Jesus said in John 10:30 (Amplified) that, "I and the Father are one" and revealed the difference between God and Father in this one statement. Before we had viewed our Father by what we had seen and read of the old covenant God. Now, Jesus is revealing Him as Father instead of just God. Is He still God? Of course He is, but His relationship with man has changed now from a distant God to an ever present Father and One who protected from the outside to One who is ever present on the inside.
Our view of who God is has been slanted because the only thing we knew about Him was gleaned from the old covenant. To actually come to know Him as Father, we must see Him under the new covenant of grace and righteousness by Jesus. Jesus said that the Father and I are One, so when we see Jesus, we have seen the Father.
We've somehow connected God with punishment and strict rules that must be kept to keep from destruction. But, law has been swallowed up by grace in the new covenant. The sacrifices of the old covenant have all been met by the Lamb of God in the new covenant. Whatever the law demanded, Jesus met in one awesome sacrifice of Himself. Jesus became the sin offering, the trespass offering, the offering of the first fruits, the Passover, and the offering to be made if we were unclean. Whatever man needed to be made right with God was met by Jesus. Now all the things that were needed to completely fulfill the Law were met by Him.
No matter how man tried to stand upright with God by the Law, he always fell short because of the sin nature that was within him. But, now, Jesus has made us righteous by giving us His own right standing with God. Now, we have the right, through Him, to come into the presence of God and to address Him as Father. Now, it's not God and His people, but the Father and His family.
If we learn to view Him by looking at Jesus, we see Him as He really is. Now, He's not limited in His approach to us by our sin, but made one with us through the sacrifice of Jesus which covered all of our sin and iniquities.
We still walked in the fear that He was going to punish us every time we fell short in our walk. We knew that some of the things we've done (even after we were born again) were wrong and worthy of punishment. And, because we knew we deserved to be punished, we allowed a place for the enemy to move in our lives and we attributed all of the calamity to our Father because we didn't understand Him.
This has been a pattern in the lives of Christians for years. We knew that a just and righteous God had to punish sin. What we didn't understand was that all the punishment fell on Jesus so that you and I could walk free from it.
Now we understand what John meant when he wrote in 1John 4:18 (Amplified) that, "There is no fear in love (dread does not exist) but full grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors, and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and (so) he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love (is not yet grown into loves complete perfection)."
By reading this scripture in the light of the Spirit of Grace, we begin to understand that maturity in the Spirit lets us understand how much this great love has done to deliver us. When we're mature enough to believe that love even covered our punishment for wrong, we begin to see our loving Father instead of seeing Him as others have often portrayed Him as a vengeful God.
Isaiah 53:6 (Amplified) tells us, "Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains (of punishment) yet we (ignorantly) considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God (as if by leprosy)." You see, His love not only took care of all our trespasses, but also the punishment that was due because of those trespasses.
So, 1John 4:18 (Amplified) says that when we're mature enough to understand the greatness of this love and how even our punishment was taken by Jesus, we can now walk without fear (of punishment) because we now understand that He's not only God but our Father.
Understanding this great love will set you free from fear and close the door of condemnation to the enemy. Now, we are finally coming to the maturity of the love of God our Father.
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