Tag Archives: Fullness of God

No Limits in Sight

15 Monday Apr 2024

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Hello and Welcome to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I am continuing my study on the Whole Armor of God with my focus on the Helmet of Salvation.

My previous posts on the Helmet of Salvation have focused on the protection, saving, healing, and renewing that takes place in our minds.  This was a useful avenue of study for me but I have been pondering the passages of scripture that speak of Jesus as the head and us as His body and wondering if it wouldn’t behoove me to spend some time on how those passages of scripture relate to His being a Helmet of Salvation.

The passages I’ve been pondering are these:

Colossians 1:18: “and He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence”

Colossians 2:18-19: “Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he had not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God”

I’ve also been pondering Paul’s writing his hope that we “may grow up into all things into Him who is the head-Christ” which is found in his letter to the Ephesians and, along with all of these passages, there has been a fragment of scripture floating through my mind but one where I could not remember where in the Bible it was located.  I did some research and found it in Psalm 133:2 which says, “It is like precious oil upon the head, Running down on the beard, The beard of Aaron, Running down on the edge of his garments.”

I felt as though there were something important here to see but, beyond the obvious (Jesus is the Head and we are His body) no clear picture was coming together.  I thought I’d let it simmer on a back burner in my mind for a bit and return to it in a few months but then I read two things which caused my out-of-focus mental picture to sharpen.  The first was Psalm 133:1.  Verse 2 picks up in mid-thought so I was curious what the context of “it is like the precious oil…” would be.  The Psalm opens with, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

The second thing I read was a statement in William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour:  “Be very careful of giving thine enemy hand-hold.  Wrestlers strive to fasten upon some part or other, which gives them advantage more easily to throw their adversary; to prevent which, they used-1. To lay aside their garments; 2, To anoint their bodies” (Gurnall, Vol 1. pg 120).

Reading this statement on the heels of having studied Colossians 2:15 which says, “Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them…”, I saw with clarity how, joined as we are to the Head Jesus Christ, protected and nourished by Him, partaking of His divine nature and thus His same anointing, of course no enemy can get a grip on us!  I was reminded of Hebrews 7:25: “…He is able to save to the uttermost…” and I amused myself for a bit imagining all enemies attempting to snag a hold merely sliding off into a puddle at my feet. 

However, it was Psalm 133:1 which struck me.  I read verses 1 & 2 together and thought about how difficult it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.  In fact, if I take a long look at our society, I would say it is impossible for us.  But then, maybe it was never expected for us to try to live in unity.

If this study on the Whole Armor of God has showed me anything it is that this Christian life is all Jesus Christ.  It is not we who live, it is Christ living in and through us.  We do not love in our own strength, His love fills us and overflows out of us to the world around us.  We do not do our best to believe and have faith, our faith is His faith.  We do not strive to be righteous, our righteousness is His.  We do not stand and fight the enemy in our own strength, we are made to stand in His covenant love and life and rest in His victory.  When it comes to living in unity with the brethren, it is not left up to us.  We are not to strive to be like Jesus Christ but are to live in the realization that we are IN CHRIST is He is IN US.  Unity.  True unity is found in Jesus Christ and everything He is and has is ours through the working of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible makes clear the Holy Spirit is the anointing that was upon Jesus and is upon us.  Acts 10 tells the story of Cornelius the Centurion and Peter’s Vision and also records Peter saying, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him” (verse 38).  1 John 2:17 says, “But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.”

I think it’s important to keep in mind Jesus’ description of the One He would send during His conversation with His disciples at the last supper (found in chapters 13-17 of John’s Gospel) when reading 1 John 2:17 because John is not describing some thing as the anointing but rather a Person.  That Person is the Holy Spirit and yet we do not merely have an experience of the Holy Spirit without also experiencing the Son and Father.  I think we have been taught to think too much in terms of separation when it comes to God.  It’s like we’ve been taught to believe we have one relationship with Jesus, another with the Father, and yet another with the Holy Spirit assuming we have belonged to denominations that believe the Holy Spirit is still at work today rather than having ceased with the death of the last Apostle.

