The Lie & The Light

There Is A Lie Hidden In the Heart of Man

Jason Henderson

Contents

1

Created for Purpose

2

Testimony in a Man

3

Falling From Purpose

4

What Is the Lie?

5

Naming a Creation

6

The Red & The Blue

7

Introduction to the Light

8

Adam's Judgment

9

Walking In the Light

10

Abiding In Christ

11

Light Defines All Things

12

Light Transforms the Soul

1. Created For Purpose

Genesis 3:4-5 Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

There is a lie hidden in the heart of man. It is there when we think about life, when we contemplate purpose, and when we look for what is real. It motivates us when we plan, when we learn, when we love, and even when we seek after God. It is a deadly virus that has infected body and soul. This lie is not something that man believes. This lie is the lens through which man believes all things. The objective of this book is to expose the Lie for what it is, in the hope that it will pass from the heart with the coming of Light.

We will start by focusing on God’s purpose for creation and the effect that the Lie had on this purpose. We will see that the effect was colossal. Then we will look more closely at the Lie and discover what it is, how it works, and why it is so deadly. Finally, we will endeavor to describe God’s great solution to the Lie, that being the Light, and explain how and why the Lie meets its end only in the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Co 4:6). But we must begin with an overview of God’s eternal plan and purpose.

The Eternal Purpose of God

Why did God create? We call Him the Creator, and that is true of Him because He created. But why did He create? Did you ever consider the fact that God did not have to create? That was a choice on His part. He did not stumble upon the earth and decide He’d best intervene. He made the earth according to a desire in His heart. He created all things with something in mind – an intention, a purpose. Creating was not the purpose itself. He created for purpose. First there was a purpose; then there was the outworking and expression of that purpose in a creation. There was nothing that God needed, but there was something that He desired.

So much could be said in attempting to describe this purpose, but as that is not the aim of this book, a few sentences will suffice to get us heading in the right direction. God created in order to glorify Himself through loving a creation. He loved this creation by imparting the life of His Son to those who would believe. He gave a Son whom He purposed to be received by, formed in, and expressed through the ones He had made. John says, “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1Jo 4:9). We are the eternal beneficiaries of this purpose, but He is the center. We are the undeserving recipients of “His great love” (Eph 2:4), but His is the plan, the purpose, the glory. God desires the increase of Christ, through a corporate people, unto the eternal glory of God. This is the heart and core of God’s plan.

So what did God do? He created with this purpose in mind. Everything that He created was with a view to this end. Not one thing was created for any other reason. Not one thing was created just because it was beautiful, or interesting, or entertaining. Nothing was created as an experiment. Everything in the natural realm was created with a single purpose in mind. It was made to bear witness of, and give created expression to, this eternal purpose.

I am aware that man has fallen so far from this purpose that, not only is he able to look at the natural creation and fail to see God’s purpose in what was made, but he has actually created purposes for it of his own. Not only do we fail to understand God’s intention, we have found ways to use this creation entirely for our own intentions. We are so blind and corrupt that many actually spend their lives believing and teaching that this flawless masterpiece indeed has no purpose, no creator, and has, in fact, somehow created itself. We act as though such an idea is perfectly rational. More than that, we teach this to our children. “Nothingness created a big bang; the bang created a perfectly adapted planet with a local heating device. Contrary to all science, the inanimate planet managed to generate life; life then changed from slime into an aardvark, then to a Sasquatch, and then a human being. And class, this is where sunsets, and red blood cells, and families, and perfect ecosystems come from.”

The depths of depravity in the mind of man is simply astounding. If it was not such a tragedy, it might be considered a miracle. Albert Einstein once said, "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

In spite of our blindness, it remains that everything was created to bear witness of and give expression to God’s eternal purpose. I cannot tell you exactly how all created things do this. I can only tell you what I have come to understand. But regardless of the depth of our understanding, when we contemplate this realm, we must always keep in mind the intention of God. Far more than merely a temporary residence for human beings, the natural creation, in all of its intricate design, was made to be a specific and calculated testimony, or declaration, or reflection, of God’s eternal purpose in Christ. This realm, in addition to being the realm out from which God redeems men and brings them to Himself, was created to maintain an awesome and complex living testimony of God’s ultimate object.

In that creation you catch a glimpse of everything that God has foreknown and predestined in Christ. In it you see themes of redemption, transformation, growth, darkness and light, death and life, love, increase, power, and wisdom. And this creation is only natural! This creation is just the shadow, “the substance belongs to Christ” (Col. 2:17). The substance is realized in a new creation in Christ Jesus.

When I make reference to the new creation in Christ, you mustn’t imagine a better version of earth. You mustn’t picture bigger trees, bluer water, and brighter suns. It is not a better version of the natural; it is entirely spiritual. It is not a natural universe at all but rather the universe of Christ, a creation where He is the Water of Life, He is the Light, the Vine, and the Bread. All of these natural testimonies speak loudly of some facet of Him and the reality of a people crucified with Him, made alive with Him, seated with Him, and finding all things of life and godliness in Him. All created things together testify of this supreme objective in the heart of God.

In the days of his flesh, so much of Christ’s teaching is occupied with gathering up natural testimonies and showing them to have fulfillment and realization in Him. The many “good” things of the natural creation, along with the “good” which God commanded in the Mosaic Law, were made and established for a single purpose – “These are they which testify of me” (Joh 5:39). “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luk 24:27). Both the old creation and the old covenant were designed of God to prefigure the new which has come in Christ. The first creation, with its water, bread, light, fruit, and harvest, and the old covenant with its day of rest, high priest, offerings, washings, feasts, laws and kingdom – in all of this, the many loudly testify of the One.

Again, everything that was created exists as much more than merely the realm out from which God brings man when bodies grow old and die. The natural universe “declares the glory of God” (Psa 19:1). Here we have a collection of countless arrows that point to one Son. When He created the earth, God said it was “good” for that very reason. The natural creation is not intrinsically good. In other words, God did not say “it is good” because He noticed the beauty of a landscape or the vastness of the sea. This creation was declared “good” because it reflected and gave expression to a plan that was hidden in God’s heart before the foundation of the world.

This creation is to Christ what the moon is to the sun. The moon’s “goodness” as a light is bound up with the measure to which it reflects the sun. It has no light in itself. It is helpful for seeing only to the extent that it bears the reflection of true light. In this way, the natural creation puts the eternal Son of God on display. Everything that God made functioned, and still functions, as a perfect natural testimony of an eternal and spiritual purpose, except for man and what man has perverted for himself.

2. Testimony In A Man

Once upon a time, Adam was part of God’s created testimony. He was the crown of all natural types and shadows. In him you saw the greatest picture, the clearest prophecy and promise of God’s purpose in Christ. Like the earth, Adam was not inherently good. We must expel that from our mind because that is part of the Lie. “No one is good but One, that is, God” (Luk 18:19). But man was the greatest type and shadow of God’s purpose because in this first man God had created the clearest testimony, the most distinct and significant declaration, of Him who was goodness itself – the “Second Man” (1Co 15:47). The “first” was created in the “image and likeness” (Gen 1:26) of the “Second” in order to bear witness of “Him who was to come” (Rom 5:14). Until the Lie, man functioned perfectly in that role. That may have been three minutes, three days, or three months. The length of time is irrelevant. It is only important that we understand how he functioned as a “type” of the coming One (Rom 5:14). (A “type” is any person, place, thing, or institution that has the God-intended function of foreshadowing or displaying some spiritual reality in Christ.)

Before man saw and valued all things through a lens of self-obsession, he first saw this realm as he was intended to see it. He first saw and understood and operated according to the awareness that God gave to him. He had a perfect mind and perfect senses with respect to this creation. Man did not have eternal life because eternal life is not a thing. Eternal life is Christ. It is not, as we often hear, “the ability to live forever;” it is the Life of God in the soul of man. Adam did not have eternal life. He was “made a living soul” (1Co 15:45) but has always needed to be “born of Spirit” (Joh 3:6). However he was perfect in this sense: he had a perfect view, a God-given apprehension, of the creation over which he had been made lord.

Adam understood natural reality according to truth. He was fully aware of his environment. I do not know exactly how this worked. Some have speculated on just what the mind of Adam and Eve – the “pre-fall mind of man” – was able to know, see, and do. Some make mention of how we now apparently use only a small percentage of our brain’s capacity. Others have pointed out that Adam was able to name every living creature and tend a garden of incredible size. Regardless of the specifics of his natural abilities, I do know this – man was far greater in understanding, perspective, and truth with respect to the natural realm than we are today. We have technology, philosophy, and science, but the first man had truth, wisdom, and God-given perspective. He had a view of created things that was not clouded by a dark lens of self, and with it he saw the world, named his creation, and ruled according to the truth of that realm, if only for a very short time.

With truth reigning in his soul, Adam functioned as all natural things do – in the image of the spiritual reality of which they bear witness. With wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, he fully comprehended and inhabited his realm. He knew the animals better than they knew themselves. He saw them according to their created purpose. He gave them each a name according to God-given comprehension. He was to reign in, rule over, fully know, and subdue this creation. He was to be fruitful and multiply and fill this creation with his kind. Everything created “reproduced according to its kind” (Gen 1:11ff). With truth operating in his soul, Adam could abide in this state of being in perfect harmony with the mind of the Lord. And the reason for all of this, the big picture and goal behind it all, was that in the fullness of time man could find this created purpose realized and fulfilled in Jesus Christ as a new creation. The re-born soul of man would one day become the very creation in which the “Second Man” would reign and rule. Christ would fully know and subdue and name His creation. We would be the ones in whom Christ would be fruitful and multiply. We would be the increase according to His kind. We, as His living habitation, would one day bear His name.

In other words, the story of Adam and his creation invites us to see something of the heart of God. It is a preview of coming attractions. Before the Lie, Adam’s relationship with the world prophesied God’s end-game. In Christ, God has fulfilled and perfected all that Adam was meant to portray.

