God is patient, ready to overcome evil with good. By nature we are impatient and ready to attempt to overcome evil with evil of our own making.

Each day the choice is set before us. Shall we choose to serve the Lord and learn the lessons of godliness or shall we force our own way and will in an attempt to make a better life for ourselves (so we imagine)?

We are saved so we may enter the process of change into God's image, and the process of being brought into perfect union with God through Christ. We are saved so God may bring to pass in our personality the four aspects of the original Divine declaration.

Perfect image and perfect union are the result of overcoming, through Jesus, the obstacles that seek to prevent change into God's image and restful union with Him through Christ. It is a fight and the crown goes to the winner.

Why would God make it necessary for us to struggle so hard to attain what He has spoken concerning man? The reason is that character can be attained only as we struggle against ungodliness. God is desirous that we be not merely innocent and righteous but militantly righteous—able to rule in righteousness.

Also, we are pressed into perfect union with the Lord by various forces that come against us.

God will not be content until His children are in His image and in restful union with Himself. This will be true of all the saved no matter how long it takes. The victorious saints of the present era will prove to be a firstfruits of what one day will be true of all saved people, although the rank in the Kingdom the overcomer attains will no doubt be his throughout eternity.

It is God's will in the present hour that each of His elect be made the complement (bride) of the Lamb of God. The Holy Spirit works with us until we realize we are nothing apart from the Lord Jesus. It is only as we abide in Him and He in us that the Kingdom of God is brought into being.

Image apart from union is Antichrist. Satan desires to be like God but he does not want to become a part of God's Person or will. So it is today. Religious people desire image, or fruitfulness, or rulership, or power in prayer, apart from union with God. This is wickedness.

The Lord Jesus Christ did not come from Heaven in order to set people free and give them power so they can proceed to live their own lives, to achieve their own desires, to fulfill themselves according to their own wishes. Christ came from Heaven in order to make people His possession.

The concept we are discussing is one of the most troublesome of contemporary Christian thinking, and the working out of it will result in a division in the ranks of the believers. In the twentieth century we have come to believe that man is to use the grace of God to promote his own well-being and the well-being of others. We think we are to seek the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit in order to save, heal, and otherwise deliver people from Satan and especially from the consequences of satanic behavior.

This is an incorrect motive and will lead only to the False Prophet and Antichrist. It is the result of the blending of the values of humanism and the religion of Christianity.

To be continued.