Printed in U.S.A.
Copyright 2019
by
Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society Inc.
Lynnwood, Washington
ISBN 978-1-57770-071-5
E.W.KENYON
Author
(1867 – 1948)
First Words
Chapter The First THE HIDDEN MAN OF THE HEART
Chapter The Second THE NEW SELF
Chapter The Third LOVE AND SELFISHNESS … . THE TWO GREAT SPIRITUAL FORCES IN THE WORLD
Chapter The Fourth THE SPIRIT OF MAN
Chapter The Fifth THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT
Chapter The Sixth DEVELOPING YOUR SPIRIT LIFE
Chapter The Seventh SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN OUR SPIRITS
Chapter The Eighth THE CREATIVE ABILITY OF THE RECREATED SPIRIT
Chapter The Ninth SOME STUDIES IN THE RECREATED SPIRIT
Chapter The Tenth NATURAL MAN’S FAITH
Chapter The Eleventh A STUDY IN FAITH
Chapter The Twelfth SIN CONSCIOUSNESS
Chapter The Thirteenth HOW DOES THE BELIEVER SIN?
Chapter The Fourteenth GOD’S CURE FOR SIN CONSCIOUSNESS
Chapter The Fifteenth A JOYFUL CONFESSION
Chapter The Sixteenth RELATION OF CONFESSION TO WISDOM AND SUCCESS
Chapter The Seventeenth HOW WISDOM COMES
Chapter The Eighteenth EXACT KNOWLEDGE
Chapter The Nineteenth WHAT BELONGS TO US IN CHRIST
Chapter The Twentieth COUNTING ON THE ABILITY OF GOD IN YOU
Chapter The Twenty-first GOD-INSIDE-MINDED
Chapter The Twenty-second A NEW CLASS OF MEN
Chapter The Twenty-third SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SUPERMAN
Chapter The Twenty-fourth CAN THERE BE ANY IMPOSSIBILITIES TO US IN CHRIST?
This is an unveiling of the “Hidden Man of the heart.”
It is a study in what psychologists have called the “subconscious mind.”
It is an attempt to reveal “yourself” to you.
Modern psychologists do not really know man, because man is a spirit, and they delve only in the realm of the Senses, thus they cannot become acquainted with the real man.
Man was created in the same class with God. He is an eternal spirit.
His senses were given to him to contact the physical world. He was given reasoning faculties so that he might use the knowledge that his senses conveyed to his brain.
Behind the sense-ruled reasoning faculties is the real man, who is a spirit.
The Church, as a whole, is unfamiliar with the recreated spirit.
What we call our conscience, is really the voice of the spirit. If one could learn to listen to his recreated spirit, and keep in intimate fellowship with the Father, there is no limit to where he could go in spiritual things.
The Holy Spirit was given to guide us into all truth, or reality. He finds it a very difficult thing to lead our reasoning faculties, but it is the normal and natural thing for Him to lead our spirits.
We have never realized that love is a product of the spirit, and not of the reasoning faculties. Faith is also a product of the spirit.
We are talking of the Recreated spirit which has received the nature and life of the Father. It has become united with Christ and received Eternal Life.
Eternal Life is the nature of the Father, and that nature is Love. Love is the mother of faith.
You can have no deep faith life without a love life.
The Recreated spirit is also the fountain of wisdom, and all of the other fruits of the spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22.
I want you to study this book carefully, look up all of the references, and put the challenge to a real test.
SOMETIME ago I was asked to write an article on the Psychology of the New Birth.
As I began to study the problem, I saw that there is no Psychology of the New Birth, for the New Birth is not mental, but spiritual.
Psychology has to do with the mind, and the New Birth has to do with the “hidden man of the heart,” or the spirit of man.
You understand that man is in God’s class of being. When he was created in the Garden he was made in the image and likeness of God. He had to be a spirit being because God is a Spirit.
