Jesus came to give life in extravagant quantities. As life in itself Jesus contrasted Himself with the Robber who kills, steals and destroys. Jesus is The Life Multiplier and lover of your soul. Jesus is the complete expression of God’s love for the world.

Everything about Jesus is life-giving. An individual who lives from Jesus will live because of Him. So will a family, a city and a nation. The Kingdom of God is those for whom Jesus is their life. The kingdoms of this world consist of those who seek life in other places, other things, other people, other institutions that are not Jesus. All of these, even when they claim to represent Jesus, suck the life from individuals and society. Christ’s church is the manifestation of Himself in people. Churches that form part of the kingdoms of this world consist of those who attempt to manufacture a Christ from their own efforts.

If the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 the collapse of capitalism began in 2008 and is proceeding apace. Systems that rely on greed and a lust for power cannot maintain themselves forever. At heart the kingdoms of this world are malevolent and life-denying. Not only must one man die for the people to ‘save our place and our nation’ but the many must be sacrificed for the few so that the few can live in the wealth and power to which they have become accustomed.

Both the left and the right represent the world system. They want a chunk of it for themselves. If they are not struggling to get more privileges they are militating to maintain the power and control they have. Christians who define themselves by their pecuniary interests or the interests of their class do not have the mind-set of the Kingdom of God. They are filled with a spirit however – the political spirit who is most frequently allied with the religious spirit.

There is a one letter difference between life and lie. The systems of this world are innately life-denying. When it comes to the crunch vested interests will oppose life and liberty in all its forms when ‘life’ threatens their interests. This is why Jesus was crucified. This is why Caiaphas declared, ‘One man must die for the people’ John 11.47-50. But this leader of the Sanhedrin was thinking not of the well-being of people in general. As a representative of the father of lies he instinctively promoted the lie that anything that is genuinely life-giving is a threat to the quality of our lives. Caiaphas was speaking of the privilege and hegemony his class occupied as rulers of their nation.

God’s people need to be more discerning than they are. Morality is not confined to sexuality, homosexuality, abortion and drugs. Morality also has to do with justice, equality, truth and liberty. Morality is concerned with how power is exercised and what politicians will do to retain their grasp on power. Much of the financial crisis in Europe has occurred because, in order to retain their hold on government, politicians have spent beyond their means. In the United States the economy is in trouble, not only because of the greed of banks, but because the privileged believe themselves too privileged to pay their way. This kind of morality forms the bases of how societies exist, how they flourish or how they disintegrate.

It is not uncommon for Christians to speak well of Christ, even as they are embedded and committed to the system of this world. It is from this system that they get their identity, status and daily bread, even as they are ignorant of the true bread of life and the regeneration of society that comes when we actually EAT HIM and begin to build a new creation that comes to be known as the Kingdom of God. The current political – economic systems of the world produce slaves – slavery that is disguised as good houses, high paying jobs and the belief that consumption produces happiness. What is not so generally known, and even ignored, is that our standard of  living can be built on the low wages of the poor, either in our country or the countries of the third world.

We were made to live in God. We can do this today as our heart, followed by our being consumes Jesus and makes Him our life. We are made complete in Him, not just eternally as in going to heaven. We as families and societies are made whole and nourished in Jesus, so that Christ as our life on a societal scale becomes the new and living way of LIVING, the new creation which is the Kingdom of God.

‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ Rev 21.1-4 NIV.

Keith Allen

To know Good’s heart is to know God’s love. To know that God is love is also to understand His anger. God’s anger, unlike ours is unsullied by rage and vindictiveness. But it is nevertheless real since it is the other side of His perfect love. Where human love can be polluted by sentimentality, selfishness and the desire to control. God’s love is pure.

If we have never experienced deep anger, it may be that we have never really known love.

As sons and daughters of God we have emotions that we inherit from our Father. Everything that came from the hand of the Father was good – including the potential for anger. If we don’t feel anger, maybe we don’t feel much at all. Maybe we don’t love much or  have never been truly loved. It’s what we do with emotions that determines whether our actions are good or evil. Do we abuse or harm people with our anger? Or do we allow our anger to motivate us to work towards the elimination of injustice and abuse? Do we harness our anger so that it propels us to multiply love?

