Gospel of John [16:12-15]. The Doctrine of the HS, part 59 - The World. 2Co 11:1-4; Luk 1:35; Joh 1:1-14.

Title: Gospel of John [16:12-15]. The Doctrine of the HS, part 58 - The World. 2CO 11:1-4; LUK 1:35; JOH 1:1-14.

 

 

Christ says that the moment you put yourself in His hands you are in for a complete journey to be conformed to His image. Nothing less, or other, than that.

 

Whatever suffering is may cost you and whatever circumstances are allowed to happen to you, Christ will not hold back on all that is needed.

 

Think of how much it cost Him. He did not shrink back from completing it perfectly, in fact when He said, "It is finished," He used the perfect tense of the verb. In other words, "I left nothing undone."

 

We may be content to be ordinary people, but He is determined to carry out a different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice.

 

The world likes ordinary people. The ones in charge want it that way so that they hang on to their wealth and power. The prince of the power in the air has set up this system. Even in our day invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship are discouraged so that the flow of wealth remains where it is. The powers want us all in our place, like in Orwell's 1984. Christ, the unique One who could not be pigeon holed, and He is not manufacturing His believers in this way either.

 

This is why we should not be surprised if we find that we are in for one heck of a ride that is not in any way like an ordinary life. We are not better forms of the world or better forms of the heathen, but something entirely different, existing in the heavenlies and destined to rule with Christ physically over the kingdoms that He is going to present to His Father in their completed and perfect form. His job is not over and He will complete it so that again, there is nothing left undone.

 

In borrowing a parable from George MacDonald: Imagine yourself living in a house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to live in it Himself.

 

He will make the feeblest and filthiest of  us into a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with energy, joy, wisdom, and love that we cannot now imagine. He is going to make us a bright, stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly His own delightful virtue and power, though, of course, on a much smaller scale. The process will be a lifetime and in parts it will be very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

 

Sure there are many doctrines but there is one faith. There are many churches with educational systems, outreaches, missions, etc. but there is one Church. The whole of it is to create invisible heroes who understand that they are eternally connected to the one body of Christ, but an eye is not a hand - we still maintain our individuality. Our government is enormous and so complex, but it was designed with a very singular purpose in mind and that was to protect and ensure the natural rights of the citizens as declared in our Declaration of Independence. If the government is not helping in that then it is a colossal waste of time. If the Church is not drawing men to Christ and teaching all converts how to be conformed into the image of Christ then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, and even the Bible books themselves are simply a waste of time.

 

Satan raises our attention to the details of God's program in the hope that we lose sight of His whole purpose, so that we may pick and chose some favorites and so then be drawn away from the others.

 

It is not wrong to look at the details, but as we delve into them we are to never lose sight of the whole or the singularity of the whole purpose of God.

 

Notice the context of the passage:

 

2CO 11:1 I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness; but indeed you are bearing with me.

 

2CO 11:2 For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.

 

2CO 11:3 But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity [singleness or unaffectedness] and purity of devotion to Christ.

 

2CO 11:4 For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.

 

The failure or divergence away from simplicity or singularity is their acceptance of "another" Jesus, spirit, and gospel. The same occurred in the Garden of Eden where they accepted another way than God's.

 

The world is full of those who have accepted another way and are trapped in the three dimensional world. Their solutions, their societies, their education, their desires and interests are all of that realm. The believer has been lifted to another realm and all of desires and interests of the believer are to now be turned over to Christ.

 

 A mature Christian and an unbeliever shopping at the supermarket will not look any different. But if a question or a crisis of a spiritual nature occurs at that market you will see two completely different creatures. If the two men are together found in a situation, minor or major, where agape love is required there will be two completely different creatures revealed. Some may not still notice him and others may just notice that he was different. Some may denounce him for being so and others may be inspired to know more of what they saw or heard. Whatever the reaction, his nature was revealed and a fragrance of Christ was left behind in the hearts of those who beheld it. It's not that we have to leave a fragrance of Christ everywhere we go; it's just that we should be ready to.

 

There are things in this world that are like God because He created them, but they are not Him just as a self portrait is not the actual artist. The portrait is not alive. The greatness of space and the greatness of God are not the same greatness. The vastness of space is like the omnipresence of God in same sort of way that a picture of a person is a resemblance, but not the person. It is not alive.

 

Man is made in the image of God, but he is not God, fallen or not fallen. Fallen man has life, the most complex and sophisticated of all living things, but he has not got spiritual life. We use the same word "life" for both, but they are not the same sort of thing.

 

God created man - different from Himself, but in His image.

God begat Christ - same as Him; the Son of God.

 

LUK 22:70

And they all said, "Are You the Son of God, then?" And He said to them, "Yes, I am."

 

Christ is true humanity and undiminished deity forever, but He was begotten humanity. Begotten [monogenes] speaks of no beginning, but an eternal and unoriginated relationship. Christ did not become, but necessarily and eternally is the Son. He is unique and so in His dual nature a mystery to be believed by faith.

 

"We can only rightly understand the term "the only begotten" when used of the Son, in the sense of unoriginated relationship. "The begetting is not an event of time, however remote, but a fact irrespective of time. The Christ did not become, but necessarily and eternally is the Son. He, a Person, possesses every attribute of pure Godhood. This necessitates eternity, absolute being; in this respect He is not 'after' the Father" [Vine's Expository Dictionary]

 

His humanity had a birth to which we would say that the body had a beginning in appearance to the world, but wrought in Mary by God the Holy Spirit, unique to Him, we cannot conclude that His physical body is of a beginning as ours are. Some have jumped to the conclusion that Mary's chromosomes were a part of Him, but that is not expressly stated but assumed. It is conjecture.

 

MAT 1:18 When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit

 

The natural assumption is that somehow the HS is the father and Mary is the mother. It is telling that Jesus never calls her mother, but woman.

 

There is one instance where He was teaching around Capernaum and His mother and His brothers came to see Him and they couldn't get to Him because of the crowds and He was told that they were outside:

 

LUK 8:21

But He answered and said to them, "My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it."

 

This is obviously not disrespect but a possible indication of something that is inscrutable, and so I will not venture a theory, but to just open the mind away from conjecture and to the very real doctrine that "begotten Son" is absolutely unique to all humanity who are created. The virgin birth goes much deeper than a physical birth of Jesus without a sin nature.  

 

LUK 1:35 And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.

 

The human race do not possess words that will adequately describe this since it is not of our world. It is like describing volume [3 dimensions] to a two dimensional world.

 

There is no start or beginning to Him, yet He is pure humanity. We have absolutely no reference to this and so it is inscrutable to us. Eternity, in Christ, came into time as light shined in darkness.