28.2 You in Me
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
You were caught in a quagmire of hopelessness from which you could not escape when you first came to Jesus. You did not even know that you were so desperately lost until the Holy Spirit caused you to understand your awful reality. Yet in that same moment that you became blindingly aware of your true condition, you saw something else. You saw forgiveness extended towards you. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins (Ephesians 1:7).
You did not know theology, but you did know three things in that moment. You KNEW you were a sinner; you KNEW Jesus came into your heart; and you KNEW your sins were forgiven.
The Sacrifice. Yes, you knew that Jesus had come into your heart. What that really meant was hidden from you – and as you grew in “Christian” understanding the concept of Jesus inside of you faded into a child’s belief.
Yet something else was also happening in that moment of your salvation; you had entered into an agreement with God. How were you forgiven of all the wicked things you did?
When you entered into that agreement with God, you first saw the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross and you understood that Jesus had died for you. You understood that Jesus had done something that healed the break between you and God. God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
The Agreement You Made. My purpose is to talk about the agreement you made with God the moment you asked Jesus to cleanse you of your sins. Before you entered into that agreement, you were incapable of seeing your lostness, you were incapable of looking to Jesus, and you were incapable of receiving forgiveness of sins. Here are the words that could define the philosophy by which you lived: “I’ve got things under control. There’s nothing wrong with me. I will figure this thing out.”
Yet something else was happening in the heavens all around you, inside your absolute reality, things of which you were quite unaware. Another Person had set His intentions upon you.
In Gethsemane. Two thousand years ago, on a rocky hillside overlooking Jerusalem to the west, a Man, an eternal, all-here-now Man, had dropped to His knees in an olive grove, a garden called Gethsemane. By the end of the first hour on His knees, this Man, in great agony of soul, agreed with God: “Not My will but Thine be done.”
What was this agreement with God? Jesus agreed, in that moment, to become your sin, to become all the hostility of your wicked spirit against God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Crucified with Him. How could Jesus become your sin? But of God you are in Christ Jesus… (1 Corinthians 1:20). – Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? – knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him… (Romans 6:3 & 6).
Where and how did you get put into Jesus? And who and what is this Man in Gethsemane? This Jesus in Gethsemane is the embodiment in human flesh of every Word God speaks all here and all now in the heavenly realms all around. This human Jesus is the same today, yet you know Him now only as a life-giving Spirit.
You, and everything else, exists every moment only by the Words that Jesus is continually and personally speaking.
Only through Faith. Sustaining all things by the word of His power. – Jesus Christ the SAME, yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 1:3 & 13:8). Gethsemane is the same today as it was 2000 years ago. Today, in that moment of your salvation, Jesus called you into Himself there in Gethsemane, Jesus, the One by whose words you exist every moment.
Here is something we must know about God. God cannot sin; that is, doing something wrong never enters into God’s mind. Forcing His will on others never enters God’s mind because such an action would be sin; it would be rape. God enters into the knowledge of anyone only with their express permission, an agreement to receive Him called “faith.”
Speaking the Same Words. Jesus could not die for you unless God first put you into Jesus, there in Gethsemane. And God could not put you into Jesus unless Jesus gave God His permission to accept you.
When Jesus first said, “Not My will but Thine be done,” you were already there inside of Him, that was you speaking those words. Jesus had become you. Jesus had become all of your sin, all of your wicked hostility against God. And you, there, inside of Jesus, spoke through His mouth the words that allowed God to bring you, one day, into that agreement with God that you and Jesus already made together.
I Died. It is for this reason that you were inside of Jesus as He hung upon the cross, this Jesus who, knowing no sin, had become your wicked spirit, your old man. And thus you died, together with Jesus. I AM crucified with Christ… (Galatians 2:20). – For you died… (Colossians 3:3). You were able to make that agreement with God for one reason only, you ARE always and already inside of Jesus, there in Gethsemane, a Jesus who is always carrying you all the way through the cross and into Life.
Let’s look back, now, at what you really agreed to with God when you received Jesus as your Savior.
Close Your Mouth. That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God (Romans 3:19).
