In this sermon, Norman Grubb discusses the concept of living a life free from condemnation and failure through our union with Christ. He emphasizes that as Christians, we often try to put on a false self and pretend that we are capable of living a victorious life on our own. However, Grubb explains that true victory comes from recognizing that it is Christ within us who enables us to live a life of no condemnation. He encourages listeners to read his article on how to handle temptation and failure, which explains how to live a victorious life through our union with Christ.

Week six, program one. This is David Ord with another Union Life broadcast. We're in a series of programs at the moment in which we're considering the question, who am I? Who am I in Christ? Man who wrote a book by that title, Who Am I, is Norman Grubb, and he's with us on the program for this series to explain more thoroughly just what a Christian's inheritance is in Christ. And I'm going to ask him if he'll pick up right where we were in the last program in this series. Well, we're looking into how I can be really myself, the full, liberated self I'm meant to be. And we've seen that the meaning of being yourself is that God made human selves as means by which he could express himself, the deity, through humanity. And we've seen how, therefore, we had to go through the experience ourselves of finding out why it is to be a self, which meant we had to face up to the alternatives because life is always the linking together of its opposites. And so we went through the experience in which we could be a wrong self or a right self. We found a wrong self when the spirit of error, the satanic spirit, occupied us through the fall, and we were simply agents of a self-centered deity. And then through Jesus Christ, through his death which cut us off from the old spirit, his resurrection which introduced us to the new spirit, we move into the new spirit. We're now expressing the spirit of self-giving love, God's spirit, instead of the satanic spirit of self-loving love. And we went through with looking into the ways in which we have to discover that a human self is only a container because we've been deceived through Satan in thinking that we are self, an independent self, because he himself claimed to be independent, which is a lie. He's only a creation of God, but he acts as his independent self. He pities us for that lie, whereas really we were expressions of his independent self through us. So we moved into our Christian life with the wrong concept that we were independent selves and could now live a life, a better life with the help of Christ, instead of living it under the influence of Satan. We found there's no such thing as we living it. Humanity expresses the deity living his way of life by us. So we have to go through the quite painful experience as a Christian in discovering that the final form of sin is trying to do things, trying to be ourselves. That's what Satan is. Independent, self-acting, self-reliant self. That's what sin is. Self-reliant, self-acting self is sin. So we had to find out our final sin. It wasn't that we did things like lying or feeding or whatever it is, but that we were expressing this spirit of independence which is sin. I can do it myself. I do it my own way. So we had to come to this final revelation that Jesus said to himself, of myself I can do nothing. We may say we say that. We have to come until we discover, well that is it. I never was doing anything. Like Paul said in Romans 7, when I would do good, even this person with me, we don't do good. The only do good is God, the good one, doing it through us. So when Paul said when I would do good, that was his sin was that. Self-reliant self saying I would do good is sin. And therefore he found evil with him because that was an evil thing. So we have to discover this final insight. My final problem is I'm a self-expressing, independent, self-reliant self. When at last I discover, therefore the self in itself is just a container. It's a vessel. It's a branch to a vine. It's a temple to the God in it. And so on. And when it can come to be a revelation, then I can move into what Christ completed for me. And I can see it by receiving Christ, out went the spirit of independence which is Satan expressing his independence by deceiving me, by making me think I'm independent. And he's replaced my spirit of self-giving itself, which is God, and begins to express his self-giving self through me. And I then move into this second crisis of faith. My first crisis of faith was that I discovered outwardly I'd committed sins. And there had been a movement of precious blood which indicated his death on my behalf. He's going to hell on my behalf. And then he's rising from the dead. But there I had to go deeper and find my total trouble. It wasn't the sins I'd committed. It was this sin self which is the independent quality of self. And when I saw that was out, because it was an error and a lie, and the spirit of independence was replaced by a spirit of self-giving which is Christ, I'm moving by a second act of faith. And as faith does, it accepts what is available by my inner free will, my spirit's free will. I accept what's available. I accept it as such. Then by the law of faith, what you take takes you. Faith becomes substance. And that comes into me and became a consciousness that this has become a real fact. That it's not our living. It's a living Jesus Christ, a living God, living in me. So the real me is he. And I'm just the vessel, just the agent. And I move into an experience of that because life is experience. Life is being ourselves who we are as ourselves. And the first experience we had was that I'm a sinner saved by grace, accepted and loved and forgiven and a child of God. The second experience is that the real truth is my humanity expresses him himself. He himself now has his residence in me in permanent condition. And my permanent identity is he in me and spirit bears witness to me that this is a fact. Now I've moved into the full realization of what a human self is. A human self, really the means of which the divine self is expressing his self in its quality of self-giving love. And from there now I start being a real self. And the surprising effect of this is that when it has settled into me by way of an inner witness, an inner consciousness, it is he living the life, not I. The paradoxical consequence is not that I, as it were, regain him. I have regained him, but I've regained myself. I have regained Christ in a sense when I've saved. He becomes a saviour to me. And when I've moved into this fullness of the relationship, he's become the one who's replaced me in living his life in me. I've regained him. But en route, I've lost myself because through the conviction of sin I've begun to downgrade myself. I've been disgusted with myself, a disillusioned. I've got the false idea I'm the wrong kind of self. So I've been living, dragging my feet about myself, condemning myself, feeling guilty, thinking I should be better. All these lies because we say we can't be better. The only better is Christ in us. So I've lived a life in