New Creation Realities By EW Kenyon FIRST WORDS...................................................................................................................2 THE REASON WHY............................................................................................................2 THE LIVING WORD............................................................................................................3 TREATING THE WORD AS THOUGH IT WERE A COMMON BOOK..............................8 THE FOUR GOSPELS IN CONTRAST WITH THE PAULINE EPISTLES.......................10 PAUL ABOUT PRAYER...................................................................................................13 CHRIST IN THE LIGHT OF THE PAULINE REVELATION..............................................16 WHAT THE RESURRECTION GIVES US........................................................................23 "IN WHOM WE HAVE".....................................................................................................29 THE LEGAL AND VITAL ASPECTS OF REDEMPTION.................................................34 Some Vital Facts...........................................................................................................................................................35 SHARING WITH HIM........................................................................................................39 THE LAW OF LIFE...........................................................................................................42 THE RENEWED MIND......................................................................................................46 GOD REPRODUCING HIMSELF IN US...........................................................................48 LIMITING GOD IN US.......................................................................................................53 WHAT WE DARE CONFESS ABOUT OURSELVES.......................................................55 WHAT REPENTANCE MEANS........................................................................................57 HAVING YOUR OWN FAITH LIFE...................................................................................62 THE LIMITATIONS OF JESUS.........................................................................................66 THE DEFEATED SATAN..................................................................................................69 THE END OF CONDEMNATION......................................................................................72 WALKING AS MERE MEN...............................................................................................75 BELIEVING IN HIS SUBSTITUTION................................................................................81 THE REST OF REDEMPTION..........................................................................................83 "IT IS FINISHED"..............................................................................................................87 JESUS AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE FATHER............................................................89 Jesus the Savior..............................................................................................................90 Our Advocate...................................................................................................................91 Jesus Our Lord................................................................................................................92 He is my present Shepherd Lord...................................................................................92 WHY NATURAL MAN CANNOT KNOW HIMSELF.........................................................94 SOME FACTS ABOUT PENTECOST..............................................................................98 WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH LOVE?........................................................................101 FIRST WORDS A SERIES of heart messages on the New Creation Realities. Little studies on great themes. Investigations about the "Hidden man of the Heart." We have found the secret that the psychologists long have sought. It is "the inward man"; it is the Recreated spirit; it is the part of man with which God deals. A delving into the love life of the sons of Love, where the "hidden man of the heart" rules the outer or seen man of the senses. You will find some suggestions about the combat of the Recreated spirit with the senses which govern this outer man. It is really an unveiling of what we are in Christ today; of what He says we are; what He has made us to be in His great Redemptive work. These messages are largely from the Epistles. They are not complete, but are suggestions to provoke you to study more deeply in these hidden riches. We have come to know that one cannot know the Incarnate One as we have seen Him in the four Gospels, unless we have had an opportunity to become acquainted with Him in the Epistles. In the Gospels He is the Lone Man of Galilee, the humble Unknown, who ends His earth walk on Calvary. In the Epistles He is the Risen, Triumphant One, the conqueror of death, sin and Satan. He is humanity's