The Divine Exchange

by Derek Prince

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” ~ Isaiah 53:6

     

CONTENTS

Atonement, the orange grove and the storehouse keeper
Consider the work of Calvary
Healing comes
A central truth
A divinely ordained exchange

1. Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven.
2. Jesus was wounded that we might be healed.
3. Jesus was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness.
4. Jesus died our death that we might share his life.
5. Jesus was made a curse that we might receive the blessing.
6. Jesus endured our poverty that we might share his abundance.
7. Jesus bore our shame that we might share his glory.
8. Jesus endured our rejection that we might have his acceptance with the Father.
9. Jesus was cut off by death that we might be joined to God eternally.
10. Our old man was put to death in him that the new man might come to life in us.          

The following is a transcript of five messages preached by Derek Prince in 1987 as part of a series entitled The Fullness of the Cross. This series is a classic, one for the ages!
        
Atonement, the Orange Grove and the Storehouse Keeper
        
I believe that it would be appropriate for me to begin by quoting a verse from a hymn that I don’t believe I’ve ever heard sung. I don’t know where the verse came to me, it must have been at least 40 years ago or more, but for some reason or other this verse has stayed in my mind. And I think in a way it expresses what I want to be able to communicate to you which is the completeness and the totality of the victory that was won by Jesus on the cross. This is the verse:
        
“The winds of hell have blown, the world its spite has shown. The cross is not our throne. Hallelujah for the cross.”
        
I trust that by the time these studies end, every one of us will say with a new emphasis “hallelujah for the cross.” I probably should begin by explaining what I mean by the cross because particularly for people from a Catholic or a liturgical background there’s room for misunderstanding. I do not mean a piece of metal or wood that is suspended around a person’s neck or hung on the wall of a church. In no sense am I criticizing that but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what was accomplished in the purposes of God by the death of Jesus on the cross. I just used a simple phrase, the cross, to cover that whole meaning.

One of the words that’s often used in this connection is the word atonement. It’s a familiar word to most people with a Christian background but I think many don’t really know what the meaning of the word is. I would just like to demonstrate it by writing it up in three parts. At-one-ment. So the atonement is what makes us at one with God. It’s what breaks down every barrier between God and man and makes it possible for a sinner to be brought into a place where he is at one with God. I think it’s perhaps as expressive as any word that’s used.

By way of a scriptural introduction I want to turn to Hebrews 10:14, one very simple verse that says a tremendous amount. This is speaking about what Jesus has accomplished on our behalf through his death on the cross. We need to bear in mind all the way through that the death of Jesus was a sacrifice. The word used here in the version I’m reading is offering but we need to bear in mind it always means a sacrifice. When Jesus died on the cross he was two things: he was the priest that offered the sacrifice and he was the sacrifice himself. And his death was a sacrifice in the proper Biblical sense of that word. And concerning that sacrifice, the writer of Hebrews says:
        
“For by one offering [but let’s say by one sacrifice] he [that’s Jesus] has perfected for ever those who are being sanctified.”
        
That’s about as emphatic as any words could be. By one final, all sufficient sacrifice he has perfected forever. He has done all that ever would be necessary at any time to meet the needs of every believer. And I want to emphasize that right from the beginning. I believe that every need of every human being in time and eternity whether it’s spiritual or emotional or physical or material or in any other realm, every single need of every human being has been supplied through the sacrifice of the cross. There is no other basis ultimately upon which God will meet our needs and do what needs to be done for us other than the cross.
        
That is why it is so tremendously important that we learn to appropriate what was accomplished for us through the death of Jesus on the cross because we only have in our experience as much as we receive through the cross. The extent of what you are able to appropriate through the cross will be the extent of your spiritual experience and riches. I want to say this most emphatically. God has no other basis upon which he will supply our needs and do what needs to be done for us other than the cross.

Sometimes when I’m teaching in the Third World I try to use simple little examples or patterns to express these things. Actually, they work just as well in America or Britain but the British and the Americans tend to think of themselves as a little more sophisticated. So if I present it from the Third World you may be better able to receive it.

My mind goes back to a situation in Pakistan just about two years ago or a little less where I had gone with a team to preach. The first meeting was held in Karachi and I had never met the brother that invited us until we arrived. The whole scene was entirely unfamiliar to me and I really didn’t know what to expect. The atmosphere was by no means friendly. I said to him, “Where are we going to hold the meeting tonight?” He said, “In our church.” Well, having seen the abysmal poverty of Pakistani Christians I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. So I said, “How many people do you think your church will hold?” He said about 300. I said, “How many people are you expecting at the meeting.” He said about 600. So I didn’t understand that but I wasn’t going to try to reason it out.

So they put us in a van and drove us there and true to Pakistani time we arrived an hour late where the church was. We never saw the church because when we got near it the entire intersection was totally crammed with people. And by conservative estimate there were about 3,000 people there. They had come for this meeting. They had come for one reason: Because they had heard we were going to pray for the sick. That was what brought them. They got me up on a platform and I was surrounded by people so close that I could have touched them on every side. There was no room for anyone to move. I looked at them and I thought, “What am I going to say to them?” And then God gave me this little parable. I had determined to speak to them about what Jesus had done on the cross, what they could receive.

So I said to them, “Now if you people were all hungry and I were the owner of an orange grove, I could do two things. I could go to my orange grove, take an orange, bring it to you and say, ‘Here, eat that.’ And it would temporarily satisfy your hunger. Or, the other thing I could do would be to invite you to the orange grove, show you the orange grove with all the fruit on the trees, invite you to walk around and help yourself.” I said, “That’s what I’m going to do tonight. I’m not going to offer you an orange, I’m going to take you to the orange grove.”

That’s what I’m going to do during these studies. I’m going to take you to the orange grove. It’ll be up to you to help yourself.

I was in Africa a little while earlier, in Zambia, and I had a whole series of meetings each morning with African leaders. I wanted to follow basically the same theme that I’ll be following here and I thought, “How can I awaken their interest?” So I said, “I want you all to know that God has a wonderful storehouse. You have no idea how big the storehouse is and it contains everything you’ll ever need. There’s nothing you’ll ever need that isn’t in that storehouse. But, the storehouse has a keeper, a person who is in charge of the storehouse. You can’t get anything out of the storehouse unless you make friends with the storehouse keeper.”
        
Now they were all professing Christians, at least most of them. So I said, “What is the name of the keeper of the storehouse?” And of course some of them said Jesus. I said, “I appreciate the answer but it’s not what I want. The keeper of the storehouse is the Holy Spirit. He is in charge of all the treasures of the Godhead.”

Let me show you that in John 16:14–15. Jesus is speaking about what the Holy Spirit will do for his disciples and he says:
        
“He will glorify me; for he will take of what is mine, and declare it [or reveal it or unfold it] to you.”
        
And then he goes on:
        
“All things that the Father has are mine; there I said that he [the Holy Spirit] will take of mine, and declare it to you.”
        
Notice everything that the Father has he has imparted to the Son. And everything that the Father and the Son have is under the charge of the Holy Spirit. The only one who can impart it and reveal it is the Holy Spirit. He is the keeper of the storehouse.

Then I said to them, “When you come to know who the keeper is then you need to know that there’s a special key that he uses. And there’s only one key that will open that storehouse. And that key has a very special shape.”

I would let them offer me a few guesses as to the shape of the key. I don’t recall that anybody gave the answer that I wanted. I said, “The shape of the key is a cross and the cross is the only key that will open the storehouse that contains all the treasures of God.” You can be a child of God, born again, believing the Bible, but you can live like a beggar unless you make friends with the keeper of the storehouse and unless you allow him to use the key which is the cross to open up all the treasures of God.” There is no other key ultimately to all the treasures of God but the key of the cross.

Now I say this on a background of personal experience. I have observed in my own life over many years that I hardly ever teach anything that is just an abstract theory. Actually, I am not interested in theories. I was, before I became a preacher, a professional philosopher, I dealt in theories. I had all I wanted of theories at that time. I want no more.

Almost everything that I consider of any significance that I’ve discovered in the Bible has in some way been related to experience. God seems to use experience to motivate me to find truth. When you’re in need you are motivated to look for an answer. I want to tell you briefly this morning how my experience opened up the truths that I’m going to try to share with you.
        
 Consider the Work of Calvary
        
I was drafted into the British Army in World War II, a professor of philosophy without any knowledge of God. I had been a member of the Anglican Church, I had done all that the church required of me and I have to say, without any criticism of anybody, I had not met God. I am not questioning that God is in the Anglican Church somewhere but I have to say he and I never met. When I went up to Cambridge University at the age of 18 I felt I had done all of the churchgoing I needed to do in the early years of my life because we used to have to go to church eight times a week. So I thought that’s the end of Christianity. I viewed Christianity as a kind of crutch that weak minded people used to hobble through life with and I decided I wasn’t that weak minded, I didn’t need the crutch and so I threw the crutch as far as I could throw it and set out to find my own answer to life’s problems.

That’s why I became a philosopher. I felt somewhere must be a meaning and a purpose to life and if it wasn’t in Christianity the obvious place to look was philosophy. I was successful academically but I hadn’t found the answer when World War II came. When I was drafted into the British Army I was faced with the fact that I would no longer have access to a large library right at my back door and books were really the central thing in my life. I was faced with the question, what will I take to read when I go into the Army? I sat down in a philosophic way and reasoned it out and I said to myself, “Here you are, you’re supposed to be a teacher of philosophy but there’s one book of philosophy in the world which is more widely read and more influential than any other book and you know very little about what’s in that book. It’s your philosophic duty to study it.” You have probably guessed that the book I had in mind was the Bible. I’m glad that I was sensible enough to recognize its unique influence.

So I bought myself a nice new black Bible and took it with me into the Army. I had no idea how to study the Bible so I said to myself, “How do you study the Bible?” I said, “Like any other book, start at the beginning and read it through to the end.” My first night in an Army barrack room with about 24 other soldiers I sat down on the bed, opened my black Bible and started reading at Genesis 1:1. I didn’t realize that reading a Bible in public in the Army made you very conspicuous! I still recall the uneasy hush that fell on the whole barrack room when they saw somebody reading a Bible.

However, when I wasn’t reading the Bible I didn’t live the least bit like people who read the Bible. I don’t want to go into all my many sins. Let me say two things: I was a heavy drinker of whiskey and I was a hopelessly confirmed blasphemer. Being in the Army made that much worse. I was incapable of speaking without using some kind of blasphemous word. I always remember that with shame but that was the way it was.

So there I was for nine months reading my Bible, drinking my whiskey, blaspheming, baffling everybody including myself. The Bible was the first book I’d read that defeated me. I had always been able to say this is where the book is right and this is where it’s wrong and this is where I agree. I couldn’t do that with the Bible, I couldn’t classify it, I didn’t know what it was. Was it philosophy, was it mythology, was it poetry, was it history, what was it?

And at that point God put in my way some people unlike any I had ever met in my life. My religious background was very staid, I mean, I had grown up in the Anglican Church. I knew there were Roman Catholics and you ought to stay away from them! I had two friends who were Jews and I knew there were Methodists; some people who had made trouble in British history way back! Believe it or not I had never heard of Baptists. I didn’t know there were such people. It’s difficult for Americans to believe that. The people I met were not Anglicans, they were not Methodists, they were not Baptists, they were not Jewish. They were Pentecostals. Now, if they had told me that, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me. I had never heard of Pentecostals. But, I can’t go into the details, being together with them I realized they had something I didn’t have.

First of all, the Bible was meaningful to them. They talked about the Bible as if it was the morning’s newspaper, as if everything in it had just happened. I said to myself, “This isn’t reasonable, these people — actually they were people of very humble origin and very limited education. I said, “They have never even been to a university. I’ve spent seven years at Britain’s largest university, they understand it and I don’t.” And they tried to explain it to me and I could not understand the language that they used. Actually, if they had spoken Greek I would have understood it better.

I came to a point of desperation. I’m not going to go into the background but I decided one night in the Army barrack room, which I shared with one other soldier, to pray until something happened. So I let him go to sleep and about 11 P.M., a fine night in July I started to pray. I discovered I couldn’t pray. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know who to pray to. I was totally baffled. I spent probably about one hour just trying to say something that could be called prayer. And then something changed in a way that I was not able to account for and I found myself saying to some unknown person, “Unless you bless me I will not let you go.”

And when I started to say I will not let you go I couldn’t stop. I went on saying, “I will not let you go, I will not let you go, I will not let you go.” And then some strange power began to take control of my body and my arms started to go up in the air and I noticed that the palms were upwards. One part of me was analyzing this experience all the time. In the middle of everything the analytical philosopher was still there. Why were the palms upward? And I got an immediate answer without reasoning: power from on high. And I saw in a way that I could have never reasoned that there were two sources of power: one from on high and one from below. And I knew that I had been in touch with the one from below because I had been heavily involved in the occult but I had never been in touch with the one from above.

That power came over me cast me on my back on the floor and I spent more than one hour on the floor with my arms still up in the air which is not possible naturally. And I had a total transformation in my whole being. I don’t want to try to describe it in detail but from that day to this, and that is now 46 years ago, there are two things that have been absolutely clear to me. One is that Jesus Christ is alive. The other is that the Bible is true. And so I concluded that I was wasting my time studying philosophy when the Bible was the book with the answers. So at that moment I ceased to be a philosopher and I decided I would give myself to studying the Bible. Later the Lord called me to teach the Bible.

Very shortly after that experience the British Army sent me overseas with my unit and I spent the next two years in the deserts of North Africa in Egypt and in Libya. During that time I became sick with a condition of the skin which was called by all sorts of long medical names. Ultimately was diagnosed as chronic eczema. And I spent one year on end in a military hospital in Egypt—which is not the place to spend a year in the hospital, believe me.

As I lay there in that hospital bed I knew God, I was baptized in the Spirit, I believed the Bible but I didn’t have an answer. I kept saying to myself, “If I had faith, I know that God would heal me.” But the next thing that I always said was, “But I don’t have faith.” And when I said that I was in what John Bunyan calls the slough of despond, a long, deep, dark valley of despair. But one day through a book by a former medical doctor, Lillian Yeoman, a piercing ray of light penetrated that valley and the light came from Romans 10:17 which says in the version that I was then reading:
        
“So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.”
        
And the word that I laid hold of was this: Faith cometh. If you don’t have it you can get it. I want to tell you, each one of you, that’s true. Faith comes. You don’t need to be without faith. You may be without faith right now but you don’t need to stay that way. Faith comes how? By hearing. Hearing what? The word of God.

