![[The Good Seed]](../images/thegoodseed.gif)
The Making of a Son
By Lloyd Ellefson
Today's subject is SONSHIP or THE MAKING OF A SON. We want to receive some practical lessons and understanding from the the Spirit's revelation of the scriptures. This will help us to grow in our realization of who we are as sons of God. A man becomes a father when he produces a child, and the child then calls him father. In applying this principle to our relationship with God, we recognize that we have to be born of the Spirit before we can correctly call God our Father. Christ, the seed, is the Word of God, and as the Son, He reproduces Himself in us. The Spirit of Sonship that is in Christ comes to us, for the Son of God has been born in us. This fact often escapes us because of our ego, for it is in delusion and darkness.
"At that time Jesus answered and said, `I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes.'" (Matt. 11:25) By calling God His Father, Jesus showed that He understood that He was the Son of God! God in His wisdom has hidden His knowledge from the intellectuals, and revealed it to those who will listen to Him. Revealing things to babes bypasses humanity's intellect!
"All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son, except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." (v.27) It is important for us to know the relationship of the Son to the Father. Only the Father knows who the Son is and therefore He is the only one who can reveal Him to us. Also, the Father can only be known through the Son, for only the Son can reveal the nature of the Father. Furthermore, the Father has to reveal the Son's eternal nature and character to us. This can only be revealed to us by the Spirit because it cannot come through human instruction. Understanding this does not depend upon our natural intelligence.
In speaking to the pagans on Mars Hill, Paul said, "In Him (God) you live and move and have your being." (Acts 17) The pagans didn't know this because the Father had not revealed it to them. But He had revealed it to Paul. Paul said, "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance" (of not knowing who you are and where you came from) "God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent." (v. 30) People are to repent of the ignorance that is in their human mind and thoughts. The human mind is an agent of awareness; it does not contain a creative process as God's mind does. Man can only discover and rearrange things that are already in existence. Man calls this being creative, but he has never created anything. However the Son is a created being in us - created by the Word of God.
God said, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways." (Is. 55:8) Our ways are the result of our thoughts, and God's ways are the result of His thoughts - and His ways are not our ways! He does not operate according to human comprehension. If we can grasp this, we will see that none of man's thinking is spiritual! Natural thinking cannot think the thoughts of God!
Jesus said, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." (Jn. 4:32) Jesus was sustained by food from a higher realm than natural food and drink. His sustenance was the Word of God. "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." (Matt. 4:4) Christ is the Word of God - He is our bread. The Spirit of God (the Spirit of Christ) does not adulterate anything; nor does He receive knowledge from anyone but the Father through Jesus Christ. He will convey it to us exactly as it comes from the Father. He is the Spirit of truth and He will reveal all things to us. For this reason He is called the Holy Spirit! There are many spirits in the world -- demon spirits, spirits of anger, spirit of man, etc. But when God sent His Holy Spirit to us, it meant that He would only bring us truth.
The Holy Spirit reveals God's purpose to us and leads us into all truth! God is omnipresent and His being, life and love are everywhere. Picturing Him as a man sitting on a throne in heaven localizes Him. Since no man can see God and live, we have to have a new nature before we can see God. The Spirit of Christ brings us His nature! So we begin to see things in a broader spectrum, and understand that all have sinned. Sin, of course, is a big problem! However it shouldn't be a problem after Christ comes to us. We need to recognize that sin is the transgressor of the law, but it can only operate through humanity. In the typology of Adam, we see that Adam had not entertained sin until the temptation came to him from the outside.
I believe that death was present before Adam sinned, because it must have been present when God said, "If you disobey, you will die." I believe that sin came out of the death that was already present - and sin is the venom that keeps on producing death. So our greatest enemy is not sin, but death! The serpent in Genesis is identified as satan in Revelation. The serpent is really death. Adam sinned and died because he received the serpent's of his lies. Adam took the venom of death and he died. And death passed upon all men, because all have partaken of the sin which causes death.
