Et Cetera

Condemnation -- Get Over It!

By Fred Pruitt

Q: How do you see 1 John 3:19-22?

And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.

For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.

Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.

And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.

A: What I have seen, in simplicity, is this:

First, we are not under condemnation from God. Even when we are in sin we are not under condemnation from God. Condemnation is the result of the Fall, but rather than the condemnation being something "intentionally" put on us by God, what the Fall did was to separate us in our understanding and spirit from the Father, so that the natural outcome of the death (separation from God) that they experienced by eating the fruit of the tree, was condemnation. (Also, living by the law brings condemnation as well, but that is for another discussion.)

Condemnation, therefore, is part of the wicked one's kingdom. Adam and Eve, who walked in the garden with God until they ate the fruit, knew no condemnation whatsoever, until the separation occurred. Then, through the separation and the great lie of self-relying, self-focused self, which they received from their new inner motivator and false father, Satan, condemnation became part of their inner reality. ("I was naked and I hid.") It underlay all of life in everything they did, so that all humanity inherited this condemnation and fear of physical and spiritual death through our first parents.

We must realize that it was not God who condemned, but the spirit of error. It comes from him. God is love. He lifts up, restores, reconciles, forgives, blesses. It is the devil who is the source of condemnation!

Now, when we come to Christ, at first we are not aware in our understanding and consciousness of this fact -- that in Christ there is no more condemnation.

We often take what is a continual sense of condemnation for most of us, and confuse it with conviction for sin. We must come to understand the difference. Conviction for sin is specific, and comes from the Holy Spirit. He causes us to know it, so that there is no doubt. This sense of condemnation we are talking about, is vague and non-specific, and simply makes us continually feel like we're never up to snuff, never measure up, never what we're supposed to be -- which flies in the face of the Cross and Resurrection. If we are mindful only of our humanity on its own, then that would be the truth, like the ten spies in Numbers 13:33: "And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers." We are not instructed to be mindful of our humanity on its own, however, because it is NOT ON ITS OWN! We are now FILLED with the life of God, which promises to be a "river of living water" (Jn 7:38), to those who believe. It is THAT faith, that is the faith of Joshua and Caleb, whereby they are able to say, "Let us go up and once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it" (Num 13:30).

We all go through a great struggle with that, and as we know, the end of that struggle is the Romans seven misery of coming to the end of our separated selves, that we might know oneness with Christ (I live, yet not I) and the Spirit life of Romans eight: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus HAS SET ME FREE from the law of sin and death." (Rom 8:2)

What John is referring to in his seeming description of twoness with God -- our heart, His heart -- is our consciousness and understanding breaking through the condemnation finally in our oneness with Christ. When he says, "our heart condemns us not," he is talking about when that knowing happens in us particularly. It is wonderful to know GOD does not condemn us. We start there. But as we are brought up by the Spirit to understand that Christ and I are one person (1 Cor 6:17) expressing in the world, He expressing His divine nature as my human life (Gal 2:20), THEN my consciousness begins to wake up to the fact that we no longer need take this condemnation that we have received all our lives from the wicked one. It is his condemnation, not God's and not ours. Therefore, we come to a sense of a raised consciousness, in which I know in myself no condemnation whatsoever. I have nothing any more to accuse myself of, even though all my life I may have lived in self-accusation (which came from my false father, but I didn't know that).

What is in God does us no conscious good until it becomes conscious reality in us. So when it says God is greater than our heart, that is the same as Jesus as the expression of God saying that the Father is greater than He, since the Source is greater than the expression of the source. So God is universal, and universally He does not condemn. But we are particular, and therefore into our "particular," or individuality, that universal reality of "no condemnation," must finally find its home in us who are particular expressions (sons, children) of the Living God.

This is part of God's process of raising up CONSCIOUS sons who know who they are. All truth and wisdom is in God. It benefits us in our understanding when we are able to locate Him in us AS all that, so that now God's truth, wisdom, power, strength, and no condemnation, is not just up in Heaven and God dispenses bits of it down to me if I really pray hard enough and show my dedication. I now find all that in Christ who lives IN ME and therefore all that truth, wisdom, power, strength, no condemnation, IS NOW resident in and part and parcel of ME, since He has taken up residence in me to be His expression in this world (2 Cor 6:16). It is part of the fulfilling of this verse: "Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are you in this world." As He IS, so are YOU! ARE! ARE! ARE! ARE! ARE! Present tense!!!! (Not "one day" will be!) God lives in the present, not the future. TODAY is the day to believe! We look not at the things which we see, but at the things which we do not see! FAITH! (In what God HAS done, whether we think we see it or not!)

It is somewhat the same as Paul's word to the Galatians: "until Christ be formed in you." (Gal 4:19)

When we are born again, Christ is in us and lives as us. He lives and expresses His live in,through, and as our humanity through the Holy Spirit. But we don't know it yet, and what Paul means by "Christ is formed in you" is when our consciousness (understanding) is brought in line to what is already real inside us in the Spirit.

And once that self-condemnation is out of the way, then the whole world opens up to us, since our main impediment to the life of God flowing out of us is finally removed: our "me focus." The "me focus" was taken out in the Cross but we must come to know it, and then and we KNOW we are raised again in consciousness and understanding to a completely totally new life which is only Christ. (2 Cor 5:17).

And that is what gives the new sense of confidence, so that we are able to say, like Jesus, "Father, I know that you always hear me." And this what enables us to go "boldly" before the throne of grace, because we KNOW we are now accepted in the beloved, and as sons of the Father with all the rights and "powers" of a son, we have total access into God, since the veil separating us from God (the devil's lie of self-independent and separate from God) has been permanently removed. In the death and resurrection of Jesus we died together with Him and are raised together with Him, and it becomes operative in us in our understanding and consciousness when we know that and live in the truth by faith.

It is our self-consciousness through our false father that condemns us. Finally coming through this portal of Romans seven to eight, we are brought up by the Spirit to see God doesn't condemn us and therefore if God does not condemn us, and we know that, then our heart is finally knit with his in that realization, so that we no longer accept that voice of condemnation, since we know it is false, and nothing but false. We no longer find ourselves with some vague continual fault whereby we continuously accept blame for simply never being up to snuff. (That is UNBELIEF in what Jesus has done in the Cross!) That is where our hearts become one with His heart IN OUR CONSCIOUSNESS AND UNDERSTANDING, thus causing us to "Grow up into Him ... the Head."

So, this passage isn't talking in any sense about separation, but about the raising of our consciousness by the Spirit so that we see as God sees, rather than the old way that we have always seen.

This is vital, and we hit this point over and over and over, because "no condemnation" is the final death of the "me" mentality, and what comes out of that is the Life of the Spirit, blessing upon blessing toward others without impediment, but now in total faith in a total God expressing Himself by a total me.