So I decided that I would devote myself with new intensity to studying my Bible which was the only book I had with me except that little book by Lillian Yeoman. So I was very simple. Having been a philosopher I appreciated simplicity. I armed myself with a blue pencil and I said, “I’ll read through the whole Bible and underline in blue everything that relates to four themes: healing, health, physical strength and long life.” Well it took me quite a number of months to do that but I worked all the way through the Bible and at the end do you know what I had? A blue Bible.

But I was still not healed.

And then when I was in a hospital at a place called Al Balagh on the Suez Canal, a most unusual lady came to visit me. I had met her briefly before. She was a brigadier in the Salvation Army. She was a brigadier because her husband had been a brigadier, he died and she automatically took his rank. But she was a very unusual Salvationist, especially in those days, because she was an ardent tongue speaker. She had heard about this Christian soldier in this hospital in Al Balagh and, Lord, may her memory be honored, she was 76 years old at the time. She got hold of a small four-seater car, a British soldier to drive her and took her American coworker with her, a young woman from the State of Oklahoma and they made this rather tiresome journey to the hospital where I was. She marched into the hospital ward fully attired as a brigadier of the Salvation Army: bonnet, ribbons and all the other things, overawed the nurse and obtained permission for me to go out and sit in the car with them in the hospital compound.

So I found myself sitting in the back seat of this very small four-seater car. The British soldier was in the driver’s seat, the Salvation Army brigadier was next to him. Beside me in the back seat was this young woman from Oklahoma. There was no preliminaries, the brigadier said, “Let’s pray.” So we started to pray. After a little while the young lady from Oklahoma began to shake all over. I wasn’t frightened, I knew it was the Holy Spirit. Then I began to shake. Then all of the people in the car began to shake. Then the car began to shake. The engine was not running but it was vibrating and rattling as if it was going about 50 miles an hour over a rough road. Now I knew that was the presence and power of God. And what humbled me was I knew God was doing it for my sake.

Then this young lady from Oklahoma spoke in a very clear, articulate, beautiful tongue. Then she gave what I understood to be the interpretation. Now you have to know in those days I was far more British than I am now. I had a background in the classics, I was a student of Shakespeare and I spoke very articulate English. I hardly need to tell you Americans that people from the State of Oklahoma are somewhat different! But when this young lady gave this interpretation it was in the most beautiful, articulate English. And it was absolutely designed for me because it contained things in it that other people wouldn’t appreciate.

Now I do not remember all of it but there’s one part I never will forget. It’s as vivid to me today as it was then. It said this:
        
“Consider the work of Calvary. A perfect work, perfect in every respect, perfect in every aspect.”

Now that is elegant English by anybody’s standard. But it was particularly meaningful to me because I had grown up studying Greek and instantly my mind went to the Greek New Testament and one of the last utterances of Jesus on the cross when he said, “It is finished.”

The Greek word is just one word tetelestai. But it’s the perfect tense of a verb that means to do something perfectly. I have said sometimes you could translate it this way: It is perfectly perfect or it is completely complete. I realized that the Holy Spirit was interpreting that statement of Jesus and applying it to what had been accomplished by his death on the cross at Calvary. I realized that the Holy Spirit was showing me if I could receive it, the answer to my need was there provided by the sacrifice of Jesus.

Now I got out of the car just as sick as when I got into it but I had direction, I knew where to look. I understood that I was to study what the Bible teaches about what was accomplished by the death of Jesus on the cross, the work of Calvary. That was 44 years ago. I have to say I’m still studying today. I have never exhausted that theme. I just thank God that he was so gracious and so merciful early in my Christian walk to direct me to the work of Calvary.

As I studied this I was confronted with what seemed a clear statement that on the cross Jesus not merely took our sins but he took our sicknesses and our pain. And partly because of my background as a philosopher which is essentially analytical, and partly because of my background in the Anglican Church where I had formed the impression—and I’m not saying it was the correct impression but I had formed that impression that if you were going to be a Christian you had better expect to be pretty miserable and a failure. And here I was looking at something that seemed to say something totally different, that the Lord had provided complete healing and success.

As I went through the words I’d underlined in blue I couldn’t find anything negative. There was never a suggestion that God wanted his people to be sick or to fail or to be defeated. There was no suggestion anywhere. And in particular it seemed to me very clear that the Bible said Jesus, on the cross, bore our sicknesses just as much as he bore our sins. And he bore our sicknesses that we might be healed just as much as he bore our sins that we might be forgiven. I tell you, I searched the pages of the Bible, went backwards and forwards because it was totally contrary to my way of thinking to come to that conclusion.

So then I decided that I was going to believe this and I entered a period of spiritual conflict that would be hard to describe. The conflict was in my mind. You see, the more you have trusted in your mind the more struggles you’re going to have in your mind. My whole strength and my life was my mind. And I somehow felt God had provided this sacrifice, it’s for me. But I don’t believe there was a single objection to divine healing that wasn’t brought to my mind supernaturally because I didn’t discuss it with people. Every possible objection against the teaching of divine healing came to my mind in those months.

I found myself doing something that I saw patterned by Abraham and I want to just read one verse in Genesis 15. We’ll come back to this later on in these studies, it’s a covenant that God made with Abraham. The covenant was based on certain animals that Abraham had to sacrifice. After they had been sacrificed and the bodies had been exposed, the vultures came down to feed on those carcasses. Abraham was responsible for driving the vultures away and keeping the carcasses of the sacrifice intact. And in Genesis 15:11 it says:

When the vultures came down on the carcasses, “Abram drove them away.”

I felt myself like that. Here was the sacrifice but there were all these dark vultures assailing my mind and trying to take away what had been provided by the sacrifice. I would speak of doubt and fear and depression and discouragement. I was particularly subject to depression. And I cannot in words describe the conflict that went on inside. You could look at me from outside and you wouldn’t know that anything was happening. But there was this turmoil in my mind. Every time a doubt was insinuated I would turn to the word of God and drive the vulture away with a scripture.
        
Healing Comes
        
I now believed that Jesus had provided my healing, that it was there for me but I wasn’t apprehending it. I wasn’t appropriating it. And then the blessed Holy Spirit gave me the verses that got me out of the hospital. They can do no less for each one of you. If you need them they’re found in a book that you might not expect to find them in, the book of Proverbs, chapter 4.

It’s interesting as a matter of just objective fact that when I had my Bible outlined in blue there were two books that had more blue than any other. One was the book of Proverbs and the other was the gospel of Matthew. If you really want a treatise on healing you can find it in the book of Proverbs.

So, it was in Proverbs 4:20–22. Now I’ll quote them, I’m reading the New King James, I’ll quote them in the Old King James because they’re so deeply embedded in my mind I can never say them any other way.
        
“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those who find them, and health to all their flesh. “
        
When I got to that final sentence I said to myself, “That settles it. If God has provided something for me that can give me health in all my flesh, I’m enough of a logician to know that health and sickness are opposites. Where you have health there is no room for sickness. If I can have health in all my flesh then there will be no room for sickness.”

Then I looked in the margin of the particular Bible I had and I saw that the alternative translation for health was medicine. Well, I said, “That’s even better. If I’m healthy they’ll keep me healthy but if I’m sick they’ll be my medicine.” I saw that they was God’s word and got saved.

So once again I chose to be simple. How I bless the times in my Christian life when I’ve chosen to be simple. And what problems I’ve gotten into when I decided to be complicated. I said to myself, “I happen to be what the British Army calls a medical orderly.” That’s one person who helps the doctor. I said, “I’m going to take God’s word as my medicine.” I said, “I’m going to do it literally.” Well, when I did that the Lord communicated to my mind this. He said, “When the doctor gives the person medicine, the instructions for taking it are on the bottle. And unless the person takes it according to the instructions no cure is guaranteed.” God said, “This is my medicine bottle and the instructions are on it, you better read them.”

So I went back again and I read them and saw there were four instructions.

1. Number one: attend to my word. Give careful undivided total attention to what God is saying. He’s worth listening to.
2. Number two: Incline thine ear. That means bow your head down and be teachable. Don’t try to tell God what he ought to have said because he’s said a lot of things you’d never think he would have said.
3. Let them not depart from thine eyes. Focus your whole attention on what God is saying in his word. Don’t have a spiritual squint.
4. And, keep them in the midst of thine heart. When you receive God’s word by attention through your ears and through your eyes, they meet in your heart. And the heart is the center of all human life and experience.

The very next verse of Proverbs says:
    
“Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.”
        
Everything in your life is settled by what you have in your heart. I want to leave that thought with every one of you. The course that your life will take depends on what you have in your heart.

So I said, “Well, that’s it. I’m going to take God’s word as my medicine according to the directions.”

So I renounced all further medication. I want to say very emphatically I’m not against doctors or medicine. But they had done everything they could do and I was no better. So I said, “From now on I’m going to take God’s word as my medicine.” I can’t go into all the details because it’s a long story but for about three months in one of the worst climates in the world which was the Sudan, I took God’s word three times daily as my medicine. That’s how people take it, three times daily after meals. After each main meal I went away, bowed my head, opened my Bible and said, “God, you said that these words will be medicine to all my flesh, I’m taking them as my medicine now in the name of Jesus.” I didn’t experience any miracle, there was no particular moment of a dramatic change but within three months I was totally well. There wasn’t any sickness anywhere in my body. Other soldiers who were healthy were getting sick in the same climate.

Furthermore, when I look back now over the years that have passed it seems to me that somehow I got an injection of divine life and strength which is still with me today. I am well over 70 today and I am more active, I preach more, travel more, work more than at any previous time in my life. To God be all the glory but let me say it pays to take the medicine. That’s just an introduction to my own experience.

I will mention one other thing that happened that was significant. About 1947, for the first time I went to the country of Norway and I was in a Pentecostal conference there and I stayed in the home of some people. They talked to me about a certain preacher whom I had never met but what they said about this preacher was when he teaches about the atonement two hours pass like ten minutes. That staggered me. I thought to myself, “Two hours! How could anybody spend two hours talking about the atonement? I would find it hard to spend ten minutes.” But it stirred something in me. I saw here is a mind. If only I can get into that mind, its treasures are limitless.

And so that experience in the hospital and then the testimony of that Norwegian preacher placed in me a determination to find out for myself about the atonement. That’s what I’m going to be sharing with you in these ensuing lessons. 

A Central Truth
        
Now before this session closes I’d just like to focus for a few moments on Isaiah 53:4–6. We’ll probably not have time to complete this but we’ll begin. All the New Testament writers agree that this is a prediction of Jesus though he’s not named.
        
“Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows [But the correct literal meaning are sicknesses and pains] yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes [or his wounds] we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
        
Now I want to study those verses together with you but I want to take just the remaining minutes of this particular session to analyze the structure of Isaiah. I believe you’ll find it very illuminating.

The prophet Isaiah contains 66 chapters. And by all agreement there is a tremendous break at the end of chapter 39. So it’s divided up into 39 chapters plus 27 chapters. And that, coincidentally, is the number of books in the Old Testament, 39 and in the New Testament, 27.

Now if you take the last 27 chapters of Isaiah, that is, 40 through 66, you’ll find that they fall naturally into three groups of nines. The first group of nine is 40 through 48. The second group of nine is 49 through 57. The third group is 58 through 66. Now what divides them is at the end of each group of nine there is a specific warning of God’s judgment on the wicked. If you turn for a moment to the end of 48, verse 22:
        
“There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.”
        
Then you turn to the end of chapter 57 and it says:
        
“There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”
        
You turn to the end of chapter 66, verse 24:
        
“And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.”
        
Every one of those three sets of nine ends with a specific warning of God’s judgment on the wicked. That’s the dividing line. So you now take the middle set of nine which is 49–57 and you take the middle chapter. It is which? 53. So 53 is the middle chapter. Now look for a moment at 53 and you’ll see—and I think almost all Bibles with a verse division will indicate this—it’s made up of four sets of three verses. Verses 1–3, verses 4–6, verses 7–9 and verses 10–12. So you got four sets of three verses. Now if you go back to the end of chapter 52 you find there are three verses at the end which are an introduction to chapter 53. I’ll read them for a moment. Isaiah 52 beginning at verse 13:
        
“Behold, my servant . . .”
        
And that’s the introduction to all that follows. It’s the revelation of God’s servant.
        
“. . . shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished at thee, his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: so shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them they shall see; and that which they had not heard they shall consider.”
        
You’ll see that is, in a way, a kind of summary of 53. It speaks of the humiliation and the suffering of Jesus, the exaltation of Jesus and the cleansing of his sprinkled blood that comes promised. So the last three verses of 52 are the introduction to 53 which contains four sets of three verses.

Now if you add in the end verses of 52 to the four sets of three in 53 you get five sets of three verses. Is that clear? All right. You don’t have to have a computer to work that. Now if you take five sets, what’s the middle set? Three. All right. So the middle set is verses 4–6. That is the middle of the middle. It’s in the middle of the middle nine, it’s in the middle chapter and it’s in the middle three verses. Now that is no accident. What the Holy Spirit is telling us is here is the center of the revelation of the New Testament. What does it consist in? The substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus. And it concludes with verse 6 which we will return to in our next session.
        
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him [that is on his suffering servant revealed in history as Jesus of Nazareth] the iniquity of us all.”
        
So in our next session we’ll go on to consider the full significance of that critical verse, Isaiah 53:6.
        
A Divinely Ordained Exchange
        
At the close of the last session we had arrived at Isaiah 53:4–6 and I pointed out to you that these are very uniquely placed verses. If you take the last 27 chapters of Isaiah, these verses are in the middle chapter and the middle verse. I think the Holy Spirit is telling us this is the heart of the message of salvation. You know that the name of Isaiah is directly linked with the Hebrew word for salvation. He is the prophet of salvation. Here is the essence, the heart of salvation. We’ll look once more at verse 6 and consider its meaning a little more carefully.
        
“All we like sheep have gone astray . . .”
        
“All we” leaves out no one. Do we agree about that? Does that apply to all of us? You don’t have to tell me but you need to make your mind up.
        
“. . . we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him [that is Jesus] the iniquity of us all.”
        
That word iniquity is an interesting and important word. The Hebrew word is avon. That word is here translated iniquity and most times in the King James, the New King James and I think the New American Standard it’s translated iniquity. Its basic meaning is guilt. Another way of rendering it is perversity. What is our guilt? What is the guilt of the whole human race? You won’t find it by looking at my face! It’s down there in the verse. What have we all done? We’ve gone astray and particularly have done what? Turned to our own way. I think the most contemporary translation is rebellion. That’s the universal guilt of the whole human race.

But Isaiah says:
        
“the Lord has laid upon him the guilt [the perversity, the rebellion] of all of us.”
        
