THE SON

THE SON

                “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

                Why did God send His Son into the world? The first and most obvious answer is that He loved us so much that He was willing to offer His own beloved Son as an offering for sin. Well, that is every bit true, but it is only a partial answer. So again we ask: “Why did God send His Son into the world?

                Our second answer might be that a man sold our world to Satan and so it had to be a Man to buy it back. That too is true, but it too is a partial answer.

                What we need to understand is that God the Father had no ability to save us. He loved us and wanted to redeem us and reconcile us to Himself, but He couldn’t do it. Let me explain it this way.

                We all see those high power lines that stretch across the country to bring electrical power to cities. I don’t know what their exact voltage is but I understand that it runs in excess of 10,000 volts. We need that electricity because it lights and heats our homes and so on. But if you were to run a 10,000 volt line directly into our home it would fry everything and burn the house down in a matter of seconds.

                What we need then is some sort of mediator, some sort of transformer that reduces the voltage down to a level that our houses and factories can operate in.

                Just so, God could not enter into our lives directly without destroying us and so He had to institute some means of mediating, of transforming His power to us at a level that we could operate in.

                We see this all powerful God on Mt. Sinai, His voice shaking the mountain, His presence burning the top of the mountain. It scared everyone to death and even Moses was trembling with fear at the sound of His voice. Ex. 19:16. So the best that God could do was to set up a human priesthood with laws and types and shadows all pointing forward to a plan God had to send a Mediator, a transformer into the world who could bring God to us and reconcile us to Him without frying us so to speak.

                And while the Levitical priesthood presented the truth to us and while the Sanctuary of Moses told us about God’s ways, and even though the Ten Commandments showed us in part what we were doing that displeased God, these things were not in and of themselves the Truth, but point to a greater truth yet to come.. They could only point forward to something that God had promised…a living Mediator or transformer who could reconcile our 110 circuitry with His 10,000 volt power.

                Paul begins the book of Romans by saying: “Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning His Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh…”

                The apostle John gave us an astounding truth and one with which Paul agreed and spent his entire ministry defending. John said:

“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.” John 1:17

This is something very profound and essential. It is something to which we must pay particular attention. What John is saying in essence here is that the Old Testament Laws and types and shadows were not in and of themselves the truth, but rather that they pointed forward to the Truth that was to come.

                So then we can begin to understand the import of Paul’s message. He was saying in effect, that we must detach from and die to the system of laws and types and shadows that pointed forward to the real living truth and we must become attached to another, to Christ the Transformer, the Mediator of a covenant that brings the very Spirit of God into our hearts and lives without killing us. It opens up to us the transforming power of God which comes to us through Jesus Christ alone.

                This gives a whole new meaning to Jesus’ statement saying: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through Me” John 14:6Here He is letting us know that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life to which the Old Testament pointed. And Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me.” John 5:39

                Jesus also says: “truly, truly I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” John 6:47, 48.

                It is in understanding that God sent us into the world to bring to us the real that we begin to understand Jesus’ statements about Himself as something completely new… something to which the Old Testament could only promise, but could not deliver.

                So, when Jesus says, “If you love Me, keep My Commandments, He is not referring us back to Sinai and the Law that was given thereby an untouchable God to Moses. Paul everywhere tells us that while that Law was holy and righteous and good, it could not impart life to us and it could not save us. The Law could only point forward to someone who could ransom us and Mediate His Spirit to us.

                This then gives a whole new dynamic to Jesus’ statements where He says for instance: “A new commandment I give to you that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jn. 13:34, 35.

                Now John said something astounding in John 15:10. He said, “If you keep My commandments you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

                `This statement tends to go right over our heads, as it has gone over my head all of these years. What on earth is Jesus saying here? What is the difference between His commandments and the Father’s commandments?

                What this is saying is that the Father’s commandments are the commandments given on Mt. Sinai and Jesus, as both God and Man, became the only human in history to keep those commandments flawlessly. He Himself then fulfilled that Sinai Law so that He could bring to us a New Commandment. It is a commandment that we could not keep without His Holy Spirit because it involves our loving one another even as He loved us. So in order to make this possible Jesus said: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.

                So the New Covenant is something entirely new, that operates by new laws and a new source of power and it is mediated to us by a new priesthood called the Melchizedek Priesthood which came to Abraham 430 years before the Old Covenant was introduced. The Old Covenant could not produce love, but now, by the Spirit of Christ, He can produce His love in us and it is this love that fulfills the Law of Moses and then carries us on to be transformed into the image of Christ.

                Paul devoted almost his entire ministry trying to explain to us that you can’t go back to the weak and powerless Law of the Old Covenant. It cannot save us, or produce the Love of God in us. Jesus has become the Mediator of a New Covenant a new and living way.

