Written Word

Another Glimpse into The Life of Christ in Five Phases

(This is an excerpt. To purchase the book, go here: http://bit.ly/U05x1 )

Three Aspects of God 

To know Jesus of course we must have at least a relatively good knowledge of God. We know that there are these three divine expressions: God the Father; God the Logos or Word (John 1.1); God the Holy Spirit. The three, we are told, constitute the Holy Trinity. It would serve no good purpose to contend that there is no such word in the Bible as "trinity." That is not pertinent because there still remain undeniably a Father, a Logos or Word and a Holy Spirit, whatever one chooses to name the overall concept.

Of course we who comprise the "Oneness" movement are supposedly completely at odds with the Trinitarians. This writer cannot agree with this stance. When one studies the writings of the Trinitarian theologians (as opposed to the man who voices his unlearned opinion at the local barber shop) one can see that, although the words may be different, they are saying in essence what we are saying. After they go to great lengths to tell us there are three Persons in the Godhead, they then insist that the three are not actually three since the three are of one essence and think and agree as one. The main point here is that they are firm in their assertion that there is only one God.

Is there, then, such a wide gulf between them and us? While we stoutly and correctly maintain, as they do, that there is one God, do we not admit there are three distinct manifestations of the one God? We carefully avoid saying there are three persons as if fearful that will proliferate the one God. But one of the definitions of “person” is this: “Any of the three modes of being (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) in the Trinity [Godhead].” (Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1999).) That should not ruffle our Pentecostal feathers too much.

There are different spheres of operations for the three respective manifestations of God although there is a blurring of the boundaries at times. This is because whether one refers to the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit, they are all one God. Each expression or manifestation of God is fully God, therefore each one shares the responsibility and/or credit for all the actions taken by the other two facets of God.

For example, Christ created all things (Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:16, 17) but we would not presume to say that the Father and the Holy Spirit were completely shut out of this activity. There is another example to buttress the premise that one manifestation of God does not operate independently of the other two: The Holy Ghost dwells in the hearts and directs the activities of the saints of God according to John 14:26 and 16:13. But in Acts 16:7 we read that the "Spirit of Jesus" (ASV, RSV, NIV) was He who directed the journeys of Paul and Silas. This Spirit of Jesus of course is the same One we call the Holy Ghost. The scripture's apparently chance reference to Him as the Spirit of Jesus helps to confirm our contention that the three are all one God and what one does is in effect done by all three. At the same time we must remember that God chooses to differentiate between the respective works of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and that is the way we should view their operations.

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Master Your Ambition

Ambition is a good quality to have in general, but for the child of God who has it, he or she should exercise care in how they handle it. Without ambition to power our small craft through the rough seas it will inevitably encounter, we would have no certain course and would drift aimlessly wherever the tide would carry us.

When ambition is present and is used correctly, It will power us to wherever the helm (steering mechanism) directs the boat. But, once again, we have to use ambition with care, otherwise it might overpower the helm and take us to the wrong port. Ambition is the push to succeed in what we are doing, and if it pushes us contrary to the helm (the will of God),we are in serious trouble. It will not then be an agitated sea or pounding waves that overwhelm us, it will be our excessive reliance on the thrust of our ambition. Ambition should never override the sure direction in which our helm is trying to take us.

There are various types of ambition that we might have in our journey on our personal high seas: 1) There is the obviously wrong type, the carnal ambition that is centered on self without regard to the will of God. That is a definite no-no for one who is supposed to be following Christ. 2) This second ambition type is as we discussed it above, the ambition or drive to succeed in the Lord's work that is so strong that we override the helm, which is the will of God. The thrust of our ambition propels us so strongly at times that we go outside of where the helm wants to take us, we venture outside of the will of God. When our "autopilot" (our conscience) signals "danger!" we brush it aside and insist, "I am doing the work of the Lord; nothing is going to stop me!" How dangerously foolish!

Paul cautions us to fight within the rules of the game. In the following letter to the Corinthians he likens our spiritual journey to a person running a race:

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27 No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." (1 Cor. 9.24-27 NIV)

At the end of many years of a glorious hard-fought race, Paul could speak to his spiritual son Timothy out of a wealth of experience:

"…if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules." (2 Tim. 2.5)

Further in the same letter to Timothy Paul made this touching and eloquent observation:

"But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. 6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing." (2Tim. 4.5-8 NIV)

Paul did not break the rules in his ambition to succeed; he did not override the autopilot. He was very careful, in fact, not to reach beyond his "measure of faith," that which God had allotted him.

"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you." (Rom. 12.3)

If ever there was a man of drive and ambition, it was Paul, but he kept the ambition strictly within the bounds of the will of God.

