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Wednesday March 4, 2026

Paul’s Great Discovery

“Paul’s great discovery was that the human self is basically neutral as far as the kind of nature it expresses. He says in Romans 7:18 that no good thing resides in our humanity (flesh). But then he says that neither does any bad thing, though he had mistakenly and so deceivedly thought it did. No!–if any good in him is expressed by the Spirit bearing His fruit through him, merely as a branch; so also, any bad is not in humanity, our flesh, but is equally the fruit of the bad spirit through us as a branch. Actually he said that in Romans 6:20-22. Which fruit were we formerly producing? Fruit is not a branch product, but a vine product. It depends on which vine our human selves are the branches of! So if the good is the Spirit of good expressed by me, the bad is the spirit of bad–what Paul called ‘sin that dwelleth in me’ in Romans 7:17. This is now replaced by Christ dwelling in us (Rom. 8:10).

So, at the point of desperation, Paul found a solution to his misery. He was not able to combat temptations under the pointing finger of the law’s ‘you ought to.’ The solution was the radical revelation that he never was an independent self combating temptation and challenged by the law. He came to see his created self (as are all selves) as the mere container and then expresser of the Eternal Self. We are all created to contain and express the Eternal Self. But we have to learn that nothing functions except by swallowing up its opposite. We learn the operation of God’s opposite by yielding our human selves to the Satan occupant, resulting in ‘sin that dwelleth in me.’ We are tricked into believing that we run ourselves (as Satan thinks he runs himself) and that we ourselves are the sin persons doing the sins. But we are only branches, not vines.

God sent the law through Moses to challenge us to be doers if we think we can! Down at last we fall. We are of course unable to be self-operating selves, because there is no such thing. Initially we saw our sins removed by grace. We did not yet see that they were Satan’s sins by us and not ours (John 8:44). But then comes the final discovery that the sin-doer was never we, but he in us as us. The law caught us out as if we were independent selves. Then came the condemnation from the law and the struggling to rid ourselves of the sin-power holding us. But at last we see! There never was anything wrong with our branch humanity made in His image. So therefore, we take no condemnation as if we were the culprit. It was he, ‘Mr. Sin,’ pulling at us and often knocking us over.”

Taken from: No Independent Self

By Norman Grubb

Pages 15-16