which, although I was a Lord's servant, Lord's child of God by faith in Jesus Christ, yet I was dissatisfied with myself and suspicious of myself and fearful of myself, needing help, I think, to keep me on the right way. So I had this downgrading idea of myself. Now when I've moved in this new consciousness that myself isn't really myself, it's a state of himself, I move into a new attitude towards myself. And I begin to replace self-condemnation, self-downgrading, and self-suspicion by self-acceptance. That's a very new reality to me. I begin to say to myself, well, if I'm totally his agent, if he's the person living in me, I'm the vessel in which he is the living water, I'm the branch of his, and he's the vine, if I'm good enough for him, I'm good enough for myself. And so I begin to live by a changed attitude towards myself. So this full life isn't just a changed attitude towards him. Through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, he's become what he is to me. That's become the fact. But with that has come the new revelation of a changed attitude towards myself. And the difference is, until we move into this positive recognition, our tendency is to be suspicious of ourselves, to be sin-conscious, flesh-conscious, self-conscious, and regarding myself more on the failing level than the success level. Well, how can I regard myself on the success level only if I've settled into the fact that the successful person is the living God in me expressing himself by myself? When I can dawn on me this is the God of all sufficiency, it's the person in me operating by me, operating by me, I begin to say, well then, as I say, if I'm adequate to him, I'm adequate to myself. And if I am to him the agency by which he expresses himself through my reasons and my emotions and my physical appetites and actions, then I can equally accept myself. So I move into the new inner recognition of self-acceptance. Now this is rather a surprise, and not only a surprise, it's even regarded as somewhat suspect by most of us as believers, because, as I say again, our progress as believers has been to lose confidence in ourselves, not gain it. We go over it again when we say in our unsaved days we tried to be confident in ourselves. It's a lie, of course. We put on a dog as if he hid what we really were, arguing to make life work. When we got saved, found we were sinners, we'd given up that up. We would become lost sinners. Then we get saved. Now we're saved, and we are Christ. But we haven't got self in the focus yet, because we think this false idea of self-reliance, self-improvement is a lie from Satan. So I go to a person and say, well, I downgrade myself, because I feel I'm not what I ought to be. I'm such a failure. I have my sins and my weaknesses and a lack of power, a lack of peace. So I have a disgust of myself, a condemnation of myself as a redeemed person, very far from relying on myself. And my emphasis is that I can't do a thing and I'm no good and so on. So it's another revolution when that changes. And we're going to be getting into this whole subject with Norman Grubb, our guest for this series of programs on Who Am I? and really understanding how we are to live the faith life of no condemnation, where we accept ourselves because we know that Christ is united with us so that He is our real life. Now, if you'd like to begin to understand this more thoroughly, we want to send you a little article. It'll take you just 10, 15, 20 minutes to read it. And it's entitled How to Understand Temptation and Failure. Norman wrote it. We know you're just going to find this an article that is going to revolutionize your life. So many Christians know failure in their lives. They do not know the successful life of victory that Christ meant them to have. It's called How to Handle Temptation and Failure. There's no charge for it if you write to 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118. That's 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118. Or call Area Code 901-795-0121. That's 901-795-0121. Be sure to join us for the remaining programs in this series on Who Am I? Until tomorrow, this is David Ord. Program two. This is David Ord with today's Union Life broadcast. We're in the middle of a series of programs which we've entitled Who Am I? And the noted author and lecturer Norman Grubb, who wrote the book Who Am I? is with us on this series of programs and we're presently discussing the whole question of how a Christian can know the confident life of the replaced life of Christ living as Him. Now I can be a satisfactory self, a self-satisfied self, a self-assured self, when I can be satisfied with myself, when I can have confidence in myself and can operate life on the basis of self-confidence and self-sufficiency. Now that's saying a very big thing. Because that's saying the very thing that we, the redeemed, don't say about ourselves. Because as we've said before, we've had these misconceptions about that we should be improved souls which we never can be. We have to watch it here because the world has picked this up. And the world doesn't know the replaced self. It doesn't know a human self which was controlled by the spirit of error, of self-centeredness, is now controlled by the spirit of truth, the spirit of self-giving love. It doesn't know that. It tries to build up a false self. And so a psychiatrist doesn't know Christ will try and stimulate people to somehow trust themselves as if there's some quality about themselves which they can trust. They're in for trouble. Because that self-trust still remains a self-satisfying, self-centred trust and we're in pain on this. Now we're not talking about that. We're talking about a new understanding of myself. I can accept myself because Christ accepts me, not because I accept myself as that independent self out. There's no such thing as independent self. I've now realised self always is controlled by the deity in it. Now I've moved from the control of the deity of self-centeredness, the deity to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. But it doesn't mean when I've moved into this I've moved, it has a door on me. This is the person leading my life by me and he's satisfied with me. I'm his appointed agency. So my emotions and my reasons and my appetites, my abilities are his agency for expressing himself. So I then begin to move into a new attitude towards myself which is I accept myself. I've confidence in myself not because of that false conscience relying on an independent self but because I now know my human self is really Christ's self expressed by myself. But it is Christ's self expressed by myself. So I'm not only expressing Christ as the person in me, I'm confident in me as the agency by which he expresses himself. So I'm moving into a new area of self-acceptance on its only possible sound basis, which is only accepted because it is the agency by which he expresses himself. But it is the agency. So I'm expressing, I'm confident not only in the agent but the agency. He's the agent, expressing his perfect ways through me. I'm the agency. Now in the older tendencies would say, well I trust the agent but not the