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.
Inside Out
Clearly, God’s glory is seen in physical light piercing the dense, living redwood fence reaching upward into God’s kingdom. Much more than this, His organic glory within each believer connects us with each other as we grow consuming grace. His eternal glory within us often escapes our attention. His glory becomes our glory as our oneness in Him and each other is manifested even in our own flesh, Romans 8:11.
Here is one mystery of Godliness unlocked for the believer who “has ears to hear.” Our soulish tendency is to rely upon self but the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple, Ps. 19. When we “will” open the faith door into our mind and heart, we enter into God’s own sanctuary of counsel, Rev. 3:20. His Truth is light into our soul so we can discern His “good” and become wise, Heb. 5:14. This is where we need to spend personal time! His glory becomes ours since we are His.
FAITH, Growing in it!
Faith is one of the most pivotal elements in the life of God’s people since it determines destiny and qualitative growth in our created existence of grace. We are Drilling Down faith.
When I was a boy, we drove our 1935 two-tone grey Plymouth through a redwood tree. They had a one way road through one of these behemoths in northern California. A few redwoods are still alive today “who” were just beginning life when Jesus was born. It is hard to imagine how massive these ancients become. I wonder how large we can grow our faith?
We Should Walk In Them
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.
God’s Faith Forest
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!
Walk by the Spirit (part 2)
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.
Grasping Love by Faith in Christ Jesus
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.
Grasping Love By Faith ... In Christ Jesus
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.
GRASPING LOVE BY FAITH: In Christ Jesus
Our faith is based upon our knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ and our relationship with Him as a person. A regenerated believer, one who has been born again, knows what it means to have new life. It is easy to identify by our experience of faith when Jesus Christ came into our life. But this new birth is an embryo of life in Christ. It begins a gestation period introducing us into grace accessible by faith. Being born again is receiving Jesus factually! We literally receive the resurrected life of the person, Jesus Christ. How is this possible? … Love! What has love to do with it? ☺
In human terms it is ridiculously absurd. This reality contradicts natural laws and our sense of what is possible. The colossal nature of what God has done is a measurement of how gargantuan our God of love is! The regenerate person has within “self” a witness and testimony of the saving power of Jesus Christ as well as God’s immense love which drives grace. Paul says it best in Romans 5, it is so “much more!”
Grasping Love by Faith
“Love is layered throughout this passage and the dominate theme. But none of our core samples of love are the same. In fact, this prayer passage itself suggests God’s diversity. The further away from the center of God’s fullness, the love textures become more dimensioned with reason and truth. They all have love in them but the closer we get to God’s fullness, the more dense is the love surrounding ‘fullness’.” -GN
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, … … …
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
We are continuing our look at this passage illustrated in the life of Elijah. God exposed the breadth, length, height and depth of agape love through power from where Elijah was standing inside the cave. Watching God’s display, protected by the cave, didn’t persuade. Elijah had just been God’s own instrument of power before Ahab and all Israel. The wind, earthquake and fire may have been a reminder but not a revelation for Elijah. But it wasn’t God’s power he saw, it was His love. Fear had griped his heart driving him into the cave but he left the cave in faithful submission to the lover of his soul.
In Christ Jesus - Dec 14
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).
In Christ Jesus - Dec 7
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 making them effective.
We launched our In Christ discussion from a verse platform written by Paul to the saints in Corinth,1Corinthians 1:30:
And because of him (God) you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification and redemption,
We observed these “carnal Christians” are in Christ Jesus. This relationship in Christ Jesus brings a wisdom defined as righteousness, sanctification and redemption. We identified these “wisdoms” being associated with the work of the Father, the Holy Spirit and Jesus the Son, operating in our life. Spiritual wisdom is God’s grace cultivated by our faith. Grace is a spiritual capacity but faith is our soul’s ability to receive and apply it.
In Christ Jesus - Nov 16
Our union in Christ is much more than an association with Jesus. An association with Jesus is, in essence, having a “position” in Christ because we are justified. This popular seminary explanation of being in Christ tells us little, it is limited and lacking (l&l). When you hear, “It is our ‘position’ in Christ”, it is a hollow sound ringing out a warning. The noise is academia creating structure for the church where Christ’s life is not seen yielding His power in resurrected lives.
We are not challenging the validity of our position in Christ, it is most certainly true and does speak to our justification. Like many things containing truth, we get a warped sense of our identity when this is all we hear. We would go so far as to say, it actually vitiates our effectiveness, creating a skeleton without any tissue and mussel.
Justification will be more central to our discussion on righteousness in Christ, but we need to provide some mediation for our harsh observation. Yes, we are judged righteous through God’s sacrifice of Jesus for our sin, as expressed in the Greek aorist tense (Romans 5:1), telling us it was a completed act. It is also expressed in Romans 3:24 in the continuous present tense, telling us justification is also ongoing for the believer who is justified once and forever in the aorist tense. In other words, our justification or our “no condemnation” in Christ (Rom. 8:1) is also our resurrected Lord living in our mortal bodies giving ongoing righteous life, justifying us as sure as He is in us and we are in Him. So, while we are positionally, in Him justified, He is also working his righteous work in us so that the essence of who we are is also being expressed through our polluted souls as we are glorifying Him. No, we are not talking about sanctification, this is in addition to sanctification.
In Christ Jesus - Oct 26
There are two scriptural descriptions for the modes in which our life in Christ operates. One is grace and the other is faith. Grace is God’s ministry of love to us and faith is our response to God’s love. It is God’s power, however, providing context for love-grace and faith.
