How Did God Deal With Our Twisted Personalities?

Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Loved ones, the truth is that the mighty surgery that God works in all of us on Calvary could not be effective in any human being until it was set forth in a way we could understand and perceive.  So, even though God had done that in his own heart, in the Lamb that was slain before creation ever occurred, yet, the benefits of that death and that extermination of that twisted personality, it could only be actualized by a person who consciously identified himself with Jesus in his death.

Of course you couldn’t do that unless you knew about it. Do you see the Jews had no way of knowing about it?  They had no way of being delivered.  Loved ones, we know about it.  You know that there is nothing in you so bad that God has not already destroyed it in Jesus.  There is no habit that you’re used to, that’s got such a grip on you, that God is not able to actualize the destruction in you that took place in Jesus.  That’s why he says, “So, you also must consider yourself dead unto sin and alive unto God.”  Unless you are able to consider yourself dead unto sin and alive unto God, the action cannot be made real in your life.

But now you know it, loved ones, you can be. Do you see the purpose of Jesus’ death was the destruction of that -- oh, what does Dostoevsky call it -- that “streak of irrationality” in you.  That streak of irrationality that will even destroy you, yourself to get your own way.  God put that in his son, Jesus, and destroyed it there on Calvary.  That destruction can be made real in you if you are willing to identify yourself with Jesus in his death to his rights.

 You can come to a place where you accept what God has done for you in Jesus on Calvary, and you identify yourself with him, and you are willing for all of yourself to die so that a new being could be created.  Because, that is the amazing truth.  There will be no New Birth, unless there is a death of that old self in you.