Job 7:3-5
“So am I allotted months of vanity, and nights of trouble are appointed me. When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’ But the night continues, and I am continually tossing until dawn. My flesh is clothed with worms and a crust of dirt, my skin hardens and runs.”
Beloved Family… texts like the one above are troubling, to say the least. I think it’s safe to say that none of us would derive much joy or pleasure from studying and pondering them. They are expressing the dismal failure and frustrations and weaknesses and debility that our mortal state of being and our Sin-corruption impose upon us. But it is precisely texts like these that have a direct bearing on the absolute and eternal Glory that belongs to our Messiah, and, through Him, also to those of us who are called to follow and abide with Him.
Matthew 16:24-27
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the Glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds.”
Beloved, the Lord is offering those who will follow Him a Treasure that nothing in all of Creation can kill, steal, stop or replace. In ourselves, we are broken and bankrupt and we have death at work within us. But when we forsake that and stop trusting in it and put all of our faith, hope and trust in what the Lord Himself is pledged to be for us, we are endowed with Him and all of the Glory and Divine Fullness that is in Him. And so, because we know that fact by faith in God’s Word… let me ask you a question: from all that you know of our Lord Yeshua, which of the two following texts describe His exalted, magnificent Glory most aptly?
Colossians 1:15-20
“He is the Image of the Invisible God, the Firstborn of all Creation. For by Him, all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also Head of the Body, the Church; and He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have First Place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the Fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven.” (Emphasis added.)
Compare what Paul said in the text above, to the description Israel’s prophet, Isaiah gave to his fellow Israelites, as he described the Messiah that most of them, to this day, still refuse to accept and claim as their own:
Isaiah 53:1-3
“Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved, before you give your answer I must warn you that it’s a trick question. The Truth is that there is no difference between those two texts. They are both descriptions of the very same Glory, Magnificence and Superlative Excellence of our awesome Lord. The very same awesome Lord is being viewed from two different perspectives. But in either case, God’s Eternal Glory that is in His Changeless Nature is being proclaimed!
His Glory is manifested and is able to shine forth the way it does, precisely because He was willing to go into the depths of Hell’s deepest pits of Darkness for our sake. And precisely because He did that and succeeded… He overcame the powers of Darkness and destroyed their hold over us and dismantled all of their toxic, nefarious works. By allowing Himself to be debased to such depths… He saved us from eternal Doom! So perhaps we’ll be able to see this Reality with greater clarity if we ponder this other text that the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write:
Philippians 2:3-11
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant (slave), and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. FOR THIS REASON ALSO, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the Name which is above every name, so that at the Name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in Heaven and on Earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Scripture is revealing that the Perfect Selfless ‘Chesed’ or ‘Agape’ Love’ of God has demonstrated its unique Supreme Greatness through what He sent His own Word to do for us. The Living Word of God was willing to allow Himself to be taken to the uttermost depths of personal agony in order to reconcile us to God and restore us to total union with our true God-given identity, purpose and destiny! He went to these lengths to reclaim and restore His own beloved image and likeness!
Therefore, the Greatness of His Supreme Glory is revealed… by the profound Agony to which He willingly subjected Himself purely for our sake! In other words, to know how high God’s Glory goes… we must look at the profound depths to which He was willing to lower Himself to rescue us from ourselves and to free us from the clutches of the Father of Lies.
Jeremiah 31:2-4
“Thus says the Lord, “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness—Israel, when it went to find its rest.” The Lord appeared to him (Israel) from afar, saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with Lovingkindness. Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel! Again you will take up your tambourines, and go forth to the dances of the merrymakers.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So the Truth is that at the same time that you see Yeshua at His most desolate, weakest, most disgraced and abandoned low point… you are getting Divine Revelation that is expressing the Supreme, Insuperable Glory, Power, Majesty and Grandeur of His Infinite Love Nature!
