Part 2 of 5 Parts
The Following Message Has Been Transcribed For
Clarity, Continuity Of Thought, And Punctuation By
The LEM Transcribing & Editing Team.
Praise the Lord, everybody. This is the second part of this message. I am giving an exhortation from an alternate translation that was rendered from many hours of study, looking up every Greek word that was translated to form the King James version of Romans, Chapter 1. The Lord has not anointed me to go over the work-up with you. Years ago when I first started preaching and teaching like this, I would go over the work-up with you. I would say the King James version says this word, and our legitimate alternate translation of that word in the Greek Lexicon is such and such a word, and I am going to use that word. I was very very careful years ago because I was concerned that true believers would not be able to believe me or follow me, or that I would have no credibility in their eyes. These days the Lord is not anointing me to do that.
However, the work-up is available, and the people in the meetings were given copies of the notes, and I am probably going to upload the notes to the web page for download for the people who are not in the meetings. If you want to take the time to look at my notes, I have it all set out verse by verse, what the King James Translation says, and my alternate translations. Words from the King James are in round parenthesis, and our alternate translation of the word is present followed by round parenthesis showing the word in the King James. Sometimes I add words to clarify the meaning, and those are called amplifications. There is actually a Bible called the Amplified Bible. What that Bible does is pretty much what I do because the Word of God is so rich. It is pregnant with an idea that is in the Bible in an abbreviated form.
Sometimes the Lord gives me an idea for a message. He can give it to me in five minutes, and I can be preaching on it. Actually, it happened once, where the Lord gave me a message, dumped it into my mind from a very high spiritual level, where it comes into your mind in seed form. I was preaching on it for weeks after that. To put it in a form that I could explain it to the person who has the mind of Christ, it took weeks. To people that do not have the mind of Christ, it might have been impossible to explain it to them. An amplification is exactly that, an amplification of an idea. We can have an idea in the King James or even in the Greek, and when I look at the alternate translation, I say it could mean this and it could mean that. Actually, it means both ideas, and I work it into one sentence. Those additional words I put in brackets to show that it is my understanding of what the Lord has shown me by the Spirit of Revelation through my efforts to research.
Those notes are available for everybody who has access to the LEM ftp upload site. What the Lord is saying is that it is grow up time, and you all have to start working yourself. Either you have to get the witness in your spirit that what I am telling you is by the Spirit of God, or if you have any doubts or questions, the notes are there for you to look up for yourself.
On part 1, we only got through verse 10. Also, let me make this comment for those of you who may be hearing the message who have not been studying with me for a long time. I will work up an alternate translation of each of the verses, and then it is more common than not, it is very common that when the Lord is revealing the doctrine of Christ, which is the mystery of the Word, it is the hidden message of the Word, that the order of the verses have to be changed to make the message as clear as possible.
Remember that all translators work by looking at the text in the original language. They look at verbs and nouns. They look at a text that is not in any idiomatic form. It is not in a conversational form. It is just words, verbs, nouns, and it is up to the translator to make sense out of those words in accordance with his understanding of the words in front of him, and what his general concept is of what is trying to be said. Every translation is subjective. The only infallible Word of God is the actual Hebrew, actually even more than the Greek, is the infallible Word of God. Even that, even that is not the infallible Word of God. The infallible Word of God is the Glorified Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God. Therefore, His Spirit of Revelation is the infallible Word of God.
We have translations written down because our mind is fallen so far that that is what we need. Everybody needs to know that every translation, even what I do in the alternate translation, is not the last word. It is so common that I will preach a message like this, and when I go to put the alternate translation in the book, I see mistakes. I say why did I not know that meant that? Why did I not correlate those two principles? So long as our mind in finite, there is room for growth, and of course, as long as we are in this flesh, that will be our condition. There will always be changes. That does not mean the translation is wrong. It means that the understanding of the translator at that time, was incomplete or in error. Hopefully, it was under the influence of the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Christ, which is the Spirit of Revelation.
There is a difference between a spirit of error, and saying something that is completely untrue, such as there is salvation aside from union with Christ, or you can be saved by good works or by studying the Word. That is a complete error. Salvation is only in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. What does that mean? His name is Christ in you. The Glorified Jesus Christ is ascended. He is in a high spiritual place. His name, His representation, His representative, His ambassador, the manifestation of Himself to humanity is in human beings. That is who His name is. His nature is in men. This is what salvation is all about, imparting the nature of God to fallen human beings, who presently have the nature of the Serpent.