Death is the father of sin, and Adam is the priesthood of death because he ministers sin. In Adam all die. Death is being fathered by satan. In John 8 Jesus told the people with whom He was having an argument, "You are of your father, the devil." Their thoughts had been fathered by satan; they had not come from God. Satan's idea of how to become like God, turned out to be a delusion. It produced death instead of life. Many people have not discerned this. Jesus said, "The way to life is narrow, and few there are that find it." A destruction of man's thoughts and ego has to take place. Man has to be freed from his confidence in his self-righteous works. Even his self-satisfaction in having kept up his Bible reading and good works has to pass away; a separation or death to all that has to occur. Jesus came to die for the sin of mankind.
Many inconsistencies are being preached today. I'd like to point out just a few of them. For example, in the religious system we are taught to glorify Jesus and to pray to Him, even though Jesus said, "In that day" (when the Holy Spirit comes) " you will ask Me nothing." (John 16:23) That means we will not pray to Jesus. Why? Because He, the Spirit of the Son, will be in us, causing us to cry, "Abba! Father!" Then as one with Christ we will pray "Our Father"!
Jesus prayed, "`Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee...Father, glorify Thy name.' There came therefore a voice out of heaven: `I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again'." (Jn. 17:1; 12:28) How do we glorify the Son? Do we glorify Him by saying He is a physical Jesus, coming again in a physical body? Do we glorify Him by praising this idea of Him? Do we glorify the Head by saying that we, His body, are by nature sinful, unclean, constantly sinning and in need of forgiveness? Can the Head be glorified if the body is full of sin?! Moreover, Jesus said that He was coming for a bride without spot or wrinkle; His bride is His body. We see that the teaching of the Head being glorified while the body remains sinful, has nothing to do with the message of the gospel! Jesus comes for a bride who has no spot or wrinkle! We must remember that the Head and the body are one!
We are not to divide Christ. By teaching that Christ is sinless and those who are born anew are still sinful, we are dividing the Head and the body - Christ is being divided. We have to be one with Christ - one with Him in the things He believed, one in the things He said, and one in His attitude toward God His Father. He is bringing many sons to glory. The practical part of this is the fact that we can be taken into a realization of sonship. In His providence, God has made a way for us, and the way is Christ. We know that in our natural state we are sinners and not sons of God. But God has made a way for us to be delivered out of the death in the Adamic nature, and to be raised into the life that is in Christ Jesus. Through the Holy Spirit the eyes of our understanding are opened to receive Christ's revelation of the Father. In this exchange the Father then reveals the Son to us.
"For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh." (Rom. 8:3) God did not send His Son in sinful flesh, but in the LIKENESS of sinful flesh. God's redemptive work was a long process. I believe it began with Adam, and continued through Noah, Abraham, Moses, King David and the prophets, until Jesus Christ came as the fulness and the sum of all these things! These form a cloud of witnesses that work in us. Moses, for instance, is a consciousness of the law in us, and so is Abraham in the sense of being the father of the faithful. Our consciousness has been separated from God. All these people have had a part in returning it to God. The sum of the redemptive work that is typified in these men is in Jesus Christ; He is the fulfillment of each one! This does not refer to who they were in their humanity, but to what God was working in them in regard to redemption!
God has always been; He is the source of all things. God sent His Son, and the Word was made flesh. The first thing that came out of God was His Word. He was the first-begotten of God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." The Word was made flesh! This was the evidence that God had fathered a Son. The Word is the seed that comes out of God's mouth, and it has the energy to perform everything it was sent to produce. The farmer who plants his seeds knows that they will reproduce after their kind. He also knows that without the right environment they will not grow and mature. They need some assistance, and God has provided that. Spiritually speaking, when God's word is heard, it produces His Son in us by the energy of that word. His Son is not a physical being; He is a spiritual being and therefore cannot be seen with physical eyes.
Jesus Christ, the Word, was made flesh and came in the likeness of sinful humanity. He manifested God through the flesh. His flesh was the veil that hid the true essence of the Christ within Him. And of course the flesh had to die. So the humanity of Jesus died on the cross. Jesus knew that God would give Him into the hands of men, and that humanity would take Him and kill Him. And they did! Men rejected Him, men crucified Him, and men put Him to death! It was not God who put Him to death. God knew that men would attempt to hold on to their own ideas or concepts of God and their authority in the earth. Since Jesus Christ infringed on their authority, they thought they would be free to do their thing if they got rid of Him.
