“He who is fond of his soul is destroying it, and he who is hating his soul in this world shall be guarding it for life eonian. John 12:25 concordant
“He who is hating his soul.” Did our Lord indeed say that? Did John understand aright when he so reported Him? There is no doubt about it! Jesus certainly said:
“He who is hating his soul, shall be guarding it.”
Now, please do not be offended at this noble doctrine of hatred preached by Jesus the Christ. It is not our neighbor we are to hate. It is not our enemy we are to hate. It is not even our more talented, successful, and blessed brethren. It is OUR OWN SOUL WE MUST IDENTIFY AND LEARN TO HATE! The sweet concepts of the law keep religious men seeing themselves as being good and admirable. They do not see that the soul clothing itself in the very strength of the law is the most deceived of souls.
We are to hate our own soul, so we can find His. We should have no hatred left for anyone else. Jesus teaches us to hate our own selfish soul. Now when we are brought to learn the urgency of this practice, we have successfully “taken up our cross” and are following Jesus into a mature stature! Many have heard about the cross and many are giving ascent to its truth. Some do preach about crossing out our life for His. Yet successful bearing of our cross is submitting to the spiritual operation of Christ working within us to circumcise our hearts with His truth. God’s Spirit is teaching us a working way to hate all soulish dominance.
Christians are to appreciate our neighbors. We hate no one. We recognize we already love ourselves, so we can love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Oh yes, we do love ourselves!
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:39
That is a command: to love your neighbor like you already do love yourself. Jesus simply states true facts — that all men already do indeed love their self. Jesus emphasized that we must learn how to hate what is expressed from our own soulish life, hate its selfish ways of thinking, hate its ways of promoting its self interest. Christians are effectively learning how to identify and deny any further domination of the fallen selfish soul of man. In so doing, we are supplied the faithful operation of our Father’s resurrection life that floods our inner spiritual man with a divine spiritual dominance. We practice “taking up our cross,” as a release from our outer man’s dominance daily in order to be resurrected out from self-love’s influence.
Most people think and speak of death in referring to the physical death of the body. Physical death of the body is not all of what God calls death. Using the carnal mind of man is also death. Death is practiced very prominently in the minds of men and women of this world. When Jesus says that we must take up our cross and follow Him, He does not mean that we all must be slain on a wooden cross as literal martyrs. The self-centered CARNAL MIND of man is DEATH and rules the soulish part of us. That part must be hated (intensely disliked) in order for us to really find God’s life.
“He that finds his life shall lose it: and he that loses his life for my sake shall find it. ” Matthew 10:39
This passage is not talking about dying and leaving our physical bodies to go out to some far-off heaven somewhere. These are instructions from the King revealing an ability to find a present portion of God life that is beyond the outward reasonings, beyond the carnal thinking of man’s soulish independence from God’s presence. God's spirit brings quickening truth to our spirit, renewing our mind (soul), and quickening our body while we are here living upon this planet.
If we practice taking up our cross, embracing His Word and Spirit from within, we find we are “beheaded” for Jesus, sealed and registered into an inner heavenly condition of peace and love while yet remaining in our flesh and blood body. God has many real martyrs that have been "beheaded" for the testimony of Jesus. These are overcomers who hate the carnal mind enough to have gained the mind of Christ now. Adam’s descendants have fallen into a realm of soulish minded knowledge, from which the spirit of Christ must quicken our spirit to gain dominance of our inner being.
Our Father supplies new spiritual life every day once the spiritual operation of bearing our cross is established within our being. His Word is “crossing out” the ways of our own soulish, self-centered life. His Spirit is enlightening us and crossing out our carnal reasoning sufficiently enough that we can find an order of His life working victoriously within our inner spiritual man that accomplishes all the spiritual principles taught us as followers.
The Roman death of crucifixion was the death reserved for the worst criminals and was a shame used on the vilest of men. Beloved — in the day of Jesus, a cross was an instrument of cruel execution, no different than the gas chamber or the electric chair today. It was the place where known criminals and those considered the scum of the earth were put to death. It was not a pretty or inspiring symbol then, yet Jesus said we are to deny ourselves and take up our cross, our gas chamber, our electric chair, our hangman’s noose, and follow Him. It’s a place of humiliating execution of our proud, puffed-up ideas and their influence over others in our walk.
