PROMISE
PROMISE
The premise and promise of the Gospel, Best News Ever is the grace of God
expressed in Jesus Christ’s redemptive passion, death and resurrection.
His amazing love!
Are we expounding a religious concept based on human effort?
Is this a philosophical concept? A doctrine? A theory?
Is human life limited by human potentiality?
When you reach the end of the line what else is there?
What is beyond human wisdom and human life as we know it?
Clearly, God has prepared a table for us full of glory, His glory, eternal rewards,
grace, sonship, endless joy, triumph, fulfillment and happiness.
He has provided answers to our deepest and unexpressed yearnings.
He has given us direction beyond human curiosity, comprehension, above
intelligence and accomplishments surpassing our fondest dreams.
The beginning of true wisdom is deep reverence for God, recognizing that
we are mere sinful mortals.
Our existential quest encounters the reality that we are sinners and all come
short of the glory of God. We need to see ourselves as God sees.
We are desperate apart from Him.
No one can deny the fact of our intrinsic fallibility and mortality,
yet we all have this yearning for permanence and eternity.
We seek what Jesus told Nicodemus: a new birth. The spiritual rebirth.
The Eternal God wants us in His eternal Kingdom and is recreating
us through His Eternal Spirit, in Christ Jesus the Eternal Son.
“Jesus told him, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, that unless
a person is born again, anew,from above,
he can never see the Kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to Him, How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter his mother’s womb again and be born?
Jesus answered, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you,
unless a man is born of water and the Spirit,
he can not enter the Kingdom of God.
What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not at My telling you, You must all be born anew.
The wind blows where it wills, and though you hear its sound, yet you
neither know where it comes from nor where it is going.
So it is everyone who is born of the Spirit.
Nicodemus answered by asking, How can all this be possible?
Jesus replied, Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet do not know or understand
these things?
I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, We speak of what we know,
we have actually seen what we are testifying to.
And still you do not receive our testimony.
I have told you of things that happen right here on the earth
and yet none of you believes Me,
how can you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?
And yet no one has ever gone up to heaven, but there is One Who
has come down from heaven- the Son of Man,
Who has His home in heaven.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert (on a pole),
so must the Son of Man be lifted up
(on the cross).
In order that everyone who believes in Him, trusts Him and relies on Him
may not perish, but have eternal life and live forever!
For God so loved and dearly prized the world that He (even) gave His only
begotten (unique) Son,so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on)
Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have everlasting life.
For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to
condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might
find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.
He who believes in Him is not judged ( he who trusts in Him never comes
up for judgment: for him there is no rejection, no condemnation-
he incurs no damnation), but he who does not believe (cleave to, rely on,
trust in Him) is judged already (he has already been convicted and has already
received his sentence) because he has not believed in and trusted in the
name of the only begotten Son of God.
The basis of the judgment by which men are judged lies in this: the Light
has come into the world, and people have loved the darkness
rather than and more than the Light, for their works were evil.
For every wrongdoer hates the Light, and will not come out into
the Light but shrinks from it, lest his works (his deeds, activities and conduct)
be exposed and reproved.
But he who practices truth (who does what is right) comes out into the Light so
that his works may be plainly shown to be what they are-
wrought with God (divinely prompted, done with God’s help,in
dependence upon Him).
(John3.3-21).
The new birth, of the water and of the Spirit is the only way to see, experience
and know God’s Kingdom.
Because He is Spirit and those who come to Him must worship Him in Spirit
and in Truth. The Holy Spirit makes intercession for us according to God’s will.
He helps us in our weakness, He comforts us.
He makes us conform to Jesus Christ. The Spirit shed abroad in our hearts makes
us know that now we are the sons of God.
We have received the Spirit of adoption, wisdom and revelation in Christ Jesus
or Lord. The Holy Spirit helps us in our infirmities, makes us holy and whole.
The Spirit convicts us of sin, yet the Law of the Spirit has set us free from
the law of sin and death, the vicious course, the curse of fallen humanity.
He sets us free from the carnal mind which is contrary to God.
The Spirit makes us truly alive, eternally alive.
He sets us free from the boundaries of physical existence.
He transposes us into the realm of God. Thus positioned we can continue our discovery
in delight, our understanding of limitless Life, Love and Light, the fulfillment of God’s Fullness.
HALLELUJAH! THANK YOU LORD JESUS FOREVERMORE!