In the parable of the landowner, Jesus told them that God had sent them prophets, and they killed them. Then He sent His Son and they also killed Him. "Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it." (Matt. 21:43) The kingdom will be given to a nation in which Christ is actually ministering His life and rule! Christ is actually the kingdom of God. This is a mystery to many. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. The manifestation of the Word in the earth came through forms, and were the product of the Word of God.
We need to have faith in God; it is the substance of things we can't see. (Hebrews 11) All seen things are made of unseen things. Therefore having a house, a car, or a healthy body is not the evidence of faith. The unseen things consist of the presence and the purpose and the energy and the power and the light of God!
We cannot get to know God by our own efforts. Reading about Him, thinking about Him, or hearing about Him from others, only causes us to know ABOUT Him. That is not the same as knowing Him. Knowing Him comes when we hear the voice of the Son of God! In fact, that is the only way we can know Him correctly. Those who hear shall live! If you can hear the voice of the Spirit and what He is saying to the church, you will understand that God is bringing you into the consciousness that was in the spiritual man at the beginning. The new creation man comes out of God - not out of the flesh nor out of natural man. That is why we don't call anyone on earth our father.
Jesus told the Jews that if they were of God, they would know Him and love Him because God had sent Him. In John 8 He told them, "You are of your father the devil." Obviously the Jews didn't believe that; they wouldn't today either! They didn't know that all their thoughts were fathered by satan. Christ's thoughts were fathered by God. Since the Jews contradicted what He said, and didn't believe who He said He was, it proved that their thoughts were fathered by satan.
"But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right (authority) to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name." (John 1:12) His spiritual presence is with us today - not His physical presence. When we believe on His name, we are believing in His nature, for His name and His nature are one. That is why He gives us the authority to become the sons of God when we believe on His name. The things He said were in agreement with His nature and revealed His nature!
Just as the soil needs to be prepared for the planting of the seed, so we need to be prepared for receiving Christ. To accomplish this, God has given us the law to be our teacher! The purpose of the law was not to give us knowledge of God, but to give us knowledge of sin. When the law is properly understood, it destroys our self-righteousness, and prepares us for receiving Christ. We are to be fallow ground ready to receive the seed of the Son of God! When Christ, the Anointing, comes to us, the Holy Spirit energizes this seed, and brings forth the Son. Christ is birthed in us when we receive the Seed, the Word of God.
"Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (v.13) Sonship does not come through the natural bloodline, the will of the flesh or of man. Those things do not count in God's eyes. Blood here refers to our genealogy. All the old genealogy - so important to humanity's thinking - is destroyed in Christ. The Levitical priests received their priesthood from Levi, but Jesus didn't. God knew that people would cling to the old, so He mercifully let all the genealogical records be destroyed or lost; the temple with all its records is gone, so now no one knows who would be eligible to serve as priest. The old priesthood had to be done away with! So Jesus terminated it by becoming a priesthood of God in the Spirit. He was born of Judah (not of Levi) so the old genealogical priesthood is no longer necessary nor relevant! Christ is now our high priest - not according to the old order, but according to the order of Melchizedek!
The words GENEALOGY and GENERATION have a common origin. Both begin with the word GENE. Today people are studying the DNA that is in the genes. The DNA dictates the gender and characteristics which are passed on from the parents. The Adamic man has been destroyed on the cross; in Christ our natural genealogy is no longer valid. We have been born of the Spirit! We are actually partakers of Christ's nature! We are not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God!
Before we were born of God, we were only conscious of being generated out of flesh. We tried to preserve our flesh, our natural thinking and comprehension. We were satisfied with our natural understanding of the Bible. All our concepts of God, Jesus, heaven, Israel, etc., were in the natural realm. Then we were born of God! The word BORN, from the Greek GENNAO, means TO BRING FORTH. To be born of God means to be brought forth or generated out of God. When we are born of God, we come into a completely new realm of understanding. Christ came to give us a true understanding of God! He gave us the Holy Spirit to teach us and to lead us into all truth! The spiritual words He speaks to us bring us into a spiritual realization, and it brings to birth a consciousness of who we really are. This does away with our natural realization of who we are. Our spiritual realization enables us to receive revelation knowledge of who God is.