Last week we looked at discernment as our response to God’s provision of wisdom. God’s wisdom is contained within His measure of grace. Discernment is a skill set we have responding to God’s grace. In other words, discernment is God’s grace upon grace as we acquire God’s wisdom in faith.
Faith is “willing” our soul into action. Notice, discernment is a skill set we acquire through action we take. “Our powers of discernment have been trained by constant practice” is the way the writer to the Hebrews put it in 5:14. Our “will” is key in responding to God’s grace. Some default to mind’s reason and let “facts” rule our behavior. Others default to feelings or our heart’s desire to prejudice what we do. Our soul follows what we ”will” it to do. Either way, it is our responsibility.
In Christ Jesus - Oct 19
Our union in Christ is much more than an association with Jesus. An association with Jesus is, in essence, having a “position” in Christ because we are justified. This popular seminary explanation of being in Christ tells us little; it is limited and lacking (l&l). When you hear, “It is our ‘position’ in Christ”, it is a hollow sound ringing out a warning. The noise is academia creating structure for the church where Christ’s life is not seen yielding His power in resurrected lives.
We are not challenging the validity of our position in Christ; it is most certainly true and does speak to our justification. Like many things containing truth, we get a warped sense of our identity when this is all we hear. We would go so far as to say, it actually vitiates our effectiveness, creating a skeleton without any tissue and muscle.
Justification will be more central to our discussion on righteousness in Christ, but we need to provide some mediation for our harsh observation. Yes, we are judged righteous through God’s sacrifice of Jesus for our sin, as expressed in the Greek aorist tense (Romans 5:1), telling us it was a completed act. It is also expressed in Romans 3:24 in the continuous present tense, telling us justification is also ongoing for the believer who is justified once and forever in the aorist tense. In other words, our justification or our “no condemnation” in Christ (Rom. 8:1) is also our resurrected Lord living in our mortal bodies giving ongoing righteous life, justifying us as sure as He is in us and we are in Him.
In Christ Jesus - Oct 12
Our union in Christ is much more than an association with Jesus. We may consider our spiritual relationship “in” him a bit distant since His work on the cross was such a long time ago. The courtroom scene often illustrating our “position” in Christ conveys our legal standing without connecting us on a personal level in His life.
The translators of the Greek New Testament sometimes interpret the Greek preposition εν (in) with our English preposition “by”, as in the case of 2 Timothy 2:1 which we quoted last week:
2 Timothy 2:1 You then, my child, be strengthened by (εν) the grace that is in (εν) Christ Jesus,
Another example we use, because of its importance, is Romans 5:9 and 10; “we shall be saved by his life.” Paul is writing we are being saved “in” His life. This simple preposition fundamentally changes the way we see who we are “in Christ.”
The Lord’s prayer in John 14 also coveys a spiritual relationship more hands on than legal: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” In this same passage Jesus says: “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20ff).
Milk to Maturity: Spiritual Anatomy - 6
We are exploring scripture’s framework for our spirituality. Being “in Christ” conveys meaning it sometimes take years to understand. We acquire spiritual senses not possessed by natural persons when we become 2 Corinthians 5:17 Christians. Seeing ourselves spiritually helps discern natural things of the “flesh” so we can deal with them spiritually.
The scripture speaks not only of spiritual growth in naturally polluted habitats, but also our hope and glory in Him. Hope and glory are often thought of as waiting for us after physical death. While this is true, it isn’t the whole scriptural story.
Hope and glory are linked like two companions always traveling together. It is like having spokes in a wheel, one is always there with the other. Spiritually speaking, glory has to exist before hope can exist. Scriptural glory comes out of God’s existence while hope is man’s expectation of God’s glory. Glory is of God while hope speaks of man.
Milk to Maturity: Spiritual Anatomy - 5
We were thinking, maybe, three Spiritual Anatomy pieces and here we are on number five out of six. As we walk this anatomy path together, we seem to find one more door to open before wrapping up. Last week, we considered the blending of our human contribution into God’s continuing grace within us. We looked at how we use our mind and heart to build our structure so that God can do His organic work within our soul, bringing us to a complete salvation. The power bringing us into salvation is the same mighty power effecting our salvation as we attain an imperishable inheritance through the living and abiding word of God, 1Peter 1:23.
The term salvation is used in scripture within the context of saving our own soul more often than the more familiar usage referring to our reconciliation, regeneration or new birth. Part of this salvation process is self-judgment so that we are able to build a better structure (our soul & body) in which God is dwelling. God is certainly the project manager expressing His wisdom through our sanctified construction.
Milk to Maturity - 2
We considered last week two stories of Jesus illustrating the arduous task of moving from milk to maturity in the Christian life. This week we look at the life of Paul and see how he navigated his life into the port of maturity.
Paul’s father was a Roman citizen who was also a Pharisee of unmixed Jewish blood. He was born in Tarsus which was the home of the best university in the known world. He went to school in Tarsus to become a rabbi which dictated he learn a trade, tent making. After completing his preliminary education, he was sent to Jerusalem and became a student of rabbi Gamaliel who was president of the Sanhedrin. He spent several years studying the scriptures here before returning to Tarsus. Barnabas may have been a classmate of Saul.
Paul returned to Jerusalem after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. He was probably a member of the Sanhedrin about two years later when Stephen was martyred because of his strong witness that Jesus was, in fact, the promised Messiah. Saul (who later became Paul) probably was in charge of Stephen’s martyrdom. Stephen was a Greek speaking Jew who was eloquent and very persuasive causing severe controversy within the Hellenistic synagogues.