Tape Gems - Justified in the Spirit

By Oscar M. Baker

(I Tim. 3:16). Rotherham’s translation says, “declared just in Spirit”. And spirit is used of the new nature, new man in a believer, and the ordinary person (believer) has two spirits – the old nature and the new nature. But here the Lord was, “declared just in Spirit,” therefore He never had the old Adamic nature, He was free from sin. Men are justified by faith, but Jesus Christ was always just. Let’s take a couple of references. Mt. 3:17, here’s a justification at the baptism of the Lord, in the region of Jordan, “And lo a voice from heaven saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased’.” Wouldn’t you take that as a justification? I have another reference on that, Mt. 17:5. This is His transfiguration, and here is a very similar episode to the time of His baptism. “While He yet spake, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them” (and that was the Lord, Peter, James and John) “and behold a voice out of the cloud which said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him’.” Now, “hear ye Him”, means to pay attention to everything that he says. He’s God’s mouth piece – God speaking to men. And whatever He says is truth, whatever He says is relevant, He doesn’t waste words. So here (I Tim. 3:16) He is justified; God is well pleased with Him, that’s justification.

Now you can begin to see a little bit about our justification. There’s absolutely no way in which a man can to be just before God, and justified, except by putting on the righteousness of Christ!

[T.F.T. tape 1-19-82, “The Mystery of Godliness”.]

  "Received up into glory”

(I Tim.3:16). I have a whole bunch of refs. on that, I don’t think we need to go into all of them, and yet you know there are people who don’t believe this. In a certain denomination that I was tangled up with many years ago, they were teaching in one of their educational institutions that the Lord was walking along a path one day with His disciples (after His resurrection) and that He got ahead of them and went over a hill, and when they got to the top of the hill He wasn’t anywhere to be seen. So they just supposed that He’d gone up into heaven. Now that’s modernism for you, and that’s the way they treat the whole Bible, till they’ve made a mess of It.

Now remember in Eph. 1:20-21, that God raised Him from the dead and set Him “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named”. That is one of them where He was received up into glory. In Col. 3:4 we have there, manifested in glory, that’s the hope in the future, this place into which He was received.