Monday, November 6, 2017

"The Pathway To Humanity"


"The Pathway To Humanity"


    Only one truly human being has ever lived on the earth.

    "Great is the mystery of godliness.  God was manifest in the flesh" (I Timothy 3:16).
    "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17).
    "I do always those things that please Him" (John 8:29).

    The Lord Jesus Christ alone attained to the standard of humanity, as defined by God.  He did so without relinquishing His divinity - "Unto the Son, He saith, Thy throne, o God, is forever and ever."  He nevertheless lived as a man inhabited, led, and enabled by the power of God - "The Son can of Himself do nothing… I live by the Father" (Hebrews 1:8; John 5:19; 6:57).  All others are sub-human according to the prototype established by the Father, fulfilled by the Son, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Humanity exists to be "the habitation of God through the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22).  Moreover, our Lord does not simply sit on a throne in our hearts when we trust in the Lord Jesus.  "I will dwell in them and walk in them" (II Corinthians 6:16).  God actively works in believers to redeem and empower our humanity when we believe.  He thereby enables our human faculties to serve as the receptacles and reflections of His character, nature, and way. 

    The Lord Jesus serves as the model of authentic humanity, as defined by God.  He is the essence of what it means to be human.  Those in whom Christ dwells by His Spirit are on the pathway to full citizenship in the human race.  Our Savior was and is God dwelling in man, the Divine inhabiting and illuminating the human temple.  This is God's ultimate purpose for us, although a difference exists in that we were never Divine, nor will we ever become God even as He lives within us.  However, we are like the Lord Jesus in the fact that we exist to serve as the human dwellingplace of God, and as the scene of His working to empower our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and actions.  "To live is Christ" declared the Apostle Paul, who also testified, "the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Philippians 1:21; Galatians 2:20).

   Believers journey upon a pathway to humanity.  Nail-scarred footsteps guide our way, revealing what it means to be truly human, as inhabited and empowered by the Divine.  "Walk even as He walked" commanded the Apostle John, that is, follow the Lord Jesus in trusting our Father to lead and enable a life that His life, as revealed in our earthly members and faculties (I John 2:6).  This is life in the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.  There is no other, and in this day, God offers to us the joyous experience of what it means to be truly human as inhabited and enabled by the Divine.

"By the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."
(I Corinthians 15:10)  

Weekly Memory Verse
   For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with Thee.
(Psalm 5:4)
   



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