We are learning to embrace the spiritual operation that humbles us wherever it appears in our life’s experience. The cross we bear is initially brought into view in our extremities when we reach a catastrophe that leads us to be aware of God’s humbling power. It is also found in the smallest of daily things when we are sensitive to its operation. Our Father is revealing His Son to us by His Spirit. An exchange of thinking is exercised within our spiritual concepts that lead us to recognize carnal opinions and viewpoints being expressed through our knowing of good and evil.
Understanding of God’s Spirit is working within our spirit to process us whereby we are changed, lifted to be enthroned with a LIFE that does bear the cross. God can easily find ways for us to bear a cross daily, even in the smallest routines and events of daily life. Being truthful, lying not, Christ makes us humbly attentive to great and gloriously important facts. It is important to Him that our inner spiritual man be made alive to His Spirit and Word right now.
Our quickened spirit can understand God’s Spirit clearly enough to be circumcised effectively within our inner being. It is the fallen outer man, the natural minded man that is soulish, identifying everything from his fallen viewpoint. Yet if that part of our soul is crucified, a miraculous making alive and awareness is granted within our inner spiritual man. Paul truthfully said:
“I am crucified, and I live..” Galatians 2:20
Paul speaks of two corresponding, parallel principles working in his present life. I AM crucified, and I AM alive. These area dual, present, and continuous realities for Christians. I am and I am! I AM crucified, and I AM living! But what is crucified? Not my inward spiritual man, not my spiritual mind, but my outward soulish reasonings.
The carnal thinking of the selfish mind needs to be put off, crucified until deadened! Soulish minded men with carnal religious thinking have hijacked the church on earth with an anti-Christ mindset from which God still requires us to be loosed. We learn what His Spirit is revealing within our spirit. That is the process of spiritual renewal, finding each day how He leads us to take up our cross and follow Him. Paul put it this way:
“Though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day” II Corinthians 6:16
Men are perishing, not just because they are getting old and ready to go to the cemetery. Oh, no! Men are perishing for lack of understanding the spiritual life given by the Spirit of Christ. Christ within us gives access to God’s life in our inner spiritual man, an access to forming a mind that does not allow carnal minded death to rule within us any more.
When the Spirit of Christ Jesus works out a discipline that crosses out our own soulish dominance sufficiently, we will always be enabled to see through man’s carnality. We are able to even recognize those in religious church programs who have used worldly methods to organize “systematic deceptions” among the Lord’s people. Yes, Jesus is coming to those spiritual men who are crucified with Christ. They are not perishing now, but are going to lasting places. They know of heaven and of a kingdom that is not corrupt. They are made to fit an experience of BEING ALIVE to GOD!
“He who joins the Lord is one spirit…” I Corinthians 6:17 concordant
The man who is quickened by Christ is a spiritual man, being conformed to the image of God’s firstborn Son. God has fathered our spirit to be like Jesus is now. For that purpose, He quickens our inner man and forms us as being the offspring of God Almighty. God has Fathered the inner conditions of matured Christians, giving His characteristics by connecting the ingredients of His Spirit to our spirit. Our spirit is made alive, “born again” and grown unto the Spirit of sonship, whereby we cry deep within: “ABBA”!
God is MY Father, just as Jesus said He was our Father. Now we third day saints are being made alive to God’s reality, actively being with our Father! Our inner man is capable of receiving an inner spiritual renewal daily. We find we are raised to find His Life quickly by embracing those humbling processes which point out any remaining prideful ways that control our outer man’s soul. We are freed from the lusts of carnal ideas, freed from the lust for things we see and want, freed from being prideful in the fallen life. Men who will not actively pursue finding Christ in their lives are stuck in those things which make man perish.
Thank God, Jesus poured out His life’s blood on His cross as the perfect sacrifice that qualified for the release of God’s plan to bless all the families of mankind! The divine paradox of His death brings God's life to all of us who, like Paul, can truthfully say “I am crucified and I live.” We are hating our soulish ways by resisting our own selfish reasonings, yet we are becoming alive to a spiritual revealing within our inner spiritual being. Man’s mindsets are fallen into death and are taken away into hellish conditions of confusion and torment. Christ has come by the Spirit to add somethings new. His Spirit divinely adds to our inner character, resulting in an entirely NEW, INNER power dominating our conscious being!
