“God incarnate” is an amazing truth. We may read this phrase and simply understand the concept of God in flesh without grasping the Divine provisions. It’s about the treasure we now possess in these jars of clay revealing the surpassing power of life and circumstances are belonging to God and not to us! It is not just about God, it is about you and me, it’s about we human people being in Christ Jesus participating in His divine fellowship, participating in His glory and holiness … before we get to heaven!
How can we even imagine the Creator of all creation limiting Himself into temporal human flesh! Despite this contradiction, God goes even further by opening the doors of eternal glory to created humanity; He provides “The Way” for mankind to enter into agape love, personally, becoming one with God through Jesus, the Son of Man. Any person who is in Christ Jesus, is a new creation; the old is past and the new has come. Jesus became sin so that we might be created righteous. There is much hidden here, more love than we can presently know!!
Jesus is the veritable Son of God and the Son of Man! Jesus, the God-Man, who made Himself humanly visible and tangible for our human touch! Breaking His holy barrier between creation and His divine Self, God is providing righteousness to reign while putting sin to death. But before bringing absolute righteousness to rule in our terrestrial sphere, He is putting together a body of believers, a church, who will rule with Him in His future eternal Kingdom. This is but another step towards all things being done and competed in history through Jesus Christ, our Lord and loving Savior.
By being created new in Christ Jesus, created humanity is glorified in His love and grace! This is our primary unaware issue and our eternal hope in God’s glory! “And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
We are God’s born-again earthly children who are being given opportunity to know Him and the power of His resurrection … even before our final redemption! But those not “in Christ Jesus” will receive the righteous judgment of a faithful God who absolutely rejects sin and the sinner who does not accept God’s born-again gift of eternal life in our Lord Jesus Christ. But we who have been redeemed, we are being changed daily into an eternal weight of glory by our faith in His workmanship!
For our sake, God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that, in Him we might be made the righteousness of God. God made fleshly human people so that they may join God’s own eternal Kingdom of righteousness in fellowship and agape love. God’s will, will be done!
But it requires righteousness on our part! This is so huge; it is what Paul calls our “treasure in jars of clay” and it most certainly is the most glorious gift we can receive in this clay jar in which we now live! God creates us brand new (born-again) when we accept Jesus’ gift of Life and Love within our own personal jar of clay, so that we, while being in the world, are no longer of the world
How can we be in the world and not of the world? It is a miracle! We must drill into this eternal truth and absorb it; read prayerfully the prison letters with Romans 5 thru 8. Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of man is not only in us, we also are in Him; our fleshly jar of clay is His Temple!
When we are born-again our spirit is joined to the Holy Spirit and we are “created” new in Christ Jesus. God purchases us for His own possession through the blood of Jesus. In scripture the word redemption includes this meaning even though our body of clay is not yet redeemed. Our temporal clay remains in the culture of a fleshly life-style. Our Spirit is alive in Christ Jesus but our flesh is Spiritually dead. We do not have two equal natures, as some teachers suggest; they are not equal in either life or power! Our fleshly nature is defeated but has a residual influence through the world and its Satanic ruler. We already are in Christ Jesus, who is in “heavenly places” and He is in us! We enter into this Spiritual mystery by faith, consuming it with God’s grace because our living hope is already within us since Christ Jesus is already in us.
Our natural Way is fleshly, worldly and very self-oriented without Jesus. But when we are born-again, “we are born-again” and created new in Christ Jesus, so that, the old is passed away and the new has come!
But his ways are not our ways. We have to become temporally foolish to become Spiritually wise. This deep process, requiring time in the flesh with a born-again Spirit, will discern God’s truth and righteousness from the culture of the flesh which, by faith, we overcome. We are overcomers in Christ Jesus!
One primary purpose for living a redeemed life, within a fleshly body, is to develop a discernment within our new Spiritual person by having to deal with the world, the flesh and the devil which is actively waring against our soul. This is a durative process God uses to make us Spiritually wise.
As we become faithful to God’s logos word, we grow in grace while having fellowship with God. The presence of our living Holy Spirit will change our fleshly body to the holiness of God’s righteousness in agape love. We will even begin to know God Himself on a personal level! This is knowledge even Angles of heaven long to look into.
What Jesus has done and is doing is providing “His Way” into our way. We are in “His Way” by becoming Spiritual born-again beings, entering His eternal His realm within heavenly places from out of our temporal circumstances of condemned sinful flesh.
God is not only our Father in Christ Jesus, but Jesus Himself is our teacher and we are His children looking into His Word for our learning. “He will lead and guide us and stay close beside us.” We are His workmanship!
God has not only made us His righteousness but makes us whole and complete in Jesus; He has created a new Spiritual being within us including the capacity to grow in grace with Spiritual knowledge. In Christ Jesus, we are equipped to grow in SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING to the things from God’s own point of view. This is included in the God’s special grace and provided for our consumption through faith.
