In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of man as a trinity, drawing from Hebrews 4:12. He explains that just as the Old Testament priest cut the sacrifice into different parts, the word of God can separate between the soul and the spirit. The speaker uses the analogy of the tabernacle in the Old Testament, which had three parts: an outer court, a tent with two parts, and the Holy of Holies. He emphasizes that our will should be controlled by our mind and emotions, and that love is the greatest power for doing good. The speaker also highlights the importance of both Jesus Christ and the Bible in our lives, as they are interconnected and provide guidance and sustenance.

It's interesting the way words get back into our vocabulary. A few years ago the word integrate got back into our vocabulary. And now, just in the last year and a half, the word integrity, which is a first cousin of the word integrate, is now in our vocabulary. You even hear newscasters talking about this matter of integrity. The word integrity and the word integrate come from a good old Latin word which means whole, W-H-O-L-E, or entire. A person with integrity is a person who's not split, he's not double-minded, he's not double-hearted, he's not morally a schizophrenic, he's one. In mathematics, an integer is a whole number. And in morality, a person with integrity is a whole person. It's also interesting to notice how our psychologists and psychiatrists these days are talking about the importance of wholeness in life. The doctors say that we don't just treat the body, we treat the whole man. One of the world's leading psychiatrists, Dr. Paul Tournier, has written a book called The Whole Person in a Broken World. And of course the basic work of a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a doctor, or for that matter a pastor, is to put people back together again. That's the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many people are falling apart inwardly. And because they're falling apart inwardly, they have to have props and emotional scotch tape and all sorts of substitutes to keep things together. And when things fall apart too much on the inside, something very, very drastic is liable to happen. People come to a place where they panic, they become paralyzed. They can't put life together on the inside. Too much is happening. Too many pressures, too many difficulties. And when life starts to fall apart on the inside and a person no longer has wholeness, why bother to live? And so I suppose if somehow we were able to penetrate the mind and heart of a suicide, which of course we cannot do, we hear the cry, everything seemed to be falling apart. Can anybody put it back together for me? Now it's interesting to note that even Christians face this problem. After all, we are human, and we do have physical bodies, and we do have emotional artillery and emotional furniture. And we as God's people are not immune from this very serious problem of losing emotional and moral and spiritual integrity, becoming double-minded, double-hearted. And so I'd like to share with you tonight what the Holy Spirit of God can do about this. Last Sunday evening we began to talk about the Holy Spirit, our psychiatrist. I'm not suggesting that the Holy Spirit takes the place of any human help that God might be able to use. What I am suggesting is that you and I as Christian people have one who lives within us who is waiting and ready and willing and able to help us. We're talking then tonight about how you and I can maintain integrity, how we can be whole people, not falling apart, our emotions going one direction, our thinking going the other direction, how we can be whole people in this present world. And I'd like to present to you three basic considerations. They're very simple, but I think in their simplicity they may get a hold of us tonight and help us. In Psalm 51, verse 11, David prays a prayer that you and I would never pray. David, of course, had sinned, and Psalm 51 is his prayer of dedication. In verse 11 he says, Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. As you know from your Bible study, in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was resident but not permanent. He would come upon a person and then leave a person. In the New Testament, because of the work of Jesus on the cross, when the Holy Spirit comes into your life, he never leaves. Jesus said, Even the Spirit of truth, whom I will send from the Father, that he may abide with you forever. So when you were saved, the Holy Spirit of God came into your life and he will not leave you. Now the Holy Spirit is God, and Jesus is God, and the Father is God, and Jesus said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. He said, Lo, I am with you always. This is true of God the Father, it's true of God the Son, it's also true of God the Spirit. Now, you and I would not pray this prayer, but we would recognize this experience. There are times in our lives when it seems as though God has left