Revival

Communion: Forgiveness

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

The problem is what you and I in our generation think is forgiveness of sins. We don’t see
forgiveness as it really is and like so many things in our world, we’re losing touch with reality
because we’re losing a sense of what truths really are. So all of us probably suffer from a total
misconception of what forgiveness is. Let me give you an example that we’ll all know immediately
and will sympathize with. You have a roommate or you have a husband or a wife or a friend, someone
who lives with you, and one day they just burst out in a show of bad temper and criticize you and
tear you apart. So there’s coolness between you for the next couple of days and they come to you
and say “I’m sorry, forgive me.”

You of course want the relationship to be right and you forgive them. It goes on like that for a
week or two weeks and then once more they burst out in a show of temper and they tear you apart and
they criticize you and there’s coolness between you for the next two days. And they come again and
say “I’m sorry, will you forgive me.” And you say “Yes, I will” because you want the relationship.
It’s a little harder this time because you forgave them last time and it was right from your end but
it didn’t seem to give them any ability to stay right with you. But you still say “I forgive you.”
It goes alright for another two weeks and they burst out again in bad temper and they criticize you
and they tear you apart and there’s coolness for the next two days. Then they come to you and they
say “I’ sorry, will you forgive me?” Well you don’t know what to do; you just don’t know what to
do.

We’ve all been in the same boat; of course we want to forgive them because we want things to be
right between us as they used to be. But we begin to wonder in our minds is this forgiveness? I
forgive him or her but what use is it if our relationship is going to continue going through these
agonizing crises? Isn’t there something inside your heart that says “I want to forgive them, but I
want a relationship. I want a relationship of love. I want a relationship that is continuous. I
want a relationship of peace. I want a good friend here whom I feel I can really trust. It seems to
me that there’s something that needs to be done in their heart that will enable them to walk free
from this bad temper otherwise it doesn’t matter how often I forgive them; our relationship is going
to be like that.”

And gradually you must admit in your own heart you begin to sense that your relationship is going to
sink to a superficial level because bit by bit you’re going to feel in your heart that it doesn’t
matter how often you forgive these people because any minute they could burst out against you again.
And whatever you say, deep down in your heart, even though you want to forgive them and you do
forgive them, deep down in your heart there’s a growing uneasiness. There’s a feeling inside you
that this relationship is not very intimate, it’s not very trustworthy and it’s not very dependable.
And surely, bit by bit you begin to question what you mean by forgiveness. And you begin to say
“Now is this forgiveness? Or if I do keep on forgiving them is it not just indulgence of sin that
I’m involved in? Is it not just encouraging them to think that it doesn’t matter how often they
burst out in temper, it doesn’t matter how often they lose patience with their friend, that’s the
way life should be.“
And is it not true that most of us would start examining whether forgiveness is possible where they
is no change in the other person’s attitude to you—that it’s permanent?

Loved ones, do you not think that’s what runs right throughout our legal system? Do you not think

that’s why we’re all concerned about it? We all rise to the idea of forgiveness, but we feel that
there’s something wrong with the kind of forgiveness that we’ve just outlined because it looks to us
very like indulgence. It looks very like carelessness about morality. Eventually do you not think
that if you carried on that way, if for instance you substituted criticism of you or stealing your
money for bad temper, do you not think you’re beginning to indulge in the same amorality as the
person who has sinned against you?

In other words does there not come a time when you’ve forgiven so often that actually you’re just
teaching people to ignore standards? Certainly you must admit that if you were doing it with a
child, and I know it as an ex-school teacher, there’s no doubt in your mind that you’d be teaching
them to be amoral. You’d be teaching them, “Son, it doesn’t matter how often you lose your temper,
it doesn’t matter how often you criticize, it doesn’t matter how often you steal, I forgive you;
you’re ok.” And I know from my experience the dear kid takes full advantage of that. He just keeps
going one way and probably we’ve all seen homes that have ended up in a mess because of that.

In other words, surely you can only talk about forgiveness in righteousness, is that not true?
Surely you can only talk about forgiveness, which is really the restoration of a relationship, you
can only talk about the restoration of a relationship in righteousness if the other person, sooner
or later, after however many time of forgiving eventually comes to the point where they no longer
lose their temper with you, where they no longer criticize you, where you begin to have a
relationship of love.

And loved ones, that’s really what forgiveness is, even in the Old Testament. You don’t need to
look up this verse, “the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.” And that’s
as far as we, in our generation, read: “The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to
everlasting upon those who fear him and his righteousness to children’s children. To those who keep
his covenant and remember to do his commandments.” In other words, our dear God does not indulge us
in amorality the way we tend to think he does and the way we have presented him to each other as
doing. Our dear God planted in us the same common sense that is part of his own nature.
Forgiveness only makes sense if eventually the husband or the wife or the son or the daughter or the
roommate begins to change in their own hearts and lives and begins to continue a relationship of
love with you.

So in a sense the problem has never been God’s forgiveness, God has always been willing to forgive
us. The problem is that it becomes to us just indulgence of our wrongs or our sins unless we can
change ourselves. And loved ones, that’s what communion is about. You’re right, forgiveness is
preached in Jesus’ name, but it’s preached in Jesus’ name because Jesus is the one that enables us
to change so that forgiveness can be real. And it’s in Jesus that all of us were changed, that’s
why communion is precious.

If you’ve had things in your life that you know are wrong and you’ve continued to ask God to forgive
you them, and he has continued graciously to forgive you them, even though his voice has become
quieter and quieter and you’re having more and more trouble listening to it, yet he still has
graciously has forgiven you. If you’re in that situation and you know his voice is becoming quieter
and more distant because you’re continuing to do the things that you ask him to forgive you for and
if you’re getting yourself into that position as we described between the two friends, if you’re in
that spot,loved ones, God changed you in Jesus.

That’s what communion is about. God changed you in Jesus. He foresaw the kind of life you would

live. Could I just tell you a little thing that should make that much easier for you to believe;
that God foresaw the kind of life you would live. The little IBM personal computer would take 153
days to solve a certain difficult mathematical problem. Cray invented one of his massive Cray
computers that solves that problem in three seconds. If we can do that with our computers is our
mighty God not well able to foresee the kind of life that you would live and provide a remedy for
them? Of course he is. God has an infinite mind and even though he doesn’t make us do what we have
done in our lives, he foresaw that we would do it. And he put you into his son Jesus and destroyed
you there and made you anew and clean and whole and if you believe that, you can be changed this
morning. That’s what communion is. Communion isn’t just about God being willing to forgive us.
Communion is about God changing you and me in Jesus so that we can continue a real, restored
relationship with him forever.

Just one last thing; you may say, “You mean through the influence of his Spirit, and through my
coming to Church, and through my reading the Bible and praying and trying to obey him I can be
changed?” No. No. I mean you have been changed. That’s what this dear Book says. It says Christ
died for all of us; therefore all of us have died in eternity, above time and space. And if anyone
is in Christ, and all of us are in Christ because Christ died for all and all died, if anyone is in
Christ he is a new creation, the old has passed away, the new has already come. You can be that now
because God has already made you it in Jesus. And through your faith in that, the Holy Spirit can
bring that into your life. That’s true, loved ones. You can believe into that this moment.
Let us pray.

Testimony: Ernest O’Neill

Romans 6:6

by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

17 April 1983, Minneapolis, MN U.S.A.

It’s difficult loved ones for me to go too long without testifying again to what Jesus did in my
life. So I’d like to do that simply.

I was a Methodist minister in Ireland and I sensed that God wanted us to go to London to study, so
my wife and I went there and I really didn’t know what to do next. I was a Christian and knew that
God had forgiven my sins. I knew that from when I was 17, when I went to University. That whole
business of sex and the impossibility of doing anything about the strong drives that I had in that
direction brought home to me the power of sin and the need to at least have it forgiven. So when I
went up to University in Ireland at 17, I got down to what was to Protestants a dreadful thing, the
Stations of the Cross. I began to spend my prayer time thinking about Jesus dying. I tried to get it
through my own thick head that He had actually died and that there was a piece of soil in Palestine
where His Cross had actually been thrust into the ground. Gradually, as I thought about that and my
mind dwelt upon it, I came to the conclusion He had really done that. There was really a man Jesus
who had a beard that you could maybe smell if you were close to it or He had ears like mine and He
had clothes on. And He had actually died on a cross in Palestine and He had died looking right down
the centuries past the Roman soldiers to Ernest O’Neill and saying, “Father, forgive HIM for he
knows not what he does.”

So it came home to me when I was 17 that Jesus had actually died for me, and that because He had
died for me, God was willing to forgive me my sins. So I was born of God when I was 17. From then on
I had a Bible study and a prayer life, not daily but pretty close to daily. Then I sensed God
calling me to the ministry and that’s why I went into the Methodist Ministry. Now after teaching
English literature for a couple of years in Ireland, I went into the Methodist Ministry and then
ended up in the position that I’ve described, where I felt God wanted us to go to London.

We found ourselves in London in the Methodist Church there and then did not know what to do next. My
life, even though it was Christian and I was committed to the ministry, was not what it was meant to
be. I didn’t know what was wrong then, but I knewm this is not a wonderful life. My mother would
often say to me, “Ernest, Christians are supposed to be happy.” I mean, it was just like a sword in
my side because I wasn’t happy. I was worried and anxious and concerned and troubled most of the
time or a lot of the time and very tense, and yet I was a Christian. So I knew that something was
wrong but didn’t know what.

When so it came to whether I’d go back to Ireland or stay in London I at last just said, “Lord, I
don’t know.” I began to seek God, fairly much day after day in London, where should I go? Through
prayer came “America” and that was the last place I wanted to go because America had a lot of money,
a lot of commercialism, it wasn’t the place where you wanted to go if you were really serious about
God, at least as a little Irish minister. And I felt I WAS serious about God.

That was the only answer I got so I went to my neighboring pastor and said did you know anybody in
America? He said he knew the Bishop of Minnesota and he’d arrive in London in the next month. So

eventually I had dinner with the Bishop of Minnesota and ended up here in Minneapolis. That was
about 20 years ago, the same year that Kennedy was assassinated. Then I got into the Methodist
ministry here in America but found the same problem there as I had in Ireland. It was this, and I
can tie it down fairly precisely: a lady could come into my study after I’d preached a sermon and
could say, “Well, I didn’t think this and this and this was good, I thought you could have left that
part out.” Well I sat there in my chair because in seminary we’re given smiling classes and I would
smile because you’re supposed to smile when they tear you apart. But it really didn’t matter if I
was smiling because inside in my heart, I was resentful of her. I had rising up within me the
feeling, “What right has she to talk about my preaching? What does she know about homiletics?”

That was one of the problems. A rising up of resentment and criticism towards other people which I
did not show on the outside but which were inside all the time. And that was inward sin; I didn’t
know about that. I didn’t know the distinction. I knew it was there, but I didn’t know what you
could do about it. That was one of the problems. I didn’t show it on the outside because I had
trained myself, I suppose, to discipline my outward expressions to other people so that they
wouldn’t see what I was really thinking. But I knew what I was thinking. And of course it really
makes a break between you and the person you’re speaking to because they think you’re one thing and
you’re really another. So you don’t feel in communion with them — they may feel they’re in
communion with you– but you know right well they’re just in communion with a just a hypocritical
appearance that you’re putting on. So that was one problem.

Another problem was selfish ambition. I don’t know about the brothers here, but we men are taught
that we must achieve things. We get the idea that we must make a niche for ourselves in the hall of
fame somewhere. I certainly was convinced of that and felt often driven by a selfish ambition to be
somebody important. I wanted to be somebody well known, somebody famous, for people to like me,
people to respect me and to be successful. I wanted to be able to write back and tell my mother what
I’d done in this world or something like that.

So selfish ambition, which often drove you to be very jealous of anybody else who did anything half
reasonably. So even if someone sang a song or somebody else did something well, that wasn’t doing me
any harm at all, yet I was so preoccupied with being center-stage and being the important one that I
would feel jealous of them or envious. I did not even want to sing, I just felt I didn’t want them
to be that well known or well liked or well respected when I wasn’t. And so selfish ambition begot
in me jealousy and envy and of course a lot of pride. And that was the second plain thing that I
knew in my life: pride. It’s so ridiculous now when I look at it, but I remember what it was. It was
pride in my own insight into Christianity and my ability to explain it to other people. That came to
me later one night when the Holy Spirit give me revelation and it came in those very words.

So I had pride and it was a thing that was debilitating because you’d preach a sermon and everybody
would say, “Oh, that really brought God’s Word home to me” but actually you took that to yourself
and said that means it was a good sermon and I did well, and that I had succeeded and I’m very
clever — that I can really see truths about God and am obviously pretty good at communicating it to
other people. So actually it stole the whole of joy and delight of being any use to God at all,
because I was so concerned with pride in what I could do. And of course that’s what brought the
resentment when somebody criticized me. I felt, if only they could see all the good things that I
do, if they could see all the wonderful things I do, they wouldn’t criticize me. There was a great
deal of reaction against any criticism because of that pride.

The third thing was just very plain, it was lust. I don’t know how you all are and eventually I

suppose as life goes on, we get too old or we wear out or something, but it seems to me most of us
men anyway, find we have tremendous problems with unclean thoughts, with fantasy life, not only with
dreams at night, but the terrible things that are the conscious dreams that we have during the day
and the fantasies we have and the playing around with the unclean pictures and unclean movies in
certain situations. It really spoils your relationship with all girls, you know. Well, they actually
are often very open and very straight and don’t have those same feelings about us. Often they are
very appealing in the holiness and the goodness of their feelings towards us, but of course we are
always after the main chance and always with an ulterior motive in the back of our minds. So lust
was a pretty constant problem and spoils all that you try to do, of course, with the opposite sex at
all for Jesus’ sake and much that you try to do in your own marriage because those of you who are
married and still have trouble with lust know that it really spoils marriage too. And it prevents it
being a relaxed and lovely and beautiful experience.

So those were the things that were working inside me as a Methodist minister. I was by that time, I
suppose when we came here, about 29 or 30 years old. I’d been in the ministry about eight or nine
years by then. I went in when I was 21 and yet it was no better, it was still the same. It was this
struggle within and this pretense on the outside. In fact, really there’s no question, there’s no
question what was my favourite verse, but it was the verse in Romans 7:15 that described my almost
daily experience. “I do not understand my own actions for I do not do what I want, but I do the very
thing I hate.”

When I look back on it of course, I really did what I wanted. I mean not actually, it wasn’t exactly
true — that verse in fact describes the situation of a Jew living under the law. In fact, if
anything it describes an absolute non-Christian. In fact, I did do the things I wanted. I pretended
that I wanted more holy things that I read in the Bible and the things that I’m supposed to want,
but actually I did what I wanted because I found inside me that there was an irrational streak that
wanted things that I, as a Christian, was supposed not to want. This irrational drive within me
wanted to jump into bed with some girl. This irrational drive within me wanted everybody to praise
me. This irrational drive within me wanted my satisfaction, wanted everybody else wiped out and me
elevated. So I found that there was a strong drive inside that actually produced a wanting of its
own. So in a deep way I DID do what I wanted. It’s just that in fairness, I suppose there seemed to
be two “I’s”, there seemed to be an “I” that wanted those things and there seemed to be a little
weak “I” that did want something of Jesus. And of course that was the Spirit of Jesus. When I was
born of God, the Spirit of Jesus did graciously come into me.

That’s the situation we’re in when we’re carnal Christians because that’s the state I’m describing.
I was a carnal Christian. I had in fact received the Spirit of Jesus into me. It was Him that drew
me into the Methodist ministry. I mixed it up with a lot of my selfish ambitions and tried to dirty
it and spoil it, but He still kept wanting His Father and it was His Spirit that made me want to
pray at times and to read the Bible or made me want to preach or to help other people to know Jesus.
And it was His Spirit that at times wanted God and it was His Spirit that pointed out to me that
these other things were wrong. Then beside me there seemed to be this Old Man, this Old Self that
wanted all these sinful things — and that was my situation. I saw no way out. I had not heard of
any way in the Methodist Church, I had not read of any way in the literature. I was brought up as a
in fairly liberal Methodist theolog. I had not read anywhere that you could do anything about those
things. Indeed I felt that this was the result of just being human and that throughout your life
your job was to hold those things down. Indeed in my semi-sophisticated way I thought, that is where
discipline comes in, that is where maturity comes in, that is what growing in grace is about. I
always looked forward to growing in grace to the point where I would have victory over these things.

If you had pressed me, I would have to admit that I wasn’t much better now, than I was nine years
previously. In fact, I would say that I was worse, because these things became more subtle in their
expressions. You became cleverer at holding them down. You became cleverer at avoiding them or
evading them in your own conscious mind because they brought such tears to your eyes and such
frustration to your heart. So that was the situation, and that’s a carnal Christian and that’s what
I was. I didn’t know it then.

I was invited to a little Bible school in north Minneapolis to speak because I was the new Irish
minister come to the Methodist Church a few blocks away, and so they invited me to speak at the
little chapel hour. I don’t know why I spoke about it, but the closest that I could see to any kind
of hope was a sermon that they had given us in the 44 standard sermons of John Wesley that we had to
read in seminary. Now, they did not give us the good sermons, but they gave us at least this one
which was closest. It was the one in First John 3:9, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin.”
But Wesley in that one does not go into the details of deliverance from the power of sin or
deliverance from carnality. He just states it pretty clearly, that if you’re born of God you don’t
commit sin. And you can’t get out of it by saying, “oh well that means I don’t on the whole commit
it.” You just don’t commit it because you’re free of it and I shared that at the little chapel hour.
In other words, really what I did was share my best aspirations, I suppose. I realized this was a
Bible school, I was a miserable old liberal theologian that was hardly meant to believe the Bible,
so I’d better share the best that I knew, so I did share that. It was from my heart that I said, I
believe it’s possible some time to come to a place in your life where you can live in this, you can
live “whosoever is born of God does not commit sin”, you can live like that.

Now I had a theological problem obviously in my own understanding because I was born of God, but I
did commit sin and so I couldn’t make sense of it. But at least I shared what I thought. There was a
man sitting at the back with a bald head and he had no clerical collar on, which is ridiculous to
anybody who thinks he’s a minister in Britain — and he came up to me afterwards and introduced
himself, and said to me that he was a pastor of this church. I thought, how can you be a pastor if
you don’t have a collar and tie on? And then the guy started to tell me that he used to be a used
car salesman. And I thought, “Here am I sitting with the degrees and all my training and this guy’s
a used car salesman. Well, the sooner I get off and get on with my work the better.” But he of
course started to talk with me and I saw an honest light in his eyes, I think that’s it. An honest
light, you know. He didn’t know Greek, didn’t know Hebrew, didn’t know all that stuff but he seemed
to be honest, that came through.

So I talked with him a little in the study. He started to tell me a story. He told me that his
church specialized in this very issue that I had touched upon in the chapel hour. Well, I hardly
knew what issue I’d touched upon in the chapel hour, I just had spoken the best I knew. Then he went
on and started to tell how he had been a missionary in Bolivia for years in that church and had
tried to preach this. And yet he had not experienced it at all. Then he began to outline — I didn’t
know what he was talking about — but then he began to outline in detail, he began to describe me.
He was actually describing himself. Then he began to describe me, as he described the state of his
own inner heart. Because most of us, if you’re sitting here and you’re carnal, you recognize
yourself. It’s not me I’m describing, I’m describing you. As he started to describe his own heart
and his own experience of defeat in the Christian ministry and the Christian life, so I began to
realize somebody else has experienced this. That was the first time that I had heard anyone talk
about these things.

I had known them in my own life, but I had never known anybody to talk about them in their lives. I
assume that everybody was either playing a game or was not having the troubles that I was having.
And he described exactly the carnal state of his own Christian heart, the problem with inward sin
that he had over years and years. Then he said, “But then I came to the secret and I found the
deliverance that God had prepared for us.” And He didn’t actually go into much detail. He said, “I
found that there was only one way.” He said, “I discovered that all the things that I had inside —
my lust, my pride, my selfish ambition, the anger, the jealousy, the envy, all the inward sins that
rose up inside me that I could not hold down — I just kept from expressing them outside to other
people — came from self. They all came from self. And then I saw Romans 6:6.”

I knew Romans, but I certainly didn’t know what Romans 6:6 contained. Then he said, “Romans 6:6, you
know, says” — or I think he used King James, ‘our old man was crucified with Christ.’ “Our old man
was crucified with Christ so that we might be delivered from the power of sin.” I had heard of it,
but I had never noticed it before. And he said the Old Man is the Self. I at last realized that my
old self had been crucified with Christ and that the moment I was willing to die to that self — and
that’s what he said and you might not like it and the psychologists might make mincemeat of it —
that’s what he said and it was Gospel to me. He said, “I realized that I had to die to Self. I had
to accept what had happened to me in Jesus. The moment that I would do that, that moment I would be
delivered from the power of sin.”

And so he then described to me how he began to seek God and ask God to show him himself in all the
clear reality that God could see it. And to give him Judgment Day honesty with the inward sin that
was within so that he would not cover up anything or pretend anything wasn’t there, but would be
absolutely honest with God. He said he began to do that. Then he said, “The Holy Spirit began to
show me things.” I knew the Holy Spirit — that was the Third Person of the Trinity — and He was a
kind of force that came upon the work of God — but he seemed to talk about the Holy Spirit like a
person. I never had heard that before. He said, “The Holy Spirit helped me and He began to show me
things within myself that I had never seen myself. He began to reveal to me what I looked like
before God. I began to see how rotten I was and how absolutely ugly I was. I saw myself in ways that
I’d never seen myself before. And I began to be sick and tired and sore. And I began to give up any
hope that I could get rid of such a monster as I appeared beside the pure and Holy Jesus.”

Then he said, “I came eventually to the place, after several weeks of seeking, where I said, ‘Lord,
I’m willing to do anything to be delivered from this.'” He said, “God’s Holy Spirit, in that moment
came in and cleansed my heart. And I was delivered from that power of Self. And I no longer after
that had that agonizing trouble with the lust. I had no longer the rising up of anger inside.” I
still remember him saying it, he said “there was no rising up from within me.” Well I listened to
him — and of course, I don’t know if you’re like me, but if your heart is hungry you know, I was
desperate for anything that would bring deliverance. I don’t know that I even had my skepticism
alive enough to be cynical about it. I just knew that if that’s possible that’s what I want.

Then he give me a book, “Possibilities of Grace” written by an old Methodist Bishop years ago in
America — “Possibilities of Grace”. I went home and looked up the chapter, I think he calls it,
“Holiness” or “Sanctification” and it says, “How to Obtain Holiness”. Oh, that’s what I wanted. I
looked right at that chapter. I started to read how to obtain Holiness. How to be cleansed from sin,
how to be sanctified, how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, how to be baptized with the Holy
Spirit, how to come into a closer walk and into full consecration, it really doesn’t matter you
know. The Baptists talk about it as full consecration, full surrender, the Methodists don’t talk
about it. The old Methodists talked about sanctification, entire sanctification. Pentecostals tend

to talk about Baptism in the Holy Spirit though they don’t always mean an inner work as well as an
outward work, but that’s really what it is. It’s the fullness of the Holy Spirit within you. I began
to read how you should obtain that.

First of all he said, “See yourself as you really are in God’s eyes.” So I started to do that. I
know, you all say, “you poor soul, you’ll drive yourself to distraction through introspection.”
Well, I didn’t know any better and that’s what I did. I looked at myself as plainly as I could. I
looked as plainly as I could at those things within. I didn’t see many of them at the beginning. I
didn’t see the pride I had about my own insight into Christianity and ability to expound it others.
I never suspected that. I just started to look at the bad things inside me and to see what a rat I
was and to look at the things and stop evading them. I wanted to see that they were there and that
was me, Ernest O’Neill. I did not just speak unclean words, I was a man of unclean lips. I WAS this
person, this was me. It wasn’t just little things that I was doing. It wasn’t little traits or
little human tendencies, it was me. This was the real me. I was filled with lust and pride and
filled with selfish ambition. I didn’t get very far, and I came to a position of frustration I must
admit.

It was then that I remembered what this man had said about the Holy Spirit and so for the first time
in my life I began to speak to the Holy Spirit. That is, I treated Him as a real person. I
remembered in the New Testament, Jesus had said He was a counselor. So I reckoned that’s what I
needed, I needed a counselor who would show me deeper, because I’m at a blank wall here, because I
was going as deep as I had got before with my introspection. I began to speak to the Holy Spirit. I
said, “Holy Spirit will you show me myself as God sees me. Show me myself until I’m sick and sore
tired of myself and I’m willing for anything so that I can be delivered. Give me a new conviction of
sin.” Now, loved ones I did that; I can’t apologize for it, you know.

I feel for all you souls who get all tangled up with false condemnation, but I have to testify to
what God did in my heart and how He worked with me. And I had to ask Him to bring me a new
conviction of sin. If you say, “Oh, you poor sick creature” – well, that’s what I was then, and I
knew that I had to see what was wrong in my life the way God saw it. I had to come to the place
where I was willing for whatever deliverance He had for me.

So I asked the Holy Spirit, “Show me Holy Spirit, show me how I look in God’s eyes.” Well, that’s
when insights such as I said to you would occur to me. I would waken up in the morning with certain
words on my lips, which obviously had come from the Holy Spirit and He would have shown me a whole
depth of my life that I’d never seen before. A whole gross monstrosity of Self that no one had ever
known and even I had never known was there. That’s why loved ones, I think it is a supernatural
work. Even in the seeking, even in the conviction of sin, it seems to me it’s a supernatural work,
right at that early stage. It is a revelation of things that you have not seen that only God can see
in you. And I sometimes think that this was maybe even the beginning of my deliverance because it
was kind of separating myself from Self and saying, “Lord, I cannot deliver myself from Self, I need
You to do it.” It was the ceasing to be God in my life — to be my own god and to control my
spiritual experience. It seems it was a going out to God or reaching out to God and saying, “Lord,
You’ll have to even show me what’s wrong in my life.” And so the Holy Spirit did that.

Then this book said that you should see that you can do nothing about that. That that Self of yours
has a grip on your life that you cannot break, and that carnality within you is so subtle, it loves
religion, just loves it. It loves a lot of the things you do in your Christian ministry. It loves a
lot of the good things in life, as long as Satan can hold onto your will, and so you will never

track down that old Self. Of course, that’s the error that I always made before, you know, you
control it, you tame it, you train it by reading the right books, you pray a lot, you have cold
showers, you do all kinds of things to try to control that old Self, but this book said, you can do
nothing about it, this is part of Satan within you. It’s like a spy of Satan’s is inside your heart,
it’s a self that is not under your control, it’s part of Satan’s kingdom. You have to be delivered
from it.

And so I thought about that and prayed about it, and as the Holy Spirit of course continued to bring
out more of the hideousness of my selfish will, I saw, “yeah, I cannot.” I tried, you know, as we
all do, we try to do works worthy of repentance which we always should do, we should always try to
obey. And I tried to obey and tried to get rid of these things and of course the more I tried the
more distraught I became and the more despairing I became, and the more convinced I became that this
is right, I cannot deliver myself from this.

Then of course the third step that this man said was, “See that it has all been done. See that it
has all been done.” And then he got the same verse, Romans 6:6, “See that your old self was
crucified with Christ.” And so I began to think about that verse. And really it didn’t mean too much
to me. I could get it intellectually, and I could look at the Greek word “polios” meaning, “old
man”, I could see that it had been translated “old man” in King James, I could see that “crucified”
was the eros of the Greek verb; it meant it had been done in a moment and was finished with, had
occurred at a moment in time. I saw that is what it meant. I didn’t understand how my old Self could
be crucified in a moment in eternity but I saw that’s what the Greek meant. It meant that it had
been done, it didn’t mean that I had to crucify myself, so I saw the foolishness of old Luther even
and the others trying to beat themselves with chains or kill themselves or crucify themselves. I
saw, yeah, that isn’t it at all, it has been done, I was crucified with Christ.

I saw that and I believed it and it said in Romans 6:11, “Reckon yourself therefore to be dead
indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ my Lord” so I did that. I even knew the
Greek word for “reckon” – it’s “legizo” — “to consider and treat yourself as being really dead
with Jesus.” Well, I did — mentally and intellectually I tried to do that. I tried to believe, “I
am dead, I was crucified, it’s finished” — and I’d get up the next morning and I still had the
anger or the lust or the pride, and there would be no change.

So it went on like that. I had by that time dealt with my outward sin, so I was back in what we’ve
talked about, I was at least back in a justified experience. I was at least back obeying God
outwardly anyway, so I was back in salvation which I had at least — whether you believe you can
throw it away or whether you believe like Nee that you can be alive but live as if you’re dead. It’s
kind of rather a game with words. I was not in the full joy of Jesus anyway. And I got back into the
joy of salvation but I was not making headway on this deliverance from inward sin and the old Self
and so I kept on trying to believe, trying to believe.

And then gradually it dawned upon me what he had hinted at in his book. He said to really reckon
yourself dead with Christ you have to be willing to die with Him. You have to be willing to die with
Him. I would say that was throughout the whole experience the biggest new fact, although the
personality of the Holy Spirit was also fairly new to me. But probably the biggest new fact was that
one. The fact that I had to be willing to die with Jesus, because we’d always been taught in
seminary that Christ died for you so that you wouldn’t have to die. In fact, that’s where we got a
kind of an almost demonic joy thinking, “Oh good — He suffered we don’t have to!” It was kind of a
relief: “Good, I don’t have to die for my sins, He died for me so that’s great, I’m scott free and

can do what I want.” That had always been a pretty important tenet of my creed.

But this was new, the whole thought, “you are to be willing to die with Jesus” and then I began to
realize, well of course God has done the thing in Jesus, but He won’t force me to enter into that.
He will ask me, “Are you willing? I have already done it in my Son. You don’t have to make it real
in you, I will do that but you do have to be willing.” And so that’s were the pilgrimage began.

I began to deal with my own heart and will. Am I willing to die with Jesus? I began to think, now
what does that mean? I began to ask the Holy Spirit, will you show me what it meant? It might have
been different for other people but what was it for Ernest O’Neill? Lord Jesus, what did you bear in
your own heart of me on Calvary, that I need to be willing to let go of and die to. Then the Holy
Spirit began to dig and dig through the layers and layers — and you dealt with the things that were
most obvious, you know: would you be willing not to lose your temper? And you had to ask the Holy
Spirit, “Why, why is that a big deal?” He would show you, well you use your temper to actually hold
people off. You use your temper to get control of situations that you’ve already lost control of.
Now would you be willing not to lose your temper, in other words, would you be willing not to have
control of those situations? And that of course involves all the different situations, your job,
your home, your money, your salary, your future and that means you have to willing to trust God with
those things. So I went through that kind of thing.

It’s the same with the lust you know. What was it like for Jesus? Well, He had no woman, He was not
able to jump into bed with some woman, He never did have intercourse and would you be willing if
necessary never to have intercourse? Would you be willing not to, if that was God’s will? He may not
make it your will because you’re married and it’s normal for that to be the relationship, but would
you be willing if He wanted? Most of all with us men, would you be willing when He wants or when
your wife wants, not just when you want? Would you be willing to die to your right to that?

And that’s what it began to come down to more and more. Not attitudes even, but rights. Would you be
willing to die to this right? When Jesus died on Calvary He was looked upon as a criminal, they
misunderstood Him completely. Would you be willing to die to your right to be understood all the
time? Would you be willing to be misunderstood, and be happy and content? Would you be willing to
die to your right even to have two coats to your back? Would you be willing to die to your right to
a good salary, to die to your right to marriage, to die to your right to a successful future? Would
you be willing really to be with Jesus on the Cross? And more and more I asked Him, “Lord Jesus,
will You let me see what it feels like close to You on that Cross? Would You help me to see what it
means for me, Ernest O’Neill?” And the Holy Spirit would go on and on. It’s different with all of
us, there’s some besetting sin in your life, you know. May not be the obvious one — only the Holy
Spirit can show you — but it’s usually the one that holds all, the key to the thing, and for me it
was one Saturday morning in my parsonage in north Minneapolis I was praying — I spent a lot of time
now praying — and the Holy Spirit said, “Would you be willing to be nothing if it were for Jesus’
glory? Would you be willing to be nothing? Would you be willing to be a zero? Would you be willing
to be a failure?”

Well, that was the very opposite of all that I’d been taught in my education I should be, the very
opposite of the motives that often move those of us who are actors or preachers or public people. It
was the opposite of what was the tenor of my life. “Would you be willing to be nothing for Jesus’
sake? Would you be willing to be a failure? Would you be willing for your mum back in Ireland to
think you’d died, she’d heard so little about you? Would you be willing to be nothing?”

That was it for me, but it’s different with all of us. Maybe when we get to Heaven and I’ll find
that wasn’t it, you know it was just Jesus. “Would you be willing to be with Me, my son, on the
Cross? Would you be willing to be in Me and to be wiped out as far as this world is concerned and to
have a tombstone erected now, with your name on it, indeed not even a tombstone with your name. To
have a tombstone with nothing on it, for you to become public property for Me? Would you be willing
to be nothing and to be an absolute nobody for Me?” And then that was a miracle, and so then I said,
yes.

I spoke in tongues about a year and a half later. I don’t know that tongues are a big deal in the
thing anyway. I think there are many of us that haven’t spoken in tongues — I don’t think that’s an
issue. Certainly I didn’t then, but there was an absolute confidence that the Holy Spirit had come
into my life and filled me and cleansed my heart. I felt the cleanness inside. I felt the cleanness.
There’s a line in a First World War poem that goes — it’s a misinterpretation of course of the
First World War – “like swimmers into cleanness leaping.” Well, that’s what it was. It was like a
swimmer into cleanness leaping. For the first time I had not had this refuse and garbage and dirt
inside my heart. It was the first time I had not had a fountain of strong desire for lust or envy or
pride or anger or jealousy coming up from inside my heart. And so it was just a quietness inside. I
didn’t testify to my wife but I thought that if this is real, my wife will know it. It was just a
quiet sense in the bedroom. In that room a quiet sense that the Holy Spirit had come into my heart
and had cleansed me and filled me with Himself.

I had of course had to see immediate proof of it. I’ve told some of you before about two of the
issues, you know, that one of the most difficult situations and many of you have dealt with them is
divorce within the church. It can be a most unpleasant thing for everybody involved and certainly
for me because I was their minister. Some people are so nasty that you just don’t want to tackle
them. I was in the middle of one of those when a note was passed to me by my secretary. It said,
“Will you call Mrs. So and So? I knew what that was about and normally I would do what I think all
of us carnal Christians do, I’d run my own life, that’s really what we’d do. We just obey God when
it suits us, you know. But we run our own life most of the time and we make things convenient for us
and that’s why our life gets all piled up, do you know that? I never had enough time for things. I
never had time to do everything. My life was always chaotic and panicky because I never had enough
time because I was always lining all the things back there, to do them my way, to do the things
suitably and conveniently because I could divide them up into pleasant things and the unpleasant
things because I was still alive and I was still controlling things. But now it was different.
Ernest O’Neill was crucified with Christ. There was no Self rising up inside. The note came, I left
for the phone and called the lady and got right into the messy situation.

That was the first time I obeyed with instant obedience. It was a great relief to instantly obey.
And you could instantly obey because there was no longer any interest in your Self and in your own
convenience. In fact, your life was a schedule for Him to write. It was no longer a schedule that
you had filled in all days in and these things I want to do and these things I want to achieve and
I’ll try to work you in where I can, Lord. It was now all – that is wiped out, it’s finished. Now
Lord, whatever You want that’s what counts.

Then the next morning I got a letter from a friend of mine who’d been at seminary with me. I’d gone
to seminary with more degrees than anybody else and was ahead of most people. I was always anxious
to get on that old academic success line. Yet God had constantly made me want to find out how does
the Gospel work. So I constantly preached in churches to find that out. Meanwhile some of my own
colleagues had streaked ahead of me and got their doctorates and one of these of course was in

Garrett Institute I think in the University of Chicago and was now a doctor in psychology and he
wrote to me from time to time. Every time he wrote, of course, you can guess what I felt. I felt why
didn’t I get going, why am I not doing that, how jealous I am of him. So the letter came I opened it
and there was no jealousy. It was just a miracle. I knew there was a change in my heart. So that
changed my whole life.

Then everything didn’t go beautifully. Everything then fell, the roof fell in, all the outside
things, as I began to preach that in the Methodist church and they didn’t like it. Everything came
down around my ears. I left the Methodist Church and was without work for nine months. I ended up
teaching at Benilde High School. I remember saying to my wife, “I think I might never preach
again,” but I wasn’t even concerned about it. I was happy, “Lord, whatever You want me to be, I’ll
be. If You want me to preach I’ll preach. If You don’t want me, I won’t.”

So it was a great rest. I would say I entered into the second rest of the people of God. The rest
that God entered into on the Sabbath Day when He ceased from His labors. And it seems to me that’s
what you do when you at last accept your position with Jesus on the Cross: you cease from your
labors. You stop laboring to be God’s child and Jesus Himself takes control and He does it through
the power of the Holy Spirit.

So that changed my life, loved ones, and then from there some of you know some of the progress, but
I had to tell you because a little voice warns me “if I preach not the Gospel.” I had to tell you
this tonight. That’s true and it’s for you, you know. I’m not doing any commercials and it’s just
true. It doesn’t need selling. It’s God will to do the same for you. The Holy Spirit will deliver
you from the power of sin. Now, if you say, “You mean you have power to suppress the anger and the
envy and the jealousy?” No, no, that was the battle I fought when I was a carnal Christian. No,
you’re delivered FROM the envy and the jealousy. The envy and the jealousy do not rise up within
you. You feel Jesus rising up inside you, and it is a deliverance and it is a victory. And of course
it is full Christianity, you know and it’s the full Gospel. Now you have to make a choice. You
can’t just go away, because it is either hell or Heaven. When God began to make this plain to me I
began to see the truth, I knew that it was either Heaven or hell. You have to go on. Those of you
who are born of God, you have to go on. There is no way back. There is no where to go back there.
The bridges are burned. There is no way back.

You remember the old-fashioned evangelical phrase: “You’re spoiled for the world.” You are. You
can’t ever go back to the world. You will always feel that you’re living in an anticlimax life.
You’ll always feel you left the best if you ever go back there. No, it’s only on, you can only go
on. So tonight go on. Go after it with all your heart. Hunger after it with all your heart and God
will bring you. I didn’t have a whole lot of information, but I had a hunger I wanted deliverance
and God’s Holy Spirit met me, as He will you too.

Tonight we could have altar call and I’m sure that many of you would come up here. I would say this
to you, you have to get to the point where you’re determined. After the Benediction everybody gets
up and all that kind of thing. You have to get to the point where you determine that you’ll stay
here and you’ll seek God, if you can’t seek Him at home. Or if you think, “I don’t dare leave here
because, Satan will get me before I get home” then you should go to the prayer room, or go back into
the corner and seek God. If you want help I think there are enough of us here who are in the
fullness of the Holy Spirit; I would ask them to maybe stay around, and they can come over if you
just raise your hand up, they’ll come over and pray with you.

Really what I would urge you to do is either that or to go home and to get down to business with God
and don’t give up until you come through because you must be determined. It has to be, “I will not
let you go until You bless me.” It has to be that kind of attitude. It might take you weeks, might
take you months, but if you want that with all your heart and you keep going, God will answer you
because that’s why Jesus died.

Let us pray.

Dear Father, we thank You for that. We thank you, Lord, that Jesus died to save us from our sins.
Not to save us in our sins, but to save us from our sins. We thank You for that, Lord. We thank You
that His death was effectual because we were actually in Him when He died. That our old self was
crucified with Christ that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to
sin. Lord, we thank You for that. That each one of us and indeed every soul that has ever lived or
will ever live has been crucified with Christ and that has been done –and that it is our great
privilege to bow before our Savior and accept from His dear hand the benefits of His mighty death.
Lord, we thank You for that. We pray for each other, our Father, pray Holy Spirit for each other
that we may get down to business with You, this evening at home or here or wherever we can get hold
of that great pearl of great price that is worth selling all the other pearls together. Lord, we
thank You.

Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

Can God be Seen in You by Others?

Romans 7:19

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

There’s a story that you might have heard about five wise men in a certain Indian village, and they
decided they’d try to find out who was the wisest. And so they arranged really a test for them.
They put something in a huge building in the middle of the village, except that this building had no
windows in it; and so it was absolutely dark inside. And then each of these wise men were to go
into this dark building and tell just by touch what was inside the building.

And so all the village gathered, and the first wise man went in through the door, and they closed
the door on him. And he felt forward and felt with his hands a huge flat surface. And he felt a
little to the right and a little to the left and still that flat surface seemed to go on and on, and
he couldn’t find the end of it, as far as he was able to move. And so he came out and he said,
“It’s a wall. There is a wall in that building. There is a huge wall, the ends of which I couldn’t
touch at all.”

And then the second wise man went in and he went into the darkened building and verged a little to
the left and bumped into what seemed to him round like that, a kind of pillar. And he tried to put
his arms around it but it was so thick that he couldn’t get his arms around to the other side. And
so he came out and he said, “It’s a tree. There’s a huge tree in that building, so big that I
couldn’t get my arms around it.”

And then the third wise man went in and he verged over to his left, a little further this time, and
he found this thing hanging down it seemed from the ceiling. And he put his arms around it, and he
could get his arms around it and it seemed like a thick, thick thing. And so he came outside and
said, “It’s a rope. There’s a huge rope in that building that is hanging from the roof.”

And then the fourth wise man went in and he went over vaguely in that direction and he put his hands
up and almost put what seemed like a sharp, sharp point right through his hand. And he felt it and
he was clear what it was and he came out and said, “There is a massive spear in that building. It
is just a big long spear, and it has a point so sharp that it will go through your hand in a
moment.”

And then the fifth wise man went in and he was feeling up in the direction of where the spear was
and then he felt a breeze, and he suddenly felt a kind of wind blowing on him. And he put up his
hand and it seemed like a huge leaf, bigger than any leaf he had ever seen on a tree. And he came
out and said, “The building is full of huge leaves.”

And the wise men gave all that information to the villagers and then the villagers said, “Alright,
we’ll see which of you is right.” They opened the doors and out lumbered the most massive elephant
that you could ever imagine in your life. And one man felt the side of the elephant and said, “It’s
a wall.” And another man felt the leg of the elephant and said, “It’s a tree.” And the other man
felt the tusk of the elephant and said, “It’s a spear.” And the other man felt the trunk of the
elephant and said, “It’s a rope.” And the other man felt the huge ear of the elephant and said,
“It’s a leaf.”

And in a way, I mean, they were all right, in a way. And yet you could imagine the confusion in the
villagers mind as they tried to imagine a wall that has leaves on it, and a spear, and has a rope.
It’s impossible to create a picture that makes any sense, because even though they were all telling
the truth, and telling what they had seen, they made no sense to anyone else, because they were
telling only parts of the whole. They were describing only parts of the whole, and it didn’t make
sense to anyone.

When you say, “It’s probably better to eat fruit and vegetables than to eat meat.” It probably is.
When you say, “It’s probably better not to smoke, or drink too much.” It probably is. When you say
that, “Unselfish capitalism is probably more scriptural than the socialism that we see in our
world,” you’re probably right. Those are all parts of reality. And they’re all parts of the truth
that is God.

But loved ones, it’s interesting, if that’s what your friends hear from you about God, you can see
they’re in a worse shape even than the villagers, who heard about the part of the elephant that was
a wall, or the part of the elephant that was a tree. They really have no touch with reality when
you tell them about those individual parts. And of course, if you major in those individual parts,
if you’re really hot on ‘no smoking or drinking’, or you’re really hot on ‘eating fruit and
vegetables and no meat’, or you’re really hot on ‘capitalism as opposed to socialism’, then, if you
major in those things, you actually don’t only fail to give them a picture of God as he really is,
but you actually give them a contorted picture of God. Because even those are all parts of reality,
they are only parts and they don’t represent reality itself. They don’t really enable a person to
touch the reality of God.

Now actually our song book might not be too bad. I think some of Wesley’s hymns are better than
some of these, but this song book may well touch our contemporary life in a better way than many of
the old traditional hymns. But if that’s what you tell people about what you do on Sunday they’re
hearing only a part of reality and they’re not getting any true picture of God as he really is.

I think our open prayer time is far better than the pastor fiddling away on his own, trying to pray
a prayer for all of you, instead of you praying your own prayers. But, that is only a part of
reality; it’s not God himself. It may be that victory over sin and self, and victory over anger,
and envy, and jealousy through faith in our death with Jesus, is even a vital truth. It’s
absolutely vital. But if that’s what others hear from you about God and about reality, actually
they’re only hearing a part and they’re not seeing the whole.

Indeed, at the risk of tramping on your toes, the virgin birth I think is absolute truth. I think
it is essential. The resurrection of Jesus is absolute truth. This dear book, I think, is God’s
supernaturally inspired revelation of himself. But even those things, however essential they are,
are only parts of reality. They’re only parts of God; they’re not God himself. And to the extent
that you share only those things at work through the week, you’re actually not helping anybody very
much. You’re giving people a part of reality, or a part of truth, and actually it may just be that
part that will put them off God rather than will draw them to God.

And so it can be argued that even our muddling attempts at witnessing can often do harm, and we can
end up discussing doctrines, or principles, or methods of worship, or points of belief, or behavior
patterns, and all we’re doing is distracting people from God himself, to subordinate parts of
worshipping him and subordinate parts of believing in him. And really in some ways it is deceptive,
because it’s very easy for dear friends of ours at work, and dear colleagues at school to get a very

contorted view of what God is like, when they listen to you and me outlining our doctrines,
outlining our beliefs, spouting off about what we believe about this and what we believe about that,
telling them about our church and the way we do things. It can often ‘put them off’ God more than
it leads them to God.

And in fact, what they need to see is reality as a whole. Reality as a whole; not bits of reality
and parts of reality. You may say, “No Pastor, I mean a part of reality is better than nothing.”
No, really it’s not. A part of reality gives them a false impression of what reality is. What they
need to see is God as he really is.

Now you may say, “Well, I mean, that’s impossible. It’s difficult for you or anybody else, with all
of us concentrating here on a Sunday morning, it’s difficult enough for you to present all of
reality. How are we going to present all of reality? We cannot show them all of God, because of
the inadequate creatures that we are. How can we ever show them God as he really is?” And yet if
they don’t see that, really they won’t be able to respond to God.

Stand back for a minute. Stand back from that building. What is in that building? An elephant,
that’s what’s in that building. Stand back now from God. What is God, or who is God? God is our
Father and he’s our Savior. He’s our Savior because he made us over again in Jesus, and he
recreated us, and enabled us to become new creations in Christ. That’s the only part of God that
you can actually show your friends at work: the part of him that has replaced something selfish, or
something sinful, or something unlike him, in your life. That’s it. That’s it.

You can’t actually show them the part of God that you don’t need. Maybe you are a very honest
person; you probably can’t show them God, through your honesty, because maybe you were brought up by
your mom and dad to be honest, and you are honest. But you have something in your life that you
know is not like God. You have something in your life that ‘they’ know is not like God. When you
allow ‘that’ to be replaced by God’s own nature, when you allow that to be crucified with Christ,
that’s the part of God that you can show them. That’s a glimpse of God, as he really, is that will
come home to them as live.

When they see something in you and they say, “He is a changed man; she is a changed woman. I’ll
tell you what she was like, and here’s what she is like now. And it’s not just that they’re better;
it’s not just that they’re morally good; there’s something beautiful in it; there’s something of God
in it; there’s something of Jesus in it.” When they see that, they’ve seen God.

I read an expert in ‘aesthetics’ — ‘aesthetics’ not ‘ascetics’ but ‘aesthetics’, the study of
beauty. Yates and all the English poets were involved in that. And this writer said, “The only
authentic thing, the only truly authentic thing in a painting, the only really authentic thing in a
painting, of any kind, is that which cannot be expressed any other way.” Now think of it, the only
authentic thing in a painting is that which cannot be expressed through any other art form.

You see in other words, if you can describe in words what there is in a painting, then that’s not
the ‘one’ authentic part of that painting; then it can be expressed in words just as well. If you
can express in sculpture what is expressed in painting then that’s not the authentic part of that
painting. The only authentic part of a painting is that which cannot be expressed in any other way.

Similarly you can apply it to sculpture. The only authentic part of a sculpture is that that cannot

be expressed any other way. I don’t know if – I haven’t done much study of this, but you know that
sculpture appears to your sense of touch. And so it’s the shape, and it’s the smoothness; it’s the
feel of a sculpture that makes it different from a painting. Now if you could reproduce that in a
painting then that is not an authentic part of sculpture. So whatever cannot be expressed in any
other way, that’s the authentic part of the painting. That’s the authentic part of your witness.

The only authentic part of your ‘presentation of reality’ to your friends, and to your colleagues,
and to your relatives, is that part of you which has been destroyed on Calvary in Jesus, and has
been recreated in his image and beauty; that’s the part of you that is authentically God, and that
is your testimony to the reality of God.

2014-11-02 To Here 16:20 p.4

Now loved ones, I sympathize with you if you sit there and say, “What about my brilliant
explanations of theology? What about my insights into politics? What about my understanding of
human nature? What about the way I love them, I just love them to pieces?” No, no it’s all bluff,
it’s all bluff. I sympathize with you, we’d all like it to be those things but all those things do
is testify on the whole to ourselves. The only authentic part of God that others will touch through
your life, the only part of reality that they will touch, is the part of you that you have allowed
Jesus to replace with himself and that part they will recognize as God. That’s it folks.

It’s not all the discussion about doctrines, or beliefs, or views, or ideas. It’s not all the talk
about what is the right way to behave, or what is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do.
It is simply a question of what you have allowed God to redeem in your life. That’s the part of God
that others are seeing through you. That’s it. That and nothing more, that and nothing less.

So if only to cut down all the airways, if only to cut down all the air traffic and all the chaos
that is going out from you as so called witnessing, will you bow before God this morning and ask
him, “Lord God, I’ve done a lot of talking about you, I’ve done a lot of describing my views on
things. I’ve done a lot of advising but I think all I’ve told them is that there may be a tree in
there, or there may be a rope in there, or there may be a wall in there. But Lord, I want them to
begin to touch you. Now what in my life do you want to change so that they can see you through me?”
And loved ones, that’s all we’ve got to give.

I would ask you as we bow our heads before God, would you ask him that? Would you ask him if
there’s something in you that he wants to change so that your children, so that your roommate, so
that your colleagues, so that your friends could touch God? And then ask him to change that in you
this morning.

Let us pray. Dear Father, the discussion of religious views comes so naturally to us we just love
to talk Lord, you know that. Our tongues just go up and down like mad trying to give out all the

great wisdom we have. And then Father we just love to rule over people’s lives, we love to make
them do what we think they should and so Father you know how often we’ve attempted to witness and
ended up telling people what they ought to do. And Lord we see that even though all these things
may be true they are only parts of reality and not reality itself.

And we see Lord that there’s only one way in which our dear friends can see that you are their
redeemer and savior and that is if they see the part of us that has been redeemed by you and has
been changed by you and destroyed by you and replaced by your own nature. So Father we bow before
you now this morning and ask you to give us light about that. Lord, what is it in me that puts
other people off you? What is it in each of us that distracts other people from your nature and
your dear character?

Lord we know that you destroyed that in Jesus on Calvary. Father we say to you take it now, take
the rotten thing from us now. We give it to you Lord, take it and destroy it now this morning in us
and Father replace our impatience with your own patient heart and character. Lord as we are willing
to bear with other people, as we are willing to endure the consequences of their wrong actions, will
you replace our impatience Lord with your patient heart and character? Father, will you replace our
indifference and our casualness with your heart of love? As we are ready Father to begin to give
ourselves to other people, and as we are willing to forget ourselves and to put them first, and to
begin to want the best for them whatever it costs us. Lord will you now replace our casualness and
our indifference to people with your heart of love? Father we ask you now this morning to give us
reality in ourselves so that when others touch us they touch you.

And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be
with each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

How to Become a Christian 1

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

… he said, “Look, my Father is the real God but you don’t let him be God in your life and because
you won’t let him be God – he himself has given you up.” And Jesus you know, pointed out that
there was no other alternative really. Once you had a group of people who wanted to be their own
Gods, well it would be like the sun deciding to run in whatever way it wanted throughout the
universe. It only has to make a little move and we’re burned up or we freeze to death. And if you
can image it careering at its own will throughout the universe, it wouldn’t be long before it
shattered the universe completely and that’s why Jesus said, “God had to bring us under condemnation
of death once we decided to live without him and be our own gods.”

And loved ones, you’ve seen some of it, you know, in your own homes you know it. Where you’ve
decided to have your own way, you’ve brought chaos into your home, you have shattered you’re
relationships, you’ve trampled on top of people. Now, do you see that if God let us continue being
our own gods in our own lives we would spread our dirt, and our pollution, and our hatred, and our
misery throughout the universe? We have got as far as the Atlantic Ocean with some of our waste oil
and I think we’ll eventually get as far as space with our garbage. Do you think that if God let it
continue there would be no universe left and Jesus says, “Listen, that’s why you feel alienated
because there’s God my Father, has had to condemn you to death and he’s only allowing you to live
for a little while longer to give you a chance of responding to him.”

And this, you know, is the explanation that we found in Romans there, these first three chapters of
Romans really explain Jesus’ explanation of reality very fully and you have it there in Romans 1:21
where Jesus explains why we feel so alienated and why we feel so lost and lonely. It’s not because
people won’t have anything to do with us or because our parents reject us, or because we have no
sense of significance in society, but it’s because God himself has rejected us.

It’s Romans 1:21, Jesus says this is what we’ve done, “Although they knew God they did not honor him
as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds
were darkened.” And then in Verse 24, “Therefore God gave them up.” And you see in Verse 26 again,
“For this reason God gave them up.” And then in Verse 28 again, “And since they did not see fit to
acknowledge God, God gave them up.” And really it’s this consciousness deep down that we’ve been
given up by God that makes us feel so alienated.

Brothers and sisters, it’s not fear of the mushroom cloud, that’s fearful enough. But it’s not fear
of the mushroom cloud, it’s not even fear of death but it’s the consciousness planted deep down in
us that we know we have run our lives in our own way, and been our own gods, and we’re refusing to
let God be God in his own universe and therefore we’ve been rejected by him and we’re really under
condemnation to destruction, you know.

Now Paul said that in Romans 1:32. He said, men know this. “Though they know God’s decree that
those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.”
And that’s why we feel so alienated, we know that this is going to happen to us. In 2:2, “We know
that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such things.” And really we see that it’s
that consciousness that makes us feel so alienated. No wonder we’re having identity crisis, because
we’re not in the right relationship to the only one who can give us meaning in our universe and
we’re bound to have an identity crisis, we’re bound to be uncertain about where we fit in because

we’ve rejected the person who knows where we fit in.

Now as we read, you know, and studied Jesus’ explanation we began to see that all through this God
was anxious to find a way by which he could bring us back to himself, and he was anxious to find a
way by which he would not have to destroy us, and by which he could suspend the death penalty long
enough to give us a chance to really deal with him again. And you find that running through all
Jesus’ explanations. But do you see that to just take back his death penalty, to just say, “Listen
son, if you want to go right through the universe and destroy all my planets I don’t care. I’ve
changed my mind, I’m not going to destroy you any longer.”

Then not only the Son but every human being in the universe would say, “He doesn’t mean what he
says. We don’t need to take his justice seriously.” And if we can’t take his justice seriously why
should we take his mercy seriously. And do you see that if God simply changed his mind and said,
“Look, murder your way through the whole of the universe if you want, spread your dirt over every
planet if you want I don’t care. I’m willing to forgive you and take you to myself whatever you’re
like.” Do you see if that happened brothers and sisters we would have gone on destroying,
destroying.

But God to be credible at all has to hold to what he said and he said, “Look, I have to destroy any
of you who want to be your own gods.” And yet God has been anxious all through the ages to find
some way of giving us another chance. And you know that Jesus explained to us, “Listen, God has
done this, by exercising his judgment upon me instead of you. So that if you are ever in any doubt
about whether he hates any independence or rebellion against him, you can look at me. Look, I died
in time and space, I died in the heart of God from the foundation of the world, but I died in time
and space in the first century AD. And if you’re in any doubt that God hates sin and hates
rebellion, look, look at what his wrath did to me.” And God was able by that means to suspend the
death penalty on all of us.

And really dear ones, we live in a time of respite today, you see. We really live in a time of
respite when God has suspended the death penalty because Jesus has enabled him to by dying in our
place. And this is you know, the faith that we believe. It’s the faith that Jesus had died in our
place and that God this morning is willing to forgive any of you for your selfishness, and your
lust, and your envy, and our jealousy, and your pride, and your desire to make everybody do what you
want them to do and he’s willing not to destroy you, but to in fact receive you as his own sons and
daughters. And it’s all because Jesus has enabled him to. Jesus has enabled God to remain a just
God and yet forgive us.

Now this morning we’re going to study a question that I think comes up, a very obvious question in
the light of all that. And it’s that question if you’d like to turn to it in Romans 3:31. This is
a big moment for us, we’re finishing one chapter of Romans. We do it once every year and a half.
Romans 3:31, and this is a question I think that is relevant in the light of our faith you see, that
God is willing to forgive us because Jesus has died for us. “Do we then overthrow the law by this
faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” But that’s the question, “Do we then
overthrow the law by this faith?”

There are many Christians that think we do. There are many Christians that say this, “God is
running something like the selective service board, and he acts something like old General Hershey
used to and he’s trying to select from the people in the world the best people who can live in his
universe forever. And he decided,” some Christians say this, “He decided first of all to select

them by law.” And he was a bit like our clever selective service board, they tried first of all you
remember, “We’ll take all the people of a certain age who can’t get to college.” And then you
remember in this highly civilized and sophisticated society that we have, then they saw that with
all our computers a far, far better way for such an intelligent society was to throw all the names
into a hat and pick the first 300 out and they would fight.

Well some people feel that God runs the world something like that. God decides first of all,
“Alright, I’ll give them 10 commandments and everyone who obeys the 10 commandments, I will receive
him into my universe to live with me in infinity and eternity forever and they will help me to
subdue to the rest of universe.” And then some Christians argue, he saw after 1500 years of trying
that it wasn’t working and that nobody could obey the law and so they say then he came in with this
other idea, “Anybody who believes what I have said about my son’s death, I will accept them into my
heaven.” And so many Christians argue, you see, Jesus has changed the whole thing for us. 1God
once tried the law as a filter, now he tries belief in Jesus so now if you have faith in Jesus you
don’t need to bother about the law at all.

Now dear ones, do you see that this is a parody of the whole doctrine of justification by faith.
This is a parody of God’s whole plan, he did not work it that way but do you see that that is the
kind of believing that has resulted in churches filled with people who believe that Jesus’ death
enables them to sin with impunity. You see that? Many of our churches today and the whole attitude
that people have of cynicism towards Christians stems from this fact that many Christians honestly
believe that the law was tried by God, didn’t work and now he’s set I aside and he says, “You can
disobey as much as you want, my Son has died for you. As long you believe that that’s all that
matters, I’ll accept you in.” And many Christians therefore, live lives that are not like Christ at
all and yet they keep pleading you see, “Ah, God looks at the righteousness of Jesus not at my
righteousness.”

In a real way he does do that but not in the way that I’ve outlined and so many people, many
Christians even answer Paul, “Do we then overthrow the law by faith?” Of course, we overthrow it.
It doesn’t matter whether you commit adultery, it doesn’t matter whether you’re greedy, it doesn’t
matter whether you get angry at times, if you believe in Jesus, if you believe that he died for you,
that’s the only thing that God requires. It’s just a new condition now that God has laid down.

Now loved ones, it isn’t so you see, that isn’t the situation at all. God has not set aside the law
like that and then brought belief in Jesus in in its place. Here’s what happened, God wanted a
group of intelligent and spiritual beings who could share with him the fellowship, and the
relationship, and the love that he had with his own son. And so he made us out of love. Now, he
made us with the capacity to be like him. Obviously, you don’t have too much satisfaction in
discussing Sartre with your dog, and it really requires a certain amount of similarity to have any
real fellowship, or relationship with another being and for that reason God made us like himself.
He made us with minds like his own, and emotions, and with will like his own and he gave us a body.

But he didn’t want to make us a captive audience. He didn’t want to make us a group of people who
fellowshipped with him because they could do nothing else, or who were like him because they were
just made like him, and so he made us only with a capacity to be like him. And inside us he put
something like the womb inside a woman. He put inside us a spirit, a womb that was capable of
receiving a real spirit from him inside it. And he then allowed his Son to walk among us, and
that’s the meaning of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden you know, Jesus was God’s only Son and
he had the unique spiritual uncreated life of God running through his whole being. And this life

contains the genes of God’s character and wherever this life comes it takes God’s character.

And then God said, “Now you men and women, you must receive this life by choice from my Son. So my
Son is going to walk among you and I want you to receive this uncreated spiritual life from my Son
into the womb of your own spirit and that Holy Spirit of life that comes from me will enable you to
be born again in my image. But I want you to be able to choose to be born. I don’t want you to feel
you have to be born. I don’t want you to be like me because I made you like me. I make you with
the capacity to be like me and now you’ve to choose to opt into my trinity family.” And that was
God’s plan and it was his plan from the very beginning dear ones. And you know what men in fact as
a whole have done, they decided they didn’t want to take part in anything that would make them as
dependent on life from God as that, and they began to take the physical life he had given them, not
really realizing it would die out after a matter of 70 years, and they decided, “We’ll make do with
this, and we’ll live our own life as we want, and we’ll become like gods without his aid.”

And so God was faced with a group of people, a group of men and women who rejected his plan for them
and he was faced with the fact that they only had physical life and it was going to die out in a
short time. And he was faced with the whole problem of bringing that home to them. And you know
what God did, first of all he gave a set of symptoms of spiritual uncreated life to men to show them
plainly that they didn’t have his own uncreated spiritual life within them. And he said for
instances this, “Look, anyone with uncreated spiritual life inside them, anyone who has that kind of
life from me will put nobody before me in their own lives. They’ll spend no more time, or thought
on objects made of wood or steel than they do on me. They won’t treat me carelessly or lightly,
they won’t take my name in vain. They will set one day in seven apart for me. They will honor and
love their father and mother. They will not do anything to harm another person by word or deed.
They will not have unclean thoughts or actions. They will not deprive others of anything. They will
not covet people’s positions.”

And God said, “Look, if you have this uncreated spiritual life in me then these are the laws that
describe the way this life works so you’ll be able to tell if you have it or not.” And so for 1500
years God allowed us to measure our lives against the law. But do you see dear ones, the law was
never a means of salvation. It was always a means to expose sin and you remember, you find that if
you’d like to look at it in Romans 3:19, “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those
who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held
accountable to God.” That’s the purpose of it all, to stop every mouth and convince everyone that
they have not received the uncreated spiritual life of God.

“For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes
knowledge of sin.” And the whole purpose of the law was so that we see that we had not received
what God wanted us to receive. And then you remember, what he was faced with, he was faced with the
fact that he was committed to destroy any being that existed by his own life. He was committed to
destroy anyone that did not receive his own life in order to protect his own universe. And unless
he did that the whole universe would cry that he was an unjust God that did not keep his promises
and did not keep his threats and wasn’t worth treating as God and that’s why Jesus had to die in our
place, so that we would have no doubt that God would destroy everything that did not have his life
within it. And God took the lifelessness that you have inside you this morning and put it in Jesus
and he destroyed it there in Jesus. And so God is able at this time to give life to any person.

But do you see that the whole purpose of God’s creation is that we would receive his life. And the
whole purpose of faith is not to believe that because Jesus had died God is able to forgive us,

that’s only part of the story, that’s only the belief part of faith. The other part of faith is to
actually receive the life that caused all the trouble in the first place. In other words, it’s no
use, it’s no use believing that God is able to give you the life if you don’t receive the life. And
do you see that once you receive this life into you, and the person of the Holy Spirit, do you
overthrow the law? No, the law is the description of the way this life works and so if you really
exercise faith in Jesus and not only believe he has died so God could forgive you but also actually
receive light through the Holy Spirit from God, then those laws will be true of you.

You will find when the Holy Spirit comes into you, that you will in fact put nobody before God. You
will in fact find in your own life that you’ll spend no more time or thought on objects of wood or
steel than you do on God. You’ll find that you set one day apart in every seven. You’ll find that
you don’t treat God carelessly or lightly. You’ll find that you’ll honor and love your father and
mother. You’ll find that you will not do anything to harm another person. You’ll find that you are
filled with the very life of God himself and that life is described in the laws, and so you’ll find
yourself keeping the laws. And when Paul asks, “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?” If
it’s real faith that not only believes that Jesus died for you but receives the light that he died
so that you could receive. Then you don’t overthrow the law by no means. You establish the law,
you strengthen the law because every one of us who have received the life of God live that law
before people.

Of course you see that that’s the way the world is convicted. The world isn’t convicted by
preachers standing up and thumping the Bible and saying, “You’re a bad world, you’re a sinful
world.” The world is convicted because it sees the law alive in other men and women, it sees Christ
walking among them and it realizes it should be like that and it should receive this life.

Now dear ones, real faith does not overthrow the law. Real faith establishes the law because real
faith is not just believing that Jesus has died for you. John 1:12 describes what real faith is,
“As many as received him, to them gave he the right to become the children of God.” And it’s
receiving, it’s not believing. It’s receiving the Spirit of Jesus into you this morning that
enables you to live forever. It’s receiving the life of Jesus into you that enables you to live the
law in your family, and in your dorms, and in your homes. It’s receiving the Spirit of Jesus into
you that banishes the meaninglessness and the emptiness of your own life because that was God’s
purpose at the very beginning, that you’d receive his life into you not just believe.

Now do you see dear ones, that faith is not taking the place of obedience? Faith in Jesus does not
take the place of the law, but when you exercise real faith, believe all that I’ve shared with you
this morning and then receive Jesus’ Spirit into you, you find yourself keeping the law. That’s
what Jesus meant when he said, “I have come not to abolish the law, I have come to fulfill the law.
For not one jot or tittle will pass for the law until all is accomplished.”

And brothers and sisters, what most of us have found is whenever we receive this super natural
Spirit of Jesus inside us, we find it easy to live above the law. We find it easy to go beyond the
law. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes
and Pharisees, not only to be free from hatred and killing but to be filled with love for your
brother and sister.” Real love, not just soft effeminate or imitation love, but a real honest,
strong, robust love. And we’ve found that when we received the Spirit of Jesus into us, we’ve lived
well above that law.

Do we then overthrow this law by faith? No, by no means. We establish, we strengthen the law. Now

have you come into that experience, you know? See, all of us believe that Jesus died so that God
could forgive us without denying his justice but that isn’t what makes you a child of Gods. What
makes you a child of God is receiving the spirit of life through the Holy Spirit that God originally
planned to give us. And he’s willing to give you that this morning, you know. You could receive
that this morning.

Those of us who have found ourselves living above the law, do it not by will power or by our own
strength or dynamic, but by a miraculous spirit of Christ that God is able to put inside you this
morning. You have a womb, like every one of us, you have a womb inside you called the spirit and
that womb is ready to receive the seed of the Holy Spirit within it so that you, man or woman, can
live the spiritual life that God gave you. So it’s possible this morning, you know.

You may say, “Well, what do I do?” Well, just as we bow our heads all you need to do is to say,
“God I believe that this is the explanation of reality. I believe this does explain why I feel
alienated, and lonely, and insecure. I believe that your Son did die so that you could give me this
life. Now Lord God, I’m going to give you my life now will you give me the Spirit of Jesus? I
don’t know whether you receive it by emotions or by intellect, but will you give it to me? I ask
you now in all honesty for the Spirit of Jesus. And brothers and sisters, God will keep his word
with you as he kept it with us, you know, and you’ll find yourself living above the law really where
God himself is.

I pray you know, that he’ll give you grace, and wisdom, and guidance to do it this morning. I know
a lot of you are sitting there, you know, wondering, “Ah, I wonder what it is all about?” Well
really, all I can say is if you’re honest with God whether you know a whole lot about it or not, if
you’re honest with God this morning he can put the Spirit of his Son inside you and can guide you on
from that, you know. And if you want to talk to any of us afterwards, there are lots of kids here
who experienced this and will share with you either here or in the entrance all, or if you want to
talk during the week just call Ashland or call me and get together. But we have found that this
does much better than the Ouija board, and the spiritualists, and really it is the answer and we’ve
found it so we believe you can find it. Let us pray.

Lord God, we thank you that you have not left us with no guidance. You have not left us with nearly
counterfeits, but you have given us plain clear presentation of yourself and your own plan in your
word and in Jesus your son. Now Lord God, if this is true, we would trust you by the Holy Spirit to
reveal that truth to us and to make it real to us. Lord God, if we’re honestly seeking you we ask
you now to make this real to us and enable us to see that this is more deeply true than it is
intellectually acceptable. And oh Lord God, we would ask you to put the Spirit of your Son Jesus
inside us to take away the emptiness and the loneliness, and the insecurity, and to enable us to be
the people that you intended we should be at the beginning. We trust you to do this for the sake of
your Son Jesus and so that we will please you and we will live the lives that we were made to live.
Amen.

How to Become a Christian 2

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I have sensed God saying to me that it’s very easy for us to come here Sunday after Sunday and be
glad for what was sung to us this morning, and be excited you know, that people like Kent have
experienced it and Helen, and we tend to enjoy being in this atmosphere. And yet, God witnessed to
my own spirit that there was a great danger of us being snow bunnies, you know. And a snow bunny
just goes on to the slopes, and looks beautiful but doesn’t ski. And it is very easy to get used to
such a good atmosphere because this is the way God wants us to live, you know. Let’s face it, this
is love and this is the way we’re supposed to live and it would be bad if this were not attractive
or winsome. There’d be something wrong with it if God’s children were not more attractive in many
ways than those who aren’t God’s children.

But do you see brothers and sisters, that it isn’t enough to be snow bunnies? It isn’t enough to
sit there and to watch, and to enjoy because you see that that can bring you into tremendous
condemnation because in a real way we have a greater opportunity here to understand what our Creator
wants us to do than anyone else in the whole world because again and again we see the joy of people
who live in God and we also listen to the explanation of how to enter in. But there is a great
danger that we with our student oriented habits will tend to study, and study, and analyze, and
discuss, and argue, and admire, and then turn it over the other side and discuss that side, and
admire, and look, and talk it over, and question and never really act. And loved ones, do you see
that Jesus was wise when he said to us, “Listen, the first thing I want you to do is not to
understand, and not to think, and not to discuss, and not to question, and not to talk about it, and
look at it, and admire it, but the first thing I want you to do is to repent and believe in the
gospel.”

Now dear ones, it’s good for us to listen to a practical man like Jesus speaking very directly to
people like ourselves who are in danger all the time of being academic and of thinking, and
believing, and not acting. And do you see that the way into all this, the way into the life of God,
the way into making your own life meaningful, the way into getting your own insignificance, the way
into getting some purpose into your own life, but most of all the way into making your own life
worthwhile and fulfilling the purpose for which you were created is to repent and believe in the
gospel. You know? And you may say, “Well, I mean, why should I repent? I have not done anything
very bad. I am not a Manson, I am not a prostitute, I am not an alcoholic, I have not destroyed my
home, I have not wiped out millions of people, I have not destroyed thousands of people with guns,
why should I repent?”

And you know what Jesus said? He said, “Listen, all of you, even though you’re very respectable
people to look at, and even though you’re very good people in many ways, yet all of you have sinned
and you’ve fallen short of the glory of my Father.” And Jesus, who is the only one who can really
give us any justifiable reason for accepting him as God’s son, he said to us, “Look, you’ve all
fallen short of what my Father wanted you to be.” And you know dear ones, many of us opt out of the
experience of Christianity at that point because we tend again, and again to sit back and say, “I
agree with what you say, that all people as a general rule have sinned and I certainly can see it
plainly in those miserable Irish that shoot one another. I can see that those people have sinned.”
Or we say, “You know, I can see that Charles Manson has sinned. I can see that the men who fight in
Vietnam they have sinned because they kill people.” And we often say, “I can see that the mafia
have sinned. I can see that Nixon has sinned. I can see Lee Harvey-Oswald has sinned.” And do you

see we have a great danger of accepting ourselves.

We have a great danger of saying, “I’m with you pastor, you go to it and you bring social action
into the world and put all those people right because all of them have sinned. But, I’m glad that I
have not sinned.” Now dear ones, do you see that many of us opt out of the experience of Jesus at
that point? Because, we’ll agree that everyone has sinned but us, you see. All have sinned except
the Presbyterians. All have sinned except the Baptist. All have sinned except the Catholics. All
have sinned except the Methodist. All have sinned except the people who come to Campus Church. And
dear ones, do you see it isn’t so? Jesus said that all of us have sinned, you know. Every one of
us and you too as you sit there and I know you’re a great person in many ways, I know you can do
many good things, and you have done many good things for people, and you’ve shown much kindness.
But do you see that it’s Jesus who says, not on the basis of empirical observation but on the basis
of his Father who knows all things that you have sinned. And the beginning of your coming together
with God is believing what he says about you, and really it’s a first step you know, to admit that
you have sinned.

That even wonderful, magnificent, faultless you have actually sinned. And you know a lot of us
feel, “Well, in what way sinned?” We can see how those primitive people in Old Testament days how
they sinned. We can see that sin is disobeying God’s will in any way. We see that sin is not doing
what God wants us to, and we can see that he said, “Though shalt have no other Gods before me,” and
we can see how those miserable Jews had all kinds of idols and gods before Gods, and we can see that
they have sinned and they deserve everything God is going to do to them. We can see that.

But do you see dear ones, that we are naïve if we really believe that the Jews set up a god called
Baal made of wood or stone and worshiped that? You know, they weren’t fools. They knew the stone
didn’t move, they knew the stone wasn’t a god. Do you see that it was the meaning of the word Baal
that was their god? That’s why it was called Baal, the word Baal in Hebrew means owner. It means
somebody who gets things. And when they worship Baal, they weren’t worshipping a stone. They’re no
fools, they weren’t so stupid that they thought that was a god. But they lived for getting things.

You see, a god is what you live for. A god is what you’re thinking about most times when somebody
asks you what are you thinking about. That’s your god. A god is what you spend most of your time
and most of your energy in doing. A god is what you dedicate your future to and your life today to.
And you see, for the Jews they were dedicating their lives, many of them, to getting things. They
planned their futures with a view to how much they could get. They planned their careers with a
view to how much money it would bring them. And they lived for getting things.

When they got into tight situations where it was a choice of getting profit for themselves and doing
somebody else some good, they got profit for themselves. And when you live for getting things, when
you live preoccupied with your getting the clothes you want, or you’re getting the position or the
job that you want or you deserve, when you live, you know, for getting the necessary books out of
the library that you need whatever everybody else needs, do you see that is worshipping another God?
That is setting up and getting acquisition as our guard.

You know loved ones, a lot of us tear down the establishment and say that they’re living for what
they can get. But dear ones, we often with our poverty, often with our sparsely furnished rooms, we
are as covetous over the few things we have as they are over the many things. And do you see that
it doesn’t take you to be rich to worship the god of getting? You can be poor and worship that god
far more by coveting and wanting. Loved ones, I ask you, you know, what are your plans for your own

future and your own career, and what are the considerations that govern your plans? And so many of
us talk so high and mighty about serving society and humanity, but deep, deep down in us it’s really
the desire to get things.

You know, we’ll be a social worker because a social worker pays a certain amount and you can live
reasonably and do good. Or, we’d love to be a doctor or a dentist because you’re helping humanity
and you’re getting. Now, do you see that it’s not that you can’t enter into some of those things,
but you must enter into them with an honest motive. In other words, many of us sin because we live
for getting.

Another of the images they worshipped was Ashtoreth, the god of enjoyment. And that was really what
they worshipped, it was enjoyment, it wasn’t a stone idol, it was the god of enjoyment and they just
lived to enjoy themselves at all costs. Now, do you see that that’s what led into the Manson
situation? Do you remember, that girl as she stuck the fork in the old man that she had killed and
then the judge asked her why she did it and she said, “Because, I enjoyed it at that moment. That’s
what I wanted to do at that moment so it was right.”

But do you see loved ones, that when we act from that motive we’re just as great sinners as she is
even though we haven’t killed anybody? When we make people suffer because we want to enjoy, then we
are sinners too and that’s what sin is. You know, it’s worshipping the god of enjoyment at all
costs. And you’re honest people and I ask you just to be honest in your own hearts, how many times,
you know, we have walked over somebody else so we could get what enjoyment we wanted? Brothers and
sisters, you know in our own relationships with each other we have often turned off a friend, we
have often shrugged off a friend because there was a certain girl or a certain fella that we wanted
at all costs to be with. And you know when that god of enjoyment lifts up in your mind everything
goes to the side.

Now do you see that is what Jesus meant? He said, “All of us have sinned,” and we’ve all fallen far
short of God’s glory. And he said, “Listen, my Father cannot let people like that live. It he lets
masses of you live throughout his universe who are living only for your own enjoyment and are living
for what you can get, you’ll destroy his universe. You’ll make it an unfit place for dog, or
animal, or beast, or man. You’ll destroy God’s own plan and his own purpose. Indeed, it’s either
God lives with his idea of goodness or it’s you that live because the two can’t exist side-by-side.”
And that’s why Jesus said, “The wages of sin is death,” you know.

Loved ones, you know it. In our own experience here this morning you can see it. It only takes
some dear one to come in among us this morning who does not love the same things we love, who does
not treasure Jesus’ presence and that dear one can cut the atmosphere like a knife and you can see
it. It only takes some dear one to come in among us who is not in sympathy with Christ and suddenly
our own fellowship can be destroyed. Now, do you see it was the same with God? That the two things
can’t exist side-by-side and that is why Jesus taught us that the wages of sin is death and that’s
why many of us live in a terrible angst, a terrible worry of an impending disaster, because dear
ones we are under condemnation to death many of us. Many of us have never made things right with
God. Many of us have never stopped worshipping other gods and therefore we are actually under
condemnation from the Creator of the universe and that’s what we’re living with.

Loved ones, many of us are not really worried about the mushroom cloud. Many of us are not really
worried about our futures. Many of us are really worried behind all those things about the fact
that deep down our conscious registers that we are sinners and God is going to destroy us at the end

of this world. And that’s why many of us have worry and trouble in our consciences and in our
emotions.

Now you know, it’s no use saying, “Oh well, that’s only the very bad sinners that God condemns to
death.” You see that the heart of sin is living for yourself. It doesn’t matter what degree of
living for yourself is true in your life, it’s living for yourself is sin. You know, sin is the
S-I-N, it is the great I, I want to enjoy myself, I want to get, I want to rule, I want to have my
way whatever anybody else wants. And do you see that that’s why God says that all of us have sinned
and fallen short and death is going to take place in all of us even if we’ve sinned a very little or
a great deal because there aren’t really degrees of sin. There are degrees of vices. There are
degrees of immorality. There are degrees of crimes, but there is no degree of sin you see.

You know, there was a story told and you probably read it before and I’ve shared it with some of you
before about the two men. And one of them, you know, is like ourselves, we are very good
respectable people and we have sinned very, very little. And this young man has kept his body in
good state, and it’s in good physical condition and he’s like us, he’s like us good and noble
sinners. And then there’s a very old man, a very old man who has worn himself out by bad habits,
has drunk his liver into an unhealthy condition, has destroyed his body and he’s about 75 years of
age and he’s standing there. And in front of them is a great gulf, it’s about 50 foot across and
it’s 500 foot cliffs on each side, and a great rocky gorge with pointed jagged rocks underneath.
And the old man says, “Well, I’m going to try and jump that gulf,” and many of us are like that.