Risen Redeemer who has met the demands of justice and satisfied every claim against humanity. He made possible the New Creation, a new race of men, who can stand in God's presence without the sense of guilt, condemnation or inferiority. THE REASON WHY The Pauline Epistles must ever stand as the work of a supergenius or a divine revelation. They reveal what happened on the cross and what followed during the three days and three nights until the Man was raised from the dead. One cannot grasp the great Substitutionary fact in the four Gospels. Neither can we find the New Creation Revelation ; nor can we discover the ministry of Jesus at the right hand of the Father. The four Gospels give us a sense knowledge view of the Man. The people stood in the presence of His miracles, over-whelmed with a consciousness that they were in the presence of God. They call Him the Son of God. They see Him conquer Satan and demons, but there is no intimation that He is going to make them conquerors of demons, of death and of disease. What He says to them in regard to it is veiled because they are spiritually unable to grasp spiritual realities. They have not yet experienced the strange phenomena of the New Birth. So the Pauline Revelation is a master stroke of Divine Grace. It lets us into the inner secret of God's mighty purpose in the Incarnation. In the Gospels Jesus acts like Deity, talks like Deity, dies like Deity, and conquers death like God. He was God manifest in the flesh in His earth walk and He was God in the Spirit in His Substitutionary sacrifice. At God's right hand He has a glorified body and is Head of the New Creation. You will find that He did a perfect work for us and the Spirit through the Word does a perfect work in us as Jesus is today at the right hand of the Father doing a perfect work for us. THE LIVING WORD OUR attitude toward the Word determines the place that God holds in our daily life. The Word should always be the Father speaking to us. It should never be like the message from an ordinary book. It should be as real to you as though the Master stood in the room and spoke to you personally. This Word was designed by the Father to take Jesus' place in His absence. When He says, "The Father Himself loveth you," it is a personal message to your heart. When the Master said again, "If a man love me, he will keep my word; and the Father and I will love him and make our home with him," that should be as personal as though you were the only one in the world. It is as though you were sitting at the feet of Jesus, and He looked down into your face and said, "The Father and I will come and make our home with you. "Be not dismayed, for I am your God. "I am going to be your strength ; I am going to lend to you my own ability. "When weakness comes, remember that I am the strength of your life. "When you need finances, remember that I said, `My Father knoweth that you have need of all these things'." You can whisper to your own heart, "My Father will supply every need of mine. He knows my needs and loves me. He and I are one." Man's word is usually dead before the printer has finished his work. Few words of man live after a generation, but God's Word is different. It is impregnated with the very Life of God, it is eternal. Heb. 4:12, 13 gives us an illustration: (Moffatt's Translation) "For the Logos of God is a living thing, active and more cutting than any sword with double edge, penetrating to the very division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow - scrutinizing the very thoughts and conceptions of the heart. And no created thing is hidden from him; all things lie open and exposed before the eyes of him with whom we have to reckon." This is one of the strangest statements about the Word in Paul's Epistles. Notice this 13th verse : "That no created thing is hidden from him." Of whom is he speaking? The Living Word-The Logos. "And all things lie open and exposed before the eyes of him with whom we have to do." The Word takes on personality; it becomes Christ Himself. Our contact with the Master, then, is through His Word. And did you notice, "the eyes of Him." The Word then has eyes. It sees our conduct, our attitude toward it. It is a Living thing. How deeply that should impress us. I hold in my hands a Book with the very Life of God in it, a Book that scrutinizes my conduct; that judges me. A Book that feeds this inner man-my spirit. It imparts Faith to my Spirit, builds Love into it. God's only means of reaching me is through His Word. So the Word becomes a vital thing. It has been rather difficult for some of us to grasp the fact that during the first century, the Christian Church did not have our New Testament. The first epistle that Paul wrote to the Thessalonians was the beginning of the New Testament. It was written seventeen years after his conversion. I Thess. 