This seems like an odd title to write about, but it is the title of what the Lord is now working in all of us, if we will receive it. If you have heard me teach or speak in the last few months, it probably was this title. So let’s dig in.
The entire Body of Christ has been taught a huge deception for hundreds of years. That deception has hindered our concepts of our relationship with the Lord and kept us occupied with an attempt to live without sin. Sin has been the main subject in the Body of believers, and in our lack of understanding of this simple word “one,” we have occupied ourselves with the “trying and trying harder” to get rid of our guilt instead of moving into the truth of our Lord’s word, and living in victory and oneness.
The deception? It is that we are much lower and unworthy sinners, saved by grace. We feel and act as we’ve been taught that we are separated from our God. He lives up there in Heaven and we live down here. Our prayers are aimed at trying to get Him to listen and move. All of that is religion and there is a blood -stained way that is very different.
Were we saved by grace? Yes! Were we unworthy sinners? Yes – not an argument there! Have we been saved by grace? Yes, yes, and Yes. However, we as believer still think we are still sinners. In the New Testament, those saved by this precious, costly grace are never referred to as “sinners,” but instead we are consistently called, Saints. Because of the religious teaching about saints, we do not generally follow the Biblical pattern with this word, and we see ourselves as lowly and unworthy in His presence. As long as we hold ourselves separate from Him, we deny the work of the death, Burial, and resurrection. He did all that so we would be as He is in this world. We are in His Body, in Him!
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 KJV
You see, the Lord Jesus Christ gave us the victory over sin 2000 years ago so we could live as He lived. (1 John 4:17 “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgement: because as he is, so are we in this world.”KJV) The Apostle John knew something most of us do not. When Jesus came to earth, He laid aside His divinity (Philippians 2:6-8) and lived as we live. He did not sin. That seems impossible to us, but His intimacy with the Father made it possible. He died, was buried, and rose in life, so now He can empower our lives, through that same intimacy with the Lord, to live life beyond sin. Oh yes, we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the Father, yet through life in Christ we have the opportunity to live in that glory, forgiven, healed, and massively empowered.
What I have noticed is that we as believers, justify our sin, by thinking we cannot do anything else about our issues. Sin is something we left left behind when we were translated into the Kingdom of the Son of the Father’s love. (Colossians 1:13) Will we sin, yes, however, we do not camp there. Once we get our minds and thoughts out of sin and into the reality of “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” we enter a live of shared Oneness in Him and those sin actions, yes, ever those thoughts, begin to take a back seat in our lives – instead of a front seat in our teaching and preaching. Do folk need to repent (I use the common understanding of the word, which is inaccurate, but that is understanding for another post) yes, but then we need to receive the forgiveness that was given over 2000 years ago and enter life in Him. Sin is not our issue! It was solved at the cross and now He invites us to live a live of intimacy in Him.
As I have begun this series, I see I must write a number of posts to explain what I have said here and make the way clear for us living as “one” in Him! It is truth, the truth of the death, burial, and resurrection. Not just something for later, but for us now. Pray with this. It is the truth!
Mannaword 