So much of the New Testament shows our salvation in Christ to be the fulfillment and realization of what Adam and his creation pointed to. We are a new creation; "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold the new has come" (2Co 5:17). The Seed of God has its increase in us. We have “been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible" (1Pe 1:23). Thus Paul prays, "My little children with whom I am in labor until Christ is formed in you" (Gal 4:19). Christ is subduing His Creation. "He...will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself" (Phi 3:21). He names us according to Himself. "I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name" (Rev 3:12). We become the increase of His kind. “So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase…For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field” (1Co 3:7-9). “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom 8:29).

Adam was created with purpose, and that purpose is not realized in the much-abridged story of sin and forgiveness that is so popular in the church. It is far bigger than any of us realize. In the beginning, God created a natural universe that gave expression to the glory and goal of God through His Son. Once upon a time, Adam was part of that testimony. And then he ate a lie.

3. Falling From Purpose

Adam fell. The church speaks often of this infamous fall, but it is commonly misunderstood. Man did not fall from union with God. In the garden, God walked with man in a relationship unhindered by sin. That much is true. But God did not reside in man. God spoke words to man, but He could not reveal His living Word in the soul of man. Man did not fall from the salvation that God now offers us in Christ. When Adam fell, he fell from purpose. He fell horribly short of what God had created him to be and to do. He lost all ability to bear in himself God’s intended testimony and to abide in his created purpose. In other words, he “fell short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23).

This fall from glory was not merely the consequence of picking a forbidden fruit. Something had already happened when Eve reached for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Serpent was not selling apples; he was selling a lie. Satan first deceived the woman, and only when she believed the Lie did the fruit take on a new appearance. First she ate the Lie, then she ate the fruit because it suddenly seemed “good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise” (Gen 3:6). “She took from the tree and ate,” but this was an outward indication of something that had already transpired in her heart. Adam and Eve fell, not because they touched something with their hands, but because they accepted something into their heart. Man fell when he believed the Lie.

This was something much worse than falling for a trick. Eve did not simply confuse two trees or get duped by a talking lizard. Something much more significant happened here. We can know this with certainty because of the transformation that immediately took place. At once, Adam’s perception was permanently disfigured. Something shifted in his soul, and this man became entirely self-aware, self-consumed, and self-condemned. Adam and Eve were not just misled by words. They swallowed a lie that permanently altered and entirely corrupted the way they viewed themselves and their Creator. They exchanged God’s perspective and purpose for their own. They could no longer see creation according to truth. In fact, they saw nothing rightly because all things were now comprehended through the darkened and perverted lens of self.

At once, Adam was aware of himself, his lack, his need, his shame. Nothing is more clear in the story of this man and his descendents. Immediately, all things of the natural creation were known, understood and experienced, not according to God-given perspective, but entirely with respect to self-interest. This was the effect of the Lie, and the resulting corruption has been passed to every son and daughter born in the “image and likeness of Adam” (Gen 5:3).

Fear entered into this otherwise perfect testimony. Anger, pride, shame, and murder were soon to follow. Why? Because man’s relationship with all created things no longer correlated with God’s perspective and intention. Adam no longer bore a testimony of God’s ultimate objective in Christ. He had fallen from created purpose, and now his relationship with all things found its root and reality in the awareness of self and the all-consuming obsession of self-preservation.

Man now looked at all created things through the filter of self-gain. As the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans describes, man exchanged the glory of God for his own darkened understanding. He exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Consequently, he became the center of his own story and a purpose unto himself. He saw all things in relation to personal benefit. And so no sooner did he accept the Lie than he immediately hid from God and sought to cover his nothingness. He feared God’s wrath, blamed others for his own guilt, and shortly thereafter killed in jealousy. These are the fruits of self-obsession. This is how the Lie corrupted the soul of the first man. The Lie was now the perverted lens, the twisted mirror, through which all things were seen.

Purpose was lost. Testimony was forfeited. The crown of God’s creation no longer bore the image and likeness of the “One who was to come” (Rom 5:14). Man had contracted a virus of self-obsession. Man had become a lie. And with this Lie began a new day where man would exploit and manipulate this world according to purposes of his own.

It is no wonder that immediately following the fall, we read of the world filled with violence and corruption. We see God grieved in His heart, mourning over the state of the world, and preparing to destroy both man and the earth in a great flood.

Genesis 6:5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the LORD said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them."

Genesis 6:11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. 13 And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Why such remorse and wrath in the heart of God? Because truth was rejected. Perspective was lost. God’s eternal purpose had been surrendered. Now “all the earth lies under the power of the evil one,” (1Jo 5:19) and its inhabitants are under the dominion of the “Father of Lies” (Joh 8:44). The Serpent is henceforth known as the “ruler of this world” (Joh 12:31), the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2), the “god of this age” (2Co 4:4). The earth had fallen together with Adam – distorted and spoiled of purpose. Yet the world was the increase of Adam, a creation under his dominion, and so it became falleness on display, Adam’s vast canvas. A world where the Serpent and his kind “now work in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:2).

Luke 4:5 Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. 7 Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.”

T. Austin-Sparks writes:

This is a false world we are living in, a world that is carried on upon lies. The whole constitution of this world is a lie, and it is in the very nature of man, though most do not know it, but think they are true. They are trying to build a world on a false assumption.¹

4. What is the Lie?

The question remains – what is the Lie? We have seen something of its results, but what exactly did Adam and Eve believe? What kind of lie could do this? How could a lie change so much?

A lie could have this effect only if it had to do with the deepest and most fundamental presuppositions of the human heart – only if it attacked the center of all that man knew about God and himself. A lie could forever pollute the soul of the natural man only if it offered a view of reality where man found purpose, value, wisdom, destiny, and life apart from God. This is the heart of the Lie. This is what Adam believed – that he was something, anything, independent of God. Satan’s goal was realized that day in the garden when Adam and Eve walked away from the Serpent believing they could “be like God,” “know good and evil,” and “have their eyes opened” (Gen 3:4-5). “Did God really say…?” They now knew better.

So this Lie is something much deeper and more powerful than a belief. It is an unspoken and generally unrecognized world-view where man becomes the center and source of all things. Man’s carnal perspective becomes the lens through which he sees and measures and values everything. All things are relevant to the extent that he is bettered by them. All things are true to the extent that he wants them to be real. All things are good to the measure that he gains from them.

This Lie is at the center of all that we naturally think and know and want and feel. We mustn’t refuse to hear this. There is no “Adam-friendly” or “seeker-sensitive” way for God to show us that:

Romans 8:6 (LitV) “The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace; 7 because the mind of the flesh is enmity towards God; for it is not being subjected to the Law of God, for neither can it be.”

The Lie is not just one of our thoughts, it is the fountainhead of all thinking. It is beneath all desire, hope, and intention. It is deeper than emotion, and it moves and shapes the intellect.

We live for and according to our evaluation of all things. We assess everything according to our imagined knowledge of good and evil. We believe that, independent of God, we have purpose. But this is like a hammer claiming purpose apart from a carpenter, a pitcher professing value without any water, or a light bulb asserting usefulness without electricity. In fact, it is far worse than all of that: it is a corrupt human soul thinking it has or is anything apart from God’s eternal Spirit. The Lie forfeits the objective of God and attempts, in an ever-growing number of ways, to find purpose in an empty and deceived vessel. We believe ourselves valuable independent of God’s created intention. We imagine ourselves filled with potential and capability that needs only to be discovered and developed. We see in ourselves so much that is good and useful; man can use it, even God can use it. In this way, we bring the Lie right into the church.

The Lie In The Church

It is not difficult to recognize how unbelievers live according to the Lie. They seek to know life and truth apart from God. As “mere men” (1Co 3:3) they find purpose in the earth and its possessions, relationships, and activities. They value the world for its passing effect on their emotions. All of this is entirely appropriate for those who are “dead in trespasses and sins” and who conduct themselves “in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and who are by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:1-3). They do not pretend to see things another way. Indeed, “they cannot see the kingdom unless they are born from above” (Joh 3:3). The great confusion and contradiction lies with us – the ones who have come to new life in Jesus Christ.

Though we have found Christ, we fail to recognize that we have amassed an enormous collection of errant imaginations and presuppositions that lie beneath our understanding of salvation. The Lie has shaped our view of all things, and until it is destroyed and displaced by the Person of Light, it remains the foundation upon which we seek to understand Christianity and obey the gospel. Yet if our Christianity is anything less than the life of the Lord Jesus Christ being formed in the soul, then it is nothing at all. True words, right doctrines, and noble causes, if built upon the Lie, amount to nothing more than dead religion – because we remain the center and source of all that is done in the name of God.

The Lie is the silent author of so much of our doctrine and instruction that portrays the cross as God’s way to produce a better version of ourselves. We have invented a gospel that somehow allows Adam to live for God. We have popularized a salvation wherein Christ dies so that we can reach our potential, be our best for God, live our lives to the fullest. We have made God the author of our adamic success stories. Adam lives on, we say, but praise God!...now he is forgiven. But this is so far from the truth. Our salvation is in fact the death of the adamic man so that Christ Himself can “be formed in you” (Gal 4:19). We are indeed forgiven but only in that we are “crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20), that He alone can “be all and in all” (Col 3:11). Through the cross, we are “baptized into His death” (Rom 6:3) and “buried with Him” (Col 2:12) so that it is now “not I, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

But we have created a cross-less Christianity where salvation is a mere “sinner’s prayer” in conjunction with behavioral modification. How do these ideas find their way into the church and grow to such popularity? It is really quite simple. In the darkness of the unrenewed mind, we bring with us into Christ a world-view that has been shaped by the Lie. Right away we seek to serve Him with our wisdom, please him with our abilities, learn Him with our minds, and request His assistance for our goals. Like everything else, God becomes another means to our end – a way for us to pursue an egocentric dream of spiritual greatness.