Psalm 92:1-9
“It is good to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to Your Name, O Most High; to declare Your Lovingkindness in the morning and Your Faithfulness by night, with the ten-stringed lute and with the harp, with resounding music upon the lyre. For You, O Lord, have made me glad by what You have done, I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands. How great are Your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep. A senseless man has no knowledge, nor does a stupid man understand this:
That when the wicked (powers of Darkness have) sprouted up like grass and all who did iniquity flourished, it was only that they might be destroyed forevermore. But You, O Lord, are on high forever. For, behold, Your enemies, O Lord, for, behold, Your enemies will perish all who do iniquity will be scattered!”
At first glance, we might be tempted to assume that only texts that graphically describe Yeshua at His uttermost level of Power, Glory and Praiseworthiness can accurately depict His Eternal Majesty and Triumph. But we must also realize that Father’s purpose for incarnating and sending His Living Word to Earth was so that He could serve as our Atoning, Redeeming Sacrificial Lamb and Blood Covenant Covering and Champion. So when we view Him in that light, we realize that He came specifically to serve as our Blood Covenant Representative Scapegoat before Almighty God. He was sent to be the Covering that Father chose to place between us, and His infinitely Perfect and Righteous Wrath against our Rebellion and Sin.
Luke 12:49-53
“I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished! Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law!”
So, when we see His coming in this light, we realize that Yeshua came to save those of us that would be ready to admit our true state and repent of it. He came to be our Protective Covenant Shield… our Substitute Atoning Sacrifice! So while He lived and operated on Earth… His role was not that of Almighty God… but rather… He came to live AS IF HE WERE US! He allowed His Father to deal with Him while He represented each one of us!
This is the entire point of God’s Blood Covenant Pattern that He uses in dealing with our fallen humanity! Our disgrace, shame, rejection, pain and agony and just punishment had to be laid upon Him, so that, by acting as our Scapegoat, He could set us free from what was rightfully coming to us! So when we consider our Messiah in that light, we see that Yeshua came to live and act in our name. And that gives us a completely different picture of Him and what He means to us! He came to take what was coming to all of us upon Himself. He came to protect and save us. He stepped in front of us and took the full impact of the deadly projectile that was aimed directly at our hearts! Thus His work was to exchange lives and track records with us.
Beloved, this was the only way He could legally and justly set us free from what Sin had made of us! He had to exchange what is His, for what rightfully belonged to us. He had to be covered with our corruption and wickedness and bear the brunt of the curses that Sin heaped upon our mutilated, condemned human nature… to shield and deliver us from eternal perdition. And so, that terrible punishment and agony that He willingly suffered, is what enables and gives us the legal right to share in His Perfectly Righteous, Eternal Life. His Perfect Righteousness and Absolute Holiness can now be ours… in the sight of Almighty God. This is what our Messiah gives to any of us who are wise and truthful and humble enough to come under His Protective Covering.
Matthew 23:37-39
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Emphasis added.)
So when we consider the awesome Blood Covenant Exchange He made with us, then the following passage shows our Messiah at His Greatest level of Glory. And it enables us to regard Him at the absolute Zenith of the True, Ultimate, Eternal Authority that belongs to the living Word of God made flesh:
Matthew 27:45-54
“Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, “This man is calling for Elijah.” Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. But the rest of them said, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him.”
And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
The Lord’s horrible Abasement is the purest, clearest expression of our Messiah’s Perfect Divine Love that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit have expressed on our behalf. Yeshua is, in Himself, the Living creative Word of God. In other words, He is the Eternal Source of all Life. But although He is Life, He willingly took our living Death and all of its punishment upon Himself. That is the depth to which He identified with us and become one with our mutilated state of being. He identified Himself with us, so that we could legally be placed in Him… and then, in our name, He could embrace and fully experience the full brunt of the punishment, desolation and abandonment to which our Rebellion and Sin against God had made us liable.
