“Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
Our last discussion eluded to the character and essence of Jesus. Finite created people, like you and me, have Spiritual discernment only if we have been born again by God and only by mercy and grace. Humanity became Spiritually dead when Adam, humanities’ head, violated the fellowship of trust God Himself provided. Yet, in Christ, here we are now in a loving relationship with our divine God because our Lord Jesus Christ entered into our human circumstance, redeemed us back to Himself, freeing us from the bondage of our own corruption. His love is manifested to us just as was His loving concern for the woman at the well. She criticized Him, abused Him, but He smiled and offered living water.
This is living grace flowing as a divine presence targeting those born again by God because we said, yes! Grace comes to us as children of God; this is who we are and grace in Jesus’ name provides light upon our pathway. It is up to us to: 1. Receive grace given, 2. Consume grace within ourselves, 3. Use grace ministering to others. In other words, we are in Christ living in grace, bestowed via our Father God’s love.
We need to know God personally. His smile needs to be on our face and living water needs releasing out from the inside of us. Its not enough to just see His character and observe His Godly qualities. We need His intimacy, just as the shepherdess girl in the hills of Engedi knew Him as her beloved in the Song of Solomon. We need to know Him in His essence, through new birth, exploiting His available grace to grow into the Spiritual person He provisioned through redemption. We are called, as His children, to walk in the dynamic of His living essence.
We are called to grow in grace. Our human tendency is to accept God’s grace, embrace the comfort of knowing Him and rest in this peace till He ushers us into a heavenly abode rescuing us out from the corrupt influence of human wisdom.
Isaiah was God’s man when King Uzziah of Judah died. King Uzziah was one of the few good kings of the southern kingdom who was on the throne for an extended time of blessing. Isaiah went to the Temple to enquire of God upon Uzziah’s death and saw the Lord sitting upon His throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the Temple.
Even though Uzziah was now gone, the Lord was lifted up high above the worldly concerns of Israel and at the same time our Lord’s presence filled the whole Temple. Uzziah was gone but Jehovah God was not! Isaiah was already God’s man but something happened while he was in the Temple seeking God.
Isaiah was in awe at the presence of God; he was over come with his own unworthiness when confronted with the splendor and power of God’s aura. Isaiah says, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
Isaiah was already God’s man but he was blessed at a deeper level when he went into God’s Temple. God had “so much more” for Isaiah to learn and to do!
A seraphim flew to Isaiah with a burning coal taken from the altar of God and touched Isaiah’s mouth saying, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
Isaiah was in the Temple seeking God even though he was already God’s man. He did not receive his commission from God by doing human things and mourning the death of Uzziah. He went into the Temple with a seeking heart. We need to go into the Word with a seeking heart.
The body of Christ, you and me, can enjoy the peace and benefit of salvation looking for that wonderful time of Christ’s coming to take away His bride out from our temporal mooring. But we also can go into the word of God seeking His presence which is provided for this very purpose. We are commanded to dwell in His word richly so that we can teach and admonish each other in all wisdom. This is intentional behavior on our part! We will find the presence of God waiting on His throne high and lifted up waiting for us to seek Him! He has much more grace waiting for us to take and consume.
He creates us with a choice to receive grace, consume grace and show forth His grace-light in us. He creates opportunities for us to enter into agape love relationships to experience His essence and choose to respond! He desires we put on our spiritual ears and tune into His forgiveness, pure righteousness and Spiritual song of love, … walking in it!
The Hebrew believers had a lofty view of angels and rightly so. But as Gentile believers in the 21 century, we have a view of Jesus seated on the right hand of the majesty on high. Academically, we may want to examine Hebrews but our GraceNotes’ interest is primarily at a relationship level. We want to be the Spiritual person whom our Redeemer has called us to be. We want to live in His name even as we contend with finite humanity in temporal time.
This requires knowing Him in His essence and ourselves in Him so that we can display His character as our character. Our character is tied to whom we are right now in Him, in our present flesh, in our present circumstances, allowing consumption of His grace shining our “in Him” essence on the darkness of our flesh using His righteousness as our grace-light!
Our identity is two fold. It is defined by the reality of our essence and is defined by those judging behavior we display. Our essence is the miracle of creation we call being born again. It is our new Spiritual soul configured with discernment between good and evil, to have peace, being released from the ravages of worldly passions. We have the essence of God, being born by God, yet we allow distractions of physical comfort and the temporal good things God provides to be absorbing our focus. Our character depicts choices we display in behavior. Love is a choice! We need to make loving Jesus our intentional choice habit.