He was created so that, by partaking of God’s nature, he might become a child of God. If he were but a physical being he could not receive God’s nature. If he were but a mental being, he could not receive God’s nature.
He had to be a spirit being, an eternal being who would live as long as God lives. Man had to be in God’s class.
He had to be created so that he could be the companion and associate of Deity.
God gave him authority over all the laws of nature. Every living thing was subject to him.
This same authority was evidently given to Jesus. During His earth walk He ruled the laws of nature, changed water into wine, restored the maimed limbs, calmed the seas, and raised the dead.
This first man was a spirit in God’s class. When he committed High Treason he became a partaker of Satan’s nature. He was actually born again, and he became a new Satanic creation. Because man is a spirit being, it was his spirit that partook of Satan’s nature.
Before the fall in the Garden, during his fellowship with God, his spirit ruled him, and his senses were subject to his spirit. But, when he sinned, and his spirit received the nature of the Adversary; it became subordinated to his senses.
I believe that before Adam fell his five senses played only a small part; the instant he fell his spirit lost dominion, and his five senses took over. He now relied upon his senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling.
He was driven from the presence of God. He was in an enemy world. He had to see clearly, lest he lose his life. He had to hear keenly, or an animal would take advantage of him. His taste must tell him what was good to eat. His touch must tell him whether an object was hot or cold, sharp, or rough.
Adam gained an education through his five senses.
His spirit was being made the prisoner of his five senses.
The Psalmist cried, “Bring my soul out of prison.” Psalms 142:7.
The Hebrew word should have been translated “spirit” instead of “soul.”
It was the cry of the spirit for liberty. It has been the cry for freedom down through the ages.
Man’s spirit lost contact with God. His body became mortal, subject to death. This was the condition in which Jesus found the human race when He broke into the sense realm to introduce the Father to sense knowledge man.
Here are some spirit facts: man is a spirit, he has a soul. The soul is composed of his reasoning faculties. He lives in a physical body. The physical body possesses the five senses, they are the educators and teachers of the brain.
Let it be clearly understood that the brain cannot function without the senses.
If a child were born without sight, hearing, or feeling, he would be called an imbecile.
He may have just as good an intellect as the other children, but the senses have no way to contact it. The brain is dependent upon the five senses.
The spiritually dead man’s spirit is in harmony with Satan. His spirit does not object if he commits murder.
You remember how Paul told Agrippa, “I lived in all good conscience.” That was during the time he was consenting to the death of the believers.
His conscience permitted him to do it. That conscience was the voice of a spiritually dead man, a Satan-ruled spirit.
Here are some names that the spirit is called in the Epistles: the “Old Man” … “Put off the old man with its doings”; the “New Man” … “And put on the new man created after the image and likeness of God.”
He is also called “the hidden man of the heart.”
The spirit is the real man. The body is not the real man, it is merely the home in which the spirit lives.
The mind is not the real man, because the mind can be destroyed by destroying the senses.
The real man is the “hidden man of the heart,” or the “hidden spirit.”
Here is the proof of it: “Wherefore if any man is in Christ there is a new creation, the old things have passed away, behold they have become new. But all these things are of God.”
He is called a New Creation.
Another translator makes it read like this: “Wherefore if any man is in Christ there is a new self.”
That is in perfect harmony with Ez. 36:26 where the prophecy of a New Creation is given, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.”
The words “heart” and “spirit” are used interchangeably all through the Old and New Testaments.
God says that He is going to give man a new spirit. He is going to make a new man out of him. He is going to give him a new heart (or spirit) which will make him a New Creation.
What striking statements these are! Man is going to be Recreated. The sin nature is to be taken out of him. He will no longer be called the “Old Man.” He is going to be called the “New Man” in Christ.
As the sinner, he is the “Old Man” who cannot approach God except through Christ; he does not know Him as a Father.
Now God has performed a miracle. He has recreated him. The “Old Man” has stopped being, and a “New Man” has taken his place. A New Creation comes into being.
