4.1 That the World May Know
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
That the world may believe that You sent Me. – That the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me (John 17:21&23).
God must exclude before He can include. The reason is simple. Nothing of the old can enter the New except by passing through the full acceptance of the death of the cross. God cannot show us the truth except through Jesus; God cannot show the church except through us; and God cannot show the world except through the church.
The firstfruits are always for others, that they also might enter in, each in their season.
Unity
I was presented again recently with the popular definition of “unity” as outward appearance and human performance. There is no thought, in this definition of “oneness,” of Christ Jesus as Savior and Salvation, as Lord and Head of His body, as the One who lives as all and carries all, the One who always does ALL things well.
The church enjoyed the full measure of outward unity for 1000 years; God called it “Jezebel.” The Oneness of Christ IS; it just is. Either we know it or we fail to know it. Life together, a body of believers walking together as one, is not outward unity by false submission, but simply Father.
Father Cannot Be Boxed
And one thing Father never does is fit into people’s boxes. The moment anyone attempts to nail Father down into a “unified group,” off He goes to find a new wineskin through which to reveal His love.
Christ cannot be known as a many-membered Body except He always comes through Christ as me, Christ as each individual person. The world is one outwardly. Christ is One in the Heart of each individual member of His body, but outwardly, the Father is doing all sorts of different things. Who can restrain Father to their little group?
Christ As You
The church of Christ is as much the world as the world is because she does not know that Christ is living as her and because she will not see that Christ IS living as her brother, regardless of what her brother is doing outwardly.
The greatest difficulty found in Christ as me is Christ as you. If Christ is carrying me, living me through His perfect path for my life, then He IS doing exactly the same with you. And sometimes, that’s hard for us to accept because of our blind eyeballs that imagine they “see the truth.” Christ alone is the truth; and He works all things in all who belong to Him; and He does all things well.
A Personal Decision
The oneness that is of Christ and the unity that is outward are based on fundamentally different ways of seeing.
YOU disagree with me on important truths; YOU approach God and serve Him in ways drastically different from how I think are appropriate. I have a personal decision to make. 1. You have a demon and are apostate – or, I use “God” as my whip and browbeat you into conformance to my ways. Or 2. Christ Jesus IS Lord, He IS living as you right now, and He IS doing all things well. The first is disrespect, either way; the second is One.
Respect
The “world” includes the majority of our brethren, those who see by outward appearance, who judge by the performance of the flesh. HOWEVER!!! If you and I look at any of our brethren as anything other than Christ Himself, we are as much a part of that “worldly” church as anyone else.
That the world may believe; that the world may know. Respect. Being certain that God is big, that He does many different things, that He can do through others rather than me, and that He is working all things according to His own will. AND – extending integrity to you.
Not My Cup of Tea
We do not “make” the church One. We are One; believing that we are will cost us everything.
Since the world is fake; it knows fake. Outward unity is as fake as Christians’ disrespecting one another; the world does not believe.
Please understand; respecting you when you write things to me that are “wrong,” when you hit me with what I deem to be a “false” view of Christ, is not my cup of tea. I would rather shake you hard until you see it my way. Reason alone keeps me bound to seeing Christ alone. If Christ lives as me (and I NEED Him to), then He MUST live also as you.
Gethsemane
A big part of my laying down my life for you is believing that Christ IS living as you when I don’t want to. God has placed two individuals in my life experience of whom everything outward convinces me that they are of the devil. Yet they love Jesus and are anointed of God. Accepting Christ as them is probably the hardest task God has ever put in front of me. Much of what I teach about the Mercy Seat of God comes from my willingness to embrace Jesus as these two persons. It is the willingness of Gethsemane. Yet I would never come under their teaching, yet I see Christ as their persons (not as their outward beliefs).
Real and True
The Oneness that will convince the world is not a oneness of agreement or performance; it is not a broad and shallow oneness. The Oneness that will convince the world is life laid down and love poured out. It will be seen far more in two walking together in the deepest of friendships than in many walking in much agreement. It is the highest respect and the deepest regard for one another, regardless.
When the world sees real, it will know real. When the world sees true, it will know true.
Evangelism
I honor and respect the gift of evangelism as the Spirit of God has bestowed upon many, those who are able to take the hand of those whom Father has given to Jesus out of this world and lead them into becoming born again.
The Lord has taught me much through the exercise of looking at thousands of “friend” requests on Facebook from all over the world and making a determination to accept or decline. I see that “evangelism” for so many is little more than a show of themselves, a way to pretend before the face of Eve, “Look at me, I am a man of God.” And there are few whips more useful to those who would beat God’s people than: “Get out and save the lost.”
The World Does Not Believe
The world looks at that and mocks. The world knows fake. The world does not believe.
We were the same. What convinced us that the Father sent Jesus into us? By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us; and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:21).
Later in this course are two sessions on Life Laid Down and Love Poured Out. We are looking at these things from the perspective of the Kingdom, the outworking of Christ from us.
Unbelief
Most of our brethren do not see the complete outward fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer as a necessary part of the ending of this age of human folly. They do not believe that our being one inside of Father and Son is the only real way by which the world will be evangelized. Those who believe in a “rapture” have rejected all possibility that these words of Jesus are relevant for us on this earth. Those who wait for any fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer to come only from a Jesus OUTSIDE of themselves, far separate from them, wait in unbelief, that is, in the conviction that God cannot be telling us the truth.
Rivers of Spirit
The only thing that will transform this world, drawing every individual out of the old and into the New, is the rivers of Spirit flowing out of our bellies. The source of those rivers is life laid down. By Spirit alone, by love poured out, we bring all things into submission to Jesus.
That the world may know that You . . . have loved them as You have loved Me.
You and I KNOW Love because Jesus laid down His life for us. The world is no different. Father LOVING us is known by our own love poured out: SOURCE –> becoming –> RIVERS.
The World Will Know
By studying this prayer of Jesus, we are establishing the foundations, the paths on which to walk, through which we will explore and understand the practical outworkings of the Kingdom of God. We have no idea where we are, really, or where we are going; we just want to be inside the right path.
I am more and more convinced that these words of Jesus, along with the critical elements of the Covenant we signed with God, these WORDS that are Spirit and Life in us, by these words we are being transformed. The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are Life.
The world WILL know that Father LOVES us.