A.W. Tozer writes, ‘There is a strong tendency among religious teachers these days to disassociate anger from the divine character and to defend God by explaining away the Scriptures that relate it to Him. This is understandable, but in the light of the full revelation of God it is inexcusable.’

It’s inexcusable also to claim that anger is illegitimate in human life – particularly when such denial is associated with passivity and the effete kind of piety that neuters our humanity; emasculates our person so that  we pretend that genuine Christianity is a bunch of people going about being   ‘nice’ to each other. In such a state we are incapable of taking a stand for truth and justice and thus we fail to love.

Then there’s the misguided attempt to get the abused and sinned against to deny their anger and attempt to extinguish it with premature forgiveness – as though the abused must stop feeling angry for the comfort of those at hand.

We cannot offer genuine forgiveness until we have let our heart be angry. Until we have acknowledged the pain and anger resulting from the assault of un-love on our heart, we cannot offer genuine forgiveness.

The cancer of society is not that we are hated. It’s the institutionalization of un-love.

God is love and God experiences anger. But the wrath of God does not mean that He goes about constantly mad at human beings. The wrath of God and the love of God are seen in the Person of Jesus. Jesus bears the penalty of our sins while revealing the love of God. Tozer writes, ‘God’s wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. He hates iniquity as a mother hates the diphtheria or polio that would destroy the life of her child.’

We do not realize how deeply enmeshed and accepting we are of un-love and un-life. We come into the world expecting to be loved and to live life to the full, but time causes us to lower the bar. We accommodate ourselves to the landscape of death and try to make religion out of it.

Jesus is saying to His people today, ‘I see you good works. But why are you so absorbed in healing soul and body when your being remains so crippled?’ There is no lasting peace when our being is in pieces.

‘They offer superficial treatments for my people’s mortal wound. They give assurances of peace when there is no peace’ Jer 8.11 NLT.

So let’s be rid of the notion that false doctrine with its slanders about the Father, the diminishing of Jesus, the debilitation of the power of the cross, the substitution of ‘endurance’ for the authority of God’s sons and the castration of the Holy Spirit do not matter. It does. (Of course the Holy Spirit does not suffer castration. We do.) All of this makes humans smaller and weaker even as it perpetuates our degradation in the name of god [sic]. Let’s be clear. You have no right to bind people in the Old Covenant in the name of  your denominational identity!

In the visions of Rick Joyner, Jesus is depicted on occasions as burning with anger, significantly, in the context where children of God are suffering spiritual abuse at the hand of those who claim to be nurturing the flock. Rick Joyner urges Christians to take account of  ‘the severity of Christ.’ This ‘severity’ arises because Jesus loves people so deeply that He is angered by the abuse perpetrated by Christians on themselves when they settle for anything less than Himself.

We can have a life in ‘christianity’ and be small and ineffectual or we can have Jesus as our life and exercise the authority that is His. Union with God in Jesus means that we are life-givers, liberty-multipliers and healers. You want to heal the planet? Be His woman. Be His man. Have Christ live in you. Embrace Him as your life!

Mostly Jesus goes about multiplying forgiveness, healing and joy. Occasionally we see Him angry. On the occasions when Jesus is angered in the New Testament the anger is directed at teachers of the law and religious leaders. I believe He was angry when He wrote poignantly in the sand. Jesus burned with anger at the presumption of those who condemned Him for healing on the Sabbath – not only because this was not loving but because they purveyed a perverse view of God.

His anger was fierce against the marketers of religion in the temple, just as it is today towards those who use His name as a vehicle for career and self promotion. It’s disappointing, to say the least, when we find Christians who get angry when they are overcharged at the super-market, but look the other way when people use Jesus, the Holy Spirit or anything Christian, to build an empire for themselves.

Who would say to their child, ‘My daughter, you were born without a toe. The surgeons have fixed that. As yet you are lacking an arm. But that’s Ok. One is good.’ Many of God’s people subsist on only one lung. Severely incapacitated they gasp for the oxygen of life. But those who could know better retort. ‘That’s alright. We only believe in one lung in our denomination.’

