Lesson 16 - God's Revelation of Jesus According to Paul
|
|
No one knew the Father until Jesus introduced Him; no one knew Jesus until the Father had introduced Him.
This introduction is given to us in Paul’s revelation. The Father is unveiling to the Church what they really are in Christ. He is unveiling what He did for us in His Son.
I once wondered why Paul never quoted from the Master; then I noticed that Jesus said in John 12:50, “The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father bath said unto Me, so I speak.”
The same thing was true of Paul. He had no choice of the thing he wrote. His message was fresh from the Father’s heart.
Read Galatians 1:6-12 carefully. Paul here declares he was not taught of man; so his message did not come from Peter nor from John, but came fresh from the Father.
6 I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, 7 which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.9 As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.
10 For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.
11 But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Paul did not know about the Substitutionary Sacrifice until it was revealed to him.
Two Phases of the Substitutionary Sacrifice
There are two phases of the revelation: one is the Legal side of the plan of Redemption, and the other is the Vital.
The Legal is what God did in Christ for us, what legally belongs to us as New Creations. The Vital is what the Spirit through the Word is doing in us in the New Creation. It is His indwelling, His building the Father’s Nature into us through the Word.
God Working Within Us
Philippians 2:13, “For it is God Who is at work within us willing and working His own good pleasure.”
God is working within us. He is building Himself into us. He is building His Love Nature, His Righteousness, His Faithfulness, His Longsuffering, His Gentleness. As we contact the world, these qualities are necessary, and He builds them into us.
I Corinthians 1:30, “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus Who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and Redemption.”
Jesus Made Our Wisdom
He made Jesus to be wisdom unto us so in this revelation we have discovered that Jesus is our wisdom. We don’t have to have prayer for wisdom as James tells us; but as we meditate in the Word, this revelation is the wisdom of God. It is an unveiling of the Father’s ability. He lives in that revelation, and as you feed on it and meditate on it you become wiser than your enemies.
Jesus Made Our Righteousness
He not only is made unto us wisdom, but He is made unto us righteousness. This is the most difficult thing that I ever had to accept — that God had made Jesus to be my righteousness. Righteousness here means the ability to live in the Father’s presence as I live in the presence of people here in the office, without any sense of inferiority or condemnation or guilt. I could not understand how the Father could do that.
But He makes it clear in His Redemption spoken of in Colossians 1:13, 14: “Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.”
Darkness is Satan’s family relationship. His kingdom is darkness. Darkness is hatred, jealousy, bitterness — everything that Satan can impart to man.
We have been delivered out of that and have been delivered out of the authority of it, so that it no longer dominates us or rules us.
“And He has translated us by the New Creation into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in Whom we have our Redemption, the remission of our sins.”
This is the New Creation that has come into the family of Love of which Jesus is the Lord and Head, the Firstborn out of death, in Whom we have our Redemption.
Firstborn From the Dead
The Church has had a limited Redemption. It has been more occupied in the meaning of the Greek word than it has in the reality of our deliverance from the dominion of the Devil.
You notice that we have been delivered out of the authority of Satan and we have been redeemed. Two things have taken place: the penalty has been paid that we owed to Justice. Jesus met it when He was made sin on our behalf, and He went to the place of Justice where He suffered for us. Then He met the requirements when He was made alive in Spirit: 1st Peter 3:18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, with 2nd Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,.
As soon as He was justified and made alive He met the Adversary, conquered him, and stripped him of his authority. You see, there is a perfect legal redemption.
Jesus actually conquered our enemy and delivered us out of his dominion. When He did that, He made possible our New Creation, and when we were made New Creations we received the Nature of God in our spirits.
2nd Corinthians 5:18-21. Read this carefully down to the twenty-first verse and see how God made Jesus to be sin on our behalf to the end that we become the righteousness of God in Him. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Now you can understand how Jesus has been made our righteousness. There are three phases in that revelation.
Romans 4:25 says that He was delivered up on account of our trespasses and was raised when we were declared righteous or justified.
