![[The Good Seed]](../images/thegoodseed.gif)
Seed and Seed Bearing
By Lloyd Ellefson
Greetings in the name of the Lord! The name and the nature of the Spirit and His presence are one. So if we say "Greetings in the name of the Lord," it embodies everything His nature is. We are speaking on His behalf and by His energy working in us; we are also testifying to who He is spiritually. This has nothing to do with the letter of the scriptures, for that is death.
When our speech conveys spiritual understanding and revelation, the spiritual meaning is not understood by natural man, even though he can hear the words we speak. However the hearer's inability to understand the message does not take away the spiritual energy contained in the spoken words. They are words or seeds of the understanding of God's Spirit. Paul said that one plants, another waters, but God gives the increase. We can bring the seed and the Spirit together, but we can't bring the increase. The increase is in God, so if the words we speak are to have power and bring an increase, they must come from the Holy Spirit!
We have been redeemed from intellectual things and from the many books about the kingdom, the cross, and the numerous series of teachings on various subjects. Those whose comprehension comes from the natural mind try to convince people of biblical truths intellectually. They have accumulated a good deal of knowledge - much of it centered on forgiveness and justification. But being a new creature in Christ is more than that!
In Acts 2 Peter told the people that they ought to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins. Upon that basis they would receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit only anoints the new man. The flesh cannot receive the Spirit for it cannot understand Him and therefore strives against Him. The Spirit's teaching is meaningless to the natural man who is also called the Adamic man, the soulish man, the earthy or material man. The natural man's spirit has not been made alive, so he does not have the capacity to receive the spiritual impact of the message. The Spirit brings life, and Christ's words are spirit and life!
Christ wants us to have the same testimony on the earth as He had. "As the Father has sent Me, so send I you." Spiritual words contain a testimony of spiritual reality so they can only be understood by those who have ears to hear spiritually. Others can only hear, but they will not understand. Since the kingdom of God is God's rule in the Spirit, our spirit has to be made alive before we can hear spiritually. As we are in submission to the Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ will operate in us and we will understand the Spirit's teaching.
Although we are Christians, we are still ruled by the needs of our natural body. For survival we need gravity, air, food and drink! We are in bondage to the natural needs of the flesh. Similarly, for the survival of our spiritual life, our true life, we need to hear spiritual realities and feed on them. When we are ruled by the Spirit our body is redeemed as a tabernacle of testimony. Now we can testify to that life which is ours in the Spirit! We are in Christ Jesus and have been made new creatures in Him!
"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Rom. 8:1) No condemnation belongs to those who are in Christ! It doesn't say it's for those who believe what they hear about Christ Jesus, those who think He died on the cross and think they have forgiveness and justification and are going to heaven some day. If their assurance only resides in the natural man they will doubt their salvation whenever their behavior is below standard. When the Holy Spirit awakens our spirit and makes us alive, we understand that we are no longer children of this creation. We are children of God, a new creation born of the Spirit! For these there is no condemnation!
The Spirit will teach us to walk in obedience to the Spirit. Minding the Spirit means to obey the Spirit; minding the flesh means to obey the flesh. As long as we are in our natural consciousness we are unable to walk according to the Spirit; that consciousness cannot understand what it means to be in Christ Jesus. Its testimony does not have life.
"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death." (Rom. 8:2). The Spirit of life is in Christ and we are in Him! This is not a manifestation of life in the flesh; it is not the academic, human understanding of physical life. This Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from that. Humanity has a legalistic spirit of the law, but the Spirit of the law in Christ Jesus is different. Paul said the law is spiritual and Jesus said that every jot and tittle of the law was going to be fulfilled. Since the law is spiritual, and the commandments given to Moses were to be obeyed by the carnal man, they could only be a form of truth. The letter kills; it brings death, but truth brings life! In bringing life, truth puts to death the carnal ideas the natural man treasures.
In Romans 2:17-21 Paul addresses this subject. The Jews relied upon the law, boasted of knowing the will of God and of approving the things that are essential because they had been instructed out of the Law. They were confident in their ability to guide the blind, to be a light to those who are in darkness, to be correctors of the foolish and teachers of the immature, because they had the Law. But their law was only an embodiment (form) of knowledge and truth. So external law is only a form of truth. In spite of all their knowledge they did not do the things they taught others to do.
