Beloved Family, when I believe the Lord has given me a download to share with the people in my sphere of influence, I do my best to write it out accurately and then I deliver it. But very often, either because the Holy Spirit prompts me, or because my mind keeps working on trying to get the message across more effectively, I keep finding new and different ways to say the same thing. And today’s message is a good example of that.
You have no doubt noticed how often I keep quoting the following text in my messages:
“Therefore, if you have been raised up with Messiah, keep seeking the things above—where Messiah is, sitting at the right hand of God. Focus your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Messiah in God. When Messiah, who is your Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him, in Glory!” (Colossians 3:1-4 TLV)
I keep repeating it for the reasons stated above. There’s so much packed into that text that I keep finding different ways to express and amplify the tremendous depth of meaning and significance contained in those words. So here’s yet another way of looking at what is in that text: Consider it as the Heavenly perspective that God wants every saved person to adopt for himself. It is our Heavenly Father’s Viewpoint… the way things look to Him, when He sees you now. It’s the view that is only possible when you’re able to look at things from the Resurrection Side of the Cross!
For us it is the perspective that is only possible after we’ve actually been joined with our Messiah in His death. Once that happens, the Holy Spirit fills us with His Eternal Life and that equips us to occupy our new ‘at the right hand of Father’s Throne’ position. Only those who have truly been crucified and who are no longer connected to their former earthly pre-Yeshua Self-life, can access and enjoy this viewpoint.
I keep harping on this because in my observations over the years, I noticed that there are many folks who call themselves believers but who do not view things from this ‘seated at the right hand of God’ perspective…
- They do not see themselves as being one with God’s Living Word made flesh, nor do they understand that He is now our New Life and that we are all brand new creations… newly begotten sons of God… by the Power of the Holy Spirit!
- They did not readjust their minds and brains and bring them up to date with the enormous Reality-Shift they’ve undergone.
- They have not renewed their minds and rewired their brains to update their navigational equipment to bring it into proper alignment with their new spiritual reality,
…thus these poor folks unwittingly continue to cling to the perspectives they had developed during their years prior to encountering Messiah Yeshua… and so spiritually, mentally, and emotionally they continue to operate in what they first inherited. They still see themselves as they were, and so they think, act, react and interact from the old Self-life perspectives in which they learned to excel as citizens of this fallen world.
In other words, they still see things as they were during their pre crucifixion-death-in-Messiah days when they did not know the Lord and had not yet become one with Him in the New Covenant. They still see things and think about everything in the same old ways… in the way Nicodemas and Peter kept viewing them in their early days with Yeshua. And like them, many modern day believers look at everything through the lenses that are natural to those who have not yet become one with Yeshua and died with Him, and who now abide with Him in the Glory of His Resurrection Reality.
“Now there was a man, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jewish people. He came to Yeshua at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that You, a teacher, have come from God. For no one can perform these signs which You do unless God is with Him!”
“Yeshua answered him, “Amen, amen I tell you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus said to Him. “He cannot enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?”
“Yeshua answered, “Amen, amen I tell you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised that I said to you, ‘You all must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:1-8)
Yeshua was speaking from His Father’s viewpoint in Eternity, which is the view God shares with us in His written Word. The Lord was telling Nicodemas and his disciples about the way things are above, in the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven, and not as they appear to those who are not yet filled with the Holy Spirit. Such people remain earthbound and limited to contact with this temporal time and space dimension. But in God’s Eternal Viewpoint… everything is already finished and complete! And He can see each one of us not only as we currently are, but also as we’re eventually going to be after He has led us all the way across the Finish Line of the course He has set before us. This is because, unlike the way it is in our dimension, in God’s eternal dimension, everything is finished. It exists in its completed form and is already a fact. In eternity, everything is fully present.
So, in their earlier days with Yeshua, poor Nicodemas, and Peter, were naturally looking at everything from their normal earthly, time and space perspective. And that’s why what Yeshua was telling them seemed so utterly alien and incomprehensible!
“From that time on, Yeshua began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and ruling kohanim and Torah scholars, and be killed, and be raised on the third day.
Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Never, Master! This must never happen to You!”