My aim is not to criticize the church but simply to expose the reality that the Lie does not vanish into thin air the moment we are born again. In fact, the Lie is not “put off” (Eph 4:25) without putting off the man who is defined by the Lie. This is precisely our problem. This is what we most often misunderstand. You cannot put off the Lie, except by putting off the adamic man who is the Lie. Though salvation has you dead to Adam and alive to God in Christ, the Lie still reigns in the darkened understanding of the unrenewed mind. As such, it is cast off only when the residue of the first man is washed from the soul in the coming of Light.

Someone might say, “I used to believe that Lie, but I no longer do. I have learned that I am nothing apart from God.” No, you have not. You cannot say that. It is not that kind of a lie. It is not an intellectual deception that you can decide to part with. It is not a lack of information or education. You cannot put off the power of this Lie until you have put off the fullness of that man. Nor can you say that you have learned the fullness of the Truth any more than you can say you have grown up into the fullness of Christ. This Lie is not something you merely stop believing. This Lie is someone who must stop living.

In John chapter 8, Jesus spoke to the Pharisees about knowing the truth and believing the Lie. He did not insist that they correct wrong ideas or acknowledge better doctrines. The problem was far more serious than that.

John 8:41 You do the deeds of your father…42 Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me…47 He who is of God hears God's words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God."

The situation was much worse than they understood. The problem was not something they thought, it was something they were. “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” Thus the solution that the Lord presented was something far greater than spiritual facts. According to Jesus, knowing the truth is an encounter with the Son who sets you free from yourself.

John 8:31 Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 33 They answered Him, "We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, 'You will be made free'?" 34 Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. 35 And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. 36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

What I am saying is that the Lie is so much more than an idea or concept in the brain. It is the darkness of the fallen adamic mind that is eaten alive by self-awareness and felt need. It is not just one of our thoughts; it is the foundation for all of our thinking. It is the starting point of all that we perceive – a universe where man is center stage. It is a world-view where man has purpose, value, life, wisdom, and destiny independent of God; it is a false light by which man is able to imagine a life and purpose that has nothing to do with truth. “If the Light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness” (Mat 6:23). This delusion cannot be overcome by coming to believe that there is such a Lie. It is dealt with only when the man who is the Lie is put away by the cross. The Lie is defeated when the nature of darkness is confronted and destroyed by the Person of Light. Man’s only hope is to gain another light, to find another lens, to see all things out from another Man – one who has called Himself the Truth, a Man who said “I am the light of the world” (Joh 8:12).

The true knowing of Christ is a veritable journey out of one man and into Another. It is not just the pardoning of offenses but a new Life by which we live, a new lens through which we see, a new Light in which we walk. It is the experience of the cross. The cross exists as the instrument of God for the destruction of the Lie. It is not only where Jesus died for you; it is where you are crucified to the Lie and the Lie is crucified to you. It is how we are “delivered from the power of darkness” (Col 1:13) and become sons of Light. “For you formerly were darkness, but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light” (Eph 5:8).

Every act of the Spirit of God is toward this end. The primary and perpetual occupation of the Holy Spirit is to teach the cross to the souls of redeemed humanity. And one of the very first things that we face under His instruction and tuition is that our problem is not with lying. Our problem is that we are the Lie. This is precisely what the Spirit of God brings into view when Christ begins to be revealed in you (Gal 1:16). You come to realize that the problem is more than a lack of light. The problem is that even your light is darkness, even your “righteousness is filthy rags” (Isa 64:6), even your facts fall short of the truth. You are not struggling with darkness; you are the darkness that you struggle with. By nature we are the darkness into which Christ must come and shine unto our displacement. The Light shows you to be the Lie and deals with you by the death of the cross. The cross of Christ is God’s remedy to the Serpent’s lie.

Numbers 21:9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.

Spiritual growth is nothing short of the displacement of the Lie by the putting off of that man, and “putting on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (Col 3:10).

Ephesians 4:20 But you have not so learned Christ, 21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus: 22 that you put off, concerning your former manner of life, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, 23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Consequently, putting away lying, "let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor," for we are members of one another.

A literal translation of verse 25 reads, “consequently, putting off the lie” or “putting off the false.” In context, it would seem that Paul is doing something more than reminding the Ephesians to refrain from “bearing false witness.” This passage clearly deals with learning Christ and being “taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus.” Through the “renewing of the Spirit of the mind,” these believers are said to be putting off one man and putting on Another. As the Light of New Life shines, they become free from the old and learn to abide in the new where they are members of one another. Consequently, they are “putting off the Lie” and coming to deal with one another according to the Truth. They are breaking from the darkness of self-obsession and relating to one another as members of one body, having been “made to drink of one Spirit” (1Co 12:13). They are “speaking the truth in love” (Eph 4:15), recognizing that “those who have joined themselves to the Lord are one Spirit” (1Co 6:17). The Lie passes from the heart along with the adamic man. For those who are in Christ, knowing the truth indeed sets you free.

5. Naming A Creation

Prior to the fall, man could name the natural creation according to a God-given comprehension of what he saw.

Genesis 2:19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field.

The name he gave corresponded to his understanding of what was there. The name was consistent with created purpose. God approved of his names. But when man believed the Lie, he lost divine perspective and understanding. Adam “exchanged the truth of God for the lie” (Rom 1:25), and yet, regrettably, he has never ceased giving out his names. In other words, though the Lie has robbed him of any true sight and discernment, he continues to identify and assess all things according to his now-fallen comprehension. He names according to his own view, his own perspective. Based on observation and experience that is hugely corrupted by self-obsession, he gives all things a “name” in keeping with the value he places upon them and according to a false light that he calls understanding. He does this not only in the natural arena where he once had perspective, but he seeks to name spiritual things as well – in a realm where he has seen nothing at all. With a carnal mind that is by nature “enmity with God” (Rom 8:7), he seeks to explain and identify a realm and reality that can only be revealed by the Spirit of God. He reads spiritual terms but assigns adamic definitions. In this way, salvation is misconstrued and cheapened. The gospel of Life is taught as just another religion of man.

For example, we name “righteousness.” I mean we assign our definition to it. We attach our comprehension to it. We name it, understand it, recognize it, and teach it according to how this word appears in the false light of the adamic mind. Rather than knowing righteousness as the life and nature of Christ once witnessed by the Mosaic Law but now working in the soul of the redeemed by faith, we have reduced it to a list of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. To most, righteousness involves a set of laws, a collection of rules, or the “good” things we feel obliged to do as Christians. One man says it is something we do. Another believes it is something we wear. To another it is something we mustn’t drink, or touch, or say. The point is that we give it our name. We know it according to the Lie.

We name “love.” What is love? How do we in the church understand and teach love? Generally, love is taught to be anything one does or feels that ministers to a felt need. Forget about whether there is any truth represented in it. Forget about whether it corresponds with the purpose and mind of the Lord. Never mind that it has nothing to do with what the apostle John describes – a people abiding in the One who is love, and relating to one another in the Light. If it meets a need, or stirs emotion, we are quick to call it love.

Even though the centrality of man is a common thread in all of our “names,” we are not thereby united. We are quick to change our ideas. We are “tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4:14) and therefore rarely agree with one another for very long. Yet we marvel at the division in the body of Christ and are ashamed of our countless denominations. But there are as many names as there are people naming. No two carnal minds think alike. There is never agreement in the flesh because souls are utterly independent and autonomous until they are filled with the same Spirit and flooded with the same Light.

For those who begin to see anew in the Light, it is no wonder why growing in the truth involves the re-defining of all spiritual things. We should not be at all surprised that our comprehension of every spiritual term needs to be renamed in the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Co 4:6) because whether we realize it or not, all natural understanding was born and bathed in the darkness of the Lie. We have named fellowship, church, worship, ministry, love, faith, glory, sin, salvation, grace, and redemption. They all have names that were assigned in the dark. It is not a question of whether we believe in these things. The issue is whether we have seen them in the darkness of the Lie or in the clarity of “His marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9).

In the days of His flesh, Jesus healed a man who was blind from his mother’s womb. This man had never seen a thing, and yet he had certainly interacted with his environment throughout his life. He had undoubtedly encountered trees, buildings, rain, and sunlight. He had known parents, siblings, and friends. Though I cannot say exactly how this works in the mind of a blind person, he must have had some mental image or concept in his mind about the appearance of things in the world. Based on what he had felt, heard, smelled, or thought, there would necessarily be some impression or idea that came to mind when he encountered things of the world. Jesus spat in the dirt, made mud, and applied it to his eyes, and for the first time in his life, this man saw things as they were. For the first time ever, he saw independent of his own imagination. Here is my question: how many of his ideas about the appearance of things do you think he would have guessed correctly? How many of his mental images – images of his mother, a rain shower, a forest – do you think were exactly as he imagined? Certainly not a single one. But why? Because there was nothing but darkness to work with. There he had nothing but imagination until his eyes functioned to let in the light. Even the most educated guess would be a blind stab in the dark, a misunderstanding that arose from using the wrong senses to understand what only light can show.

So it is when we seek to understand and “name” anything apart from the Light of Christ. Unless He names it, it is part of the Lie. If it has not been named in the Light of His appearing, then it was named in the darkness of the unrenewed mind. Just as with the first man in the garden, all things must be brought before the “Second Man” to receive their name. And the very first and most essential thing we must allow Him to name is ourselves. He must name us according to Truth before we will ever see rightly. And when Christ names you, He first names you “dead.” He names you “blind.” We must reckon with this. Before you will ever understand the name “son,” or “redeemed,” or “bride,” or “city,” he must first show you to be “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev 3:17). That is our name by nature, and His Light will make you acknowledge it.