That is what salvation is because there is no law against a righteous man. When we have the nature of God, Satan, the enforcer of the righteous sowing and reaping judgment, will have no legal ground to hurt us in any way. The Lord will never remove His law. His law is righteous. We reap what we sow. What goes around comes around. He is righteous. If we get hurt, we need to know that somewhere along the line, we or our ancestors, have done something that has brought this judgment upon us. That is the truth that mankind has to face if they want to be delivered from hell, which this is. The Lord is not changing His law. His law is right.
Is it okay to sin then? No, of course not. We hurt ourselves when we sin. We reap what we sow. What goes around comes around. God’s solution to the problem is to give us a new nature. God’s solution to the problem is to erase or rub out the nature of the Serpent, which when we have it, we cannot do anything but sin. We are not capable of doing righteousness in the Serpent’s nature. The Serpent’s inherent nature is described by the word poneros; evil. The Serpent’s nature at its very root is evil. When we have the Serpent’s nature, the very best we can hope to do is some good deeds. Because our spiritual root is evil, Satan has authority over us. She is the warden in this high security prison that all of humanity is in. The Lord’s solution is to give us a new nature, to give us His nature, because Satan has no authority to judge a righteous man.
That is what Paul was talking about in another place when he said, let no man judge me. The marks of the Lord Jesus Christ are upon me. He was saying I have the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, or I am doing something that seems wrong to your carnal mind, but do not judge me because judgment will fall on you for judging a righteous man. He said, you had better not judge me unless you are sure you are in Christ. You had better make sure you are not deceived. You better make sure that you are in Christ because you made a judgment that what I have done did not come out of the nature of God. That was what he was saying.
He also said in that same place, no man can recognize us. No natural man can recognize Christ. The things that the people who carry the Christ do, look foolish and look wrong to the carnally minded world. Be careful, because when you judge a righteous man as unrighteous, something will happen to you that will be designed to change your mind. The Lord is concerned about His name and His reputation, not out of pride, but the Lord wants His reputation to be represented accurately so that people could know where to go for help. The nature of God today is resident in imperfect men. Now if we want the help of God, we need to be able to distinguish between the human being’s imperfections and the righteousness of God that is manifesting through them.
Now if we judge a man by his human imperfections only, we cut off the power of God in that person that is sent to help us. If we judge the man only by the righteousness of the Christ that is in him, and we do not face up to his human imperfections, we can stumble when that man relates to us out of his human imperfections. Now who would judge a man only by the righteousness of God and ignore his human imperfections? Someone that has idolatry for that person of God.
We are challenged by the living God, brethren, to do something that is very hard. We are challenged to have relationships with people, and know from moment to moment, whether they are in Christ or they are not. Well, that is impossible, Sheila. What a burden you say. Who can live like that? The answer, brethren, is that Christ can live like that. The answer is that Christ should be grafted to you too, because Christ in you recognizes Christ in another man. You see, the old covenant puts us under the law. Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. There is no power in the law to keep the law. God tells us thou shalt not and we do it anyway. Is that not what Paul said? He said, woe is me. The great apostle Paul said, woe is me. What I desire to do, I fail to do, and when I am determined to not do, I do it. Woe is me. Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Now he was not talking at that point about his physical body. A body is something that contains something else. The mind is the body of the spirit, so the mind is a body. He was saying, who is going to deliver me from this carnal mind, that when I want to do, I cannot even perform it? What I know is wrong, and I do not want to do it, I do it anyway. He was saying, get me out of this hell. Who is going to deliver me from hell? That is the condition of the carnal mind.
Then in the Book of Revelation we read, who is strong enough to open the seals of this book? Woe be unto mortal humanity. There is no one, no one, who is strong enough to open the seals of the book. Then a voice said, fear not, Jesus, the lion of the tribe of Judah, can open the seals. Now what are the seals, brethren? What are the seals that are so difficult to open? Brethren, the opening of the seals is the revelation of the sin nature in human beings. Why is it so hard to find somebody who can open the seals? Because when you open the seal, when you reveal sin in somebody else, the judgment falls on you as well as the person that you judge.