This “hidden man of the heart” is now a “New Man,” a new self.
The old self was born of spiritual death, the nature of the Adversary. The new self is born of love, the nature of the Father God.
He is a new Creation and he is created in Christ Jesus. He is going to have a new kind of walk.
The old self was in fellowship with the Adversary, the New Creation is in fellowship with the Father.
Here are a few valuable facts: the old creation had no standing with God. They could not approach Him. From the fall of man until Christ came, no human being could approach God except under the atoning blood of bulls and goats.
The New Creation man, who came into being on the Day of Pentecost, could stand in the Father’s presence as though sin had never been.
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”
“Who can lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God who has declared him righteous.”
This New Creation man has become the righteousness of God in Christ.
You can now see that Christianity is God dealing with the spirit of man. He imparts to man His nature, making man a New Creation.
He is as much a New Creation as was Adam in the Garden.
God makes His contact with man through his spirit, not his senses.
The development of the human spirit is imperative.
We have wondered how this unseen, unknown personality could be developed. We know now.
He is a partaker of the Divine Nature.
The first manifestation of that Divine Nature is the new kind of love.
The development, then, of this New Creation is going to be by the nature of the Father taking him over.
In other words, he begins to walk in love, live the love life, practice the Word, and fellowship with the Father.
Jesus’ earth walk was a perfect example of this new love life.
The Father can unveil the Word to a man’s spirit so that it becomes a living thing in his daily walk.
Love becomes his natural realm. He lives love. He thinks love. He is love, because he is a child of love. God is love.
MAN is a spirit being. He possesses a physical body in which he dwells. He has a soul composed of his reasoning faculties. His body enables him to contact physical things. His reasoning faculties contact mental things. His spirit contacts spiritual things.
Before he receives Eternal life his spirit is dominated by Spiritual Death. This makes it impossible for him to understand the Bible, which is Revelation Truth.
I Cor. 2:14 “Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually understood.”
The part of man that is recreated is his spirit.
Ezek. 11:19 is a remarkable prophecy. “And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you: and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.”
Here is a unique suggestion. He is speaking of the New Creation.
He will recreate their spirit, or heart, as the term is synonymously used.
He says, “I will give them one heart.” This suggests that a new kind of love is coming which will make them one as a body of people.
Jesus said, “That they may be one even as we are one.”
In John 13:35-36 we read, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
In the 36th chapter of Ezekiel, the 26th verse, we read, “A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you.”
Here is the prophecy of an absolutely New Creation.
He is going to take the stony heart of selfishness out of them, and give them His own heart of love.
In the 27th verse He says, “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.”
There will not only be a New Creation, but His Indwelling is promised.
We can hear Jesus saying, “He is with you, but He shall be in you.”
I Peter 3:4 “But let it be the hidden man of the heart.”
Here we are given a title for the recreated human spirit. He is called the “hidden man of the heart.” He is the New Creation man. He is “the man.”
The physical body is not the man, it is the temporary dwelling place for the man.
The reasoning faculties are not the man, they are his servants.
The body is the home of the five senses, or the five servants of the man. All of the knowledge that the reasoning faculties ever get comes through the five senses, or the five servants of the brain.
The brain would lie dormant, inactive, if the five senses did not function.
It would be good to note here that all of the knowledge that is taught in our colleges, universities and technical schools has come to man through these five channels.
The only way that man can obtain knowledge, or an education, is through these five servants, or members of the physical body.
Romans 7:22 “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” Here this hidden man is called the “inward man.” In either case, the “hidden man” is “the man.”
The personality of the inner man is sometimes effected by the outer man.
2 Cor. 4:16 “Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.”
Eph. 3:16 “That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with his ability in the inward man.” (lit.)
The outward, or the visible man, is the one that you salute on the street.
The inward man is the one who gives this outer man either his attractiveness or his repulsiveness.
