“He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him give us all things?”
-Romans 8:32.
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” -1Peter 5:10.
For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.” -Philippians 3:3.
”For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” -2Corinthians 4:17-18.
God still owns planet earth including all created universes!
God is who life is all about; God’s Life is pure righteousness, the righteousness that comes from God by faith. We have now, in our own body, not what God provided Adam. We wear a corrupted version of the glory possessed by Adam. The joy we derive from this mortal fleshly body, is inherited through physical birth corrupted by human interdiction.
Our life without God is miraculous, no question! Creation itself declares the glory of God but law demonstrates our weakness and declares our need for God’s Life.
Fellowship with God is God’s desire. If we are to meet God’s requirement for fellowship, we must possess God’s righteousness. It is God’s intent that His creation be able to stand before Him in truth and righteousness so that together we enjoy communion. This, in itself, brings glory to God and our worship.
The glory Adam had, via a Holy creation, thrived in vital relationship with our living Father God. But Adam’s sin destroyed the glory in his Holy created body, passing to following generations a dead body void of God’s presence; it had no Spiritual Life, it had no Life of God in it; it was a living dead body. Our natural contemporary breathing flesh is the result of sin including the positive thinking of depraved mankind in base corruption. Without God, our body is dead, according to scripture.
What we are all about, you and I, is reconciling ourselves back to God, allowing God‘s restoration, not only of our fellowship, but so much more. God reconciled Himself back to us through the death of His Son Jesus. Our Lord Jesus resurrected His Life from His physical death to once again be with His Father. Living at God’s right hand, Jesus is offering His resurrected Life, which is far greater than Adam’s original creation. God has reconciled Himself to us, it is now up to us to accept His gift of reconciliation and grace and be reconciled to Him with His Living Righteousness in us.
The organic nature of our living flesh is outside our realm of what is possible. We are the miracle of breathing dirt, capable of love and hate, capable of reason and communication, capable of beauty and destruction. In order for God’s righteousness to dwell in our clay container takes an even bigger miracle than God breathing life into a body of flesh made from the dust of the earth. This miracle is inside us!
We are both restored and being restored into permanent, everlasting righteousness. The creator of Life itself offers a new higher Life from outside of time. He offers a Life unconstrained by temporal, corporeal, earthly boundaries; it is eternal and placed inside our container of flesh, in us! Enter glory! Our amazing social being is now gifted, when we accept God’s grace, with the purity of absolute values, totally out from God’s own reality, placed in our created identity, so we actually participate with God thru Jesus. We are created new in Christ Jesus, the old is past, the new is come.
Glory has several dictionary meanings but is scant to the magnificence of what is true scripturally and is true of Who is dwelling in us! God’s Glory reaches into us, changing our identity and character. It reaches into us from beyond its living distinctiveness. In fact, its identity is merely a form for us to ponder. It is undefined power because our human and created limitations cannot probe its source.
The Glory of God’s life is gifted to corrupted, frail humanity. Gifted is the right word but it is more than gifted, it is created organically within the living nature of man’s creation so that the person, “born from above,” has the Spiritual sense of divine communication. The I AM of God’s glory becomes integrated into the character and substance of living dirt containing God’s eternal breath.
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
God not only provides His Life into our dead bodies, He brings us into a Spiritual culture of faith sustained by His own grace. He Himself will restore, conform, strengthen, and establish us. We have this promise, plus, what He begins, He will finish. God not only continues providing Life into our dead bodies, He is directing our eyes off from the temporal things of flesh, providing Spiritual vision so we are able to switch our reliance into Him as our Chief Shepherd while coming into the discernment that we are His sheep. We know how dumb sheep are, right?
The variable is us, natural but reborn sheep. He takes who we naturally are, shaping us in agape love, to see ourselves Spiritually, discerning our natural fleshly self from the new creation birthed in us from His absolute righteousness, holiness and truth. He allows us to continue choosing the values we wish to indulge. When we elect a fleshly behavior, he brings judgment into our circumstances so that we begin to Spiritually discern the difference between His Life and habits of flesh we naturally spend and use.
Suffering is part of our calling. What we call suffering is in great part giving up the natural comforts of being human and learning about living Spiritual. God is a spirit. He wants us to know Him and enter into fellowship with him at a level higher than the frailty of our humanity and… even higher than created angels! We are His family,
His children!