Thus He drank the cup of our Iniquity to the dregs and absorbed into Himself, God’s Righteous Judgment and Punishment against our Sin. And this is how He set us free from Sin, and Guilt, and from the Curses that follow Sin and the Eternal Death that all enemies of God deserve. He gladly embraced the experience of our Death Sentence… allowing our Fate to overtake Him completely. And as He was being totally drained and exhausted and overcome with sorrow and grief and helplessness, He took all of that off of us and set us free.
What Did It Take To Be Saved From Ourselves
THAT IS WHAT IS WHAT IT TOOK FOR GOD TO SAVE US FROM OURSELVES… AND TO RESTORE US TO OUR TRUE STATUS AS ALMIGHTY GOD’S SONS AND HEIRS!
Only if and when our beloved Messiah reached that awful Zero Point through His agonizing suffering, was He legally able to cancel out our condemned, accursed state of being and deny Satan any legal claim that he formerly had upon us. And only after that, was He free to bestow upon us His Perfect Righteousness and Acceptability before God. And because that utter Abasement is what it took to cancel out our debt, that Zero Point is what displays, embodies and proclaims God’s Highest, Most Exalted and Magnificent Peak Level of Spiritual Authority and Merciful Excellence. For in His awesome act of Self-Surrender, our beloved Messiah made it possible for all of Creation to be Redeemed, Regenerated and fully Restored so that it could even surpass the original glory that God had bestowed upon it in the beginning.
This is the Purest Expression and Manifestation of our God’s Eternal Glory… His Perfect Love Nature… that made it possible for Him to share the Glory that is His Alone, with those He has created and redeemed. And now, He is in the process of restoring us fully and empowering us to be completely ready and able to love and cherish our awesome God for all of Eternity, just as He deserves! This was the meaning of what Yeshua was endeavoring to explain to Nicodemas, who was a member of Israel’s Sanhedrin, about who He is and why He was here in our midst:
John 3:10-21
Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into Heaven, but He who descended from Heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the Darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the Truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God!” ( Emphasis added.)
So I believe that our Lord and Master, in His role as our Covenant Representative and Kinsman Redeemer (in Hebrew the term is: Goel), revealed the Peak of His manifest Eternal Glory, as soon as He hit the zero point on the Cross… the point where He poured Himself out to the last drop of His precious, Sin-less, utterly Righteous Human Life’s Blood before His Heavenly Father on the Altar of Atonement. That was the purest and most clear expression of the self-less Love that only Almighty God is capable of having and giving. And that is the Love His Word is showering upon us and inviting us to receive for ourselves when He picks us out of the crowd and says: “FOLLOW ME!”
So I ask you… in light of this awesome Atonement… wasn’t our Messiah primarily describing Himself, when He uttered these words?
Matthew 5:1-12
When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in Heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Yes… as our Covenant Representative, He was the Primary One being described in these words. He did all of these things as one of us, so that even though we are personally bankrupt, we could receive the credit and full reward for what only He was able to accomplish through His Perfectly Sin-less, Spirit-empowered Humanity. He identified with us so perfectly that His Father was able to deal with Him as if He was all of us. He took on our guilt and condemnation to such a profound level in His Father’s estimation, that there was no difference between Him and us. And that is why, if we believe and trust Him, and follow in His steps when He summons us to do so… Father will put His own Spirit into us… and the Spirit will enable what is in God’s Living Word to become alive and active within us.
This is what the Lord came to make possible for us to share with Him in the New Covenant. At first, He was the only Human that had the Holy Spirit of God within Him in such Fullness. But now, because of His Perfect Finished Work of Redemption, that same level of Spirit-filled Eternal Life is also available to us! And when we believe and identify with Yeshua as much as He has identified with us, we too will be Spirit-filled and God will be able to regard us with the same full acceptance and everlasting Love that He bestows upon His Beloved Son!