us. Now, consideration number one, let's consider his name, who he is. He's called the Holy Spirit. Now sometimes in the Authorized Bible you find Holy Ghost. Ghost is just another word for Spirit. He is the Holy Spirit. We are Trinitarian. By that I mean we believe in God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Each one is God, they are equal, and yet they are separate. Now it can't be explained, it can be believed, and it can be experienced. One of my professors at seminary said, try to explain the Trinity and you'll lose your mind. Try to explain it away and you'll lose your soul. So we are Trinitarian. We believe that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are God. One God in three persons. Now the Holy Spirit is called the Holy Spirit because this tells us who he is. First of all, he is holy. Now the word holy in the Bible has the meaning of separate, set apart. When Peter says, quoting from the Old Testament, Be ye holy, quoting the Lord, for I am holy, he certainly isn't indicating that in this life you and I can be perfect or sinless. I'd be very much afraid of a person who came and said to me, I have not sinned in five years. Either he is a liar or he doesn't know what sin is. I'd be prone to want to ask his roommate or his wife or her husband and find out whether or not that person had sinned in the last five years. The word holy in the Bible has the meaning of separate, set apart. The holiness of God sets him apart from everything else. Now the holiness of God is not just simply whitewash. We think of holiness as purity. We think of holiness as absence of that which is defiling. The holiness of God is purity filled with passion and power. I think of the description that John gives of heaven, the throne of God, when he says before the throne there is a sea of glass mingled with fire. The holiness of God is a powerful thing. The holiness of God is not just a negative thing, it's a very positive thing. And the Spirit of God who lives within us is holy. That means he is set apart. Now that means that if the Holy Spirit is set apart and he lives in me, I should be set apart. And I have noticed in my own life as well as in the lives of others that when God's people are set apart, they aren't prone to fall apart. He's holy. Now the word holy in the English language is very interesting. In the Greek and the Hebrew it means set apart, separated. But the English word holy comes from the same word that we get our word health, or whole, W-H-O-L-E. In other words, the word holy in the English carries with it the idea of wholeness, of health. What health is to the body, holiness is to the soul. Now back in 1 Thessalonians 5, we have these two things put together. 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23. Paul has come to the end of this letter and he's pronouncing several benedictions and several final exhortations. And he has here one of the great benedictions of the Bible, verse 23, 1 Thessalonians 5. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. He puts two words together there. He said, I want you to be set apart and I want you to be wholly set apart. In other words, holiness in the life of the believer involves the whole person. And he goes on to explain. And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the spirit of God wants to work within the whole man, the whole woman to make that person wholly holy. Now what Paul is suggesting here, I think, is what we have back in the Old Testament. I do not make this a test of fellowship or even a test of orthodoxy. There are those who believe that man is a trinity. I believe man is a trinity, spirit, soul, body. There are those who say that rather than being a trinity, man is dual. There is the inner man, the soul, the spirit, the mind. There is the outer man, the body. Now I lean a little bit, in fact I lean a great deal, toward man as a trinity. Hebrews 4.12 tells me that just as the Old Testament priest took that knife and cut the various parts of the sacrifice, it was very important to cut it correctly because God got a certain part, the priest got a certain part, and in some cases the worshiper got a certain part. Just as the knife cut the various parts of the sacrifice, so the word of God is a sharp knife that can separate between the soul and the spirit. May I illustrate it this way, and please do not turn me off if you have a different interpretation. Back in the Old Testament they had a tabernacle. That tabernacle had three parts to it. It had an outer court which was a white fence that kept everybody out. In the middle of that court there was a tent, and that tent had two parts to it. It was one tent with two parts. You had the holy place and the holy of holies. Interestingly enough, in the holy place there were three pieces of furniture. A lampstand, an altar for incense, and a table with some bread on it. Now wherever the holy place went, the holy of holies went. They were together, but they were separated. I think it's a picture of man. That