The first part of your agreement with God was that you were wicked and perverse, cursed of God and deserving only of execution. The second part of your agreement with God was that you were incapable of doing anything about it. You could NOT fix yourself. – That’s what “close your mouth” means. You cannot fix yourself, and you certainly cannot fix anyone else.
But the third part of your agreement with God is something you may not have understood right away.
You ARE inside of Him. The moment you asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins, you agreed that God was now free to put you into Jesus, there in Gethsemane. You agreed that Jesus could become your sin dead upon the cross. You agreed that Jesus could become you. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ (Galatians 2:20).
In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in you (John 14:20). In that day you made your first agreement with God, you may not have known what it all meant, but you did KNOW that you, all that you ARE including your sin and your shame, were now inside of Jesus.
Agreeing with God. When you entered into Jesus you left the company of multitudes of people who are just like you once were. And the significant difference now between you and them is this. They do not agree with God; they are convinced they can fix themselves.
You agree with God; you know you cannot save yourself, you must have another Person to take all your wicked mistakes upon Himself, that you might die inside of Him. And for the season of God after you were born again, you came to know the full meaning of that Sacrifice and you cleansed yourself of all filthiness by the washing of the Word. The Bible was now your book.
A Greater Measure. It wasn’t long, however, before you hit a brick wall dead on. You perceived another great barrier between yourself and the knowledge of God. You saw things in the Bible that you did not understand; you read things you knew were not part of your experience. You wanted more from God – so you asked for a greater measure of God’s Spirit.
It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life (John 6:63). – How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him (Luke 11:13). And in that moment you entered into a second agreement with God.
Surrender All. In the days and moments before you entered into this second agreement with God, you found yourself confronted with a question requiring an answer of you. That question would have come to you in a different manner than how it came to anyone else, yet there it was – Will you surrender all that you are to Me?
Before you surrendered your soul to the Holy Spirit, you did not know the extent of your inability as a Christian. You did not know that you could in no way understand the words of your Bible with your intellect. You did not know that you could not ever please God with your “Christian” actions. And in your surrender, you agreed that to know God, He had to immerse you into a realm you had never known – into His Holy Spirit.
In Spirit and Truth. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth (John 4:24). In that moment, as the Holy Spirit flooded out from your own spirit and into your soul – into your mind, will, and emotions, you knew a joy unspeakable and full of glory – and the words on the pages of the Bible became a living reality to you.
Before you entered into that agreement, you were incapable of seeing your inability to know what the Bible actually means and you knew nothing of walking in the Spirit. Here are the words that could define the philosophy by which you lived: “I’ve got things under control. I will figure this Bible out. I will live as God expects a good Christian to live.”
Another Person. Yet something else was happening in the heavens all around you, inside your absolute reality, things of which you were quite unaware. Another Person had set His intentions upon you.
Two thousand years ago a Man, an eternal, all-here-now Man, had dropped to His knees a second time in Gethsemane. At the end of the second hour on His knees, this Man, in agony of soul, agreed with God: “Not My will but Thine be done.” What was this agreement with God? Jesus agreed, in that moment, to become your soul, to become all the psychosis of your own self-story spinning your own self-consciousness as if you were separate from Christ.
Bearing Fruit to God. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his soul, his own self story, will lose it, and he who hates his self-story in this world will keep it to age-abiding life (John 12:24-25).
Jesus is that grain of wheat and you are the ground into which He has fallen, there, a second time in Gethsemane. As that seed becomes the plant, so Jesus has become you that He might, through you, bear fruit to God. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit (John 15:16).
You did not know in the moment you agreed a second time with God what it all meant, but you did know that Words of Life were flowing all through your soul by the Holy Spirit.
You Agree with God. When you entered into Jesus as the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit, Jesus as the Truth, you left the company of multitudes of people who are just like you once were. And the significant difference now between you and them is this. They do not agree with God; they are convinced they can figure out God and the Bible themselves by their own minds.
You agree with God; you know you cannot comprehend either Word or Spirit, but you must have another Person to take all your foolish psychosis upon Himself, that you might possess His soul, His story to speak as your own. And for a season after your soul was filled with the Spirit, you came to know the full meaning of an anointed and living Word, and you sought to know God in the dealings of the Spirit. The Spirit was now your life.
