Our Adequacy is of God

In 1977, Norman Grubb gave a talk on 2 Corinthians and it answers in large measure the question about the meaning of life and what we're to be doing here:

"All the meaning of being a person is that in our inner self we should be in union with the divine Self: the human spirit with the divine Spirit, with God Himself. God's expressing the kind of person He is, He has expressed His love by us. And so we are in our normal life living normal lives, expressions of Christ Who's of God: self-giving love. So the basis is a spirit relationship because our real self is spirit. The rest is just forms of expression: our soul and our body express our spirit, our selves. And the true meaning of the self is a human spirit in union with the divine Spirit as an expression of that divine Spirit. The divine Spirit is the universal Person who has expressed Himself in the whole universe. The whole universe is an expression of Him in infinite forms of love and wonder and power. That's all He is. He is the Person for others. That's what God is: love. We become persons for others. . . .

"By receiving Christ the Spirit has come into you. Then you're people of the Spirit now. The Spirit of the living God is in you. He's the One who confirms to you and makes real to you your relationship with God. Spirit is the inner person confirmed so our relationship is with a living Christ and with a living Father as one. Not a separate people up here somewhere but one unity. Jesus' prayer: 'Let them be one as We are one. I in You, You in them and they in Us as one.' Because actually the whole universe is one. That's the ultimate discovery that we're coming to. The whole universe is one expression of one Person and we're the privileged people to be--having found the unity ourselves as conscious people like God--to be able to transmit the unity to others of the family who He has purposed to have as His eternal sons. As His eternal sons we are His eternal heirs and they're going to own the universe and manage His universe. It's our destiny to manage His universe.

". . . You are now sons of God because you have the Spirit of God in you--the Spirit of His Son has come in you. You know it and you know He's near to you in relationship. He's the Spirit of the living God. He's living to you and has come out in the fruits of your life.

". . . Nothing yet outer can ever be real to us. We're inner people. All we ever have is what we inwardly know. We only operate by what we inwardly are, what we inwardly have. And so any form of outer religion, and outer code, outer book is nothing to us unless it becomes an inner reality. And then it's ours and we operate spontaneously by what is to us what before was knowledge. Knowledge is inner knowing. It's inner union with something so it's part of us. And this is what it is to be this new kind of person--the real person as a human expression of God.

". . . That produces a completion, something for which we use the word 'glory.' This is it! I'm what I'm meant to be! I've got it! This is reality, this is glory. So it's a word for all that can be.

"And this is what we're to be on earth. This: we've got all that we can have. We may need to enlarge on the understanding of what we have . . . When the Spirit has taken up His abiding place in union with us He reveals Jesus to us in ever enlarging sense . . . With open face now because there's nothing hidden. This is the truth, we've entered into this truth, the sin life has been put away in Christ, it's blotted out in the blood and in Christ and in our crucifixion with Him and opened to this new life. And now with open face we see more of the totality of what God is: His love, His power, and His presence. The only way we know this is because the whole universe is one Person. It's beginning to dawn on us and it says we begin to be changed because we reflect His Person.

"What you see you are. We always see what we really are. We reflect, we begin to reflect, so it says we're changed into the same image. Reflecting this Person in us in an ever enlarging sense, from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord . . . So the Spirit is causing us more to be more thrilled and filled and adequate and apparently normal people yet living on top. Life is always on top, underneath nothing. We're crazy to be gods--'gods' is what Satan said. God's on top, never underneath. God's adequate. We're adequate because our adequacy can't be a higher adequacy. Our adequacy is God expressed in me. I'm adequate because I have. So there's glory. This is it! But of course it isn't, 'This is it' but 'This is He.' He and I, one person. This is in an ever enlarging sense.

"So we look to the world like egoists. The world thinks it's clever . . . not to have. To say, 'Oh, I'm nothing' but, no. The world tries to hide. It wants to be something. It hides it behind a facade: 'Oh, I'm nothing, I haven't got it.' That's baby stuff. We have got it but the world doesn't like that because you have got it only if you've got Him--you haven't got it in yourself. It's true in ourselves we haven't got it but don't admit that. That's a start: we haven't got it, we've failed, we're wrong and we all like to stay like that because it gives us an excuse for our deviations and so on. So we tend to downgrade ourselves, although not really, because underneath we upgrade ourselves. We pretend. We have a suspect [sic] to downgrade ourselves. When a person says, 'Oh, I've got all!' 'Hey, what you talking about? You're a conceited fellow!'