Many of us know, “Well, I want to be with God, I want to live for him, I want to be where he is, I
want to get to the other side. I don’t want to have that uncertainty that Hamlet had. I don’t want
to feel that there’s an unknown country on the other side, I want to get over there.” So we’re like
the young man and he wants to jump to the other side, and the old man decides he’ll go first and he
totters back a few steps and he takes a run, and of course he only jumps about four feet and he goes
down to the rocks below and he’s killed. And we tend to say, “You see, well that’s those great
sinners that’s what should happen to them. I can see God has to wipe out Hitler, he can’t have a
Hitler in heaven without destroying heaven. I can see how a Hitler must die, I can see how a
[Mussolini 16:15] must die. I can see how Manson must die. I can see how these people who have
sinned greatly must die.”

And then the young man comes and he is in good physical condition, has looked after himself, has not
sinned much and so he takes a massive leap. He takes a great run and he leaps, and it’s a mighty
leap, it’s 39 feet and it’s a world record, and he falls short. And do you see, that it doesn’t
matter dear ones? It doesn’t matter that it was a world record, it doesn’t matter that you’re so
much better than the person down the road, it doesn’t matter that you’re so much better than you
ever thought you could be? Do you see that God says, “You’ve fallen short. You were made to be
like my Son Jesus. I made you to be like Jesus and that’s why I created you and you’ve fallen short
of that and nobody less than Jesus can continue to live for eternity in my universe without
destroying my universe.” And that’s why dear ones, all of us are under condemnation to death and
that’s where the gospel comes in you know.

I think a lot of us say, “Well, what can we do about it? We can try harder.” Well, do you see
there’s no point in the poor fella trying harder when he hits those rocks. There’s no point trying
harder to be done, there’s a penalty that has come about and it’s been exercised upon him and he has
to face it. There is no trying harder. I came here ’63 and we drive on the left hand side of the
road which is the correct side of the road for any sensible person to drive. And when I came over

here I had to learn to drive on the right hand side and so I tried it my own way for two weeks
[inaudible 18:00]. So I drove on the right hand side of the road, and I was just learning your
signs you know on the street corners, and I was learning to read those signs do not turn left
between four and six o’clock which is obviously a sacred time of some kind.

So, I concentrated on that and I came along at one time between four and six o’clock and I turned
left and one of your gallant police officers came up and asked me what I thought I was doing. And I
explained to him, “Well I turned left.” And he said, “Yeah, but it’s between four and six o’clock,”
and I said, “Ah yeah, I’m sorry I’m just new in the country. I’ve just come here and I’m just
getting to know your signs.” And he said, “Well, that’s good. You better try harder because it
will save you $10 next time.” And I said, “Well, listen officer I haven’t even taken this driving
test here, I’m driving on my British license so would you consider that? I’m going to take the
test, I’m going to learn your laws, and I’ll be careful every time I come to this corner.” And he
said, “Well, that’s good it will save you another $10.” And I could make all kinds of substitute
penalties and could suggest all other answers to the problem, but do you see that either I had to
pay the $10 or somebody had to pay it for me?

Now, do you see that’s our situation loved ones? You know, the psychologists try to psychoanalyze
out of a sense of impending disaster. The psychologists try to persuade us that this guilt comes
because our pet dog rejected us when we were children. We try in all kinds of ways to deal with the
guilt and to psych ourselves out of it. But do you see dear ones, there is no way to deal with the
guilt because it is God’s penalty. God has said, “Listen, if you sin you’re guilty death. That’s
the only way I can remain the just authority in the universe, and you have to die or somebody has to
die for you because I cannot revoke the penalty. If I revoke the penalty you’d laugh at me. You
wouldn’t accept that I was credible as a just God. My mercy would not be possible because I would
have no moral authority.” And do you see that that’s the gospel?

That God has commanded his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for you.
And loved ones, you should have died for every dirty thought that you’ve ever had, you see? But
Jesus took that thought into his own conscience and he allowed God’s wrath to burn up that thought
inside him. See you and I should have died for every time we’ve coveted anything, every time we’ve
tried to do some one down in order to get what we wanted, but Jesus took that into his own
conscience and he died for that.

In other words, Jesus knows everything that you’ve ever had in your heart that has been wrong but he
not only knows it but he knows the pain that came upon him for that. And God has died in Jesus for
you and that’s why you don’t need to die. And there’s no reason for any of us to be under guilt
this morning. There’s no reason for any of us to fear an impending disaster because Jesus has died
and has met that impending disaster for us and we’re free.

Now many of us say, “Well, I understand that intellectually but I tell you I still have worry and
apprehension in my own heart. I’d tell you I still do feel the mushroom cloud, I still am afraid of
death.” Do you see dear ones, that though Jesus has died for us you have to enter into this
yourself personally? In other words, you don’t get it by being a snow bunny, you don’t get it by
being a spectator, and seeing it, and believing it. Satan believed it, the devils in hell believed
that Jesus died for our sins, but do you see that you do not experience reconciliation with God, you
do not receive the Spirit of God’s life into yourself, you do not know freedom from fear until you
personally move into this.

How do you move into it? Jesus made it very plain, he said the first thing you do is you confess
the things that you know are wrong in your life. You stop trying to argue that you’ve never sinned.
The first step is you confess your sins. And brothers and sisters, you know many of us have got
all caught up in this business of confession. We’ve thought that it meant just confessing to a
priest, or confessing out loud. The Greek word for confession means I raise up my hand and I agree
with God that what he says is wrong, is wrong.

Brothers and sisters, if God has continued to say, you know, sexual sin, promiscuity, masturbation,
envy, jealousy, anger, greed, if he has continued to say to your heart, “Look, these things are
wrong,” then confession is saying, “I’m not going to argue any longer God. I confess that is a sin,
I agree it’s wrong. I’m not going to try to justify myself any further.” And you see it’s the
first step, and honest confession dear ones of the things that you’re arguing with God about.

You see, many of you say, “Oh but why couldn’t I experience God the way some of those other people
have?” Do you see it’s because you won’t deal with God about the things he’s been pointing out to
you for years. You’re still trying to prove that it’s right for you to do it. Brothers, I did it
in my own life in personal things. I tried to prove that I was in a certain set of circumstances
which justified this, or I was the certain kind of personality that needed this kind of outlet or
fulfillment. Do you see that confession is agreeing with God that these things are wrong? That’s
the first break in the whole game you know. Many of us are under constant strain and stress because
we won’t make that first break. We won’t start agreeing with God that those things are wrong.

The second step is just repentance, you know. Jesus said, “Listen, unless you repent every one of
you will perish.” And the second step is just an honest repentance, and repentance is not only
saying to God, “I’m sorry for causing your son to die for my sins.” It’s not only crying over the
mess you’ve made of your life, it’s not only being sorry for the people you’ve hurt, but it’s really
stopping sinning. You know? I think a lot of us enter into pseudo experiences of Christ because we
come up at a grey meeting, or some other kind of meeting, or we pray through in our rooms, or we
deal with God in our minds and we confess all the things and we say we’re sorry and we feel a real
sorrow in our hearts, but we don’t stop doing the sins and repentance is you stop doing those
things.

You don’t do them any longer. You just stop doing them. And I think a number of us, you know,
probably need to realize it and I think I’ve shared this with you before so it’s not really new to
all of you at all, but it’s possible you know for Kent who sang this morning, it’s possible for him
to say to me, “Now pastor, this is a picture. This is a picture of my girlfriend,” and I don’t know
if you have a girlfriend, “This is a picture of my girlfriend and me and it’s very precious to us
both and we’d like you to have it but we’d like you to take care of it.” And I take it from him and
I say, “Oh, yeah thanks kid,” but I’ve torn it. And I say, “Kent, I’m really sorry I’ve torn that.
I really am sorry. Kent, I’m really sorry I’m tearing up this picture because I really respect what
you say and I really don’t want to tear it up and I tell you I’m really, really sorry and I’m
repenting.”

Well loved ones, you know, but do you see that’s what we do? We say, “Lord God, I know my
uncleanness, I know my dirty thoughts crucified your son. I know my greed was a spear in his side,
but Lord, I’m really sorry, I’m really sorry.” And loved ones, God recognizes not what we say but
what we do and that’s why repentance needs to be something definite and real. Many of us have
entered into pseudo emotional experiences of Jesus because we have not had done with our sins. We
haven’t stopped doing them, not for a minute. We’ve asked Jesus to come in on top of them all and

you see, he won’t do it.

The last step is really just receiving him. If you are honest in your confession and your
repentance God will put the Spirit of his Son Jesus into your life and that’s what has enabled many
of us to be changed people, because there’s a super natural spirit of Jesus that has all the
goodness of Jesus inside him. And he transmits all that to us miraculously. And that’s why, you
know, at times we think of ourselves as new creations because we’re different people entirely
because we’ve received the Spirit of Jesus inside us.

Now if you don’t honestly confess, and honestly repent then what you enter into is an emotional
osmosis, or an intellectual assent or appropriation of truth and intellectual concept. And many of
use, you see, are in that position. We have given assent to these things, but we know in our own
lives we aren’t really Christians because we haven’t been honest in our confession and repentance.

Well dear ones, that is really the way to become a Christian, you know, and if you’re really
concerned about it then I do ask you to just deal with God this morning. I’d rather not spend time
because we are a little over time, and I’d rather not spend time having a long prayer time here this
morning, but I would ask you if you know you should make a definite step with Jesus, then as we sing
that last hymn you can go round and we can pray in there on the stage afterwards. I think that’s
the best place, it’s the only place we have where we can pray. But if you want to take a definite
step and you’ve fiddled along for years and you’ve never taken a definite stand of faith, then you
should do it you know.

Now it’s not vital to come forward, no you can do it in your seat, you can do it at home when you go
home, but it is a definite step that you take, you see. And so I ask you to consider it, you know,
as we sing the last hymn and it does demand just those three steps and God will put the Spirit of
his Son into your life. You will become a different person.

A New Start – 1975

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I think we all thank God for the gifts that he’s given to the whole body, but Colleen really has a
gift that Jesus has given her of writing songs, you know, and it’s just a blessing and I think you
feel the same. And I think we should trust Jesus to multiply that creative life among us. And he
respects us really, to produce a creativity that will bring to the world life. So, we need to trust
Jesus for that, for all of us, whatever our particular abilities are. Loved ones, trust Jesus to do
something new through you, you know, really do.

Many of us have come here Sunday-after-Sunday now for some years and probably most of us here
believe there is a God. And perhaps most of us believe that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God.
What I would like to do this morning, very simply, is to tell you what Jesus’ ideas are about your
life so that you may know what he thinks you should do. And then I would ask you just to do it at
the end of the service, really. So that’s it.

First of all, Jesus says you aren’t going to last long. You just aren’t made to last long. There
are millions of cells dying in your body during this present minute and there’ll be millions more
dying the next minute. So in a real sense, most of us here are at least at that stage in our lives
where there are more millions of cells dying than are being renewed, so in a real way loved ones,
all of us here in this auditorium, probably maybe the youngest might be what 15, 16, 17? All of us
in this auditorium are really dying me and women in that sense, you know.

The physical and mental life that we have will certainly not last much longer than at least our
grandparents, 70 or 80 years. And Jesus says that to us this morning. That which is born of the
flesh is flesh. The physical and the mental life that you have is just not going to last very long
and so in a real way your days are numbered. And secondly Jesus says you won’t believe that. You
won’t believe that. That’s the way he put it to some people who refused to believe him. He said,
“They will not believe. They don’t want to believe and therefore they will not believe.” He says,
you think you were made for more than that, for better things than that. You think you were made to
do more than to go out like a light after 70 years here on earth.” And he says, “That’s why you
keep trying to parlay the attributes of physical and mental life you have into the qualities of
infinity that you would like to have, because there’s something inside you that keeps saying, ‘All
this surely was not created just to end like that after 70 years in nothingness.’” And so you keep
trying to avoid the limitations of the created life that you have, and you keep trying to escape
from the bonds of this earthbound existence at catching at some of the equalities of infinity. And
you will not believe that what you’ve got at the moment is not going to take you beyond this finite
world.

So really what you do is you feel you were made for stability and safety, and security. And isn’t
that true? There’s something inside all of us that makes us feel we were made for stability, we
ought to have stability. That’s why we’re so much in trouble at a time of depression or at a time
of war, we feel we were made for a secure, stable, safe life. And so what most of us are doing is
trying to use the cleverness, and the shrewdness of our minds to ensure that kind of life, and to
catch at that stability that is only possible in infinity. So we educate in order to survive, and
we get the education that will help us to survive, because that’s our first battle. Then we trade
in the degree for the best kind of financial reward we can get, and so we continue to live our
finite lives trying to produce the security and stability that we again, and again feel isn’t

possible.

So we keep trading up the cars, and trading up the houses with the thought in the back of our minds
that we can probably never trade them into absolute certainty but at least we should keep trying, we
should keep using the old mind to try and make ourselves secure and stable. And so we use our mind
at work to try to edge ourselves into a position of security in relationship to our colleagues or in
relationship to our rivals. And we keep trying to improve our investments to the point where we
somehow will get that security or stability. And we keep trying to build as cast iron life
insurance and medical insurance package as we possibly can. And yet all the time a fella like
Howard Hughes haunts us because there we see a fella that has built up more than we could possibly
ever hope to build up and yet he keeps himself in seclusion so that he can avoid the possibility of
any kind of disease or bacteria that would kill him.

And so we sense in the midst of all this using our minds to try and ensure the security, and
stability of infinite life, we still kind of feel like we can’t get it. And we kind of sense that
we were made for the serene peace and yet the overwhelming interest that you would be able to have,
in we always think of it as some fancy island which would be a combination of Walden Pond and the
Arabian Knights. And we kind of think, “Yeah, somewhere in this life we’re supposed to experience
not only complete serenity and peace because that in itself will be boring, but it’s supposed to be
combined with a tremendous exhilaration and excitement that would keep our lives continually
satisfying.” And we kind of feel yeah, we were made for that, and so of course we try to produce it
and we try to use every experience, and every relationship we possibly can to produce this
combination of serene peace and overwhelming excitement. And yet somehow, however many people we
use and however many circumstances we try to manipulate for our own purposes we find that we don’t
have that serene peace, or that overwhelming excitement.

In fact, in some ways we find that we’re utterly frustrated about those things. And again, and
again we experience not serene peace and overwhelming excitement but even times like Thanksgiving
day when we find ourselves with the dear ones that we want to be with most, we find often that there
comes a sense of loneliness or a sense of desolation, a sense of not all that conviviality and
excitement of that relationship you felt you should have throughout your life. And it’s the same
loved ones you know with really what Milton used to talk about. Milton used to say, “I am born for
some great purpose,” and I don’t know that there’s any of us here however ambitionless we are that
hasn’t felt at some time, “Yeah, we were born for something special. We were put here for some
special purpose. We weren’t put here just to have our name on a gravestone. We weren’t put here
just to pass like a ship in the night through this world and nobody noticed that we were ever here.
We weren’t put here just to be a number, we were put here to be significant in some way. Somebody,
some way, somewhere, somehow must know we’re here, must see that we’re achieving something. We’re
not just one of a mass of billions and billions of people.”

And so you know we work ourselves to death trying to will ourselves into some position of importance
and so we throw our weight around in the office, and we throw our weight around at home, and we
throw our weight around in school hoping that somehow we’ll will ourselves into a place where people
can’t just ignore us, they have to recognize us and appreciate us.” And yet at the end of the day
we’re just startled by the few people that remember Jack Benney, and he died just this past year.
And if it weren’t for the commission that keeps on bringing up the morbid business of how he died,
really how many think of John F. Kennedy? And we’re amazed at how the Picassos and the Roosevelt’s,
and the Jack Benney’s of this world can pass off the face of the earth and it’s amazing how few
people think of them afterwards.

And loved ones, Jesus says to us, “That’s because what is born of the flesh is flesh,” and what
you’re trying to do is take the finite, limited attributes of your created physical and mental life
and you’re trying to produce all the liberty of eternity, all the freedom of an infinite life even
though all that you’ve got is a limited finite life. A physical and mental life that can never
imitate anything but that life. And so Jesus says, “Really, you can never be anything different
from what you are because the life that you possess is what ties you down to that and all that
you’re becoming with all your efforts is a little monster because you’re trying to bring everything
and everybody to the place where you somehow can experience the infinite happiness, and serenity,
and peace, and exhilaration, the tremendous since of significance, the great sense of security and
stability, that you could only experience if you had an infinite life inside you. And you’re really
using everybody to try and create this and so you’re becoming a massive, hedonistic, manipulating,
domineering, ruling monster and that’s really what you’ve become.

An egotistical monster that is trying to manipulate all this created life around you so that somehow
you will experience some of the qualities of an infinite life and Jesus says it cannot be and yet he
really does bring us good news loved ones because he says those yearnings that you have inside you
for serenity and peace, for exhilaration and excitement, those yearnings that you have inside you to
have some eternal significance, those yearnings you have inside you to have at last a security, and
a stability that you don’t have to continually fight for. Those yearnings that you have to be
something other than a little wild animal in the forest looking around to see who’s going to attack
him next. Those yearnings that you have were put in you by your Creator because he actually made
you for that kind of life. But this is not it.

And loved ones, Jesus is just so strong in that. He just emphasizes repeatedly, “No, this life that
you have at the present time is not that life.” And he says, “The life that you’re trying to use is
that physical life there.” And at times when you try to manipulate your time by chemicals, or you
try to manipulate your emotions by stimulations, at times you even use a mental life in there. But
Jesus says, “There is within you another part that is deeper,” and it’s the part that will satisfy
all those yearnings, and it’s the part that is made for infinity.” But he says really to us, with
almost all of you, it’s absolutely dead. That part of you is dead. And until that part comes
alive, you’re going to experience continual frustration trying to do on this level and this level
what alone can be done in here by this infinite part of you.

And he says that part of you can only come alive if the maker who made you brings it to life through
the power of his own spirit life. Through the power of his own infinite eternal life that runs
through his own being. Only he can bring this part alive. That’s why Jesus said those words.
You’ve all been born once. You’ve all been born of the flesh and you got from your mum and dad
physical and a mental life. But you have to be born anew. You have to be born all over again. The
maker of the world never meant you to make do with that life. He intends you to be born again. And
that’s why Jesus said to that teacher Nicodemus, “Look, you have to be born anew all over again.”
You have to start all over again. You have to be born from above. And the only way you will be
born from above inside in your spirit is by God’s Holy Spirit coming in and regenerating, activating
your own spirit and making it alive.

Then when that happens, that spirit of life from your maker will begin to work out through every
part of your personality and it will impart to your mind here, a right perspective and a sense of
where you fit into God’s plan for developing the world. That spirit will pour out through your
emotions and will impart to you all the excitement, and the serenity, and the peace of an infinite

intercourse and friendship with the eternal being behind the universe, and will be utterly
satisfying to your emotions. The Holy Spirit will pour out through your will and will begin to
direct you as to what you should do in this life so that at last you’ll have a real sense of
significance because you can see where you fit into the Maker’s plan.

And loved ones, that was his plan, that you would allow his Spirit to bring you alive in your spirit
and then his lights would begin to pour out through you to the rest of the world. And the one great
obstacle to that is that this physical and mental personality of yours has become utterly unfitted
for that. This physical and mental personality has become a domineering, manipulating, egotistical,
self-gratifying, self-deifying monster. And all it does and all its been able to do for years is to
take in from the world, to take in from the world trying to create a sense of eternity within by
sponging from other people on the outside. And of course, while that personality remains like that
God dare not give you such an infinite power as the Holy Spirit.

This Holy Spirit is the person he used to make the ocean and the mountains. It’s this Holy Spirit
that holds all the protons and neutrons together here in our universe. It’s this Holy Spirit that
makes the whole universe work at this present time. It’s this Holy Spirit that keeps the pressure
right here on the surface of the earth so that we don’t cave in and we don’t blow up. It’s this
Holy Spirit that keeps the sun in the right position. God dare not give the power of that infinite
Holy Spirit to you with a personality that would use it only to gratify and deify itself, and to
dominate the rest of the universe.

And so loved ones, unless that personality of yours with all its selfishness, and all its
self-deification can be destroyed, God cannot give you the Holy Spirit. And yet, that’s what you
and I most need. We need this infinite spirit of life. It doesn’t matter how many drugs we take,
it doesn’t matter how much alcohol we take, it doesn’t matter how much money we amass in the bank
account, it doesn’t matter how fast a car we get, it doesn’t matter if we go on vacation every other
week, it doesn’t matter what we do, we are never going to satisfy the infinite yearnings that have
been planted inside of us. Loved ones, you’re demanding too much from your husband. You’re
demanding too much from your wife. You’re demanding too much from your employees or your employer,
they cannot produce in you these things that only the infinite spirit of God can produce and that
can only come into you if that personality is destroyed and that’s what happened in Jesus on
Calvary.

That’s what it means when the Bible says, “You’re old self, your whole personality was crucified
with Christ.” All that mess with all its domineering selfishness was destroyed in Jesus on Calvary
in a supra spacial supra temporal miracle. And the fact is because God is eternal and could destroy
you 1900 years ago even though you’re alive today, because he is infinite he is able to do this
today. That’s really what it means you see.

Maybe you’d look loved ones, at just some of the things that happened on Calvary. It’s Psalms
22:16. Psalm 22:16, this is one of those Psalms you know, that in an amazing prophetic way tell
what Jesus was saying in his own heart on the cross, “Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of
evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet—I can count all my bones—they stare and
gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots.” “They have
pierced my hands and feet.”

Loved ones, your hands have been used so often to gratify yourself that God could not entrust the
Holy Spirit to such hands. Your hands have been used so often to get your own way that those hands

cannot be used by this Spirit of God that is used only to express love and to give. That’s why your
hands were miraculously destroyed in Jesus. Loved ones, that’s the only reason God is able to even
consider giving you the Holy Spirit because your hands were pierced in Jesus’ hands. Those feet of
yours that have so often gone to the wrong place, those feet that have so often been used to get
what you wanted for you. Those feet could not be used by the Spirit of God.

That’s why when Jesus died you died. That’s why the Bible says, “We judge that if he died for all
then all died.” Your feet were destroyed in Jesus on Calvary. That’s what it means loved ones,
when the Bible says, “God made him to be sin who knew no sin.” God actually put all your
independence, and all your desire for self into Jesus and destroyed it there. And because of that,
he’s able to give the Holy Spirit to anyone who will receive that Holy Spirit. And so loved ones,
that’s really it.

God offers you, this morning, the Spirit of his own infinite life and if you want it you have to do
two things: you have to accept by faith the destruction of that inturned personality of yours, that
personality that has cared for itself for so long, that personality that wants its own way whatever
it costs anybody else, you need to accept the death of that old personality with Jesus; and you have
to be willing for that.

In other words, you have to stop living for yourself. You have to stop turning in on yourself. You
have to stop referring every event, and every situation, and every job opportunity, and everything
anybody asks you to do to yourself and whether it’s going to benefit you, whether it’s going to make
you happy, you have to once and for all say, “I’m finished with that. It’ll leave me nowhere
anyway, but above all God it’s against your will for me. So today I’m accepting that you destroyed
that inturned personality of mine on Jesus on Calvary and I accept that and I’m willing for that.”

Loved ones, you have to turn from self. You have to take self off the throne of your own life and
you have to give yourself to God and say, “Lord God, I’ve lived for myself these years and it’s a
mess. I’m prepared now to live for the purpose for which you made me, for you.” And secondly, you
have to receive the Holy Spirit by faith. You have to say, “Lord, you promised that you’d give the
Holy Spirit to those who ask. Jesus said that, ‘How much more will your heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to them who asked.’ Lord you promised that. I receive you Holy Spirit to be all that I
need in my present life, all that my Father wants me to have.” Loved ones, that’s it, that’s what
Jesus said and that’s what it is to be born of God if you do that, or to be born again.

It’s a lesser thing to call it becoming a Christian. Really, that’s our name for it these days.
Jesus would have said, “It’s entering into reality. It’s coming free at last. It’s being liberated
from yourself. It’s at last entering into all the aspirations that my Father planted inside your
heart. So loved ones, really it’s up to you, you know. I would ask you from my own experience, I
would ask you not to wait for some emotional experience, really. I didn’t have it. My wife didn’t
have it. Many of us here hadn’t a great emotional experience, if you understand what I’ve explained
to you about Jesus’ ideas for your life, then you should just take the step now.

Just in a minute or two I’ll say let us pray and you should just take the step. But you can see
what it means, it means turning from living for yourself and it means depending on this Holy Spirit
to produce in you the kind of life that your Maker wants you to have. And of course, anybody it
doesn’t matter whether you’re a skeptic or not, anybody here knows the one that knows how to run the
factory is the one that made the factory. It’s just common sense that the God who made you knows
the kind of life that will be fulfilling for you.

So loved ones you’ve got what I said now, if you’re not what people call a Christian, that name can
mean a lot of things but, if you’re not what people call a Christian but the big thing is you know.
You know because some of you have talked with me and you know where you are, if you haven’t taken
this step I say you should take it this morning. If you say to me, “Well pastor, why take a
definite step?” Loved ones, God answers only faith. Really.

I tried to get into it by osmosis, I tried to drift into it. You can’t. You have to take a
definite step, truly, truly. I think – I don’t know quite why it is, with me I think the old mind
was so much king that I think God wanted me to declare I’m going out on a limb here, it’s a
reasonable limb, but I’m going out on a limb expecting somebody else to do something. I felt so
much it was all in my own control in the past. Lord, as an expression of my trust in you I’m going
to trust you to do this thing I don’t even know what it is. I don’t even know if I’ll feel any
different. I don’t know what it is, but I know these things that you’ve spoken about this morning
are what I know in my life and I need and I’m going to take the step.

So loved ones, I’d really encourage you just to take a step today, this morning. I’ll help you in
the prayer if that’s of any use, but really if you’re real with God this morning yourself that’s all
you need it doesn’t matter what words you use. Let us pray.

Lord God, some of us here hardly know how to talk to you, or how to express this, but all of us
Lord, know what your son has said and it does ring in our own hearts because our own lives have not
been very satisfying, and we have tried to somehow wind these attributes that we have here on earth,
wind them up to the nth degree to try and produce some kind of satisfaction, or sense of infinity.
But Lord, we know that it has not worked. And Lord God, what your son Jesus has said makes sense to
us, that we were made for something other than our names to be put on a gravestone. We were made
for something other than few to remember us for a few years.

And Lord God, we want to get into the main stream of the plan that you have for our lives. So Lord,
we bring before you now our own selfish life. Lord, we bring before you all the things that we have
done to try and get satisfaction. We bring before you Lord, all the people that we have used. We
bring before you all the circumstances that we’ve tried to manipulate for our own good. Lord, we
see how we are like frightened little foxes in the forest, always on the lookout, always filled with
flight or fright. Lord God, we bring this selfish egotistical hedonistic life before you and Lord,
we don’t know how you bring about its death but we believe that Jesus did rise from the dead and we
believe that what he says did happen, that we were somehow in the infinity of eternity, crucified
with him.

Now Lord, we accept that and we’re willing to be made real now in us today. Lord, we ask you now to
make this real in us, to make real in us this death to self once and for all so that we’re finished
with this living for ourselves, so that it is as if we’re no longer alive. We’ve no longer
ourselves to look after. Lord, we want to let this self and all its parasitism be buried in the
tomb with Jesus, and Lord we want that stoned rolled over it today for good. Lord, we trust you
now, we know that you will roll that stone over if we will let you. So Lord, we confess to you all
the sin that fills our life. One-by-one we name them to you and we tell you that we’re finished
with them, we’re turning from that kind of existence. With or without the Holy Spirit Lord, we’re
determined to get finished with this kind of life that we’re living.

Lord, we’re putting the bank account into your hands, all these other things that we’ve held onto

and tried to multiply into some kind of goldmine, we’re putting it all into your hands Lord. We’re
letting this old self die. And now Father, you have promised that you’ll give the Holy Spirit to
them that ask. Father, it’s your life that we need so we ask you now for the Holy Spirit. Holy
Spirit, will you come in now and make us alive inside? There’s been a great hole in the center of
our lives that has been emptied for years, will you come in and make it alive?

We don’t even need to know that it’s alive Holy Spirit, we don’t even demand that we be conscious of
it, we are willing to trust you. Will you energize our spirits and make us alive with God’s life?
And will you live out through us God’s love, and God’s direction, and God’s rule? Holy Spirit, we
would take a step now and thank you for coming in. Thank you that you are faithful and that
tomorrow and Monday morning we can bank on you for direction as to what we should do at each moment.
We thank you.

The Word Became Flesh

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

One of the situation comedies on television this season that has not bombed yet, but is just on the
edge is Sanford & Son , you know it, Sanford & Son. And the two littlest guys several weeks ago were
talking to the neighbor who was kind of a traditional God fearing red blooded American. And the
little guys of course, were very skeptical about the existence of God. And this poor neighbor was
doing his best to give all the best answers, and at last of course, the little guy said, “Okay,
okay, if he exists what does he look like?” And the neighbor kind of thought for a while and he
said, “Well, he’s very old and he has a long white beard, dressed in a long white gown.” And they
kind of sensed that this was an opportunity to get some inside information and they therefore went
on and said, “What kind of car does he drive?” And the poor old neighbor thinks for a while and
says, “Well, I don’t know but if I was him I’d drive a white Lincoln Continental.”

And you know, when we are driven into thinking, “I wonder what God is really like?” You do find
your mind turning into that kind of thinking, don’t you? And yet, you know it’s silly, but you kind
of think a wee bit in those terms. And down through the centuries that’s what has happened loved
ones. Man has varied from one extreme of God as a kind of old, indulgent, nodding, distant, man
looking down from them from a great distance, varied from that kind of picture of God to the other
kind of cruel, tyrannical, unforgiving being that is pictured in the Hindu God Shiva. And down
through history man has varied from one in extreme to the other in trying to picture God.

Man has always had the sense to know that there must be somebody as personable as himself to have
created the universe with all the order ad design that is in it. But when it came to picturing what
that God was like, he’s varied from making the God too transcendent, that is somebody that was too
distant, too separated, too much apart from us to somebody who was too imminent, too much part of
us, too much in the middle of us. In other words, at times man has pictured God in the way the
neighbor did picture him, an old gentlemen living in heaven, looking at us from a great distance,
and not absolutely sure what’s happening to us.

But at other times man has tried to worship even nature itself as the bringer of rain, and the
bringer of crops, and the bringer of heat, and light, even worshipped nature in the form of
conscience as the bringer of morals, and the one who decides what is the difference between right
and wrong. But whatever way we have pictured him there has always been great mystery about it. All
of our ideas have been shrouded in uncertainty. One religious leader would say this, another
philosopher would say that, one dad would explain it this way to his son, another mum would explain
it this way. One myth would describe God this way, another myth would describe him another way, and
it all has been shrouded with mystery and uncertainty so that countless millions of us have gone
into death not really sure what the person would be like that we’d face on the other side.

Now loved ones, 1981 years ago all that mystery disappeared. 1981 years ago the Son of the Maker of
the world, the Son of our God came into our earth as a human being and suddenly all the mystery was
cleared away. Suddenly all the questions, “What would God do if he was in this situation,” were
answered. Suddenly, all the vague philosophical concepts to explain the existence of the one true
God were wiped away and settled. Suddenly all the opinions, all the vague generalizations
disappeared in the body of a little baby in Bethlehem. Suddenly no man or no woman had to be in
doubt about the kind of person they would meet, and the kind of person they would have to give
account to at the end of their lives. Suddenly all the questions were settled about what our God

was like, 1981 years ago when God became one of us and we saw in absolute detail the way he would
talk to certain people, the way he would walk, the way he would act, the way he thought. That’s
really the heart of Christmas. That’s the meaning of it.

That now we know what God is like. Now none of us need be in any doubt what the person who made us
is really like. I think a lot of us respond at that point by saying, “Well, how can you be sure?”
We admit Confucius was a great philosopher, we admit Mohammad was a great religious teacher, we’ll
admit that Buddha was a great leader, but we’ve never called them God. Now why do you think it’s
reasonable to call Jesus God? To regard Jesus as the special unique only begotten Son of our
Creator in a way that we are not his sons? Why is it reasonable to call Jesus God, or to believe
that obscure pheasant who was born in Bethlehem, and spent all of his life in such a very small area
of the world’s surface, and talked to so few people, why should we believe that that obscure little
pheasant who was a carpenter was really the Son of the Maker of the universe?

Well loved ones, there are all kinds of reasons. He really did talk like God. If you think of it,
you know, he really did talk like God. When he was 12 year old, and his parents found that he was
no longer with him on the way home from Jerusalem, they went back to the city and they found him in
the temple, and they asked him what he was doing, and he said, “Didn’t you know I’d be about my
Father’s business?” Now his Father’s business was carpentry, but he was discussing theological
issues with the doctors in the temple. And Mary did not strangely immediately say, “You’re a fool.”
But she just pondered those things in her heart, because obviously this little boy was sufficiently
different from other little guys to make her sense there was something different about him besides
what she had observed at the birth. And it went on like that.

He didn’t teach like the Pharisees, “Well I think this, Josepheus taught this, Moses taught this,
but I think that.” He taught with authority. He taught with a sense, “This is the way it is.” So
he talked with the kind of authority that you would expect the maker of the universe to have. Oh,
there are other things, you know, if you’d like to look at them. Look at Matthew 16 loved ones,
because that’s something that makes this man very different from all others. If you just open up
that chapter I’ll explain it to you before we look at the verse. It’s Matthew 16, every other
philosopher or religious teacher sets his teaching up here, says, “Don’t look at me look at the
teaching.”

I think every one of us, we do it ourselves, don’t we? We say, “Look, don’t look at me I’m not the
important thing. It’s the truth that’s important.” That’s the way every human being act. Now,
this man pointed out that his teaching is not the important thing, it’s him that’s important. I
mean, that is hideous. Either he is an absolute megalomaniac, or this is really true. But, he did
treat himself differently loved ones, to the way ordinary human beings treat themselves as
authorities.

Now, you have it in Matthew 16:15, “He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’” And he
pressed on that, you see. Another person would have said, “Ah, it doesn’t matter who I am it’s the
teaching that’s important.” But he said, “Who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter replied, ‘You are
the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona!
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.’” He obviously
talked, you know, as if the Creator of the universe was his special Father and he obviously
encouraged other people to feel that way about him, and he put himself above his teaching. And you
know, he claimed attributes for himself that only God has. He claimed attributes of eternity for
himself that only God has. He talked about seeing himself as seeing God. He said, “If you’ve seen

me you’ve seen my Father.” He said, “If you’ve received me you’ve received my Father.”

Now loved ones, this obscure pheasant was born in Bethlehem 1981 years ago, claimed that he was the
Son of the Creator of the universe and he talked as if he were. Now that’s the first reason I think
why you have to consider the possibility that he was. Because I think the next step is that many of
us say, “Well, the psych wards are full of such people.” The psych wards are full of people who are
making all kinds of claims like that and the world has been full of gurus down through the centuries
who have tried to draw everybody’s attention to them so there’s nothing different about that.

That’s why loved ones, I think you have to examine the claims and you have to determine, “Alright,
was this man a liar? Did he know that he was not divine? Did he know that he was not the only
begotten Son of the Maker of the universe, but he deliberately deceived all of us in order to lend
authority to his teaching?” You have to decide, you know, is that it? Was he a con man who lied to
the whole world about himself?

Now, do you see the logical difficulty you get into? Do you see the irrational approach you get
into if you believe that? There is not one philosopher in the world who does not say that this
Jesus was not the greatest ethical teacher in the world. There’s not one person. Huxley – British
cynic that he is, he admitted, “Yes, this was the greatest ethical teacher in the world.” Mohammad,
other great teachers will say, “Yes, Jesus is the greatest ethical teacher in the world.”

Loved ones, how can he be the greatest ethical teacher in the world if on the central point of his
teaching his own identity he lied? You cannot respect his ethical teaching at all points and then
say, “Yeah, but he lied about the central most important point that he taught us.” You cannot do
it. It’s an illogical impossibility. You either have to say, “If he lied about that then all the
rest is untrue and does not work in this life,” or you have to say, “All the rest is higher than any
other man who ever taught us.” And therefore, we have to believe if he had such wisdom as that, as
produced that kind of ethical teaching, then he must be honest on the central point of his teaching
his own identity as the Son of the Maker of the universe.

In other words, it’s very hard to believe that he is a liar. Was he a lunatic? Was he a
megalomaniac? Was he another Hitler, or another Moon with that unification church? Was he another
man who wanted to make himself better than everybody else? Was he in fact, insane? And it’s really
hard to believe it, isn’t it? His life is a pattern of sanity. His life has none of the
abnormality or imbalance that schizophrenics would have, or that megalomaniacs would have. In fact,
C. S. Lewis you remember, points out that no one has been able to explain how a megalomaniac could
produce teaching that is so sublime, and so true, and so profound.

His life just isn’t that of a lunatics. And really loved ones, if he is not a lunatic, and he is
not a liar, you really have very little left. You have to determine is this man really the Son of
God? He is really what he says he is? I think some people will say, “Oh, well he’s a legend.” But
for a legend to have developed you need time. Some people will say, “Ah yeah, what we have in the
New Testament is not really Jesus as he existed. That’s Jesus touched up with a lot of
exaggerations that his leaders added in order to lend authority to their position.” But loved ones,
for a legend to develop you need time. Time for all the people to die who were alive during that
man’s lifetime. Otherwise, if you begin to write exaggerations about him they just begin to
contradict those exaggerations and say, “It’s not true. We were alive then.”

Now of course, the time was not available. There is not a great gap of time between the time that

Jesus lived and the first writings we have about him. Galatians was written in 48 AD. That’s 18
years after Jesus died. There must have been many eyewitnesses alive who knew Jesus who read these
accounts of his life and could simply say they’re true or they’re untrue. Loved ones, really all
you’re left with is that this man really was the Son of the Maker of the universe, that that’s
really who he was. And you know, even his claims, and his talk, you can get away with claims or
talk even though we examine them this way analytically. But what you can’t get away from is his
acts. He really did have power over nature, and over sickness, and disease.

He fed 5,000 people with a few loaves and fishes. He stilled a raging storm. He made water into
wine. He raised the widow’s son. He raised the centurion’s daughter. He raised Lazarus from the
dead. He obviously had the kind of powers over the world that you would expect the one who had made
the world to have. So, his power of sickness, and over nature and disease is consistent with his
claims that he is in fact, the one by whom all these things were made. It certainly dealt with the
things around us as if he had made them. And then you know, if you examine his own character, there
is just no life that has been lived like his.

Ah, somebody puts it this way, a man called Muggeridge tries to summarize it and points out that
there has been no human being who has ever been as perfect as this man Jesus. He just is above
everybody. Mohammad’s life was torn with acts of vengeance, and fights, and strife. Old Confucius
admitted that he had many faults. This man Jesus actually stood in front of a group of people and
said, “Which of you convicts me of sin?” And nobody pointed sin out in his life, nobody said
anything.

The great saints, and sages, and mystics will all admit that the deeper we have gone the more
conscious we are of our own sin, the more conscious we are of moral failure. Loved ones, he had no
sense of moral failure. But not only that but the people that lived closest to him agreed with
that. People like Peter and John said, “Listen, there is no sin in him.” Even the centurion who
was his enemy who crucified him said, “This surely was the Son of God.” Even Pontus Pilate whose
job was to find out something wrong in order to get rid of him said, “Behold I find no fault in this
man.”

