You Have the Right to Become

Psalm 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

God will shed light to your path. In the distance you can see the goal. The Lord will reveal to you what you are to become. Then He will put a lamp to your feet, a light to show you the next step. You ask, “Will it work?” It will work if you believe. The problem of every Christian is unbelief. Your human nature cannot believe, will not believe, and never will believe. You have to break out of that. Learn how to believe the Word of the Lord, and learn how to understand what He is saying.

In Leviticus 19:2 the word of the Lord came through Moses, saying, “Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” So Christians take that to be a command and set about to be holy. They do things they think will make them holy, and they only fail. Man cannot make himself holy by what he does. “But God said, ‘Do it.’” You misinterpret what He is saying. It is not a command; it is a provision. He is saying, “Because I am holy, I can make you holy.” You cannot do things to make yourself holy. What must you do? Open your heart to the Lord, take the walls down that are shutting Him out and let Him bring forth holiness in your life by His presence in you.

The most exalted teaching in Christianity is that one day Jesus Christ will return to earth. You can get so locked-in to that concept that you lose all awareness of the coming of His presence into your life. When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day. II Thessalonians 1:10. How can that happen? What is that verse really saying? The Greek word for come is erchomai. That Greek word is always used in a present tense or present tense continuous. It is never used in a future tense. So this scripture is talking about a spiritual coming of the presence and life of the Lord. He cannot come into you as an individual in bodily form, but He can come into your life spiritually and be glorified in you and through you. This is what real Christianity is all about. It is only as His life comes forth in you that you can really begin knowing Him. You cannot know Him while He is separate from you.

Now, you don’t have to do that. You can read these scriptures and you can learn a lot of things about Jesus, but we don’t want to just know about Him. We want to know Him. We want to experience His life. We want Him moving through us. That is what the Lord is looking for – a people He can live in and move through. The whole Bible from the beginning of Genesis all the way to Revelation is speaking about that one thing: God is looking for a people whom He can inhabit. He wants us to become His dwelling place. That is what the Body of Christ really is, His habitation. For ye are the temple of the living God; as God has said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people (II Corinthians 6:16). You also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22).

Now turn to the book of Revelation. Have you ever read a book and skipped to the last chapter to find out how it turns out? That is what we are going to do here.

Revelation 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

Many years ago I was reading a commentary on the book of Revelation by a particular theologian. He had a picture drawn that showed another earth and heaven coming down out of the sky to replace this one. That is not what God is saying here. A new heaven and a new earth – I experienced that when I first opened my heart to the Lord and He began coming forth in my life. I became a new heaven and a new earth. This old earthen nature was changing. I began to experience something of heaven, His presence. Here the Apostle John speaks of it as coming down out of heaven, not in a literal sense of descending from up high somewhere, but he is saying that it is something that is of God, something that is created by Him, and comes forth from Him.

Revelation 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem…

That is what we are becoming. Do you remember in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus looked at His disciples and said, “You are a city set on a hill; you are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13-14). He is creating a city, creating a temple to live in; same difference. We become the city of God, the place of His dwelling.

Revelation 21:2-3 And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.

We are becoming a new heaven and a new earth. We are becoming that holy city. It is when God dwells in the Body of Christ that we become the holy city of God. It is not talking about Jerusalem over in Israel. It is talking about New Jerusalem, the place where the Lord God Himself dwells.

Let’s look at another scripture in Corinthians. This presents a truth that is very important to us. We tend to make the mistake of assuming things. We assume to have things that we don’t have. We assume too often to have more of God in our lives than we really do. It is a process. We are learning how to dwell in the Lord and we’re learning to be His dwelling place. It is a change that is taking place.

II Corinthians 1:10 Who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver: in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us.

Do you see the continuous action? He has delivered us, He is delivering us, and He shall yet deliver us. Here is a fallacy among many Christians. They accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and then they say, “I’m born again.” They count it as a finished work. “Now I’m ready to go to heaven. It’s done!” When you assume to have something you don’t have, you have shut the door to ever receiving the fullness of it. “So, do you mean we’re not born again at that time?” The work has begun, it just hasn’t been finished. Being born again is not a one-shot, one-time deal, it is all over with. You have come to the place where change can begin taking place in your life.

John 1:11 He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.

Look at that historically. He came to His own – the Jewish people – and the Jewish people did not receive Him. Do you suppose that is happening now? That He is coming to His own Christian people and many Christians are not receiving Him?

John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them gave He power (the right) to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.

Once you receive Him then you have the right to become sons. It doesn’t mean that you already are. You’re not everything you are going to be yet. To those who receive Him, to Christians who have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, to them He gives the right to become. It doesn’t say that they already are, but He gives them the right to become sons of God. What are sons of God? Those who become of the same nature; a son is of the same nature as his father. This is being born again.

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