The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Human"
What does it mean to be human? The answer lies in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only truly human being to ever live.
"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).
Only the Lord Jesus is perfectly human - as God defines human. Our Savior serves as the prototype, the template of what human beings are meant to be.
"This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17).
"I do always those things that please Him" (Matthew 8:29).
"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened (enlivened) by the Spirit" (I Peter 3:18).
The Father affirms His pleasure in Christ. The Son confesses His devotion to the Father's will. The Holy Spirit raised the Lord Jesus from the dead as testimony that Christ's humanity was worthy of enduring forever. Yes, our Savior, while not relinquishing His divinity, abides forevermore as the model of everything human beings were created to be. "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand" (John 3:35).
To know what we are called to be as human beings, we must "look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2). Our Father works "all things together for good" to accomplish this purpose, the good He declares to be conformity to the spiritual and moral image of the Lord Jesus" (Romans 8:28-29). We can be sure that every blessing, every challenge, and every mundane moment of our lives flows with the current of God's consistent and persistent determination to make us like His Son. "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).
Our Father could do nothing more sublimely wonderful for us. The writer of Hebrews declared the Lord Jesus to be the gladdest being in existence (Hebrews 1:9). Thus, the more we become like Him, even amid the great challenges and difficulties required to forge Christlikeness in us, the more our hearts will know deep and abiding joy. The process is long, and because of our imperfect response, involves stumbles along the way. The stumbles, however, are always ours, and regardless of where we are along the path of righteousness, our faithful God persists in His unwavering determination to finish the good work He started in us when we believed.
"Faithful is He who calleth you, who also will do it" (I Thessalonians 5:24)
In this day, our Heavenly Father will orchestrate and allow many different experiences in our lives. He will coordinate all into the sublime purpose of Christlikeness. The more we know this holy process, the more we will respond in faith and faithfulness to fulfill our role of response. The more human we will become, and the more our hearts will know the joy of becoming what God made and redeemed us to be. Human, as inhabited, motivated, and enabled by the Divine. The one perfectly human being who has ever lived, the Lord Jesus, made possible this glorious purpose of His Father, as fulfilled in us by the Holy Spirit's relentless working to conform us to the image of Christ.
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as he is."
(I John 3:2)
Weekly Memory Verse
Keep thy heart with all diligence. For out of it are the issues of life.
(Proverbs 4:23)
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