So loved ones, his own life and his claims to sinlessness were backed up and reinforced by other
people. And here is the way Muggeridge has described it. “His zeal never degenerated into passion
nor his consistency into obstinacy, nor his benevolence into weakness, nor his tenderness into
sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and unsocialability or undue
familiarity. His self-denial from moroseness. His temperance was free from austerity. He combined
childlike innocence with manly strength absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the
welfare of man. Tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin commanding
dignity with winning humility. Fearless courage with wise caution. Unyielding firmness with sweet
gentleness.” It’s the kind of human character you would try to imagine if you were trying to create
a perfect being, and that’s what this man Jesus, this obscure pheasant who was born in Bethlehem was
like.

Finally, maybe the most powerful thing is of course that many through controlled breathing while
apparently being buried alive have claimed to come alive again after being dead. There have been
many con men who have done that kind of thing. There are gurus and mystics in India today who can
give an appearance of having been dead and having come to life. Their fame of course never gets far
beyond the boundaries of their own village and if it ever comes to light in the world as a whole,
their claims are very quickly exposed by just a little bit of analysis and a little bit of

confirmation from eye witnesses.

But loved ones, this man continually repeated that he would be crucified and that on the third day
he would rise from the dead, and he did it. And there is no historic incident that is so reliably
documented as this resurrection of this man Jesus. No historical incident has been so analyzed from
a literary, and historical, and legal point of view as has his resurrection from the dead. No two
facts have been so often questioned and so often subjected to detailed criticism, and discussion,
and debate as have the twin facts of the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances. And after all
that, over 1900 years the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is still the most solid historical
incident that we have available to us from first 500 years, 1000 years of our era.

Loved ones, it doesn’t matter what way you turn on that one, you cannot get any other answer except
the resurrection is a far easier explanation of the whole event then all the explanations we can
suggest or substitute for it. You try to go that swoon theory, it falls to the ground. It’s
ridiculous to believe that he could have swooned and then could have come alive so tremendously and
powerfully alive after bleeding in a dang cold tomb for several nights, and then come so alive that
he convinced his followers and 500 people at one time that he was more alive than he had ever been
before. And was able not only to come alive but to appear in different places at great distances
from one another.

It’s just foolishness when you start arguing the Romans stole the body. If they stole the body all
they had to do was produce it to kill the Christian witness once and for all. If the disciples
stole the body then you had to have them dying for something they knew to be a lie which is an
ethical impossibility. People will die for what they think is true but they will not die for what
they know to be a lie. They will not lead their children into crucifixion for what they know to be
a lie. It doesn’t matter which way you go loved ones, you have to accept finally that the only
explanation of the resurrection is the resurrection. You can’t argue they went to the wrong tomb,
how did they all keep going to the wrong tomb day, after day, after day.

You go to the resurrection appearances and you try to apply the psychological laws of hallucinations
to them and it doesn’t work. A hallucination must be subjective. He was seen by about 500 brethren
at one time and by groups of people in the upper room. Hallucinations have to be seen by people who
want to see them. On the road to Emmaus you remember, the two men said, “And we thought that this
was he who should have redeemed Israel.” They had given up hope of him coming alive again. They
had no hope of him coming alive. They felt that bit doesn’t come true. Hallucinations have to
appear over a long, long period of time. His appearances took place over 40 days and then they
disappeared completely. You just cannot explain away the appearances on the ground of
hallucinations. The psychological laws are not similar.

Loved ones, it doesn’t matter how you go on this little pheasant who was born in Bethlehem 1981
years ago, you’re driven to the conclusion that this was really our God come here in a human body
and that if we want to know what our God is like you just look at this man Jesus and he is God. And
loved ones, that’s it really. The final proof of the existence of God is this little baby that was
born 1981 years ago in Bethlehem and that’s really what it means that the word became flesh, and
that’s how we come to believe in God. And the amazing thing is that your friends and relatives, and
your colleagues at work, and my colleagues and friends will only come to believe that there is a God
if the word again becomes flesh in your life. That’s it.

Unless God sends the Spirit of his Son into your heart so that your life reflects the beauty of this

life, your friends and colleagues are hearing words, words, words, and talk they know is cheap and
they listen to it day in and day out. Loved ones, unless the word becomes flesh in you all you give
to your friends and your relatives is talk. And of course, what God wants this Christmas is for his
Son to be born in you in a fuller way. There isn’t one of us loved ones, there isn’t one of us here
who does not need Jesus more alive in us this coming year than he was last year. You cannot live on
the degree to which he was alive in you last year this next year. God requires that you allow his
Son to be fully formed in you in a fuller and more complete way. The only way it can happen is if
the Holy Spirit conceives this Jesus in you as he conceived him in Mary. And if you say to me,
“Well, what do we do?” Loved ones, there’s just one condition, you say what Mary said, “Be it unto
me according to thy word.”

You say to God this morning, “Lord God, I do want my relatives, I do want my friends, I do want my
colleagues to have the same opportunity of seeing that there is a God like you as I have had. So
Lord, look at my life, will you change it as you want and I’m willing for you to change it, and I’m
willing to change it myself as you want so that Jesus can be born in me.” Now loved ones, look the
problem is they see you. That’s it. They see you and me with all our inconsistencies, and all our
bluff, and all our hypocrisy, and all our dishonesty, they see us and they hear us talking this big
talk about God and how we’re Christians, and how we believe in God and love ones, they are no more
fools than we are.

They just say, “Haw-hum,” and they’re polite to you, you know they’re nice to you and you’re their
friend and they don’t want to break up a friendship so they’re polite to you. but loved ones, they
will not believe until they see your life like Jesus’ life. And the only way that will take place
is if you say to him, “Be it unto me Lord, according to your word. Whatever you want to do with my
life Lord, here it is do it. However you want to change it, you want me to stop being dishonest in
business Lord, that’s it I’ve finished with that. Jesus come in and be your own honest self in my
business life. You want me to stop being dishonest and lying at school in order to establish my
reputation? Lord, I’m finished with it. You come in and be your own honest pure self so that they
can see God. You want me to stop sidestepping on income tax? Alright Lord, I’ll stop it. You come
in and be your own honest self.”

Loved ones, the world is dying for a side of Jesus and each one of us here in this auditorium is
able to give them that side. But it does mean that you have to be willing for Jesus to come in and
be himself in you and let him change your life. I really just pray – I really – well, the words
aren’t strong enough you know. I cannot tell you how strongly I pray and wish that you would let
Jesus be formed in you. Really. And just let your life be run and ruled by God the way he wants so
that Jesus could appear in you. That’s what the miserable old word needs, you know. Let’s pray.

Dear Father, we know this in our hearts but Lord, somehow Satan or somebody has deceived us into
thinking that well, we can never be a carrier of Jesus. So Lord, many of us have settled for less,
settled for doing our best. Lord, we recognize that doing our best has given us an escape, we’ve
been able just to do as much as we wanted, but Lord, we see that it’s just a hypocritical mess and
our friends, and our colleagues at work and at school have failed to believe in God because they
can’t believe in us because they know our Father, that if we really believed that Jesus was you we
would let him live in our lives and take over our lives. We’d change our ways.

Father, we would ask you as we come to the end of this year to show us what it means for us to say,
“Be it unto me according to your word.” And Lord, we would ask that during this Christmas week you
would show us what it means or us to have Jesus born in us. Lord, we want our friends, and our

colleagues, and our relatives to be able to see him clearly, no longer shrouded with our miserable
halfhearted lives but see him clear, and clean, and pure, and plain. So Lord Jesus, we want to deal
with you this week and we want to ask you on Christmas morning to be born in us and Lord, we are
willing on that day to let all the miserable coating of dishonesty, and lying, and hypocrisy, and
selfishness fall away from us so that you can be seen as you really are in all your beauty. And a
word may become flesh in our lives for your Glory. Amen.

Is Jesus Your Personal Savior?

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

The most important thing we can do for each other this morning is to help each other to get into
heaven. Really, that’s it. Everything else we do for each other is kind of temporary but the most
important thing is that you yourself would get to heaven and so I’d like to spend the half hour
trying to help you get to heaven. You might say, “Well, that’s silly the way you describe God it’s
pretty obvious that he’s loving and he wants us all to get to heaven, and we’re all going to go to
heaven. It seems to me that there’s no reason why any of us would go anywhere else. I mean, it’s
pretty obvious that that old hellfire and brimstone stuff is old fashion religion of yesteryear and
so we’re all going to go to heaven anyway so really you have no great problem this morning.”

Well loved ones, there is a problem because the most perfect purist man that ever lived, the one who
has given us the most detailed information about our Creator that we human beings possess, he said
some things that just blow away that lovey dovey universalist idea that we’re all going to end up in
heaven any way, whatever we do in this life. And it’s very important for us to see that.

The dear man who gave us the best information that we have about the beyond because he, in fact,
went into the beyond and came back and told us, “It’s what I say. It’s all that I told you about my
Father.” He made it very plain that there is a place other than heaven and it’s important for us to
see it, you know, just to be honest and intellectually consistent this morning.

So, would you look at Matthew 5:22? Matthew 5:22, they’re words of course of Jesus because he is
the man that I mentioned. Matthew 5:22, “But I say to you that every one who is angry with his
brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and
whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.” And I know we have a tendency to
say, “But that was Jesus speaking to the Jews, you know, accommodating himself to the ideas that
were then prevalent among them, but he himself always spoke of love and kindness and he did not
normally use that kind of language.

Well loved ones, look at what Mark reported in his ninth chapter. Just if you flick over a few
pages to Mark 9:43 Mark 9:43, “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you
to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot
causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be
thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter
the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.”

Now, I don’t know if you’re like me but it was popular in our seminary to say, “Well, hell you know,
it’s the word Johanna, it really means a garbage dumb of some kind, and really it kind of means a
kind of purgatory maybe at the worst, you know. A place where you’ll go and you’ll be purged of the
sin that’s in you and then it will come to an end and then we’ll all end up in heaven. And some of
us go through our purgatory here on earth and some of us have to go through it then.” Well brothers
and sisters, it’s just hard you know. Greek scholar, Hebrew scholar, it doesn’t matter what you
are, you can’t get around those words in Mark 9:48. Mark 9:48, “Where their worm does not die, and
the fire is not quenched.” Hell, “Where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

Actually, we did our best, we modern scholars to get rid of that because you could look at the
footnote N at the bottom of the RSV, and do you see it’s the third footnote down there N, “Verses 44

and 46 which are identical with Verse 48 are omitted by the best ancient authorities.” So actually,
King James Version still has 44 and 46, but we got rid of two of them, but you couldn’t get rid of
48 because 44 and 46 are exactly the same as 48, “Where their worm does not die, and the fire is not
quenched.”

So brothers and sisters, you know, let’s keep away from the old general philosophizing, “Well, that
isn’t my God, you know. That isn’t a God I know.” Forget it, the God you know is the God that’s
presented here. There’s nowhere else to get a God except from the Bible and from Jesus. And the
fact is, that our dear Savior who showed such love to the woman caught in adultery said, “Listen,
it’s better to cut your hands off than to have two hands to go into hell where the worm does not die
and the fire is not quenched.” And loved ones, we need to see that, you know.

We need to see that hell is not really something that God has created, it’s something that we have
created. And this may all sound very strange to us modernists, but do you know that the
existentialists John Paul Sartre, one of the most modern thinkers that we have had, he says exactly
the same thing. Would you believe it? From his virtually agnostic atheistic position he says
exactly the same thing. He says that there is a hell that goes on forever, and ever. You know the
existentialists philosophy that Sartre espoused. He said, “What you do day-by-day declares what you
are.” He put it this way, he said, “You authentic yourself by your experience.”

In other words, every time you say a word, every time you do an act, you declare who you are.
Moreover, you become more what you are. So every time you do something the existentialists say you
become more what you really are. And of course Sartre said that the more you do those things and
the more you say those things, the more you become a character out of whom there is no exit. And so
he wrote a play which he called no exit where he described what he thought eternity was going to be.
And he put in one room, those of you who know the play will remember it, he put in one room a
lesbian, a card, and a murderer. And they talked for a while and wondered where the torturers were
and laughed and joked and then as they began to bicker, and argue, and criticize one another, and
tease one another, and joke with one another, and kept on and on, and began to fornicate, and began
to criticizes, they gradually realized that they were each other’s torturers. And then they looked
up at the electric light bulb, one light bulb in the room and they suddenly realized that it would
never go off. It would never go out. And they were stuck in that room with these other two people
forever and there was no relief. They would continue being what they had become in this life.

There’s an almost nightmarish lines in it you know, the man says, he’s speaking to the person who
brought them here, “He says, your eyelids, we move ours up and down, blinking we call it. It’s like
a small black shutter that clicks down and makes a break. Everything goes black, one’s eyes are
moistened. You can’t imagine how restful refreshing it is 4,000 little rests per hour, 4,000 little
respites, just think. So that’s the idea and to live without eyelids. “Don’t act a fool, you know
what I mean, no eyelids no sleep. It follows doesn’t it? I shall never sleep again. But then how
shall I endure my own company? Try to understand, you see, I’m fond of teasing, it’s a second
nature with me and I’m used to teasing myself, plaguing myself if you prefer. I don’t tease nicely
but I can’t go on doing that without a break. Down there I had my nights, I slept, I always had
good nights by way of compensation I suppose, and happy little dreams. There was a green field,
just an ordinary field, I used to stroll in it. Is it daytime now?” “Can’t you see the lights are
on?” “Ah yes, I’ve got it it’s your daytime. And outside?” “Outside?” “Damn it you know what I
mean beyond that wall there’s a passage, and at the end of the passage there’s more rooms, more
passages and stairs.” “And what lays beyond them?” “That’s all.”

But it is interesting isn’t it that an agnostic existentialist would actually present the same
picture of hell as something that goes on forever, and ever as Jesus has presented to us in this
book. And loved ones, that’s it hell is not something created by some terrible cruel God. Hell is
simply a dear Father giving us free will and allowing us to choose what we want, and giving us even
breath, and heartbeat, and blood circulation, and food to eat, and continuing to reign his reign
upon us and give us the sunshine even as we exercise our free wills to curse him, and to oppose him,
and to destroy him. And hell is a dear Father giving us the free will to continue to choose this,
to decide that, until we gradually become the kind of character and person we want to become. And
then, at that point the Bible says, “Then comes the judgment. Death and after that the judgment.”

Then God does take it as his right to separate those of us who have lived for ourselves and not for
him throughout our lives from those of us who have chosen to live for him and not for ourselves.
Only at that point does God separate the one from the other. But we determine what we are
day-by-day. And so it’s happening with us, you know, here. It’s happening with you. Every day
you’re making decisions, decision-by-decision, choice-by-choice, word-by-word, thought-by-thought,
act-by-act, you’re becoming a certain kind of person out of whom there is no exit. And you will
live with that person forever, and ever, and ever. And you may say, “Well, it’s unthinkable. It’s
nightmarish. But I know human nature well enough to realize that we’re a self-deceiving crew ad I
may think I’m alright and yet I may be doing the very thing you say. I may becoming a monster and I
don’t realize it because we are a self-deceiving group and how do I know? How can I know which way
I am going?”

Well loved ones, Jesus did give us the right story on that. He did tell us, he told us what way we
were going, and he explained it to his disciples and Paul who was one of his disciples or his
apostles you remember, wrote it in a letter to people at Rome and he said this, “All of us, every
one of us, all of us, have sinned. Every one of us so stop philosophizing, stop rationalizing, stop
wondering whether you’re going the right way or not. At this point in such a relativistic business
as judging where you are in regard to God, what you need is an object of judgment of some kind.”
And Jesus said that. Every one of us here in this room have sinned.

Not every one of us are criminals. Many of us haven’t committed any crimes. Not every one of us
are immoral. Many of us are not immoral. Not every one of us have filled our lives with vices.
Many of us have few vices, no crimes, very few immoralities. But what Jesus is saying is every one
of us have sinned. That is in the normal sense of the word sinned. James 4:17 says, “Whosoever
knows what is right to do and fails to do it for him it is sin.” That is sin. And Jesus says every
one of us in this room has known what was right to do at some point in our lives and has not done
it. And you see the first time you or I ever did that we were setting ourselves up against God.

See, I know the way you think, you think the way I think. I think, “Wait a minute, one little
thing, doing one little thing wrong, that’s not bad. Why if I do one little thing that I know is
wrong, that’s not a biggie. All of us are like that, we’re all in the same boat. We all do lots of
things that are wrong.” But do you see that’s the blindness of sin? These three dear people ended
up in this room with the electric light bulb in it and they couldn’t understand why they got there.
They’d never done anything wrong they thought. And that’s the subtlety of sin, it is a blinding
thing loved ones.

It makes us feel, “It’s no big thing to do once what you know is wrong. It’s no big thing.” But
that sin comes in and it blinds you, and it prevents you from seeing that when you choose that one
little thing that you knew God didn’t want you to do, you actually elevated your will above his.

You did loved ones, you know. There’s no way around that. I mean you and I can play it down and
make it a small thing, but you know that’s what we did. We actually said, “My will is more
important to me at this time than the will of the maker of the whole universe.” We elevated our
judgment above his. We did. I mean, actually isn’t it true to say we said we are going to be God
in this situation. We’re going to decide this is right for us. And at that moment, a whole vast
ocean of greyness and mist came between you and your God. That’s it.

You husbands and wives, or you know mums and dads, or sons and daughter, you know how at home you
suddenly discover after weeks, and months, that you don’t even know the other person, you know that?
You know how it starts off with a little niggle things and you just get a little distant, a little
more distant, a little more distant, and whether it’s your dad, or your mum, or your husband, or
your wife, or your son, or your daughter, suddenly you get down the line about six months or a year
and you realize, “I’m miles from this person. I don’t even know the way they think. I don’t know
the way they think. I don’t even feel what they are feeling.” And the other person is saying to
you, “But you don’t understand me. You don’t know what I am thinking. You don’t feel the way I
feel.” And suddenly you realize, “Yeah, that’s right I don’t. Yeah, we are we’re miles apart. I
don’t know what’s happened but we are.”

Now that’s what it is loved ones. That’s the little sin, the little doing something wrong, that
begins the huge separation that begins to open between you and God. That’s why Jesus said through
Paul, “The wages of sin is death,” you see. Not kind of something, you do something and the great
God clunks you and kills you. Not that. But as you disagree with him, as you do what you think
again, and again, little decision by little decision, little choice by little choice, gradually
death comes about and great separation opens up between you and your God until you no longer feel
with his heart. You no longer sense the pain that you’re inflicting on him by your running your own
life whatever way you want.

Until you get more and more insensitive to him to the point where you can no longer sense his
presence in your life at all and that’s the beginning of hell. That’s the beginning of hell in your
life. And whether it’s Sartre or whether it’s Jesus Christ, what you are is what you will be. You
will continue to be that forever, and ever, and ever. So loved ones, it applies, you know, if you
have an unclean mind you’ll live in that garbage for the rest of eternity. If you have a resentful
heart that resents people, and criticizes people, you’ll live in that for the rest of eternity.
You’ll live in that. If you are one who is always looking out for yourself, whatever it costs
anybody else, that’s what you will be for the rest of eternity. And so will all the other people
around you be doing the same thing.

Now that’s our situation, you see. The worse thing about sins are not the sins, the outward acts,
and the words, and the thoughts, the worse thing about the sins is the sin inside. That’s the
plague. That’s the plague. That emptiness in your heart, that feeling I can’t quite get through to
God, I can’t quite know where he is, I can’t sense what he wants. That’s the plague, that’s the
tragedy. The sins, you can sometimes stop them, you can sometimes avoid them but the sin is the
personality that you are becoming day-by-day that cannot change.

Now the gospel is that God took your personality as it is with all those unchangeable traits of
yours and asked his Son to take it through the experience of hell and the destruction of hell. And
when he came out the other side, because of his own righteousness, God asked him to recreate you
fresh and new. And that’s what was done and that’s the only way to be changed, and that’s the only
way to heaven. And it’s all meaningless to you if you have never thanked Jesus for that. He is

your personal Savior, in that you contributed something to the pain and agony of hell in his heart
that none of the rest of us did.

Some of that agony that he bore was for you, wasn’t for me, wasn’t for any the rest of us in the
room. There’s something of his death that you contributed pain to that none of the rest of us did.
There’s a piece of his sin that you bore that he didn’t bear for any of the rest of us. He is your
personal Savior but it’s meaningless and you’ll be untouched by it, and you’ll go to hell unless you
thank him personally for what he has done for you. That’s it.

Unless you go to him this morning and say, “Jesus, I have things in my life that will take me into
hell in this life and hell hereafter. Lord, thank you that you bore these things for me. I confess
them, I want rid of them Lord.” And you confess those sins whatever they are. And then you turn to
him and well, I needn’t tell you, what do you tell you don’t need instruction you either believe
this, if you believe it you know what to do. You know there’s only one thing you can say to him,
“Jesus that’s what I would have had to go through except I wouldn’t have come out the other side.
I’d be living forever in a hell burning against myself, and selfishness, and resentment. Lord
Jesus, thank you. I turn from this mess. I turn from it this day and I turn to you and Jesus, I
ask you to come in and now live your life again inside me.”

That’s how you make him your personal Savior, you see. Because the moment you acknowledge that he
has done what he has done then there’s a bridge built between you and he begins to be able to get
through to you, and you begin to receive words from beyond, and messages from your God. And you
begin slowly to build again a sensitive relationship between you and your dear Creator that was his
intention for you from the beginning.

So I’d just ask you, is Jesus your personal Savior? Is Jesus your personal Savior? Have you
acknowledged him personally? He already knows you intimately because he has born every one of your
sins in his own heart and born the pain for them. Have you acknowledged him. Have you made a
friendship with Jesus? That’s what it means loved ones, to be a Christian. It’s a personal
relationship with Jesus who has born the unbearable for you. Let us pray.

Dear Jesus, we would thank you for going to hell for us. And Jesus, we see it goes beyond us here
if we don’t thank you and confess to you the things that we know you died for in our lives. Savior,
we’d confess them to you personally and we’d repent of them personally to you. Jesus, we’re sorry
that we caused your death. We’re sorry that the dirt, and the monstrosity that we have created
within ourselves brought about your agony and pain. Jesus, we apologize and we repent. And Jesus
Christ, we ask you now to acknowledge us as we acknowledge you and Jesus, will you take over our
lives now?

Give us your spirit, and enable us now to live free from this personality that we have been forming
down through the years. Jesus, we believe that it was changed, we believe that you destroyed it in
yourself, and Savior, we ask you now to come into our hearts and to take over our lives, and to live
your life in us from this day forward so that we may live no longer for ourselves, but for you and
for our dear Father in heaven. And oh Lord God, we ask you to save us from the hell that we have
created and that we have made necessary by all of our self deification.

Savior, we thank you, thank you, thank you that there is heaven and thank you that we can be there
today with you and we can live there forever. Thank you Lord. The grace of our Lord Jesus, and the
love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

Helps and Hindrances to the Spirit’s Witness

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Loved ones, would you turn in the Bible to Revelation 3:20? Most of us know these words they’ve
been repeated often since we were children to us. Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and
knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he
with me.” And most of us know that verse from at least Billy Graham evangelistic crusades and
probably most of us from hearing it at some of evangelistic service in our home church.

We all know that it’s the verse that’s quoted to indicate that God is willing to come into your
heart, and to take over your life, and to give you a sense of his favor and his love in your own
personal heart. And you probably, like me, have felt, “That’s what I need. That’s what I need.
Religion, I believe in it, I believe in Christianity, I believe in the sense of going to church, and
I believe in this Bible, but it isn’t real to me inside. It isn’t warm and real in my own heart,
and I don’t know how to get it real.” And maybe you’ve often come up Evangelistic Crusades or
Evangelistic services and you’ve repeated those words even to yourself, “Lord I know that you’re
saying to me, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door I
will come in to him, and eat with him, and him with me.’” And then you have gone through all kinds
of contortions, to try to open the door of your heart.

And I don’t know what you’ve gone through, but I know I myself went through all kinds of, what I
thought were mystical experiences. And I tried to imagine in my own mind, “The Lord Jesus, is here
in this room, he’s at this altar rail, he’s in this room were I’m speaking him and he’s right here
and he’s willing to come into my heart and all I have to do is ask him.” And I tried to imagine him
coming into my heart, and I was unable. Or, you tried singing the verses of the hymn, because you
thought, “If I can get the atmosphere of that meeting that I was at where I felt God stirring me, if
I can recapture that feeling that I had then I’ll know the warmth of God in my heart.” And yet it
has never come real for you. It has never really taken place.

And you may have actually come to this body for years and yet still it isn’t real to you. And I
would appeal to two groups of you actually, one of you who might be very intellectual and might have
to work out everything in the mind. And you might be in the position where saying, “It’s just not
for me, that kind of closeness that other people talk about. I happen to be more cold blooded than
other people. I’m just coldly intellectual, I think things through so I can expect the reality of
Jesus in my life that other people have, who aren’t quit as intellectual.”

Indeed, if you’re like some of us you might think actually it’s rather embarrassing to have anything
to emotional or warm inside and you might have decided, “I am an intellectual Christian. That’s
what I am. No, I don’t feel God particularly close to me, I don’t feel very great warmth of his
presence in my life, I don’t feel he is personally showing his favor to me, but I believe all of the
things that this book says, and I believe that he is not against me.” And you might be in that
position of many of us who are intellectuals, where we feel, “Well what we have is enough.
Admittedly it doesn’t seem to be exactly what other people have, who are real with God but it seems
to be enough.”

I speak also to those of you who are emotional, and you think to yourself, “Well, if I can only get
an emotional experience of Jesus in my heart that’s what I need.” And so you go from church, to
church, to church, to atmosphere, to atmosphere, trying to get that emotional experience that will

convince you that God is in your heart, that the Savior has come in to take over your life, and to
dwell there.

Brothers and sisters, none of that is right. None of that is right. None of those things are
right. That’s not where Jesus coming into your heart is at, at all. It has nothing to do with that
stuff, it has nothing to do with your emotionalism, nothing to do with your intellectualism. It has
nothing to do with mystical experience, it’s nothing to do with kind of a momentary experience, it
isn’t loved ones. It’s on a far more down to earth level than that, and the reality that loved ones
feel of Jesus in there heart, does not come from an emotional experience, or from an intellectual
experience, or from a mystical experience, it comes from a spiritual experience. And a spiritual
experience is real and down to earth, and plan, and simple. And it’s the one that the dear old Jew,
old [Wayne Swartz 5:50], he’s a dear fella, you’d love him, you know, it was so enjoyable meeting
him in Mexico. He’s a New Yorker, and just a happy old New York Jew, and just so outgoing, and so
happy, and so wears his heart on his sleeve. And he is the dearest guy, and I hope he’ll come up
someday and spend some time with us here.

It where Wayne Schwartz’s experience is, that’s it. That’s it. My wife is very different from
Wayne Schwartz, and yet she came through the same experience. I’m very different from Wayne
Schwartz, I came through the same experience. Anybody who comes to the point where they’re asking
Jesus in their heart, finally finds out that the reason they can’t experience the witness of the
spirit, and it’s the witness of the spirit that counts, it’s not emotionalism that counts, it’s not
intellectualism that counts, it’s the witness of the spirit, the reason they don’t experience the
witness of the spirit, that Jesus has come in, is because Jesus hasn’t come in, because there’s
something in there heart that won’t let him in. And that something is very plan, loved ones.

Now I’d just ask you to look at it in that newsletter it’s on page four and old Wayne puts it so
plainly and so straight that I couldn’t put it any better, and I don’t think any of us could. It’s
page four, it’s on the right hand column, about half way up the right hand column on page four, you
see where he says, “So Jews could and should believe in Jesus”, that page. “So Jews could and
should believe in Jesus. The only thing I needed to see then was another Jewish Christian, to
really see that everything was true. I was then convicted as far I could be. One night it finally
happened, I met a girl from the states who was Jewish, as I was, and she taught me about how 11
years ago she gave her life to Jesus. That was all I needed. That night, I asked the Lord to come
into my life. I’m not exactly sure what I thought would happen, but I knew that nothing did
happen.” And that’s what’s happened with a lot of us.

“I’m not sure what would happen but I knew that nothing did happen. I was sleeping at about five or
six AM and heard a voice telling me that if I would stop sinning I would have what I wanted.”
That’s it. “If I would stop sinning I would have what I wanted. It was so loud, so clear that it
woke me up.” Finally it became clear as to why nothing happened that first time I invited him in,
I was still planning on sinning.” Wayne used to cruise the beaches and pick up the girls, so he was
trying to continue the old life and yet ask Jesus in.

“It happened the first time I invited him in I was still planning on sinning. You can’t fool God so
what I was going to do was sin. What I wanted was Jesus. Before I had repented but not with a
heart ready to leave sin behind and God knew it. Very shortly after I made my decision to leave sin
behind and I prayed once again and this time boom, I received the Lord with the Spirit and all his
benefits and fruits: joy; peace; patience; love; and everything else that goes with it, Galatians
5:22. For the first time in my life I had real peace. Praise the Lord, I was now a reborn Christian

Jew. This happened on June 12, 1982 and now three years later I’m still amazed at the storehouse of
blessings and promises I’ve inherited, along with how many people are in need of Jesus to free
them.”

That’s it loved ones. That’s it. It’s not complex at all, it isn’t. It’s not a complicated thing
at all. If you’ve asked Jesus to come into your heart and nothing has happened, it’s only for one
reason. It’s not because you’re not emotional enough, it’s not because you’re not intellectual
enough, it’s not because you’re not mystical enough. It’s because you still plan on sinning. That
is it. God has convicted your heart about something that you should stop doing or something that
you should start doing and you are planning on going on doing what he has forbidden, or you’re
planning on going on doing what he has told you not to do. That’s it, you know.

I know it sounds hideous and I was offended by the whole thing. I felt I was a kind of intellectual
sophisticate in the university and I could not believe that God would be so ridiculous as to tie his
presence in my life to something as practical and down to earth as stopping being impatient with my
mother, or stopping being irritable, or stopping swearing. But God is. God is disgustingly down to
earth. God simply says to you, “Your sins made my Son’s death necessary. Your sins killed my Son.
I cannot give you my Son in your heart if you are still involved in putting names in his hands and a
spear in his side. That you have to stop. You cannot please the blood of Jesus and shed the blood
of Jesus at the same time.” That’s it loved ones.

In other words, you see what you’re doing you’re involved in a spiritual impossibility. It’s a
spiritual impossibility. You can’t ask the Savior from sin to come into your life and you continue
to practice sin. That’s it. So if you want Jesus in your heart, and you want God to be real in
your life, stop the sins that God has told you are in your life. That’s it. That’s it really. I
mean, you must have been – that hits anybody, it’s so simple and plain and the dear guy puts it in
such an unsophisticated way. He says, “I’m not sure what I thought would happen but I know nothing
did happen.”

He was a Jew, he knew nothing about all the stuff we had been brought up with for years, but he did
what we said he should do and nothing happened. God is faithful. God is faithful. God won’t let
anyone be deceived. And then God spoke to him and told him he had to stop sinning and when he
stopped sinning – he only had to plan to stop sinning. He only had to determine not to sin and the
whole thing became real in a moment. That’s it.

You know, he didn’t – Wayne Swartz hasn’t been at any evangelistic campaigns, he doesn’t know
anything about all the stuff we go through. He just knows that God is faithful, if you stop sinning
Jesus really does come into your heart. If you don’t stop sinning, you can ask him into your heart
but you don’t experience anything real, you just experience an emotional thing, or a reaffirmation
of your life.

Now brothers and sisters, I’d just make no apology for sharing that again. I mean, it doesn’t seem
to matter how long we are on the journey it always gets back to that. It doesn’t matter how long we
are or how saintly we all think we are, it gets back to the matter of stop sinning, and immediately
boom there comes a presence of God into your life that you could not believe. And it’s the same
with the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes in and fills you when you get rid of
the things that God has shown you are there.

So brothers and sisters I’d encourage you on this Father’s day, this first Sunday on campus in ’85,

if you have tried it before and it’s been kind of disappointing, or you’ve tried it before and it
doesn’t seem to have worked, would you examine your own life and I’d ask you is there any sin there
that you’re planning on continuing? And I’m saying to you will you stop it now? Will you just plan
not ever more to sin that sin. And if you’ll be real with your God he’ll be real with you.

Now, sooner or later you’ll have to be real with him. Sooner or later you will meet him and he will
expose those sins to you and to the whole world but then there will be no forgiveness possible. So,
you have to do it sooner or later. It’s just now you can do it to salvation. Then you will do it
to eternal damnation. So loved ones, will you do it now, will you stop it now whatever it is? Or,
whatever it is he’s been asking you to start, will you start it now? Will you correct the thing
now, will you change your life to align it with God’s will for you and he will immediately give the
witness of your spirit in his heart and you’re spirit and you’ll know God is there. You’ll know
he’s there. You will, you’ll know he’s there.

You know, it’s not organized at all I didn’t know I was going to say these things I thought I was
going to preach to you an ordinary sermon and so there’s no communion and there’s no place for you
to kneel. You should come, you should do whatever needs to be done. You should come up and you
should kneel here, you can kneel here you know, and you should make your commitment to God. You
should. If you have tried before and it hasn’t worked and you see now the very sin that you know
you’ve to forsake, or you see the very thing that you’ve to do, you should come up now and just
repent of it to God and then just go back to your seat and trust him for the witness of the Spirit
which he will give to you just when he decides is best for you. But we should do it, you know.

Let’s just bow in prayer and we can just keep singing that Search me – Oh God…. and then we’ll sing
it maybe four or five times and then we’ll just close.

The Simple Gospel

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

For about five years we’ve been studying God’s explanation of reality in Romans and we really do it
in great detail because we do about a verse, and sometimes just half a verse every Sunday. And as
with all large jobs like that, that are being covered in such detail, it’s good at times to kind of
stand back and look at it from a distance. And you know, when you’re painting the old house it’s
good to stand back and just see how it all looks, and to see the thing again in perspective. And so
loved ones, every three, four months, just as Jesus guides me I feel it’s important for us to stand
back and just break for a while from the detailed study and look at the whole truth just once. And
just look at the plain simple gospel from a distance.

It’s good I think, for those of us who are Christians because it just enables us to see the wood and
not look at all the trees. And it enables us to realize again why we have any relationship with the
Creator of the universe at all. And it’s good for those of you who are not Christians yet, or who
don’t have a real alive relationship with God because it enables you to know what to do. So that’s
what I’d just like to do this morning, just preach a simple gospel. And you all know the verses, I
just want to comment on them and let Jesus make them real to us.

The first step in the gospel is bad news. Gospel is two Anglo-Saxon words god and spell and that’s
where they got the title of that musical Godspell. It means good news. But the first part of the
gospel is bad news. Unless you, as you sit there, are willing to identify yourself with the bad
news you’ll never enter into any relationship with God. Now loved ones, the bad news is this, it’s
Romans 3:23, all of us here in this auditorium, all of us have sinned. It’s just so easy for you to
sit there, and me to stand here and say, “Yeah, that’s right. That is right for that. Oh, I hope
there’s somebody here this morning that needs to hear that. I just hope there is. That girl beside
me, she looks as if she needs to hear it.” And then if we’re over 50, “That guy there with all that
hair in front of me, he looks as if he needs to hear it.” And isn’t it – loved ones, it is wild but
we are just the worse at that, aren’t we? And you know, even as we’re all laughing, we’re kind of
tending to do it ourselves too inside.

But all of us have sinned, and I think we keep getting into the mess because we think it means, all
are guilty of vices. That is a society concept, a vice. You know, gambling is vice. I’m sure
it’s almost also a sin but it’s primarily a vice. Even drunkenness, it’s regarded in our society as
a vice. Certainly, it’s a sin too. But we tend to sit here this morning and say, “Well all those
who have committed vices, they have sinned.” We can see that but it’s not that. Sin is a narrower
term in a sense and a broader term in another sense than vice. It does not mean a vice. Some of us
tend to say, “Well, Patty Hearst, or the guy who shot his mum and dad, and his sister in Anoka,
anybody who commits a crime they have committed sins. They have sinned.”

Loved ones, it’s not a crime. A crime is a legal concept, sin is a deeper thing than crime, it’s a
deeper thing than vice. And God says, as a matter of fact and truth all of us here have sinned.
All of us. He doesn’t need to prove it, he just says, “That’s a fact. I know it is. All of you
have sinned.”

What is sin? Sin is transgression of the law. Sin is disobeying God’s law. So all of us have
disobeyed his law in some way. That’s it. All of us have either committed adultery, or we have
hated someone with a murderous hate, or we have committed adultery in our hearts by lusting after

someone without expressing it in outward act. All of us have stolen, “Thou shall not steal,” if we
haven’t stolen money, or if we haven’t stolen something from someone, we’ve stolen someone’s
reputation by criticizing them and tearing them part. All of us have sinned in some way. We have
disobeyed God’s law in some way.

Now loved ones, here’s an important verse in scripture that I think you need to look at. It’s James
2:10, because a lot of us have a tendency to say, “Well, yeah I’ve sinned but not nearly as much as
other people.” Or, “I haven’t sinned as great a sin as somebody else,” and this kind of puts it
very straight, you know. James 2:10, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has
become guilty of all of it.” “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty
of all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ said also, ‘Do not kill.’ If you do not
commit adultery but do kill, you have become a transgressor of the law.” So whoever keeps the whole
law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it and that’s what God means when he says
we’ve all sinned.

We’ve all sinned as badly as Adolph Hitler. We’ve all sinned as badly as Mao Tse Tung. We’ve all
sinned as badly as the fellow that shot the Kennedys. We’ve all sinned as badly as someone who has
just murdered someone in New York City today. We have all sinned as badly as that, because loved
ones, once you sin one little sin, one little thought of envy against someone, that’s as bad as if
you’d done everything. And the reason is that sin is not so much something that you do as an
attitude that lies behind the action.

You commit adultery because you really don’t trust that the Father has everything for you that you
need and will give it to you when you need it, or you’re not willing to believe that. You steal
because you’re not willing to trust that the Father who made you is actually going to provide all
that you need in this life. So the attitude behind sinning is one of, “I’ll make it on my own.
I’ll do it my own way, I’ll do it without his aid, and I don’t need his help, and I don’t need his
life.” So loved ones, sin is most of all a declaration of independence against the dear person who
made us and that’s the heart of sin. All of us have sinned in that way.

Now loved ones, once we did that certain things followed. First of all, we felt a real sense of
being on our own in the world. We realized that we’re on our own. We had a real sense of not
knowing where we were going in the world, a real sense of purposelessness because we couldn’t figure
out who put us here or why we were put here because we’d rejected anything from him. And, we had a
tremendous sense of desolation and loneliness. And all this came because the Creator withheld from
us at that moment all that he wanted to give us: the life of his Holy Spirit; his own love; his own
favor; his own friendship; his own kindly reassurance; his own recognition of us; and his own
guidance of us in our lives, he withheld all of that and that’s why we have such a sense of
desolation.

Moreover, God at that moment determined that he would have to destroy us and the reason for that was
that once we started to live on our own we became absolute perversions of what he intended us to be.
He intended us to be loving, kind, relaxed, trusting people who received all they needed from him
and therefore could give everything that everybody else needed to them. But instead of that, we
became very needy people, very empty people. People who hadn’t enough of anything. We became
parasites who wanted to live off everybody else, who wanted to get all we needed from everybody
else. We turned into self dependent monsters, world dependent monsters, people dependent monsters.
We turned into people who would destroy his universe and at that moment he determined that he had to
destroy us. And loved ones, that’s what that Bible verse means, “The wages of sin is death.”

We keep thinking that we haven’t done too much harm to ourselves, and so we keep thinking, “Okay, so
we sinned a little, so we’ve lived a little independent of God. Alright, we can get back to him.
We can just determine now to get back to him and start trusting him.” But loved ones, you’re not
facing the fact that your personality has become permanently damaged. Instead of a personality that
would give love to others, it’s become a carnal personality that demands love from each other.

