INTO HIS IMAGE

Revealing of the

Sons and Daughters of God

By Fred MacKrell

A publication of:

SkillRite Publishing

Copyright©2014 by Fred MacKrell

Into His Image/

Revealing of the Sons and Daughters of God

Digital Version

ISBN 978-0-9827827-5-0

All rights reserved solely by the author. The author guarantees that all contents are original and do not infringe upon the legal rights of any other person or work. Reproduction of this material or any portion thereof for resale is prohibited.

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 / In His Eyes

Chapter 2 / In Him, We are Adopted

Chapter 3 / In Him, We are Redeemed

Chapter 4 / In Him, We are Sealed

Chapter 5 / In Him, We Hope

Chapter 6 / In Him, We Live

Chapter 7 / In Him, We are Joined

Chapter 8 / In Him, We are Welcomed

Chapter 9 / In Him, We are Filled

Chapter 10 / In Him, We are One

Chapter 11 / In Him, We are New

Chapter 12 / In Him, We are Light

Chapter 13 / In Him, We Submit

Chapter 14 / In Him, We Pray

Chapter 15 / In Him, We are Justified

Chapter 16 / In Him, We Reign

Chapter 17/ In Him, We are Free

Chapter 18 / In Him, We are Delivered

Chapter 19 / In Him, We are Alive!

Chapter 20 / In Him, We are Heirs!

Chapter 21 / In Him, We Glory!

Chapter 22 / In Him, We are Called

Chapter 23 / In Him, More than Conquerors

Chapter 24 / Into His Image

Endnotes

Introduction

Here we are, wondering what in the world is going on! Since World War II, the United States has been on an upward socio-economic trend as has been most of the Western World, and yet, due to some very suspicious circumstances, we find our world, our country, our retirement accounts, and our very futures at risk. For many years, we have assumed—and yes, we have been led to believe—that prosperity was a God-given right.  Instead, we find our prosperity about to be forcefully taken from us by people and organizations that could care less about us, or our children whom we love with our very lives. No, these principalities and powers have an agenda that transcends political ideology, economic philosophy, and religious theology. These insidious forces of evil do not care about the welfare of the human soul; they enact their plan of rebellion that has included all generations since the Garden of Eden.

Apostle Paul wrote very clearly in Ephesians 6:12 that “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”  While we watch in stunned amazement the antics of our elected officials, we must always keep in mind that these people are not acting on their own. Blind to their own slavery, they find themselves compelled by powerful spiritual forces of evil. Thinking that they are feathering their own nests of lasciviousness, they are being led by the nose to their destruction as well as to the destruction of their constituents. The godly of the earth wait for the God of the universe to send down His rage upon these wicked men and women. Some await the destruction of a country that was once thought to be heaven’s gift to the world. In time’s final assessment, will good truly triumph? How long can this evil continue?

There truly is hope for this world and hope for each one of us. It certainly does not lie in the hearts and minds of humankind. Or does it?

God has made very clear through His apostles and prophets that He will have the victory in this earth. He is still working His plan which He implemented and began to carry out in the Garden of Eden. We know that God Most High made a rock-solid covenant with Abraham. We know that He renewed and expanded His covenant with Israel through Moses and then King David. We know that this covenant was consummated in the blood of Jesus Christ of Nazareth at the cross of Calvary. We also know that the New Covenant, once prophesied by Jeremiah, found its inauguration at the same cross in the blood of the Lamb of God. Now, here we are, waiting for the prophecies of Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, John, Paul, Peter, and Jesus Christ to come to pass. We are longing for the final chapter to be written—where evil is finally vanquished and tightly sealed in the hell that was created to contain it.

We know that spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms must be battled and defeated by spiritual forces of righteousness in the heavenly realms. Flesh and blood have no power over such a potent division of demons. We also know that we have battled day after day against such forces in the arena of sin, and we have lost time and again. Flesh can only battle flesh; the spiritual must be battled in the spirit.

I have written this book as a sequel to Beyond the Veil: Into the Presence of God. In Beyond the Veil, we find that our ultimate rest is found in the presence of God, and His Presence is found in His believers, His people. In Into His Image: The Revealing of the Sons and Daughters of God, we will begin to explore what it really means to have the Presence of God dwelling in His people and what impact this truth will have on the world in which we live. Paul writes in Romans 8:19: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” Please bear with me as we examine this case made in the Scriptures for the revelation of the sons and daughters of God. We are those sons and daughters! The question is this: Will we walk in our full, God-designed potential, and what impact can that have on a world that is waiting in eager expectation—a world that is longing for a people of God who will no longer hide their God who dwells within their very hearts? I can promise incredible blessings for everyone who reads and follows the truths in this book.

May God bless us as we seek to come into our full potential as sons and daughters of God!

Chapter 1 / In His Eyes

To everyone who saw or knew them, they were just men. They were men who laughed and cried. They were often amused, puzzled, distressed, frustrated, and, at times, angered. They were men who wanted the best for their families and friends and for the world. Without a doubt, they were totally human, bearing in each of their genetic programs the tragic flaw of God’s perfect creation: sin.               They were men who had been handpicked from the multitudes of men just like them, each chosen for his unique abilities and raw, undeveloped character. Their leader saw deep into each of their hearts and into their futures. He saw their potential as if knowing beforehand what each would endure and accomplish under the most trying and oppressive of conditions. In fact, he knew better than anyone how the untested iron ore composing each of their souls would one day be purified and forged into a tempered steel of resolve by the very heat that they would find themselves bearing. They would be infused with the supernatural power of the heavens, and they would stand up to the threat of death without even a hint of retreat.

Yes, they were just men, but men who had been seen by their Creator as men who would change the world, not by their own power but by the power of the one who called them and taught them by his own example. They would follow him to the end, an end that was really just a beginning as the darkest of nights gives way to the brilliant sunshine of a new day. His end would be the very portal to their new beginnings, and their ends would give birth to the longest running chain letter of life that the world has ever seen or ever will see. Their leader was a man by the name of Jesus, and their names are recorded in the gospels of the Holy Scriptures. In fact, some of them would write part of the Bible that we cherish. They were the disciples.

We know through our Bible studies, even from childhood, that these men were far from perfect. In fact, many of them would certainly have been disqualified had we been in charge of their personnel bureau. James was reputed to have had an unbearable temper. Matthew was called from the tables of tax collection, a position despised in that day. And how could we forget Peter; he was brash and impulsive, often suffering under the scathing rebuke of the Lord whom he loved.

Yet, in retrospect, we regard each of these men as heroes of the Church, knowing that without their strong character and witness we would not have the foundation upon which each generation of believers has been laid. In fact, there would be no believers because it was the disciples-turned-apostles who first preached the gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of the resurrection. They were living examples of that mighty regenerating power, being themselves reborn from molten ore replete with impurities, refined and then forged and pounded into mighty, unbending, unbreaking purveyors and preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What was the catalyst for this transformation?

In short, it was what happened in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost that transformed these men into the spiritual titans that Jesus saw from the day when He called each of them. It was the arrival of the Holy Spirit that wondrous day as they awaited Him in prayer and the very anointing and covering of the Comforter and Counselor that Jesus had prophesied the night before His death on the cross. From the Garden of Eden, God had been longing to restore His cherished creation to right-standing with Him and to fill each of His people with Himself. That separation between God and man that was caused by sin and the rebellion of Adam and Eve hurt God to the core. He was more grieved by this separation than was man, and He longed for the day when He would restore man to righteousness and place Himself within the spirit of that man. There would be no more separation! Jeremiah prophesied that God would be with His people and that all would know Him from the least to the greatest (Jeremiah 31:33-34). The fulfillment of this prophecy came as the Holy Spirit descended from heaven and sat upon, enveloped and in-filled every believer in that Upper Room, and He continues to in-fill and to anoint His believers to this day. That is our good news!

14 Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.  15 He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.’ (Mark 16:14-18)

These disciples, who would one day soon receive the power of the Holy Spirit, were rebuked by their Lord for their lack of faith. In the next breath, Jesus gave them the commandment that would rock the world, literally: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” Because we know about their one-dimensional faith at this point, we know the disciples could only hear the words of Jesus; they could not fully understand until they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

What must have certainly left them perplexed was the statement, “These signs will accompany those who believe.” Jesus went on to say that they would drive out demons, speak in new tongues, handle snakes without injury, drink poison without being sickened, and lay hands on and heal the sick. Highly reminiscent of the “sending of the 72” in Luke 10, Jesus again commands His believers—His disciples—to do the works that He had done throughout His own ministry. We have seen Jesus drive out the demons and heal the sick time and again in the Gospels, but His words in the Gospel of John signify the passing of His mantle to everyone who would believe in Him:

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. (John 14:12)

What an incredible statement! “Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.” He goes on to say that the same believers would do even greater acts because Jesus was going to the Father. If we read further into John, chapters 14 through 16, we find that Jesus has much to say about the coming of the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit would not come until Jesus had ascended to His place at His Father’s right hand in heaven. In other words, believers in Jesus Christ would be able to do these great and miraculous acts because they would have the power of the Holy Spirit within them to perform these signs and wonders. This Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is the extension of the will of the Father and of the Son. He dwells within the heart of the believer, standing ready and able to perform miraculous works as soon as the believer submits to the Spirit’s leading. In addition, Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, ready to confirm with signs and wonders His word that is preached.

19 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. 20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.   (Mark 16:19-20)

Jesus has set the table for His Church, His body of believers. Not only did He see His disciples as victorious apostles of the faith from the day He called them, He sees every one of us in the same way. He set aside His deity, He emptied Himself of His status as Son of God, and He became one of us when He came to this earth (Philippians 2:6-8). At Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him like a dove, anointing Him for His ministry over the next three years. Jesus later stood in the synagogue in Nazareth and read these words from the prophet Isaiah:

18 The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.    (Luke 4:18-19)

Every act that Jesus did, every miracle that He performed, every demon that He cast out, every sick person that He healed, and every word that He preached was done not because He was the Son of God but because He was the Son of Man, anointed and empowered by the Holy Spirit. What this means for all of us is that every believer in Jesus can and will do what Jesus has done because we are also anointed and empowered by the same Holy Spirit sent from heaven when Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father as promised in John 14: 12. No matter how much we try to prove ourselves unworthy, no matter how much we shirk our God-given command to do these things in Mark 16:14-18, and no matter how much we fear being cast as religious radicals, Jesus’ promise still stands as a witness that we are called to do what He did and to do even greater acts. In His eyes, we are His body, His people, and His extended hands and feet to do His will here upon this earth. By His Spirit, we are enabled to perform the signs and wonders that He has promised as He watches over His word that we speak and preach as we go our way in our daily life; He watches over His word to bring every jot and tittle to pass. As Jesus did with the early Church, He still watches over His word to confirm it with signs following His word that we speak.

In His eyes, we are partners in redeeming the world in which we live. The question remains: Will we take up this mantle that He has passed to us? Will we become the spiritual titans that the disciples became as we accept and protect the anointing of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Will we grow into the image that Jesus has intended from the creation of our ancestors in the Garden? Will we cast off the devil’s false indoctrination that we are unworthy to walk in our God-ordained destiny as the sons and daughters of God? This concept may be terrifying, but I promise that Scripture will bear it out. Our journey will take us to the revelation that we could very well be the generation that will fulfill the words that Jesus spoke, promising that we would do the very acts that Jesus did and to an even greater degree. To relegate this promise to days gone by is to deny the very words of our Lord. Let us proceed in humility, knowing that the Holy Spirit will teach us what He wants us to know about these matters.  Let us first explore our standing in Christ Jesus and our standing as children of the Most High God.

Chapter 2 / In Him, We are Adopted

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. (Ephesians 1:3-4)

It is nearly unbelievable that God would cherish mere humans as we are—cherish us so deeply that He would bless us with every spiritual and heavenly blessing in Christ Jesus. Think on this one fact alone: the Father has made available to us every blessing of His kingdom. Beginning with the cutting of the Abrahamic Covenant and the blessings that God bestowed upon His covenant partner Abraham in Genesis chapters 12-15, we see that God truly is a God of blessing.

1 The LORD had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.  2 I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’   (Genesis 12:1-3)

Deuteronomy 28 also shows us the blessings that God the Father has for His people who will walk according to His covenant. In fact, we may see in hindsight the blessings in which Abraham walked displayed in the blessings of the Mosaic Covenant; to name a few, they were blessed in the city and the country, had blessed wombs and blessed herds, were blessed in bread and sustenance, had blessed comings in and goings out, were blessed in victory and protection, were blessed in abundant prosperity, and had blessings in everything one could put his hand to. Of course, these blessings were provisional. God’s people of Israel were commanded to fully obey the Lord and to follow all His commands. If they did, then they walked in the power of the blessings. If they did not, then they walked in the diametric opposites of the blessings, also known as the curses.

The good news for a New Covenant believer is that the covenant cannot be broken because Jesus, the sinless Lamb of God, has already sealed the covenant in His holy blood. Therefore, if we abide in Christ Jesus, then the blessings are ours, every day and all the time! If we remain in Him, if we seek Him first and His kingdom, then we may confidently expect the blessings of God to follow us and to overtake us as we follow Christ. These are the blessings spoken of in Ephesians 1:3, the spiritual blessings of the heavens, hidden for us in Christ. Yes, every blessing that we may find we will find hidden in Christ Jesus. As we seek Him and seek to fellowship with Him in spirit, the blessings will actually find us and come upon us. If we seek the blessings first, then we are not seeking Christ, and the blessings immediately turn to curses.

One of the characteristics of the New Covenant is that we participate in it by faith and not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9). The Greek word for covenant is diatheke (pronounced di-ah-teak-ee). A diatheke[i] covenant signifies a great benevolent God making a covenant with a people who have nothing to offer other than their souls, their very beings. We truly have nothing to offer the God of the universe that He could not speak into existence the moment that He needed it. No, all we have to offer in this heavenly relationship is our allegiance and our submission to the will of our great God. As in a marriage covenant, God has given Himself to us in Jesus Christ; the natural and logical response is for us to give ourselves completely to Him.

The truth is that we did not choose God; He chose us in Christ. In fact, He chose us before the creation of the world and thus before our creation and before our conception. From an eternal and supernatural perspective, we begin to understand how incredibly blessed we indeed are. Overcome and distracted by the trivialities of everyday life, we quickly lose sight of this all-enveloping blessing that we have in Christ Jesus. This is exactly why Jesus exhorted His audience in the Sermon on the Mount to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” If we will live a lifestyle in which we are constantly in touch with our Savior, then we will be living high above the world’s trivialities and distractions, gently wrapped in the supernatural gifts of the heavenly realms.

Verse 4 of Ephesians 1 also highlights the fact that we were chosen to be holy and blameless in the sight of God. We will explore further the meaning of righteousness, or right-standing with God. The reality is that, in the blood of Jesus Christ and because of His perfect sacrifice on the cross, we are holy and blameless in Christ Jesus. We may not feel like it, and we may occasionally sin. Yet the Father sees us as holy and blameless because that is how and why He chose us before the creation of the world: to be holy and blameless in His sight—He sees us hidden in His Son who is holy and blameless. The question that emerges from this knowledge of our holiness and blamelessness is this: How will we live as we grow into the revelation of our calling in Christ Jesus?

As we explore our standing in Christ Jesus and the way that God looks at us through the prism of the New Covenant in the blood of the spotless Lamb, let us take a look at the next verses in Ephesians 1:

In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.   (Ephesians 1:5-6)

As we keep within reach the thought of the spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms spoken of in verse 3, we consider possibly the greatest blessing of all which is to be adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ. To be adopted is to be chosen. For better or worse, many of us who were born into the family in which we were raised found great blessings in our family relationships. However, those who have been adopted by a loving family have experienced an even greater fortune; they were deliberately chosen in love. All who are in Christ have been chosen—predestined—to become members of the family that derives its name from God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth. To be adopted is to be chosen!

Adoption is in itself a covenantal act. This concept of diatheke covenant could also be interpreted as adoption. A child who has been adopted has brought nothing but himself to the relationship. The one who adopts does so in love and in total compassion for the child who needs a father and mother. Every asset and resource available to the adopter becomes available to the adoptee through the act of adoption and, in turn, inheritance.

We are adopted into son-ship, into status as children of God. Our oneness with Christ allows us a covenantal inheritance and partnership in the royal family that has temporal and eternal implications that we must consider later in this book. One facet that bears consideration at this point is that God calls Jesus His Son, and here He calls us His sons and daughters. If we are indeed His children, then we are younger and constantly-learning brothers and sisters of Jesus, the Son of God. We are adopted, and yet we have full status as children of the Most High God “in accordance with His pleasure and will—to the praise of His glorious grace.” This was not our idea; we could not have conceived such a plan. No, this was God’s idea, and how grateful we should be that He has made a way for the wayward to participate in the incredibly glorious riches of the Kingdom of God.

Chapter 3 / In Him, We are Redeemed

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. (Ephesians 1:7-10)

Anyone who is in Christ Jesus, anyone who has professed faith in Him, and anyone who has accepted His forgiveness and cleansing blood is part of the family of God. He or she is a child of the Most High God and has received every spiritual blessing as noted in Ephesians 1:3. We have been adopted as sons and daughters because of the pleasure and will of the Father as noted in Ephesians 1:5. In theory, we can all accept these truths, and we affirm them every Sunday in church. However, in practice, we seem to forget that we are part of the royal family as we go our way in our daily lives. We seldom pray; we rely more on our own abilities as human beings than on our heritage as spiritual beings. Rather than living as children of the King and dining at His table, we find ourselves foraging through alleyway dumpsters for a tainted morsel that we might savor as homeless orphans.

Why is it that we practice our Christianity as orphans and not as adopted royalty? Why do we reserve prayer as our last resort and not throw our cries to the Father in Jesus’ name as our very first punch in the face of our mortal enemy—the devil? My opinion is that we do not see ourselves as totally and eternally forgiven by God. We do not run to the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit because we see ourselves still eating the pods that the farmer tosses to the swine, and we are seemingly satisfied to be living in the hog pen of the world’s system. In reality, we do not have a living and working revelation that we are in right-standing with the Father through the blood of Jesus Christ. If we are indeed to be transformed into His image, we must meditate on the truth that we are righteous; this truth is found in verse 7 of Ephesians 1:

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.    (Ephesians 1:7-8)

In Him, we have redemption through His blood. Redemption is not something that we can do ourselves any more than we can perform intricate open-heart surgery on ourselves. Our Lord has redeemed us with His own blood, the blood of the Everlasting Covenant (Hebrews 13:20). If we have placed our faith in Christ Jesus, then there is nothing we can add to the equation nor can we subtract from it. We are redeemed through His blood, period. Therefore, if we have standing as the forgiven and redeemed, then what can we possibly do to undo this standing, short of deliberate renouncing of our faith in Christ?

The truth in Scripture is this: if we are adopted children of God, then there is nothing that we can or cannot do that will change our familial status in the Kingdom of God. If we sin a thousand sins, the sin may cloud our minds and cause us to forget our royal inheritance, but it can never cause us to be “un-adopted.” As soon as we awaken to the fact that we are redeemed, we always find ourselves running to the arms of our heavenly Father, and we always find Him glad for our return. Not for a moment are we cast from the royal family, even while living in sin. Yes, our sins were quite unbecoming for children of God, but we were children of God nonetheless.

Whether we knew it by revelation or not, each of us came to faith in Christ, and, as a result, we were lavished with the unbounded riches of God’s grace. These are the blessings that Paul spoke of in verse 3, and they are hidden for us in Jesus Christ. Those who walk in constant fellowship with Christ walk in these riches of God’s grace. May we find ourselves so close to Jesus that we find ourselves drinking abundantly from the river of blessings that flows within the Kingdom of God.

. . .that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.  (Ephesians 1:8-10)

One of the incredible blessings that flow from a relationship with Christ is “all wisdom and understanding.” One of the great benefits of the Christian life is the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling within. The Holy Spirit, our conduit to the heart of the Father, stands ready to make known to us the mysteries of the will of God, according to His good pleasure. Isaiah referred to the Spirit of God who would rest on the coming Messiah as the “Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and power, the Spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD” (Isaiah 11:2). As adopted children of the King and as co-heirs and young siblings of Jesus, we also have this Spirit of wisdom and understanding resting on us and dwelling within us, giving us supernatural insight into the mysteries of God’s will. And, regarding the blessings of this life in Christ, Paul writes:

9 However, as it is written: No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him— 10 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.   (1Corinthians 2:9-10 NIV)

All of the wondrous blessings hidden in Christ are revealed to us by the Spirit. Yes, the Holy Bible—God’s word—reveals to us the inspired and written word of God, but it is the Holy Spirit who divulges the deep, life-giving rhema[ii], the spiritually revealed word of God. It is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God (Romans 8:16). Only with this Spirit-witness may we have the revelation that we are indeed the adopted and righteous children of the King. Only with this Spirit-witness may we know the things that God has freely given us in Christ. Paul writes, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us” (1 Corinthians 2:12). The man or woman who is truly a person of prayer, a person who communes with the Father and Son through the Holy Spirit, will be the person who knows beyond any doubt what the Kingdom of God is all about. The person who communes with the Spirit knows God’s will because he or she knows God. We may know the mystery of God’s will because He has made it known in Christ and through the Holy Spirit. It is ours for the taking! We may, in fact, put this truth in these terms: We may know the will of God beyond any doubt because His will lives within us through His Spirit! The Holy Spirit searches the depth of God—His very heart—and the Spirit, in turn, reveals God’s heart to us. Given this, why are we spending our time and affections on things of the world and not on our Creator and Redeemer?

Chapter 4 / In Him, We are Sealed

11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.  (Ephesians 1:11-12)

We are really so very small! On a cold, clear night when we look up at the stars and deep into the universe, we should stop to consider how small and insignificant we are. Instead, we look up at the stars and the galaxies millions of light-years away and turn away and confess with our lives that the universe revolves around us. Psalm 19 states, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” We gaze at the heavens, and we should praise God for His wondrous works of hand, and yet we live like it is all there for our temporal enjoyment. In general, the human race gazes at the works of creation and arrogantly asserts that there is no God while staring into His very face.

The God who created us knows that we are dust and that we have hearts of stone. Yet, He has chosen us. He has chosen us because He has had from the dawn of time a great plan of redemption and restoration of fallen man and woman. Jehovah God Most High placed His most beloved creation in the Garden of Eden, knowing full well the temptations that Adam and Eve would endure and then embrace. The God of Creation knew before the fall that every generation of humankind would find itself in slavery to sin and death, clashing with the knowledge of good and evil at every turn.

Without a doubt, God has had a plan for our redemption from the very start, and we know through the Gospels that this plan was consummated in His Son, Jesus Christ. We know that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, lived a sinless life of ministry, died on the cross as the spotless Lamb of God, rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, sent His Holy Spirit to indwell and enable His believers, and will one day return in glory as the final triumph over Satan and his minions. We know that the blood of Jesus Christ is more than sufficient to cleanse and heal the human soul from the pandemic disease of sin. We know that those who receive Christ as their Lord will enjoy eternally the Presence of God in His home forever. However, what we do not know, or just have not had the revelation of yet, is where we as believers fit into the story.