He wasn’t raised until justification became the property of the unsaved world. Just as God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son — made the world a present of Jesus — now God not only makes the world a present of Jesus, but He makes the world a present of righteousness. But Jesus is of no value to the sinner until he confesses Jesus as Lord.
Romans 10:9, 10, “9that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” NKJV
The moment that he does it, Redemption becomes a reality, and righteousness becomes a reality. All that Jesus is, is stored up and waiting for the unsaved man to take. The moment that the unsaved man says, “I take Jesus as my Savior and as my Lord,” and believes in his heart and doubts not, he is made a New Creation. Not only is righteousness reckoned unto him, but he has the righteousness of God.
This new Nature that is imparted unto him is God’s Nature, and that Nature is righteousness.
Now you can understand Romans 3:26. God, in speaking of Himself, says: “That He might Himself be righteous and the righteousness of him that believeth in Jesus.”
You see, God actually becomes the righteousness of the man who believes in Jesus.
One can hardly grasp the significance of this — that God has become our righteousness.
Now you can understand Romans 8:31-33, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.” When anyone lays anything to your charge, God becomes your Vindicator.
Jesus, Our Advocate
Did you ever notice that if a man sins, he has an “Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous”?
Any man who commits sin loses his sense of Righteousness and is ashamed to go into the presence of the Father. Then he asks forgiveness, and the Father listens to his Advocate, Jesus. You see, Jesus is our Advocate and can plead for us who have lost our sense of Righteousness, and our Righteousness is restored.
“For if we sin, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
He forgives our sins that we have committed, and He cleanses us from unrighteousness and restores to us fellowship with Himself.
You see, the whole thing moves around this fact of Righteousness. God becomes my Righteousness, now He makes Jesus to be my Righteousness.
Romans 4:25, “Who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.”
He was raised up when our Substitute had obtained Righteousness for us. Righteousness is reckoned, then, to the unsaved man. That gives him a legal right to approach God as a sinner, and to accept Christ as his Savior. The moment that he does it, God becomes his Righteousness, Jesus becomes his Righteousness, and by the New Birth he becomes the Righteousness of God in Christ.
Becomes a Reality
Meditate on this until it becomes a reality to you. You can’t get it the first time you hear it or the first time you read it. I went over these scriptures again and again. My heart craved it, but my reason rejected it. But after a while I knew that God had not only made Jesus wisdom unto me, but Jesus was my Righteousness.
The third thing it says is that Jesus is made unto us “sanctification.” We have made sanctification a hobby and a doctrine and a part of our creeds, and we have said that sanctification was something that we obtained because we prayed and surrendered and consecrated ourselves until God was able to sanctify us.
That is Sense Knowledge interpretation. You can’t do anything; neither did God ask you to do anything to make you worthy.
Romans 4:4, 5 declares this, “4Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. 5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness,” 4 Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.
You see, God gave His Son to the ungodly.
Romans 5:6-11 clears the case, “For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly.”
And in the tenth verse we read, “For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.”
What does it mean? It means that same thing as Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
Eternal Life, a Gift
In other words, sanctification is a gift. You can’t do anything to merit it. It is yours when you are recreated. It belongs to you as much as Eternal Life belongs to you. God gave Eternal Life. God gave Redemption. God gave wisdom. God gave me sanctification, and God gave Himself in the person of His Son to us so that “He that has the Son has the Life.”
If you have Eternal Life, you have the nature of God. If you have the Nature of God, you have Righteousness. If you have righteousness, you have sanctification.
What does sanctification mean? It means being set apart — separation.
Who set you apart? God set you apart.
Then what do you do to accept it? As soon as you are Born Again and the Spirit comes to make His home in you and begins to build Jesus’ Nature and Life into your spirit, you begin to separate yourself from the unnecessary things that have held you in bondage and kept you so occupied that you didn’t have time for the best things.
A woman said to me, “I haven’t time to study the Word. I have so many things to do in my home.”