Now that we have the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, we no longer walk according to the flesh. It has set us free from the law of sin and death. This occurs by faith and is for this present time. We constantly increase in our knowledge of the things of God.
"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) That's where sin dwells, right? There was nothing wrong with the law - but it was weak through the flesh! The weakness of the flesh keeps us from fulfilling the law. There was nothing wrong with the law - the problem lies with us.
The solution lies in having a spirit that does not only want to do those things - but wants to be them! This is much greater than having a law of commandments that makes all kinds of demands on us, yet leaves us without any help to fulfill them. Those who have received the Spirit understand that all things, including us, have become new in Christ Jesus. That is most important! After we have been made new, spiritual realities can come to us in the newness of the Spirit.
"For the kingdom is the LORD'S and He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship, all those who go down to the dust will bow before Him, even he who cannot keep his soul alive." (Psalm 22:28-29) Those verses are quoted in the New Testament. If you seek to save your soul you will lose it. Soul does not refer to life; there is no other life but the life that is in God. We can't save our life - our life is in God; it is hidden with Christ in God!.
"Posterity will serve Him; it will be told of the Lord to the coming generation...And as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living...?" (Ps. 22:30; Isa. 53:8) In other words, Jesus had no generation in the flesh; He had no natural progeny. He only reproduces Himself in the Spirit, that is in the seed of the kingdom! The children of the kingdom are born of the Word; they are born of an incorruptible seed! We got that seed through the testimony of Christ. At first His testimony was rejected because the people did not have the Spirit. After the Spirit came, the ministry of reconciliation was given to the body of Christ.
It says, "A seed shall serve him; and it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation." (KJV) The promises were all given to the seed (not seeds, Gal. 3:16), and that seed is Christ. This seed continually brings forth a generation of spiritual sons of God, just as the natural seed of Adam continually brings forth a generation of the seed of the flesh. But the latter has no inheritance in the kingdom of God.
"They will come and will declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that he has performed it." (Psalm 22:31) The righteousness of the Lord will be proclaimed by a generation that is part of the seed-bearing ministry, for they have been born of that seed; they are the vessels that manifest the fruit of that seed here on earth. That fruit is spiritual fruit. Under the Father's direction miracles often occur - as they did in the case of Jesus. He spoke to the sea, to a withered arm and to dead people - things which don't have ears and normally are unable to respond - yet they responded!
In contrast to that, when Jesus spoke to people there was constant rejection. Those who have been established in the Spirit, experience a replay of that. We are sons of God and our job is to reconcile people to God. This is to be our testimony.
Rev. 11:15: "Then the seventh angel sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, `The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.'" Angels are messengers in the kingdom; they can be either spiritual or human. We are messengers and are able to deliver the spiritual messages we receive from the Holy Spirit. We are Christ's testimony in the earth today. The kingdom of this world is one kingdom with one ruler - the prince or god of this world. (The KJV has kingdoms, but that is a faulty translation.) It does not refer to kingdoms; it is one kingdom, one rule. It is a system of rule that rules creation.
Humanity is part of this creation because everyone has been made out of the dust of the earth. Man became a living soul after God breathed into him. And when Jesus breathed on His disciples in John 20, they became alive spiritually.
But the main point here is that the kingdom of the world has become the Lord's and His Christ! When Jesus said, "I have overcome the world," it meant He had overcome this world system. It is important to understand that it is one kingdom and that Jesus has already overcome this world. As we see all the evil that is in the world, natural thinking asserts that Jesus will have to return in the flesh to set up His kingdom on the earth, and govern it with an iron rod to make people obey the ten commandments. He might even bring about a great tribulation which would cause people to repent.
This is not spiritual thinking! Jesus came to tell us that the kingdom of God is not of this world. It does not consist of material things, but it is in the Holy Spirit! He wants us to know that it is a kingdom of joy, peace, and righteousness in the Holy Spirit! This world is governed by the god of this world. (2 Cor. 4:4) The whole world lies in the wicked one; it is not operated by Christ nor is it being redeemed by Him. That is why it has to be overcome by the Spirit of Christ in us. That which has been overcome has lost its power! It has no point of contact in us!