outer tent and that outer fence, that outer court is my body. You could take down this fence and never touch that tent. You could walk up and kick the fence and never touch the tent. So this outer fence represents my body. This is my contact with the world, seeing and hearing and feeling and smelling and tasting and touching. Now this inner tent is a picture of the inner man, the soul and the spirit. The holy of holies was that very sacred place where God came and dwelt when they dedicated the tabernacle. Now when you were saved, God moved into your spirit. Before you were saved, your spirit was dead. Now your soul was alive. Once again, I will not make this a test of fellowship, but it does help me to understand the work of the spirit. I've always conceived of the soul as representing my mind and my heart and my will. I am made in the image of God. And with my mind I can think, and with my heart I can feel, and with my will I can make decisions. And God always meant for man to be controlled from the spirit. Now, I trust that nobody will criticize me for saying this because I'm not being critical. We hear a great deal today of soul power. And quite frankly, most of the people in the world live on soul power. Not what certain people mean by this, but what the Bible means by it. You see, the unsaved person, the holy of holies, is dead. The spirit of God has not come into his spirit. And all he has to operate with is his mind and his emotions and his will. And this is energized by a thing the Bible calls the flesh, a fallen nature. You see, my friend, when I was born the first time, I was born with a fallen nature. And I discovered that I had a mind of the flesh. You know what Paul says about that? The mind of the flesh is enmity with God. I discovered I had a heart of flesh, and my emotions were turned against God. I discovered I had the will of the flesh, and my will was turned against God. Then one day I was saved, and you know what happened? The Holy Spirit of God came into my spirit, and my spirit became alive. Just as when they dedicated the tabernacle, God's glory moved into the holy of holies. But the glory of God didn't stop there. When God's glory moved into the holy of holies, it kept on moving. And it moved through the holy place and moved out into the court so that everything was controlled by the glory of God. Now, this is why he's called the Holy Spirit. He wants to take control of our lives and make our lives whole and set apart. And he does this by working through our spirit. This is why Paul prays that your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless. That God might control you wholly. That's our first consideration, his name, who he is. Now, our second consideration is his enemy, what he opposes. He opposes sin. He is holy, he opposes sin, and he is the Holy Spirit, he opposes flesh. Now, many people get confused about what this business is about flesh. When the Bible talks about your flesh, it doesn't mean your body. Nowhere does the Bible tell us that your body is sinful. Your body is neutral. Your body is something like this pen that I hold in my hand. I can take this pen and write somebody a letter of encouragement. I can take this pen and write somebody a check. That's a good letter of encouragement. I could take this pen and write a very hateful letter to somebody and break their heart. The pen is neutral. It depends on who controls the pen. Now, your body is neutral. Your body is not sinful. Your body is neutral. But the old nature, the fallen nature, can control my body, or the new nature, the Holy Spirit, can control my body. And you know what it is that controls your body? Your will, and your heart, and your mind. Now, let's go into this just a little bit deeper. The thing that causes people to fall apart is sin. Now, I am not suggesting that our Christian psychologists and psychiatrists are not doing the right thing when they try to help people, because I don't know that much about it. But I'm suggesting to you that many people have disintegrated lives because of sin. I had a phone call one day from a lady who was very desperate. She said, Would you please go to the hospital and see my daughter-in-law? She is going to have special therapy. I don't think she needs it. All she really needs to do is get saved. Of course, a pastor always hesitates to walk into a hospital and assume the responsibility of a doctor. I try never to do this. But I said I will visit her. So I went to the hospital, and there she was, a very lovely person. I said to her, Have you ever trusted Christ as your Savior? She said, No. As she began to talk to me, she felt she could confide in me, and there came out a story of sin. So from the Word of God, I simply shared with her what Jesus can do about sin. And right there she received Christ as her Savior. And the Holy Spirit moved into her dead spirit and quickened her dead spirit and made her alive. And once her conscience was clear and fear was gone and guilt was gone, she became a new person. Now, I