Our eternal life, while wrapped in flesh, is an opportunity to participate in God’s work of redemption by submitting our self- flesh to our essence in Christ Jesus. All of our earthly values are still intact after we are created new with a oneness in Christ Jesus. Sin still resides in our flesh making war on who we now are in our essence, a new creation in Jesus, the old having passed away while the new has come.
Our opportunity to serve Him is now, in our flesh; it is our opportunity to engage His grace within us, growing Spiritual capacity by submitting our flesh into the mercy of His continuous redemption. Wrapped in flesh gives our character opportunity to glorify His resurrection power, submitting self dead to sin while growing His life in this fleshly container. You may be wondering how this fits into the passage quoted above and into Hebrews generally. So glad you asked! Lets look a little further at this passage:
“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exists, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their foundation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.”
Remember in John 15 where Jesus refers to His disciples as “friends.” He shares with them all that the Father tells Him. We have here this same unity in relationship expressed by Jesus taking on suffering so that we all can enter into His foundation of righteousness and holiness through sanctification.
These few verses describe Jesus’ submission to the Father so that you and I will have the benefit of a redeeming salvation. We are the “many sons to glory” but this glory happens today while still confined to containers of clay! Glory can mean heaven but here it is in reference to the “perfect foundation” created by entering into our polluted darkness and providing resurrection power in the light of God’s grace. We are the sanctified, benefiting from Jesus’ source while traveling earthly terrain. We travel without paying for our sin because He did it in our stead!
The author of Hebrews is warning these Hebrew Christians to pay attention to the word preached because “drifting away” is easy with so many different gospels being preached. These “children of God” did not have the printed word as we do. They had the law and the “oracles of God.”
We have the same problem. Our distraction is not a gospel argument, it is the self-flesh itself with the abundance of stuff which gratifies a man. This makes Hebrews and Revelation relevant messages for our current age. Both of these two letters direct our attention back into the essence of Jesus Himself.
When we are satisfied with things about Jesus and comfortable with a scriptural argument, we tend to wander away becoming religious rather than seeking Him in His Temple/Word. Our learning and blessing is tied to the intimacy of living in the resurrection power of Jesus’ provisions … in Him, in so much more grace.
Our sin laden flesh is the target for continual sanctification. Our flesh is linked to us in ways we don’t fully understand. But through the mind of Christ we bring our mortality of flesh into subjection to the holiness of God through our relationship of grace in Christ … when we intentionally choose to love Him!
Look at these verses more carefully. The created universes in time and space are in subjection to Him even though they do not appear to be under His control, yet they are! So are we! We are admonished to walk by faith not sight, looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.
We are linked intimately into our Lord Christ Jesus by a miraculous creation of new birth within our very soul. We are created new in Christ Jesus , the old is past and the new has come. But each one of us in Christ Jesus is different and gifted separately. Together, we form the Body of Jesus with Jesus being our Head.
When we are gathered together as His Body, He is in our midst ministering and fellowshipping with us, growing us into Him so that we become like Him through our intentional choices so our essence expresses behavior to others. We need to cultivate the Spiritual man God created in us because that is who we now are!
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs in thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Just because we don’t see everything in subjection to him does not mean He is not sovereign. Our verse tells us grace was working in the life of Jesus too, so that grace is made available to you and me. Our challenge is to evaluate our choices and choose love, His agape love!
We are talking about being intentional. Be intentional in your essence and your character.
Our Essence.
Our essence is who we are in Christ Jesus after being born again by God Himself. He created us a Spiritual person. God is a Spirit and now we share His nature. We are Spiritually a child when born again because we rely on human natural instincts, intellect, passions with a common good that is earthy!
Now we have to un-train our reliance upon human reason and instinct, and become a Spiritual person! It is a totally different realm. We still use our reason and heart but now we place our soul-self into the hands of Jesus our Lord and Redeemer.
This is a huge change and we have to be intentional; we have to be deliberate and committed to a very rewarding and challenging journey. It is a life long pursuit. It is not only the most productive and joyful journey we can possibly take, it is also the most difficult, full of challenges and suffering. To have Life with a capital “L,” we must put to death what Jesus already has nailed to the cross. Joy comes with sacrifice!
