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According to Christ

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you. (Ephesians 1:18 NIV)

It is a seeing of the immense significance of Jesus in the eternal and universal order. With the Apostles that seeing was subsequent to the days of physical association. During the forty days after His resurrection it was like the dawning of a new day. First, those intimations, as when the uncertain light just passes over the heavens. Then more steady and certain rays, leading to the Day of Pentecost, when the sun appeared in full glory over the horizon dispelling the last shadow of uncertainty. On that day they saw Him as by an opened heaven. The mystery of the past was dispelled. The Bible lay open like a new book. They saw Him in the light of eternity. They began to see that, while He was the glorified, personal, Son of God, He was Himself the embodiment of a great, a vast heavenly and spiritual order and system. This seeing was absolutely revolutionary. It was a crisis out of which a new world and a new creation was born. True to this fundamental principle, all that vast revelation, which has come down the centuries from and through the Apostle Paul took its rise from that crisis described by him as "It pleased God... to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:16). "I received it... by revelation of Jesus Christ" (vs. 12). All the implicates were in the crisis; the full content was a progressive and ever-growing revelation.

While there was some initial testimony, the Apostles did not formulate in conference an enterprise, a mission, with all the related arrangements and organization. The new Life forced off the old leaves and dressed the new organism with a new vesture from within. The might, energy and urge of the Holy Spirit within produced a Way and an order, un-thought-of, unintended by them, and always to their own surprise. What was happening was really that Christ was taking form within them, individually and corporately, by new birth and growth. The believers and the companies were becoming an expression of Christ.

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.

We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. § [God] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. § Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Jer. 31:3;  2 Thess. 2:13,14;  2 Tim. 1:9;  Ps. 139:16;  John 3:16;  1 John 4:10

I have made, and I will bear.

Thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.” § Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you!

As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings, so the Lord alone led him. § He bore them and carried them all the days of old.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. § For I am persuaded that neither … height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you.

Isa. 46:4;  Isa. 43:1,2;  Isa. 46:4;  Deut. 32:11,12;  Isa. 63:9;  Heb. 13:8; Rom. 8:38,39;  Isa. 49:15

The Fruit Of Grace

For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them" (Gal. 3:10).

None can be born again by the law, and none can live anew under the law - neither its precepts, nor its principle. "The life I now live by faith - by adherence to and reliance on and (complete) trust - in the Son of God" (Gal. 2:20, Amp.)

"The Gentile never was under the law; and being set in the Lord Jesus Christ, now that he believes, he stands on other ground, to which the law does not apply. Every believer is regarded by God as alive from the dead, to bring forth fruit (not works) unto God. The law only deals with a man as long as he lives, never after he is dead.˜Ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ' (Rom. 7:4).

"And that is not at all what is said of us, after a second blessing,' or any other step of imaginary perfection. We begin with. . . alive in Christ.' I am identified with the Lord Jesus dead and risen. It is no longer the law dealing with me to try if it can get any good out of me. I have relinquished all by receiving Christ, and I take my stand in Him dead and risen again, as one alive from the dead, to yield myself as a new creation' to God and walk in newness of life.'" -W.K.

"The teachings of grace are perfect and sufficient in themselves. They provide for the instruction of the believer in every situation which may arise. There is no need that they be supplemented, or augmented, by the addition of precepts from either the Law of Moses or the teachings of the kingdom." -L.S.C.

"What an indignity religion puts on every Person of the Godhead alike, on the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ, when it drags souls back to the dread distance of Judaism." -W.K.

"I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law then Christ is dead in vain" (Gal. 2:21).

The Indescribable Gift - Perfect MAN Eternal SON (6)

The Mystery of Christ