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Now as we bring to a wrap
this understanding of the "New Commandment",
here are some things now that we know:
we know that God chose humans rather than angels
to be His heirs.
We know that the basis of this choice
was that humans were a very different kind of creation
than the angels.
The angels were created as ministering servants.
Humans however were given a spirit and with this
they were given the ability to love God.
The essence of free will
is that it relates to the exercise of love.
The one thing that cannot be coerced,
the one thing that cannot be demanded, is love
because if it were coerced and became a duty
it wouldn't be love, it would be obligation.
Love is the spontaneous coming forth from a human being
of a desire to care for another
even up to and including the forfeiture
of his own life.
This is a characteristic that is not present
and that is not observable in any other creation
except human beings and in human beings who know God
and who are born again of the very nature of God.
This is the essence of the whole matter.
The angels who sinned challenged God
because their entire perspective was based upon
the glory and the power of a superior creature
versus an inferior creature.
God kept the matter of how He was going to demonstrate
the rightness of His choice-humans versus angels-
He kept the matter
of how He was going to do that to Himself.
When Jesus came, God did the unthinkable
and in many respects it was a complete surprise
to the demonic, the fallen angels.
God chose to come to the earth
in the form of the despised creature himself.
This, by itself, confounded the demonic
because in the pride of the demonic
it would never consent to being found
in the form of humanity.
You know there is often talk
about how humans and these fallen angels
engaged in *** relations
that produced the Anakim-that's rubbish.
For one thing, the demons would never consent
to a union with humans
because they think they are greater than humans.
Why would they want to consent to a human,
an activity that made them patently equal to humans
when in their own minds
the human is such a vastly inferior creature,
leaving aside the fact that-
according to Luke the 20th chapter-
these creatures were not made for procreation.
they have no capability of procreating.
But the main essence is
that the demonic would never have consented
to relationships with human beings
on any level except abuse
because in their minds
they were the greater of the creation
and God, in their minds, was wrong
for choosing a lesser creature.
Now what God of course knew
was that though the creature was placed,
positionally, lower than the angels,
the creature-humans-
was given something by their Creator
that the angels were not given
and that is the ability to love.
Angels do not love; angels have no ability
to lay down their lives for another-
angels are ministering servants
and they are incapable of loving.
Now, when God chose to come
in the form of the despised creature,
this was a plan that could not have been
anticipated by the fallen angels
because they never assumed that God
would lower Himself to take on the form
and the stature of the very creatures of controversy.
And you can see how God manipulates the enemy
through this weakness on the part of the enemy.
One quick example:
Satan, of course, controlled the world's armies
in the day when Jesus was born.
How would God hope to bring His Son into the world
as a struggling human infant from an ordinary family
unattended by legions of angels for His protection?
How would God hope to pull that off
when the enemy was dedicated to His eradication
once it became apparent to the enemy,
based upon prophetic Scripture,
that God intended to come in the form of human flesh?
Well the answer is simple:
God had His Son be born
where pride would never look for Him.
If it were Satan who were in the place of God
anticipating this child being born
he would have ringed the place
where the son would be born
with legions of his supporters.
He would have made sure
that every available medical care came to his aid.
Every security precaution and detail
would have been attended to.
But God didn't have to do any of that.
God simply caused His Son to be born
of a very ordinary family;
they were royalty but indeed a lesser royalty.
They weren't the ruling house at the time.
They were members of the ruling house
in that they were from the line of David
but they were not the ones on the throne at the time.
So God brought Him through a lesser notable house
and then God had Him be born "out back"
in a stable among the animals.
Pride, I assure you,
would never have looked for the Son of God
to be born in those circumstances
but that's exactly why God had Him come
and arrive in those circumstances.
And later on after it became known that He was born-
the wise men had told Herod this-
Satan moved on Herod to kill all the children
to try to exterminate Jesus
ex post facto-after the fact.
How does God save His son again
without these extraordinary precautions?
The answer is very simple.
He spirited Him away as it were.
He first told Joseph in a dream
to take Him down to Egypt
and then had Him physically be taken to Egypt.
Why Egypt?
Because 2000 years ago, to a Jew,
Egypt was about slavery,
about being a second-class citizen,
being without rights and so on.
But the enemy would never look for the Son of God
in the form of a slave or in a second-class status
because pride would never allow him
to consider that as an option.