A year or two afterward she was taken very, very ill. Doctors said that an operation was the only hope, but that she had just very little chance — one in one thousand.
I said, “You have plenty of time now for studying the Bible.” And then she remembered.
First Things First
“I should have put first things first,” she said.
The most important thing to any man — I don’t care what his business is — Is to know his Father and to know his rights and privileges in Christ. That is the most important thing in life.
This Pauline Revelation is the most marvelous thing given to man, but it is of no value to you until it becomes a part of your life.
He was not only made unto us wisdom from God, and Righteousness from God, and Sanctification from God; but He is made Redemption from God.
What does Redemption mean? It means, first, the satisfying of the claims of Justice against you so that you are redeemed from the sentence that falls upon unregenerate man. God did that in Christ.
Now the unsaved man filled with Satanic Nature cannot believe in the sense that you as a believer believe, so the message is presented to him, and he acts upon it. He may not understand all of it, but the moment that he acts upon the Word, he receives Eternal Life. Then his spirit becomes illumined and he begins to renew his mind, and now he can understand what has taken place in his life.
You see, believing means acting on the Word. A sinner cannot have faith in the sense that you have faith as a believer, but God reckons it to him as faith when he acts upon the Word that God has given him.
Our preaching to the unsaved to believe and believe is unwise. What we are to do is to give him something to believe or act upon. Make it clear to him how Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture, how He arose from the dead according to the Scripture, how God gave Jesus to him as a gift, and how he should take Him as his Savior and Lord.
Don’t mention “believe” or “believing” to him. If you do, you confuse him. You understand what God means by believing, but he doesn’t.
QUESTIONS
1. Explain the Two Phases of our Redemption.
2. Tell how He has been made wisdom unto us.
3. Explain Colossians 1:13-14.
4. Explain how Jesus is the firstborn from the dead.
5. Show how God is the Righteousness of him that believeth on Jesus.
6. Explain why reason will reject our being the Righteousness of God.
7. Show how “Works” limit God.
8. What is meant by “first things first”?
9. Explain how the unregenerate man has been Redeemed.
10. What does God mean by “believing”?
This introduction is given to us in Paul’s revelation. The Father is unveiling to the Church what they really are in Christ. He is unveiling what He did for us in His Son.
I once wondered why Paul never quoted from the Master; then I noticed that Jesus said in John 12:50, “The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father bath said unto Me, so I speak.”
The same thing was true of Paul. He had no choice of the thing he wrote. His message was fresh from the Father’s heart.
Read Galatians 1:6-12 carefully. Paul here declares he was not taught of man; so his message did not come from Peter nor from John, but came fresh from the Father.
6 I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, 7 which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.9 As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.
10 For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.
11 But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Paul did not know about the Substitutionary Sacrifice until it was revealed to him.
Two Phases of the Substitutionary Sacrifice
There are two phases of the revelation: one is the Legal side of the plan of Redemption, and the other is the Vital.
The Legal is what God did in Christ for us, what legally belongs to us as New Creations. The Vital is what the Spirit through the Word is doing in us in the New Creation. It is His indwelling, His building the Father’s Nature into us through the Word.
God Working Within Us
Philippians 2:13, “For it is God Who is at work within us willing and working His own good pleasure.”
God is working within us. He is building Himself into us. He is building His Love Nature, His Righteousness, His Faithfulness, His Longsuffering, His Gentleness. As we contact the world, these qualities are necessary, and He builds them into us.
I Corinthians 1:30, “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus Who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and Redemption.”
Jesus Made Our Wisdom
He made Jesus to be wisdom unto us so in this revelation we have discovered that Jesus is our wisdom. We don’t have to have prayer for wisdom as James tells us; but as we meditate in the Word, this revelation is the wisdom of God. It is an unveiling of the Father’s ability. He lives in that revelation, and as you feed on it and meditate on it you become wiser than your enemies.