It is a very remarkable fact that God deals with the “inward man” instead of the outer man.
Spiritual things are unveiled to this “hidden man of the heart.”
The Holy Spirit makes His home in the “hidden man.”
Sin consciousness comes from this “inward man.”
It is deeply important that you understand this fact: it is the recreated spirit that convicts of sin in the believer, and our conscience is his voice speaking to our reason.
We stated before that the “hidden man” is the part of us that is recreated, receives Eternal Life, and becomes a New Creation.
One of our recent translators gives 2 Cor. 5:17 like this, “Wherefore if any man is in Christ there is a new self brought into being, but old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.”
The reconciliation it speaks of in the next verse is between this “hidden man of the heart” and the Father-God.
He never speaks of a reconciliation between the mind, or the reasoning faculties, and God, it is always a reconciliation of the heart.
When I first saw this truth unfolded, it began to have an effect upon my attitude toward some of the teachings that I had accepted in my early days.
Let us think of man as being in God’s class. He is a spirit. He is an eternal spirit. He is capable of receiving the nature of God. He is capable of loving God. He is capable of becoming a son of God.
You understand, he was created in the image and the likeness of God, that is, spiritual likeness.
He lost that image in the Fall, but it is restored in the New Creation.
There is a very remarkable term used in the Pauline Revelation many times. For instance, in the first chapter of Ephesians it occurs (in one form or another) eleven or twelve times.
Take this as an illustration, Eph. 1:7 “In whom we have our Redemption.”
Notice the first two words, “In whom,” “in Christ,” or “In Him.”
For a long time that bothered me. I wondered what it meant.
I came upon something in John 15:5 that helped me. “I am the vine, and ye are the branches.”
The branch is a part of the vine. The vine is a part of the branch. The two are one.
In Eph. 1:6 he says, “We are in the beloved.”
In Eph. 2:6 it states, “We are seated together.”
We are seated with this Beloved One at the Right Hand of the Father.
Eph. 2:6-7 “And raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
In Eph. 2:10 it tells us that “we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.”
You see, this occurred before the Resurrection of the Master.
When Christ was recreated the Father said, “This day have I begotten thee.”
In the mind of Justice the entire Body of Christ was recreated.
This becomes a reality in us the moment we accept Christ as our Saviour and confess Him as our Lord. We then receive Eternal Life, the Nature of the Father. This makes us New Creations.
Now come back to the scripture I quoted, “Wherefore if any man is in Christ there is a new creation, a new self. The old things of the old self have passed away, behold, they have become new, and all these things are of God: who has reconciled us unto himself through Christ.”
Romans 6: 4-8 “We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in the newness of life.”
Notice the next verse. “For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.” Note the tense, “was” not “is.”
“For he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.”
Way’s translation throws much light on this. “Well then, if that baptism made us share His death, it must have made us share His burial too. It must follow that, as Messiah was raised from among the dead by means of the descent of His Father’s glory, so we too, who arose with Him, are to be employed wholly in the activities of the New Life.
“For if, by having died like Him, we have entered into living union with Him, most certainly we shall not be less so in consequence of having risen with Him. This we recognize, that our former self was nailed to His cross with Him, so that that body which was the instrument of sin might be made impotent for evil, so that we could not any longer be slaves of sin.”
Notice carefully that the part of us that was recreated, made new, was “the hidden man of the heart.” He is called “the old man.”
This old man was crucified with Christ. It was neither our physical body nor our reasoning faculties, but our spirit. That is the part of us that was Spiritually Dead and had to be recreated.
Col. 3:9-10 “Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him.”
Notice that the “old man” was put off, crucified with Christ.
When Christ arose from the dead a “new man” arose with Him. That new self is the human spirit.
Now the physical body, which is the home of the five senses, must be brought into conformity with Christ, who is the Head of the Body.
This brings us to Romans 12:1-2, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.”