Ephesians 1:11-12 gives us the clue that this well-conceived and perfectly-executed plan of glorious dimensions includes the predestination—the predetermination—that God’s children would be held out and presented for the praise of God’s glory. What could this possibly mean? For one, God will have the final victory over the forces of evil, those forces that snatched His children from safety and held them hostage in the hellish dungeon of depravities and sinful obsessions. On the final day of time, God will lovingly embrace His children whom He has redeemed, and He will then point to the iron doors of hell and forever banish the once-perfect Lucifer to eternity without the glories of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Could the statement that Christians would be for the praise of God’s glory also have greater implications for the Christian? This is the vein of gold ore that we are going to mine further in this book. Could it possibly be that God the Father has plans for the men and women who have been rescued from their sinful state, to take them in their freshly-cleansed condition and to use them to help redeem the earth and to assist in the eternal governance of the earth and of the universe? We will explore this concept even further in subsequent chapters The Scriptures have much to say of our future as we are held out for the “praise of His glory.”

13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13-14)

We know that the gospel of our salvation is the message of truth and the vehicle by which we were saved when we first believed it and embraced the Christ of the gospel. Paul has a very interesting thought about this. We were included in Christ when we heard and believed. The King James’ Version uses the phrase trusted in Christ, meaning that we put our weight and future in the hands of Christ, releasing the world system from all responsibility for our well-being and provision. Putting the two translations together, we are included in Christ as we trust in Christ. We find ourselves enveloped in Christ and His goodness as we place our hope in Him.

When we believe in Jesus Christ and fully place our weight on Him, we are then marked in Christ with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who was sent to complete our redemption. We could have been cleansed from sin, forgiven, and declared righteous in the sight of the Father and still left as empty vessels of clay. No, in God’s perfect purpose and plan, we have been reclaimed by the very Presence of God Himself, the Presence that was withdrawn from mankind the day of the fall in the Garden of Eden. He has placed Himself in each of His believers to guarantee our inheritance until the completion of all things. He has placed Himself within us to keep us from falling away, to keep us from pursuing our old lifestyles, and to renew our spirits to the glorious condition of the Kingdom of Heaven. The One who gave the law on Mount Sinai dwells within His beloved creation now. We do not have to keep that law any longer because the Author of the Law keeps us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

History tells us of the practice of royalty. When a king would write a letter or document, he would roll it into a scroll or fold it as a letter and then drip wax upon it to seal it and hold it closed. While the wax was still hot, he would take his signet ring and press it into the soft wax, leaving his unique insignia upon the letter. This official seal served as the guarantee that the letter had not been opened or tampered with until the appointed opening by the intended recipient. In the same way, the Holy Spirit is the seal that marks those who believe in Christ, guaranteeing that each of us will be delivered unhindered and unmolested to the arms of the Father. Our inheritance is God and His Kingdom.

In the meantime, the same Holy Spirit seals us in His envelope of salvation, which includes His provision, protection, guidance, healing, deliverance, and peace. Each facet of the salvation of Christ is administered to us by His Spirit, and this is all “according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:11-12). May we seek every day to live according to His glorious will as revealed to us in the Holy Spirit.

Chapter 5 / In Him, We Hope

15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. (Ephesians 1:15-16)

Apostle Paul, who had led many of the people of Ephesus to Christ, either directly or indirectly, begins a prayer which he recorded for them and for all who would follow. He begins his prayer with a statement of encouragement for those who believe in Christ. He gives thanks to God for the faith of believing Ephesians and for the love that they had shown to their fellow believers. Should we continue to read on in the Book of Ephesians, we find that they were indeed a weak and imperfect lot, needful of guidance in the life of righteousness and purity.  Regardless, they were the subject of Paul’s prayers and would also be recipients of God’s answer to the prayers of a righteous man (James 5:16). What Paul knew, and what we will do well to pay attention to, is that the following prayer would be more than sufficient to obtain heavenly guidance for the Ephesians through whatever dangers and pitfalls awaited them in the future.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.  (Ephesians 1:17)

We have already discussed to some degree the Holy Spirit and His ministry in and among believers. What is worthy of note at this point is that Paul, who had been entrusted with guidance of the early Church, knew the crucial importance of a Spirit-filled and Spirit-guided believer. The ultimate goal here was not to create a body of followers who were dependent on human guidance alone but to foster a people who would listen to and obey the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. They would have the Holy Spirit to follow long after Paul had given his life as a Christian martyr.

The Spirit of wisdom and revelation that Paul prayed for the early Church to receive is the same Spirit that we have received nearly two thousand years later. The Spirit of wisdom gives us understanding of God’s written word and insight into His will for the Church. He gives us the ability to apply God’s word to our lives and daily situations in which we find ourselves. He helps us to discern what is best, and He helps us to teach our children the same truths that we have found to be so vital. The Spirit of revelation allows us to see beyond the printed page and into the very heart of God the Father. He allows us to see beyond the physical world and into the spiritual, letting us see a portion of the expansive mural of time painted on the windows of heaven. He reveals to us what will be and tells us of things to come. More importantly, He helps us to see what God has intended from the day of creation for His children to be and to give us the heavenly standard for which we must strive. We are His children, and Jesus has sent to us the Counselor who teaches us all truth and tells us what is to come (John 16:13). This is the Spirit of wisdom and revelation whom Paul heeded and, in turn, desired for disciples of Christ everywhere.

This same Spirit of wisdom and revelation was sent by God to complete the process of redemption. All of our sins—past, present, and future—were not just covered by the blood of the perfect Lamb of God; they were completely done away with. Hebrews 9:26b makes it very clear that those who receive His sacrifice and forgiveness are cleansed forever: “But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.” He not only covered our sins, He did away with them. Psalm 103:12 confirms that God sends our sins as far as the east is from the west. First of all, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation must make clear that we are truly forgiven and our sins have been remitted, completely sent away.

Once we know in our minds that our sins are remitted, we also come to the realization that God would not just leave a vacuum in our hearts, in our spirits. The holy progression was that first Christ died for our sins, was buried, rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, ministered His own blood on the mercy seat in the heavenly Holy of Holies, and is now sitting at the right hand of God the Father. Once our redemption was complete, it was at that point that the Father and Son sent the Holy Spirit onto the earth to indwell each believer. This indwelling by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation—the Spirit of Holiness, the Counselor—would fill the vacuum left by the remission of our sins. We are now filled with the Spirit of righteousness, not the spirit of this present evil age. If we have this revelation of our own righteousness, not because of anything we have done but because the Spirit of God has filled us with His righteousness, then we are ready to receive the revelation of our right-standing with God in Christ Jesus. Paul continues in his prayer:

18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20 which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.  (Ephesians 1:18-21)

Notice that Paul did not speak of physical eyes in verse 18 but of spiritual eyes, the eyes of your heart. Thus, we are not speaking of a head-knowledge of our position in Christ but of a heart-knowledge, a knowledge that is not taught by man but by God through the Spirit of God.

Next, if we are to see this wonderful inheritance with our spiritual eyes, then we are to know this hope to which He has called us in the knowledge of the spiritual realm, not the knowledge of the intellectual realm. Unfortunately, in our day, the intellectual realm is what is valued, even within the Church. Human natural argument trumps anything spiritual; such is the nature of a society that walks by sight and not by faith. The Spirit of wisdom and revelation was given to us to enable us to walk and live in a holy, spiritual stratum far above the carnal and the worldly. If nothing else is received from this book, please resolve to live in the Spirit and not in the flesh. It is here where we will find the life that consists of righteousness and holiness, not of sin and selfishness.

This knowledge, this revelation of which Paul writes, consists of three things which are as inseparable as the Trinity that gives them. First, the hope to which we are called is the design for our eternal lives in Christ; second, the riches of our glorious inheritance are the fullness of our salvation in Christ; and third, God’s incomparably great power for all who believe in Jesus Christ is the resurrection in perpetual motion and effect. Our hope consists of our rich inheritance and our rich inheritance consists wholly of the granting of God’s power. Though they cannot be separated or one received without the other, we will discuss briefly each of these facets of God’s grace to His children.

The hope to which we are called is the plan that Father God had for each of His children from the foundation of the world. Adam and Eve walked in it for a short time; we may walk in it for eternity. This hope is our relationship with the Father by the blood of His Son as ministered by the Holy Spirit. We who have received salvation in Christ Jesus have received a right-standing with God that cannot be overcome by any work of Satan, whether it be temptation or all-out attack. We may walk with God, no longer His enemies, and we may approach Him with freedom and confidence, coming boldly unto His throne without any guilt or fear of separation (Ephesians 3:12, Hebrews 4:16). If we know that He will receive us now in spite of our earthly frailties, we know that He will welcome us into His Kingdom that will be our eternal home! This is the hope to which He has called us.

The riches of God’s glorious inheritance in the saints are a bottomless and unfathomable mine of grace and mercy, certainly worthy of our pursuit. These riches of our inheritance include all of the blessings of Deuteronomy 28 but are in no way limited by this short list of God’s blessings. The truth is that anyone who will seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness—who will seek to be found in Christ and His glory—will certainly find all the blessings that one could ever desire or need. We could go into some detail now about these riches and blessings, but that would actually be counterproductive; we must set our course to find the very heart of God and to dwell there. The blessings will follow! However, one great blessing that we will eventually explore is the plan that God has for His redeemed in the future of His Kingdom. Could it be that we will help Him manage His expansive universe? There are actually some clues in the Scriptures that point to this possibility. We shall learn more in later chapters.

Finally, Paul writes of the incomparably great power available to the believers in Christ. He goes on to say that this power is the same as the power that He used to raise Jesus our Lord from the dead, and the same power and authority that He exercised to seat Jesus at His right hand, far above all other powers and authorities. Without a revelation of grace and righteousness, even the most scripturally proficient believer will buck and stammer at the very thought of having the power of Christ’s resurrection within his or her reach. Consider for just a moment the power that Jesus gave to His disciples to heal, to raise the dead, to cast out demons and to deliver the Good News. That was before the resurrection, before the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church. Consider again the possibility of a 21st century Church so in tune with heaven and the God who rules it that we could do even greater things than Jesus did (John 14:12) because He has gone to the Father and has sent His Holy Spirit of power—the very Spirit who raised Him from the dead (Romans 8:11). It is this power and the authority to use it that Paul prays we will find and in which we will proceed to walk fully. Most certainly, it is by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that we will learn how to walk in the power of the Spirit of God. In Galatians 5:24, Paul wrote, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” To keep in step with the Spirit must be our goal if we are to walk in His incomparably great power!

22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the Church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.   (Ephesians 1:22-23)

Yes, Jesus is the head of the Church—His body, whom we are. As the gospel goes forth into the earth and as it is received and obeyed, the Body of Christ grows into every corner of this globe. Jesus inhabited a single human body as He walked the Holy Land, and yet now He inhabits millions upon millions of human bodies and souls, people who may touch and heal and deliver and love just as He did. We are the fullness of Him who fills all in all! Only the people of Israel and Jerusalem were able to see His works and His ways as Jesus walked the earth, but now everyone on this earth may see His works and His ways as the Body of Christ grows up into maturity. This is our ultimate hope here on earth, and we are very probably in the days when all this will be revealed to the earth’s multitudes. May we each be found walking in faith and obedience to the words of Jesus Christ:

11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. (John 14:11-14)

Chapter 6 / In Him, We Live

1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.  (Ephesians 2:1-3)

When each of us was born into this earth, we all had one thing in common: our sinfulness. Thanks to Adam and Eve, we were all born as human beings, but then we were all born under the burden of their disobedience. To look upon a newborn baby is one of life’s greatest joys, and yet reality tells us that the innocent newborn child has the potential to become one of the world’s greatest sinners. The sinful nature is so deeply ingrained in that child that we marvel at the ability of a toddler to lie, deceive, cheat and steal without being taught these classic sins. A preschool boy or girl can be intensely selfish, jealous, insolent, arrogant and malicious without the first lesson on how to do so. Much to the contrary, until that child has surrendered to Jesus Christ and has allowed the beginning of the redemption process to begin, he or she must be taught how to act in love, in justice, in self-control and in patience. The parents’ role is to train the child under the Old Covenant law until the child can train himself or herself according to the grace of the New Covenant.

All of us have learned the concept of natural instinct. We know that animals from lower orders to the highest have a program within their makeup that teaches them how to act and how to survive. My family raises chickens, and we eat the eggs that the chickens lay, so we are fairly well-versed in “chicken behavior.” A chick only a few days old knows instinctively how to scratch in the dirt and straw in order to scare up food to eat. Young chickens do not have to be taught how to go to sleep at dusk and to rise at first sun—they are simply programmed to do so. The pullet, or young hen, begins to make her nest weeks before actually laying her first egg. We didn’t teach the first chicken how to do any of these things. For us, the most amazing exhibition of instinct was when one of the chickens turned out to be a rooster. A few weeks before he actually crowed he would flap his wings and try to emit a rooster sound, with little success. However, one day as the sun came up, he worked up his first crow with much aplomb, I must say. Now, somehow he actually knows that it’s 5:00 AM, whether it is winter or summer. I would love to say that I taught him everything he knows, but we all know that would be ridiculous. That rooster has the program to do what he does written in his genetic makeup, in his DNA. Unfortunately, the same is true for the human being. If left to their own raising, children would become utterly sinful adults. Parents much teach their children how not to act like a sinner; simply left to natural instinct, children will choose the sinful route every time. Our society is paying the price for the lack of adult parenting in righteous homes. Single parent and fatherless/motherless homes over the last two to three generations have created a society without morals and without conscience because we have allowed these children to raise themselves or to be raised on gang-infested streets where the DNA of Adam and Eve is on vivid display in godless behavior.

There are two forces at work in this iniquitous situation. The first is the sinful human nature, otherwise known as the flesh. This is exactly what we have just discussed—the predisposition of humankind toward sin. The second is the force of evil at work in the spiritual realm, namely Satan and his demons. These spiritual forces of evil are constantly at work fanning the flames of human sin through the process of temptation. Were there not a root of sin in the human heart, Satan would have no spark or flame to work with.

Consider for just a moment this existential question: What came first, the sin or the sinful nature? We know that Adam and Eve had not yet sinned in the Garden of Eden when the serpent presented them with the temptation to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, if they had not had the ability to sin, then how could they have rebelled against God and taken from the forbidden tree? They must have had hidden within their free-will the ability to choose evil, even when warned against it and faced with the penalty for their wrong choice. We do know that once they had become intimately involved with the forces of evil, they were destined to bear children programmed for sin and desperately in need of a Savior.

The Kingdom of God and His heaven is certainly free of sin and its promoter, Satan. We know by the Scriptures that Satan and his demons have been cast out of heaven and thrown to the earth where they await their final judgment and destruction. Unfortunately, that demon-infested earth is exactly where we are, and we must deal with the situation at hand. God, in His infinite wisdom, has allowed us to be born into this threshing floor of time where every sin is exposed and brought to light that we may deal with it with the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. Satan is allowed to sift each of us as wheat, just as he did Peter in Luke 22:31-32:

31 Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

As we are sifted as wheat within this capsule of time, may each of us have a faith that does not fail, but may we also allow the blood of Christ to cleanse us and the power of the Holy Spirit to train us in righteousness. May we forsake the DNA programming of the sinful human nature, and may we walk in the paths as reborn in Christ, having allowed our sinful natures to be crucified at the cross of Christ (Romans 6:6-14). Following this path will allow us to walk as the righteous as those who are no longer among the enemies of God who await His wrath.

4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)

There is a dire outlook for anyone living under the burden of the sinful nature: a future of a hopeless downward spiral in sinfulness and selfishness without any real hope of pulling out of it—just the crash ending in destruction. Anything good in this earth is here because of a presence of God and His people. The old saying goes that “people are basically good.” Intellectual honesty will say just the opposite: “People are basically sinful!” Good only makes its appearance in obedience and deference to the God of the universe.

The good news, and I mean that in the gospel sense, is that God reaches down and plucks from the muck and mire of worldly depravity helpless souls like us. Even in our sinfulness, even in our transgressions, God has made us alive in Jesus Christ. All He needs is our desire and our permission for Him to save us, and He makes us alive in Christ Jesus! This, my friends, is grace—nothing that we merit or deserve—simply a hand from the rescuer, offering to pull us from the storm-tossed sea of unrighteousness and into the rescue boat sent from heaven. Grace is the offer of the helping hand of Christ; faith is our reaching up to grasp His hand, allowing Him to pull us out of our dire state. Colossians 1:13-14 explains completely:

13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Ephesians 2:6 says that “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” This analogy of the rescuer reaching out and saving the sinner from his sure destruction is solid and sure. That is exactly what God has done for us through the preaching of the gospel of Christ. When each of us heard the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and of His sacrifice for our sins, we were presented with the hand of God offering our rescue from our sinful human condition. What we do not seem to have learned as distinctly is the fact that we were pulled from sure destruction and set in a place of safety, peace, abundance, and glory. We have been raised up with Christ and seated with Him in the heavenlies. Not only were we taken out of the sinful family of Satan, but we have been adopted and brought literally into the family of God. We no longer scrounge the dumpsters of the world looking for spoiled morsels of meat, but we now sit at the King’s Table, breaking bread with the One who adopted us, the Heavenly Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We sit in heavenly places even while we walk these dark streets of the world. We are called to no longer partake in the vain and futile ways of the world but to search the alleyways for others who would accept rescue as it were offered. We are raised up with Christ!

On this side of eternity, no one knows the scope of God’s grace or of His motivation. We have just a clue in verse 7 of Ephesians 2: “in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” When times will have reached their fulfillment, God will lay out His entire plan and accomplishments for the entire universe to see and scrutinize. The One who embodies justice will display His justice. The One whose very being consists of mercy and grace will display His mercy and grace. There will be no accusation from the Accuser for there are no grounds for accusation. The Judge will present His final case, and then the judgment will be pronounced. Satan, his demons, and all who have rejected the hand of grace in the form of the Son of God will then receive the punishment of eternal destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9). The offer of grace has been made, and at the end when all will have heard, God will open all the books of justice and there will be no cross-examination, no opposing argument, and no rebuttal.

However, those who have accepted the abundant provision of grace given in and through Jesus Christ the Son will then be displayed as trophies of His grace. We will be forever living evidence of the incomparable riches of grace that flow from the heart of God the Father. He will show us off, just as a proud father shows off his newborn son. Only, we are not the newborn; we are the re-born!

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  Ephesians 2:8-10)

Remember, it was the hand of grace that saved us. Had God not offered us His hand—His righteous right hand of Jesus Christ—there is absolutely no way we could have pulled ourselves into the rescue boat. Yes, it was our hand of faith that reached up and grasped His hand, but it was His grip and His lifting that pulled us into the boat. We are saved by grace and through faith. There can be no boasting any more than the rescued seafarer can boast that he rescued himself.

What we must remember every day of our lives is that we were rescued for a reason. We were not rescued so that we could dive back into the same mess that we were in to start with. God did not save us from sin so that we could go back to the taverns and brothels of this world to indulge the sinful nature all over again. No, when God pulls us into His ship of rescue, He commissions us as new members of His crew. We are now called to be rescuers as well. If God calls us to go to the taverns and brothels, it will be to pull others out and bring them to the same gracious God who rescued us. That is how it works. God has prepared for each of us to do great works; it is these works that we must do, not works of our own design and choosing. We are not saved by these works of God; we are saved in order to perform these works of God. He has made each of us His handiwork and has commissioned each of us to be part of His rescue team. As we perform our Spirit-led and Spirit-ordained duties, then we will add to the heavenly trophy case where the incomparable riches of God’s grace will be displayed. Our duties are not to be performed in our natural human strength, and truly anything done of eternal consequence must be performed in the power of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, the effort is merely carnal and temporary and will burn with the chaff (1 Corinthians 3:13-15). Let us resolve to seek to do the works that are led of the Spirit of God and empowered by the Spirit of God. These are the good works of Jesus Christ that God has created us to do.

Chapter 7 / In Him, We are Joined

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:11-13)

Every human being has been born into this world in a state of alienation from God because of the inherited bloodline tracing back to the fall of Adam. No one is exempt from this inheritance of sin and death. However, those born of the nation of Israel—who can trace their bloodline back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—take part in the Abrahamic Covenant; these are the children of Israel. Before the cross of Christ, they were the only people with a legal relationship to God. Everyone else was alienated from the Kingdom of God.

The mark of the Abrahamic Covenant was circumcision. Those men who were circumcised were allowed relationship with God; those who were not circumcised were on the outside and were considered foreigners to every right and privilege of the Kingdom. Without this covenant relationship with God, there was no access to God’s promises, to His atonement for sin, to His blessings, or to His inheritance in heaven. As we now know, those on the outside chose to make their own ways to God, and, as a result, we now have thousands of pagan-style religions with tens of thousands of ways to access God. However, the only real way to access God is the way that He has ordained; all others are man-designed and simply vain and empty.

For those who are Gentiles by birth and those on the outside of the Abrahamic Covenant, there was no hope, no covenant, no promise, no citizenship, and no relationship with God. But now in Christ Jesus, we are all brought near to God through the blood of the eternal Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. The lamb that the Israelites sacrificed for the sins of the people was a shadow of things to come in the New Covenant. The true Lamb of God was sacrificed as a perfect sinless man; this was the only way that our sins could be dealt with on an eternal basis.

9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:9-10).

The scripture above speaks specifically of the Old and the New Covenants. The New Covenant was ordained and sealed in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and this sacrifice is sufficient to last forever. Even a person born 2000 years after the crucifixion may participate in this New Covenant simply by faith in Christ. No other religion in the world gives every person access to the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son. Every person indeed has access, but only those who profess Jesus as Lord and who believe that God raised Him from the dead will participate in the unsearchable riches of the Kingdom of God.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  (Ephesians 2:14-16)

At the time of the writing of this letter, there was much conflict regarding the Old Covenant doctrine and the new. Many of the Jews who had lived under the law had now become followers of Christ and were now participating in the New Covenant with a new set of standards. Jews were used to following the written law; they were now being called on to follow the law of the Spirit that was written on their hearts. The circumcision of their flesh was a shadow of the past; the circumcision of their hearts was the new sign of their redemption (Romans 3:28-29).

Paul is saying here that both the Jews and the Gentiles could be reconciled to each other in the flesh of Jesus Christ. They would no longer be two peoples, but they would become one at the foot of the cross. No one would be called on to fulfill the law (which was impossible to do in the first place), but all would be justified by faith in Christ (Galatians 3:15-16). There should no longer be hostility between Jews and Gentiles who believe in Christ; all are justified in the same way and that way is by faith in Christ and His power to redeem (Romans 4:13-17).