But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but the things of men!”
Then Yeshua said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants 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 but forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew 16:21-26, Emphasis added)
Dear ones… the ‘Good News’ is that, by joining Himself to us (by taking on our human nature and representing us in God’s Eternal Covenant) and joining us to Himself, when He died on the cross… so did we! We didn’t die in ourselves, we died in Him! This is not a matter of earthly sensual experience. It is a fact we can only access by the obedience of faith! And if we believe and trust and embrace our Messiah on these Covenant terms, the Truth is that He has thus already set us free from our Sin-corrupted, mortally-wounded fleshly selves! We’re no longer chained to that former self-absorbed bondage that arose when we kept assuming that we were radically independent beings, condemned to try to live lives of our own, for ourselves, and by ourselves. And that’s why for us, it is at first very difficult to undergo the massive paradigm-shift we have to have before we can ‘see the light’ and understand the significance of what God’s Word is revealing to us about the absolutely essential redemptive Work that our Lord has done for us, and in our name.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones.” (Proverbs 3:5-8)
When we’re stuck in our original earth-bound pre-Christ paradigm, then everything that concerns our outcomes, results, and destinies continually depends on us… and how well we manage to try to figure everything out… and how well we can equip and prepare… and conduct ourselves as we do our best to make our own way through this earthly life. This is because we still believe we are independent agents, living lives that we fashioned for ourselves. We fail to grasp the Reality that the New Covenant has made us to be one with Messiah, and that He is now our New Eternal Life! And this is why so many among us still have no idea that, in truth, everything we are and have, and can be or do, has to come to us from God… because apart from His Living Creative Word, we can’t be, or do, or have – ANYTHING!
The Cross Must Do Its Work or We Cannot Be His Image and Likeness
That utterly false earthly, self-centered, independent way of seeing and operating is a demonic delusion! It does not at all conform to the actual Reality of the true identity, purpose and destiny our Creator has actually intended for us. God never designed and meant for us to live and operate as separate rogue beings that have to fend for ourselves. He created us to be His very own Personal image and likeness! That is, we are designed and meant to live, and to act, and react as one with God’s Living Word made flesh… in all things, and at all times! And when we can finally grasp this and begin to see it and operate from that perspective, we then realize that because we are one with our Lord… nothing created… not even the Serpent and his powers of Darkness, can maintain any hold or claim on us. And nothing can ever harm us or take away our ‘raised up with Christ identity’ or deprive us of our full share in God’s Eternal Blood Covenant Inheritance! Only our own unbelief and rebellious insistence on maintaining our radical independence can ruin us!
The Fall of our first parents destroyed all of the original pristine Perfection God had put into them. It marred, twisted and deformed their human nature beyond recognition. By severing them from their original oneness with God, Sin killed their spirits, which were the faculties that enabled them to personally know, and be connected to, and to interact with, their Creator and Sustainer! But, after they fell, they were blinded and deafened, spiritually speaking. And they were no longer able to be lovingly connected and empowered by and endowed with, all that our Creator is, nor could they enjoy all that He had intended to share with them, and all of their descendants. And that fallen, broken human nature is what we all inherited from them. So, even from the moment of our conception, the Death caused by Sin was transmitted to us. And we were born with dead spirits, and came into this world not realizing that we were, by our fallen nature, enemies of our own Creator!
And this is why God commissioned His Son, His Living Word, who originally Created us, and is always sustaining us, and keeping us in existence. That commission sent Him to come after us and seek us out from our various lairs in which we lurk and try to hide our shame, guilt, and wounded brokenness from public exposure. Our lairs are actually ‘tombs’… tombs in which we who cannot really live, are forced to abide. Sin killed us, so we are actually nothing more than, rogue, ‘living dead’ creatures, trapped in total spiritual darkness and forced to live out our living death existence.
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. After a little while, the world no longer is going to see Me, but you are going to see Me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I in you.” (John 14:16-20, Emphasis added)
“Your mercy, Lord, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Your Righteousness is like the mountains of God; Your Judgments are like the great deep. Lord, You protect mankind and animals. How precious is Your Mercy, God!