“And be not fashioned according to this age: but be ye transformed (or transfigured) by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
This body is the home, or dwelling place, of the spirit. This recreated human spirit wishes to communicate its new-found joy to those about it.
Hidden away as it is in the human body, it has no way of communication but through the five senses.
Therefore, the first thing that must be done after one is recreated is to bring these five senses into subjection to the recreated human spirit, and the Word. When this is done the mind will be renewed.
Although you are Born Again you still possess the same mind and body that had been under the dominion of the Adversary. This is the reason that it is so important to renew the mind and bring it into harmony with the recreated spirit.
You must bring it into subjection to this new self that has come into being.
The trouble with the majority of believers is that their minds have never been renewed.
The mind will never be renewed until they begin to practice love. They must live this love life that Jesus introduced to the world.
“If any man be in Christ there is a New Creation.” This New Creation is born of God, and God is love; so the New Creation is a Love Creation.
In our Redemption, Love went the limit. The cross and the three days of suffering was love’s limit.
Now we are born of that Love; so we have become Love Creations.
We are partakers of Love’s nature. We have the attributes of Love. God reproduces Himself in the New Creation. He makes a superman of Love that “seeks not his own.” This New Creation is not provoked by persecution or by slander, or by anything that the people ruled by selfishness can do.
You see, the New Birth made a New Self, a New Spirit, a New Man; and it gives to man a new kind of selfishness. It is the selfishness manifested in Paul and the other members of that early organization called the Church. It plans to give more than it gets, and it is perfectly selfish in this struggle to give more than another can give.
It denies itself to give more. It is really Christ let loose in us.
You can hear the cry, “Master, You died for me. I live now for those for whom You died. You became a slave of love for me. I will become a love slave for them.”
In 2 Cor. 5:13 we read, “For whether we are beside ourselves, it is unto God; or whether we are of sober mind, it is unto you. For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves.”
This Selfishness, as I love to call it, is the kind of love that sought the cross for me.
You remember that dear old saint, Polycarp, a convert of John the Beloved. When he was eighty-two, he started on that long trip to Rome, to confess before the Roman authorities that he was a love slave of Jesus Christ. They pled with him in every town through which he went on his way, that a stake and fagots awaited him. His heart was set on giving his testimony in Rome. When he arrived, he was arrested; they tried him, but he refused to recant. They tied him to the stake and heaped the fagots around him.
The authorities pled with him to blaspheme the Name. Tenderly he looked at them and said, “I have served this Master nearly eighty years. I love Him. He is my Lord.” And then, with a firm voice he said, “Light your fire”; and in the midst of the flame he cried, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
You could hear him say, “He loved me. He gave Himself up for me. If He gave Himself for me, it is no more than right that I should give myself for others.”
It was love that led him. It is Love that leads the way of unselfishness.
Let us notice a basic fact: there are two great forces in the world, this new kind of Love (agape) that Jesus brought, which springs out of the heart of the Father, and Selfishness, which is the nature of Satan.
Satan is spiritually dead. Spiritual death has given birth to Selfishness. Selfishness has dominated the human race.
Man is spiritually dead until he receives the nature of God.
Then, the combat in the world is between Eternal Life and Spiritual Death, or between Agapa and Selfishness.
The outstanding characteristic of natural man is Selfishness. It has given to us every one of the major sins that are destroying the human race.
Selfishness is the parent of the liquor traffic, gambling, and every other sin.
The husband who comes home half drunk doesn’t love his family as much as he loves himself. The mother who has taken on the unhappy habits of modern society, and dares display these habits in the presence of her growing children, loves herself and her appetites more than she loves her children.
The natural man cannot love his children as much as he loves himself. He cannot love his wife as much as he loves himself.
The natural human heart is a partaker of the Satanic nature, Selfishness; and when that Selfishness gains the ascendancy it makes the man a despot in his home, filling it with the spirit of tyranny.
