Our last GraceNotes, (Mingle or Mash) was about putting into practice who we really are “in Christ Jesus.” “Therefore, there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!” It is putting God’s resurrection power to the test in our lives daily!
Amazing as is Romans 8:1, another incredible fact is who we are going to be … when we are taken out from our earthly sandals and clothed with immortality. A far more exceeding weight of glory will be extended to us in ages to come because of the riches of His grace even now.
Typically, we use “weight” as a term when thinking of our worldly troubles. Remember Jewish Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof? His tradition and life was disrupted with the marriage of each of his first three daughters. It wasn’t them getting married that was the problem, that was a celebration! The problem was, not only did they not ask his permission, they followed their own desires and not his Jewish tradition. At least he had a Fiddler on the Roof whose melody plays really well!
When we are filled with Jesus our weight is filled with His glory according to the riches of His grace. Now, while wearing sandals on feet of flesh, we grasp God’s grace to consume it. Our relationship with God, in Christ Jesus, is defined by God’s loving grace for our growth and His glory. Our Spiritual relationship is bound up in a culture of God’s grace available for our consumption. Experiencing the resurrection power of God’s grace means we have to not only believe but accept in our soul all the work he is willing to do both daily and yearly!
God’s grace is much more than “unmerited favor of God to man.” God’s grace is a culture of agape love being revealed into our “inner being;” it is training children (us) to learn dependence rather than worldly independence! We are being invited to bathe in grace, to breathe it into our soul. As we consume grace, we receive so much more, … grace upon grace.
Right now, we are in His grace, because we are in Christ Jesus. This world, on the other hand, is constantly changing its culture. Looking backwards, we observe perpetual changes in human values. This is what Fiddler on the Roof is about, a change in tradition. Our worldly culture, here and now, is growing darker and darker as social values continue eroding personal liberty and trust in God.
When the USA was born, the Bible was basic in classrooms everywhere. Today our Father God, our personal Savior and Creator, is regarded as mere religion. Life in Christ is regarded as myth, made up for those not willing to take on the challenges of a worldly system. This is how dark the culture of man has become. Man no longer sees objectively the reality of creation and its miracle of truth in existence. Man’s worldly schemes are themselves perpetual changing traditions.
But in our spiritual Life there is no change, not in God’s culture of grace. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God’s agape love is constant. God is not only constantly righteous but His grace provides into us everything He is. As He is now in glory, John tells us, we are right now on earth. Ours is an eternal weight of glory in God’s culture of grace. We are now in God’s grace culture if we are in God. The sooner we make adjustments for God’s grace the better!
What adjustments, you may ask?
Grace is not only about blessing, well, yes it is, but we will have to go through some rugged suffering along the way, … reaching our ultimate blessing! We have to shed our natural, worldly, earthly culture and put on Jesus Christ. There are major adjustments … requiring His grace and our faith.
Knowing who we are in Christ is a continuous, developing process; it is a Knowing … on our part! On God’s part, it is His constancy and faithfulness! We are a little slow on the pick up but we are walking the “Knowing” journey in Christ Jesus; we must also, therefore, be walking the “Accepting” journey. Knowing who we are in Christ must include accepting who we are in Christ Jesus, knowing in our mind, accepting in our heart.
Being who we really are is a blend of “knowing and accepting.” Since knowing and accepting grace is itself the revelation of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, we can see our submission to “living in the Spirit” is what we are doing in our knowing and accepting process. We separate our “walking” into these component parts so that we can discern with deeper understanding. These parts are all blended together in our walking journey with our Lord Jesus; breaking our walk into knowing, accepting and being, equips us with more understanding and not just hearing, but listening with spiritual ears. Consuming grace is what we do when walking in the Spirit.
While actively participating in both knowing and accepting grace is God’s work within us, it is also our focused faith activity. We apply God’s truth into our experience so that our foundation becomes the cornerstone of Jesus Himself? Applying truth is the outcome of intimately knowing Jesus in agape love. We are becoming living stones! Yes, living stones while we are still in flesh!!! This may be one good way to define grace, becoming living stones!
Accepting grace is akin to marriage. Desire dominates our early motivation when we begin our marriage relationship. Many years later we become more deeply aware of ourselves as well as our partner’s deeper person; we develop capacity for more intimacy and at deeper levels. If love is operating, we accommodate our partner with richer trust and fuller acceptance.
This is the “acceptance” we need to acquire while consuming God’s grace. Jesus is the lover of our soul. He already is “knowing” us better than we know ourselves. In this “knowing” context, Jesus provides all we need for strength and spiritual maturity because He is truth and righteousness. Accepting grace is not just hearing but listening and doing while “leaning on Him.” It is a process of getting to know our own new spiritual creation in Him. Faith is more than believing, it is accepting in our own soul and walking the walk in our human sandals.
A passage illustrating this vital difference is found in Mark 8. Jesus has just fed the 4,000. Leaving the area by boat, He and the disciples stop at Dalmanutha. There Jesus encounters the Pharisees questioning Him and asking for a sign from heaven proving His authority. This He refers to as the “leaven of the Pharisees” when sharing with His disciples as they depart in the boat toward Bethsaida.