There’s another sort of free translation which says:
        
“the Lord made to meet together upon him the guilt [perversity, rebellion] of all of us.”
        
I remember the second time I went to a Pentecostal church before I had met the Lord and I felt I was in very strange circumstances. At the end of the message the preacher said, “If you want this, whatever it is, put your hand up.” I knew they were all talking to me because I was the only sinner present. And the previous time I had been two days earlier in a different church the preacher said this, you know, “every head bowed, every eye closed, put your hand up.” I was offended. I’d never been in any place where they told me in church to put my hand up. I sat there in the silence wondering what was going to happen next and what happened next was somebody else put my hand up. My hand went right up in the air and I knew I had not raised it. Talk about emotionalism, I was nervous! Then they said to me in this strange language they used, “There’s going to be revival in the Assemblies of God.” Well, I didn’t know what a revival was and I had no idea what the Assemblies of God were but I thought, “if this is part of this thing I’ll go and see what is going on.”

This is my second service and the man preached on “Enoch was not because the Lord took him.” He was one of those preachers who believe in making things vivid and up to date. And so he drew a modern picture—this is Britain—of the CID which would be the FBI here in America coming with their tracking dogs to trace the missing Enoch. The dogs followed the scent so far and then there was no more scent, it didn’t go north or south or east or west. So they concluded he must have gone up. Well, with my logical background I can see that’s logical. Then we got to the end of this message and I knew what was coming, every head bowed, every eye closed, and put your hand up. I said to myself, “Somebody did it for me last time, I couldn’t expect that to happen twice. If I really want this I better put my own hand up.” I put my own hand up and after that there was a sigh of relief and they went on with the service. I mean, sinners were few and far between in services in those days. In this quote, revival, I was the only person that raised my hand in one week.

But anyhow—they were disappointed at the result. At the end the preacher came up to me and he looked at me and I looked at him and I think he thought he had a problem on his hands. So he asked me two questions. He said, “Do you believe that you’re a sinner?” My specialty in philosophy was definitions so the natural way for me to answer that question was quickly run through all the definitions of a sinner I could think of. And every one of them fitted me exactly. So I said, “Yes, I believe I’m a sinner.” Then he said, “Do you believe that Christ died for your sins?” I remember very clearly what I said. I said, “To tell you the truth, I can’t see what the death of Jesus Christ 19 centuries ago could have to do with the sins that I’ve committed in my lifetime.” And there I reached a block. And he was wise enough not to argue with me. I’m sure he went away and prayed for me.

Well, then I met the Lord and my intellectual problems were set on one side but they were not totally disposed of. I still didn’t fully understand how something that had happened 19 centuries earlier could relate to the sins I’d committed in my lifetime. But it says here the Lord made to meet together upon him the iniquity [or the guilt] of us all.

But one day reading in Hebrews 9 I found the answer for me. It might not be the answer for others. Hebrews 9:14 is speaking about the power of the blood of Jesus and it says:
        
“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? “
        
Notice that phrase again “he offered himself.”

The word for sacrifice I pointed out – he was the priest and he was the sacrifice. As a priest he offered his sacrifice which was himself. But the words that resolved my problem were the words that came before that, “through the eternal Spirit.”

Now because of my knowledge of classical languages I knew exactly what the word eternal means. It doesn’t mean an endless period of time. It means something that’s out of time, in a different realm from time. And so I understood that what happened at Calvary was in the eternal realm. It wasn’t just limited to a point in human history although it was a point in human history. But in that transaction there, God the Father took the iniquity of all men of all ages, past present and future and laid them upon Jesus on the cross. That resolved my problem.

Going back now to Isaiah 53:6. The word avon that you have up there not only means guilt but it means the punishment for guilt. And in translating from Hebrew you have to determine sometimes by the context shall it be translated guilt or punishment for guilt. And sometimes you have to translate it both. So that God not only laid on Jesus the guilt of us all—now listen, this is vitally important—but he laid upon him the punishment for the guilt of us all.

Just because this is so important I want to take a few examples from the Old Testament where this word avon is used and show you how it’s translated. We’ll turn, first of all, to Genesis 4:13. This is the cry of Cain after God had pronounced judgment on him for the murder of his brother.
        
“Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.”
        
The word is avon. Not only my guilt, but the punishment for my guilt.

 And then an interesting passage in 1 Samuel 28:10 where King Saul at the end of his life did a very terrible thing and went to consult a witch. The witch didn’t want to respond to his request because the penalty for witchcraft was death. She didn’t know she was dealing with the King of Israel at the time. But Saul made this promise to her. Saul swore to her by the Lord saying, “As the Lord lives no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.”

The word is avon. You will not have to answer for your guilt. So it’s not so much guilt as punishment for guilt.

And then in Job 19:29. We don’t need to go into the context but it says:
        
“Be afraid of the sword for yourself, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword.“
        
…where you could hardly translate it the guilt of the sword. You have to translate it punishment.

And then two passages in Lamentations. Lamentations 4:6 and 22. If you’re having trouble finding Lamentations, which could happen, it comes at the end of Jeremiah.
        
“The punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom.”
        
You’ll see there it’s translated both punishment and iniquity. The punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people. You see, it’s a concept that we don’t actually have in English. So in translating we have to be flexible.

And then the same chapter, Lamentation 4:22:
        
“The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion.”
        
Again it’s translated both punishment and iniquity.

Now that’s very important because it’s the key to understanding what happened
when Jesus died on the cross. God the Father made to meet together upon him the guilt, the perversity, the rebellion of all of us and all the evil consequences that follow rebellion. I’m going to say that again because it’s crucial. If you miss me here you’ll be trailing for the rest of these sessions. This is the key. God the Father made to meet together on Jesus on the cross the iniquity, the guilt, the rebellion of us all and all the evil consequences of rebellion.

Now if you can once grasp that, that’s the key to the storehouse. Everything you need is contained in that revelation. We’re going to study and see to some extent how it’s worked out. Let me say it this way: What happened on the cross was a divinely ordained exchange.

Think of that key word exchange. All the evil due to our rebellion met together upon Jesus. That’s the left hand. The right hand is the opposite. That all the good due to the sinless obedience of Jesus might be made available to us.

Now I’m going to say that again because I have to imprint it on your mind. It’s contrary to our natural thinking. We wouldn’t reason it out that way. All the evil due to our rebellion came upon Jesus on the cross that all the good due to his sinless obedience might be made available to us. Or, to say it very shortly, the evil came upon Jesus that the good might be made available to us.

Now I’d like you to participate with me in saying that because as a teacher I know that when you act you get more. So I want you to observe me and then do what I do. Don’t do it the first time, just observe. The evil came upon Jesus, that’s my left hand, that the good might be made available to us. I want you to use your left and your right hand. Put your pen or paper or whatever it is down. Don’t follow me because my left is your right. Use your left. Okay? The evil came upon Jesus that the good might be made available to us.

Let’s say that again. The evil came upon Jesus that the good might be made available to us. Now I want to change one word. This is to help you. Instead of saying us say me. Now it’s very personal, it’s just you and God. You know what they say at the cross? There’s only room for one at the foot of the cross? You’re the one now. You’re looking up at the cross, you see his body beaten, bleeding, a horrifying spectacle, something that you don’t really want even to look at or think about. And then you say this. (Now we’re going to say me, remember.) The evil due to me came upon Jesus that the good due to Jesus might be made available to me.

That’s right. It’s when you make it personal. Now you may not have felt any change but you have opened the way to the treasure house when you’ve grasped that one central fact.
        
1.     Jesus Was Punished That We Might Be Forgiven
        
Now what I’m going to say to you will be straight out of the Bible and you might say it isn’t true. But the truth of the matter is it is true and if you will begin to hear it and say it and think it, it’ll become true in your experience. See, God deals in things that we don’t think are real. God said to Abraham, “I’ve made you the father of many nations.” He didn’t have a son of his own! But God said, “I have made you.” As far as God was concerned it had happened already. So when God says he’s made all the evil to meet upon Jesus, as far as God is concerned it’s happened. It takes you a long while to appropriate what God has done but it’s there all the time. Can you grasp that?

Now let’s look at some aspects of the exchange. Actually, in your outline that you have I’ve listed ten. I don’t want you to imagine for a moment that’s complete, it’s just a specimen. You may recall that when the Lord spoke to me through that young woman from Oklahoma, she said, “Consider the work of Calvary, a perfect work, perfect in every respect, perfect in every aspect.” So there are respects and there are aspects.

We are going to look, if you wish to say it, at ten different aspects of the work of Calvary. Ten different ways to view what God accomplished there by the death of Jesus. We’ll begin with Isaiah 53:4–5. I’ll read them again.
        
“Surely he . . .”
        
Let me pause there because I want to bring out something in the language. That’s the most emphatic way possible to emphasize the word he. What the Holy Spirit is doing is directing our attention away from ourselves and our problems to him who is the solution. The word surely in Hebrew is aken and it’s a word that’s used to direct your attention to the next word that follows. Then in Hebrew, as in some other languages—maybe not languages that you’re familiar with unless you know for instance Russian—but in Latin, Greek and Hebrew you can either put the pronoun in with the verb or leave it out. But the form of the verb tells you what it is anyhow. Can you get that? So you can say “he bore” without putting in he. But if you put the he in, you’re emphasizing it. And if you put the word aken in front of the he, you’re doubly emphasizing it. So what we get is all the emphasis placed on he.

He’s the solution. There’s no solution in ourselves. We don’t have the answer. But if we can only turn ourselves away from ourselves and our own problems to him on the cross, he is the solution.

“Surely he has borne our grief . . .”
        
But the literal meaning of that word is sicknesses. I’m glad that I have Martin Luther on my side. In the German version he uses the two standard German words conkite(?) and schmertz(?), sickness and pain. And that is the correct meaning of those words all through the Hebrew language from Moses down to the present day. Still the word that’s used to be sick is the same word. So I’m going to give you the literal translation which you do find in some versions. It’s an extraordinary thing to me that the modern versions which are not hesitant to correct the King James in a whole lot of areas don’t do it in this area. You know why? Because their translator’s mind couldn’t grasp the reality of the fact that Jesus actually took our sicknesses. That’s a tremendous hurdle for a theological mind to get over, isn’t it?
        
“Surely he has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains. Yet we esteemed his
stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.”
        
I remember once in 1947 I was talking to a Jewish man in the streets of Jerusalem. I told him that I believed Jesus was the Messiah. I always remember his answer. He said, “He couldn’t have been a good man. If he had been a good man God would never have let him suffer like that.” And that’s exactly what Isaiah says. We did esteem him smitten by God and afflicted. But, verse 5:
        
“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised [or crushed] for our iniquities, the chastisement [or punishment] for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes [or his wounds] we are healed.”
        
There are two aspects in those verses. First of all, the punishment in verse 5, “for our peace came upon him.” The punishment due to our wrongdoing came upon Jesus. Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven. That’s the opposite. It says in verse 5 the punishment for our peace that we might have peace. Until the punishment for sin had been inflicted there was no possibility of peace. But Jesus was punished that we might have peace with God through being forgiven.

If you want to look at those two passages there that I mentioned, Ephesians 2:14–17, speaking about what took place on the cross. Paul says:
        
“He himself [that’s Jesus and notice the emphasis on he] is our peace who has made both one [that’s Jew and Gentile] has broken down the middle wall of division between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And he came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and to those who were near.”
        
Notice the emphasis is on the word peace. There can be no peace for the sinner until he knows that his sin has been forgiven. And just to confirm that in Colossians 1:19–20.
        
“For it pleased the Father that in him [Jesus] all the fullness should dwell; and by him to reconcile all things to himself, by him were the things on earth the things in
heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”
        
So Jesus was punished that we might have peace through being forgiven.

I think we’ll practice doing this without hands because I want this to be imprinted on your mind. I want you from this time onwards never to be able to forget. I’ll do it once. If I do it wrong you correct me because I sometimes get it wrong. With my left hand I’ll do the evil, with my right hand I’ll do the good. Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven. All right, that’s very simple, isn’t it? But it’s very important. This time I want you to do it with me. Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven. Let’s do it once more. Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven. Now we’re going to do I and me. This is very personal, it’s you at the foot of the cross, nobody else there. God is dealing only with you. I’ll do it once then you do it together. Jesus was punished that I might be forgiven. Jesus was punished that I might be forgiven.

All right, that’s the first aspect of the exchange.
        
2.     Jesus Was Wounded That We Might Be Healed
        
Now, in the same two verses we get the physical aspect of the exchange which is just as clear. Going back to verse 4:
        
“Surely he has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains. [And then verse 5:] He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement [or punishment] that brought us peace was upon him; and by his stripes [or wounds] we are healed.”
        
Notice how logical it is? He took our sicknesses, he bore our pains and by his wounds we are healed. The Hebrew there for “we are healed” is rather difficult to render in English but I’ll say it this way: It was healed for us. That’s the nearest I can get. So you can say healing was obtained for us. Why? Because he took our sicknesses and bore our pains. Therefore, healing was obtained for us.

To make it short and simple we will say he was wounded that we might be what? Healed. That’s very simple, isn’t it? But very important. It concerns a lot of us here at this present time. He was wounded that we might be healed.

Before we do that I want to emphasize that the New Testament totally endorses this interpretation because this passage of Isaiah is quoted twice in Matthew 8 and in 1 Peter 2. In each case it was a Jew quoting it who understood Hebrew and in each case he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. So we have a totally reliable and authoritative interpretation.

Keep your finger in Isaiah 53 in case we need to go back there and turn to Matthew 8:16–17. Now this is the opening of the public ministry of Jesus. This is the first time he began to minister in public. It says when evening had come, because it was a Sabbath, and the Jews were not allowed to travel or to carry anything on the Sabbath. So they had to wait until the Sabbath was over to come to him and bring their sick.
        
“When evening had come, they brought to him many who were demon possessed;
and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick.”

Notice how many he healed? [Congregation said all.] Are you sure of that? What did it say? [All.] Did it, really? Now, why did he do that? The next verse tells you.
        
“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying, He himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.”
        
What is he quoting? Isaiah 53:4. And notice that he uses two words for physical problems. Infirmities and sicknesses. If you were to distinguish between them I would say infirmities would be weaknesses, things that you’re liable to, like allergies, and sicknesses would be actual diseases like cholera or diphtheria or influenza, whatever it might be.

But, you see, Matthew says that the healing ministry of Jesus was the fulfilment of Isaiah 53:4–5. And he emphasizes that he healed every one. Why did he heal every one? Because he had taken, or was going to take—but in the eternal counsel of God he had already taken—our sicknesses and borne our pains. You know that’s good news! I don’t see how people can hear that and believe it without getting excited. Maybe it will take a little while to sink in but it’s not only good news, it’s exciting news.