“And the sons of mankind take refuge in the Shadow of Your Wings. They drink their fill of the abundance of Your House; and You allow them to drink from the River of Your Delights. For the Fountain of Life is with You; in Your Light we see light.” (Psalm 36:5-9, Emphasis added)
Just like God’s Living Word summoned the deceased Lazarus and commanded him to arise and walk forth from his tomb, so does He come after all the rest of us to summon us out of the darkness of our spiritual death… and into a full share of the Light and Glory of His own Resurrection Life! Yes, beloved, this is Truth: our story is not about us asking Him to come into our lives here on Earth. Sin killed us! We wander the earth as living dead men because in Truth, we have no life of our own! So our story has to be about our Messiah-Redeemer, coming after us to set us free from bondage to our radically independent, living death Self-life existence. God’s Living Word is now here to enter into us so He can become our new Eternal Life! He gives Himself to us, in exchange for our living death! And only in Him, and by Him, can we be restored to full Authentic Humanity, the Humanity of God’s Living Word, just as God originally intended for us to be.
Transformed Life – The Living Dead Come Alive in Yeshua
So, when we become our Messiah’s personal disciples, everything worldly that we used to be dies! It’s as if we are radically uprooted and then transplanted into the new Ground of an Eternal Heavenly Identity and Life and Purpose! Thus we relocate… to a new Eternal, Heavenly Residence and Destiny. We no longer remain entangled with our original earthly citizenship and status in this fallen world! We’re reborn… fused into an unbreakable union with God and His Personal Family Household… and we’re given full citizenship in His Eternal Heavenly Kingdom. Our original state of living death has died… and we have been recreated and regenerated by Almighty God. He is now our New, Eternal Life… and, even now, by faith, we have the right to abide in His Perfect Presence… through our spirits that already abide with Almighty God, as He sits on His Throne!
Yes, our souls and bodies continue to reside on Earth, to fulfill the commission and set of assignments He has entrusted to us while we serve Him in this life. But the spiritual part of us is already with God in His Eternal Abode! This is why we must be trained to see and think and act and react differently, now that we’ve become brand new creations. And this is why, just like Stephen did in Acts 7, we must learn to be accustomed to viewing everything from the Resurrection side of the Cross… even as our bodies continue to inhabit the earth!
“Therefore, if you have been raised up with Messiah, keep seeking the things above — where Messiah is, sitting at the right hand of God. Focus your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Messiah in God. When Messiah, who is your Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him, in Glory!” Colossians 3:1-4, Emphasis added)
So when we actually repent of our rogue Self-life ways, and allow our Messiah to fill us with His own Holy Spirit, the Spirit causes our risen Lord, and all that pertains to Him, to become real and alive and gloriously productive… in us… as us… and through us… because we have now been brought into HIS LIFE! In other words, we are ‘transplanted’ from our original fallen ground, and replanted into the Ground that nourishes us with the Resurrection Life that only abides in our risen Messiah, Yeshua. And now, we have the privilege, honor and RESPONSIBILITY, of realizing that we now abide with our beloved risen Messiah… in our Father’s Personal Abode… because we have been safely transplanted and deposited forever, in our new Home in God. And we abide with Him, in His Word, on the Resurrection side of the Cross! And so now we can serve as ‘connecting points’ through which Heaven’s Eternal Reality can begin to enter into and occupy Space and Time, and the two can begin to be joined together.
“Therefore, my loved ones, just as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence—work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For the One working in you is God — both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13 TLV, Emphasis added)
And so, beloved brethren, after we have denied our former Self-life and its ways, and then truly pick up our crosses and begin to abide as one with our Messiah, we must follow where He leads… in full realization and understanding of what it actually means to be one with God and to bear the Fruit that His Life, working within us, is here to produce! We have moved from living death… to Eternal Life! So it’s essential that we understand what it means to ‘follow’ our Lord… in Spirit and in Truth!