”For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
One of the best Biblical illustration of “light momentary affliction” is the life of David before he became King of Israel. He was anointed King as a shepherd boy by Samuel but didn’t become King for many years later. During this interim, David served King Saul (observing and learning) but Saul was jealous of David because the people saw the glory in David. David hid in caves while King Saul sought to kill him. David, at the same time, respected Saul because he was sitting on God’s throne as King over Israel. Even though David had opportunities to kill Saul, he did not! Rather, he accepted his circumstances to be ordained by God and worshipped God even while being pursued by the King. You might say David was in boot camp wearing the weight of glory on the run before enjoying it on the throne, (Remind you of anybody?).
Another illustration of “light momentary affliction” is Elijah. We think about Elijah in terms of bringing down out of heaven God’s fire consuming not only the sacrifice Elijah prepared, but the wood, the rocks and the water in a surrounding mote.
Before Elijah brought down God’s judgment upon the sacrifice, Elijah was hiding in a cave drinking water from brook Cherith, east of the Jordan. God fed him using ravens to bring him meat both mornings and nights. When the stream dried up, because of the drought, God sent him to a poor widow woman in distant Zarephath. There Elijah continued in his boot camp training by eating from the bottom of self-replenishing jars of oil and meal. It was here Elijah received the seal of God by bringing back to life the young son of the widow of Zarephath.
Elijah went through this training during the three years of draught upon Israel. “And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes will see your Teacher.” The Lord uses our physical body to instruct our soul. What is at issue is our soul. Our callings are discreet and differ, so our training may look different from one person to another. The Lord is God and He is our Teacher. Both David and Elijah went through long preparations before God glorified Himself through their calling and service.
For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”
Our task is to take our eyes off of our flesh and learn to have zeal for our eternal Life in Jesus, the true Lover of our soul. We are the true circumcision because God has satisfied the law on our behalf. This is not symbolic; it is what we need to take to our Eternal Bank. If we don’t see this, or understand this, pray our Spiritual eyes have the light of truth to instruct our heart into God’s path of righteousness and glory.
Paul explains this emphatically for us, “But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” We are all called to serve the new creation that is rebirthed within us by putting no confidence in the flesh.
Perhaps you remember the chorus, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus:
O soul are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There's light for a look at the Savior
And life more abundant and free
Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there
Over us sin no more hath dominion
For more than conquerors we are
His word shall not fail you, He promised
Believe Him and all will be well
Then go to a world that is dying
His perfect salvation to tell
And turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
-“Heavenly Vision,” written by Helen Howarth Lemmel, 1922.
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
We are exploring these things as part of God’s grace and His glory. They include our calling into His eternal glory in Christ Jesus but Grace also includes taking us into the woodshed as well as to the kitchen! Our eternal soul is at stake! God is doing His part but leaves to us to respond; we must consume His existing grace before He gives us more grace. It is a relationship of drawing upon God’s ocean of grace upon grace!!
He calls us to hear, we respond in faith so He can restore, confirm, strengthen and establish us! He gave us a free will and He will respect our will to choose! Grace is a relationship of Love; He is Loving us so that we can Love Him! Our choice!
“He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him give us all things?”
The purpose of created life was and is the Glory of God displayed and enjoyed! We lost our divine connection thru Adam but in our second Adam, Jesus, we are offered reconciliation. In Christ, thru a new creation, we now have grace to exploit the realm of Life God intends for each of us. We are now born a second time, from above, and possess LIFE in our resurrected Savior and Lord. Now we can be conformed to the image of His Son, the firstborn of many brothers, because we are IN Christ Jesus.
HOW can we NOT exploit this amazing grace and zealously dedicate our energy to be the eternal person God is calling us to be! We must grasp now this amazing infinite grace because thru it, God’s glory has begun and continues to fill into our Life before we are raptured out of this earthly corruption. God’s glory is our missing part.
We lost access to the Tree of Life, and with it, we also lost an intimate connection to God our Father. Now, today, while God is forming the Body of Christ, we have opportunity to know the glory of God on an intimate basis, as family, now, on earth, because He came into our humanity, into our flesh, so that, we are joined into Him Spiritually. We are now Spiritual people in Christ Jesus! We are being tested to see how much we believe! Let us grow in grace and knowledge and produce His fruit because greater is He that is in us than he who is the world.
If God did spare His own Son but gave Him into the cruelty of sin and debauchery in order that we might enter into His family of community and intimacy, will He not be faithful to this Love He is still offering?