Jesus Made Our Righteousness
He not only is made unto us wisdom, but He is made unto us righteousness. This is the most difficult thing that I ever had to accept — that God had made Jesus to be my righteousness. Righteousness here means the ability to live in the Father’s presence as I live in the presence of people here in the office, without any sense of inferiority or condemnation or guilt. I could not understand how the Father could do that.
But He makes it clear in His Redemption spoken of in Colossians 1:13, 14: “Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.”
Darkness is Satan’s family relationship. His kingdom is darkness. Darkness is hatred, jealousy, bitterness — everything that Satan can impart to man.
We have been delivered out of that and have been delivered out of the authority of it, so that it no longer dominates us or rules us.
“And He has translated us by the New Creation into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in Whom we have our Redemption, the remission of our sins.”
This is the New Creation that has come into the family of Love of which Jesus is the Lord and Head, the Firstborn out of death, in Whom we have our Redemption.
Firstborn From the Dead
The Church has had a limited Redemption. It has been more occupied in the meaning of the Greek word than it has in the reality of our deliverance from the dominion of the Devil.
You notice that we have been delivered out of the authority of Satan and we have been redeemed. Two things have taken place: the penalty has been paid that we owed to Justice. Jesus met it when He was made sin on our behalf, and He went to the place of Justice where He suffered for us. Then He met the requirements when He was made alive in Spirit: 1st Peter 3:18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, with 2nd Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,.
As soon as He was justified and made alive He met the Adversary, conquered him, and stripped him of his authority. You see, there is a perfect legal redemption.
Jesus actually conquered our enemy and delivered us out of his dominion. When He did that, He made possible our New Creation, and when we were made New Creations we received the Nature of God in our spirits.
2nd Corinthians 5:18-21. Read this carefully down to the twenty-first verse and see how God made Jesus to be sin on our behalf to the end that we become the righteousness of God in Him. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Now you can understand how Jesus has been made our righteousness. There are three phases in that revelation.
Romans 4:25 says that He was delivered up on account of our trespasses and was raised when we were declared righteous or justified.
He wasn’t raised until justification became the property of the unsaved world. Just as God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son — made the world a present of Jesus — now God not only makes the world a present of Jesus, but He makes the world a present of righteousness. But Jesus is of no value to the sinner until he confesses Jesus as Lord.
Romans 10:9, 10, “9that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” NKJV
The moment that he does it, Redemption becomes a reality, and righteousness becomes a reality. All that Jesus is, is stored up and waiting for the unsaved man to take. The moment that the unsaved man says, “I take Jesus as my Savior and as my Lord,” and believes in his heart and doubts not, he is made a New Creation. Not only is righteousness reckoned unto him, but he has the righteousness of God.
This new Nature that is imparted unto him is God’s Nature, and that Nature is righteousness.
Now you can understand Romans 3:26. God, in speaking of Himself, says: “That He might Himself be righteous and the righteousness of him that believeth in Jesus.”
You see, God actually becomes the righteousness of the man who believes in Jesus.
One can hardly grasp the significance of this — that God has become our righteousness.
Now you can understand Romans 8:31-33, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.” When anyone lays anything to your charge, God becomes your Vindicator.
Jesus, Our Advocate
Did you ever notice that if a man sins, he has an “Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous”?
Any man who commits sin loses his sense of Righteousness and is ashamed to go into the presence of the Father. Then he asks forgiveness, and the Father listens to his Advocate, Jesus. You see, Jesus is our Advocate and can plead for us who have lost our sense of Righteousness, and our Righteousness is restored.
“For if we sin, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
He forgives our sins that we have committed, and He cleanses us from unrighteousness and restores to us fellowship with Himself.
You see, the whole thing moves around this fact of Righteousness. God becomes my Righteousness, now He makes Jesus to be my Righteousness.
Romans 4:25, “Who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.”
He was raised up when our Substitute had obtained Righteousness for us. Righteousness is reckoned, then, to the unsaved man. That gives him a legal right to approach God as a sinner, and to accept Christ as his Savior. The moment that he does it, God becomes his Righteousness, Jesus becomes his Righteousness, and by the New Birth he becomes the Righteousness of God in Christ.