17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. (Ephesians 2:17-18)

Jesus came first to the people of Israel with His message of peace. There is so much more significance to this statement than we as humans can appreciate. The truth is that we have been enemies of God since the moment that Adam and Eve rebelled and allowed the enemy of our souls to have total access to our earth and to our hearts. We have been enemies of God in our minds (Colossians 1:21) due to our sinful inheritance and actions, and yet, Jesus came preaching peace to all who would receive and embrace the embodiment of God walking the earth. He had not walked the earth since His walks with Adam in the Garden of Eden when He was at peace with man before the fall. Now, He walked about the Holy Land, preaching peace to those who were near (of the nation of Israel) and peace to those who were far away (Gentiles, or everyone else). The peace that the angels announced when Christ was born (Luke 2:14) is the peace that allows all of humanity access to the Father of all Creation—Jehovah God, Yahweh, God Most High—by the Holy Spirit who enables and empowers the seeker to become a follower.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Paul is extending the hand of fellowship and friendship to everyone who would believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. Yes, all of Israel was blessed to have borne their covenant with God, and yes, they were the people of God on the earth for about 1700 years, but now God was extending His hand of friendship to all who would come. Through faith in Christ, anyone on the earth is eligible to become one of God’s people and members of His household. God the Father has extended the covenant right-hand of fellowship to all of mankind as He has held out His righteous right-hand in the person of Jesus Christ (Isaiah 41:10).

The foundation for the Body of Christ and for the new Holy Temple of the Lord was laid by and in the holy apostles and prophets of God. Each word spoken, each deed done, and each life given by the apostles and prophets have become the living stone and mortar that lay at ground level a solid, level, and square foundation for the Church of the ages. In addition, the Cornerstone for this holy temple of the Lord is Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus is the standard for righteousness and holiness, and each stone in the foundation is rightly aligned with Him. In turn, every generation of believers in Christ is laid upon the previous generation, and every stone represents a redeemed human soul, perfectly aligned to the Cornerstone (1 Peter 2:5). In a society that applauds individualism, we the Church must stand as one body with one Spirit, called to one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4). As we seek to walk as the revealed sons and daughters of God, let us do it with this in mind:

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Romans 12:3-5)

Yes, we are now at peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. We are at peace with each other through fellowship in Christ. Jews and Gentiles are at peace with each other at the foot of the cross of Christ. There is a mission to accomplish, and we must learn to do it as one body and in one Spirit. Each member belongs to the other, just as the holy temple of the Lord is one building made up of many stones. Let us seek to find ways to unite around the word of God instead of finding ways to divide ourselves. This newfound unity will certainly be a sign of the imminent coming of the Lord, for the Body of Christ will then be revealed as a functioning vessel of love and compassion to the world when it needs it the most. It is then that the sons and daughters of God will be revealed.

Chapter 8 / In Him, We are Welcomed

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—  2 Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. 4 In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. 6 This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 3:1-6)

In previous verses, we have seen that the Gentiles are now heirs together with Israel. We were once separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, foreigners to the covenants of promise and without hope and without God. But now, through the blood of Christ, we share in all of these things with Israel, the people of covenant. In verse 6 above, Paul says that Gentiles are now “heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” Paul calls this incredible gift the administration of God’s grace. Israel was the people of God by blood covenant; we are the people of God by God’s grace and Christ’s blood of the New Covenant.

Apostle Paul was commissioned with the task of teaching the Gentiles of his time this administration of God’s grace that was given to him for the Gentiles. He did not learn this message from any man nor was he taught it; he received it by a revelation from Jesus Christ Himself (Galatians 1:12). This supernatural message is that citizenship in the Kingdom of God is available to anyone who would have faith in Jesus Christ as Lord by believing in Christ’s resurrection and by confessing Him as Lord (Galatians 2:16, Romans 10:9-10). Salvation is no longer attained by observing and obeying the law, as if anyone could do so in the first place; this was the salvation of the Old Covenant. The New Covenant grants salvation to anyone who would believe in Jesus as the Son of God; this is the act of faith in Christ. We receive this salvation by faith, but it is first offered to us by God in His grace. To anyone who had grown up under the Old Covenant, this was indeed a mystery. This mysterious grace of Christ now makes the believer, whether Jew or Gentile, citizens of God’s Israel, members of one body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus.

7 I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. 8 Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.  (Ephesians 3:7-9)

Paul, who had witnessed firsthand the supernatural call and selection of an apostle, was now also a bearer of this heavenly power. Acts 9 describes a dramatic conversion from a hateful persecutor of Christians to a loving shepherd willing to lay down his life for a people whom he had once harassed and ordered killed. His words seem to reveal that Paul knew that he did not deserve this office nor was he qualified to be a preacher of God’s grace. However, Paul remains to this day a supreme example of what God’s grace can do for and through a man who has experienced God’s redemption. What we need to grasp in this passage is that Paul, regardless of his past, was commissioned and empowered by God to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ and to make plain to everyone the administration of these boundless riches.

As we examine these verses of Ephesians, let us jump back for a moment to the first chapter:

18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.  (Ephesians 1:18-19a)

The riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints! That is what Paul prayed the reader would receive, and that is what Paul preaches in all his letters. We must explore and meditate on what God intends for us in these “riches.” Again, in Chapter 2, Paul gives us a bit more to consider:

4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  (Ephesians 2:4-7)

The riches we have received may be summed up in two words: Christ Jesus. In Jesus, whose name encompasses the infinite depths of salvation, we find everything that we could ever need or want—past, present and future. In Him, we have forgiveness for sins, power to live a godly life, and hope for eternal life in the presence of God Himself. We have redemption from a destructive past, guidance by the Holy Spirit for today’s trials, and the promise of a home and abundant absolute life in heaven. Jesus gave just a glimpse of His riches as He ministered to the needy of Israel. Whatever Jesus offered to them, He offers to all who would come to Him and believe on Him. Peter says it in a similar way:

3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.  (2 Peter 1:3-4)

This mystery Paul speaks of in Ephesians is that we may now participate in the divine nature as Peter so succinctly phrases it. Peter and Paul both experienced in very real ways this divine nature as they went about preaching and teaching the grace of God. They were used by God for healings, recorded and unrecorded. They both saw the mighty hand of God move as they preached His gospel with Jesus watching over His word to confirm it with signs and miracles. As Jesus had promised in John 14:12, these apostles did what Jesus had been doing and did even greater acts. The question still haunts us in our generation: will we carry on the ministry of Christ Jesus in this fashion, or will we try to dilute the gospel and thus dilute the results?

10 His intent was that now, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. 12 In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. (Ephesians 3:10-12)

This manifold wisdom of God, this grace, this granting of the unsearchable riches of Christ is now made known not only to us but also to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. In addition, all of these things are to be made known to all of creation—to the entire universe—through the Church of Jesus Christ. Paul was one of the first to preach it but certainly not one of the last. Imagine for a moment the significance of the statement that the Church’s job is to enlighten the universe to the unfailing and indomitable grace of Christ. Remember that we are trophies of God’s grace. Remember how despicable Saul of Tarsus was. Now, remember the great works that God did through the re-born Apostle Paul. Paul is a trophy to the grace of God. For every one of us, there is a similar story. Each of us has a past of which we are ashamed; we each have a future that God has sanctified and ordained. We are thus also trophies to the grace of God, transformed from Adam’s sinful children to God’s chosen and righteous.

We are to approach each day in the Kingdom of God by faith, not looking at our past or our failings in the present; we are to look toward our Lord and our eternal home with the eyes of faith, trusting that God will accomplish through each of us what He wills. What we must remember is what Paul says in verse 12 above: “through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” We are told in Hebrews 4:15 that we are to come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace in our times of need. No matter what time of day, no matter what state we find ourselves in, we are to come to God with freedom and confidence, knowing that He will receive us and grant us what we need to live godly and submitted lives unto Him. Let us never forget that this is a covenant enterprise between the believer and his or her Lord. God has received us into His Kingdom with open arms; we are to receive Christ and His will into our hearts in the same fashion. Everything that we need to accomplish His will in our homes and towns He has already made available in heavenly abundance. We must simply come to Him with freedom and confidence, knowing that we are partners with Him in the Church’s commission to take His grace to every human on earth. In Him, we are welcomed. Let us live our lives accordingly.

Chapter 9 / In Him, We are Filled

13 I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.  14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. (Ephesians 3:13-17a)

Paul, the man assigned to preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, had certainly paid a high price for his obedience to Christ. He was imprisoned time and again, flogged repeatedly and beaten with rods, stoned, and shipwrecked and left for dead, hungry, thirsty and sleep-deprived. The people of his time knew that if it were not for the grace of God, Paul would have died years ago, and yet, Paul continued with his mission. In fact, he tells of the revelations he received from Christ Jesus Himself. In so many words, Paul counts his persecutions as small compared to the exceeding greatness of His relationship with Christ. He expresses in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10):

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Paul, in his discussion of his hardships and his victories, mentioned the infamous “thorn in the flesh.” No one knows for sure what the thorn was physically, but we know spiritually it was a messenger sent from Satan to torment Paul. Paul asked the Lord three times to remove this thorn, and the Lord’s answer to Paul is the scripture above was simply, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” In the next breath, Paul says that he would glory in his own weakness so that the power of Christ would rest on him and infill him and consume him. May our prayer be the same. May we care less about our “thorns” and more about Christ’s all-sufficient grace, expressed in His power and might.

Anytime a person receives anything by grace from God, it is filled with His power. The grace of God is simply the opening of God’s hand to give us what we need for a life of godliness and submission to God’s will. Without His grace, we would be left powerless on this earth to live one day in His will. Paul was no different. However, Paul did solve the enigma; the hardships, the persecutions, and the difficulties mean little to nothing compared to the privilege and honor that comes with the grace and power of Christ. In fact, our earthly successes mean nothing compared to the grace and power of Christ that rest on us. Paul says in verse 13 of Ephesians 3 that his sufferings are our glory. They are our glory because they enabled Paul to walk in the unfathomable power of God Almighty. In our weakness, God’s power is enabled and exhibited. Another perspective would be that once a person’s selfishness and agenda are out of the way, then the Spirit of God has full reign to work and bring about His plan through that person.

It is this same power that is the subject of Paul’s prayer in verses 14-17. Paul had seen firsthand the incredible power of Christ in his own life. Now, he prays to the Father for those who had received the gospel he preached; he was, in turn, praying for the entire Church. He prays that out of God’s glorious riches the Father would strengthen the believers with the same power he had witnessed in his own ministry. That power begins with and in the Holy Spirit as He grants a measure of faith to a person to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord (Romans 12:3). The power continues as the Holy Spirit sent from heaven takes up residence within the spirit—the heart—of the believer (verse 17). The Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of Christ, indwells the believer and performs His entire ministry as the believer listens and obeys. He tells us what is to come (John 16:13). He convicts us of sin (John 16:9). He teaches us and reminds us of what Jesus taught on earth (John 14:26). He enables our prayer life (Romans 8:26, Ephesians 6:18). He teaches us about all things (1 John 2:27). He enables us to live a sin-crucified life (Galatians 5:16-25). He testifies with our spirits that we are God’s children (Romans 8:16, Galatians 4:6-7), and He leads us step-by-step in the way we should go as children of God (Galatians 5:25). We must recognize that our life in Christ would be futile without the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us and performing His ministry through us.

This is the grace that God was speaking of when He told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” His grace is embodied in the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts by faith. As we yield completely to the Spirit of Christ—the same Spirit who anointed Jesus—we become laden with the same power that enabled the ministry of the Son of Man. Remember that the anointed Jesus had emptied Himself of His “God-ness” and became a man (Philippians 2:6-8). He was no less the Son of God, but for His earthly ministry, He was anointed by the Spirit of God and did His works in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:18-19). It should be easy for us; we know that human power is nothing compared to the power of the Holy Spirit. The problem that remains is not a question of power but of will. Will we walk according to the will of God, or will we continue to walk according to our own selfish wills? Paul discovered that his own will must be crucified and that the will of God must be given full sway (Romans 6:5-14). We will study this concept more in later chapters as we approach the revealing of the sons and daughters of God.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.  (Ephesians 3:17b-19)

As we come to the revelation that God truly does inhabit His children through the Holy Spirit, it must change everything we do. We cannot say that we know God and not be vessels of love. God is love, and so is the Holy Spirit within us. How can we say that we know God and hate our brother? (1 John 4:16-21)

The truth is that each of us, if called on to love our brother under our own human power, will fail miserably as we try to love one another in the flesh. Consider this: each time we try to love another human being in the power of the flesh and fail, we discover to a greater measure the greatness and graciousness of God’s love. When we are tempted to not forgive a person, we discover how wide and long the love of God is because He is eager to forgive. When we are tempted to not bear with another person in love and patience, we discover how high and deep the love and patience of God is because He is ever bearing with patience and loving humankind. When we are tempted to run over another person to accomplish my own agenda, we discover how shallow we are and how infinitely large is the love of God whose agenda supersedes all and yet is attained in patience and kindness.

As each of us submits totally to the Spirit of God within us, we find the power to love another with God’s love and not our own. We begin to discover afresh as we love with His love how wide and long and high and deep is the ability and power of God to love the unlovely. If we love without a selfish agenda, we begin to understand, to some degree, how a Father could send His only Son to a cruel cross to redeem a people who did not deserve redemption in the least. The Father, through eyes of eternity, could see the end result; with the help of the Holy Spirit, we may also begin to have power to grasp how multi-dimensional and infinite God’s love is. God’s love indeed surpasses human knowledge. Consider the child who thinks he or she knows the ocean by surveying it from the beach. The child has no idea how wide and long and high and deep the ocean truly is. In fact, oceanographers have studied long and hard enough to realize that they know precious little about the ocean—only that they want to know much more. So must we be! The more we learn about God’s love, the more we realize what we do not know—only that we want to know more and more about the boundless love of God, expressed in His kindness and grace that He has given to us in His Son, Jesus Christ.

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)

These words conclude another prayer by Paul for the Church at Ephesus and, in turn, for each of us. He has already made the case that the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms by the Church, the body of believers in Christ. He has already made the case that each believer may approach God with freedom and confidence. Paul has prayed that each believer may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, and he has prayed that we each may know the infinite dimensions of God’s love.

Now, Paul prays that glory be ascribed to the God who does immeasurably more than anything the human mind can imagine. That power to do the unthinkable, the unimaginable, is now at work within each believer in Jesus Christ. This great work to be done before the return of Jesus Christ will, of course, be accomplished by Jesus Himself and all who make up His Body of Believers. The glory of God will rest on Christ and His Church. We are all of one body, filled with one Spirit, of one faith and purpose. We will explore in the next chapter what the Body of Christ really is and how it should perform as we look forward to the day of God and speed His coming.  We must get ready to do our part to be conformed to the image of Christ. As each of us takes up our cross and conforms to His image, we will find that He will be ready to entrust to us His mission on this earth in these final days.

Chapter 10 / In Him, We are One

1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:1-3)

As we continue with Paul’s writings in Ephesians, let us remember the overarching big picture: God has a people whom He has adopted in His love, predestined for His glory, marked with His Spirit, blessed with His inheritance, strengthened with His power, seated with His Son, saved with His grace, entrusted with His gospel, united at His cross, and filled with His fullness. It is this people whom Paul now addresses and instructs on how to conduct themselves as they live their lives on this earth.

His first words above are “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Granted, there would certainly be the temptation for a people with a gifting as we reviewed in the previous paragraph to become haughty and conceited. A people whom God has chosen and raised up with Him could even become arrogant and overbearing. Other religions have certainly fallen into this trap. Paul, however, makes it very clear that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ does not want His people to be egotistical or self-absorbed. On the contrary, Paul exhorts believers to be completely humble and gentle, patient while bearing with others in love. These adjectives describe a people quite the opposite of those practicing carnal, contrived religions that we see around the world today.  Humility describes perfectly the personality and demeanor of Jesus Christ as He walked the earth neither fearful nor timid but of absolute submission to the will of the Father.  In this way, Jesus serves as our prime example.

As a result of our submission to the will of the Father, we will be people who make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace (verse 3). We are indeed the Body of Christ, and we must always seek to keep the Body united; the only possible way to do so on an earth that is 25,000 miles in circumference is for each believer to submit to the will and guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. Not only will a Spirit-led Church be in unity at any segment of time, but the Church will be unified across the centuries, simply in submission to the Eternal Spirit of God and of Christ. Paul continues:

4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)

This is actually a very simple concept, this idea of unity. It is simple until it meets with a society such as ours, one of individualism and competitiveness. Everyone has his or her idea as to what the Scriptures really mean, and there are hundreds and thousands of sects and denominations all claiming to have the real insight into the heart of God. We are in an age when we have bypassed verses 2 and 3 of Ephesians 4. We have set aside pure humility and gentleness, forbearance and patience, and we have most importantly set aside the unity of the Spirit of God. Should we as the Church in the 21st century decide to become the Church that Jesus prayed for in John 17, we must all lay aside our individualism and humbly submit to the Holy Spirit who dwells within each of us, His believers.

We are one body submitted to one Spirit and called to one hope. We worship one Lord by one faith experiencing one baptism to the glory of the one God and Father of all, who governs all while He flows through all and in-fills all. The analogy of a very large body is quite by design. Paul used the word-picture of the human body to describe the Church. There are certainly different parts to the body, each with different functions and gifts (Romans 12:4-5, 1 Corinthians 12:12-27). A body that is healthy works together with each member doing its assigned tasks without complaining or grumbling against the other members. In this particular chapter, Paul is exhorting the Church to grow up, to become the Body that Christ has designed to work in this earth for His glory and Kingdom. Let us continue:

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says:  ‘When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.’  9 (What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)  (Ephesians 4:7-10)

The Lord Jesus Christ has given His grace as He has seen fit. Each member of the Church has different gifts, talents, personality, and demeanor. Some are fit to become preachers while others are fit to serve in the inner city trenches, ministering God’s grace to the poor and abused. But it is Christ who decides who will serve in each capacity. It is up to each of us to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and to find our place in the Body.

When Jesus ascended to heaven, He soon sent His Spirit to carry on His work through the Church. Jesus, Son of Man and Son of God anointed by the Holy Spirit and sent by the Father, walked this earth as one person with all of the possible gifts at His disposal. He healed, He taught, He preached, He gave to the poor, He fed thousands, He administered a band of disciples, He calmed the seas, and He exhibited faith and knowledge and mercy. All of these gifts and more did Jesus administer to the people who had need.

Now, however, we are a body made up of millions, possibly billions, of people worldwide, and we are called upon to do the work of Christ and even greater works than He performed since He has ascended to the Father and has sent us His Spirit to anoint and facilitate His continuing work here on earth. He was one person performing His ministry; we are millions called upon to perform the same ministry. He had all the gifts; His Body has all of the gifts. Only the gifts have been apportioned to each person as Christ Jesus has determined. Jesus ascended and gave His gifts to men, and now He fills the entire universe with His presence and love.

11 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.  (Ephesians 4:11-13)

It is this ministry that we are to carry on what Jesus had in mind when He sent apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to prepare His people to serve in the Body. We are to serve just as Jesus served. We are to teach as He taught. We are to heal as He healed. We are to deliver souls from the devil as He delivered souls from the devil. We are to feed as He fed and clothe as He clothed. All this is done in and by the power of the Holy Spirit. But we will not perform His ministry in perfection until we become mature as a body—as His Body. As we learn from the leaders of the Church (who should have already learned from other leaders and the leading of the Holy Spirit), we will grow together as a body, learning to submit to each other and work together seamlessly in love. It is then that we will be mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.    (Ephesians 4:14-16)

Notice what Paul says in the first verse above, verse 14. Notice that it is infants in Christ who are tossed back and forth, blown here and there by different winds of teaching and doctrine. It is infants who are deceived by cunning and crafty people, by con-artists of the faith. It is not the mature who are deceived or separated from the flock by false teaching; no, it is the immature who are not able to rightly divide the word of truth. It is the believer who is old in years but untrained in the word of righteousness (Hebrews 5:11-14) who must be taught and taught again because he is immature in the sight of God. Our first task, in light of this passage, is to become super-literate in God’s word, having studied it and memorized it and practiced it until we are as skillful with the word as the master swordsman is with his weapon.

Next, we are to speak this truth that we have learned from God’s word to one another, building each other up in the Lord. We are to forsake vain and frivolous conversation, and we are to spend our time feeding the bread of God’s word to our children and to our friends and fellow members of the Body of Christ. The body-analogy continues, just as each cell and each tissue ministers to the adjoining cells and tissue, ministering life to one another and creating a healthy environment in which the greater work may be accomplished. Each member of the body does its work as it supports the others, keeping in mind that the Head of the body, Jesus Christ, is overseeing and sanctioning the work of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the blood that flows from one cell to the next, providing life-giving food and cleansing each part. The entity that holds the body together and lubricates its functions is the recurring concept throughout the New Testament: love. One simple word; one major concept. God is love, and we are filled with God. Therefore, we must be filled with love. If not, then we are not of God, for God is love (1 John 4:7-8, 16). It is that simple.

We will not be formed into the image of Christ until we are living in love for our fellow members of the Body of Christ. Jesus said it very clearly in His last treatise on the New Covenant before He went to the cross:

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

Living in love means that we must be humble, gentle, forbearing, and patient with each other. We must speak the truth of God’s word to each other in love. We must seek to each grow up into Christ as we all do our work. Only then will we function together as the mature Church that Jesus has ordained.

Chapter 11 / In Him, We are New

17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. (Ephesians 4:17-19)

Apostle Paul has already made the case that believers who were once Gentiles are now one with Israel, citizens of God’s Kingdom, sharers together with Israel in the promises of the covenants, and part of a great temple of the Lord God Almighty and His Son Jesus Christ. We are not only redeemed by the blood of Christ but raised up to sit with Him in heavenly places, sealed with His Holy Spirit, prepared for great works within His Kingdom, and filled with His knowledge and power. Now, as Paul explains, we are no longer Gentiles. We were Gentiles by natural birth; now, however, we have been reborn as children of the Most High God, and we must no longer live as the Gentiles do, limited by natural carnal thought, thinking only as those who do not know God.

Paul also wrote in Colossians 2:2-3 that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are ours in Christ:

2 My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

The only way to obtain these treasures of wisdom and knowledge, to have the full riches of complete understanding, and to know the mystery of Christ is to humble oneself to the point of submission to God and His will. If any person will simply accept by faith Jesus as Lord and Savior, that person immediately has access to all these riches and treasures of understanding, wisdom, and knowledge. However, should that same person remain hard of heart, stiff-necked against the beauty and humility of the gospel, then that person has shut out any possibility of spiritual knowledge, destined to live only by what he or she sees, hears and feels in the natural realm.

Believers know that all sustenance and provision ultimately comes from God. Non-believers think that they must fight, scrape and connive to put food on their table and a car in their garage. Believers know God has chosen a mate for them, and they patiently await the moment the future spouse is revealed. Non-believers fear they will never get married, so they marry the first person who shows interest, no matter what that person’s motivation is, all to an end of disaster.  Believers look to God for all things good, while non-believers must trust that the government will provide, for there is no God who cares. Believers do not fear in times of distress and tribulation, knowing that God’s plan is being executed with His eventual appearance again on this earth in Jesus Christ. Non-believers will curse God in times of disaster, blaming Him for all woes and calling Him an “unloving and hateful God.”

