An Abundance of Grace

There’s a word in the New Testament that is extremely important for us as believers to understand and obey. Our eternity is tied to it. You can think of it as the key word for all the Church – for all of us – no exceptions.

Now, please understand, God’s aim is not to control you like some slavish robot. He made mankind to relate to Him, to be like His Son:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

(Gen 1:26)

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His...

First, we all know that God is love but John’s epistle starts with another fundamental truth which is really two truths. God is light. Not visible light; not sunlight or any light on the EM spectrum, but eternal, unbounded, immeasurable spiritual light that shines everywhere. It illuminates not only all His creation but every heart and mind. It reveals truth, it warms the soul, it cleanses and lifts up.

All people exist with the ‘void’ of being separated from the divine. Some are so senseless and dead in their separation, that they don’t even realize the void. Some sense it and cope with it by imagining they can cross or span the void by doing enough good (or evil) and some sense it but deny it in the hope that the emptiness will go away. Some imagine fantasies of there being no divine at all and as a result live like animals.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden was ‘marketed’ by the serpent as God withholding something divine from us. But instead of just knowing good and evil, it warped our minds, causing our perceptions to ‘think’ 180 degrees away from God’s thought and to be in sync with Satan’s.

Yes, we are called to do good (He who does good is of God… 3 John 1:11), we’ve been told to love one another (“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12), we are called to trust God like Jesus, to pray without ceasing, to help and edify those in need, to set our mind on things above, on and on. All of this is part of imitating Christ but none of it is done in your strength. The necessary strength and character attributes come from God’s Spirit:

Just like the serpent did in the garden of Eden, Satan always wants to pollute your perception of Who God is and His promises. He wants you to focus on your sin rather than repent and TRUST for the instant you do you realize that God never left, that you never ‘surprise’ Him, that His love and grace are infinitely more powerful than your failures, that Christ’s blood is and always will be the final Word.

So, what we are meant to understand is that the God-Son, as the Almighty’s Expression, His Agent, didn’t simply create life but rather He is life. Thus, the entire cosmos was vested in the outcome of His sacrifice.

This is why the trifecta is so important. God could have done anything to rectify what was being spoiled. He could have created literally anything, and yet He chose to create a beautiful world with a magnificent garden and a situation that would teach all His creation the one fundamental truth.

Do you want to live as Jesus, like His disciples (post Calvary)? Meet each moment, good or bad, with trust in Father God. And don’t worry about it, don’t try to make yourself trust. Just choose it and rest in Him.

In our day, you might say ‘he just couldn’t catch a break’. He started off as kind of a ‘grumbler’, not at all happy about what God had told him to do. Ironically, he came from a small town just a few miles from modern day Nazareth which of course was where Jesus grew up.

Why is the human heart and mind ‘coping’ with Jesus by trying to define Him in these myriad ways? Simply put, to define Him is to put Him in a ‘box’, to ‘contain’ Him. When something we perceive about Him or those we associate with Him bums us out, we can simply adjust our definition and thus His ‘container’. That’s how we remain ‘superior’.

I must have read this scripture a thousand times, literally, and then a couple of days ago, wham. It struck me as shocking that the risen Lord, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, Lord of all, having conquered death and hell and condemned the devil to destruction, having completed His divine mission – He calls the very ones who deserted Him in the garden, He calls them “My brothers”.

Comparatively, it’s easy to recognize Satan’s work outwardly but not so obvious when his work is inward and most of the time it is. His thought-arrows are deception, hatred, pride and lust, etc. As he influences you with his ‘propaganda’, you become his tool.

And this is where the “fullness” comes in, literally. When He comes in, He brings His “fullness” – infinite love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and so forth. His presence is His fullness. Filled with His fullness means filled with God’s presence and thus all that He is. It’s a spiritual union:

For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.

"For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."

For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

(Eph 2:10)

I’m convinced that the entire host of heaven was watching this as Abraham simply obeyed. With a broken heart, he still believed that God could raise his son from the dead. He journeyed with Isaac to Moriah, to the mount we call Calvary. Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice. He willingly submitted to his father and allowed him to lay him on the sacrificial pyre.

This glorious gift of grace means that with His Spirit in you, you are no longer “of the earth” like the first Adam. Rather, you are from that point forward “of heaven” like the “last Adam”. In fact, you are then a member of the family of God – your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

He’s Lord of the Sabbath because back in Genesis He created the the seventh day of rest, the Sabbath, (See Gen 2:2,3) and more than that, He is the Sabbath. More accurately, He is our Sabbath. You see, sabbath is all about rest and peace. Because of this, it is also about trust for you cannot truly have rest or peace unless you have trust, trust in the Almighty. Jesus embodies this rest, peace and trust.

These people who could not believe despite the obvious, empowered by the presence of God’s Spirit in them were transformed inwardly. They then had the power to embrace ‘the basics’ and the power to trust the next lesson – perfection.

When all others forsake and or forget you, God never will. His love for you is perfect and eternal. And you may think, ‘God doesn’t understand my hurt’, but actually He does. You see the pain of forgottenness is synonymous with the pain of forsakenness. And on the cross, God the Son cried out to God the Father:

And 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?”

