The Life of Jesus Is Our Life

Why did Jesus come into this world? The prevailing answer would be that He came to die. While nobody would argue that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is central to our faith, it seems sometimes that the implications of the fact that He lived with us in this world for thirty-three years are minimized or even overlooked. In His death, Jesus brought us back to the Father, but at Christmas time it would help us greatly to remember that in His birth, He brought the Father to us.

“Immanuel” is His name – “God with us.” Jesus came to make clear to us what His Father is really like. The lie that befell Adam in the Garden of Eden had given all of humanity such a distorted mental image of who the Father is that the Real God didn’t even remotely resemble the caricature mankind had drawn in his own mind. So into this world comes our Savior declaring, “If you’ve seen me, you know what the Father is like because we are one and the same!”

Jesus didn’t come into the world so that the Father would change His mind about us. Your Father has never been angry with man and Jesus came to show us that. He came to change our minds about the Father. He told story after story to show us the great love the Father has for us. The loving father in “the story of the prodigal", the shepherd who left the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep, the man who sold everything he owned so that he could possess the hidden treasure in the field – the list of examples could go on. Jesus wanted us to see that our Father adores us and has eternally determined to include us in His family in a way that we will be a part of “The Inner Circle” forever. Jesus was born so that we can see that our Father loves us so much that He sent the Son to find us and bring us home.

There’s another tremendous reason Jesus was born. It has to do with the vicarious life He lived while He was here on planet earth. Mankind was in a mess when Jesus got here. Because of Adam’s sin, we were wasting away toward absolute loss. That scenario was not one that our Eternal God had ever recognized as a viable option. From eternity past, the Father, Son and Spirit had purposed that we would live in His eternal embrace and nothing – not Adam’s sin – not Satan’s ploy – not our own foolishness and stubbornness would get the last word on that topic. He created us for Himself and He would have us, regardless of the cost.

So Jesus came into this world and became one of us, and as us, He undid the damage Adam had created. He lived a “vicarious life” for us all. The phrase means that He didn’t simply represent us. He was us. As the Perfect Man who joined Himself to our humanity, Jesus replaced our unfaithfulness with His own faithfulness toward the Father. His obedience before God obliterated our disobedience. His righteousness supplanted our unrighteousness. He became us before God the Father.

Think of it like this. When David and Goliath faced off in battle, the agreement was simple. If David won, the entire army of the Philistines suffered defeat. If Goliath won, every person in Israel would become slaves. As “federal heads” of these two nations, David and Goliath were the Israelites and the Philistines. The lives and destiny of the two nations were contained in these two men at that moment.

So it was with Jesus Christ. Mankind’s destiny had been wrapped up in Adam, but the Last Adam came and in his vicarious life defeated the Goliath of sin that threatened our destiny. Through His victory, we all have become victorious. His life was our life before the Father. His death was the end of our old lives. His resurrection was our birth. His indwelling life today is the bond of love between our Triune God and us. Humanity and Deity mix and mingle in an ever flowing river of pure love through Him.

To say, “Merry Christmas” is to affirm that Jesus has succeeded at what He came to do. He has joined us to Himself and His Father through the communion of His Spirit. The Divine Agape who spoke all things into existence is your Life-Source. Whatever may be happening in our circumstances, we can live with the assurance that “we stand in Him complete.” This is indeed “good tidings of great joy for all men.”

Merry Christmas.

Why Am I Obsessed With One Topic - God's Love?

“I understand the love of God and thank Him for it, but that topic seems to be the only thing you talk about these days” someone recently wrote. “ There are other important things to know than just that. Why are you obsessed with this topic?”

It’s a fair question. If you’ll indulge me, I want to give a short background of my ministry in answering that question. Maybe by explaining where I’ve come from, it will be easier to understand where I am at this point in my life and ministry.

I began preaching when I was 16 years old. My first sermon was on “Youth Sunday” in my church. Shortly after that, I started preaching anywhere I could – at other churches, standing on the trunk of my car in the parking lot of the bowling alley, standing on the sidewalk outside the theater where people were waiting to go in, wherever I could find a spot where people were standing still, I’d preach. I became a senior pastor at 19 and no young pastor could have been more zealous.

I’m 56 now. That’s forty years. For those first twenty years, I was very sincere and our Father blessed the ministry he had given me through His grace. My heart was always in the right place. However, little by little my head began to move in the wrong direction. In other words, I began to think wrongly about ministry and about life in general.

I gradually became more and more convinced that my role was to teach people how they should live. So that’s what I did. Every week, my sermons would be filled with instruction, admonition and encouragement about what the listeners needed to do to be more pleasing to God. One week, I may talk about the importance of Bible study. The next week it might be prayer. Evangelism was a topic I repeated often. The topics varied but the common denominator in every sermon was the call to “rededicate yourself to Jesus Christ today” and try to do better.

If you’ve read my first book, Grace Walk, you know how what I preached didn’t even work for me. My secret thoughts were that I simply needed to do a better job of practicing what I preached.