The being of God is unity which is a subject I don’t have the space to elaborate on in this post.  I will share two passages of scripture.  The first is also found in 1 John 2 where the Beloved Apostle writes, ““he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also” (verse 33b).  The second is 2 Corinthians 3:17: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”  We are filled with the fullness of God and that’s all of Him: Father, Son, and Spirit.

In His letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul writes, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, will all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.  But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift…for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head-Christ-from whom the whole body, joined and knot together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (Eph. 4:1-7, 12-16).

Paul ends this letter with “Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.  Amen.”

I wonder if we would not begin to see brethren dwelling in unity if we began offering grace to all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity because it is Jesus alone who is the Head.  The passage in Colossians 2 warns us not to be cheated of the reward we have in Jesus Christ by those who have not held fast to the Head.  Let us not only hold fast to Him who is the Head but grow up in all things into Him who is the Head.

The Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance.  Where are the boundary lines to that inheritance?  Is there ever a moment when we would hear, “this far and no further” or could it be the words of C.S. Lewis are accurate and there is only “further up and further in”?  Let us cease being afraid to leave behind the “discussion of elementary principals of Christ” and “let us go on to perfection”.  What is there to fear?  We are made complete in the One who is not only the Head of all principality and power but has disarmed all principalities and powers having made a public spectacle of them (See Hebrews 6:1-3, Colossians 2:15).  May the anointing Holy Spirit open our eyes for us all to see that we abide in the One who is perfect love and who thus casts out all fear.  May we see that because we abide in Him and the Father is also in Him, we have been brought to complete unity.

Above all, may the Holy Spirit bring us to see that, as we abide in His love, we put on the love which is the bond of perfect unity! It’s all Jesus Christ and there are no limits to His love!

Hallelujah!  Amen.

 Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Gurnall, William, The Christian in complete Armour, Volume I, Seventh Printing, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, 2021, Page 120

Lewis, C.S., The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, HarperCollins Publishers, Barnes & Noble, Inc. New York, New York, 2009, Pages 753-760

The Faith of the Son of God

11 Monday Dec 2023

Posted by in Studies, Whole Armor of God

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Hello Readers!  Welcome to Renaissance Woman and another post in my current study series on the Whole Armor of God described in Ephesians 6:10-18a.  I am focusing on the Shield of Faith for the time being and, in an attempt to understand what faith is, have been seeking an accurate definition.

My Webster’s New World Dictionary does begin its definition of faith with the word origins and their meanings.  These are the Middle English feith, the Old French feid and fei, the French foi, the Latin fides meaning confidence, belief, the Late Latin fidere meaning to trust, the Indo-European bheid meaning to urge, be convinced, the Greek peithein meaning to persuade, and the Latin foedus meaning a compact & to bide.  The dictionary ought to have stopped here for this is an accurate representation of what the word has historically meant.  But, it does not.  The dictionary then goes on to define faith as “unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence”.  It is not until I read down to the 5th entry that I see a return to the historical meaning. 

In the Greek, faith was originally a word of covenant and, I know I am harping on a point, but I cannot imagine anyone entering into a covenant without confidence and trust.  I also cannot see this would be a confidence and trust without proof or evidence, especially considering the seriousness with which parties entered into covenant.  Breaking a covenant more often than not meant forfeiture of one’s very life: not a compact to be lightly entered into.

A dictionary must address how a word is used by the majority of the population and there is no denying the word “faith” is one that is used in a derogative manner.  I hear it mostly among those in the scientific community who say “that belongs to the realm of faith, not science”.  However, faith is something possessed by all people and does not always pertain to a religious belief.  Faith simply means confidence, belief, and trust and, without it, there would be no relationships of any kind.  I had made this point in an earlier post and, while reading through the Commentaries on Hebrews 11:6, I found this in the Pulpit Commentary: “Even in ordinary affairs of life, and in science too, men act, and must act, to a great extent on faith; it is essential for success, and certainly for all great achievements-faith in the testimony and authority of others whom we can trust, faith in views and principles not yet verified by our own experience, faith in the expected outcome of right proceeding, faith with respect to a thousand things which we take on trust, and so make ventures, on the ground, not of positive proof, but of more or less assured conviction.” 