"The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ." The word Lord means Master - Jesus is our Master; of His Christ means His anointed ones. Who is the Lord's Christ? To understand this, let's look at Acts 2. Here Peter said that God had poured forth His Spirit, and that God had made Jesus both Lord and Christ! This was the first spiritual message that had come through a man like Peter. Jesus had given him the keys to the kingdom and Peter used them to open the kingdom to the Jews. He who anoints us now is Christ! This anointing from God comes to us through Christ. Therefore we are the Lord's Christ - we are His anointed ones! (Psalm 2:2; Acts 4:26)
The kingdom of the world has become subject to the Lord; it now belongs to the Lord; He rules over it and has authority over it. The kingdom of the world consists of the greed, the lusting of the flesh, the hatred, the love of money, the love of property, the love for the things of this world! This kingdom governs all the nations of the world. The god of this world rules by bringing corruption. destruction, evil, disease, etc. to people. We escape the evil and corruption in this world through the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and are a testimony to others. Since we are bearers of the good seed, we are planting the seed of the true vine, the seed of righteousness, the seed of immortality that will reproduce itself in people.
He has overcome the world! This is reason for rejoicing! In Revelation 3:21 it says that we are going to overcome even as He overcame. Jesus overcame the world in His daily walk on earth, and that is where we also overcome the world. Jesus did not organize marches, etc., against the Roman government. He overcame the world that was in Him by the spiritual presence of God that resided in Him! Being like Jesus in this world does not consist of doing great wonders and having people honor us. That idea is far, far from the truth. Being like Him means doing the will of the Father just like Jesus did! This will cause the world to hate us. Jesus said, "If the world hates Me, it will hate you, because the servant is not greater than His Master." The world hated Christ.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever! Just as He did not govern nor change this world when He was on earth, so He is not going to do so in the future. He is bringing us into a new world, a new creation, and a new sense of being! His rule is in the new kingdom!
The Hebrew word MESSIAH means anointed. It is the equivalent of the Greek title CHRIST. So we are the Lord's Messiah, the anointed ones in the earth. This is important because now that we have been made alive spiritually, we have become the seed-bearers. Matthew 13:38 tells us that the sons of the kingdom are the good seed! Jesus did not generate any progeny in the flesh; He regenerates and makes us alive through the Word that He has given us. Now we can testify to the life that is ours in the Spirit. We are bearers of the seed that will bring children and sons into the kingdom! They will be brought into the understanding that they are the children of God and sons of God!
In Luke 22:37 it says, "For I tell you that this which is written must be fulfilled in Me, `And He was numbered with transgressors'; for that which refers to Me has its fulfillment." Jesus spoke with authority of things written prophetically about him in the Old Testament. He said, "Father I have finished the work which You sent Me to do." He knew the things which had been prophesied of Him, and that they had to be fulfilled in Him! On the cross He said, "It is finished." There was a total completion of the things that were to happen to Jesus literally; all the promises and the prophecies of the Old Testament were fulfilled in Christ!
As we recognize that all prophecy is fulfilled in Christ, we receive a further testimony of what Christ is, who He is, and who we are in Him. Everything we are is accomplished in Christ! Our Father-son relationship with God has been brought about in Christ! Everything that was written about Jesus Christ had to be fulfilled in Him! Everything was accomplished in Him, not by Him. They do not happen externally - they happen in Him!
The things Jesus Christ accomplished spiritually were symbolized in the Old Testament. So the things which were written about Him have their fulfillment in Him. We are not waiting for them to come externally, for they have already been fulfilled. Instead, we are growing and ascending in the understanding of these spiritual realities that were accomplished in Him. They are ours in Christ, but we have to grow in our understanding and appropriation of them. The things that refer to Christ have come to their completion when they are fulfilled in Him. Jesus said He had accomplished the work God sent Him to do. He is the sum of all things in the Old Testament - they are all fulfilled in Him!
The promises were given to the seed. There is only one seed of God, and it always generates after its own kind. It always produces the same Son; it doesn't produce an assortment of doctrines, ideas, truths, or spiritual realities. In the natural realm, flesh begets the same kind of flesh; so in the spiritual realm, God's Spirit reproduces Himself in us. We receive the same Spirit Christ received! Then these written things have ended for us, for they have been fulfilled in the fulfillment of Jesus Christ! He said, "Don't think that I came to destroy the law and the prophets. I came to fulfill."
Jesus has come again even though He is not here in visible form. He is here; He has come! How could we be in Christ if He has not come again? Being in Christ means that we become the manifestation of Christ in the earth! We have received Christ, the Spirit of anointing, and He is our life! The Anointing we have received is our teacher, and He gives us an understanding of the Bible.