agency. We're very fond of saying that. I trust Christ, couldn't trust myself. Now the revolution in this reality is I not only trust Christ but I do trust myself. With a laugh, I say because myself is a God-man himself. It looks like me but I'm in a union. And in that union spontaneously he is expressing himself by me. That's why we say the good example of the meaning of this new union is the way by which we get established in our profession. We take on studying medicine or teaching or carpentry or plumbing or cooking or something as something outside ourselves. A body of knowledge we apply ourselves to. As we do so what happens? Gradually the knowledge gets us. I settle in, I find I'm able to cook or teach or practice medicine or do so and so. I am able. Now it isn't really I, it's really this body of knowledge which has got hold of me now and expresses itself within, expresses itself through me. Yet I so regard it as myself that I don't say I learn carpentry, I say I am a carpenter. I don't say I learn medicine, I say I am a doctor. I don't say I learn cooking, I am a cook. What really matters, I myself now is expressing the cooking ability or medical know-how. I'm not, I mean I am the agency expressing the know-how but I call myself this by the name of the know-how. As I'm a doctor I'm really only expressing medical know-how or cooking know-how. Yet it becomes such a union, I don't talk, I talk as if I'm the person who is the cook, is the doctor. Now that's the sense now in which I'm a Christian. A Christian really is, I'm a human, just a human, an agency, but I'm in a union in which the vine is expressing itself through the branch as one and the vine is in action. The living water in the vessel is available, whatever the illustration we use, there's one and that's the one operating. It's with so much one, I don't call it himself, I call it myself. And I say I'm a Christian. I really am Christ expressed by my humanity. But I don't talk like that. I talk as if I'm the Christ. So I come to a place where I appear to be the Christ. The real fact is, of course, I'm just the agency and he's the agent. But with so one, I speak as if I'm the agent. Like I say, I'm a doctor. Well, I'm not really a doctor. I'm really practising medicine. I'm a cook. I'm really only practising cookery. This is a new way in which in this total life we move past the area in which most of us as believers have said, oh, I don't say it but myself. Oh, I'm weak. I'm poor. I can't do anything. And so on. I talk on the negative level about myself because I'm divided in my mind between myself and himself. And I've still got the dregs of that old idea as if I should be a changed person. I should become something. Then I'm a failure. That's how I'm a failure. I can't do it. I fail. That's that old, what we call Romans 7 stuff. That's out. And we have to constantly say, when we understand the self doesn't change, the self expresses, the deity expresses through the self. When I moved into that, I see the change of deity through Jesus Christ, the new deity in me, Jesus Christ. And I've moved into the consciousness that he is the person in me, that we are in a union. I move now from a Christ consciousness to a self-conscious. I begin to say, I do it. I can do all things with Christ's strength in me. I am full of power by the wisdom and love of my mind. Micah says that. I'm full of power by the Holy Spirit, the wisdom, love and might. And Caleb say, let us go up, but they say, we were labeled. Well, we were labeled with God through Caleb. He spoke to his Caleb. And Elijah say, there'll be neither Jew nor Arab, but according to my word. His word, he meant I'm speaking God's word. I'm as God speaking it. Therefore when I speak it, that's God speaking it. Now this is a new area of total self-acceptance. A self-confidence. Now this is what the human hunger is for. We're made to be on top of life. What the Bible talks about reigning in life by Christ. Reigning means on top of life, managing life. Not being managed by life, we manage life. In every circumstance, we're managing our circumstances and people, not they are. And this is what we hunger to be. That's why the Bible says we're to be as God, because God's a manager. It says we are, Satan tempted and said you'll be, if you follow me, you'll be as a God, knowing good and evil. But when we move on to Christ, we don't simply as God, we are God, not as God. As God, but you've got to imitate God. That's Satan's trick. We can become imitated, imitate, make a mess of it. But when we come through from Satan to Christ, we don't as God, we are God. Because we have an expression, the cook is expressing his cookery to us. Christ is expressing his Christhood by us. And therefore, we are now talking this new language in which we are sufficient. Paul says, God, Paul says, he's praying to God, who's made me an able minister, able minister of the new covenant. Then he says, to make it clear, he says, he says, not of ourselves, he says, of ourselves, we have insufficiency. Our sufficiency is of God. But because our sufficiency is of God, we are able. So he moves up, not by just saying, I'm insufficient, God sufficient. He says that's the basis of it. In the basis of it, I'm just the do nothing, the know nothing, he's the everything. But I don't, though I say that, really, I say I'm sufficient now. Because in this union, I'm expressing him. Now this is the new level of self-confidence, which seems daring, seems presumptuous, seems blasphemous, and we should be attacked by fellow believers. Because until we've come into this, as I say all along, we've got this wrong concept of self, that says self should be improved, then we say we aren't improved, and we're all that mess up, I'm no good. We've got the wrong, we've got this lie that we should be self-improved by ourselves. Where at last we learn, we're never self-improved by ourselves. The only improvement, or the opposite of failure, is Satan living a wrong life in us, or Christ living a right life in us. That's all there is. Then we know, and so we can say, but those who don't say, oh, how can you say that? How can you say that you have confidence in yourself? Because until you are in the consciousness of it, it looks blasphemous, or close to us all. So here we move into this new being, new life, new self. And it's on this basis we begin to live a life with a new confidence in it. The confidence is, I do my own stuff, and I forget Christ and do it. And what do I mean by that? A very important matter. As I've already said, if you know how to cook, you don't keep saying, I'm a cook, I'm a cook, I'm a cook. You forget you have the cooking know-how. You act as cook, and you practice the know-how, and you just say, I'm cooking. Really, you're practicing cooking. You forget that. Or if you're a doctor, you don't say, I'm practicing medicine. Say, I'm a doctor. I know my know-how. I'll give you the right pill or something. I do, it's really only practicing know-how and medicine. But you forget that, and you act as the person who is doing it. Now then, when you're this type of person, I'm doing it. I run my home. I run my business. I fill myself with my interest in life. I'm full of normal interest, natural interest in life. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. And you really fill it with what we call, say, with a big wink. Because the Bible says that the God would wink at humans. So we say, with a wink. And we're going to pick right up on this in our next program. We're heard on this station five days a week. You've been listening to Norman Grubb, who wrote the book, Who Am I? Now, Norman wrote a little article. It'll just take you a few minutes, 10, 15 minutes to read it. It's entitled, How to Handle Temptation and Failure. We were meant to live a victorious life. This article explains how. There's no charge for it. We want to send it to you. We're happy to let you in on what we've come to see as the victory life in Christ, if you don't yet know it. Now, write forward to this address, 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118. That's 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118. Or call area code 901-795-0121. That's 901-795-0121. Be sure to tune in to tomorrow's program in this series at the same time. The address again in just a moment. Until next time, this is David Ord. Program three. This is David Ord welcoming you to another Union Life broadcast. We're in the middle of a series of programs which we have entitled, Who Am I? One of the biggest problems that Christians face today, the reason so many know are defeated and are discouraged life, instead of the glorious victory life of Christ living through their flesh and manifesting His life through them, that they are living letters of Christ. The problem that so many face that prevents them really knowing this glorious life is they don't know who they are in Christ. They don't know what their heritage is in Him. Now, we've been talking with Norman Grubb who wrote the book, Who Am I? And at the end of the last program, Norman made the remarkable statement that there is a sense in which when we really come to know who we are in Christ, that we forget God and live as it were. Norman, would you want to pick up and just explain more thoroughly just what you mean by that for us? It's a pretty revolutionary thing for us redeemed people who are inclined to downgrade ourselves and belittle ourselves, speaking about our weakness and failures and so forth, to say we are accepting ourselves and affirming ourselves and saying that we are capable, we can do it and do it. We're not downgrading ourselves, we're upgrading ourselves. We're saying really what Paul said in the complete sense in his great statement where he said, first, I've been crucified with Christ as far as being a selfless, under the control of the spirit of Satan, of error. Now, he said, I live. I said, yes, it's not I now live. Come on, there's a new person who's expressing his life through me, and as me, and that's Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not either Christ lives in me. Then he goes on to say, I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, which faith of the Son of God means you see yourself as he sees yourself. The faith of the Son of God is he affirming who he is in us, and we are affirming who we are. And so he's saying, I now live, he comes back as a liberated self. And he speaks about God and his attitude towards him, where he says he thanks God who counted me faithful, putting me in the ministry. Now, it's one thing for us to say we count God faithful, it's another thing to say God counts us faithful. That means that God relies on us, and therefore we can rely on ourselves. So we're saying that this is the fully liberated life, where I've understood that I am in myself just a vessel, that's all, just empty, I'm just a branch, I'm just a slave to my boss, I'm just a temple to the God living in me, that's all I am. And yet, because I am the agency by which he does manifest himself, by which he does produce his fruit, by which he does do his work, like I'm a body member of the head, I reaffirm myself, I say therefore I'm the one doing it. And I, as it were, get myself back. And in doing so, I operate by the whole purpose God has in view, which is we should be confident selves, confident selves, self-sufficient selves, self-assured selves, apparently boasting selves, because we ought to be the ones in action, but the hidden secret of us being in action is really it's he by us. And yet we are so, having got that in focus, we're saying it's we doing it. It's just that by the fact in every profession, you learn a profession which isn't you. You learn carpentry, you learn teaching, you learn medicine, you learn something, it's a body of knowledge which isn't you. But as you study, it becomes you. And that settles into the know-how of practicing your medicine or doing your cooking or doing your teaching. Now, when that's settled in, you actually take the name of the person as if it's you doing it. You say, I'm a doctor. Really, you're merely practicing the know-how of medicine. I'm a cook. I'm merely practicing the know-how of cooking. You're the agency by which the cooking know-how is expressed through you. You don't talk like that. You say it's if you're the cook and you're the doctor and so on. And that's the same way by which we say we're Christians. What we really are, we're expressing Christ. We put this, I'm the Christian, not he. I'm the Christian. I really am a Christ-expresser. That's the sense in which we act as if we forget that we're an expresser of a body of knowledge within us, or in our case, expresser of a living person within us. We forget that and act as if it is we. And that's the sense in which we say a cook forgets he's a cook and just says, I'm a cook. A doctor forgets the fact he's just practicing the medicine of knowledge and says, I'm a doctor. And so we act our Christian life on the basis, I'm doing this. I'm doing my daily job. And jump into it and in doing so, forget the fact it's really the inner person expressing his know-how through me. And I just, I'm doing this job and I'm doing so and so. Well, it's not really me, it's he. I forget him and act as myself. That's what union means. That the reality of union has become so you that you're only just the agent, but you forget that. And that's why the most effective I am and whoever lived with Jesus Christ. You might say, what's the most effective egotist who ever lived with Jesus Christ? I am the way, I am the truth, I am the living bread, I am the living water, I am the door, I am the good shepherd. I am, I am, I am. Yet the, I mustn't call it a joke. It's almost like a joke you say in this point. When he was challenged, how did you do those mighty works? Oh, I didn't do them. I do nothing by myself. I do what I see the father do. What's that mean? And they say, how did you make those mighty statements? Oh, I didn't make those statements. I judge as I hear. I'm hearing something. What do you mean? He said, you see, it's like this. When you understand who I am, you say, where's the father? You often go, where's the father? You think the father's up in some distant place. He says, if you see me, you see the father. But the whole meaning of God's means