Kenneth Copeland - Living in the Power and Authority of Christ
— Hello everybody. Welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory Broadcast. Now we're talking about who we are in Christ. The Anointed one, who he is in us, and the power and the authority that we have as new creatures, new copies. Let's turn over there to Second Corinthians 5:17.
— Yes, sir. Second Corinthians 5:17, what a good one.
— Oh, that whole...
— 17 thru 21.
— Well, I got that one marked up 4 and 5.
— I can't see any white on your pages.
— Oh, Lord. Where do you start? Oh, yeah. 4:13. "We having the same Spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day". You're newer and better looking every day. Every day, Every day.
— Amen, amen, amen.
— That's a truth, though the outward man perish as you going through things. It doesn't matter because the Spirit is eternal and the Spirit is infused with the life of God. You know, we've been talking about who we are in Christ, and that changes everything. This is the message that changes everything.
— Everything.
— It's not the make up I put on. It's not the treatment I would have. It's the Word of God and the new birth that we have passed from death unto life.
— The reason it's called the Word of God is because it's his bond. It is his Word, he has given his Word.
— The moment you act on the Word, God makes himself responsible for your results. The moment you take the Word, there's revelation coming. But faith requires corresponding action. So the initial act of faith is to move your mouth. If your faith ain't strong enough to move your mouth, it'll never move a mountain.
— I'm going to tell you what he said. Don't ever face your giant with your mouth shut.
— That's right...
— David came after him...
— But he's covenant talking. He's talking covenant.
— He won that fight in the name of the Lord of hosts. He put angels in that deal right then.
— The Lord of hosts.
— Lord of the host is the Lord of the angelic armies of God. He put an angel behind that rock.
— And so the saying or the speaking of the Spirit of faith, I believe and I speak. And so the speaking part, David won the war of words before you win the fight of faith.
— You have too.
— And he's just saying and saying, Jesus said you say. And so the confession of your faith in Romans 10:9 and 10 is you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead and thou shalt be saved for what the heart man believes unto righteousness, with the mouth confession precede the experience of salvation.
— That's right.
— And so your identification with Christ is activated by an identical confession of faith. In other words, when you make a confession, you say the same thing. So your identification with Christ, now your faith is, I'm going to agree with God that I am who God says I am. I have what God... So your confession and the words of your mouth actually ignite your identification and so that confession that Jesus is Lord, we were on an airline and we were sitting in an emergency row sometime ago and the lady comes up to us, the stewardess says, "Will you help us if you have an emergency"? And we just nodded. And the lady said, "I must have a verbal response". And I said, "Yes, ma'am, we will help you". And she said, "Okay". In other words, that emergency row was so critical, she can't just have a nod and so when it comes to your faith in your confession of faith, you can't just give God a nod. He need you to say something about that. He needs you to declare that. And so your confession...
— And you don't use the word kinda when you're doing it.
— Oh, yes, ma'am,
— I'm kinda going to go. How do you kinda go?
— So you agree with God in your confession and that confession precedes the reality and the experience of salvation. And so the Lordship of Jesus and you confess him as Lord, and Paul says, "We have the same Spirit of faith, same thing David had, same thing Joshua and Caleb had. Same thing Jesus had, same Spirit of faith". And so the same means identical. We have the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. That's our identification, the same identical Spirit, same Spirit of faith.
— And if the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He'll make alive your mortal body.
— He quickens it.
— I'll tell you that's a healing scripture there...
— That's how she got healed from that brain tumor was Romans 8:11.
— Well on the way down the hall to surgery...
— Tell us that... I had an inoperable brain tumor and so I was headed into surgery to have a biopsy, see what that was, and on the way, because I believe God sent his Word, he always sends his Word to heal. And it's a timely word, right in time, just what you need. Psalm 107 verse 20. And the Lord sent this Word to me. Romans 8:11 that the same Spirit that dwells in you, it's the same Spirit the raised Christ from the dead. And he will quicken your mortal body by that same Spirit. And I took hold of that. And Mark always talks about laughing, you know, the result of revelation knowledge is Ah! I got it. It's not my problem, it's Jesus. He already spoiled principality, he already dealt with this problem. So on the way to the surgery, here I was, with this gizmo on my head looking up at the ceiling tiles and, you know, I started laughing. The Holy Ghost is in me, he lives in me. That tumors nothing or whatever it is. And I went into surgery laughing.
