5. Speaking Christ

The first command of the New Covenant is to abide in Christ. The second is to speak Christ. Speaking Christ is how we abide in Him.

© Daniel Yordy 2010

The first command of the New Covenant is to abide in Christ. The second is to speak Christ. Speaking Christ is how we abide in Him.

Everything comes in its order and we MUST get God’s order right. God always works from the inside out. To love one another comes only by first speaking Christ. True love comes only out of Jesus living His life in us and as us.

Speak Christ!

Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. — If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, you shall be saved. — Hold fast the confession of your hope without wavering. — Acknowledge the good things of Christ inside of you.

Moses was commanded by God, the first time, to strike the rock. When he did so, water came flowing out – salvation, life.

The second time, however, God commanded Moses only to speak to the rock. But Moses was frustrated with the carnal foolishness of the people God had given him to shepherd. In anger, he struck the rock a second time instead of simply speaking to it. God still gave life to the people, but He cut Moses off from entering the life to come, he could see it only. (Exodus 17:5-6 & Numbers 20:8-12)

Paul called the Lord Jesus ‘the last Adam,’ and ‘the second man.’ In other words, there can be a third man in God’s purpose, but Adam ended on the cross of Christ. So Paul said in Ephesians 2:15 that God creates a new man in Christ. But there is no more Adam. There are elements of Adam’s place and experience before God that are replicated in Jesus’ place and experience before God, but NOT in ours.

God brought life out of Jesus by striking Him. “Strike the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” (Mathew 26:31) But now, God brings life out of us by the words of our mouth, by speaking Christ. The cross of Christ is made real in our lives by the words of our mouth.

Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:11

This is a commandment to speak. So that is what I do. I say, “Christ is my life, I have no other life.” When I say, “I have no other life,” I am reckoning that all that needed to die is, indeed, dead. I am obeying God.

Now here’s the deal. Many ministers of the gospel like to emphasize obedience. But seldom do you hear them say to obey the commandment to speak Christ.

When I sat with the elders while I was in the move, an anointed, non-legalistic fellowship which honored women in ministry, we had a discussion once on revising the order for the community. In 10-12 hours of discussion of ‘God’s order for His people,’ we never once left or even resolved the issue of women’s clothing.

I had the time, a few months later, to see what God really commands us in the New Covenant. I wrote out every verse in the New Testament that is or could be construed to be a commandment. Then I organized those commandments into groups. I have the list in my file. At the time I had never heard of the idea of speaking Christ, and so did not have a category for those commandments. I could not yet know the victory of Jesus inside of me.

Of all those commandments, there are only three or four that could be construed to be ‘letter of the word’ commands dealing with external things like ‘women’s clothing.’ All the rest are spiritual commands.

For instance: “Give thanks in all things.” Force yourself to obey this command. Make yourself do it in all the strength of your ‘fallen human flesh.’ Guess what. You are speaking Christ, and you will be lifted up into the Spirit of Christ.

Now, in all this talk about ‘obedience,’ most ministers have no idea what we are to obey; they have never considered the commandments of the New Covenant as a whole. For instance, commands to evangelize are very few, though not unimportant. Paul never once told his churches to “Evangelize the lost.”

The most frequent commands are “Watch out, take heed, beware.” The second most frequent command is “Do not be afraid.” But the command of the gospel that reveals Christ in us is Romans 10:9 - Romans 6:11 -Philemon 6.

“Confess the Lord Jesus — Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God — Acknowledge the good things of Christ inside of you.”

Romans 6:11 is the least obeyed commandment in the New Testament. Yet, if we disobey God in this, then all other so-called ‘obedience’ is just the working of self. Flesh subduing flesh. Self dying to self. The fallen human nature defeating the fallen human nature. And trying to call it ‘the cross of Christ”!

God became angry with Moses, because Moses messed up God’s pattern, for the same reason that many ministers of the gospel mess up God’s pattern today.

Because Jesus was the end of Adam, God struck Him upon the cross, and drew life out of Him that God then planted inside you and me.

We overcome all things by speaking what God already says about Christ inside of us. When we speak Christ, Jesus Himself, the Savior, defeats our enemies and brings the wayward workings of our outer person into His Spirit.

Let’s look at love, then.

One of the most precious verses in the Bible to me for many years is Romans 5:5

. . . The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Many times I wept before God, placing my hands upon my heart and in the depths of desire and brokenness, saying, “Father, if I could ask but one thing of you, if you could, please, place Your heart inside of mine, that I might see this love You speak about, here, flowing out of my own heart.”

I prayed that through the years, because, when I looked at my own heart, all I could see was wretchedness and shame and despair. I am not a naturally outwardly ‘loving’ or ‘giving’ person. When I would compare myself with those who do have the natural gift of giving and loving outwardly, I would know (and so would everyone else) that I had a wretched heart.

But I always read Romans 5:5 as a future to hope for, an ideal to aspire to, something that doesn’t exist in us now, but that we can ask God maybe, maybe someday, when – but only if – we have come to the full measure of the cross, whatever that is - no one knows, to work this love in our lives.

