Postscript to Yes I Am
by Norman Grubb

In this second and final part of Norman’s additional thoughts after the publication of Yes, I Am, he tackles the difficult topic of sexual attraction in the life of the believer with his usual clarity and spiritual discernment. He strongly stands against the sin rampant in this area, and yet succinctly draws the distinction between actual sin and temptation. However, even in temptation he underlines the necessity of dying to any kind of self-for-self motives by affirming our true identity, showing how to turn a strong attraction in the soul to an intercessory spirit purpose for another.

Part Two
Just on one point we often need special reminders, on our body-responses. We know there is nothing wrong with our vigorous physical appetites. God made us like that. But we also know that these body appetites are the battle ground of our lives, the area of our greatest failures and destructive defeats in millions of lives, and the scenes of our fiercest struggles, and deepest condemnations of failures in our redeemed lives–food, liquor, drug habits ("mild" or destructive), and sex.

For some the "struggles" are with eating and overweight; with others tobacco, even worse, narcotics; with some alcohol; and with nearly all of us, certainly us men, sex. So I center our attention on sex. Its major hold on us is obvious when all lists of flesh sins in the New Testament start off with sex–"fornication, adulteries, lasciviousness, uncleanness." Such phrases continually recur (e.g. Gal. 5:19, and Jesus in Mark 7:21). It is obviously plan to most or all of us in our experiences. Sex draws. Its right use is God-given, in marriage (as Paul plainly states in 1 Cor. 7:2-6, and Heb. 13:4). But there is always the normal attraction. Whatever may be the responses of some, we men respond to women both in themselves and in their outer physical appearance. At what point then, do we cross the border line between pleasant admiration and responses, and sex-lust? The truth, of course, is that all is sex. The whole universe in its division by God into positive and negative as the sole means of activity and manifestation is by opposites who seek each other and are therefore "sexed." The only question which therefore remains is at what point is it right normal sex, or at what point it crosses the line into what the Bible calls lust.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY
I do not now refer to the abandonment by us as a fallen race, in its unsaved condition, in the misuse of sex in its full form in adulteries, fornications, perversions. I am now centering on our temptations, battles, often failures, and much condemnation through our sex drawings and responses in our born again lives. To me, the answer is again found in our understanding and application of the soul-spirit differentiation of Heb. 4:12. To us, in our walk in the Spirit, we plainly know that the actual sins of fornication or adultery are sins "they that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:9-10). We can fall into such sin, and when there is such a fall, there is the way of confession, repentance and cleansing as in 1 John 1:9, and such repentance carries with it the total cessation of such a relationship, and the "renewing of the mind" that regards the future possibility of such a sin as out of consideration by the keeping power of God.

But with the committal of those sins regarded as not in the "vocabulary" of the believer, what about the normal drawing of sex in all our daily contacts? At what point are such drawings by the eye or touch or mind also sin, and thus producing constant guilt and struggle against them, with so much failure, when we are surrounded with so much physical enticement? Here is where the answer is in that division between soul and spirit. Our spirit (we joined to Christ, one spirit) does not want the ways of flesh. Our souls, linked with our bodies, though assets for God, do also feel those drawings of eye, mind, touch, affecting both our soul-emotions and thoughts and our body responses. It is here where most of us have been caught up with false guilt and condemnation. James, again in 1:14-15 makes plain that temptation is drawings of desire, but is not sin. Verse 14 makes that plain. Sin is where we have responded to those drawings and either agree to committing the sin if we can, or else committing it. But when we have not agreed, but merely been attracted, that is not sin–Heb. 4:5. And this is where we are filled with false condemnations and vain struggles. While in our old false out-look, we thought there was something ‘unclean’ about our human appetites and responses, then indeed we are condemned by our very sex drawings, and struggles and failures; and deep within us we just accept that we are pretty "dirty" saints. You can see it plainly enough with us in meetings where we are being exhorted to live the victorious life, or even told we can do so. We look down, not up, and our faces often show an inner sense of guilt (thinking of our multiple sex drawings), or an inner indifference for "such talk is phony and impossible."