“I am being crucified” is an alternate rendering of the Greek in Galatians 2:20. The cross of Christ still has very practical applications in our everyday lives. You see, our Father faithfully prepares the places, situations, circumstances, and experiences whereby our selfish soul is exposed to the futility of itself and is effectively laid down. The cross we bear can still be painful, yet the power of God is revealed greatly in every crisis of our lives. Like the prodigal son, we too finally come to an end of our selfishness. Then we arise and go to the Father. His love is extended and clothes us as the Holy Spirit teaches us and reveals spiritual unction and strength. Our carnal thinking is exposed by the mind of Christ ruling within our temple.
“To be carnally minded is death,” Romans 8:6
“He that loses His life for my sake shall find it.” Matthew 10:39
"We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete." 2 Corinthians 10:5-6 NASB
We Christians can cast down every “self-opinionated” thought and reach out to find a new heavenly consciousness, a recognition of God’s presence within our spirit. We experience it much more clearly just by denying our soulish expressions wholeheartedly. We learn to put away the characteristics of our earthly, carnal mentality to “mortify” or “put to death” our own soul's rules that are dictating the potentials of our life. Thus, an inner spiritual operation of God is circumcising our heart. This operation effectively buries us together with Him in a baptism that raises us to the Life of God.
We Christians are entering a greater glory than the church age has been able to provide. When His spiritual mind is enthroned within us and is being exercised in our Christian walk, we are highly rewarded by becoming “NEW CREATURES”. Living creatures are walking and living in our Father’s spiritual instructions rather than after the mind of any man. Some are “crucified with Christ”, experiencing a consciousness whereby they overcome all faults and rid themselves of every enemy, even the last enemy which is death. We are taking up our cross daily to banish our own selfish and carnal mind to take captive its opinionated thoughts, desires, and demands:
“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Romans 8:6
“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Matthew 16:24
"Now, whenever the consoler which I shall be sending you from the Father may be coming, the spirit of truth which is going out from the Father, that will be testifying concerning Me.” John 15:26 concordant
In the past, many Christian leaders thought to deny one’s self meant deny the liquor store, deny the theater, deny the pool hall, deny the mini-skirt, deny communism, deny the church systems. But deny ME? Deny sweet, precious little Me? Deny MYSELF? Oh, we would much rather deny the liquor store and the pool hall than to deny OURSELF! Yet, very little is gained in self-denial, UNLESS WE ARE LED by the Holy Spirit's promptings to follow Him by denying ourself as He presents our cross to us. We are taught of His Spirit as we are following on to know just what He wants. There is a dimension of our individual inheritance that there is no other way of getting but by PERSONAL SUBMISSION TO CHRIST — as willingly enduring OUR CROSS.
The cross Jesus bore was not an accident at the end of His earthly life. He was born, and lived, and died under the shadow of the cross set before Him, as predestined to do the will of God. He knew it was there before Him all the time, but He never once shunned bearing His cross. Rather He EMBRACED doing the will of God all the time.
Never once did He fail to take up His cross. He did it daily for there was never a day that He said, “This day is the day for my own pleasure. Today I will do the things I want. I will go about my Father’s business again tomorrow.” Never would He say, “This is mine to enjoy. The will of the Father must wait until this is over. Then I will continue on with my calling.” Even in the times of His greatest sorrow, He would not say, “I should have comfort, for my grief is too great."
One might soar high on the sweet wine of revelation to understand the mysteries of how the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, how they shall sit on thrones, how they shall judge the world and angels in the ages to come, how they shall deliver the creation from the bondage of corruption. This is all true, for it is a pure vision which shall be fulfilled;
Long before a man ever partakes of such marvelous realities, however, he will have been thoroughly dealt with as a son. As a son, he is to be a partaker of a maturing process whereby the soul-life is abased before the spirit of the Lord within. Every pile of rocky pride and every root of bitterness — all self-ascendancy will needs be purged out of every Christian seen in the New Jerusalem, thus glorifying God! We are learning quite well what is meant when He inspired the wisdom penned in these significant words:
“Outside are curs, and enchanters, and paramours, and murderers, and idolaters, and everyone fabricating and fondling falsehood.” Revelation 22:15 concordant
Learning to allow Christ to rule within our spirit until one’s own soul is dethroned is not easy. In fact it requires that our spirit be joined together with His Spirit as unto a oneness so we are fortified and strengthened in the inner man. Thus we are able to gain control over all the unbalanced emotions and impulses, all the varied dispositions of human behavior and nature that are not easily bridled or broken: the restlessness, the defensiveness, the quick reactions to pressures, the frustration with loss that angers us. The fear, worry, hurt, and self-assertion all need be conquered and rendered inactive by the overwhelming strength of Christ ruling within our spirit.