A Ministry Of The Spirit! – Part 3

15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. Mat. 16:15-17

Did you ever stop to think that the flesh has its own revelation? Yes, it does. That was exactly what our Lord Jesus said here.  There is a revelation of the flesh just as much as there is a revelation of the Spirit; but Jesus qualified the latter by calling it a blessing:

“Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”

But, pray, what was revealed to Peter, this which Jesus called a blessing?

It was Jesus! It was revealed to Peter that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God”!

And Jesus told Peter he was blessed for having that knowledge! This is the same revelation we need to have.

The revelation that is of the flesh is not a blessing. This ‘revelation’ does not see Jesus. It sees other things. And yet, paradoxically, it is this very revelation that is considered by the contemporary church a ‘blessing’. If someone prospers materially, they call it a blessing! Talk of a back to back understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ!!

The prosperity gospel is a product of the revelation that comes from the flesh. It is the flesh that sees the dollar sign; the Spirit does not. It is the flesh that sees and speaks of houses and lands and the general well-being of the body; the Spirit does not.

Even miracles and healing are not what the Spirit is about per se. Why else would the Apostle Paul write:

“22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: 23 But we preach Christ crucified…”? (1 Cor. 1:22-23)

But probably the most important precedent in this regard is to be found in the Old Testament, in 1 Kings 19:11-13. Let us consider this portion of scripture.

“11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: 12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. 13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?”

Praise be to God, the Great God who is beyond all understanding! The LORD passed by and there was a strong wind, a wind so strong that it rent the mountains; but the LORD was not in that wind!

Then came an earthquake, and after that a fire; but God was in neither of those things. These were extremely powerful manifestations of the power of God; but God was not in them!

God instead was a still small voice. In none of the great signs and wonders that God did before Elijah did Elijah hear God’s voice. But, after they were all done, in the silence that followed, Elijah heard God’s voice.

What does that all this tell us?

To me it goes something like this: under the New Covenant, God passes by and miracles happen, healings occur, people are blessed materially and great signs and wonders are seen; but God is not in those things. God is in… a voice!

The Bible says in Hebrews 1:1-2:

“1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…”

God is in His Word. And His Word is His Son. And God’s Son is Jesus Christ. When you connect the dots in the Spirit, you realize that everything in the Bible talks of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. And, according to the Apostle Paul, there is only one Jesus: “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2)

Under the ministry of the Holy Spirit, one thing and one thing alone is emphasized: to know Him, Christ. How? Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Christ. That is why the Apostle Paul says:

“Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” (1 Cor. 11:1)

Paul did not follow Christ by singing, “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” You can sing that and still not be a follower of Christ. Paul became a follower of Christ by crucifying the flesh daily.

If a minister emphasizes healing of the body over spiritual wellness, his doctrine is of the flesh. I have heard of a ministry somewhere out there that has something called a healing school. A healing school!

Whatever that is, it cannot be of the Spirit. The Spirit cannot initiate a school dedicated to the healing of the body. The Holy Spirit has only one ‘school’ – one that deals with the healing of the heart. And that school has only one subject in its curriculum: the revelation of the cross of Jesus Christ. It is at the cross where, as our bodies are broken, that our hearts are healed.

And just to make things clearer still, even 1 Peter 2:24 does not refer to physical healing as most believers have been taught. It is not just on account of the context of that particular portion of scripture that I say this (the context certainly supports that stand); but on account of the entire Biblical context. The ministry of the Spirit is primarily for the healing of our souls.

So, to recap: yes, the flesh also has its own revelation. This ‘revelation’ involves cars, private jets, bling, lands, houses, paid bills, physical healing, job promotion, death to perceived enemies, visas to the U.S., the entire gamut. These are the things the flesh calls blessings.

But the man who is filled with the Spirit sees the cross. He feels happy for he has found the place where he can crucify “the flesh with the affections and lusts.” (Gal. 5:24)

It is the cross that the spiritual man celebrates. And in so doing, in his life are fulfilled the words of the Apostle Paul:

“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Gal. 6:14)

Blessed is such a man, for to know Christ, and Him crucifed, constitutes the true spiritual blessing.

Postscript: Moments after Peter had received this great spiritual revelation from God, the enemy broke through his weak defenses and blind-sided him with a powerful revelation from his own flesh.

“21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. 22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. 23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” (Mat. 16:21-23)

[As ‘primitive’ as both the mode of transportation and the road pictured here might appear, in the not-too-distant past, travelers in rural Tanzania had to rely on only one means of transport: their two bare feet, sometimes crossing hundreds of miles on foot to reach their destination]

Faith Worketh by Grace – Part 2

[Genesis chapter 17]

Twenty four years after He had called Abraham (then known as Abram) God told him, “I want you to be perfect”!