of expression is expression itself through a human person. In this case, it was Jesus, took flesh on our behalf, God's own son, became a man on our behalf. He says, I'm a father expresser. And so I'm saying, I am, I am, I am. It's not I at all, really. It's the father expressed through me. And that's why we say the same thing. We say, I am, I am. Paul says, I live in the flesh. As I said yesterday, Elijah says, there won't be dew nor rain, but only my word. And Caleb says, let us go up and want to possess the land. We are well able to overcome it as if we do it. Yet the real truth underneath it is not at all. It's because the real me is God expressed through me. And that's how we operate on this level. And I mentioned yesterday, with something I'll talk about later, as if we talk of ourselves with a wink. We say, I'm doing, of course it isn't really I, it's he in me. But I don't continue to say it. I do it. It's really I, he. I'm doing the cooking. I'm running the home. I'm doing the man business. I'm running the, I'm fulfilling that activity. It isn't really I, it's he. I say it with a wink as it is, really, it's he within me. Now this is a very remarkable new outlook on life because it's not the outlook that the average redeemed Christian has. As I said yesterday, it's the false outlook we try to have in an unsaved age. We try to put on the dog and put on the face as if we're doing it. Hide the fact inside we know we're not and can't. That's the old life. We're living a life of pretense. We're putting on a false self. That false self has been crucified with Christ. And we realize now that really was Satan expressing his self by us. We were just falsely making out as if it was the life we're living. Now we said we passed from that, from a false self to a no self. We'd come in, oh no, it didn't die at all. It was Satan through me. Now I've got to learn the new changes, not Satan through me, it's Christ through me through entering into the process of Christ's resurrection. And we move into this, so we go through a period of the destruction of self-confidence. Because we had the false self-confidence. By myself, I'm weak. And then until I understand the thing, I fail. I haven't understood Christ's running management of my life. And so I keep on in that Roman seven attitude on the pages of the flesh and so on. And we go through a period in which we downgrade ourselves. When we come into this new relationship, this new relationship, we upgrade ourselves. Because we say, oh yes, but didn't I? Didn't I? Because the real I now is the expression of the new deity, Lord Jesus Christ, and I do it, it is he doing it. And this means we move into life in a freedom because deep inside ourselves, we're conscious of our freedom and our sufficiency because underneath it, we're conscious, it's him, it's he. And this is the foundation of what is true living. This is true living. That life is to be a self-satisfied self, a self-assured self, a self-sufficient self, an enabled self, we're made to be that. As Jesus said, we are, the Bible says, gods, gods of self-sufficient self. And Jesus quoted how the Bible says, when the word of God's coming to you, the psalmist says, I said, you are gods. And the Bible says we are to reign in life by Christ. Reigning is a king, he handles things, not handled by things, he handles things. Now you handle life. This is the new meaning of life. And it's not only possible but true. When I know the inner secret, it looks like me but I live with a wink. It looks like me, I say, it is me, didn't I? It's really he. Like Jesus said, I am, I am, I, oh, didn't I? If my father threw me all the time, that was his hidden secret. Yet he acted as if he was he. Now as he is, so are we in this world. So as he operated and affirmed, so we're to affirm on our level. And therefore we're to be, yes, we are. There's one little insight I often give of that, it's a simple little thing, it's almost like a joke in it, but what I mean, and that is that some years ago I was in, I came upon it before Jimmy Carter was the president of the United States, I came upon it with his older sister Gloria. And in our fellowship in a conference, the Lord gave this revelation to her, she said, oh, I see, I'm not just Gloria, I'm Christ in glorious form. It's the living Christ living through my personality, my personhood. She got that, it was a great light to her. But the little joke I had was this, she went home and then she wrote me a letter about a few weeks later, said, I want to tell you something. She said, I had to learn something. She said, when I came home, she lived in that famous little city, we all know by name, Plains, which isn't very large, but apparently it had a garden club. And she says, when I came home, I had a letter on my desk asking me to, I belong to my garden club, asking me to give a lecture on herbs. She said, I know nothing about herbs. She said, that had been my line. So she said, I'd better study. So she said, for a couple of days, I just put myself to studying herbs to give a lecture on herbs and gave it. But she said, when I came home that night, I got on my knees because, and I went to the Lord, I said, Lord, you forgive me. I've been so busy studying herbs these two days. I forgot all about you. And she said, and the Lord said to me, you're silly, what are you talking about? What do you mean? I was curbing with you. That was my lecture, not yours. She saw the point. That her concentration on herbs was underneath Christ concentrating by her, expressed through her. That's what life is. Isn't that a wonderfully liberating message? Now, I know that some of you are going to be shocked by the positive confidence of this message. But the fact is, we are meant to manifest the life of Christ now. Now, we want to help you to see these things in the scriptures more clearly. If you'll write for the article, How to Handle Temptation and Failure, to the address that will be given at the close of this program. Request the article, How to Handle Temptation and Failure. There's no charge for it. We're happy to send it to you. It'll take you just a few minutes to read it. Be sure to hear the other broadcasts in this series. We're on the station daily until tomorrow. This is David Ord. In Christ, and in a sense, we almost forget God and live with that wink, as you put it, of knowing that really it is Christ living through us. Would you tell us that again? I'm rather repeating what I said as they come out into the full meaning of selfhood. Well, I can be a self-confident self, and we've been going over the fact I'm a self-confident self when I find that in myself, I'm a nothing, but I'm a container of a deity who is adequate. And the false deity has been removed through the cross of Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ is a true deity in me, the Holy Spirit, and he is the adequacy. But when I'm in this union, I've moved into this conscious union, I'm adequate. Because I'm saying my suspicion is not that we have any sufficiency of ourselves, that it is of ourselves, our sufficiency is of God. Yet, I do say, like Paul, he's made me able minister, because of my adequacy. So