If Christ is not risen up in you to reveal sin in another human being, you are in trouble. If you are judging out of your carnal mind, the same judgment that falls on the person you have exposed will fall on you. What does Paul say about that? He says, how do you know that that sin is in that person? You know because you do it yourself. That is what he says. So judge not before the time. What does that mean, judge not before the time? It means do not judge before the new age comes. When is the new age coming? You cannot answer that because the question is false. It is not when, it is in whom has the new age come? The new age is Christ in you.
He came. He came on the day of Pentecost. The Glorified Jesus Christ returned to the earth, and He is in men, maturing in various stages of maturity. If the new age judges somebody’s sin, if it is truly Christ in a man judging that person’s sin, when the judgment falls, it falls on the person who has sinned, and it falls on Christ in that person. The person who judges survives because it was God, in that person, doing a good deed of opening the seal to expose sin in the other person.
Sometimes, even though it is Christ in us, because we are imperfect men, we reap what we sow. We reveal sin in somebody, and sometimes we lose friends. Sometimes the people take the victory and sometimes they do not. That is what the life is in Christ. That is what our life is like. That was what Paul’s life was like. That is what the seals are, brethren. That is what the four seals are. It is a warfare against the carnal mind. That warfare is exercised through exposure, and it is dangerous exposing sins in people, because that sin nature is a serpent that rises up and bites you. That is what the seals are all about, the exposure of the sin nature in the individual.
To be honest with you, I do not even know where that came from. We are doing Romans, Chapter 1 today, which is very exciting to me. It is really an explanation of God’s promises to mankind. As long as I am in the Church, I have heard this chapter preached as an indictment of sexual immorality. When I worked it up, I find out that there is not one reference, not one reference, in the whole thirty two verses to sexual immorality. Does that mean it is okay to sin sexually? No, I am telling you Romans, Chapter 1 has been misinterpreted by preachers in the Church for years. It has nothing to do with sexual immorality. It has to do with the sins of the heart. It has to do with attitude, with the sins that manifest in attitude.
At the rate I am going, I do not even know if we will finish this today. At the end of the chapter Paul names those sins. We are going to look at those sins and the names of them, as the King James translated them. I have looked up the meanings of all of those words, and basically they are the human sins of the heart, that the average Christian is prone to push aside and ignore, and focus only on their behavior, and on the behavior of others. Is it a good thing to have bad behavior? No, it is not a good thing to do bad things that hurt people, but you can be absolutely harmless for your whole life, if it is possible behaviorally, and still die, because the sin is in your nature and we have inherited it from our father, the Serpent.
The Lord Jesus Christ has come, and Jehovah has sent the Lord Jesus Christ to expose that truth, that we are the children of the kingdom, but something is wrong. We were born with a perversion. Our nature is not of out Father God, but of our mother’s adultery, and we have the nature of the Serpent. There is no way we are getting out of hell until we accept that fact. You are never going to receive a new nature if you think the nature that you have is good and fine. The Lord is not ripping our sin nature out of us and replacing it with His righteous nature without our co-operation. Our co-operation requires us saying amen every time that sin nature is exposed in us.
See, it is not enough to say yes, I have pride, and yes I have rebellion, and yes I have envy. That will not cut it. If you want to get out of this high security prison here, that will not cut it. The Lord has to show you the operation. If you are willing to admit you have pride, He will have to show you how that pride is operating in your thought process, in the way you think, and then He can rip it out of you. To just make a general confession that I have pride, there is not enough power in that for the Lord to remove it from you. He wants to remove it from you. When we are sick, and we need an operation, the doctor has to cut us open to get to the sick organ.
The Lord’s intention is to remove this sin nature from us, but we have to be willing to see it in action, in the way we think, and the way we reason, and the way we deal with problems, and even most important of all, the way we respond to Christ. The way we respond to Christ will prove, whether or not we are also Christ, or we are in our carnal mind. Then once we understand this, the transition can take place, the exchange can take place. You cannot get this new mind if you cannot even recognize the mind of the old man. That is what it is all about. That is why Paul also says, there is now no more condemnation to those in Christ Jesus, to those who are called according to His purposes. The sin is not being exposed to condemn you.
The sin is being exposed as a surgical preparation, to give you a new mind and a new nature, that Satan has no authority to hurt. Satan is the Lord’s servant. She is right there in Job, Chapter 1, right there with the sons of God, right there in the midst of them. She is the unconscious part of the carnal mind of the sons of God. She has a legal right to execute judgment on sin. She is the warden and the power that is in control of this world system. The Lord’s answer is, recognize what you are doing and let me give you a new nature, which is not always pleasant, but the operation works. The exchange takes place over a period of time, and a piece at a time.
