Created To Participate In Jesus’ Godly Responses!
Audio – Part A: 24 min
Audio – Part B: 23 min
Full Message:
Bible Verses: John 14 – 6 Hebrews 13
Living Into This Challenging Christian Life With Jesus!
Introduction:
The Christian Life is living out and manifesting the reality of our union and communion with the Father, through Jesus (the Son), and in the Holy Spirit! Our purpose in life is to be one with God! Despite our sin and weaknesses, the Lord will strengthen us in our relationship with Him as we trust Him for it! When our Lord Jesus Christ reappears gloriously, we too will be glorified and fully blameless in Him! Until Jesus’ reappearing, the Christian life is a challenging life —lived out only in union and communion with the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit!
“God has united himself with us, and us with himself, so that all that we think or do, we do as his children, participating with him in all that he is doing in our world now through the continuing ministry of Christ by the power of the Spirit.” —Dr Gary Deddo
Theological Theme:
Advent means the coming of Jesus in His first appearance and in His last appearance. With regards to Hebrews 13, God [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] wants us to see that He has come, therefore He is here, yet He is still coming in the Second Advent, His second appearing as well. He wants us to know that in Jesus Christ we have been created to PARTICIPATE in Jesus’ Godly responses. You are NOT to think of yourself apart from Jesus Christ because that is not who you are. You are a “Chip off the old block”.
Christ Connection:
“Who is Jesus? After addressing that inquiry, and only after, can we take up two other theological questions: Who are we in Jesus Christ?, and What are we to do in response?” —Dr Gary Deddo
Jesus is God as man and the way and the life of a human being. So at every point, we are to look at Jesus to understand who and what God is really like. When we look to Jesus, we understand the Father’s heart, we understand what the Spirit’s intent is, we understand what He meant for men and women to be like, to live like and to give like.
Christ has taken our human cause and our human nature and lived for us the Godly life that God always envisioned for us to live so there is nothing for you to make up. There is something for you to discover but that has come to you in grace.
In God, we’ve been given a gift and a task in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the answer to anything. “Union with Christ means that he is the sole and ultimate source of our meaning, purpose, significance, security, dignity, and destiny.”
We have been given the gift of Jesus Christ. He has been the gift of THE WAY, and THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE for us, and Jesus IS THE TASK. The gift is something to do, to be done, something to be lived into, something to be shared with others.
“But if Christian life and ministry is somehow participation, what is it that we actually get involved in? Christ has completed his once-for-all ministry. How can we get involved in that? We can’t attempt to redo what he has done. How, then, can we participate? This line of questioning indicates that we often forget or perhaps never fully grasped the fact that the risen Christ ascended in his bodily form with his humanity, a humanity not only intact but now glorified.
All our responses to Christ are nothing more than following Christ in his present activity and engaging in the ministry that he is actively doing now through the Holy Spirit. When we preach the gospel, we participate in the apostolic ministry of Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit continues to bear witness to Christ and to our need for Christ. When we love a neighbor, or love an enemy, for the sake of Christ and witness to his kingdom, we are merely catching up with God. We’re merely going to work with God. When we pray, we’re joining Christ in his faithful prayers of intercessions for us and for the world. When we worship, we are joining in with all the faithful, including those who have gone before us who are continually worshiping following the leadership of Jesus Christ, our great worship leader.
When we see our whole lives this way, we join with the apostle Paul, who proclaimed, “I live yet not I but Christ who lives in me.” That is not just a platitude that sounds nice. The whole of the Christian life is actually a participation in the life and ministry of Christ. So we can say, I pray, yet not I but Christ prays in me. I obey, yet not I but Christ obeys in me. I have faith, yet not I but Christ has faith active in me. I hunger and thirst for righteousness and reconciliation, yet not I but Christ in me.” —Dr Gary Deddo
Missional Application:
Jesus has now given us the Father’s love in a tangible way, but until The Lord comes in His second appearing, you only live with The Lord by Faith —through The Holy Spirit—and not by sight. This message of Advent —the fact that Christ has come, that He is RIGHT HERE NOW and that He is STILL COMING — is the message that can only amaze us. We proclaim this message to the world in participation with Jesus!
“….although still sharing in our now glorified human nature, he is not present in the way he was before his ascension. He is, in a way, absent from earth. He has sent the Spirit as another comforter to be with us, but he in his own person is unavailable to us as he was. But he has promised us that he will return.
Parallel to this is the nature of the kingdom. It was indeed “near” and active in Jesus’ earthly ministry. It was so near and available that it called for an immediate response, just as Jesus himself called for a response of faith in him. However, as Jesus taught, his rule and reign had not yet come in its fullness. There was more to come. And that time will coincide with Christ’s return (often called his “second coming”).
So faith in the kingdom includes hope for the coming of the fullness of the kingdom as well. The kingdom was already present in Jesus and continues to be present by his Spirit. But its completion is not yet. This is often summarized by saying the kingdom of God is already, but not yet.”—Dr Gary Deddo
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Trinity and Humanity 
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