You see, if the church really believed that, evangelism would be pretty simple. Like suppose I suffer from corns which, thank God I don’t. Suppose I did. And I discovered a remedy that completely dispelled corns. I mean, I just forgot I ever had a corn. I see this poor dear old lady hobbling around with corns. You know, it would be almost inevitable that I would say, “Madam, do you know that there’s a remedy for corns? You don’t have to have those corns.” I wouldn’t have to be an evangelist. I’d just have to be a normal person. Isn’t that right? If we, not somebody else but we – that includes me – if we were totally convinced of what I’m teaching we would evangelize.

Going to Pakistan was a revealing experience for me because it’s 98 per cent Moslem country. And we got as many as 16,000 people out to meetings without much advertising. Why? Because we prayed for the sick. And they got healed. They got healed. Not all of them, only a few of them, but they really got healed. The blind saw, the deaf heard, the lame walked. Believe me, brothers and sisters, you don’t have a problem getting a crowd if you have that. There are plenty of other fine ways to attract people but the number one central method of the New Testament is miracles. And practically speaking, they cost nothing—in the natural. In the spiritual they cost a lot.

Let’s go on to 1 Peter 2:24. Oh, I want you to notice before you do, Matthew 8:17, notice the quotation in the version that I’m reading:
        
“He himself . . .”
        
Notice all the emphasis? Where is it? On he, that’s right. And then we’ll go to 1 Peter 2:24. This is speaking about Jesus. It’s one of these long sentences that the New Testament writers indulge in. Beginning at verse 23:
        
“Who, when he was reviled, did not revile in return; when he suffered he did not threaten; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously. Who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sin, might live for righteousness: by whose stripes [or wounds] you were healed.”

Notice that? See, that’s both aspects. The spiritual, he bore our sins in his own body on the tree that we might be forgiven, and he took our sicknesses and bore our pains that we might be healed. I tell you, brothers and sisters, some of you are responding and some of you are not. That’s not my problem. But you may need to renounce unbelief at some time. I know it’s not easy to believe. Believe me, I struggled in a hospital bed for months to the point where I really believed it. It’s a strange thing. The critics of Jesus in his day never questioned that he could heal the sick. They did deny his claim to forgive sins. The church today, the evangelical church takes it for granted that people’s sins can be forgiven but stumbles over the fact that people can be healed. Which is harder? To forgive sins or to heal sickness? Which is the greater miracle? That our sins can be forgiven. There’s no miracle that transcends that.

You’ll find in previous centuries tremendously intelligent and dedicated and earnest men like John Wesley struggled for years to apprehend by faith the fact that their sins could be forgiven. Because today it is pretty generally taught, people take it for granted. They walk up and take it like helping themselves to a pill over the counter. It’s comical.

In John Wesley’s ministry in Cornwall, which is the extreme southwest county of England, there was a man, just a humble man who said that he knew his sins were forgiven. You know what they called him? A blasphemer. They press-ganged him into the British Navy to deal with him. See? Really it’s a subjective issue. It’s our attitude that determines how we’ll respond.

Again, I want you to notice in verse 24 of 1 Peter 2. Who? What? Himself. Do you see that? All through the emphasis is on him. Brothers and sisters, there is no solution in ourselves. You can go on quoting doctors about your sickness as long as you please and feeling yourself here and there and everywhere else. But it’s not the solution.

I am always amused at people who tell me they can’t memorize scripture. “Brother Prince, I just can’t memorize scripture.” But the same lady goes to the doctor, comes back and tells you verbatim everything the doctor said about her sickness. She memorizes what she believes.

Did we do this one on both hands? I don’t think we did. Now this time I’m to expect you to do it with me just by intuition. It’s the physical. He was wounded that we might be healed. He was wounded that we might be healed. Now I. He was wounded that I might be healed. Put your hand up in the air and say it. That’s you. Amen! Tell me, how much work did you have to put into getting your sins forgiven? None. How much work do you have to put into getting healed? None. It’s finished.

I have studied Greek since I was ten years old. The word that’s used in 1 Peter 2:24, you were healed, is the normal Greek word for physical healing. And again, like the Hebrew words, it’s not changed its meaning. It still has the same meaning in modern Greek. From it comes the modern Greek word for a doctor, iatros.

Christians sometimes say to me, “Brother Prince, how can I know if it’s God’s will to heal me?” And I usually answer something like this—and mind you, there’s lots of things I don’t know and lots of questions I can’t answer. It doesn’t embarrass me the least bit. But I say, “If I rightly understand the revelation of scripture, you’re asking the wrong question. It’s not how can I know if it’s God’s will to heal me, it’s how can I appropriate the healing which God has already provided for me.”

You find that healing is never in the future tense when it refers to the atonement. Seven hundred years before it happened Isaiah said healing was obtained for us. And fifty years or so afterwards Peter said by whose wounds you were healed. It’s very emphatic. A simple past tense. It happened on the cross. It’s a fact of history. Whether we believe it or not it’s true. What we believe will affect us. We can’t change the facts of history, they’re already stated.
        
3.     Jesus Was Made Sin With Our Sinfulness That We Might Be Made Righteous With His Righteousness
        
Let’s go on. I think we’ve got time to do the next one. Going back to Isaiah 53 and verse 10. Now, the last three verses of Isaiah 53 give the spiritual significance of what’s happened, the purpose of God which was accomplished.
        
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him [to crush him]; he has put him to grief . . .”
        
And it’s the same word for sickness. Let’s not go into that but it’s the same word.
        
“. . . when you shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”
        
It’s also possible to translate it “when his soul shall make an offering for sin.” It doesn’t make any difference to the bottom line which is Jesus’ soul was made an offering for sin. Jesus’ body bore our pains and sicknesses, but his soul was made the sin offering.

Now in order to understand the implication of that you have to be just aware of the procedure for the sin offering in the Old Covenant under the Levitical law. When a man sinned he had to bring the appropriate offering. It might be a sheep or a goat or a bullock. Incidentally, the more important the man, the bigger the offering. This always amuses me because if the high priest sinned he had to bring a bullock. And you know they didn’t keep the cattle next door to the tabernacle. So if the high priest sinned he had to go all the way out to where the cattle were kept and lead his bullock all the way up to the altar. And everybody must have thought, “Well, I wonder what Aaron did!”

Anyhow, when he arrived the priest laid his hands on the head of the offering and the man confessed his sin over the offering. And symbolically the sin of the man was transferred to the goat or the bullock or whatever. Then the goat or the bullock paid the penalty for the man’s sin. Instead of killing the man they killed the goat. So the sin offering was something to which the sin of the person was transferred so that the offering paid the penalty for the man’s sin. See the picture?

Jesus’ soul was made the sin offering. This is a staggering thought. I don’t believe we can even begin to comprehend what it meant for the soul of Jesus to be identified with the sin of the whole human race. That utterly pure and undefiled soul became identified with the sin of all humanity. He became the sin offering. Our sin was transferred to him and then he paid the penalty in our place. So his soul was made the sin offering. He was identified with our sins.

Now because of the fact that the word offering is used, a lot of contemporary Christians don’t appreciate what Isaiah is saying. The soul of Jesus became identified with our sins. But, if you keep your finger in Isaiah 53 and turn to 2 Corinthians 5 and the last verse of the chapter which is verse 21, this is Paul’s rendering of Isaiah 53:10. If you don’t understand the terminology of the sin offering, you don’t recognize it. Paul is saying the same thing in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that Isaiah had said in Isaiah 53:10. Now I’ll read it the way it is, then put in the nouns in place of the pronouns.
        
“For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
        
Let’s put in the pronouns.
        
“God the Father made him, Jesus the Son, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
        
That is staggering! If you think it’s staggering that he took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses, this is infinitely more staggering. He was made sin with our sinfulness that we might become righteousness with his righteousness. What’s the exchange? Not a problem. You don’t have to be a theologian. In fact if you were a theologian you’d probably have problems. Now forgive me, Lord. I just get so impatient with people who make the Bible complicated. My whole aim in life is to make it simple. I may not succeed but at least that’s what I’m trying to do.

Now you theologians, come on and let’s see if we can do it without prior rehearsal, the left hand and the right. He was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness. That was good to start with, now let’s do it again. He was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness. If you’re not excited about that there’s something missing. Praise the Lord, I got one excited student here!

But now let’s do it individually. Not us but my. He was made sin with my sinfulness that I might be made righteous with his righteousness. Isn’t that wonderful!

Now let me just give you one very beautiful picture of this exchange which makes me excited. Isaiah 61:10. You’ll notice how many times we go to Isaiah. He is the prophet of salvation. Not that the other prophets don’t have the message of salvation but it’s his theme, especially these last 27 chapters. I read these words and I’m smiling, you wonder why I’m smiling. Because my mind goes back to my boyhood. I read here:
        
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God . . .”
        
I always picture myself walking out of a typical English church which is at least 200 years old, it’s new. It’s rather cold and I’ve been in this Anglican service where we have been saying the most glorious things about God. I mean, the Anglican liturgy is just glorious. And then the people walk out of church and there isn’t any evidence whatever that they’re excited about anything. I always used to think to myself, “Now, if that lady in front of me dropped her lace handkerchief and I ran after her and gave her her handkerchief back she’d get much more excited about her handkerchief than about all the things she’d been saying in church.” Why? Because they’ve never been real to her. That’s not a criticism of the Anglican Church, it’s true of multitudes of churches. People have never grasped this glorious reality.

Now, if you grasp it you’re going to have to be happy—even if you don’t want to be happy you’re going to have to be happy. And let me point out to all of you dear Christians, it is no sin for a Christian to be happy.
        
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God . . .”
        
The Hebrew says sos asis bah adoni. I just say that because there’s a beautiful new Hebrew song just been written by a Jewish believer in the last year that’s based on these words.
        
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation [you’re saved, wonderful, but don’t stop there], he has covered me with the robe of righteousness . . .”
        
Bear in mind that when you get the garment of salvation that’s an undergarment. But there’s a top garment that goes over it. What is that? The robe of righteousness. One other translation, I think it’s the NIV, says, “he has wrapped around with the robe of righteousness.” Whose righteousness? His righteousness. You see, you can never feel guilty after that. If you once realize that the devil has got nothing to say against you because no matter from what point he attacks you and criticizes you, you say, “It’s all right. I’ve got the robe of Christ’s righteousness wrapped all around me, I’m covered on every side. There’s nothing you can say against me.” In fact, when the devil accuses you of all the silly things you’ve done and the wicked things, the Bible says agree with thy adversary. Tell him it’s quite true. Perfectly right. I can tell you a lot more things as a matter of fact! But it’s all in the past because he’s given me a garment of salvation and he’s wrapped me around with the robe of his spotless, divine, eternal righteousness.

You see, the righteousness of God has no past to be ashamed of. It’s incapable of guilt. It’s totally perfect and pure. And that’s what we’re offered through this exchange. I hope you begin to see that this exchange opens up to every area of your life, everything you really need. Everything you really long for. And more than you can imagine. It’s all contained in this divine exchange.

Let’s go very quickly to the three aspects that we’ve done. You may have to help me because I sometimes get confused when I’m on the platform. The first one is punished. The second wounded. The third is sin. We’ll do we, our and us and so on to start with. Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven. Jesus was wounded that we might be healed. Jesus was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness. Now what can you do after that? You have to say thank you, Lord. What else is there to say? Amen, thank you, Lord. Praise your name Lord Jesus.

We’ll continue with the various aspects of the exchange in our next session, God helping us.
        
4.     Jesus Tasted Death For Us That We Might Share His Life
        
We’ve been looking at various aspects of the exchange that took place when Jesus died on the cross. The essential principle is stated in the words “the evil due to us came upon him that the good due to him might be made available to us.” It was a divinely ordained exchange. We will just quickly review the aspects of the exchange that we’ve already looked at, then we’ll move on.

I spent five years of my life training teachers for African schools in Kenya. One of the principles that became very real to me is stated this way: nothing has been taught until something has been learned. I saw my student teachers go through all the procedure at the front of the class, writing things up on the chalkboard and all that, but as I walked around the back and looked at the pupils’ exercise books I realized that nothing had been learned. So just to go through the processes of teaching doesn’t necessarily teach. I’m going to do my best in every way I can to make sure that something has been learned.

So we’re going to review the three aspects of the exchange that we have already looked at. And rather than look at your outlines, for a moment I would like you just to try and do it by memory. It could be that you’ll have to correct me. We’ll do the left hand for the evil, the right hand for the good. We’ll do a short version.

• Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven.
• Jesus was wounded that we might be healed.
• Jesus was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness.

Now we’ll go on to the next which is that Jesus died our death that we might share his life. Although this is stated in Isaiah 53, it’s stated perhaps most clearly in Hebrews 2:9. We’ll start there in Hebrews 2:9. It says:
        
“But we see Jesus, [and the see is by revelation, it’s not with natural eyesight but it’s the revelation of scripture.] who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor that he by the grace of God might taste death for every one.”
        
Notice the word grace. We need to emphasize that word. I probably haven’t emphasized it enough. Everything that we’re talking about proceeds from the grace of God. Anything that comes by grace cannot be earned. If you can earn it, it isn’t grace. Paul said in Ephesians 2:8:
        
“By grace you are saved through faith, and that’s not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast.”
        
So where it’s by grace it’s not of works. It cannot be earned. Grace is received only through faith. John 1:17 says:
        
“The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
        
So Jesus is the channel of grace, the cross is the basis of grace. It’s only on the basis of the cross that God offers grace. And it’s by faith that we receive grace. Let me say that again. Jesus is the channel of all grace. Only through Jesus is God’s grace made available. The cross is the basis of the offer of grace and we receive it by faith, not by works.

Nobody can explain the grace of God. It’s unexplainable. Why did God permit Jesus to go through the terrible agonies of the cross on behalf of people like you and me? And the Bible never gives any explanation. So I would say don’t try to look for one. Just be willing to receive by faith the measureless grace of God. The unexplainable grace of God.

The problem with most religious people is they try to earn grace but you can’t earn it. And as long as you’re trying to earn it by works, you don’t receive it. At some point you just have to stop trying to earn it and just receive it.

Paul said in Romans 4:
        
“to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”
        
If you want to receive grace, what’s the first thing you have to do? You have to stop working. We’re talking exclusively about things that come by the grace of God.

And the writer of Hebrews says here that by the grace of God Jesus tasted death for every one. He died in the place of everybody who was due to die. Because the wages of sin is what? Death. When Jesus was made sin it was inevitable that he had to die. That is the inevitable consequence of sin. Now it says he tasted death for every one.