We might often imagine the wrath of God to be reserved for criminals, drug dealers, pornographers and adulterers. And so it is. How often do we recognize that this anger also awaits those who bind people in Moses, Old Covenant captivity, the weakness of the flesh and the impotence of the children of the slave woman –  for the sake of a career in the church or to protect our idol of denominational identity?

‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness’ Romans 1.18 NIV.

‘He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored’ Mark 3.5 NIV.

‘When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled’ John 11.33 NIV.

‘To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!’ John 2.16 NIV.

Keith Allen

Last night I had a series of dreams. In one dream some youth workers and their younger helpers were lined up across a church stage prior to giving a presentation on a new project. I noticed that none of them were Spirit-filled or Spirit led. Much less did they know what it means to ‘live in the Spirit with the authority of the sons and daughters of God.’ As I looked at them I wondered what well intended modes of the flesh and the letter they would rely on to kick-off their next endeavour.

There are people that multiply Jesus and people that multiply iniquity in His name. Iniquity is the institutionalization of the knowledge of good and evil passed down the generations.

As I write this I’m aware that there are churches who employ youth workers who have never distinguished themselves as having a passion for Jesus. There sole qualification is that both they and a parent live a version of being a churchaholic. Just in case you think this is too severe, it’s based on my observation as a church member over many years that there are plenty who believe church to be more sacred than Jesus.

The series of dreams I experienced last night were in the form of impressions. All of them about Jesus being incarnate in us by the Holy Spirit. All of them about Believers being sons and not workers because Christ was being multiplied as He lives His life through them – multiplying in the lives of His people the righteousness, love, authority and power that distinguished him in his sojourn among us. Once we realize that it’s not about us Jesus can manifest His life through us.

All of these dreams were about Believers finding their being, essence, life, identity and purpose in God. About being merged in God, about being in union with God to carry out our commission as sons and daughters of God with authority and not as proponents of the law. No ‘teacher of the law’ can live in the Spirit or represent the Kingdom of God.

At intercessors meeting last week one of the ladies remarked, ‘I’m just beginning to see the importance of the words, ‘In Him we live, move and have our being.’

For quite some time I have been aware that Paul’s seemingly casual statement‘In him we live and move and have our being’ is the essence of what Jesus means the sons and daughters of God to be living in today. In this season, Jesus is drawing us out of ourselves and our wooden and ‘bitty’ lives to live in the wholeness and authority of His Son.

In His Son – His Son is us: Christ in us. The authority of His Son multiplied through us is the reality of God’s expanding Kingdom on earth. Christ as you doing what Christ once did on earth through you TODAY spreads the hope of the dawn of His Kingdom in fullness and the arrival of His Kingdom of glory and light.

The Church of Jesus is that which grows from our union with Him. This kind of church is a tree of life that whose fruit is more life. Much of what is called the organic church is nothing of the kind. It is an attempt to forge through letter and formula a more lively version of the letter driven church. Man’s church is a construct of flesh and letter – useful for the management of slaves but useless for the establishment of sons.

To live in God is to have our being in Him. It is to be fathered as sons and daughters by the Father. To have our being in God is to live in the Spirit and be sons and daughters living in the inheritance of the Father’s authority and the Son of Man’s creative flow.

‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’ Acts 17.28 NIV.

‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57 NIV.

Keith Allen

THE REAL STORM CO – BEATING UP A STORM

There’s a saying that goes, ‘Someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with an argument’ This is why God’s amazing plan is so powerful. His plan was not a list of abstractions or formulations. It was not a matrix of behaviors and beliefs. His Plan was Jesus. God’s Plan is Jesus and all that He is, has done and will do.

His Plan is Jesus in you.

Jesus came as life. At His resurrection life, not death, was forever established as the norm. At His inauguration and the right hand of authority in the heavens, the authority of man to reign on the earth over circumstances and death was established for eternity. Such authority in Christ is a now reality.

Jesus did not retreat into heaven. He rose into heaven to advance the work He had begun. Christ in us it the hope of glory because Christ in us is the defeat of death and the resurrection of life in all its forms. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned to earth at Pentecost to multiply Himself and all He did in every believer who believes. ‘Doing God’s will on earth as it is in heaven’ is multiplying what Jesus began.