"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." (v.14) Jesus identified with us in His human body. Jesus Christ is the only-begotten of the Father. In Old Testament typology, we see that Sarah could only bring forth the one son, Isaac. He is a pattern and picture of the only-begotten Son of God.
Christ was the exact image or representation of God. Because we are in Him, this image is now being produced in us! We have the same lifeline as Christ; we are born of the Spirit, and Christ brings us His anointing.
The promise first came to Abraham - not to a corporate people. It was Abraham who was separated from his kindred unto God. Israel as a corporate people could only represent the natural man. Jesus took on the flesh of Abraham; He came in the likeness of sinful flesh so He could manifest God to man, for man could only see the physical. He was born as an infant, circumcised, and grew up like any other Jewish male. Even though He was destined to be the Christ, He first lived under the law for 30 years, and went to the temple on the prescribed feast days. During those years no one took special note of Him. He didn't do any miracles. And because He lived under the law, no one was offended. When the fulness of time came, He appeared at the Jordan River and repented of His servitude to the law. This does not imply that He had sinned, for He hadn't - but the law had been His teacher. After the Jordan River experience, He was taught and guided only by the Holy Spirit!
The Bible says, "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent." (Numbers 23:19) Furthermore it says, "What is man that thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man that Thou dost care for him?" (Psalm 8:4) Jesus came as the Son of Man, as a manifestation of humanity; God manifested in the flesh - not God BEING flesh, but God MANIFESTED through the flesh. When Jesus appeared at the Jordan River, the government of His life was changed from law to Spirit.
The commandments of the law governed man's behavior, and they were to give him knowledge of sin. The knowledge of God through the law was only a form (framework, outline, embodiment) of truth. (Rom. 2:20) For example, in construction, wooden forms are used for pouring cement. The forms have to be filled before they are removed. The law provided the framework, and Jesus Christ brought the reality - the truth!
At the Jordan Jesus received His adoption. In Biblical terminology this does not mean that He was adopted into God's family, but that He was no longer a child; nor was He subject to the rule of the servants (law) any more. He was now mature and ready to enter His ministry. He understood that His place in the Father's household was now that of a son instead of a servant! (Gal. 4) When we receive our adoption, we receive a new sense of reality in regard to who God is and what He is doing.
In Jesus Christ's identification with humanity He experienced the rejection of man and the humiliation and excruciating pain of crucifixion! In His fleshly form Jesus demonstrated the nature of God! Since people do not understand this, they think the fleshly form is still important. They are deluded because they think the Son of God has to remain in a visible body. They think that His physical body was resurrected, and that He ascended into heaven in that body, and is now sitting there until He comes again. But actually, in Christ's death, the humanity or manifestation of the flesh died and disappeared - never to return - for it has served its purpose!
In Hebrews 12:1 we read that we are surrounded with a cloud of witnesses who are described in chapter 11! As we look at these witnesses, we see that they all portrayed a part of God's redemptive work. In Noah, God's cleansing work is accomplished. In Abraham, we perceive God's wonderful promise. In Israel and the prophets, etc., the working out of God's mercy and judgments are seen. This cloud of witnesses was present when Jesus came to the Jordan River. We know that Noah was represented by the dove. Abraham is known for his faith in God to keep His promise - and this faith was very evident in Jesus Christ. Moses was there, because Jesus came to the Jordan as one being ruled by the law. The prophet Elijah, representing repentance, was present in John the Baptist. All the patriarchs in whom God had worked and revealed some truth about redemption were there as a cloud of witnesses! The sum of all things is being witnessed to us in the Spirit of Christ!
Gal. 4:1, "Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything." This is a general principle. A child has to learn to obey the laws of the household. Paul uses this as a picture of growth, not only in Christ's life, but also in ours. When Jesus came out of the law at the Jordan River, and the Holy Spirit came on Him, God spoke to Him from the heavens, and said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." (Matt. 3:17) From that day onward, He testified as the Son of God.
Jesus did this as a pattern for us to follow. During the first part of our lives we live under the law. When we sin, the law (the consciousness of Moses in us) condemns us, for through the law is the knowledge of sin. To get out of condemnation we need to come out of the rulership of the law.