I saw a couple who had lived very unhappily and had thought much about separating, but there were little children. The father had a godly background, and so had the mother, but neither of them had ever received Eternal Life.
After the children came along, the wife began to feel the irritations of bondage and said, “These children just rob me of my liberty.” The husband began to feel the same limitations. Selfishness began to grow apace. The home was not a home. It was just a place where they quarreled and made up, found fault, and cursed the children.
Then one day my little book, “The New Kind of Love,” fell into the hands of the husband. He brought it home and started to read it. He became so engrossed in it that his wife wanted to know what he was reading.
You see, Selfishness is always jealous. The keener and richer your Selfishness is, the more sensitive you become.
She became very curious as to what that little book was.
Finally she said, “What is that you are reading?”
He said, “It is the most wonderful book I have ever read.”
He laid it down on the table, and she began to read it. She hadn’t read half of it before she made her decision. She had seen things.
When he came into the house she said, “How far did you read in that book?”
“Nearly all of it. One of the men at the office gave it to me.” He responded. “What do you think of it?”
“I only wish we had gotten hold of it when we were first married and life would have been different,” she said.
He picked up one of his children and held it in his arms. “Wife,” he said, “would you like to go with me on this thing? I would like to have Eternal Life. I am sick of my selfishness.”
She looked into his face, and reached out her hand and said, “My dear, I will go the whole way with you.”
The two older children were not home when it happened, and the father and mother did not tell them about it.
Three or four days later the oldest girl said, “Mother, what has happened to you and Dad? You haven’t quarreled since last week.” Then the mother told the story to her, and the girl, in her mother’s arms whispered, “Mother, I want it too.”
And so, Love came to live in that house.
After a bit every member of the household sought to give the other more than he received. Love’s rivalry began to develop. The husband and wife sought to out-do each other in love.
You see, when two New Creation people, Love filled, begin to practice Agapa, the very atmosphere of heaven is in that home.
Love’s slogan is, “I am not seeking my own, but your happiness.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have classes that would take up the study of Agapa. There has never been a chair of “Love” in any of our Colleges or Universities, and yet it is the most important thing in life.
You cannot adjust the labor and capital situation by law or by force. It can only be settled with Agapa.
Oh, if there should arise in the labor world a great leader who could evangelize the labor world and prove to them that Selfishness has never yet built anything that it did not destroy!
Sense Knowledge has built cities, but it always destroys them.
Few of us have recognized that there are two kinds of ambitions: one was born out of the desire to conquer and to reign, and to have and to hold, no matter what effect it had upon those who stand in the way; the other is the ambition to give, and to build, and to make happy; to educate and to train, and to make beautiful, glad homes. One is the Jesus kind, and the other is inspired by Satan.
You know, one of the sweetest things that Paul ever said was, “He counted me worthy to represent Love, even to represent God, to represent the new kind of love.” Saul the hater, became Paul, the lover.
I wish that there could be little societies of men and women who would come together to study how to develop this new kind of love, so that they would have the new kind of selfishness.
I know a man and woman who lived very unhappily for nearly thirty years. They could not separate. They talked about it. They planned on it. They had even gone to their lawyer to talk it over; but when the real thing came, they could not seem to do it. They received a copy of my book, “The New Kind of Love,” and then they came to my services and I happened to be speaking on this new kind of selfishness.
He came to see me a little while after that and said, “Do you know that my wife and I have found the thing we have been hunting for, for thirty years? We are playing the game now. Each one of us is trying to get the advantage of the other in love. Four or five of our neighbors have started to practice love also. One of them came the other night and said to me, ‘You know, I can’t practice this love. I don’t have it in my heart,’ and then my wife pointed her to the Lamb of God; and now she has that new kind of love too.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every one of you who read this book would become an evangel of this new kind of Love, this new kind of Selfishness?
We have seen the sons of Selfishness become the sons of Love. We have seen the old Selfishness meet this new kind of Selfishness and be defeated.