"So the flesh doesn't like people of the Spirit. The Spirit is bold. You say, 'I have all!' Well, if my human little self has become a dwelling place of the divine Self then I have all. I've had to find I'm not, I'm the nothing, the nobody. But I don't mind being nobody when it contains a Somebody. And that Somebody is God.

"So I rise up. So Paul says . . ., 'I am adequate . . . I am adequate to transfer the Spirit to you.' He said his adequacy is of God. Not that we're sufficient in ourselves to think anything of ourselves. Our sufficiency is of God, who 'hath made us able ministers.' So we're not unable, we're not unable people. We're not insufficient--we're sufficient people. We're adequate people. We've got what it takes. We have the wisdom needed.

"That's pretty conceited words until we know the secret. While we think that life is my self built up that's conceit. If I say it's my down-break, not build-up, out of my down-breaks: I've not been what I should be, I haven't been how I should be but God though Jesus Christ has accepted me back. Not only accepted me back but given me what I came for, a renewal which is Himself, making me His body, His form of expression, the branch of His vine. Well then I am adequate! So Paul says, 'I am adequate. Not in myself.' He says, 'My sufficiency is of God' so we say the same.

". . . It wasn't ultimately something he preached, but except as an agency, but through his preaching and as he explained to them how he received Jesus and the Spirit is in you is a revelation of Jesus, you received and then he said, 'Then you know.' . . .

"He says, 'I'll tell you what it means to be a minister of the gospel.' . . . The word we usually use is an 'intercessor.' An intercessor is a person for others. The word intercessor comes from the Old Testament where you pour out your life unto death to make intercession. An intercessor is used in the Bible of God's giving a person a special commission: that there are gaps to fill, needs to be met. An infinite variety of us to meet the infinite needs. And we have a sense of a specific need and when we get a specific need we say, 'God, this is my honor. There's a law by which death produces life. What happens to me isn't the point here. Here I am, I'll put myself in the place of those to whom I minister, any way by which I may be the means of bringing You to them.' Now that's an intercessor. He's not interested in what happens to him except that it's something for others.

". . . In outer form what he does is quite simple. He doesn't happen to play any games, he's being quite honest, it isn't a trick, or twistings because he manifests the truth. The truth is Jesus the Savior because we're sinners and that God met us in His love by taking upon Himself our sins in the body of His own Son on the tree by which He has become reconciled to us and we come back to be children of God by faith in Jesus Christ and all that follows. So, he says, this is the simple truth. He said, 'All I give is the simple truth and it commends itself to your consciences because you say, "That fits. That's a fact. I am a person who's messed up my life. I am wrong but I can take it if God's like that. God isn't a vengeful--going to destroy me--kind of Person; [rather one] who so loves me that He'll take the destruction upon His own self, go to hell on my behalf. That appeals to me, a God like that."'

"So it does commend ourselves to a conscience open to recognize that we're sinners. Though he does say of course that the gospel is hid some because you don't want to recognize that you're a sinner. A sinner means you've failed. He says there's another god. He says there are those in whom the god of this world has blinded their minds so that they don't believe. There's another god, the one who claims to be the god of this world which is the god of self-centeredness. God is the originator of something and so he's called a god because he originated the dimension of self-centeredness. God is the dimension of self-giving love. Satan is the dimension of self-centeredness so he's the god of this world and he infected this world with--this is the philosophy--: the glory of life is 'Be for yourself. Get all that you can. Fight for all that you can and get what you can and the hell with the rest' more or less. That's the chaos of our world, of course. That's the god of this world.

"Now if you're still finding your satisfaction that way you're blinded. You don't want to believe. You believe what you want. Belief isn't technical believing doctrine. It's moving in something you want. The word 'faith' that we talked about yesterday morning is moving in some 'I want that, I'll take it.' . . . The mind only conveys to you the thing you need. It's part of the means of conveyance. But, 'Oh, I want that', 'I'll go here', 'I'll do that.' That's faith. You're involved with yourself. Oh, you're involved with something you want.