2:13, "Wherefore I also give continual thanks to God, because, when you heard from me the Spoken Word of God, you received it not as the word of man, but, as it is in truth, the Word of God; who Himself works effectually in you that believe." (Conybeare). Notice, it was "the Spoken Word." That was all they had, whether Paul gave it, or Peter, or John, or any of the Apostles. It was God speaking through human lips. It had not yet been put into writing. Now you can better understand Acts 19:20 telling of that great revival at Ephesus. Luke used this expression : "So mightily grew the Word of the Lord and prevailed." It was the Spoken Word. The Pauline Revelation was only known to those who had heard him. The other Apostles did not have it. They had what the Spirit gave them to meet the emergency of the hour. It is a fact that Christianity is what the Word says about Redemption, about the Body of Christ, or the New Creation. We become Christ-like in the measure that the Word prevails in us. The Word is Christ revealed. The Word is God present with us, speaking the Living Message of the Loving Father God. The Word is always NOW. It is His Word to me today. It is His voice, His last message. It becomes a Living thing in my heart as I lovingly act upon it. It becomes a Living thing on the lips of Love. It has no power on the lips of those whose lives are out of fellowship with Him, who live in the reason realm. His Word makes our ministry limitless. His Word is what He is. It is the mind of the Father. It is the Will of the Father. It shows the way to the Father. The Word is the Father speaking. You notice that it is always in the present tense. The Word is the Bread of Heaven, food for our spirits. Matt. 4:4, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Jer. 15:16 says, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them. Thy words were unto me a joy and rejoicing of my heart." Job tells us how precious the Word is to him. Job 23:12: "I have not gone back from the commandment of his lips ; I have treasured up the words of his mouth more than my necessary food." When a child of God looks upon the Word as job did, then it becomes a Reality in his daily life. Job had no Written Word; he had the Word spoken by angels. We have the Written Word. We have it printed in many forms so we may carry it in our pocket. How little we have appreciated the value of His message. Psa. 107:20 "He sent His Word and healed them." That Living Word that He sent was Jesus. Mark 16:19-20: "So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed." Notice that the Lord worked with them. I believe that a revival would break out almost anywhere if the Lord worked with those who preach, and if the Word was as real to them as the Spoken Word was real to the Early Church. But the word of man has gained the ascendancy and has more authority than His Word has today. He confirms the Word today everywhere that it is preached. I want you to notice how the Father makes the Word good in the lives of men and women as they dare to act upon it. In the closing sentence of the Gospel of Matthew, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age," the believer can be sure that though he be forsaken by all others, there is One who will stand by him. But the thing that has most deeply impressed my heart is the Reality of God in the Word. He is not only in the Word, but He breathes His very life through it as it is unfolded. He said, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." He is in the midst of them in the Word. Jesus said, "If ye love me, the Father and I will cone and make our home with you" (John 14:23), If we could only realize that when we open the Word, it is a Living Thing we are implanting in the hearts of men. The Word is God present with us speaking the Living Message of the Living Father God. It is the NOW Word from Him to me. It is His voice. It becomes a living thing in the heart of Faith. In Rom. 10:8 it is called the "Word of Faith." It is His Word that gives birth to faith in the believer. It is God's faith expressed. You see, He is a Faith God and He always uses words to do things. Heb. 11 :3 "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the Word of God." Hear Him whisper, "By myself have I sworn" (Gen. 22:16). He was in the Word. The Word was a part of Him. You can't separate a man from his words; neither can you separate the Father from His Words. How it thrilled me when I read in Heb. 7:22 that Jesus is the surety of the New Covenant. The New Covenant is the Word, and He is the surety of the Word. The Word was a living fact when Jesus spoke it. It is still a living fact. Jesus was a part of all He said ; He and His Word were one. Jesus is just as real now as He was the day He arose from the dead. His Word is just as real now as when He inspired John or Peter or Paul to write it. What He said was a part of Himself. Reality throbs in it, flows through it, lives in it. The Word was; the Word is now what it was then. Here are some other assurances Psa. 23:1, "The Lord is my shepherd." John 10:14, Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd." Isa. 41 :10, "Fear thou not, for I am with thee : be not dismayed, for I am thy God." Rom. 8:31, "If God is for you, who can be against you." Phil. 4:13, "I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me." Psa. 27:1, "God is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?" Phil. 4:19, "My God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus." Psa. 121:1, 2, "My help cometh from the Lord." Psa. 84:5, "My