"So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law." (Gal. 4:3-4) Even so, when we were children under the law, we were still children of God. But we were not mature; we were in ignorance. We did not know that there was a life beyond law, flesh, and servant domination. We were under the law of this world until time was fulfilled. When Jesus came, He broke through that law and brought in the kingdom of God. His kingdom is a spiritual rule, a spiritual realization, a spiritual home; it has a spiritual Father and a spiritual nature.
The change from childhood to adulthood is a maturing process. We have to let go or repent of our childish ideas. This also applies to the spiritual realm. Repentance has to take place in order to mature spiritually. We have to repent of having been ruled by the world system, the legalism of the law (the knowledge of sin), etc. A progression in our hearing has to take place, so we can discern the difference between the voice of the law and the voice of the Spirit! But repentance is not enough; we have to come to Christ and receive the Holy Spirit. Jesus lived 30 years under the law before He was anointed at the Jordan. In other words, though He was born as the Christ, He did not manifest the Christ or His sonship for 30 years. He was a child, not differing from a servant, even though He was Lord of all. He was under the law, under governors and tutors until the time appointed by the Father.
Jesus introduced the kingdom of God by saying, "The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand." When "the fulness of time" came, it meant that time was fulfilled. That means there is no more time because we enter eternity and immortality in Christ. The kingdom of God is not subject to time, nor is it governed by time. That which is in time has a beginning and ends in death. Our physical life is in the death realm - no matter how long we live, it still ends. So the mind of the flesh will end. But the kingdom of God is immortal, endless, and only has life!
We also were children and in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fulness of time came, God sent His Son. He was made of a woman, made under the law to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons! Adoption as sons means coming out of the law and being redeemed out of the servanthood of the law; it means coming into the full entitlement and authority of a son! This is what happened to Jesus at the Jordan River when the Holy Spirit came upon Him! After that He began to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit, and to testify that God was His Father. "And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, `Abba! Father!'" (Gal. 4:6) We are no longer servants! This frees us from the sin-consciousness the law imposes upon us!
Let's look at the extent of the privilege that coming out of the law affords us. In Col. 2:11 it says, "And in Him (Christ) you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." This circumcision is a spiritual one; it has nothing to do with our physical body. The Spirit's anointing brings us the consciousness that is in Christ, and it takes away our fleshly desires! We are complete in Him! He is the head of all principalities and powers!
The Lord is the Spirit! (2 Cor. 2:17) When the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus He became the Christ. Christ means anointing. This anointing is the Messiah. Jesus did not become the Messiah until He came out of the law at the age of 30 years. When we receive the Holy Spirit we are put into Christ. This anointing will teach us all things.
After the law has actually taught us that our self-righteousness is still sin, death and darkness, we make an about turn and receive the Christ! The authority that comes through this spiritual realization teaches us that we are sons of God. We don't pride ourselves on this, because this is the Father's doing, and we are thankful for the tremendous grace and mercy He has extended toward us! Others cannot understand this because only God can reveal the Son! Only the Father can reveal the Son to other people. All we do is testify to who Christ is and what He has done.
"Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead." (v.12) Even as God raised Christ from the dead, so He also raises us from death and the law into the realization of sonship!
"And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions." (v.13) Being raised from death to life is resurrection! We are raised from death to life, from darkness to light, from Adam to Christ! Christ's experience demonstrated God's power; and the Holy Spirit witnesses to us that this is true, and gives us the spiritual comprehension of it.
"Having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." (v.14) The decrees that were against us refer to the law given to Moses on the mountain, the letter of the scriptures, etc. As sons of God we are the offspring of God, and our true nature comes from Him; no longer are we the offspring of human nature or death. Therefore the law is now contrary to our nature, because through the law is the knowledge of sin, not the knowledge of righteousness! That is why we no longer have to preach the law; we don't have to tell people to deal with their sin and to stop sinning. That would be contrary to Christ, because Christ did not need the law to do God's will. After Jesus received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, He didn't have any desire to do anything that was contrary to the law. He didn't need a law saying, "Don't do this or that." The same Spirit is working the same desires in us!
"When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day." (vv.15-16) The delusions that were in man needed to be disarmed, so man could receive the truth. Men killed the physical body of Jesus because of the delusion they were in. This was the worst thing man was able to do to Him. But that did not stop the work of God, for it actually became greater when the Spirit came!
