Wisdom 26 Jesus, One Above Us

[HKHaugan]

Wisdom 26 Jesus, One Above Us

 Last time we talked about the Atonement, the choice Jesus, by faith, made to give His life for ours on the Cross so that by faith we could be one with Him. Why? When Adam and Eve, the first people, chose to think and act apart from God whom they knew and follow the devil’s temptation they didn’t know, sin replaced the Spirit and they found themselves alone, frightened and self-centered. Sin was their new spiritual drive and they lost contact with God. Their mind, heart and spirit were separated from God. We inherited that condition from them.   Only a sinless sacrifice could return God’s created images to Him to be restored. Jesus, the only sinless one who ever lived on this earth, took our place on the Cross to bear the burden of sin and destroy its power through His death. He chose His Father’s will to limit Himself to a human body with its limitations, its choices, its temptations, its aloneness nd live by faith in it. That is called the substitutionary atonement. Through it we are made one with the Father.

 He did this to show three things, His love for His Father, the love of His Father for all people, and how we can share that love with others. He took not only our external body but our internal aloneness and lived by faith to show what a perfect human being was all about. He brought His relational grace and love into all His human experience. He is what every human being is created to be like. Not the same but like. That is, each to be unique, creative, living by faith and loving like Jesus.

 The Cross was really the sum of His daily faith choices. Each step was a step in faith doing His Father’s will. His willingness to obey His Father’s will by faith as opposed to a self-centered will foreshadowed the Cross. His Cross showed everything He taught and did in faith was the way to live. Without a complete oneness in human form there can be no assurance we have the One righteousness of God in Christ. Unless He was totally alone in His humanity like us He couldn’t truly relate to us or for us. He had to live by faith in His aloneness like all of us.

 The cross He asks us in our aloneness to embrace is personal faith to live in a relationship with Him, let Him be the Lord of our choices, to let Him live through us. It means the Holy Spirit we lost was returned through the choice we made to be spiritually reborn (Jn.3:16).

 Jesus did not live a religious life. He lived a spiritual and relational life. What that means for us is that we have no way to get to God except through His Son Jesus. Religion died when He died on the Cross. But when He rose from the dead it was the relational love of His Father coming through the Holy Spirit that raised Him. Relational life is an atonement life. It eliminates aloneness, separation and division and restores our relationship with God and one another, if we choose. Aye, there’s the rub,--- faithful choice,--- the Cross at work in us.

 Because Jesus chose to live an atonement life and die an atonement death brings us to a ‘therefore.’ ”Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in Heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Php,2:9-11).”

 Having perfectly fulfilled the will of His Father to be at one with us and at one with His Father, He became our spiritual and relational means to be a child of the Father. Because Jesus did this, He ascended into the highest glory and exaltation. It is in the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, that we see the words of the ascended Lord Jesus ruling from the throne of Heaven. Reading it spiritually, we find it a stunning prediction of future events. Events that assure His return to bring a final judgment on the world.

From a cradle in a stable to the mighty eternal throne of Heaven was accomplished by His blood shed on the Cross. From His birth into this world through His life and death in Israel, Jesus, by faith, elevated His Creation, every part of it, to the pleasure of His Father. It is His joy that each of us were created as His children to grow in Jesus and His plan for our eternity. You can feel this in Nehemiah’s words, “Do not grieve, the joy of the Lord is your strength (8:10).” Carried in Revelation is the Holy Spirit moving John to see 24 elders surrounding the Great Throne, laying down their crowns before Him saying, “You are worthy our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being (Rev.4:14).”

The purpose of all this if for us to grasp the significance that each of us is an image of the Creator, given a mission, to establish our partnership with Him as He builds His Kingdom in this world through us. And get this, that part of the Kingdom is right where we are in our family, among our friends and wherever we work and travel. As spiritually gifted brothers and sisters we walk the Galilean hills and valleys right where we are every day. The people we travel among each day make up our personal world. God so loved this world that He gave His Son that they might hear and receive Him and become a part of His Kingdom. While we may only see bodies now, it is the believers inside those bodies that are in the Kingdom. To share the truth that anyone is welcome to enter His Kingdom depends on our willingness to let them see our hearts, our love, our grace and truth given us by the Lord. He is our King, our Savior, our Lord and our Redeemer.

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty (Rev.1:8).”