strength is in Him." Psa. 62:5-8, "God is my refuge." These are Living Words, and as you feed on them they build you up. The knowledge of what Christ is and has done for you personally, builds faith in you. When I turn to the Word and read it as His message to me, He confirms that message in my life. He confirmed the covenant made with Abraham. He confirmed the Word that Jesus spoke through the Apostles. (Mark 16:20). Jesus said in John 14:15, "If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments." What was His commandment? That we love one another. He that loveth me and keepeth My Word, lie it is, you see, that the Father loves. Here are some other facts that we ought to remember. John 16:8,9, "When He (the Spirit) is come, He will convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go unto the Father; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." What is going to convince the world? Words in the lips of Faith. Only that Living Word in the lips of Faith can take the place of an absent Christ. The Word talks to us. It takes the place of Jesus. The Word is the Father speaking to us now. It has the same authority that it would have if the Master stood in the room and spoke it. Faith in the Father is Faith in His Word. The Word takes on all that our Faith demands. Jesus said, "According to your faith, so be it unto you." As you consider the Word and act upon it, it will become real to you. This Book, the Living Word, has God in it. The Word takes the place of the unseen Jesus. Meditation in the Word is like a visit with Jesus. Josh. 1:8, God told Joshua to meditate in the Word day and night ; in other words, to live in it. Jesus said in John 8:31 "Abide in my word." The Word gets into your blood, into your system and becomes a part of you. The Word is inspired. Holy men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, as they were borne along in their spirit life. God spoke by the mouth of the holy prophets. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." Every word that God speaks has life in it. Remember Heb. 4:12: "The Logos of God is a Living Thing." It is not like man's words which die after a generation; God's Word lives. I love to think of it as the "prevailing Word," as it was in Ephesus. How it ruled over that wicked city! Today the Logos of God is ruling in the hearts of those who yield to its sway. The Word has the authority of God in it now. It has the Righteousness of God in it. It has Recreating power for the unsaved. It has healing power for the sick. It is the very Bread of Heaven to the hungry in spirit. I wish that it could be like this: that when you pick up the Word it will mean that God is present with you and that the Word is His attitude toward you now. It is His attitude toward sin, toward Redemption, toward Righteousness, toward Eternal Life, toward the Sons and Daughters of God. That is the Father's attitude toward all the issues of life. My word is my will. The Word is the Will of the Father. God watches over His Word. What God says is, becomes. God is Truth, so I will be true. God is Light, so I will walk in the Light. You see, we learn to act on the Word, as we act on the word of a banker or a lawyer in some crisis in our life. I wonder if you ever realized that the Father is jealous over His Word. He never set a low estimate upon it. He holds it in the highest regard. If He said it, that ends it. To His enemies, it is but paper and ink; but to the Lovers, it is Life and health ; it is joy unspeakable. The preaching that produces little conviction, is caused by the Word not having been in the heart of the teacher. We are to be sowers of the Word. Jesus gave us in Matt. 13 a marvelous picture of the art of preaching. It is sowing the Word. It falls upon all kinds of hearts, but the irrigation of the soil is dependent upon the sower. If we irrigate it with prayer and sometimes with tears, it is bound to bring forth a harvest. Some of us forget the Word in hard places. Unconsciously we walk by sight. The senses take the reality away from the Word, but as the spirit gains the ascendancy over the senses, the Word once more has its place. Remember, your word is you. You must learn to say, "I gave my word ; I must keep it, no matter what it costs." If your word is of no value, you will reason that the Word of God is of no value. I have found that unbelief in the Word of God is largely because of people's lack of faith in their own word. If you want to build the highest type of faith, be a faithful person yourself. Believe in your own word. Establish a reputation for truth; then the Word will be that to you in your life. Here are some little facts that may mean much to your life. The Word is on my hands. What am I going to do with it? Am I going to act upon it, let it govern my life, or will I just study it ? Will I sit in the Bible class and study it and then go back to my room and study it but not live it? Not let it become a part of my life, but just an intellectual exercise? The Word is taking the Master's place in my life. What I do with the Word will determine what the Word will do to me one of these days. The Word will work in me, building Jesus' life in me, building