, this one person who is love, which means he lives other people's lives, he really is other people, get down to it. Being spirit, he must have his means of manifestation. All manifests him, as Glenn's been pointing out to us. But supremely, persons manifest him because he's a person. Therefore, the reason for our creation is to be in such a natural unity that we are as he is. As Tom had pointed out so plainly, not by imitation, but impartation. And know how we live like that. So we're the eternal love. As he is so, we're the eternal love. We're other people. This is how it comes out. Tommy and Lila began this morning, that whatever term we may use, Pentecost, Absolute Spirit, God's sanctification, as poor as ever it is, it only has one meaning to it ultimately. A union relationship between him and us. A unity between us. So we are he and we, and yet such a relationship that it turns out to be just he, I beg your pardon, turns out to be just we, but it's really he. This is the paradox we get onto. On what basis can we live naturally? Never again I question it. This basic fact of this unity. He and we. He by we. He by us. We as he, whatever phrase we like to use. Now we left it yesterday afternoon at the point of the fact that there's another he who's captured humanity. It's not that he. He's only a created he, but he's a God. And he's called the God of this world. And John stated to us that there are two he's. And one he lives in the unredeemed and the other he lives in the redeemed. So he said, greater he is in you, the redeemed, than he is in the world. And gave them their names and said, hereby therewith the spirit of truth, that is the person who is the truth, in the believer, and the spirit of error, that is the person, the God who is the error, in the unbeliever. So the relationship and the condition in which we come into this world is a wrong God in us. And a wrong God by us. The God of self-sentiments. The God of self-giving. The false one. And we discussed that yesterday and we can discuss that again today I take it. But what we've got to find out is the means by which and the grounds upon which there's been a change of Gods. Because there's always, always for humanity, the only possibility for humanity is a change of Gods. The God being the inner person, so joined to us that we spontaneously function as he functioned. How can the wrong one be out and the right one be in? There's a permanency. So we forget it and live. So you see I'm going back in a sense to common places. Foundations of the Gospel but just to give, it's helpful to give the re-examination of those foundations. We saw, yesterday also, that we're in a hopeless condition, we're captives, we cannot get out. We're captives. One description of the question is that we're slaves. Slaves of the devil. Slaves of the spirit of self-centredness. We're captives, we can't get out of it. The only way we can be out is if somebody else gets us out. Who can get us out? No man can get men out because we're one of us. And so we get the great revelation of the Gospel. Which is, of course, the perfect revelation, of course, of the kind of person God is. Love means it exists for need. It belongs to need. It's the possession of need. Need's the predator, love's the debtor. And where there's need, love belongs to that need. And the supreme need of the human race is that we've been caught up in the wrong garden and going in the wrong direction. And living, and it should be so, to be eternal in the constant distortions. Therefore, the Gospel is this person, this living person himself being the one who rescues us. And rescue means the means by which, as I said yesterday, he regains his total property. God couldn't create higher than humanity because you can't create higher than yourself. And he creates us in his similitude, in his likeness. Because only can he as a person function through persons. So it's the very topmost of his creation that has been lost to him and become a total property. And the whole human creation, expressing all forms of the activity of self-centeredness, well, we're meant to express all forms of the activity of self-giving. Self-love, self-giving. So there's no other purpose in redemption than that God should regain his total property and be able, naturally and easily, through time and eternity, to express himself in an infinite variety of self-giving love and self-giving activity. Instead of humanity expressing the wrong God in all forms of self-seeking. This we know how it is done. By God becoming a man. The Bible leaves us no question about that. Because John says that this one who came was the Word, he was with God, he was God. And the Word was made flesh. So he said this one on earth was God. John says as differently as Paul says it. Paul says God was manifest in the flesh. Now this is a tremendous fact. A fact far beyond reason. That the one who is, it's fantastic to reason, the one who is in the sense of the universe itself, the upholder of the universe, the one who expresses himself through the universe, became a tiny part of it, a human. I don't ultimately base my faith on trying to stretch my reason to believe things or not believe things. I base my faith ultimately on what I might call my instinctive ideal. In this, I can't conceive, I can't conceive, I can never conceive anything more wonderful than a God whose real life is living the lives of the people he creates. I can't conceive of one, a God whose only interest is to be us, to live our lives. So his life, his joy, his gaieties, his fulfillment is being us, being we. I can't conceive any higher than a love like that. When that love has been exemplified on earth by a person who did that, I bet my life on that for God. I'll take all the rest in. So I never have any difficulty with liberalism and so on, because I say, well, until you find me a better God, I'm going to have this one. I'm waiting. That's