“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those through the fear of death were subject to life long slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Suffering the pains of humanity in His own human body, Jesus forsook His heaven of purity and righteousness to give us grace. In shoe leather we walk in Jesus’ name since our new character is in His essence awaiting our maturity. Let’s not neglect Pink’s observation concerning the essence and character of Jesus. Pink’s insight is good council for walking in God’s grace. May we realize the full impact of what High Priest Jesus is still doing in our behalf, “helping us who are being tempted.”
It is easy to observe Jesus’ physical birth at Christmas. He was a naturally child born in a natural way at a physical place in Israel. Christmas is humanity’s celebration for a Savior who takes away sin from finite, created people.
How fitting, now in April, it is the time of another celebration. Easter is not only about Jesus’ resurrection back into Life after death’s crucifixion, it is Jesus conquering death, destroying its effect on created life … if we accept it!
The crucifixion was God’s sacrificial Lamb. His blood is our atonement; it is His blood removing our sin so that we have power to live in Him. Jesus’ blood is the covering, the propitiation, both individually and for our sinful humanity “and so much more.”
Easter is a birth date of new Life given to humanity; it is eternal Life made available for people born from above. It provides new Life so that we can be born by God, created new in Christ Jesus, so we may live with power His Life in our containers of flesh. Our Life is literally created, not of man, but of God Himself in us. An Easter celebration is about our created birth into eternality just as Jesus’ Christmas birth is into humanity!
His resurrection power is our Easter gift when we accept His Life in us. Jesus has become our Redeemer, our Shepherd, our Bread of Life, our Light, our Rock, our personal High Priest. our Bridegroom, Jesus is our intimate friend loving us on a divine level! God is able to make all grace abound “into” us.
This is what it means to be born again! We are “born” into a special family becoming Spiritual children and heirs of glory, but not just heirs, we are able to participate growing in His grace and glory. Grace is Love flowing and shaping us Spiritually into God’s image. We participate in this flow by eating His Word and communing in the Holy Spirit. By His grace we are glorified in Him.
A family is about love. Eternally, it is about αγαπη love. This is love at such a high level, we only taste it grasping grace by faith in Jesus’ priestly intercession. We are being led into love at this agape level, growing grace within through Spiritual knowledge into Jesus. We are being nurtured into Jesus with grace.
This is a divine Family! It is totally about relationship. It is not simply a cause and effect kind of relationship. It is the kind where real Love is in both the essence and character. Agape Love ministers deeply to unseen needs. It is about caring for each other with the dynamic of doing what is needed for another. We are the beneficiary because the blessing is in the doing!
Our Spiritual birth is just the beginning of a work Jesus continues through the Holy Spirit. He is cultivating resources in us for His resurrection power. But it requires our intentional responses, i.e., eating the bread of His word and responding in obedience to Spiritual lessons from and in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus destroyed death and our slavery by entering into humanity and paying our price. Now we have become His children and are learning Spiritual living in His Life rather than in fleshly choices of temporal deception. We now have options to grow a Spiritual garden within our own soul by consuming divine food provided by our Shepherd. We cultivate the soil, allowing the fruit to develop on our branch.
How? How do we cultivate the soil to produce fruit on our branch?
Eating His flesh and drinking His blood!
How do we do that? Doesn’t this refer to taking communion?
The Holy Spirit has been given to us. He is dwelling in us revealing the things of Christ. He is able to reveal our Lord’s truth according to our own personal needs. How can He do this, if we do not place God’s word in our own heart for the Holy Spirit to use?
When we become a member of God’s family through new birth, new relationships are established. Not just one, we become part of Christ’s Body. Jesus is wearing a pierced side with nail prints in His hands. He has taken resurrected humanity into heaven but has also resumed His place as deity, He is God, the I AM! We are being brought into His divine provision as family, members of Jesus’ personal Body.
