John

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BodyLife: The Three “L”s. (#2a, Righteousness)

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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.

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BodyLife: The Three “L”s. (#3, Light)

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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. 

In our last discussion of Christ’s Life in us, we described our created center in the knowledge of Jesus, receiving supernatural resources to grow God’s grace. Love, Life and Light are all part of our singular wholeness in Christ but each contributes qualitatively to our culture of Jesus’ grace in us. We want to now turn to  “Light” and see how God illumines our  natural soul and uses His word of truth.

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BodyLife: The Three “L”s

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We spoke to the issue of BodyLife in our last GN. BodyLife is an organic reality flowing out of every believer. A new life has been created inside our body and joined to God’s own Spirit becoming our new identity.

Problem! We are so rooted in our fleshly body we end up walking in flesh while living in our new spirit/Spirit. God’s resurrection power is thereby unavailable except in putting to death sin in the body … Jesus already nailed it to His cross!  We need to nail it to His cross also, using His resurrection power. Jesus paved the way for us to get it done.

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Grace Reigns: Our Identity

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Its in the 60s outside.  On naked arms the sun is warm and bright. Great weather for spiritual eyes. What a  creation God made for the man Adam! God gave Adam dominion over a rich diverse system of life and landscape. God created it and then and gave it to man. Why?

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Inside Out

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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.

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Faith, Drilling Down

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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.

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Walk by the Spirit (part 2)

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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. 

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Grasping Love by Faith in Christ Jesus

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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. 

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Grasping Love By Faith ... In Christ Jesus

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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. 

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In Christ Jesus - Dec 7

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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. 

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In Christ Jesus - Oct 12

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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).

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In Christ: Prologue

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My ministry “niche” has been identified by a local Pullman pastor.  

I didn’t take offence, but I did give it some later thought.  How easy it is for us to put physical form to spiritual character. But the message I distilled from his comment has more to do with the shape our gospel takes in our mind because we dimension the Spirit.  When we do this, it takes us immediately out of faith into spiritual management.

This was a constant problem for the disciples and Jesus’ response? “Where is your faith?” (Luke 8:22-25), “Is your heart hardened?” (Mark 8:17)  Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin (Romans 14:23b).

The Bible was not written to defend the deity of Jesus, or to prove the trinity. It is not intended as a thesis for theological debate. It is God’s own living Word from Creator to creation. More specifically, it is written to those whom God loves.

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Milt to Maturity: Spiritual Anatomy - 7

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We are remiss exiting this spiritual anatomy discussion without connecting to scriptural teaching about the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). We tend to focus exclusively on being “individual members of it.” 

Jesus Himself makes the point for us in John 17:21,

“That they all may be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Our connection to the Body of Christ seems secondary because we are insecure about our primary relationship in Christ. Grace is a relationship! The “Body” is interpreted as the church, where we gather to satisfy social needs while becoming spirituality religious. Nurturing a relationship with a living Person is not a religion.

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Our Shepherd Lamb

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Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and became the Son of Man. He was both man and God. He became God’s Lamb so that He could become God’s Shepherd.  This is both beautiful and profound.  

God put Himself sinlessly into our fallen state so that He may righteously redeem and justify a new kingdom of mankind.  Adam is the head of our natural temporal state and we are all born into sin through him. When we enter into 2 Corinthians 5:17 as a believer, we are born a second time into the second Adam, Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians 15:45.  The first birth is a natural birth and the second birth is a spiritual birth, 1 Corinthians 15:42ff, “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”

We are spiritually dead in Adam.  We are spiritually alive in Christ. In 
Adam we are naturally hostile to God and we shun spiritual things.  Yet, while in Adam and hostile to God, Christ died for us and reconciled us back to God.   

This is the argument Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 15 and in Romans 5 but notice this astounding announcement in verse 10 of Romans 5:

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The Lamb of God

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A few weeks ago we visited heaven through the eyes of John.  The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world was there!  The Lamb’s Book of Life is also there with the names of believers who will be with Christ in heaven.  The curious thing is this Book was written before the people in it were born. In fact, it was written before the foundation of the earth was even in place.

How do we bring together this pre-creation reality with the vision of the Lamb of God we see in Revelation? How does what existed before time extend into a place not yet in history  and how can it have relevance for you and me?  That is the beauty of it all. It IS about us! 

The Bible is very comprehensive. It is not just a collection of religious stories. It is God’s communiqué of reality to creatures He created. God prepared the Bible to reveal His supernatural unseen contemporary plan.  It is a map showing how Jesus Christ is the portal through which we can actually step into the eternity existing before and after our present temporal experience. It sounds mystic but it is, in fact, NOT.

There are a myriad ways of reading the Bible, studying it, preaching it and trying to understand it in meaningful ways. To get there from here requires walking on stepping stones called faith. These faith stones themselves are divinely placed leading us to the portal of Jesus Christ.  It is up to us to choose the steps we follow and it is also up to us to step into eternity through Christ.