Sunday Report
This Old Testament passage carries New Testament doctrine! Did you notice how the top is like a choral refrain in heaven while the bottom is a response from earth? There is a relationship connection!
The eye of our living Lord is upon us who have His living hope in our hearts. Our hope is because we have received His love poured into us so that our faith may be renewed in hope since we have now been joined, His Spirit to our spirit, and redeemed.
God’s grace flows to us and in us. This is most amazing! Pondering our reality, what actually is going on in us is staggering!
More staggering than a predictable eclipse of the sun, orders of magnitude greater and unseen is… grace. It is not so much what the Creator has done, gazing at the sun’s halo; it is what the Creator is now doing! Have you seen the Son’s halo?
Our three “L”s form a nucleus of Spiritual identity. They speak to the essential Life of Jesus Christ, God’s Love shared in us and the Holy Spirit’s Light to guide our glorification in Jesus producing His fruit.
God is! He is the “I AM” and has bought us into His eternal family. This is our new family name and we need training. What He has begun He will continue to perform.
Righteousness and sanctification and redemption sum up the wisdom God gives because we are in His Son, Christ Jesus. This is declared for us in 1Cor. 1:30, above … and He is in us.
LIFE is the second thread in our BodyLife trilogy of “L”s. We are speaking, of course, of Jesus’ resurrected LIFE in us. This common term in the evangelical community has lost its cutting edge. The living Life of our resurrected Jesus is literal. Not a mystic concept or theological idea, Jesus dwells in believers, Colossians 1:27, 2Cor. 1:22, Romans 8:1cf.
This truth is absolute! Do we see Jesus in believers or do we hear them pleading for Jesus’ help? No wonder Christianity is viewed as mystic and off the wall! How would you answer this? Valid or not?
This is our third GN in a trilogy. We began with a drill down of Galatians 2:20 where a constant contrast between death and life is depicted, I have been crucified nevertheless I live. Christ Jesus, who is delivered from death by death, is also experienced by the born again believer. Created in Jesus, a believer is a new person with a new identity. Our New Life is supernaturally birthed, literally, providing living roots within our risen Savior. Our distinctiveness is a resurrected Jesus within us, inside our container of flesh. This is so amazing it is difficult to grasp! It is a miracle … only by His grace! His power is released into our old crucified self. It sounds cultish to a person without a supernatural Spiritual birth. Yes, it is supernatural, and just as mystic as is creation all around us.
This verse is like our view of the Redwoods. There is much more than meets the eye. Sin cannot overwhelm neither can circumstances be so impossible that grace is not waiting on scene to do “so much more.” Grace is a personal relationship working inside-out as well as outside circumstances - in. It is about two persons in relationship! One person is you and the other person is too amazing to describe!
The other side of our grace relationship is God Himself. Not the image of God who is in our mind, nothing that small. It is The Eternal Reality of God Himself. The I AM Who creates out of nothing! This is the person on the other side of our personal relationship because we are in Jesus Christ. It is not only GOD, it is The Holy Spirit, it is The Lord Jesus Christ, it is the Triune Godhead Person! I know! How can it be? Yes, it is the God of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses and the God of Jesus. Our grace is from out of God, our personal God, who provides power for us to accomplish His will ... and so much more! This grace, the Grace of our Triune God, is “this grace in which we stand,” Romans 5:2. How glorious is our God!
In our last discussion we focused on the new creation each believer experiences when born from above in Jesus, God’s only begotten Son. It is righteousness, the risen life of Jesus, from the dead, gifted to us through our faith, by His grace. His LIFE, in resurrection power, is created in us. This powerful Life is what we need to release His life Inside Out. This is one degree of Glory!
Do we realize the glory of our Lord God has been created in us? The Lord, who is a Spirit, has placed His Shekinah glory within each believer but it is only a taste, it should whet our appetite.
Looking at the above picture, you are struck by the massive trees next to two small persons walking on a narrow trail bridge. If these two people are believers, they have within them something much greater than trees. In the shadow of giant redwoods, dwarfing the two small clay vessels, God created again with resurrection power, life in these two people. This is what is meant to be ‘’born again.’’
Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:24 our new self is created in the likeness or image of God in true righteousness and holiness. The word created here conveys the same meaning used in Genesis when God created man and breathed life into Him. This time, John tells us in John 1, we are born of God Himself. God’s amazing grace purchased us, so once again, we are His possession. The first time we were His by creation but this time we are His because He bought us and we gave our heart and life to Him. This time, we are lifted above terrestrial soil and made citizens in God’s eternal Kingdom. While serving on this clay ball, already sin cursed, these two believers walk in the light of resurrection power.
Faith is one of the most pivotal elements in the life of God’s people since it determines the destiny of our created existence AND our qualitative growth in grace. We are drilling down faith.
January Grace Notes listed 12 commonly known faith verses. One of many omitted is the following:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” -Romans 1:16-17, (See also Habakkuk 2:4, Hebrews 10:38, Galatians 3:11).
As ye have, therefore, received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding with thanksgiving.
Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of your brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed that is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God.
Faith is critical to our walk in the Lord at every level. We are expanding our faith discussions so that we can look a little deeper into the mechanics of this important subject. In the previous discussion our focus was on the state of our being “in Christ.” The reality of our life has changed from temporal resources to unseen eternal resources which now are ours “in Christ”. These eternal resources are defined in scripture itself and by our faith. We want to explore these resources and how to use them as a life style in Christ. If we walk by faith rather than sight, if we walk by what is unseen rather than what is tangible, we need a whole new set of guidelines. Before we do that however, let us review where we are and how we got here. Our faith is the reality of where we are.
God grows faith through grace. Once we are born into His care, we become part of God’s grace culture. This unique system of living is sourced in God Himself. Every circumstance of our life reaches into His personal nerve center because we have been bought and brought back into God’s personal family becoming children of God. His loving response to His children, who are in Christ, is an ability gifted to each believer according to God’s purposes and our need. This is called grace.
Our faith is joined to grace and has divine purposes. We grow in Christ through our faith by His grace. Growing in Him is preparation, while in our flesh, for ruling with Him during His earthly millennium kingdom and then reigning with Him eternally.
What a privilege to participate in God’s righteous nature and while actually being absorbed in His grace, gaining a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. This is what happens when we are born spiritually of God. God is a Spirit and His Holy Spirit reveals spiritual things of Christ to us after we become a child of God, not of the flesh or the will of man, but of God Himself. We become Spiritually alive when we are born of God.
This puts our life at a very high level. Our life embarks into a Spiritual strata which can be mystifying and difficult to grasp. Our new Spiritual eyes do not easily discern spiritual things. We become Spiritually aware but often it is easier to revert to a habit of personal comfort and natural living. The walk of faith is not for the faint. There is a battle here. It is not mystic, but real.
This is our third consecutive faith discussion. We are still in the parking lot of this great Faith Forest of redwoods. But even in the parking lot a whiff of the air draws us into the wonder of something far larger and profound than mere humanity. On foot, under 300 feet high redwoods, old enough to have been alive while Jesus walked the earth, is a provocative setting to consider faith. These massive trees suggest powerful purposes and the God of this forest is our living Redeemer soliciting our participating in what He is doing. And we say, “I’ll think about it. Can I get back to you?” Oh, the darkness of our small minds!
We took a look at this verse last time as an introduction to faith. It suggests by context both living and walking are different, living does not necessarily equate to walking. The scriptural record is clear, our faith links the resurrection power of Jesus to both living and walking. Faith not only establishes us in righteousness but also provides the power to bring Jesus into our very soul so that we can live and walk in the Spirit.
The question becomes, why do we want to move mountains and mulberry trees? Faith not only moves mountains, it does much more, it makes us righteousness. The task of making us righteous is greater than moving mountains and this is exactly what we are called to do. We have been given the power to be righteous by faith.
Jesus Christ is our creator. In order to create, you would have to exist before your creation. It is hard to think of existence before time but this is exactly the heritage of 2Corinthians 5:17 believers described in these great pages and prayers of the apostle in Ephesians.
We are in a journey from temporal creation into an eternal setting deeded those who live in God’s immortal love.
Lavished in us are riches of God’s grace whereby we participate in a plan uniting both heaven and earth, in the fullness of time, all things in Christ, Eph. 1:7cf. This doctrine and its application are travel tools to prepare us for God’s eternal glory.