we moved into a life where we're adequate, yet within ourselves, as we say, living quite a wink, we know it's him, really. A life I now live, in the flesh, I live it. I live it by the inner recognition, by the faith of the Son of God, the recognition of Christ's faith in me, that he's my adequacy. I live by that inadequacy. And yet, in doing so, the paradox is, we live as if it's ourselves. And we're explaining how Christ was a, I am, I am, I am, I am, I'm this, I am this, I'm the way, I'm the truth, yet, at least, it's not I, it's the Father in me. So we live as I am, adequate people. And, not a reckoning, knowing that we are adequate, we're just doing our ordinary, daily life, living it. And in doing so, we're, as it were, forgetting, apparently forgetting it's not we at all, that's the hidden secret, it's really he. We live as if it's he. And I spoke a little illustration of that, of the contact I had with Jimmy Carter's elder sister, Gloria, about six years ago, in a conference. And, in course of the conference, she'd come to see this truth, that it was really Christ living in her. She'd say, it was Christ living in my Gloria form. I'm just an agency, my humanity is an agency for Christ. She'd got that plain, so it was she, and it wasn't she, it was Christ. And after she went home after this conference, a few weeks later, she wrote me a letter. Now, what is, almost like a little joke, how this fact became real to me. She said, when I arrived home, she said, to her home in Plains, and I always make a little joke there, saying Plains isn't a very big city, but apparently had a garden club. And she said, I'm a member of the garden club, and a letter was on my desk, saying, would I give a lecture on herbs? I said, I never knew about herbs. So she said, I'd better study up my subject to give my lecture. So she said, for the next two days, I spent my occupation studying up herbs to give the lecture, which I gave. But she says, when I came back yesterday night, after guilty about it, I knelt down to apologize to God, and said, God, please forgive me. I've been so busy studying herbs, thinking herbs these last two days, I forgot about you. And the Lord said to me, you silly girl, what do you mean? I was co-herbing with you, it was my lecture, not yours. I was just co-herbing, I was co-thinking with you, and you were just, as it were, you're expressing my thoughts through you. She said, I learned, therefore, I act as if it's I, it isn't I at all. So I was just using that as an illustration of, it is an amazing new dimension of living. Therefore I can't apologize for repeating this fact, because it's not the dimension of the new rule we redeem people to live in. I'll go over it again, say, in the unredeemed we pretended to be sufficient, we were. We tried to build our own life on our self-sufficiency in our old, fallen days. Then we got caught up, and we were sinners saved by grace, broken down by the Holy Spirit. And we became saved, and we became so broken down, that we said, oh, I'm no good, I can't do things. And I hadn't yet found out the sufficiency of Christ in me, and therefore I was still unknown to myself as a way in the control of Satan in his self-sufficiency, tricking me to think I'm self-sufficient, which I'm not. So I'm struggling with this life, and failing, and downgrading myself, so weak, and such a sinner, and so frail, and having the power, having the peace, and not the kind of Christian I ought to be. So I live a self-condemning life, although I'm a Christian. And then I move into this new sufficiency, where I say, now I've learned it. It's never I will be, I've got it all right. It never was me to be improved. This self-effort is the spirit of Satan's spirit of self-reliance in me. And that spirit's out. Now the new spirit of self-giving love, Christ in me, has taken place with the old one. And I've come into recognizing this new consciousness, that I'm just the agency for a self-sufficient Christ in me. But the consequence of this relationship is, again, I forget the fact it's He as it were. I'm the one now who lives my life as if it's I. It's really He. And I'm saying, I can't cease to underline, because that's important, because it had to be, for me, a new recognition of life, that I could function as a person able to live it, and without constant reference. Now that's the point, what I mean. It isn't constant reference. It isn't, I've got to keep back going to Him, got to keep praying about this. Because when you enter the union, you are that. As I said before, if you know how to cook, you don't keep saying, oh, I'm a cook, and think about how I cook. I just cook. If I'm a doctor, I don't have to say, oh, well, am I a doctor? Do I know my stuff? I practice medicine. I'm operating by the know-how which has got me as if it's me. And I'm practicing medicine and operating this know-how, forgetting it's a know-how, just saying it's me. So this is this new quality of life. When I begin, therefore, to accept myself at all levels. I don't question my motives. I don't question my choices. I don't question my will. I don't question my operation. Because I've settled this thing, it looks like me, and I'm thinking, and I'm willing, and I'm choosing, and I'm acting. It seems a very basic thing to say, but this is my hidden secret. It looks like me. I say it is me. It isn't really I at all. It's really He expressed by me in the union. I forget the fact that He's the know-how in me. I act as if I'm the person doing it. This is this wonderful new life. And we said, again, this is by the fact there's no bigger I am I am than Jesus Christ. It wasn't He, but the Father in Him. And Paul's saying the same thing. I live the life I now live. I live the natural life. It isn't really I. I live by the recognition it's Christ who loved me, gave Himself in me. So I can't apologize for spending so much time in underlining this new dimension of self-sufficiency. And this covers all life. But you know we're not used to it. We have, oh, I question my wishes. You see, while I doubted myself, because I didn't know that self-reliance was really under the influence of Satan, self-sufficiency, I doubted my motives. I doubted my choices. I doubted my will. I questioned whether I should do so and so. I lived suspiciously. When I hadn't yet got the union right, I'd probably say, oh, I'd better ask God. I'd better pray. I'd better wait till God and find out how to do things. Because I didn't realize I act as God. I didn't know that. You see, again, with Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, he didn't have a prayer meeting when he got food for 5,000 people, or when he got a coin for a fish in his mouth, or when there was no fish, he got fish in his heel. He didn't have a prayer meeting. He just said, I will. I do that because he acted as God. He said, didn't I? As my father by me, I say I will be thou clean. I say, put the people in rows and break the bread up and you'll find sufficiency. And he acted as sufficient. And when there was a storm, he didn't say, please, God, stop the storm. He says, peace, be still. In other words, he said, I'm operating as a God of peace. And I