Major Ian Thomas emphasizes that the unique human spirit allows man to receive the Holy Spirit, enabling divine behavior as intended by God. He explains that true faith is an attitude of total dependence on God, which is essential for pleasing Him and behaving as He intended. Thomas argues that without the Holy Spirit, man cannot fulfill his purpose and is left to function merely as an animal, devoid of divine influence. He stresses that faith must be active and expressed through obedience, as anything less is considered sin. Ultimately, the sermon calls for a deeper understanding of faith and the necessity of the Holy Spirit in restoring humanity to its intended state.

Now we saw yesterday quite plainly that what makes man, man as opposed to animal is the fact that God has given to him an amazing, unique capacity called the human spirit that enables man to receive the Holy Spirit, the one by whom the triune God takes up residence within a man. Now remember this, in deity there is absolutely no difference between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In deity, in God, in the fact that they're God, they are one. But it is the peculiar office of the Holy Spirit to be the one person of the Trinity by whom the Trinity indwells humanity. Now that's rather important to remember. And yet at any time you can safely identify the Holy Spirit with the Father, and you can identify the Holy Spirit with the Lord Jesus. For instance, in John's Gospel, chapter 14, we read in that passage of all three specifically mentioned, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all dwelling within a man. But the human spirit is that part of a man described as we saw yesterday in Proverbs 20, 27, as the lamp of God, that part of a man which is the particular habitation of the Holy Spirit. And the human spirit is unique to the human race. It is this fact, this capacity to be indwelt by deity, to be the human vehicle of the divine life of the Creator God. It is this fact that lifts us out of the animal kingdom, and although we are animals, makes us more than animals. And it is the human spirit added to the human soul that gives to the human soul that part of the animal soul. Now we saw that when God created man, he not only gave him a body beautifully made, he not only gave him the life mechanism called human personality, or the human heart, or the human soul, mind, emotion, and will. Bear that in mind, would you please? Mind, emotion, and will, the tri-part nature of the soul, or the heart, or the personality. Soul, heart, personality, they're all really one and the same thing. And broadly speaking, consists of mind, emotion, and will. The mental, emotional, and volitional capacity of a man. And we saw that God having given a body, and a soul, and a spirit, he switched the lamp on. And what oil is to a lamp, or electricity is to these lamps, so the Holy Spirit came into the human spirit, took up residence, and from the human spirit, in his innocency, unreservedly, without any resistance, the first Adam yielded every area of his human personality to the Holy Spirit within his human spirit. So that the Holy Spirit within the human spirit of man, in his innocency, was able to invade with divinely directed. It was God behaving. You see, everything that you do with your body, you do by the exercise of your will, under the influence of your mind and your emotions. Maybe you have never analyzed that fact. Of course, there are certain mechanical activities that concern the function. Everything that involves voluntary action, you do with the exercise of your will, but under the two influences of mind and emotions. I may have used this illustration before, but it makes it very simple. Supposing you suddenly got very angry with me, highly excited, all hot round the neck. That would be an emotional disturbance. And your emotions might well say to your will, hit him. Now supposing your emotions captured your will, what would you do? You'd hit me. Isn't that right? But probably before you did so, your mind, which is your calculator, would have a good look at me, and it might well be that your mind would say to your will, I shouldn't do that if I were you, he's about twice your size. He'll hit you back. Now that's a very simple illustration. But in a thousand and one different ways, this is how you function. Now supposing your mind is absolutely deocentric. That is to say that it's completely centered in the will of God being exercised by the Spirit of God. Supposing your emotions are absolutely deocentric, exercised completely, exclusively, and wholly under the influence of the very nature of God. You can still, you can see very simply that the exercise of your will would be an exercise of will under the influence of a God-taught mind and God-controlled emotions. So that everything that you did would be in absolute harmony with the nature of the God who made you, and would be absolutely at, in harmony with the will of the God who made you, and who lives within you, and who expresses himself in action through you. That is why I said yesterday, that a man functioning as God intended man to function, is God in action. Now that's a pretty big statement. And I'm not prepared to make a statement like that without supporting it pretty thoroughly. And we're going to. Because I want you to bear in mind from the very beginning of these meetings, that the purpose of God in redemption is not to get you out of hell and one day get you to heaven. We must wean ourselves of this baby conception, this baby idea of salvation. The cross, the