One thing it means to follow our Lord is this: From that monumental and pivotal moment in which we actually ‘deny’ ourselves and ‘pick up our cross,’ as He tells us to do, we must consider ourselves to be dead to the Sin of radical independence from our Messiah, and alive only to God, by our Covenant union with Him. And so we do this because in and by that life changing decision, we have been spiritually uprooted from our former Self-life ground and therefore, we no longer have any ties or connections to it. Yes, at one time, it was our home base and it was all that we knew. But no longer can that be true. We have ‘changed sides.’ More than that; we have changed dimensions, kingdoms and identities! We now serve a new Lord, the real Lord. And He is now our Life… and so we are under His Command, wearing His uniform, and deployed to resist and oppose His enemies. Now, since He is our Life… His enemies, are also our enemies and His interests are our interests!
So we are still caught up in the war that rages between God’s Word and the demonic spirit of Anti-Christ, but we have undergone a radical ‘change of sides.’ And to go back to our old Self-life way of seeing, thinking, acting and reacting will never again be on our menu of options. We died to that! And now, we live only to God and from God… and for His good pleasure and purposes. Our text from Colossians 3 orders each one of us to: “keep seeking (to learn to own, possess and live by and from and according to) the things (that God has given to us from) above—where we are seated with our Messiah, at the right hand of God.”
The ‘things above’ refer to the Eternal New Covenant Resurrection Reality into which God has brought each disciple who has truly repented of his or her Self-life and willingly and knowingly chose to become one with our Messiah. And it also includes God’s Perfect Finished Work – all of the Perfect Finished works of Creation, Redemption and Full Restoration that our Lord Yeshua, the Living Word of God, has already created and bestowed upon us. In Heaven, we already have been given Everything! (Ephesians 1:3-6) And so, even while our bodies occupy the Earth… in our spirits, we have the right to abide with our Heavenly Father in Heaven, and to come to Him in prayer… and to receive all that He has to give to us from His Treasury of Grace in Eternity. Our Eternal Inheritance in Messiah already contains everything we will ever need here on Earth, in space and time. The Holy Spirit is ready to transmit all of that to us, in the midst of our earthly situations and circumstances, through the obedience of our faith. This is what God’s written Word calls our ‘Daily Bread’! (See Matthew 6.)
Now we are sons of God, and co-heirs with His beloved Son. And our place is established with and in Yeshua, for all of Eternity! God’s Living Word created all of this in the very Beginning. And He laid the entire array of Creation before His Heavenly Father. In God’s Infinite and Eternal Perfection, this was immediately and perfectly done… as soon as Father commissioned and spoke His Word forth… sending Him to create and sustain all of Creation!
“So the heavens and the earth were completed along with their entire array. God completed—on the seventh day—His work that He made, and He ceased—on the seventh day—from all His work that He made. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, for on it He ceased from all His work that God created for the purpose of preparing (all the Finished Work that He would later reveal and present to us and for us).” (Genesis 2:1-3 TLV.)
Thanks to Yeshua’s Perfect Finished Works, after we become one with Him, His Resurrection Life, and the Treasury of Grace that it makes available to us, is the only Reality that remains before us. Our Heavenly menu of options will always offer only one magnificent Entrée – Yeshua, in all of His Eternal Perfection and the Fullness of His All-Sufficient Provision! From now on, He is the only Reality before us. The Cross took us completely away from our original Sin-corrupted and broken earthly ground. And God’s Grace transplanted us into the Ground that is to be in the Perfect Heavenly Presence of our Resurrected Messiah. It is in Him that we are to live and upon Him that we are to rely… and from Him that we are to feed and be sustained and receive everything we will ever need. And, since God’s Word is one with the Father… and since He is now our Eternal Life… and since He abides in us and has identified Himself with us so deeply, it is with Him that we must now identify ourselves as well… at all times… and in every situation.
“For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also did; but the word they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united with those who listened with faith. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said,
“As I swore in My anger, They certainly shall not enter My rest,” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”;and again in this passage, “They certainly shall not enter My rest.”
“Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who previously had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again sets a certain day, “Today,” saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts!” (Hebrews 4:2-7, Emphasis added)
From now on, whatever we are or have or become or are able to do… must originate in Yeshua and come to us from Him. We live out from God’s Living Word who is now our one and only Resource. And from now on, we must rely and depend upon Him in this world and the next… throughout Eternity! The moment our humanity died with Him on the Cross we died to everything we used to be, and depend on, apart from Him. Now we forsake and bypass every fallen, temporal, earthly source upon which we once depended and we look to our indwelling Lord exclusively, from now on.