Amazing, isn’t it, how, with our theology and revelation of the ‘deeper’ things of God, we are able to imagine Him to be telling us something that is NOT true!

Can I speak these words? “The love of God fills my heart and flows out from my heart at all times right here, right now.” Can I speak these words even when I am ‘feeling’ very unloving? Are they true, even when I am struggling with bitterness against someone?

I must speak them, and they are absolutely true.

We do not walk by what we see with our natural eyes or feel with our human emotions. We walk, speaking what God says about us.

And here is what I find happening in my life when I speak these words, “Christ is my life, I have no other life.” Jesus Himself, from out of my innermost being, swallows up the bitterness, the lust and temptation, whatever it was that once dominated me. Jesus Himself, my Savior, swallows those things up in an instant, and they are as if they never were.

I know a brother who is very giving and loving. He was and is a model to me and encouraged me greatly in the Lord. Then one day, I met his brother. His brother did not walk with Jesus, yet he had the same giving, encouraging, loving nature. Now, the one brother had the anointing of God upon his human nature, the other brother did not, but apart from that anointing, it was the same human qualities. What an eye opener! I had been calling this brother’s human qualities “Christ,” but my own human qualities “the flesh.”

Even someone who is naturally loving and giving, and has an anointing of God upon their human nature, must still believe that Christ is their life and that they have no other life in order to truly know Him. Unless we speak Christ, our human abilities, including the human ability that some have to ‘subdue the flesh’ do not bring us to the knowledge of Christ.

I love because God says that His love is always, right now, abounding in my heart. I confess with my mouth the Lord Jesus, by saying out loud, “the love of God is abounding in my heart.” I overcome in the outer parts of my life in this world, not by the ability of self to subdue self, but by speaking what God already says about me. “You are more than a conqueror through Christ who loves you.”

I speak Christ: “I am an overcomer and more than an overcomer, right here, right now, through Christ who loves me.” Then, as I speak Christ, I discover that which I hoped would be mine someday, flowing out of me right now. This is not a theory: this is my present experience.

I speak Christ, even, and especially, when I feel my worst. I speak Christ when I feel condemned, cut off from God, in sin, in the flesh, whatever. When I feel my worst, I speak Christ, and I am so blessed and amazed to discover that Jesus Himself, the person, Jesus, my Savior, the One upon whose breast I lean my head, flows out of my heart and mind in an instant and swallows up every voice inside of me that was calling God a liar.

Consider these words:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18

When Jesus said that we bear our cross daily, He was talking about this ministry of reconciliation; He was NOT talking about the demise of a fallen human nature.

This word is absolute. (And there are others just like it.) This word must rule over all the commandments of God in the New Covenant. Everything inside of me that needed to die is dead. I know that this is so, and I speak it with my mouth in obedience to God’s command to me to do so. Everything inside of me right now is brand new. Everything inside of me is of God.

“I AM alive indeed unto God.” God commanded me also to speak this.

Underneath of that absolute reality we insert such commandments as “Put to death the deeds of the body,” and “Put to death your members that are on the earth.” Romans 8:13 & Colossians 3:5

These are subordinate commandments, dealing with the cleansing of the outer parts of our person in this world. They are not in any way referring to who and what I am.

There is an incredibly awful teaching inside of “kingdom truth” that says that what God is doing in our lives right now is revealing to us the anti-Christ inside of us. That God is exposing to us the depths of the man of sin as he lives and rules inside of us. I was told by one precious sister whom I have known in the Lord for many years, “I have no time to consider what you are saying about Christ in me, I have enough concern dealing with anti-Christ in me.”

You can rest yourself upon this rock, dear believer in Jesus, God says that Christ lives in your heart. Nowhere does He say that anti-Christ lives in your heart, nor does God ever even insinuate such a thing. I don’t care what ‘deep’ revelation is claimed. What God Himself says about me is enough for me.

You are dead. – God, you are telling me the truth.

Christ, who is your life. – God, I accept what you say.

If God be for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen. . .

– God, I stand absolutely inside of these words, and that hideous accuser of the brethren can rail all he wants, he cannot touch me.

Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.

God, I stand fully in Jesus, my opponent is entirely on the outside of me.

But God doesn’t just say that Christ lives in our hearts, He says that Christ lives in our hearts BY FAITH! That means we do NOT go by what we see with our natural eyes or perceive with our natural mind, but we speak with God, calling those things that ‘be not’ as though they are. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is speaking Christ, now.

What you seek, you will find. What you speak, you will know. What you see, you will become. Those who seek anti-Christ and selfishness and sin inside their hearts will find what they seek. I will not go with them.

They have determined that what they see with their natural eyes and feel with their human emotions is more real than what God explicitly says about them.

God struck Jesus upon the cross and life flowed out of Him. God says to you and me, “Confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus.” We do so; we speak Christ, and life flows out of us.

Adam ended on the cross. We are the revelation of Jesus Christ.