                This is not in opposition to the Father for indeed the Father set this whole thing up. And the Father was indeed in the Son reconciling the world to Himself, but the Son in the veil of human flesh because for us a transformer, a Mediator to bring the 10,000 volt power of God down to a human compatibility level and Jesus continues to mediate this New Covenant to us by His Holy Spirit as He operates as our High Priest after the order of Melchizedek.

                And because Jesus has, by the Father’s design become that one transformer, that one Mediator between God and man, god has exalted Him and given Him a name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow. So when we worship Jesus, we are worshipping the Father and Jesus said, “He who hates Me hates My Father also.”  John 15:23

                “Therefore also God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.” Phil 2:9-11

                God has given all authority to His Son, not only on earth, but in heaven as well and even in hell. He is the only way to God. He is the only Mediator, the only Source of power to which we can receive and live by.

                This is why Paul is so adamant about our not going back to Old Covenant laws and types and shadows. They contain truth in types and shadows and promises, but Jesus is the real and living Truth to which all of those things point. Paul is saying, “Why would you live by a type or a shadow when you can live in the power and presence of God Himself as He is mediated to us through His Son? Why would you choose to live by a priesthood made up of sinful men who would die, rather than the eternal High Priest who now lives to make intercession for us?

                I have struggled for a lifetime to understand this and I may not fully understand it yet, but I know this, we are not strung out between two covenants… trying to satisfy both the Law that can’t save us and the new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that now fulfills everything that the Old Covenant pointed forward to.

                Now, mind you, the Old Testament is the foundation upon which the New Testament sits, for it verifies and testifies to who God is and who Jesus Christ is and must be in order to save us. It contains the truth in laws and types and shadows and thus provides an undeniable identity of Jesus as the Savior of mankind to which the Law pointed.

                But make no mistake about it: We live in an entirely new covenant, under an entirely new priesthood, with new laws and new powers and our goal in this new covenant is to live to the mediated power of Christ so that we may grow up into His image.

                Jesus came to lift us up out of this dark and hopeless world of sin, and to empower us and transform us into His image and likeness so that we could share His throne with Him as royal children of God and joint heirs with Jesus.

                Therefore Hebrews 12 tells us that we have not come to Mt. Sinai that was so terrible that even Moses said, “I am full of fear and trembling, but we have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks better than the blood of Abel.” Heb.12:18-24

                If we can once and for all get this, we can begin to live in a world of power and transformation into sons. And it is because we fall back and resort to the lifeless things, the powerless things… to laws and types and shadows that cannot produce life in us that the church has become weak and ineffective in the world today.

                We need a major revival in our day. It is not a revival of lawlessness, such as the false grace movement is trying to promote, but neither is it a return to the letter of the Law. What we need is a revival of truly living by the Spirit of God so that He produces the love of God and the obedience and power of the Holy Spirit so that we can do the works of Christ in the world.

                Jesus gave us His very own Spirit on the day of Pentecost so that we could carry on His work in the world and yet we have largely fallen short of it. We have tried to replace His dynamic power with Laws and traditions that cannot save us or give us the power of Christ.

                Once we understand what Jesus is really wanting of us, then we begin to realize that Paul was not splitting hairs. He was telling us that Jesus brought to us a new and powerful way to please God. We are no longer slaves to a mountain in Arabia, but we are sons of the free born woman as was Isaac. (Gal. chapter 4) and true to form, it says: “And if we belong to Christ, then we are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” Gal 3:29. And those promises to Abraham were initiated under a Melchizedek priesthood and not a Levitical priesthood that came many years later.

                So when Jesus says to us ”If you keep My commandments you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” John 15:10, He is talking about two different sets of commandments. His Father’s commandments represent the Law given on stone on Mt. Sinai, whereas His commandments are as follows in verse 12: “this is My commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you.”

                This is a commandment that we cannot keep unless His Holy Spirit is flowing through us. But we have become temples of the living God 1Cor. 3:16 and He is within us working out His will in our lives and empowering us to do His work in the world and we desperately need to seek the Lord with all of our hearts… to live by His Spirit, instead of dead laws. We have a mission to finish in this world that we cannot possibly do unless we are empowered by and animated by the very Spirit of Christ.  

                So why did God send His Son? He sent His Son to do something that HE could not do. He could not reconcile us to Himself without a Mediator, a transformer who could within Himself make God and mankind compatible so that He could enter into us by His Spirit and save us from our own sinful selves.

                Jesus did so and in the process, He brought us a new covenant… a covenant made possible by His indwelling power in us. The Law told us what love must be, but could not give us this love. So Jesus came and offered us a new covenant, empowered by His own Spirit and administered by the Melchizedek priesthood so that we can be transformed into His image and to love even as He loved us and in so doing we can finish His work in the world.