3) Now we come to the third type of ambition, one that is consonant at all times with God's purpose and direction for our lives. Once again Paul is a good example for this reason: Although his ministry was an outstanding and glorious one, in his day it was looked on by his fellow Jews as a contemptible thing – but it was in this very calling that Paul worked like a man driven, and he was certainly driven by an ambition that kept within his measure of faith.

Paul took a calling that was shameful to all but the Church and turned it around in his mind into what it really was: the "high calling of God in Christ Jesus." In similar manner he metamorphosed the cross of crucifixion from a low despicable state (which it was and rightfully still is today) into a glorious profession!

It is incumbent on us today to pursue whatever calling God has for us with the same unbridled enthusiasm, the same drive to excel, the same ambition, doing all we can, within the measure of faith allotted to us, to touch lives and to bring glory to the name of Jesus Christ.

"Whereof [Paul's apostolic office] I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. (8) Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ…" (Eph 3:7-8)

Be passionate in your work, however lowly, and be driven to success – all within the bounds of the will of God.

Pattern Yourself after Christ - Carefully

There is not, and indeed there cannot be, a perfect analogy between Jesus’ life and the lives of His followers. Of course it is only proper that we yearn to be like Christ, but at certain points we have to accede to the fact that Jesus’ divinity caused Him to display an aspect of Himself to which we can only futilely aspire.

But first let us look at the many areas in Jesus’ life in which we can properly strive to be like Him. After all, we are His offspring. Jesus showed many examples of compassion, examples we should seek to emulate, namely these: 1) He forgave sinners of their sins, which, upon close inspection, were sins against Jesus’ own divine Self; 2) Jesus was not too holy to associate with the lowest of sinners and with those who had the most dreaded affliction, leprosy. In these areas we should aspire to be like Him. As Jesus did, we can in love mingle socially with unrepentant sinners while at the same time living above the sins they practice. This is called witnessing. It is also called “letting our light shine.”

In our aspiring to be like Jesus, we should not be so fastidious (“finicky”) that we cannot touch and minister to those who are afflicted with loathsome diseases. Jesus was not so aloof from those He healed. It is true that Jesus healed some without touching them, but He touched the leper; He touched others who were sick. There are unfortunates of today who are sorely in need of a modern day Florence Nightingale or a Sister Teresa to walk among them where they live and share a bit of their misery and to give them a pencil thin ray of hope in the hellholes to which they are consigned by an unfeeling fate. (No, this is not God’s doing; it is the result of sin’s blighting a world that was originally created perfect.)

On the other hand, I repeat that there are some things that our lack of divinity preclude us from doing. While we are granted the privilege of praying as Jesus did in Gethsemane, we can never be, as He was (nor should we aspire to be), burdened with 1) the sins of an entire race of people nor 2) with the awful knowledge that in a few hours the Father will abandon us to the literal hell of being cut off from all sense of His presence. Jesus had known this abiding presence all His life, even when he was an infant and unaware of it. Nevertheless it was there and it kept the infant Jesus as it keeps all who are living in this world.

It is oftentimes the unaware sense of the presence of God and His Spirit’s unseen check on the actions of wicked men that keep them from going completely mad and indulging to the full their pursuit of wickedness. When Jesus was cut off from His Father, with whom he had the closest and most intimate relationship (Jesus was God come to earth as the Son of God, which is as close a bond as we can conceptualize), it resulted in torment greater than that He endured in Gethsemane and at Calvary. It is a matter of fact that the rejection by the Father was such a horror that it killed Jesus before the cross could end His life. That is why Pilate marveled that Jesus had died sooner than one could be expected to die by crucifixion.

“Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died.” (Mark 15.44 RSV)

For an indirect confirmation that Jesus did not die entirely by the trauma of being crucified, we have these words by the commentator John Gill:

“For death, by crucifixion, was a slow lingering death; persons that were in their full strength hung a great while before they expired; and the two thieves, which were crucified with Christ, were not dead when he was…”  (John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible)

God does not need to bring us a special revelation; reason virtually shouts it at us: We cannot expect our lives to be an exact parallel of Jesus’ life. He was without doubt fully human, but He was also, without doubt, fully God. We are not.

It becomes increasingly clearer as I study the Word of God: Our individual lives are not to be exact parallels of the life of anyone who ever lived or is now living. We look at other lives that are blessed of God, living or deceased, and we are expected to use them for examples of godly living, but we are not to imitate them to the nth degree.

One prime reason is this: No human is perfect, therefore if we make our lives exact replicas of any human, we will be copying his or her defects and failures. We have already touched on why we cannot fully follow the example that Jesus set: we are not, like Him, divine. We are obviously faulty lumps of clay on whom God is working  — but He has not perfected us yet. So we take the good examples from the lives of other godly men and women and we endeavor to be like Jesus in His humanity, and we keep our faith in the Almighty who will bless our efforts and bring us eventually to the perfection we seek.