The great combat today is between Selfishness and Love. Satan is the symbol of Selfishness; Jesus is the symbol of Love.
HERE are some things that love has never done: it has never enslaved the weaker; it never takes advantage of the ignorant; it has never reigned as a despot or tyrant; it did not vote for the rum traffic; it never steals or takes advantage; it never seeks a divorce; it is never in court as a criminal; it never seeks its own.
It never behaves unseemly in the family life; it never gets drunk; it never sets a bad example before the children; it does not swear, blaspheme, or use vile language; it does not remember evil that has been committed against it; it does not talk about the weakness and failure of others; it does not rejoice in evil things, and it is never happy when its enemy has been defeated.
This is the negative side of love.
You ask, “what does love do?”
It seeketh not its own; it destroys selfishness; it bears the burdens of others.
When it discovers that someone has done an unseemly thing, it covers it up, it shields it and never talks about it.
Can’t you see the vast contrast between selfishness and love?
It is no wonder that the Commissar under Stalin who had charge of the educational system of Russia said, “We must kill love, we hate Christians. Love makes men soft. We must learn to hate. We must learn to kill.”
That is selfishness unbridled. In a country where love has been destroyed, it becomes perfectly shameless.
Here are some facts we must recognize.
There are two kinds of love. One is natural human love, the other is the Jesus kind of love.
In the opening of this chapter I gave you a picture of the Jesus kind of love, the kind Communism hates. Why do they hate this love? Because Communism is builded upon selfishness.
You see, there are two kinds of Communism. There is a Communism governed by selfish men, and a Communism governed by love.
Following the birth of the early church there was such an outpouring of love that “they had all things in common, and no one said aught that he possessed was his own.”
Satan has tried to imitate that through selfishness, through selfish men, but it cannot be done.
It is a notorious fact that there are only three or four million communists in Russia, and they are the rulers and under-rulers of the other one hundred and fifty or sixty million people.
The rulers believe in Communism because it makes them masters, and their people slaves.
No form of government where selfishness reigns is safe for the weak and poor.
Sense Knowledge governments have always enslaved the poor and weak. The strong govern the weak. Might is right in the realm of selfishness.
These selfish law makers fear the Jesus kind of love for two reasons.
In the first place, it reveals their meanness and selfishness. The other reason is that the Jesus kind of love is the positive enemy of selfishness. The two cannot work together.
You see, self preservation is the first law of natural man. It seeks to save itself, while love is the very opposite … it seeks to save others.
All the crimes that were committed in war, international crimes, were born of selfishness.
The war between labor and capital is a war of selfishness. Capital is builded upon selfishness.
Love would never go on strike.
Love would never grind labor’s face into the dust.
The only solution of the labor and capital problem is to bring the capitalists into vital contact with Agapa, the new kind of Love.
This new kind of love is the nature of God, imparted to man in the New Birth.
It is the only solution of the labor and capital problem.
Selfishness of a deadly type is sweeping our land. It is bound to bring a war between capital and labor.
Capital has everything to lose in a war of that kind, and labor has nothing to gain. Labor is dependent upon capital for its living.
The only solution is the Jesus kind of love … the love that He brought to the world.
Selfishness has given birth to every ideology that is deadly.
Capital and organized labor is one of its fruitages.
One branch of labor says we must have Communism.
There can be no peace in the world as long as selfishness is ruling. There must arise a man of love, with the same ability to lead men as a Stalin or a Hitler, to lead the forces out of the realm of selfishness into the realm of love.
The love of what money gives is the root of all kinds of evil. When a selfish man gains the ascendancy in a community, he becomes a menace to society.
The Church is the only enemy of selfishness. When I say “Church,” I mean the New Creation folk, the people who walk in love. Not the church as she is today. Many of the leaders of our denominations are modernists and even Communists.
Spiritual death, the nature of Satan, has given selfishness to us.
The nature and Life of the Son of God has given to us Love, and the conflict today is between Love and Selfishness.