We can do better than sit in circles and discuss God. We can do better than ‘Me being the kindest person I can be.’ In the power of the Living Jesus, we can do things that are impossible for any human to do unless God is present and active in our words. We are able to release God’s power to cause the masses to respond: ‘That has to be God!’ We have the authority to speak LIVING WORDS.

People need to know that God is real and present with us. Should we live in the knowledge of good and evil, we can speak religion. Should we live in God through Christ we can speak life. In the near future expect to see examples of the dead being raised to life in Australia.

Rather than bleating about the Second Coming, might it not be a good idea to multiply His first coming into our every-day situations as some are beginning to do?

We can do better than focusing on behavior and doctrine in the Bible while ignoring the entire supernatural fabric of the book. We can do better than doing the kinds of charitable things any kindly atheist can accomplish. We have the authority. We need to believe in what we have been gifted with and stop making religion out of the devil’s robbery. You want to stir up a storm? Just repent of being the unbelieving believer and shake the kingdom of Satan.

We are mandated and commanded to heal the sick, raise the dead and caste out demons. Stop living Christianity as a philosophy and live Jesus as a Person.

Jesus is life without measure. He is forgiveness, righteousness, wholeness, light, liberty and wisdom. He is healing and life. Jesus is authority and power clothed in love. Jesus is the resurrection and the life alive in you. Jesus multiplied in His people is the advance of the Kingdom of God in the world.

Keith Allen

Once while sitting in English class trying not to think of lunch and concentrate on the strangeness of Percy Bysshe Shelley, our lecturer declared dogmatically, as was his manner, that farmers did not have years of experience. They just had the same experience 60 times.

I had to laugh. Brought up on a farm I had known farmers like that. But I have also known some progressive farmers as well and many ‘same experience people’ who were not farmers. Some of them, I have to say, were church elders. Which reminds me of a quote I found in The Bulletin one Christmas holidays. “Lack of imagination, curiosity and a fear of openness with inflexibility are interpreted by the fearful as fitness to lead.” Sad to say I’ve seen that more than once in churches where those who follow such people slowly die in the name of god and religion and ‘being careful’.

The same experience sixty times. Some of us have a new experience early on in our life but that’s the last one we have. We walk in our own footsteps year by year, repeating the same things over and over again, burdened with rusted on beliefs that time proves to be both erroneous and lifeless. Yet we plod on while our fellowship dissolves around us and we remain strangely unaware and inert to our condition. Like the frog in the bucket of slowly boiling water, we remain captive to our faulty ideas while acclimatizing ourselves to our forthcoming fate. Then it is too late and we are dead. What was once a tender plant becomes an old stump, destined to be burned and torn out of the ground.

Should Jesus be our life we can expect new life each morning and continual freshness to be our lot since Jesus is resurrection and life and He lives in us.

Israel wanted what it knew. But because it found its’ security in its own ideas and chose an identity much smaller than the reality of who they were in God, they circled aimlessly and their bones bleached in the desert.

The law and the Old Covenant cannot impart life. Only Jesus can make clacking rib-cages rise up and become sons of God. Unless we are prepared to die to a religious identity and be resurrected with a new name and a new life in Jesus we can never become spiritual beings or represent the Kingdom of God as His priest-kings. The command of the Father is to live in His Son. The testimony of Jesus is,  ‘I AM YOUR LIFE.’ This makes us competent to minister the Kingdom of God.

‘Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD’ Ezek 37.3-6 NIV.

Jesus lives to reproduce Himself in us and to manifest Himself as us in the world. One whose life is Jesus and who aspires to live in the fullness of His life as a son of God participates in divinity. This is a state of being far above any attempt to use Jesus as a stepping stone to something less. What is less?

I used to think that Jesus existed to empower us to keep the Ten Commandments. Many people do, or if not so persuaded are hostage to a more subtle form of legalism that grows out of the ‘should doism’ of their church culture. A legalistic spirit can graze in the garden of a house church just as happily as it can in a mega church if the people going there have not stepped out of the letter into the Spirit.

‘The Spirit is not a tricky way of helping us live the letter. “The Spirit” is how we live in God.’