God first works in you His view of what you are by nature because only then can you understand what it is to become a partaker of His nature (2 Pet 1:4). The understanding of what you are without Him is the foundation upon which He begins to show you what you are in Him. So you learn the name “dead” before you can understand the name “risen with Christ.” You learn the name “judged” before you understand the name “accepted in the Beloved.” He names you by your nature before you can realize what it is to be named by His. If He does not first show you the Lie, you will carry it like a disease into the church and blend it with the truth.

But God will name whatever we are willing to present to Him. He will show us the truth about anything we are willing to see. “In His Light, we see Light” (Psa 36:9). In His Light we come to understand what the Lie has done to the soul of man. It has made us “by nature, children of wrath” (Eph 2:3). In our flesh “dwells no good thing” (Rom 7:18). “Apart from Him, we can do nothing” (Joh 15:5). Only in His Light do we realize that all good things have their source in God.

John 3:20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been wrought in God."

But in the Light we see that He is the reality and definition of righteousness. He is the substance of love. These are not words that give definition to Him; He is the one giving definition to these words. Man does not understand God by reading spiritual words. Man understands spiritual words by seeing God. He is the One who bears the name and defines the reality of truth, and life, and glory, and salvation. “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1Co 1:30). As Watchman Nee rightly said, “Christ is the sum of all spiritual things,”² and He offers Himself to us as the Resurrection and Life of our soul. He fully gives Himself to us and, in doing so, He offers us His names. He grants His names in exchange for ours. We exchange “beauty for ashes” (Isa 61:3), death for life, old for new, son of Adam for Son of the Living God. He names whatever we will present to Him. But we present so little. Instead we hold fast to the Lie wherever we have grown fond of our own names.

For example, we are quite attached to our understanding of prayer. We are certain that it does not need to be renamed in the Light. We say to ourselves, “I have been praying since I was a child. I have read many books on the subject and have seen my prayers answered. If there is anything I understand it is prayer.” As a result we hold tightly to our understanding rather than presenting it to Christ for its “name.” It is this way with any spiritual concept or belief. It could be forgiveness, heaven, ministry, judgment, or whatever. We are so familiar with these words that we are beyond questioning our comprehension of such fundamental Christian doctrines. Assuming we know so much, we refuse the Truth in the name of the facts. We are so accustom to Christian words and so well-versed in the Scripture that we never suppose that the Lie is at the foundation of all that we call spiritual knowledge. It is in this way we can be “ever learning, and never coming to a knowledge of the truth” (2Tim 3:7). We can “diligently seek the Scriptures thinking that in them there is life” but remain “unwilling to come to Him to find Life” (Joh 5:39). Professing to be wise, we remain fools, because “these things are hidden from the wise and learned and revealed unto babes” (Matt 11:25). We are warned by Paul that “if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know” (1Co 8:2).

I am not speaking of an unwillingness to be corrected in theology or further educated in doctrine. That is not what we resist. We resist exchanging the Lie for the Person of Truth because we refuse to let go of our names. We like the idea of “walking in the Light” but not the cost of forgoing our favorite lies. We want to live free from bondage but not if the entire adamic man must be circumcised from the soul. We blindly, but defiantly, stand opposed to the intent of the Spirit. We buck against the cross that demands the death of the first man together with his deeds, lusts, and religious ideas. We cannot accept that to know the truth, it will cost us our names.

Just like the man born blind, there is no possibility that we have named anything rightly apart from Light. Christ is a new Life, and new Place to live, and so we must start over with a new Light. And whatever we hold onto, whatever definition, understanding, value, or view of anything that has not been utterly renamed in the Light of Christ or whatever so-called Christian thing, concept, doctrine, or experience that we cling to, it will eventually find its way to the center stage of our heart. Often these are the things that have been the most familiar and important to us in Christian religion; they are the Ishmaels that we have begotten and loved when we would not wait for the son of promise. They are the towers of Babel that we have built with prayer, time, and tears, seeking to make a spiritual name for ourselves in the earth. But anything of the natural man and natural mind that is not fully released and forsaken will always be there waiting to claim your allegiance and eclipse your view of God’s Truth.

6. The Red & The Blue

Though we have been focusing almost exclusively on the Lie, our objective is ultimately to understand and experience the reality of the Light that displaces the Lie. However, if we begin by underestimating the power and effect of the Lie, then we will unknowingly seek to build truth upon it. Facts that are laid upon a false foundation are powerless. In this way, Christianity, regardless of how accurate our doctrines, can be a meaningless encounter with words, rather than an experience of the Spirit of Truth filling our souls with Himself. Truth is a Person – not words about a Person, and you come to know the Person of Truth only when He floods the darkness of your soul with His marvelous Light.

Have you ever needed to see and experience the power of the Truth? Have you ever been desperate to know something more real than your pain, your circumstances, even your very self? I have known some difficult times in my life where I wrestled with fear and confusion and significant inward torment. I remember in many of those times crying out to the Lord in the words of Psalm 43:

Psalm 43:3 Oh, send out Your light and Your truth! Let them lead me; Let them bring me to Your holy hill and to Your dwelling place.

I wish I would have known in those times, in all of my praying, fasting, and pleading, that before Truth could ever right my emotions and overcome my circumstances, it had to show me a lie that had saturated my soul. There was a lie that was even deeper than my pain. It had filled and formed my perception. It had named my world the wrong name, and it was too familiar to recognize. I could not see the forest for the trees.

Born Into A Red World

Perhaps this analogy will help illustrate. Suppose there was a world where everything was red. There were not seven colors of the rainbow. There was just one. Everything was red. There was light red, dark red, cherry red, blood red, ruby red, scarlet, etc. Just one color with its variations. And in this red world it was just as impossible for a person to imagine a color other than red as it is impossible for you and I to imagine a color that is not already part of our known spectrum.

I remember as a child trying to discover an altogether new color. I figured there must certainly be a multitude of unknown colors that were just awaiting discovery. However, try as I might, my mind could only visualize shades and combinations of what I had already seen. It took a bit of time, but I finally decided I did not possess the ability to look beyond what my mind had already observed.

The fact of the matter is that nobody has ever discovered or invented an altogether new color because it is impossible for the mind to extend itself or create beyond what senses can perceive. The mind of man is quite creative, but its creativity has its limits. Even the most bizarre fairy-tale creature that man can dream up is only a mixture or enlargement or modification of something that already exists: a twenty foot spider, a miniature person with hummingbird wings, a four-headed ostrich with fangs, etc. Strange, yes, but not legitimately new. Man simply cannot imagine or create beyond the realm and reality into which he is born.

Returning to our analogy, a person born in Red World could only know, imagine, and understand all things as some variation of red. What would happen then, if somebody were to approach a native of Red World and begin to describe the color blue? Let’s just say that somehow a person who had actually seen blue sat down with a Red World native and spent a number of hours explaining and teaching this entirely different color. Even if that person were able to perfectly describe blue, and if he chose the most descriptive words, the clearest analogies, and most unambiguous language – still, the hearer would only be able to imagine blue as some variant form of red. Red is all that the mind has to work with, and so, of necessity, the concept of blue would enter into the imagination as some modified rendering of red. The problem would not be that they were not trying hard enough to understand. The problem would be that they did not have the right foundational reality from which to begin. Even if our man from Red World attempted to erase his presuppositions and ignore all prior red experiences, there is something still deeper. There is the inescapable fact that everything he had ever seen, known, understood, and imagined, was red.

But suppose that after listening to this detailed account of blue for many hours, the man from Red World decided that he finally understood. So he runs home, finds his box of crayons along with several pieces of paper, and attempts to sketch blue. And just in case some of his ideas might be mistaken, he draws eight or ten different variations of what he now understands blue to be. He then brings the drawings back to the man who has actually seen the color blue, and proudly displays his work. But, quite predictably, none of his drawings are blue. In fact, every last one is still some form of red. So the man from Red World, wanting desperately to get this right, says to the other man, “Friend, please show me what part of these drawings is not blue, and I will fix it. Point out to me where I have gone wrong. Which one of my sketches is closest to being blue? Is this one not dark enough? Is that not light enough? I have an entire box of crayons, and I am quite willing to make the necessary adjustments!”

Certainly you can see the point I am trying to make. I am not talking about colors. I am talking about the Lie. Before there was ever a sketch on paper, there was a world defined by the color red. So it is with us. The Lie was the color of the crayon. The Lie was the color of the paper. The Lie was the color in our mind before we ever sat down to draw blue. Red was the starting point of every thought of blue. That is how the Lie works in our soul until it is contradicted and crowded out by the Light. The Lie is the starting point of every thought of life, purpose, truth, love, even God. It is always the incumbent name until it is overthrown by Light.

I am doing all that I can to paint a picture of a world where all things are seen through a massively distorted lens because that is the world we live in. If we fail to understand the problem, we will never look for the right solution. Wrong presuppositions bring forth wrong conclusions, regardless of our intentions. The problem is so much bigger than we want to believe, and so the Solution is far more than we understand ourselves to need. Our need for Christ is very much greater than we suppose. Therefore, before we will seek to know Him as our Life and our Light, we must first come to recognize that the mind of the fallen adamic man is the abode of the Serpent’s lie. It has been this way from the beginning. Despite any claims to the contrary, man swallowed the Lie and judged himself to have life, purpose, wisdom, relevance and destiny independent of God. That is the Lie that flows through our veins. It fills our minds with ideas. It moves with us into every circumstance and relationship. It accompanies us to our Bible studies, Sunday sermons, and prayer meetings. It colors all things red. Believing in blue, teaching about blue, and seeking to live for blue does not change our color. We can build blue schools, gather in blue churches, and proclaim blue realities, but unless the Light of Blue Himself dislodges and destroys all things red, we have not really changed or come to know the power and Person of our salvation.

Why is this so hard for the natural mind to understand and believe? Because Christ is a color we have never imagined before. In every way, He is a color that no red mind can know until blue begins to shine.