Love awaits a leader, to build a new type of Christianity.
A new type of men, who will teach cooperation rather than exploitation.
It will either be that, or we will become the slaves of another Hitler.
As long as selfishness reigns, the strong will enslave the weak. The intellectual will enslave the ignorant. The classes will enslave the masses.
The French Revolution did not solve the problem of France. Stalin did not solve the Russian problem. Hitler did not solve the German problem.
We have one tremendous responsibility facing us, and that is prayer!
The only solution of the impending problem is to bring God on the scene.
We need a national Revival … not a Revival of religion, but a Revival of Eternal Life.
Only Eternal Life will give us the New Love Law that should rule us.
FOR years we were mystified as to the source of thoughts. We knew that they were not the children of reason. They flashed upon us, they came leaping at us from nowhere.
Beautiful melodies would float into our consciousness and gain the mastery over us; poetry would come, beautiful couplets, to which reason did not give birth.
Solutions of problems that had bothered us for days came to us unsought, unheralded.
Inventions and creative things flashed into our minds independent of Sense Knowledge sources.
Designs of beautiful structures, fabrics, and pictures that staggered reason came floating into the mind as clouds on a June day pass over our heads. From whence did they come?
Then we discovered Prov. 20:27, “The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah.”
This spirit is to guide the reasoning faculties. So few enjoy the Lord’s Lamp or take advantage of it.
We learned that man is a spirit. He is in the same class with God. He can live independently of the body. He is eternal.
We learned that there are two kinds of education, spirit education and mind education.
We discovered that the church and our educational system had never seriously attempted to understand the real man.
In the babe we see purely the physical. Then as the child’s mind begins to reach out and becomes inquisitive, the child becomes simply mind and body to us.
We are careful to feed its body, to build it up, to train the mind and make it efficient, but who has ever taught or trained the spirit?
We heard much in psychological discussions about the subconscious mind. At first we were thrilled with it. Then we discovered that it was nothing but our own spirit.
We found that conscience is the voice of the spirit, reason is the voice of our mind, and feelings are the voice of our body.
There are two kinds of consciences: one of the Christian, the child of God, and the other, the conscience of natural man.
We discovered that there are three kinds of spirit development.
Natural man can develop his spirit until it becomes a force in him. We see this in Christian Science, Unity, Spiritualism and other psychological religions. This is the natural, unregenerated human spirit being cultivated.
The human spirit is naturally very religious, because it is God-hungry. It is the mother of all human religions.
Christianity is God’s answer to the hunger of the human spirit.
Every human religion attempts to answer this hunger and fails.
The part of man that is Born Again is the spirit. It receives the nature and Life of God.
It is our spirit that can contact God, or contact Satan. Reason cannot find God. Sense Knowledge has been unable to discover God, or the human spirit.
It can see evidences of a Creator, but it cannot find Him.
It can see evidences of man’s spirit, but it cannot understand it or find it in the body.
Natural man’s spirit is dominated largely by evil. Men have used it to gain the mastery over others for their own ends.
Then there are demonized spirits, men who are controlled by evil spirits. Oftentimes they perform prodigies, miracles, it seems.
The scriptures speak of this type: “Necromancers, spiritualists, and mediums.” They are all demon-ruled spirits.
Often their minds have no part in what they say. Demons speak through their lips independent of Sense Knowledge.
These men can become deeply spiritual and become deep in the things of Satan.
The third kind of Spirituality is that of the New Creation spirit, for a man becomes a New Creation by receiving the Life and nature of God.
The Holy Spirit makes His home in the physical body and dominates the human spirit that has been recreated. As this is cultured and developed through the Word, there is no limit to its possibilities.
The effect of the spirit upon the body is little understood. It would pay materia medica to study this phase of healing.
Prov. 15:4 “A gentle tongue is a tree of life; but perverseness therein is a breaking of the spirit.”