Application:
There are many ways to do this, putting to death the self that is in our clay container. Many sign up for a small group at church. Some become committed to reading “Our Daily Bread” or women often prefer Sarah Young’s “Jesus Calling.” Some become committed to a local church program. We want to grow in both grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are now a born again Spiritual person and we want to make sure we cultivate Spiritual discernment.
My personal intentional practice is to daily listen and study with J. Vernon McGee on the “Through the Bible” Radio program, https://ttb.org. Its on daily Monday thru Sunday via internet, radio or many other devices including a solar “Bible Bus.” This program will take you through the whole Bible, Old and New Testament in five years. It is available in over 120 languages world wide. Monday thru Friday is the daily study program, currently in Isaiah. Saturday is a Question and Answer session and Sunday is a Sunday sermon taken from the archives of the old “Church of the Open Door” in down town Los Angeles.
Our Character.
Forming our character to glorify Jesus Christ is being who we really are in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is probably the primary focus in the 13 year life of GraceNotes. Our trumpet call is: Know yourself, Accept yourself and Be yourself in Christ Jesus our Lord. Our current focus however, is what we are doing with our time and energy to be intentional about making this happen in experience.
Another trumpet call we use is: “The best way to learn is to teach.” What is implied here is forcing our own self into the process of accountability. It is a visual display of our life in front of other people. If we make ourselves accountable by displaying knowledge and good technic, we set a standard for our self as well as others.
What we are talking about is our activity in the larger group of Christ’s Body. The idea is to connect and share with others “the riches of glory in Christ Jesus.” We have the same problem here as we do in our “essence.” We need to be intentional or we get swept into religious activities becoming vulnerable to a “different gospel.”
Application:
Ill not try to enumerate activities and ministries that are “Christian.” We haven’t mentioned prayer, always crucial. It is the medium of our Spiritual connection, being in the Spirit, allowing the ministry of His voice priority number one into our heart and mind. It is essential!
I have multiple activities and relationships I cultivate but let me share one recent connection I devote myself to so I can test myself, purify and expose myself accountably before the glory of our Lord and glorify Him through obedience.
This past October, I was installed on the Board of a ministry in Tijuana, Mexico. I had visited the ministry on the ground at the end of last summer at the invitation of a friend who was and is a friend of the ministry. The ministry is small compared to others but is huge in its presence and power in the hearts of men, women and children who have real physical needs across the southern US border.
The ministry is 20 plus years old and has grown from a simple shelter for men and women to a multi-property ownership at six separate locations. A few young mothers abandoned children at our shelter off the Tijuana streets early on. Some of these same children are now on staff at the orphanage. Our orphanage is now at its capacity with about 30 children located presently in Tijuana.
Last month a group of men and women came down from a church in Michigan and installed a new roof on this old beautiful home inside Tijuana serving as our orphanage, teaching children to grow in Christ.
We need to move this orphanage to our 33 acre ranch just outside of Tijuana, about 30 minutes to the southeast. This ranch is another story about men released from prison without identity who are becoming seminary graduated pastors. While this is already going on at the ranch, we need to build out facilities here to absorb the existing children in the Tijuana orphanage providing not only more capacity but also life skill training, preparing them for their Spiritual journey in the Lord.
What I learned from this group from Michigan was the ministry effect of interacting with Christ’s body so that the fellowship of believers builds up each other in the Lord by equipping. It’s the same “essence” principle of “learning by teaching” but here it is growing by ministering.
I’m sharing this here because I want to invite each one of you to experience La Roca Ministries in Tijuana, Mexico. I’m not talking about a visit across the boarder (be sure you have a passport). I’m talking about growing in the grace of Jesus by doing His work in the field that is white unto harvest. I’m talking about iron on iron and being in Christ which is who you are called to be!
Perhaps you can put a team together in your own church, or if not, we will be glad to plug you into a team from another church. It is not just about keeping up our physical property, its coming together in the name of our Father God and ministering to each other.
We invite you to go to www.larocaministries.org and take a look at our current ministry agenda. We are looking to fill out our 2020 calendar. If you are moved by this possibly, go on line and leave us a message. You will get a follow up call from a team member who will chat with you and get us going down the fellowship road.
If you don’t want to wait till 2020, that’s OK too! Just let us know what you are thinking and we will do a follow up chat. This is intentional behavior on your part and God is high on His throne waiting for you to consume His grace because He has “so much more.”