Sonship

Message Preached at the Pentecostal Camp Meeting, Berkeley, California, June 2, 1924

Let us read this morning the third chapter of the First Epistle of John. This is one of those remarkable passages that is exhaustless. We see here that God wants all his believers to understand these words which have been written. It is the believer’s attitude, his inspiration, his divine ability, a place where he rests in faith, and a place where God has done something marvelous for him. God has taken him out of the world. It is a remarkable word that Jesus said, “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world…They are not of the world.” This is a great truth for us to understand, and in this glorious position of God’s own, we come to a place where we know with confidence, and we say it without fear of contradiction of our own hearts or even the contradiction from outside voices, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.”

Beloved, I want us to examine ourselves as the Word comes forth because there are many scriptures which are definitely purposed of God that we should inherit, but we do not come into line to claim them. Remember this! There are many things you may quote without having the essential of the reality of the fact of the production of them. I want us to have something more than the literal word. Words are of no importance unless they have the unction of the assurance of the abiding of those words.

Let me say a few things which are contained in the Scriptures that ought to be ours. Here is one: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” That is Scripture. That is divine. That is for us! But it is another thing all together to actually have it. Here is another word: “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.” Another word I want to give you which is used by most believers: “Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.” That is quoted by many people, but, “May God reveal unto us that the meaning is something more than saying it.” You can quote these words, and yet you know all the time you are failures because you are not in the place of victory.

God wants us to be something more than ordinary people. Remember this, whosoever you are: if you are ordinary, you have not touched the ideal principles of God. When God lays hold of a man He makes him extraordinary in personality, power, unction, thought and activity. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” It is a divine plan. It is God’s will in a plan. God wants us to possess everything He has for us. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” God has such purposes to perform in us. He has a great desire to utter these words in our hearts so that we may rise and claim his purposes. He desires for us to be ambitious and even covetous for his purposes to be fulfilled in our lives. He wants a desire to be in us that nothing can satisfy without, we not only “toe the line,” but live in the line and claim the whole thing as ours. God must have it to be so.

You will never reach ideal purposes on any line without the Word becoming the epistle. You become the living epistle by the power of the Holy Ghost…nay…you become the living force of the epistle of the revelation of God, the incarnation of the personality of His Son-desires, Son-expressions, Son-activities. Look at him! See Him! He is the most beautiful of all.

Beloved, there is the principle! The remarkable position of every soul in this place is to be so inhabited by Jesus that you become a living personality of God’s ideal Son. It is very remarkable! It is very beautiful. God has these divine plans for us. So many people believe that because they are natural they are always to be in the place of weakness. Beloved, your weaknesses have to be swallowed up with the ideal of Him who never failed. Every time He was tried He came out victorious. “He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He was thus tempted and overcame in order that He might be able to succor all who are tempted and tried and oppressed in any way. Jesus was the great embodiment of a personality from God to the human life to unveil us in our weaknesses and to behold His mightiness through us that we might be strong in the Lord. Praise the Lord!

We are saved by the immensity of His power, this great inflow of life, this great fullness of God. This wonderful inhabiting of the Spirit comes right into the human soul, and He shakes “the husks away.” He shakes the mind! Oh, how many people have lost out because the mind and the head are too big, the mind is too active, and they are too “natural?” Therefore God cannot get His way. May God sweep through us today and show us that the only thing that is ever going to help us is the heart. “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” It is the heart where we believe in faith. It is the heart that is inhabited by the Spirit. It is the heart that is moved by God. The mind is always secondary.

When the whole life is surged by the power of God the Word becomes the personality of the subject. We become the subjects of the Spirit of the living God, and we are moved by the Almightiness of God. Then we live and move and have our being in this flow of God’s integrity. What a wonderful adjustment for weaknesses. “God is able to make all grace abound.” God is able to shake us through. He is able to send a wind and blow the chaff away till it will never be seen again. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” I do not want to leave the subject until I feel that God has given you a rising tide of expectancy or adaptability within your soul which will bring you into the very place He has made for you. It is as easy as possible if you can touch it by faith this morning.

I can understand now, clearer than ever, the twenty-fourth Psalm: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates.” There are human gates, human hindrances, human thoughts, and human trying. “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.” Let Him in! “Ah,” you say, “He is in.” Who dare believe God this morning? Who dare claim his rights? What are the rights? “Now are we the sons of God.” This is absolutely the position of rest and the position of faith. It is perfect trust, perfect habitation, with no disturbance, you have peace like a river. Look at the face of God, hallelujah! The very Word itself that comes to judge comes to help.