didn't tell her to do this because I never tell people to do this. She did this on her own. But she signed herself out of the hospital. And as far as I know, in the years that followed, we watched her go through some many difficult experiences. She was trusting the Lord, and God was helping her to keep life together. Now, once again, I'm not saying I interfere with doctors or with treatment. I do not do that. But in this particular case, it illustrates the fact that once sin was taken care of, she started to become a whole person. Now, let me remind you of what happened back in Genesis. You all know, or I'd ask you to turn to it. When man sinned against God, the first step in disintegration took place. Man was separated from God. The creature was separated from his Creator. That's chapter 3 of Genesis. In chapter 4 of Genesis, man is separated from man. Cain kills Abel. That's always the result. Man is separated from God, and then man is separated from man. And when you read the rest of Genesis chapter 4, you discover that man becomes separated from himself. Cain wanders off, and he says, My punishment is too great for me. And he builds himself a city. And he tries to live on all these substitutes. You find the same thing over in James chapter 4. James is writing to Christian people, and he says, Why are you fighting each other? What causes wars and fighting among you? Why has your fellowship disintegrated? I'll tell you why. It's because of the fighting down in your heart. That's the reason why. You're at war with each other because you're at war with yourself. And if you can't get along with yourself, you can't get along with other people. And then James says, I'll tell you why you're at war with yourself. You're at war with God. He said, You adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of this world is enmity with God? So these three wars are going on in the lives of people who are not integrated, who do not have wholeness. They're at war with God, and because they are at war with God, they're at war with themselves. They've cut themselves off from their source of supply, and because they can't get along with themselves, they can't get along with other people. Now, you've had this experience in a small way. I'm sure every child or every teenager here tonight knows what it's like when mother or dad comes home and it's been a rough day. Been at the office or been at the factory or been out driving on the expressway, and you open the front door and come in, and Junior says, How you doing, Dad? Uh-oh. Now, why in the world should I go home and open the front door and growl at my children? Probably for the same reason you do. When you can't get along with yourself, you pulled some boo-boo that day, you goofed. When you can't get along with yourself, you can't get along with other people. That's basically because we can't get along with God, and God is so easy to get along with. He's not hard to live with at all. So here we have this disintegration. Sin comes into our lives, and Christian friends, let's admit, it does. Sin comes into our lives, and we break our fellowship with God, and because we break our fellowship with God, we can't get along with ourselves. Guilt moves in, fear moves in, and because we can't get along with ourselves, we can't get along with other people. Now, there's a false kind of integration. I heard about a trucker who was barreling down the highway, and all of a sudden his motor began to make noise. Now, if that happened to me, I wouldn't know what to do. And he didn't know what to do. He was out someplace where there were no garages, and here was this motor making noise. So he pulled over to the side of the road, and he loosened a couple of the mudguards. And so as he drove down the highway, the mudguards made so much noise he couldn't hear the motor anymore. Now, some people solve life's problems this way. They look for distractions. Do you realize that sometimes, not always, but sometimes people who are very, very busy in the Lord's work are using it for a distraction? It's possible for us as Christians to feel ourselves falling apart down inside. So we'll throw ourselves into an abnormal kind of ministry thinking the distraction is going to solve our problems. May I meddle one step further? There are people who think that by going into the ministry, they can solve their problems. And my friend, don't ever go into the ministry with the idea of solving your problems. It'll just make them worse. It's like marriage. Marriage doesn't create problems. Marriage reveals them. That's right. So there's a false kind of integration. For example, you can lower your standards. Let's suppose that a certain sin comes into our lives, and it bothers us. But if we talk to the right people and read the right books, we'll discover this sin really isn't so bad. After all, a lot of people do it, and they get away with it. So if you lower your standards, you can solve your conscience, and you can kind of put life back together again, but