The Spirit of Christ re-invents us in the image of Jesus – not in the image of the law or a series of performance criteria. Jesus is not the Grand Master of the to do list. Live out of to do lists and we live in the letter. But should our to do lists be a manifestation of Christ in us, we will be life-multiplying people wherever we go.

The knowledge of God is progressive. God is teaching us today to live entirely in His Son and not in a mixture of ourselves and Him, which is to say not in a cocktail of flesh and spirit. Jesus has revealed to many of us the power and fruitfulness of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But we can employ the gifts of the Spirit without living in the Spirit. But in so doing we remain crippled in our lives and carry quite a small sword, which is to say our authority in Christ is limited and way below the infinite potential of one who lives entirely in Christ by the Spirit.

‘The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned’ 1 Cor 2.14 NIV.

We cannot live in the Spirit and live in the knowledge of good and evil at the same time. We cannot be both slaves and sons. Some believers remain slaves because they are still hostage to the law. Their identity and security depend on it. But it’s not the kind of identity or security that enables one to walk on water. Only sons do this because they live in the Son of God whose Spirit is in them. Other Christians remain in the knowledge of good and evil because their belief system is a Christianized version of it. Their thought patterns and modes of knowing what they know, by which I mean their epistemology, are steeped in the constructs of the knowledge of good and evil. Consequently their power over the evil one is small and they are prone to represent themselves and a culture of judgment in the name of God. This kind of things can produce ‘the church’ but never the Kingdom of God.

‘And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him’1 John4.16 NIV.

It may shock or annoy us to learn that the essence of God is not law but love. The definition of love is Jesus and Jesus is the human face of God. Jesus did not tell us to ‘law one another.’ We have been commanded to love one another as Jesus loves us. Such a feat is accomplished supernaturally as Jesus lives through us by the Spirit of Sonship.

With Jesus as our life we become humility and we become love. Best of all we grow in what it means to be sons and daughters of God, all because it is Christ who is in us transforming us constantly from glory to glory. To be glorious is to be as Jesus. But in Jesus, glory is also to be you and flower as His daughter or son in your place of authority. We love best not only when we forgive and multiply the spirit of reconciliation and unity. We love best when we are serving others as who we were made to be.

A few years ago, the woman who won Master Chef in Australia remarked that she saw her cooking as a way of loving people. Our work is a way of loving people. In Christ being ourselves is a way of loving people. When we live in Jesus who is THE NEW AND LIVING WAY we become a way of revealing Jesus’ life, love, light colour, liberty, wisdom and all the adventurous and exciting things that are JESUS! We multiply the Kingdom of God in the world.

Keith Allen

Anyone can have enough wisdom to be reasonably discerning. The beginning of wisdom is ‘fearing the Lord.’ This means worshiping God and doing what He says. Intelligence is a help, but is not a guarantee of wisdom or discernment. There are very intelligent people who are notoriously undiscerning – which is not obvious to themselves but it is to those who know them. Then there are quite simple people who astonish you with their discernment. In their case it comes from a humble, pure heart that seeks after God and understands His Kingdom.

I once taught a small class of students in social science who were at the bottom of the academic stream. It was a pleasant experience and they made good progress, possibly learning as much if not more than some of their more self-absorbed peers. They learned chiefly because they had the humility to listen and give attention to what was being said.

There are people of moderate intellect who don’t possess this attitude. They are not celebrities and not in high status jobs but neither are they humble. They are quite satisfied with their own views. They maintain themselves in various positions of bondage and limited potential because they talk so much and listen so little. They don’t listen enough to learn. They are very much attracted to what they have to say, yet belong to that class of people who talk a lot without saying anything. The time is coming when the humble really will inherit the earth and take the positions of leadership that Jesus has given to them in the church.

There are people about who insist on being leaders irrespective of their ability to lead. They find themselves in these positions due to personal overconfidence or because others who dread change have placed them there. These people were born to minister in particular sphere and can do this with distinction. But they are ministers of the table and not of the word. The Spirit of Christ among us does not rob us of individuality or the purpose for which we have been gifted to serve. If we are in the Spirit of Christ, our uniqueness will be revealed so that we can enrich our group life by being who we are.