Only After Our Death On The Cross Can Resurrection Life Reign In Us
We are now dead to (that is, totally separated from) whatever we were, or had, or did, or aspired to before, in the earthly lower level of existence. The way we used to know ourselves, and the way the people of this fallen world used to know us, no longer pertains to us! Therefore, we no longer consider any of that to be linked to us, or to be part of our identity. No longer can we mentally ‘anchor ourselves’ to any of that! Our death with Messiah on the cross has stripped it away from us – forever! And we are now forever rooted and established in all of the Fullness of our risen Lord… in Almighty God!
“For if I rebuild the very things I tore down, I prove myself to be a law-breaker. For through law I died to law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Messiah; and it is no longer I who live, but Messiah lives in me. And the life I now live in the body, I live by trusting in Ben-Elohim—who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God—for if righteousness comes through Torah, then Messiah died for no reason!” (Galatians 2:18-21, TLV)
Beloved, we do not strive to obey God’s laws and commandments to try to save ourselves! The Lord Himself, who is the Living Word of God made flesh in us, has already saved us, purely by God’s Grace! And it is Yeshua, living within us, who reveals, commands, obeys and fulfills everything His Father sent Him to be and to do in our name! God’s Word has done it all, from start to finish! This is why we must learn to rest and draw from the results of what He has already produced in our name. And this is why Father insists that we learn to identify with Him… and to REST in Him!
“‘For I will take you from the nations, gather you out of all the countries and bring you back to your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. Moreover I will give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the stony heart from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Ruach within you. Then I will cause you to walk in My laws, so you will keep My rulings and do them.” (Ezekiel 36:24-27)
So now… your mental focus¾your new identity and sphere of consciousness, must be to: “Focus your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you have died (to the rogue agent you used to be when you belonged to this world), and YOUR LIFE IS HIDDEN WITH MESSIAH, IN GOD!” (Colossians 3:2-3, Emphasis added)
In other words, Messiah, the Living Word of God made flesh, is now your one and only Life and Identity! What He is… in all of His Perfect Fullness… is now in you! And whatever pertains and belongs to Him, also pertains and belongs to you!
“This mystery is that the Gentiles are joint heirs and fellow members of the same body and co-sharers of the promise in Messiah Yeshua through the Good News.” (Ephesians 3:6, TLV Emphasis added)
“So I say this, and affirm in the Lord, that you are to no longer walk just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their minds, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves up to indecent behavior for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as Truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the Truth.” (Ephesians 4:17-24, Emphasis added)
The Holy Spirit, through the apostle Paul, is revealing how God considers and views us, now that we’ve become one with Him through our Messiah, in the New Covenant. He’s telling us that He no longer sees us in terms of what we used to be, before we came to know and submit to the Authority of His Living Word. He’s telling us about how He sees us now that we are one with our risen Lord! And if He doesn’t see us as we were, then neither should we! We too must learn to see that our risen Messiah is now our Life and is the one who is operating from within us. God looks at us and sees His beloved Son… who serves as our Shield and Covering. Father has filled us with the Perfect Presence and Eternal Inheritance of His own beloved only-begotten Son! Thus we are perfect in God’s sight, thanks to Yeshua, our New Life.
“Now Saul, still breathing out threats and murder against the Lord’s disciples, went to the kohen gadol (the high priest). He requested letters of introduction from him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women belonging to the Way, he might bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
As he was traveling, approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. Falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”
“Who are You, Lord?” Saul said.
“I am Yeshua—whom you are persecuting!” (Acts 9:1-5 TLV, Amplification and Emphasis added)
So the Word unites us to Almighty God. And the Fullness of God that is in Yeshua, is now also, eternally in us!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Messiah. HE CHOSE US IN THE MESSIAH before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before Him in love. He predestined us for adoption as sons THROUGH MESSIAH YESHUA, in keeping with the good pleasure of His will—to the glorious praise of His grace, with which HE FAVORED US THROUGH THE ONE HE LOVES!
