For This Reason 3

[HKHaugan]

For this Reason 3

Being a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven means we have been gifted with a different perspective, a Heaven view as opposed to a world view, a different context for the mind, for the heart and for the spirit. We have been given a picture of spiritual reality which is eternal. It may be just a glimpse but it is an eternal glimpse for an earthly purpose. We see things above the world and its temporary conclusions. We see things in ideas, spiritual concepts and absolutes that existed before Creation. We feel differently. We are motivated differently. This is not grounds for superiority and pride but rather for humility. In just the same way when God chose the Hebrew people to be His people it was not because they were good or superior but because He loved them (Deut.7:7-9). The same reason He chose us who were sinners that we might be a new Israel in humility before Him. We know the world is an atmosphere of self-centeredness, pride and fear. Our task is to offer the antidote to this toxic atmosphere---the Lord Jesus who brings His grace, truth and love into the heart personally.

This is seeing that is to be shared, given freely without any expectation of return. Instead of seeking to be praised it is seeking to serve, to see others better than ourselves and see the love of God working to retrieve broken hearts through us. We have been blessed by God to see things from His vantage point and that vantage is an ‘add’-vantage---given for others. We know this because God’s ultimate demeanor is grace. God is graceful, full of grace. It is a grace that wants only the best for His images. That grace brings His love that engages the heart and that grace offers His personal life in the Holy Spirit to engage our spirit. All of this comes in the revelation of Jesus, God the Son. So when Jesus teaches us to pray to the Father “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven” it is an absolute experience in the mind and heart of God He wants to bring into the world of people through faith, hope and love. Jesus is the demonstration. As believers we are His demonstrators.

3:1-3 Here Paul declares himself the appointed and anointed administrator of the demonstration which is the mystery revealed. The operative words in this section are revelation and insight. The Lord revealed the mystery and the insight from it was startling. He knew the Spirit was working in Him to give Him the spiritual understanding that would be his mission.

The mystery was that Jews (spiritually directed to believe in one God) and Gentiles (lost in the worship of many gods), the total opposites in the spiritual realm, have been united in Christ. When the Law was given through Moses it gave the Jews a moral structure in which they would live their physical existence as a visible witness to there being only one God. That was half the plan. The other half involved something to which the Law pointed and that was the heart. The heart was wrapped in sin.

For both Jew and Gentile the sinful heart was God’s target. He not only wanted one people out of the many but the many to know Him and to know Him personally in their hearts. That meant the Gentiles as well. In the larger picture of human restoration that was the other half of the plan. So out of the Jewish race the Father would draw a heart Person, Jesus, to bring all of mankind together. God the Son would live a perfect Spirit filled heart life, the one He originally intended in Adam and Eve. By offering a free and open relationship with Him every person could be restored to their Creator spiritually, relationally and eternally, Jew and Gentile alike. What God had begun in the Spirit is finished in the Spirit.

The Jews were a carrier people, a message carrier that God was a heart-personal God. What we see in Paul’s insight is the struggle he had within, the good that he wanted he couldn’t and the evil he hated he did. Each human being had been separated into a schizoid condition which is exactly the devil’s plan and this inner struggle is what the spirit of sin causes. In every heart there are two needs, one to satisfy the moment, the other to have a long term structure to live by. We see these two played out in Jewish history in the separated kingdoms, northern and southern. We see it in the fall of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Abraham and Lot, Peter and Paul, Pharisee and Sadducees, Orthodox and Reformed and on and on. It is the polar opposites that are meant to be reunited. We are not talking about ecumenical movements here that bring denominations together but heart movements that restore individuals to God and one another.

Every person needs spiritually grounded character for their heart to live spontaneously.

Isn’t this really what the Parable of the Prodigal Son is all about? You have the Prodigal and the Legalist, the institution and the individual, Catholicism and Protestantism and all in all---the seen and the unseen, the temporary and the eternal. When Jeremiah foresaw the role of the future Messiah it would be as the one who wrote the Law on the heart (Jer.31:33). He would combine the Law and the Spirit perfectly. The inner conflict between the need for Law and the Spirit, for structure and freedom, for order and spontaneous behavior would be resolved in Jesus.
The same conflict we see in our society right now, liberal and conservative, old and young, fear and faith, personal faith and denominational doctrine, between discipline and flying by the seat of the pants. The inner conflict between order and spontaneity can only be resolved by the Holy Spirit. Our spirit was lost in Eden which is why we have to be born spiritually from above. When Paul had the insight that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself it was world order and individual freedom balanced through the Holy Spirit. We can see it in the Body of Christ even today between the evangelical legalist and the charismatic moment. Then finally there will be a new Heaven and new earth.

My personal dream for any individual and congregation is that they are open to having an evangelical mind and a charismatic heart keeping in step with the Spirit (Gal.5:25).

Les Miserables is a clear dramatic capture of this theme in the two main adversaries, Jean val Jean and Jauvert. The unrelenting legalislism of Jauvert and the forgiven thief Jean val Jean who lived a balanced relational life of faith by the moment.

Isn’t this conflict in all of us from birth? The human heart has set the pattern for the larger society. The conflicts we see all around us are extended heart conflicts from individuals to the groups they embrace. All our national documents reflect this divide. “We the people in order to form a more perfect union…” “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We have the structure we know is moral order built in to us at birth and we have the desire to act spontaneously for the moment. The life we live in this world is a self-conscious struggle energized by our sin. We are on a teeter totter trying to hold everything in balance all by ourselves.

What is missing is the Spirit of God who makes it all work. He is comes in a relationship with Jesus. It is a spiritually inspired universe and its God’s grace in Jesus through the Spirit that makes it all work.

Jesus is the picture, power and person who is in perfect spiritual balance.

As we look at the overall picture Paul has presented in Ephesians it is in the cosmic or heavenly sphere that Jesus first revealed Himself to neutralize the power of the evil one and all his minions. The mystery apparently was a mystery even to the unseen forces in the spiritual realm. Paul was given this revelation into the mystery of something that happened in the unseen dimension, the rebellion of the devil that caused the human condition of sin which Paul described as ‘the good I want I don’t and the evil I don’t want I do.’ Jesus defeated this personally for each one of us on the Cross. He who knew no sin became sin for us, He felt what we feel and he bore it into the darkness of fear and death but His perfect faith overcame it. And this was done with each of us in mind. How does He embrace each of us? This is what shows He is God.

What Paul thought He was as a Jew was half right but his inner nature was exposed when he met the Lord on the road to Damascus. There he found the other half, the heart and the Law restored in Christ and that he too could have the same. The other half became his mission. The mission to the first half was given to Peter. There is the mystery unfolding, the heart found and the structure supported.

So why is all this important? Everyone we meet is out of balance in mind, heart and spirit. Looking in the mirror we can say the same about ourselves. We all need to be rebalanced. But The Lord came to rescue, restore and rebalance all of us. Thus our mission is Him, to live for Him, to present Him and to glorify Him. What all of us need is a spiritual facelift, that is how we present our face, ourselves, to the mind, heart and spirit of others. What we want to reflect is the face of Jesus. The more we are in the Scripture the more we are led to rely on the Holy Spirit to make the Scriptures sensible to our mind, blend it into our heart and motivate our spirit into acting out its words. What the Word offers, the world needs, Jesus.