There’s an interesting statement which is not in your outline but God directed my attention to it this morning. It’s in John 8:52. The Jews are criticizing Jesus for things he’d been saying.
        
“Then the Jews said to Jesus, Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham is dead, and the prophets, and you say if any one keeps my words he shall never taste death.”
        
I want to point out to you that Jesus didn’t say he shall never die. He said he shall never taste death. And Hebrews 2:9 says that Jesus by the grace of God tasted death for every one. It’s very obvious that believing Christians do die physically. But they don’t taste death. The bitterness, the darkness, the anguish and all the evil that goes with death. Jesus tasted all that for us. He endured our death.

The alternative is so obvious that everybody can say it. What is the opposite of death? Life. Let’s say that then. “Jesus tasted death for us that we might share his life.” I prefer to say that. Let’s say it again. “Jesus tasted death for us that we might share his life.”
        
5.     Jesus Was Made A Curse That We Might Receive The Blessing

Then we come to Galatians 3:13–14. Here is a very clear, specific aspect of the exchange which has largely been ignored by the Christians that I have associated with. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anybody preach a message on this text except myself. But for me, over the last five years, it has become increasingly vivid and important. Through the insight that God has given me on this text and its application to the cross, I have seen, I think, more radical and dramatic transformations take place in peoples’ lives than through any other truth that God has given me. So we’ll look at it and then we’ll analyze it. Galatians 3:13–14:
        
“Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”
        
Remember that the tree was the cross. Some people don’t understand that, but in some languages the word tree means a tree when it’s growing and a tree when it’s cut down. If you happen to be in East Africa, in the Swahili language the word “mti” means exactly the same. It’s a tree growing or a piece of wood cut down. When it says the tree, it’s talking about the cross. I’ll read that verse again.
        
“Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”

In other words, when Jesus hung on the cross, every Jew who knew his Old Testament recognized that Jesus was made a curse. Then we read the other side of the exchange in verse 14:
        
“That the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
        
Now, what are the two aspects of the exchange in that verse? What’s the evil? Curse. What’s the good? Blessing. It’s very clear, isn’t it? Jesus was made a curse that we might receive the blessing. Let’s say it again. “Jesus was made a curse that we might receive the blessing.” And you’ll notice there’s tremendous emphasis on curse in verse 13, the word occurs three times. Christ has redeemed us from the curse, having become a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is every one who hangs on a tree.

In 1979 Ruth and I were in a family conference in the State of Missouri. A young man whom I don’t know that I ever met before or since kind of interrupted the conference in a way with a prophecy which was one of the most significant in my life and ministry. The prophecy had two main themes. This is unrelated to what we were talking about at the conference. It will have something to do with what I’m going to deal with later on in this series. But the prophecy said in effect: “All that God has been doing against witchcraft up to the present time has been nothing but preliminary skirmishes. But from now on God is declaring total war on witchcraft.” That was 1979. Then it said: “The reason is that witchcraft has millions of men bound whom God needs in his end-time army.” Then, as a kind of P.S. it said: “And you will come across people who are under a curse that comes from preceding generations. But you do not need to be afraid, you will be able to release them.”

Well, that was totally new to my thinking at that time. That was 1979, now 1987, that’s how many years? Eight years, nearly eight years. I have seen that prophecy totally fulfilled many, many times over. God opened up a whole new area of truth to me concerning curses. And I have had the joyful experience of seeing hundreds of thousands of people released from curses. And the basis is this – there is no other basis for any provision of God – the basis is Galatians 3:13–14.

That Jesus was made a curse perhaps we need to confirm. If you keep your finger in Galatians 3 and turn to Deuteronomy 21:22–23. This is part of the Mosaic law:
        
“If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree. But you shall surely bury him that day so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. For he who is hanged is accursed of God.”
        
So by the divine plan of God, Jesus died hung on a tree. And by that God signified to all who knew his word that Jesus had been made a curse. And that’s what Paul says in Galatians 3:13. Jesus was made a curse that we might be redeemed from the curse. To redeem means to be bought back. And that in place of the curse we might receive the blessing.

Now, if I got into the subject of curses we’d miss the real thrust of this teaching so I only want to take a little while. But if you want to know about curses, there is one chapter in the Old Testament which is the source chapter. How many of you know which it is? Deuteronomy 28, that’s right. And it has 68 verses. The first 14 verses deal with blessings. The remaining 54 verses enumerate curses. And if you want to know what a curse is, you need to read the last 54 verses of Deuteronomy 28. It could shock you to find out some of the things that are called curses.

This is my rough estimate. I think Ruth and I find that when we minister to people, particularly praying for the sick, at least one out of every four persons we minister to is under a curse. In most cases the person is not able to receive healing until the curse has been broken. We have seen some very dramatic examples of this.

I think I’ll give you just one which happened a long while ago in the great city of St. Louis. I would say it didn’t really register with me at the time, it just happened and I said to myself, “There’s something here but I don’t quite know what it is.” But I was conducting a service in the Presbyterian church and it was a deliverance service. It was one of those churches that felt deliverance should be conducted in the basement. So, that’s where we were.

I was standing behind a little pulpit just like this one and I come to the end of my message and I was looking at the people sitting there and right on the front row, just about like where these people are here, there was a family: father, mother and teenage daughter. And I felt the Holy Spirit said to me, and I wasn’t anticipating it, “There’s a curse over that family.” So I stepped up to the father and I said, “Sir, I believe the Holy Spirit has shown me that there’s a curse over your family. Would you like me to revoke it?” And he immediately said yes. Later on I got to know that he had been through a lot of things which made it easy for him to believe there was a curse. So I stepped back behind the pulpit and I prayed a very simple prayer just releasing that family from the curse in the name of Jesus. When I said in the name of Jesus there was a visible, physical reaction in each member of the family although I was not touching them.

Then I saw that the daughter had her left leg in a cast from above the thigh to the bottom of the foot. So I stepped back and I said, “Would you like me to pray for the healing of your daughter’s leg?” And he said, “Yes, but you need to know she’s broken the same leg three times in eighteen months and her doctor said it will not heal.”

Now, if I heard that statement today I wouldn’t have any doubts that there was a curse because only a curse will cause a person to break the same leg three times in eighteen months. All I could do was just take the cast in my hands and hold it and pray a very simple prayer. I’ll cut the story short but the next time they went back to the clinic to have the leg x-rayed it was healed. And within a few weeks the cast was off. Apparently there was complete healing.

As I meditated on that I said this: Why did God show me the curse before he permitted me to pray for the healing of the leg? My conclusion was because if the curse had not been revoked, the leg would not have been healed. I have seen that confirmed scores of times in subsequent experience.
        
6.     Jesus Endured Our Poverty That We Might Share His Abundance
        
We have time, I think, to deal with at least one more exchange. This is really part of deliverance from the curse. It’s so specific that I’ve kept it separate. We put together two scriptures, always remember these two scriptures and never separate them. 2 Corinthians 8:9 and 2 Corinthians 9:8. It’s not difficult, once you’ve got one you can remember the other. So 2 Corinthians 8:9 says:
        
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich.”
        
Now you don’t have to be a theologian to see the exchange, do you? Jesus became poor that we might become rich. It’s difficult for some religious people to say it but it’s there. “Jesus became poor that we might become rich.” Now I’m going to adjust that later, that’s just to start with.

Now, turn to 2 Corinthians 9:8. Ruth, would you come up and stand beside me. The reason is that we have a number of scriptures that we confess regularly together because Jesus is the high priest of our confession. Did you know that? And this is one we say I would think, almost every day because we have a very large ministry which covers most of the globe by radio in six languages by cassettes and books. And the financial burden is extremely heavy. But praise God we don’t have to bear the burden. We have a burden bearer. This is our confession but we’ll read it the way it is here first. 2 Corinthians 9:8:
        
“God is able to make all grace abound toward you that you always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”
        
That’s an amazing verse. In the Greek the word “abound” occurs twice and the word “all” occurs five times in one verse. There is no way that language could be more emphatic. Paul says God is able. Do we believe God is able, let’s make sure of that. You do believe God is able? You really believe God is able? God is able to make all grace. So we don’t earn it. All right? We receive it by faith. It’s not our monthly salary, it’s grace abounding towards us that we always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work. “Every” is the same as “all” in Greek so there are five alls.

Now Ruth and I make this a personal confession. Every time we think of the sum that we’re responsible for we just say this. Now we make it personal, you understand? Instead of you we say we.
        
“God is able to make all grace abound toward us, that we always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”
        
Now let me point out to you there are two words there. There’s sufficiency and abundance. We need to understand the level of God’s provision. Let me give you a little example. You are a housewife and you need $50 worth of groceries. I don’t know how much $50 would buy these days but anyhow... So you go to the grocery store with $40, you’re shopping out of insufficiency. But you go with $50, you’re shopping out of sufficiency. But say you have $60 and you need $50 worth of groceries, you’re shopping out of abundance. That’s abundance. Abundance is connected with the word for a way. It means you have enough to watch over, for yourself and for others.

Let me take you back to Deuteronomy 28 for just a few moments and we’ll look at the Old Testament presentation of this. Remember what I said about Deuteronomy 28? It’s the chapter with all the curses? Well, right in the middle of it, verses 47–48, there’s what I call the poverty curse. Now I know that there are Christians who feel differently about this and I have to say I’m convinced out of scripture that poverty is a curse. If it’s not a curse, why do you work so hard to get rid of it? If poverty is a blessing, why not pursue it? There are some people who do—and I respect at least their motives. But I don’t believe it’s scriptural. This is the curse. Remember, this is in the list of curses.
        
“Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of all things . . .”
        
That’s God’s will, that you serve him with joy and gladness for the abundance of all things. What’s the alternative?
        
“. . . therefore, you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness an in need [or want] of all things.”
        
That’s a curse. It’s hunger, thirst, nakedness, need of all things. How would you sum that up in one word? Poverty. It is absolute poverty. You cannot have greater poverty than being hungry, thirsty, naked and in want of everything. Is it a curse or is it a blessing? Are you sure, really sure that it’s a curse?

Now I want to share a revelation that God gave me. It happened a good many years ago in the land of New Zealand which is one of my favorite countries. My first wife and I had been invited there for ministry and they told us they would pay our fare both ways. But, when we got there they didn’t have the money. So they said, “We’re going to take up an offering for your fare.” They said you can preach. So I’ve preached on offerings before, I got a list of scriptures and explained the Biblical principles. I was going through this and using my outline and quoting my scriptures. But at the same time something new came to me. In my mind’s eye, as I was preaching, the Holy Spirit was showing me Jesus on the cross.

As I went through the list of the curses of poverty I saw every one applied to him. He was hungry, he hadn’t eaten for 24 hours. He was thirsty. One of his last utterances was “I’m thirsty.” He was naked. They’d taken all his clothes off. And he was in need of all things. He owned precisely nothing. He was buried in a borrowed robe and in a borrowed tomb. Hungry, thirsty, naked and in need of all things. Why? Because he exhausted the poverty curse. The total poverty curse was exhausted when Jesus died on the cross.

Why did he exhaust the poverty curse? That we might have abundance. I prefer to say abundance. You can say wealth, but abundance and wealth are not exactly the same. Abundance means you have enough for yourself and something to give to others. You see, Jesus said it’s more blessed to give than to receive. And because you’re a child of God, God doesn’t want you to live merely on the lower level of blessing; always receiving. So he provides abundance so you might have something to give and thus receive the greater blessing.

I don’t believe that the Scripture of the New Testament indicates all Christians will drive Cadillacs. Or even Rolls Royces when it comes to that! I’m not sure all Christians should have large bank accounts. But I do believe that all Christians should enjoy abundance. Enough and something over, not for yourself, but for every good work. That, I believe, is the level of God’s provision for his people.

You see, a lot of people think Jesus was poor during his earthly ministry. I don’t. He didn’t have a lot of cash but he was never in need. Anybody who can feed 5,000 people in the wilderness is not exactly poor. And when he needed money for the taxes, he didn’t go to the bank, he went to the lake and got it out of a fish. I mean, what’s the difference whether you get it out of a fish or the bank! My little statement about Jesus in his earthly ministry is this: He didn’t carry a lot of cash, but he always used his Father’s credit card. And it was always honored. When he sent out his disciples he reminded them at the last supper, “When I sent you out without purse or bag or staff or anything, did you lack anything?” What did they say? “Nothing.”

I know missionaries that have a car, a salary and a house provided and lack a lot of things. So it isn’t a question exactly of how much you have in the bank. It’s a question of your relationship with the Lord.

Now, I think we have time to imprint this on ourselves. Let’s, first of all, do the left and the right. I’ll do it the first time because I want you to get the specific words. “Jesus endured our poverty that we might share his abundance.” Okay? Can you accept that? Is that a fair statement of what the Bible teaches? Now you’re going to do it with me. “Jesus endured our poverty that we might share his abundance. Jesus endured our poverty that we might share his abundance.”

Now, following the usual pattern we’ll do it more personal. This could change the whole course of your life. These next few words you say could have a permanent change in what you’re going to experience. Now we’re going to do it my and me. “Jesus endured my poverty that I might share his abundance.”

Now I think we just have time for us, Ruth and me, to teach you 2 Corinthians 9:8. I just feel unfair for us to have it all, you know, why shouldn’t you? I’ll tell you something. With my ministry, at 65, I said, “I think probably I should begin to think of retiring.” I told the people that run the ministry, “From now on, I’m thinking of retiring.” When I remind them of that now they just laugh in my face because our ministry in the last year increased between 200 and 300 percent in its outreach. And as for activity, I’m more active now than at any time that I’ve been in my life. Why I say that is because we have a tremendous financial responsibility. I don’t even want to tell you what it is. If you just look at us and think about us as people traveling around, you’d have no idea.

I know the way to raise money. You travel around the state, you hold conferences, you present the needs of your ministry and you sell your material. I got a lot of material to sell. But God commissioned us primarily to go to the people who don’t have, to the needy. So I have made a little bargain with the Lord. I said, “Lord, if I do that, I’m going to rely on you supernaturally to provide the needs of the ministry without my going around and telling everybody how much we need.” And the basis of our provision is 2 Corinthians 9:8. So Ruth and I are going to say it once more and then we’re going to give you the privilege of saying it.

And I suggest you YWAM’ers, you need to learn it by heart. They used to say it, interpret it—they don’t do it anymore, YWAM, Youth Without Any Money! It’s not true, they own castles everywhere! If you want abundance, just join YWAM.

