Hi all,
Last week I shared how for the first 500 years of Christianity they were focused on the resurrection rather than the cross. I talked about the phrase ‘is risen’ and how it is a continual state of being, forever a condition of existence.
The Son was given so He could be the child born
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders…” The son given, is Christ, who became the child born, Jesus. Isaiah 9: 6
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, Christ. Christ is the title for the Son given, who existed with the Father in glory before the universe was.
Jesus is His human name, given be Gabriel to Mary, and means ‘salvation’. (Luke 1: 31)
Throughout the New Testament, when you see the word ‘Christ’, the writer is emphasizing the deity of the Lord. It emphasizes the fact He is God. When you see His name ‘Jesus’ the writer is emphasizing His humanity, the Man.
When ‘Christ’ is mentioned alone or first, as in “Christ Jesus”, it means the greater focus is on His deity. For instance, I Corinthians 2: 16 says we have the mind of Christ. NOT the mind of Jesus, but the mind of Christ is in our spirit.
That means we have God’s mind in any situation, any turmoil, there for us to gain His unlimited wisdom to help in time of need. If we were to be theologically correct, Jesus doesn’t live in our heart – Christ does.
When using the name of Jesus alone or first as in ‘Jesus Christ’, the emphasis is on His humanity. For this reason we ask the Father ‘in the name of Jesus’. We cast out demons, ‘in the name of Jesus’. We lay hands on the sick ‘in the name of Jesus’. Jesus is the man who is God, and we as men have authority to use His NAME – Jesus. As men using the Man’s name.
It may seem like splitting hairs to say Christ lives in me and not Jesus
But the difference is profound in its effect on our thinking. When the average Christian says they asked Jesus into their heart, their thinking automatically limits itself to focus on the man Jesus. They subconsciously stop at the cross.
When we correct ourselves to say Christ lives in our hearts, then we state the whole Person and Mind of the Father God, the power of the resurrection, abides in our hearts – Christ Jesus the Man who as God oversees His body by the Holy Spirit, making us more than equal to any situation life can throw at us.
Christ, God’s Son, had not known earth-life personally until He became a man.
“For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats take away (human) sin. When He came into the world He said this: ‘A body you have prepared Me, for in the blood of bulls and goats you have had no pleasure.” Hebrews 10: 4-6
“He took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man. And having emptied Himself He found Himself fashioned as a man, and humbled Himself to death, even the death of the cross…” Philippians 2: 6-8
The Father is a Spirit in the realm of the Spirit, so He has never known hunger, sleep, the need to use the toilet, or temptation. James 1:13 says He is not tempted by evil. One must have a human body to be tempted and the Father does not. He is a Spirit with a Spirit-body. But Christ Jesus experienced all the limitations of being human for He had become a man.
Resurrection day: The day everything changed between Father and Son.
When Jesus was resurrected from the dead it meant He would forever be the Son who had tasted death, and conquered it. The Son who had left heaven pure and untainted, was raised from the dead as a man, forever existing in the Life of ‘is risen’.
The Father rightly gave Him a name above every name as a result. Rightly gave Him the kingdom to rule in the lives of men. Rightly made Him to be exalted, honored, revered, and worshipped above all created beings. Philippians 2: 5-11
“God (Father) has fulfilled His word to us in that He resurrected Jesus, as He says in the second Psalm; You are my Son, this day I have fathered you.” Acts 13: 33
The Father considers Jesus’ resurrection as the day He fathered Him.
Let that sink in. Why would things have changed so much between them that the Father considered resurrection day the day He fathered Him?
Because He left heaven a Spirit-being and returned as a Man. He returned in the human body He ‘found Himself in’, though transformed by the power of the resurrection. There is right now in heaven with the Father, a man in a human body. The Son of God will eternally exist in a condition of ‘is risen’, as a man who died and then conquered death.
For ages Christ existed with the Father in the realm of the Spirit. Then He became a man. When He died it was something neither He nor the Father had ever experienced before. And when He was resurrected, He was not to be restored as it had been before the physical universe had been created. Things between them would never again be the ‘normal’ they had together in glory before the universe was created.
He was resurrected as a man, now with a body made of celestial material, all man, all God. He died as a Man to put His last will and testament into effect, then the Father raised Him from the dead so He could be the Executor of His own Estate and inheritance – the body of Christ, to whom the Father has given the kingdom.
The relationship between Father and Son could never go back to what it was before He left heaven to become one of us.
It is the power of the resurrection that changed everything. Everything. Its effects will be felt into the ages to come, for that is what we are promised in Ephesians 2: 7 – “…in the ages to come the Father will continue to show us the riches of His kindness which is towards us in Christ Jesus.”
Next week, why after the resurrection Jesus is never again referred to as God’s only son….until then, blessings,
John Fenn
