Jesus made two statements that have an ongoing positive effect on my life. In fact, they are foundational to understanding the purposes of God. Jesus said, I have come that they might have life to the fullest (John 10:10). This passage speaks volumes to me. First and foremost, I see that God’s will for us to live the abundant life is so crucial that He sent Jesus to make it possible. So, living a full life is as important to me as the death of Jesus. The quality of my life is a reflection of my yielding to God’s plan in Christ!
The second thing that it reveals is that it is impossible to have life to its fullest without Jesus. Paul made it clear that there was no other way for man to be made righteous and thereby qualify for life. If there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law (Gal. 3:21). For what the law could not …God did by sending His own (Rom. 8:3). In other words, Jesus had to come, die on the cross, and be raised from the dead to give us the life God desired us to have. There was no other way!
Because the message of the cross has been so compromised for so long the modern Church is abandoning the need for the cross. I recently had an interesting reaction from someone on Facebook who had bought into the ideas of Universalism. His reaction to the biblical statement that Jesus satisfied God’s wrath for man on the cross seemed to be rational and loving but was so deadly. “If God is love He would have had no wrath.”
If God being love at the core of His being (which He is) was enough there would be no need for righteousness. If God’s love for us alleviated the need for the cross and the need for our personal faith then Jesus would have had no need to come. If God did not operate by absolute laws of character and righteousness He would have simply forgiven man and Jesus would not have had to die. But Jesus did have to die for us to know God and experience life.
The second teaching of Jesus that I feel is linked to John 10:10 is: And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3). So now we add a new dimension to the process of experiencing abundant life… knowing God and Jesus, the Christ! So we cannot experience abundant life just because we are saved; we experience abundant life because we know, that is, experience God with all our being!
All of the Old Testament is foundational to knowing God. All of His covenants, sacrifices, and holy days were types and shadows that were ultimately fulfilled in Jesus. Much of the ignorance about God and His covenant stems from ignorance about the Old Testament and failure to understand what is revealed about God through those Scriptures. Paul and all of the New Testament “foundation layers” preached Jesus from the Old Testament Scriptures. There was no New Testament. Their understanding of God and the New Covenant came from their knowledge of the types of Jesus presented in Old Testament Scriptures. It was when the Church rejected the wisdom and revelation of the Old Testament and started interpreting the work of Jesus based on cult ideology and heretical religions that the message of the cross was truly lost!
You can’t understand the Old Testament without knowing the truth about Jesus, but you can’t really know the full truth about Jesus if you don’t know the Old Testament. When most people read the Old Testament they fall under the law. They fail to see that all of those rituals and legal requirements are fulfilled in Christ; so, we are delivered from the curses. Jesus met all the requirements (Rom. 10:4) and we are in Him; therefore, we are already qualified for the promises. But in addition to this we see how God wants man to live. We see how God feels about sin and righteousness.
The statement I’m about to make sounds harsh but in the Old Testament we see the need for righteousness. Remember righteousness means “as it should be.” The implications of the fuller meaning are vast and touch on every aspect of life. God’s intention is that we, God’s family, experience Him, ourselves and all of His creation as He intended… as it should be. In order for us to be “as we should be” we have to know and feel the love of our Creator. When we know and feel the love of God it is manifest in our sense of dignity and worth.
For us to have this incredible sense of dignity and worth that empowers us to exercise authority over all of Planet Earth we must know God and His incredible value (agape love) for us. But John tells us that the love of God is manifest in the cross, (1 John 4:8-10) most specifically the fact that Jesus was our propitiation (satisfying of wrath).So, to favor the cult view that a God of love doesn’t have wrath makes the cross void. If Jesus didn’t become my sin and take my punishment then He was just a man who died. I see nothing of God’s love.
It is only when I see the full price that Jesus paid that I remotely grasp the price that God paid for me, the extreme to which He was willing to go for my salvation, the deep love and value He had for me. Don’t be seduced by the worldly philosophies that substitute divine love with a humanistic love. The three most disempowering earmarks of the antichrist spirit is the refusal to see that Jesus became a man just as we are, the price He paid on the cross, and the fact that we only participate in this great love by faith.
The only cure for low self-worth is the love of God. Invest in your life with the rich tools and resources we offer, many of which are free. When you feel and see yourself the way God sees you and feels about you everything in your world will change.
Thanks to all of you who made our Amazon “book party” such a huge success. In the US market Moving Your Invisible Boundaries made it to #17 in all books, #4 in self-help, and #1 in Movers & Shakers. In Canada it ranked #2 in books and #1 in Movers & Shakers. This will cause thousands of new people to open their hearts to the message of “Christ in you.”
Together we really are changing the way the world sees God!