We’ll say it once and you’re going to do it with us. “God is able to make all grace abound toward us that we always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” Now we’ll say it phrase by phrase and we invite you to say it after us. And don’t say it just at the back of the head of the person in front of you. You’re saying this to the unseen world. It’s your confession to angels, the Lord, demons and the whole works. Okay, are you ready? “God is able to make all grace abound toward us that we always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” Now we’ve got thirty seconds left, we’re going to let you say it with us this time. Are you ready? “God is able to make all grace abound towards us that we always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” Praise the Lord.
        
7.     Jesus Bore Our Shame That We Might Share His Glory
        
We’re going to continue today with the theme of the cross. Yesterday I explained that by the cross I do not mean a piece of metal or of wood—although I have no objection to that—but I mean what was accomplished by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross to be received by faith. I tried to lay the basis of understanding saying that the essence of what took place was a divinely ordained exchange in which all the evil due to man’s disobedience came upon Jesus, that all the good due to the sinless obedience of Jesus might be made available to us. That, I believe is the key that opens the treasure house of God. Very, very simply stated: “The evil came upon Jesus that the good might be made available to us.”

We had no claim upon it, we couldn’t demand it, God simply did it out of his sovereign, fathomless grace. I don’t believe that eternity will be long enough to find out why God did it but I’m so glad he did do it. That’s the most important fact of all.

Now, I want this to be a real learning period with you and so I’m going to do review from time to time and I’m going to give you some simple assignments which are optional, you don’t have to do them. But you’ll benefit if you do do them. We did, in the course of our sessions yesterday, cover six aspects of the exchange. I would like you to see if you can remember them without looking at your outline. It’s no sin to look at your outline but let’s just check how much we do remember. And I often need to look at the outline myself. I also want to say that there’s absolutely nothing final, no absolute theology in all of this. I’m not claiming that it contains all that was accomplished by the cross, it’s simply opening a door for you to enter in and appropriate what God has made available. So please don’t start a Derek Prince theology of the cross.

This is simply a guideline to point you in the direction in which you have to go for yourself. Nobody else can ultimately make these discoveries but you. There’s that old hymn that says there’s room for just one at the cross. And that really is true. You, personally, have to appropriate from God by the Holy Spirit and by the Word of God what the cross has made available to you, personally.

However, we’ll try and do this. Now I may stumble myself because I’m not going to look at my own outline. And I don’t always teach this exactly the same way so it could be that you’ll have to correct me. But we’ll do the evil on the left hand, the good on the right hand. Everybody participating now, the first one is:

• He was punished that we might be forgiven.
• He was wounded that we might be healed.
• He was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness.
• He died our death that we might share his life.
• He was made a curse that we might receive the blessing.
• And he endured our poverty that we might share his abundance.

Well, that’s wonderful!

Now you can look at your outline. We’re going to go on. There are four further aspects of the exchange which are on the outline. I want to make it very clear to you that that’s not all, these are just some examples. If you look in the outline, after the exchange between poverty and abundance there is shame and glory. This was made real to me through ministering to people in the area of deliverance and what is called emotional healing. I discovered that one of the deep problems that many people have is a sense of shame.

Now I don’t know why it is. I’m not claiming to be any bit better than anybody else, but some of these emotional problems I never had. I had to think myself into the position of people who did have them. For instance, I’ve met uncountable people who had a problem with rejection. I just never had that problem. It wasn’t because I was better, I mean my problem was something rather the opposite. If you don’t like me, that’s your problem not mine. But I discovered that there are multitudes of people who are tormented with a sense of shame. They feel really somehow they can never really lift up their face in the presence of God. I’ve noticed some people who worship, they always worship with their heads down. I think it’s a real symptom of something. Job said, “I will lift up my face without spot to God.” We ought to be able to come into God’s presence without any sense of shame whatever.

One great cause of shame in our contemporary culture is child abuse. People, whether boys or girls who were sexually abused in childhood, often have a lingering sense of shame which will follow them up through life. But I’m so glad that the cross provides a remedy.

Let’s look at the picture of the crucifixion of Jesus that’s given us in Matthew 27:35–36. You know, the Bible, and particularly the New Testament is unique in its discipline, the way it describes things. You take any modern author describing the crucifixion, he would have gone into all sorts of detail and tried to make it emotionally impacting. But the New Testament simply says “they crucified him.” It’s the most amazingly short statement. Let’s look there. Matthew 27:35–36:
        
“Then they crucified him, and divided his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoke by the prophets, ‘They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.’ Sitting down they kept watch over him there.”
        
We are often deceived by pretty religious art as to what took place when Jesus was crucified. But it’s stated very clearly here, they took all his clothes from him—because they wanted his clothes. Generally speaking, a man in those days had four basic garments. There were four soldiers, each soldier took one garment. Then there was the seamless robe and because it was such a particularly beautiful garment they said, “Don’t let’s tear it up, let’s cast lots for it.” So, if you study what that says it implies that he was left totally naked. Obviously there will be no religious art that will ever portray him that way.

So he was stripped naked and exposed to the gaze of the soldiers and all the passers by. And you find the New Testament in a way is very discreet. It says the women who came with him stood at a distance. The only one who came close was his mother. Behind that you see this picture of Jesus exposed in total shame. Why? This is the wonderful answer: He bore our shame. He took the shame that had come upon so many of us in so many different forms to do away with it, to eliminate it, to set us free from it.

What’s the opposite of shame? Glory, that’s right. Let’s look at just one other picture the Bible gives of the shame in Isaiah 53. You really need to keep a marker in Isaiah 53 because we’ll keep going back there from time to time. It says in verse 3:
        
“He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief [and that really is a man of pain, and acquainted with sickness]: and we hid as it were our faces from him.”
        
In modern English: we averted our eyes from him. The sight was so offensive we didn’t even want to look at it. That was our shame that he was bearing. Then we look at the opposite side in Hebrews 2:10:
        
“For it was fitting [or appropriate] for him for whom all things and by whom all things [that’s God the Father], in bringing many sons to glory, to make the author of their salvation [that’s Jesus] perfect through suffering.”
        
Notice one purpose of the sufferings of Jesus was to bring many sons to glory. So we have the exchange, Jesus bore our shame that we might share his glory.

It’s wonderful to think that God’s purpose was to bring many sons and daughters to glory. But it was only possible through the cross. Let’s do that now with the gestures, I’ll do it just once to sort of get you lined up. Jesus bore our shame that we might share his glory. Jesus bore our shame that we might share his glory. To be sure we really mean it we’ll do it once more. Jesus bore our shame that we might share his glory. Now we make it personal. It’s very important to make it personal because in the last resort it’s you as an individual. Jesus bore my shame that I might share his glory.

Let’s say thank you to him, shall we? I don’t think we can really believe that without saying thank you.
        
8.     Jesus Endured Our Rejection That We Might Have His Acceptance With The Father
        
We’ll go on to the next exchange which is closely related but it is different. That is, rejection. My observation is, and this is simply out of my personal dealings with many people, that the commonest, single emotional problem in our contemporary culture today is rejection. I’m also inclined to believe it is the deepest wound that the human heart can ever bear. There are various sociological reasons for that. Primarily it’s the failure of contemporary parents and particularly fathers. I have said sometimes the problem of America is it’s a nation of renegade fathers. And I would guess there’s some in front of my eyes here this morning. That’s something that you have to determine.

My conviction is that every baby born into the world is longing for one thing before anything else—that is love. And particularly the love of a father. A mother’s love is truly wonderful but a father’s love is what gives a baby security. There’s something about being held in the strong arms of a male that was designed by God to provide security. I sometimes look at little babies held in their father’s arm or over their shoulder, and the one thing that they are saying is “I’m secure.”

Also, love is really not effective if it isn’t openly expressed. To love people secretly is probably better than hating them secretly but it doesn’t do much, especially for children. Children need warm, openly expressed love. And my observation is at least 50 per cent of the generation now before us has been denied that provision of God through many different sociological facts. But the truth of the matter is that there are millions of people growing up in this nation and around the world that have never really known warm, outgoing, unconditional love. And the result is rejection.

It can begin earlier than that. I’ve dealt with many people who had a problem with rejection that started when they were in the womb. When the mother discovered she was pregnant she didn’t want the baby. Maybe she had too many mouths to feed, or maybe she was just selfish and centred on pleasure, or maybe her relationship with her husband was not good. But she just resented it.

An interesting thing that I discovered some years back when I was ministering to people and I dealt with people who needed deliverance from rejection, I discovered it was of particularly high proportion in a certain age group. When I checked when they had been born, I discovered it was during the Great Depression. I just deduced that here’s a mother struggling already with poverty and the problem of feeding who knows how many children and she discovers another one is coming. She just says, “I wish I didn’t have that baby, I wish I didn’t need to have that baby.” And that has an effect on that little person inside the womb. And it can come out of the womb already feeling rejected.

Then again, there’s another very common cause of rejection which is the break up of a marriage. In Isaiah 54:6—does anybody have an NIV here? Could I borrow it for a moment? Thank you. I’m choosing this because of the translation. Isaiah 54:6:
        
“The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit; a wife who married young only to be rejected, says your God.”
        
That’s exactly the situation of millions of women in this nation right at this time. They married young only to be rejected. However, let’s not imagine that the wound is borne only by a woman. Because a man can suffer just as deeply the wound of rejection from a broken marriage as a woman. So thank God that there’s healing. If there were no solution to people’s problems I wouldn’t want to focus on them. I would go off and just live it up while I had time. Sometimes I’m absolutely overwhelmed by the depth of human suffering. There are times when I feel it’s almost impossible to support that burden.

It’s bad enough in the west, but when you go to the Third World or behind the Iron Curtain, the total sum of human suffering is almost unendurable. But thank God we have the answer. If I didn’t have an answer I don’t know what I would do. I’m so thankful that it’s a complete answer. It meets every need. There is no need of humanity that is not met by the sacrifice of the cross. It’s wonderful to be the person with the answer.

I trust that by the time this series of studies is over and you’ve been ministered to individually by the people who help you, I trust that every one of you will go out of this period here as a person with the answer. You probably heard that saying, “I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.” Well you can be part of the solution. If you will grasp the truths we’re sharing and apply them, you can be part of the solution. I don’t think that God has ever given me a greater privilege than to be part of the solution. I know I don’t deserve it but I’m glad he gave it to me.

Let’s look at the picture now in Matthew 27, we’ll go back to that chapter and we’ll see how Jesus endured the wound of rejection. We’ll begin at verse 45 and read to verse 51.
        
“Now from the sixth hour [that was noon by their counting] until the ninth hour [which was 3 p.m.] there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried our with a loud voice saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?’ Some of those who stood there when they heard that said, ‘This man is calling for Elijah.’

Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. The rest said, ‘Let him alone, let us see if Elijah will come to save him.’

Jesus, when he cried out again with a loud voice, yielded up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”
        
What killed Jesus? It wasn’t crucifixion. He would have died but it would have taken considerably longer. When Joseph of Arimathaea went to Pilate to ask for the body, Pilate was surprised that he was already dead. Crucifixion was normally something of a lingering death. Jesus died of a broken heart. What broke his heart? Rejection. Rejection by whom? By the Father. The most agonizing of all rejection. He cried out in his agony, “Why have you forsaken me?” and no answer came from heaven. The first time in the history of the universe that Jesus prayed and got no answer. It says immediately after that he gave one further loud cry and yielded up his spirit.

But what was the result, the immediate statement that follows? The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Now it was an extremely thick veil, no human being could have torn it in two starting at the bottom. But when it was done from the top it was to demonstrate it was a work of God. The veil was what separated sinful man from a holy God. And when Jesus took our rejection and died, that veil of separation was torn apart and the way was opened for us to come to God without shame, without rejection, accepted.

Let’s look in Ephesians 1 at the result of acceptance. Verses 3–6. I’m reading from the New King James.
        
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he has made us accepted in the beloved.”
        
I like that translation because of the use of the word accepted. What’s the opposite of rejection? Acceptance. “Jesus bore our rejection that we might have his acceptance as sons and daughters of the Living God.” The Father turned a deaf ear to Jesus Christ, but has opened his ear to our cry as his children. The exchange is absolutely exact.
        
The word that’s translated here “has made us accepted” is the verb that’s derived from the Greek noun for grace which is charis. And the same word is used when the angel Gabriel saluted the virgin Mary and said “hail thou that art highly favoured.” So it’s a very strong word. We need to understand God just doesn’t tolerate us, his favour is upon us. He is passionately committed to us. We never have any reason to doubt our access to him. This is an exchange that took place when Jesus died but it can be worked out in the lives of each one of us who needs it.

Let me illustrate that by a little incident that always stays in my mind. I was in a conference that was held in Georgia in a very beautiful setting out in the forest. I was scheduled to speak at a teaching session and I was in danger of being late. So I was walking very rapidly across the campus and I ran into a lady who was walking just as rapidly in the opposite direction. When we had got ourselves together again she said, “Mr. Prince, I was praying that if God wanted me to speak to you, we’d meet!” I said, “We have met! Tell me your problem but I can only give you two minutes.” So she started to tell me what her problem was and I think she would have gone on a long while. At the end of one minute I said, “Listen, I think I understand your problem and I know the answer. Would you pray this prayer after me?” I didn’t tell her what I was going to pray. In fact, I didn’t know what I was going to pray but I knew the essence of what I was going to pray. I said, “Now, you say this after me. Oh God, I thank you that you really are my Father, you really love me. I really am your child. I’m not rejected, I’m not unwanted, I’m not second class. I belong to the best family in the universe. Thank you God, you are my Father, I am your child, you love me and I love you. Amen.” I said good-bye. I had no more time.

About a month later I got a letter from the lady and she told me very simply that that brief encounter had completely changed the whole nature of her life, she was a different person. What had happened? She had passed from rejection to acceptance.

Now, it was all done by God and she was already a child of God but she hadn’t realized what had been accomplished for her by the cross.

Shall we just go through the motions then? It could easily happen even while we’re doing this that somebody here who has a wounded heart—you know, the Bible says “the spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit, who can bear?” When the wound is in your spirit, that’s something else. But if there should be somebody here, while we are saying this, if you can receive it by faith you can make the transition. But we’re not going to take a lot of time. And if the Holy Spirit doesn’t move that way that doesn’t mean that you can’t receive help another way. But why wait if you can get it now? God has got a permanent now. The Bible says “Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation.” A lot of people misquote that. They say today is the day of salvation. That’s not what God says. He says now is the day of salvation. Today—who knows what will happen later, but now, now is the day of salvation.