TEMPTATION IS NOT SIN
But when we have come to our new "revelation" that there is nothing unclean about our humanity in all its appetites, but God-made and beautiful; and when we have added to that the new recognition that we shall always live tempted, because God has privileged us to remain in the world which is sex-obsessed and uses all possible means to stimulate it, then we squarely recognize we shall always have these sex attractions by the eye, touch or thought, but that THEY ARE NOT WRONG. They are normal living in this world. This is where, for instance, so many have come under false condemnation by Jesus’ saying in Matt. 5:28 on "looking on a woman to lust after" and then says "Hast committed adultery with her in his heart." Underline "in his heart," because here (Spirit) is the place of choice, not just attraction. And that’s the point. The heart choice to which Jesus referred meant the inner intention to seduce her if I could. So now we make that vitacdivision in our recognition between our true identity and purpose and such an adulterous heart spirit-purpose, which by God’s grace we in Christ do not make, and which is near in our thoughts for a passing moment, resulting from the constant impact of our human relationships which can and do include soul-body attractions–"temptation." In our former erroneous out-look we should feel condemned as if it was a sin, and should be always seeking ways of deliverance from such flesh-diversions of sight and mind and then getting condemned again by a very look. But now we recognize the world is geared to offer such enticements, and when responding to such, we now say: "Of course, my humanity responds to what attracts its appetites. That is not sin. It is normal while we are in this world." But having admitted that "enticement" we say, "but that’s not my real me. That is a pull on my soul-body from without. But I am dead to that. I am Christ in me, as me, and He directs my interests and drawing to His ways of other-love," by which my real interest is not on another person for my gratification, but Christ in a person, or Christ to be formed in a person. Thus, my flesh drawings leading to self-gratification, become the negative stimulus for that same flesh to become quickened interest in Christ being manifested through me in spirit, soul and body. And "there is therefore no condemnation" but further progress in faith.

For this same reason–that we are so body-appetite prone–quite often in our new Christ in us as us relationship, we are slower to recognize and accept with all boldness that, as Paul said (1 Thess. 5:22), not only does our union reality mean Him expressing Himself by our spirits, but "I pray God your whole spirit, soul and body be pre-served blameless." Soul and body are equally included in the wholeness of our God-Union, and we take a further step forward and boldly walk wholly free as a whole person, without the former negative special watchfulness over our bodies, but rather enjoying our bodies as totally His agents. There is no fear in love.

The extent to which we can express affection, when the sinful use of our bodies is fixedly excluded, must be left to each individual–nor should one judge another, but retain our new-level position of seeing each other as Christ in our forms. Then each individual is to judge at what point any expression of affection is knowingly leading on to the "lust" of James 1:13, and response is the warning of Paul when he wrote "flee also youthful lust" (1 Tim. 2:22).

HOW TO HANDLE INORDINATE AFFECTION?
There is a right and a wrong interpretation of love, which in its wrongness destroys so many lives and marriages among those who are still in the world without a redemption experience, but also can deceive some who are the Lord’s. Those born of the Spirit inwardly know that the only true love is God’s other-love shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit (Rom. 5:6). But to those in the flesh, love is something emotional and physical, basically self-interested, because it still is an expression in us of the spirit of self-centeredness. Therefore when an unborn again husband is attracted by another woman, and his outer response to his own mate appears to have cooled on the flesh level, he will just say he has changed his "love," and these days moves easily into divorce. The same can be true of a wife. If the only power a person knows is the apparent power of the flesh, and so strong on the sex level, who can withstand it? But we are talking of ourselves who know Another Power. What do we do if what the Scripture calls an "inordinate affection" grabs us–like a strong almost overwhelming passion? For we well know this does happen. Now we are those who do know what true love is–as we have said–a spirit condition whereby we know that love is self-giving, and is an expression of God’s love by us. To us, then, the soul-body part of our love, which is meant to be equally real in us all, is secondary–merely an extra, though delightful, addition to our true spirit-bonds with our mate. So we know that a sudden change of soul emotion towards a person does not really mean that we are "in love" with them, as the world misnames it, but we are gripped with a strong "inordinate affection."