The Gentiles, or the non-believers, are darkened in their understanding and cannot see beyond the natural realm. Paul describes them in Philippians 3:19:

19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.

Their ignorance is simply a symptom of a deeper problem: their rebellion against God and His gospel. They have given themselves over to sensuality and impurity because that is all they have. They have no hope of anything better; their only “hope” is that things will get worse. Things are as good now as they will ever get, so why not indulge the sinful nature, for that is the best that will ever be. These are the people that God has given over to their depravity; if that is what they want, instead of Christ and His Kingdom, then that is what they will have—for eternity (Romans 1:18-32). Quite succinctly, Paul says that we, those redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, are to have nothing to do with the lifestyles of the depraved and lascivious. Though we may have lived this way in the past, we are not to live that way any longer, for these acts of the flesh have nothing in common with the kingdom of light. We will discuss this more in the next chapter.

20 You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21 Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:20-24)

We must now put the way of life of the non-believer behind us because that is what the truth of God’s Holy Scriptures tells us to do. The Scriptures tell us that we are to put off and away our old selves, which are sinful and deceptive in their desires. We are to renew our attitudes and our minds. Then we are to put on our new selves, which are created in the image of God, who exists in true righteousness and pure holiness. This is the truth in Jesus Christ, as written in verse 21 of Ephesians 4. Let us nail this truth down in our own minds and hearts that we may teach it to others, especially to our children. We were once Gentile sinners; we are now to walk in our new way of life in Christ Jesus.

It is helpful to explore other passages of the Bible to add dimension to these words above. The most vivid and profound teaching on this subject of living a new lifestyle is found in the book of Romans, also written by Paul. Once we understand what has literally happened in the spirit realm regarding our redemption, then we will understand better how we are to live as believers, as those made and formed into the image of Christ.

1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:1-4)

The obvious state of mankind from the Garden of Eden until now is a state of sinfulness ending in death. Jesus Christ—Son of God—described Himself as the Son of Man. Literally, Jesus was calling Himself the Son of Adam, or in other words, the second Adam. Romans 5:14 calls Adam “the pattern of the one to come,” or Jesus. Adam committed one act of disobedience and unrighteousness and plunged the human race into sin and death for the next several thousand years. However, the second Adam—Jesus Christ—committed one act of obedience and righteousness at the cross of sacrifice and gave eternal life to anyone who would believe in His death, burial and resurrection, to anyone who would confess Him as Lord (Romans 10:9-10).

It is here that Paul continues his discussion on sin. He asks the question: “Should we go on sinning since we are under grace?” And then he answers his own rhetorical question, “By no means—absolutely not!” Why should we go on sinning, knowing that we have died to that sinful nature and the lifestyle that it engenders? Don’t we know that by believing in Jesus Christ, by experiencing baptism into Him and into His death, that we have died to sin and all of its horrors? By believing in Christ Jesus, we have immersed ourselves into a new dimension, into a heavenly kingdom, and the only way into it is by death, and that death is the death of Christ on the cross. Once we have accepted His death as our own, we have died to sin in order that we may also accept His resurrection as ours as well.

5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. (Romans 6:5-7)

Yes, if we have joined with Jesus in His death, then we have joined with Him in His resurrection as well. Here is the “truth that is in Jesus” Paul referred to in Ephesians 4:21 and is taught in verses 6-7 above: our old selves have been crucified with Christ in order that our bodies of sin might be done away with. Because of the appropriation of His crucifixion to our own beings and lives, we are no longer slaves to sin and those who have died are no longer slaves to sin. Negro spirituals of the 19th Century were written as hymns of hope by those who were born into slavery and foresaw no physical end to their plight. The only hope that most slaves had was their bodily death and subsequent warm reception into the Kingdom of God. They knew that once their bodies died, they would no longer be slaves to an earthly master; they would then offer themselves as bondservants to their Heavenly Father. In the same way, once we have died to sin, we are no longer in slavery to sin.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  (Romans 6:8-10)

Yes, if we have died with Christ, as the Scriptures confirm, then we know that we will also live with Christ. We know that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father and by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 1:4, 6:4, 8:11). He cannot die again, and, therefore, death has no mastery or power over Him. If He cannot die again, then He will live eternally, and His life will He live unto God the Father and for His glory. That is the same eternal life into which we have been baptized as we were baptized into His death. This is a mystery of God that Paul preached, and we have received it by faith. This is also a mystery that non-believers cannot begin to understand until they accept by faith the work of Christ for themselves. Once non-believers become believers by faith in Christ Jesus, then God grants them spiritual eyes through the Holy Spirit to understand their new standing in Christ Jesus.

11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:11-14)

Here is where we dig into the actual living of the Christian life. We know that we have died to sin through Christ’s substitutionary death for us. We know that we are no longer slaves to sin but slaves to righteousness and holiness. So now, we must everyday and every moment count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Since we are no longer slaves, we may tell our bodies what they may do and may not do. We now have a choice in the matter. Paul writes that we may, and must, no longer offer our bodies to sin and wickedness (as the Gentiles choose to do). We must offer our bodies to God as the eternal beings that we now are, and we must offer these bodies to Him as instruments of righteousness. We are no longer forced to do anything by sin; if we sin, it is at our own choosing. This is what God desires for us to avoid at all costs. This is why we must continually count ourselves dead to sin. At every opportunity to sin, we must remind our bodies and our minds that we are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:20-23)

Again, this is the “truth that is in Jesus” to which Paul referred in the fourth chapter of Ephesians. He said there that we must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking, whose foolish minds are darkened due to their hard-heartedness and insensitivity to the gospel. We must no longer indulge in impurity with continual lust for more. Paul says here in Romans that we are now ashamed of those times of sinfulness and those acts which result in death. Sin is merely death in slow motion. When will we wake up to this fact? Eternal life has no room in it for sin and death.

What slave in this earth would ever leave a life of freedom to return to a life of bondage? There are some who do. Remember the Israelites, shortly after they were brought out of slavery in Egypt when they complained that at least they had food to eat when they had been in slavery? (Exodus 16:2-3). Do we not do the same when we return to the haunts of our old life to indulge once more in the “pots of meat” that we supposedly left behind when we came to Christ? This is to what Paul was referring when he said:

22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.  (Ephesians 4:22-24)

If we do not renew our minds to the “truth that is in Jesus,” then we will continue to be “deceived” by the sinful desires of the old self. At this point in our spiritual lives, we are not really deceived unless we choose to be. We have the Scriptures, we have the Holy Spirit and His guidance, and we have the death and resurrection of Christ that have been appropriated to our own lives. We must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in their futility of thinking. We are growing into the very image of Jesus Christ, and we have much to do in this earth before He returns. Let us be made new in the attitude of our minds, putting on our new selves, which are created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. It could not be clearer; we must take on the image of Christ – now!

Chapter 12 / In Him, We are Light

25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 26 In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold. 28 He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. (Ephesians 4:25-28)

Now, we know that we are adopted as sons and daughters of God, raised up to sit with Jesus in heavenly places, indwelt by His Spirit, members of God’s household, blessed with the riches of His wisdom, knowledge, understanding, love and power, and freed from slavery to sin forever and ever. Each believer from the least to the greatest is a member of the royal family of God. Christ Jesus is the King of Kings, and we are all brothers and sisters of the King, certainly not by anything that we have done but by His own design and choice. It is all by grace. But, if all these things are given to us by grace, does that relieve us of the responsibility to comport ourselves in a manner consistent with the royal family of God? Are we to resume our churlish behavior in which we lived before He found us? Are we not to raise our standards to those of the One who adopted us out of the futility of the world’s system and into His Kingdom of Light?

At this point in the book of Ephesians, Paul stresses some of the more important points regarding the standards of behavior for believers in Christ Jesus. There were some issues with each of the areas of behavior we will discuss in this chapter, or Paul would not have mentioned them. But most importantly, he was exhorting this Church at Ephesus, and indirectly the Church at large, to grow up. Every believer starts out as a baby in Christ; that is the nature of being born again. We all start out as infants, but then we grow and mature as we are discipled and trained in the aspects of God’s Kingdom. Each of us must strive for maturity, and one of the outward signs of this maturity is our outward behavior. Another sign is our inward focus. Paul deals with both of these in the fourth and fifth chapters of Ephesians.

His first teaching is on truthfulness. We must not deal in falsehoods, whether with our family, our neighbors, our community, or our governments. We must speak truthfully at all times, in love. Earlier in Ephesians 4, Paul says that we must speak the truth in love. On one hand, we are talking about teaching the truths of the Scriptures, but on the other hand, we are talking about relating facts and opinions, as we know them to be truthful and not false. The 9th Commandment says that we should not bear false witness or testimony against our neighbor, and we have rightly interpreted this to mean that we should not lie, period. We know that God speaks the truth at all times; if we are conforming to His likeness, then we must do the same. In addition, the One who described Himself as “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6) and who sent to dwell within each of us the “Spirit of Truth” (John 16:13) expects nothing less than truth from the people whom He fills with His holy presence.

Paul then writes about anger. In our anger, we must not sin or give the devil a foothold. We know that God has a holy anger against sin, injustice, insolence and rebellion against His holy standards. Satan is reaping the fruit of God’s anger against all of these things. Hell is the result of God’s anger and His resolve to never allow sin and rebellion into His Kingdom ever again. However, Psalm 103:9 says, “He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever.” There is no evidence in Paul’s letter or anywhere else in the Scriptures that we are not to get angry, especially at the instances that anger God. However, we are not to remain angry or bitter or revengeful or vindictive. We are not to harbor our anger; rather, we are simply to allow it to motivate us to correct injustice or to train others in right living. We may get angry, but we are not to be an angry people. If we do allow anger to overcome us, then we are indeed giving Satan a foothold in our lives, and we grieve the Holy Spirit whom we are given to guide us. Those who are growing into Christ’s image are not those who are angry but those who appreciate the grace given them and who extend this grace to others.

Paul then teaches on responsibility as useful citizens of the world and of the Kingdom of God. No one should steal. Those who steal are dishonest, lazy, irresponsible and possibly addicted to some substance, none of which have any place in the Church. People who will not work for their food and supplies should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Paul says that believers should not steal but must instead do something useful with their own hands, and thus earn money to pay for their own food; they may, in turn, help others who are truly in need of food and help. Our progressive government has taught something quite the opposite over the last fifty years, and, as a result, we now have a society of people who would rather let someone else pay for its food and shelter. People who are growing into the image of Christ do not behave this way. Believers are to help others and to help others to mature and become responsible citizens of society and God’s Kingdom.

29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:29-32)

We are to watch what we say and to not let unwholesome talk cross our lips. Our speech must be filled with grace, seasoned with salt (Colossians 4:6). We are to recognize that each word that we say reveals what is hidden within our hearts. Jesus said this: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). He also said that we would give account for every idle or careless word that we speak (Matthew 12:36). Instead of idle, foolish, or obscene words, we should speak words of encouragement, to build others up according to their needs for their benefit. Peter wrote that we should speak as though speaking the very words of God (1 Peter 4:11). As we are conformed to the image of Christ, let us watch our words and insure that every word is spoken as though speaking the very words of God.

Paul’s next statement may apply to our words of which we have just considered and to the sentence after it. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” We must insure that our words are not words that would in any way grieve the Holy Spirit within us. If they do, He will certainly let us know, giving us a chance to correct immediately anything that we have said untoward or inappropriate as believers in Christ. It may be a gentle nudge or a nagging conviction, but we must be careful never to ignore the leading of the Holy Spirit. In fact, ignoring Him is a sure way to grieve Him. God knows that we are learning and growing in paths of righteousness, but to ignore His instruction will hold us back until we learn to do what He teaches us to do.

Another way that we may grieve the Holy Spirit is by harboring bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, and malice. None of these is appropriate for the sons and daughters of God—brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. The writer of Hebrews says that the root of bitterness causes trouble and defiles many (Hebrews 12:15). This can actually be applied to all of these conditions. In fact, bitterness and unforgiveness are at the root of rage, brawling, slander, and malice. Harboring ill thoughts toward others manifests in various ways, but it all comes back to what the people harbor in their hearts. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that if we do not forgive men their sins, then our heavenly Father will not forgive our sins (Matthew 6:15). As we seek to be fashioned into the image of Christ, let us get rid of all bitterness and all things that are out of place for the people of God. Let us be kind and compassionate toward one another, for we know that it was God’s compassion and kindness that have allowed us entry into His Kingdom. Let us forgive others just as Christ God has forgiven us.

1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:1-2)

Paul goes on to exhort the Church to follow God’s example in the arena of love. We are also to walk in the way of love, always mindful that Christ loved us so much that He gave Himself up for each of us. Not only was He obtaining our redemption and right-standing with the Father through His death on the cross, but He was also giving us a life-picture of the way we should live as well. His sacrifice of love was a fragrant offering unto the Father; our sacrifices of love will be fragrant offerings to the Father as well. This life of love which Paul encourages us to live will be irrefutable evidence that we are indeed growing into the image of Christ. No one ever laid down his or her life for a cause in which he or she did not fully believe. The apostles gave undeniable testimony to the gospel which they preached; they were willing to be martyred to prove its validity. Will we be willing to do the same as we live a life of love?

3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. 4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. 5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. 7 Therefore do not be partners with them.  (Ephesians 5:3-7)

Paul writes this rather stern warning for the Church concerning immorality. All unrighteousness is sin (1 John 5:17), but there appears to be a gradient, a progression, that sin takes before it ends in death. Sexual immorality, impurity and greed are at the end of the spectrum nearest death and destruction. These are blatant sins of disregard for the laws and standards of God, and they are sins of open rebellion, tempting the anger of a holy and righteous Father. It is worth the time to read the first chapter of Romans and see how God really feels about sins of depravity and lasciviousness, of sexual immorality and open rebellion. Those who commit these sins as a practice think they are getting away with their sins; God’s word says that this could not be further from the truth. In fact, God gives the sinners over to their sin, allowing them to be thoroughly engulfed and consumed with their sin, leading to sure death and destruction. Real-life diseases and dramatic killings fill the newspaper and television news hour; this is not by coincidence. God’s word is true forever and every time it is put to the test. Does it even need to be said that sexual immorality, impurity, and greed are out of place for anyone seeking conformity to the image of Christ?

Also, on the spectrum of sin on the nearer end of the line are the following: obscenity, foolish talk, and coarse joking. These sins merely reveal what is in the heart of the person who speaks them. If one has an obscene heart, then his or her words will be obscene as well. If one has foolishness in his or her heart, then his or her words will be foolish. Coarse or dirty, inappropriate jokes reveal a heart that is dirty. Paul says that these are out of place for God’s holy people. We should be speaking words of grace and of thanksgiving. If we do not daily and consistently give thanks to God for His grace and mercy and for His promise of our eternal inheritance, then who will? A person who never speaks foolishly and always speaks words seasoned with grace is the person who is well on his or her way to conformity to the image of Christ.

We are never to be partners with the immoral, impure, and greedy. They are destined to eternal destruction. They will not be welcomed into God’s Kingdom—not just because of their sins but because they are not part of the family of God. They rebel openly against the God whom they have openly rejected. There is no inheritance for people who reject Christ Jesus as their Savior; how can there possibly be a place in heaven for people who would rather spend eternity without the God who fully inhabits and enlightens heaven. We may preach to the rebel the gospel of Christ in hopes that he or she will repent, but we are to never be partners with him or her. This can mean that we should not partner with unbelievers, but it especially means that we should avoid any covenantal relationship with people who are openly and blatantly rebellious against God, practicing sin with such a hardness of heart that they would rather die in their sin than to repent. We must not be partners in business or in marriage with those who live in open rebellion against Christ; this will only end in grief and tragedy.

8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14 for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:

“Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:8-14)

Everyone seeking to grow into the image of Christ must realize by now that we are not citizens of an earthly country but of a heavenly one. We are children, sons and daughters of the Kingdom of Light, and the Light is God Himself. Revelation 22:5 states, There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. 1 John 1:5b says God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we are children of the Light, then we are light as well. Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount:

14 You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  (Matthew 5:14-15)

We are light, and Paul says above that we are light in the Lord (verse 8). We must, therefore, live our lives as children of the light, and that will manifest as we bear the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Paul notes these fruit as goodness, righteousness, and truth. All of the sins we have considered in this chapter are diametrically opposed to goodness, righteousness, and truth . . . every single one of them. We must stop living as though we belong to two different kingdoms. It is time that we put our full weight on the side of the Kingdom of Light—of God—and quit dabbling here and there in the aspects of darkness. Kingdom maturity is found in those who are sold out completely to their Lord without any desire to dabble in the occasional sin. We are not looking for ways to sin. We are looking for any way possible to serve and affirm our allegiance to Christ and His Kingdom.

At times, as we live as children of the light, our very presence will expose the shameful deeds of darkness just as sunlight exposes and makes everything visible. We are not to mention what the sinner does in private, but the Holy Spirit within each of us has the power to convict the sinner merely by our presence. If people feel conviction of sin when we walk into the room, praise God for we are right where we need to be in God’s will. If this is not but a rare occurrence, then it is time to examine our own lives, allowing the light of the Holy Spirit to search the dark, hidden corners of our hearts, bringing to the mind the areas that need repentance and cleansing. We must deal with those things now and confess our sins and ask God for forgiveness. We will be so glad we did! We do not want to let another day go by living outside God’s perfect will.

15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.       (Ephesians 5:15-20)

It is no surprise to anyone that we live in a time of great evil. We feel that our present society has found new depths of depravity with new ways to sin being invented every year. Yet, nothing has really changed regarding the human heart. Man’s propensity for sin has been present from the Garden of Eden and has been passed on to every generation since. The days were extremely evil in Paul’s day, and Christians were experiencing incredible persecution; Paul himself was beheaded by the Roman Empire for his allegiance to Christ.

Yes, we live in a very evil time. Paul’s words are just as appropriate now as they were when he first wrote them. We are to be wise, making the most of every God-given opportunity, because the days are evil. We must not be naïve concerning the capacity of the world to commit evil, and we are to shun any participation in this evil. When Jesus sent His disciples out to minister in the Holy Land, He gave them a solemn warning about the evil that lurked behind every tree and in every home: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”(Matthew 10:16). Jesus is also saying that His disciples must remain pure as God’s sheep must be, even among the wolves, shrewd as serpents, not naïve, but remaining innocent. One must be able to enter deep into a smoke-filled tavern to rescue a dying man, emerging victorious without the hint of smoke on his clothing. In other words, we serve God here while in this evil world; we must recognize sin for what it is and not participate in it while saving those who are being destroyed by it. Jesus was often chastised for fellowshipping with sinners; He simply responded that He had not come to call the righteous but the sinner to repentance (Luke 5:31-32). It is the sinner that needs rescue, not those who are already in the boat. Those who are being formed to the image of Christ recognize this and do not worry what the self-righteous man may say when they fellowship with the sinners. Just to be clear, we may fellowship with the sinner for the sake of his rescue, but we are never to fellowship with the sin. If we do, we may fall back into the same maelstrom from which we were first rescued.

We must be sensitive to the Lord’s will concerning all things but especially this area of Christian behavior. We must avoid drunkenness on earthly spirits; instead, we should seek the holy state of being filled with the Holy Spirit. We must keep our lips from uttering inappropriate or idle words; instead, we should speak in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, voicing the word of God at every turn. We should have hearts filled with praise for the God who created us, redeemed us, and will one day return for us with a great shout and the trumpet of God. We must always have thanksgiving on our lips to our Father in heaven, giving thanks to Him in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are indeed light in the Lord. Let us live every day with this truth in full view. As we do this, we will find that we are that much closer to our final conformation to the very image of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him, be praise and glory forever and ever. Amen!

Chapter 13 / In Him, We Submit

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  (Ephesians 5:21)

There is a type of cell within the human body that refuses to submit to the others. It refuses to work with other cells and tissues within the body, and it refuses to follow the master plan set by the head of the body, the brain. This rogue cell finds the most comfortable place to exist, usually in soft tissue, and then goes about its own plan, much to the detriment of surrounding cells, tissues, and organs. As it multiplies and spreads, it begins to crowd out other cells and tissues, choking them to death as it robs the rest of the body of food, oxygen, and proper function. This rogue cell, which has now become rogue tissue, will one day cause the death of the person in whom it resides unless it is somehow medically removed. We know this rogue as cancer.

For the Body of Christ to function properly, there is a simple but mandatory hierarchy and chain-of-command to follow. This passage in Ephesians details this hierarchy very clearly and in a straightforward manner; if it is misunderstood or questioned, the responsibility lies with the hearer or the reader, not with the writer.

Our very first responsibility in the Body of Christ is to submit to Jesus Christ Himself. If one has issue with this statement, then he and she is not really a Christian. When we give ourselves to Jesus and call Him Lord, then we have in reality called Him our superior, our commander, our caretaker, our boss. We have placed ourselves in His care, knowing that He is much smarter, more resourceful, and better equipped to care for us than we are for ourselves. We submit to Him because He has saved us from our sin and sure destruction, both in this life on earth and in the hereafter. He is the Great Shepherd, and we are His lambs. King David cited many of the Shepherd’s benefits toward the sheep in Psalm 23. The sheep that does not appreciate or follow his shepherd is the very one soon needing rescue from the lions and the wolves.

As we submit to Jesus Christ as Lord in every area of our lives, we find that He has called us to also submit to one another out of reverence for Him (Ephesians 5:21). This is the second rule of submission, after the first—to submit to Christ Himself. We are called to love each other (John 13:34-35), to serve each other (Matthew 20:26-27), to edify each other (Romans 15:2), to care for each other (Galatians 6:2), and to forgive each other (Colossians 3:13). We are to be the Body that has every cell in submission to the head and to the other cells, with every sinew and every organ working together in harmony. This is the definition of holistic health, and it is the way the Body of Christ must function on this earth in order to be an effective force for love and good (Ephesians 4:16, Colossians 2:19, John 17:20-23). As we submit to Christ, we submit to one another. It is quite simple, yet quite profound.

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:22-24)

After Jesus Christ as the head of the Church, the next in the chain-of-command is the husband. This may be an office that men would rather not hold or a structure that some women may contest, but this is God’s plan for the Church. For the Body and the family to function properly, the husband will serve as the head of the household. The authority for protection, provision, prayer, proper instruction, and leadership is invested in the husband and father. To contest this authority is to contest the wisdom of God, and many do so to their disadvantage.

