Month: November 2020

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 
Hebrews 11:1

On the transformation trail we who have experienced redemption by the blood of Christ are in the process of unlearning many old things and learning many new things. There is an American saying that goes something like this: it’s not just what you don’t know that hurts you, it’s what you know that just ain’t so. We are coming to recognize, in the light of God’s Spirit, that many truths we have taken for granted, perhaps even adopted as the basis of our lives, are not really true. Instead we are learning to rely on the life of another: the life of Jesus who indwells us. 

Some of these so-called truths that we are unlearning have to do with the visible world. The way we relate to the world. The way we get along in the world. Jesus did not ask the Father to take us out of the world, but to keep us from the evil one (John 17:15). And growing up in the world we have been conditioned to depend on education, experience, information and input from our physical senses. All of those sources contradict what Jesus is telling us. It takes faith to stand firm in Christ while being assaulted by contradictory evidence all around us. 

So it’s a good thing that we have many helpful examples in the scripture. Here are a few that are cited in Hebrews 11: 

• Abraham had a promise from God. We read that “no distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God.” But given his advanced age—and that of his wife—it was impossible that the promise could be fulfilled. Sarah laughed in disbelief and received as a reply, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” The Lord is full of wonders, and able to keep His promises. The numerical value of Abraham’s years was no barrier to God.
• Moses grew up in the court of Egypt, a wealthy and powerful nation in the world of that time. When he learned of his heritage and God’s regard for the enslaved children of Israel, he turned his back on the personal wealth and power that he had gained from Egypt. It was impossible for Moses, by himself, to extract his people from the grip of Pharaoh. Nevertheless, Moses resolved not to pay allegiance to Egypt any longer. When the time came, all of that great nation’s wealth and power could not prevent God from using that same Moses to execute His plan and deliver His people. 
• God sent Gideon to confront a large army with a ridiculously lightweight band that was not even armed in any conventional way. The overwhelming numerical advantage of that enemy meant nothing to God in terms of achieving victory. 

Centuries later, Jesus was passing through Samaria. He arrived at one of Jacob’s wells, exhausted. His disciples went to a nearby village to find food. Meanwhile, a woman from the village came to draw water. His request for her to give him to drink sparked a conversation. It was an amazing, revelatory conversation during which he stated, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 

The kind of life that he refers to as eternal has to do with more than enduring for all time. That term encompasses all of the aspects of his own life. Jesus is eternal life, and he gives us eternal life by coming to live within us. As we learn to depend less on ourselves less and on more his life, we will be less influenced—or depressed—by the “facts” of age, political power, wealth and other temporary attributes of the world we live in. 

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And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life. 1 John 5:11-12. 

When God created the visible world, He made many forms of life, the greatest of which was human life. He created humans alone with a spirit as well as a soul and body. This spirit gave them the ability to “understand,” as Elihu put it as he began to speak to Job (Job 32:8). The understanding that God imparted to Adam allowed him to name the other forms of life that God brought before him; naming implies an insight into the character. 

Although the first humans possessed understanding, they had a choice to make: from what source would they draw? In other words, would they take God as the basis of their life, or something outside of Him? God had presented them with the tree of life in the center of the garden, and with an alternative source of life—the tree of knowledge of good and evil—and left them free to draw upon one or the other. Spiritual life and understanding as opposed to natural, soul-powered life and knowledge. They could have chosen to share in the tree of life, and they would have received into themselves divine life with its characteristics. Instead they joined themselves to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and received the life that we have all inherited, our fallen nature, having characteristics with which we are so familiar. 

But what if the humans who were created first had made a different choice? What would their lives have looked like? The answer is in God’s idea of the perfect man, Jesus Christ. Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. Jesus, like our first parents, came into this world without a fallen nature. Jesus, in comparison to them, had the disadvantages of arriving as an infant rather than as an adult and living in a fallen world rather than the more favorable setting of Eden. But when he arrived at the Jordan River to be baptized, the Father declared from heaven: “You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

The Father made this statement before Jesus had preached publicly, attracted any followers or performed any miracles. It was a response to the life he had led as he grew up in Galilee. He was poor, working class, part of a large family that eventually he became responsible for supporting, a Jew sharing in the oppression of Roman occupation. Nevertheless his life was one the likes of which the world had never seen. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). During the brief years of his ministry Jesus openly talked about the source of his life, the Life that he always drew his own life from, the basis of his life. In public, and privately among his disciples, he said things like:

For as the Father has life in himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in himself.John 5:26

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. John 6:57

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father?” Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? John 14:9-10

The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works. John 14:10

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. John 14:11

(Praying for his followers) I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. John 17:20-21

As man, Jesus lived by the life of another: the Father’s life. The author of Hebrews describes this as the “power of an indestructible life.” And what is God’s idea about our life as Christians? We also are to live by the life of another: “And because of him [God], you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1Corinthians 1:30). What the first humans rejected we, in Christ, have the opportunity to welcome back. We can enter into Christ who overruled the fall of humanity. Jesus not only is God’s idea of the perfect human, he is God’s idea of the perfect basis for our Christian journey. By receiving the life that is in the Son, which is eternal life, we gain everything that has everlasting value. 

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