1Corinthians 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

But thanks be to God that our salvation corresponds to God’s understanding of our need. He has given to us, through the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, a death that we could never die, a life that we could never live, and a Light by which we come to know and abide in all that God has finished.

7. Introduction to the Light

Similar to the Lie, the Light (or the Truth – I use these terms synonymously) is far more than a belief. It too is like a lens through which you come to view all things. The Lie is the deception of the Father of Lies that works in the fallen mind of man. The Truth is the perspective of the “Father of Lights” (James 1:17) who shines Light in your heart and brings you to His view. “In His Light, we see Light” (Psa 36:9). This Light is the Lord’s understanding and perspective operating in the soul of man through “the renewing of the spirit of your mind” (Eph 4:22). It becomes a spiritual view of reality in which, and by which, you live. Paul says, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal 2:20). It is not words on a page, theologies in a head, doctrines in a heart, or testimonies in a mouth. It can be proclaimed or described by all of these, but it is foremost a Person who shares “the Light of Life” (Joh 8:12) – with you.

The Truth is a Person into whom you must first be born.

John 3:5 Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Beyond that, the Truth is a Person in whom you must learn to abide or you can do nothing of spiritual relevance.

John 15:5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

The Truth is the Word of God, and He is “living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit” (Heb 4:12). And with this “sword” he cuts away one man and establishes Another. “He takes away the first that He may establish the second” (Heb 10:9). Knowing the Truth always works in us towards His increase and our decrease, just as the increase of any light necessarily supplants darkness.

We who are in Him must come to see all things in His Light as we are “renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created us” (Col 3:10). In this way we come to know the Truth and are made free from ourselves and our slavery to the Lie. We awaken from a red dream that we were so sure was blue, and we learn to “walk in the light as he is in the light” (1Jo 1:7). In this Light we understand that we who have died with Him are now raised together and hidden with Him in the Father. As He is revealed by the Spirit, we come to see as He sees and “know even as we are known” (1Co 13:12).

Colossians 3:3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When [Greek “hotan” ~ literally “whenever”] Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed together with Him in glory.

This Scripture does not describe a future event. It declares a present and ongoing discovery of Christ our life. The glory mentioned here is not a distant place or time, it is our present reality and relatedness to the Lord of Glory who has given us His Spirit. It is the very glory that Paul says we see with “unveiled face” when we look into the mirror of God.

2Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image.

It is the glory that Christ has brought us to by joining us to Himself and making us “one spirit with Him” (1Co 6:17).

John 17:22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one.

And as Christ, our life, is revealed, it is in this glory that we are found and learn to abide. The Light teaches us the Life of God that resides in the soul of man and works in us to conform us to His image. This is so much more than Christian religion; this is Christ Himself.

A Common Question

In the Light, hearts begin to distinguish between dead religion and a living Christ. They recognize that “the life of Jesus” is meant to be “manifested in our mortal flesh” (2Co 4:11), and nearly everyone’s first question is “how?” They do not doubt what they are beginning to see, but neither do they understand how it works. I clearly remember thinking – “I now realize that goodness is not something I do; righteousness is not something I do; these are things that He is, and things that must work in me. But…how do I do that? Or how do I get Him to do that? Or how does that happen?”

Perhaps the best way to begin to answer this question is to look back to the Lie. How did the Lie work in you? Did you ever have to learn how to express the Lie? Was it ever necessary to take classes or exercise discipline in order to think and desire and act according to the Lie? You will answer “no.” But why? Why was it effortless? Why was it so easy?" Because it was simply a matter of living according to what you knew was real. It was a matter of nature. You lived according to your awareness of your state of being. You did not have to contrive something because it was already there. There was no need to work on something because it worked in you. You were not trying to believe something because you were naturally quite convinced. Living the Lie was an instinctive outworking of what was real of you, and your awareness of it.

In this you can begin to understand something of the power of the Light. We have much to say about this, but simply put, the Light is the God-given awareness of our true state of being. In other words, it is the awareness of what God has done in Christ. It is God's awareness and understanding of new life, resurrection, freedom, reconciliation, union, purpose, etc. This is not “mind over matter.” This is the Spirit of God working to show you the reality of God’s finished work in Christ. It is not true because you make yourself believe it. It is true because you were born of His Spirit, and have become a partaker of Him. The fact that we do not believe is precisely the problem.

Light Brings Us To Faith

It is the Spirit of God who works in us the miracle of faith whereby we see as He sees and “know as we are known” (1Co 13:12). When His light shines, we come to an experience of faith.

What is faith? Contrary to what many assume, faith is not what you and I believe about something. It is not belief. It is not trust. It is not hope. Someone says “I have faith that God is able to part the ocean.” But that is not faith. That is a belief – something you believe God can do. Someone says “I have faith that God will raise up an honorable leader for our nation.” But that is not faith either. That is hope. It is a wish – something you would like to see happen. Another says “I have faith that God will always provide for my material needs.” Again, that is not faith either. That is trust – something you are depending on from the hand of God.

So what is faith? Faith is the mind of Christ operating in your soul. It is the view of spiritual reality that is present to the eyes of the heart subsequent to the revealing of Christ. It is a spiritual seeing or beholding that is given to you by the Spirit. More than that, it is actually the Spirit’s beholding, His view, being written on your heart.

Jeremiah 31:33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

So when the Scriptures speak of the Spirit of God revealing the truth, we mustn’t think that God’s Light operates to help us believe that something is true. Faith is something much more significant. It is not a confidence that something is true, nor is it our understanding of spiritual things. It is, rather, the Spirit’s understanding of all things being written on the heart by the finger of God. Faith is something altogether supernatural. It exists in us only where the Light of Life has shined and brought us to His mind. It works in us in such a way that the truth as it is in Christ progressively becomes the truth as it is in our soul.

Becoming Aware of Our State of Being

Think back to the first chapter. We began by looking at Adam as the first man, created by God and placed into a world with perfect awareness of his state of being. It was God's desire that man fully occupy his state of being, and to that end, God gave him perfect awareness of that state of being.

In other words, God placed Adam in the natural creation and gave him what was necessary to live into the fullness of that world. Adam was given natural light, five senses, and a perfect physical mind so that he could fully experience, enjoy, understand, name, rule over, and partake of that creation. Without awareness of his creation there would be no way for Adam to live in the good of it. In fact, what do we call a deficiency in the awareness of our state of being? We call it a disability or handicap. What does it mean to be disabled or handicapped? It means that in some capacity or another, whether sight, hearing, physical or mental ability, a person is not fully aware of or in touch with their state of being. One we call blind, another deaf, another paralyzed, but with each there is a disconnect in their awareness of, or relationship to, their world. There is an inability to experience and live in the good of all that is real in their surroundings.

The Light of Christ shining in our soul works in the very same way. It causes us to become aware of our true state of being. It causes us to know where we are. We, who are born from above, who have been joined to the Lord and brought into the Father’s house, remain for the most part hugely unaware of our spiritual state of being. Apart from Light bringing us to true faith, we cannot occupy the Land that God has brought us into. That was the story of Old Covenant Israel. That was the story of Abraham before them. God called to Abraham to leave one country, kindred, and father’s house and come unto an inheritance that God would show Him. That is how God calls you and me. He calls us out of one kind, one creation, one family, and into another. He calls us unto an inheritance that can only be shown to us.

It is an exodus out of one man and into Another. It is a calling to leave one realm and abide in another that is progressively revealed. Like Abraham, we must walk the length, and the breadth, and the width of this Land called Christ. The Spirit takes us on this journey of faith, where we come to “know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1Co 2:12). We come to see Him as our “exceedingly great reward” (Gen 15:2). All of this was Abraham’s journey in type and shadow, and it is ours in spirit and truth.

But without Light showing us what God has made real through the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, we cannot occupy our true state of being. We cannot abide where we do not know ourselves to be. Though we are in the Truth, so often the Truth is not working in us. We have been “made alive, raised up, and made to sit with Christ in the heavens” (Eph 2:6) – yet we seek only to occupy the earth.

8. Adam’s Judgment

Believing the Lie was not merely an act of disobedience for which Adam was cursed of God. It was not just a test that he failed. It was a choice to take unto himself what the Serpent offered him, and the Serpent offered him a Lie.

As we have seen, man immediately began to live by this Lie. At once, it started to shape all that he knew, and wanted, and feared. It defined all that he would live for, work for, and even kill for. Adam had fallen from purpose, and that purpose would never be found again. Humankind would one day again be offered purpose but never again in Adam. Not that man. Not that purpose. He would come to purpose only in another Man – the One who, as the “last Adam” (1Co 15:45), would bring fallen man to his appointed end and offer Himself as the Resurrection and the Life. Through the cross, man would be “delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Col 1:13). As partakers of Christ, man was more than forgiven. He became a participant in God’s “eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph 3:11).

It is essential to understand that the adamic man and his creation, having fallen from purpose, were destined to meet the end that God appointed for any who ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and his creation must die. And, indeed, that is what happened. Of course Adam and Eve experienced physical death, but I do not believe this was the appointment with death that God had in mind. Some years later, death visited all the earth in the great flood (Gen 7:23). But this too was not the death of which God had spoken. Finally, “in the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), death swallowed up the entire adamic race in the body of Jesus Christ on the cross. We “died with Christ” (Col 2:20), were “baptized into His death” (Rom 6:3), and “buried with Him” (Col 2:12). Indeed, this is what Jesus foretold as He walked to Jerusalem for the last time –

John 12:31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. 32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself."

In the death of the One, the many came to judgment. “One died for all, then all died” (2Co 5:14). Here is where that first man met his appointed end. And in the resurrection, God began a New Day – the eternal day of the Lord – with a New Man, a new dawn, a new kind. Satan, the “deceiver” and “ruler” of the world, was “cast out” (Joh 12:31) and had no place in God’s new creation in Christ.

