Chapter The Eighth
THE CREATIVE ABILITY OF THE RECREATED SPIRIT
We know that non-Christian people are not creative. We know another fact, creative minds have come from families where there has been Eternal Life. The natural man can copy and imitate, but he has no ability to create a new thing.
When I learned that creative ability is in the recreated human spirit, I then saw the solution to the human problem. We know the Jesus kind of love does not come from the natural human heart.
"We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not, abideth in death." 1 John 3:14. This is spiritual death.
This is a startling quotation. We know that we have Eternal Life because we love the brethren.
In the next verse we read,"Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."
Here is another illuminating statement. This new kind of love springs from the nature of God.., this God-nature is the thing that recreated us.
Now you can see that just as love springs from the recreated heart, so wisdom comes from the recreated heart. Wisdom is the ability to utilize the forces of nature.
No one will deny the fact that heathen countries have never been able to utilize the chemicals, minerals and gasses or any of the other natural resources with which the earth is filled. Only those who have New Creation ancestry have ability to use these things.
Now you can understand that all creative ability is God's ability. God has imparted this ability to the spirit of man.
It is not out of harmony with reason to say that the creative ability evident among Christian nations is God's own nature being manifest.
The vast potentialities of the creative ability of God in us has not yet been developed.
Now notice the statement that Jesus made in John10:10, "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." The Greek word for life in this case is Zoe. It is God's life and nature.
Now you can understand John 1:4, "In him is life and that life is the light or the wisdom and ability of God in man." (Lit. trans.) This is really thrilling! In the New Birth we actually tie up with God's ability.
2 Cor. 3:5 carries us a step further, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God."
Our ability is from God. God, then, is the bank where our resources are deposited. We use His wisdom and ability
Now note this statement, "He that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life." John 8:12
There are two pertinent words in this verse:
(1) darkness, that is sense knowledge or Satan-dominated knowledge;
(2) light, that is wisdom and ability imparted to us from God. Revelation Knowledge.
Born again , child of GOD, does not live by the common Sense, but by faith in the Revelation Knowledge of the FATHER GOD.
1 John 1:5 declares, "GOD is light, and in HIM is no darkness at all." This tells us we may walk in the light as He is in the light.This means walking in the presence of God's ability.
Jesus Christ said, "He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." That is the new life, Zoe.
What would happen if we should take advantage of that and walk in the light of God's nature, God's ability and God's wisdom?
We would no longer be governed by our five senses. We would walk in the light, not of our sub-conscious mind, but of our recreated human spirit, which has received the nature and life of God.
Proverb 20:27 has this unique statement, "The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah."
This recreated spirit of man becomes Jehovah's lamp. He uses it to guide us into the mysteries of the natural world.
What a startling pronouncement that is, "the spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah."
Man's recreated spirit is the lamp the Father uses to lead men into realms hitherto hidden to them.
Remember Jesus' statement, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (or as the Authorized Version reads, "more abundantly.")
What did He mean by that? He meant that you may have the Father's nature and have an abundance of it.
Abundance means "an over-croppage." The barns are filled to overflowing, An abundance is more than I can see any way to use.
We have found that Eternal Life is the creative ability in man. Then, if the Father imparts to us an abundance of this creative ability, it would seem as though it would be almost limitless.
There would not be a chemical remaining in the mineral world to discover or to utilize.
We would know how to use what we have wasted and thrown away in the manufacturing world.
We would learn secrets of which we have dreamed, but believed to be inaccessible.
Atomic power is an example of Divine genius, The force was there, but we did not know how to capture or use it. It seemed just outside of human ability, and it was. It was Divine ability that taught us the secret of nuclear energy.
This ability was not found in heathen lands, nor in countries of state-ruled churches. It is only found where men and women have access to the Life that Jesus Christ brought to the world.
Phileo ( in Greek) is natural human love which grows out of selfishness. The desire to possess it gives birth to hatred and murder and every vile deed.
Agape ( in Greek) is the Jesus kind of love, the nature of the Father. It is an unveiling of the Father's very BEING, and this nature with all of its inherent ability is the reality of Christianity.
In other words, Christianity is the intrusion of the nature of God into man. It is God imparting His nature to our spirits, recreating them.
That marvelous prophecy in Ezekiel 36:26 has become a reality, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh."
Heart and spirit mean the same thing, Your spirit is your real self.
Now He says, "I will take out the old self and will give you a new self.
"That new self is going to be born of me. I am going to give birth to a new self in you. That new self will be able to know me. It will be able to understand me and enjoy fellowship with me.