shed blood of the incarnate Word, his vicarious suffering, was not designed to get us out of hell and one day get us to heaven. It was designed essentially to restore man to his truth. Everything therefore that we see in perfect man before he fell is that to which, to which redemption is directed. Get that? Everything that you and I recognize to be characteristic of man before he fell into sin is that to which redemption is directed. And we need to bear this in mind. Now, when the Holy Spirit came to indwell the human spirit, in man's innocency he exercised control over his mind, his emotions, his will, and the body of man became the image of God. In other words, he was the very image of God. God made man in his image. Now, I don't think that means, of course, that man, that God rather looks exactly like a man. That isn't necessary. But it does mean this, that were you to have looked at man in his innocency, you would have seen God behaving. You would have seen in him and all about him, his attitude and his reactions and his behavior, everything you would have seen expressed. This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him. In other words, in that he was completely available to the divine government, what he said was divinely prompted. What he did was divinely prompted. He was available. And so he was the outshining in action of the glory of the God who made man. But we've seen that in order to be that, he had to maintain of his own free volition, an unrelenting attitude of total dependence, that could only find expression in complete availability and obedience. And that is faith. That is faith. The only legitimate definition of what the word faith means in the Bible in relation to Christian behavior is an attitude of total dependence expressed by unrelenting availability and obedience. Nothing less will do. That's faith. And that's the purpose which God made man. So isn't it surprising that if you turn to the 11th chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews and verse 6, you read this very emphatic, not to say startling statement. If we take time out to pause and consider its implications. Hebrews 11 verse 6. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Do you understand that? Without faith it is impossible to please God. It isn't that you may or you may not please God under certain circumstances. It is a sheer absolute and categorical to please God without faith. Because faith is dependent, finding its expression in unrelenting availability and obedience. Faith is simply man being to God what God intended man to be to God. Available. And anything less than that cannot and will not please God. Anything less than that is man being less than man as God intended man to be. Anything less than that is man behaving in a way other than God intended man to behave. For man to behave as God intended being obedient to all his mind and will. Therefore without faith it is impossible to please God. That means of course we have to have a much more mature definition of faith than simply believing a creed. As I mentioned last evening, we have to have a much more mature idea of faith than simply thinking that because you happen to believe a certain number of gospel texts in the Bible you are a believer. That constitutes faith. No, no. Faith is always positively, essentially active. This is what James was emphasizing. James epistle, second chapter, verse seventeen. Even so faith, if it hath not worked, if it doesn't behave, if it isn't available to God, exclusively available to God, relentlessly available to God, if it hath not worked, is dead. Being alone. Faith that doesn't behave is without that which gives it substance and life. It's a dead thing. Yea, a man may say, verse eighteen, thou hast faith and I have works. Show me thy faith without thy works, I will show thee my faith by my works. I want you to understand this and I want you to believe it because it's true. There is no such thing as a saving faith that does not behave. There is no such thing as a saving faith that does not make the man essentially available to God for God to behave in that man and through that man. There is no such thing as a saving faith that does not present to God a man's mind, a man's emotions and a man's will. There is no such thing as a saving faith that does not involve a complete reorientation of the human person around the spirit instead of around the flesh. Any faith that involves less than that is pseudo. It's counterfeit. It isn't the real thing. After writing two epistles to the Corinthians, Paul sets them in examination in the fifth verse of the last chapter. Two Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verse five. He says, prove your own selves. Examine yourselves well. That Christ is in you. That he's taken up residence to re-establish divine government. That Christ is, unless you're counterfeit, unless you're an imitation, a shabby imitation of the real thing. Verse twenty-six of James, chapter two. For as the body without the spirit is dead, and the word spirit there means breath, it's used often for the same word. As the body without breath is dead, so faith without works is dead. A live body breathes and a living faith breathes with divine action. A living faith breathes with divine action. Now I want to give you a counterpart to Hebrews eleven, six. And it's even more alarming. Remember the first. Without faith it is impossible to please God. When you're trying to decide whether what you are doing is pleasing God or not, you will understand by now already, I'm sure so far, that