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.
Grace Reigns: Our Identity
Grace Reigns
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.
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.
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!
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
“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 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 30
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.
In Christ Jesus - Nov 23
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.
We have been drilling down the terms in 1 Corinthians 1:30 giving us an In Christ Jesus focus. We considered wisdom from a human point of view, i.e., being able to discern God’s truth. Then, we considered righteousness as the vital 2 Corinthians 5:17 union of a believer with God. Righteousness is God the Father’s nature birthed into each of His adopted children. Last week we reviewed sanctification as God’s purpose for us in Christ Jesus and our own purposeful commitment making His righteousness in us visible to others. Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Now we come redemption, the third term in our verse. The verse puts it this way. “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom of God, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.” Jesus Christ became to us the wisdom of God. Wisdom is made known to us through righteousness, sanctification and redemption. This is God’s wisdom coming through Jesus Christ because we are in Him. Our wisdom focus is from our human perspective but the verse’s concern is righteousness, sanctification and redemption in Christ Jesus.
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.
Glory and Dominion - Dominion - Part 2
Last week we looked at Glory through the lens of 2Corinthinas 3:18. The Person of the Holy Spirit provides grace to grow the eternal attributes we acquire in Christ Jesus our Lord and Redeemer Lamb.
We also glimpsed a peek of the Lion King in the throne room. The Lamb who takes away the sins of the world also is the King Who rules. The combination of Glory and Dominion speaks to an inherent relationship with the Father as both Lamb and King.
Glory and Dominion - Glory, Part 1
The Throne Room - Revelation 5, Worthy is the Lamb.
“To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. “ – Revelation 1:5b-6.
In chapter four, we were introduced to the throne room. As we closed the chapter, the four “living ones” were singing praises to the eternality of almighty God the Father, an appropriate refrain from the “living ones” in heaven. (Keep in mind these “living ones” are about to inflict judgment on the earth as the first four seals are removed in chapter 6.) The refrain of the four “living Ones” invokes a song of praise from the 24 elders. These redeemed representatives of Christ’s Body sing their praise to God as creator of all things and worthy to receive glory, honor and power.
The Throne Room: Revelation 4, The Church in Heaven
It is Easter Sunday! What better place to be than in the throne room of heaven. The grandeur and majesty of being where the resurrection life of Jesus Christ is displayed as ruler and owner of earth and all universes!
Here in the throne room is we see divine might and purpose in both love and righteous justice. We see the lamb slain for the redemption of His body while at the same time the dramatic judgment and condemnation of sin and sinners. The magnificence here is greater than our own salvation. Here is the essence of God Himself.
Our salvation reaches beyond the power of sin. The blood of Christ is everlasting and so is His redemptive righteousness. Salvation delivers us directly into the presence of almighty God. The Body of Christ is represented by the 24 elders throned in heaven with the risen Lamb who is about to reign.