The Epistles of Jacob Behmen

...[strange] merit of grace [or application of promises] credited from the outside [or received in a historical understanding original: "Historicall apprehension"; a belief based only on facts and history rather than personal spiritual experience of being justified and acquitted by another, like criminals], but through a child-like, regenerating, innate, in-dwelling, member-like, and essential grace. This is where Christ, the conqueror of death, rises within us with his life, essence, and power from our death, and has his mutual ruling influence and operation in us, just like a branch on its vine—as the writings of the Apostles testify throughout.

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7. He is far from being a Christian who only comforts himself with the passion, death, and satisfaction of Christ, and applies and credits it to himself as a pardon or gift of favor, yet remains an unregenerated, wild, [worldly, and sensual] beast. Such a "Christian" is every ungodly person; for everyone would gladly be saved through a gift of favor. Even the Devil would very willingly be an angel again by grace received and applied from the outside.

8. But to turn and become like a child, and be born anew of God's grace-water of love and the Holy Spirit—that does not please him. Even so, it does not please the titular Christian original: "Titular Christian"; one who has the title of "Christian" but lacks the internal reality, who will wrap himself in the mantle of Christ's grace [and claim his merits for himself by a historical claim to a promise] and yet will not enter into adoption original: "Adoption"; the spiritual process of being made a child of God and the new birth—even though Christ says that he cannot otherwise see the Kingdom of God.

9. For what is born of the flesh is flesh and cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (John 3). To be fleshly-minded is enmity against God, but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace. And only he who is born of God hears God’s Word, for only the spirit of grace in Christ hears God’s Word.

10. For no man has ever seen God; the Son alone, who is in the immeasurable bosom of the Father, declares the Word and Will of God within us. Thus, we hear and understand his will and good pleasure within ourselves and are willing to follow it, yet we are often kept back by the outward, sinful flesh. Therefore, the operation or effect of that same divine power [purpose and godly resolution in our mind] does not always manifest in the outward form original: "Figure"; the external behavior or physical body, yet it enters the inward form in the inward spiritual world, concerning which St. Paul says, "Our conversation original: "conversation"; in this context, it means "citizenship" or "conduct of life" is in Heaven." ☞

11. Concerning this, all the saints of God, and especially St. Paul, have complained: that they had an earnest, sincere will and served God with the mind of the internal ground original: "internall Ground"; the deepest center of the soul where it meets God, but with the flesh, they served the law of sin. So it is that the flesh lusts against the spirit, and this lust and evil desire original: "concupiscence" is daily drowned and mortified in the death of Christ by the inward ground [or the center of light rege-