Season 25
Inner Being and the Work of the Cross
Season 24
But the work of the cross, Christ’s sacrificial death, enabled the new connection to God, giving to us access to the new life of God, the light of God, and the ability to love like God.
The disciples were dismayed. And then Peter spoke up with the statement with which we started showing that you can leave it all behind and still be attached to it. He was basically saying, “What’s in it for us?”
The truth of God’s Word and His character have been under assault since Eden. Satan desires to twist it and uses his agents to ‘interpret’ it, dismiss it or marginalize it so as to deceive us concerning God.
There’s a word in the New Testament that is extremely important for us as believers to understand and obey. Our eternity is tied to it. You can think of it as the key word for all the Church – for all of us – no exceptions.
Now, please understand, God’s aim is not to control you like some slavish robot. He made mankind to relate to Him, to be like His Son: Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Gen 1:26) For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Rom 8:27)
First, we all know that God is love but John’s epistle starts with another fundamental truth which is really two truths. God is light. Not visible light; not sunlight or any light on the EM spectrum, but eternal, unbounded, immeasurable spiritual light that shines everywhere. It illuminates not only all His creation but every heart and mind. It reveals truth, it warms the soul, it cleanses and lifts up.
All people exist with the ‘void’ of being separated from the divine. Some are so senseless and dead in their separation, that they don’t even realize the void. Some sense it and cope with it by imagining they can cross or span the void by doing enough good (or evil) and some sense it but deny it in the hope that the emptiness will go away. Some imagine fantasies of there being no divine at all and as a result live like animals.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden was ‘marketed’ by the serpent as God withholding something divine from us. But instead of just knowing good and evil, it warped our minds, causing our perceptions to ‘think’ 180 degrees away from God’s thought and to be in sync with Satan’s.
Yes, we are called to do good (He who does good is of God… 3 John 1:11), we’ve been told to love one another (“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12), we are called to trust God like Jesus, to pray without ceasing, to help and edify those in need, to set our mind on things above, on and on. All of this is part of imitating Christ but none of it is done in your strength. The necessary strength and character attributes come from God’s Spirit:
Just like the serpent did in the garden of Eden, Satan always wants to pollute your perception of Who God is and His promises. He wants you to focus on your sin rather than repent and TRUST for the instant you do you realize that God never left, that you never ‘surprise’ Him, that His love and grace are infinitely more powerful than your failures, that Christ’s blood is and always will be the final Word.