you do not have to examine what you're doing. Because that will tell you nothing. I could go up into a pulpit and preach and think, now am I pleasing God? Well how did I preach? That has absolutely nothing to do with it. Was the substance of my sermon good? That has absolutely nothing to do with it. Because as to whether what I am doing is pleasing God or not has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm doing in its nature. The only criterion is this. Is what I am doing at this moment, the inevitable activity of God through me by virtue of my availability to him. That's the only criterion. Is what I am doing God behaving in me? Is my activity simply the consequence of my availability to the one who alone has the right to inhabit my humanity and act in terms of my humanity? Because that alone will be the measure in which what I am doing pleases God. Only if only we could grasp this, if only the Christian church, they think so long as they every now and again, that pleases God. Doesn't. Nothing pleases God. Except what has its origin in God. Our hectic activity. This bustle of the flesh. Doesn't please God at all. Nearly all the mightiest blunders ever committed by good men, well-meaning men in the Bible recorded for us, were perpetrated by good, well-meaning men busy for God. Who never took the primary precaution of any interest in what they were doing. But somehow we fancy that so long as we're busy and we're busy programming, and so long as we keep our boards on the job, whether God is interested in our program or not is secondary. We somehow behave as though God ought to be profoundly thankful that there are any folk at all prepared to look after his waning interest in this poor sickly world. Aren't we kind to God? There is only one way in which you can be sure that you're pleasing God. And that is that you have grasped the significance of true faith and have yielded obedience to the spiritual principle involved. Faith involves your unreserved availability with no strings attached. None. No preconceived notions as to what you ought to be doing for God. None. Simply availability. An instant obedience to the prompting of his indwelling Holy Spirit whose office alone it is to prompt you into divine action. Now here's the counterpart. It's found in the epistle to the Romans chapter 14 and the last verse. Romans 14. Paul has been dealing with a problem in particular, but of course like a true apostle of spiritual discernment he has been dealing with the problem in particular on the basis of the principle in general. We're not going to examine the problem in particular of the 14th of Romans, but this is the principle in general. Latter part of verse 23 of the 14th of Romans. Whatsoever is not of faith is what? Is what? Sin. I say this doesn't leave us one single loophole. This doesn't leave us any margin whatever. God is cornering us. God is hemming us in. He says without faith it's impossible to please him and whatsoever is not of faith, in other words what doesn't leave him is sin. Therefore faith in the bible sense of the term is not optional. It's imperative. God says you can't please him without faith and if you don't please him with faith you commit sin. So you are left with no option. In other words there is no such thing as living your christian life as though it was a hobby and that only those who happen to particularly desire a fuller or richer experience of Christ need bother. Faith is an imperative and for one good reason. Without it, without it you cannot behave as God intended man to behave. You are subhuman and all the activities of subhumans who behave without this attitude of dependence upon which demands obedience to God is sin. This is pretty drastic isn't it? This is no more drastic than what we read plainly God has given to us in his word as his basic minimum terms of reference. It means that if I am prepared to come up into this pulpit and preach to you tonight and I'm capable of doing so if I were to come up into this pulpit prepared to preach to you tonight in anything other than an attitude of total dependence upon in the very act of preaching to you I would be committing sin. Because my very attitude would be a repudiation of my manhood. A manhood that demands God to be man. The moment I am prepared to stand up here with an attitude of independence I immediately subscribe to the Adamic creed. I immediately subscribe to the satanic creed which was adopted by Adam. I immediately adopt the principle that was perpetuated. I don't need to be dependent. Now we're getting now we're getting nearer to a definition of sin and remember this when the Holy Spirit comes the Lord Jesus said he'll come into the world to convince the world not of sin he'll come into the world to convince the world of sin singular. Look in John 16. John 16 and verse 7 nevertheless I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the comforter will not come unto me but if I depart I will send him unto you and when he the Holy Ghost is come he will reprove the world of sin singular. He will reprove the world of a particular attitude of sin. Verse 9 says the Lord Jesus because they believe not on me. We shall have to take later in one of our later sessions more time on what it really means to believe on Jesus Christ but of course I need hardly point out to you at this stage that the Lord Jesus did not mean that the Holy Spirit would simply convince the world of sin because they hadn't registered a decision to receive. When he says of sin because they believe not on me he is speaking of this relentless attitude of total he's speaking of this repudiation of man's dependence upon God. He's speaking of this pig-headed self-interested attitude. I don't need God's son. I don't need God's spirit. I don't need God the father. It's of this attitude the Holy Spirit will convince the world. It is a perpetuation of the attitude adopted by the devil. Isaiah 14. Isaiah 14 12. How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground which did weaken the nation? For thou hast said in thine heart I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high. Where's the emphasis? I. I'll have I'll do and I'll be without. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit. That was the fall of Satan. He adopted a pig-headed defiant hostile attitude of total independence. And it was this attitude that he perpetrated and then perpetuated in man. God said to man you have now all that I am. You can't have more. You don't need to have less. You're physically alive but you're more than that. You're spiritually alive in all that I am. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Without him was not anything made and in him was life. And this life was the light of men. But God said I cannot compel you because love cannot be compelled. To remain alive you have to do nothing. Only to die I need you act. See that tree? In the day that you eat of the fruit of that tree I will know that you no longer want this faith love relationship to continue. I will know in that day that you want to step out of your attitude of dependence upon me which is absolutely imperative for your spiritual survival. Clear? The devil came along and said has God told you that if you were to defy him and eat the tree there, the fruit of it, has God told you that if you were to defy him that you would die? It's a lie. It's kid stuff. It's stuff and nonsense. Because you are not what you are because of what God is. You are what you are because of what you are. And you can lose God and lose nothing. All you need is the moral courage to kick over the traces. All you need is the moral courage to defy God to his face as I have done. Repudiating. Demonstrate your own independence. Demonstrate your own self-sufficiency. And you will not die. Be independent with these. And man died by faith. He died by faith in a lie. That was the conversion of Adam. In a very real sense your conversion and my conversion is a conversion but in point of fact it's a reconversion. That was the conversion of Adam at the first tree. You and I in the infinite mercy of God may be reconverted in that we repudiate the Adamic choice at the second tree. Where he brought our sins in his own body on the tree. Who had to be what he was to do what he did that we might have what he is and be what he was. But in the day that Adam adopted the satanic attitude of independence. God withdrew the Holy Spirit from the human spirit. He switched the lamp out. The lamp was still there. He still had a body. He still had a soul. And both functioned for the animal part of him survived. But he was spiritually dead. Ephesians 4, 17 and 18 declares plainly that the natural man, they're described, Ephesians 4, 17 and 18, as a gentile. The natural or animal man walks in the vanity of their mind, verse 18, having the understanding darkened through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their human heart or personality or soul. Totally unillumined, why? Middle of the verse. Being alienated, cut off, severed from the life of God. That's the animal man. He still has a body, he still has a soul and both function. Physically alive, soulishly functioning, spiritually dead. He forfeited the divine content by which alone he could behave as man. And man without God cannot behave as man, he can only behave as an animal. A very clever animal. So clever that he can throw satellites into space and soon he'll land on the moon. But I want you to know this, that the men who are achieving this and are in advance in all the world, the men who are doing this, affirm with all their conviction that they are doing it alone as animals. Remember that. For as we discussed yesterday, the very basic philosophy of God-hating, Christ-rejecting communism is that man is nothing more than an animal. And when they've landed on the moon they'll say, we did it as animals. A very clever animal, a very dangerous animal without God. But remember this, the devil wants to demonstrate not how drunk a man can get, the devil wants to demonstrate not how much of a prostitute a woman can be, the devil wants to demonstrate that man can be man without God. And when the psalmist in the eighth psalm says, what is man without mindful of him, the answer is this, thou hast made him to exercise dominion over all the works of thy hands. That God created man to be the human vehicle of the divine life and to exercise a divine authority over all the works of God's hands, but only by virtue of his moral and his spiritual relationship to God. Now the devil's great animal man can exercise dominion over all the works of God's hands. That man is an animal, a man without God can conquer space. And the experiment is well advanced. And the Lord Jesus Christ said that when the experiment is just about as advanced as that, do you remember in Luke's gospel, you'll see signs where? In the sun, in the moon, and in the stars. May as well check it. Turn to Luke's gospel, chapter 22. Side by side with the restoration of the Jew to Palestine as a national entity and unbelief, heralding the end of the times of the Gentiles, verse 25 of Luke 