When Jesus mentions the “leaven of the Pharisees,” the disciples immediately think of bread realizing they had only a single loaf in the boat. Jesus forcefully reminds them He has just fed the 4,000 as well as 5,000 previously. Angry with them, He rebukes them for not understanding his point.
“Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are you hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see and having ears have you not heard? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” -Mark 8:17-12.
Greater is He that is in you than he that it is in the world. We need to adjust our values so that we focus on our true strength, God Himself. He is our primary concern; we are now operating in His grace! Accepting His grace is accepting Jesus as our loving Lord. Being in Him, we know He is God and He loves us but at the same time we must put to death the earthly things dominating our earthly culture.
Jesus continues with this same lesson after arriving in the boat at Bethsaida. Here a blind man is brought to Jesus and people begged Jesus to “touch” him. Jesus takes the blind man by the hand out of town with only the disciples. Jesus put spittle on the blind man’s eyes.
Touching him Jesus says to him, “Do you see anything?”
The blind man says, “I see people but they look like trees walking.”
Then Jesus laid His hand on his eyes. The blind man opened his eyes and he saw everything clearly.
This lesson is for us as well as the disciples. We can have partial sight by believing but to see clearly we need to have Jesus lay His hand on our eyes. In other words, we need to not only believe, we need also to accept His grace and allow Him to work His miracle in our heart as well as our mind. We need to not only accept His grace, we need to exercise our personal faith by using His resurrection power, which is in us, to be who He calls us to be!
We are much too casual about our new Life and who we now are. We are purchased by Jesus’ own blood and made part of His being! We don’t take seriously the consequence of what God has done and He is now doing. Instead, we are looking for the best entertainment in physical comfort. Grace seems a theology we practice when we are being spiritual.
It is not!!
It is who we are 24-7. If we don’t take this seriously, we won’t be able to consume His grace. We are actually robbing our own spiritual identity from whom we are intended to be! Our greatest lost will be treasure we won’t possess because we have not been consuming God’s grace.
For I, the Lord your God,
hold your right hand,
it is I who say to you,
Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” -Isaiah 41:13.
Accepting who we are in Christ means understanding God’s grace culture, so that, we may now thrive in righteousness and truth while wearing our flesh in sandals. We are called to be overcomers. Overcoming is a faith builder! There is no purpose continuing the indulgence of fleshly concerns except as pertains to love and our social duty. They are all destined to pass away; we are already eternal and our present activity effects our eternality.
Just because we still live in fleshly bodies, jars of clay, does not mean we are still part of this worldly system.
We are not!!!
We are visitors in residence. “Come out from among them and be separate” is our Father’s plea. We are now His Temple, His dwelling place. While still on earth, grace is training us to take our eyes off what is seen and be placed upon what is unseen, so that, the glory of God is seen in our own personal, present jars of clay.
Accepting who we are in Jesus Christ is accepting His glory. God is the Father of all glory. He reveals Himself in us to the splendor and perfection of His divine self. His glory is a provision of His grace in us. Paul tells us we now are already standing in His grace. This is now our nature, our identity, but we live in mortality so that we must transition from earthly, mundane values and begin living in the glory of Life itself because this is from God. Life by God’s standard is our only glory and it is in His name!
This is His reason for sending Jesus to earth. It is not enough to believe, we must also absorb God’s grace so that we have Life in Jesus’ name. This is the stated purpose of John writing his gospel. This is the very reason Jesus came to earth, clothed in flesh, so that, we might be whom God intends for us to be … by walking in His Spirit!
Knowing who we are in Christ Jesus, accepting God’s grace and acting it out thru personal experience is Being who we are in Jesus Christ!
Accepting grace is not just believing in our heart and mind. This is the very thing that Jesus was angry about with the disciples in the above Mark 8 passage.
Knowing Jesus and accepting His grace enables our identiy, who we are intended to be. But accepting grace also includes another factor, our faith. Faith is simply our response to God’s generous and glorious grace.
Faith is an integral part of believing so that we become a new creation in Christ Jesus. For us to develop our walk, to produce fruit now and for eternity, necessitates growing our faith, responding to God’s loving grace. This means addressing issues of our soul, (our mind, heart and our will) so that we shift ourselves out of a worldview into God’s own eternalview of Life itself, that is, Life as God created it and intends us to thrive within. We already have eternal life but we are not always walking in it!
In order for us to be who are intended to be requires walking in faith. Next GraceNotes we are taking a stroll into the forest of faith. We are calling it: “To Be or Not to Be.”
God’s grace culture flows out of agape love; it is the product of God’s love for us. Grace enables us to see and understand spiritually using His culture of grace. That is to say, things flow out from God because He is Light, Love and Life. Spiritually, we are little children, but growing requires our will to choose with our faith. Faith is choosing God and His grace of truth and righteousness.
We hope you will be taking a stroll with us into God’s redwood forest to see with spiritual eyes. It is our responsibility and privilege to walk in God’s creation. I pray we grow in His grace and knowledge, seeing Him more and more as He is in His purity and beauty. Pray with us we absorb all the glory He shares walking in His faith forest of creation.