A Third Barrier. It wasn’t long, however, before you hit a brick wall dead on. You perceived another great barrier between yourself and the knowledge of God. And you perceived that barrier to be your flesh, the desires and inclinations of your body that, to you, seemed to operate always in opposition to the life of the Spirit.
So you set yourself on the task of subduing the flesh, of breaking the “bonds” you received from Adam, the task of hearing God speak and doing what He said. Yet you failed, completely and absolutely, at the whole business of obeying the Spirit; you could not enter into the Holiest. And in your ruin you came before God a third time, this time in the deepest of desperation and hopelessness.
To Know God. You knew that you needed to know God and you knew that you could not grasp such a thing. This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3). – Having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh (Hebrews 10:19-20).
In that moment you entered into a third agreement with God. You see, in the days and moments before you entered into this third agreement with God, you found yourself pondering deeply two words – one sacrifice for sins forever (Hebrews 10:12) and – I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20).
Christ, not I. Christ, not “I.” His flesh, not “my” flesh. And in that moment of your third agreement with God, you agreed to allow Jesus to be your flesh, to be that very thing that you imagined standing between you and knowing God. The full knowledge of Christ now living as you in all ways filled all the pathways of your consciousness.
Before you entered into that agreement, you were incapable of seeing your inability EVER to please God, you were incapable of knowing the Holiest, and you were incapable of receiving Christ Jesus as being the only life you are. Here are the words that could define the philosophy by which you lived: “I’ve got my flesh under control; I will do what God says. I will prove to God that ‘I’ love Him.”
Jesus IS Become You. Yet something else was happening in the heavens all around you, inside your absolute reality, things of which you were quite unaware. Another Person had set His intentions upon you.
Two thousand years ago a Man, an eternal, all-here-now Man, had dropped to His knees a third time in Gethsemane. And through that third hour on His knees, this Man, in agony of soul, agreed with God: “Not My will but Thine be done.” What was this agreement with God? Jesus agreed, in that moment, to become your flesh, to become all the perversity of your own ways always seeming to be contrary to the Spirit. Jesus agreed to become you.
One Flesh with Him. 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 (Christ and you) shall become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:30-31). How could Jesus become your flesh? How could Jesus become you? – He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for you!
When Jesus said “Not My will but Thine be done” the third time, you were already there inside of Him, speaking those words. Jesus had become you. Jesus had become all of the filthiness of your flesh, all of your separation from God. And you, there inside of Jesus, spoke through His mouth the words that allowed God to bring you, one day, into that agreement with God that you and Jesus already made together.
The Final Surrender. In some ways you had come full circle back to your first agreement with God. For surrendering yourself to Jesus, to allow Him to BE all of your present sinfulness, to be your present self, to allow Him to be you, this surrender is the greatest surrender of all.
And you knew three things in that moment as Jesus Himself carried you through the Veil into the Holiest, into John 14:20. You knew that you were incapable of ever living the Christian life. You knew that you were incapable of ever pleasing God. And you knew that you could not fix yourself nor anyone else. You needed Someone else to become your life, to become you. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ – Christ who is our life (adding Colossians 3:3).
Sinking into Jesus. For God’s next season in your life, you sank into the utter rest of knowing that Jesus Himself lives as you, that He carries all that you are inside Himself inside of Father every moment. And you began to rejoice inside of John 14:20. In that day (this third day of agreement with God) you shall KNOW that I am IN the Father and you IN Me and I IN you.
And the meaning of these words became the meaning of your life. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this present age (1 John 4:17). As Jesus IS, right now, so I am in every present moment. And as Jesus rose to His feet the third time in Gethsemane, so you did as well entirely inside of Him. Jesus is become you.
From Glory to Glory. But when you entered into Jesus as your only life, you left many people just like you once were. They do not agree with God; they are convinced they can live the Christian life by their own effort. They fantasize themselves seeking God’s will and doing it.
You agree with God; you know you cannot live the Christian life, but another Person must take all your flesh upon Himself, that you might be His Body, His expression of Himself as you. And there are no more barriers ahead, no more brick walls against which to crumble. Yes, there are transitions ahead inside this walk inside of Jesus, but those transitions are from glory to glory, the easy expression of Jesus Himself living as you.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror (in our own face) the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).