The emergence of the house church has provided an opportunity for someto be confident in their incompetence and limited understanding of what Jesus is doing and what He requires of us. This may be because we still live in the flesh and have moved side ways from an institutional church into a simple church where we propagate the same thing. Or it may be because we have acclimatized ourselves to a culture of sentimentality, emotionalism and group dynamics that we mistake for the Presence of the Holy Spirit.

The latter can produce a category of people who imagine they are receiving and giving a ‘word’ from God when the reality is quite different. Mike Bickle stated a truth in a book I read long ago when he wrote ‘They have a weak mind and lose tongue.’ In this season the wise will shine like the sun while all that is hollow will be revealed for what it is.

‘Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces’ Matt 7.6 NIV.

‘But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted’ Luke 14.10-11 NIV.

A life in God’s Son will equip all to live with grace and competence. We will become who we are and positioned to do what we are meant to be doing because a life in the Presence of God reveals who we are.

When we are attracted to Jesus we will also be attracted to those in whom He lives and speaks. Seeking Jesus’ face, we will behold our own faces and those with whom we worship. We will understand one another from the Spirit and not the flesh. We will have an accurate idea of what God is doing and what we are meant to be doing. Together Jesus will reveal our true selves to us and our community. We will be positioned in His House as living stones. Such stones are strong, alive and accurately positioned because they live in God and not in themselves and their false assumptions. They are fruitful and multiply because they are most truly themselves and doing what God made them to do.

There are blind leaders of the blind. There are blind folks who attempt to lead people who can see. There are also sighted leaders who help others walk in the revelation of God and discerning leaders who walk with those moving as one in the light of what Jesus is doing now.

Jesus sets before us an open door. He is the Doorway to who we really are. If we behold His face and hear his voice He will close doors to those possibilities that are not us and open doors when opportunities arise for us to serve as who we are. We are the most life-giving to each other and the most devastating to the Enemy when we are living in our genuine identity and purpose.

‘Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: “How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?’ Prov 1.20-22 NIV.

‘Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him’ John 14.21 NIV.

‘So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables’ Acts 6.2 NIV.

‘Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them’ Acts 6.3 NIV.

[Note on the picture: Pride leads us to force open doors that do not belong to us and were not meant for us to enter.]

Keith Allen

THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP AND THE SONS OF GOD

Repentance is not some moralistic thing. It’s a call to turn from all that is weak and withered to the extravagant life of those who find their being in Jesus.

Christ’s cross reveals what we are and who we can become. To reveal to people their true condition and to uncover to them what they can become is the most loving thing that can be done for any man, woman, denomination or town.

But there are some to whom repenting does not come easily. They are convinced that they are the church and the church is them. They belong to the tradition in which religion is society and society is religion. Mentioning their sin and deficiencies is defined as ‘being negative,’ and taken as a personal offence. Far from repenting they accuse those whom God sends to them of ‘trashing the church.’ But in so doing they participate in the sin of those who crucified the One who came to give them life.

‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Acts 17.28 NIV.

To have the life of God is to be more than un-dead. To live in the Son of God is to be a spiritual being, twice breathed into life by the Father. Unless we are born again we will not see the Kingdom of God. This can mean that we will not participate in eternal life. Or it can mean, that as churched and Christian as we may be, we cannot take on the authority, power and nature of those who are sons of God. Tozer points out that humans are not bodies which are inhabited by a spirit. We are spirits who have a body. Note that the Father breathed Himself into clay. Our divine nature comes from our Father not the clay. His Name is hallowed on earth because we are part of Him. Empowerment to do His will on earth as it is in heaven is ours because we are His Sons.

How we define ourselves determines what we can become. The words ‘Now are we the sons of God’ pulses with meaning when we consider that what it means to be a Son of God. How we define a son of God has been revealed for all to see. This is Jesus the SON OF MAN.

‘Let me put it as clearly as I can. The sons of God live in the Son of God. They live this way ‘in the Spirit’ because this is the only way the Person of Jesus can become your life!’

We are not ‘born again’ just because we are moral and ethical people. We are born again because we are dead to our natural selves and alive to our supernatural selves by the Spirit of Christ. It’s unlikely that we will be born again if we have not perceived the depth of our degradation and the height of our potential as spirit beings who are sons and daughters of God. We were not created as intelligent lumps of meat. We really are made in the image of God.

