Gospel Encounter 16

 

JESUS? . . . CHRIST? . . . LORD? . . . FATHER? . . . HOLY SPIRIT? . . . GOD?

JUST WHO DO I RELATE TO?

Who is in my heart?  Who do I pray to?  Who do I relate each day’s walk to?  Who is in me?  Are my words important?  Who sets my path?   Who do I talk to each day?  Who am I?  What is God like?

“Will you receive JESUS into your heart tonight?”

What is the different emphasis of JESUS and CHRIST to me?

Where are we, as a part of the Church today, in God’s great plan of the ages?

 

Have you ever had any of these questions pop up in your mind?  I trust that you have resolved these questions, but if not maybe the following observations from scripture might just clarify this foggy scene.

‘Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks’. . .

‘Christ in you the hope of glory’. . .

 

FIRST: We establish that God is word — the Living Word. Thus everything relating to God comes via ‘word’.  ‘God said . . .’ (Genesis 1:2)

‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God’ - John 1:1.

NEXT: We declare ‘that God is Spirit . . .’ (John 4:24). WORD in spirit is thought.

NEXT: JESUS is the word made flesh . . . the incarnation of God who is word.

‘The ‘word’ was made flesh and dwelt among us’ = JESUS, the SEED. This all-important aspect of God is basically ther earth scene. . . where ‘flesh’ dwells . . . the ‘seen’ realm.

John 12:24, ‘Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it die, it brings forth much fruit’. The ‘Jesus-Seed’ died and was buried in the ground with the expectation of a harvest of that Seed. Every seed brings forth after his kind — 1 Cor 15:38 ‘But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body’.  Verse 44 ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body’. . . thus, JESUS, THE PATTERN SON was the ‘natural body and (see later) we are the spiritual body of Christ..

1 Pet 1:23  ‘Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever’.

This refers to Jesus, the Seed, the Living God-Word that is sown into our earth . . . our ‘minds and hearts’.

JESUS, the Second Adam, was God’s PROTOTYPE man of what He would bring forth.

JESUS . . . ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of God’. As ‘Son of God’, Jesus was in full communion, union with His Father. As ‘Son of Man’, He was in full union with the natural realm, the earth realm yet this realm did not dictate His life but rather the Father did that.

John 14:9-14

(9) Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?

(10) Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. (11) Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.  (12) Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

The Father in Jesus was the word that Jesus spoke forth. The creative accomplishing ‘works’ were carried out by the Father as His breath (Spirit — PNEUMA) was released in His words.

Father = the Source of all life . . . Jesus (before the cross) = the expression of that life.

Jesus was the Son of God as the Holy Spirit (God) placed the Seed in Mary’s womb. Earthly Mary, being chosen to be used by God, gave Jesus the ‘Son of Man’ aspect of Father’s life. The invisible God was now in the visible realm.

Jesus and Father were ‘ONE’ . . . John 10:30  ‘I and my Father are one’.

John 14:28  ‘Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I’.

The SOURCE of all Life is greater than the EXPRESSION of that life. . . they are ONE. ‘Thought’ and ‘word’ are the same but the ‘thought’ is the greater for without the thought, there would be no spoken word.§