all. She hasn't turned up yet. With all my being, I see in God my ultimate. I can't conceive a higher ultimate. All right, I'll bet my life on my ultimate. And I'll choose the wrong right horse and I'll win in the end. That's all. So I don't base my faith really on historic facts. Basically, I gather in all historic facts because if it's centered around that person, I take the lot. So on that basis, I take the whole Bible. If she took the whole Bible, I'd take the whole Bible. The way in which he completed for us a total deliverance, without one act in it, is known to us. That's what the Bible presents. And all those who interpret Jesus Christ and him crucified to us on earth, bear the same message. So if we turn one, then we turn a lot down. Paul says the same, and John says the same, and James says the same, and Peter says the same, and that's all that's left. He's a Jew, he only goes about 30 verses, so he says the same too. The whole lot says the same. So we're looking at this fact now. We must have a deeper faith unless, as I say, if to you this is the only conceivable God there could be, all right, then it's easy to take in what is said, I think. But this was God become man. As a man, to redeem man. First of all, of course, he had to be one who couldn't himself become a captive to the wrong God. That had to be fought out in one. So he himself refused every kind of solicitation and enticement to become captured to the wrong God which had captured the first Adam. Therefore he was in the condition in which he was free from the captivity and its consequences which seized upon the human race of which he was a member. Now he went in, went through a process which could produce for us a deliverance without a crack in it. An entire salvation, redemption, whatever we like to call it. This was, of course, through the process of Christ dying, Christ rising, and ultimately Christ ascending, although we shan't touch on that. Last one this morning, this afternoon. Christ dying, Christ rising. The Bible divides the effects of Christ dying and rising into two distinct areas, presented to us in two distinct forms in the Scriptures. Mainly by the Apostle Paul, who is the one who really opens up the whole matter for us. The others do too, but he gives us the whole structure of salvation. You may speak of the two stages of redemption as Christ for us and Christ as us, with their different effects. Christ for us and Christ as us. It's pictured for us also in a little statement which kind of slips in to one of the comments on the Lord's Supper, made by the Apostle Paul in the 10th chapter, 1 Corinthians. When he speaks about the Lord's Supper, it's just passing remarks, so often great truth comes in passing remarks, as you know. And he speaks about the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of Christ? I'm just quoting. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of Christ? Now having said that, spoken of the communion of the blood of Christ, communion of the body of Christ, he goes on saying, for we being many are one bread and one body. He doesn't say one blood. If you think he'd say, is it not communion of the blood of Christ? Is it not communion of the body of Christ? We being many are one bread, one blood, one body. He doesn't say that. He doesn't say we being many are one blood. He says we being many are one bread, one body. The bread being equivalent to the body. There's reason for that. Because there's one necessary, preliminary, necessary part of our redemption, which is something we couldn't touch. Which he had to do for us, apart from us. So we're not the blood. The blood is his life. We're not that. We're the body, which is not Christ, of course, is the blood. We're not the blood, we're the body. So he doesn't connect us that way with the blood. Because for this first part, there had to be someone who did something for us, apart from us, which he couldn't do for ourselves. Because we're caught up in a permanent condition of everlasting separation from God. The scriptural phrase is eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord. It must be. A race captured by a God of self-centeredness cannot live side by side with a race captured by God of self-giving. They won't work. They won't be too friendly up there any more than they are down here. It won't work. It's impossible. There must be an everlasting separation between the two. So we're caught up in this everlasting separation, which has consequences of death, sin which bruises death, and after death, remaining in whatever the consequences are of the everlasting separation. To remain in the consequences of an everlasting separation means to remain in the consequences of self-centered life. Well, we get a little of the hell you get from self-centeredness down here. So a faint shadow of what can be when there's no comfort. We can comfort our self-centeredness a little down here by nice food and nice things and nice services. When there was nothing except our burning desires, there won't be a pleasant life. Hell starts inside here, but we get a little comfort up here. When we are stripped, what comfort? So we are caught up in a separation which is everlasting, in which of course are involved the sins of which we are conscious, and the guilt as a consequence of them, and all that we speak of as our lost conditions. Now Christ, on Calvary, shedding his precious blood for us, means the infinite and eternal one, giving up his infinity and eternity for us. That's what he did. He was the one who need never have died. He said so. No man taketh it from me. I lay down my life upon myself. This was the one who never need die. He resolves in giving up his right to an ununbroken eternal life to be us, and for us to have to take upon himself a separation which has captured us all. So the Bible presents us with him, on Calvary, in this aspect, shattered all through Scripture. If you eliminate the blood of Christ, you eliminate the Bible. The two side by side. We begin the equivalent of blood of Christ is able. The first person of Christ is there to be a substitutionary sacrifice for his sins. It's right the way through the Bible. Until we come out at the final prophecy before Jesus Christ came. Behold the Lamb of God. The scapegoat who took the sins into the wilderness and so on. The whole Bible says so. Eliminate the blood, eliminate the Bible. Eliminate the blood, eliminates redemption. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. The blood means an eternal life, taking temporal death for our sakes. That's what blood is. Blood is the life. Blood is the evidence that life's gone out. And the blood means therefore an eternal life, given up being eternal, and taking upon himself the temporal death which is the effect of sin. Which would go on into death being separation from God, would go on eternally, taking upon himself. And causing him to use such expressions, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The one I never was forsaken was actually God himself. God forsaking God, as it were. And ending by saying, it is finished. All that he claimed to be finished would have been meaningless unless he had been raised from the dead. The only proof that the sacrifice was efficacious was the one who made it, who was raised from the dead. That was evidence to hope he was entirely accepted and entirely finished. That's why Paul says he was raised again for our justification. Justification is a far, far profounder, more marvelous word than forgiveness. Forgiveness is human. Can be. Justification is beyond. Forgiveness means, well, if I've wronged you, you might forgive me. I couldn't be quite sure that you'd forget it. And I'm sure I shouldn't forget it. There's an element in forgiveness which isn't complete enough. You might forget it or might not. I'm sure I shouldn't. Justification is amazing. It means you are as if the thing was never there. That's blotting out. I'm always there. I've had 27 years of foundation of that. I'm always there. It hasn't been sort of well asked for or unforgiven somehow. No, there's a basis to this. And I don't pretend to understand it all. I dig and think, I don't pretend to understand. But I understand enough for it presented to me. That all that would cause me to admit I'm a sinner, which I am. I'm guilty, which I am. I'm a rebel against God, which I am. And justified under condemnation as having broken the eternal law. There's only one law in the universe. The law is a convenient term we use for the way a thing works. A simple word. You talk about a law of something, well, you catch the way it works. For instance, Newton thought he found the law of gravity. Of course, Einstein tried to disagree with him. But if you understand Einstein, God bless you. But at least the law of gravity. What do you mean? Well, there's something that works this way. There's something that works the way. If you do drop a cup, it will break. Well, the consequence of a broken law, I'll drop the cup. Defy the law, and at least in China, you'll get a broken cup. So, there's an effect of broken law. All those things involve. I mean, I fully understand it. Therefore, the whole of life is broken law. Why? There's only one law of the universe. The law of the universe is the way God works. How does God work? He's love. That's all there is in the universe. The only law of the universe is the law of the way a thing works. How does the universe work? By personal love, nothing else. So, everything which isn't self-giving love is broken law. And there's only one who is self-giving love, and that's God. So, only so far as God is operating by you is there unbroken law in you. All the rest is broken law. So, poor us. We're poor. And that simply is made of the fact there are effects of broken law. Now, I couldn't mount all those up. What real foundation do I have? You see, how are they all there? Unless they're presented with this gospel, this way of redemption, worked out by God. He revealed that he himself became a person. You see, he could represent humanity because he was humanity. That's the deity. He was humanity. He's the basis of humanity. So, he had the right to represent humanity. I'm glad he took the name son of man as a good term, a sort of general term. He didn't call himself something else, just son of man or Jesus Saviour, which is what it means. But he was humanity. All right then, he could be humanity. This is the leaf of faith. God is manifest in the flesh. And this person giving up what was his normal, normal relationship, normal condition, eternal life, giving it up. Becoming what we are, a person under death. In other words, he took upon himself the curse of, it says, everyone hanging on a tree, cursed everyone hanging on a tree and so on. The condemnation, the judgment, took it upon himself. Well, I may not understand it all, but I understand that enough. That in the resurrection, God's saying, this person is perfectly righteous. What he went through isn't there any longer. And therefore, if I relate it to him by faith, it's not there with me any longer. Look at this, it's not there. It's as if it never was there. It never comes to be this. I'm out. I must ascend this in God's sight as his own son is. Righteous in God's sight as his own son. That is the care of righteousness. That is the foundation there. I find a freedom in it. So I don't jump into a vague thing called forgiveness, not quite sure how it comes. I'm on a foundation, the basis of our freedom. And ultimately, of course, the basis of our continual cleansing. That doesn't quite show up now. But when we know this fact, we also learn in our daily lives, it's as quick sinning as quick cleansing. Because God's attitude never changes. Actually, it never did. Because in God's sight, the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Indeed, God's