Our responsibility as family in Jesus’ Body is to place his manna (our fuel) into the heart and mind of our physical body. We are children in a Spiritual Kingdom and we need to feed on Spiritual Food. His flesh is our collective experience of His sinless life on earth given to us to ingest and assimilate into our character. He is able to pour into us what we need in order to become like Him. Each of us have different needs because we are all different collectives of understanding and temporal learning.
When Jesus speaks in John 6 about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, it is metaphoric naturally but it is real and vital Spiritually. Our Life in Christ is Spiritual, God is a Spirit. We have been transferred, that is, literally moved out of the natural kingdom realm and staked down into Christ’s Spiritual Kingdom. This is NOT metaphoric. We are now, literally Spiritually born by a new creation in Christ Jesus and transferred into His own family even while still living in corrupt, temporal containers made of flesh and bones.
Notice in this John 6 passage, Jesus is speaking specifically about His earthly work. He talks of eating flesh and drinking blood of the Son of Man. It is this flesh experience, our fleshly containers identified with Jesus ministry on earth, that is in view here. We are to feed on Spiritual food as set forth in the principle of new created Spiritual Life and putting to death the temporal sin experience by the Blood of Jesus. It is metaphoric to the natural man but vital to Spiritual Life. If we are viewing this metaphorically, it is because we are operating out of natural values. To the Spiritual person, it is a vital living principle.
There are two threads in the gospel message. One is Life and one is death. Paul gives it to us in Romans 6:11, “So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Living in temporal vessels is a battleground. It is our boot camp learning the glory of resurrection life through the power within us, knowing Him and the fellowship of His sufferings. It is about Life (His Life) on the one hand, and death (our death) on the other. This is the process of grace and faith which we travel once we become born again with Jesus’ resurrection power. It is His resurrection power within us that gives us discernment; it also gives us faith to grow in His grace of agape Love.
The resurrection means His Life becomes ours, including His resurrection power ready to access divine grace. He is at the right hand of the Father interceding on our behalf. It is only through grace we cultivate the intimacy of “knowing” Him. We are called to enter the fray; we are called to love at the agape level; we are called to accept the conflict as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. We are called to be “overcomers” in Christ Jesus. It is our intentional choice to engage and experience His abundant Life because we are able to go forth in resurrection power. We are not in this alone. It is His work in us continuing to train us Spiritually as we prepare to be His Bride.
Jesus is now functioning as High Priest. While we live in this container, our resurrected Savior is seated at the right hand of the Father helping us who are being tempted. Jesus came into humanity sharing the flesh and blood of His children whom he loves with agape love. Now we are learning through experience of finite human flesh the presence of His eternal living Life. In fact, our understanding is enhanced by sharing in His suffering; putting sin to death in our own body with His resurrection power.
We are the offspring of Abraham, learning to live Spiritually in His name while contained in an earthen vessel. We are moving His essence within us to visible character through grasping His grace. This is illustrated throughout the revelation of truth given to us in His Word. In fact, it is a common thread in the letters to the churches given to us in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. Jesus Himself, in His letter to Pergamum, makes a relationship point for our focus.
“… To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.”
Pergamum was a pagan city. It was the dominant city in the ancient world before Smyrna and later Ephesus took its place. It was the Las Vegas of its time touting temples to Zeus, Dionysus, Athena and Asklepios. Roman emperors later built their own worship centers here.
A small fellowship of believers was located in this center of pagan culture located in Pergamum. Some did compromise their faith but others like Antipas were martyred for their faith. The head of the Church instructs us that He will give a white stone with a secret name written on it to the one who overcomes within these circumstances of persecution and physical hardship.
The white stone was used to award the winner of an athletic event during the Roman times. The winner’s name would be inscribed on the white stone. Here, we have something much more personal. Here, an intimacy is placed upon the stone shared only between Jesus and the one in His Body to whom He gives this affection.
We see here something of the existing intimacy of a member in Christ’s body who perseveres thru the fray and overcomes, a personal white stone!