Understanding Adam’s End

When Scripture declares Adam’s death at the cross, it is obviously not describing a physical end of adamic humanity. However, it is actually describing something far more significant than the destruction of flesh or the end of a species. What Adam found at the cross was judgment. Judgment is a word often misunderstood. Contrary to how it is regularly used, it is not synonymous with punishment. When a person goes to court they are given a judgment. The judgment is where truth is separated from lies and guilt is divided from innocence. In judgment you have a dividing or ruling between good and bad, right and wrong, legality and illegality. Punishment, on the other hand, is what is awarded those who are judged to be guilty of a crime. It is the penalty for wrongdoing. The distinction is significant.

At the cross, God established a great division. Death was permanently separated from life. Old was separated from new. Darkness was separated from light. All things of the “first” (the first man, the first creation, the first covenant) were forever divided from the “second.” It is in this way that the cross of Jesus Christ was the “judgment of the world” (Joh 12:32). All that had fallen short of the glory of God was exposed as sin and separated eternally from Him. In the cross, the judgment of God was revealed, and the righteousness of God was manifestly divided from the unrighteousness of Adam.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone believing, both to Jew first, and to Greek; 17 for in it the righteousness of God is revealed…For God's wrath is revealed from Heaven on all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

God did not have to destroy the planet to judge the world. Far more devastating than a destruction of the earth is a cross that forever divides the living from the dead. Through the cross, God declared only one Man alive. In fact, that one Man is “the Resurrection and the Life” (Joh 11:25). All others are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). Now if any man desires to live, he must live in and by the One.

John 5:25 Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live.

John 6:53 Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

John 3:36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.

Though continuing in the earth, Adam and his kind must now be “born from above” (Joh 3:3), “born of Spirit” (3:7), “born in Zion” (Psa 87:5), in order to cross over to God’s side of this great divide. Having eternally divided the “first” from Himself, God now has relationship only with the Second Man and those who live “in Christ.” This phrase – “in Christ”, or “in Him” – is the most recurring phrase in the New Testament. And that is because the Apostles understood our salvation to be the leaving behind of one man and being made to abide in Another.

Adam is dead to God – “dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of flesh” (Col 2:13). Adam is dead in himself, having no spiritual life. Adam is judged, permanently cut off from God as a kind. But Adam is still a very active and functional nature in the earth. It is in fact the only nature that works in those who have not been born anew of the Spirit of God. And it is the nature that continues to work in Christians to whatever extent we have not put off the old and, by the renewing of the spirit of the mind, put on the new (Eph 4:22).

Why Do We Act Like Adam?

All of this discussion of Adam and his judgment is that we might better understand the nature of the first man that lives by the Lie. That nature is indeed dead to God, judged of God, and alienated from God but nevertheless is active and thriving, even in the souls of the redeemed, to whatever measure it has not been destroyed by Light in the revealing of Christ.

If you are born again, you are no longer Adam by nature. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2Co 5:17). Regardless of how you may feel, what you have done, or what you have or have not comprehended by faith, you have unquestionably made the exodus out of the “first” and into the “second” through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. God knows you and relates to you according to what He has done and what is real and true in Christ. In relation to you, He does not recognize what He has judged and put away from Himself. So “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). Nevertheless, what God has put away through the cross will continue to work in your soul and define your reality until Light shines and displaces the darkness. Though born of God’s Spirit, you will walk in the Lie to the degree that the eyes of your heart have not seen God’s finished work.

Believers often ask – “If Adam is dead and I am a new creation in Christ, why is it that I still act so much like Adam? Adam seems to be very much alive in me!” The problem is not that somehow Adam has escaped judgment. The problem is that we misunderstand Adam’s death. We read the word “dead” and assume it implies an immediate cessation of activity. Make no mistake, Adam is entirely without Life and judged of God. Yet you and I who are born again begin our life in Christ with a spiritually blind and Lie-infested adamic mind. This is no different than how a human baby enters the world. A newborn baby comes from the womb fully alive. He or she is not in need of more life. That is not their problem. Their one all-consuming deficiency and weakness is that they have absolutely no comprehension of either the life that they have, or the realm into which they have been born. They have only a slight comprehension of womb-life that now is utterly unhelpful and altogether irrelevant to growing up and prospering in the earth.

This is exactly how we begin in Christ. If only we would approach our new birth with such an awareness of our complete ignorance and desperate need of Light. Though we are born of His Seed and a partaker of His nature, the adamic mind is utterly unhelpful and altogether irrelevant to growing up and prospering in Christ. Worse than that, “the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom 8:7). And so until God’s Light teaches us the Person and realm into which we have been born, will live by the Lie that we have known.

Very simply, you act like Adam because the Lie is still far more real to you than the Light. You act like Adam because, though you have been born of the Truth, the Lie is still the lens through which you know most things. Growing up in Christ is not a matter of getting more of something you do not have. You will never have more of Christ than you do the moment you are born again. Growing up in Christ is learning the Person and Place into which you have been born and abiding in Him. Spiritual maturity involves Light showing you what and where you are. Until it shines, we will continue to act like Adam because his Lie is all that we have known.

9. Walking In The Light

Perhaps the greatest hindrance to spiritual growth is beginning the journey unaware of God’s finished work in Christ. Not knowing what God has done, our walk with Him inevitably becomes a series of misunderstandings. We seek to be something we cannot, to offer what He has already rejected, to arrive somewhere that we already are, or to climb a spiritual ladder that does not exist. The universal cry of the unrenewed Christian mind is “God, teach me how to live for you!” But God desires no such thing. If we had it in ourselves to live acceptably before God, He would never have given His Son to be the Life and Light of the human soul.

The love of God for you is something much greater than forgiveness and behavioral coaching. The love of God is His very Life given to the soul of man. Paul writes, “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom 5:5). We are not trying to acquire something we lack, or attain to something we are not. Spiritual growth is learning “the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1Co 2:12) so that we can walk by His Spirit. “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal 5:25).

Growing up in Christ is not obtaining more Life but rather walking in greater and greater Light by which we come to know, experience, and express the Life that has been given by God. Christ, who is in us by new birth, must come to “dwell in our hearts by faith” (Eph 3:17). This was Paul’s prayer for the church of Ephesus.

To grow up in Christ, we must walk in His Light. But this Light is not true doctrine or right beliefs. It is not words. It certainly does shape doctrine and cause belief and, in time, its brightness affects all understanding, action, and even emotion. But it is something far more supernatural than a right understanding. In fact, coming to see in the Light will not be the correction of your view but rather the awareness of His. It is more than a better perspective; it is a better Man. And you come to live in and abide in His awareness of what is real. This Light works in your soul the consciousness of what God has done in Christ. It makes what God has finished the experience of your heart. It brings the “spirit of your mind” (Eph 4:22) into alignment with His. This is what Scripture calls the “renewing of the mind” or “the mind of Christ” – when we who are born of His Spirit come to His awareness of all that is real in His Son.

This is not an awakening to the idea that you are God, or coming to discover a "divine spark" within you, or any such nonsense. This is the Truth as it is in Christ becoming the Truth as it is in your heart. This is the Spirit of God "guiding you into all truth" (Joh 16:13), "teaching you all things" (Joh 14:26), taking what is [Christ's] and declaring it to you" (Joh 16:14). This is the Spirit of the Lord awakening your soul to reality as God knows it, and consequently “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2Co 10:5).

“Wake up, O sleeper, and Christ will give you light” (Eph 5:14). The renewing of the mind is not memorizing Bible verses or adopting a Christian world-view. It is what happens in our heart when we allow God’s Spirit to show us the truth and substance of our salvation, which is a Person. Salvation is not something that Christ gives to you. Salvation is Christ being given to you. True spiritual growth, therefore, commences when this same Christ begins to be revealed in you (Gal 1:16).

So when the Bible speaks of truth working in the soul, it is talking about an encounter with a Person. You grow in the knowledge of God as the Person of your salvation begins to shine His Light in you. Because of God’s finished work in the cross, He can now “shine in your heart to give you the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2Co 4:6). The One who is already the Life of your soul (Col 3:4) must become the Light by which you walk.

Again, this is far more than a belief system or doctrinal creed. It is not a moral code or an example to follow. It is a Person. It is not you trying to be like a person, or you trying to please a person, or you trying to take orders from a person. It is not you trying to do anything. It is the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ seeking to conform you to Himself. He is the Life in your soul. He is working in you as the Light of Life to show you what is real. He is shining the Light of His Life to reveal what the cross has destroyed and what now remains. In this way the judgment of God – the division between the living and the dead – becomes obvious to the eyes of your heart. You see what is dead to God. You see what He has put away and it quite effortlessly begins to fall away from your heart. You become aware of what is not a part of Him, and because you are increasingly “found in Him” (Phi 3:9), it ceases to be found in you. You “put off the old man together with his deeds” (Col 3:9).

On the other side, you see the Person of Life and begin to understand that he is the Life of your soul. It makes sense to abide in Him. You know Him as the Truth, and you can walk in His Light. In this way you begin to "apprehend that for which Christ Jesus has also apprehended [you]" (Phil 3:12). And in this, the Lie is driven from your heart.

The Light is a Person who lives in your soul, but we so often assume it to be instruction, guidance, and belief. We think that God’s Light is His advice or assistance. We look for Light to show us where to go, what to say, or what to do. We come to the cross for salvation and immediately ask for Light to teach us how to live, but right away we have contradicted our salvation. God’s Light does not work that way. It does not show you how to live. It does not even let you live. In order to gain His life, we lose our own. In order find His life we die to ourselves.

Matthew 16:25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Luke 14:26 "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

If we truly desire to know the Truth and walk in the Spirit, the Light will quickly show us that it is now “no longer I, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

So when God would lead a person to walk in the Light, He is not pointing a direction that they are to go. He is not telling them a thing to do. He is not sharing a value system to adhere to, or educating in theology. When God teaches us to walk in the Light, He shines the Light of His life from within the heart to conform our souls to Himself.

