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My friends, as usual I feel totally and utterly inadequate and ill-equipped to express anything even close to what He is. My puny words cannot fully contain Him. My thoughts, however high, fail to ascend anywhere near the height in which He dwells in all His Supremacy and Glory. It is like trying to describe light or truth or peace with mere words and language. You can’t really, you can only come to possess them, and know that you have them. Yet, something inside me compels me to try. O that I would see Him in anything but form and shadow, as He truly is. That I would come to know Him - the Awesome and Absolute Life known as The Christ. Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech-- unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. (2 Cor. 3:12-16) He is the essential theme and focus of the Scriptures, is He not? – Is He not there “In the beginning” and in that final “Amen”? Does His glory and promise not shine on all pages in between? As we approach the Book is it anything less than He we are searching for? If so, then we will surely not see Him there, for He is the All and Everything in time past, time present and time future. He is the meaning we must seek throughout. Only in Him is the veil of the scripture lifted so that the Lord's message can unfold. He is the One, my brethren, and this bears repeating in this hour when it seems we have taken our eyes off of Him and His pre-eminence in the perfect plan and purpose of God. He alone is that great Mystery, Truth, Wisdom, Life and Light of the World as recorded in our Holy Bible. He alone is our ultimate objective, and only in Him does every good thing flow down from the Father in Heaven in all fullness and life. Only when we as Christians really comprehend this deep in “the bowels” as they say, will all of the wondrous glories of the Scriptures open up to us, both in our understanding and living walk. Consider the literally hundreds of shadows, types, names and titles, figures and ideals recorded throughout the Bible - in both Old and New Testaments - that in some way or another point to or are affirmed in Him. As disciples, we understand (or should anyway) on a practical level how all divine promises and ideals are realized in Him, and in the newness of life that He represents for us. Yet in much of our Christian teaching and practice today, we hold this rather loosely don’t we. And the result far too often is that these ideals - once removed from the root and ground of Christ - become little more than abstractions and empty sermons. In this post, I would like to throw out something that may be a little controversial to some, but shouldn’t be. It is this - that when we come to our Bibles and discover such mysterious and perfect concepts such as Life, Light, Truth, Wisdom, Righteousness, Grace, Peace, Joy, Holiness, Victory, Freedom, Strength, Godliness (the list goes on, etc…), we can quite easily view these as synonymous with the Person of Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is entirely helpful to do so, both in terms of our fruitfulness in study and application. These words, as existent throughout all pages of Scripture, are practically “code words” for Christ. He, as the “fullness of God”, embodies the utter perfection that they contain. Like these words, He is the ultimate; there is nothing higher, or deeper, or more complete. Just as you cannot add anything to life or truth to get something more or greater, you cannot add to Him. For us, He is the very most we can hope for, or realize as new spiritual creatures. And when we approach the Scriptures seeking Him there, it is quite natural and even appropriate to see Him in all of these many aspects of ultimate reality. Did He not declare that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life? And also is He not love, for the Scriptures affirm that God is love. As we gain Christ do we not also acquire all of the many aspects of His perfect nature, including grace, truth, righteousness, wisdom, peace, holiness, godliness and the like. He is the entirety of fullness and completeness – anything less is empty and incomplete. As we are equipped in Him, in all of the power and freedom of this new spiritual reality, are we not clothed in His attributes? For example, when He says that blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, is this not essentially the same as saying we are to be spiritually hungry for Him? When the Book of Proverbs enjoins us to “get wisdom and understanding”, does this not translate for the Christian that we are to pursue Christ, and as a result, His wisdom and understanding will be accessible to us? Go ahead and try it, my friends. Replace every instance of the word “wisdom” in Proverbs with the name of Christ, and see if this doesn’t blow this book wide open with meaning and relevance. And in Deuteronomy 30, where the choice between life and death is presented to the nation of Israel, we Christians can comprehend this as a decision for or against Christ, for He is Life and there can be no possibility of blessing apart from Him. (Note: Go easy my hyper-dispensationalist friends. Take a few deep breaths and step back a bit from your lines and divisions. Here again, it is Christ you see, that answers all of your questions. As the Book of Hebrews reveals, He is the unifying thread that ties together all of God’s workings with man.) In Colossians 3:12-15, substitute “tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, love and the peace of God”, with “the Lord Jesus Christ”, and see if it does not instantly put it all into the right perspective. Nor is there holiness, godliness, righteousness, victory, liberty, glory or light other than that flowing out of Him into the redeemed soul of the new man. You, O man, who presumes to have these things apart from the exchanged life in Him, I say you are a fool, a legalist, a religionist, and a pretender. When we fall on our knees before the Holy Father and pray for strength or power or freedom or victory, are we in fact not merely asking for more of the life of Jesus Christ pulsing in our soul and spirit. Is He not the Tree of Life we so desperately require, and the heavenly ladder that ascends into the heart of the Father? And are not all of these, in ultimate fulfillment, the Lord Jesus Christ? He is the ideal man, the perfectly wise One who always does the Father’s will, and fulfills His good pleasure and intent. We cannot hope to be equipped with wisdom or any other perfect thing, unless we are filled with all the fullness of God. These too, are code words for Christ, for He alone is the very fullness of god in all perfection and light. As students of the Bible, we tend to toss these high words around as if we actually know what they represent, as if they actually mean anything apart from Him. The truth is, they do not, and when we stumble down this path we fall into that same godless humanism spawned in Eden and fulfilled at Babel; the satanic notion that man can fulfill his creative purpose if only he knows where to look, and applies himself perfectly to the task. We seem to have put the cart before the horse in so much of our teaching today, whereby we teach young converts that if they live pure lives, resist sin and temptation, keep their hands clean, etc, then Christ will seem closer and more real to them. NONSENSE! It is only when Christ gets inside of us that this purity or any other high thing is even possible. Until this happens, nothing happens! What is it you want, my brother – power, strength, victory, peace, knowledge? Well I tell you here and now that these are all code words for Christ! Get Him, and all the rest will follow and flow, and watch and see how the old man begins to be undone from the inside, as His regenerative life and spirit begins to clear out the cobwebs of 7,000 years of man’s rebellion and death. O Father in Heaven, help us to see your Beloved Son on each and every page of your Holy Bible. Keep us, O Lord, from the lie that there is anything good in us apart from Him. Help His Glory and Life to shine forth in our study as we search the Scriptures, and realize deep down in the heart how much we need Him. Help us to grasp this life-changing truth that until He enters our hearts and assumes the throne of our lives, we are no better or different than Adam. Equip us, dear Father, with His Perfect Nature, with all the fullness of God found solely in Him, that we may finally and ultimately be all that we were created to be, for your Glory and Honor. In His Wondrous Name, we pray. Amen. Please pray for us here at Living-Walk, that we would watch and see the Master at work, and understand what He would have us do. Your friend in Christ Jesus,
Wayne |
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