In Him we have redemption through His blood—the removal of trespasses—in keeping with the richness of His grace that He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight, He made known to us the mystery of His will, in keeping with His good pleasure that He planned in Messiah. The plan of the Fullness of Times is to bring all things together in the Messiah—both things in Heaven and things on Earth, ALL IN HIM! In Him we also were chosen, predestined according to His plan. He keeps working out all things according to the purpose of His will—so that we, who were first to put our hope in Messiah, might be for His glorious praise.” (Ephesians 1:3-12 TLV, Emphasis added)
So, dear ones, God is revealing the enormous supernatural ‘quantum leap’ in existence through which He has completely ‘transplanted us’ in Spiritual Reality… from our former earthly identity and status and citizenship… over to our new Heavenly identity, status and citizenship IN OUR MESSIAH! And that is why it is such a travesty, when believers insist on wallowing in their former earthly, pre-Christ identities, issues, and disabilities. We are no longer what we used to be. So we must leave all of that behind! We are no longer to adore, or look to ourselves for anything! If we died with Yeshua on the Cross, then we no longer have a radically independent destiny to make for ourselves, or to follow! Now only the Lord, in His Resurrection state, is our Life! So I ask you to ponder the following quotation from our old friend, T. Austin-Sparks. I offer it along with some amplification of my own that is contained within the parentheses that I inserted in his text:
“… Gone is the distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female – you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28 Phillips)
“… God is not meeting Jews as Jews, and Gentiles as Gentiles, and a great many are making the mistake of thinking that He is. His Word to the Jew is: “You must leave your Jewish ground, and stand before God, not as a Jew, but as a man (who has repented of earthly Self-life and acknowledges that the risen Lord is his one and only Life from now on), and until you take that ground God has nothing to say to you; you will not have any light whilst you persist in coming before God on your own (Sin-corrupted earthly) ground.”
“The same has to be said to everyone else. We have to leave our own ground in every way. That applies nationally, and in every other thing. Are you going to answer the Lord back: But I am this or that, or something else; or, But I am not this or that. It is not what you were, or what you think you still are. But it is about what the Son is! That is what is of account. Come onto His ground. The Lord will not meet you on the ground of what you are, whether it be good or bad; He will meet you on the ground of the Heavenly Man (that can only be found on the Resurrection side of the Cross).
“Do you answer back, “I am so weak!” The Lord is not going to meet you on that ground; He will meet you on the ground of His Son. That is what the Holy Spirit means by such words as He speaks through Paul: “…be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus”. (2 Timothy 2:1)
“God hears us exclaim, “But I am so weak, Lord!” but He does not pay any heed to what we mean to indicate by that confession, which is: “Come down on to the ground of my weakness and pick me up!” He says, “You forsake that ground, and come on to the (Resurrection) Ground of My Son, and you will find strength there.” “I am so foolish, Lord!” The Lord says: “You will remain foolish until you get on to the ground of My Son, Who is made unto you Wisdom.“
That applies all the way along. We take our own ground before the Lord and are surprised that the Lord does not lift us right out of our own ground and put us into a better position, but He never does. We shall stay there forever, if that is our attitude.
“The Lord’s word to us is: “Forsake your own ground and come on to My Ground. I have provided a Heavenly Man Who is full of all that you need; now come on to that Ground.” It does not matter what you are, or what you are not. There (in Him, and only in Him) everything is adjusted and made good.” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved, this is the New Covenant Reality that many of us fail to realize, and in which we fail to abide and reside. In the habitual stream of consciousness of many among us, the mental pictures we tend to entertain continue to be filled with us, and our worldly, earthly identities, root backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures, nationalities and mundane values and pursuits. That’s because we’ve not yet been able to realize and enter into the massive paradigm-shift that the apostles had to experience and according to which they had to readjust and recalibrate themselves:
“For it is we who are the circumcision (the Jewish people), who worship by the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God) and glory in Messiah Yeshua and have not depended on the flesh—though I myself might have confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he might depend on the flesh, I far more—circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel; from the tribe of Benjamin; a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the Torah, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting Messiah’s community; as for Torah righteousness, found blameless.