This passage does not command the wife to wait on her husband hand and foot. She may do so if she desires, but this is simply calling for the woman to respect her husband as the head of the family, as the one who has the authority of the household as granted and bestowed by God Himself. If both husband and wife are following the first rule of submission—to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ—then there should be no problem. The human body gives great illustration to how this should work. The head or brain (Jesus) commands the function of the entire body. The heart (the husband) follows the signals from the head and pumps blood (the wife) through the body so that every cell may live and function properly. While the blood is submissive to the heart and goes where the heart compels, the heart cannot function without blood coming to and through it. The heart and the blood are mutually submissive, for if either loses sight of this dependence on the other, the body will become ill or die. Such is the diagnosis of many broken Christian homes. As we grow into the image of Christ, let us remember to follow God’s hierarchy and His call for mutual submission.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant Church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the Church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the Church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:25-33)

As we continue with Christ’s plan for His Church, we receive much more instruction for the husband here than for the wife. The husband, as head of his home, has more responsibility. The husband is to love and care for his wife just as Christ cares for His Church. We know for a fact that Jesus loved His people so much that He gave His very life so that we might have eternal life (John 3:16). Not only that, but Jesus desires to present and receive to Himself His bride as a pure, spotless and stainless Church, as radiant and freshly cleansed. He does this by cleansing us with the washing with water through His word, by cleansing us of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9), giving us the riches of His wisdom and understanding (Colossians 1:2-4), and by indwelling us with Himself in the form of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17). This is the profound mystery that Paul writes of: the husband and the wife are analogous to Christ and His Church; the husband has great responsibility to care for His wife, as Christ does His bride. The husband must speak the word of God to his wife. He must protect her, forgive her, teach her, feed her, provide shelter for her and support her in her work in the family. The picture we must protect in our minds is not the one of Christ on His throne commanding the Church, but of Jesus on His knees, washing the feet of His disciples. This is the picture that Paul paints with his words in the passage above.

One word about marriage: the New Testament paradigm for the Christian home is one man and one woman as husband and wife (1 Timothy 3:2-3). If we keep the pattern in mind of one man (Christ Jesus) and one woman (the bride of Christ), then we will keep straight in our minds the proper use of marriage. Divorce should be avoided at all costs; in many cases it can be avoided if the husband and wife behave properly and faithfully toward each other as prescribed in Ephesians 5:22-33. Marriage can only be between a man and woman; any other combination in light of the Scriptures above is nothing short of blasphemous in the sight of God. Simply refer again to Romans 1, and we will see how God feels about perversions of His holy plan for man and woman. Unfaithfulness to one’s spouse is also an abomination in the sight of God. Adultery is unfaithfulness within the marriage relationship; idolatry is unfaithfulness within the relationship between man and God. Both are detestable in the sight of God Almighty.

1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 Honor your father and mother—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3 that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. (Ephesians 6:1-3)

The next step in Christ’s hierarchy is submission of children to their parents—both father and mother. Children should be helped to recognize that God blesses the parents with the wisdom, knowledge, and experience to successfully raise children to one day become godly men and women in Christ. Surely, there will be disagreements, but if the chain-of-command is protected, then the children will one day discern that the parents were right. If parents make mistakes, which will surely happen, then they should admit their mistakes and ask for forgiveness. This is also a priceless part of godly instruction: learning how to admit fault and to ask for forgiveness. God promises successful and long life for those children who honor their parents. May we be parents who are worthy of such honor.

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

Fathers, in this day and time, have a very difficult job to do as heads of their households. They can see the looming dangers just outside their front doors, just waiting to lure and devour their children. Unfortunately, the case in our age of technology is that those looming dangers can infiltrate living rooms, bedrooms, or even be found seated at kitchen tables. Television, computers, smart phones and MP3 players bring the world right into their houses, cars, and even Church buildings, where the evils of this present age can snatch children away from right under the noses of fathers while they watch unaware. Yes, these could well be the most dangerous times ever in which to raise a child. Fathers must ever be wary of these dangers while seeking not to frustrate or exasperate their children. If in doubt, it is better to say “no” than to one day regret letting a child do something harmful. However, fathers must say it in a godly wisdom and attitude, being careful not to bruise the very heart that they desire to win to Christ. As fathers seek to bring their children up in the training and instruction of the Lord, there is no better instruction on how to do so than in the 6th Chapter of Deuteronomy:

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

(Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

Known as the “shama”[iii], this passage describes beautifully how a father is to teach his children. Fathers should talk about the word of God with his children all of the time; as they sit at home, as they go their way, when they go to bed and when they rise. Fathers should carry their Bible in their car and with them when they go about their daily business. Fathers should teach their children to memorize God’s word daily and to memorize it with them. Fathers should hide God’s word in each of their hearts and post His word on their walls and around their house. Every situation in which fathers find themselves with their children is a potential teachable moment regarding God’s word and Kingdom. As we can attest, there is plenty of room for improvement in each of our homes in this area of godly training and instruction in the Lord. Let us each strive to do better today than we did yesterday.

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.                                                                             (Ephesians 6:5-8)

Hopefully, slavery is no longer an issue although it is still practiced in parts of the earth. However, each of us can take instruction from this passage concerning the workplace and how we should behave there. According to God’s Kingdom, the employee must submit to the employer with respect, fear, and sincerity of heart as we would respect, fear, and love Christ. We are to serve with whole hearts as if serving Jesus Christ, not man. If we have a job and work for an employer, then we consider the probability that God provided that job for our family and us. We ultimately work for Him. Yes, a man or woman may sign our paycheck, but the source of our living and provision is God Almighty. We should be working on our jobs as if we were working directly for God Himself. Would we hold back on productivity for Jesus? Then we should give our employers no less. As it says above, our Lord is watching and He will reward each person for whatever good we do, whether slave or free.

9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. (Ephesians 6:9)

Finally, if we are an employer, we should treat our employees with kindness and respect, keeping in mind that our provision comes from God and not from our own hands. Our employees are contract partners with us; they help us make a living for ourselves and for themselves as well. We do not treat them as slaves and do not threaten or disrespect them but cherish them as we would our own children. Again, God is watching and will reward us according to what we have done. We treat our employees well, for our Employer in heaven will treat us in the same way.

As we seek to be shaped and molded into the image of Jesus Christ our Lord, let us keep in mind the hierarchy by which He has prescribed His Kingdom to function. It is quite simple, yet quite profound! If we will respect God’s wisdom, even though it may not make perfect sense to us right now, we will be successful in life, and we will look more and more like Christ every day that goes by. The Body of Christ, who our Lord is preparing as His bride to be holy and spotless, will soon become known throughout the earth as the door to salvation for those who are filled with fear and doubt and hunger. As the world sees the mutual submission and love that the believers have for one another, they will see a sign and a wonder that has not been known since the Day of Pentecost. In that day, miraculous numbers of new believers were born again. We may soon be witnesses to such miracles one more time.

Chapter 14 / In Him, We Pray

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. (Ephesians 6:10)

Paul reminds us strategically that we are spiritual beings first, emotional and physical beings next. In a world where we live by what we see, hear, and feel, we are tempted to only live by the physical realm; however, the Christians—the righteous—will primarily live by faith, not by the physical world as do those who do not know God (Galatians 3:11). The law was written for those who are not yet redeemed, for those who have no spiritual eyes. The Holy Spirit, who gives us those spiritual eyes, will lead us in ways of righteousness, thus fulfilling and following every law completely as we follow Him and not the law. We are now spiritual beings; we must now learn to live our lives in the Spirit where the parameters and rules are quite different.

The book of Ephesians has shown us that we are adopted into another kingdom (1:5), one in which we cannot see without spiritual eyes and one in which we cannot function without the power of the King. We have been taught that we are enlivened and raised up with Christ and seated with Him in heavenly places (2:4-6) and blessed with all of His inheritance and power (1:18-21) and immeasurable love (3:14-19). We have been taught that we are saved and alive by His grace and prepared for works of service that He has pre-ordained for us in Christ Jesus (2:5-10). We are to live lives in unity with the Body of Christ (4:3-6) and in holiness and light (4:17 through 6:9), without giving way to our old selves but living as our new selves, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (4:22-24). Every word of the book of Ephesians is written to instruct us on how to live our lives in the Spirit and not in the flesh. Paul’s final words to the Ephesians are possibly the most important and sobering of all.

He exhorts us to “be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.”  He has already prayed that we would know this power given to us: the power of the Resurrection. Without this power, we would not have received eternal life to start with. How could we possibly live a life in the Spirit without His infilling and empowering with the same “dynamis” [iv] that raised Jesus Christ from the dead? This power not only relates to inherent strength for accomplishing tasks but also to the power to perform miracles and to overcome opposition and enemies. It includes a power that enables excellence of soul and morality and a power that comes from massive numbers as in armies or hosts. The victorious, righteous power of all of heaven rests on each believer in the form of the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. We are to be strong in this power. We are to appropriate the power of the Resurrection to every area of our lives, and we are to minister to others in this same mighty power. It is this power that transforms us into His image, and it is the working of this power that will soon reveal us as the sons and daughters of God, the Body of Jesus Christ.

As we seek to walk in this mighty dynamis, this power that is embodied in the Holy Spirit, we must always be aware that the greatest battle is taking place in the spiritual realm, the realm that we cannot see with our physical eyes. It is a realm so expansive and awesome that we would be seized with fear should we be allowed to see just a portion of it. We must find our ways about in the realm of the Spirit as a blind man must slowly and deliberately feel his way about this world. Unless God grants us eyes to see this heavenly dimension, we must use God’s word, His wisdom, and His guidance to move from one station to the next.

We must allow the Holy Spirit, whose realm this is, to gently nudge us from today’s position to the next, for He knows what we are to do and where we are to go. This is what Paul later in this passage calls “praying in the Spirit.”  If we are to follow Him, we must be in tune with Him. In Galatians 5:25, Paul also called this way of life “keeping in step with the Spirit.” We can be standing within a few hundred feet of a 50,000 kilowatt radio tower, but if our radio is not tuned to the right frequency, we will not receive that station’s transmission. Every believer has the Spirit of God dwelling within, but only the believers who have tuned their spiritual “radios” to the Lord’s frequency will receive His messages. Also, we must learn to always pray: Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:16-19). It is this constant state of prayer that will allow us to hear from God when we need it the most.

11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. (Ephesians 6:11-13)

We now know that we are dealing in the spiritual realm, and we also now know that we have the power of the Holy Spirit to do work there. Now we must realize whom we are aligned with and against. We know that we are of the Kingdom of God, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and we have the Spirit of God dwelling and working within each of us. Our enemy also dwells and works within the spiritual realm; his objective is to steal, to kill, and to destroy (John 10:10). If he could, Satan would steal salvation and its joy from each of us. In the same chapter in John, Jesus said:

28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30)

Satan cannot steal our salvation in Christ, but he will continue to seek to kill and destroy us, tempting us to live in sin and selfishness rather than in holiness and submission to the Spirit of God.

Paul introduces the concept of the armor of God. We must put on this armor, the armor of the Spirit, for we deal with and against forces of the spiritual realm. We are not fighting enemies that we can see and hear; we are fighting enemies who can see us but whom we cannot see with our physical eyes. However, in the Holy Spirit, we can foster sensitivity to this realm, learning to sense that the enemy is near and laying traps for us. Paul calls these enemies rulers, authorities, powers of this dark world, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Otherwise known as principalities and powers, these forces of evil are arrayed in a well-organized hierarchy of demons and rebel-angels, all answering to the head rebel himself—Satan. In the same way that an army has a general with officers under his command, so are the spirits of darkness. Their force is of tens of millions of “worker-bee” demons, and they are all fighting their last battle against Jesus Christ and His Body. We are thus called to put on the complete armor of God, so that when the days of evil come, we may be able to successfully stand against the wiles of the devil and his minions. In fact, after we have done all we know to do and all we can do, we are called to stand there fully armed and protected in Christ.

14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. (Ephesians 6:14-15)

Our spiritual armor takes on the nature of the faith and words of Jesus Christ. We must have His truth about our waist, righteousness protecting our heart, and our feet shod with the very message that saves: the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News that He has come proclaiming peace to all far and near (Ephesians 2:17). His truth completely overcomes the lies of the devil. His righteousness, which is now ours, overcomes the temptations to walk in the flesh and in our own sinful desires. His gospel overcomes the enemy by reaching into his prisoner-of-war camps and releasing captives who were all their life in bondage (Hebrews 2:14-15). We were at one time all held in bondage by the fear of death; the gospel of Christ frees us from that fear and thus from the devil who spreads it.

16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:16-17)

Faith is the piece of armor that allows us to see what is happening in the spirit realm; we obey and follow God’s word and His Spirit. Every fiery dart of Satan will be extinguished and deflected by this faith in God’s faithfulness. We know that He is the One who protects us. We cannot protect ourselves. If we will reside in the shadow of His wings, we will find sure protection there (Psalm 91:1-16). In fact, Psalm 91 is worthy of memorization; with these words alone, we may combat all that the devil may throw at us in the spirit and in the flesh. Many recite this Psalm anytime they find themselves in a fearsome situation, whether it be fleshly temptation or an approaching tornado.  God’s word is true; those who live by it in faith will deflect all the flaming arrows of the devil.

We must then protect our heads, our minds, and our souls with the helmet of salvation. To know without a doubt that our very future is hidden in Jesus Christ is more than enough to protect our thoughts, our wills, our emotions, and everything mental as we do battle with the principalities and powers. Even though we may die in battle, the devil cannot really kill us. We may die physically, but we have the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwelling within us, and He will give us life even in the midst of death. If our minds are protected with this knowledge of salvation, then we will march into battle without fear, knowing that our lives are hidden in Christ (Colossians 3:3).

We must also take up the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word. We must be mature and skillful in wielding the sword, the word of righteousness (Hebrews 5:12-14). We must study God’s word to show ourselves fully equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). It is not the word we study that performs the work of the sword; it is the word we speak with our mouths that does the cutting and slicing of which God’s word is fully capable. Revelation 1:16 speaks of Jesus Himself as He brandishes a double-edged sword out of His mouth. Hebrews 4:12 also speaks of God’s word as a double-edged sword, which penetrates and divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow, judging and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. As we speak the word of God, we speak pure truth, truth that has not been tainted or diluted. This sword is the weapon of offense that destroys darkness, cuts down great towers of deceit and pride, and frees the captive by cutting away chains of fear, sinfulness, and selfish ambition. There is no doubt that this one weapon is the greatest threat to the kingdoms of darkness. With one word from God, Satan may be frozen in his tracks, forced to cease and desist from all aggression. That one word is Jesus.

18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.  19 Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. (Ephesians 6:18-20)

Finally, people of God who are growing into the image of Christ must pray. We are not to be people who are always engaging in ceremonial prayer; that is vanity. We are not to pray on the street corners and in our Churches to be seen by men; that is hypocritical (Matthew 6:5). We are not to pray in endless verbosity; that is like the pagans (Matthew 6:7). Paul says in the passage above that we are to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests.” What this really means is that we are to come boldly unto the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:15), and we are to enter the Presence of God, enabled by the Holy Spirit. We are to come in praise and thanksgiving (Psalm 100), offering acceptable gifts of praise to the Father in the name of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5). We are to glory in His Presence, having drawn near with confidence in the cleansing power of our Lord Jesus (Hebrews 10:19-22). Then, we are to offer our prayers to God, knowing that He hears us (1 John 5:14-15) and that He will give us what we ask for as we live in His will (1John 4:21-22), knowing that His answers to our prayers will glorify God (John 14:13-14). We are to come in faith, we are to come in the Holy Spirit, and we are to come boldly to His throne. The Holy Spirit helps us to pray because we are in Him, and He is in us as we come to the throne. This is not a prayer that needs to be loud enough to penetrate the ceiling and to travel millions of miles to heaven. In the Holy Spirit, we are already in the throne room of God; our prayers simply travel from our hearts to the heart of the Father through the Spirit who searches both His heart and ours (Romans 8: 27, 1 Corinthians 2:9-16).

We may pray in words or in tongues, or we may simply pray in groans that words cannot express.  The important thing is that we are in the Holy Spirit as we pray. This is truly the prayer of the believer, to pray heart to heart with the Father, in the name of Jesus, enabled by the Holy Spirit. Those who pray in this way may know that God hears them, and they may be confident that their ministry in Christ will bear much fruit, for God in three persons is present to confirm every word of His that is spoken. These are the prayers of the sons and daughters of God who are ready to be revealed in these last times (Romans 8:19).

Chapter 15 / In Him, We are Justified

1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. (Romans 5:1-2a)

We have spent many pages together discussing the truths that we have found in Ephesians. Paul, of course, also wrote the book of Romans, a very systematic approach to the theology of the new faith called Christianity. Both letters deal with the believer’s standing in Jesus Christ; both letters encourage the believer to “be all he and she can be” in Christ. Both letters exhort the believers to grow together into one body with one purpose, to function as the living Body of Christ that God has intended from the dawn of creation.

We have made the case before that grace is the right hand of God extended toward each person, filled with all of the things that accompany salvation. Faith is the hand of the person, reaching to take hold of God’s hand and all that salvation entails. We, of course, are grasping the hand of Jesus Christ, God’s right hand, as we believe, receiving His grace as we believe on Him and embracing all He is and all He offers by grace. One of these provisions of salvation—saving of the believer by Jesus Christ and His sacrifice and resurrection—is the concept of justification. The best analogy for justification is expressed in the craft of carpentry. If an upright board is perfectly right and just, or at a 90 degree right-angle to the level floor, then it is in the position it should be. It is plumb, meaning it points to the center of the earth without leaning in any direction. To adjust a board or post to its upright position is to justify it, or to make it right. We find in the Scriptures that God is right in His ways (Genesis 18:25, Hosea 14:9). God’s word is right as well (Psalm 19:8, 33:4). God is perfectly upright, meaning that He sets the standard of righteousness for all of Creation. If a person sins, then that act is an act of unrighteousness, meaning that it is out-of-line with God’s standards. We were all born into this earth out-of-line with God’s Kingdom because we were sinners.

Romans 5:1 says that by faith in Jesus Christ we are justified, we are made righteous, and we are again at peace with God through this process of justification, of being made right. Jesus did all the work to justify us as He died on the cross; by faith, we accept His gracious offering, and, in so doing, we are justified, made right or righteous, and brought back into peaceful relationship with God the Father. Colossians 1:21-23 says:

21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

We were once enemies of God in our minds but have now been brought back, reconciled, through Christ’s sacrifice. We are now at peace with the Father. That is the result of justification: peace with God.

And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.  (Romans 5:2b-5)

Now that we are at peace with God, our hope is in Him and His glory. Our hope is that one day, after the trials of this life are finished, we will abide with the Father in His heaven forever. In the meantime, knowing that we are right with God and at peace with Him, we are able to endure. We are to glory in our sufferings, our trials because this will produce in us perseverance, the ability and patience to endure sufferings. We persevere because we see the end by faith, and that end is our eternal life with God. As we continue to persevere, we grow in character. We not only “do perseverance,” but we also “are perseverance.” Our character is that of men and women of faith who know that God is in us, and we act accordingly. We do not give way to fear; we do not shrink in the face of opposition because we know Him who created all things. He is certainly able to fight on our behalf. Finally, this character gives way to hope, the deeply ingrained expectation that God will do all that He has promised. Yes, He will do all He has promised and more, and part of what He does will be through us. He has poured Himself into each of His believers in the person of the Holy Spirit, and He eagerly desires to do His work in and through His sons and daughters. Let us each resolve to grow in sufferings, in perseverance, in character and in hope, for as we do we come closer to that day when we will be revealed as His children to all of Creation.

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)

This hope that we are considering has one and only one origin: God as the Author and Creator of hope. He knew before creating the universe that He would one day send His Son to save and justify sinners such as us. He could see from eternity what we would each become on the other side of the cross; He had a specific purpose in mind for each of us from before our conception. Just as Jesus saw the raw potential in unredeemed tax collectors and fishermen, He sees the same raw potential in each of us, and this potential is realized as the Holy Spirit cleanses us and trains us in the things of the Kingdom. We begin to manifest God’s power in a variety of Spirit-gift combinations, just as He sees fit (1 Corinthians 12:4-11). As we draw close to God by His Holy Spirit within us, He will teach us the meanings of the Scriptures. He will reveal His heavenly truth to us as we sit at His feet. He is gradually forming us into the image of Christ, the image that He saw before time began.

9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:9-11)

Yes, we have been made righteous—justified—by the blood of Christ Jesus. We were enemies and fully worthy of God’s wrath. Through the death of His only begotten Son, we were reconciled to the Father and, even more so, saved into life through Christ’s resurrection. That means that we are now in right-standing with the Father through Jesus Christ. There is no longer anything separating us from God. We are free to walk into His throne room any time of day or night (Hebrews 4:15), and we are called on to submit all prayers and requests to Him (Philippians 4:6). We may approach Him with freedom and confidence (Ephesians 3:12), and we may expect Him to confirm His word as we speak it (Mark 16:20) and to work with us as we set out to do what He did and even more (John 14:11-14).

As we look forward to the day when God reveals His sons and daughters in this earth, let us each continually study God’s word and ambitiously hide His word in our hearts. His word will be our sustenance and our sword as we seek to do His work. The anointing which we have received from Him (1 John 2:27) will teach us all things, and this anointing is the same that inspired God’s holy word in this earth. Every word that is contained in the Holy Bible carries the powerful anointing of God; it is a seed that contains within itself the genetic program to grow into the mighty Kingdom of God in the heart of the one who receives it by faith (1Peter 1:23-25). Let us have at our disposal and within our hearts plenty of seed to sow among the lost. This is the modus operandi, the method of operation, of the sons and daughters of God.

Chapter 16 / In Him, We Reign

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.  (Romans 5:12-14)

Sin entered the world the moment that Adam and Eve disobeyed God. The only commandment that God had given them was “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). This is the very command that they disobeyed as they submitted to the temptation of the serpent. They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and immediately they were separated from God and from His life-giving power. This is why they died. No, physical death was not immediate, but their spiritual death began the moment they were separated from the God who gives life.

Sin entered the world, and death entered through sin, so that every descendent of Adam and Eve has been born into the same shameful and deadly predicament. From the time of Adam until Moses, there was not a law given to hold mankind accountable for sin, and yet men and women still died. Unrighteousness was in the world.  Mankind was no longer in line with the will of God, and there was a broad gulf separating man from God. Throughout the Old Testament, with a few exceptions, people were without hope of pleasing God, for the sinfulness to which they were attached prevented fellowship with God. Abraham, one man whom God regarded as righteous because he believed God (Genesis 15:6), became the father of many nations, but more importantly, he became the father of faith for Israel and for the Church.

Through Abraham and his descendents, Isaac and Jacob, God brought the way of redemption to mankind. First, God gave the law and the process of atonement for those under the law. A person could be considered righteous if his or her sins were forgiven as a result of an animal dying and providing its blood in substitution for the death of that person. This atonement was only temporary, and it had to be renewed every year for the nation of Israel. The end-game for God was that, through this bloodline of righteousness, Israel would one day give birth to the Son of God—Jesus Christ—who would then give His own life and blood for the atonement and remission of the sins for not just Israel but for all nations. These nations include all people who would receive Jesus Christ as their sacrificial Lamb, believe in His resurrection, and call Him their Lord.