then you miss God's best. I don't think the Lord wants us to lower our standards. Now, there are some people who have too tight a halo. Paul talks about people who have a strong conscience and a weak conscience. And we think that the strong conscience is the person who says, don't do this and don't do that and don't do something else. That's the weak conscience. There are some Christians whose consciences have never grown in the love and truth of the Word of God. And if they step on a crack on the sidewalk, they have to come and apologize for it. Some little old thing that they do, it gets to be an abnormal kind of guilt. Now, you can always tell true guilt from abnormal guilt in this way. Abnormal guilt is very self-centered and leads to remorse. And you sit at home and say, oh, I'm such a failure. I'm going to resign my Sunday school class. I'm going to hand in my Bible. I'm through. That is abnormal guilt. It's caused by some little thing, and we just magnify it and it becomes very self-centered. Normal guilt, Bible guilt, is not self-centered. It is God-centered. It's not because we're looking at ourselves. We look at God and see how good He is and how holy He is, which makes us realize how sinful we are. And this leads to repentance, not remorse. Now, before we end tonight, we have to move into consideration number three. We've had consideration number one, His name. He's the Holy Spirit. He sets us apart that He might put us together. He wants to take hold of spirit, soul, and body, and in one unity, one wholeness, put life together. His enemy is sin. And so in my life and in your life, there's a conflict. There's a conflict between flesh and spirit. There's a conflict between wholeness and disintegration. There's a conflict between holiness and sin. And the answer to that conflict is the work of the Holy Spirit. So consideration number three, what does He do? What is His ministry? When you were saved, the Holy Spirit of God moved into your spirit. He came into the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle of your life. He cannot control our lives unless we let Him. When you are saved, He is resident. When we surrender to Him, He becomes Lord of our lives. Now, let's talk about that. What must we do? And when I tell you, you're going to say, oh, I've heard you say that before. I dare say before the Lord comes back or the Lord moves me or I go home by way of the undertaker instead of the upper taker. You'll hear me say it again. Because with me, this is a very personal thing. I just wish that at some point in my early Christian life, somebody would have sat down and said to me what I'm about to say to you. It's simply this. The Holy of Holies of your life, your spirit, is where the Holy Spirit lives. He has made you alive. You have God's life down there. Now, He wants to do with us what God did with that tabernacle. He wants to move out of the Holy of Holies into the holy place and move out and get a hold of everything. We have to let Him do it. Now, the thing that separated the Holy of Holies from the holy place was the veil. Big, thick veil. Hebrews tells me that veil was a picture of my Lord's body. So that when Jesus' body was rent on the cross and He offered His soul and spirit and body for me on the cross, that veil was rent in two. It's a picture of crucifixion. Now, you know what I'm leading up to. You and I must come to the place in our lives where we permit God to rent the veil, to crucify the flesh, and permit the Holy Spirit of God to work. Let me illustrate. God wants to control my body. That's the outer court. The Holy Spirit lives in my spirit. The only way the Holy Spirit can get to my body is through my soul, my mind, my heart, and my will. Now, allow me to drop an atomic bomb of truth that when it explodes may hurt somebody, but I'll do it anyway. Your life is not supposed to be controlled by your emotions. And your life is not supposed to be controlled by your mind. They have a part to play. Your life is to be controlled by your will. Now, your will cannot control itself. If you doubt that, read Romans 7. In Romans 7, Paul is trying to figure out how in the world to control his will. That which I will, I do not. That which I shouldn't do, I do. Oh, wretched man that I am. The wretched man is the man who thinks he can live by willpower. But I've got news for you. Something controls your will. And at that point where I say, I am going to run my own will, the old flesh steps in and I find out what a failure I am. Haven't you had that experience? Of course you have. Now, God says, I want your will to be controlled by your mind and your emotions. There are two verses in Ephesians that summarize this. Understanding what the will of the Lord is. My mind controls my will. Doing the will of God from your heart. My heart controls my will. Now, too many Christians are controlled by their feelings. I don't feel like going to church. I don't feel like praying. I suggest you talk that way to your boss. When you go down to Montgomery Ward or Sears Roebuck someday, just say, I don't feel like paying my bill. You get on the elevator, I don't feel like giving a token. Try it sometime. Far too many Christians are the slaves of their emotions and whichever way their gallbladder goes, that's the way they go. God says, we don't live like that. Children live like that. Children are slaves of their emotions. God says, I want your will. You notice as you read your Bible, the emphasis is on the will. If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether I speak of God or not. Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. It's the will that God's looking for. Now, my body is controlled by my will and my will is going to be controlled either by my flesh or by the Spirit. And if I have a fleshly mind and fleshly emotions, my will will be controlled by the flesh and then my body will be controlled by the flesh. But if I have a spiritual mind and a spiritual heart, then the Holy Spirit of God moves right through and He controls my will through a spiritual mind and a spiritual heart. And when the Spirit of God controls my heart and my mind and my will, He moves right out and gets a hold of my body. And it's really a beautiful thing. And just as the glory of God moved through the tabernacle and got a hold of the holy place and moved out and filled that court to the glory of God, so the Holy Spirit within moves out, He takes possession of the mind and the heart and then the will and then He controls the body. And you know what happens? Your whole being is united in the Lord. You don't have spiritual schizophrenia. You don't have split down inside with one pulling against the other. Now, what provision has the Holy Spirit made? And here I must hurry. What provision has the Holy Spirit made so that you and I have the right kind of mind and heart? He wants me to have a spiritual mind. He wants me to have a spiritual heart. May I just make a little detour here for a moment? God overcomes sin in your life not by taking away the ability to sin, but by taking away the appetite for sin. I have just as much ability to sin today as I did 25 years ago. Really, maybe more. I know more now than I did then. But God doesn't take away the ability to sin. He takes away the appetite for sin. It's not so much a matter of the doing as the desiring. So the Holy Spirit wants to work in your heart, in your mind. Now, if you'll tarry with me a few moments, we'll finish this, and then I trust we'll practice it. The Holy Spirit has done two marvelous, wonderful miracles to make it possible for you and me to have a heart that has the right kind of desires and a mind that has the right kind of thoughts. And do you know what these two miracles are? The incarnation of Jesus Christ and the inspiration of the Word of God. The Holy Spirit knows that my heart needs to love. He made my heart to love. And love is a wonderful thing. But He says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. All that's in the world is the lust of the flesh. Imagine loving the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. And so the Holy Spirit looks at me and says, you know, your heart needs someone to love. And so you know what He did? He performed a miracle whereby Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took upon Himself human flesh so that I could get in contact with Him. And then Jesus came down and He lived here for some 33 years. And He died for me and He arose again, went back to Heaven, took that body in glory back to Heaven with Him. And the Holy Spirit of God reveals Jesus to me. That's His job. I'm always afraid of these people who think the Holy Spirit comes to reveal Himself. Forgive me, I'm just a little bit leery of people who always talk about the Holy Spirit and never talk about Jesus. Because the Holy Spirit talks about Jesus. He shall not speak from Himself. He shall glorify me. And so the Holy Spirit of God reveals Jesus Christ to me and my heart falls in love with Jesus Christ. The greatest power for doing good is love, not hate, love. So He gave me a person to love and then He gave me a book to read. And the two go together. What Jesus Christ is in the flesh, this book is. Everything the Bible says about itself, it says about Jesus. He is the bread of life. This is the bread of life. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word. He is the light of the world. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. He is the eternal Savior. Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in Heaven. So it goes together like this. Tomorrow morning when you wake up, you say, God, take me. Take my body. That's Romans 12.1. And take my soul. Take my mind and my heart and my will. Take my spirit. Oh, may the Holy Spirit of God just move throughout my whole being and take possession of me and make me whole. And now, Lord, I'm going to open Your Word, because my mind will have the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and I'm going to see the Lord Jesus. Beyond the sacred page, I seek Thee, Lord, my spirit pants for Thee, Thou living Word. Why do you read your Bible? Oh, to find verses to hit people over the head with. Shame on you. Why do I read my Bible? Why do you read your Bible? To see Jesus. Don't you love to get a letter from somebody far away you haven't seen in a long time? It's a precious experience. And when you read the Word of God, you see Jesus. Now, the Holy Spirit of God performs this miracle. As I read the Word of God, He shows me the Son of God. And as He shows me the Son of God, who He is, what He's done for me, what He wants to do for me, how wonderful He is, then it gets a hold of my mind and my heart. And my mind is illumined and renewed. And my heart is filled with love for the Lord Jesus. And so that my mind and my heart are united. And then this gets a hold of my will. So that I'm not serving God unwillingly, I'm serving Him with knowledge and with love. You see, it's possible for us to obey God with our will and not with our mind. Not understanding the will of God. It's possible to obey God with our mind and our will, but not with our heart. Many times children do this. Okay, if you want me to, I'll do it. No, Paul says, understanding what the will of the Lord is and doing the will of God from the heart. Lovingly. Now, if you want the summary of all of this, it's in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. And here we close. 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. But we all with unveiled face, hiding nothing, beholding as in a mirror, that's the Bible, the glory of the Lord, are changed, transfigured, transformed into the same image. What image? The image of God. Sin has deformed this image. The Holy Spirit transforms that I might be conformed to His image. Transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. It's such a beautiful thing. Paul is just simply saying when the child of God looks into the Word of God and sees the Son of God, he is transformed by the Spirit of God to become like the image of God. This is not a crisis, it's a process. It may start with a crisis. Somebody here tonight may say, I can't have that experience, there's sin in my life. Then confess it and forsake it. It was a crisis for Jesus to make this available. His body had to be broken on the cross. It was a crisis for the Holy Spirit. He had to come down and live with me. It's a process. It's a day-by-day experience whereby you and I take time to be holy. We spend time with the Lord. We pray so that our will is surrendered to Him. And we read the Word of God so that our mind is renewed. And we love Him and worship Him so that our heart is lifted. And then the Spirit of God who lives in our spirit just moves out and takes the mind, and we have a spiritual mind. The heart, we have a spiritual heart. The will, and then the will controls the body and sin doesn't have a chance. But oh, when sin moves in, it breaks down all of this. And then we try to function on our minds alone and become intellectual, or our emotions alone and become fanatical, or our wills alone and become stoical. God says, no, put the whole thing together. Your whole spirit, soul, and body wholly yielded to the Lord. Is this possible? Of course it is. For Jesus would never have died. The Holy Spirit would never have come. Paul would never have said it. God's commandments are God's enablements. Is it easy? No. Is it simple? Yes. I've explained the simplicity of it, but it's not easy. It involves death. That veil has to be torn. You people are so patient. I appreciate you. What kind of death? Crucifixion. Did you know, my friend, that you cannot crucify yourself? I've heard preachers scream at me, crucify yourself! You can't crucify yourself. You can drown yourself. You can shoot yourself, poison yourself, gas yourself. You can throw yourself off of a building, but you can't crucify yourself. Crucifixion is one death that you cannot perform on yourself. All you can do is surrender. You know, when you and I surrender at the beginning of every day, the Holy Spirit takes care of this. He's not only the Spirit of life, He's the Spirit of death. And through the Holy Spirit, we put to death the deeds of the body, and we identify ourselves with Christ. And the Holy Spirit applies that death, burial, and resurrection to our lives. And we say with Paul, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. It's a great experience, and it can be yours. If you do not know Christ as your Savior, don't let sin tear you apart any longer. Please, give your heart to Christ. Christian friend, if something in our lives keeps God from working, it's not worth it. It will just tear you apart. It will just tear you apart. Let the Holy Spirit move in and give you wholeness. He puts life together because He is the Holy Spirit. Let's pray. O Father, we ask that the Spirit of truth may make this very real to us and bless us to love Jesus Christ more and to learn more about Him and to live more like Him. We ask for His name's sake. Amen.