“But whatever things were gain to me, these I have considered as loss for the sake of the Messiah. More than that, I consider all things to be loss in comparison to the surpassing value of the knowledge of Messiah Yeshua my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things; and I consider them garbage in order that I might gain Messiah and be found in Him not having my righteousness derived from (my own efforts to observe the) Torah, but one that is through trusting in Messiah—the righteousness from God based on trust (in His Perfect Finished Works).
“My aim (from now on) is to know Him and the Power of His Resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death—if somehow I might arrive at the Resurrection from among the dead.” (Philippians 3:3-11 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
Living Out Our New Identity in Messiah
So now, it’s no longer about anything you inherited from fallen Adam and his fallen descendants leading up to your appearance into this demon-possessed world. From now on, it’s all about what God, through His Son and Holy Spirit, has made you to be by His Grace. He has made you to be a brand new creation, a resplendent spiritual being that is not at all from, or of, this fallen Sin-corrupted world. And this is why we must now stop identifying with worldly things, and no longer see ourselves as still being a part of that. No, beloved… WE HAVE DIED to what we used to be! The existence in which we used to be trapped is no longer in the picture. The Cross removed it from us, and it set us free from that! And now, we must come to grips with the fact that we are brand new Heavenly beings… and sons of God, thanks to the Perfect Work of the Last Adam, Messiah Yeshua! Yes, we are now endowed with, and filled to overflowing, with the Life and Righteousness and Holiness and Reward, of the Perfect Living Word of God Himself!
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father—from Him every family in heaven and on earth receives its name. I pray that from His glorious riches He would grant you to be strengthened in your inner being with power through His Ruach, so that Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to grasp with all the kedoshim (saints) what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Messiah which surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled up with all the Fullness of God!” (Ephesians 3:14-19 TLV)
And so we are no longer to identify ourselves according to earthly, worldly, temporary man-made categories and structures. We are not to identify with the natural ethnicities, cultures, nationalities, traditions our flesh inherited through our fallen, Sin-corrupted bodies and souls. As long as we continue to do that, we will continue to remain ignorant and unaware of the marvelous spiritual Reality that God has deposited within our regenerated spirits.
And as long as we remain ignorant, we will obsess over our former earthbound ties and identities, and keep ‘recycling’ and reenacting them. And that always divides us and keeps us at odds with each other! So as long as we insist on identifying ourselves according to temporary, earthly, man-constructed categories such as ‘Jewish’ or ‘Muslim’ or ‘Catholic’ or ‘Protestant’ or ‘Black’ or ‘White’ or ‘Liberal’ or ‘Conservative’ or ‘male’ or ‘female’… etc., etc… we will never come together and unite! So we must no longer cling to them or they will keep dividing and separating us and forcing us to remain on the earthly Sin-corrupted side of the Cross!
We must join God’s beloved Son in His atoning Death on the Cross and allow Him to take us all across the infinite chasm that separates this Sin-corrupted dimension of space and time, from the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven.
We diverse, divided, conflicting people groups here on Earth must finally repent of our radical independence from the Creator who designed and created us all… so that we who are many, can finally allow God to make us into… One New Man… in our Glorious Messiah, Yeshua.
So, beloved, our minds must also emigrate to where our spirits have already been established. We must embrace and accept fully our death with and in Yeshua. We must also own and possess and enjoy the Resurrection Glory that is ours… as soon as we join our Lord on that other side of the Cross… by the obedience of our faith.
“But now in Christ Jesus you who previously were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups (Jews and Gentiles) into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the hostility, which is the Law composed of commandments expressed in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two one new person, in this way establishing peace; and that He might reconcile them both IN ONE BODY TO GOD THROUGH THE CROSS, by it having put to death the hostility.
“And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the Cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a HOLY (New Covenant)TEMPLE IN THE LORD, in whom you also are being built together INTO A DWELLING OF GOD IN THE SPIRIT!” (Ephesians 2:13-22 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)