Apparently, God is never in a hurry. That’s too bad for we law guys, those of us who want things to happen instantaneously and for people to change at the drop of a hat (while conveniently overlooking the fact that nothing is changing in our own lives!)

So after 24 years God tells Abraham He wanted him to become perfect. God had a perfect reason for that, though. He wanted Abraham perfect because God’s time had arrived to bless Abraham with a spiritual blessing. In the very next year, God intended to give Abraham the son He had promised him (chapter 18).

Now, as an aside here, let me point out that there are many interpretations in contemporary Christianity as to what Abraham’s real blessing or what God’s promise to him really was. The majority are materialistic, with an eye on all that wealth that Abraham had.

Well, let’s just say it was a spiritual blessing that God had promised Abraham. After all, Abraham already had a son, Ishmael, and he loved him like his own self. But Isaac was not just a son. God had spiritual business He wanted to accomplish through Isaac. He never promised Abraham Ishmael. Isaac was therefore a spiritual blessing.

That’s the way God views anything that He gives us. If He gives you a car, God does not see that metal and leather toy that you are so taken up with. He sees something that will be of value to His Kingdom, something that will work for the advancement of His Kingdom; and God’s Kingdom is spiritual.

But, on the other hand, God is not as legalistic as everything we hear sounds. God is spiritual all right, but He is willing to give us all the rope we need to arrive at where He is. He is prepared to give us even things that are totally unnecessary. Not many of us would be that magnanimous!

God allows us to enjoy the things He blesses us with in this world, even though many of them will never see the light of heaven. I am not a rich man, but I have enjoyed my wife’s natural beauty and grace for 20 years, and I am sure God has no problem with that. But the Bible tells us that “in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven”! (Mat. 22:30)

All these things that God allows us to enjoy down here is a result of the riches of the grace of God. There is no one who could possibly be as free and generous as our God. The “riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering” (Rom. 2:4) are unsearchable!

It was for this same reason that God told Abraham, “OK, I will bless Ishmael also” (verse 20) – even though we know Ishmael would never be included in God’s plan (Galatians 4:23).

Ultimately, though, God wants us to arrive at the place where we can see things exactly as He sees them, which is in the Spirit. Whatever anything turns out in the natural, if it does not come down to us as a spiritual blessing, then it has nothing to do with God’s promise and in that sense it is not of the Kingdom. It might not necessarily be sinful, but still it is not of God’s Kingdom.

In the next section we shall go ahead and see what we begun to discuss above about why God desired Abraham to be perfect and the importance of that to the promise that God was about to fulfill in his life.

LOSING ALL TO GAIN ALL

Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?

And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.

The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust. Ruth 2:10-12

The question that we need to ask ourselves is: how much has it been shown to the Lord how we have ‘left all’ and followed Him? That is Christianity’s central question. I love what Boaz told Ruth: “It hath fully been shewed me…” It was fully shown Boaz that Ruth had lost everything in order to serve her mother-in-law, Naomi. How so, so beautiful!

The problem, really, is that we fear to lose. Find me a man who is willing to lose everything and I will show you a man (or woman) who will gain everything.

That is why it is so important for we God’s people to hear the right gospel, the gospel that will show us how, and empower us to lose all that we hold dear, including our very lives, for the sake of Christ. But the scriptures also warn us that there are many errant ‘gospels’ on the loose. These are gospels that will teach us that “gain is godliness” (1 Tim. 6:5). They will teach us to hold onto our lives. We need to stay warned.

In the above portion of scripture, we read about how Boaz happened to have heard about all that Ruth had done for Naomi and how she had “left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.”

I love the blessing that this man of God, Boaz, spoke upon Ruth’s life: “The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.”

Rightly so, Ruth gave birth to Obed, who bore Jesse, who fathered David, Christ’s ancestor. I don’t know about you, but that rocks with me. That’s more powerful than anything this world will ever know.

I can say here right away that the blessing that Ruth received from the Lord is the same blessing that every child of God who agrees to forsake all will receive.

But the price Ruth had to pay to receive a heavenly blessing was also the highest possible. She lost everything! It is not easy to leave one’s father and mother and to go “sell yourself” to a strange people. There is no question that in doing so you will be inviting trouble from every which direction. Ruth’s relatives must have spoken the most awful words against her. Her parents probably even cursed her, cutting her off completely from their lives. It is a miracle her Moabite tribesmen did not send an assassination party to seek and finish her off! She had brought a reproach upon them!