Then in 1990, my world came crashing down. The feelings of success I had felt were snatched out from under me when I became senior pastor of a dying church. I thought it would turn around under my leadership, but it didn’t. It kept dwindling right out from under me. It was through that experience that our Gracious God brought me to a place of brokenness and to the place where I learned my identity in Christ.

I became consumed with the truth of who we are in Christ and for the past twenty years have been proclaiming that message. To this very day, nothing excites me more than to see the light of revelation come on in people’s lives as they come to realize their union with God. I will forever preach this message.

So, the first twenty years of ministry were spent telling people who they ought to be and could be if they would do the right things. The last twenty years have been spent telling people who they are in Christ and what it means to walk in grace.

Now, at 56 I embark upon the next twenty-year leg of the journey. While I have no intention of backing down on telling people who they are, I have experienced in my own
life a growing awareness that our God is moving me deeper into the desire to tell people who He is.

For years, I understood God the Father to be different from the Son in some ways. I know it sounds crazy, but I thought the Father was the “just” member of the Trinity who needed to have the books balanced when it comes to sin. In my mind, there was a debt that put mankind “in the red” on his books and in order to balance the record, somebody had to make a deposit – a big deposit, because the wages of sin is death.

In my thinking, Jesus was the “good guy” who wanted to make it right between God and us so He agreed to die in our place. God would punish Him so that His justice would be satisfied. Jesus willingly died, taking God’s anger over my sin upon Himself. I gave lip service to the idea that God loved me enough to pour out His anger on Jesus so that He wouldn’t have to pour it out on me, but for a long time I couldn’t help but think that it didn’t make sense that the anger He didn’t want to pour on me, He didn’t seem to mind pouring out on His son.

About six years ago, I began to be exposed to the idea that the “penal substitution theory” of the cross, which is the idea I’ve just described – Jesus being punished (penal) in my place (substitution) wasn’t the only way to understand what happened at the cross. I began to realize that the cross wasn’t a penal substitution, but rather a precious solution that was brought about by the Father, Son and Spirit, who all equally love humanity.

As I began to understand the communal relationship of love between the Father, Son and Spirit, I started to see that the idea that “God is love” isn’t incidental to any discussion of God. It is monumental. In fact, it is fundamental to having a clear view of who He is.

As I’ve grown in my understanding of this God of Love and His eternal intent to wrap His arms around all of humanity, it has transformed me in almost every way possible. It has changed how I see Him. It has changed how I see others. It has changed how I see the purpose of ministry.

To explain why I am obsessed with the love of God today would be like trying to describe why fish in the ocean are obsessed with water. It’s because I’ve come to see that the love of God is the environment in which we all live, because God is love and “in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Remember that Paul wasn’t talking to believers when he made that statement on Mars Hill.)

By the finished work of the cross, our God was reconciling the world to Himself. We are all included in what He did there. The “REALITY” of the cross is, “It is finished.” However, the “reality” of many in the church is that “it’s not really finished until I say so by my profession of faith.” What Jesus did doesn’t become real when we believe it. We believe it because it is real. Jesus did what He did and that’s true whether we believe it or not.

Does this mean everybody is a Christian? No, it does not. A Christian is a person who through faith has personally experienced the reality of what He accomplished on the cross. He is one who lives in the reality of resurrection life. An unbeliever is one who is not personally experiencing the benefits of the cross even though the reality is equally as true for him. Instead, he is living under a lie – the same lie that befell Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Hebrews 4:2 explains it this way: “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in the those who heard.”

The “good news” is the same good news for everybody. But, until a person believes it, he will not personally benefit from it. The gospel we declare is the finished work of Jesus Christ. We aren’t to tell unbelievers what Jesus will do for them. The good news is in telling them what He already has done for them. We gladly tell them “God was in Christ reconciling (you) to Himself, not counting (your) trespasses against (you)!” Then we appeal to them, “Be reconciled to God!” In other words, “Believe it! God fully accepts you so accept Him and start living out of REALITY instead of from the delusion you’re stumbling around in right now!” (See 2 Corinthians 5:19-20)

This is the message of the love of God. It’s not a potential gospel of what He will do for the unbeliever if that person will first cast their vote for Him. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8) It is the pure gospel of what our God has already done for us before we could offer so much as a grunt in return. It is the announcement of “good news of great joy which will be for all the people.”

Our God has demonstrated His love for humanity by absorbing the sins of the world into His (the Son’s) body on the cross. He offered Himself by the power of the eternal Spirit (see Hebrews 9:14) and has shouted in victory “It IS FINISHED!”

This Triune rescue mission was a success! He came to “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb 9:26) and He succeeded. Ask Him to take away your sins and He will say, “I already did!”

I plan to spend the rest of my life telling people about the love of the Father, expressed through the Son in the power of the Spirit. If I get to heaven and have to apologize for overstating His love, I’ll readily do so. I’d rather make that mistake than have to apologize for understating His love. (The fact is that I don’t foresee any necessary apologizing in this area.)