The law was given to hold God’s people accountable and to provide a standard of righteousness, a written plumb-line that exposed sin and called for atonement and forgiveness for that sin. The only person to live successfully without sin is the very one who died for the forgiveness of everyone else: Jesus Christ. Verse 14 of Romans 5 describes Adam as the pattern of the one to come; Jesus is the One.

15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:15-17)

There is stark contrast between the first Adam and the Second. Adam committed one sin, one trespass, and brought condemnation for all mankind. Jesus committed righteousness and went to the cross on our behalf; this gift followed the many trespasses of mankind and brought justification for all who would receive it. Many have died as a result of one man’s sin; many will live because of Christ’s gift of grace, His sacrifice that we might live.

This is made apparent in verse 17. If, by the sin of one man, death reigned through that one man, then how much more will we who receive God’s abundant and overflowing gift of grace reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:7: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” He has lavished us with His grace. This is not the stingy caricature that we often associate with God. He has lavished us with His grace. He has showered us with the overflowing gift of grace that He had intended for all time to give us. In Ephesians 1:18-19, Paul prays that we would “know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” We have been called to a glorious hope in Christ Jesus, given a glorious inheritance, and given incredibly great power like that of the resurrection. Christ’s gift is so bountifully greater than we could ever imagine with human minds that Paul prays we would have the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to show us and to help us understand the dimensions and ramifications of God’s grace to us in Christ. Then, in Ephesians 2:6-7, Paul writes:

6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Again, Paul is struggling to find words to express in human terms the greatness of the gift that we have in Christ. God has raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in heavenly realms in order to show all creation how great is His grace and mercy toward those who will acknowledge Him as their Lord and Creator.

God has so blessed us that He would give us His hope, His power, His rich inheritance, and His incomparable riches of grace, raising us up to be with Him in the heavenly realms and merging it with the idea that we who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and righteousness will reign in life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Does this sound like a pauper’s inheritance? Does this call for us to deny meekly God’s inheritance because we are so unworthy of His love and kindness? No. We are to certainly receive all of God’s gifts in humility, recognizing that we can do nothing to merit them in the least. However, God is calling us to the restoration of the human race, not to the status quo plus salvation. He is calling us to rise up and to be the people of God, speaking His truth and subduing the evil in this world that man brought upon it in the first place. He is calling us to walk as the redeemed, as the righteous, and as the little brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. We have been rescued back from the soul-snatcher, and we must miraculously shake off the indoctrination of that scoundrel of darkness and allow the Spirit of God to renew our minds to the truths of the Kingdom of Light.

18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.  20 The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:18-21)

Jesus Christ has, in fact, committed that one righteous act resulting in justification and life for all men and women. Adam decided for unrighteousness in the Garden of Eden; Jesus decided for righteousness in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Father would not let the cup of suffering pass from the Lamb of God, and the Lamb obediently went to the cross of sacrifice so that all could be saved. Where sin increased, grace increases all the more. There is not a sin available to be committed that cannot be drowned by the grace of God. There is not a past, present, or future that cannot be completely washed clean by the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Just as sin reigned in death, grace reigns through righteousness to give the eternal life that was so insidiously stolen from us in the Garden of Eden. Adam gave it away; Jesus won it back and even more.

Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day. God now walks inside His people in the person of the Holy Spirit. God talked with and to Adam and Eve. God now talks in and through His people, speaking His truth to all the earth. God gave a command for Adam and Eve to obey. God now enables obedience for every man, woman, and child who will submit to the leading of the Holy Spirit within them. God gave Adam the earth to fill and subdue. Now God has given the earth to the Church. What will we do with this gift?  We start by obeying His Great Commission. This is the first task of the sons and daughters of God:

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”                                                                           (Matthew 28:18-20)

15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”                                                                                (Mark 16:15-18)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  (Acts 1:8)

The true sons and daughters of the living God will no longer shrink in fear when commanded to stop preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ (Acts 4:18-20). The true sons and daughters of God will preach the gospel to their oppressors, knowing that it could well cost them their lives (Acts 6:8-7:60). The true sons and daughters of God will pray and sing glorious hymns of praise to God while sitting in prison, without embarrassment or dismay, knowing there are people who need to be rescued from the kingdom of darkness (Acts 16:25-36).  The true sons and daughters of God will confront those who deal in darkness, knowing that they are deceived by Satan and that they need deliverance as much as the sons and daughters once did (Acts 19:17-20). The true sons and daughters of God will stand up to the authorities with respect and without fear, knowing that God’s living truth is greater than all the principalities and powers that the enemy can muster (Acts 22). And the true sons and daughters of God, no matter the situation, will boldly and without hindrance preach the kingdom of God and teach about the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 28:31). This is the image of Christ that we must desire. This is the image of Christ that we must become.

Chapter 17/ In Him, We are Free

1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:1-4)

In chapters past, we have considered this passage to renew our minds to the truths that are taught us in Christ Jesus. We are to put aside our old selves and be made new in the attitudes of our minds, and we are to put on our new selves, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:21-24). Ephesians then goes on to catalog numerous sins and iniquities that we are to also put aside as we live as children of the light in the Lord. A key to this “putting aside of sin” is this passage from Romans 6 where we are to literally take part in the death of Christ Jesus and to allow our sinful nature to suffer that death as well. We are, by faith in Christ, buried with Him through baptism into death; we are, in turn, raised to life as we share in Christ’s resurrection.

5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. (Romans 6:5-7)

The old self that Paul wrote of in Ephesians 4:22 is the same as in the verse above. We put off this old self by accepting the truth that our old self is crucified with Christ, in order that the sinful nature might be killed or done away with. This death to our sinful nature allows us freedom from slavery to that sinful nature. Anyone who has died is set free from slavery to sin. As stated before, as awful as slavery is, the slave is set free upon his or her death. The taskmaster can no longer exert his punishing tyranny upon the slave who has died. He no longer has power over the one who is dead.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. (Romans 6:8-10)

Jesus Christ only died once; death has no mastery over Him any longer. Why?  Because He was raised from the dead, fully defeating death, not only for Himself but also for every one of us who will believe in Him as our Lord and Savior. If we accept His death as our death, then death no longer has mastery over us either. We fully believe we will live forever with Him because we have risen with Him. This is one reason why belief in Christ’s resurrection is pivotal to the Christian faith; without belief in His resurrection, we cannot believe we will rise with Him. Our religion would be futile with no more hope for eternal life than for the person who worships the moon.

11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:11-14)

And so, we find ourselves at the “crux” of the matter: it is up to each of us to individually count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Remember, the person who has died is no longer in slavery to sin. How can we serve the taskmaster to whom we have died? He no longer has mastery over us. This is one of the tools of faith that Jesus has given us to use in this earth to live a victorious life in Him. We may—no, we must -- count ourselves dead to sin, and we must count ourselves alive to God in Christ Jesus. We are no longer to allow sin to creep in and illegally exert itself upon us.  If we have died to sin, it may no longer have control if, by faith, we enforce Christ’s will in our lives. Certainly, we are no longer to offer the parts of our bodies to sin as instruments of wickedness. Why would a free man willingly offer himself again to the master from whom he had been set free? We know that this happens time and again, but it is not God’s will that a person should fall again into the slavery from which he or she has been freed. The greatest safeguard against this trap is for each of us to offer ourselves to the Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30). We are to offer ourselves and our bodies to the Father as those who have been raised from the dead. Sin and death have no mastery over the resurrected in Christ; righteousness and holiness and eternal life are the lot of the saved in Christ Jesus.

We have considered what it means to die to such sinfulness as was mentioned in Ephesians 4 and 5. We must no longer deal in such sins as dishonesty, laziness, thievery, anger, malice, bitterness, unforgiveness, and slander. We are to have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, greed, and obscene and foolish talk. We are to not even mention what the disobedient do in secret. Galatians 5:19-21 also includes sins of idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, drunkenness, and orgies. In this passage, Paul calls these the “fruit of the sinful nature” or the flesh; this is the sinful nature we are to crucify as he says in verse 24 of Galatians 5: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.” Paul’s prescription is also that we count ourselves dead to these sins as we have already considered in Romans 6:11 above. Herein lies our freedom! Let us find this freedom and live in it.

There remains an area of sin that we have not yet considered which could be our greatest obstacle to allowing Christ’s image to be formed in us. It could preclude the glory of walking and talking as one of the sons and daughters of God mentioned in Romans 8:18-19:  “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” We acknowledge that this glory awaits every son and daughter of God in Christ Jesus on the other side of the veil separating time and eternity. This is certainly our excellent hope of heaven that we must always keep in our sights. However, there is coming a generation that will be faced with enormous opposition by the world’s system, an intense persecution that will attempt to mock, ridicule, hinder, and destroy the Body of Christ. We call this in biblical language the tribulation, or the granddaddy of all—The Great Tribulation. If not our generation, then it could certainly be very soon, and our children will need to be able to walk in faith through such perils as the earth has not yet seen.

The sin-obstacle to our goal of seeing Christ formed in us and our children and to our walking as anointed sons and daughters of God can be summed up in two very daunting words:  fear and unbelief. We seem quite able to get a grip on such sins as immorality and greed, for these are sins primarily of the flesh, lusts of the flesh and of the eyes (1John 2:16). Fear and unbelief run much deeper. They are sins of the heart. In fact, fear and unbelief are basically at the root of all other sin and must be dealt with before the other sins will be successfully crucified and conquered.

Think about how many times Jesus spoke directly and frankly to people about their faith or lack of it. How many times did Jesus chastise His disciples for their lack of faith or their unbelief? Jesus asked the two blind men in Matthew 9:27-31, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”  They responded affirmatively, and Jesus said, “According to your faith it will be done to you.”  If they had answered in the negative, His reply would have been the same: “According to your faith it will be done to you.” In another instance, the bleeding woman fought through the crowds to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe. In great faith, she reached out and touched His robe, and Jesus sensed that power had gone from Him, and He said to her, “Take heart daughter, your faith has healed you” (Matthew 9:21). A converse scenario would be that her unbelief would have kept her from fighting through the crowd, and she never would have heard the words of Jesus saying that her faith had made her whole.

And remember the very men who were to one day become the great apostles. These disciples were in the boat as a great storm came up, and they became exceedingly fearful of drowning and shouted at the sleeping Christ, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”  Jesus immediately calmed the storm and then turned to His disciples and said, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:35-41). Jesus later said to the same disciples, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.” He then goes on to state specifically, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:22-24). So many times, Jesus has confronted people about their faith or lack of it. He did not spend nearly as much time and effort teaching about acts of sin as He did on faith, fear, and unbelief.

Faith simply means we believe every word that God has spoken through the apostles, prophets, and through Jesus Christ Himself. Not only must we believe His words, but we must believe them enough to take word-directed action. If we hear God’s words and do nothing, then our faith is dead. James wrote in James 1:17, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” In 1:22, he also writes, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” Every word of God calls for some action on our part. To be saved, we must believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead and we must confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9-10). To be healed, we must call for the elders of the Church and let them anoint us with oil while they pray the prayer of faith for healing over us (James 5:14-15). To be forgiven, we must forgive (Matthew 6:14-15). We must also confess our sins (1 John 1:9). If God gives a commandment, we must obey (John 15:10).

Faith also means we believe God’s promises to the point of believing that we receive. As Jesus said earlier, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:22-24).  Matthew 21:22 records it just a bit differently: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Jesus told His disciples the night before His crucifixion, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (John 14:14).  What would Jesus say as we pray our next prayer? Would He say, “No greater faith have I seen in all the earth?” or would He say, “According to your faith shall it be done unto you.” Would He possibly comment, “I marvel at your unbelief!” or “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

The point of this chapter is this: The sin of fear and unbelief must also be dealt with the same way we deal with other sins of the flesh. Just because it is a sin of the heart does not mean we have to keep it. How do we deal with all other sins? “We must crucify the sinful nature with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). “[We] must count [ourselves] dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). To be honest and accurate, it is the sin of unbelief that keeps us in bondage to all the other sins. If we really believed these two verses, we would be crucifying sin every moment, and we would begin every day counting ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. It is also the sin of unbelief that keeps us from putting on our new selves, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:24). It is the sin of fear and unbelief that keeps us from walking in the Spirit and keeping in step with the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:16, 25). It is the sin of fear and unbelief that keeps us from walking in the truth that Jesus left with His disciples:

12 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. (John 14:12-14)

The gist of the matter is that we must crucify this sin of fear and unbelief and we must count ourselves dead to the sin of fear and unbelief. In so doing, we will find an incredibly refreshing freedom, a freedom to live as God has intended we live. We may live in total freedom to believe every word that Jesus spoke and that the apostles wrote, and we may freely act on every word, knowing Jesus Christ stands ready to confirm every word, for He watches over His words to confirm and perform them: “You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled” (Jeremiah 1:12). In Him, we are free, free to be who He has created us to be—people of faith walking as sons and daughters of the Living God.

Chapter 18 / In Him, We are Delivered

1 Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? 2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. 3 So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.  4 So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. 5 For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:1-6)

We know from Romans 6 that if we are in Christ, then we have died with Him, and we have also been raised to life in Him. Sin no longer is our master; we have died to the sin that once kept us bound. According to the passage above, we have also died to the law that was given to convict us of sin and to lead us to Christ. As we will explore, Romans 7 is an incredibly revealing and enlightening chapter regarding the struggle between the old nature of sin and the new nature of the Spirit.

The Old Covenant law that was given by God through Moses held all of Israel accountable until Christ could come and ratify the New Covenant in His blood. The law pronounced all people, not only the great practitioners of sin but also those who tried to practice righteousness, as guilty and worthy of death. It was the substitutionary death of an animal and the blood of that animal that atoned for the sins of the people; they could do nothing in and of themselves to cleanse themselves of sin and its consequences. Temporarily, their sins were covered until the next Day of Atonement which occurred once a year. This was life under the Law of Moses.

We are now under the New Covenant which was established upon better provisions and promises. Jesus Christ died once and for all, and His blood eternally cleansed us of our sins (Hebrews 9:26-28). If we sin anew, we must confess our sins and accept God’s forgiveness and cleansing of unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Once we accept by faith these truths, then we are to go on and live our new life. We are not bound by the Old Covenant law any longer; we are now released to live a new life according to and by the Holy Spirit of God who has indwelt His believers. Let us explore further the inner debate that Apostle Paul has experienced, and let us come to the same conclusion that he did in his searching for the new and living way that Jesus Christ has given us in Him.

7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”  8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.   (Romans 7:7-12)

The law that God had given Moses was indeed a good one for the time. Paul explains that we each come to recognize what we do as sin through the light of the law. However, a dilemma develops when the law confronts the sinful human nature. When a sin is shown to be sin and thus forbidden, the sinful nature rises up and produces more and more desire for that sin. Such is the seed of rebellion that is in us as a result of Adam’s sin. Romans 4:15 says, “Where there is no law there is no transgression.” But the law did come, and sin springs to life wherever the law is applied. The very commandments intended to bring life actually bring death by forbidding sin and thus bringing it to life in the sinful human nature. None of us enjoys going to the doctor’s office. We are afraid of what he will find. If we are not aware something is terribly wrong within, the doctor cannot help us get better. In the same way, mankind was oblivious to the fact that it was dying of sinfulness; the law was given to tell mankind it was sinful and thus in need of the cure: Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). Therefore, the doctor who finds and diagnoses our illness is good, and the law that exposes our sinfulness is holy, righteous, and good.

13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.  (Romans 7:13)

This concept of sin is also known as the law of sin and death; if a person sins, if only once, that person will die. This is the result of one man’s disobedience, one man’s act of unrighteousness which we discussed as we examined Romans 5. Adam sinned once in direct disobedience to the command of God: “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Since then, we have all been afflicted with the same genetic disease of sin. If we sin, we will die—this is the law of sin and death. God’s law was given to expose our sinfulness so that we can fix it through faith in Jesus Christ. The good news continues as we find that we may share in Christ’s death on the cross in order that we may attain new life in His resurrection.

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.  For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.  (Romans 7:14-20)

The dilemma continues as well. If we continue to live by the law and in the sinful nature, we find that we struggle with our flesh every moment of every day. Perhaps a person has come to saving knowledge of Christ and yet has not come to the revelation that we are pursuing in this book. This Christian finds the struggle against sin to be extremely frustrating because he or she desires to do the good and righteous thing and yet cannot successfully live a holy lifestyle in obedience to the law and the commandment. The law commands us to not covet; our sinful nature immediately goes about the task of finding something to covet and then coveting in abundance. In addition, the more we desire to do good, the less good we find we can accomplish. In our sinful nature dwells the DNA to commit sin, not righteousness. The law commands us to “A” and we commit “Z”. It is really very simple.  As long as we live by the law and the sinful nature, we will be continually frustrated in our Christian life. However, because we now know it is the sinful nature within that commits the sin, then we know for certain what disease needs to be treated; that’s the good news. The bad news is that sin cannot be treated; it must be killed, it must be destroyed, it must be crucified at the cross of Christ. We cannot live a holy, successful life in Christ as long as the sinful nature remains un-crucified. This is the point that Paul is making here, albeit, through a very painful process and argument.

21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.  (Romans 7:21-25)

We are about to pass into another realm in the case that Paul is presenting. We also can acknowledge that there are two laws at work here: the law of God and the law of sin. And they are diametrically opposed to one another. We as humans and as Christians are ground-zero for this struggle. Unbelievers and sinners find no struggle, for there is no desire to please God or to keep His commands. No, the struggle is within the minds and hearts of God’s people who desire to do what is good and cannot carry it out. Who will deliver us from this crucible of failure? Who will relieve the strain that wears upon our consciences day after day, hour after hour? To remain here prompts us to voice the same dire statement as Paul: “What a wretched human being I am!” or “How could God possibly love someone so entirely unable to obey Him, even in the small things!”

Shall we remain in this futile and vain position? Shall we continue the daily struggle with sin, fighting the overwhelming temptation to toss in the towel completely and turning back to a lifestyle of sin? Or, shall we proceed to the next few verses in Romans 8, finding that God has provided an escape from all of this futility? To attain conformity with the image of Christ, we must proceed. Take heart, fellow believers; Jesus Christ has provided everything we need in His very person. He is the author and the finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-2). Let us seek to finish the race that we have started—in Him.

Chapter 19 / In Him, We are Alive!

1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)

Paul has just finished saying, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He has just finished his soliloquy of futility, pitting the law of sin and death against the law of God with his mind and heart right in the center of the fray. Paul, who was an expert in the Law of Moses and the traditions of the Pharisees, knew the law better than most (Philippians 3:5-6). Paul, the chief persecutor of the Church of Jesus Christ, knew what it was to be a sinner better than most (Acts 9:3-6, Galatians 1:23). Paul must have known what it was to be torn between the two better than most.

The sudden and dramatic release that we mentioned in the previous chapter is now upon us. He finished Chapter 7 of Romans by saying, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” and his very next words are

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.  (Romans 8:1-2)

We will now discover there is a law that supersedes both the Law of Moses and the law of sin and death. This law is available only to the believer in Jesus Christ, the person who finds himself and herself hidden in the One who died and rose again. This is the believer who has joined with Christ in His crucifixion and in His resurrection, who has died to slavery to sin and has become bondservant of the One who saves from such slavery.

This law is the new law of the Spirit of Life who sets us free from the law of sin and death. The very One who died that our sins would be sent away from us as far as the east is from the west is the very One who has sent His Holy Spirit to dwell within our spirits to fill the vacuum left by the cleansing power of the blood of Christ. It is this Spirit who gives life to each and every person who has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And it is this Spirit who frees us from the condemnation of the existential dilemma of the earth-bound Christian. He has set us free from the law of sin and death. We are no longer people who may desire to do good and cannot carry it out as Paul lamented. We are no longer people who want to do good but can only do evil if we will but submit to the Holy Spirit who frees us from such a position.

3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.  And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4 in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3-4)

Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and walked it as the Son of Man. In the same pattern and likeness as Adam (Romans 5:14), Jesus lived a sinless life and died upon the cross in our place, in the place of every man, woman, boy, and girl who has ever been born into this earth. Though Christ inhabited the flesh of a human, He remained obedient to His Father so that He could become the offering that would take away our sins (John 1:29). By this offering, not only did He atone for our sins but He condemned the sins of the flesh by His selfless death. He took upon Himself every sin we could ever commit, so that we could take upon ourselves His everlasting righteousness. There is absolutely nothing that we can do to deserve this righteousness, and there is nothing that we can do to destroy or nullify this same righteousness. Paul’s call for each of us is to accept and live in this righteousness, the righteousness bought for us in the death and blood of Jesus Christ.

The key to walking in a life free of condemnation is to be a believer in Jesus Christ who walks not in the flesh but according to and in the Holy Spirit who gives this life of righteousness. The twisted and futile life that Paul described in Romans 7:14-24 is no longer the lot of the man and woman who walk according to the Spirit of God. We no longer serve by the written code of the Law of Moses; that is impossible to accomplish or maintain. We serve by submission and obedience to the Spirit of God who dwells within us. Jeremiah wrote this prophecy:

‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the LORD. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.’ (Jeremiah 31:33)

The law to which the Lord refers is the law of the Spirit of Life. Paul refers to this also in Romans 8:2. This is the Holy Spirit who writes His laws on our hearts and our minds. The Holy Spirit of God who gave the law to Moses written on tablets of stone high atop Mount Sinai is the very Holy Spirit of God who writes His laws on our tablets made of flesh—our hearts. We are no longer called on to keep the law written under the Old Covenant; we are called to allow the Holy Spirit of Christ of the New Covenant to keep us. We are not to keep the endless checklist of commandments of the old; we are to simply submit to the Spirit and allow Him to live the new life of God through us:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:6)

Let us explore further this idea of living in the new way of the Spirit. We are released from the written code of the Old Covenant and need now to learn how to live according to the Spirit of God within each of us.

5 Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; 7 the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. (Romans 8:5-8)

It is a matter of the mind. This passage is pivotal in our quest to live by the Spirit. That upon which we set our minds will determine our direction in the realm of eternity. If we set our minds on things of the flesh, of the physical, then we will live according to the flesh. It is that simple. Paul makes it very clear that this realm of the physical desire is the realm of death, not only of death, but of hostility toward God. This is the condition in which Adam left the human race. Until redeemed, every human considers himself or herself at enmity with God Almighty. Colossians 1:21 states, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” We know that Adam and Eve hid from God as soon as they were mindful that they had sinned (Genesis 3:8). Why? Innately, every person knows that God is in no way pleased with carnal thoughts and behavior. We have learned that God knows our every thought (Psalm 139:1-4). He knows that upon which we set our minds and our lives bears fruit according to what we consider and think upon.