All the great things of God that come to us with such revelation, can only come in as we are unclothed and then clothed upon, so that our nakedness disappears. Nakedness is everything that is coinciding with worldly evil. If you can be attracted by anything earthly, you have missed the great association that God has for you. If it is your ranch, your bank, your associations, any human thing, if it can attract you from God you are not a son in this respect. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” Sonship! What is the reality of it? God gives it as clear as anything. If we are sons, then we are heirs; if heirs, then we are joint-heirs. But look at the tremendous, gigantic power of Almightiness behind our being called sons—son, power, joint-power, all power. Dare you let the warmth of the power of God make you see your inheritance in the Spirit? Nay, something better than that! Oh, the joyfulness, the expressiveness, the inward motion, the divine inflow, the habitation of the Spirit, God in the soul making the whole body cry out for the living God! Glory! Glory! Glory!

You want God. You want fellowship in the Spirit. You want to walk with Him. You want communion with Him. You want the association with God. God says, “I will dwell in you and walk in you.” “I will sup with you and you with Me.” “I will live in you.” This is attaining to a spiritual majority, a fullness of Christ, a place where God becomes the perfect Father, and the Holy Ghost has His rightful place as never before.

The Spirit crieth, “Abba, Father.” Oh, it is wonderful! May God, the Holy Ghost, grant to us this morning that richness of His pleasure, that unfolding of His will, and that consciousness of the beaming of His countenance upon us. There is no condemnation. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and death.

God has shown us different aspects of the Spirit. He has shown us the pavilion of splendor. He has unfolded to us the power of the relationship of Sonship. He has shown us that they that are sons of God have likenesses unto it. They have activity in it. They are claiming the rights by it. Sons of God speak and it is done. They are binding the things that are loose and loosing the things that are bound. And the perfection of Sonship is being so manifested that there is absolutely a rising tide of the sons of God.

Beloved, it is impossible to estimate the loving kindness of God or the measureless mind of God in our finite condition. When we come into likemindedness with the Word, instead of looking at the Word, we begin to see what God has for us in the Word. This is a very exhaustless subject, but I pray God that He will make us an exhaustless people.

Let us pray, “O, God, come and make me so that there is not a possibility for me to ever be satisfied, but to have a quenchless thirst for the Living God.” Then I shall not be overtaken. Then I shall be ready. Then I shall have eyes which beam, filled with extremity of delight looking at the Master. You ask, “What, we see the Master?” Here, look at Him! His Word is Spirit and life giving. This is the breath, the Word of Jesus. Through the Holy Ghost men have written and spoken. Here is the life, here is the witness, here is the truth, here is the Son of God revealed from faith to faith, from heart to heart, from vision to vision till we all come into perfect unity of fellowship into the fullness of Christ. There it is, beloved. Look! “Now are we the sons of God.” If you are there, we can take a step further, but if you are not there, you may hear but not cross over. But there is something about the Word of God which says that if there is an hearing of faith it shall profit, but if there is an hearing not mixed with faith it shall not profit. You can hear this Word on the lines of faith: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” The future is not what you are going to be tomorrow. This is the day when God makes the future possible. When God can get something through you today, tomorrow is filled with future illumination of God’s possibility for you.

Dare you come into the place of omnipotence…of wonderment! Dare you step into line with God’s possibility and say, “I am ready for all Thou hast for me?” It will mean a clean life. It will mean a separated life. It will disjoin you from everything. It will mean your heart is so perfect, your prospects are so divinely separated that you can say goodbye to the world. Paul said, “I conferred not with flesh and blood,” that he might inherit this great possession that God has laid up for us.

But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. (Heb 2:6-10 KJV)

God would have me herald, like a great trumpet call, so that my voice might sound forth in every heart. God’s design is to bring you into glory, as a son, clothed with the power of the gifts and graces, ministries and operations, and clothed upon with the majesty of heaven. For He shall bring many sons unto glory— son-likeness, son-perfection. “Oh, this is like heaven to me!” My very body is filled with heaven this morning.

Beloved, seeing these things are so, what manner of persons ought we to be in looking, in hasting, and in keeping our eyes upon Him that we may be ready for the rapture? God is bringing us to the place where we may be able to apprehend that for which God has apprehended us in the Spirit. Oh, that we may look not on the things which are, but with eyes of chaste virgin purity, seeing only the invisible Son! So having our whole bodies illuminated by the power of the Holy Spirit, we grow in grace, from grace to grace; in faith, from faith to faith; in personality of sonlikeness till there is not any difference between us and Him.

Let me give you the word if you can receive it: “As He is, so are we in this world.” What a word! Who dare believe it? God only, can take us on to such heights and depths and lengths and breadths in the Spirit. Brother, sister, are you prepared to go all the way? Are you willing for your heart to have only one attraction? Are you willing to have only one lover? Are you willing for Christ to become the perfect Bridegroom’s voice? For I understand the more Bride-like we are, the more we love to hear the Bridegroom’s voice. The less Bride-like we are, the less we long for His Word. If you cannot rest without it, if it becomes your meat day and night, if you eat and drink of it, His life will be in you and when He appears you will go to meet Him.

How many are prepared to be dismantled before the King? Are you prepared to yield to His call, yield to His will, and yield to His desires? How many will say, “At all costs, I will go through?” “Are you determined?” It is between you and God this morning.