Loved ones, I’d ask you yourselves, is it not true? Do you yourself not feel again, and again, “I
wish people would love me more. I wish my wife would love me more. I wish my children would love
me more. I wish my friend would love me more.” Everybody needs love, aren’t we all crying that?
And loved ones, that’s proof positive that we have been permanently damaged in our personalities.
If you say to me, “Ah, you mean we weren’t meant to?” No, we weren’t. We were meant to be people
who did not constantly need to grab love from other people, who did not constantly need to worry
about whether the money was coming in next week or not, who did not need to worry about whether
somebody was giving us recognition or acknowledgment. No, we were meant to be free people but we
have become permanently damaged because we have rejected our Creator, and rejected the life of his
Holy Spirit and his Holy Spirit does the same for us as blood does for a brain, it keeps it
operating perfectly.

But stop the blood flowing to the brain and the person, that’s the whole discussion with Karen
Quinlin, stop the blood flowing to the brain for too long and the brain sustains permanent damage
and the only answer is some kind of transplant, some kind of complete change. You have to send the
thing back and get it completely renovated. Now loved ones, that’s what they wages of sin is death.
God knows that we have sustained permanent damage in our personalities and those personalities have
to be destroyed and recreated again. That’s another reason why he says, “The wages of sin is
death.” Not just to protect his heaven, not just to protect the rest of us from each other, but
because that’s the only way to change the permanently damaged and perverted personality that all of
us now have because we’ve sinned.

Now loved ones, that I think is the problem with many of us. It was certainly my problem. I
listened to Billy Graham and all the other fellas preaching the gospel but I could not get that bit
that something else had to be done outside me. I thought, “Okay, I now see what I have done wrong
now let me start moving back towards God. Let me will myself to obey him.” I did not realize that
the problem is by rejecting the Holy Spirit, by not having the Holy Spirit flow through us for so
many years, our personalities have become inturned, selfish, perverted, seeking significance,
security, happiness, from everybody else but God so that even our emotions are strained and are
upturned. Even our mind works in perverted ways, you know it yourself.

Two people can be talking in an office and they’re not talking about you at all, but your whole mind
can work out, “They’re talking about me. They’re talking about me.” And the mind continually finds
itself going off in wrong directions. Loved ones, all of us here this morning have a thousand
examples of minds, and emotions that are perverted, of bodies that have become habituated to wrong
actions for so long that we cannot do anything with them it seems. Now loved ones, that’s why the
wages of sin is death.

I was trying to put some sheetrock up on the ceiling of a room that we just built, and decided to
put Styrofoam for extra insulation in, and you use a stapling gun to put Styrofoam on the two by
fours. And I got the old staple gun out and every fourth time I triggered it I got a staple, you
know. And as the day went on, every 25th time I triggered it, and I decided obviously the thing is

wrong and so I looked up the instruction, but I am a born fiddler. Yeah, I love to fix things. My
wife says, “Yeah, you really fix them good.” So I started to take the thing apart, you know, and
those brothers who know a staple gun know what I was into. So I took the thing apart. Three weeks
later it was still lying on the desk, apart. I should have obeyed the guarantee, you know, that
said, “Send it back. Send it back and we’ll repair it.” But, I decided I’d fix it myself.

Loved ones, I think that’s what a lot of us are doing. I think a lot of us think we can fix it
ourselves. The wages of sin is not death, it can’t be death, there’s no need for it to be death.
The wages of sin is going to church, go to church, go to church and we’ll kind of overcome the sin,
and we’ll heap in a lot of goodness and a lot of nice thoughts, and somehow the sin will get drowned
in all the good thoughts that come. Or some of us say, “The wages of sin – bible study, bible
study. I’ll study the bible, that’ll make me right with God. I’ll study the bible.” Or some of us
say, “The wages of sin is new resolutions. I’m going to resolve more. I’m going to exercise my
will more. That’s the wages of sin, that’s what sin is due.”

Loved ones, sin is due death. That’s the only thing that will deal with sin. That’s the only thing
that will deal with our poor old broken perverted personalities. The wages of sin is death. And
really, if you’d just grasp that loved ones, it would give you such deliverance. If you’d just see
that something has to be done to your personality that you cannot do yourself. And each time you
tamper with it and tinker with it you just make it worse because the problem is independence,
self-deliverance, self-righteousness, that’s the problem and every time you try to fix that you’re
fixing it with self effort, self will, self-trying so you’re not fixing it you’re just compounding
the whole mess. So the more you try to save yourself the more of a mess you become and the more
self-righteous you are. And the truth is the wages of sin is death, you know.

That’s it. Let’s just accept that the wages of sin is death. And then the gospel is that God has
commanded his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. God has put all
of us in Jesus and destroyed us there. That’s a cosmic truth. God has taken our perverted,
selfish, inturned personalities that we can do nothing with, with all our books, and all our
psychology, and he has destroyed that in Jesus, and he is able to recreate a new personality through
the power of his Holy Spirit. Now that’s what the gospel is loved ones.

That what you need most is to be destroyed but instead of God sending another flood to destroy all
of us, he sent a supra spacial, supra temporal flood in Calvary on the cross and he destroyed your
miserable perverted personality in Jesus. That’s what it means in Hebrews when it says, “Jesus
tasted death for every man.” Instead of you and I being actually destroyed by another flood such as
that in Noah’s time, God has put us into Jesus and destroyed us there.

Loved ones, the truth of the gospel is God has done everything that is needed to make you and me
right with him. He has done everything that is needed, you don’t need to try and do things
yourselves. You don’t need to try to beat yourselves into being the kind of person God wants you to
be. You’d never do it because you’re working on a personality that can never be patched into
rightness. You don’t need patching, you don’t need a little bit of repair work, you need to be
smashed completely by the maker and recreated again. You need to be sent back to the manufacturer.
You don’t need a little tampering, or a little tinkering, or a little fixing. You need complete
renewal and loved ones, that’s what God has done in Jesus on Calvary.

That’s the beginning of the gospel. Now, how do you enter into it? Well John 1:12 goes like this,
“To as many as received him,” Jesus, “To them gave him the right to become the children of God.”

That’s how you become a Christian. That’s how that complete renovation is made real in your life,
you receive Jesus. Not accept Jesus, not accept Jesus. Oh, I could accept Carter as president but
I don’t think I could accept Harris as president. Accept, you know, accept the intellectual
concept, no. No. It means receive Jesus. It means if this dear person is prepared to suffer the
death of his own brain so that I can have his mind transplanted into mine, then it is not just a
matter of, “Well, I’ll accept that. Yeah, yeah.” It’s not.

It’s a throwing your arms around him and saying, “Thank you. Lord, thank you. Lord, I want to
receive all of you into myself. I want to take you complete. I want my life to be yours. If
you’ve done this for me, Lord Jesus, here I want everything.” It’s that receiving loved ones, it’s
not accepting, it’s not a proud intellectual acceptance of the concept that Jesus has died for you
therefore God will forgive your sins. No, it’s a whole human real red blooded receiving of this
dear Jesus because he has allowed his emotions to be destroyed and he has given them up so that they
could be transplanted into you. He has allowed his whole being to be destroyed so that you could
receive his whole being into yourselves.

So it’s as too many who have received Jesus, to them gave he the right to become children of God and
that’s how you become a Christian. If you’re sitting here this morning and you’re not sure, that’s
how loved ones. You look to this Jesus and you say, “Lord Jesus, if you died for me like that, to
allow me to be utterly destroyed and recreated then Lord, here I give my life to you. What do you
want to change in me? Do you see anything you want to change? Lord, I grasp you, I receive you
into myself. I turn from everything that is my own way and my own desires. I turn from the way I
want to live this life. Lord, it’s as good as dead anyway. Lord Jesus, I give it to you.”

Now loved ones, I’d have to be honest with you this morning and tell you that it is true that those
of us who do not receive the son of the Creator as the Creator intended him to be received, we will
die eternally. That is right, you just can’t get around it, you know. It’s right through all of
Jesus’ words, those of us who don’t receive Jesus in that way, we will die forever.

Sartre I suppose, expressed it the best way, you know, those three people you remember, one was a
homosexual and the other one was a constant burning critic, and the three of them were in a room
with one electric light bulb, and you remember about half way through the play they suddenly
realized, “This is hell. This is forever. We are going to be tearing each other apart, and
criticizing each other, and burning against each other forever.” And you remember, they tried to
get the light out, tried to put the electric light out and they couldn’t get it out. And they tried
to get out of the room and there was no exit from the room. And Sartre, you remember, called the
play No Exit because loved ones, there will be no exit from hell, and there is a hell, you know.

However sophisticated we try to be, we had better just be honest and see that there is a hell and it
is not a crude physical experience, it is a burning against each other forever. A continual
destroying of each other with our selfishness. And loved ones, there is that simply because the
Father has to preserve a place where people who want to live like him can live like him. And you
know in our present society is it pretty obvious in order to do that you have to keep others out.
And so there will be a place where God is not. There will be a place where people burn against each
other forever. But loved ones, the gospel is that God has destroyed us in Jesus already and that if
we are willing to believe that and receive this Jesus into our own lives, then we will live forever
with our Father.

So loved ones, if you haven’t ever entered into that I would say just take the step now. I’d pray

maybe for just about a minute, and you should just take the step yourself. And if you see it all,
and you say, “Well pastor yeah, I see it all and I’ve seen it for many weeks but I’ve never taken a
step.” Loved ones, you do have to take a step. This Jesus took a vital step for you – you owe it
to him to take a step towards him. So you do need to take the step. You do need to speak to him
and say, “Lord Jesus, I believe that that has happened for me and as far as I’m concerned I give you
my life to make it real here in this present time.”

So loved ones, I’d encourage you to take the step if you haven’t. And those of us who are children
of God, let’s see that wonder of it, that God has done it all and God has done what we ourselves
could never do and will never be able to do. And that’s the relief and the peace, you know. Let us
pray.

Lord Jesus, those of us who have never received you as our Savior would now look to you this
morning. And Lord Jesus, we thank you for dying and we have hardly ever realized what we could do
in response to this but Lord, we know that an intellectual accent to it is not appropriate. Lord,
we see that if you gave your whole life for us, we have nothing that we can do but give our whole
lives to you now. And thank you Lord Jesus, thank you Lord, that you allowed us to be destroyed in
you. And Lord, we now want that new personality.

Lord Jesus, we want to go back to our maker now and be destroyed and completely recreated, and born
all over again. So Lord Jesus, will you come down here now into our lives and will you make all
that real in us Lord Jesus. Lord, we ask you now to come in and we know that your words are that
you stand at the door and knock and that if any man hear your voice and open the door you will come
in and will supp with him and he with you.

Lord Jesus, we believe you that if we invite you to take over our lives you will do it. So Lord
Jesus, we would do that now, ask you to come in Savior, those of us even who know you will rejoice
to ask you to come in again more fully than before and fill us with yourself Lord. Wherever you see
anything in us that needs to go to that dear cross Lord Jesus, will you point that out and we’ll let
it go gladly and Lord, will you recreate us in your image and make us like yourself. Lord Jesus, we
receive you now as our Savior, and as our Lord and we give you the right to live in our lives
whatever kind of life you want to live Lord, even if it’s Calvary all over again, we want to go your
way because of the sacrifice you have made for us.

We thank you Lord. Thank you.

A Complete Birth

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

During the past few weeks we’ve been talking about what a real Christian is, what it means to be a
child of God, what it means to be born of the Spirit and we’ve tried to distinguish between that
kind of a person and a normally moral person who abides by Benjamin Franklin’s list of moral
principles. And we said that a Christian is more than that and a Christian is more than just a
virtuous person who has the four classic cardinal virtues in his life. And we’ve said that a
Christian is just more than a church attender, even a church attender who believes God’s word.
We’ve pointed out even the demons believe God’s word and that it is possible to accept the Christian
world view of life and yet still not be a Christian. And then you remember, we said that it doesn’t
mean that if you perform miracles you’re a Christian, and it doesn’t mean if you have many gifts
spiritually that you’re a Christian.

We’ve said that a Christian is something different from all those things. And you remember, we tied
it down with that Verse in John 1:12, that a Christian was not one who believed but one who
received, and it says, you know, “To as many as received him to them gave he the right to become
children of God.” And the Christian is not one who believes, who feels sorry and believes, but a
Christian is one who repents and receives the Spirit of Jesus into him.

Then you remember, we talked a little bit about how you distinguish a real Christian from those
other people. How you distinguish a real Christian from a moral person. How you distinguish a real
Christian from a virtuous person. How you distinguish a real Christian from somebody that just has
an experience of many spiritual revelations and gifts. And you remember, we went back to that hard
verse that determined who were Christians in the first century and maybe you should look at it, it’s
just a short verse. And maybe you should make sure that it’s in your Bible as well as mine and it’s
1 John 3:9 and in the first century they had no question who the Christians were.

The plagues hit them you remember, in the time of Maximinus Daza and the Christians were the ones
who stayed behind to lift up their dead despite the danger to their own lives. The whole heathen
world saw that the Christians were the people who lived like Christians and it’s 1 John 3:9, “No one
born of God commits sin.” And that’s how you know a Christian, a Christian doesn’t sin. That’s it.
You know a Christian because a Christian doesn’t sin and you know that we tried to distinguish
between this and sinless perfection.

A lot of people say, “Oh, that sinless perfection. That means that a Christian never makes a
mistake.” No, a mistake is not sin. Sin is what you remember, James 4:17 says sin is, sin is
knowing what is right to do and failing to do it. For that person that is sin. And so sin is not
just making mistakes. Many people say, “Ah yes, a Christian is one who never makes mistakes, never
unintentionally deviates from absolute light, never does anything wrong whether he knows it or not,
never has excessive emotion at times, never falls back through weariness of the body.”

Now loved ones, do you see that we cannot be perfect in those ways. We have imperfect minds, we
have unbalanced emotions, we have weakened bodies, we are bound to make mistakes. We are bound to
offend people without really intending to offend them. We are bound, at times, to do things that
God in his infinite wisdom would not do if he were in our place. But do you see that that is not
sin, that is a sense of our own creaturliness, that there is a great deal of God’s perfection to
enter into that he has not revealed to us yet.

So a sin is not a matter of absolute perfection. A Christian is perfectly obedient, he is not
perfect. He is not free from mistakes or ignorance. He is not free from bodily weakness or
emotional excesses, but he is perfectly obedient and that’s that great difference you see. There’s
no such thing as sinless perfection taught in the Bible, but there is perfect obedience taught.

Now, what do we mean? Well, James 4:17 if you’d like to look at it because it is an important verse
for clear understanding about our position as children of God. James 4:17, “Whoever knows what is
right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” And sin is knowing that God wants you to do
something and not doing it. It’s refusing to obey the light that God has given you.

Now do you see brothers and sisters, that many of us here do things that the other would not do and
there’s no harm in that if God has not given you light on that subject yet. Some of us have already
learned that even to talk too loud at times pushes ourselves forward instead of Jesus. Some of us
have not realized that yet. God only asks you to act up to what he has revealed to you. In other
words, if you say, “Ah but brother, then is sin relative?” No it’s not. Sin is disobedience to
God’s will revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. But sin is what the Holy Spirit reveals to you as
sin in light of the 10 Commandments, the moral law of the Sophists, the Sermon on the Mount,
Christ’s own life, the Beatitudes, and the Epistles of Paul. In the light of those commandments
that are given to us by God, in the light of the Holy Spirit’s revelation of those commandments to
us, we are expected to be obedient you see.

Now, you can see that that is not a fearful walk. All you have to do be responsible to is to what
God shows you at that time and so it’s a conscience deliberate disobedience to God’s will. That is
what sin is. Now, some of us say, “Oh well then a Christian never sins, is that it? In that sense,
in that limited sense, a Christian never sins?” Loved ones, Jesus I think would answer, “Hardly
ever.” Hardly ever. A Christian hardly ever sins. It seems that is the spirit of the Bible you
know.

If you look at 1 John 2:1, that spirit I believe is shown in beautiful balance to us. It’s 1 John
2:1, “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin.” Now, that is the
position of a Christian, his normal everyday life is one of not sinning. He ought to walk free of
sin. He ought to walk in such a way that sin is alien to him and unnatural to him. Now, do you see
the second half of the verse, “But if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father.”

Now loved ones, do you see that many of us live on the second half of that verse? We live on the
basis, “Yeah, I’ve sinned today again but I have an advocate with the Father.” Well loved ones, do
you see that isn’t the spirit of the statement of scripture? The spirit of the statement of
scripture is, “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin.” That’s the
normal everyday life of a Christian, he doesn’t sin. If in an emergency situation you fall into
sin, it is an emergency and you need to cleave to Jesus, and get back to God, and make a total
surrender again of your life to him. In other words, it’ an emergency situation.

No, you don’t lose your salvation by one sin. You don’t walk in fear. You don’t walk fearful, “Ah,
a Christian doesn’t sin. I’m not going to sin.” No, you walk in joyful love. You say, “Father, I
thank you that you have given me the spirit of your Son and I am able to walk in open obedience to
you. I thank you for that and I thank you Father, that if I ever do sin Jesus is my advocate and I
cleave to him in love. But I thank you that you will enable me to walk above sin.” Now dear ones,
do you see that’s the spirit of scripture? The spirit of scripture is not that a Christian sins

habitually you see, or even that a Christian sins once a month. The spirit of scripture is a
Christina doesn’t sin, if he does sin the advocate is there but the normal state is that he doesn’t
sin.

Now, can you see the importance of getting to that point? Bertrand Russell could walk in a fair
degree of obedience, you see? Socrates, you read the life of Socrates, read the story of his death,
you know, what a glorious death that was and he knew nothing of Christ. Do you see brothers and
sisters, that many dear ones can live fairly virtuous moral lives, and many dear ones can live to a
great degree under the commandments of God, but the only person who can live obedient to God
perfectly, above sin, is one who has received the Spirit of Jesus into himself.

Now that’s the importance of seeing the level on which God wants us to walk, because any Tom, Dick,
or Harry with a fair degree of will power can walk in a certain degree of obedience. But do you see
that God’s word to us is, “If Christ is not Lord of all he is not Lord at all.” I teach English
literature during the week, no not for my sins, but I teach during the week and if I said to the
class, “Okay now, I want you to obey me,” and one little fella said, “Well sir, I’ll obey you most
times but when I want to do what I want to do I won’t obey you.” Well, I am not master of that
class, not in any sense. If he says to me, “I’ll obey you when it suits me but the times I don’t
want to obey you, there will just be odd times, there’ll just be few and far between, then I won’t
obey you I’ll do what I want then.” Then do you see dear ones, I’m in no sense master of the class?

Now, do you see that it’s the same way with Jesus? If we say to him, “Lord, I’ll obey you on most
occasions. On most occasions I’ll walk in obedience to you, but when it comes up against my own
preferences I will not obey you.” Do you see it’s a mockery to call Jesus Lord? You can call him
counselor, or servant, or helper, or even Savior, but he is not Lord of your life unless it is
absolute obedience to him.

Now, it’s at this point that many Christians have problems because many dear brothers and sisters
have really received the Spirit of Jesus into their own lives, and they are walking in victory over
sin. But there are certain times in their lives when they find another spirit manifesting itself
within them. For instance, some of them come into their room some night, and they had all the books
set out on the desk, and the roommate has just swept them all to one side and she’s at her work.
Or, you left everything organized in the room, you come back and the roommate has a whole lot of
people in the room and it’s chaos. And you know that well, the Bible itself says – you might like
to look at it just to make sure, Ephesians 4:25.

Ephesians 4:25, and this person is aware that this is necessary. Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry but do
not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” And the Christian is very aware that that kind
of anger in the sense of being angry is a controlled unselfish reaction against wrong for God’s sake
such as Jesus manifested in the temple. But that other anger, “Do not let the sun go down on your
anger,” is an uncontrolled selfish anger and that Christian knows, “Yes, I haven’t to be angry.” So
she is about to bite caustically at her roommate and she controls herself and says, “Ah, thank
goodness I didn’t say it.”

But inside there was that strong desire to cut that person apart and criticize her for throwing your
books aside. And inside in other words, there’s that feeling of discontent, and a wee bit of
feeling of guilt. You feel, “Well, I avoided outward anger but boy I felt the thing rising up
inside.” Or, you come to a place you know, where you’ve missed an assignment at school, or you’ve
missed a commitment to meet someone and you meet them the next day and you know – well, you look at

Ephesians 4:25 there, “Therefore, putting away falsehood, let every one speak the truth with his
neighbor, for we are members one of another.” And you come to the professor and you say, “Well
listen, I didn’t do it. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.” Or, you make the apology to the person and you
suffer the damage to your reputation. But underneath you find this almost irresistible desire to
lie your way out of the difficulty. There’s this tremendous desire inside to rationalize your way
into believing, “Well, it’s right for me to tell a little white lie in this situation.”

Now dear ones, many brothers and sisters who have received the Spirit of Jesus into themselves have
become aware that at the moment of obedience there has been another spirit within them that has made
it at times almost impossible to obey and they have obeyed only at the payment, and the cost of an
immense struggle inside. And many brothers and sisters walk continually in that struggle. Many of
them believe that’s the fight of faith, that every time you come to a time when you have to obey God
you find that it seems natural for a bit but then it seems unnatural to obey it and there seems
something natural inside that wants to rebel and put yourself first and have your own way.

Now dear ones, do you see that that’s the thing that was referred to by Paul in Romans 7:21. You
might like to look at it, and really it shouldn’t be but many children of God experience that in
these days. Romans 7:21, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at
hand.” And you want to do what’s right but evil lies right there. Brothers, you know it in the
other sphere that is bound to cause us trouble in this day when were so unbalanced about the
subject, Leviticus 20:10 there. Leviticus 20:10, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his
neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” And brothers, you know how
often we’ve come up to that point and we know that is sin and we hold back from it because we know
our salvation goes immediately.

But yet underneath there is that strong tendency to want to commit adultery in your heart. And you
remember, that Jesus tied it down to that? He said, “Listen, of old time in Leviticus he said, ‘If
you commit adultery you are guilty of the judgment,’ but I say unto you if you look unto a woman to
lust after her in your heart you have already committed adultery.’” Now brothers and sisters, many
of us who have honestly received the Spirit of Jesus find that within us there is a strong inward
desire to disobey God. It seems to be based in our attitudes, in our motives, in our reactions. It
seems to be based in our desires. Outwardly we manage to keep up an appearance of children of God
and we manage not to commit outward sin, but inwardly there seems to be a desire tending and falling
it seems into sin as far as Jesus’ definition is concerned.

Now loved ones, do you see that that’s what’s referred to in Galatians 5:17? So obviously, the
Father knew that many would enter into such a partial surrender that they would experience this kind
of thing. Galatians 5:17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of
the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing
what you would.” And many of us you see, would testify to that. We would say, “That’s right
pastor, we agree with you about obedience but boy it is really hard at times. There is such a
strong desire in us to disobey God.”

Now brothers and sisters, do you see the tragedy is that this takes a further step in many of our
lives? You remember, Hebrews 12:1 where the writer is asking us you remember, to give everything to
God and there’s a phrase there that means a lot to many of us because of our personal experiences.
Hebrews 12:1, “Therefore , since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay
aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that
is set before us.” Now the phrase or the clause, “Sin which clings so closely,” is I think in the

King James’ Version, “The sin that so easily besets us.”

Now brothers and sisters, the tragedy is that this desire inside us often fixes on some besetting
sin and many of us walk in that situation. We walk in obedience in every area but in this
particular area and this seems we call it our besetting sin. And every time we come into this
situation we fall again, and again, and again. Now do you see that that in itself is not the cause
of loss of salvation because Jesus will forgive you until 70 times seven? The blood of Jesus will
cleanse you from all sin in so far as you walk in the light. Walking in the light is coming up to a
sin, seeing that you’re falling into it, saying to the Father, “Father, I hate sin, I detest it, it
is alien to me I am going to fight against it until you give me victory. I’m opposing it, I’m
resisting it and I treat this as a major emergency in my life and I come before you now and ask you
to forgive me.”

Every time brothers and sisters you can do that the Father can forgive you. Do you see the real
danger is that you come into a position of hardening of heart in that area? That’s the tragedy,
that you come into a place where you cease to fall down in repentance at his feet and you become as
detached from the pain you’re causing Jesus as a surgeon is detached from the pain he appears to be
causing the person he’s operating on. Now that’s where the real danger comes in. That is where
you’re beginning to verge into hardness of heart, into resistance against God’s will.

In other words, as long as you can walk with a soft penitent heart, the Father will continually
forgive you. He will never refuse to forgive a person who truly repents. But do you see that with
these besetting sins the tragedy is we come to a place where we get so beaten down, and so
demoralized, and so fed up that we begin to rationalize it and we say, “That is just a personality
trait with us. We are particularly artistic people and so we do happen to have difficulty with our
emotions.” Now that’s where we cease to be in fellowship with the Father.

Now dear ones, do you see that many of us walk in that kind of life? We walk in outward victory but
inwardly there’s the strong desire to disobey God and at times this bursts out in repeating
besetting sins. I think it’s important to see that the personal experience of a Christian does not
finish on that defeatist verse in Romans 7. Now, would you look at that defeatist verse first? You
can probably quote it off by heart.

Romans 7:14-19, “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not
understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I
do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin
which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can
will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want
is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells
within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I
delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the
law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man
that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Brothers and sisters, the chapter does not end there. Now, please see that the chapter doesn’t end
there and the Christian life is not that life of defeat. The chapter ends in 25, “Thanks be to God
through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my
flesh I serve the law of sin.” But thanks be to God that there is deliverance and, “There is
therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” and then further down Verse 5,

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who
live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” Dear ones, there is
deliverance from that. There’s victory over that situation.

Now why does the situation exist at all? Well, do you see that in the book of Romans there’s a
distinction between sin and sins? There’s a clear distinction. If you read the first four and a
half chapters of the book of Romans you find the emphasis is continually on sins. Now, there’s a
verse I could point you to, I think it’s Romans 3:25. Romans 3:25, those first four and a half
chapters deal with sins, that’s the plural word sins. Romans 3:25, “Whom,” Christ Jesus, “Whom God
put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s
righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” Now sins are
acts, and thoughts, and words. That’s what the Bible means by sins, acts, and thoughts, and words
that are deliberately disobedient to God’s will for you. Now do you see the second three and a half
chapters of the book of Romans talks not about sins, it talks about sin in the singular. It talks
about sin.

Now, you look in Romans 7:20 for instance and you’ll see the change. Romans 7:20, “Now if I do what
I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin,” in the singular, “Which dwells within me.”
Now sin is the attitude that produces sins. Sin is the inward attitude that makes you want to
disobey, that makes it hard for you to obey. It’s the attitude of your whole self inside that wants
to remain God in your life. You want to keep having your own way. Yes, you want a ticket into
heaven, and you want the sins forgiven, and you want the blood of Jesus shed for your sins, but
inward sin so many of us want to hold onto and we retain that inward nature.

Now brothers and sisters, that’s what the New Testament means by sin. It is that desire that Eve
had, you remember, Satan said, “Surely, when you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you
shall be as God.” Now it’s that desire inside us to be God over our own life. Loved ones, I say
this is sympathy for the ACT test and the SAT test, but it’s that attitude that dominates our
attitude to our futures so often. We see, “Yes, I’m capable of this. I’m mechanically minded, I
should be an engineer.” Or, “I like poetry, I like literature I should be an artist.” And we
decide what we’re going to do with our future. That is sin.

An attitude whereby you decide what you’re going to do with your life, and that is inward sin. It
expresses itself you know, in wanting your own way. You have an argument at home, it’s not really
because your way is the best way at all. No, her way is as good a way, your mum’s way is as good a
way, your dad’s way is as good a way, but you want your way and they want their way, and that’s sin.
You see? It’s just a aspiration, it’s just a desire to do what you want to do, whatever God wants
you to do. Now loved ones, if that remains unchanged there can be no victory in your life.

Now that’s the thing that’s described in Romans 8:7 and put very plainly, you know, by Paul. Romans
8:7, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law,
indeed it cannot.” And you see again, and again many of us have found this. We’ve wanted to do
what was right but there’s something inside us that seems to want to do what is wrong. Now loved
ones, unless God can do something for that you are destined to walk in continual defeat, and strain,
and misery all your Christian life. And therefore, every profession of joy, and peace, and
continual love is just hypocritical. And you know that many of us have come to that place, we know
that we’re just blatant hypocrites. Inside we’re different from what we are on the outside.

Now what has God done? Well, let’s see what he’s done for our sins, Romans 3:25. Romans 3:25,

“Whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s
righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he has passed over former sins; it was to prove at
the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus.”
God said, “Anyone who sins I will destroy.” In order to avoid destroying us and remain a just God,
someone had to be destroyed in our place. Jesus was that someone. Jesus shed his blood and died
for us so that God could retain his justice and yet show mercy to us. Allow us to live and yet
retain his own sense of Justice. In a real sense, Jesus died for God. Can you see that? In a real
sense, Jesus shed his blood for the sake of his Father so that his Father would be free to forgive
us for our sins.

Now, do you see that the reason we say, “Jesus died for us,” is not really because his blood enabled
his Father to forgive us, but for another reason? Look at it in Romans 6:3-4, “Do you not know that
all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried
therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of
the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” God knew that he had not only to forgive us our
sins, he knew that he had to deal radically with that attitude within us of rebellion that produces
the sins. And what did he do? He put us all into Jesus and crucified us. That’s right dear ones,
and it’s in that sense that Jesus really died for us.

It doesn’t say, “Jesus died instead of us.” It doesn’t say, “Jesus died so that we wouldn’t have to
die.” It says, “Jesus died for us so that we could die with him by faith and allow God to destroy
and render inoperative that desire to be our own God, that desire to have our own way, that great
self that rises up and wants to do what it wants to do.” Now dear ones, do you see that God has
done something with that? And if you say, “Well, brother if he has done something with it, why is
it so alive inside me?”

Well brothers and sisters, God had borne your sins in Jesus on Calvary but you had no freedom from
the guilt of those sins until you were willing to do two things: let go of the sin; and have faith
that those sins had been born. Now it’s the same with that old self inside you. That old self was
destroyed 1900 years ago, your funeral took place in Jesus 1900 years ago, but you can experience no
freedom from that until you are willing to die to self in your own life and until you’re willing to
believe that all that has been crucified with Christ. And that’s it loved ones, and that’s what we
call the sanctification side of becoming a Christian.

The justification side is where God is justified in forgiving us our sins because Jesus has paid the
death penalty for us and where we are justified in coming before God because our sins have been paid
for. The sanctification side is where we realize that we have been crucified with Christ, that we
have no rights to our own lives, we have no rights to do what we want with this life, we are dead
and buried with him and now only the Holy Spirit has the right to rule our lives and we are willing
to be crucified with him, and we believe that the Holy Spirit is in our lives and telling us what to
do.

Now loved ones, unless you experience a complete birth and a complete death, you cannot be in the
position of a normal Christian whosoever is born off God does not commit sin. And wouldn’t it be
true to say that as we sense the Holy Spirit speaking to us this morning, most of us probably here
this morning are in that second position? You’re dear brothers and sisters and you have received
Jesus as your Savior, but do you see that God has crucified you with Christ and what you are doing
is refusing to be crucified. There are many things inside you that you want to hold onto. The big
thing is yourself, you love yourself more than you love Jesus because you’ve never really accepted

that you were crucified with him.

Now brothers and sisters, if you say, “Well, brother it witnesses with my spirit and it seems to be
true, but how do I enter in? Do I crucify myself?” No. Dear ones, you have been crucified. God
states clearly, “Listen, all of you who belong to Christ Jesus have been crucified with him. Do not
go back and question my word, I know what happened 2000 years ago. I was there in Christ
reconciling the world until I fell. I know I destroyed that miserable thing inside you that wants
its own way. I know I destroyed that attitude in Jesus. When he bent his great will over to me he
bent your will over to me. I know that has been done, you don’t need to crucify yourselves. Will
you believe you’ve been crucified with my son? Will you begin to accept that you have no rights to
your own life? You don’t have the right to tell the wife what to do. You don’t have the right to
decide what your own future is going to be. You don’t have the right to get irritable with people
or have people do the things you want to do. You have been crucified with Christ, you don’t exist
any longer, you’ve given your body, and mind over to the Holy Spirit and now you’re going to
experience the resurrection that Christ experienced when the Holy Spirit comes into you and fills
your life completely and begins to live in you freely the life of obedience.”

Now that’s it dear ones. It’s just those two things, you see. Faith, that you have been crucified
with Christ. Romans 6:6, “Our old self was crucified.” Satan comes down and says, “You’re
irritable this morning, you weren’t crucified.” You say Satan, “I’m not believing my feelings, I’m
believing God’s word. I was crucified I’m not arguing with that.” And then you look to the Holy
Spirit and you say, “Holy Spirit, will you reveal to me where I’m not really willing to enter into
all the benefits of my death with Christ? Where I’m wanting to live this old death life instead of
resurrection life? Will you reveal to me where my self is still ruling in my life, where I have not
allowed the victory that God wrought in Christ to extend to me?” And the Holy Spirit will begin to
give you light, you see and then all it is, is instance obedience. So it’s faith that you were
crucified with Christ and it’s faith in the Holy Spirit to rule your life today.

Brothers and sisters, it changed my life. Seven years ago it changed my life and I had been a
Methodist minister for eight or nine miserable years with hypocrisy, and outward appearance of
obedience and inward rebellion. Loved ones, this is the full experience that God wants us to enter
into. Now, if you sit there and say, “Ah now brother, are you talking about a second work of
grace?” No, we’re not talking about a second work of grace or a 54th work of grace, we’re talking
about what a full experience of becoming a child of God is and it means that you’re born of the
Spirit and you allow that old attitude to die with Jesus. And the victory is not in repressing or
suppressing that attitude by will power, but in allowing God to deal with it in Christ by the power
of the Holy Spirit.

That’s why there’s no strain in the Christian life. There is no strain dear ones, and there is no
defeat. There is constant victory and constant peace and love, and you can see it’s only when we’re
living above sin in that way that the Holy Spirit is able to use us at all. Up till then we’re so
preoccupied with our own defeats that we have no time to be used by him. So dear ones, as God
guides I’ll share further about this. I think if you want help yourselves I’ve tried to write a
little book Free to Live, a little booklet. There are lots of books out in the bookcase and the
bookshop is full of books on how to enter into this victory. Not only a complete birth but a
complete death and then resurrection life.

Dear ones, I think we should just close in prayer without the hymn, it’s close to time. Let us
pray. Holy Spirit, we ask you to vindicate your truth to us through your word. As we read Romans

6, Holy Spirit, will you reveal to us that this is an experience into which we ourselves can enter?
That we can leave self at last behind nailed on that cross and be freed from ourselves, and become
lost in Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit. We thank you that such an experience is possible and
we trust you to lead us into it that there may grow up a new generation of Christians who will walk
as they talk, and who love as they say they love, and who obey as they say they ought to obey. And,
we trust you Father, to being that about among us here in this place.

Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us now and ever more. Amen.

A Complete Death

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Consider the 2nd century believers in Jesus who displayed that belief, during the plague in the most
brilliant light, for the Christians were the only people, who in the midst of so much and so great
tribulation proved by deeds their sympathy and love of their kind. Some busied themselves
day-after-day with the care and burial of dead bodies. They were without number and nobody else
bothered about them. Others gathered together into one place all who were tortured by hunger and
supplied them with food. When this became known, people glorified the God of the Christians and
confessed that they alone were the truly pious and God fearing people because they gave proof of it
by their deeds. And brothers and sisters, right throughout the centuries that is always the way
that others have recognized Christians and it’s the way you see, that the New Testament emphasized.

You might like to look at one of those verses, they’re right through the New Testament and Old
Testament, but one very clear one is there in Matthew 7:16-20. And it states this truth of the
importance of Christian’s lives as a witness to unbelievers. Matthew 7:16, and Jesus is speaking
and he’s talking about false prophets you see, people who say they are God’s servants but aren’t
really, they’re dressed in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. And then in 16, “You
will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every
sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil
fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”

A Christian can’t behave in an non-Christian way. A non-Christian can’t behave in a Christian way.
“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know
them by their fruits.” And you remember, we shared last Sunday that it doesn’t mean that you just
exhibit the four classical virtues of temperance, and courage, and wisdom. It doesn’t mean that you
just exhibit the virtues that Benjamin Franklin ( one of the American founding fathers) listed:
integrity; industry; and loyalty. But it means that your life is filled with the beauty of Jesus’
own life and the fruits of his life are present in your life and by your fruits people know that
you’re a Christian.

And you know that the verse that it’s very hard to get rid of in the New Testament that we studied
last Sunday, puts this in very stark terms and it’s that verse, and you probably want to look at it
to make sure such a heretical verse actually got into the New Testament. And it’s 1 John 3:9 and it
is a verse that really sticks in our throats. 1 John 3:9, and you would like to feel that it’s a
verse that John wrote in a moment of sleep, or in a moment when he was falling from grace, except
that he keeps on writing it right throughout this letter. 1 John 3:9, “No one born of God commits
sin; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.” And you
recognize a Christian because a Christian doesn’t sin. That’s it, a Christian doesn’t sin, that’s
how you know a Christian.

Now loved ones, you know that Satan has got in with us on this verse and that’s why I dare to spend
one more Sunday on it, because Satan has persuaded us all that that is heretical. That it’s in the
Bible, but it’s a bit of the Bible that ought really to be examined, we don’t think that it’s
absolutely true because we say, “Listen, I’ve been a Christian for years and I’ve found it
impossible not to sin. So, I set up myself with my 60 years of life against this Bible that has
existed for well, 1900 years,” anyway the New Testament. And so it’s very hard.

And brothers and sisters, do you see I sympathize with you with all my heart but do you see that we
need to see what God believes and what God wants for us? Especially, in these days when so many
look down on what is called the Christian church, we must try to see if there’s some reason for this
and I believe we will find it in this verse. There are two extremes that Christians take towards
this verse. One extreme is to over interpret it. One extreme is to proclaim an unscriptural
perfection that is not God’s will in this life. That’s one extreme and some people do that. Some
people take that verse and they proclaim an unscriptural perfection. A perfection of mind,
emotions, and body, a perfection for mistakes from ignorance, from any unintentional deviation from
absolute right that is just impossible with God’s help or without God’s help. And many proclaim an
unscriptural perfection that just drives us into the ground. On the other hand, many others under
interpret the verse and they proclaim such an unscriptural mediocre definition of sin that even a
good humanist could live up to it, or a half surrendered Christian could live up to it, or a half
born Christian.

Now dear ones, it’s important that we keep away from either of those, what Francis Schaffer ( Swiss
theologian) would call the cliffs. You see, Christian truth lies down the middle and if you go far
too over far to the left you fall off that cliff into unscriptural perfection and if you go far too
far over to the right you fall off that cliff into a mediocre unscriptural standard that is too low.
Now, we need to trust the Holy Spirit to keep us in the middle of the path so that we don’t fall
off either cliff because if you call off either cliff it not only has intellectual difficulties and
problems for you, but it also has spiritual problems.

Now you see how important it is not to have too mediocre a standard. The reason for that is that we
have for years had such a mediocre standard for Christians, that Christians have been largely
speaking undistinguishable from other people. And so in order to distinguish themselves they have
invented cardinal sins, that they by their upbringing, never had anything to do with anyway. And so
many Christians are so undistinguishable from people who aren’t Christians that they invent the
sins. “Well, I don’t like the theater too much anyway, so it’s a sin to go to the theater and if I
go to the theater I’m not a Christian. But I’m glad to say I don’t go to the theater so I’m a
Christian. And, don’t drink. And I don’t drink anyway but it’s obviously a sin to drink and I
don’t drink so I’m glad I’m a child of God. And, don’t smoke. And I’m glad I don’t smoke so I’m
obviously a child of God. And don’t drink, and don’t dance, and don’t smoke, and don’t go to the
theater.” And dear ones, you know that many of us have invented lots of other cardinal artificial
sins in order to try to prove to ourselves that we are Christians because our lives has been
undistinguishable from others by virtue of the fact that we have not lived as Christians.

