What mercy God has had upon us in bringing us to the church and giving us revelation! The Lord Himself came to this earth to fulfill God’s purpose. Men failed; Adam failed and Adam’s descendants failed. Noah’s generation failed. Israel’s generations failed. Then the most powerful weapon that this universe has ever seen was given to men: the gospel. The gospel is the power of God. The gospel is God Himself. God Himself became the move of God, the work of God.
As Paul was serving the Lord in his journeys, the Lord was giving him revelation after revelation. Paul was raising up churches and, according to the need, exhorting them with his revelations. Paul wrote to the Galatians and the Thessalonians, rebuking the saints and leading them to the way of life, spirit, and the fruits of the Spirit which are faith, love and hope. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, showing what it means to be a minister of the New Testament and how the ministry is produced. The ministry is not a doctrine but it is the result of the revelation of Jesus Christ and experiencing Him until He is infused into those who follow Him and they become the triumphal followers of Christ!
Taking the responsibility to exercise to feed others (Matt. 24:45-46) and the pressure caused by the responsibility will wrought the life of God into us, into our mind, will and emotion. This will constitute us ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit, because the letter kills but the Spirit gives life including righteousness and the glory that never fades away. That’s why we don’t get discouraged but we go forward. Even though our outer man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16).
But when Paul went to Achaia he had a dilemma. He wanted to go to Spain but he missed his companions and something was telling him that he needed to go to Jerusalem. At this time, he wrote to the Romans and revealed something great to us: God’s full salvation is based in the death of Christ, in His blood that gives us eternal life. The base of the redemption of Christ introduces us to eternity, the New Jerusalem. The gospel of grace is to save our spirit. It is to give us an eternal place in the presence of God that is consummated in the New Jerusalem. This redemption, this death and this blood also released God’s life. The Lord in His resurrection gives this life to those who believe and in this way we are regenerated. This life needs to grow.
The Lord gave us a second weapon that is the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel of grace reaches our spirit and brings us to eternity, but the gospel of the kingdom reaches our soul and saves our lives completely. The apostle Paul saw that Christ became the mystery of God. He was the mystery of God and in Christ dwells the fullness of the Godhead (Col. 2:9). Everything that God is and everything that God accomplished is in Christ! He is the consummation, the realization of all the shadows and of all things that were spoken about Him in the Scriptures. Christ became the Spirit. The Lord is the Spirit to accomplish everything God had planned when He chose us before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish and predestinated us unto sonship (Eph. 1:4-5). God became a man to accomplish redemption and to cleanse the vessel, to wash men and to bring them before God. He is the head of all things. When He was exalted and made Lord and Christ, this was the fulfillment of all the Father’s promises. The Father gave Him all the riches to prove that He is the Lord and Christ. God poured the Spirit upon His Body. Those who were gathered on the day of Pentecost received the outpouring of the Spirit. It came upon them as tongues of fire (Acts 2:1-4) and they became the manifestation of a holy nation, a kingdom of priests (1 Pet. 2:9). Jesus is Lord!
The Spirit is sealing us, giving us the guarantee of our inheritance. We are receiving God day by day. We belong to God through this seal that is on us through the Spirit sealing us in our soul with His life. This is the portion that is being given by the Lord. Then we can say that this becomes an inheritance to God. Day by day every part of our being is becoming God’s. And day by day God is making Christ our inheritance. We are His and He is ours. This dispensing makes the church the Body of Christ, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. The Lord as the Head is filling some whom He is captivating on this earth. He is giving Himself to those people so they can also serve others and help all the saints to function and be perfected. If each saint is functioning in each one’s part, the Body is growing. Jesus is Lord!
Romans begins, “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, a called apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, Concerning His Son, who came out of the seed of David according to the flesh…” (Romans 1:1-3) Here we can see the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. God became a man out of the seed of David. Verse 4 continues,“Who was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” When the Lord resurrected, His humanity was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness. Psalms 2:7 says, “I will recount the decree of Jehovah; He said to Me: You are My Son; Today I have begotten You.” In Acts 13:33, Paul also could say, “That God has fully fulfilled this promise to us their children in raising up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, You are My Son; this day have I begotten You.” When the Lord resurrected, His humanity was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness. He was God in His spirit, but His humanity was designated Son of God.
Through the Spirit, when we receive the Lord, we receive everything that the Lord brought and uplifted. Everything is in our spirit through receiving the gospel of God! The gospel of God regenerates our spirit, enlarging it to make our spirit a dwelling place. Thus God can enter into our spirit and be one with our spirit. Working through our spirit the Lord can flood our soul, and this overflowing of God into our soul is the growth of life. This process eliminates the old things that are still in us. It is an organic and inward transformation. It is following a pattern to conform all of us to the image of the Son of God.
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