Let us review. We need to know that in God there is no death. We came out of God and in Him we live and move and have your being. He is our life - He is our all in all. His life is not temporal - it will not pass away. It is immortal - it has no beginning nor ending. His life ushers us out of our temporal existence of mortality, sin, sickness, disease and death. Jesus Christ did not think in those terms. He thought in terms of righteousness, life and immortality! Through His life we receive the mind of Christ and the thoughts of God. Thinking His thoughts gives us the same consciousness Christ had! So Christ has become the light of our way; He is our revelation of God!
God sent the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ to us. We need to listen to the voice of the Spirit in order to know God correctly. We need to become comfortable with the things the Spirit of Christ brings us. He brings us His nature of sinlessness and immortality. Our destination is no longer the earthy grave; our destination now is God! Many voices are clamoring for our attention, but the Holy Spirit gives us the discernment to differentiate between His voice and the others. Truth enables us to recognize the sophisticated lies of satan. These lies are entrenched in the world system, in doctrines, books, and in religious interpretations of the scriptures.
Being born of God entitles us to sonship. We enter into sonship when the Holy Spirit causes us to cry "Abba! Father!" This does not mean that we have arrived - that we are something, and have reached a pinnacle of perfection, and that God has accomplished His work in us. His work in us is a continuing work! We are not to strive for self-attainment and self-aggrandizement. We don't need to keep or protect our self-image; we don't have to reach earthly perfection, or accomplish great things. Only the natural mind strives for that. The natural mind can never conceive the things God has prepared for us. God is our life, God is our knowledge, God is our wisdom through Jesus Christ, because we are looking at immortal things!
We can rest in the fact that God is always NOW; God always IS! Through Christ we have a relationship with God, and this brings us into His presence! That is where we are! This is the great rest of God! Just knowing all the various details in the Bible does not bring us into a relationship with God. It is a case of knowing our position in relationship to God! There is no rest in anything else, because all knowledge belongs to God! Actually, true spiritual knowledge and life cannot be separated from God! A branch separated from the tree dies, for the source of its life is gone; in the same way, anything separated from God dies, for it has lost its source of life!
"Who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." (2 Cor. 3:6) We are not servants of the letter of the law, for the letter kills! There is death in the letter of the law.
"And will not he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the law and circumcision are a transgressor of the law?" (Rom. 2:27) Although the Jews had circumcision and the letter of the law they still transgressed the law! Since the law is spiritual, it is impossible to fulfill the law by merely observing the letter of the law. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, for He is spiritual! Sonship does not need a law!
The law brings us the knowledge of sin. If we are living under a consciousness of sin, it means we are under the law again. If we fall from grace, we fall into the law and its works; we don't fall into hell. The penalty for sin is death, and death is separation from God; the penalty is not hell. People who are not in the kingdom of heaven are already in hell at this present time. In Acts 2 Peter quoted king David's prophetic words about Jesus, "Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades." The soul of Jesus was taken into humanity, so He cried, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" This identification with humanity was simply a seed that would bring man out of Hades into the relationship that Christ had with God.
When the light of Christ shines in our hearts, our old sense of sin and death and mortality which we thought was truth, fades away. To become a son of God does not require any effort on our part! We simply submit to the workings of God through the law, and in repentance we receive Christ! Growth takes place by hearing and obeying the Spirit of God! It is in silence that we hear God. It may take some endeavor to quiet the carnal mind, for it is against the Spirit. But we do not get anything from God because of our own efforts - because of our begging, crying or praying.
"He that hears the voice of the Son shall live." The voice of life has to come by hearing, so we have to take heed to what we hear and how we hear. We are to HEAR what the Spirit is saying to the church! Just as Jesus only did what the Father told Him to do, so hearing what the Spirit says is to determine our works! That is why hearing is so important! The Word itself is the energy and the energizing to accomplish what God wants. This brings us into rest. God does not tell us to do things in our own strength and energy. That would be the law again.
I hope this has helped you to see that sonship is not an attainment of the natural man. It is simply being taken into the realization of who we are in God! It is total freedom from serving God in the death and delusion that we were in. It is a joy to serve God! We were born to serve Him.
Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding. Amen.