say now that peace and calm in this stormy weather. I say, peace, be still, which means I don't see rough waves and winds. I say, calm. I speak as God with this calmness and let the calmness be here. And then the thing becomes calm. Now, this is acting as God. This is the new quality of life which we call, which we see men like Moses and so on, they acted like that with authority. And they say, Moses, I make condemnation for him, he speak. I make a toll of him, he say, when he lays life down for them using these strong terms. So I keep saying now, it's a new dimension of life to begin to be myself and be confident to be myself and make my choices. We really do it in little things. We obviously do, when we go to a supermarket, we don't pray a prayer, make sure I take that can of soup or that can of soup. I just pick the one I'm really taking, I'm guided. And I choose my can of soup. And I choose so and so. If I know this stuff, I say, it looks like me. If really, I say, God led me underneath. I don't talk that language. I chose it. So actually we are living a great deal of our lives like it. We haven't learned to recognize that's what we're meant to do because the real person who's called to me to choose a can of soup is Jesus Christ. So my common practical life is really Jesus Christ that he comes and tells me and I'm doing it. And I say it is. But he would challenge me, I say, I don't really live like that. I live because I'm constantly a guided person. And that's what Paul meant in Philippians when he said, I said, this new life is, for it's God that worketh in you, say it beside you, it's God that worketh in you to will and do of his good pleasure. It's God in you, he says that. And he's willing, he's doing. Now I suppose you work it out. You work out your salvation with fear and trembling means you're underneath has a sense of caution that's always there. There could be possibly an over-confidence but most of us are under-confident. Since it's not trouble isn't to be over-confident to be under-confident, to regain the confidence. But you work it out. Therefore you say, my will, it's in your will really. God works in you to will, so your will is his will. And do, God works in you to do. You do his doing. So the Bible says it's God working, doing the willing and the doing. You say it's you. And it's said it is you and the world sees it's you. It's your fellow Christian who'll tell you up. Because your fellow Christian hasn't known this union. It's a species of himself that says you must watch because he's got this false idea of this self that doesn't know it's a Christ-induced self. Always be careful of yourself. You can't say those things. They're the ones that tell you up. Now we're going to be picking up with this in our next program. We're heard on this station at the same time, five days a week. Norman Grubb is with us throughout this whole series we're doing, which we've entitled, Who Am I? He wrote the book, Who Am I? And now if you'd like to have some of what you've been hearing today in print, we want you to write for an article that'll take you not 15, 20 minutes to read it. It's entitled, How to Handle Temptation and Failure. Just request the article on temptation and failure. If you'll write to 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118, we'd be glad to send this article to you. That's 4606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118. Or call area code 901-795-0121. You've got a pencil or a pen handy, just jot that number down. It's area code 901-795-0121. Someone is waiting to take your call. Request the article, How to Handle Temptation and Failure. The address again in just a moment. Until next time, this is David Ord. Program five. This is David Ord with today's Union Life broadcast. We're in a series of programs which we've entitled, Who Am I? And it's based on the book which Norman Grubb wrote by that name. Now, Norman is with us for this series of programs. We're going to ask Norman now if he'll just pick up with the sub last time of this confident life that we live in Christ, knowing that we are adequate because he is the adequacy within us. Now, I've spent several talks on this, so I can't go back too far again on the radicalness of understanding that what we call the Christian life isn't poor failing me and somehow Christ helped me through. It's successful me because the success is Christ is a success person in me, not I. But I'm in such a union that I'm functioning as if it's I, it is I. And I live my life and do my stuff in secret, knowing it's really he. And we've gone over this again and again and I don't think we can do so more except to say that if you're a person who has moved in in this second phase crisis into the replacement of the indwelling spirit of error by the indwelling spirit of Christ into a constant union, not just a relationship, a union that's within you, it is you, but it isn't you, it's Christ in you. You moved into this, that then, as it were, the next stage you enter into is having become that it's really he running, it's he speaking, you then say it's I. That's the next stage. You first say, when I first saw this, when the Holy Spirit bore witness, I've been through the process of the faith, I bore witness, yes, it is Christ. Oh, I said, it's Christ thinking through me. It's Christ speaking, it's Christ being. It isn't really Christ, it's Christ through my human agency. But you're so wrapped up with this new consciousness to live in Christ permanently as a person who is a person operating as a permanency, become a fixed conscious union, you kind of forget it's you and say it's Christ. But you can't live life like that. You can't live life saying it's Christ, it's Christ, because it's you living it. And you move to the next stage, it's I. Now, as we say, that's open to being taught up by a fellow Christian to whom it sounds blasphemous or presumptuous, who don't think that you know. But this is the kind of presumption that bothers them in the Bible. Jesus himself has his conscience of faith. And these men like Paul and Moses, they spoke with a conscience that manna will come tomorrow. Strike the rock and water comes out and all these things, all the way through. Speaking words of confidence because Moses actually said that. He said, unless this thing happens, that was over when the earth was open to swallow up all of the earth by them. He said, you will know tomorrow whether I spoke this of my own mind. He said, I didn't speak it in my own mind. It came through my mind, I didn't. You will see tomorrow. I did not speak it in my own mind. I spoke it, but it was God's mind by me. That's how we live. And so we move, therefore, into a, seems dangerous to say it like that, but from a, I would say from a Christ glorification to a self-glorification. I'm just saying that self-glorification means you're glorifying him in your human form and you laugh at yourself. You're just an old vessel, you're an old pot. You're only just a branch. He is expressed as you, by you, and you operate in confidence and you begin to live at ease because you won't accept the shots of condemnation. Well, no, I spoke that word. I