Conversely, God is well-pleased with those who set their minds on what the Spirit desires. In part, we know that the Spirit desires things such as holiness, justice, righteousness, love, joy, peace, and the fruit and gifts of the Spirit. He desires obedience, reverence, and submission. He rejoices in truth and in the word of God. These are all things that we should desire as well. If we will set our minds on what the Spirit desires, we will reap life and peace; that is the nature of life in the Spirit of God. In Colossians 3:1-3, Paul writes:

1 “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

We have established earlier in this book that we have died with Christ Jesus through faith in Him, and, in turn, we have been raised to life in Him. Our life is hidden with Christ in God.  Why are we not setting our minds on things above? This is as much an act of the will as the decision in Eden’s Garden. We must take our minds by the helm and turn them toward heaven. We no longer have the carnal excuse that we relied upon before our redemption; no, we may at any time turn our hearts toward the Spirit’s desires because that very Spirit dwells within us and gives us His life. No longer slaves to sin, we must steer our thoughts and desires toward those of the Spirit of Christ. This will reap for each of us the pleasure of God and life and peace of the Spirit.

9 You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.  (Romans 8:9-11)

If we have indeed received Jesus Christ as Lord, we are automatically and graciously planted in the realm of the Spirit. The Spirit of God lives within us, and we live within the Spirit’s realm. The physical realm is the place where we may access everything with our physical eyes, ears, and senses of touch, taste and smell. It is a realm governed by time and the process of entropy that leads to decay and disarray. Everything in the physical realm will eventually return to dust. The realm of the Spirit, on the other hand, is a realm that we may only access with our spirits, the eternal part of each of us. The Holy Spirit gives each of us entry and access to this realm by His very presence within our hearts. This is a realm not governed by time, and there is no decay or disarray. If one has life in this realm, one will live and exist forever in the presence of God Himself. By the eternal Holy Spirit, we now have access to this realm, which is also known as the Kingdom of God. If we walk by faith—by God’s word and His Spirit—then we learn to sense the things of the Spirit; we become increasingly aware of the movement within the realm that we cannot see or hear with our physical eyes and ears. Those who do not believe in Christ and who thus do not belong to Christ do not have access to the realm of the Spirit.

There is a power flowing through the realm of the Spirit that enlivens every creature and creation of that realm: eternal life. Until Adam and Eve gave control of this earth over to Satan and his minions, there was a flow of life here as well. Their partaking of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil brought another force to flow through the earth, and this was the force of sin and death; the life of heaven was no longer available until Jesus Christ paid our ransom and came that we might have life, abundant life. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). This life of which Jesus speaks is represented in the Greek by the word zoe[v], which is a life of absolute fullness. This is not just a life represented by a breathing body of a human or animal or of the greenness of a tree or plant. This is the life of God that gives vitality to every living thing. Zoe refers to the force of life that flows from God’s throne through every corner of His Kingdom just as electricity flows through the super-grid of power in our country. Zoe is inter-related with the light and love and holiness and righteousness of God Almighty. If one has this life, this absolute abundance of God’s life, then he or she has access to a life that lasts forever and that draws the living creature to the very Presence and Being of God. Once released from its tie to this earth in the human body, the living spirit of the redeemed automatically flies to its home in the Presence of God just as loose nails and screws fly to the massive electromagnet whose job it is to separate the iron from all other items of refuse.

The Scripture above states that our bodies will die because of the law of sin and death, but our spirits are alive because of the righteousness of the Holy Spirit within us. Our hope lies in this promise of God. Yes, our bodies will die, but our real selves, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness, will be alive in the Spirit’s care and power. Not only that, but the same Spirit will give life to our mortal bodies through the same power that He used to raise Jesus Christ from the dead. Again, this is not just life as we know it which allows us to live and function in this earth; this is the zoe life, the absolutely abundant life of God’s Kingdom that infuses all who believe in Jesus as Lord and who believe that He arose from the dead.

12 Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Romans 8:12-14)

Paul writes that we now have an obligation to live no longer as mere human beings in the flesh and within the restraints of time and physical survival. We are to live no longer to satisfy our sinful human natures. We are to think no longer about our own selfish ambitions, what we will eat and what we will drink and what we will wear. God knows we need such things, but as Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount, “For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:32-33). Our obligation is no longer to make our own plans for the future; our obligation is to seek first the Kingdom of God and to find out where God wants us to be and what He wants us to do.

If we only live according to the flesh and the physical realm, only death awaits us.  If we feast and satisfy ourselves, thinking that there is no hope of anything better, we will die futile deaths, hopeless and separated from the absolutely abundant life of God. However, if we will by the Spirit of God, count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11), thus putting to death the misdeeds of the body (Romans 6:12-13), we will indeed live that zoe-life that Jesus came to give us so abundantly. In Him, we are alive, for the Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead also gives us life. In Him, we are truly alive. Praise be to the God our Father and His Son Jesus Christ, who has saved us from the death of Adam and has given us the resurrection life of Christ Jesus!

Chapter 20 / In Him, We are Heirs!

. . . because those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.   (Romans 8:14)

The children of God are those who are led by His Spirit. It is a simple statement, and yet there is a fearsome implication for the millions who think somehow they will arrive in heaven just because they would rather be there than in hell. No, it is the children of God who know the voice of the Spirit of God, and it is those who choose to follow Him who are God’s children. Paul could easily have said, “Many who are God’s children will follow His Spirit,” or “Some of God’s children will live lives of obedience to the Spirit of God.” No, he put it very plainly: “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14/ NIV 1984). Jesus likened His people to sheep and says the same thing as Paul:

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:27)

If we read this and perhaps think we are Christian and yet we really do not know His voice, then this is where we must stop and deal with some unfinished business. Are we indeed led by God’s Spirit? Do we know His voice? Do we ever sense a gentle nudging in our heart to obey His will? If we can honestly say that we know His voice or that we are learning to hear His voice, then we are ready to proceed. We all have those moments when we would rather fulfill our own will than God’s. For that, there is forgiveness. However, if we are honest with ourselves and cannot say that we know the leading of the Holy Spirit, then we must begin where every Christian has begun—at the cross of Jesus Christ. We must admit that we are sinners (Romans 3:10-12, 23) and that, if we do not change our course, we will reap eternal death (Romans 6:23). We must accept Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for our own forgiveness from sins (Romans 5:8), and then we must receive Him as our Lord, or as our boss, our leader. We must believe in our heart that God the Father raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and we must confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9-10). If we have done this simple yet profound act of faith, then we are saved and part of God’s family. We need to simply receive His Holy Spirit into our spirits by faith (Galatians 3:5) set our minds on what the Spirit desires (Romans 8:5), and determine to keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:24). Very soon, as we listen for the Spirit’s voice, we will begin to sense that God is inside us, and that He is indeed leading us according to His zoe life. We will find that the world has nothing to offer in value comparable to the absolute and abundant life of God.

15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.  And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.  (Romans 8:15-16)

The Holy Spirit, once received by us, gives us genuine freedom from sin and from the oppressive world system of slavery to sin that Satan has commandeered all these thousands of years. We are no longer slaves to fear; fear is also a tool that Satan uses to keep his slaves in bondage. No, we have been released from slavery to sin by the death we have identified with at the cross of Jesus Christ. We have been set free from sin, and we have become slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:18). Not only have we been delivered from this slavery, this bondage to the kingdom of darkness, but we have also been translated into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son (Colossians 1:13). Who does this work? It is the ministry of the Holy Spirit who delivers us from that darkness, and it is the Holy Spirit who translates us into the Kingdom of Light. It is also the Holy Spirit who seals our adoptions as sons and daughters of God the Father and as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. We have been adopted. We are now sons and daughters of the King.

It seems that we have come full circle, and we now discuss again the concept of adoption. It is, in fact, a covenant act; to adopt is to choose to enter into a relationship with another, with one who is in desperate need of help and refuge. To adopt is an act of supreme, godly love, to offer all of one’s resources and inheritance to one who does not deserve or even expect such lavish kindness. One example is the story of David and Jonathan. David and Jonathon had made a covenant with one another that they would care for each other as brothers. David made a solemn promise to Jonathan that he would never forget to show kindness to the family of Saul and of Jonathan forever, as Jonathan asks:

14 But show me unfailing kindness like that of the LORD as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, 15 and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family—not even when the LORD has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.”  16 So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, ‘May the LORD call David’s enemies to account.’ 17 And Jonathan had David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.  (1 Samuel 20:14-17)

David was a covenant –minded man from the days of his youth. He understood it was by God’s covenant with Abraham and Israel that he killed the lion and the bear, and it was by God’s covenant that he killed Goliath. It was by the covenant that he had, as a Jew, become a victorious leader and eventually the King of Israel. Along with King Saul, Jonathan and the rest of that generation of Jonathan’s family had died in battle. Now, as reigning king, David awoke one day to the resounding covenant promise that he had made years before to Jonathan:

David asked, ‘Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?’  (2 Samuel 9:1)

David’s servant answered that there was indeed a son of Jonathan left to whom David could show his covenant kindness. The young man’s name was Mephibosheth. He had been crippled from birth and was living in poverty in a town known then as Lo Debar. David immediately sent for Mephibosheth to be brought before him, and in fear Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”(2 Samuel 9:8). David’s response was that of an honorable man who had made a covenant promise to Jonathan years before:

9 Then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s servant, and said to him, ‘I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. 10 You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for. And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.’ (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)  11 Then Ziba said to the king, ‘Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.’ So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table like one of the king’s sons.

12 Mephibosheth had a young son named Mica, and all the members of Ziba’s household were servants of Mephibosheth. 13 And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table, and he was crippled in both feet.  (2 Samuel 9:9-13)

Mephibosheth (similar to us), though he considered himself a “dead dog,” was a beneficiary of a covenant of kindness and love, the checed-love of which we have spoken before in Beyond the Veil. This is the God-kind of love that says that “I will die before I allow you, my covenant partner, to perish.” This is the God-kind of love that awoke David that day and prompted him to seek out the son of Jonathan who was in dire need of food, clothing, and a father. That indeed was our state before God sent His Son Jesus to buy our redemption, and it was our state before we heard the gospel and received God’s covenant of kindness and grace that He ratified and sealed in the blood of His Son. Mephibosheth ate at the king’s table for the rest of his life, and so will we who are adopted members of the King’s family. Remember the Scripture in Ephesians that we studied early in this book:

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he  predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 1:3-6)

And then in the second chapter, Paul also writes:

4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus . . . (Ephesians 2:4-6)

We could all say to God the Father what Mephibosheth said to King David that day, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?” The truth is that we really do not deserve the kindness of God. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), and we have all gone astray like stupid sheep (Isaiah 53:6). There is no doubt at all that we are only saved by the grace of God and nothing else (Ephesians 2:8-9). But the truth is also that, because of the promises Jehovah God Most High made to Abraham and his descendents, including Jesus Christ, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Because God remembers His covenant promises, He has raised us up with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. Because of His boundless kindness and grace, God has adopted us as His children—His sons and daughters—and He has given us an incredibly rich inheritance in Christ Jesus. We have indeed been adopted by the Father’s choice. We now eat at the King’s table, just like Mephibosheth did. Only, now we know we will eat at the King’s table for eternity, along with all the rest of the adopted and the redeemed, known as the Body of Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:17)

Not only are we adopted children of the Most High God, He has made us heirs of His Kingdom. Just as Mephibosheth inherited all of Saul’s land and possessions, so do we as children of the King. As the Holy Spirit reminds us, all the glorious riches of our inheritance are ours (Ephesians 1:18-21, 1 Corinthians 2:12). All the riches of wisdom and knowledge are also ours (Colossians 2:2-3). All of zoe-life and its abundance are ours (John 10:10). The right and command to approach the King’s throne are ours (Hebrews 4:16, Ephesians 3:12, Hebrews 10:19-22). The right to pray in the name of Jesus and to receive what we request are ours (John 14:13-14, 16:23, 1John 5:14). His resurrection from the dead is ours (John 5:24, 6:40, 11:25-26). Eternity with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is ours as well (Revelation 21:1-4).

To consider that God has chosen each of us to sit with Him at the King’s table is more exciting than words can describe. As already said, none of us deserves even a fraction of what God has blessed us with. What is even more exciting is what Paul writes above, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” Not only are we heirs, we are co-heirs with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Traditionally, the oldest brother got the lion’s share of the inheritance and all of the blessings. However, in our case, we share with Jesus, our older brother, in all of the inheritance and all of the blessings. Not only are we children of God, we are brothers and sisters of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Think about that for just a moment. Our big brother is the One who created the universe, the very One who redeemed mankind, the very One who will one day come in glory and set up His throne in the new heaven and the new earth (2 Peter 3:13). Jesus Christ is our big brother, and we sit with Him at the Father’s table.   How glorious!

The verse above includes a condition. We must share in His sufferings in order to share in His glory. If we have died with Him at the cross, then we may share in His resurrection. Paul wrote this deeply inspiring, heart-felt statement in prayer, knowing that he would one day give his life for the cause of Christ:

10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11)

The good news is this: if we are led by the Spirit of God, we will be at the right place and the right time in service to our Lord. If we must suffer, He will also give us the strength to endure. If we must preach His word in the midst of struggle, He will give us the power to do so. If we must rescue others in the midst of battle, He will give us the knowledge and insight to accomplish the rescue. If we must lose all that we have for Christ’s sake, we know that our inheritance lies in heaven, where moth and rust cannot destroy and where thieves cannot break in and steal. If we must give our lives for the sake of Christ, we know that our life is safely hidden with Christ in God. His Resurrection is our Resurrection. May we all take Paul’s prayer above as our own: May we all desire to know Christ in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and somehow attaining His resurrection from the dead. In Him, we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs—joint-heirs—with Christ Jesus our Lord.

Chapter 21 / In Him, We Glory!

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)

We Christians are an odd lot! We, the earthbound believers in Christ, are in reality the only creatures who live in two worlds. The non-believers exist in one dimension, and that is the flesh. They can only do what is motivated by their natural desires and the world system. Animals that roam the earth can only do as their natural instinct and desires lead. Plants and trees simply grow and bear fruit according to their design, without any discernible acknowledgement of the eternal realm. On the eternal side, angels do as they are commanded by God, ministering to the heirs of salvation without having to personally deal with the fleshly ambitions and desires of the human race. Satan and his rebels only live in the spiritual dimension, relying on the sinful human nature to accomplish their work within the race of mankind. Without the prince of darkness having a natural human body himself, he may only tempt, or, in certain instances, he may possess. But here we are, Christians still living on the earth with one foot in the natural realm and one foot in the realm of the Spirit. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:12-13, we have an obligation to live according to the Spirit and not according to our fleshly sinful nature. We must be led by the Spirit of God because we are the sons and daughters of God.

Romans 8:18 begins to address our future as sons and daughters of the living God. On one hand, we are locked into this world, still subject to suffering as humans. As spiritual as we may become, we still bump up against the trials of humanity in our own lives and in the lives of friends and family. Becoming a son or daughter of God does not preclude attacks from those living lives of evil; in some cases, the evil person will intentionally assail the child of God, unknowingly led on by the forces of evil in the spiritual realms. As long as we inhabit un-glorified human bodies, we may be attacked by sickness and disease (there are many promises of God that deal with these), and there will always be the possibility of accidental injury as long as we participate in athletics, home improvement, freeway driving, and other aspects of natural human activity. This is all part of being a descendent of Adam, and we know to expect suffering to some degree.

The people of Paul’s time had similar occurrences in their lives as well. However, we need to get beyond these daily pains and struggles, and we need to consider the trials of persecutions that the early Church was undergoing. The Christians of that day were not as widely accepted religiously or culturally as we are today. They were hated by the orthodox Jews as a blasphemous cult. They were hated by the sinful citizenry of the Roman Empire as they stood for righteousness and holiness, opposites of the hedonistic and lascivious lifestyle of so many of that day. The Christians were most intensely persecuted by the Roman government because they would only give their allegiance and reverence to their Lord Jesus Christ and not to Caesar. Some of the Roman emperors believed themselves to be deities, and they felt quite threatened by a Church that declared Jesus to be Lord, and not Caesar. Nero, who was emperor when Paul and Peter were executed, also felt threatened by Christian believers who would call into question his extremely immoral lifestyle by their very behavior of purity and holiness. The Christian Church had much opposition and few allies. Therefore, persecution was intense, and confession of Christ as Lord was likely to result in imprisonment or death. These were the sufferings to which Paul is referring in his letter to the Roman Church in verse 18 above. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes a similar statement concerning persecution and the reward of heaven:

10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:10-12)

Jesus’ will was very clear to those who would decide to follow Him: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15:18). He went on to explain that those who follow Him no longer belong to the world, that He has chosen them out of the world, and that the world will hate them because they are of another world, another dimension. If we are persecuted because we are of another kingdom, we are to rejoice and be glad because the Kingdom of God and all of its benefits await us. We are not the first to be persecuted, and we will not be the last. Jesus Christ Himself was crucified because He represented the Kingdom of Heaven in direct opposition to the Roman Empire and this world’s system of politics and commerce. The prophets were persecuted, and so were the apostles. In fact, most of them were also martyred for the cause of Christ and His Kingdom.

We are destined for the Kingdom of God, also known as heaven. What may be the best-kept secret of the Church is this: We do not have to wait until we die to access the treasures and privileges of heaven. Our deposit, our down payment on our reward, actually lives within each of us in the person of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:13-14 reminds us that believers in Christ have been “marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possessions.” Until we actually go to heaven and live there eternally in God’s presence, His Presence has come to live in each of us. As we grow increasingly into the image of Christ, more and more of the glory of God will be revealed in us and through us. As we discipline ourselves each day to set our minds on things of the Spirit and as through the Spirit, we put to death the misdeeds of our bodies. We become more and more like the children of the King we are meant to be. As we count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus and as we crucify the sinful nature with its passions and desires, we allow the glory of God, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit to seep through every pore of our beings to reveal the glory that has resided within and has desired to be displayed since each of our times of redemption. As we determine to walk in faith, hope, and love, we will find we are not only witnesses to Christ in word, but we are witnesses to the glory of Christ in deed and in fact. Not a life of submission and conformity with a set of rules or laws, not a life of living in the world and of its standards, not a life of schizophrenic Christian worldliness or worldly Christianity, but a life of increasing conformity to the image of Christ and life in and of the Holy Spirit will be what creation needs in this day and hour. This, my brothers and sisters, is what the world has been waiting for.

19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-21)

Adam and Eve, in their ignorance and rebellion, subjected all of God’s creation here on earth to frustration. That frustration is actually the law of sin and death at work to do what its ally Satan also does: to steal, to kill and to destroy (John 10:10a). If Adam and Eve had not “bitten the big apple,” certainly that opportunity would have been presented to us. Nonetheless, creation has been held in bondage to decay from the time of the Garden of Eden until now. All of creation has been waiting for many millennia for its emancipation from this cruel imprisonment, waiting to be brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. This glorious freedom is the diametric opposite to Satan’s work of stealing, killing, and destroying. This glorious freedom is what Jesus called “life”. This is the life of which we were speaking when we examined the zoe-life, the life of absolute abundance. This is the life that is hidden within each of God’s children. This is the absolute life that yearns to be revealed to creation, and this is the absolute life that all creation yearns to see. As we determine to allow this life to be revealed in each of us, creation’s desires will be fulfilled.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:22-25)

Again, remember that Paul was speaking here primarily to Christians who were being persecuted for their faith in Christ. They were at the beginning of the timeline of the Church of Christ on earth. They were indeed suffering for their faith, and many were losing their earthly lives to find their heavenly rewards in Christ. This passage speaks to them in hope and exhorts the believers to be patient as they wait for what the Spirit has promised. Every word that Paul wrote to the various Churches were words of hope, giving believers encouragement to persevere and to seek diligently the Kingdom of God and all that awaits the believer there.

Two thousand years later, we are at the other end of the timeline. Every day that goes by means we are that much closer to the return of Jesus Christ our Lord. As the days intensify and the battle that is being waged in the spiritual realm for justice and righteousness grows, we must realize we are about to enter times of persecution the earth has not seen since the beginning of the Church. Satan will inevitably make one last stand for his kingdom of darkness with unprecedented levels of thievery, murder, and destruction.

As the forces of evil and darkness ramp up their battle, we must know God will not be defeated. Revelation states clearly there will be much tribulation in the earth, but Jesus Christ will finish victoriously, and He will reign forever with His people. Our question is: if the battle is about to be joined, how will we serve? Will we shrink in fear as the heathen will, or will we rise and join the ranks of the believers who will walk in faith, speaking the words of victory that have been given to us by the apostles, prophets, and Jesus Christ Himself? This is the destiny of the sons and daughters of God!

We have many accounts in the Scriptures and in Fox’s Book of Martyrs of men and women who gave their lives for the sake of Christ and His gospel. There is a courage that comes from the Holy Spirit that most men of the earth will never experience. Paul alluded to this courage when he spoke of having his eyes set on the goal for which he was striving in Philippians 3:12-14:

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

All Paul could see from his point in the race was the face of Christ Jesus. He had forgotten what was behind; he strained toward what was ahead. Earlier in this same passage, Paul said that he considered everything garbage compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord (Philippians 3:8-9). This, my friends, is the hope to which Paul refers in Romans 8:24-25. The hope of gaining eternity with Jesus Christ provides all the courage a man or woman could ever need or want. As each of us runs the race of life, we must also look toward the goal—toward the finish line—and disregard every hindrance and obstacle that we may encounter along the way. We must fix our eyes on Jesus Christ our Lord (Hebrews 12:1-2); then we will have sufficient courage, knowing that He is our reward, and nothing good or bad can cause us to shrink from our ultimate desire of embracing Christ at the finish line.

Our final adoption as sons and daughters will happen there, in heaven; the revelation of the sons and daughters of God will happen here, on this side of eternity. As we live our lives here on earth while we strive for heaven, we must allow God to be who He is through us. This is what will reveal us as the children of God. As we follow His every command, as we submit to His every leading, and as we speak His anointed word, we will find that God is living His zoe-life through us to reach others in order to bring them to this same covenant adoption that we have experienced. This is never something that we can work up or do by human will; this is only possible as each of us submits totally to the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. As we awake in the morning, we must immediately make the choice to live according to the Spirit for the entire day. As we go to sleep at night, we must assess how we have lived in the Spirit, and we must resolve to do so even more intently the next day and the day after that. We must remember that we are to set our minds on heaven, on things above, where Christ now sits at the Father’s right hand. We must remember that our lives are now hid with this same Jesus Christ; we have died in Him—He now lives through us.

The least thing in heaven is more glorious than the greatest thing of earth. May we all allow God Himself to live in and through each of us as we walk the streets of our towns.  May we each be so in touch with our Lord through His Spirit that we speak His words and extend His hands as we offer His hope and share His life.  This is . . . the revelation of the sons and daughters of God!

Chapter 22 / In Him, We are Called

26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. (Romans 8:26-27)

When will we lay aside the childish doctrine that the believer in Christ is stranded here on earth while God is millions of miles away, sitting aloof upon His throne and granting crumbs in answer to prayers for loaves of bread? When will we take Jesus at His word that the Spirit of God is with us and in us? When will we believe His promise that we will do what He has been doing and doing greater things because He has gone to the Father’s side and has sent His Holy Spirit to dwell within us? Those who are conformed to the image of Christ must live in the revelation and realization that, through His Spirit, God dwells within us to accomplish His work in this earth, carrying on the very ministry that Jesus Christ performed as He walked the hills and valleys of Israel.