a queer person, because he provides remedies before there are needs for them. The Bible says, before there is Jesus to be saved, before there is sin for us to save us from. That was a bit funny. We usually have the need first and then the supply afterwards. He has the supply first and digs a hole for the need and puts the supply into it. We're the holy dog. So God's doing his own business. I like that. I haven't heard that before, Tommy, the devil's wrath. I think it's a great one. I agree with you. If that's all redemption is, that's not enough. I told you that the Bible presents us with a peculiarly poor, the process of redemption, Christ crucified, Christ risen, in two distinct stages? Phases? What word to use? Departments? What word to use? Why isn't it enough? Because my ultimate problem isn't the sins I commit, it's the sin that commits them. It's the sin's spirit which motivates me is my problem. The sins I produce, which have caused me to be and express this life of self-sacrifice, are a product of the sin's spirit which is not me. The he that is in the world, the spirit of the world, the spirit of the devil. Jesus said a great thing. Jesus said some things we don't always like. He said to the Pharisees, but we also have Pharisees until we were saved, perhaps we'll get a little Pharisees every now and then as well after we are saved too. But he said this, he said to the Pharisees, ye of your father the devil, and the lust of your father you will do, and say it is yours. He says you of your father the devil, lust of your father, because in this spiritual relationship your father is inside you. Just as the heavenly Father is inside Jesus, so the Lord's Father is inside the unrelieved. You are expressing his lustiness through you. This was the comment that was made in 1 John 1, 1 John chapter 3 I should say, where it spoke about loving your brother and not being like Cain. Essentially what he says, he says, love your brother, don't be like Cain, who is of that wicked one and through his brother. Why put those words of that wicked one in there? Why not just say, don't be like Cain and through his brother, because it wasn't Cain who was through his brother. There was a hater murderer inside Cain who merely used Cain as an agent. That's what humanity is. The wicked one was the one who hated and murdered through Cain and Cain was the agent. So you see, I'm getting at this, redemption is hopelessly incomplete if it merely removes the consequences of my sins, which have separated me from God, and don't remove the motivator and replace it by a new motivator. The spirit of holiness is said to be the spirit of sin, if you like. The spirit of self-giving love is said to be the spirit of self-loving love. Unless it does that, it's incomplete. I was saying, I think I moved off at the moment, I was saying in the middle there, I find at my age my memory sometimes gives me a jump or two, so if you'll pardon me if I miss a point or two, but I was saying about that quick-cleaning, quick-cleansing. I was jumping off there, I was saying now of course in God's sight, we always were reconciled, he never needed to be reconciled to us, oh no. He had to fulfil a process which could reconcile us to him, which would make it possible for us to come back to him. So we'd always reconciled. I mean, therefore, there's never a need for us to remain in guilt when we do fall into sin. As quick as we fall down into sin, we can get up again into faith. Because the Bible speaks of the continual cleansing of the blood, it speaks in Hebrew's line, how much more shall the blood of Christ keep cleansing your conscience, now I'm not talking about the undredeemed, I'm talking about redeemed, keep cleansing your conscience from dead works to serve the living God, dead works of course are self-effort works, living works are God-effort works. How much more shall the blood of Christ keep cleansing you, because in other words, always is this fact that in that act two thousand years ago, everything that ever could be is finished, the whole lot's out, past, present, future. So in a second, when I become consciously guilty again, I try it, I should be guilty, as a conscious person. At the moment I'm there, I'm able to move over and say, ah, it's not there, it's not there in God's sight, it's not there in my sight. It's as quick as quick cleansing, as our basis to continual freedom from guilt. So I'm moving on now to this second aspect, which must give us the basis of a complete redemption and renewal. Since Paul brings it into the focus for us, I think Paul got a shock. As we'll see a little later on, I think that very few of us find what we're talking about now, in the one step when we first enter into a relationship with Christ. It's usually the second step which is involved here. I think that was in Paul. Because if I read it right, Paul made the second great discovery when he went to Arabia. Because he speaks a great deal about the second discovery in the Galatian letter. He opens it up in his fullness in the Roman letter, but he applies it in the Galatian letter. And in the Galatian letter he says he went to visit a journey in Arabia. He went to Mount Sinai. The shock he got was he didn't find Mount Sinai there, he found Mount Zion there, which is much more convenient. Because he speaks of both of them. Mount Sinai is law, Mount Zion is grace. And he saw right into the implications of Christ crucified and Christ risen. And he saw here the implications as us. Now in one sense we have nothing to do with it. In one sense all of us come to the foot of the cross and see this person who took our place and went through a certain process of bearing our sins in his own body on the tree and being made a close force and having the judgment of God upon him. Upon us for our sins in our place and removed in his death and verified by resurrection. We don't touch that. We just come