managed it that way. I did, and you dare to say, well, that isn't I, it's Christ. And he's taken on by his grace to relate to, to join himself to me and make himself my permanent center. And so I'm saying it, and yet I'm saying it looks like me. He said that word, he expressed that opinion. Now, I don't think I could spend more time because we spent several of these sessions seeking to underline that. But I think I should raise with that the other question, which is what about all the things in life which seem to pull me away from this? All the temptations and experiences in life when I'm a bothered person, I'm a tempted person. There's so much of the negative that pulls me. How does that fit into this new dimension that self-conscious we're talking about? And that we need to have as a complete answer to that as we have about what we just talked about of the area of our self-conscious which is really a Christ consciousness. The answer to this, the solution to this is first of all to recognize that our privileged place is to remain in a world which is not full of Christ affirmation, but full of self-affirmation, of the wrong form of self-affirmation. The whole world consists of, in the power of the Bible says the world lies in the wicked one. The world's beautiful, but in the hands of the wicked one is a self-confident person, self-centered person, self-loving self, Satan. So the whole world misses self-gratifying self, self-loving self, self-seeking self, the end of life being a self-end. The opposite of Christ, which Christ is our other loving person, seeking other people, the solution to other people's problems, not my own. The opposite. So we've now become people, the basis of our life is Christ, it's self-giving motivation. We live in a world which is geared to self-loving motivation, self-gratifying motivation, other way around. Therefore the whole world is like a great area of temptation to us. To pull us back, as the world lies in this, they pull back to the old kind of self. Therefore we now face this fact in the middle of affirming who we are and acting as who we are, being free to do so, being bold to do so, yet there continually come negative diversions, things which pull us off into worry or hate or resentment or doubt or hurt or fear. Or lusts or things that build up ourselves, self-gratifying self, pride and all these things keep pouring in us, they pull at us. Now let's face squarely, that's why we're here, we're here to be that, because our privilege is to be a light in a dark place. That we're to shine, as Paul says, a light shining in the darkness. And the darkness is, the word darkness doesn't mean out of darkness, it means darkness is self-loving self, self-centered self, that's darkness, because light is God who is self-giving self. If God is light and God is self-giving self, if God is self-giving love, the opposite is darkness. So we're not talking about material, you're talking about darkness is the quality of life which is self-centered self, our own life, Satan's life. Light, quality of light is self-giving self, which is God. That's why when you're saved, you get a sense of light into you. Inner light is inspiration. It isn't the outer, oh I know. See, outer light, oh I see, because of the sun, I can see that, the sunshine, I can see that. And the sun makes me able to see things, oh I see that. So it brings into us a conscience of the thing being so. Now the inner light of salvation is, oh I see, I see Jesus, that's the inner light. Oh I see, Jesus is my saviour. You've got inner light, you've come to life, to a new dimension, the Jesus dimension, the Holy Spirit dimension. Oh I see, he's my father, that's the new birth. It brings in the light, that's the light, the true light within you. Swallowed up, the old doctor was showing you new self-centred self and so on. Now, we have to understand that we are inwardly this light, and consciously, we're Jesus and so on, and yet we're in a world which is all the opposite. Which pulls us back to being this in yourself, fear for yourself, plan for yourself, scheme for yourself, hate those who hurt you, be hurt when you're hurt, grab what you can, fulfill all your lusts and appetites if you want to. The whole life is self-gratification, and we live in that pull. So don't let's kill ourselves, don't let's think this means, although I am in a new dimension, I live freely in it, this is the paradox. I live freely, yet I'm living in a dimension, an area which is the opposite, and pulls the opposite way, and I'm continually going to get those impacts on me because that's the value of my humanity. Humanity is, to be human, I've got to respond to my environment. Human means you respond to your environment. You're only alive because your eye can see, your ear can hear, you respond to your environment, your body feels it, that proves your life is, your body responds to the things that appeal to your body, your eye, that's the response to the environment, it's what life is. Therefore, I'm still in this human, and my environment is very much a self-centered environment. Pulling me away from the new light I have in seeing things, as I do, I haven't discussed that link, the way we see things, as always the kingdom of God, we haven't discussed that further on that level. So now that's what we call temptation. Now the first, therefore, understanding we have to have on that level, you will always be a tempted person. How do I know? Because God planned that the perfect man should come on earth, his own son, he'd be the last Adam, the head of the new race, Adam who's the quickening spirit in the human body, which we become in Christ, and he says this last Adam must live, be human, in a human body, and that proves humans to be tempted in all points. So he tempted to be tempted, in all points means there wasn't one single normal human reaction of response that Jesus Christ didn't have, whether physical, whether mental, your emotions, your reason, or your body, and he felt all the pulls, the human pulls, the response to environment, and environment is a self-loving, self-gratifying, self-justifying, self-seeking environment, putting you out and self-giving. So here we are, we are now a pretentious self-giver, get that clear, in the new life we're not self-lovers, we're Christ now, as Christ expressed it, we're self-givers, our new drive is self-giving, to be for God and be for others, and be amazed at how other people may find this secretive life that we found. That's us, that's our inner dimension, but we live in an outer environment which is the opposite, and that's the temptation. We're going to be picking up with this series of broadcasts, we're on this station five days a week, we'll carry right on in the next program, be sure to tune in at the same time, five days a week on this program. Write for the article, How to Handle Temptation and Failure by Norman Grubb, who you've been listening to on this program, 24606 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, 38118, or call area code 901-795-0121. Repeat that again, that's area code 901-795-0121. The address again in just a moment, until next time, this is David Ord.