Learning To Identify With Yeshua
Beloved, becoming one with Messiah Yeshua is more than enough to cancel out our debt to God and have it redeemed and paid in full! When we join our former radically independent self to Him in His atoning Death, Death swallows up what we started out to be.
And that independent self was the property of then Serpent. But when it dies with and in Yeshua, our spirits are set free. And the risen Messiah can then abide and work within those spirits and become our new and eternal Life! And it is into His awesome Eternal Glory that Our Messiah summons us to follow and join Him… to identify with and become one with Him in all that He is, just as deeply as He identified with us and what we were. And… if we do identify with Him to that extent, we will also become one with Him in His Glorious Resurrection Life for all of Eternity… just as He became one with us in our abject earthly misery!
So now, this is our challenge: to learn to identify with Yeshua to the same extent and depth in which He first identified with us. We are to see ourselves as being one with Him so much… that whatever happened to Him… is what also happened to us.
What our Representative did, we did! When He lived, we lived. When He loved, served and obeyed His Father to Perfection, we loved, served and obeyed our Father to perfection. When He was tortured and debased and executed on the Cross, we went through that very same experience with Him… and when He died… WE DIED… along with the Sin, Corruption, Curses and Death Sentence that were rightfully ours! All of that died with Him… and that is why we are set free forevermore… to live in Him and from Him and by Him… for the Eternal Glory of Almighty God! This is the awesome Gift God has given to us… He gave Himself!
It is this awesome Blood Covenant Bond… the New Covenant ‘Blood Brother Identification’ that God requires all of mankind to have with His Son. Our Messiah is our Guarantee of being saved and filled with the Spirit of God! He is the Covenant that binds us to God and makes us to be one with Him! Yeshua is the Authority that makes it possible for us to be filled with our Heavenly Father’s Holy Spirit and… to be regenerated and made into brand new creations and sons of God. It is because we are one with the Lamb of God that we can receive a full share in the Resurrection Life and Glory of our wonderful Resurrected Messiah!
John 17:13-21
“But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your Word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Sanctify them in the Truth; Your Word is Truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even 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 sent Me!” (Emphasis added.)
When we can see how deeply Yeshua eternally identifies with us, we can embrace and enter into that awesome New Covenant identification that unifies us with Him, and with the Father who sent Him to us for this purpose. Yeshua is the Gift from God with whom we can now identify and be as one.
Once we are joined to Him in the fellowship of His sufferings, we can also rightfully identify with Him in the fellowship of His glorious Resurrection and Eternal Inheritance. And, to make sure we will be able to enter into His Glory, to operate at such a sublime level of Faith, God gives us His Holy Spirit to abide within us, to empower us with Yeshua’s Resurrection Authority and Power, so that we can operate out of the same Perfect Faith, Hope and Trust that was in our Messiah, all the days that He walked the Earth as our Representative. It is this Resurrection Power that enables us to walk faithfully with Him in the fellowship of His sufferings.
So it’s utterly necessary for us to develop this deep level of identification and union with our Messiah. We must see no separation between Him and us. We must see ourselves as being just as one with Him, as He had to see Himself being one with us. His faith and obedience to God is ours. His suffering and death are ours. And His Resurrection Glory is also going to be ours, spirit, soul and body… as soon as the process of our ongoing Redemption has run its complete course. And this is another reason why Father is subjecting us to our Last Days Disciple Boot Camp Training regimen at this present time. And this is what Paul was alluding to so often, in the letters he wrote to his contemporary fellow disciples:
“Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead… Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the Word of God, but by the manifestation of Truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the Light of the Gospel of the Glory of Christ, who is the Image of God.
2 Corinthians 1:9; 4
For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond servants (slaves) for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of Darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the Knowledge of the Glory of God in the Face of Christ!
“But we have this Treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing Greatness of the Power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the Life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the Life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but Life in you.
“But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed, therefore I spoke,” we also believe, therefore we also speak, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace, which is spreading to more and more people, may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the Glory of God.