"So people can't believe in Jesus Christ who find that in the god of this world they're pretending, seeking to find their adequacy. There's [sic] got to come to a disillusionment first. So he says there are some and, whether or not they like it, they're blind. Of course the devil's busy trying to make them satisfied with what they are themselves and what they can get by themselves.

"Thank God, He breaks that up. Thank God. His first work in us is the breaking of us up before the re-making of us but there are those who don't appear to take that so they can't see glory. They don't like the light of the glorious gospel of Christ. They can't see glory in being an expression of a God of self-giving love because they find glory in being an expression of self-loving love. Self-loving love doesn't like self-giving love. They're two enemies: one's light, the other's darkness. So while you're disillusioned with the self-giving love it's a No-thing. The whole universe is a Person who is love, which is God. Now there's a No-thing, it's a nothing. It's death, not life. We call it life, it's death, this living for ourselves. Until you find that it grates on you and it's left you empty. It doesn't meet your need. When you do find glory that will cause you to want the other. You don't see the glory in the gospel of Christ expressed in a God of love to you.

". . . So we're not preaching ourselves. You'll catch on to that. You see, we're not pushing ourselves, we're pushing the living Person who has become everything to us. One of the indications that this is truth is that the agent would be a servant. That's something that's often gotten lost in our churches. That's why I don't like this ministry business. I'm partly anti-church because I don't like the--some sort of--'boss man' unless he's a real servant. There are today here and there, men who are real servants. I wish they weren't paid. The very fact that they're paid makes them feel that they're getting something out of it. The original gospel was unpaid: Paul in this gospel would not take pay. He said, 'I won't take pay. Other people could provide my need if they'd like but I'm not being paid by you. I'm not going to give you that indication.' That's one of the liberties he had between himself and the false apostles--they were getting some good thing out of it. I'd like to rebuild the whole church without anyone getting any good out of it. Let them starve. Why not?

"I belong to a mission where God supplies our needs, we've got about 1,300 scattered around the world. Somebody said to us, 'Well, one of your missionaries might starve.' Oh, he can starve gamely anyhow. I'll starve for Jesus. One of us said when I was in Africa in the early days because we had very little money come he'd heard a rumor that one of our missionaries (I was in the Belgian Congo) in the early days had starved. So we had a leader with a sense of humor. So he sent around to the different stations (we had about eight stations). He said, 'Have any of you got a skeleton there? A missionary who starved for Jesus?' And, so, when he got the answer back, 'No,' he wrote back to the friend at home, 'Dear friend, I'm very regretful to say that I haven't yet found any of them who've had the honor to starve for Jesus.'

"So it is coming. There are pastors today (I'm afraid they're paid, which is a pity) but who do show this new servant spirit, thank God. Both priests who are Catholic and it is happening today. But this is the standard. Jesus was a servant. He wasn't a priest. He was a common carpenter in the sense that He was just a common man. He walked about the streets. He loved people, that's all. They couldn't stand him. Their idea of religion was to build themselves up to be great big noise. They couldn't stand this Man who destroyed their concept of what God is. God is just a common servant running about loving people. We don't want a God like that. We want something that's really a projection of our own superiority. We want to be superior to God so we pretend to be superior. So we project an idol or something, a God in a big temple because we like superiority, because we love superiority.

"But when we ourselves have the Spirit of a servant, we love the Person who has the spirit of a servant. We love God, which [sic] is a servant. And we love the fact that it says that the one who He highly exalts throughout eternity is the One who became a servant, to the point that He died, took upon the shame of the cross. And that's the One who God exalts so that's the One who God delights in, He doesn't delight in the one whom you delight in. So God delights in the spirit of a servant. That's what He is. He's a servant. That's why we love Him.

"So Paul says, in this sense you can test the genuineness of an apostle of Jesus Christ because he has the genuine spirit of a servant. You really know he's for you. He's not for what he can get, the good thing out of it. He's not preaching you, he's speaking to show you this Person who changed him and who'll change you. In other words, expose you in your failures and your sins, to be replaced by the grace of God.

