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Walking in the Light of our Lord Jesus Christ in a fallen world. 1 John 1

1/24/2023

In the first chapter of his first epistle, John gives us a "Hands-On" introduction to our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ, His purpose and work. The humanity of his Jesus is clearly declared in the verbs that he uses (heard, seen, looked upon, handled) to describe the Apostolic encounter and relationship with the One who was from the beginning.
In verse 2, this One Who Is the Word of Life, he declares plainly to be the Eternal Life that was with the Father. In these two verses we have a most personal and intimate encounter with the God/Man Who Is the Sent One from the Father. (See John 5:22-24, 6:29)
Verse three lays out John's reason for giving us this introduction to his Beloved Lord. It is that we may have fellowship with the Apostles in a spiritually Hands-On way in order that we may have a spiritually Hands-On fellowship/relationship with the Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. This is in keeping with John's record of our Lord's High Priestly prayer in John 17:20 where our Jesus prays for "them also which shall believe on Me through their (the Apostles) word." The power of the Gospel is in this historic Apostolic Witness, the Witness that we are called to spiritually encounter. They did not speak of some myth!!
It is intriguing that while John presents Jesus as the Eternal Life that is with the Father from the beginning, his focus is not primarily our eternal life in him. I believe that's to be understood in his words, but he seems to be emphasizing that our life in Christ is first of all to be one of fellowship with the Father and His Son. There is no indication of a "get out of hell free card" salvation in John's thinking. This Eternal Life, this life in Christ Jesus, brings us into fellowship with the Most High God, and this is no mere nodding acquaintance of which he speaks..
I have heard the cutesy description of fellowship as two fellows in one ship. That is dreadfully inadequate in John's context. The only validity to such a trite example might be seen if we see Christ Jesus as our Ark and us floundering, drowning, trying to walk on water, and His mighty right hand drawing us to the safety of the Ark. Or perhaps we being in Christ Jesus and the waves of this world and the storms and lightning of our flesh threaten to sink us, and again our sweet Jesus calls our, “Peace be still”, and all is at rest.
It is in this intimate, continual fellowship with our Savior who is Eternal Life, our Ark of Safety, that we find true Joy and that to the fullest.

Next time: the believers walk in fellowship with his Lord through this defiled and fallen world. 1 John 1:5-2:2

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Christ our Daily Food John 4:32-34

1/12/2023

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The food, the spiritual nourishment of our Lord of which He speaks, that which exceeded His natural hunger, was His delight to do His Father's Will (Ps. 40:6-8). And He is the Embodiment of the Father's Will and Testament (Eph. 1:3-10), the Father's Word made flesh (John 1:14), that Prophet of which Moses spoke (Deut. 18:15-19; John 6:14, 7:40), not given from Sinai, but from Heaven, His Father's Throne(Isa 66:1).
Our Jesus declares himself to be our necessary food.(John 6:27, 47-58) He is speaking of the necessary food that is the essential nourishment of Eternal Life! His body and blood is so vital, that in verse 53 He says, " I say unto you except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you."
The physical elements of His commanded feast (Mt. 26:28; 1 Cor. 11:25) are to draw us to the continual reminder of the spiritual meal that we must feast upon, His Perfect Body and Blood, prepared by the Father(Hebrews 10:5) that ALONE can sustain the Eternal Life freely given us upon belief in the Sent One, our Jesus(John 6:29). He is our Righteous Man, the One the Father requires, that wasn’t to be found throughout the Old Covenant (Isa. 59:16, 63:5, Ezek. 22:30). Our Jesus ALONE could Do and Possess the Righteousness that is ALONE the Delight of God (Ps.40:6-8) and Pleasure of the Father.(Mt. 3:16-17, 17:1-5) He is all that we could not be and has done all that we could not do!!! And on top of that, He has paid the penalty required by the just Righteousness of God for all that we could not be or do (2 Cor. 5:21)
By faith alone, we must feast upon the Lamb of God, our Passover Lamb, who ALONE provides the two-fold benefit that we must have. He has kept the death angel from our door,(Heb. 2:14-15) and He is our needed food for the treacherous journey through the wilderness of this fallen world(Gal.2:20). He ALONE can sustain us unto the Glorious inheritance(Eph. 1:17-21) of the Eternal Promised Land, of which Peter speaks of in 2 Peter 3:11-13, a new Heaven and a new Earth where Righteousness dwells. And that Righteousness which dwells there is the very Presence of our Righteous Loving Father and His Beloved Son by the Power and Love of His Glorious Spirit.
But Wonder of wonders, by faith alone, we have access into that Glorious Holy of Holies right now. Hebrews chapter 10 presents to us the incredible truth that we are called to enter into the Holiest by the Blood of Jesus even now, by a New and Living Way which Jesus has consecrated for us through the veil that is to say His Flesh, (that is body the Father prepared for Him Vs 10:5), and having a High Priest(Heb. 7:24-25) over the House of God (Heb. 3:5, that is, all who have come to God through Him,) let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
And how do we feast continually upon this necessary food? Our Lord hasn't left us guessing, for he says in John 6: 35, " and Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that comes to Me shall never hunger and he that believes in Me shall never thirst." Coming and believing is but the response of faith, faith alone that believes that this God/Man Christ Jesus was sent by God His Father as the Righteousness of God that ALONE satisfies the Father's Will in Heaven and upon the Earth. As a dear old saint once said, "Join anything of your own to Christ and you un-Christ him. God will look at nothing but Christ, and you must look at nothing else. He is the Savior, and there is none beside him. Look anywhere else and you are undone, and that eternally."

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The Table of Joy and Thanksgiving

1/6/2023

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The Lord did not leave it to the apostles to institute the Lord's supper after His departure. He rather regarded it as so important that by his own authority, while yet present, He instituted it in the most solemn manner on the night of His betrayal, immediately before going out to the garden. The bread and wine selected as emblems of His body and blood, were designed to impress upon His disciples (& us) with the persuasion, #1 that His body was the true Paschal sacrifice; #2 that His blood was the true sacrificial blood by which the New Covenant was constituted, more perfect by far than the Covenant at Sinai. The elements were signs of a reality, pledges in hand, that as surely as they took the sign into their hands, they by faith received the thing that was signified; for they were seals and pledges as well as signs.
The Covenant is founded simply on the bloodshed of One for many for the remission of sins, without any other element, whether in the form of supposed merit, or moral improvement, or services performed as the procuring cause. The cup of Thanksgiving was thus the evidence of our participation by faith in the blood of Christ and the bread that participation by faith in the body of Christ, as our only acceptance before God. The sacrament of the supper loudly proclaims this great truth to all time, and all ages must hear it. Till the Lord come, His atoning death must be proclaimed with festive Joy at this supper, as often as it is deemed proper to celebrate it. Of how great importance must that truth be which Jesus so vividly portrayed, and the perpetual memory of which He has so carefully secured! This shows what a supreme place belongs to His atoning sacrifice. It is the principal thing of the Gospel; nay, it is the Gospel. Take it out of the Gospel and it ceases to be the Gospel.

George Smeaton, from The Doctrine of the Atonement According to the Apostles.

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Walking in the Light of our Lord Jesus Christ in a fallen world. 1 John 1

Christ our Daily Food John 4:32-34

The Table of Joy and Thanksgiving

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Walking in the Light of our Lord Jesus Christ in a fallen world. 1 John 1

Christ our Daily Food John 4:32-34

​The Table of Joy and Thanksgiving

Author

Archives

Categories

The Table of Joy and Thanksgiving