“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of Glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal!”
But because we are, by our original fallen nature, so self-centered and self-reliant, and because our worldly Humanistic upbringing and culture have so conditioned us to always think of ourselves as being radically independent and self-sufficient, we do not see ourselves as being bankrupt and desperately in need of someone to redeem and cover and stand in for us in order to save us. Instead we think of ourselves as being ‘pretty good’… and, even though we know that we sin and continually misfire and suffer temporary setbacks, we insist that we are still in possession of some kind of ‘divine spark’ and that we have great value in ourselves. But when we do that, we separate ourselves from Yeshua, instead of learning to identify with and live as one with Him and from Him; and we end up with nothing but our condemned original state of Sin.
So instead of depending on Him, humanistic people keep assuming that all they need is a little ‘touching up’ here and there… some form of self-improvement education and training… and perhaps also… a little help from God. Thus they remain geared to think that, despite the reality and truth of their Sin and mortality, they still have some form of ‘goodness’ and ‘God-likeness’ within that is worth keeping, worth educating, and worth improving and polishing up and relying upon, for future use. The assumption is that the so-called ‘God-like part’ of us does not need to be forsaken and done away with. So they remain convinced that the following indictment of God does not apply to them.
Isaiah 64:6-7
“For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on Your Name, who arouses himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have delivered us into the power of our iniquities.”
A dear brother of blessed memory, T. Austin-Sparks, had a deep understanding of these issues. His website (Austin-Sparks.net) offers daily devotionals taken from his writings, to which people may subscribe. In one of those devotionals, he described our great neediness before God like this:
“We shall not be able to raise ourselves any more than we can crucify ourselves, but we must recognize that the Lord’s dealings with us are with that in view. In order to display the power of His resurrection, He will very often have to take the attitude toward us of letting things get well beyond all human power to remedy or save, of allowing things to go so far that there is no other power in all the universe that can do anything whatever to save the situation. He will allow death, disintegration to work, so that nothing, nothing in the universe is of any avail, except the power of His resurrection.
“We shall come to the place where Abraham came, who became the great type of faith which moved right into resurrection: “He considered his own body now as good as dead” (Romans 4:19). That is the phrase used by the apostle about Abraham: “as good as dead.” And Paul came into that: “We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).
Whatever else men may be able to do in the realm of creation, they stop short when death has actually taken place; they can do no more. Resurrection is God’s act, and God’s alone. Men can do very many things when they have got life, but when there is no life it is only God who can do anything. And God will allow His Church and its members oft-times to get into such situations as are altogether beyond human help, in order that He may give the display, which is His own display, in which no man has any place to glory.”
Beloved, Scripture tells us this same thing in many different ways. Nevertheless, we still struggle and fail to grasp the full impact of what God is revealing. We may understand that only God’s Living Word is able to know and understand and contain the Fullness of the Revelation that Father wants to give us. And we may also admit that only God’s Living Word had the Authority necessary to impose God’s commandments upon us. But we struggle to understand this additional eternal fact:
Only God’s Living Word made flesh has the ability and authority to fully obey and satisfy God’s commandments and fulfill all of His revelations and promises. Only by the Living Word’s Authority and the Holy Spirit’s Power, can the fulfillment of God’s revelation and commandments and promises become Reality for us. And that is why God’s Living Word must be able to abide in and live from within us, by the Power of God’s own Spirit! When His Life is truly ours… the perfect ‘track record’ of His Life is also ours!
In the Beginning, when God’s Word began to create all that is, we did not even exist! But all was created nevertheless… past, present and future. And only after that did God create Man. He intended for all of us to enjoy what He had already provided. And so He tells us, again and again, that His Word’s Perfect Works are finished, and have been utterly completed and fulfilled to Perfection. That is why He commands us to enter into His Rest! And so the comments of T. Austin-Sparks regarding this, continue:
Ephesians 3:16
“I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources He will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit. (NLT)
“The strength of the Lord’s people is none other than the strength of the Holy Spirit in the inward man. Right at the very center of the being, deeper than thought or reason, deeper than emotion or feeling, deeper than all that which comprises the more outward man which, under given circumstances, may prove weak and incapable of standing up to the situation. In the variations of our soul life, the changes of our moods, our ideas, our attitudes, our feelings, our minds; deeper down there is that strength which does not let us go.