Life, Faith, Love, Grace and strength into me, or else it will judge me in the last day. What will it do for me? It will work for me. If I preach it and live it, it will work for me. It will reveal the very riches of my inheritance to me. It will give me courage to enter into and enjoy my inheritance. It will build the Master's stedfastness into me. The very character of Christ will be built into me, and only He knows what it will do through me. It has saved the lost; it has healed the sick; it has built faith and love in multitudes. Let the Word of Christ then dwell in you richly. You can so soak in the Word and the Word so soak in you, that your word and God's Word become blended into one. It will be your language and your words, but it will be His Word. His Word in you becomes a part of you. It has made you what you are; it will make others like you. You are lost in the Word, but the Word is found in you. The Word became Flesh once. It is becoming spirit in your spirit. The Word dwells richly in your practice, in your conversation, in your prayer, in your convictions. You are using the Word to cast out diseases, to bring money to people, to save lost souls. This Word and you have become one. You remember that for more than fifty years after Christ's death, the Written Word was known only in a very limited way. The New Testament wasn't brought together until the middle of the second century. The Words that Jesus spoke were not yet written. It was the "Spoken Word," but He was in it. They were a part of Christ and they breathed Christ's Nature. Remember, the Word of God liveth and abideth. All right, speak the Word and it will live in the lives of men who hear you. He said, "I watch over my Word." He will watch over the Word you preach and teach. Jesus said, "If my words are living in you and you are speak- ing them, I will live in them as they pass from your lips." The Word of Christ becomes a Living thing in your lips. Speak the Word fearlessly. Let the Word live in you gloriously and richly. TREATING THE WORD AS THOUGH IT WERE A COMMON BOOK HIS title bears the heart reason for spiritual failure. It is the reason why in daily life, the believer breaks down, why the adversary has no trouble in overthrowing him in a crisis; the reason why lie is a spiritual hitchhiker, always depending upon someone else's prayers, someone else's wisdom, someone else's interpretation of the Word. He has no life of his own independent of others. In the Family of God, he is a "yes man," but it is always, "yes" in the wrong place. Paul describes him in Heb. 5:12. I shrink from giving you this Scripture; it is so personal in so many lives. "For when by reason of time ye ought to be teachers, (ought to be leaders and soul-winners), ye have need again that someone teach you the very rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God." It is a pity, you seem to have forgotten the first steps in this Divine Life. Instead of walking out into the fullness and liberty and riches of His grace, you have halted. There has been no growth, no development in your life. The Word doesn't mean much to you. Oh, there are certain Scriptures you know that condemn you and make you feel miserable, but there is no life in the Word for you. "The Word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my pathway." but it isn't that to you. The Word hurts and cuts and bruises and makes you feel unhappy when you read it, when it should be manna and food for you. Notice how tenderly he said, that "someone teach you the rudiments," the very beginning of the faith life. Why? Because instead of living it, acting it, and taking your place in the Word, you have remained a babe, an undeveloped spirit. Your mind has never been renewed by the Word. You see it can't be renewed until you begin to practice it. Jesus hit the tap-root of it in Matt. 7:24. He said, "Every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock : and the rail] descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon the rock. But he that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, is like unto the man that built his house on the sand." The first high tide swept him out into the sea. I am sorry for such folks. They have to be fed with milk all the time. You NN-111 find them in the nursery. They always have a bottle. Some of them have the wrong bottle. It is not filled with the sincere milk of the Word. They are babes in all their conduct. Paul in I Cor. 3:3, "And ye are yet carnal." That means they live in the senses; they are ruled by the senses; they are guided by the senses. All their diseases are sense made. He says they are walking after the manner of men, or as "mere men" of the world. Just world folks. There has been no change, no growth, no development in their life whatever. They are treating the Word as though it is a common book. They can't get their healing. Others have to pray for them and they are a burden upon the Church. They are a spiritual liability. If they happen to be men and women of ability and of standing in the community, and the Church gives them office or a place of responsibility, they become a deadly burden to the Church. They are never in the Bible class. They do not