"And he says, as we do that, that's what we are, we present to you this fact: you can know what God is by Jesus Christ, 'the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' This is marvelous. How, in other words, could we know God's like that. Our whole concept of God is from some superior, vengeful, terrible Being. That's why I don't go to church to worship. Everything's worship to me. It's God in His beauty and His love. This is worship. To me everything's worship. I worship a Person who expresses Himself in all forms of love. That's worship. Jesus said you worship in spirit, not in going to church, in spirit and in truth. Truth is what He really is. Worship Him in what He really is. And this is the amazing thing. This is God. Who could believe that?

"If Jesus Christ hadn't come--and He had to do certain outward things because in that day there was no other way in giving some demonstration of Who He was so He performed miracles. We don't need to tie to a miracle today. The miracle today is now I'm a changed person and you are. Where I didn't love myself there's a new motivation in me. That's a miracle. That's the only miracle needed in the world. The world needs lovers, not people for themselves, people for others.

"But who could believe that with the idea of all that build-up of all this vast persons or another and you're told this common Person is God? Who's going to take that? All that Person knew was to love. And all He rebuked is anything which militated against self-giving love, that and if anything in the name of God, militating against self-giving love, He was after it--rightly. But nothing else. He's after nothing else. He served everybody, to heal and so on. This was God. That's all God is.

"So if I want to know what God is, that's what God is. Wonderful!

"But if course He had to give sufficient evidence that you could accept that this was God so to do that He did perform things we don't see too much of today, a miracle, because in those days we are given some impression that He was a Person who did miracles of mercy, not miracles of self-glorification. He refused to jump off the temple and to do things that would magnify Him as a special person but He would do miracles because of mercy.

". . . that's the One we preach. We preach of course far deeper than that. We preach His cross and His resurrection. But here he's [Paul's] showing what God is in the face of Jesus Christ because he had been referring to the face of Moses, which had a glory, and even that had to be veiled in the Old Testament days and this One has an open face, a common face. God isn't about some mystical glory. Glory is a Person. Isn't that wonderful? Our faces are it, too, the same thing. There comes a quality. That's spirit. Spirit's a quality. It isn't some weird halo stuff. It's not mystical. It's commonsense. It's common people--a quality--and that quality is the Spirit of love. That's all.

"But he [Paul] says there is a way in which this has to come to you, come to you not by some powerful minister, not by some magnificent preacher--a person who's a real die-er, who's weak and who goes through a process of death and there's quality even in his death. A person who goes through the stretches and persecutions. This is a minister, not a great big Reverend with half a dozen degrees and preachments and things. The agency by which He comes is a person in whom you see a new quality of life in which they'll take all kinds of the confrontations, the distortions, of life and yet somehow Paul has a peace and love and victory in them. Somehow they're able to show in an ordinary life an extraordinary Spirit: peace and love and light and purpose.

So he [Paul] says a minister is a person who's just an earthen vessel. 'Earthen' wasn't a bad word. It means made of common clay. We're common clay. And this common clay possesses a treasure and the treasure is the living God expressed in Jesus Christ. And so the power is seen not to be in the earthen vessel but in the living God. How does that power come out? In sensible ways, not in big, tremendous dramatics or sensation. In common situations like trouble and perplexity and similar persecution and smash-up and yet somehow in that situation you're not smashed up. And you're perplexed, [but] you're not somehow in despair, so your poised. You're perplexed, you're troubled but you have something, a quality of peace through the trouble that something good's going to come. It's another quality which man hasn't got. This, of course, is God.

"We have that quality when God's our sufficiency. So in these situations we say, 'Yes, I'm perplexed but God's my wisdom so I'm cool.' I say, 'I don't know what to do. Alright, I shall know. God'll show me.' 'I'm persecuted.' Well, it's an honor to be persecuted for Jesus so you're finding praise and glory in something which most people are offended. Or you're troubled over the troubles of life--lack of this or need of that. 'Okay, but that's not the point. I'm the Person who really is here expressing Himself, [it] is the living God in His sufficiency. He's my sufficiency.' So there's a poise and a peace and a praise in tight spots so nothing crashes.

"Cast down but not destroyed. Knocked down but not knocked out. So there's a kind of bounce in the Spirit. There's a bounce in a Christian, something that comes up all the time. Now people don't see that because we're not responding as we usually respond. This the ordinary man. The minister of the gospel isn't some amazing person, some amazing preacher. In fact, Paul apparently was a pretty poor preacher--good writer, poor preacher. But the quality of glory and peace and victory and friendliness and love and freedom which wasn't to be found in most people who are going through that kind of thing he went through [was there].