“That is the true nature of spirituality. It is not the tremendously forceful conviction of our intellects or the mighty power of our wills. When these cannot stand up to conditions of intense spiritual antagonism, opposition or perplexity, there is that more inward thing, right in the inward man, which is of God – the Holy Spirit: “Strengthened with might by His Spirit into the inward man.”
“Test that out and the result is that when the mind is bewildered by the perplexity of a situation, and the arguments are all in the direction that a mistake has been made, a wrong course has been taken, everything is false – when all the feelings are churned up, disturbed, anxious, fearful, or when there are no feelings at all, they are simply petrified by the position – when circumstances are all arguing in the opposite direction of that which we, in the purest moments of our fellowship with God determined upon.
“The world around us – and very closely around us, even within the sphere of our own natural life, our own soul life – is an inexplicable mystery. Then spirituality is proved by that inward strength which abides: that standing when you cannot go forward; that holding when you can do nothing; that remaining when all the forces are seeking to sweep you off your feet. That represents a measure of spirituality. That is the true nature of the child of God.
“The opposite is to be carried away by argument, reasoning, appearance, circumstance, and all such things. That proves a lack of true spirituality. In a sentence, true spirituality is not to live on the outside; it is to live with God right down deep in the inner part of your own being, where He, the Spirit, is. (Emphasis added.)
This is speaking about that supernatural inner Resource that God Himself becomes for His own Covenant People. It is the Spirit-imparted Life of our Messiah… deposited deep within our spirits. God puts His Perfect Living Word into us by His Holy Spirit… but although this Treasure is in us… it is never ‘of us’ or ‘from us.’ It is always the Gift of God… displaying God’s Righteousness and Lovingkindness from the midst of our utterly bankrupt fallen flesh. And this is what I believe our Lord was getting at when He said these words to His disciples on the night before He died:
John 15:1-11
I am The True Vine, and My Father is the Vinedresser. Every branch in Me, that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the Word, which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am The Vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
If anyone does not abide in Me (by Faith in My Perfect Presence he remains radically independent, and thus), he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My Joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” (Emphasis added.)
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU, FOR POWER IS PERFECTED IN WEAKNESS!”
“Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the Power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong! (Emphasis added.)
This, beloved Family, is the Glory that Yeshua came into our midst to embody, to teach, and to fulfill on our behalf. He went first… into the depths of our utter weakness and inability and helplessness… by embracing the Zero Point of our Death. He paid the full price of our Ransom! And by doing that, He took all guilt, shame and condemnation away from us. And… because He was Sin-less and Innocent and Perfectly Righteous in Himself, the Serpent could not get any legal hold on Him.
Satan had no right or authority to keep His own Creator locked in the death grip of his Sin. So He had to let our Messiah go free… and our Heavenly Father restored His beloved Son to His rightful Divine Status and Eternal Life… Resurrection Life – the Life that, by His Authority over all things in Creation, He was sent to be for all the rest of us! He suffered the loss of everything to effect our full Redemption. And now, as we follow Him along the same path, we must experience the loss of all that pertains to our fallen nature… so that His Atonement may be applied to us… and what is unworthy of God within us can be stripped away and totally replaced by what can only come to us from God’s own Living Word.
Ephesians 1:3-10
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
“In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the Glory of His Grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have Redemption through His Blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the Riches of His Grace, which He lavished on us.
“In all Wisdom and Insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an Administration suitable to the Fullness of the Times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the Heavens and things on the Earth…”