have family prayer, and seldom ask the blessing at the table. They belong to the A Class of hitch-hikers. Their faith is always weak. You will see them going to the altar but they never get anything. The altar is a place for babes to get an impulse to go to the Word and feed on it. It is not a means to an end. It is just a beginning. But if you see them going to the altar year after year, you know they have become habitual, spiritual cripples. Satan rules them through the senses. They are afraid of death. They are afraid to meet the Lord. They have thrown away Life's privileges because they lightly esteemed the Word of God. Some Facts We Ought to Study in This Connection When I ask another to pray for my healing or to pray for any of my chronic needs, I reject the gift of my healing, and I doubt the Word of the Giver. I repudiate my own Righteousness in Christ, and I refuse to take my place in Christ as a Son. I know that no one has a better standing than I have. No one has a better place in the Vine than I have. No one can draw life from the Vine more readily than I can. I am what He made me in Christ. My Righteousness was given to me in Christ. My right to the use of Jesus' name is a gift, but I have repudiated the whole thing. I have neglected to develop my gift. I have ignored the admonition of my Lord. I do not study the Word to live it! I know that my sickness is because of a spiritual condition. I know that I have walked according to the senses rather than according to the Spirit. I know that healing cannot be permanent in my body until my spirit is adjusted to the Word. If sickness is not spiritual, He couldn't have made Christ's spirit sick with my diseases, and if my body is filled with disease, it is because my spirit is not in harmony with the Word. I am rebelling against the sickness and fighting against the pain, but I don't fight the cause of my sickness. I fight the effect of it. You see, until I take my place in Christ and begin to act the Word and become a doer of the Word instead of a talker, I remain a failure. Sickness is threefold, Spiritual, Mental and Physical. All are sick in spirit before they are sick in body ! You see, here is where the trouble is. Jas. 1 :22 tells us, "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves." One can stay in that condition, until after awhile they begin to believe they are right and God is wrong, and you will hear them whining, "Why does God put these things on me?" and some unwise teacher will say, "He is trying to discipline you." I tell you, He never uses the devil to discipline His children. Disease is of the devil. You are suffering the results of refusing to take your place in Christ. You refuse to study to show yourself approved unto Him. You have refused to feed on the Word. You had opportunity to study but you didn't take it. You would rather read the literature of the hour than to read the Word from Heaven. For this reason I have arranged three Correspondence Courses. The great heart of the Master is yearning over you. His intercession has been ineffectual so far. It can't be effectual until the Word works effectively in your spirit. You must study to show yourself approved of God. THE FOUR GOSPELS IN CONTRAST WITH THE PAULINE EPISTLES IN the early days of my ministry, German philosophy had gained the ascendancy in many of our theological institutions, and there came a strange new slogan. You heard it continuously "Back to Jesus." It captured my imagination but I didn't know what it meant. Then I heard one of our leaders declare that Paul had altogether too much influence over the Church, and that we are to give up the Pauline Revelation and go "back to Jesus." That was really the beginning of my study of the Pauline Revelation. The four Gospels, you remember, were written years after Christ's resurrection. Luke's Gospel was written from 63 to 80 A.D. The Gospel of John was written from 80 to 110 A.D. That meant two generations after the resurrection of Jesus before John wrote. From my study, I notice this strange fact, that Paul quoted Jesus only twice, and in John's Gospel there were only two traces of the Pauline Revelation. One is John 1 :16, 17: "For of his fullness we all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." I began to wonder why the four Gospels did not have any of the Pauline Revelation in them. Then I discovered that they recorded only events up to the resurrection and ascension. They knew what had taken place on the Day of Pentecost and of the tremendous upheaval that followed the preaching of the Apostles in Jerusalem, Samaria, and in the Roman Empire, yet they never made mention of it. I wondered how John could have written his Gospel as he did, knowing that he had passed through the great revival in Jerusalem ; that he had been a part of all those mighty miracles until the destruction of Jerusalem, when he himself was banished from the holy land; and knowing of the miracles that had attended his ministry before he was banished to the Isle of Patmos, and yet he did not tell us any of those wonderful things that had taken place. You remember in John 20:30, 31, he declares, "Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name."