“The Hope of Glory” Part 4 - “The Gift of Himself"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe… 

"The Hope of Glory"      

Part 4 - "The Gift of Himself"  

    

   

   Eternity will not suffice for full realization of "the unsearchable riches of Christ" bestowed upon believers by God as the free gift of grace in the Lord Jesus.

   "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32).

   We cannot imagine the glories we will experience as God forever lavishes us with tangible expressions of "the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19).  However, at the heart of all, one gift shines the most brightly.  

    "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (I Corinthians 3:16).

    The gift of Himself.  God is not content to merely live with us.  He loves us so dearly that in Christ, our hearts become His home.  The Holy Spirit lives in every believer, working to reveal the character, nature, and way of the Lord Jesus in us.  We are not merely ourselves, but ourselves as inhabited by the Spirit of Christ.  He lives in us and we live in Him to the degree that "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit" (I Corinthians 6:17).  Certainly He does not become us, nor do we become Him.  However, we live in such vital spiritual union that He will never be without us, nor will we ever be without Him.  Moreover, God Himself comes with the gifts He gives, even as the Apostle Paul declared, "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:19; emphasis added).  

   Such blessed truth impacts this moment as well as eternity to come (Colossians 1:27).   Presently our awareness and experience is limited in comparison to what it will be.  "We see through a glass darkly" in an often cloudy and dark world (I Corinthians 13:12).  But still we can see as we "walk by faith, not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7).  The Spirit of God and the Scriptures of God bear witness to the Savior of God as present within our hearts.  Recognizing the reality of God's gift of Himself involves belief of the truth and the determination to "judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24).  We may not look, feel, or always act as the Christ-inhabited spiritual temples we are.  However, nothing changes the fact of the blessed truth.  The more we discover God's gift of Himself in the pages of the Bible, the more we will realize in the chambers of our hearts that "God is in you of a truth" (I Corinthians 14:25).  The gift of Himself.  No greater blessing can be imagined, no greater gift could be given, and no greater bestowal more graces our lives with abundance than "this hope of glory, which is Christ in you."

"Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word; that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me."

(John 17:20-23)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."

(II Corinthians 3:18)

  

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