Now once again, if we don’t know the soul-spirit differentiation, we shall be full of false condemnation, and regard ourselves as equivalent to adulterers and unfaithful to our mates. But once again, temptation is not sin. It is a normal pull on our humanity.

DEATH FOR ME LIFE FOR OTHERS
If then such an "affection" takes hold of us, we do not run into condemnation. We face squarely that it has taken hold of us. We may possibly see that we were not wary or quick enough to follow through Paul’s "flee" waming. But there it is. First, of course, we settle it plainly that our bodies are "( t for fornication, but for the Lord" (I Cor. 6:13). So we take our full inner stand against any such temptations; and if this affection is already a known thing between two, then we make plain to the other one that this will not have a flesh and sin ending.

So then what? Back we come to our basis. We are spirit joined to His Spirit, and motivated by His nature of "other love." Any flesh pulls on our affections in soul or body we recognize, but then affirm that they are not the real love of mate to mate, but a passing infatuation. Then, because we know that spirit-love, and our marriage bonds safe with our mates, we see this sudden "love–storm" to be a call to the daily dying and rising in daily life of which Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 4:8-11, where we replace the flesh-pulls by our recognition of our death in Christ to.all such, and in our resurrection a reversal by a spirit-pull to express the opposite to the temptation. So though in a longer stronger pull of an inordinate affection, we deliberately take the same way. We see it as a call to reverse the stream of the passion. Instead of it being something to satisfy me, in this death and resurrection reality, we turn the flow of the affection into solely desiring what can be of Christ for the person concerned–that Christ may be fully formed in them. In other words we turn it into an intercession–dying to anything personal, and taking the position by faith that He comes fully His loving self, in that one. This may take time when an affection is strong, but we by this come to see that the Lord has given us an affection (not to be considered as a rival love) which the Spirit by us can now turn into a gain, not a disaster, and so we go through with it as gained–first in our new release and reversal in "faith", and then in God’s time in the other one.

RENEWED FAITH FOR OUR MATE
There is a place in this also where we move into a new position of faith for our mates. We may be torn by jealousy, fear for our marriage, anger, hatred, what not. But our own marriage will never be entirely safe unless some experience has come to us in which in that most intimate relationship, our married love is not centered in our love and trust in each other, but in the marriage of each of us as brides of Christ. Our human mate is the symbol of that, so we center on Christ in each other; and that means in our walk of faith that the Holy Spirit has His own full control of our mate, and we wholly trust Him in him or her through whatever situa-Lion may arise. Here then is the totally liberated way in the married relation-ship; based on total trust in and seeing Christ in our mates, and if any ‘rival’ affection arises, knowing that it is not rival, but an intercession. In all things, marriage included, "more than conquerors." And if it is a matter of an unequal yoke, where husband and wife are not one in Christ, and thus not in true spirit-relationship, then the place of victory is not that the marriage may be retained if there seem indications of unfaithfulness, but rather that we are given the place of intercession and to gain it for our partner.

I have not gone further into this highest calling of intercession, the summit of our ‘high calling’ for every member of the body of Christ, "in that each of us as His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hash before ordained that we should walk in them." I have written much on that in the later chapters of Yes I Am; but I would also recommend that readers get the recently published book The Intercession of Rees Howells by Doris Ruscoe, which follows on to the life of Rees Howells Intercessor which I was privileged to write, and which has been like an atom bomb of the Spirit in many lives. Doris Ruscoe’s book takes us yet more fully into what God had revealed on intercession in a unique way to Rees Howells and which he so fully practiced, and in this highest of calling has become a voice of the Spirit to the whole church of our generation.