Will you join me in this exciting ministry? I don’t have all the answers to objections and questions, but I encourage you to not to wait until you have all the answers to people’s objections and questions about the love of God before you join this grace revolution. We know The Answer and He will guide us as we move forward in expanding His kingdom on the earth.

Love is our motivation. Love is our methodology. Love is our message. Let’s just love. How is it possible to “miss it” if that is how we live our lives???

One Of The Lies Heard In Church Every Sunday

There are secular and sacred things in life

Firmly entrenched in most people’s thinking is idea that all of life is divided into two separate categories: the sacred and the secular. In the sacred or spiritual category are things like church, church buildings, prayers, rituals, clergy, the Bible and Bible reading. What’s secular or “unspiritual”? Everything else, which includes basically 95% of where ordinary people spend their lives and energies: marriage, parenting, work, possessions, hobbies, and interests.

Let me say it straight out: This distinction has no basis in Scripture. It is false, and in fact reveals a deep misunderstanding of the nature of the Christian life. This is not only one of the deepest misconceptions about Christianity, it is one of the most difficult to correct. It seems this type of thinking has roots in human cultures like oak trees — deep, tangled, and near-impossible to uproot. The message of the living Christ that went out into the world almost two thousand years ago was a frontal assault on this kind of thinking, and that is why the early Christians turned the world upside down. It was their overturning of this natural way of thinking that baffled and impressed their neighbors. Nothing like this had ever been seen before.

Yet, here we are all these centuries later, and we still have to reeducate every Christian generation to think biblically on this. People will attend church, hear a sermon and perhaps participate in worship, then go out and live just like their non-Christian neighbors. Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “When you leave church and get back into the ‘real’ world, here’s what you do …” It’s believed that you can experience “sacred” things in church, then you go live in the “secular” world according to different principles. This false distinction between sacred and secular is the root of this.


TAKE A FRESH LOOK AT THE SCRIPTURES

We know today that Jesus Christ is the risen, glorified, enthroned Lord of heaven and earth. That He be honored as such is completely right. We should remember, however, that this same Jesus spent approximately 30 years on earth living an ordinary human life — keeping in mind that “ordinary” for Jesus included complete sinlessness. That set Him apart, certainly, but human He was, nonetheless.

When Jesus was called to begin His mission, the Father spoke to Him at His baptism: "And behold a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

Remember, those 30 years were all lived before He preached a sermon, healed a leper, or walked on water. So far as we know, Jesus never did a miracle before He began His public ministry under the leadership of John the Baptist. Most probably, He merely did what any eldest son would have done in that culture: He worked alongside His father Joseph in the family business — basically an independent contractor, working with stone, metal, and wood.

In other words, Jesus pleased the Father by the quality of His life in the “ordinary” spheres of existence — home, family, friends, neighbors, work. Recall what we’ve seen about the our identity in Christ.

"By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10).

You are a holy child of God. The word holy means “set apart.” The words sanctified, saint, and sacred are all forms of the same word root in both Greek and Hebrew. People tend to lump all these terms in the “religious” category, the category of the “sacred” we talk about in church. But this is a far greater truth than that. All these terms refer to an object that has been set apart as God’s special possession, for His exclusive use. That’s why the New Testament refers to all believers, including you, as “saints” — “holy ones.” People who have been “set apart as God’s special, beloved possessions, intended for His exclusive use.”

CLARIFY YOUR THINKING

If that’s true, it follows that everything in your life has been made holy. There’s no such thing as secular and sacred. The opposite of sacred according to its real meaning is “common” or “ordinary.” And there’s no doubt about it, you are truly uncommon if the life of Jesus Christ dwells in you. Consequently your environment becomes an uncommon, sacred environment because you are there. Jesus didn’t fear what we would call the secular world. In fact he plunged himself headfirst into it. By his presence in those environments, he made sacred those things that had been considered secular.

The idea that there’s a difference between sacred and secular in the life of a Christian is not true. You live and move and exist in Jesus Christ. Consequently, everything about your life is sacred. Our role as believers is to allow “Christ in us” to move into every sphere of our lives, bringing His influence to homes, families, businesses, governments — even churches. Christ expressing Himself through you wherever you are is the real Grace Walk.

52 Lies Heard in Church Every Sunday will be available in January. To preorder your copy now and receive free shipping, click this link: http://gracewalkresources.com/item.asp?cID=0&PID=635

A Heart Warming Rendition

Or is it "heartburn?" Once again, in what has become an annual tradition for me to share this "very reverend" audio gift with my friends, I bring you . . .

OH HOLY NIGHT (Now, you gotta listen to the whole thing :)

Interview At Grace Communion International

Here's the link to the first of four interviews I did on the program, "You're Included" at Grace Communion International.

http://www.gci.org/yi/mcvey109

BE The Church This Christmas Eve

Maybe this is not the best approach though :)

Gotta Love This . . .

December Grace Walk Newsletter

Our monthly newsletter is called "The Grace Vine" Click this link to read it online or download it as a PDF file.

http://www.gracewalk.org/articles_view.asp?columnid=3469&articleid=70699