"The Holy Spirit will take My creative ability, My melodies, My art, and impart it to this new self. Out of this new self will come a stream of artistic ability, of creative ability. It will give birth to a new type of poetry; it will have the very genius of God in it."
This is not a new metaphysics or philosophy. This is reality. This is God breaking into the sense realm.
This is God imparting His own nature to the human spirit.
How little we have appreciated Colossians 2:2-3, "That their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden."
Now we have it: Christ came out from the Father, bringing the secret of a new civilization, made up of a new type of men ..New Creation men.
When any one accepts Christ as Saviour, and confesses Him as Lord, God imparts to him or her a new nature, making him or her a new self.
"Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation, a new self." 2 Corinthians 5:17. Notice the rest of that verse, "the old things are passed away."
The old things that have governed Japan, India, Mongolia, Arabia and Egypt, and all of the other non-Christian nations... these old things have passed away.
"All things are now of God."
2 Corinthians 5:17 says: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.” It adds that “the old has gone, the new is here.”
What things? The New Creation things, the new ability things, the creative energy of God.
All man needs is to have Eternal Life, then give his children an opportunity to develop.
Now you can understand what Jesus meant when He said, "He that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness, butshall have the light of life." Also His statement, "He that believeth on me passes out of death into life."
There are two kinds of death taught in the Word. There is physical death and spiritual death.
"You hath He made alive when you were dead in your trespasses and sins." Physical death is in the realm of the grave. Spiritual death is in the realm of Satan's nature. In Eternal Life, we are made alive from the nature of spiritual death.
"We know that we have passed out of death into life (that means from the death realm into the life realm), because we love the brethren." 1 John 3:13
Now notice the next verse,"Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."
No one has ever known a man or woman, who possessed Eternal Life and was dominated by it, to commit murder. Murder grows out of spiritual death, the nature of Satan; he was a murderer from the beginning.
When this new kind of life comes into the human heart, it is God's nature coming into human.
The outstanding characteristics of this life are love, peace, joy, longsuffering, gentleness, forbearing one another, forgiving one another, holding no grudge against each other.
That is what Eternal Life gives to men and women. They become Jesus-like,
When the Master arose from the dead, one of the first things He wanted to do was to see Peter. He wanted to put His arms around him. Peter had betrayed and denied Him at His trial.
If Judas had been alive, He would have met him.
We are sure He spoke to the men who drove the nails into His hands and feet, and the soldier who pierced His side with the spear, and the men who placed the crown of thorns upon His brow.
He had said those strange words, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."
Now He came to them and told them He had died for their sins and could offer them Eternal Life, and sonship, with the wiping out of every sin they had ever committed.
When Stephen was dying, he whispered, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."
When they lighted the fagots ( a traditional bundle of sticks, ) around the sainted Polycarp, his last words were these, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."
How did these saintly men conquer hate with love? God's nature had come into them and taken them over.
Now we can understand the creative ability of God. It is the most magnificent thing the world has ever known. It is the secret of Christianity.
If there could come a new type of evangel, one who would tell men and women the truth about Eternal Life, what it has done and what it will do for humanity, ninety percent of the leaders of this country would swing into line and say, "I want this Eternal Life."
Every college man and woman would say, "I must have Eternal Life so that my children will have the benefit of this creative ability."
The Jews fought Jesus down through the ages because they did not know Him.
The Church has never understood their own Master, or what Eternal Life will do for men and women.
The Creative Ability of the Recreated Spirit
If the Church would present the reality of Eternal Life to the Jewish people, they would stop being Jews and become sons of God. .
We have preached the ethics of Christianity rather than the reality that makes up Christianity.
Now you can understand, "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly"; and John 1:4, "In Him was life and that life is the creative ability of God in man." (Literal translation.)
Philosophy is the problem child of Sense Know-ledge. Sense Knowledge gave birth to it when it failed to find reality in life.
Philosophy is purely the product of refined Sense Knowledge.
The philosopher is like the undertaker who covers the casket with flowers to hide the dead. He seeks to cover the dead body of Sense Knowledge failure with beautiful, lovely words. But the flowers cannot give life, they cannot give love, nor reality.
Philosophy has never been anything but the swan song of human failure. It is the blind child of the senses. It has been the blind leader of the blind for the last two thousand years.
It has never found reality. It has never led anyone into reality. Reality was never found by a philosopher.
Reality is found only in the New Creation.
Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the reality and the life.
This reality is Truth .