there and all the conditions of the sinners are disappeared. We are in God's eyes that the devil was there. But we have to go beyond the foot of the cross. We have to get on the cross. Now Christ for us we don't touch. That's the blood of Christ. Christ as us is we. That's why that second statement about the Holy Communion says we are one bread one body because the body is part of you. And this statement requires us like when Christ is on the cross we are there and like a body is part of you. One bread one body. Now what is Paul saying about the next statement? He says get this clear. If this person was humanity, humanity was there. Now you don't come to the cross and say he died for me. You say no if he was humanity I was there therefore if he died I died. And if he was buried I was buried. If he rose I rose. If he ascended I ascended. We are getting close in now. This is the logic that keen mind could see. God uses all thoughts. It's interesting to get out his great, apply his great revelations in the two dispensations. He was too trained mind. Moses in the old dispensation and Paul in the new. So God uses the fool and the wise and he can only get much fewer wise. No I won't. Sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. I want to protect the wise not run down too much. I'll make peace with you afterwards. I like it. I agree. Sorry. So I'm saying Paul could see the total structure. And he said this. Now watch that he says. Therefore if this person was we it was we. Now what does that mean therefore it was we? What are we? We are people with a sin spirit inside us. Actually as I said before you never get the Bible right where it remains letters and words to you or things. You only get the Bible right where it dissolves and becomes a person. And so even sin it took me it's a great revelation I suddenly saw it. Sin is a spirit. Sin is the character of the sin person. And sin mind you is just a spirit it's a satanist. You know that. It's just forms of self egocentricity that's all. It's a satanic person. So sin really means it's the character of the satanic person. So sin's a spirit really. Same as using the Bible word holiness. He's a holy spirit. He's the spirit of love. The spirit of the products of self giving love. The fruits of the spirit and so on. You see he's the holiness in us. Do you see what I mean? Jesus Christ is great and does wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. The words dissolve. These tough dry words. While the Bible remains dry to you you can be sure heaven hasn't broken up to you yet. It lives oh there he is there he is. Through the words you find the person. Words I speak to you they are spirit they are life. The letter kills the spirit gives life. So I'm only saying this now. I'm saying this for a reason. Therefore John is saying look at this. Paul is saying look at this. This is where the whole humanity hang in there. And humanity is a human race which has got the love of God inside it. It's got the spirit which is the sin spirit which is the spirit of selflessness inside it. Therefore Paul made a remark. He said God made him to be sin for us. That's a change of heart. He's always talking about bearing our sins and our sins upon us. Sins are the things which have the wrath of God upon them and separate us from God. They're the judgment and the consequences and all that. That was his blood. That was where he died in our place and took the curse upon himself. That's the other one. That's Christ dying for us. He doesn't talk about sins here. Sin is the sin principle. Sin spirit. Sin person. Now he suddenly says in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 24 some other day. He was made sin for us. Why? He says look Paul said look if he was humanity he was a whole race which was being motivated by a wrong God. And being motivated by a wrong God is producing all the natural products of self love, self seeking, self gratification. Naturally egocentric. Here he was he says. Now here he is in God's sight this was humanity. In this person hanging on Calvary. And therefore in God's sight as it were he was a humanity with this wrong spirit. Then he said he died. Now it's very clear in the Bible he really died. That was the evidence of the soldiers. They wouldn't break his legs because he died so they pierced his body and out came the blood and water which is the evidence of the death. And a dead body was taken out. Why is that important? Because a death is separation between body and spirit. That's why. That's what death is. And therefore he said look here if this person represents humanity up there with the sin spirit when he died that's separation. Then humanity was separated from the sin spirit. Exactly. Exactly. This was what separated the whole humanity from the inner dwelling of control and out working of this wrong spirit of self serenity which entered through the wrong tree. All those years ago. This was the negative liberation. If we question about that we'll go on a little further a little later and see how it works out. It works out when you see its effects. The scientific hypothesis is proved by its effects isn't it? Whether it works or not we'll see. Now you get that Paul says to us here is a dead body. That was we. This was humanity. This was humanity lying in a tomb buried with him. Buried with him is a scriptural expression. Very well. In that tomb. A dead body. Now Paul says what can raise a dead body? Well obviously only a spirit. A new spirit here. And therefore he says Jesus Christ was put to death in the flesh quickly by the spirit. Quickly like the new life in the womb. Quickly by the spirit. Here was his own spirit, God, the spirit of self giving love coming into this body which was we. This is the new humanity. Now this is the completed foundation for a permanent, perfect, indissoluble new unity taking place between God and the human spirit, the redeemed human spirit