(Mat 27:46)

Jesus spoke of “great faith” and “little faith” and a couple times of “no faith”. But in Luke chapter seventeen, after exhorting His disciples about forgiveness:

“Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”

(Luke 17:3,4)

They knew they needed help. They may have thought forgiving this much could be challenging; thus, His exhortation seems to have prompted them to ask...

Did you notice? It looks like all these six incidents involved one or more of the three ‘inner circle’ disciples who witnessed Christ’s transfiguration. What amazing patience from Jesus as He faced the coming sacrifice!

Like John the Baptist, we all tend to look for the wrong things from God. When God doesn’t do what we expect or how we expect or when we expect, we can be ‘scandalized’ or ‘tripped up’ or doubtful. We set our eyes upon men, even ‘spiritual’ men, even men in ministry and when they fail our expectation (and they always will), we can be like John.

Actually, you could say disobedience on Adam’s part led to sin and sin led to fear. And ever since, it has been hard-wired into the human race. Now, the Bible clearly instructs us to fear the Lord (more than 30 times) but let me clarify something. When the scriptures talk about the fear of the Lord, they are referring to reverence – to revere Him. You see, in both Hebrew and Greek, the languages of the Old and New Testaments, the word for fear and reverence is the same.

You see, Jacob had always been all about escaping trouble, escaping fear and you can bet that as a last resort, that plan was always on his mind. But with a broken hip? That won’t happen.

Now, “wedding” is a New Testament word and “marriage” is only used twice in the Old Testament which I find interesting. Of course, weddings and the concept of marriage are as old as the story of mankind. And notably, weddings are the joyous celebration of marriage and thus it’s natural that Christ’s first miracle as recorded in John chapter two was in support of that joy.

But in chapter twenty, as Abraham was looking off in that direction, the whole valley became a billowing furnace, like a nuclear bomb had dropped. It’s likely that Abraham’s heart just sank. You see, they had no cell-phones then. Abraham saw this inferno in the valley and surely thought his beloved Lot was toast, literally. He had no way to know that God had saved him by taking him out of there.

Now that was a sight to behold! The scriptures tell that no man has seen God at any time but here the LORD (Yahweh) caused all His goodness to pass before Moses.

The first teaching regards doing righteousness which includes kind deeds, giving, and service or any personal sacrifice. Religion emphasizes doing these things publicly and many systems are in place to acknowledge the ‘righteous doers’ and to glorify them.

This parable from Jesus speaks to the character of the Almighty and, importantly, about our perception of His character. Unfortunately, many preachers and commentators ignore that and zero-in on the issue of their productivity or lack thereof.

When you look into a mirror, you’re looking at yourself – the implication is that with Christ in you as a believer, you are also seeing Jesus but dimly because of the flesh. Therefore you ‘know’ or recognize Him in part. But the time is coming when you will perfectly know Him just as He knows you. You’ll know Him this way because you were made to be this way – in His image.

And as His children, we abide in Him and He in us. That’s how we see/know light – we live in His light and thus separated from the darkness, we comprehend the light:

For with You is the fountain of life;

In Your light we see light. (Psa 36:9)

As the soldiers sent by the Chief Priest along with Judas Iscariot approached Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, He asked them a most poignant question reaching far beyond that pivotal night. It transcends time. Thus, He asks us the same question today.

When you want to learn more about grace and forgiveness one of the characters in the Bible you can reference is David the king of Israel. For all his courage in battle and sincerity in worship, his life was filled with messes, and he often was their maker. Can you relate to that? I sure can.

But Jesus overthrew their tables on this by asserting that they were like ‘deer in His headlight’ so to speak. Exposed as fakers with God. What He was saying is what He always said – “You must be born again.” You must be completely, changed inwardly to be clean (i.e. acceptable) before God. You simply cannot get away with the outward show.

You see, the context of the lesson was/is our duty to forgive but the lesson goes beyond that and puts a spotlight on the condition of the heart of the forgiver or servant of the Lord.

This is why most all of us need to persist in prayer because we need a holy heart attitude, uncluttered by the world and our own ‘flesh’. It’s in that time ‘on the mountain’ like Christ (see Mat 14:23 and Luke 6:12) or in your own Gethsemane, whether fellowshipping and/or agonizing with the Almighty, that you arrive at the ‘one-two’.

And how about those who are “oppressed”? Well, the translators perhaps should have used the literal meaning of “crushed”, or “broken in pieces” or “shattered”. You may have read the novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo” wherein, the protagonist, a young French sailor, Edmund Dantes was falsely imprisoned in the horrible Chateau D’if. Each year, the ‘warden’ chained Edmund up and beat him nearly to death. Finally, when he is able to escape this monstrous hell, he takes with him immense wealth from a pirate treasure but sadly, he is still bound up in his heart in Chateau D’if. He is never truly f...

But not everyone who encounters Christ does so with sincerity. Some see themselves are morally superior to everyone else. The power of God’s Son does not impress them because they actually are not just bound by sin by devoted to evil: