THE GREATNESS OF CHRIST

Series: The Person of JesusLesson #5

Eph. 1:10 That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:

I. We Are Considering A Phrase From The Letter To The Ephesians, “All Things In Christ;” “...Unto A Dispensation Of The Fullness Of Times, To Sum Up All Things In Christ.”

1. That is the general vision. We will now begin to break it up into parts.

2. The one basic all governing fact with God is the inclusiveness and exclusiveness of His Son Jesus Christ.

3. Everything intended and required for the realization of the divine purpose is in Christ. That is the inclusiveness of Christ.

4. Whatever is not of Christ is not accepted by God in the final issue. That is the exclusiveness of Christ.

5. It may seem in His mercy that God is allowing much in His children that is not Christ. But it is of extreme importance that we settle it once and for all, God is not allowing it.

6. God may extend to us His longsuffering, but He is not in any way accepting what is not of Christ.

7. When He looks at the church, when He looks at you individually, He sees one thing, that is Christ. And all of His dealing with us in time is to rid us of all that is not Christ.

8. God has initially said that everything that is outside of Christ is dead to Him, so He is progressively working death in that realm.

9. In the final issue, not one fragment anywhere that is not of Christ will be allowed.

II. What The Church Is To Be.

1. The church is to be what Christ was and is as the heavenly man. I cannot over emphasize that because the ultimate intent of God is to conform us to the image of Christ.

2. We must be not only able preachers of the word, but demonstrators of what Christ is. It is not enough tell people about Him, we must show men Christ. This is the very soul and purpose of Pentecost.

3. Only that which is of Christ, the heavenly man, is eternally effective.

4. Hence, the more there is of Christ, the more effectiveness there is from God’s standpoint.

5. That simply means that what was, and is true of Christ, as the heavenly man, as to His being, as to the laws of His life, as to His ministry and mission, is to be true of the church. For this the Holy Spirit was given.

6. We do get happy, there are a lot of wonderful things, but the purpose of it all is to make evident that which is Christ. The ultimate intent of God is to conform us to this One of whom we speak.

7. We have shown in lessons past, that this life principle is progressive in the believer; that is, it is continually working conforming us to the image of Christ.

8. We are speaking of Christ as the heavenly man, and not of His deity. We will never be God. It is to the man Christ Jesus that we are to be conformed.

9. The church in Him is also a heavenly man. Paul called it, “the one new man.”

10. The church is not to be thought of as Jew or Greek, male or female. These and all other earthly distinctions are set aside, and the one new man is formed in whom Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11).

11. Christ in His essential nature has never been of earth. He is the Lord from Heaven. He stressed the fact with these words, “...I am from above...” (Jn. 8:23).

12. What is true of Christ is also true of the church, and what is true of the church is also true of the individual believer who makes up the church.

13. We are in the world, we are not of the world. We are born from above. The church has never been an earthly thing in God’s thought.

14. Paul shows us that the church was in the heavenlies before the fall took place. It was there in the foreknowledge of God.

15. In Christ we are made to bridge the gap created by the fallen race.

16. Paul views the church from the heavenly standpoint, and he always speaks of it as being complete. Faith is built on this.

17. When you and I realize the truth that, “God never begins until He is finished,” faith will come alive. God looks at you as already complete in Christ.

18. When you were born of the Spirit, the Holy Ghost baptized you into Christ. That is a miracle. You could never have gotten there apart from the miracle of the new birth. But once there, you are told to abide there.

19. The abiding is your responsibility, and it is done by the choices you make in everyday living. As you abide in Christ, and as God sees you in Christ, He reckons the experience of Christ to be yours.

20. It was for you that Christ died. It was for you that He rose. It was for you that He brought redemption. God sees the finished product, although there is a lot of work to be done in us.

21. The church is seen as being literally formed in this dispensation, but it is immediately translated to heaven.

22. When we come into Christ, we are then seated in the heavenlies with Christ. “Made to sit in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 2:6). It does not say we will be placed there sometime in the future.

23. Upon believing, we were cut loose from this world from God’s standpoint, translated out of this kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of God’s Son. As soon as we came into Christ, at that point, we ceased to be earthly.

24. The moment we come into Christ, we are spiritual, heavenly people, and this life that came with this birth from above, this eternal life, this principle of life, is progressively working and conforming us to this heavenly man.

III. We Must Recognize Our Link With The Eternal And Heavenly, And Proceed From There.

1. There is no other starting point. We reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. There never would have been what we call “worldly Christians,” if what we are saying had been understood.

2. Worldly Christians are a total contradiction to God’s thoughts.

3. We are not struggling to be heavenly people, we are not hoping to attain such a place, we must proceed from that standpoint. I am in Christ, I have been born from above, I am a heavenly person.

4. Then, if I proceed from there, the Holy Spirit can work with me. Everything that contradicts this must be crucified. (The other side of me has been rejected by God in the Garden of Eden).

5. It is not just the wicked and the profane that must be put down, but everything must be put down that contradicts the fact that I am now, because of my birth from above, a heavenly being, a spiritual being.

IV. Nothing But What Is Of Christ Will Be Allowed By God In The Ultimate Issue.

1. Because that is true, all of the activities of God in discipline are introduced and pursued.

2. For example, let’s look at the discipline that comes by failure.

3. The upward movement of God, in both individuals and movements is always accomplished by a succession of deaths and resurrections.

4. The experience is not limited to the early stages alone, but continues throughout the course. When God apprehends a human by the new birth, then begins this process of death and resurrection. “I must decrease,” said John, “that He might increase.” It is through this process of death to what I am God makes room for the increase of what He is.

5. The effect of this is law is: “That with God nothing but what is of Christ is allowed.”

6. Only what is of Christ can be effective, and our experience means that more and more of the mixture has to go, and Christ must take its place.

7. Failure leads to that. I know we are all frightened of failure, but nothing teaches us like failure. The Lord gives us latitude in the Bible when He says, “Follow after the Spirit.” That simply means that as a human, there is a possibility of me drifting from the path, but if my heart is right when God allows me to fail in that area, then I know I have to obey to come back.

8. God applies this law, to that end. When everything has been said and done, and all these present ages have run their course, in God’s age of ages, there will be nothing left but Christ. It will be worth it all to live in a world where there is nothing but Christ.

9. God is seeking to bring the church to this goal, to be the fullness of Him that fills all in all.

V. God Has Determined From All Eternity That This Universe Shall Be Filled With Christ, The Heavenly Man. He Will Accomplish This Through That Corporate Heavenly Man, The Church, Which Is Joined To Him As The Head.

1. We, the church, are now heirs and joint heirs with Christ. It is our union with Him as the Head, making up that one new man, that will be the reflection of Christ that is going to fill the entire universe.

2. So what is God doing? He is getting rid of the Jew in us, of the Greek in us, and constituting us according to Christ, conforming us to the image of His Son. That just simply means, all of God’s efforts with you and I, for the church collectively, is to reproduce in us the moral character of Christ and the submissiveness of Christ as He was to the Father.

a. He said, “I do only those things that I see My Father do.” When we are brought to this place, the Gospel flows as freely through us as the body of Christ, as it flowed through Him when He walked this earth in the body Mary gave Him.

3. The moment we come to the place where the last remnants and relics of what is not of Christ fall from us, then He will be displayed in us.

4. He shall come to be glorified in the saints.

5. No wonder Paul in the book of Ephesians prayed, “The eyes of your, (the church’s) understanding be enlightened that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18).

VI. Israel’s Coming Into The Promised Land Is A Type Of Total Victory In Christ. God Said All That Happened To Them Was An Example Unto Us (1Cor. 10:6-10).

1. The wilderness journey of Israel shows us the path to the death of all that is not Christ.

2. It is through this wilderness journey that we are made to see that God through it shows us everything in our lives that is not Christ.

3. When you look at Israel in that journey as the illustration and example for us, we can understand how God works to conform us to His Son.

a. Six weeks out of Egypt they are farther away from the Promised Land than they were when they started. The cloud moved south. Why are they there? Because God led them there. All of the leading of God was to bring them into those places where the wilderness of their heart was revealed to them.

b. When you and I came out of Egypt, in the new birth, there was still a lot of Egypt in us. A lot of the bitterness of Egypt hung on to us.

c. He led them first to Mariah where the bitter waters revealed the bitterness of their hearts. It was through the cross, the tree, which was thrown into the waters that God dealt with all of this.