in the place of the old one which went out in the dead. And the new one came in the resurrection. There's our foundation. That's how we can operatively, daringly, funnily, enjoyably be in this relationship. It isn't something we vaguely grasp and hope itself. It's given us a great historical foundation. It should have a historical foundation if sins in history, redemption has been history. Certainly. That doesn't mean we live by historical Jesus, no. Paul is pretty bold. Paul may not say yeah, if I knew him after the flesh yet, now I know him no more. I'm not joined now to a Jesus in the human flesh. I'm joined now to a Jesus who is spirit and yet that spirit has a body. There's a resurrection body. That's the basis for us having a resurrection body one day. So we ought to argue that just now. So there we are. So now we're saying this. I take this time to remind you of this total, square, historical foundation for us who are sinners in history by which God provided in the person of his son which was himself this complete redemption. Which is a unification, I mustn't say a reunification, which never was, a unification of God and man. Now we have to ask this question, because we have time. Typically the way of that aspect, not so much to a company like you but to many, is that's the more historic type of thing. They say, oh well I don't know, that sort of thing happened two thousand years ago, what's it matter to me anyhow? It wouldn't affect you so much but we pass through a phase now in which we look back on something which happened. Now what really matters of course is how does a general fact become a personal experience? How do general facts of life become a personal experience? Because what matters most is the personal experience. There is a perfectly simple law, again it's been emphasising simplicity to us, a perfectly simple law in the working of the whole of the universe I suppose, at least of this world, because as we have perfectly clear there is no spiritual sector, there is only one, everything is a form of God isn't it? God has certain forms, everything is a form of spirit. So there is one law functioning through everything. The same law functions in what we call the secular as functions in what we call the spiritual, same thing. And that's what the Bible calls the law of faith. Now faith has become a rather kind of commonplace word or rather a word of what I would like to call a cliché. And they are always conveying to us what it means. Perhaps to put it in simple human terms, it's the law of supply and demand. What do I mean by the law of supply and demand? I mean this, the whole world is full of supplies. Again I think I've touched on this in one of the previous talks. Full of supplies. Now in a general sense we have faith in those supplies. We believe air is air and water is water and roof is a roof and everything else, and in a general sense it's convenient to have a general faith. It doesn't affect us too closely, we just have, we live by general acceptance of faith and all sorts of things. In that sense we recognize the supply. But a supply doesn't become a personal experience, it's kept by our own demands. When I have a personal demand, I'm conditioned then to appropriate my portion of the supply if it's available to me. And then something happens. And that's how we live. There's a general supply of food in this world-blessed country. Our stomachs have got the demands. And so with the supply and the demand, it's perfectly simple first to appropriate the supply of the food. But watch, it isn't you who appropriate the food, it's the food that appropriates you. You find that out after you've eaten. Whether pleasant or unpleasant. Now here is the law of supply and demand. What you take, takes you. This is how you experience it. There are, we'll say, 300 chairs in this room. That's a general supply. Well, in a general way, yes, we all accept a general supply as a fact. Now the demand is you need one chair. Now here's your freedom. There's a supply. You've got a demand. Of course it's available to you. You exercise your freedom. This is freedom. And you sit yourself in a chair. You're not holding that chair up, it's holding you up. Turn around. What you take, takes you. This is the law of faith. The cake was took. The grabber's grabbed. This is the law of faith. This is the law of experience. Now all through life, you come here by faith. That's to say, you're told there's a supply of a conference here. There's a supply. Well, for some reason or other you have a demand. You say, I'd like to come. All right then, your faith is, your freedom is, you book and you come. Here you are. Now the took is took because you've got to sit and take what you get. You can't escape. See, you're done for. Now all life is like that. People feel it's a mistake that faith isn't getting, faith is being got. And this is the beauty of life. Life consists of experiences which have got you. Every one of us here has got a trade. Maybe you're a housewife, maybe you're a musician, maybe you're a lawyer, a doctor, a carpenter, whatever it is. You've been taken over by your trade. You started by taking it over. You started by learning and practicing yourself to this and this and this. At times, ten times, it became part of you. It caught you. And you're just a natural carpenter, or a natural doctor, or a natural housewife, a natural so-and-so. This is the beauty of life. And you move into beautiful spontaneity when you've been captured by what you first captured. This is life. So faith, what we call faith, has never become faith until you've been taken over. This is the key to the gospel. You don't take God, you're taken over by God. That's the fun. See, I move among circles where there's always anxiousness trying to hold on to God. That's hard work, trying to hold on to God. You're satisfied in holding on to God, you hold on to nothing else besides. The