Now the other thing is true, that one of the reasons we have so much evangelistic activity in the
nation and so little revival, is that we have had a low mediocre standard of the Christian life.
You remember, the promise that God gave us for the revival, “If my people who are called by my name
will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will
forgive their sin and heal their land… ( 2 Chronicles 7:14) Now dear ones, we have great
evangelistic activity in our nation but it is incredible that we have no deep revival. In other
words, the courts are as full as they ever were, the jails are too full. The mental wards in our
hospitals are overflowing. There has been no deep seated revival of ethical life and of emotional
life in our nation, because really, we have proclaimed an unscriptural mediocre standard of the
Christian life and we have slid around the whole business of sin.

Dear ones, it doesn’t matter which movement of God’s Spirit in our world’s history that you go to,
it has always come from a new realization of what sin was. Really, it has always come from a new

realization of sin. Now, would you just share with me a little this morning? Let’s just look at it
once again and trust the Holy Spirit to clarify it in all our minds. Let’s take the group that say
that sin is anything that is not absolute perfection. That’s these people who say, “What that verse
means is anyone who is not absolutely perfect as God is perfect, that person sins.” Or, “Anyone who
deviates from absolute right at all, whether he knows it or not, that person is sinning.”

Now do you see that that means every one of us who makes a mistake has sinned. Every one of us who
makes an honest mistake has sinned according to that definition. Let’s imagine that you’re in a
group and I’m in that room with you and you don’t know that I’m from Ireland. And the conversation
is going on and you make some sarcastic crack about those mad men in Ireland who are shooting each
other. And you don’t mean to hurt me and you don’t mean to insult the place I come from, you didn’t
know. You haven’t the perfect mind, you don’t know everything. You didn’t know that I was from
that country and you didn’t intend to cause me any hurt or criticize me in any way. Now, do you see
that that’s a simple mistake and that’s not sin?

Or say you, as an honest Christian tries to witness to someone on the University campus, and you end
up putting them off Christianity, you end up causing an offense in them. Now, you did it with a
pure intention and a pure heart and it resulted because you had not a perfect mind in saying
something that put them off. Now, do you see that that’s a mistake loved ones? That’s not a sin
and God does not hold us guilty for mistakes. Do you see also that if you held to the fact that sin
was anything that was not absolute perfection, our emotions are unbalanced on many occasions, we do
not have the perfect emotions of God. A times at a funeral we will indulge in excessive grief.
Yes, we will grieve because of ourselves rather than for the sake of the dear one or another. At
times we will indulge in excessive grief. Now, when our emotions are unbalanced the Father does not
regard that as a sin.

It’s the same with our bodies. At times our bodies are set by weakness, and sickness, or colds and
it prevents us doing what God would want us to do. That is not a sin. You see, God does not hold
any lack of perfection in our minds, or our emotions, or our bodies as sins. He just does not.
Dear ones, he defines sin very clearly for us and you remember, it’s in that verse James 4:17, and
it has nothing to do with those mistakes, or ignorance, or involuntary unintentional deviations from
absolute right. James 4:17 states plainly that sin is something that you do and you know you’re
doing it, and you know that it’s rebellion against God at that moment you do it. James 4:17,
“Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” That is sin. Sin is
conscious deliberate disobedience to God’s will (to God’s will as you know it).

Now loved ones, it’s not enough for you to say, “Oh, I know that is wrong and that person is doing
it so he must be committing sin.” No. That brother or sister may not have had that revealed to him
in the way that you have. They are responsible to God for their obedience, you’re responsible for
yours. You can never guarantee that everyone has had the light that you have had. But sin then is
any disobedience to God’s will as it’s revealed in the 10 Commandments, in the moral law of
Sophists, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Beatitudes ( Matthew 5-8) , and in Christ’s own life,
and in Paul’s Epistles.

Sin is any refusal to enter into obedience to God’s will as it is revealed there. So, for instance,
let’s look at just one or two of them. If you look at Exodus 20:12-17. Exodus 20:12, “Honor your
father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you.”
So, if you deliberately dishonor your father and mother, and you know it at that time, that’s a sin.
“You shall not kill,” and Jesus’s elaboration of that, “If you’re angry with your brother you’re

guilty of the judgment.” If you are angry, you know you’re angry, you persist in your anger, then
that’s a sin. The Father is gracious to you before you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit when anger
rises up in your heart, as long as you resist it the Father recognizes that. Now after baptism with
the Holy Spirit it is possible even to get rid of that rising up of anger, but before that Jesus’
blood applies to your heart as long as you resist what is rising up.

Brothers, it applies the same way you remember, to that next one in 14, “You shall not commit
adultery.” And Jesus said, “But I say unto you if you look unto a woman to lust after her in your
heart, you are guilty of adultery.” It applies to that. Before the baptism of the Holy Spirit
you’ll find your heart rising up and answering Satan’s temptation. As long as you resist that
rising up, and you deliberately turn from it, God regards you as not sinning. Now after the baptism
of the Holy Spirit it is possible to be delivered even from that rising up. But do you see that God
is gracious to us? He asks us to deal with what we know is wrong at that time and to resist it and
stand against it.

Now so it goes on, “You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.” Now, if you do those they’re sins. And so it goes on
you see, right through if you look at Leviticus 19:15-18 you’ll find that God states clearly there
what is his will for us. Some of us think, you know, these things are wonderful discoveries of the
social activist. Really, they were given by God 2500 years ago to a people. Leviticus 19:15-18,
“You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great,
but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. You shall not go up and down as a slanderer
among your people, and you shall not stand forth against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you
bear sin because of it. You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your
own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

Now, if you deliberately disobey that and you know you’re disobeying it, there comes a shadow into
your heart. That’s why when you have a grudge against someone, or you hold a resentment against
someone, there’s a shadow comes into your heart you see. God is faithful. We may not believe that
he rejects us but he witnesses his rejection at that moment and his condemnation by a shadow in our
heart, a sense of guilt. A shadow comes between ourselves and another person in that relationship.
But sin is something knowing.

Now dear ones, some of us say, “Oh no pastor, sin is sin whether you know it or not.” No loved
ones, sin is only a knowing, conscious, deliberate disobedience to God. Now you have that taught
clearly for us in Leviticus 5. Leviticus 5:3-6, and these are concerned here with the laws of
hygiene that God gave but they do indicate his attitude to conscious sin. Leviticus 5:3, “Or if he
touches human uncleanness, of whatever sort the uncleanness may be with which one becomes unclean,
and it is hidden from him, when he comes to know it he shall be guilty.”

So, in other words, there comes times when you do something, you don’t know it’s wrong at that time,
but later on it comes to your heart, “That was wrong.” Then it’s up to us to turn immediately to
Jesus and say, “Father, I didn’t know that was wrong at that time. Will you forgive me? I confess
it now.” But you see, you aren’t guilty until you know it. “Or if any one utters with his lips a
rash oath to do evil or to do good, any sort of rash oath that men swear, and it is hidden from him,
when he comes to know it he shall in any of these be guilty.” But you can see yourselves, that God
does not regard us as guilty unless we know we’ve disobeyed him. In other words, sin is a conscious
deliberate disobedience to God.

Now, some brothers and sisters say, “Alright pastor, then I can see that sin is not ignorance, it is
not an unintentional or involuntary deviation from an absolute right. It is not a mistake. I can
see it isn’t any of those things, it’s something a conscious disobedience to God. Okay, now is it
true that if you sin then God immediately rejects you, shows you that you aren’t his child and you
have to start all over again?” No, loved ones.

If you do sin, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous. Otherwise you see,
you’d lapse into legalism and we’d all be walking in fear. See, if I was walking along and
wondering, “Boy, if I sin once I’m finished. If I sin once I’m finished.” Then soon I’m walking in
fear all the time. I’m wondering, “Where is sin? Where is sin?” No loved ones, you see children
of God do not walk that way. Children of God walk in conscious joy and in absolute confidence that
as Christians it is unnatural, it is alien to our nature to sin, it is something that we do not do,
it is something that we don’t want to do. If we ever do it we thank God that we have an advocate
with the Father and the proof of our childlikeness is the penitent heart. Immediately we make a
quick adjustment, we go to the Father and we say, “Lord, we have sinned. We confess it to you, we
trust you to forgive us.”

In other words, even after you’ve tied sin down to deliberate disobedience, do you see that we walk
not in constant fear of sinning, we walk confident and joyful, and knowing all the time that if we
do, in an emergency sin, then we have an advocate with the Father. Now loved ones, it’s important
maybe to define emergency. Emergency is not just when we come into emergency situations, God is
able to keep us peaceful and calm in those situations, and free from panic. But do you see that sin
is an emergency? If you sin, that’s an emergency situation for a Christian. It’s something that is
not natural for the Christian to do. It’s alien to him. He’s come into something that is against
his whole nature and that is an emergency situation and he ought to treat it as such.

Now, let me show you the verse where God teaches that plainly. It’s that verse 1 John 2. 1 John
2:1 A and B, and many of us live on the basis of B and you should live on the basis of A and B. 1
John 2:1 A and B, that’s both parts of the verse, “My little children, I am writing this to you so
that you may not sin,” that’s why I’m writing it to you, “But if any one does sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” In other words, it’s like me saying to you,
“Look, when you’re driving that oil light should never light. It’s not a natural thing for that red
light to be on when you’re driving, it’s an unnatural thing. So, if that red light ever does go on
it doesn’t mean you’re engine is ruined, but stop. Stop the car and get oil in it.”

Now, do you see that it is madness to live on the basis of the emergency? It’s madness to say, “Oh
well, he said the engine wasn’t ruined if the light when on. Well, I’ll drive for 20 or 30 miles
and when I have time I’ll put oil in the car.” You can see that it’s an emergency when we sin and
we ought to treat it as such. Now, that’s what that verse means, that many of us have difficulty
interpreting about mortal sin, you remember. Would you look at it in 1 John 5:17-18 and I’m sure
you’ve had the difficulty that I’ve often had with it. 1 John 5:17, “All wrongdoing is sin, but
there is sin which is not mortal.”

In other words, you see, there is an emergency situation that arises at times in a Christian’s life
when he sins, but as long as the whole bent of his life is against it, as long as his whole nature
rejects that and treats it as an emergency, then that is not a mortal sin. But if a sin – if a
Christian is walking in a sin weekly, or monthly, or periodically over the year, then do you see
that he’s beginning to walk into a sin that will bring death? In other words, the attitude of a

Christian is, “Once I’ve received Jesus I’ve stopped sinning, and I have no intention of sinning
from now on, and sin is something that I reject and resist as unnatural to me.” And this is the
attitude dear ones, of a Christian.

That’s why brothers and sisters, I know you do it in a moment of extravagance, but do you see that
we should not say that Jesus’ blood covers all pass sins and all future sins. That’s madness you
know. That’s like saying to the Lord Jesus, “Lord Jesus, I know you will take the thrust of my
sword into you at this moment, and I know you’re borne it and now I’ve stopped, you’ve forgiven
them, but I know you’re going to continue to take every thrust that I put into your body from this
day forward.” Now that is not right, you see. A Christian has no intention of sinning when he
receives Jesus. As far as he’s concerned he is finished with sin and if he ever does sin it’s an
emergency situation. Otherwise you see, he’s involved in mortal sin, or sin which brings death by
willing repetitive volition.

Now, could we look just for a moment or two at the other extreme, the other attitude? Some people
you see, take that ridiculous over exaggeration that sin is anything that is not absolute
perfection, and that obviously is not what sin is. Some go to the other extreme and they say,
“You’re dead right, sin is something that we can’t avoid, because after all let’s face it I know
we’re children of God and all that, but we’re only human. We’re only human beings, and we cannot
avoid sin. So, sin I something that occurs from time-to-time in the Christian’s life and the only
difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that the non-Christian’s guilt gets him down
because he can’t do anything with it, it demoralizes him whereas we Christians, we can sin with
impunity. We can sin and Jesus’ blood covers our sins, we get rid of the guilt.” In other words,
we can sin without any guilt.

Now dear ones, do you see that that’s terrible? That is heresy and yet you know that many of us
have come close to that, we’ve said sin is the normal part of a Christian’s life. Some of us have
pleaded you see, 1 John 1:10, maybe you want to check it. 1 John 1:10, and some of us take that
verse, “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” And some
people say, “Now there, if you’re a Christian and you say you’re happy you don’t sin, you’re a
liar.” Now, do you see that it says, “If we say we have not sinned,” and John is obviously talking
about fellowship between life in darkness and he’s talking about our previous pre- new birth
experience. If we, when we were pagans, we said we didn’t sin in those days, then we make God a
liar. All of us have sinned.

Now, some of us of course say, “Oh, but doesn’t Paul say, ‘I’m the greatest of sinners,’ doesn’t
that prove that even he sinned?” No dear ones, you remember, Paul among other thing says, “The
imitators of me, even as I am of Christ,” in Philippians he says, “Let’s as many of us therefore as
be perfect.” In other words, he believes that you can enter into a perfect obedience, not a
perfection of mind, or emotions, where you never make mistakes but a perfect obedience and we know
that one of the marks of great saints is that the closer they get to Jesus the more they feel their
own ugliness. And this is what Paul was saying, “I’m the greatest of sinners. Not only was I the
greatest of sinners when I persecuted the church of God, but Lord Jesus, as I see your beauty, I
feel more and more my own ugliness.” But Paul wasn’t saying, you see, “Oh I continue to sin night
and day.”

Now, many of us say, “Oh well, 1 John 3:9 does not mean what the RSV ( Revised Standard Bible) says
it means.” In other words, it doesn’t really mean does not sin. It really means what the Amplified
Version ( A V – Bible) says it means. And the Amplified Version, you remember, says, “Anybody born

of God does not habitually sin.” Now loved ones, let me read from Christianity Today first of all,
and let me share with you I am not a Greek scholar and I can read the New Testament in Greek and let
me share with you that the Amplified Version is not a translation, you see.

If you notice, the Amplified Version is based on a linguistic principle that is actually invalid.
That linguistic principle is that you pile synonym, upon synonym, upon synonym to get to the real
meaning of the original. That is not linguistically valid. Now, this fellow, who wrote in
Christianity Today say this, “The Amplified Version is a blessing at times,” you see I’m not saying
don’t stop reading the Amplified Version but don’t decide doctrine and truth on the basis of the
Amplified Version because it is like Kenneth Taylor’s work, it is not a translation – it’s a
paraphrase.”

They say this, “The student should be aware that the Amplified Bible,” ( this is in 1965), “Which is
based on an erroneous linguistic foundation,” in parenthesis, “The incorporation of synonyms and
alternative renderings into the text in order to bring out the full sense of the original and
Kenneth Taylor’s ‘Living Bible’ series, completed 1970, are not among the better English
translations.” Well, dear ones, I don’t say it – just because they say it – but I know that it
does not fairly treat the original or translate the original.

Now some of you may say, “Oh, but isn’t the original the imperfect tense?” The imperfect tense,
doesn’t it mean the same as for instance in Latin,” any of you who know Latin, ‘amabam’ would be I
was loving in Latin and I was loving can mean I was accustomed to love, or I used to love. And some
dear ones say, “Ah, this is the imperfect tense here, it means I was accustomed to sinning.” Any
one born of God is not accustomed to sin. He is not used to it, he does not do it habitually. But
dear ones, the tense is not the imperfect.

Now brothers and sisters, I share with you in love again, it is not the imperfect tense, it is
present tense, it is the ordinary present tense and it just means what it says. A ‘teetotaler’
doesn’t drink, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t drink habitually it means he doesn’t drink. A Christian
doesn’t sin, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t sin habitually, he doesn’t sin.

Now some dear ones say, “Ah but brother, doesn’t habitually translate the sense of the passage more.
I mean, you yourself have said that if we do sin in an emergency we have an advocate with the
Father. Now, are you not saying habitually?” Well loved ones, I think semantically habitually in
the English language does not mean that. For instance, if you say to me, “I sleep in one morning,”
and you say to me, “Do you sleep in habitually?” Well, I answer you, “No, no I don’t do it
habitually I just do it from time-to-time.” Now, that’s normally what habitually means, isn’t it?

Now, do you see that isn’t the sense of that verse? The sense of the verse is that there’s absence
of sin in the Christian’s life. A Christian doesn’t sin. The purpose of the Greek is to exclude
sin from the Christian’s life, not to limit the extent of the Christian’s sin. Not to say, “Well, a
Christian, I mean, he doesn’t sin every day but he sins maybe weekly, or two weekly, or three
weekly, or monthly.” Now loved ones, it doesn’t mean habitually it just means the Christian doesn’t
sin and oh brothers and sisters, if we will rise to God’s standards for us, we’ll find more than
sufficient grace in his Holy Spirit, to enable us to live in that standard.

Do you see, any humanist – Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Socrates, could live up to the low
mediocre standard that many of us have interpreted God as wishing for our lives? Do you see that
only a person who has received the Spirit of Jesus into himself can live at the level that God

describes in the Bible, and that’s the need for the new birth loved ones. If you’re having trouble
with sin in your life, what you need is to allow God to send the Spirit of his Son into your life
and that alone will enable you to live above sin, and to live in perfect obedience to God. Not to
live above mistakes, not to live fearful of ever falling, but to live above sin in your own life.

Some of us say, you know, “But ah brother, that is a ridiculous standard. It is beyond human
ability. It drives man to despair.” Praise God it does just that. Yes, it does. It does. Dear
ones, if you can ever come to the Bible and say, “Well, that describes me I don’t need Jesus.” Then
you’re in trouble. You see, you’re not reading it right. The whole purpose of God’s law is to
drive us to the end of ourselves, to drive us to that place where Paul described in Romans 7:18, “I
know that no good thing dwells in me. I know I cannot live this way by myself.” That is the
purpose of God’s love, to drive us into the depths of despair until there is only one thing to do,
that is to receive the spirit of this person Jesus into our lives.

Now loved ones, that is what the new birth is and what we need is a complete birth. We need a
complete birth. We need not a believing in Christ, and a feeling sorry. That’s what many of us do,
we feel sorry for our sins and we believe. We haven’t to do that, we have to repent and receive,
not feel sorry and believe, but repent and receive. Stop doing the sins and receive the Spirit of
Jesus. So brothers and sisters, if you’re in that position, you know, where you’re really having
trouble do you see that it could be that you have not had a complete birth? You have not really
dealt in honest repentance with the sins that were in your life, turned from them, and asked Jesus
to come in. And so what you’ve entered into is an emotional osmosis of Christianity and not a real
regeneration.

You’ve entered into a moral reaffirmation plus a set of doctrines and principles instead of a real
repentance and an actual regeneration. Now it is God’s will for us to experience a complete rebirth
and next Sunday I’ll share with you a complete death because it is that sin that rises up that needs
to be dealt with and can only be dealt with by complete death. But oh I urge you to experience a
complete birth as a Christian and find yourself walking in this way without resistance and without
criticism.

Can I share one last thing? If you’re heart reacts against this truth, that’s an indication a wee
bit of the state of your heart you see. A child of God, when he hears God’s truth responds to it
even though he isn’t living to it. He says, “Ah, but I want that. I want that.” But the person’s
who heart is not right reacts against it and wants to tear Isaiah out of the Bible, 1 John out of
the Bible! But a child of God says, “Father, if that’s your will I want to be that and I want to be
a lot more as well,” and you know that, that’s the spirit of your own heart if you loved your father
and your mother, it’s the spirit of the child of God really.

Well I pray the Father, you know, that’ll he’ll keep us from error and from misunderstanding and
that he’ll bring you into a complete rebirth that makes supernatural living possible. Let us pray.

Father, we thank you for the peace and quietness of this morning time together. And we thank you
our Father, for your word that it does not bow to our human weakness, but it raises us into
supernatural strength. Father, we thank you for that. We thank you above all that you are a loving
Father, ever stooping down to lift us up. That you are more anxious to forgive us that we are even
to repent. And oh Father, that you will at the end of the day forgive us until 70 times seven as
long as our hearts are penitent and soft enough to repent. And so Father, we would trust you to
keep us well clear of sin, enable us to see it as alien and unnatural, as the reason for the

atonement, as the reason for all that you have done in this earth, and Father enable us to hate it
as much as you do, and to love purity and obedience as much as Jesus does.

Now Father, we trust you to give us a good day, each one of us. We trust you to guide us this day
and to make us a blessing to each other in our homes and our dormitories. And now the grace of our
Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now
and ever more. Amen.

The Purpose for Living

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Dear Father, in the name of Jesus, we plead the over powering influence of thy Holy Spirit tonight.
Lord Jesus, we know you are able to overcome the physical discomfort, we know you are able to so
preoccupy us with yourself that we will be unaware of any discomfort and we trust you therefore to
so pour your Spirit out among us that we will be so bent on seeing you that we will have time for
nothing else, least of all ourselves. We ask this in your precious name, amen.

Perhaps dear ones, it seems to some of us that there has never been so much bewilderment about the
purpose of life. You know, with King’s death, and Kennedy’s death, and with the riots, I think more
and more people are saying, “What is it all in aid of anyway? What’s the meaning of life now?
There doesn’t seem any.” And yet people in all generations have felt this way. It was about 50
years ago a professor of Latin at Cambridge University wrote a poem expressing this kind of
bewilderment. He said, “Yonder see the morning blink, the sun is up and up must I to wash, and
dress, and eat, and drink, and look at things, and talk, and think, and work, and God knows why.”
And the tragedy is dear ones that many times Christians are as bewildered about the purpose of life
as those who are not in Jesus.

What would you say is the purpose of life? I think a lot of us tend to talk about it in the same
way as this professor did when he wrote the last stanza of the poem. He said, “Oh often have I
washed and dressed and what’s to show for all my pain? Let me lie abed and rest 10,000 times I’ve
done my best and alls to do again.” And so often when you ask people today what the purpose of life
is, they talk about it in terms of 10,000 times I’ve done my best. They talk about it in terms of
oh well to be the best that you can be, to live the best life that you’re able, and to live the good
life. To leave the world a better place than you found it. And so often dear ones, Christians talk
in the same terms of the good life as opposed to the bad life.

Now, do you see tonight that when we talk about good and bad like that, we’re eating of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil of which we were forbidden to eat? But so often we talk about it in
terms of living the good life in Christ even, and the moment we mention good and bad we’re
immediately taking part in the very act that the devil tempted us to at the very beginning. Or,
perhaps some Christians say, “Well, the purpose of life is to save souls.” But dear ones, you see
that means that God must have made us just so that he could save us? Now surely God did not cast us
into a sea that was stormy and wild just in order to have the privilege of lifting us out of it.
And yet so often you and I tend to talk in terms of saving souls as the purpose of life.

The controversy that the devil has with God is not between good and bad. Do you know that? The
controversy that the devil has with God is not between good and bad, it’s between life and death.
The devil is not too concerned if you think you are good, and the devil is not too concerned if you
try to be good as long as it’s death, as long as it’s the life of death. But he is concerned if we
ever enter into the life that God prepared for us.

Now would you turn those thoughts over in your mind as we go back to the original question, what is
the purpose of life? First of all dear ones, it wasn’t because God needed our company. You see
that? It wasn’t because God needed our company that he made us because, you remember, in John 1:1
it says, “In the beginning was the word,” that’s Jesus, “And the word was with God.” So God and
Jesus had their own company. And you remember, I think it’s in Genesis 1:2 we read that the Spirit

brooded upon the face of the waters and so obviously, God the Father, and God the Son, and God the
Holy Spirit had each other’s company so they did not need to make us for the sake of our company.
You remember too, I think it’s in Genesis 1:26 the Bible says, “Let us make man in our own image.”
Not, “Let me make man in my own image.” So again obviously, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit were speaking.

You know it was a little like a husband and a wife, when they love each other and share a great love
between them, they feel a need to create other dear ones who will share that love. And God created
us to share the love that his trinity family already enjoyed. That’s why he made us at the very
beginning so that we would share the love that he and the Son, and the Holy Spirit already rejoiced
in among them. And so it was out of the sheer generosity of his love that he made us at all. And
oh dear ones, it’s so bad when some of us say, “You know, I didn’t ask to be born.” God wanted us
born so that we could share the joy and the love that he had with the Son and with the Holy Spirit.
He didn’t make us then just to save us, but to share his love.

I think it’s necessary to see then that God wanted dear ones who were like himself. That’s why you
see, the Bible says, “He made us in his own image.” He made us a trinity. He made us, you
remember, all the words occur in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, he made us with a spirit. He made us with a
spirit that could rule, and he made us with a soul that could express that rule through our mind,
and emotions, and our wills, and he made us with a body that could reveal this spirit to other dear
ones of the same type. Just as he himself was a trinity, he made us body, soul, and spirit in the
same kind of trinity. He made us too, you remember, in the very image of Jesus.

You remember way at the beginning it says, I think it’s Romans 8:29 says, God predestined us at the
very beginning before there was ever a fall, before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was
ever there, God predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son Jesus. And this was so that
we would fit well into the family of the trinity.

Another way in which he made us in his image was to give us a free will like his own. He didn’t
want robots who belonged to the family because they could not refuse, but he wanted dear ones who
would opt into the family. He wanted dear ones who would willingly choose to become part of the
family. This was his purpose in creating us at the very beginning. You may say, “Well, what was
the choice?” Well, the choice at the very beginning was twofold. You remember, it says in the
Bible that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.

God made our bodies of the dust of the earth and he breathed into our nostrils the breath of life
and we became living souls. That was created life. See, the Bible says, “Let us make man in our
own image.” Not, “Let us beget him,” but, “Let us make him in our own image.” And so God gave us
created life and then it was his desire that his Son Jesus, whom you remember from John 3:16, you
remember the words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only manufactured son.” No, “That
he gave his only created son?” No, “That he gave his only begotten son,” and it was his will that
Jesus should come and walk among us, and live among us, and that we with our created life, would
receive from him his begotten life and would therefore be able to be adopted into the family of the
trinity.

I think there was another choice in that too. You remember there was a choice there. Jesus is
signified by the tree of life and I think you remember, in Genesis 2, obviously a choice is implied
in Verse 9, and Verse 16-17. Verse 9 if you’d like to look at it, “And out of the ground the Lord
God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also

in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” so that there would be
an option required to opt into the family. And then in Verse 16-17, “And the Lord God commanded the
man, saying, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’”

In other words, there was a choice otherwise God wouldn’t have told us that. And the choice was to
begin to receive the begotten life of God from his Son Jesus as he walked among us. There was
another part of the choice too it was his desire that when this spirit of God’s begotten life would
come into our life it would begin to pervade our souls, and our bodies. You see your soul and your
body started off neutral. They started off neutral. Your mind is a neutral thing, really. Your
emotions are neutral. Your will is neutral and it was God’s will that we would receive this
begotten life into ourselves and then allow it to pervade our souls, and eventually our bodies and
this was his plan so that we ourselves would become a trinity in which the spirit was present
everywhere.

One of the early fathers said, “Wherever one person of the trinity is present the other two persons
are present as well,” and that was God’s will for us. That wherever a soul was there would be the
fullness of God’s begotten life in his spirit. Wherever a body was there would be the fullness of
his begotten life in the body. You see that when Jesus was transfigured on the mount, when you saw
the spirit life breaking out through his physical life. It was God’s will that the body, and the
soul, and the spirit would all be pervaded with the begotten life of God.

This then dear ones, was his will for us and really as long as we abided by God’s decisions, and
God’s judgment about life, we were able to receive through our spirits, all that we needed from the
tree of life. So, you had – we’re not feeling very energetic. You receive from the tree of life
you receive from the begotten Jesus energy. Your mind was blunt and wearied you received from the
begotten tree of life the acuteness and the sharpness of Jesus. Even had we cut our hands we would
go and we would take of the leaves of the tree of life and the hands would be healed by the begotten
life of Jesus that flowed through the tree of life to us. And as long as we abided by God’s
judgments, and as long as we took his word on what we should do in life, that tree of life was
continually available to us and that tree of life would pour the spirit into us, and our souls would
receive our approval from God, and we would walk with a sense of approval on our conscience knowing
that we were approved by God. And that was the way we were meant to walk, not needing approval from
any man, but receiving the approval from God in our own conscience and our bodies then were meant to
express the life of God throughout the world.

You can see this when you think of that verse you remember, Genesis 1:28, where God explains the
process by which our spirits, souls, and bodies would become one together in his begotten life. He
gave each of those parts of our personality a function. He said, “Be fruitful and multiple.” It
was his desire that our bodies would pass on his created life and would beget others in his own
image, and that we would multiply. It was his desire that our souls, our minds, and our wills and
emotions would express in deductive detail, in deductive detail all the life that the Spirit gave to
us so that we would fill the whole earth with the glory of God. It was his desire that our spirits
would be ruled by God’s Spirit and that Jesus’ begotten life would flow through us so that he
through us was able to subdue the whole world.

You remember Genesis 1:28 says, “Your job is to subdue the world.” Well, it was meant to be Jesus
subduing the world through us in his begotten life so that glory, and pleasure, and satisfaction
came to God. That was the plan dear ones. That was God’s glorious plan for us and we were to find

our full fulfillment in the exercise of that begotten life that we receive from Jesus.

Well what happened? Once God gave us free wills man always had the prerogative that God had given
him, to choose to live his own life independent of God. Not accepting God’s advice, not accepting
God’s provisions because you see, he had created life and you remember Satan had already exercised
this authority, and this prerogative. He had already rebelled against God and decided to live his
life on his own terms independent of God and it was Satan that was allowed by God to tempt us to do
the same thing.

You may say, “Terrible, terrible,” but you see, God wanted us free. God wanted us members of his
family because we wanted to be and so you remember, in Job we read how God allowed Satan to approach
Job and tempt him. So, God allowed Satan to come into that world of ours and you remember how Satan
set about it. You find it in Genesis 3:1. He said, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any other
wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat of
any tree of the garden?””

Satan is a deceiver and the father of lies and the first suggestion he made to man was, “Do you
really think this is the only way to live? Do you really? Do you think this is the only way to
live? Hath God said, ‘You can eat of every tree of the garden?’ You have the right to eat of any
tree of the garden surely now you’re in it.’” And then you remember the second thing that Satan
tried to deceive Eve on in Verse 4, “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die. You’re
alive now.’” He didn’t tell her that this was only created life. He didn’t tell her that she would
need operations, and bandages, and that you would need armies of policemen to protect her in this
created life. But he said, “You shall not surely die you’ve got created life.”

And dear ones, a great deal of Satan’s power over us through the years has been the suggestion that
this created life is what God intended us to have. So many dear ones are burdened under that. They
think, “Well, this is the life that God planned us to have.” It’s the second best. And you
remember lastly, he deceived Eve about the advantages of this independent life. He said in Verse 5,
“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. Isn’t
that the very purpose that God sent you here for, to become like him? To be conformed to his own
image? Surely, you will be like God knowing the difference between good and evil.”

You remember, that whenever man decided to accept Satan’s lies and deception, whenever he decided to
try and live on his own without trusting God, whenever he once got the idea into his mind, “Lighten
up, this is life. This created life is good enough.” Once he did that every part of his
personality became perverted. The Bible describes the kind of perversion that spread throughout his
whole life, and dear ones, some of us tonight will recognize this in ourselves. And I want you to
say if you recognize it not, “I’m bad,” because then you’re eating of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil. Not, “I am bad,” but, “I need the begotten life of Jesus. I need the begotten life of
Jesus tonight.” Not, “I need a reformation.” Not, “I need more determination,” but, “I need the
begotten life of Jesus.”

Well here are some of the things that happened, that perverted man’s whole personality when he began
to live this death life. It’s all in Genesis 3:6, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for
food,” and our bodies began to desire enjoyment for its own sake. The death life, the created life
was so unsatisfactory that our bodies tried to enjoy things for their own sake and so dear ones, the
world is filled with dear people who are trying to enjoy themselves, enjoy themselves as much as
they possibly can trying futilely and vainly to make this created life look like the begotten life

of Jesus. And so you get many of us running around really trying to work up excitement to make this
life as exciting as the begotten life.

You know there’s a great desire for excitement. We buy fast cars, we buy fast motor launches today
to go as fast as we can to try and get some life into life and it’s all this desire to try to make
the created life what the begotten life was really meant to be because there’s something inside each
one of us dear ones, that yearns for begotten life. Do you know that? Even if you’ve never been in
church for years, there’s something in you that wants this begotten life, there’s something that is
bigger than what we’re experiencing at the present time.

So, the body began to enjoy itself for its own sake. And then you see the second part in Verse 6,
“And that it was a delight to the eyes,” and the soul which was made to give out the life of the
spirit to the whole world and to fill it, and to replenish it, the soul turned back in on itself and
instead of replenishing it wanted to get, get, get, get and it didn’t matter how many charge
accounts it had in Dayton’s, it couldn’t get enough. And dear ones, you know that. You keep trying
to transform the created life into the begotten life by allowing this perverted function to take
place in your soul, and you try to get, and you try to get, and get, and you can’t get enough and
you never will get enough because that’s not the way the soul was meant to work.

And the spirit is talked of in the last part of Verse 6, “And that the tree was to be desired to
make one wise,” and our spirits became perverted too. They were meant to be ruled by God. They
were meant to receive from him his own life. The spirit instead began to rule over itself and over
others. Our spirits dear ones, were meant to be ruled by the Father but our spirits became
perverted and began to rule themselves and so we’re all concerned over the future because that’s our
job, we have to take care of that precious future because God no longer can because he doesn’t rule
us, and so our spirits have great yearnings to make the future what we want it to be.

Our spirits have not the rule of God’s Spirit in them and so they want to rule not only our lives
but the husband’s as well, and not just to discipline the children but to get them to do it exactly
as we want them to do it. And when somebody begins to act in a way that we don’t agree with we
burst out in temper because our spirit wants to rule over them. It’s perverted it was made to be
ruled by God. It was made so that God’s life would flow through it and rule others and the spirit
instead of feeding on the Spirit of God and the tree of life, has to start feeding on itself.

So dear ones, really drugs and alcohol are part of the way that we supply the exhilaration that
would normally come from the begotten life of Jesus. Do you know that that the begotten life of
Jesus provides exhilaration and excitement? This is why Paul said, “Don’t be drunk with wine
because that’s one way of doing it, but be filled with the Spirit and there’s no hangover and it’s a
better way.” You see? And it is true dear ones, when the spirit feeds on the tree of life that is
in Jesus, when the spirit feeds on the begotten life that is in Christ then the spirit doesn’t need
that false exhilaration. The body doesn’t need the kind of enjoyment that it gets from its own
action but it receives the enjoyment of the spirit through it.

The soul doesn’t need to be constantly seeking after men’s approval. Dear ones, that’s why we go
for status, do you see it? You know, we want them to know that we’re actually doing quite well and
so we buy not a Volkswagen, and a radio, and a TV set but we’re like the Jones’ next door and we buy
the big car, and we want status, and we want approval because the soul lacks the approval of God.
Lacks the sweet favor of God upon it and so it’s constantly trying to gain approval from others.

That’s why we’re always trying to prove to everybody else that we have really quite good abilities,
you know, we’re quite good at our job. And that’s why when somebody catches us out on the job we’re
really very anxious to prove to them that well, we can explain this, we can explain it because we
want to justify ourselves in their eyes, and justify ourselves in everybody’s eyes because we have
failed to be justified in the eyes of the only one who counts. And so dear ones, our spirits, and
our souls, and our bodies entered into this death life and that’s what I’m anxious for you to see.

It’s not that you’re bad, do you see that? It’s not that you don’t know how to manage your
emotions. It’s not that you don’t know how to manage your domestic life and you have to try harder.
It’s not that you’re not doing a good job at work. It’s dear ones, that you’re living the death
life, you’re believing the lie of the devil who has persuaded you that this created life is the
begotten life of God.

Well, what did God do? Dear ones, he is the author of truth and honesty. Where Satan is the author
of lies God is the author of truth and honesty and he had to keep his word. In Genesis 3:3 he said,
“Listen, if you eat of that tree you will die.” And in order to hold the world together in justice
God had to exert that death penalty upon us and so you remember, in Genesis 3:24 he withdrew the
tree of life from us by driving us out of the Garden of Eden lest we might eat of that tree and live
forever. And if we’d live forever with the perversions we had already in our personality we would
have created many hells and would have become many Satans and God had to withdraw from us the
eternal life that was his plan for us. And he could do nothing else, he had stated so often the
righteous live forever and the sinful will die and he had to keep his promise and there was no way
out.

Indeed, he could never replace that tree of life until you and I were all utterly persuaded that he
detested sin and that it always brought death. And you remember the precious way he did that? The
one who was to be the father of the new race, the one who was to walk among us in peace and harmony
and bestow upon us his own begotten life in love, he was the one that God allowed to listen to his
commandments about the tree of life and about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and to
abide by those commandments so that he himself did not incur the penalty of death. And yet that
dear one tasted death for all of us.

That dear one who was to come here in peace among us came here to the agony of the death that we
deserved to die. Until one man died plainly for all of us to see we would really never have
believed that God detested sin. We always have said, you know, “Well he’s changed his mind. He’s
just replaced the tree of life for us because he decided it won’t work.” And God had to show us
that above all he was just and it was because he loved us so much that there was anything like wrath
because he didn’t want us to endure created life all our lives. And so he allowed this dear one who
was originally to come and give us begotten life to come and die that death for us.

When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” he was experiencing the pangs of
hell and outer darkness that the created life will always experience. You see dear ones the created
life will not last. The created life only has the appearance of life. It has a temporary
appearance for 70 years and then at the end of that there’s a second death and outer darkness. And
Jesus faced that outer darkness and that second death. He endured even the pangs of hell so that
God could replace the tree of life. And how did he replace the tree of life? Well, because Jesus
obeyed God perfectly, when the devil tempted Jesus to enjoy himself by eating the bread, Jesus
refused continually through his life. When the devil tempted Jesus in his soul to get the kingdoms
of this world, Jesus throughout his lifetime obeyed God, when the devil tempted Jesus to rule over

in his spirit the very laws of gravity and the very laws of God, Jesus refused to use his spirit in
that way and throughout his life he walked perfectly before God. And so the Bible says, “The
righteous deserve to live,” and so he deserved to live by his own obedience and he himself possesses
begotten life.

He has deserved alone of all of us this begotten life. And dear ones, the message is that he is
able to give it to you. That he really is able to give it to you. That this Jesus now has never
died. That he’s alive tonight and he’s able to give you the begotten life of God. Are you living
that created life and pretending that it is begotten life? Are you? You know is your body
constantly seeking its own enjoyment, whatever the cost is to anyone else? “I must be satisfied and
I know what I need and I know what I want.” Is your body always anxious for its own enjoyment, and
its own comfort, and its own convenience?

Do you see what I’m saying? It’s not you’re bad. Do you see that? It’s not that you’re bad it’s
that you lack the precious begotten life that God is able to give you. And I’m saying to you, turn
from that old death life that you think is life. You have no control over your body. You cannot
change it, only God can pour into it his begotten life. What about your soul? Is your soul always
trying to justify itself? You know, are you always trying to prove your Christian righteousness?
Are you always in discussions about the victorious life trying to say, “Well yeah, but man has
weaknesses you know and I suppose this is my weakness.” Are you always trying to get round the
message of the pure life? Are you always trying to persuade others that you’re actually better than
you really are? Are you always trying to justify yourself or seek other men’s approval?

Dear ones, I know tonight that there are men and women here that are burdened under this desire for
status. I just know that there are some of you here that are burdened under this desire for status.
You laugh at keeping up with the Joneses but you know that that’s the reason why you keep buying
new carpets, and new furniture, and why you keep getting the other jobs, because it’s all this
desire for men’s approval because you lack the approval that comes upon God with the begotten life
of Jesus.