‘God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth’ John 4.24 NIV.

We can talk all we like about the infinite value of a human life. We can repeat the mantra of the harmonious development of the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of our being. But unless we actually live in God, courtesy of Jesus and the Holy Spirit we remain wooden, stilted and only fractionally alive.

In the flesh and from the earth, we live far below the potential of the sons and daughters of God. Why? Without the understanding that the human person is truly spiritual only when the human spirit is joined to the Spirit of God, what we call ‘spiritual’ is merely physical and mental. Thus we subject ourselves to a bad deal. We lose the ability ‘to see’ the Kingdom of God because we have cut ourselves off from that which defines us as kings – daughters and sons of God.

“But the Father has bestowed on us The Spirit of Sonship.’

Repentance is not some moralistic thing. It’s a call to turn from all that is weak and withered to the extravagant life of those who find their being in Jesus.

In calling Us to repent, Jesus is calling us to become who we are.

‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is’ 1 John 3.2 KJV.

‘You received the Spirit of Sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father” Rom 8.15 NIV

‘In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’ John 3.3 NIV.

‘For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God’ Rom 8.14 NIV.

Keith Allen

For those who have turned away from walking in the fullness of the Spirit there needs to be a return to the place where they left the Spirit and a full overcoming of whatever it was that caused them to turn away…

… The word of the kingdom of God will not prosper in us apart from living and walking in the Spirit of God. In this time of entering the kingdom age, the glory light is being turned up to bring cleansing of impurities and release the brilliant glow of the glorious kingdom of God. It is like God has His hand on the big glory light control knob and is turning it up at an increasing rate.

The faith that makes people daughters and sons of God does not come from mere evidence or even industrious Bible study. It comes from revelation and revelation starts in the heart. Tozer asserts that those who walk in the light of God do so because for them believing is seeing. This is the believing that occurs because a man or a woman has given their heart unconditionally to Jesus and as a result becomes privy to the only light that is light. It is the believing that occurs, as Tozer says, because ‘One has committed their total being to Christ.’ Is this your life?

Our being enclosed in God’s being is what produces liberty and light. This is the light that Adam was meant to have and what Christ has returned to human beings. We were designed to live in God and see in God.

In Christ we are once again placed in the Father. By the Holy Spirit this union is made a reality as our spirit is not only joined to God. We are surrounded by Him and by the One Spirit we become sons, which equips us with the authority and power the sons of God are called to wield in Christ.

SPIRIT OF SONSHIP

The authority of God does not rest on the anointing but on Christ. Our ability to administer this authority depends not on the anointing but on whether we are in Christ. Strictly speaking, life in the Spirit is much more than being Spirit-filled and operating in the gifts. Life in the Spirit is a life in the Father brought about because Jesus is our life. Life in the Spirit is actually the Spirit of Sonship manifest in us courtesy of the One Spirit who draws all into the embrace of the Father.

This explains why there are many who have the gifts of the Spirit, yet remain equipped with bread-knives rather than swords. Their authority over circumstances and the Enemy is small. Discernment is absent. Their personal lives suffer from serial disaster. They have the ability to judge but not to love and through them, the Kingdom of God is denied.

The unfortunate truth for many good-living and Spirit-filled Christians is that they have never been born again. They have assented to the construct but it has not taken hold of their being or taken over their heart. They are living in either the law or trying to meet the demands of church culture.

‘A key marker of the Kingdom of God is discernment. Discernment is more than a gift. It results from being formed and built up in Christ. Discernment is the mind of Christ in you.’

Light in the Spirit is Christ from first to last. Life in the Spirit is Christ in you and Christ manifest in the world as you. In Christ’s light we see light. But should we live in law, performance and religion we will not know Christ or see Him as He is. We will make him in our image rather than being re-made in His. We will be unable to multiply His power in any meaningful way. Our eyes will be veiled as will the potential of our lives. Only in Christ is the veil taken away. Only in Christ are we born again and only in Christ can we see the Kingdom of God.

‘But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away’ 2 Cor 3.14 NIV.

‘In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’ John 3.3 NIV.

Keith Allen