Paul has layered steps into the fullness of God from the posture of prayer. We have been looking at each step starting at the bottom, the fullness of God, and moving up, one step at a time, back to the top, leaving a staircase for our understanding into God’s love. Last time we looked at faith. It is our door allowing Christ to “dwell in our hearts” allowing us to experience the fullness of God.
Now we want to look more closely to what the apostle Paul means by dwelling in our hearts. The word he uses in the Greek is a compound word meaning House (οικοs) and down against (κατα). It is not uncommon in Greek to combine a preposition into a word in order to convey a nuance or emphasize a meaning. In this instant, the emphases is not just living in a house or dwelling in it but with the κατα formed into the front of the word, Paul emphasizes the full weight of God’s presence is meant to impact our soul-self. He is saying Christ may come against our heart so that we can know the full content of Jesus’ presence within our soul-self.
Paul layers steps into the fullness of God from the posture of prayer. We examined rooted and grounded in the previous layer; its a similar couplet used in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, Col 2:7. But here, in Ephesians, its one deliberate layering of God’s requisites, including, knowing the love of Christ surpassing knowledge, the breadth and depths, having the strength to contain Christ, being rooted and grounded and now the dwelling residence of Christ by Faith within our hearts. Here, in this layer, to know the fullness of God as a personal experience faith is vital.
The dwelling presence of Jesus within our heart is accomplished by unlocking faith. But this unlocking is accomplished in strengthening with power through the Holy Spirit, Eph. 3:16. But for the moment we are looking through glasses of faith and will look at strengthening with power another time.
This isn’t our last probe into being “filled with the fullness of God.” But we must start “drilling up” to the love of Christ surpassing knowledge (Eph. 3:14-19). The way Paul puts it, love is a condition for being filled with the fullness of God. But first, we want to be realistic about what Paul means by “filled with all the fullness of God”. We won’t leave our discussion with all the answers but perhaps we can measure its meaning within our understanding. As we journey in faith, God is ever increasing our capacity to receive more grace (Romans 5). So, since we are not removed from God’s spiritually organic activity, “being filled with all the fullness of God,” we focus our soul’s attention in other directions as God maintains His work within us. Let us not forget, it is God working within us, to will and do according to His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). His faithful work in us continues while our mind is otherwise engaged (Philippians 1:6). This is pictured for us in 1Kings 17ff as we probe this remarkable man Elijah.
After about two years alone with the birds, the brook and God, Elijah is now ready to be strengthened in his faith and tempered for Ahab at Zarepath. First, the widow who did not have the resources to do what Elijah required. Exhausted of resources, the widow submits to God through Elijah and proves God’s faithfulness. Second, bringing back to life what God had already promised to sustain. God seals Elijah by putting divine power into Elijah’s hand for use restoring life into the widow’s son. God affirms Elijah showing His power to others through him and allowing Elijah to experience God’s reality in God’s service of love and judgment.
This is one of Paul’s prayers for the saints in Ephesus:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith – that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
– Ephesians 3:14-19.
This is a marvelous prayer. It is spiritually layered from bowing on Paul’s knees to that upward place of being “filled with all the fullness of God.” On the surface it may seem artificial or symbolic. How many people do you know who are filled with all the fullness of God? Yet, Paul didn’t speak in euphemisms. He was focused on being a pastor rather than a theologian. His constant desire was people to experience life in Christ Jesus in very practical ways. The early Christians were actually called people in “the way” (Acts 9:2).
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus,
who became to us the wisdom of God,
righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”-1Corinthians 1:30-31.
Our life in Christ operates in two scriptural modes. One is grace, the other is faith. Grace is God’s love to us and faith is our response. It is God’s power that makes both effective.
“But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1Corinthians 1:23-24).”
We have been called by God to be His visible power and wisdom. This is literal context for our verse. Humbling thought? Humbling and sobering!
But, it is absolutely true, we are to be visible containers of God’s power and wisdom (2Corinthians 4:11). And what does this power and wisdom wisdom look like? It is righteousness, sanctification and redemption, or to put it another way, it is the resurrected person of Jesus Christ seen in us. It is Jesus Himself, in us, bearing His fruit of righteousness, sanctification and redemption through us, in our life. We need to soak ourselves in this reality!! This is why we added verse 31, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.