4. We look at this example and we see that all that leading, all that testing, was to confront them with the condition of their own heart. Their attitude towards the provisions of God had to be demonstrated.

5. When you hear all of the murmuring in the church today, you realize that most of the people who have come to know Christ are now not satisfied with God’s provisions for their lives.

6. They are thankful as Israel was. Having escaped Egypt, they hadn’t gone far when they said to Moses, “In Egypt we had leeks, and garlic, and onions. Out here we have nothing but this manna.” They wanted to go back to Egypt. Variety was more appealing than the manna.

7. Hundreds of years later when Christ came, He said to them, “I am that bread, I am that manna.” I have found that the same spirit prevails in the church today. You must keep a “circus act” going to keep those people calling themselves Christians there. They are saying, “We want something other than Christ.”

8. If you bring in the religious celebrities and the religious clowns, the flesh will fill every pew in that church. Tell that same people that you are having a prayer meeting in the morning at 5 o’clock and that nobody is going to be there but Jesus (the manna), you will be the loneliest man in that church, because they are not satisfied with the provisions of God.

9. When God gave Christ, He gave everything we need. Everything else is extra. Paul said, “I know what it is to abound I know what it is to be abased, but I have learned, that whatever state I am in therewith to be content” (Phil. 4:11).

10. The greatness of Christ has never taken a hold of us. In the end, in the ages to come, there will be nothing but Christ.

11. S.D. Gorden said, “If you make it into heaven, at the gate there will be a cross, and that cross will say to you, ‘nothing that is not of Christ is aloud here.’”

12. From the moment you are birthed of God, until the moment you awake in His likeness, the whole working of God with you is to conform you to the image of His Son; to replace the old life with the new life.

13. You can always recognize a person under the control of the Holy Spirit. The mark of that person’s life is that more and more, he or she is occupied with the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the mark of a person who is growing and maturing under the absolute control of the Holy Spirit.

14. All the while God is dealing with those things in our life that our not of Christ through the ministry of the cross, by the Holy Spirit.

15. You cannot interpret the cross apart from the Holy Spirit. Through the eternal Spirit, Christ offered Himself to God. It was by and through the Holy Spirit that Jesus went to the cross. The same Holy Spirit that led Him to the cross will lead you to your cross.

16. God is saying to you and I, “If you will be Christ’s disciple, you will have to go through the process of becoming a true disciple.”

a. The first step is to “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus” (Mat. 16:24).

17. What is that cross? It is the Holy Spirit leading us into those Red Sea situations where there is no way out but God, where we learn not to lean on any other arm but the arm of God.

18. The Holy Spirit led Jesus to the cross. The Holy Spirit put Him through the cross.

19. The cross that you and I must bear is made up of the everyday trials, sufferings, and rejections, or whatever comes in life.

20. If in the trials of life you examine your heart and there is no willful sin in your life, then you know that what is happening is of the Holy Spirit. It is He who has led you there, and like Jesus, if we will let the Holy Spirit, He will put you on that cross, and you will come off of it with less of you and more of the Lord Jesus Christ.

21. This is God’s way of conforming us to His Son, this heavenly man, this great Christ of God.

22. We are talking about the person of Jesus, the heavenly man, not God. He was both God and man, very God and very man. As God, we will never be.

23. As we look at Him, we understand what God is looking for in us. As we behold Him in the Spirit, we are changed into His image. This is the end result of walking in the Spirit.

24. for a person to continue to be faithful in the midst of everyday trials, struggles, and temptation, there must be an extravagant faith in the future. Men cannot go on a part from that. But when that faith is in the future then and only then can I truly become a believer.

25. The mark of the true believer is the willingness to sacrifice the present for the future. But for a man to sacrifice his present for the future, there must be an extravagant faith in an extravagant future.

26. When I think on this truth, that I, who am less than the least has been predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, then I can endure the trials and difficulties of the present life. As He was in this world, so are we. As I understand this, then I can say with the Apostle Paul, “It will be worth it all when we see Christ.”

27. When we see Him, according to the Apostle John we shall be like Him.

1Jn. 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

28. It is the progressive working of this life that brings us to that image. As we behold Him in the Spirit we “…are changed into the same image from glory to glory…” (2Cor. 3:18).