"What that really is is bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus that the life of Jesus might be seen in the body, in the mortal body. . . 'Always bearing about the dying of the Lord Jesus'--in the body--'the dying of the Lord Jesus' that the life also of Jesus may be manifest in our body. What's that mean? Well, it meant Jesus died to His own human reactions. It says when He went to Gethsemane: 'If I could get out, I would. I'm a human. If I could escape, I would. But, no, I mustn't. I've got to take what God's got because God's way is the right way.' So He took a dying right to the bottom of the dying. And then, of course, He had a rising. Now that's repeated in His body. He's the Head. It's repeated in His body and the dying in that case means underneath the cross is mainly hidden. You don't make a big fuss about the cross. You hide the cross to show the glory.

"That man I was talking about I lived with in Africa [C.T. Studd], had a little word he would say, 'Take my life and let it be a hidden cross revealing Thee.' What he went through, other people went through, living (it was really quite all right but it appears to be roughing it) in the heart of Africa. You hide the cross because of the intensity and the joy and the fulfillment of being able to take Jesus Christ to the people. You share the resurrection life.

"So he [Paul] says there's the hidden dying. The hidden dying is: I'm again and again accepting things that I don't like. I say, 'What a minute! I don't like that person treating me like that. I don't like not to have my needs met. I don't like to have problems I can't solve. I don't like to be knocked out. I don't like. . . .' Dying is that. Dying is something I don't like. It's not about what I like. I'm here for them and if this is God's way for me I accept it. Now when you accept it, what happens is, in you, there's a rising of the Spirit of God--now it's God's life. So out of this death comes, 'God's my sufficiency!'--that comes out, it comes out in your body. Something about the quality which people can see that there's something which isn't normal in an ordinary person in distressing situations. This is how the intercession is for others fulfilled.

"Now there is a difference. In our earlier days we had to go through tests and trials (we talked about that in James) to find out ourselves our need, to find out that we don't fight our own battles but to move in to 'It's not I but Christ.' That's the earlier stage: when you go through trials for your sake to settle you in to the fact that this life isn't you but Christ. When that's settled you move into another whole realm of trials, your whole life is for others. That's what our life is. Whether we think it or not, when we're through that, some way it's something that God's expressing Himself out to others through us. So it's an Intercessor's life. So it's not to do with Paul's own needs. He was involved with situations which could meet the needs of other people so he says, 'We're delivered unto death for Jesus' sake.'

"So we see that, we accept that it comes from God. Accept these situations. Then he says this remarkable thing happens: 'That death works in me and the resurrection life comes into you, presumably mainly by you catching on. Because we can't give life to others. The Spirit of Christ gives life. The Spirit of Christ gives life by causing them to see their need and themselves receiving Him whom I've received.

"So the way it works out is that as they see simple people, ordinary people, walking in situations, walking in this quality: free, loving, helpful, considerate life, not some big, bossy, noisy life but life that has this quality--you catch on. So I like that. I like that. You begin to say, 'Yes, you have the same Jesus that I have. Come on now.' And you begin to find that you have the same Person. Life has worked in you. . . .

"That's the intercession: death in us, life in you . . . Part of it is we have the spirit of faith . . . He who raised up Jesus Christ, we're going to be raised up together. See the humility [in Paul]. This was the father of them [the Corinthians]. He said, 'He'll raise me up with you', not 'You up with me.' See all the time he was always putting himself down. He said, 'You're the people that matter. You'll be raised up in the resurrection day and I'll be with you!' You'd think he'd say, 'You'll be with me!' He didn't say that. In that day He'll present us with you. He'll present you and I'll be along with you. That's the spirit. 'I'm delighted that you are what you should be and I'm glad to be identified with that.' He says here, 'For all things are for your sakes.'

"Now we understand that that's not a thing that you put on. The life that we're talking about is not a 'put on' life. It's not, 'Oh, I ought to be like that but I'm not.' No. I dare to say it because God does it by me . . . Don't say you haven't, say you are! This is what God is in me. Don't take false condemnation and false accusation and false self assessment. Drop all that stuff! If He's taken me on He in His own way causes me to be for others. Don't try to be, just dare to accept: 'I accept that situation. This is the new meaning of being. I'm an expression of a Being who's for others.' So all things for your sake. I take that. If it doesn't appear to work out you still believe it . . . And more than we know He is working out through us. We know it. Sometimes we know it and sometimes we don't need to know.