Is your spirit filled with the desire to rule over others? Do you always want your own way? Is
your spirit always anxious to have its own way and to make everybody do what it wants? Is there
some dissatisfaction still in your own spirit? Is there some feeling in you that surely there’s
more to it than this? Well dear ones, there is. When the begotten life of Jesus comes into you,
the whole life begins to work right. Do you know that? It all begins to work right.

You receive resources through the spirit. You receive resources from God through the Holy Spirit.
You receive a sense of restfulness in your spirit and contentment and this begins to pervade your
mind, and your will, and your emotions so that they are integrated and they begin to express this
life of Jesus through them and you’re conscious is at last ready to depend on the blood of Jesus and
to say to the Father, “I present the blood of Jesus to you and I know you’re pleased with that. I
know my life is miserable but I trust you to look at the blood of Jesus,” and the conscience rests
in the approval that God gives you when you do that. And the body at last becomes the servant of
your life and not the master and begins to be used by the Holy Spirit, and by your soul instead of
using them.

In other words, your whole life turns the right way up, or the apostles turned it the upside down
because at the moment our lives are upside down if we’re experiencing only that old created life.
Well, how do you receive Jesus’ begotten life? Turn from the death life. That’s it. You must turn

from the death life. You must acknowledge that what you’re living is the death life and dear ones,
this applies not only to those of us who aren’t Christians tonight but to many of us who are half
Christians, if there’s such a thing. To many of us who have not gone all the way with God.

Turn from that death life. Say to God tonight, “Father I know that there’s some of the death life
in me. Some of those qualities that were present in the Garden of Eden are present in me. Some of
those characteristics that the Spirit has described tonight, I have them in my life.” Now it’s the
death life dear ones. I can work on that for two or three hours and it’ll never get up and walk
away because it’s inanimate. And you can sit it there and leave it there for a million years and
some little animals they walk away with it, but it itself will never walk away.

In other words, you cannot get life out of something that is dead. Now, if you’re experiencing the
death life with all your eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with all your attempt
to put cosmetics on this dead corpse and make it look as if it’s alive, you cannot produce life.
You cannot produce life because life is received from the one who has life and that is Jesus. In
other words, you need to turn from the death life. You need to admit, “This is the death life that
I have,” and whatever way it expresses itself in you, you have to resolve tonight to turn from that.

If it’s your body, if it wants constant enjoyment and that’s all it seeks either in food, or in
sexual pleasure, or in satisfaction, or in comfort, or in convenience then you must say, “Tonight
Father I’ll turn from that. I’ll turn from that death life in my body.” If your soul is constantly
seeking after other people’s approval and trying to justify itself then you must turn from that and
you must say, “Father, if they look upon me as a complete failure I don’t care. I’m turning from
that desire to justify myself. I’m turning from that desire to get possessions and to try to prove
I’m worth something with the amount of money that I’ve earned, or by the job that I hold down.” You
need to turn from that death life.

If it’s your spirit and it wants to dominate your home, and you’re a dictator in your home and you
want everything to go your way, and you cannot abide anybody else having their way, then you need to
turn from that tonight and say, “Father, that’s the death life in me. I need the begotten life of
Jesus tonight to fill me there in that place and make me alive.” And then you need to turn to
Jesus. He that hath the Son hath life.

If you have Jesus tonight dear ones, you have God’s begotten life inside you and you know it. And
similarly if you’re pretending that the old created life is the begotten life you know that too.
Dear ones, Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive tonight and is willing, because this is why he was sent,
he is willing to give you this begotten life. Well I pray that if the Spirit has spoken to you, you
will come and receive that life. It’s important dear ones, to come only if God’s Spirit has spoken,
you see. But you know if he has spoken. You know if you’re pretending that this old death life is
begotten life or not and if that’s the case will you just come tonight and receive from Jesus what
he is able to give you.

The Holy Spirit Destroys the Works of the Devil

Exodus 2:10-15

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. The reason the Son of God
appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Let us pray. Dear Father, we trust you to explain
this clearly to each one of our hearts in such a way that we will submit to the victory of Jesus and
of the dear Holy Spirit, and that we will become sons of God in spirit and in truth. We ask this
for Jesus’ glory this morning. Amen.

You remember, we said that the reason the Son of God appears was to destroy the works of the devil.
In other words dear ones, the Son of God appeared to takeaway sins. I think a lot of us feel he
came maybe to save us in the midst of our sins, but we saw that even at the very point of conversion
Jesus comes to take away our sins. So a man or a woman is burdened with an angry word that he
speaks in his life and in his home, and God’s Spirit comes down and shows that those are the same
angry words that destroyed the Son of God on the cross of Calvary. Or, a man begins to sense that
there is dishonesty and deception in his business and he sees that that same deception of Jacob was
what made it necessary for Jesus to die on the cross. Had there been no deception in the world
Jesus would never had to die. So that in a real sense his deception kills the Son of God.

He sees the sarcasm, and the cynicism in his language in his own home, and he sees that that same
sarcasm, cynicism, and jibes was what helped to destroy the Son of God as the priest looked at him
and said, “Save yourself and come down from the cross.” And even a dear one at the very moment of
conversion sees that the sins that fill his life or her life have destroyed the Son of God. And so
they see that if they are to be related to the Father again in forgiveness, and that is what real
forgiveness is, the Father says, “Come and I will treat you as you were with me before the fall.”
And before the Father is able to relate you to himself like that, the dear one sees that he must
turn from those sins.

So he must turn from the sarcasm, he must turn from the deception, he must turn from the anger and
in that way Jesus saves them even at the point of conversion from his sins, from his outward acts
and words that disobey God. So dear ones, it’s impossible to have the assurance, the witness of the
Spirit in your heart that you are a child of God while you still continue acts and words that
destroy Jesus. It’s just impossible. The Father cannot have you in his own heart. He cannot show
you his favor. You cannot expect the Father to be pleased with those who continue to hurt his Son.

So even at conversion dear ones, it is necessary to turn from the acts and words that destroyed the
Son of God. And of course, God comes down in grace and forgives you, and you have a sense of
freedom from guilt in your conscious because you know that from now on the blood of Jesus can be
offered for your sins. Do you see that you cannot offer blood that you spill yourselves? Do you
see that?

You can’t thrust the sword of your angry word into the side of the Lord Jesus and take the blood
that comes out and offer it to God and say, “Be pleased with that Father, do not look at my sinful
life.” You can’t dear ones. The only time the blood can be offered to Jesus on your behalf in
place of your death is when you stop spilling his blood. And so it’s necessary, even at the point
of conversion to have an experience of Jesus destroying the works of the devil in your life, in your

outward life. And you remember how we went on to say that soon after that you began to sense that
all sin was not gone.

You began to sense that – well, to take the example of the dear one with the new dress, she came
home and she said, “Look at the new dress I bought,” and you know what the bank account is like and
you hold back the word, you don’t say, “Love, that was stupid. That was stupid you know the state
of the account. You know we couldn’t afford it.” You hold back that but within you there rises up
the desire to say that and you feel, “Does she know what she’s doing? Has she no sense? Has she no
sense or responsibility?”

Dear ones that is sin. Now, that is sin. There’s no point in saying, “Ah brother, no you’re
mistaken it’s only sin when it comes out,” or, “It’s only sin when it begins to get a grip.” Dear
ones, if there’s a rising within that’s sin and the glory of the gospel is that through the
cleansing power of the Holy Spirit you’re able to be free from the rising. Ah dear ones, I would
that I could say that to you more plainly, but do you see even when the dear one says, “Look at the
dress and you rise up within and you want to tell her,” that is sin because salvation at its lowest
is salvation from sin and salvation at its highest is salvation from the inclination to sin. Even
the bent to be unchristlike, God can save you from that and so it’s not long we said, until the Holy
Spirit begins to convict a Christian of that.

It’s not because of the inward sin that is in his heart, because it eventually breaks out into open
sin and he starts this long train of confessions and repentances day, after day, after day. So soon
he begins to realize that this sin has to go too and there he sees that it’s not a question of
forgiving it, it’s a case of destroying it. And the Bible of course says that sin, or our old self,
or our old man, or that desire for our own way and our own rights that was crucified with Jesus.

And there comes a blessed time in a Christian’s life when he begins to see that sin within him that
anger, and irritability, and anger, and jealousy. That desire to have his own way. That desire to
rule over other people’s life as enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God neither
indeed can it be and he cries out, “The good that I would I cannot do and the evil I do not want is
what I do.” And then he sees that that self was crucified with Jesus and that the Holy Spirit is
asking him, “Are you ready to be crucified with Jesus yourself? Are you ready to die to self from
this day forward and live only to what Jesus wants in your heart?”

And there comes a great day when it’s like a dear one whose lungs have given up and they’re put on
the artificial lung machine, and they give up their own lungs and they’re utterly dependent on the
artificial machine. And if it stops they stop living. If it doesn’t give them resources they have
no resources to live by and the dear one changes the source of his motivation and he turns from that
old self and he puts it on the cross once and for all. Allows the Holy Spirit to make that
crucifixion real in his heart and then he begins to live on the basis of the Holy Spirit and he
begins to depend desperately, and trust and obey the Holy Spirit like an artificial lung machine
that he cannot do without. And the dear one begins to walk in victory within.

And then you remember, we said yesterday that the Holy Spirit gives then power for service and he
gives gifts. So you can see in a way that the Holy Spirit sanctifies you first in your outward life
in the body in the acts and words, secondly, in the spirit inside in your spirit where you want to
rule over your own life and over others and thirdly, he sanctifies you in your soul by supplying the
resources that your soul once supplied. He supplies them by the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Now dear ones, after you’ve entered into conversion, the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit, and the
baptizing work of the Holy Spirit you’re ready to begin the deeper life. Now, do you see that? The
deeper life doesn’t begin until then. While you’re still struggling with sin dear one, while you’re
still fighting that battle within you’re not ready to begin the deeper life. The deeper life begins
after a dear one has died to self, been cleansed by the Holy Spirit and been baptized with the Holy
Spirit with the gifts of the Spirit. Then the dear one is ready to begin the deeper life and so
really in a way the conference begins when we have entered into that.

So in a sense dear ones, if you have not experienced those steps well all of what we’re going to say
is so much mental wisdom to you, you see, because you cannot enter into it until you’re at that
point. Now dear ones, I council you to pray about that today so that you will seek to come to that
point.

I’d like to just in the next three sessions, if possible, to deal with three aspects of the deeper
life. First of all, the ministry, the Christian’s ministry in the spirit and then this evening, the
Christian’s witness in the spirit, and then tomorrow morning the Christian’s fellowship in the
spirit. And I think it is a very different kind of life and an exciting one. The one that God
originally meant us to engage in, in the Garden of Eden. You remember, he said, “I want you now to
allow my Holy Spirit from the tree of life, to pervade your mind, and your intellect, and your body,
and to fill you completely, and to express himself through you freely.” Well, that’s the life we’re
engaged on when we move into the deeper life, to allow the Holy Spirit to integrate all of us.

Now, would you like then dear ones, with the ministry and the spirit in mind, to look at Romans 1:9,
and it’s only part of Verse 9. There’s so much in it I don’t think we could deal with it all but we
can deal with that middle piece. Romans 1:9 and I’m sorry I just have the RSV here but I think
you’ll be able to find the same clause in the King James. Romans 1:9, “For God is my witness, whom
I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my
prayers.”

Now dear ones, there’s too much and really all we can take is, “Whom I serve with my spirit.” “Whom
I serve with my spirit.” What is the ministry of the Christian? Well the ministry of the Christian
is to serve God with his Spirit. I think it’s necessary first of all to see that the ministry of
the Christian is not to do God’s work. The ministry of the Christian is not to do God’s work.

Now, you cannot do God’s work. Only God can do God’s work. Your ministry depends on God’s work but
it is not to do God’s work. Now you see the distinction? You may say to me, “Now pastor, that’s
only a matter of speaking? It’s only a manner of speaking we have when we say, ‘We’re doing God’s
work.’” But dear ones, so often it tends to be a manner of thinking also, you see. Our Christian
ministry depends on God’s work but does not consist of doing God’s work. Only God can do his work.

Now you can see this more clearly if you look at what God’s work is and Brother Elmer has been
telling that to you plainly. John 16:8-11, this is God’s work and this is why no Christian ministry
consists of doing God’s work, though all Christian ministries depend on God’s work. John 16:8-11,
here is God’s work and this is specifically his work not ours, “And when he comes,” (when the Holy
Spirit comes) “he will convince the world of sin and righteousness and of judgment: of sin, because
they do not believe in me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no
more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” That is God’s work, to convict the
world of sin of righteousness, and of judgment.

Now, if you ever go in to minister as a Christian and no work of God has taken place in the dear
one’s heart, you waste your time and deify yourself. So it’s vital dear ones, you see for a work to
take place in a person’s heart before you actually speak to them. I remember that dear old white
haired man that I told you of with the hole in the wall you remember, and the Holy Spirit making the
hole if you jumped. He said, “You know you can do no witnessing unless a work of God has already
taken place in the dear one’s heart.” And that’s true you see, right from before conversion, unless
God has awakened them in some sense there’s no point in you saying anything.

So that’s why the Christian’s ministry depends on the work of God. But where the Christian goes in
without a work of God taking place then all the attention is drawn to the Christian. So you know
dear ones, there are many churches where all the attention is drawn to the building, or the
preacher, or the choir, or the great preaching, or the power of the place. And that happens when
the work of God is not central. But when the work of God is central and the Christian’s ministry
depends on that, then this happens as it happened in Romans 1:8 if you look there.

They don’t thank God for the preacher, or for the choir, or the beautiful building, or for the many
good people in the church but in Verse 8, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of
you.” Why? “Because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.” In other words, where God’s work
is taking place among people and the Christian’s ministry depends on that. The people’s faith is
talked about. They’re expectancy for God to do mighty things and their trust that he will do mighty
things. Those are the things that other people talk about. They talk about the people’s faith
because faith of course is the gift of God and is not stirred up by great preaching, but is the gift
that God gives to the people who are willing to submit to him.

So where God’s work is really taking place and the Christian’s ministry depends on that, then
people’s faith is talked about. But where there is no work of God and Christian’s are trying to
minister without a work of God, the people begin to talk about the preacher, or the great church, or
the great choir, or all the wealth they have, or the possessions they have. So there is a real
difference dear ones, one work will not last and the other work will last forever. You can see
that’s true in 1 Corinthians 3:12-13.

1 Corinthians 3:12-13, there are two very definite kinds of work that are done under the ministry of
Christians so-called. 1 Corinthians 3:12-13, “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold,
silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble – each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will
disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each
one has done.” And you can see that Christians can minister in two ways, you see without the work
of God and trying to do the work of God, or with the work of God and depending on the work of God.
And the one does not last and will be temporary, and the other lasts forever. And we want to build
with precious stones not wood, hay, or stubble. So it’s important even with our sons and our
daughters not to go in and do our own works in their hearts you see, but to be sure that God has
done a work before we speak and then the work remains.

Dear ones, the second thing I think we should look at in the ministry of the Christian is there in
Romans 1:9. First of all, the ministry of a Christian depends on God’s work but is not God’s work
and then in Verse 9 that we read, “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel
of his Son.” A Christian in his ministry serves God, he does not serve men. A Christian in his
ministry does not serve men, he serves God.

Now we have a danger in these days of saying, “Well again, that’s only a manner of speaking brother.

We mean we’re serving God I mean, if you give a glass of water in my name you give it to the Lord
Jesus.” But dear ones, the tendency seems to be in these days that we emphasis that we’re serving
man and God fades from the picture. And the Bible puts it very bluntly that a Christian’s job in
his ministry is to serve God and God must be foremost.

Now you can see another verse where that is present in Ephesians 6:7. Ephesians 6:7, this emphasis
is present again, “Rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men.” “Rendering
service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men.” So we are called to serve God and not
serve men. Do you see that there is a great danger that many of us who have had our sins forgiven
and have been cleansed from inward sin, and have been baptized with the Holy Spirit will move out
into self again in our ministry? Can you see that?

That many of us are tempted by the devil after we have had our sins forgiven and been cleansed from
inward sin and self and been baptized with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There’s a great danger
that in our ministry we will move back into self. And if we’re conscious first of serving men dear
ones, that’s what happens. So there are many churches today, and you know it, which are bent on
serving men and then end up men pleasers. The preachers end up men pleasers because they have to
please the men that they’re serving. And they become preoccupied with the affect their preaching is
having on the men that they’re preaching to. Or, they become preoccupied with the amelioration of
social evils, and they say, “Our job is to serve men,” and I think it’s Fromke says, you know, “The
liberals have a tendency to say what can be done by men to improve the world.”

And there’s a tendency in many of us to go that way. We say, “Well right enough we should be doing
something about the Negro problem. We should be doing something about the race issue. We should be
doing something about the gun law.” And suddenly we begin to change over to serving men and to
trying to ameliorate a society that God has promised us is going to be destroyed. And so many dear
ones in their Christian ministry are led into frustration and futility because they begin to serve
men, and they begin to try to renew this world that only God can renew instead of turning to God and
serving him through the saving of individual souls and the leading them into the sanctifying power
of the Holy Spirit and into the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Instead of that, they begin to
concentrate on serving society.

Now dear ones, the Bible says, “We are called to serve God and not to serve men.” Now you may say,
and this is just the third part of what I would like to say this morning, “How do you know how you
should serve God? And, how do you serve God? How can you serve God?” Well, you find the statement
of how we serve God in 1 Corinthians 3, and maybe you would like to turn to it since it will be
basic to what God can say to us this morning.

1 Corinthians 3:5-9, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as
the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who
plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who
waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are fellow
workers of God; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

I don’t know how the King James translates that dear ones. Can someone read the King James Version?
I think it’s that word “with” that the sister read, the Greek is really “theou” which means of
God. And the Bible emphasis is that not are we so much fellow workers with God, you know, equals
walking along and Father you do a bit and I’ll do a bit, but we are fellow workers of God. We work
together as fellow workers that belong to God.

God does his work and then he calls in workers to work together for him. So not so much you see, we
are fellow workers with God but we are fellow works of God. God does his work and then we are
called to work together on the basis of the work that he has done already. So it’s like a surgeon
who is doing a heart transplant, he’s the one that does the heart transplant and he renews the dear
heart in the person and he has nurses and other doctors and assistants around him. And as he does
the work he requires assistants and each one must know what God wants them to do so he needs forceps
at this time, so he needs a needle at this time, so he needs tissues at this time. And he calls
from each one what he needs.

Now it’s in that sense that we are fellow workers of God. So God sees a dear one who is struggling
under bondage of sin and he convicts that person of his sin and that dear one needs someone to
explain to him what conviction is. And God calls one of his fellow workers and tells them, “Will
you explain to him what conviction of sin is?” And you maybe meet that dear one and explain it.
Then that dear one needs to go on from the forgiveness of sins to sanctification and God calls
another of his fellow workers and says, “Would you go and reveal the message of inward victory to
that dear one?” And maybe it’s you that are called this time. And so God is the great surgeon and
he does the work and we are fellow workers of God. We do what he tells us.

You can see how vital it is to know when God tells you what to do. It’s vital dear ones to know
what God tells you he wants you to do and when he wants you to do it. Now, how do you know that?
Well let’s look to the verse of scripture that shows us. And you see it just over the page from
that 1 Corinthians 3, it’s 1 Corinthians 2:11b and then Verse 9b-10. 1 Corinthians 2, how do you as
a fellow worker, how do you as one who is to minister as minster of Christ, how do you know when you
ought to minister and what you ought to minister? 1 Corinthians 2:11b, “So also no one comprehends
the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” In other words it’s the Spirit of God that’s the
only one that knows.

Now look at Verse 9b-10, 10 especially, “God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit
searches everything, even the depths of God.” Now, you know what God is thinking because God’s
Spirit knows what God is thinking and is able to tell you. Now it’s important dear ones to see that
this is part of the ministry in the Spirit, that your ministry is determined, and commanded, and
directed by God’s Spirit. Now you may say, “Why all this mystic stuff? Why not just use your own
mind that God has given you, and your feelings, and your good common sense, and do what you think
ought to be done for God’s cause to forward the world?”

Well dear ones, let’s look at Moses who did that and let’s look at Exodus 2:10-15, and he did just
what some of us think of suggesting and what I’m afraid many of us do in our Christian ministry.
Exodus 2:10-15, he used his own native wit. He was committed to God and he wanted to do what God
wanted but he decided to work it out for himself. Exodus 2:10-15, “And the child grew, and she
brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son; and she named him Moses, for she said,
‘Because I drew him out of the water.’ One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his
people,” the Israelites, “And looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one
of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in
the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together; and he said
to the man that did the wrong, ‘Why do you strike your fellow?’ He answered, ‘Who made you a prince
and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid,
and thought, ‘Surely the thing is known.’ When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But
Moses fled from Pharaoh, and stayed in the land of Midian; and he sat down by a well.”

And there is old Moses using his own native judgment and his own native abilities, and you see what
a glorious success he made of the task. He fled and ended up sitting down by a well. Now dear
ones, if you carry out your Christian ministry on the basis of your own native wit and common sense,
you will end up fleeing from the situation and sitting down by a well and being of no use to God.

Now, look at Moses when God’s own Spirit directed him. Exodus 3:1, “Now Moses was keeping the flock
of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian; and he led his flock to the west side of the
wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.” And then in Verse 7, “Then the LORD said, “I
have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their
taskmasters; I know their sufferings.” The Spirit of God spoke to Moses and told him. Then in
Verse 10, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of Israel
out of Egypt? But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of
Israel out of Egypt?’” And his own native wit rose again, “He said, ‘But I will be with you; and
this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of
Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain.”

And then in Verse 20 you see the achievements of God continuing through Moses, “So I will stretch
out my hand and smite Egypt with all the wonders which I will do in it; and then he will let you
go.” And so the message goes on into 30 and 31 of the next chapter where eventually the people are
freed. And God’s mission is accomplished through God’s Spirit telling the co-worker of God what he
ought to do.

In other words dear ones, there’s a difference between your ministry being directed by God’s Spirit
who alone knows God’s thoughts and your ministry being directed by your own soulish powers. You
see, just as there is a clear distinction between God’s Spirit and our spirit, you remember, we
talked about the Garden of Eden and the tree of light through which God was going to pour the spirit
of the begotten life into our spirits so that it would pervade all of our lives, our minds, and
emotions.

Now as there is a difference between God’s Spirit and our spirit, Romans 8:16, “The Spirit of God
witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.” There’s a distinction between them. So
there is a distinction dear ones between the spirit and the soul that we have. You see, there is a
distinction between our spirit and our souls. Now, you may question that and you may want to look
at it more carefully so would you like to turn just to some of these passages?

First of all the most obvious one is 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and most of you perhaps know it by heart
and don’t need to turn to it. 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you
wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ.” Now many of us read that and say, “Well that just means your body, you know, and all
the spiritual part of you.” Now dear ones the word of God is precious and was inspired by the maker
of the world so that the right words were given to us to convey the right meaning.

Now when the Bible makes the distinction between body, and soul, and spirit that distinction is
there because we are loose in our use of language it does not mean that God is loose in the use of
language. And God says “Body, soul, and spirit,” because he means that there is a distinction not
only between body and soul but there is a distinction between soul and spirit.

In fact, you’ll see by the next reference that we take that it is vital for a Christian in his

ministry not only to know that there is a distinction between soul and spirit but actually to allow
his soul and his spirit to be distinguished in his own life. It is essential for him to be able to
see the difference in his own life and to know when he is listening to his spirit and when he is
listening to his soul. Now you can see that in Hebrews 4 dear ones. Hebrews 4:12-13, “For the word
of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and
spirit.” “Piercing to the division of soul and spirit.”

In other words, not only can you know that you have a soul and you have a spirit but the word of God
is able, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the revelation of God’s word to distinguish for
you between your soul and your spirit. And the Bible calls us to serve God with our spirits. Now,
do you see the importance of it dear ones? We are called to serve God with our spirits not with our
souls. And many of us are having failure in our own Christian ministry because we’re trying to
serve God with the power of our own souls. And you know again, and again the Bible emphasizes this,
worship with your spirit, pray with your spirit, serve with your spirit. The Bible emphasizes that
we must pray, and worship, and serve with our spirits not with our souls.

Now you may say, “Well, what are our souls? What does our soul consist of?” Well, would you just
be patient then and we’ll follow just a few references through and see it from the scripture and
then we can apply it to our own hearts. 2 Peter 2:7-8, first of all our soul consists of these
things. 2 Peter 2:7-8, “And if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness
of the wicked (for by what that righteous man saw and heard as he lived among them, he was vexed in
his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds).”

Now he was distressed, he was vexed. You feel distressed and vexed when your emotions feel
distressed and vexed. But the New Testament there says, “He was vexed in his righteous soul.” Now
the soul consists first of all of our emotions. That’s one of the parts of the soul and that’s one
of the things that we’re not called to serve God with first and foremost, with our emotions.

Now at times we do serve God with our emotions, you see. At times we go up to this old dear one and
we think, “If we can only get over to them the joy of life in Jesus, then they’ll want him for
themselves.” And so we pray it up, and we work it up, and we feel really joyful and we hit that
deck with a smile on our faces, and with the emotions bursting out and we say, “Life in Jesus is
great.” And the emotions pour out to them and we minister with our souls and we minister death dear
ones.

You minister death. You do not minister the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus has a precious
joy that no one can imitate but we turn on this human joy for the best motives. I know dear ones,
for the best motives but it is not of Jesus. It is not of the Spirit of Jesus, it is the emotions
of our soul. And so often we witness in the strength of our soul. You see, that was the very
temptation in the Garden of Eden. You remember we said it was not choose good and avoid evil but it
was choose the knowledge of good and evil. It was a rising up of the soul in the Garden of Eden.

You remember we said that all our functions were perverted of every part of our personality by the
fall. Our bodies instead of giving out people in the image of God began to enjoy themselves and
concentrate on their own enjoyment. You remember we said that our spirits that were meant to rule
over the world and God through them to rule over the world began to rule over themselves and rule
over other people. And then the soul, which was meant to receive directions from the spirit, it
began to work itself, it began to operate itself. It began to substitute its power for the
resources from the tree of life.

Dear ones, when you pour out your own emotions to someone to whom you’re supposed to witness and
those emotions do not come from the Spirit of Jesus, because of course the Spirit of Jesus can use
your emotions, I don’t mean you go without emotion, but there’s an emotion that is soulish and
there’s an emotion that comes because the Spirit of Jesus has provoked it. Now one gives life and
the other gives death. One can be used by God, the other draws attention to self and they say,
“What a happy person that fellow is.” Well, what good does that do? That’s of no good to God.

So the emotions dear ones are one part of the soul. Now Psalms 119, this will seem strange to you,
I just never realized there was a Psalm with 167 verses in it but Psalms 119 has more than that.
Psalms 119:167, and this is dear ones, another part of our souls. Psalms 119:167, “My soul keeps
thy testimonies; I love them exceedingly.” “My soul keeps thy testimonies,” it means commandments
and it’s your will obviously that keeps commandments.

Part of the soul is the will. The soul consists of your emotions and your will. And the Bible
calls us to serve God with our spirits not primarily with our wills. The Holy Spirit will use your
wills. He will guide your wills. You need to allow the Spirit to use your wills but you yourself
must not use your will. So there comes a moment when God asks you to do some work for him and you
don’t feel like it at all and you say, “Well, I’ll do it,” and your will determines to do it and you
go in that spirit and you go and you minister to the dear one but you do not minister the Spirit of
Jesus, you minister your strong will to them. And many of us, when dear ones come to us and say, “I
cannot, I cannot keep the commandments. I cannot do it. I don’t know what’s wrong, there’s
something within me that rises up.” We minister the power of the will to them and say, “You must
will it. You must will it.”

Now you must will obedience over outward acts and words but you know that you cannot will down the
risings up within a converted man or woman. That’s something that only the Holy Spirit can deal
with. And so we are not called to minister by our wills or in our wills, but through our spirits to
minister with our spirits. Well dear ones, another part of the soul is found in different parts of
the Bible but I think that maybe we have only time to look at the mind and you can see it there in
Deuteronomy 11:18.

Deuteronomy 11:18, “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul;
and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.”
“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul.” Now if you lay up
words for an examination you obviously lay them up in your memory and that’s part of your mind. And
the soul consists of the emotions, and the will, and the mind. So do you see that the soul consists
of the mind, the emotions, and the will? I believe also there’s reason for saying it consists of
the conscience but the vital things in the ministry of a Christian are the mind, the emotions, and
the will. And dear ones, God calls us not to minister with our minds but to allow the Holy Spirit
to use our minds.

Now I think Philip could have ministered with his mind. God came down to him and said, “Will you go
to the desert road that leads to Gaza?” Philip, if had been ministering with his mind would have
said, “Thinks, the desert road that leads to Gaza? A desert road has no one on it. No Father,
because there’s a revival going on here and I’m needed here to lead other dear ones into conversion.
No, I will not go to the desert road that leads to Gaza because my mind tells me that’s a desert
road.” Now often if we minister in the power of our minds, we will go astray in our own Christian
ministries because that’s ministering with the soulish powers.

Now dear ones, we cannot, we cannot do any work for God by ministering with our minds. So often in
an argument we minister with our minds. We’re determined that they’ll see the doctrine as we see it
and we’re determined they’ll understand the infinite minds definition of sin just as we understand
it. Dear ones, that isn’t the vital thing at all but that they see the beauty of Jesus and they see
that sin is any falling short of that beauty. But many of us minister in the power of our minds and
not in the power of the spirit. We do not serve God with our spirits we serve him with our minds.

So I did this, you know, at my first church in Minneapolis I decided, “What they need to do is read
the Bible so I’ll get Bible study groups going.” And right enough we did it and I had a good Bible
study book, and I duplicated sheets, and I had six groups going, and there were 10 or 12 people in
each group and that was magnificent. In a Methodist church any way, it was magnificent. And there
were 70 of us meeting every week for an hour. And I led every group so that I led six groups a week
just to make sure that they saw the word of God as it really was.

And I had thought this whole thing up with this great clever thing here. And then it went for six
months and six months passed by and I looked around for the fruit and there was no fruit. They all
knew the Bible and they were enjoying the groups and, “Reverend O’Neill we really think the groups
are good.” But there was no life pouring through the groups because this mind had thought the idea
up and I had organized them as I would organize an army. And dear ones, if you serve God with your
mind like that instead of with your spirit there will be no fruit.

The Christian’s ministry depends on serving God with the spirit. Now, you say why? Well, God wants
this to be the situation in your life, the spirit receives directions from his Spirit. Then the
spirit wears the soul. You see, wears the soul as I wear this coat. The spirit wears the soul and
expresses the directions that God has given it through the mind, and emotions, and the will of the
soul and then the soul wears the body and the soul expresses what it has received from the spirit
out through the body. And the will of God is that the life that he gives to your spirit should come
out untinged and untainted through your body. And that’s why the body, the soul, and the spirit
must not only be completely sanctified but they must work in that order dear ones.

If it works from the soul then it is not of God, it is of the soul. It is still of the old
independence of men. And you know, you’ll often see a person who has claimed to be sanctified and
claimed to be baptized with the Spirit and that dear one pours forth their soul and all you meet is
their soul and the power of their soul and you do not meet the Spirit of Jesus and you know that.
There’s something that grinds inside you and you know that’s soulish power pouring out.

Now dear ones, that is not God’s will. You can see this is also why psychology has little place,
psychiatric counseling as little place in the life of a Christian because the spirit is the one
that’s wrong or right. The soul only expresses what is in the spirit. Now psychology is “psuche”
and “logos” it’s the knowledge of the “psuche”, or the mind, or the soul. And when psychologists
work with you they work on that second level and they’re working all the time with symptoms.

So you deal with the dear one who is neurotic at home and you decide, “The only way I can do it is
give her electric shock treatment.” And you try and shock a soul. I don’t know what you’re trying
to do you’re just trying to shock it. You know it shouldn’t be as it is, you know, you try to shock
it out of the syndrome that it’s in, in that moment. But you see dear ones who are Christians know
that the soul is only expressing what the spirit has felt and it’s at the spirit level that the
problem is. And that’s why it’s so precious that the best psychiatrist of all is the Bible which is

the word of God which can divide even the soul from the spirit and can reveal to us the intentions
of our hearts. So it’s vital to see the distinction.

Dear ones, we could go on for days on this, it’s so precious. Could I just point out one more thing
to you, that it’s vital for us, you see, to begin to deal at the level of our spirits in our own
lives. If you deal at the level of the soul, and many churches do, many churches try to educate the
soul. Many churches who even believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, are all the time trying to
educate the soul. Well, it’s like me taking my car and driving it back and forward between Bethany
and my home. Driving it back and forward two or three times and then saying, “Okay, you can go on
your own.”

That’s what you’re doing when you’re dealing with the soul you see, because the soul’s driver is the
spirit. And however often you run the soul back and forward over that line it won’t get used to it
because the soul itself is strictly speaking neutral, strictly speaking neutral. And if it is
predisposed one way it’s predisposed because the spirit is predisposed this way. You can see that
that’s why the Bible is so wise, isn’t it, when Isaiah cries, “I am a man of uncleanness.” Not, “I
spoke with my lips unclean words,” not, “My mind thought unclean words,” but, “They all did what
they did because the spirit was unclean.” And so it’s the spirit that guides the soul and the soul
guides the body.

A Christian needs to receive his directions directly from the spirit. Now many of us have gone
astray because we’ve come into all the experience of the spirit and we have not lived by the spirit.
We have not ministered in the spirit we’ve looked at the books, the psychology books, and we’ve
read all the other books. And I’m sure it’s good to read them, but it’s good to realize that your
direction day-by-day moment-by-moment must come from your spirit.

Now last of all dear ones, and there isn’t really much time to talk about it but God wants to show
you the distinction between your soul and your spirit. So again and again dear ones who are about
to enter into the deeper life find they’re meeting defeat

Controlled Surrender

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

For those of you who are here maybe for the first time and have been put off by previous experiences
of an emotional and irrational presentation of Christianity because really we don’t present the
intellectual basis this morning for the Christianity that we believe in and I can only point you to
the house of Dunamis and the bookshop in the House of Dunamis we have maybe a library of 50
cassettes which deal with the intellectual basis of Christianity and we in past Sundays have talked
about this. I point you to the Fish bookshop which has a good selection of Christian books on those
subjects, and point you to the seminars, and just ask you to be patient and realize that we’re
following out a study that we have been considering together for several months, and so you in a way
come in in the middle of it.

It’s not because we don’t deal with the intellectual basis but we believe we need to get beyond that
also. We, since Christmas have been talking about what the real Christian is. We’ve done that
because people have so many varied concepts of what a Christian is. Some of them think that we’re a
Christian nation because we put, “In God we trust,” on our coins. And so a lot of people say, “Oh,
that’s what you mean by being a Christian.” And a lot of people say, “Oh well a Christian man is a
very moral man or a very virtuous man,” or, “A Christian person is a church goer or someone who
believes the truths of Christianity.”

Now dear ones, it’s because of those varied concepts that we have been talking about what a real
Christian is on these Sundays. You remember, we said that a real Christian was one who had
experienced the two effects of Christ’s death. He had experienced a spiritual birth whereby God’s
Holy Spirit came into his spirit and brought new life and sensitivity to God into him and that came
through real repentance. And the second effect of Jesus’ death is a real spiritual death to that
old self life caused by the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in displacing that self and made
possible by the fact that we were really crucified with Christ 1900 years ago.

Now both of those probably sound wild to anybody who has never considered Christianity seriously
before, but what it really means is first a miraculous implanting of a God centered set of
motivations and sensitivities inside us. And secondly, a miraculous displacing of the old
self-centered set of sensitivities and motivations within us. And a real Christian is one how has
experienced both of those – a spiritual birth and a real spiritual death to self.

Now is it possible for a person to enter into just one of those? Yes, last Sunday we talked, you
remember, about a person who is half alive spiritually. A person who has allowed the Holy Spirit to
make the new birth real in them so that they want to do God’s will, and they want to do things that
please Jesus, but the self inside them and the miserable self-centered desires that they have,
prevent them from obeying God’s will. That’s a person who is half alive spiritually. A person who
has entered into the new birth but has not entered into a real experience of their death to self
with Christ and so they are in a sense like the man described, you remember, in Romans 7:19. And we
did look at it before but if you want to check it there are a couple of references there in Romans
that it would be good to look at. And Romans 7:19, describes the state of a person who is half
alive spiritually.

Romans 7:19, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” “For I do
not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” And many people have entered into

half a Christian experience and are in that position. They know what they ought to do but they have
not the power to do it and they live constantly defeated experiences failing to do what they know
they should do. Now really, their position is much like a Jew. You could say almost that they are
living under the old covenant. They’re living under the old covenant which enabled people to have
their sins forgiven but did not give them power to live in obedience.

They’re living a bit like the person, you remember, that Paul describes there in 7:24, he says,
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And some people would say
that isn’t a defeated Christian talking, that’s Paul talking as a Jew under the law, “Wretched man
that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” What was a body of death? Well, you
remember, they had several methods of execution in the first century, one was crucifixion. Another
was putting a stake right through the heart of the person. Another was taking the victim that the
criminal had murdered and hanging that victim’s dead body around the criminal and making that
criminal walk for months and months with that dead body decomposing around him and the stench
constantly destroying any freshness of the air, and eventually overcoming the man.

Now, that is what Paul means, “Who shall deliver me from this body of death, this dead body hanging
around me that prevents me living the full life that I could live if it wasn’t there, and it’s
continually hindering me when I get into situations that require extra effort?” Now loved ones, you
see, that’s what many of us find ourselves in. We find that there’s a kind of body of death that
hangs around us and we want to love the person, we want to love them wholly and completely but there
is within us a self-righteous desire to judge them and that body of death hangs around us. And we
want to love the person but that self-righteous desire to judge them comes up and we say, “No, we
can’t love them because they’re like this.”

Many of us want to have a pure relationship with our dear ones. We want to have a pure love
relationship but there is a self-pleasing lustful desire to satisfy ourselves that is constantly
creeping up inside and this old body of death seems to swing around us at times when we want to have
a pure experience with the dear one. Now, that’s what it means to be half alive.

There are many of us who really want to live for God totally and we really do want to follow Jesus
and make any sacrifice that is necessary but inside us there is this self glorifying desire that
wants to live our lives for our own sakes and for our own benefits. Now that’s the body of death
dear ones. It’s not this flesh body, there’s nothing evil about the body itself. It’s the body of
death, the body of sin inside us that is constantly trying to pull us back into self. Now that’s
what a half alive Christian is, you see.

Now what you need to decide this morning is where you stand in regard to that, really. The first
time the gospel was ever preached was the day of Pentecost and both these experiences, a real birth
and a real death, are implied in the instruction that is given to those converts or to those
non-Christians before they were converted. Maybe you’d look at it, it’s Acts 2:38, and you remember
it was the first time that any man ever presented in the world that God was willing to accept men as
his own children because of Jesus and was able to restore his image in their own lives. And then
you remember, some people came up to Peter and they said, “In the light of this what shall we do?”
And Acts 2:38, Peter answered like this, “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one
of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift
of the Holy Spirit.’”

And there were three steps dear ones. The first step was repent, and you had to stop doing the

things that were wrong, and ask Jesus’ Spirit to come into your life. And that’s the first step in
becoming a Christian. And then you see you had to be baptized in the name of Jesus. And you know,
they were wiser than us, they didn’t spend hours arguing about whether they ought to go right under
the water, or whether it was enough to sprinkle, or whether it was enough to pour on, and all that.
They really got to the basis of what baptism was. And you remember how Paul explained it in Romans
he explained what baptism was before the people ever went under the water in Romans 6:3-4, you
remember. And this was the second necessary step, you see, to be a totally alive Christian.

