We Are His Workmanship

(Eph. 2:4-10)

If we have heard the essence of the gospel, we are learning to move on with the Spirit, to count all things loss in pursuit of the high calling of God.  We are on a journey to be conformed to the image of Christ Jesus.  That is the high calling.  It begins with the cross as the cancellation of our fallen nature.  Man, as Adam, was put to an end there.  And God raised us in Christ to make us alive to Him by the Spirit.  The process, the journey, continues with the cross daily.  We learn to stay yoked with Christ, and be listening to our Father.

The Scriptures (Paul’s letters) allow of no other sustaining factor in the body of believers (the church) than the life of the Spirit.  The tragedy of so many systems of church organization is that they often serve as a scaffolding to hold up an edifice from which the Spirit has departed and which ought to be allowed to collapse.

The paragraph above in italics is from a booklet on unity by a Scot, a brother in the Lord, John Kennedy.  In his later life, he served as an itinerant teacher encouraging local believers in India.  He had a maturity which is needed always.  Unfortunately it is too often lacking in what I will call the Western church.  He wrote two booklets on this same topic and addresses practical issues.  If we learn to listen by the Spirit, we can understand beyond the written words.  This man John shared valuable insights.  I am not sure these messages are still in print or I would recommend them..

The word of the cross has far-reaching impacts if we will allow the Spirit to apply it to us.  This application is needed corporately as well as individually.  It was so in the church at the beginning, in the first century.  They knew Christ as crucified and the potential to be killed for worshipping Christ was a reality until the days of Constantine and the emergence of a harlot church.  It continues today.  A most important truth for believers to practice is a commitment to the Lord Himself.  True unity exists as we allow the Lord to grow us up into Christ.  Jesus said He would build His church.  The strongholds of our adversary (the gates of hell) cannot resist that church.  That church is His body.  That is not a concept but a spiritual reality.

As I reread the passage in Ephesians and saw the phrase I use as a title, the word “we” caught my attention.  Individual knowledge of the Lord is essential.  Each of the 12 first disciples had that with Jesus but much of the time they were relating to Him as a group.  Leadership among them was established yet a strong sense of humility was imparted as well.  This was exemplified at the cross.  They saw it happen.  Not everyone of them had the same experiences.  Three were taken to the mount and saw a heavenly reality.  Thomas had a unique experience of the resurrected Jesus.  We too often see that critically but we miss the point.  Jesus met him where he was and he touched a resurrected man.  The 12 continued on together and were all in one place, of one mind, with about 110 others in that upper room when the Spirt fell on them all, and they were filled with that Spirit of God.

As we each go on, we need individual time with the Lord as well as gatherings.  Times may come for personal separation for a season.  Saul had this after his time in Damascus.  Jesus did it regularly.  We each need recharging.  Those times bring rest and refreshing and direction.  Sadly, however, we still try to do church and too often it comes short.  This will be a distressing thought but every time we organize and call it “church,” we continue to miss it.  A generation of young ones is rising who do not want to do it anymore.  We do need gatherings and they are happening.  I must be full of care (careFULL) not to discourage what the Lord is pleased to accomplish as we gather.  He does show up.  He does encounter.  But so much is activity that feeds our need to do.  Been there done that.  The Lord is bring us to higher place.  May we allow Him to work on us and leave behind the frameworks.  Lord, revive Your work in our time.  Even so, come Lord Jesus and walk among Your lampstands and speak so that we may be aligned with You.

Of Whom the World Is Not Worthy

(John 17:5, Heb 11:36-40, Heb.12:1-3, John 15:18)

Jesus was never at home in this world.  He was a foreigner in this place.  He wanted to be with His Father sharing that glory that He knew before the world was.  He is the author and finisher of faith.  So we are encouraged to fix our eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross and everything that went on before it.  His life here culminated in the cross where He said, “It is finished.”  More than His work in this world was completed.  So much more was done.  Sin was put to death.  Death was overcome and destroyed,  We read that He destroyed him who had the power of death.  We are no longer under a sentence of death but have a life that will never die.  That life is Christ Himself which brings us to, and keeps us, in the presence of God.  It is for us to continue on in faith no matter what we may face.

Faith is believing and trusting.  It is substance.  It is not wishful thinking.  It is right thinking, based on right believing.  Our thoughts and beliefs cannot be separated.  We must remember that the flesh, ourselves apart for God, resists the Spirit, and vice versa.  We want our own way.  We want every good thing but can be deceived.  The Lord works by His Spirit to transform us and free us from every false notion.  He opens our eyes to see heavenly realities.  Without a vision, a vision of the Lord, we get off track.  This vision is what Paul prayed for, a spirit of wisdom and revelation, an ongoing experiential knowledge of the Lord Jesus.  Faith is the evidence, a conviction of truth, of things not seen by the natural eye.

Everything we see can oppose this.  When we have spiritual eyes to see, we see God in all that our natural eyes see.  Sometimes we can be fooled by and through those distractions our spiritual eyesight is refined.  The Bible is full of examples of this.  Samuel is sent to anoint a son of Jesse and learns his own lesson that God is looking at the heart.  When David shows up, Samuel, trained in knowing the Lord, knows that David is the one.  Saul is blinded on the road to Damascus and remains so for three days.  That is the length of time Jesus was in the grave.  Jesus was fully convincing Saul of the truth in those three days.  Now that was the hand of God.  It was the same hand that covered Moses from seeing the full glory of God as He passed by.  His ways are higher than our ways and always bring a glorious result.

Saul’s natural sight was restored but the spiritual insights he began to receive while blind provided the foundation for the wisdom written in his letters.  He began his process of transformation and the Spirit’s work in conforming him to the image of Christ.  Like Paul, those mentioned in Hebrews 11 are men and women who believed God  for heavenly interventions at the cost of things held dear.  Some lost their lives to receive a greater reward.  You may have heard the words of Jim Elliot.  “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”  Jim was killed as he was bringing the gospel to unreached people.

So in the mix of these stories and people of faith, we have this thought, “of whom the world was not worthy.”  The world cannot receive the Spirit, Jesus said.  The world runs on the desires of unfaithful men and women.  They do not believe God.  They do not want God.  God has extended His love to them and they have refused.  God would lead them to repentance and they will not.  In this, we do not only consider leaders whether elected ones or those over businesses, we consider the people who support them in self-centered activity.  They care nothing for eternal values but want only to satisfy earthly desires.  Materialism, power and control, and what the Spirit calls fleshly lusts which wage war in us, and against the souls of men. May we be careful not to love (agape) the world nor the things in it.  They are given for us to enjoy, and we all learn the balance of enjoying our Father’s good gifts.  But may we learn that pleasure of His as He rejoices over us as His children, chosen in Christ, to know Him and enjoy Him forever.