Becomes a Reality
Meditate on this until it becomes a reality to you. You can’t get it the first time you hear it or the first time you read it. I went over these scriptures again and again. My heart craved it, but my reason rejected it. But after a while I knew that God had not only made Jesus wisdom unto me, but Jesus was my Righteousness.
The third thing it says is that Jesus is made unto us “sanctification.” We have made sanctification a hobby and a doctrine and a part of our creeds, and we have said that sanctification was something that we obtained because we prayed and surrendered and consecrated ourselves until God was able to sanctify us.
That is Sense Knowledge interpretation. You can’t do anything; neither did God ask you to do anything to make you worthy.
Romans 4:4, 5 declares this, “4Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. 5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness,” 4 Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.
You see, God gave His Son to the ungodly.
Romans 5:6-11 clears the case, “For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly.”
And in the tenth verse we read, “For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.”
What does it mean? It means that same thing as Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
Eternal Life, a Gift
In other words, sanctification is a gift. You can’t do anything to merit it. It is yours when you are recreated. It belongs to you as much as Eternal Life belongs to you. God gave Eternal Life. God gave Redemption. God gave wisdom. God gave me sanctification, and God gave Himself in the person of His Son to us so that “He that has the Son has the Life.”
If you have Eternal Life, you have the nature of God. If you have the Nature of God, you have Righteousness. If you have righteousness, you have sanctification.
What does sanctification mean? It means being set apart — separation.
Who set you apart? God set you apart.
Then what do you do to accept it? As soon as you are Born Again and the Spirit comes to make His home in you and begins to build Jesus’ Nature and Life into your spirit, you begin to separate yourself from the unnecessary things that have held you in bondage and kept you so occupied that you didn’t have time for the best things.
A woman said to me, “I haven’t time to study the Word. I have so many things to do in my home.”
A year or two afterward she was taken very, very ill. Doctors said that an operation was the only hope, but that she had just very little chance — one in one thousand.
I said, “You have plenty of time now for studying the Bible.” And then she remembered.
First Things First
“I should have put first things first,” she said.
The most important thing to any man — I don’t care what his business is — Is to know his Father and to know his rights and privileges in Christ. That is the most important thing in life.
This Pauline Revelation is the most marvelous thing given to man, but it is of no value to you until it becomes a part of your life.
He was not only made unto us wisdom from God, and Righteousness from God, and Sanctification from God; but He is made Redemption from God.
What does Redemption mean? It means, first, the satisfying of the claims of Justice against you so that you are redeemed from the sentence that falls upon unregenerate man. God did that in Christ.
Now the unsaved man filled with Satanic Nature cannot believe in the sense that you as a believer believe, so the message is presented to him, and he acts upon it. He may not understand all of it, but the moment that he acts upon the Word, he receives Eternal Life. Then his spirit becomes illumined and he begins to renew his mind, and now he can understand what has taken place in his life.
You see, believing means acting on the Word. A sinner cannot have faith in the sense that you have faith as a believer, but God reckons it to him as faith when he acts upon the Word that God has given him.
Our preaching to the unsaved to believe and believe is unwise. What we are to do is to give him something to believe or act upon. Make it clear to him how Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture, how He arose from the dead according to the Scripture, how God gave Jesus to him as a gift, and how he should take Him as his Savior and Lord.
Don’t mention “believe” or “believing” to him. If you do, you confuse him. You understand what God means by believing, but he doesn’t.
QUESTIONS
1. Explain the Two Phases of our Redemption.
2. Tell how He has been made wisdom unto us.
3. Explain Colossians 1:13-14.
4. Explain how Jesus is the firstborn from the dead.
5. Show how God is the Righteousness of him that believeth on Jesus.
6. Explain why reason will reject our being the Righteousness of God.
7. Show how “Works” limit God.
8. What is meant by “first things first”?
9. Explain how the unregenerate man has been Redeemed.
10. What does God mean by “believing”?