22, there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, don't be surprised. The Bible is the most up-to-date newspaper in the world. But I want you to know this, that the Lord Jesus was fully cognizant nearly 2,000 years ago, when animal men that have made such an awful mess of this planet start messing around with other planets to make a mess there. It will not bring unparalleled blessing to mankind. What will it produce? The Lord Jesus said there shall be signs in the sun, in the moon, in the stars, and upon the earth. Distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. Hundred megaton bombs. And then, verse 27, they shall see the Son of Man coming in a cloud. Look up. Lift up your head. Your redemption draweth nigh. So, when man fell, the Holy Spirit withdrew from the human spirit. Now that left man devoid of that which enables him to behave as man. But listen, if that were all that had happened, of course, he might have been as harmless as a flock of sheep on a hillside. But what has made man dangerous? Being destitute of his divine content. It's not just that he's now only capable in his unregenerate condition of behaving as an animal. It isn't just that that makes him dangerous. It's the fact that in his unregenerate condition, in the absence of the Holy Spirit from the human spirit, there was an invasion of his soul. By this same satanic sin principle of hostile defiance and independence of God. That's what makes man dangerous. Because the human personality that should have been in orbit around the Holy Spirit, went into orbit around the flesh. And that is why constantly you discover that expression always equated. There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who no longer behave in terms of human personality under the domination of a sin principle of hostility. And that's why redemption, conversion, regeneration, is something more than having your sins forgiven and having a nice comfy feeling inside that when you die you'll go to heaven. Spiritual regeneration involves the re-imparting to man of the Holy Spirit that he might re-invade the human soul and re-establish divine government in human behavior. Now that's what we saw in Romans chapter 8 in our first evening session on Wednesday. That what the law could not do, God has done to this end, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. In other words, that a man might behave righteously. So we see there's only one absolute origin of righteousness, and that is God. And righteousness in man is God behaving in man. And there is only one absolute origin of unrighteousness, and that's the devil. And unrighteousness in man is the devil behaving in man. I'm not going to examine that with you tonight more fully, but we're going to do so. But in the closing moments that we have available to us tonight, I would rather that we focus our attention for a moment upon the Lord Jesus, who came to be man. Now what kind of a man did he come to be? A fallen man, as by death, as by one man sin ended in the world and death by sin, so death passed upon all. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that because of the fall of man into sin when you and I are born now, how are we born? Uninhabited by God, only inhabited by sin. There is none righteous, none at once. Did you get that? You and I by natural birth as the sinful seed of the fallen Adam are born uninhabited by God, inhabited only by sin. Is that the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to be? Supposing Jesus Christ had been born the natural way as you and I were born, what kind of a man would he have been? If we are to believe at all what the Bible tells us about the fall of man and the natural depravity of man, if Jesus Christ had been conceived and born as you and I were born, the animal way, he too would have been born uninhabited by God and inhabited by sin. And he would have sinned as you and I, sinned because he was a sinner, as you and I sin because we are sinners. We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we sin. And if I am prepared to believe that Jesus Christ could be born the natural way and live a sinless life, then at once I have to repudiate the fall of man, I have to repudiate the depravity of man, and I have therefore inevitably to repudiate the need of spiritual regeneration, and of course I therefore have to repudiate at once the need of redemption. If Jesus Christ was born the natural way, conceived by a man of a woman, and was capable by the natural birth still of living in such a way that he did not sin, then it means that any man could do the same. All it means is that he tried hard enough and you and I haven't tried hard enough yet. And of course there are those who are prepared to tell you that Jesus Christ was born the natural way, that his incarnation, his miraculous incarnation of the Holy Spirit is a myth. A young theological student in Adelaide last time I was here 18 months ago came to me and he said, I just had my first lecture from the professor on Luke's gospel. Subject, virgin birth of Jesus Christ. One, untrue, two, unnecessary. I want to tell you this, that if the virgin birth of Jesus Christ was one, untrue, and two, unnecessary, it means that any man, woman, boy or girl born the natural way could live as sinlessly as Jesus Christ, if only he tried hard enough. It repudiates at once the fall of man, it repudiates at once the depravity of man, for the virgin birth of Jesus Christ presupposes at once that Jesus Christ had to be born differently, because no man born the natural way could be born other than uninhabited by God. But furthermore, I want you to know this, if the virgin birth of Jesus Christ was not only untrue, but also unnecessary, you've got to accept the fact that your savior was the illegitimate child of a faithless woman. Because if he was not born miraculously of the Holy Spirit, I think most of you know enough of your Bibles to recognize the fact that the only man to whom there could have been credited a legitimate birth, completely repudiated responsibility. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise, when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privileged. Joseph completely, the only man by whom Jesus Christ could have been legitimately born, Joseph completely, categorically repudiated physical responsibility. If he was not therefore born miraculously of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ was an illegitimate child, born out of wedlock, through the faithlessness of a bad woman. And that's your savior. According to the professor of that unfortunate theological student in Adelaide, Joseph was a just man, he didn't want to make her a public example, but he so repudiated responsibility that he was going to put her on one side. Quite obviously such a woman was not worthy of his affections. That was his attitude. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Before he was born, he was named Jesus, a boy's name. Did you name your family before they were born? Isaiah 49 verse 1. Listen, O Isles, unto me, and hearken ye people from afar. The Lord hath called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. Yes, he was named the boy before he was born. How very embarrassing it would have been for God. Not to say for Joseph, if it had been a girl. Did you ever think of that? Therefore shall that holy thing that shall be born of thee be called the Son of God. There was only one possible way in which Jesus Christ could ever become man without inheriting what you and I inevitably inherit as the fallen seed of the fallen Adam. And that was to be miraculously conceived of the Holy Spirit. And when the Lord Jesus Christ was born, he was born, listen, uninhabited by sin, only inhabited by God. When you and I are born, we are born uninhabited by God, inhabited only by sin. When Jesus Christ was born miraculously, he was born uninhabited by sin. Totally foreign to him was this hostile attitude of defiance and independence. Uninhabited by sin, inhabited only by God. That's why in John 14 verse 30, John 14 30, the Lord Jesus speaking to his disciples said, Hereafter I will not talk much with you, for the prince of this world cometh, the devil, the prince of this world, the prince of this world cometh, the devil, and listen, he hath nothing, nothing in me. He does in you, he doesn't in me. He's never gained one iota foothold within the area of my whole humanity, uninhabited by sin. This satanic agency. That's why in a quotation of the prophetic psalm in the Hebrew epistle, 10th chapter, 5th verse, the Lord Jesus said, When he, Christ, entered into the world, he said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but instead, Father, you have made ready a body for me to offer. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no delight. Then I said, Lo, here I am, come to do your will, O God, to fulfill what is written of me in the volume of the book. Father, you have made ready for me a body to offer. Here I am, come to do your will, to fulfill what is written of me in the volume of the book. Thank you, Father, for the body that you have miraculously fashioned in the womb of Mary for me to occupy, a body that you have prepared for me that I might offer this body to you in perfect manhood. That was the beginning of the demonstration that had been agreed as between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost before ever the world was. Before ever the world was, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had determined that they would give to fallen man a demonstration of perfect manhood. And the Son consented to step out of eternity into time. He consented to set aside his divine prerogatives and of his own free will humble himself and empty himself and become a human being. And to present to the Father not just a body, the word body means the whole of his human personality, body, soul, spirit, mind, emotion, and will. That there might be implemented perfectly in terms of that perfect humanity in its absolute availability to the Father everything that had been recorded in the volume of the book. I only have one last thing to say to you tonight, you've been so patient. How did Jesus Christ offer to God that body which the Father prepared for him? I've told you that unless we can corroborate in terms of Jesus Christ everything that we have said about man, we must reject it. For Jesus Christ is the exegesis of all truth, he's all that we can ever know about God, he's all that we can ever know about man. And if what I've said about man as God made him is not true of Jesus Christ, it isn't true. How did Jesus Christ present his manhood to the Father? We need only turn to one verse in the preceding chapter, ninth of Hebrews and the fourteenth verse. Ninth chapter of the epistles of the Hebrews and the fourteenth verse, speaking of the Old Testament sacrifices done away by the one sacrifice forever of Jesus Christ. And within that context in verse fourteen it says, how much more shall the blood of Christ, listen to these words, who through the eternal spirit, offered himself without spot to God. Purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.