As we learn to rely on the power, insight, knowledge, and instruction of the Holy Spirit of God within each of us, we will find that it is a much wiser and better way to live. We will find that one word from God can change a life; one idea from God can change a nation. The key to successful Christian living is facing the fact that our physical eyes can only see one part of the complete picture, allowing the eternal eyes of God to give us the information we need to make good decisions. It is absolutely true that God works on a “need-to-know” basis, and many things of the Kingdom we do not need to know right now, but He will give us all information that we do need to minister and pray successfully in our time. This information is given to us through the Spirit of God; the Spirit knows the heart and mind of God, and He knows our hearts as well.

As we pray, we must learn to pray in concert with the Holy Spirit. We must allow Him to bring to mind those for whom we should pray. We must allow Him to show us how to pray and what petitions to bring to the Father in the name of Jesus. It is possible that we may not have the words to express these petitions, so we must allow the Holy Spirit to give word and voice to our petitions. We may find ourselves praying in the Spirit with groans that words cannot express (Romans 8:26). This is entirely scriptural. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:18 that we should “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” We must learn to rely on the Holy Spirit to enable and empower our prayers. As we do, we will become confident that our prayers will be answered because we know that the Spirit prays in unity with the will of the Father. The exercise of praying in the Spirit stimulates our minds and spirits to come into line with God’s will which is when we begin to manifest His image in our lives. We find that we listen less and less to the wisdom of man and listen more and more to the wisdom of God because we find that God’s wisdom is real. Man’s wisdom is, at best, superficial and certainly artificial in comparison to the wisdom of God. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 2:15-16:

15 The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment:  16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord  that he may instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

We indeed have been given the mind of Christ through the person of the Holy Spirit. Let us spend our time studying and training in the truth of God and much less time in the doctrines of the world system. We will find ourselves rapidly conforming to the image of Christ as we soak in His will and His ways.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. (Romans 8:28-30)

Those who are called according to the purpose of God are those who have accepted a place in the Kingdom of God. The covenant that we have with God is the single point around which our lives revolve. God, in His grace, has offered to each person forgiveness and redemption from Adam’s legacy of sin and death. Those who have accepted His offer of redemption have given themselves to the Father as His adopted sons and daughters in Christ Jesus. We are now called according to His purpose, not our own. Our own purposes and plans died at the cross of Christ. We have died, and our lives are now hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). We are now predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

We are sons and daughters of the Father and younger brothers and sisters of Jesus. It is interesting that this very truth, written plainly in Romans 8, has become a bone of contention in the Church. Those who preach this truth vigorously are often labeled as heretics and false teachers: “Dogs beget puppies! Cats beget kittens! Bears beget cubs!” And yet, when God begets His own sons and daughters, we call ourselves anything but sons and daughters of the Living God. We are so afraid of committing the purported sin of Eden—of wanting to be like God—that we shrink from such a thought. The truth is that the serpent Satan perverted the words of God in his temptation of Eve. The command of God was that Adam should not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Period. The truth is also that Adam was more like God than any other creature in the Garden, including the serpent. By disrespecting God’s command, Adam actually gave up his ‘god-likeness’ for a life of toil and anxiety, a future of sin and death. He became more like Satan and much less like His Creator. But now, by God’s grace and the sacrifice of His Son—the Second Adam—Jesus Christ, we are now brought back into His glory and into His likeness. We are called to be like God! As we live in Christ, this calling is truly fulfilled.

The process is clear. We are born into His Kingdom through our faith and by His grace. We have reached out to take hold of His gift of life. We are now predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ. Once we have been predestined to His image, we are called to His holiness and righteousness, to His will and His ways, and to His service and ministry.  Once we are called, then we are justified to His standards. We can no longer rely on human patterns or examples; we must ascend and strive for the standards of heaven, allowing the Holy Spirit to do this work within us and not by our human effort. Once we are justified, made righteous and placed in right-standing with the Father, we are glorified. The glory of God is in essence the visible manifestation of the Presence of God in the earth and in heaven. When the glory of God filled the temple, all of the priests saw the fire that surrounded the Presence of God (2 Chronicles 7:1-2). When we are glorified, we are actually filled with and covered in the glorifying Presence of the Most High God. Paul wrote that we are, in fact, the new temples of the Living God (1Corinthians 3:16, 6:19). We are predestined to be conformed to His image, called to His ways and His works, justified to His standards and welcomed in His throne room. We are glorified and filled with His Presence. The serpent could not change that!

Let us take one more look at Romans 8:28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

This verse has been taken out-of-context to support the extra-biblical doctrine of “everything happens for a reason.” While we may not totally deny that every occurrence must “pass through the hands of God,” we do question that God ordains evil works such as murder, rape, thievery, destruction, and rebellion. The many things that happen to us are the result of evil here in the earth. These are all the results of the original sin in the Garden of Eden and are all products of the law of sin and death at work in a fallen human race. Sickness and disease were not the will of God for Adam and his descendents. We can agree that God can take any event or condition and redeem it for good. We must always count on the ability of God to right wrongs and to bring good from bad. We may believe these things, but the verse above was written in the context of God’s plan for His sons and daughters, in bringing them to maturity in the image of Jesus Christ. Every resource of heaven is brought to bear to bring us into perfection, and every day we live by the Spirit brings us that much closer to the image of Christ being formed in us and through us. This, my brothers and sisters in Christ, is our destiny, and all things work together to form us into the perfect image of Christ.

Chapter 23 / In Him, More than Conquerors

31 What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?                                                                                          (Romans 8:31-32)

The God who has predestined us, called us, and justified and glorified us is indeed for us. The God who has made covenant with His people through the sacrifice and blood of His Son Jesus has given His inheritance to the children whom He has adopted. If the Father would give up His only begotten Son, His most treasured possession, for the ransom of us whom He would adopt, then would He not certainly also graciously give us all other things as well? We may think we are lowly and unworthy of His love, but the Father obviously thinks we are worthy; the price of our redemption was His precious, perfect Son.

Ephesians 2:4 says, “But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions.” Paul goes on to say in verse 6, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” The “all things” that Paul mentions in Romans 8:32 are the “incomparable riches of His grace” that he mentions in Ephesians 2:6. The basic truth is that if we have Jesus, we have everything that we need. The very name of Jesus in Hebrew means salvation. To those of Biblical times, salvation meant deliverance, forgiveness, provision, healing, protection, peace, wholeness, life, and victory. Salvation also has an eternal aspect to it in that every facet of salvation is applicable for the past, present, and future. It is this idea of salvation that Paul writes of as he speaks of “all things” and “the incomparable riches of His grace.” Everything that we will ever need for life and godliness is carefully hidden in Jesus Christ. All we need to do to access these riches of salvation is to seek first the Kingdom of God in Christ and to seek His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). The Father has graciously given us all these things in Christ Jesus.

33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.  (Romans 8:33-34)

There is really only one who has had the office of bringing condemnation against mankind from the dawn of creation: Satan. His very name, Satanas[vi], means adversary. He is the one who set the trap for Adam and Eve, and he is the one who tempted Jesus—the Second Adam—during His time in the wilderness. Satan is also the one who came before the Lord in the Book of Job, asking for permission to attack Job. Another name for Satan is the devil, or diabolos[vii]. The literal meaning for the word “devil” is accuser. He is the one who has always accused man before God, and he is the one who has accused God before man.

Consider two cases where the accuser comes before God to make his case against men. The first example was in the Book of Job, and the second is found in Luke 22, where Satan has asked to sift Peter as wheat. Whatever his agenda, we know that Satan is the very one to bring such slanderous accusations against God’s creation: man.

However, there is no longer any condemnation as Romans 8:1-2 says: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” Satan’s accusations only had power over the man or woman living under the law of sin and death. Those who have died to sin and have joined Christ in His resurrection are those who are now under the law of the Spirit of life. We are set free from the law of sin and death, and Satan may not accuse us. We are no longer in his domain. As the Scripture above says,

33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.  (Romans 8:33-34)

We, as believers in Christ Jesus, are hidden in Christ Jesus. At the cross of the New Covenant, we have taken part in His death, and, at the tomb, we have taken part in His resurrection. We are in Him, and He is in us (John 14:20, 15:4).  That is the ultimate benefit of the New Covenant, and our Lord Jesus sits at the Father’s right hand interceding for His new brothers and sisters in whom He is totally invested. Satan may try all he might, but he can no longer bring slanderous accusations against us, for we are in Christ. What is more, every day that we are being formed into the image of Jesus Christ is a day closer to our final phase of redemption when we exist in His Presence forever and ever.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.  (Romans 8:35-36)

We know that Satan may no longer accuse the believers before God. Can he in any way separate the believers from the love of Christ? Is there any trouble or hardship that Satan can bring to place himself between the believers in Christ and their Lord? Is there any persecution that can cause the believers in Christ to turn back or to shrink from their mission? Is there any famine or nakedness that can deprive the believers of their salvation that is hidden in Christ? Is there any violence or threat or impending martyrdom that can separate Christians from their Christ? Is there any cross or guillotine or sword or rifle that can cause Christians to deny the very One in whom their life is hidden?   The answer is a resounding . . .

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.                                                                               (Romans 8:37-39)

No, no, a thousand times, no! There is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Because of His wonderful work at the cross, we are now one with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The New Covenant was consummated as the blood of our Savior and Lamb of God flowed down the cross that gave us life. But more than that, as our High Priest went into the heavenly Holy of Holies and ministered His own blood on the mercy seat in heaven, our death-filled sin was completely done away with, sending it as far as the east is from the west.

24 For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:24-26)

The work that Christ has done needs never be done again. His blood is so effective as an agent of cleansing and remission from sin that one sacrifice is all that can or will ever be offered. He has done away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and, because of this sacrifice, there is nothing that can separate the receiver of this grace from the One who gives it. There is no death or life, angels or demons, anything past, present, or future, powers, height, depth, or anything conceivable in all creation that can separate Christians from their Christ.  No! We are more than conquerors through Christ Jesus who loves us, and, if we cannot be separated, then we shall not be defeated, for we know that in Christ our final victory is already won.

Brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, we must take hold of this truth and begin to press in to the deep and bountiful blessings that are found in fellowship with God.  We must begin to seek Him with all of our heart, for we know that as we do we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). We must allow our faith in God to break free from tradition and dusty religion and seek the water that forever quenches our thirsty soul (John 4:13-14). We must determine at this moment to set our minds on things of the Spirit of God and not on things of the sinful nature and the flesh (Romans 8:5-8). We must set our mind on things above where Christ now sits at God’s right hand (Colossians 3:1-3). We must count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11). We must keep in step with the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:25) and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests (Ephesians 6:18). We must allow the Holy Spirit to help us in our prayers (Romans 8: 26-27), and, most importantly, we must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, knowing that He has hidden in Christ Jesus everything that we need—past, present and future (Matthew 6:33). As we do these things, we will find ourselves increasingly conformed to the image of Christ.

Chapter 24 / Into His Image

6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man,  he humbled himself  and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!  (Philippians 2:6-8)

Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, came to earth cloaked in the flesh that He had created millennia before. He came as a descendent of Adam and Noah and Abraham and David. His mother was a descendent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. His Father is Jehovah God Most High, the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth.  According to Paul’s treatise on the humanity and deity of Christ, the Anointed One, Jesus was indeed God. And yet, at His own choosing, He came to earth as a man, a mere man. Yes, He was and is the Son of God; however, the Scriptures make it very clear that Jesus emptied Himself of His “God-ness” and took on himself the humble position as a son of Adam, which is the literal meaning of His own appellation—Son of Man. He became like us!

In addition, as Jesus began His earthly ministry, He went to the Jordan River and was baptized by the Old Covenant prophet and “Preparer of the Way of the Lord,” John the Baptist.  As Jesus arose from immersion in the river, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him as a dove as the Father proclaimed, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:16-17, Luke 3:21-22).  Thus began the earthly ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was at this point that the same Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to allow Him to be tried by the devil; we know that Jesus spoke God’s truth to the enemy of our souls, thus resisting and successfully withstanding temptation.

The very next appearance that Jesus made after His temptation in the wilderness was in synagogues throughout His home region of Galilee. Luke records that Jesus returned to Galilee in the “power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14). As He came to His hometown of Nazareth, He visited the synagogue there on the Sabbath. Let’s take a look at this passage from Luke 4:

14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, 21 and he began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.   (Luke 4:14-21)

The Son of Man, who had emptied Himself of His “God-ness”, His deity, reads this prophecy from Isaiah 61, a prophecy referring specifically to Himself. Jesus, who had allowed the prophet to baptize Him in the Jordan River, who had heard along with everyone there God’s booming commendation of His Son-ship, and who had been led by the Spirit into the wilderness and then out of it again in power, stood to read Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming Messiah. The people were well-acquainted with this prophecy; their amazement and possible puzzlement was at Jesus’ proclamation that He was the One to fulfill their honored prophecy.

Isaiah had written at the prompting of the Lord: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me. He has anointed me with His Spirit to preach the gospel to the poor, proclaim liberty for the captives and recovering of sight for the blind, to set the captive free and to preach the year of the Jubilee for mankind.” We have seen in previous chapters that this is, in fact, what Jesus has done for each of us. We now know that we have freedom from oppression, captivity, and slavery because of Christ’s blood sacrifice at the cross. We now have freedom and sight and eternal riches, all hidden in the Christ who died for us, fulfilled by the Holy Spirit sent to dwell within each of us, His believers.

However, what we are rarely, if ever, taught is that the Son of Man has set for us a precedent, an example in how to live the life of the redeemed. Jesus came to earth as man, not using His “God-ness” to His advantage (Philippians 2:6). He humbled Himself and took on Himself the very nature of humankind, making Himself nothing. The indisputable truth is this: Jesus Christ emptied Himself of His deity and walked the earth as a Spirit-anointed man. He performed every aspect of His ministry from teaching to healing to delivering from demons to prayer under the anointing of the Holy Spirit that descended upon Him in the Jordan River. Jesus raised the dead by the very same power that raised Him from the dead—the power of the Holy Spirit of God (Romans 1:4). He withstood temptation in the wilderness and in the Garden of Gethsemane by the power of the Holy Spirit, not by His own power as Son of God. Why would Jesus, the Anointed One, perform His righteous acts of ministry as a Spirit-empowered man and not as the God who sends the Spirit? Would His sacrifice for our sins have been valid if He had remained sinless as God and not as a perfect man? Would victory over sin and death have been as profound if Jesus had won it as God and not as the spotless Lamb, the sinless Son of Adam?

Yes, Jesus became like us so that by the power of the Holy Spirit we might become like Him!

Jesus emptied Himself of His deity and did nothing on this earth that we cannot do in the Holy Spirit’s power and anointing.

Yes, He has set for us an example: Do the will of the Father, and do it in the power of the Holy Spirit!

As 21st century Christians, we recount the theory that we are just “sinners saved by grace,” awaiting our glorious home-going while quite unable to minister as Jesus, the Son of God, did in all of “His God-ness.” Can we handle the unvarnished truth in the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation? We have no excuse to be living as anything other than sons and daughters of the Living God. We have no excuse not to perform Christ’s Great Commission in this earth. We have no excuse not to lay hands on the sick and see them recover. We have no excuse not to release captives from oppression of the devil. We have no excuse to surrender meekly ourselves to temptations of this world and of the enemy. We have no excuse to deny the Sovereign Christ who purchased our souls with His own blood, denying Him in the face of political and religious persecution. Truth be told, we have no excuse not to raise the dead by the power of the Great Resurrector, the Holy Spirit. All these things Jesus did and more but under the same power that we have been sent from heaven, the power of the Holy Spirit of Christ.  That, my friends, is nothing but the truth.

In fact, the commission Jesus took upon Himself that day in the Nazareth synagogue is the same commission that Jesus has left for us. It is the same commission that He gave to His disciples in Matthew 10:

7 As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. (Matthew 10:7-8)

I              t is the same commission that Jesus gave as He sent out the seventy-two.

He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. . . When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ . . . Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’”  (Luke 10: 2, 5, 9).

It is the same commission that He gave the disciples before His ascension:

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)

15 He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.’   (Mark 16:15-18)

If we still have doubts as to whether we are to be walking in Spirit-empowered ministry, then we will certainly remember what Jesus said the night before He went to the cross:

11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.  (John 14:11-14)

This is God’s will for us! We have been given the right to walk as sons and daughters of God because of Christ’s sacrifice. We have been restored to right-standing with the Father. The heritage that Adam squandered is the heritage that Jesus has won back for us. The difference is this: Adam did not have his God living inside of him to keep him from evil; we do! Not only that, but we have also been given the ministry to reconcile others to the newfound heritage that now belongs to each believer. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

How will we perform such a daunting ministry as this? The same way that Jesus, the Anointed, did as He healed, delivered, fed, comforted, and taught the multitudes: by the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Again, we have no excuse. In His promises, He has given us everything that we now need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him (2 Peter 2:3-4). He has given us His gifts so that the Body of Christ may continue the work that He has left for us to do (1 Corinthians 12:4-11, Romans 12:3-8, Ephesians 4:11-13). He has given us His Fruit of the Spirit whom we will need to interact with and in this world (Galatians 5:22-23). He has given us the blood of the New Covenant, whereby we may engage the heavenly task and those who oppose it with confidence (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). He has given us His promise that nothing will be able to separate us from Him and His love though persecutions and threats of death should arise (Romans 8:31-39, Hebrews 13-5-6). He has given us His promise of His glorious return and hope that we have of living eternally in His presence:

12 Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. (Revelation 22:12-13)

He became like us, so that we could become like Him. Let us now become like Him by the power of His Holy Spirit within!

Let’s end with one final thought. Close to one hundred years ago, there sailed a renowned British explorer of the Antarctic continent. With him were twenty-eight other men whom he respected greatly for their abilities and courage. In fact, he loved them as brothers, as sharers together in the exploration of the mostly unknown and often brutal continent.

Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew approached Antarctica in 1914, and yet their ship was soon tenaciously bound in packed ice with no hope of release until the end of the next winter. Unfortunately, the incredible mounting pressures of the ice began to squeeze the ship until one day the Endurance was broken apart and eventually sunk beneath the ice. This left twenty-nine courageous men to fend for themselves on a floating floe of polar ice, drifting through the icy sea in sub-freezing temperatures. Their supplies began to dwindle, and they survived mostly on seals and penguins and with melted ice chips as their drink. They eventually were able to make it to an uninhabited island off the coast of the Antarctic continent in three small lifeboats that had been salvaged from their sinking home.

Knowing that time for their survival was quickly fleeing, Shackleton and five other men set out in one of the small boats to find civilization and rescue for the others. Through eight hundred miles of incredibly cold and stormy seas, they sailed. Many times their small boat almost capsized and sank with the men thinking each day could be their last. They finally landed on South Georgia Island where they obtained help and a ship of rescue. They began another long quest to find their way back through the maze of ice floes to rescue the other men, arriving shortly before some would begin to die. All were rescued, and Sir Ernest Shackleton quickly gave all credit to Providence, to the God of Creation, for their blessed ending.

As a good commander and ship captain, Sir Ernest’s concern was always for his men, not for himself. He knew, however, that his survival meant the best chance for the successful rescue of his crew. As his tiny boat was tossed in the frigid, tempestuous South Atlantic Ocean, the only thing that mattered to Shackleton was the rescue of his men stranded on Elephant Island, hundreds of miles behind him. He did not rest until they were all safe and sound. In fact, when all were safe and accounted for, Shackleton began rescue efforts for the crew of another ship that had been stranded as well on the great frozen continent where land and sea show no mercy. His own safety only mattered in that it gave him the time and ability to rescue the others. [viii]

We could probably explore other such accounts of bravery and unselfish desires to rescue the lost. However, our most applicable example, in my opinion, would be the Apostle Paul, who wrote both the books of Ephesians and Romans as well as many others.  Through his many trials and persecutions and near-death experiences, the only thing that Paul could think about was the people to whom he had preached and would preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As a “captain” of the Church of Jesus Christ, Paul would not rest until he had rescued as many as God would allow from the cold, dark and stormy seas of sin and death, to bring them on board the ship of mercy, and to train them to be rescuers of others drowning in the same seas of despair. Paul, who toward the end of his ministry, weighed on one hand the benefits of departing to be with Christ, which was far better, and weighed on the other hand the benefits of staying to help Christ’s Church to grow in numbers and maturity. His response was this:

21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23 I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; 24 but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me. (Philippians 1:21-26)

And Paul did remain for a time, but God would soon call him home to his heavenly reward. Just a verse prior to the passage above, Paul said, “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:20-21).

Perhaps, our prayer should be the same as Paul’s as we seek to be conformed to the living image of Christ:

May each of us have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in our bodies whether by life or by death. May we have the courage to forsake all that this world has to offer, pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold for us. And may we know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

(paraphrased from Philippians 1:20, 3:10, 12).

May God bless each of us as we seek daily to be increasingly conformed to the image of Christ!

Endnotes

[i]

Diatheke – Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for “Diatheke” (Strong's G1242). Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 11 March 2011.

[ii] Rhema - Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for “Rhema” (Strong's G4487). Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 11 March 2011.

[iii] Shama - Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for “Shama” (Strong's H8085). Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 11 March 2011.

[iv] Dynamis - Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for “Dynamis” (Strong's G1411). Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 11 March 2011.

[v] Zoe - Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for “Zoe” (Strong's G2222). Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 11 March 2011.

[vi] Satanas - Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for “Satanas” (Strong's G4567). Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 11 March 2011.

[vii] Diabolos - Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for ”Diabolos” (Strong's G1228). Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 11 March 2011.

[viii] Shackleton, Sir Ernest,  South-The Endurance Expedition.  New York: Penguin Putnam/Signet, 1999

Table of Contents

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter 1 / In His Eyes

Chapter 2 / In Him, We are Adopted

Chapter 3 / In Him, We are Redeemed

Chapter 4 / In Him, We are Sealed

Chapter 5 / In Him, We Hope

Chapter 6 / In Him, We Live

Chapter 7 / In Him, We are Joined

Chapter 8 / In Him, We are Welcomed

Chapter 9 / In Him, We are Filled

Chapter 10 / In Him, We are One

Chapter 11 / In Him, We are New

Chapter 12 / In Him, We are Light

Chapter 13 / In Him, We Submit

Chapter 14 / In Him, We Pray

Chapter 15 / In Him, We are Justified

Chapter 16 / In Him, We Reign

Chapter 17/ In Him, We are Free

Chapter 18 / In Him, We are Delivered

Chapter 19 / In Him, We are Alive!

Chapter 20 / In Him, We are Heirs!

Chapter 21 / In Him, We Glory!

Chapter 22 / In Him, We are Called

Chapter 23 / In Him, More than Conquerors

Chapter 24 / Into His Image

Endnotes