The Bible is a testimony of who God is, but we need the Holy Spirit to know Him! Since the Bible is a testimony, it does not have the ability to save us, to heal us, to get us to heaven and to give us the Holy Spirit - but it tells us how to receive them! It tells us of the process of redemption that God has worked through the prophets and the promises; it tells us that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of every promise and everything written about Him in the Old Testament. He is death to the old man; He is the fulfillment of everything that God promised! He is the only inheritor, for the inheritance is only given to one seed. When we are born of that seed we become partakers of the inheritance of the things in God.
Everything is consummated in Christ Jesus through the process of redemption that God has ordained! Jesus Christ is the ultimate! Our goal is not heaven, forgiveness and justification - it's LIFE! And CHRIST IS OUR LIFE! To understand this we have to abandon all our natural ideas of life, and stop looking to the world to see what can be accomplished by its ideas of earthy redemption and earthy cleansing. We are a new creation in Christ Jesus! At this time we are being brought into the spiritual reality of these things!
Jesus knew who He was and He said, "I am the resurrection, I am the life, I am the truth, I am the way." When we refer to Jesus being the truth, we are not referring to natural truth, for natural truth has been present since the beginning of time. Jesus came into the world to testify to the truth - that is to THE truth, to the spiritual reality that lies behind the natural! Jesus knew that His testimony through His physical body was going to end, but His testimony would be reproduced in those in and through whom He has reproduced Himself. These are the called-out ones - the ecclesia, the anointed ones who are called the Lord's Christ in the scriptures.
To enlarge on this let's look at Rev. 1:7. "Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen." This revelation was signified to John. It was given in signs. God gave it to Christ, and He gave it to His servants. All these signs are fulfilled in Christ. So if you are in Christ you are in the fulfillment. The things we do not understand as yet are future to us. At some time we will come into that understanding; but until we do, they are future to us. So the things we do not understand in the book of Revelation are future to us.
For example, John speaks about being in the Spirit on the Lord's day when he heard a voice behind him. He turned to see the voice, and saw one like the Son of Man. It was a likeness of the Son of Man. Jesus usually referred to Himself as the Son of Man! That is what we want to focus on at this time.
Jesus called Himself the Son of Man when He came in the likeness of sinful flesh, and, except for sin, He identified with the limitations of humanity. After Jesus was baptized, He received the Holy Spirit and the witness from the Father that He was His beloved Son! This ignited a whole new ministry! He began talking about the mysteries of the kingdom of God and His rule. The realities of the spiritual rule that God has prepared for us were manifested in Jesus Christ! The disciples were instructed to wait in the upper room to be empowered with the Holy Spirit. They could not be His witnesses until they received the Spirit! No one can be a true witness of God in Christ until he has had this experience of receiving the Holy Spirit. Christ comes into us and reproduces Himself in the new spiritual creature He has made us. To this new man He gives an ear to hear the Spirit and to understand beyond the letter of the scriptures.
In my estimation, relatively few are hearing the Spirit and therefore most Christians are not walking in this understanding. And very few really want it to the extent that they are willing to give up their natural thinking. Most of them want earthly things like better looks, better health, better social standing, better houses and cars, plus the assurance of heaven! They give to God in order to receive more! All this testifies to the bondage that is ours in the old nature.
Jesus showed us what it is like to be totally immersed in the knowledge of who God is! He knew that God's love differs from human love, that it is not sensual and that no one could experience that love until the Holy Spirit would come. Even natural paternal love cannot portray the love of God! Since Christ was immersed in God, no adverse spirit could find any point of contact in Him. No adverse spirit could influence Him against the things God asked Him to do!
The Son of Man is a corporate man. When we receive the Spirit of Christ, we become a part or member of the new man on this earth; we are the Lord's anointed and carry the seed that reproduces Jesus Christ! Paul said, "I am distressed until Christ is formed in you." He also said that as we wear or carry this earthy idea, this earthy image of God, we will also wear or carry the spiritual image, the heavenly image. (1 Cor. 15:49) These things are produced in us by a seed - a word that has been watered by the Spirit. We become those who abide in the vine of Christ and bear fruit. If we don't bear fruit we are cut off and dry up.