So first God hid the plan
of how God would come and prove
that His choice of humans
was the only appropriate choice.
He hid the plan in Himself
and then He brings the plan forward
by having Himself show up in the form of a human being
and then He did the thing that we said earlier
which was that Jesus
submitted Himself perfectly to God,
every moment every day
doing only what He saw the Father doing.
This was the definition that Jesus employed
to describe the way He lived
in relationship to the Father.
He said, "The Son can do nothing of Himself,"
"He can only do what He sees the Father doing."
That means that the Son,
though He could do whatever He wanted to
as an independent being,
chose only to confine His activities
strictly to the purposes of God
as revealed to Him moment by moment.
Now this, coincidently, is entering into God's rest if-
and it would be entering God's rest-
if God were reliable.
But what Jesus teaches us is
the absolute, total reliability of God
and this reliability is the actual expression
of the love of God.
It is how God shows He is God.
Jesus, being fully confident of this
and completely trusting of the Father
did not defend His right
to an independent thought or action
in thirty-three and a half years of His life.
He did only what He saw the Father doing.
In this way,
when the Father required that the Son die
in substitution for all humans,
the Son accepted death on a cross
on behalf of all other humans.
God raised Him from the dead.
This act of total surrender to God
had the effect of allowing Jesus
to live His entire life without at any moment
submitting Himself to Satan or to the rule of Satan.
You see Satan had created
an alternative to trusting in God;
that alternative is called "the world"
and "the world" allows human beings to live-
and to believe while they are living-
that they can understand the things of God
and be independent of God completely apart
from needing to or having to trust God.
The alternative would be
that you totally depend on God
and you completely surrender yourself
to the purposes of God.
Satan never intended to do that because he believed
that God's plan for humans was wrong-
that God chose the wrong heirs
and he based that on what he could have done for God.
As a superior creature,
superior in the abilities of one species over another,
he felt that these superior abilities,
compared to human beings,
gave him the right to be the heir of God.
But God was not looking for that
because God is not interested
in anything we could do for Him.
Why?
Because God can do anything for Himself
that He wants to.
The evil one based his conviction
as to the rightness of God's selection
on what he thought he could do for God.
God, knowing that there was nothing
man could do for God,
but knowing that what He needs from man
is a location in time-a body-
out of which He could live and act and do,
and that that body must be compatible
with the Spirit of God.
God created a human being with a spirit
that was already compatible to God's Spirit
so when the Spirit of God comes into the human being
the Spirit speaks to the human spirit
and the human spirit has the capability of responding.
The problem typically of course is
the human soul decides that it wants its own life;
it wants its own abilities.
Oddly enough, it is to the human soul
that the enemy makes his appeal and his entire craft-
all that he has put together
with which to entrap the human being-
he has put together with respect
to entrapping the human soul.
When the human being chooses to love
he is inherently choosing a form of life
and a pattern of life that denies the soul.
That is why it is impossible
to do the will of God by the soul.
Doing the will of God requires a submission
of the human spirit to the Spirit of God
because then the Spirit of God
speaks to the human being, Spirit to spirit.
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirits that we
are the sons of God.
This all being so, when the human being responds-
his spirit to the Spirit of God-
he's doing exactly what Jesus did.
In the moments leading up to the cross
Jesus described it this way:
He said,
"My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death..."
indicating that it is in the soul
that there is the desire and the ability
to be independent in choice from God.
The putting down of the soul,
"...and what shall I say? Save Me from this hour."
Jesus remarked, He said,
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
His spirit always saw the beauty
of following the Lord and walking in God,
obeying the things of God.
His soul had this independent streak to it
and wanted to be independent,
not necessarily sinfully independent,
but to live and to preserve His life.
When, in this conflict, Jesus yields to the Father
and allows the Spirit of God to direct His Spirit,
then He loves us perfectly
because He has been willing
to put to death His own interest;
quite literally put to death His own interest,
entrusting God.
God put to death God's own interest
in fellowshipping with Himself-
the Father with the Son-
because of "another".
Both did it; the Father did it and the Son did it
because of their interest in another-
the other being us.
When we now, who are the other,
when we come to have the Spirit of God living in us
and our decisions are based on
following the Holy Spirit moment by moment;
when we do that, we have the same attitude,
we have the same character as God himself.
