"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)

   

"The Peer"

"The Peer"  

     I recently saw an advertisement on the Internet that raised the rhetorical question, "How do you stack up against your peers?"  The issue involved an earthly pursuit, but it reminded me of a far greater spiritual matter of eternal consequence.

    "Great is the mystery of godliness.  God was manifest in the flesh… This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (I Timothy 3:16; Matthew 3:17).

   The Lord Jesus Christ serves as God's standard for human beings.  We are either just like Him in nature, character, and way, or we are unacceptable according to the Divine measure for what humanity should be.  Christ is our peer.  How do we "stack up" against Him?  The Psalmist answers our inquiry: "Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity" (Psalm 62:9).  Whatever our attainment, be it low or high in earthly measure, we find ourselves less than nothing when weighed in the balance with the Lord Jesus.  Thus, we are without hope to be what God requires, unless some other way of peerage exists.

   It does.  "He hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6).  Unto a race of beings "lighter than vanity," God tips the scales completely in the favor of all who believe.  He imparts and imputes the merits of His Son to our account as a completely free gift of His grace.  Christ becomes for us in God's sight what we cannot be for ourselves.  His peerage becomes our possession.  "To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name" (John 1:12).  We do not stack up against Him, but rather stand with and within Him as by grace we are "made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Corinthians 5:21).  This is the Gospel, whereby our Peer becomes our propitiation, peace, and provider.  "Ye are complete in Him" (Colossians 2:10).

   From the moment of our conception and forevermore, we must be just like the Lord Jesus if we are to independently attain to God's standard for humanity.  We must perfectly stack up against our Peer.  Or, we must receive the gift of grace whereby Christ's righteous merits constitute us as being "found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Philippians 3:9).  Perfection achieved, in and of ourselves.  Or Perfection, Christ's perfection, applied in and through our Savior.   Utter futility.  Or undeserved favor.  These are the options, the former way being wide, broad, and destructive, the latter leading to life eternal.  We must be just like our Peer, an impossibility, or our Peer must freely justify us, a certainty if we trust the Lord Jesus.  

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

(Romans 5:1)

"For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ). Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous."

(Romans 5:17-19)

Weekly Memory Verse 

   One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple" (Psalm 27:4)

    

    

     

    

"Found By Him"

"Found By Him"

    In a lost generation unmoored from the Judeo-Christian truths and traditions that once bore significant cultural influence, we often hear the mournful refrain about people needing to "find myself."  By this, they usually mean they have no idea who they are, why they exist, and what, if any, purpose should guide their lives.  The search for self involves many methods, including the quest for adventure, journeys to special places, religious practices, escape from the norm of life, and any number of hopeful, but often desperate ventures to discover meaning, significance, and again, to find one's self.

    The Bible, conversely, never counsels us to search for ourselves.  Instead, it declares to us that truth and reality is found in the blessed wonder that God searches for us.  Not, of course, because He doesn't know who we are or where we are, but rather to reveal Himself to us in such a manner that we seek Him in holy response.

    "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Matthew 18:11).

    "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him" (John 4:23).

    A fool's game beckons us to find ourselves in hope that the answers to life's meaningful questions will be answered.  We were not made for such a quest.  We rather exist to seek God, again, in response to His seeking of us.  "When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek" (Psalm 27:8).  To know Him ultimately unveils the portrait of ourselves as spiritually birthed and animated by the indwelling Spirit of Christ.  Indeed, when believers truly find our rightful quest, we discover ourselves in Christ as a "new man, created in righteousness and true holiness" (Ephesians 4:24).  Note carefully the two traits.  "In righteousness" - that is, in the Christ who "of God is made unto us righteousness" (I Corinthians 1:30).  "True holiness" - that is, devotion to the God who made and redeemed us.  For those who realize such blessed grace and truth, the search for self becomes completely unnecessary.  Certainly we will better know ourselves as we grow in our Lord, but not because we set out on the fool's game.  We rather seek to "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (II Peter 3:18).  In the bright light of such illumination, we find out who we are by finding out who He is.  Or, as the Psalmist declared, "In Thy light shall we see light" (Psalm 36:9).

   An interesting aspect of our physical frame illustrates this truth.  No human being has ever seen his or her own face.  We've seen reflections, of course, or photographs and films of our visage.  However, our Heavenly Father set our eyes in their sockets to look outward and away from ourselves unto Him and unto people.  This speaks powerfully to the false notion that fulfillment results from finding ourselves.  It does not, and it cannot.  Again, our hearts were made to "look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith," and then to "look not every man on his own things, but also on the things of others" (Hebrews 12:2; Philippians 2:4).  The quest begins and continues as we increasingly realize our Lord's search for us that empowers our search for Him.  Find ourselves?  No.  To be found by Him, and to find Him in holy response, this is the hope of our hearts and the end of the fool's game.

"I will look for Him."

(Isaiah 8:17)

Weekly Memory Verse

   Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

(Philippians 1:6)