I’ll do it once following the same routine. “Jesus endured our rejection that we might have his acceptance with the Father.” Let’s put in with the Father. Are you ready? “Jesus endured our rejection that we might have his acceptance with the Father.” Again. “Jesus endured our rejection that we might have his acceptance with the Father.” What do we do now? We make it personal. This is the point where something can happen to you. Are you ready? “Jesus endured my rejection that I might have his acceptance with the Father.”

Now let’s say this: “God really loves me. I really am his child. I belong to the best family in the universe. Thank you, Jesus, thank you. Amen.”
        
9.     He Was Cut Off That We Might Be Joined To The Lord
        
We’ll go on now to another aspect which I have never taught before. A wonderful thing about this is I’m continually seeing new aspects. If you look down your outline, the exchange is from separation to union.

We’ll start guess where? In Isaiah 53. I told you, you need your marker there! I do too as a matter of fact. My Bible just happens to open at Isaiah 53! This is a description of the process of Jesus’ trial and execution. This is the substance of these three verses, 7, 8 and 9. Verse 8 says:

“He was taken from prison and from judgment [or from arrest and judgment]: and who will declare his generation?”

You see, the greatest tragedy for a male Jew was to die without heirs. And that was part of what Jesus apparently endured.
        
“For he was cut off from the land of the living: for the transgression of my people he was stricken.”
        
I want you to focus on that phrase “he was cut off.” But since I commented on the other, let’s look down into verse 10 and you’ll see that Jesus did have a progeny. Verse 10, 11 and 12 describe the results of his suffering.
        
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he has put him to grief; when you make his soul an offering for sin [you remember we spoke about the soul of Jesus being made a sin offering?], he shall see his seed [that’s he shall see his descendants], he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”
        
So you and I, what are we? We’re his seed, we’re his offspring. It says:
        
“He shall see of the travail of his soul [that agonies that he passed through], and he shall be satisfied.”
        
What satisfies him? You and me. We are the reason he did it all.

But let’s look at that statement “he was cut off from the land of the living.” Separated, put away. I’d like to give you some Old Testament pictures of this that are very vivid. But before I do that I need to explain something to you which isn’t in your outline. It’s possible you might want to note this scripture. Every time I go to an outline I add to it so since I made it, which was a few days ago, I’ve added a little.

I want to explain something extremely important to you about the nature of Old Testament prophecy. There are in the Old Testament many prophecies which we call Messianic. Messianic meaning they reveal the Messiah. They’re found particularly in the writings of David, Isaiah, some of the other prophets and some of the other psalm writers like Haman, Asaph and others.

Now, the strange feature of these prophecies is that the human instrument giving the prophecy, the prophet, speaks in the first person about things that he says happened to him but they never did happen to him. So what is the meaning of that? The answer which we’ll find here in 1 Peter 1:10–11 is it was the Spirit of the Messiah in the prophet revealing beforehand the sufferings of the Messiah and the glory that should follow. So though they spoke in the first person, what they said was not true of themselves but it was fulfilled in the experience of Jesus.

You’ll find this in many prophecies. You find it in Job. There are things that happened to Job which are a preview of what happened to Jesus. You’ll find it in Lamentations, you’ll find it in the minor prophets. It’s like, I suppose, scores of little glimpses given in the prophets that are no longer about the prophet but they’re a glimpse of what was to happen when Jesus died on the cross.

To give you a scriptural basis for this we’ll look in 1 Peter 1:10–12.
        
“Of this salvation [that’s the salvation which we have received through Jesus] the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating, when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.”
        
Now, to take a very vivid example in Psalm 22, David said, “they pierced my hands and my feet.” That never happened to David. You can imagine David thinking to himself, “Why did I say that? What did that mean?”

So Peter says the Old Testament prophets were inquiring what it was they were talking about. And his answer is it was revealed to them that it was the Spirit of the Messiah in them speaking about what would be fulfilled in the Messiah which was not fulfilled in their experience. I hope I’ve made that plain to you. It’s so important because there will be many passages in the Old Testament you really won’t be able to understand until you realize this was the Holy Spirit in the person of the Messiah speaking about the suffering and the glory.

Take Psalm 16. Maybe we should turn there just for a moment, there’s a very vivid example. Psalm 16 which is quoted several times in the New Testament. You see, it’s not all Jesus. It starts off with David but it ends up with Jesus. If you can see what I mean, there’s a transition. If you like, look in Psalm 16 beginning in verse 7.
        
“I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel; my heart also instructs me in the night season. [Now that could be David.] I have sought the Lord always before me, and because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. [That could still be David.] Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will rest in hope. [Now that’s not true of David. He’s talking about his physical body. He goes on to say:] For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption.”
        
My body will never see corruption. That wasn’t true of David. As the apostles in the New Testament point out, and Peter said on the day of Pentecost, “We know about David, he was dead and buried, it wasn’t fulfilled in him.” And then it says:
        
“You will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand the pleasures for ever more.”
        
You see, as we look into the experience of David, we see through his experience beyond what he himself experienced into the experience of Jesus. I suppose you could find at least 100 places in the Old Testament where this is true.

Look for a moment, just to confirm this, in Isaiah 50:4–6. Notice it’s all in the first person.
        
“The Lord has given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary: he awakens me morning by morning, he awakens my ear to hear as the learned. [Now that could be Isaiah.] The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious [I did not resist], nor did I turn away. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who plucked out the beard: I did not hide my face from shame and spitting.”
        
See, that’s Jesus. It’s another of these glimpses. And Peter explains it in 1 Peter 1. It’s important to have the New Testament explanation. Let’s look at it again, 1 Peter 1:10:
        
“Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ [but it makes much better sense if you say the Spirit of the Messiah, bearing in mind that Christ is the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew word Messiah.] who was in them was indicating, when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow.”
        
Psalm 16 contains both.
        
“To them it was revealed, that not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which are now being reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit from heaven.”
        
They came to understand that their revelation was not for them but for the future heirs of salvation. See how privileged we are? We are the people for whom those revelations were given through the Old Testament prophets. We are the only people who can fully enter into those revelations.

Now, having said that I want to give you what I believe are some pictures of what is meant when it says “he was cut off from the land of the living.” I want to be very fair to you, I’m going to give you my personal belief. Not everybody would agree with me. As my friend Bob Mumford says, “How can I help it if I’m right!” I always quote Bob Mumford for that statement, it makes me sound humble!

Turn to Lamentations 3:54. Now you’ve discovered where to find Lamentations, haven’t you? It’s just after Jeremiah. It’s a very simple statement, it says:
        
“The waters flowed over my head; I said, I am cut off.”
        
Now that could apply to whom? We don’t know. There’s no reason to believe it applies to Jeremiah. But now you turn to one of the great Messianic psalms which is Psalm 69 and all Bible interpreters, I think, see this as a Messianic prophecy. Psalm 69:2:
        
“I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I have come into deep waters where the floods overflow me.”
        
And if you want to see that this is a Messianic psalm, look on to verse 21 which says:
        
“They gave me gall for my food; and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”
        
Now this is a psalm of David. That never happened to David. This is one of those glimpses through the experience of David of what was to happen. But I believe the second verse describes what the soul of Jesus passed through when he was cut off, rejected by God, enduring the wrath of God. Why was the wrath of God upon him? Because of our sin. He endured God’s attitude toward sin.

Let’s look quickly because time is running out, in Psalm 88 which is one of the most amazing psalms in the whole book of Psalms. In fact, it is the gloomiest of all the psalms. There’s not one single ray of light anywhere in the darkness. Psalm 88, we’ll just read a part of it, but I want you to think about Jesus cut off as you read these words. Verse 3:
        
“For my soul is full of trouble, my life draws near to the grave. I am counted with those who go down to the pit. I’m like a man who has no strength, adrift [or cast loose] among the dead. Like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more and who are cut off from your hand. [Now listen to this.] You have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness [in the depths. That could not have been true of the psalmist.] Your wrath lies heavy upon me and you have afflicted me with all your ways.”
        
Now I leave it to you, but to me that gives just a glimpse of what the soul of Jesus endured through the rejection of God.
        
“You have put away my acquaintances far from me; you have made me an abomination to them.”
        
That was true because the one who was hung on a cross became a curse. Now, the following verses ask six questions which are not answered in the psalm. If you look in verse 10:
        
“Will you work wonders for the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise you? Shall your loving kindness be declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Shall your wonders be known in the dark and your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness [that’s the land of the grave]?”
        
Six questions. The psalmist didn’t know the answer. What answer would we give? I tell you what answer I would give, I would answer yes to every one of those questions—through the death of Jesus. He did work wonders for the dead. The dead will arise and praise him. God’s faithfulness was declared in the grave. All the Old Testament saints who were down in Sheol found the Messiah declaring to them “It’s time to move, I’ve paid the price. You don’t have to stay here any longer.” That’s an aspect of doctrine we can’t go into. Shall your wonders be known in the dark? The answer is yes. And your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness.

And then we come to the end of that psalm—I just trust that the Holy Spirit will somehow give you a little glimpse of what Jesus endured. And we’re not talking about suffering in time, we’re talking about something in the realm beyond this life. Verse 16:
        
“Thy fierce wrath has gone over me, your terrors have cut me off. They came around me all day long like water, they engulfed me together. Loved one and friend you have put far from me, and my acquaintance into darkness.”
        
I think the NIV says for that last sentence, “darkness is my closest friend.” Isn’t that right? That’s a picture of Jesus cut off.
        
Now, we must go very quickly because time has almost run out. 1 Corinthians 6, the opposite side, verses 16–17. You have to read them together, otherwise you don’t get the point. Paul is teaching against fornication—what is now made respectable by calling it premarital sex. But the Bible still calls it fornication.
        
“Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For the two, says he, shall become one flesh.”
        
Now that’s speaking obviously about the sexual union of two bodies. But the next verse says:
        
“But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.”
        
You must take it in the context. Paul is saying there is an immoral kind of relationship between two bodies in which they’re joined together in fornication. But, he said, there is another relationship between the believer and the Lord in which he, the believer, is joined to the Lord and becomes one spirit with the Lord. That’s the fruit of Jesus being cut off. “He was cut off that we might be joined to the Lord.” Maybe we have time to say that. Let’s do it. “He was cut off that we might be joined to the Lord. He was cut off that we might be joined to the Lord.” Now you know what we are going to do this time? “He was cut off that I might be joined to the Lord.” That’s the spiritual union between the Lord and the believer. But it’s possible only on the basis of the fact that Jesus was cut off. We’ll close for this time there. God helping us we’ll continue. We’ve got one more aspect of the exchange that’s listed. We’ll continue with that in our next session.
        
10.   Our Old Man Was Put To Death In Him That The New Man Might Come To Life In Us

We’ll move on to the tenth one which you will find in your outline at the bottom of the list. It’s entitled Old Man vs. New Man. We need, first of all, to—perhaps we’d better turn to Romans 6 for a moment, verse 6, to locate one of the passages in the New Testament where that phrase “the old man” is used. I think the new translations use the “old person,” is that right? The “old self,” I knew it was different. I’ve preached from the King James so long and memorized it so much that whenever I’m at a loss for anything it’s always the King James that comes back to me.

Anyhow, Romans 6:6. Paul is speaking about the significance of Christian baptism. He explains that it’s a burial and he explains that a burial has to take place because there’s been a death. And so Christian baptism is, first of all, the acknowledgment of a death that’s taken place and then the burial of that which died. But it leads into a resurrection. And then he explains in the following verses the death that took place. So we won’t go into the whole issue of baptism but we’ll just go down to Romans 6:6.
        
“Knowing this . . .”
        
Now I have to observe, I trust I’m not cynical, that in many places where Paul says “you know” or “knowing” or other words like that, I have to say frankly the majority of contemporary Christians don’t know. So you check on yourself if you know this.
        
“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, [that’s Jesus] that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”
        
So Paul says our old man was crucified in Jesus when Jesus was crucified. What is the old man? He also uses here the phrase “the body of sin.” Actually there are about four different phrases that Paul uses. If I can get them up. First of all, there’s the “old man, the body of sin.” In one place he uses “the body of the sins of the flesh.” There’s one more phrase that Paul uses and that is “the flesh.”

Now, those are what I would call technical New Testament terms. I think we need to bear in mind that for instance, if a young man was going to become an electrical engineer, he would expect in his study book to encounter certain what I would call technical terms that have to be used because of the nature of the subject that wouldn’t maybe be understood by people who hadn’t studied that subject, but that are essential for proper communication. And any young man that was going to become such an engineer would be prepared to learn those terms.

I believe the same is true of a Christian. In the New Testament there are a few what I would call technical terms that have a specialized meaning that you can only come to understand as you study the New Testament. And there is a whole list of some of them. “The old man, the body, the body of sin, the body of the sins of the flesh and the flesh.” In certain context—and it’s not in every context—those do not mean what they seem to mean. In other words, when Paul talks about the flesh you might think he’s talking about my physical body. But he isn’t. Likewise when he speaks about the body. In some places he’s actually talking about the body, the physical body. But in many other places he’s not talking about this physical body but he’s talking about—well, what is he talking about? What he is talking about is the old nature that is born into every descendant of Adam. He’s talking about a nature. You could call it the Adamic nature.

And that nature is summed up in one word, one very simple word which is? Rebel. Now here is an unpleasant fact about each one of us. Inside each one of us there is a rebel. We have no choice in the matter, we were born that way. And God has a program for that rebel. Do you know what his program is? He doesn’t send them to church, or Sunday school, or teach him to memorize scripture. His program is very simple. That’s right, you’ve got it, execution. God has no future for the rebel.

But the message of the gospel, the good news is the execution took place 19 centuries ago when Jesus died on the cross. Our old man was crucified in him. This is a historical fact—just as much a fact as in 55 B.C. Julius Caesar invaded the British Isles. Do you understand? It’s an objective, historical fact. Whether we believe it or not doesn’t change the fact. But our knowing it and believing it will change our experience. You see, Paul says in Romans 6:6, “Knowing this.” And then in Romans 6:11 he says:
        
“Likewise also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God.”
        
That order is logical. First of all you have to know the scriptural fact. Then by personal reckoning you have to apply it to yourself. You have to reckon yourself to be dead indeed to sin. It’s a really interesting question what it means to be dead to sin.

