In John 14:9 (Amplified) Jesus asked His disciples, "Have I been with all of you for so long a time, and did you not recognize and know me yet, Phillip? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say then, show us the Father?"
Jesus stated very plainly that He and the Father are one and the same and the only way to know God is to know Him. We've walked in confusion about who our Heavenly Father really is for so long a time. We were hindered by the enemy from really knowing the love and grace that came through Jesus and we missed our understanding of God.
We still look upon Him as only God and missed the Father even though we called Him Father. We still believed that God dealt with His children like He did under the old covenant. Because of this, we missed so many blessings of our new covenant Father. Many of these things that grace has provided couldn't come to us because we still looked to the law and not to grace.
I taught a series of messages some time ago on the unclaimed riches of grace. It seemed to fall on deaf ears at the time because God hadn't revealed it yet to all His children. I believe that the time is now right for His family to hear and see the power of His grace.
It sounds so foreign to Christian people today, because of what has been preached, to believe that grace has provided all things for all time. In Galatians 5:4 (Amplified) it's been so clearly defined that it would seem hard to miss it...but we have. Paul says in that verse, "If you seek to be justified and declared righteous and to be given a right standing with God through the Law, you are brought to nothing and so separated (severed) from Christ. You have fallen away from grace (from God's gracious favor and unmerited blessing)." Verse 6 continues, "that only faith in what Jesus done at His resurrection, will establish what God wants to do in our lives."
All of the things that are His promises of our new covenant are obtained by faith in the price Jesus paid for us. From our healing, to our righteousness, is all received by faith in Jesus paying the bill and becoming our substitute.
I don't walk in guilt over who I used to be because of what Jesus did for me. If His blood was not enough to cleanse me, then I have no way of being cleansed. I have to believe by faith that Jesus did it all. If I have been made righteous by His righteousness, then how can I improve on that by my own idea of what it takes to be made righteous before God?
If the old covenant had been able to do this, then would we have even needed a new one? Jesus was the only sacrifice that could make me right with God and by so doing, make God my Father. Before, we were only servants, but now through Jesus, we are family. As family, we are now joint-heirs with Christ and heirs of God according to Romans 8:17 (Amplified).
Many read this scripture about our sharing in His suffering, and receive the wrong idea of what that is. When the Holy Spirit talks about sharing in His suffering. He is not talking about the cross here. Jesus took our place on the cross not for us to share in it, but to deliver us from it. The suffering we share in is to be rejected by those who still believe we have to somehow pay for their own redemption. Jesus was rejected by the self righteous, but received by those of us who believed by faith in what He said and did on the cross.
You and I are still in this world, but we are not of it. Because we aren't of this world, we aren't received by those who are. Jesus said in John 16:18-19 (Amplified) that the world hated Him and because we aren't of this world, it will hate us. As long as we're here, He is here in us. And, as long as we are here, we still convict the world of righteousness. John 3:19 (Amplified) says, "Light has come, and they have loved darkness." Jesus said that we are the light now. We are to be the light of the world and we are to be the salt of the earth.
As long as the Church is here in this world, we are to spread the light of the gospel to all people. Some will respond and some will persecute just like they did with Jesus. This is suffering just as He suffered. You and I cannot suiffer what He did on the cross. If we could, then Jesus wouldn't have had to because we could have paid our own price of redemption by ourselves.
We must come to know the Father by Jesus. Only then , can we know the glory of His grace..
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