In every area that we are willing to give up the rationale of our carnal mind, and in its place receive the rationale of Christ, Satan loses that much more power over us, that much more power to hurt us. The process goes as fast as we can tolerate it. The Lord has brought me to a place where I can deal with it. He shows me my sins all the time. It does not devastate me because I am so grounded in His revelation. I want to be safe in this world. I want to tell you, of recent years, not even recent years, recently, I have been fearful. I understand that this is part of the process. I was never afraid of anything in my life, but I look at everything that is going on in this world, and all you hear advertised on TV. Do you know that every day ten thousand women come down with cervical cancer? Have you heard these advertisements on TV? I do not think they are lying. I think it is true.
I have never experienced fear, to the extent that I am fearing it now, because I never thought it could be me. I just was in denial. It is not possible that it could be me. Who ever even thought about all those poor ten thousand women? Everyday, ten thousand women are afflicted. Do you know how many babies die every day? My grandchildren are safe, so I have been in denial all these years as to the reality of the danger of this world that I live in. But my understanding of the Scripture is that this is a good part of my transition. The next step is recognizing that there is a reason that I should be afraid. All of these years that I have not been afraid, I have been very naive.
Every time I get in that car, I take my life in my hands, and everybody else’s life that is in my way. I am driving since I am sixteen, and that thought never even occurred to me, that I was taking my life in my hands every time I get in the car. This recognition of how dangerous this world is, is a step along the process that is going to give us unshakable faith. First we have to recognize the degree to which we are in danger every day. Then the Lord builds His faith in us to walk in this world, knowing that He is caring for us, knowing that I am so close to Him that there is nothing that can hurt me. Was that not Jesus’ testimony? No man can take my life. He was that close to the spiritual man within Him. I believe His Father was Elijah, whatever name you want to call him. Do not get stuck on a name. He was that close to God that Jesus could say no man could take my life.
Before you can get to that point, you have to recognize that your life is in danger every second. Do you know you could stop breathing in a second? Those of you who have been with me for awhile know, for years, I faced that spiritual choking. In one second your life could be knocked out like that; your children’s life, your husband’s life, your wife’s life. Am I trying to scare you? No, I am trying to bring you into a reality that will prepare you to move into a degree of faith in Jesus Christ that is unshakable. You could only have faith to the degree that you really believe you can get hurt. I just want to thank the Lord that I am alive today. I have heard people pray like that. They get up in the morning, and they say thank God I am alive, but it really did not mean anything to me. That does not mean anything to you unless you really believe that one day you may not wake up. You have to believe that it is a possibility.
No matter how young you are, or how healthy you are, how wonderful your life is, you need to know that in one second you could stop breathing. Your legs could stop working. In 1929 millionaires lost all their money and were jumping out of windows because they could not bear the thought of being poor. Do you know that in one second you could lose your home? A tornado could come through here, and you could lose your leg, you could lose your sight, you could lose your child who was healthy one day and dying the next day. We have to come out of our denial, and face the realities of life before we can move into that unshakable faith, that will truly protect us from all of these things. Because before that we are just in denial. We are not protected, we are just in denial. It has not touched us yet.
In one second the food supply could be wiped out. In one second the whole medical system, this great medical system in this country could be wiped out. Do you have faith for healing? Do you have faith that the Lord is going to keep you? You can say yes, but I am telling you that you do not have it, unless you really believe that it could happen to you. You will find that most Christians, if you ask them, will say no, it could not happen to me because Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. What about all the Christians who are in the tornadoes? What about all the Christians who were in the floods? What about all the Christians who were killed in Indonesia? What about all the Christians that are being persecuted in China? They are Christians too. I do not think many Christians in this country deal with that.
Yes, it can happen to me. I thank God for every day that I am okay. I know that I am in God’s hands. What about the Christians in Hitler’s Germany that wound up in death camps? I thank God that I am here today, and that I am in a free country where I have a right to preach. They are not arresting me because of that, and I have everything that I need here. I know I could lose it in a second, so let us face the truth so that we could enter into that incredible faith, that will save us no matter what the circumstances, because we are not of this world, brethren.