The point I am striving to make is, “faith” is not a dirty word.  Even those who would use it to mock others also operate in faith.  I do not think it is possible to have a faithless human existence which is a point I think the quote from the Pulpit Commentary makes clear.  The question I am asking this week-regarding faith-is, what does the faith of the son of god mean?  That phrase is found in Galatians 2:20 and the original language does say “…the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith OF the Son of God” not “IN the Son of God”.  Every person subscribing to a religion has faith in that those persons have been persuaded their way of believing is the correct way.  We who are believers in Jesus have faith that He is God who became a man, lived and died as a man, rose from death and ascended to the right hand of The Father, and ever lives to make intercession for us.  It is possible to have an intellectual belief these things are true: there are some fairly potent arguments that have served to convince others of the truth of the tenants of Christianity.  True Christianity is not intellectual though: our faith in Jesus is alive because the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to see Him who was dead but Behold! is alive forevermore.  Our faith is covenantal because He is not only alive but is alive in us.  This is our faith.  What is Jesus’ faith?

Do we think of Jesus as having faith?  Did He have to trust not only the people around Him but did He also have to trust His Father?  The scriptures do not reveal to us a doubting Jesus but we do see a Jesus who did not know the end from the beginning, who had to be alone with His Father in order to hear and receive His words, who had confidence in, believed, and trusted His Father, and we see a Jesus who had that faith tested.

The Bible is relatively silent on Jesus’ early years.  There are a few stories told here and there but, for the most part, Jesus as a child, a teenager, and young man are summed up for us as “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).  I wonder though…

…one of my favorite movies is The Nativity Story starring Keisha Castle-Hughes, Oscar Isaac, and Ciaran Hinds.  This movie had one of the best reactions to Mary’s pregnancy I’ve ever seen.  Do you ever put yourself into the mind of a villager during that time?  Joseph wasn’t preparing for the marriage in a vacuum: the entire village-and perhaps surrounding villages as well-had to be aware of his betrothal to Mary.  The entire village had to be aware of her pregnancy as well.  Would I-would you-as a villager believe she was pregnant with the Son of God?  If I am honest, I wouldn’t be entirely convinced.  I would wonder if the poor girl wasn’t at worst lying and at best suffering under some mental confusion.

I wonder whether Jesus had to deal with snide remarks about Himself and His human parents after He and Mary and Joseph returned to Nazareth from Egypt.  I wonder because of His temptation in the wilderness after His baptism.  His baptism is described in Luke’s Gospel and it is here we read of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove and the voice from Heaven says to Him, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”  Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, is then led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  The devil’s first recorded words to Jesus here are “If You are the Son of God…”

Knowing the wiles of the devil as I do, I imagine these words were carefully chosen because there was a potential button to press here.  If you are the Son of God…what if all those asides and smirks and careful references to your parentage are really true…what if the voice you heard wasn’t really God…what if you’ve imagined all of this and are, after all, just a man…the temptation to doubt everything He knew about Himself had to be strong but Jesus did not give in.  He had faith in His Father and countered with “it is written…!”

I don’t think this wilderness experience was the only test of Jesus’ faith either.  Hebrews 12:1&2 says, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

I think about the “because of the joy that was set before Him,” and I also think of a passage in Galatians: “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made.  He does not say, “and to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16).  I also think of Philippians 2:7 in the Revised Standard Version: “but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” 

There is the argument among Christians as to how much Jesus-fully God and fully man-knew about Himself and how when and where He knew it.  The passage in Luke 2:52 does say “He grew…” and I wonder if our being changed into His image “from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18) isn’t similar to how Jesus grew: one word at a time coming to Him from the Father, one promise at a time, one situation at a time where He had to trust His Father until the day when we see Jesus in the upper room, “knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God” (John 13:3).