2Corinthians 4:3 But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. 5 For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus' sake. 6 For it is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

This is not like headlights that show us what is coming or where we need to turn. The Light that God shines is the Light of His knowledge, His view, His understanding, perspective, reality, awareness. It is God’s view of all things as they are in Christ, and it shines where He has come to reside. It shines in His temple, His city, His house, His “resting place” (Isa 66:1). It does not shine on your day, on your plans, or in your prayer closet. It shines in your heart so that you can see as He sees, know as He knows, live as He lives, walk as He walks. We come to walk in the Light as He is in the Light and experience fellowship. Fellowship – that is not two Christians sharing a pizza. Fellowship is two living as one – sharing the same Life and walking in the same Light. “You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). You will never know true fellowship unless that fellowship is in the Light.

We must lay down the idea that the Light tells us what to do, because that is part of the Lie. The Light of God causes you to see and know and become a vessel for the One who lives in you. You do not cease to exist, but you are changed. “Beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord we are changed into the same image” (2Co 3:18). We are changed into a vessel that increasingly exhibits a Treasure (2Co 4:7). We “carry about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body (2Co 4:11). In this way, we are conformed to the image of Christ.

Conformity To Christ

Conformity to the image of Christ is not by way of outward submission or external obedience but by an inward metamorphosis that comes to have outward expression. “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:24). Having been born of His Spirit, our soul takes on His likeness when it is flooded with His Light. It is something like a balloon bearing the image of the air that fills it, or a flag moved and constrained by the wind. The soul is not annihilated, but it is circumcised from the old man and filled with the Life of God. We who are “born of God” (1Jo 5:1) bear His image only when His Truth fills our heart. We think like Him when His mind floods our thoughts. We act like Him when His heart moves our own. As Light shines, we are confronted by, conformed to, and constrained by the Life of God in the soul of man. This is not an outward compliance but a true transformation of the inner man.

But this transformation must begin with the realization that God’s Light will never show Adam how he can be righteous. Adam cannot be righteous any more than a you can be a giraffe. It is not in your nature; it is given to you in His. Our efforts at righteousness in the flesh, while perhaps convincing to the eyes of man, are declared “filthy rags” (Isa 64:6) by the Spirit of the Lord. You cannot sprinkle cocoa powder on a pile of manure and call it a chocolate cake. You laugh, but that is exactly how the Lie has deceived the body of Christ. That is why the best-selling Christian books of our generation have titles like “Seven Steps to Becoming More Like Jesus.” “How to Live Your Best for God.” “The Five Things that God Wants From You.” “How Prayer and Fasting Will Bring You Into His Presence.” These are the books we write when we underestimate the reality and power of the Lie. These are the solutions we come up with when we do not understand the problem. And these are the problems we think we can overcome when we have not seen God’s Solution.

The Light does not show you how to live. The Light, in effect, allows Him to live through you. Abiding in His Light, our souls are shaped by the truth, and we bear the image of the One who “mightily works within us” (Col 1:29). We become “instruments of [His] righteousness” (Rom 6:13), “vessels of [His] honor (2Ti 2:21), branches on His Vine (Joh 15).

10. Abiding In Christ

We are told in Scripture to abide in Christ. Jesus said that apart from abiding in Him we can do nothing. Another way to say that would be, “Apart from abiding in Christ we can do a whole lot of things that amount to nothing.”

What does it mean to “abide in Christ?” It is a well-known concept in the church, but do we understand it? There are a variety of common interpretations that I believe fall very short. Some would say it has to do with simply living as a Christian; “apart from being a Christian, you can do nothing.” Others suggest that it implies the need for God’s assistance in all things; “unless He helps you, your efforts will fail.” Still others believe it involves remaining in a constant state of prayer. But abiding in Christ is something far more significant than something you believe or say or do. One thing is certain, it means absolutely nothing without Light.

You can only abide in what you see. To abide, you must have light. The very word abide has to do with remaining somewhere that you understand yourself to be. It involves staying where you are or living in something you are aware of. Even in the natural realm, we cannot really abide in something we are ignorant of. We cannot remain somewhere that is not real to us. So too in Christ. In order to abide in Him, we must be able to see where we are. The Light must be showing us the contrast between two realms (the “judgment” that we have discussed). It must be dividing between two men, Adam and Christ. Only in His Light can we understand what it means to put off the one and abide in the Other.

So abiding in Christ is an expression that has meaning only when the Light of Life shows you where you are. Only when we see Him can we remain in Him. So long as you and I remain in the darkness of the unrenewed mind, abiding is an empty concept. The best the natural mind can do is relate it to doctrines, beliefs, or physical locations. Abiding requires Light. It involves remaining in the view that is being wrought in your soul by the Spirit of God. It has to do with continuing steadfast in the awareness of His reality, His Truth, His perspective. Abiding is living in the Light, walking in the Light, walking in the Spirit.

This is not mystical or abstract. On the contrary, it could not be more concrete and practical because we are talking about the experience of absolute reality. We are talking about living fully aware of Truth. The alternative is living in the vain imaginations of the carnal mind. There are some who hear this and insist it be made more practical. Yet, when it comes to spiritual life, there is nothing more impractical than one “walking in the futility of their mind” (Eph 4:18), “vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind” (Col 2:18), deceiving himself. There is nothing more absurd than to be born of God’s Spirit and still “behaving like mere men” (1Co 3:3) because we refuse to see what is real. On the other hand, there is nothing as practical and life-altering as when the “truth as it is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21) becomes the anchor and compass of the soul.

Abiding has to do with Light. It has to do with remaining in the awareness of our true state of being. Remember the first man in the garden of Eden? He was fully aware of his state of being: fully occupying, abiding in, experiencing, understanding, and reaping the good of his creation. How? Through a God-given natural awareness of that creation. He could abide there in truth, understanding, and wisdom until he fell from purpose. But now we have been restored, not to the Garden of Eden, not to Adam’s purpose, but to God’s eternal purpose that Adam was created to foreshadow. Now we have come to a New Man and a new creation. And in this new creation there is “no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for…the Lamb is its light” (Rev 21:23). The Light of His Life dawning in the soul allows us to occupy our new state of being. In His Light, we understand, experience, and live in the fullness of our salvation. Like Abraham being shown the greatness of his inheritance, we walk the length and width of this Land. In His Light, we learn what we have been given by God. Now “as the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts” (2Pe 1:19):

Ephesians 3:18-19 [We are] “able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

We walk in His Light, see where we are, and know the greatness of this inheritance. He has named this new creation. It all bears His name, “Christ all and in all” (Col 3:11).

We have been named by Another and we begin to grow with respect to our salvation. But how to do we grow? The New Testament says we grow in the true knowledge of God. We grow into one mind, one judgment. We grow in the faith of the Son of God. We are “transformed by the renewing of the mind” (Rom 12:2). Unto what? Unto a body that bears the image of the Head. Unto a people who abide in one Son and live in one Light. We grow in the awareness of our true state of being. Light teaches us to put off what God has put away and to put on what God has given. This is called being “sanctified in the truth” and is the answer to Jesus’ prayer in John 17.

John 17:15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.

Despite our unremitting obsession with eschatology and the end of the natural world, Jesus’ final prayer has nothing to do with leaving the earth. His salvation is not an exodus from the planet but an exodus from the man whose life is a lie and whose soul is enslaved to sin and death. Much more than that, his salvation is a way into Resurrection Life where we grow up by being “sanctified in the truth.” In Christ we are set apart from the old creation and purified from the old man. We are “washed with the water of the word” (Eph 5:26), and while still alive in the body, we come to know eternal Life. For “this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (Joh 17:3).

The prayers of the apostles for the church are almost entirely along these lines. Paul and the others were very much aware that the Lord’s body did not need a greater salvation than they had received. The Lord’s body needed a greater revelation of the salvation which is in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 1:17 Making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.

Ephesians 3:18 May be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Philippians 1:9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, 10 that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, 11 being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Colossians 1:9 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

11. Light Defines All Things

As God’s Truth fills the soul, it alters the appearance of everything. Nothing looks the same. It is like opening our eyes for the first time or waking from a dream that seemed amazingly real. Gradually, Light shows you what is real to God. It shows you what He sees, what He knows, and what He has done in Christ. His awareness comes alive within you, and the darkness of the Lie cannot remain. One life begins to fall away from your heart, and you are found abiding in Another. One world passes away, and your home is found in another. You do not literally leave the earth, but you can understand and say with the Apostle Paul, “God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14).

You will recall that it required no effort or instruction to live by the Lie. It was only a matter of living in our view of reality. Without effort, the Lie defined and compelled us, always influencing what we did, thought, and wanted. That is exactly what happens when His Light begins to shine in the soul. Knowing the Truth becomes the most practical thing in the world. It may not change circumstances and problems, but it changes you in every circumstance and redefines what you call a problem.

In the Light, what God knows to be real comes into your heart’s view. The finished work of the cross is presented to your heart as a matter of spiritual fact. It is no longer you trying to believe something. It is not a matter of swaying your opinion. Opinions are the ideas that man has when there is no light to see clearly. Opinions exist when there is no way to be sure. But in the Light of His appearing, you can see with a clarity and precision that exceeds natural sight. Faith grows stronger than sight. The eyes of the heart see something far more real than the earth. And in this Light, you can “walk by faith and not by sight” (2Co 5:7).