And in that way, when we love,
our love is measured by
exactly the same standard as God himself
because when we submit our lives
to the oversight and control of the Spirit of God
we are doing exactly what Jesus did
and before that we are doing exactly
what the Father did.
In this way it is proper for us
to be considered to be the sons of God
because we are of the same kind
and we're of the same nature as God himself.
We love in exactly the same manner as how He loves:
"as I have loved you."
And that manner is-and the quantum of it is-
that we prefer another over ourselves
because we are willing to allow God
to take the use of these vessels
and to work in these vessels
and to work through these vessels
to benefit others and we're willing to forego
what other choices we might have had
for our own lives.
This is not about things you can do for God
because God doesn't need you
to help Him improve His love;
God is perfect in love.
The matter is showing forth the love of God.
What this is all about is how you yield your body
and God comes and lives in you
and shows forth His love.
He is perfect in love
therefore every demonstration of His love
that comes through you is the perfect expression
of how He is able to love through you.
You cannot improve on that;
you have no ability to love any more
or in any greater capacity
or in any greater way than how God loves.
Therefore God doesn't need your help.
You cannot offer some benevolence to God
so that others may see God in a better way
than they would have seen God
if God simply used your body
out of which to live and to operate.
That's why there is nothing you can do for God
because you live to show forth the pleasure of God.
The pleasure of God
is to demonstrate His love to humanity;
He doesn't need your help to show that He loves.
It is His nature to love,
it is the essence of His being to love
and it is, quite frankly, foreign to us.
So when the statement is made
that God doesn't need anything from us,
that we can't do anything for God:
this is what is meant.
What is not meant is:
there is nothing for you to do.
What you can do is what Romans 12 says,
"I beseech you therefore, brethren,"
"by the mercies of God,"
"that you present your bodies living sacrifices..."
That means that God wants to live through you
and you are willing to give yourself,
just as Jesus did,
and have Him come and possess that body-
Spirit to spirit, His Spirit to your spirit-
and then to inform your spirit,
moment by moment in the use of that body.
When that is true, this is what follows:
this is from the book of Colossians, Colossians says,
"You no longer live but it is Christ who lives in you."
"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ,"
"set your hearts on things above,"
"where Christ is seated at the right hand of God."
"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things."
"Because you died, and your life is now hidden"
"with Christ in God."
"When Christ, who is your life, appears,"
"then you will appear with Him in glory."
So that's how the matter works out:
when you love as God loves,
you will be as Jesus was in His example
of total surrender and total self-sacrifice.
When you love as God loves,
you will be as God himself is:
that He set aside His own pleasure
in His fellowship with Himself
and accepted separation from Himself
because of another.
When you live this way
you are setting aside your right
to relate to other people
the way you would relate to them
and you are giving up your body
so that through you God could relate to others
in the way that God would.
And in the way that God does,
it shows forth the love of God.
You then are truly the sons of your Father in heaven
and the measure of that is that
you are like the only begotten Son of God.
You are like the First Born of this new race
and it is appropriate then for you
to be included among those
who are known as the sons of God.
This is the proof that will be advanced
and that has been advanced
that those that disagreed with God's choice
of humans as His heirs were wrong...they were wrong.
Because it is possible for human beings
to throw off the self-preservation
and to submit themselves perfectly to the will of God.
When that happens
they are exactly like God in their nature.
They love as God loves and that's the proof.
Do you not know then that you will judge angels?
This is the matter of the judgment of angels:
you will condemn by your righteous life-
by your decision to submit your life to God
and for Him to live through you by His Spirit-
you will prove the truth
that you are worthy, by this action,
to be known as a son of God
and God was right when He chose humans
because humans have the capability
of loving as God loves.
Then the matter will be resolved.
God did not simply set down Satan by force of will
but the inevitable triumph of the right.
That is why the age must conclude
with the final testings of these things
and in the end of the matter
we shall overcome the enemy.
We shall overcome him by the blood of the Lamb,
the word of our testimony
and that we did not preserve our own lives.
The reason for this is
that we are like our Father in heaven.
Now let's go on from here, in the next broadcast,
to talk about what does it mean practically
to love as God loves, moment by moment.
I'm Sam Soleyn; God bless you and I'll see you then.