A Bigger Jesus
Background
The foundational and ongoing sin of the Western Church is minimising the reality of the humanity of Jesus. In our rush to maximise his deity and contemporary relevance, we have downgraded a humanity which has been “taken into God” (Athanasian Creed). Given the breadth of my previous articles, teaching the need for the whole Church to submit to the whole Church (The New Wineskin), and portraying the plan of God for the single Church in Perth (The Tapestry), it is unsurprising that the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7) has been working in my heart (Eph 3:17) to open a renewed vision of “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8). The Lord is stretching the wineskin of my own innermost being (John 7:38). Whilst such a testimony is embarrassing to someone “notorious” for his emphasis on Jesus, I see this as a sure sign of God’s great grace (2 Cor 12:19-21). The Spirit’s educational programme has been advancing on two fronts. Firstly, I have been using a commentary on Mark’s Gospel (R.H. Gundry) whose emphasis on the magnetism of Jesus, his unlimited authority and great deeds is very challenging. The second influence needs to be expounded in more detail.
The Power of Spirit-Born Affections
Two major interpreters have influenced my understanding of a profound recent event. As the greatest theological interpreter of revivals, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Edwards_(theologian), argued that religious awakenings were not primarily ignited by emotional, intellectual, or will transformations, but by powerful inner affections released and gifted by the Spirit of Christ. A favoured text for Edwards was, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life/for from it flow the springs of life.” (Prov 4:23; ESV). Two centuries later, Abraham Heschel argued that the Old Testament prophets were united with the pathos/passions/intensity of God’s inner life. The prophet was called to embody and communicate divine feelings. Last week, sitting at an outside table at our local Christian bookstore encouraging an old friend and dejected prophetess, the Spirit of the Lord came upon me in an extraordinary way that has relevance for the future of the whole Church in Perth.
I was overcome by a huge wave of feeling which I instantly recognised as being an immersion in the Spirit into Jesus’ own “gut twisting” compassion (Greek splanchnizomai, splanch means “intestine”). Compassion is the emotion most attributed to Christ in the Gospels. What I sensed next was however the main message. Every heaven-born affection of Jesus imparted to him a measure of faith sufficient for the challenge the Father placed before him. He knew that he could heal “every disease and every affliction”, or feed “four/five thousand people” (Matt 9:35-36; 14:14; Mark 6:34ff.). So emphatic was this witness to Jesus’ faith that I began to bang the table. The Spirit was telling me that “all things are possible for the one who believes” (Mark 9:23) when they share the affections of the Son of God. For example, when Jesus’ spirit was “powerfully moved” (Greek: εμβριμωμενος, like “the snorting of a war horse going into battle” (John 11:33, 38), he was necessarily able to raise Lazarus from the dead. As we come to share more the inner life/pathos/passions of Christ, we too will do such works (John 14:12). Yet such great things will never happen until we have a certain vision of the kingdom of God.
Bigger Inside than Outside
Since the Spirit of God has come to live “in” us (John 14:17 cf. v.23), “he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4). The Jesus who is in us, is greater, in every measurable way, than the world which was created for him. “all things were created through him and for him, in him all things hold together” (Col 1:16). Since “in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ we have been brought to fullness”, the hope of the glorification of the present broken cosmos lives in us, “the riches of the glory of this mystery… Christ in you, the hope of glory/ Christ in you bringing with him the hope of all glorious things to come.” (J.B. Phillips).” (Col 2:9-10, 1:27). This profound reality is what Paul calls, “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8). Insight into this mystery has for centuries enabled believers to faithfully persevere in “the pioneer and perfecter of faith” through unimaginable tortures (Heb 12:2>11:37-40). Our great problem is that we are still judging people “according to a human point of view” whereas God sees us in the eternal “new creation” (2 Cor 5:16-17). We must no longer judge other believers by the temporary matters of age, race, class, intellect, education etc.! We need to see others in the unlimited frame of Jesus Christ. This however is no simple matter.
Stop Measuring Start Seeing
A local spiritual woman unwittingly prophesied to me the other morning, “you always have to apportion blame, that’s how you control your universe”. Of which sinner is this description NOT true, who has not created their own petty inner world? To lift us up out of our self-created world views (Rom 1:21-23; Col 3:1-3) we need a revelation of the heavenly Father that in Christ all things are regulated by his all-powerful Spirit. We need to come into a living faith that “in Christ all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Cor 3:21-23). We need to see in the Spirit what the John saw that the family God has created in Christ is without limit. Your identity and destiny will outlast the present space-time universe (Rev 21:1-5)!
Conclusion
We are entering into a time of the most intense spiritual warfare when we will need the strength and wisdom of all the affections of the now glorified Christ to prevail. Paul understood this when he exhorted the Corinthian Chuurch, I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ…3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” (2 Cor 10:1, 3-4). To date, our Western spirituality has been largely ineffective in spiritual warfare because we have failed to fight in the way of the vast compassion and mercy of the uncondemning Lamb of God (Isa 53:7; 1 Cor 4:12; 1 Pet 2:23). Let agree to ask our Father to pour out the Spirit of Jesus from his heavenly throne (Acts 2:33) so that our faith, in his (John 11:41-44), cannot and will not fail to achieve the vast purposes of God. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” (1 John 5:14-15)