If Christ is in us, and we are truly living out of Him, we are not of this world. That was what Jesus meant when He was facing crucifixion and He said I could call thousands of angels to get me out of here. I do not have to be crucified, but I am going to go through this because this is the will of God for me. We are of another world when Christ is grafted to us and we are following Him. We have to be obedient to Him. It is impossible to be obedient to Him without being trained to be obedient. Why? Because the average person cannot tell the difference between their Christ mind and their carnal mind. The average believer cannot recognize Christ when He comes in an imperfect human being. That is what we are up to in this ministry right now. We are learning to distinguish between Christ in the carnal mind, in ourselves, and we are learning to recognize Christ in another man, and making mistakes is inevitable. That is how we learn.
I am going to try to preach Romans 1 again. The Lord seems to be on another track today. I thank God for His Spirit. I thank God that He talks to me. The worst thing in this world that could happen to me would be to be separated from God. We are suppose to pick up on verse 11 today on the alternate translation. It is the alternate amplified translation. That means that after I worked up an alternate translation of each verse, I interspersed the verses to make the message make sense in our idiom, in the way the English language works. I think I am going to read from verse 1 thru 10 just to bring you up to what we are doing, and then I will start expounding on verse 11A.
Verse 1. Paul, appointed an ambassador with miraculous powers through Christ Jesus, was separated from the body of fallen Adam, and became the voluntary slave of Christ Jesus, who now preaches the good news that God has brought to pass, that which He said through His prophets by the Holy Scripture before time began, about what He would do concerning His Son, who came down from heaven, was incarnated by the Spirit of Holiness, generated out of the physical sperm of David, and revealed through Jesus Christ, our controller, by God’s dunamis power in standing the dead Adam up again. Whom we, among all nations, have been offered the divine influence.
The divine influence: to be influenced by the power of God. That is absolutely amazing. If we are not influenced by the power of God, who are we influenced by? The Serpent’s nature, which is Satan and Leviathan. Whom we, among all nations, have been offered the divine influence and commissioned to submit to the moral conviction of Christ for the purpose that the name of Jesus Christ should be above the names of Satan and Leviathan. By whom you are also invited to be among all those who are beloved of God in Rome, so that the divine influence may be with you also, so that you may be morally blameless. That is the nature of God.
The Lord is exposing our sins to give us Christ, so that we may be morally blameless, and being morally blameless, that we might receive prosperity from God our Father, even the Lord Jesus Christ. Because if we are not blameless, if there is a wrong thought in our mind, which is sin, it cuts off the prosperity of God. The prosperity of God is spiritual, physical, financial, and blessings on every area of our life. Wrong thinking cuts off the prosperity of God in our life. The Lord is after our wrong thinking and our wrong attitudes, so that He can prosper us.
So that we might receive the prosperity from God our Father, even the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the first born of the many members of the dead Adam and above all of them. I thank my God that you have the moral conviction of Jesus the Christ, and that your moral conviction is spoken of throughout the whole world. I want you to know, brethren, that as God, whom I serve with my spirit by preaching the Gospel of His Son, is my witness, I mention you in my prayers always.
If you have your notes, you can see that I interspersed something from verse 13. It is down in here. I want you to know, brethren, that as God, whom I serve with my spirit by preaching the gospel of His Son, that God is my witness that I mention you in my prayers always, and that I intended to come to you many times so that I might have some fruit among you also. He wants to bring Christ forth in the believers in Rome also. The same fruit that I have among other none Jews, because the Romans were none Jews. Paul was sent to the none Jew. But I was prevented until now.
Who prevented him? The divine influence prevented Paul from going to Rome before this time. Why? Did God hate them? Did God love somebody better? Did God not wish the Romans to prosper? No, the Romans were not ready before this time. Our heart has to be prepared to receive the seed that will produce the fruit in our lives. God’s timing is perfect. We must do everything that we can to not press against it, and accept that He knows best. As long as we prayed it through, and it is not a satanic influence, but it is a divine influence that is holding something back.
You all know how I feel about the situation here. We need more help. I cannot do the work. We are overly crowded. For whatever His reason, it is not yet the time to expand our physical facilities or give us additional employees. I have to accept that. I prayed myself silly, and He has not moved. I am convinced it is not Satan. It is the Lord’s perfect timing, and in His perfect timing, we will have more employees and a larger facility. I do not understand why not. I have a vague idea, but it does not matter whether I understand or not.