Who is this Jesus in whom we have our faith?  He is the Son who learned obedience by the things which He suffered.  He is the One who sympathizes with all of our weaknesses because He has been tempted in all points like as we are and yet was without sin.  He is the One who made a living way for us through His own flesh enabling us to draw near with true hearts in full assurance of faith.  Our faith is not a fleshly faith.  It is not one of intellect or good arguments or a vague and formless hope of one day by and by nor blind unquestioning obedience.  Our faith is the faith of the Son of God tested and proven in the crucible of His human existence. 

Because we are His, everything of His is ours.  What a wonder to be able to say, it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me and this life I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.  What an indescribable love is Christ’s love for us.  It truly does surpass knowledge.

Hallelujah! Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References  

Hebrews 11:1 Commentaries: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (biblehub.com) 

Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1953, 1976

More Than Able

14 Monday Aug 2023

Posted by in Studies, Whole Armor of God

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Image by Adrian Campfield from Pixabay

Hello and welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I continue my study of Ephesians 6: 10-18a: the passage where the Apostle Paul describes the Whole Armor of God.

As part of my study, I have been reading William Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour.  This is quite a tome and I haven’t made as much progress as I would like.  The book is already bristling with flags and full of underlined passages.  One passage I both underlined and flagged is: “God does not parcel himself out by retail, but gives his saints leave to challenge whatever a God hath, as theirs; and let him, whoever he is, sit in God’s throne and take away his crown, that can fasten any untruth on the Holy One; as his name is, so is his nature, a God keeping covenant for ever.  The promises stand as the mountains about Jerusalem, never to be removed; the weak as well as the strong Christian is within this line of communication.  Were saints to fight it out in open field by the strength of their own grace, then the strong were more likely to stand and the weak to fall in battle; but both castled in the covenant, are alike safe” (Gurnall, Page 30).

This passage has stayed with me.  So much of what I hear other Believers say is opposite to what I hear the Holy Spirit saying.  Believers are so busy with conducting spiritual warfare or ushering in the kingdom and those with greater abilities are heralded as being great in the kingdom.  Those who don’t have the same resources or abilities are not declared less in the kingdom but are described as a different part of His Body with a different function.  Equally important, just different: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’…” (1 Corinthians 12:15-26).  The message I hear-and it may not be what anyone intends to convey-is to know your place.  Be content with whatever that place is and, if you are not content, you can hold onto the promise that the first shall be last and the last first when Jesus comes back and it’s time to hand out rewards.  What sort of help that is to you now, in your day to day life in a world that is truly filled with tribulation, only you can really say.  It’s no good to me.  I see the truth of what William Gurnall wrote 400 years ago: were we to take to the field in our own strength, there are those who are far more likely to stand in battle than others.  Abilities and opportunities have not been spread evenly between individuals.

I have been thinking about the Parable of the Talents more and more over the course of this study.  The Parable appears in the Gospel of Matthew with a similar Parable in the Gospel of Luke.  In Matthew’s telling, the Master gives one of his servants five talents, another two, and another one, each according to his own ability.  Luke’s telling is a bit different: the Master calls ten servants and each one gets 10 minas though, when the Master returns, only three servants report to him.  There is no mention of ability in Luke’s version though it’s similar to Matthew’s in that one servant saw far more of a return on his investment than the other two so perhaps ability is inferred.  I have always heard these Parables taught in terms of ability: some of us are ten talent people, others are five, and some of us are single talent people.  I will say the Parables are also always taught that the ten talent people are not better than the five or one talent people: the only one admonished in the Parables is the servant who did nothing at all with the talent.  Still, I always sat in the pew certain I was a one talent person rather than a ten talent person.  Not only that, I was possessed with a deep fear that not even God thought I was enough.

This fear only rooted itself deeper as I was forced to come to terms with the effects of my car accident and also forced to admit the truth: my abilities were not remotely equal to those of other people.  There is a saying, “Everyone has the same 24 hours per day” which is supposed to be motivational but isn’t to a person struggling with physical limitations and the effects of a TBI.  These Parables deserve dedicated studies of their own.  For the sake of staying focused on my current study, I will only say I have had to rethink these Parables as my attention has been drawn to passages I don’t remember seeing before, no matter how many times I read through the Bible.  These passages speak of being filled with the fullness of God, being made complete in Jesus Christ, lacking nothing.  I will quote only one as it’s from the same Epistle as my study passage:

“…I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the width and length and depth and height-to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-19).

