2.2 Your First Encounter with Jesus
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
You have considered, now, four important things about the Lord Jesus Christ. First, that He lives in your heart. Second that God intends to make you just like Him. Third, that the reason God sent Jesus into your heart is that you might know God and that God might be known through you. And fourth, that you will learn of this Jesus who lives in your heart out from your Bible, but only as you seek for Him alone.
Now, I want you to look back at the moment you asked Jesus to cleanse you of your sins and to live inside your heart. What really happened in that moment? We will be discovering the wondrous answer to that question forever!
Your Lostness. 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. But what that really meant was hidden from you. Many things were happening in that moment of your salvation; I want to share with you one of those things. You had entered into an agreement with God, an agreement God calls the Covenant.
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 now 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” (Matthew 26:36-45 and Luke 22:39-46).
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 as have been immersed into Christ Jesus, have already been immersed into his death? – Knowing this, that our old man was crucified together with Him, so that the body of sin might be separated [from us]… (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 as a life-giving Spirit living in your heart. 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.
You 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 already 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 “mouth stopped” 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 now that you are made alive again, that is, born again, you are able to know the full meaning of that Sacrifice, and you are clean by the washing of the Word. The Bible is now your book. Hide it in your heart.
Inside of Jesus. I realize that I have placed many things into your thinking that are not fully explained. As you continue in your journey to know Jesus as He is, you will become more familiar with these truths.
The important thing for you, however, before we can continue talking about who and what this Jesus is, is that you must know that you were there, inside of Him, in Gethsemane and upon the cross. Never look at the suffering and death of Jesus from a distance. You were there, literally and substantially, inside of Jesus, seeing all things through His eyes, every step of the way.
And it was God who put you there, and it was Jesus who intentionally received you.