18.3 Flesh of His Flesh
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Christ I have been crucified with – I live, but no longer I, He lives, however, in me Christ – even more than that, the NOW I live in all the sphere of flesh exists only inside the sphere of the I live faith of the Son of God – this One having loved me, this One having traded Himself for me.
Once we DARE to take the flesh into the Holiest as His flesh alone, then we DARE the next thing God places before us, the most daring dare of all. We dare, with Paul, to turn around. I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church (Colossians 1:24).
A Living Sacrifice
Look back at the words you prayed in the last lesson, in trepidation placing all the horror of the present and ongoing sins of your flesh into Jesus – then look again. There is NO sin in Christ, but only an empty, empty grave. Your flesh is no longer for sin; your flesh is for God.
Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:11). – Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (Romans 12:1). – You are not your own … For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify (the) God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s (body and Spirit) (1 Corinthians 6:19b-20).
The Covenant
Coming soon in the most important session in this course, “Shaping the Human Heart,” is the lesson, “The Mercy Seat.” God’s purpose for you is not just to take you into the Mercy Seat, but to cause you to be His Mercy Seat towards all creation. And that manifest Mercy Seat that you are, the Father’s heart revealed, is found ONLY in the place of God’s choosing.
This lesson is to establish your flesh and mine, the very flesh of Christ, as that place. We begin with the Covenant. Clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart (2 Corinthians 3:3).
Hearts of Flesh
Clearly you are an epistle of Christ written by the Spirit of the living God on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.
Notice the “you are”; we speak that as “I am.” I am an epistle, a letter, of Christ; I am written by the Spirit of the I-live God, specifically my heart of flesh. The letter of Christ and the Person of Jesus are the same; it’s not something from Jesus written upon our hearts, but He Himself.
But Paul underlines, here, our hearts of flesh. And the Word becomes flesh and dwells within us and we behold His glory filling our own hearts of flesh, full of grace and truth.
Transformed
Before continuing, we must establish God’s intentions. Paul said that flesh and blood shall not enter the kingdom of God in a specific context in 1 Corinthians 15. This mortal (flesh) must put on immortality and this corruptible (flesh) must put on incorruption. Thus Paul is equating the moment that Life swallows up our mortal flesh into immortality, and our entrance into the full kingdom of God, as the same thing.
It is our flesh, our outward appearance, that God intends to transform in a moment. But first, God has something up His sleeve, something that gets Him excited.
The Tension
God intends to prove His Word. God intends to prove that His Word returns to Him having fulfilled in the earth and in human flesh all that He spoke in that Word – AND He intends to set that proving in the belly of weakness and in the face of all opposition.
Here is the tension of the great story of God. Let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written: “That You may be justified in Your words, and may overcome when You are judged” (Romans 3:4). To the serpent’s first words “Did God indeed say?” have been added billions upon billions of specific accusations against God uttered by men and angels.
A Sent Word
Let’s bring this quickly into our bodies of mortal flesh. You see, this Word that has taken up residence in our hearts is a Sent Word, sent by God to PROVE all that He speaks. The place of that proving is our hearts of flesh out from our bodies of mortal flesh.
A woman, clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ, screaming to give birth in the face of the dragon. And she brought forth a male child and her child was caught up to God and His throne (Revelation 12:5). It is NOT us trying our best to prove that God is telling us the truth. Father, no!!! It is Jesus’ great task, His second task, to PROVE the Father’s speaking to be absolute and real.
God Has Chosen –
God has chosen the foolish (,) weak (, and) despised things of the world … the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).
Central to human accusation against God is the conviction that God did us wrong by giving us bodies of weakness, that our problem as humans IS the weakness of our flesh. Thus all human effort is to make the flesh appear strong, wise, and honored – while at the same time despising any thought that God Himself would clothe Himself with this same weak and despised human flesh. Not on this earth!! Not in human flesh!!!
We Glory in the Lord
That no flesh should glory in His sight.
What is the difference? Earthen vessels – that we have no sufficiency in ourselves.
Every word I have ever heard on being an overcomer placed upon me the responsibility of human achievement in the form of obedience, holiness, and earnest seeking of a far-away God. And every such belief makes life to be not Christ, but wages. I can’t do any of that. Does that mean I cannot be with Jesus?
But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and (everything else). Thus I glory in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:30-31).
In Gethsemane
You see, the very coming forth of Jesus from the mouth of God as the speaking of the creation, committed Jesus to Gethsemane, personal and real, and to this enormous task of proving all that God speaks out from vessels of weakness.
But Jesus cannot prove anything except through human faith. Thus we have the most burning question consuming the Heart of Jesus right now. When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8).
In Gethsemane, Jesus becomes the answer to His question. And the life I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loves me and who trades Himself for me.
We Speak Christ
We are in good hands. Yet we do have a part to play, a part we can play, a part that glorifies God in our human flesh. We can believe in Jesus. – And we do.
But we live by every Word that God speaks – and faith is specific to each Word. Thus the Word is in our mouths and in our hearts, this Word of faith that we speak. As we speak Christ our only life, we are the woman clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ and out of our bellies, God reveals Himself and His authority in the universe. We understand God’s purpose out from the great story of God.
Grace
Here is how all of this works in our bodies of mortal flesh. Grace. Let me define grace, the grace prophesied by Peter that is now come upon us.
Grace is thinking and walking as if we are already incorruptible, as if our bodies are already transformed, as if the Father is already revealing Himself through us as Himself, now. – While we do not see. While ALL outward appearance seems to say the opposite. In these present bodies of flesh before the resurrection actually happens. – Life, now.
Substance
You see, our entire substance, all that we are, is coming every moment out of the mouth of Jesus as the new creation, as incorruptible and immortal life. The only thing that has not changed is our appearance. To live “according to the flesh” is to judge by appearance. To live by faith is to judge all things, starting with ourselves, by substance.
Rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ – whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see (outward appearance), yet believing (in substance), you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory (1 Peter 1:13 & 8).
Much More God
Do you see why we MUST share flesh with God? By surrendering our stumbling foolishness and selfish misery to the Lord Jesus, that He might carry all of it inside His empty grave, we can now walk as if we are the Father, revealing Himself, as He wishes, through us. As we do so, God becomes thicker and thicker.
Like Alice in Wonderland, when we first knew God, He was hardly God, more of a distant haze who wrote some rules. But as we share flesh with God, He becomes much more muchly, much more God, until we are swimming in God and God goes all through us.
In Our Mortal Flesh
Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:10-11).
Then my paraphrase:
For the death of the Lord Jesus penetrates unceasingly and successfully all the way through all that we are. In exactly the same manner, it is the same life of Jesus that appears, is made clear and visible in full and open view, right now out from within our physical body, our presently dying flesh.
We put on incorruption by faith.
The Holy in Our Flesh
When Paul said in Romans 7 that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells, he so CLEARLY was speaking of those who live by law, by outward word, separate from Christ. The Holy Spirit lives in our flesh; we are dead to that law.
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:29-32). Flesh of His flesh. It’s not our flesh; it is His.
Flesh of His Flesh
And now that our flesh IS God’s flesh (and ours as well), He does as He wishes through us. But God does as He wishes by our confidence in Him.
Do you see that word, “confidence?” Not only is confidence the key word in the seventh most important verse in the Bible, the verse of walking now IN the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it is the most important word on our side of things in our present actions.
Flesh of His flesh, the most remarkable, awesome, and glorious reality now upon this planet and in all the universe. The Father through us for the sake of our brethren.