It is that last bit “filled with all the fullness of God” that has been ringing in my ears for months now and is the phrase I thought of when I read William Gurnall’s words.  “God does not parcel himself out” and “both castled in the covenant, are alike safe”.  I’ve been writing about covenant verses contract in my last few posts.  A contract is an if/then document whereas a in a covenant, both parties give themselves to each other.  Nothing is held back.  If one party needs food, protection, defense, whatever; the other party commits to provide it up to his very life and vice versa.   In this New Covenant that is now ours, of which Jesus Christ is the mediator, by the very meaning of “covenant”, our God has given Himself to us.  And, He has not given a little bit of Himself to this person and a little bit more to that person and then a whole lot to that person over there because, wow, look at how able they are!  No!  As Peter said, “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34). 

If this is true, and it has to be because it is written in black and white in the pages of the Bible, what about the Parable of the Talents?  Malcolm Smith has a teaching on The Parable of the Talents and he pointed out how the goods belonging to the Master and delivered to the servants could be seen as a metaphor for the Master giving the servants his life.  Looking at the Parables in those terms, I wondered about the line “according to his own ability”.  If the Master is Jesus, the goods are His life, and He is One who shows no partiality, why does it look like-in Matthew’s version at least-He does indeed show partiality?  Each servant is considered to have a different level of ability and is therefore given a different amount of the Master’s goods.  I discovered something interesting when I looked up the Greek word translated “ability”.

There are three occurrences of “ability” in the Strong’s Concordance and each one translates a different Greek word.  The Greek in Acts 11:29 is euporeo (G2141) and means “to be good for passing through, to have pecuniary means.”  The Greek in 1 Peter 4:11 is ischus and means “forcefulness, might, power, strength”.  The Greek in the Parable as related in Matthew 24:15 is dunamis (G1411) and the Strong’s defines it as “force, specifically miraculous power (usually by implication a miracle itself)-ability, abundance, meaning, might (-ily, -y deed), (worker of) miracle (-s), power, strength, violence, mighty (wonderful), work.”  Dunamis is most often translated as “power”, for example; it is the word used in the Lord’s Prayer, “…thine is the Kingdom and the power”, and is also the word used in Luke 9:1 when Jesus sent out His disciples: He gave them “power (dunamis) and authority”. 

 The fact that the word for “ability” in the Parable of the Talents is dunamis absolutely blew my mind.  As I said, this is something worthy of devotion but I hope you can see, as I saw, that the “ability” of the servants was not something inherent in themselves.  Both the goods and the ability came from the Master. 

I wonder if this Parable isn’t pointing out something I’ve come to suspect; that each one of us Believers has the same “ability” in that each one of us possesses the fullness of God in Christ Jesus.  In that respect, we are equal.  We are not equal in the level to which we have come to know this to be true, appropriate it for ourselves, and see it expressed in our lives.  This is, I believe, a matter of choice.  Many of my fellow believers, too many, are content with being saved and knowing about God.  He has given Himself to us in covenant.  How much of Him do you desire?

What does this have to do with the Whole Armor of God? You may well ask.  This post is what I have received, so far, in my asking this question: if we are made to stand in the power of the Lord and His might, if the Whole Armor of God is describing the way we live in this New Covenant, and thus the Whole Armor of God is an expression of the Life of Christ in us and through us, why does Paul say to “put on” and “take up” the Armor?  I wondered if there wasn’t a conflict here.  I am beginning to see there is no conflict and I hope to continue to share that in the upcoming weeks.

Until then, I leave you with a bit more from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  May the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, open the eyes of our understanding that we might know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints (that’s us!), and what is the exceeding greatness of His dunamis toward us who believe.  May we each one know what it means to be filled with the all the fullness of God and may we give the glory to the One who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the dunamis that works in us.

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Amen.

 Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Parable of the Talents: Matthew 25:14-30, Similar Parable found in Luke 19:12-27

Gurnall, William, The Christian in Complete Armour, Seventh Printing, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, 2021

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990