But Ruth had seen something! Jesus said, “strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Mat. 7:14).

I wonder how many of us really “find” that way. It is so hidden! And when you look at the kind of mainstream doctrines being taught in church today, I would doubt your sanity if you told me that many are they who have found that road.

The Apostle Paul loved the church. That is why he would not preach them any other gospel other than the revelation he had received from Jesus Christ, which was “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2) Here Paul was not just teaching them that Christ was crucified for their sins. He went beyond that and taught them to crucify their lives with Christ, to lose all, that they might have the resurrection life in themselves.

But God gives grace to the humble. I am doubly sure that God will reveal the road to any one of His children who are willing to humble themselves. He will point them to the cross and He will give them the grace to lose their lives.

I am sorry to say this, but there is so much pride and arrogance within the Body of Christ today. God’s people know so much! Everyone has a doctrine they are trying to propagate, no matter it has not even a whiff of biblical truth in it. And each one is holding their ground, firm in the belief that what they have is the right gospel. Some are even paying attention to doctrines taught by demons.

But when we read the Bible with unveiled face, we find that there is only one true gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the gospel that teaches us to deny self, take up our cross and follow Christ. It is the gospel where we come to a place where we willingly lose our lives, which is the only way to gain that other life, Christ’s life. We must surrender the world to gain heaven. There is no other way.

Love Never Expects Anything Back

For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. 2 Cor 8:9

We could hardly claim to know the full implications of this scripture. For Jesus even to consider leaving Heaven to come to earth, that thought itself was an unimaginable sacrifice on His part. It was an affront to Who He was; but He allowed it. Praise be to Him!

But the Son of God would go beyond thinking it. He would actively carry out that thought, and carry it out to its fullness. He would perform it to perfection. But that would require Him to go all the way, and the road was long indeed. But go it He would; and He did.

He stepped out from His throne and put off the Body of His glory. Next He took up the body of our flesh and put it on. He then came down to earth and lived among fallen humankind, enduring the lowliest life that any man could ever know, beginning with His birth in a cowshed.

He knew hunger, he knew physical fatigue. He knew sleeplessness. In His adult life, He had nowhere to lay His head. He knew human-ness as any human being can claim to know it.

In His altercations with the Jewish leaders, Jesus endured the impossible as man stared God in the face and ridiculed the Law of God that He carried in His heart.

Ultimately, Jesus would suffer incredible physical humiliation and abuse at the hands of the Jews and the Roman soldiers; and finally He would die an ignominious death of crucifixion, alone, abandoned even by His closest associates. Jesus carried out God’s plan to its bitter end.

And yet there is a hidden mystery in all this…

When you read Hebrews 12:2 it talks of Jesus thus: “…  who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. Here you get the idea that Jesus would be rewarded for His sacrifice.

But when you read Jesus’ prayer in John 17:5, you get a completely different view of what Jesus hoped to get from His sacrifice. He says, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was”. In other words, after Jesus had accomplished His mission on the Cross all He was asking of His Father was to restore to Him the same glory that He had before the world was created.

Jesus would be rewarded as a man, but not as God. That is astonishing, to say the least. It means that Jesus (as God) was not receiving anything more than what He had before in return for His sacrifice. He would simply be going back to His old glory. The Bible says that Jesus was God. Even after all that suffering, there was nothing more He could become or gain as God apart from what He already had been. God cannot possibly become anything more than what He already is – GOD.

In other words, Jesus came down to our level for one purpose: He came for us, not for Himself. He came to make us to be like Him. The first Adam could never be God, because He was made from dust. The Bible says, “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” (1 Cor. 15:45) In other words, Jesus came to make us in the image of God Himself. Thus is fulfilled the scripture in Psalm 82:6, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.”

The Bible says that Jesus came to reconcile us with Himself. That is all He suffered and died for: that we might become like Him, and be united with Him. Then He would go back and sit exactly where He had sat before.

The incredulousness of Jesus’ sacrifice lies in the fact that he did it all for us. All He accomplished was for us. Jesus did not do it to receive anything back. He did all He did out of love. Love never expects anything back. That is the incredible mystery of God becoming man.

The Psalmist, beholding and understanding the truth of Jesus’ sacrifice in the spirit marvels, “LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him!” Psalm 144:3

In another place he asks, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?  For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.” Psalm 8:4-5

Jesus, though He was rich, became poor, that we might become rich. This is the greatest love story ever. The Bible says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).  Jesus sacrificed Himself selflessly to purchase for Himself something He loved dearly: man.