— 6 hours later I'm out.
— You know the rest of the story.
— Here comes the surgeon, he said that tumor that was in every test has just disappeared, and we cannot find it anywhere.
— Well, of course. The same Spirit that raised Christ.
— The resurrection power.
— The Doctor, Dr. James Edward Mare, Jim Ed Mare. And he was my AME. He gave me my flight physicals and he delivered Kellie and John. Well, Marcy, his wife, she had a brain tumor. So he called me. He said, "I want you to anoint her with oil according to James 5". Sure, so I was there with him and they were taking her in. She's on the gurney, I anointed her with oil in the name of Jesus and went to James 5 and did all that. And then they rolled her in. Well, we were in a private waiting room right there next to the operating room. Well, the doctor wasn't in there all that long, and he's a good friend of Dr. Mare. He came in there and he said, "Jim Ed..." Well, when you start doing that, I mean, he got nervous.
— I don't know what to tell you. He said, "I got in there..." Now there was a dent in her brain where that thing used to be, but it's gone. So it happened right then. I mean, they said there's still a dent there where it had been.
— Praise God.
— I'm telling you this Book is alive...
— And resurrection power melts down, just like it did in Jesus when he was raised from the dead.
— Well, look, let's go over and look at this, because there's a clue to it right here in this 5th chapter. When you look... "Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: For we walk by faith, not by sight:" and so forth and so on. Now the 17th verse. "Therefore if any man, or any person be in Christ, in the Anointed one, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new". What's the old thing? that old sin nature. I mean, the night I accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior, it was about the second day in November, about 8:00 in the evening. And it took me about 30 seconds to close my mouth. Profanity was gone forever. I was a new creature. I didn't know it. I just liked it. I didn't know that verse existed... Therefore, if any man be and he's a new creature... And Brother Hagin said, "No, I'm a new creature. I'm a new creature. I'm a new creature".
— The guy that did that is no longer exist.
— Yeah, he said that.
— And one of his friends said, "Well, Kenneth no, no". He said, "I died..."
— No you didn't, I'm looking at you right... No he said, "I died, I passed away". But now notice here look at this, "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To know that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing or holding against them their trespasses... committed unto us the Word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God". Right now. "For he who knew no sin was made to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness".
— The righteousness of God in him.
— Made.
— Yeah, made that way.
— Made... And people get all bent out of shape. I sang a song, I'm the righteousness of God and Christian disc jockeys wouldn't play it. Who does he think he is... I don't think who... I know who I am, I read the Book. I read the operator's manual. The creator, the manufacturer's manual. And he made me. He had the authority to do that. And God said, "Abram, I have made you". I have made, I've already done this. I have made you the father of many nations. He had the authority to do it.
— Well part of that though, I mean we saw this in Bible College years ago and they said that Abram, God changed his name to Abraham, which is the sound of Jehovah in the middle of Abraham. So God changed Abraham's identity.
— Yes, he did.
— And his destiny. And so Abraham, every time he'd introduce himself, he would say, I'm not the old guy I used to be, I got a covenant with God now. And so his name, God's a master at changing those things.
— That "H"is Hashem. It is the Huh in Yod Hey Vav Hey. The unspeakable name of God, he changed his name. It is the first record of any name change in a blood covenant.
— Oh, wow, wow.
— Now the devil picked up on it and course they started doing voodoo using chicken blood, and they get off into a trance. So he's trying to imitate the thing, but he can't. Now, my background being American Indian... Well, they got called Indians by Columbus. They were tribes. They were tribal people. He thought he was an Indian. They wound up being called Indians, we did. But they had blood covenants because they didn't have any law. Well, that's the reason God didn't kill Cain, wasn't any law against it. So a law book had to be written and our laws are based on these laws. But anyway, he had to begin this, animals shed their blood in the garden for clothes. 15th Chapter of Genesis, the blood of animals, 17th chapter of Genesis, the blood of a man. And so that continued all pointing to Jesus. So that he would have the right and the authority and the power to make us the righteous. Right standing with him. To make it. Now holiness is a different thing. That's a product of the fruit of the Spirit. This is a faith Word.