This is where the humility comes in. In this country, where most of us are so independent, we just do not have the respect for elders here that they have overseas. A lot of people do not even respect their parents. In some instances the children are educated so far beyond the abilities of the parents that we do not even look to our parents for wisdom. That societal influence is working against us. God does not tell me or answer to me. Sometimes, He will tell me if my attitude is right towards Him, but He does not owe me any explanation. I tell some of you here from time to time, I do not owe you an explanation, but I am going to explain this to you because the Lord wants you to understand and to learn, and He wants your co-operation in the growth process.
Spiritually, you need to know I do not owe you an explanation, and He does not owe us an explanation for what He does. If we come before Him in a right attitude, sometimes He tells us and sometimes He does not. Even if you come in a right attitude, sometimes He does not tell you. I do not know. Maybe we are not capable of understanding or maybe knowing that knowledge at that time would hurt us. I do not know. I just know that everything He does is for our good. His motive towards us is totally and completely, wholly positive and benevolent, and I cannot understand everything that He does, so I trust Him.
Verse 10. I am asking, if it should be the will of God, if it would be possible for me to visit you at this time. Who is Paul asking? Is he asking the Romans or is he asking God? He says I am asking if it should be the will of God, if it would be possible for me to visit you at this time. He is saying is it okay if I come? He knows that if it is not the will of God, it would not work out. Even though God sends you to somebody, you cannot be going up to that person and say God told me to move into your house. Are you going to let them in? God told me to visit you and stay in your house for a week. Are you going to let them in? No, you have to ask the person is it alright if I come. I believe the Lord is sending me, but is it alright if I come into your house?
Is it alright if I come into your physical house. Is it alright if I come into your mind? Is it alright if I teach you? Is it alright if I give you a word of knowledge? Is it alright if I expose your sin? Is it alright? The Lord is sending me. Do you agree, because if you do not agree, I cannot do what God has sent me to do. You have to agree, and the burden falls upon you to say, Lord, are you really sending this person? It behooves us, if we could just remember to do it, to seek God on every little thing, the smallest things in our life. Lord, could that possibly be you? Even I do not do it all the time, but I try. I have the revelation. I try. Somebody makes me an offer, any kind of an offer, hopefully I am going to say Lord, is it you? I do not think I want it at this time.
I did not want to move into this location. The thought of moving here was an anathema to me. I did not want to do it. It took the Lord three months to convince me to move in. I was renting at the time. Then when the rents went sky high, this is where He put me and I have been safe financially ever since because I obeyed Him. It is a little crowded, but I am safe financially. He did not explain that to me at the time. He did not tell me the rents were going sky high. He just said move in here. Our job is to pray in a manner that will determine whether or not we are hearing from God or the other side. Then we should obey whether we understand it or not. The more mature we get, the more likely He will explain it to us or the more likely we will be able to understand His motives. Like I said, even me, He does not explain everything to me. I am still a spiritual kid anyway, but I am older than you are. That is why I am teaching.
I am asking if it should be the will of God, if it would be possible for me to visit you at this time, so that I may know you intimately. Paul wanted to know the Romans intimately. Does that mean he wanted to have sex with all of the Romans? No, he is talking about spiritual intimacy. There is a spiritual intimacy. In order for someone who has the male seed to impart that male seed to you, he has to know you intimately. In what way? He has to have some revelation of your sin nature. That is what forms intimacy, spiritually speaking. It is a revelation of the person’s motives and attitudes.
I have been very surprised recently. I met some married people that do not know the intimate details of their mate’s lives. It really surprised me because the kind of person that I am, when I am spiritually intimate with somebody, they know everything about my life, when I am close with somebody. They know every detail of my life. It absolutely amazed me. I cannot think of an example right now, but it was a couple of husbands or wives who never even asked questions. It was something to me that would be obvious for that other one to know about; what they need, what they think, what they believe, or what they feel. So everybody, even though they may be married, they are not intimate.
Intimacy is a spiritual thing that goes way beyond the physical. Some people are physically intimate, but they are not spiritually intimate. Some people are spiritually intimate and they are not physically intimate. The intimacy that we talk about in the Bible is spiritual knowledge of the person’s true nature, of seeing the flaws in the person. Paul wanted to expose their sin nature so that he could impart the seed of Christ to them.
He says here in Romans 1 that he wants to impart some spiritual gift to them. He wants to look into their heart, to the unconscious part of their mind, and see all of their weaknesses. In that opening up, which can be likened to the incision of a surgeon, in the midst of all of the ugliness that he sees, he wants to plant the seed of life, that that seed of life should grow up, sprout, mature, and swallow up all of that ugliness that was revealed. In our inward parts, we are all ugly. The heart of man, the Scripture says, is desperately wicked, so wicked that it is hard to believe. It is particularly hard to believe that that potential is within us.