In Christ Jesus, we are endowed with personal knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We have access to the resurrection power of Jesus because He is in us and we are in Him! Being born-again endows us with the Spiritual capacity to see pure absolute truth coming from the source of truth Himself. In Christ Jesus, we are set free from the slavedom of self and given the capacity to consume grace, growing in God’s love, knowing Him in a personal way, “His Way!”
As a person who is not are born-again, we possess “common grace.” God provides grace to all sinners so that they may recognize absolute truth, discerning a selfish orientation within a fleshly self which is sin. If we accept God’s common grace by believing in Jesus as our Savior, then, we become born-again and receive a new level of “special grace” at God’s Spiritual level. God is a Spirit who joins us to Himself in Jesus. In Christ Jesus, being born-again, we have a new set of choices within “special grace” which includes growing a knowledge of God Himself on a Spiritual and personal level. A natural person, in our jar of clay, without the righteousness of Jesus is not equipped to grow in Christ Jesus and consume His grace! A non-believer does not have “special grace” nor is a non-believer “in Christ Jesus.”
When we are born-again, we are freed from our flesh’s control. We become created new with the freedom to put to death the natural culture of flesh in our natural body of clay. In Christ Jesus, we are born from above into the glory of God Himself, entering into the Spiritual heavenly realm of God’s own agape love! This new Spiritual character, which is not fleshly, is who we are “in Christ Jesus.”
Being born-again is so far beyond our comprehension that we neglect searching out the glories of it which are available in us through faith, hope and holiness. The consequence of our Spiritual neglect reaps self-independence at the cost of our faith and God’s resurrection power. Our fleshly culture of identity is aggressive and self-centered. This self-mindset hinders Spiritual maturity and our holiness in Christ Jesus. If we walk in the Spirit, we will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Paul’s letter to Ephesus reveals to us how grace leads us into viewing our life in the flesh from God’s own personal point of view. In Christ Jesus, we share, right now, who he is “in heavenly places.” It is God who is our creator, who even now knows us better than we know ourselves, reaching into us with deeper grace for us to consume. It is God, who with agape love reaches out to us first with common grace. We receive His gift of eternal life, revealed to us on His cross, so that, we can receive HIS WAY, receive His Spiritual level within our faith, hope and in His glory. We are to trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not unto our own understanding; in all our ways acknowledge Him and he will direct our paths in Him.
We have been talking about the “Way” because Jesus said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” It is Jesus Himself through the Holy Spirit who prepares and qualifies us for the “Way.” It is not only God’s love and grace, it requires our faith and our holiness!
God’s agape love is expressed into us through God’s grace which in return produces our faith opening our spiritual eyes to the glory of His presence. It is then we become aware of our amazing hope which drive us to holiness. This requires us to get our “want to fixed,” so that, we walk by the Spirit and not gratify the desires of the flesh.
“The Way” is not merely salvation from the flames of hell; it is about entering into the “hope of the glory of God.” Jesus came into flesh not only to provide righteousness to those willing to believe, but provide also an eternal hope including human participation in His Glory to those faithful to His calling! “Faith is the victory!”
Our eternal hope is Christ Jesus Himself. He is the object of our living hope and faith through the living testimony of the Holy Spirit who actively is within us, praying for us. Our life in this flesh, after being created new in Christ Jesus, provides us with a living hope and faith to be fully glorified after being raptured and seeing Jesus face to face!
Our inheritance is eternally guaranteed by the living presence of Holy Spirit within us! Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Scriptural salvation means going to heaven, yes, but this is merely a first-step into God’s provision of Spiritual Life! The scripture makes it clear our “born again” salvation already includes glorification but now we only see through a glass darkly and when we see Him, we shall know even as we are now known! This is our hope; it is hope in God’s eternal culture not a “hope” rooted in religious and biblical morals. It is being in Christ Jesus!
Our Spiritual worship is to present our fleshly bodies a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to God. We are exhorted not to be conformed to this world but transformed in our mind to what is righteousness through our spiritual testing.
It is within God’s culture of grace that Jesus continues to live in us. It is within God’s culture of grace that His love is to be shared with those whom have received His love, His body, our church!
God is our Father and our only “way” into HIM is through Jesus by being born-again into God’s own righteousness! You and I are created persons, twice! The first time God breathed into us the breath of human Life. The second time we are born Spiritually, created new in Christ Jesus!
If we want to participate in Life at its fullest, at its highest level, it is through, God’s Son, Jesus. Jesus said: I AM THE WAY! All things were created for Him and by Him. Paul in his letter to Ephesus says we are to live to the “praise of His glory.” This is our purpose and our calling according to God’s own Word to us! We are called to make visible our invisible Lord and God!