"Behold He is coming with the clouds." After Jesus ascended into heaven, two men said that He would come again in the same manner in which He went into heaven. He was received by a cloud and disappeared in that cloud, and now He is coming with the clouds. He is coming out of the same clouds. According to Hebrews 12:1, these are clouds of witnesses. They are the witnesses that brought Him here. These are the witnesses in the Old Testament - from Abel to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David to the prophets to John the Baptist. They are all part of that cloud. Jesus Himself went into that cloud of witnesses and is among the witnesses; as a matter of fact, the true witness is the Christ Himself! He went into that cloud and He is coming back in the clouds!
We do not see these people as individuals, but as types who have received the inworking of those things that are of Christ! You see, Christ was there, for He said, "Before Abraham was, I am." God worked the things that are in Christ in them. So Jesus Christ became the sum and fulfillment of all the understanding that was in them. He is the source of all these spiritual things in the Old and the New Testament. He is the source, and He has put us together to complete the body of Christ - for they all belong to the body of Christ.
The body of Christ is the body of the Messiah or the body of the Anointed. It is not a certain group of people who belong to a certain church or denomination. It is simply the reproduction of Christ in our spirits. If Christ has not been reproduced in us, we are not members of the body. Paul said, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you - unless indeed you fail the test." (2 Cor. 13:5) All those who received Him, received the authority to become children of God - sons of God!
"...and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him." They will mourn because the witness of Christ Jesus has come to them. It has come to them through all those who are in Christ, and consequently they recognize that they are dwelling in the wrong place. They are dwelling in the earth and sea instead of in the heavens. "For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time. (Rev. 12:12) This is happening at this very time.
Christ is now; He is always now! He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He never changes. He never changes His mind about this world and will never say it is good. He always remains the way, the truth, the life and the resurrection! Man cannot make Him change. The only way anyone can receive life is by being born again and being transferred into God's kingdom! It has to happen according to the way God has ordained it!
There is no such thing as compromise in His kingdom. If we are ashamed of Jesus Christ while we are on this earth, He will be ashamed of us in heaven before His Father and the angels. It is as simple as that. This is an absolute in God. Therefore it cannot be altered nor denied in any way. It will happen exactly the way Jesus testified, for He said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away." He is the rock cut out of the mountain; if He falls on you, you will be crushed, and if you fall on Him the same thing will happen to you. So there is no existence other than the life that is in Christ! If you are living in the flesh, and the flesh ends, you do not have an abiding place.
In closing, let's look at Hebrews 12:1-2a. "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith..." Jesus is the author of faith in God! Any faith that is not authored by Him is not true faith. When people talk about the Lutheran faith, Catholic faith or any other faith, they mean the doctrines believed by these groups. That is not the faith that is referred to here. Faith in one's own ability to do things is not the real faith - it is only human faith.
When Christ came we were given the faith that is in Jesus Christ! Paul said that he had been crucified with Christ. Therefore it was no longer he who lived, but Christ lived in him and was his life. He lived by the faith of the Son of God! It is His faith because He is the only One that has the kind of faith in God that will change us and make us new in God. There are many perversions of what the scriptures teach because spiritual truth is twisted in the carnal mind. It wants God's blessing on human nature and on the natural man.
God's promise was given to the seed of God, and that seed is Christ! All of God's promises have their Yes in Him and we add our Amen to that. We can only become partakers of those promises when we are united with Him. God promised to give us Christ. He has not promised to give spiritual blessings to the natural man, for he is incapable of receiving them; he can only receive temporal blessings. When we are in Christ, sonship and the inheritance and the blessing of God become ours. Outside of that, there are no special promises to the nation of Israel or to any other nation, denomination, organization, etc. All the promises of God have their Yes in Christ, and Christ, the seed, is the inheritor of all the promises of God!
Only one seed can continue the generation of who Jesus Christ is. On earth He was the Son of Man; He was from the seed planted in the womb of Mary. We are the Lord's Christ. Christ is the seed that has been planted in us (in our earth). After we have been made alive spiritually and have received true understanding, it is normal and natural for us to talk about spiritual things. This makes us true witnesses.
These things cannot be understood by the human mind. It is in the death realm because it is separated from the only One who has life! It does not have the Spirit. Only those who have the Spirit can be the seed-bearers in the earth! Only the branches that are in the vine (Christ Jesus) produce the fruit that contains the seed! Those who abide in Him are those branches. Jesus said, "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you." (John 15:16) Jesus has chosen us to bear fruit that does not perish. This is the fruit that remains!
So consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding. Amen.