Living by Faith: Entering the Invisible Realities of Christ (Part 2)

For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, and Paul makes this personal, but you can turn it around and make it individual for you or corporate for a church. If I, Gene Edwards, and you, as a body of believers, or you as an individual, go get brick and mortar and start rebuilding what was destroyed, I really do prove I’m a sinner. That’s an amazing verse, brothers and sisters. The greater sin comes in trying to please God by your good works than in the sins you committed that put that right side so ragged.

For though through the law, I died to the law that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. I’d better stop reading this translation. No wonder I just discovered that. I have been. Okay. I have been…what have you got? Here’s a New American Standard. That’s what I’m reading out of. What have you got? Okay. Ignore what I said yesterday. Then I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live…by the way, I want to read that again. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me. Brothers and sisters, that is too much of a passage to go into now. Nonetheless, I’m going to do it a little bit.

Here is a deed I have never seen. Here is an event of which I know absolutely nothing. Here is an event that did not take place within the eyes of man, but I bring it to earth, and I take it into the past, and I declare that when they took Jesus Christ to the cross, they dragged me up the same hill and nailed me to the same cross with Him, and that I died. Brothers and sisters, I want you to declare that. You have to declare that you are utterly, totally dead. You have to understand how important it is that you are dead, because the law has dominion over you only as long as you are alive. Not just law, but any demands or all demands made by men or God, cease when you are dead. I don’t care if you’re going to go straight to hell. The record closes on the day you die. Therefore, every human being in this room is dead.

Brothers and sisters, you must learn to state your deadness. It is terribly important that you dwell here for a while and come to understand that you are dead. As a sister wrote me a letter the other day, how on earth could I ever expect to rise with Christ without knowing? That’s not what she said. How on earth could I ever expect to be born without first being dead? Born the second time, I can’t be born the second time if I’m still alive the first time. That’s important. So “above” one another. You have been born above, and you have been crucified on earth and in heavenly places. You were crucified in an invisible way. You cannot see, and brothers and sisters, you’ve got to see that you are dead. Otherwise, the law will haunt you to the last day you breathe. Law lost its control on you because in places the human eye cannot see, you were nailed, viciously, brutally nailed to a cross, and when Jesus Christ expired, so did you. Death can’t find you. Hell can’t find you. The law can’t find you. They died, too.

Now, because I’m dead, God can raise me up, and God can give me a brand new birth, and I start all over again. But when that happens, I will live by means of a divine life… that is not true. I do live by divine light. Now, brothers and sisters, that’s not true on earth, but it is true in places you cannot see, and you are a holy one. You say I am a holy one, but you also say, “I am living by divine life.” That doesn’t look very true to me, but I lay hold of things that are invisible by faith, and I make them visible by faith. I am living by the same life Jesus Christ lived. It is my Lord’s life living in me. Bring it out of the heavens. We are a people who take the invisible things by faith and make them visible.

Alright, brothers and sisters, nail it down. Exhort one another, encourage one another, and for your own self, embrace an unreality that is the only reality, and that is you are living by Christ right now. “But Gene, I hid some things under the carpet.” Man, the blood of Jesus Christ took care of those when He was crucified before the foundations of the world. The only part of you that God ever sees is the part of you that is living by divine life, by the very life of Jesus Christ.

What I now live… would everybody take the word “now” and draw a circle around it, please? Never forget that. I’m going to have a good day tomorrow, I know I am, and I’m going to live by the Lord’s life. I got up this morning, and I prayed, and oh, the Lord was so near and dear to me, and I lived by His life. When is “now”? Thank you, brother. That’s the only answer you could give. It’s the present. Sandy said, “When is it now?” It’s now. It’s the present, but it’s already past. I’ve been talking; we’ve already passed it. We’re in a brand new “now”. And now I am…Now, I live by Christ. The life I now live, I live by Christ. Another “now” has ended. A new “now”. So that means in the last two minutes I live by Christ. The future I do not know about. Oh, by the way, I’m living by Christ right now. The life I now live in this flesh, I live by Christ. How many “nows” are there? Uncountable. I would even go so far as to say they’re so uncountable that there’s only one now. There’s only one now. The eternal now. Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now, saints, you say this is wonderful, Gene. Now, what are we going to do next? No, I want you to come back to this and encourage one another with invisible things. Actually, “now” is the one thing in our creation that is not of our creation. We live in space and time. Eternity is forever a “now”. There’s no ticking of the time in eternity. There is no space-time. Einstein helped us here: remove the space-time, and there is no measurement of time because there is no time. If you have mass, you have time.

Jeff, you’re not a scientist, but because you’re out there working with, you know, all these things, you have to keep telling the brothers and sisters about Einstein telling you that there is no dimension in the eternals. There’s only “now”, and that’s why Jesus Christ can see you from the beginning and the end because it’s all now. I don’t understand that, but that is the one element of eternity that is “in” time, and I am caught in the eternal now. The “now” that was before creation when He marked me off. The “now” that is the omega when all things dissolve, and I return into Him. That’s now, and so is the fact that I live by Christ right now. That doesn’t change, and that’s not ever affected. It is now. You might say that eternity takes a little bitty dip and then goes on being eternity, and just for one little place, eternity is in time, the eternal now.

Let me try to put it another way. There is the presence here in this room. In this room, there is the presence of “before creation”. Here in this room is the presence of the present, and here in this room is the presence of the utter end, when we all come together and rejoice in our salvation and in our Lord, and we become one with Him. The future…there is the presence of the future, and there is also in this room the presence of the present. The presence of the past, the presence of the present, the presence of the future, and the presence of that which is not past. The presence of that which is not present and the presence of that which is not future, but the presence of eternals. The presence of the now. And that now follows you and is always making itself the present. There is the presence. You’ve got somebody following you. There is always the presence of all eternity. You walk in the presence of the past, present, and future, and the eternals.

Now you tell one another this, that you are in the “now”. But now the life I live, I live by the Son of God. I don’t care what earth tells you; this is what eternity tells you. This is what the everlasting eternals are now. There’s no such word, eternals now. Tell you this is what the eyes of God tell you. I can’t help it that I’m made out of mass. I won’t always be made out of mass. Someday I will have a body like Jesus Christ. Not made out of mass, even if it is physical. I’m not going to be caught in space-time anymore. And right now, I’m not caught in space time. Isn’t that wonderful? I wonder what it means. No idea what I just said.

You might come up to me sometimes and say, “Gene, get in the now. Stand in the eternals. Stand at the beginning, the end, and now.” It might be a good way to start a testimony. I am here at this moment, standing in the now, the eternal. Then, finally… did you get all that? Okay. Well, it’s an inexhaustible verse. By the way, all of this has to do with individuals. This is not the corporate; this is the individual. And by the way, I now live by Christ, and Christ now loves me. I now live in Christ my life, and Christ not only loves me, but He gave Himself for me, and that fact is in the now. Wonderful verse.