Dear reader, what thinkest thou? Knowing who man is, it is an incredible thought indeed. But, more incredibly still, as we partake of the nature of God, we also begin living the sacrificial life that He lived. This is the true blessing.

Israel, not Jacob!

“But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not:  for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name;  thou art mine.” Isaiah 43:1

In the scripture above we see that God is addressing two different kinds of people: Jacob whom He created, and Israel whom He formed. Without going into long drawn-out discussions about the meanings of the words “created” and “formed” here, we at least know that God is more interested with Israel than Jacob because when the angel of the Lord met Jacob on his way back to his fathers’ land, Jacob demanded a blessing from Him, and the Lord told him, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel:  for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Genesis 32:28.

Henceforth Jacob would be known as Israel. That is of profound significance.

In all His dealings with man God allows the natural to precede the spiritual, and if we are not careful we miss out on the real blessing that God intended for us to have. That is why we who are called by God under the New Testament cannot simply rejoice in the material and physical blessings that God gives us. They come so easily and naturally we are tempted to think they are an end in themselves. On the day I got saved God healed me of a terrible physical illness. It was such a big miracle, and it could still be the highlight of my life with Jesus.

But we must discover the hidden meaning of God’s true calling in our lives. The Apostle Paul talks about a hidden mystery. When we read the Apostles’ epistles we see they did not talk very much about miracles and material blessings, even though they experienced all these. Rather, they spoke about something infinitely more spiritual – the changing of our carnal selves into spiritual, which is a process!

Nor can we rest in the mere act of salvation itself. We cannot underestimate its importance in our lives (eternal life with Jesus), yet the Bible is filled with proof that this is not the end of the matter. For example, in 1 Corinthians 3:15 we read that “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss:  but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”

Elsewhere in Jude 1:23 we read: “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire;  hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.”

Paul also talks about “a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day:  and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”

There are many Christians today who are so worldly-minded that it cannot be said of them that they would love the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Which means that people will be saved all right, but there will be a distinction: while some will enter in triumphantly, yet for others it is as if they will have barely made it.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that God does not want us to remain ‘Jacobs’. Here I mean carnal, or immature Christians. He wants to form us into the image of His spiritual people, “the Israel of God”  -Galatians 6:16. When we speak of “form” we get the impression of people in whose lives God’s hand has worked to bring out something out of something. He works on what He has created to form something new. It is this which He desires to do in our lives. There is a big difference between the simple calling of God and his formative work in our lives.

Hence the revelation of the Cross. It is of utmost importance to us to understand that the apostolic gospel that has come down to us is a revelation. The Apostle Paul (whose mental faculties we cannot fault) says he received the gospel by revelation. Moreover, in Ephesians 3 he implies that all true apostles and prophets in every generation would be men who would have caught the gospel by revelation, a revelation of the Cross. They would understand what it means to be a Christian: it is to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, that our minds may be renewed (i.e. put far from sin) and that we may conform to the image of Christ. And this will be accomplished by the work of the Cross in our lives.

When you receive the Cross as a ‘Jacob’ (i.e. without revelation) you will understand that Jesus came to die for your sins so you do not go to hell, which is true. But you cannot go beyond that, and soon you will turn to the weak, worldly materialistic gospel which does not have the power to deal with sin. But when you get the revelation of the Cross, which is only found under the true apostolic ministry, you will understand that the Cross came to work in your life also so that your body of sin may suffer and die with Christ, and to rise to the resurrection from the dead in newness of life; and to become a mature son and daughter of God, worthy and capable to inherit that spiritual Kingdom, as we read in Galatians 4:1-7: “Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son;  and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”

Note the angel’s words to Jacob: “as a prince hast thou power…”! He had fought the good fight and he was worthy!

In other words you become a man or woman who has died to sin. Many people today are praying for the hand of God upon their lives. Behold, the hand of the Lord is the Cross! If we think the hand of the Lord are the worldly blessings He gives us, the healings and all that, we are doomed to spiritual immaturity and carnality. While in Mauritius, I witnessed the death of a man whom the church had prayed for a long time to get healed. I visited him one week before he died, and he was sitting there, weak in body, but strong in faith, in righteousness and holiness. He died triumphantly, and we rejoiced on the day of his burial.

We need to join ourselves with the true gospel of Jesus Christ, Christ crucified. Then we will know, as Paul says in Romans 12, “that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” How can we say we are in the will of God while we are walking in sin? It is simply impossible. We are called to a walk of holiness and purity – of body, soul and spirit: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly;  and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Anything beneath that, however flamboyant it might appear, and under whatever name it is called, is carnality!