Paul was asking if it was alright to come to Rome. He wanted to establish a spiritual intimacy with them, and impart a spiritual gift for the purpose of, to the end that, you spiritually female Christians. He is calling the Romans spiritually female Christians. Now some people may not know that there are female spirituality and male spirituality, although we have been teaching that here for a long time. The female spirituality is the raw spirituality that you are born with, that you did not do anything to acquire it, and you may not even know that you have it. I know someone who told me once that he was just an average person and he got mad on two different occasions in his life. His response to those persons were I wish they would just die, and they both died. I do not even know if it was said in their presence.
That man learned his lesson and he never said that again. Apparently, he had some innate inherent spiritual power that he was born with, that he did not even know was there. He certainly did not know what to do with it, so it scared him. To the best of his ability, he stopped saying that, but who knows what else he did with his mind.
Paul is calling the Romans spiritually female Christians. What is the difference between the spiritual females and the spiritual males? The spiritual males have understanding and wisdom, which drives their spiritual power or restrains their spiritual power. A spiritual male would recognize the ungodly exercise of spiritual power and say no, I am not going to do it. He would have the wisdom and understanding of God as how to use it, and that you are not born with. The wisdom and understanding as how to use, control and manifest the spiritual power of the living soul, which is what we are in our fallen mankind, you are not born with it. That you have to learn and you cannot learn it out of a book. You cannot really even learn it sitting in a meeting like this. You can just get an idea about it sitting in a meeting like this. It is just like a doctor. A man or a woman is not a doctor when they come out of medical school. They have to intern. They have to practice under an experienced doctor. They have to take all of the theory that they learned and experience it. They have to practice, get the wisdom of the experience of the doctor, and they have to get their own experiences. Becoming a spiritual male involves three aspects; listening to theory like a message like this, learning from the input and the advice of someone who has been through it already, and then to have your own personal experiences. There has to be that personal advice where you have an interaction with the teacher, and that teacher has a response to your particular situation, and then to have your own experiences. If you are doing it without a teacher and you have your own spiritual experiences, you might interpret them incorrectly.
There are three elements to the process that produces a spiritual male. Also, the element of submission is present. I cannot remember who said it, but I think it was Jesus, but I am not sure who said this. You really cannot expect people to submit to you if you will not submit to anybody. You have to be in submission to have somebody submit to you. You cannot be a person who never submits and expect people to submit to you. Scripture also says, submit ye one to another. What does that mean? It means that in every conflict, in every situation, we are responsible to determine where the spirit of righteousness is. If we are wrong and the spirit of righteousness is on another person, we are to submit to them, and that includes me too.
If the spirit of righteousness appears on somebody else, and I recognize that I have been in my carnal mind, I have to submit to that spirit of righteousness on that person. You have to submit to God, wherever He is appearing, we have to submit to God. You do not submit to a man’s office. You honor the office, but you submit to the Christ in the man. When the baby Jesus was born, and the magi came to see him, my understanding after looking up every word in the Greek, is that they did not submit to that infant. They recognized the anointing that had incarnated in that infant, which I believe was the spirit of Elijah. They recognized the spiritual being that had incarnated in this physical baby. They were not bowing down to a little baby.
It is these kinds of subtleties that the mind of Christ enables us to understand. It is hard for the carnal mind to understand that. So we see worship of the infant, but we are not suppose to be worshiping a physical infant. We are not suppose to be worshiping a physical person. We worship the spirit that lives in the physical house. That is why in the Book of Revelation, John sees an angel. He falls down on his knees, and the angel said to him, stand up, and do not worship me. I am just a man like you are. Who do you think was saying that to John? Who do you think was saying that? I think Jesus was saying it to him, but that is another story. That is another story. Jesus said I am just a man. Oh oh, I just opened a pandora’s box. Okay.
So that you may be joined to Christ, who is inviting us to draw near to the Father. Paul’s entire purpose of asking for permission to come to Rome to be intimate with the Romans, was to impart the spiritual gift, which is the seed of Christ. His motive for doing that is that he has been sent by the divine influence to invite the Christians at Rome to draw near to the Father. How do we draw near to the Father? By having Christ imparted to us.
12/19/10 mjs