". . . He [Paul] didn't make a big fuss of the body. One of the ways today--I suppose God uses it--is: 'Something good will come to you, all good.' The Bible never says that. The Bible says the highest thing is good doesn't come to you that others may have the good. . . The Bible doesn't say, 'Oh, you'll have a perfect body, lots of good, lots of healing.' The Bible doesn't say that. It's a dangerous gospel because it's misinterpreting the glory of this life. It's not, 'I get something' but 'I'm something for others.' And that will cost. So it's dangerous to build people up with, 'Something good will come to you.'

"That's one of the demands of the whole healing ministry: you get healed. That's not the point. I'm for others. I may or may not be healed. So, you see, Paul's not interested in his body: 'My outer man's perishing.' He shouldn't say that today if he's a good 'victory' man. 'Oh, I'm perfectly healthy.' He doesn't say that. He doesn't say that. He said, 'I'm withering up. My inner man's renewed. It comes through my old, withered self.'

"So, you see, it's another concept of truth, that it will cost, it will drain me out. It will cost me physically, mentally, psychologically. That's not the point. The inner man--that's renewed. That's the spirit, that's where God is. That's renewed because that's eternal. That's renewed.

"Then he [Paul] puts it this way: 'My light affliction.' That's all you see it because when you see the glory it isn't light. What he sees is this: that this light affliction has, there's a law of intercession, a law of death and resurrection. It's the law of the harvest. It's the law Jesus enunciated when He said that a corn of wheat has to die that others. . . . One corn of wheat produces many, many heads of corn I suppose. The world eats those; the corn doesn't eat them. So His dying produces a whole crop of good grain and the world gets the grain. That's a law. Just the same as the law of nature.

"So Paul says 'my light affliction.' In a way he says, 'I don't count my life because it works an exceeding weight of glory.' A life, which for a moment, for a few years, works for a far more exceedingly eternal weight of glory. What a word! 'Works!' So he says there's a law there: one's producing the other. It isn't just a mistake, it isn't just sort of guesswork, it's a law. As there is this involvement in what costs it's working, it's producing a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory. Now that's not working in us. In other places he says your suffering has worked something in you. Your tribulation worketh patience in you. James would say the trial of your faith worketh patience in you. These are works not in him but for him. Works from him means out from you will come a tremendous harvest and in eternity you'll see a tremendous harvest of those who have come into the eternal glory, the eternal life, the eternal purposes of God because you went in this way which costs. 'It wasn't cost to me. It was light for a moment but not so light from one point of view but I see what it's working, so we take that.

"And because that settles us, it helps us to see that we're not looking at things that are seen. We're looking at the things which are not seen because the things that are seen are temporal, the things that are not seen are eternal. So he's not saying that the things that are seen are illusion but not far off it. They're temporal forms . . . Everything's in a temporary form. The reality is the Spirit behind the form. And so he says, 'Don't look at the things that are seen, which are temporary forms, look at that which is not seen.'--the eternal, for this is the eternal purpose coming through the forms. They operate with the eternal purpose who may renew the forms and so on. Living an ordinary life in tune, in union with the One who is all, who is spirit.

"Which, of course, the world makes you a fool. You're just a hare-brained person. And yet this is the most realistic thing. You can't get a more practical life than a life which is the God-governed life when God's got the lot and is the lot. It's a practical thing. It finds its meaning in all this [sic] things that tear a life up. Ah, I've got the practical answer. They saw the gamble of faith, if you like, yet it doesn't remain a gamble. It becomes an inner certainty, a fact. Faith is an inner consciousness, in the inside of you, not outwardly--in the letter--inwardly by the Spirit. It's true to me. God's like that and loves me like that and lives here. So it's a practical life because I have what it takes because I learn to see through. We talk about being see-throughers, seeing through the visible which are only forms. Not illusory forms but very temporary forms because the forms are forms of God but they often become misused and mixed up, messed up forms. That's what the Fall's done but I'm seeing through it to the eternal reality--through it all."