gospel's not holding on to God, it's being got hold of by God, and you're done for. There you are, and you live. You gladly live free because you're caught. This is the gospel. Now this is faith. So, faith, put it in those terms, is the law of supply and demand. Where there's a supply, where there's a demand, we express our freedom, and usually it's fairly easy. When there's a supply and when there's a demand, and you know the two, it's fairly easy. You say, hmm, thank you. And you don't know you're being caught, you don't recognise that until afterwards. And that's what the gospel is. Now the difference on what we may call the spiritual level and the material, I don't like to use those words, but for convenience sake, is this. The demands in the material level are pretty obvious, are pretty constant. There's not a demand on the spiritual level, the devil's seen to that. There's not a demand on the spiritual level. The demand can be created. You haven't got to create a demand in your stomach for too long. You haven't got to create a demand in your lungs for too long. Put it quickly there. But God has created us a demand for this supply we're talking about, which is the meaning of that, the union between God and ourselves. So there has to be a preliminary work of God by which he created demands. Thank God he does. I needn't go, I don't want to spend too much time on that, go too far into what is obvious, but it's obvious to us here. By different ways, God has created that demand in us. That's the value of the gospel, and preaching, and the Bible, and the inner law, which we touched on again this morning. Thank God, our very being is God. Because our very being is God, we know what we ought to be, thank God. There it is. And that law comes up as you ought to be, why don't you? And so by different ways, the inner law, the outer law, the gospel, Christians and so on, the demand's created. The moment of truth in life comes where, lastly, we become honest to the demand, honest to the situation. Now we all start, the consequences of law on us, whether it's the outer law or the inner law, our reaction to the law is always either hypocrisy or honesty. Hypocrisy damns, honesty is the way to salvation. We all start by hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is, I'm not going to let it on, I don't do it. So we keep a few very convenient commandments, we all must carefully keep the 11th, that's not to be found out. We keep them behind. So we start, all of us start life by a mask. We try to run away from the condition. The true condition of humanity is despair. Humanity must be in despair because humanity is a combination of finite and infinite. And we can't live a finite life, which is a worldly life, and try to escape the infinite. Diana and Elisa despair all the time. So actually lost humanity consists of two types. There's the type who try and run away, escape from facing up the real implications of life. Or there's the type who try to bluff it out and try to affirm a false independent self. You either run away from yourself and hide yourself by all sorts of interests or you try to affirm yourself by yourself. Both have a bottom of despair because we're not relating to the infinite. And you can't escape that, man is a combination of infinite and finite. You can't escape. So then go with the despair. The moment of truth is when at last we face the despair, that's when we become honest. That's when we come at last, by some means or other, to say, yes I am wrong. I have broken God's laws. I am separate from him. And so forth and so forth. That is what I sometimes call the first collapse. It's the collapse on our righteousness. And not easy because the whole basis of the fall is self-sufficiency, self-righteousness, self-justification, pride. Not easy. So for that breaking, it's not easy for us to admit I'm wrong. I'm out. My religion is a camouflage. Facts are my sins. No. No, it's not easy. None of us have come except by that way. I'm not saying, in many cases, it's come that way. No, that's a demand. So I'm jumping back quickly. Each of us, I trust in this for a minute, comes to that demand somewhere or other. Now, when there's a demand, if there's a supply, it's easy to move into freedom and participate in the supply. That's the benefit of the gospel. I go to many nations where there's no gospel. There are ways, occasionally, in which people can find God without. I won't discuss that now. That's a private heresy of my own. But that is much more difficult. Much more difficult. It's easy for us to say, thank God for Jesus Christ. It's easy for us. Thank God for the gospel. Therefore, let us never run down our churches. No, no. Anyhow, the word of God is there to some extent. Anyhow, the scripture is being read. Something is being said, let's thank God if anybody goes to church at all, anyhow. Because something is dropping in. Now, I'm an Episcopalian, so I've gone to two churches. I'm sorry to rest on them. Tommy and Tom are way out. You Methodists, you left us all to go. Way out. As for Baptists, you can't see them at all. They're under the water. So I belong with you. How bored stiff I was for 18 years. A vibrant young fellow. What's this business of Jesus Christ dying for me and saying prayers? We had to go to school. We had those boarding schools in England. I like a boys' boarding school. There were no girls to make a nuisance there. Just boys. But we had chapel every day. We had conveniently high fusing just to keep our preparation books under the fuses while the pastor moaned on with his prayers. But never mind. All that time, something is dropping in, something is dropping in, something is dropping in. The moment of truth means 18 years of age. And I suddenly did see. I needn't say now. I did see my condition. Somehow I came to see it. And because I've been taught, I was brought up to a personal question. I was suddenly asked by