— You can't grow unrighteousness. You'll never be more righteous than the day you make Jesus your Lord. So that was a radical revolutionary revelation for us. I mean, we were raised in a Spirit-filled church, Assembly of God Church, we didn't have no concept, when Dad Hagin came and said, "Jesus made to be sin for us so we might be made the righteousness of God in him". He said, "God wouldn't make an unrighteous new creature". If you're a new creature in Christ, you must be the righteousness of God in him, which meant I'm free from the sense of struggling to be accepted by God. I'm no longer struggling to be accepted.
— And you get rid of that unworthiness.
— Unworthiness and guilt and shame.
— In that song, When He Was On The Cross, I changed the lyrics right there. Instead of, I'm not worthy.
— Really no one's worthy.
— No one's worthy. No one's worthy of such mercy.
— And really, I like to say this: your identification with Christ is a group picture. What happened on the cross, in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You see Jesus dying, Jesus buried, Jesus raised. But you come over to Paul's letters and he says, "We were there, we were there, we were there". But in the four gospels, it is a photograph of redemption. But Paul's letters is an x-ray, and x-ray is the same picture. It's a different kind of a picture, an x-ray sees inside you. So Paul says, "Let me tell you what happened, not only to Christ, but let me tell you what happened in Christ". And so the x-ray is what happened in the Spirit. The x-ray is what God saw, what the devil saw, what angels saw. So Paul's revelation literally shows you that the death and resurrection of Christ is a group picture. What's the first thing you look for in a group picture, is you find yourself, and then you say, now, there I am right there on the cross in his death and his resurrection, made alive together.
— So when you read Ephesians, you're going, "Oh, I think the first revelation, it was very revolutionary was reading Ephesians 1 in first person. I am accepted. I am chosen, I am blessed, all of those things". I thought, whoa, that's me. That's how God thinks about me.
— Let's go back over there to the Book of Ephesians, and you come down to this second chapter. And you... Oh, that's talking to me. "And you hath he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our manner of life in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God"... Now, to do a study of God, really in the first covenant, it just says God this and God that and God that. But you need to go back and see who's talking. In the beginning Elohim. All three of them. All three of them.
— Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.
— Yes, sir. But then it's different, the names of God. Then he said, "I'm Almighty God, I am El Shaddai, I'm the God that's more than enough". But then he said, I am Yahova... Jehovah. I am Jehovah Rapha. I'm the God that heals you and for healing to pass away, he'd have to change his name.
— Yeah, yeah, true.
— But the point that is heavy on my heart is this. The identification with Christ. That was me hanging on the cross.
— I was there.
— I was there. And I saw it in the Spirit like this. Uh, in fact, I have an outline on it in here somewhere, but I must resist actively everything he bore for me. Well, everybody is quick to say, well, he bore my sins in his own body on the tree where he was sin. Well, yes, that's right. But he bore my sickness and disease at the same time. So I resist sickness and disease. He was made a curse for me, which included spiritual death and poverty. So I resist poverty. And, you know, it's a funny thing, when you begin to preach that prosperity gospel, then everybody gets mad. Well, of course they do. Of course they do. Because the devil had them convinced they had to be poor to be a Christian. Well, you know, Jesus was poor.
— Jesus was poor.
— Well what did he need a treasurer for if he was poor. There's enough money there for him to steal. Where did they get the clothes they put on the mad man of Gadera?
— Well, I heard a preacher, we was driving through Saint Louis, and I heard a preacher on the radio years ago, and he said, "Poor Jesus, he's so poor he had to borrow a boat to preach out of". I said, "Well, a guy that can walk on the water don't need to borrow no boat". I said, "The only reason he borrowed the boat, is he filled it up". And then this preacher man said, one more thing he said, "Poor Jesus so poor he got buried in a borrowed tomb". I said, "That don't mean he's poor. It's a bad investment to buy a tomb for three days. He didn't plan on staying there".
— That's right and you know what, what you just said about Jesus becoming sick for us. He became sin for us. He became sick. That's what I meditated on before I went into surgery. And I knew that Jesus took my sins and I became one with him. He lifted off of me my whatever, brain tumor or whatever it is...
— We keep holding these five minute broadcast. What did you say there at the last. What did you say.
— And by his stripes I am healed. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah.
— We'll be back in a moment.