CHRIST: THE BEGINNING AND THE END
LIBERTY AND LOVE #111
The first and most important consideration for the person seeking God is not the complexity of the relationship, but the simplicity of it. It is the relationship of the Creator and his creation. Christ was sent into the world to make us everything that God intended for us to be. It was never God’s plan that his people live in a state of fear or trepidation before Him. Every means of redemption is found in the work of Christ.
The true and living gospel of Christ is not just a message that imparts knowledge. It is a dynamic story that empowers those who receive it. Nothing from the first to the last is designed to be anything but all-encompassing.
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples what the word going around about him suggested about his identity. The response was that some were saying he was John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets. “Who do you say I am?” he asked them. Then Peter made the great confession and said, “You are the Christ. The Son of the Living God.” Jesus then explained where Peter received this information. Flesh and blood had not revealed it to him, but “my Father who is in heaven.” It was a matter of revelation from the Father. Even though the Scriptures of old had made numerous predictions relative to Christ’s nature and work, and Peter knew something of those Scriptures, it was the Father who instructed him.
We must enroll in the school of God if we are going to learn the things of God in Christ. How arrogant we are to think that, even though our Lord depended upon his Father for every thought, word and deed, we can understand the things of God and apply them to our unique situations without the help of God. This is the height of human arrogance and folly. If Jesus depended upon God, how much more must we depend upon him.
It is the fallen ego of man that thinks he is capable. But we are not capable. We are deceived and we are servants of sin. Only the truth of Jesus can make us free. He is the deliverer who was sent from God and makes his ways known to his people. Christ is the beginning and the end of God’s dealings with man. Changes take place only within the framework of God’s message of redemption. Everything that Jesus did pleased his Father. Everything that Jesus did counted for his people. So the conclusion is that we are pleasing to the Father if we are in Christ.
The Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. I do not find in the Bible that God has ordained a way for man to walk in himself apart from the revelation of God. Perhaps this is why we find so little spiritual strength upon which to draw on a daily basis. We are not looking to the one who can give us the deliverance that we need.
Jesus said that the greatest calling there is, is to seek the kingdom of God first and his righteousness (Matthew 6:33). To seek his kingdom is to seek his government and rule. Isaiah had prophesied that the government would be upon his shoulders (Isaiah 9:7). Christ is before us in a governing way. His intentions come become ours. It works both ways.
We get credit for what Jesus did in his righteous life and victorious resurrection and ascension if we have faith in him and abide in him. But there is something that comes to us on the other side. His perfection becomes our position; but his intentions must also become ours. What is true of him is true of us, and there is no limitations to be placed upon this. God desires that we be conformed into the image of Christ.
That is God’s thought concerning us. Since Christ is to be formed in us, and we are to glorify God in this way, it only follows that the perspective of Christ would become ours. God wants us to look at the world the way that Christ did. He wants us to have the affections of Christ and the desires of Christ. From the eyes of Jesus we should view the world and everything that we contact within it. Christ is the object of faith and he is to be formed within us. Our bodies are temples of the living God. It is in the temple that the works of service on behalf of our fellow man are performed.
The depths and the riches of Christ are unsearchable and beyond finding out. We are to be led daily by the hand of the Holy Spirit. Christ is the contemplation of saved sinners and the direct expression of all that God is.
Jesus gives us all the hope and all of the direction for our lives. In him we are given fullness, a fullness that takes on the form of obedience and servitude. All is of Christ, for Christ and by Christ. We cannot exist spiritually apart from Christ. We cannot begin to see the things of God without the help of Christ. He is our redeemer and our maintainer. We give ourselves to him and we receive all that he is.
Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit and he was governed at all times by God. This is the point of his relationship with the Father. There is nothing that Christ did or said that did not come from the Father. If we would be reflections of his image, it behooves us to partake of the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ is like a giant ocean. We are invited to swim in it. We do not construct the lake. We do not build the foundation or lay the groundwork for the things of God. We are but vessels that were included in Christ and given the freedom to seek him and to allow him to search our ways.
Christ means the death of the self-life. The self-life never once did anything that was of any value. Christ is the end for the self. The flesh and all of the horrors that are associated with it are bound up in the blood of Christ.
This is how we become the house of God. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. But the truth is in Jesus. “I am the way the truth and the life,” Jesus said. He is the perfect embodiment of truth. He is the direction and the perfection. Without our continual abiding in him, we are unable to see the things that God desires for us. We are never the person that we ought to be apart from a revelation of Christ. That revelation comes to us in stages and we wonder how the things of God ever were hidden from the saints of old. God sent forth his Son in the fullness of time. Everything that God does, he does in fullness.
Christ is the expression of all that is holy and just and good. We cannot come to God apart from the revelation of Christ in him. We can sustain our souls if we abide in Christ. We cannot become all that God would have us be if we do not entertain the realities of Christ and search out the thing that God desires for us. He gives strength and grace for each new day. This is the glory of Christ.