a retired army major who used to get after our souls. He had a nice tennis lawn. We went for tennis. He went for our souls. We tried to avoid the souls and get the tennis. Always so successful. And he asked me, do you belong to Christ? For the unpleasantness. He said, do you belong to the church? Yes. I just begun to doubt the person. We all ought to doubt. Thank God for good doubts. Is God real at all? What's this business? I couldn't say I belong to a person. I could say I belong to a religion. Now is the moment of truth. That cost me something. I was only a young fellow. I was sort of a parson. So like Tommy, of course, with perfection, perhaps. But it cost me something. Having been through all the forms of Christianity, I nearly lied. You can lie to hell. That's a false. I nearly did. And I just got it out to say, well, I couldn't say I was. I didn't belong to Christ. And that's, I think, what we have shot, because of the teaching. Now, he got me down on my knees, maybe mumbled something. I got up just as I went down. I was supposed to say a prayer of salvation or something. It didn't work very well. But what I said had gone inside. As I was going home, I said to myself, oh, look, if I can't say I belong to Christ, I'm lost. If I can't say Christ is my Saviour and I knew my sins, I'm lost. I'm going to hell. I'm out from God. That's the teaching. Because I'd been taught in the church that I'd be bored stiff all the time, thinking more of football than anything else. But it was dropping in. I knew the gospel. So when I was ready for it, oh, if I can't say Christ is my Saviour, I'm lost. I'm going to get on with that one. Now, the idea was real this time. I really saw myself separate from God. I really saw my sins separate. I realised I deserved to go to hell, not heaven. So in a very simple way, I went into my room and knelt down and asked God to forgive my sins. And my salvation was almost like a mental recognition. Oh, that's it. Now I see. That's what the blood meant. Oh, I see. Because He died for me, I don't deserve to go to hell. My sins are out of me. Oh, I see. And a joy came to my heart. There's a young fellow of 18 called God as my Father and heaven as my home. Well, football season was starting and the devil has played me. He says, oh, that's emotion. You'll see football tomorrow morning. I didn't. And I'm not meant to be before seven years now. Next morning I woke up. Oh, God's my Father. Heaven's my home. This is it. You know, so you see, where there's a mouth, where there's a tongue, you can eat. But this is the last thing I'll be able to say this morning, this afternoon. I'll say this. Because this is important. What's the effect? Now what we're saying is this. The only meaning of all this is that God, this person who is nothing but love, which means his life is involved in others, living other people's lives, and we become part of him and so we then become eternal love and life for us is, the meaning of life for us is involved in others. The deity, fullness, completion of life is a way in which we can be other people, live other people's lives and so on. Eternal love. Now watch this. The evidence of redemption is the birth of the eternal love in you. That's the evidence of redemption. What I mean is this. When you first, whatever it was, first connected with Jesus Christ in your need and he became a real saviour to you, for the first time you see something happen inside you, you have taken into you the person who is love. You didn't know that. You've taken Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is love. What effect's on you? For the first time in your human history, you began to love somebody else more than yourself. That's the eternal love. Up to that moment, you loved yourself first. You may have loved a few other people. Survival is convenient. But at this moment, they began in you a love for somebody more than for yourself. That Jesus Christ had died for you. The God that gave you. And you began to prove it by making choices, making decisions and deciding against yourself for him. It began. Now in our ignorance, we think that that's just we loving. Oh no! We can't have self-giving love. We are self-loving now. This is the birth of the eternal love. This is the birth of the person in you who is the self-giving love. As John said to you, you began to be it. And the scripture which is given at that time is in Romans 5. That's the chapter on when we receive Christ, being justified by faith and peace with God. And it says this. For the love of God, not for God. For God's love is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit who is given unto you. So what you've begun to be, I said to you, that historical redemption meant that we in Christ had been a throw-out from us of that spirit of self-sacrifice which is kept from humanity. And a union into us of the spirit of self-giving love which is God. And so we become the eternal love. This is the proof of it. But when you do, even in the most elementary form, first related to Jesus Christ, you can't help yourself. You begin to love the one who died for you. You begin to love the God who sent you. This is the eternal love. And you and your friends have caught out. Because you learn that God is not vertical. He's horizontal. He doesn't come down this way. He's here. He's people. And you can't love Jesus Christ without loving the world. And you're caught. Who are you? Spill all the rest of your life wriggling out that you can. You can't. You've begun the stream. Well, the Amazon never starts with a pickle somewhere. It ends with the Amazon. A prairie fire starts with a spark. It ends with a fire. So however big the stream is, it's begun in us. So I'm going to stop there. Now, I want to take that further because it hasn't actually settled us completely yet in what is involved in this humanistic relationship. There's some more to come yet. But this is the start.