Right now I am aware of my office by sight. I see and recognize it by natural light and natural senses. However, I am also now aware of the reality of being in Christ by the Light of Life that awakens faith in my soul. The one awareness is growing keener than the other. Faith is the sight of the soul that takes place in the Light of the Lord. There is no such thing as “blind faith.” Blind trust, maybe. But faith sees. It does not see with natural light, but it sees all things of spirit and truth in the Light of the Lord. The only reason we invent concepts like “blind faith” is because our understanding of faith has nothing to do with Light. Our idea of faith has to do with a belief we maintain in the darkness. It has to do with abiding in darkness and imagining Jesus. We believe facts and stories about a Jesus we have not seen. But true faith sees by a bright and pure Light. It sees through Christ’s eyes. And when His view operates in your heart, it is called “the faith of the Son of God” (literal translation of Rom 3:22, Gal 2:16, 2:20, 3:22, Phi 3:9). Faith sees all things in and by the Son. His heavenly view redefines your world.

What is the Light? If you are born again, the Light is an awareness of your true state of being. It is knowing what, where, and who you are, and the purpose for which God has you in His Son. It is the awareness of what God has done in Christ: new life, resurrection, freedom, reconciliation, union, purpose, reality - God’s finished work. Once again, this is not self-talk 0r mind-over-matter. Nothing is true because you believe it. But much is true that you and I do not believe. We are still mostly unaware of our true state of being.

Our problem is not primarily in doctrine or discipline or willingness. Our problem is a worldwide pandemic of spiritual blindness. As Christians, we have come to the universe of Christ but haven’t the slightest idea what is real until Light dawns. Adam has no light, but he has a dangerous imagination, and until we humble our souls before the Lord and cry out to see, we will walk in darkness and neglect God’s desire to reveal His Son in us (Gal 1:16).

12. Light Transforms The Soul

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (Joh 8:32). Much of my life was spent searching for something more than Truth to transform my soul and teach me freedom. It did not seem possible that Truth alone had the power to do this, but this was because I confused the mind’s acknowledgment of facts with the soul’s encounter with God’s living Word. When the mind becomes aware of facts, it sorts them and seeks to make application. But when the soul discovers Christ by the revealing of the Spirit, it falls as one dead and realizes it can do nothing except by Him.

Facts learned by the mind, regardless of how accurate, cannot change you. They can convince, excite, motivate, and instruct, but they cannot transform the soul. Though we learn much in this way, the honest heart cannot help but realize that something more is needed. Something more must be available. In time, we become aware of our deficiency and set out to find more. But too often the hungry soul is ushered down one of many roads that lead to nowhere. We run after conferences, chase “anointed” leaders, and read every new “Christian-living” book that hits the shelf. We give ourselves to prayer, fasting, study, and self-discipline but often to no avail. These things done out from the wrong man and towards the wrong end turn out to be works of the flesh rather than experiences and expressions of the Spirit.

In this final chapter, we will look at the power of Truth and how it makes us free. We will see that Truth transforms the soul because it shows us a finished work. God’s Light does not show you what should or could be. God’s Light reveals what already is. And when you see in this way, you find that Truth makes its own application to your soul.

Truth Applies Itself

One of the regrettable misunderstandings in the body of Christ is the idea that spiritual reality is there in our Bible to be read, remembered, and applied. This would make sense if we were learning a set of rules or instructions for living. It would even make sense in the old covenant. But the new covenant has brought us from the “oldness of the letter” to “the newness of the Spirit” (Rom 7:6). And since the Truth that God is revealing is, in fact, the resurrection-life of His Son, then application is His responsibility and His gift. Spiritual Truth applies itself to the soul when it is seen. It makes its own application by rousing you from the dead (Eph 5:14) and showing you to be “alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:11). It changes where and what you understand yourself to be. It redefines reality because you have been entirely recreated by the cross. Truth applies itself to your soul when it is known. It does not leave you to figure out how to make application.

Spiritual growth is the conquering of the soul by the Spirit of Christ, and it is nothing else. It is like a plant that fills the soil with roots and breaks forth with the increase of the seed. But it can only work in us when He finds “good soil” (Mat 13:8) that is willing to be shown the “Word of the kingdom” (Mat 13:19). The Father planned it. The Son completed it. Now, if we allow it, the Spirit reveals what Christ has finished until the Lie gives way to the Light.

2Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Colossians 3:3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 Whenever Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

Rather than seeking to merely apply Scripture “in a practical way,” here we read of the soul becoming confronted by, acquainted with, constrained by, and ultimately conformed to the reality of God’s finished work. These, along with so many other New Testament passages, describe a growing spiritual awareness of our new “state of being” that works in the soul and not the application of spiritual facts to the natural man.

The soul begins to see with "the eyes of their heart" (Eph 1:18) and can "look at the things which are not seen" (2Co 4:18) and "behold the glory of God" (2Co 3:18). In this way we "hear what the Spirit is saying" (Rev 2:7,11). Jesus said, "My sheep hear My voice" (Joh 10:3,4,16,27). "If anyone has an ear, let him hear" (Rev 13:9). We “taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps 34:8). As Paul describes, we begin to know Him in the “power of the resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death” (Phi 3:10). We see that it is not I, but "the one who mightily works in me” (Col 1:29), and we rejoice in the “full assurance of understanding, resulting in the true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:2-3).

As we come to know Truth in this way, it impacts the soul because we see what has already been accomplished by Him. There is nowhere to run from it, no way to avoid it. The Spirit makes you confront something that God has done, and its implications bear in upon you. It is a matter of seeing where you already are, living by what is already true. You are left with no option but to be conformed because what you see is completed. This is difficult to describe, but perhaps the following analogy will help illustrate.

Cliff Analogy

Imagine for a moment that you fell sound asleep on the edge of an enormous cliff. While you slept, you happily dreamed of all of the plans you had for when you awoke. You dreamed of walking your dog, reading a good book, painting the bedroom, etc. Your mind was filled with the afternoon’s many possible activities. However, while you were still sound asleep, you accidentally rolled off the edge of the cliff and began a 2,000 foot plummet to the bottom of a deep ravine.

Now as long as you remain asleep and entirely unaware of what has happened, you can continue to dream your dreams, make your afternoon plans, and smile in your heart with happy expectation as you fall towards the earth. But just as soon as you begin to awaken, all plans, ideas, and emotions begin to change, and the change is effortless and automatic because you are awakening to something that is already real. Your awareness of what has happened, and all of its unstoppable consequences, begins to dawn on you, and you are constrained by the truth. You may indeed have been intending to take a walk, but suddenly that seems utterly irrelevant. You may have had your heart set on painting your bedroom, but now that is the furthest thing from your mind. Why? Because the truth of the situation is making its own application to your soul. Options that were real to you as long as you were asleep and unaware are no longer options. Ideas, thoughts, emotions, plans, motivations, etc., all of which moved and defined you as long as dreams felt real, are no longer what you see. Regardless of what you might like to think to the contrary, what you now see is true and inescapable.

You do not wake up and see something that might happen; you see something that did happen, and the consequences are upon you. Gravity is not an option. It is not Isaac Newton's opinion. It is an unchanging, inflexible law, and as such, is not open to discussion. You can reject it but only by pretending that it is not real. If you could somehow will yourself back into a dream, you might be able to deceive yourself into defeating gravity…but only until you hit the ground. And if, at any point, you wanted to open your eyes and know the truth, you would discover a reality that demanded obedience and made its own application simply because it was real.

This is how knowing the Person of Truth works in us. The Light shows you what has happened and how the consequences are already upon you. It shows you what is real and therefore what is no longer an alternative. Faith discovers what “God has accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph 3:11). Thus the power of His cross works in you because of what has already been accomplished by Him.

As we have seen, the cross is much more than the historical crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross is where Adam and his kind were judged of God and a new kind came forth, joined to the resurrected Son in “the way” that God provided. In this death, the old man, old creation, and old covenant were put away by God. In this resurrection, the earth travailed, and Christ broke open the womb of death. Out from the dead came “one new man” (Eph 2:15) – a Head joined to a body, a nation born in a day.

Isaiah 66:8 Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, She gave birth to her children.

As the corporate Head of a new creation, Christ is called “the firstborn of many brethren” (Rom 8:29).

Zechariah 2:11 Many nations shall be joined to the LORD in that day, and they shall become My people. And I will dwell in your midst.

1Corinthians 6:17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.

We have been “made alive together with Christ… raised up together, and made to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:5-6). Christ is now the life of our soul (Col 3:4). We are joint-heirs (Rom 8:17) in all that He has and all that He is. This is not our hope for the distant future. This is the present and eternal reality of salvation. And this is what we see when we awaken from our adamic slumber. This is what we see when the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation” opens the “eyes of our understanding” (Eph 1:16-17). We do not awaken to a 2,000 foot fall. But we awaken to something already finished, and the unstoppable implications are already upon us.

There is the objective finished work of God in Christ, and then there is the subjective experience and conformity to that work as Light shows us what is real. But do not be confused – once you are born again, nothing other than Light is necessary to bring you into alignment with what He has done. Nothing other than the revealing of Christ can conform you to His image. The only reason that you and I do not fully occupy, experience, enjoy, and express the finished work of the cross is because in the absence of His Light we are still defined by the Lie.

But in the Light of His appearing, faith begins to catch up with God’s finished work. In other words, what the cross made real begins to appear and feel real to your soul. You realize that you have not only come to know something different, but you have come to a different kind of knowing. This is a knowing that does not come from you but rather is given to you. Every other kind of knowing is fine for everything other than spiritual reality. But to “know the things that have been freely given by God” (1Co 2:12), you must come to see by His Light.

The natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit. They must be revealed (1Co 2:14). But if we are willing to part with the Lie, God is present to reveal His Son. If we will suffer the loss of all that we wrongly thought to be “good for food…pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise” (Gen 3:6), the Light will show us the fullness of our salvation. We will see the finished work of the cross, walk in the truth, and live free from the Lie.

1T. Austin-Sparks, School Of Christ, Emmanuel Church Printing

2Watchman Nee, Christ The Sum Of All Spiritual Things, Christian Fellowship Publishers 1973