Unity # 3: Heirs Together of the Worth of Christ

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Unity # 3: Heirs Together of His worth

Sunday 9/16/12

THEME SONG: All I Once Held Dear

Dear Father,

      You are of infinite worth. With You is a rich store of wisdom, salvation, love, and knowledge. The fear of You is the key to this treasure. We consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing You, Jesus! Please show us that everything apart from You and Your Kingdom is worthless. Please forgive me for not letting my eyes meet Yours continually.

In Jesus Christ’s Name,

Amen

He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,6 whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a trustworthy statement; and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men. Titus 3

Dear Beloved,

 In the past several months every morning as I wake up I say “Jesus Christ is my Lord, God, and Savior, and thank You” out loud as my feet hit the floor. There were days when I said it with joy and eagerness to see that day’s work of the Spirit. There were many other days when I said it because it is true, though my heart felt the depths of the grave and there were haunting remembrances of the previous day’s unfaithfulness to Him. How can we find a balance between grace and worthy conviction of guilt? The Christian leaders of the day seem to emphasize one of the two. We need our Savior to reveal Himself because He is filled with everything necessary for our progress in the faith. The work of our Spirit is complete in every area of grace and conviction. He is the Comforter and the One who Convicts. He is the One who breaks up the unplowed soil of hardened hearts and the One who heals relentless wounds. Last week my letter was about how our belief in the true Message of Christ seals us together in the Spirit.

This letter is about the infinite worth of our Savior. Our understanding and growing comprehension of His worth and the worthlessness of everything of the world brings us together as His heirs.

The vast majority of this world insists that its prosperity is of great worth and is worthy of our strivings and of our heart’s adoration. It has been one of the worst deceptions that we have faced since Adam and Eve’s fall. The devil’s intent has been for our hearts to believe that there is worth in the things of the world. Satan wants our desires to be for the acquiring of earthly things. He wants us to find worth in leaders of false religions and gospels rather than the true Shepherd. But, as His saints, we have come to believe what Isaiah concludes: all of them are false. Their works are worthless. Their molten images are wind and emptiness (Is 41:29). The judgment of the worthless shepherds who leave their flock in the day of disaster is a sword on his right arm and right eye such that this arm is withered and this eye is blind (Zech 11:17). Think about the popular leaders of our world. This is what their outcome will be unless they repent. For this reason King David says “I will set no worthless thing before my eyes;
I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not fasten its grip on me. Ps 101:3”

As we came to faith in Christ, we all experienced a feeling of worthlessness. Apart from Christ, we were just as worthless as the temporary things of the world. And all our strivings were to no avail. If we have truly come to understand His worth, the initial step was for us to realize in our core how utterly worthless everything about us truly was apart from Him. We were like the prodigal son who did not consider himself worthy to be called a son (Luke 15:19). We were like Moses who considered the reproach of Christ to be of greater worth than the treasures of Egypt and who acted in faith, endurance, and vision of the unseen God (Heb 11:26-27).  We understood Christ’s Words that if we do not take our cross and follow Him, we are not worthy of Him. And if we find our lives through being satisfied with earthly prosperity, we would be losing everything. But when we have lost our worthless lives with their worthless earthly prosperity (or lack thereof), we would find Life (Matt 10:38-39). We would find Life, because the Life on the One with infinite worth would be made known to us in the infinite days ahead. Had we loved anything more than Him, we could never understand and become heirs of His worth (Matt 10:37). The core of our hearts as His children is the understanding that everything that we considered to be of worth before is a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. We are willing to lose everything for His sake because we have understood that only in Him true worth is found (Phil 3:7-8).

The people of the world claim to be rich, wealthy, and self-sufficient, but as we abide in Him, we realize that they are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked (not clothed in Christ’s righteous Robe) (Rev 3:17). Jesus advises us, dear saints, to buy from Him gold refined by fire so that we may become rich and white garments so that we may clothe ourselves and the shame of our nakedness would not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint our eyes so that we may see (Rev 3:18). How much did this gold, white garments, and eye salve cost? They costed Him everything and they cost us our lives. Our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, but for our sakes became poor so that through His poverty and by His grace, we might become rich (2 Cor 8:9).  We know now that the flesh profits nothing. The Spirit that He has given us gives us Life. His Words are Spirit and they are Life for us (John 6:63). The discipline of our physical bodies is of little worth, but godliness is profitable for all things because it holds promise for the present life and also the life to come (I Tim 4:8).

The Spirit in us has given us a single mind and heart to understand the great worth of our King who is abounding in riches for all who call on Him (Rom 10:12). We call upon our Lord who alone in worthy to be praised and we are saved from our enemies (Ps 18:3). We are becoming like John the Baptist who, though he had a great following and had poured out His life in sacrifice, realized that he was not worthy to untie the sandals of the One coming after Him (Acts 13:25). We know that our Lord is worthy to take the Book of judgment and Life and break the seals because He was slain and purchased all of us from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation with His blood for God (Rev 7:9). Riches, honor, enduring wealth and righteousness belong to our Christ who is our wisdom (Prov 8:17-18). His riches are kindness, tolerance, patience, wisdom, and knowledge, all of which lead us to repentance (Rom 2:4, Rom 11:33).

Dear saints, His plan is to show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:7). The riches of Christ are unfathomable and by them, He grants us the strengthening with power through His Spirit in our inner man (Eph 3:8,16). By His riches all of our needs to know Him, to accomplish His will, and to be successful in our faithfulness are supplied (Phil 4:19). God has willed to make know what are the riches of the glory of the mystery among all of us. This mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col 1:27)!

In the grace of our God, He has granted us worth in His Son. Furthermore, because the righteousness of Christ is given to us, we are counted worthy and the good works which He has prepared for us to do are given worth because they are done out of our faith in the granted priceless righteousness of Christ. Our tongues are as choice silver (Prov 10:20) and our Advocate prays for us that we will talk in a manner worthy of the God who calls us into His own Kingdom and glory (2 Thess 2:12). Even in our sufferings and persecution, we can follow the example of our Christian ancestors who rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer shame for His Name because of God’s righteous judgment (Acts 5:41, 2 Thess 1:5). Remember our faithful ancestors, men of whom the world was not worthy, who wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground (Heb 11:38). Because our God keeps us firm in our faith until the end, we are like the few in Sardis who did not soil their garments, and will walk with Christ in white because they are worthy (Rev 3:4). Our God has made us to be a Kingdom and priests to our God, and we will reign on the earth (Rev 5:10). As we fear God and greatly delight in His commandments, our descendents will be mighty on the earth and wealth and riches will be in our house (Ps 112:1-3). Earthly riches? No, we know that there is no worth apart from that of our King and what He bestows to our souls in knowing Him!

9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? Gal 4

We will be called priests and be spoken of as ministers; we will eat the wealth of nations and boast in their riches. Instead of shame, we will have a double portion and instead of humiliation we will shout for joy over the double portion that we possess in our Land; everlasting joy is promised to us (Is 61:6-7)! He is our rich root from which all of us who believe, both Jews and Gentiles are grafted and partake together of His goodness (Rom 11:17). As we share His Gospel, He uses us to make many others rich in Him. We are sorrowful yet always rejoicing, poor yet making many rich, having nothing yet possessing all things (2 Cor 6:10).

7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. Eph 1

A False Doctrine to Be Aware of:There is a false doctrine among many professing Christians that does not take into account the atoning work of Christ. This doctrine suggests that the focus of Christ's atonement was His physical death and suffering at the hands of sinful men. It may emphasize the physical suffering of Christ rather than His experiencing of the wrath of His Father. The true Gospel is that Christ has drunk the cup of His own Father’s wrath that should have been poured on us. He was crushed by His own Father, not the devil and not sinful men. Sinful men were used to crucify Him, but they did cause Him the infinite suffering of the cross. Many martyrs have been burned at the stake and they sang hymns with joy through the pain because they were counted worthy to suffer for His Name and His Spirit granted them joy and strength. The physical pain was not the suffering of Christ. His suffering was that He drank the cup of His own Father’s fierce anger against the wicked. His Father turned His Face away from His own Son. And it pleased the Father to carry out our judgment on His Son because it was the fulfillment of His will for the glorification of Himself through the Gospel. (see Isaiah 53)

Excellent Messages

Quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Ferocious for the Gospel because of the Fall by Jason Myers

Long Way Home: Song (this is not “my kind of music”, but was strangely comforting)

This Same Love: Song (thank you to my second nephew, Timothy (9 yrs), for showing this to me)

Love in Christ,

Preethi