You see, all this is part of the provision of the cross. I’ve used in my books this little, simple illustration about this terribly bad man. I mean, he’s the kind of man that churchgoing people just have no time for. He drinks whiskey, he smokes cigars, he watches pornography on the television and he’s mean and beastly to his wife and children. Now his wife has become a believer and so have the children. So they sneak out on Sunday evenings to the local gospel church to just get away from him. And one Sunday evening they sneak out and leave him sitting in his chair with a glass of whiskey by his side, a cigar in his mouth and some unedifying program there on the television. They have a wonderful time at the local church, come back so happy they’re singing choruses. As they come in they suddenly freeze and realize if he hears them singing choruses he’s going to swear at them. And they tiptoe a little further, the cigar is beside him, the smoke is curling up in the air, the whiskey glass is on the table, he’s not drinking it. He’s not watching what’s going on on the television screen. And he doesn’t shout at them, he doesn’t even get angry with them. Do you know what happened? He had a heart attack. That’s right, he died. He’s dead to sin!

All right. I mean it, that’s exactly what Paul is saying. What does that mean? Sin has no more power over him. Sin has no more attraction for him. Sin produces no more reaction from him. That’s to be dead to sin. Paul says reckon yourselves to be dead to sin. Why? On the basis of what took place on the cross. Because God executed the old man in Jesus. Our old man is executed. But we have to know it and we have to reckon it. When we do those two things it becomes real in our experience.

You see, there’s a lot of difference between having your sins forgiven which is wonderful and having the rebel executed. For instance, when I grew up in church as a boy, every Sunday morning we went to church and we confessed our sins. We really didn’t have any option, everybody did it. And I somehow walked out of the church wondering or hoping maybe something would happen. But I knew full well that during the next week I would be committing the same sins that I’d already confessed. And I came to wonder whether it was better to confess them and go on doing them or not confess them. But you see, that’s just a form of religion. That’s not the message of the gospel because God not merely deals with the past. That’s wonderful to have your past forgiven, it’s tremendous. But it still doesn’t solve your problem if there’s a rebel living inside you. Why? Because the rebel will cause you to go on doing rebellious acts. So the provision of God is not merely to forgive us of the past, but it’s the execution of the rebel inside me.

Now God made this vivid to me personally many years ago now. I was for about eight years the pastor of a small Pentecostal congregation in the centre of London, England. And some people who know me today would find it hard to believe this, but we conducted open air services three times every week in the centre of London at a place that’s known as Speaker’s Corner, Marble Arch. And that was where we got our fish. We went out and fished for sinners, brought them in. And we saw over the years hundreds of sinners saved through those meetings at Speaker’s Corner.

But one night during this period I had a very vivid dream. And in my dream I saw a typical open air meeting. A circle of people standing around and a man in the middle preaching. And as I watched the man and listened to him I said to myself, “What he’s preaching is pretty good.” But there was something I didn’t like about the man. It was like he was hunchbacked and he had a club foot and altogether he looked crooked. So I woke up and I thought, “I wonder what that meant,” and dismissed it. But about two weeks later I had the same dream again. So this time I said to myself, “God must be trying to tell me something. I wonder who the man is?” And it was like the Holy Spirit said to me what Nathan said to David, “thou art the man.”

And it opened up to me a completely new aspect of salvation. I was soundly saved by most standards, baptized in the Spirit, serving the Lord, but there was something in me that was crooked and unacceptable to God. It was the old man. I didn’t have any gospel understanding of God’s program for the old man. I had to find my way through these things. Well, about the same time Easter was coming on and because of the Easter season somehow I had in my mind a mental image of the hill of Golgotha (or Calvary) and the three crosses on it. But the middle cross was much taller than the other two. And it was like the Holy Spirit put me through an examination. He said, “Now tell me, for whom was the middle cross made?” But it was as if he said, “Be careful before you answer.” So I stopped and thought and I said, “It was made for Barabbas.” And he said, “That’s right.” Because it really was not made for Jesus. Do you understand? Barabbas was due to be executed. But he was released at the last moment, Jesus took his place. So then he said, “But Jesus took the place of Barabbas.” I said, “That’s right.” Then the Holy Spirit said, “But I thought Jesus took your place?” I said, “Yes, that’s right.” Then he said, “You must be Barabbas.”

And at that point I saw it. I never try to argue with people about that, it’s a revelation. But I saw that I was the criminal for whom the cross was made. It was exactly to my measure. It was appropriate for me. But Jesus took my place.

That made it so vivid to me, God’s program for dealing with the old man. This is quite distinct from the forgiveness of sin. The forgiveness of sins is wonderful but you’re never going to have a life of victory or real fruitfulness as long as that old rebel is still alive inside you. God’s provision is the execution of the rebel. God’s mercy is the execution took place when Jesus died. Our old man was crucified with him. The Old King James says “is crucified” which is the perfect tense. But the more correct translation is “was crucified.” It’s a simple past tense, it’s an actual, historical fact that took place.

This doesn’t matter whether we know it or believe it, it’s true. But knowing it and believing it is going to change you and me. So that’s the negative side. “Our old man was crucified that the new man might come to life in us.” That’s the exchange from the old man to the new man.

Now let’s look at the picture of the new man for a moment. I have a radio teaching message on this called “The Old Self and the New Self.” And I point out that these are two persons who are central to the whole revelation of the New Testament about whom most Christians know very little. They’re never named, they’re just the old man and the new man. And it’s interesting that when it comes to the old man, there’s no distinction of race. It never talks about the Jewish old man or the Gentile old man or the Greek old man, he’s just the old man. The Adam in every one of us.

You see, Adam never begot any children until he was a rebel. And every child that’s descended from Adam has got in him the nature of a rebel.

Now let’s look in Ephesians 4:22–24. This is part of an exhortation to be real Christians, that’s really what it boils down to. And the figure that’s used is the taking off of one set of clothing and the putting on of another set.
        
“That you put off [or take off] concerning your former conduct the old man, which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that you put on the new man, which [or who] was created according to God in righteousness and true holiness.”
        
So there you have a description of the two persons, the old self and the new self. Now the key word that describes the old self or the old man is the word corrupt. Sin has corrupted the nature of the old man. He is morally corrupt, emotionally corrupt and physically corrupt. He is going to die. The end of corruption is death.

God made something very vivid to me which is that corruption is irreversible. Once anything becomes corrupt there is no way of reversing the process of corruption. You can slow it down but it has to go through. And so when God wants to do something for us he has to give us a totally new beginning. He doesn’t try to remedy the corruption, he does away with the corruption and replaces it by a new non corrupt nature.

If you look in Ephesians 4:22, and I’ll give you a little more literal rendering of it, it says:
        
“The old man who grows corrupt according to the lusts of deceit.”
        
You see, the essence of the problem of the old man is he was deceived by Satan. And out of his deception has come what the New Testament calls lust. And in the New Testament lust frequently means desires which were implanted by God and which were originally natural and healthy but which through sin have become perverted, evil and harmful. So that’s the result of the deception of Satan that the desires implanted in us by God have become corrupt, harmful. And God says there’s only one solution: execution.

But he says, “I’m going to replace it with a new man.” Now you look at the description of the new man in verse 24,
        
“You put on the new man who is created according to God [that is, according to God’s standards and God’s purposes, fulfilling God’s design] in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”
        
It’s important to see that the old man is the product of the lie, the new man is the product of the truth. And the truth brings forth righteousness and holiness. That’s why it’s so important that we see the truth about both in the scripture.

Now, what is the old man or, who is the old man? If you go back one chapter in Ephesians to chapter 3 and verse 17 Paul prays one of his tremendous prayers. I think perhaps the greatest prayer he ever prayed. If I start to get into this prayer I’ll never get out of it so I’m just going to pick out just the one phrase in Ephesians 3:17:
        
“That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith . . .”
        
So who is the new man? It’s Christ.

You go also to that tremendous statement in Colossians 1:27:
        
“To them [that’s to us if you can receive it, to the believers, the saints. I like to say to us.] God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles.”
        
And it’s a mystery which has been his from previous ages and generations. That makes it exciting, doesn’t it? I tell you, if you don’t get excited about the gospel, you’ve never really grasped what it’s telling you.

Now, what is the mystery? It is Christ in you. Three short words. That’s the new man, Christ in you. But, and I don’t know whether I can explain this sufficiently, it’s not the person of Jesus Christ who’s at the Father’s right hand, obviously. It’s the nature of Jesus Christ, the Christ nature. Because the purpose of God was to bring many sons to glory, to reproduce Jesus in every one of the believers.

I’d like to take this just a step further and I want to warn you that there are some people who might not agree with me. And again, I have nothing against them, they can still go to heaven and I hope they have nothing against me! But this is my understanding. I always like to warn people that it’s the way I see it and you’re free to agree or not. But if you look in 1 John 3 for a moment and verse 9 you find a very startling statement. Again, if you’re not startled by it you really haven’t seen what it’s saying. 1 John 3:9:
        
“Whoever has been born of God does not sin; for his seed remains in him [God’s seed], and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.”
        
Now does that tell us that a born again believer never sins? That would leave out a lot of us here including me, believe me. One interpretation is “does not regularly commit sin.” I would like to say that in my opinion that is stretching the meaning of the Greek tense far beyond anything that is justifiable. But it actually says he cannot commit sins.

Now is there any one of us here truly born of God? Of whom it would be said he cannot commit sin? I do not believe it is. So what’s the answer? My understanding is it’s the new nature that’s been born in us. This is a nature that cannot sin, it’s the Jesus nature. It’s the new man. Now I’ll support that from 1 John 5:4:
        
“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world.”
        
Now John says they’re not whoever but whatever. Okay? So it’s a person but it’s also a nature. That’s my understanding. It’s the new man. It cannot sin, it’s incorruptible. Do you know why it’s incorruptible?

Because God’s seed remains in him. What is the seed? Turn to 1 Peter 1:23. This is the middle of a sentence, we don’t need to go through the whole thing.
        
“Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.”
        
What is the nature of the seed of God’s word, what is the key word? Incorruptible. Understand? It’s exact opposite is the nature of the old man which is corrupt.

Now, in all the universe, as far as I know, there’s this principle. The nature of the seed determines the nature of that which is produced by the seed. For instance, you plant an orange pit, you don’t expect to get an apple. You plant an apple pit, you don’t expect to get a banana. The seed determines the nature. So, if we are born again of incorruptible seed, what kind of nature do we get? An incorruptible nature. That’s the nature of the new man. Now, listen, I am not telling you that a born again Christian cannot sin. I’d have to rule myself out if I told you that. What I’m telling you is that in every truly born again Christian there is a nature which is incapable of sinning. It’s the nature of Jesus and it’s born of the incorruptible seed of the word of God and nothing can ever corrupt it.

Now the kind of life we live will be determined by the interplay of two natures: the old man and the new man. The new man cannot sin, the old man cannot help sinning. So in order to live a life of victory, we have to accept the Biblical pattern of dealing with the old man which is? Crucifixion, execution. But it’s not enough just once to reckon yourself dead. If you turn to Colossians 3 Paul makes it clear it’s an on going process. In fact, I would say—perhaps I’m unspiritual, but in me it’s an on going battle. I mean, maybe some of you are so blessed of God that you have no struggle but not true of me. Looking now in Colossians 3:
        
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God.”
        
Paul has been teaching both in Ephesians and Colossians we are identified with Jesus Christ in death, burial, resurrection and ascension. So he says if we’ve ascended with Christ why keep your nose down to the earth?
        
“Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
        
Isn’t that a wonderful statement! You died. When did you die? When Jesus died on the cross. You died. You say, “Well, where is my life now?” Paul says you’ve got a secret, hidden life that the world doesn’t understand. It’s hidden with Christ in God. What could ever be more secure than that? With Christ in God. Then he goes on:
        
“When Christ, who is our life, appears . . .”
        
Brothers and sisters, everything you need is in that one statement. Christ is our life. Victory over sin, healing from sickness, power over the devil. It’s all in that one statement. Christ is our life. It’s so simple. But then he goes on to say:
        
“[When Christ appears,] then shall you also appear with him in glory.”
        
Then the world will really see what you’re like. Meanwhile it’s hidden, the world can’t see it. Now then, verse 5:
        
“Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desires and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
        
See, the Bible is very realistic. It says all right, you died when Jesus died on the cross. But be sure to keep yourself dead! So he says mortify, put to death, keep dead. So that’s, I believe, God’s provision for victory over sin. I’d have to say lots of born again Christians really don’t have on going victory over sin. They’re continually struggling up and down. One day they have the victory, the next day they don’t. I think in most cases it’s because they haven’t seen God’s provision made through the cross.

Let’s go back to Romans 6:6 for a moment.
        
“Knowing this . . .”
        
From now on I trust every one of you do know it. You do know it. I mean, if I were to take a poll I think some of you would have to say, “Honestly I never really knew it before. But now I do know it.”

“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with.”
        
Notice the body of sin? That’s another word for this thing in us that’s always motivated to sin. “Might be done away with,” it’s very hard to find a good translation for that word, I would say put out of action. It doesn’t cease to exist. There is some holiness teaching that teaches that the old man has ceased to exist.

Well, who’s doing his job, that’s my question? It just doesn’t answer to experience. One thing about theology, it has to work in experience. Otherwise it’s not much use. “The body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

That’s the ultimate purpose, to escape from the slavery of sin. And that is only when we recognize that our old man was crucified with him. Merely having our past sins forgiven is tremendous but it doesn’t deal with the slavery of sin. See what I’m saying?

Now let’s just do what we’ve done all the time and apply that. We’ll do, first of all, our and then my. I’ve got to think how we’ll put this in words. I’ll say it first myself. “Our old man was put to death that the new man might live in us.”

Does that make sense? Might come to life in us I think is better. “Our old man was put to death that the new man might come to life in us.” Do that once more. “Our old man was put to death that the new man might come to life in us.” Now we’ve got to change it, you know the change, don’t you? “My old man was put to death that the new man might come to life in me.” That’s wonderful.

Now reading from the outline, let me list the ten aspects of the exchange which we have looked at. I would like to suggest if you want an assignment that you memorize these ten aspects. If possible, in this order. The order isn’t sacred but it does help in a way to end up with the old man. Then, when you’ve done that, memorize the related scriptures. Not learn the scriptures by heart but learn the references of the passages that substantiate what’s been stated. Now that’s not altogether easy for some of you but I honestly guarantee that if you’ll do that you’ll be a different person. I will just go through the exchanges. I won’t ask you to join me right now, I’ll do it in front of you. I’ll do it left hand and right hand the way we have.

1. Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven.
2. Jesus was wounded that we might be healed.
3. Jesus was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness.
4. Jesus died our death that we might share his life.
5. Jesus was made a curse that we might receive the blessing.
6. Jesus endured our poverty that we might share his abundance.
7. Jesus bore our shame that we might share his glory.
8. Jesus endured our rejection that we might have his acceptance with the Father.
9. Jesus was cut off by death that we might be joined to God eternally.
10. And finally, our old man was put to death in him that the new man might come to life in us.

Derek Prince
(1915 - 2003)