Romans 6:3, “Do you not know,” and you see probably Paul would do this, the dear ones would be
waiting there on the side of the river or the lake and he would explain to them, “Now, I’m going to
explain to you what baptism means,” and bless our hearts we think, “Well, if we haven’t been
baptized in the right way, this won’t take place in us.” Dear ones, it will. You’re only baptized
again if Jesus tells you to be baptized.

Do you see how silly we are brothers and sisters? We love to see the visible things, you know. If
somebody tells us by being baptized upside down you can be converted, you know, we’ll go for that.
Now loved ones, do you see, and I share this with you because I’m willing to baptize anyone
believers baptism that believes Jesus is really guiding them. But do you see there’s a difference
between that and the fad of being baptized because you think it’s an easy way into the death of
Christ? There is no easy way. You’re baptized into what you are already. Do you see that?

The New Testament always baptizes you into something that you’re in already. The baptism does not
cause the thing. The baptism is an outward sacramental proclamation that the thing has taken place.
Now, that does not mean that we should not follow the New Testament directions as clearly as
possible we should do that, but we should steer away from any faddish preoccupation with second
baptisms. If Jesus guides you to a second baptism then that’s good but be sure that it’s that. Be
sure that it’s not going for some visible mechanical thing that you think will create the experience
because it won’t.

But probably you see, as the dear ones came to the lake or river Paul explained to them, “Do you not
know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were
buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Now many of us do not walk in newness
of life because we have never been identified with Christ in his death and his resurrection. And
you see, even on the first day that the gospel was ever preached it was shared that that was
necessary.

You repented, you were born of the spirit and then you were baptized into the death of Jesus. You
were identified with him in his death and resurrection. Loved ones, sharing with you the
application of it to physical lust, you are baptized into Jesus’ lack of having a woman and you
agree with the Holy Spirit, “I agree Holy Spirit, I am willing only to experience what you want me
to experience in that area of my life. I am willing to be baptized into Jesus completely. If he
had no wife, if he had no girlfriend, if he had no woman I am willing for that. If you want to give
me a wife, a girlfriend, then I am willing for that.” But do you see that it is an identification
with Jesus in every aspect of his life, in every way in which he died to self you are willing to die
to self. And then as you’re baptized into that the Holy Spirit is completely filling your life and
taking your life over and that is the full Christian experience.

Now you may say, “Well, pastor is it possible for people to enter into half an experience?” Well

dear ones, let’s look to Acts 8 and see it there. In Acts 8:4-6, “Now those who were scattered went
about preaching the word. Philip went down to a city of Samaria, and proclaimed to them the
Christ.” Now you see in Verse 6, “And the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by
Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did.” Now that means they heard his word
there in Samaria. Now they took another step in Verse 12-13, “But when they believed Philip,” they
not only heard it but they believed him, “As he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the
name of Jesus Christ”.

So they knew what they were believing, they were believing the name of Jesus. “They were baptized,
both men and women.” So these people really became Christians, they were really born of the Spirit.
“Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs
and great miracles performed, he was amazed.” So there was in every sense a new birth experience in
the city there in Samaria.

Now, do you see how the story goes on in Verse 14, “Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that
Samaria had received the word of God,” you would think they would have immediately said, “Send them
out, give them the four laws and send them out and get them out witnessing, and get them out serving
God, and get them out playing the organ in church and have them sing in church, and have them run
Sunday school classes,” and all that kind of thing. Now do you see that immediately they heard what
had happened in Samaria, Peter and John new that only half an experience had taken place?
Presumably Philip had told them some of what he had done and do you see what they had did in Verse
14? They sent to them their two best men, Peter and John, “Who came down and prayed for them that
they might receive the Holy Spirit; for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the
Holy Spirit.”

Now it is important dear ones, to see that when you’re baptized in the name of Jesus what often
takes place is a new birth experience. You’re born of the Spirit, you receive the Spirit, but you
are not filled with the Spirit and you need to go into the full experience of Christ’s death. Now
if you say to me, “Do you not think pastor that some people experience both the New Testament
times?” Maybe they did dear ones, I’m sure they experienced it almost the next day. I’m sure there
was no difficulty in them realizing what a full surrender was in those days.

I’ve shared with you before, I’m sure they heard the word one day and then Peter or Paul would
explain to them what baptism into Christ the next day, they would realize that Peter and Paul were
as good as dead men, and that baptism for them meant dying to any future that they might have.
Dying to their own wishes, dying to their own concerns, and they were baptized and filled with the
Holy Spirit. But brothers and sisters you know it’s different today. We are born of the Spirit,
then we look around and instead of seeing examples everywhere of men sacrificing their financial
accounts, sacrificing their bank balances, sacrificing their plans for marriage, their homes, their
two car garages, sacrificing everything for Jesus, instead of that we see many dear ones who are
children of God but they are living lives of controlled surrender. And so we ourselves, you see, we
wander into that controlled surrender and that’s why many of us have little experience of the
filling with the Holy Spirit.

Now it would be good, because I see some older brothers and sisters among us in these mornings, it
would be good to say, dear ones, I’m not saying that we all ought to become missionaries, or we all
ought to leave the States, but we ought to be full time servants for Jesus. Do you see what I mean?
Not full time paid servants, but living for Him first and foremost, everything else subordinate.

And when we begin to get a new group of Christians entering into both parts of Christ’s death then
we’ll begin to have less defeated Christians around us, and we’ll have less people entering into
half an experience.

So I think it is important to see it dear ones. Now you may say, “Oh but brother how could you
enter into half an experience?” Well, I’ll show you why. There’s a principle explained in Matthew
9 if you’d look at it, and I think it will help you to see why many people do enter into only half
of what Christ as done for them on the cross. Matthew 9 and it’s the story of a healing you
remember, Matthew 9:27-30, “And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying
aloud, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David.’ When he entered the house, the blind men came to him; and
Jesus said to them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to him, ‘Yes, Lord.’
Then he touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’ And their eyes
were opened.”

Now do you see the principle is according to your faith be it done unto you, or be it unto you
according to your faith? Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit can only do in you what you believe
him to do. If you believe the Holy Spirit to take your sins and lay them on Jesus, and to bring to
you the witness of God’s Spirit that you’re forgiven and that you’re a child of God, if you believe
the Holy Spirit to come into the door of your heart, and dwell in your life, he will do that. But
he cannot do more than you believe him to do. If you do not believe that you were crucified with
Christ and are willing to be crucified with Christ, and believe the Holy Spirit to fill every part
of that miserable inward self that has envy, and jealous, and pride, and anger in it, then the Holy
Spirit cannot do it.

The Holy Spirit you see can apply to you all that God has done for you in Christ, but only if you
have faith that he will do it. And you can see therefore among many of us, it’s a sheer lack of
light. In our generation we have preached a soft gospel haven’t we? We’ve preached if you come to
God he will forgive you your sins and it doesn’t matter what you do. You can keep on doing what you
want but God will continually forgive you.

Now you see that isn’t the gospel in the New Testament. The New Testament gospel is you are
crucified with Christ. God isn’t just going to have a heaven full of people that he has to forgive,
and forgive, and forgive again. He wants a heaven full of people who have allowed that miserable
old rebellious self to be destroyed with Jesus on Calvary so that it is heaven. So that it is
heaven. And many of us you see have not heard that or have not shared it.

Now there is another reason for us not entering it. Faith is belief plus obedience. Now, if you
enter into an experience of forgiveness of sins without belief that Christ bore your sins, then you
enter into legalism. That’s why many conservative churches really have vied into legalism because
their children and their brothers and sisters have not entered into a real belief that their sins
were born by Jesus.

Now, if you enter into the forgiveness of sins without any real obedience then you’ll enter into a
life of doubts and many people you see, enter into an experience of forgiveness without any real
obedience following, and before they know it they’re beginning to doubt everything. They doubt
whether there’s a God, they doubt whether Jesus ever lived, they doubt everything that they ever
knew before.

Now it’s same with the experience of crucifixion with Christ. If you try to enter into an

experience of crucifixion with Christ without believing that you were crucified with Christ 1900
years ago, then you enter into suppression, a life of suppression where you try to suppress
something that has not been dealt with by God. And it’s the same if you enter into an experience of
deliverance from sin or crucifixion with Christ without any real obedience. Then you enter into a
life of auto suggestion where you keep saying, “I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.” But you’re not
really dead, you’re alive and kicking and every time anybody criticizes you, you know it that great
self rises up and reacts against them.

So do you see that in order to enter into the two great works that Christ achieves for us on the
cross you need to enter into both by a complete faith. That is, a complete belief and complete
obedience. Now how does this in fact work in our lives? Well, at the beginning of our Christian
life Jesus comes to the front door of our house and knocks. And the porch there is a guilty
conscious and Jesus explains to us, “Look, I was crucified for your sins. My Father has nothing
against you, you should have died for your sins but I’ve died for them. My Father doesn’t hate you,
my Father doesn’t dislike you. He has withdrawn his wrath from you. I tell you, you just look up
and believe that my Father’s face is smiling upon you and receive me into your spirit.”

Now that’s the experience of conversion and the Spirit of Jesus comes into us at conversion and then
he begins to look around at the rest of our house, and he begins to look into the bedroom, and he
begins to point out, “Now listen, there’s laziness in your life.” And the old self inside you rises
up and says, “Yeah, but I have a right to lay in it if I want to. I have a right to laze around if
I want to, it’s my life.” The Holy Spirit says, “No, I have come into your life, it is my life.
Now are you willing to die to your right to be lazy?” And then he deals with other things in the
bedroom of our house. He comes to self-indulgence and he says, “Now listen, you think you have the
right to indulge yourself whenever you want but you are not your own, you were bought with a price.
This body doesn’t belong to you it belongs to me. Now, will you let me take it over?” And the Holy
Spirit deals with us in that regard.

Or he deals with us so often in the bedroom of our lives. Really that’s where worry resides. At
night we worry and worry over what has happened during the day and what will happen the next day and
the Holy Spirit says, “Now listen, if you don’t hand that over to me you’re beginning to control
your life yourself. You worry because you think things aren’t going to turn out the way you want
them to. Now, will you die to your right to control things?” And the Holy Spirit goes through the
rooms of our house and he cleans them out. And he comes to the study and he deals there with the
pride and he says, “Now listen; you have pride in your grades. Now your grades were granted to you
by my grace and my power. They’re my grades they’re not yours.” And he begins to deal with us on
pride. Or, he begins to deal with us on envy.

He says, “Now, why do you think you have a right to be envious of someone else? You have been
crucified with Christ. You are nothing as far as Jesus is concerned, but the Father thinks the
world of you so why be envious of other people?” And the Holy Spirit dear ones, begins to go around
the other rooms of our house. Comes into the family room there where we get touchy with the family
and we’re touchy because they don’t seem to understand all the things we understand and the Holy
Spirit says, “You’re setting yourself up as God. Because they don’t understand things the way you
do, you think they’re wrong.”

And he deals with our impatience and says, “You think you know the perfect time to get things done?
Maybe their time is the perfect time. Impatience is a sign that you want everybody to do things the
way you want them to do it.” And you see the Holy Spirit moves through all the rooms of our house.

And he moves into the chapel there into the prayer room and he deals with the deadness and the
coldness that we experience in there and he shows us, “Listen, you’re in charge of your own
spiritual life. You have it under control you don’t feel I’m in control of it at all.” And the
Holy Spirit begins, you see, to search through all of the rooms of our house.

Now if we at any point resist him, that’s what, causes deadness in the Christian life. That’s what
calls a sense of defeat. If in any room of our life we resist him, that’s what causes the deadness.
If we respond to him and say, “Yes Holy Spirit, clean up that room, clean up that room, clean up
that room.” Then eventually he takes us to the very back of the house. There there is a closet
where we put all the stuff that we cleared out of the other rooms into and that closet is full to
the ceiling of all the dirt, and all of the things that the Holy Spirit said we should move out of
all the other areas of our lives.

Now dear ones, in that closet there exists three attitudes. One is I have really the right to this
house whatever he thinks. I’ll withdraw the bits of it that he tells me to when it’s convenient for
me, but I’m going to keep all this stuff back here and I’ll move it back in whenever I want. Now,
it’s that right to self loved ones that the Holy Spirit eventually begins to deal with. The second
thing is that desire for our own way and back there in that closet we want our own way, we don’t
actually want him to fill the whole house. We want to fill the whole house ourselves, that’s why
we’re keeping all the stuff back here. We feel we have the right to have our own way in regard to
our future, our finances, and okay we go along with him as long as it suits us.

But when we want to we’ll pull it out of his hands. And the third attitude is the desire to assert
ourselves, and defend ourselves. And you see we feel we have the right to assert ourselves over
this house because this is our life. Now, when the Holy Spirit gets to that closet we’ve come to
the question of whether we’re willing to die with Christ or in fact, to live a half alive
self-controlled half surrendered life and that’s the closet that you need to deal with dear ones.
And the Holy Spirit asks you “Are you willing to die to your right to yourself? Are you willing to
die to your right to have your own way? Are you willing to die to the right to assert yourself and
defend yourself?”

Dear ones, when you come to that place, you burn all your bridges behind you and you say, “Holy
Spirit I am willing.” And he knows whether you’re really willing or not and as a result of that he
fills you with himself and you enter into the fully surrendered victorious Christian life. Now
brothers and sisters, that’s a real moment, you can bluff all kinds of people that you’re willing to
die to that self, but the Holy Spirit knows if you’re willing.

Now if you say to me, “What happens if I’m not willing?” Well loved ones, I suppose you are a child
of God and you live that up and down Christian life in and out of defeat, in and out of victory. I
suppose you remain a child of God as long as you’re able to repent of your sins, but it’s not the
Father’s will for you. The Father’s will is that you enter into both parts of the cross of Christ
and you enter in by belief and obedience to the Holy Spirit.

Now brothers and sisters, it’s vital to come into that before you can know any ministry of the Holy
Spirit. So will you begin to pray about that, and think about it, and I’ll gladly talk with you or
pray with you at any time, or if you want to stay behind today and pray you should do it. But
really the way is to deal with the Holy Spirit. Let him into the rooms of your life until he takes
you back to the closet and then deal openly and honestly with him about that. I pray that God will
give you the grace to come into a full Christian experience. Now let us pray.

Holy Spirit, we know that only you can bring us there because this involves parts of our life over
which we exercise unconscious control. So Holy Spirit we need your light, and we need your
revelation to see where we need to come into a full experience of Christ’s death, and to be
identified with him in his death and then in his resurrection. So Holy Spirit, we commit ourselves
to you now and ask you whatever the cost, to come into every room in our life and to deal with that
closet at the back, to deal with that old self, and to bring us into the resurrection victory life
that is waiting for us.

We trust you to do that Holy Spirit, that Jesus may be glorified in us and not ourselves, that we
may live not unto ourselves but unto Jesus. Amen.

Half Alive

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Imagine this that you see that your roommate while you were out has been in and has been looking for
some things of their own and they have just mowed through all your stuff and it’s chaotic. And so,
the old anger gets up and you move and you say, “Who do you think you are? You think you can just
throw everybody’s stuff all over the place whenever you want to?” And then the old cold war settles
in and you hold it like that for a day, or if you’re two girls for two days. That’s just the Irish
girls, I’m sure. And then you begin to make it up and eventually you ask forgiveness and the thing
comes out alright.

Now in that situation, even those of us with very hardened consciences, are very conscious that
there are two factors involved. One, we do have a real sense of guilt because we’ve lost our
temper. You know, our consciences are programmed by the same spirit that prompted Jesus to say, “If
you’re angry with your brother, you’re guilty of the judgment.” And so our consciences, because
they’re programmed by that spirit, our consciences witness guilt and we feel somehow, “Yeah, yeah, I
know it was wrong.” We might feel it’s wrong for different reasons according to how much light
we’ve had about God, but we do feel, “Yeah, there’s some guilt. We shouldn’t have done it.” And
yet we’re conscious of another attitude inside us and that’s the attitude that feels, “Well yeah,
but I had a right to do it. I mean, he or she shouldn’t have treated my stuff that way. I have a
right to defend my own possessions.”

Now do you see dear ones, that those two factors are present every time we disobey the Father in
some way in our lives? There’s that wee bit of feeling of guilt and there’s also that feeling that
seems deeper than the guilt that says, “Yeah, but I mean I had a right to do it.” And there’s that
bit of us that wants to justify what we did. Now, how does the ordinary man in the street deal with
that? Well, usually he looks at the guilt and he rationalizes it, and he attributes it to some
Victorian inhibition that has been passed on by his parents. And he just rejects the whole idea of
death following upon anger. He rejects the authority of Jesus, he says, “No, it doesn’t matter if
you’re angry, you’re not guilty of the judgment.” He just rationalizes away the whole idea of
guilt. And how does he deal with the inside feeling, the sense of self-assertion? Well, usually he
looks at it and he says, “Well, I’m a human being. Every human being has a right to defend his own
possessions. No, I’m right to feel that way. I ought to stand up for myself and look out for
myself, and if I don’t who will?” And that’s normally the way the man in the street deals with an
active disobedience.

Now, how does a person who comes to believe in Jesus deal with that act? Well, he sees that Jesus
is God’s son. He sees that what Jesus says about the anger is true and that if you’re angry with
your brother you’re guilty of the judgment. And he sees, “Yes, that is anger. That’s a sin. I am
guilty of the judgment. I deserve to be condemned for that sin of anger.” And then he looks at
Jesus and he sees what it says there in Romans 5:8 that God commended his love towards us in that
while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And he sees that Jesus died for that sin of anger,
and he sees that there’s no reason under heaven why God cannot forgive him for that. And so he
repents and turns from his anger and says, “By your grace Lord, I’ll never get angry again. I’ll
never lose my temper again. Now Jesus, I’ll receive your spirit into my life to rule it.”

Now how does he deal with the second feeling inside him, the attitude inside that makes him feel
that he had a right to get angry, and a right to defend himself and assert himself? He looks again

to Jesus on the cross and he sees that that man did not defend himself, and he sees that that person
did not call down millions of angels to wreak havoc among the Roman army. He sees that that man
Jesus had the power to assert all his rights, and defend all his rights, and to get his own way in a
flash of a second and he sees that this man Jesus died to his rights. He did not assert himself.
He did not defend himself. He went into a tomb and lost consciousness and was willing for God to
bring him back to life when he chose and the Christian sees that he was baptized into that death and
that he has no right to those precious possessions, and he has not right to keep them all in order,
and he has no right to keep them away from other people interfering. That he has no rights and that
he was crucified with Christ on Calvary and that the Holy Spirit alone has the right to defend his
possessions, or his clothes, or preserve his future. And he sees that Romans 6:6 is true, that our
old self was crucified with Christ.

Now dear ones, those are the two vital factors in the crisis experience that brings us into this new
life in God. First of all, a realization that Jesus has died for our sins so that God can forgive
us; and secondly, a realization that we have died with Christ so that the Holy Spirit could free us
from that power of sin. Now do you see it’s those two parts of the Christian experience that lead
us into a life that can be described by 1 John 3:9, “Anybody born of God does not commit sin.”

Now if you’ve entered into only one part of what Christ has done for you on the cross, then you’re
going to have constant trouble with that old statement, “Whosoever is born of God does not commit
sin.” Because you’re going to find this rising up within you, this attitude within you, this old
nature that is still there. You remember that verse states, “Anybody born of God does not commit
sin. Indeed, he cannot sin because God’s nature abides in him.”

Now many of us have entered into an experience of the forgiveness of our sins but that old nature of
children of wrath is still what operates in our life. In other words, we walk asking God to forgive
us our sins for the sake of Jesus’ death but inside we have a nature and an attitude that wants to
have its own way, that wants to be independent of God, that wants to rebel against God.

Now brothers and sisters, unless you come into a total Christian experience you’re going to have
constant trouble with this whole business of just ordinary sin, and losing your temper, and getting
irritable, and getting selfish. Now do you see what I’m saying? It’s not an extra experience you
need. It’s a full experience of all that God has done for us in Christ on the cross.

Now is this written into scripture? Yes, these two parts of the work that God needs to do in us is
written into scripture again, and again, and again. First of all, it’s written into the promises so
maybe you’d like to look at one of the promises that plainly show it. It’s 1 John 1:9. 1 John 1:9,
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins.” That’s the first
part. God forgives us our sins because we believe that Jesus died for them. The second part, “And
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

In other words, God will not only forgive us but he will cleanse out the rebellion. He will not
only get rid of the guilt but he’ll get rid of the rebellion inside us. But God will do it. You
see the problem with most of us, we allow him to do the first part but we decide we’ll grit our
teeth and we’ll do the second part by the power of positive thinking. And we come into just a
defeated Christian life.

Now do you see that God has done it all? Somebody this week said to me, and that person will excuse
me using it because I think it’s helpful and is true of most of our experiences, “I find inside

myself at times a resistance to God’s will. I want to do it. You know, there’s a part of me that
wants to do what he wants me to do but there’s a bit inside me that I cannot change.” Now that’s
the bit that God dealt with on the cross in Christ. And the secret is you believe that on to the
cross. You don’t destroy it by will power or by the power of positive thinking; you believe it on
to the cross. And the reason you’re not experiencing complete victory is that you haven’t entered
into all that God has done for you on that cross.

Now you get the promise again you see, not only the promises, but you get the statement in
relationship to Christ’s death if you’d like to look there, because, Christ’s death is really the
only event that enables us to enter into this at all. If God has not done this on the cross dear
ones, then the Holy Spirit cannot do it in us you see. If God has not borne our sins in Jesus on
the cross, then the Holy Spirit cannot give us a forgiveness of sins. If God has not borne that old
rebellious will on the cross in Jesus and destroyed it there, then the Holy Spirit cannot give us
victory over it. So it depends on what God has done in Christ.

But you find that he has done this in Christ 2 Corinthians 5:14. 2 Corinthians 5:14, and it’s again
this truth that God has not only dealt with our sins in forgiving them but he has dealt with our sin
in rendering it inoperative in our lives. 2 Corinthians 5:14, “For the love of Christ controls us,
because we are convinced that one has died for all.” Jesus has died for our sins to enable God to
forgive us. “Therefore all have died.” But we have died with Christ and do you see it’s the second
part that we with our tendency to sell a soft gospel have missed? Because everybody wants
forgiveness but it’s a different story, do you want to be delivered from that old self will that
keeps asserting itself? And you can see that the only way to enter into a total Christian
experience is to come into that realization that we’ve died with Christ.

In other words, that God will deal not only with the outward disobedience but with that inward
attitude of disobedience. That God will not only forgive us for our acts, and thoughts, and words,
but by the power of the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ death he is able to deal with that inward motive, and
reaction, and attitude, and intention.

Dear ones, what gives you the trouble? It’s not because you murder people every day. No, you get
angry with people every day. With most of us it’s not that we’re doing many acts, and thoughts, and
words that are wrong but we have feelings inside us that are tearing us apart. We call them our
hang ups and they’re really the things that prevent us walking inside as we walk outside. They’re
those things that make us feel we’re hypocrites. We walk outwardly as a Christian but inwardly
we’re not a Christian.

We come into one of those famous tea groups and we’re supposed to love the person. Everybody is
saying, “Well love everybody else,” so we all say we love each other but really inside no, there
isn’t that flow of love. And it’s that inside thing that with many of us needs to be dealt with.
Now the promise is in the Holy Spirit too because the cross you see is what makes it possible, the
Holy Spirit is what makes it real in us. Many of you are saying, “Well alright pastor, but how?
How does this come about?”

Well you remember, Mary asked this, you remember God gave her a promise, “You are going to conceive
and you will bear a son.” She said, “How will this be?” The answer to every how in the Bible is
the Holy Spirit, “The Holy Spirit will conceive and will bear a son in your womb.” It’s the same
with this, how do you enter into what God has done for you in Christ in the cross, the Holy Spirit
brings you into it and his double work is found there John 3:6. The work first of all of the new

birth. John 3:6 and you remember when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and again it is concern with
the forgiveness of sins.

John 3:6, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit.” And the Holy Spirit first of all regenerates us. When we come to God and ask him to
forgive us our sins he regenerates us and then the other work that he does is Acts 15:9. Acts 15:9,
and it’s you remember, what Peter said about the day of Pentecost as he looked back to that day when
they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. Acts 15:9, and here he points to one of the works of the
baptism of the Holy Spirit. Acts 15:9, “And he made no distinction between us and them, but
cleansed their hearts by faith.” In other words, you see, written right through scripture into the
message of the cross, into the truth of the Holy Spirit are these two works that need to be done in
our hearts.

Now, could we deal with some of Satan’s objections? The first one is this 1 John 3:9, “Anyone born
of God does not commit sin.” Sin is knowing disobedience to God’s law. Now, I’ve entered into an
experience of forgiveness of sins but I haven’t entered into a crucifixion with Christ so I get
angry. I know it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong to be angry, I’ve made resolutions again and again not
to be angry, I still get angry. Now surely I’m doing something that I know to be wrong, surely that
means I’m not a child of God.

Now do you see the spirit of 1 John 3:9 is this, sin is alien to the Christian life. It is
unnatural to the Christian life. If you ever do sin, we have an advocate with the Father but it is
an emergency. But it’s alien to the Christian life. But the promise of God is if we walk in the
light as he is in the light, the blood of Jesus continues to cleanse you from all sin. In other
words brothers and sisters, if you’re walking in every desire to walk free of anger, if every time
anger comes you treat it as an emergency situation and you get before the Father with a penitent
heart and you say, “Lord, I know I shouldn’t be angry, I know it’s a sin. I ask you to receive me
again to yourself and to give me the Spirit of Jesus.” Then, if you’re walking in that light the
blood of Jesus will continue to cleanse you from all sin.

In other words, that’s the way you walk when you’re walking between two worlds, between the world of
forgiveness of sins and the world of victory over sin. You don’t come to this place where you say,
you see, “Oh, well I’m not really a Christian. If I’m not filled with the Spirit I’m not really a
Christian.” Loved ones, you’re born of the Spirit. You have a desire to love Jesus. You have a
desire to obey God. That is walking in the light.

It’s when you cease to walk in the light that you begin to come into the danger of hardening your
heart you see. It’s when you begin to treat anger as a normal part of your life. It’s when you
begin to believe the psychologist that anger is a healthy expression of any normal individual. It’s
when you begin to rationalize sin that you begin to sink back into a hardened heart. But do you see
the Father is gracious to us? Loved ones, the Father is not up there ready to whack us down every
time we fall. The Father will forgive us until 70 times seven as long as we have penitent and soft
hearts.

Now that’s the way to answer Satan’s objection you see, because I know some of you are concerned
about that. “Well pastor, what happens before we enter into victory? What happens while we’re
walking in some defeat?” The Father is gracious to us. He says, “If you walk in the light, if
you’re walking after me with all of your heart, if you’re doing your best to follow me and obey me,
then the blood of my Son will be available to cleanse you from all sin. But, I want you to hunger

after the full victory that I have provided for you on the cross.”

In other words dear ones, we don’t want to be a body of people who walk in fear you see. We want to
be a body of people walking out after Jesus in full joy and in as much obedience as we are able and
yearning after that full victory that is possible, and that’s full deliverance and hungering after
righteousness and goodness. Now that’s the way to, I think, to deal with that.

I’d love to ask you if you’ve any questions but will you ask me afterwards if you have any questions
in how to walk between two worlds? The Father judges us by our response to the light not at all by
our perfect walk. At the end of the day we’re justified not by our perfect walk but by the blood of
Jesus. But nevertheless we need to see that we want to enter into all.

Now the other objection is this, “I received it all when I was born of the spirit. I entered into
both works when I was converted.” Then praise God. Great, that’s great. There’s no argument. If
you’ve entered into a victory over anger, and selfishness, and envy when you are born of the spirit,
that’s great. That was probably very close to what the New Testament experience was. Probably if
you read the story on the day of Pentecost they believed in Jesus and were born of the Spirit on
that day they were preached to and then the next day they were baptized in the water and Peter said
to them, “Do you know if you’re baptized into Christ Jesus you’re baptized into his death.” And so
they went under that water in full consecration, in full death to self and they came up and were
filled and baptized with the Holy Spirit. Probably that was the New Testament experience.
Nevertheless, even in the New Testament you can find that some were born of the Spirit and not
filled with the Spirit. Some knew forgiveness of sins and did not know victory over sin.

Some other dear ones say, “I received it when I was baptized. I had an experience of tongues and I
received it all then.” Or, “If don’t have victory over anger and envy does it mean I wasn’t
baptized with the Spirit?” Well dear ones, do you see that some of us enter into a baptism with the
Holy Spirit in relationship to the gifts: tongues; healing; miracles; and discernment of spirits.”
But do you see that many of us at that time did not have light on the victory that God had worked
for us in the cross? And you see that the Holy Spirit can only lead you into what you have faith
for. Be it unto you according to your faith.

So unless you believe for that, the Holy Spirit is not able to bring you into it. Now say you have
experienced the baptism with the Spirit and some experience of tongues or of gifts of the Spirit,
and yet you get angry at home, you get envious, you get jealous, and you lose your temper. Then you
ought to say to the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit I’m not casting away my confidence. I thank you that
you baptized me with yourself but I thank you that you can reveal to me the victory that I have on
the cross of Christ and I trust you to lead me into that. I trust you not only to anoint me with
power, but to cleanse my heart from these things.”

And dear ones, this I believe is the way we should walk in relation to the objections that Satan
levels at this. I think another thing Satan tries to do is he tries to get us introspect. And it
isn’t long before you have a group of people who are saying, “Yeah, I’m looking in, I’m looking in
to see where I’m not crucified with Christ.” And they have long sessions of self-analysis where
they go in introspection deep, deep down, they think, and they go as deep as doesn’t matter, because
that’s the only depth you can go with your mind. But they use introspection and they’re
introspecting day, after day.

Now loved ones that is not the Father’s promise. Jesus promised us, “Listen, the Holy Spirit when

he comes will lead you into all truth.” Now it’s his job to lead you into all truth. Now what you
do as a child of God is you walk in knowing forgiveness of sins saying, “Holy Spirit lead me into
all truth about myself. If you see anything in me that is not in that place on the cross, then Holy
Spirit will you reveal it to me?” But brothers and sisters do not introspect. It’s a sin to
introspect because introspection is an independent activity of our own mighty minds. And our own
mighty minds can see only as deep as our own minds, they cannot see into our spirits. Only the Holy
Spirit can reveal these things so don’t let’s all become introspective. Let’s walk in the
forgiveness of our sins saying, “Holy Spirit, will you lead me into all that Christ has done for me
on the cross and show me if there’s some way in which I need to come more into that death.” So
don’t introspect.

I think a lot of us go into suppression. A lot of us go into suppression, we say, “Yeah, I was
crucified with Christ. I was crucified with Christ. I was crucified with Christ, now I’m going to
hold this self down inside me.” And we walk in suppression and repression. Now dear ones, the
answer is you believe that you were crucified with Christ and you obey the Holy Spirit and he makes
real in you the victory. You don’t make real the victory. You believe that you were crucified with
Christ and you obey and submit to the Holy Spirit and he makes real the victory in you. And that’s
the way you walk in this.

Some of you may say, “Well how do I enter in?” Well first of all never question that you were
crucified with Christ. A lot of us say, “Pastor if you saw me this morning trying to get into these
new shoes, and I lost my patience and I got utterly irritable and threw them into the corner, you
would know I wasn’t crucified with Christ.” Then I would say to you brother you are disobeying and
contradicting God’s word. His word says you were crucified with Christ. And you better believe his
word rather than believe your feelings.

Now brothers and sisters you start with faith that the fact has already taken place, that all of us
have been crucified with Christ, that all our futures ended 1900 years ago in Jesus. You accept
that, you start by setting your faith on that and you never question that. You believe God’s word
that our old self was crucified with Christ. You believe that all who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the flesh with its passions. You believe that. You start at that level, never go below
that level.

Satan would love you to go below it and say, “Yeah, you ought to crucify yourself.” No, you can’t
crucify yourself. Old Luther tried it, you know, beating his body. You can’t do it. It’s been
done already. You were crucified with Jesus. All that is evil in you was destroyed in Jesus on
Calvary. Then look to the Holy Spirit and trust him to make that real in your life. Just say,
“Holy Spirit, I trust you to lead me into all of this victory.” But dear ones, that is the way,
faith in your death with Christ on the cross and present faith in the Holy Spirit and the Holy
Spirit will then lead us beautifully into this.

But loved ones, if you try to do it yourselves soon we’ll all have to go and do basket work in the
psyche wards, really. Because it’ll drive you crazy, you’ll just go wild trying to introspect, and
suppress, and repress. And don’t start looking at each other and saying, “Oh, am I walking in
victory?” No, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job to bring you into victory. And at the end of the day
we’re justified before the Father not because of our victory but because of the blood of Jesus.

At the end of the day all the glorious saints will go before him and say, “Father, I ask you to
accept me because of the blood of Jesus not because I’ve lived this kind of victorious life, or this

kind of defeated life but because of the blood of Jesus.” Well dear ones, do you see that the whole
experience is there for us and it’s something that we should begin to move into as the Holy Spirit
guides us.

On Sunday evenings we try to deal a little more with this subject so if you find that God’s Spirit
is making you yearn for more victory in your life then you should probably consider coming to those.
And the bookshop has lots of books on this very subject and so you should go there and God can lead
you into it yourself. But really it is for you. It is true that not only did Jesus die for us, but
we died with Jesus. All our miserable selves were crucified there and we don’t need to try to
suppress them or destroy them ourselves it’s been done already. Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, we would commit ourselves into your control. We cannot bring this about ourselves but
we believe you are able to bring it about. So Holy Spirit, we as a body of brothers and sisters
will never again question God’s word that our old selves were crucified with Christ. That when
Jesus died we died. And we trust you Holy Spirit to work out all the implications of that in our
lives by revelation and make it real in our lives by experience. We trust you to bring us into this
place so that we can live as we preach and so that the world may begin to see Jesus walking again in
our bodies, and our minds, and our emotions, and our spirits. For his glory, amen.

The Real Christian

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Do you realize that you don’t need to be able to make yourself holy but you need to be able, and be
prepared to set yourself apart from the outward acts and words in your life that are disobedient to
God’s will. Then God regenerates you by his Spirit and fills your life with acts and words that are
pleasing to him. He does that miraculously, lifts you in the rocket of His own Holy Spirit.

Similarly when you are a Christian, you don’t need to then go in and start cleansing the motives and
the attitudes that you have within, but you need to be ready, as God gives you light to set yourself
apart from jealousy, apart from pride, apart from anything when God reveals these things in your
heart. And then he, by his Holy Spirit, will cleanse you and fill you with the fruit of the spirit,
love, joy, peace. But we emphasized, you remember, that there were two sides of saintliness, the
human side where we were ready to set ourselves apart from these things and the divine side where
God was able to fill us miraculously with the beauty of Jesus.

We added I think last Sunday to the third part mentioned in that the God of peace himself sanctify
you holy and keep you blameless in body, soul, and spirit. We had dealt with the body, the outward
actions and words. We had dealt with the spirit, the inward attitudes and motives. And we have now
come to the soul or the mind and we said, you remember, that it is vital for a saint to have his
mind renewed. This is the area of our personality that deals with our service to God and it’s
essential dear ones, for us to be renewed in our minds.

Our minds were the first part of our personality to be perverted by Satan and they are usually the
last to be renewed by the Spirit of God. Now you can find that in Genesis 3:4 for instance, when
Satan persuaded the woman to think something other than God had said to her. In other words, he
perverted her mind in Genesis 3:4, “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die.’” And
then goes on in Verse 5 to blind a man with his own lies, “For God knows that when you eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil.”

So it is essential dear ones, is that the image of God is to be reformed in each one of us that our
minds should be renewed. It’s essential for our minds to be renewed if we’re ever to perform the
service for which God created us. We remember he created us and he said, “Be fruitful, and
multiple, and subdue the earth.” And if we’re to subdue the earth in the way God wants to and not
the way we’re doing in Vietnam, if we’re to subdue the earth in the way God plans us to subdue it
then we need to have our minds renewed. We need to be renewed in our minds and begin to see the way
God works.

You see, so often many of us allow our outward lives to be cleansed, we become Christians. And we
go a step further and we see that there are attitudes within us that never show themselves on the
surface and we allow the Holy Spirit to come and cleanse those attitudes too. But our mind keeps on
going in the same old rut. It keeps thinking the same way as it always did. It keeps appreciating
the same set of values as it always did. And so instead of going on with God, and being used by
God, we become crippled Christians who try to do God’s work in the way that we used to do the work
of the devil. Now the mind has to be renewed as well as the heart, and the life. And I think you
have to realize if we’re going to be any use to God that has to happen.

I think too many of us, you see, have been renewed in our hearts, and renewed in our lives and we
want to do God’s work but we start trying to do it with the old methods that we used before to do
our own work, or to do the devil’s work. Now, I think some of you realize that many churches do
teach that you should have your mind renewed. Indeed, most churches today are concerned with the
renewing of people’s minds. But they talk about the renewing of the mind in two ways that are
unbiblical.

First of all, they talk about the renewing of the mind without ever mentioning the renewal of the
life or the renewal of the heart. So you know most churches today produce ethical homilies, don’t
they? I mean, most of us here in these robes are preaching, “Be good. Be good love your neighbor.
Be good in your home. Be good in your job,” and we’re just moralizing continually. So many
churches today are concerned with the renewal of the mind but then teach as if the heart does not
need to be renewed. They teach it as if we’re all Christians already and there’s nothing to do but
just show people beauty and they go for it.

Well dear ones, you know your own hearts, our own hearts do not love the truth when we see it and so
though many churches are concerned with the renewal of the mind in these days, it’s unbiblical
because they do not talk about the need for the renewal of fellowship with God first and then the
renewal of the heart. In other words, it’s what Goldwater said, and I’m sure he said many foolish
things, but he did say some wise things, and you remember he said, is that sufficiently Irish and
straddling both side so the fence, you remember Goldwater said, “You cannot legislate heart.” And
that’s right, you can pass legislation for civil rights but you can’t legislate people’s hearts.

Now you can see dear ones, there’s no point in talking about the renewal of the mind unless the
heart has been changed by God’s Spirit. This is another reason why I try to avoid all these topical
event series, what I think of Vietnam, and what I think of the civil rights movements. That’s not
what you want to know. We need our hearts changed so that we can obey what we already know is
right. So it’s wise I think to see that there is a difference between talking about the renewal of
the mind without the renewal of the heart and life, and talking about the renewal of the mind as a
consequence step after the life and the heart has been renewed.

I think similarly on the other side many Christians fail to go onto a renewal of the mind at all. I
think some Christians renew the mind in the way some of the churches do. We’ll renew our minds in
the best thoughts that our philosophers have given to us. We’ll renew our mind by thinking over
again the power of positive thinking. We’ll renew our minds in the kind of auto suggestion and
psychological persuasion that we should act this way.

Now the renewal of the mind that is talked about in the Bible is different from than that. The
renewal of the mind that the Bible talks about does not advise you to attend the discussion groups,
to read more books, to seek more knowledge, to find better methods. The Bible says, “You renew your
mind by having that mind in you which was in Christ Jesus.” So you see you don’t renew the mind in
the Biblical sense by receiving more knowledge, or studying the problem of crimes in our streets.
You renew the mind in the biblical sense by allowing the Holy Spirit to show you the ways in which
your mind is not like the mind of Jesus. To show you things that you treasure that the mind of
Jesus does not treasure. And then by filling you with the very scale and set of values that Jesus
himself had.

It’s another miraculous implanting of the mind of Jesus in you. You see, we are renewed in our life
by having Jesus’ life given to us. We are renewed in our heart by having Jesus’ heart displace our

hearts. We are renewed in our mind by having Jesus’ mind displace our minds. But unless we go into
this renewal of the mind we’ll fall back into being conformed to the image of this world instead of
being transformed by the renewing of our minds.