Monthly Archives: February 2015

A Faithful And Merciful High Priest

February 19, 2015Bible StudyAbraham, atonement, fully human, high priestLuella Campbell

A FAITHFUL AND MERCIFUL HIGH PRIEST

For surely it is not angels He helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason He had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people, Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted. (Heb. 2: 16-18)

Those who deny the humanity of Jesus destroy everything He came to do as both high priest and sacrifice. Take for example the Roman Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary. If Mary was conceived without sin, and Jesus was so-called born of a sinless mother, then He could not have been made like us, fully human in every way.

To be fully human is to carry the potential to sin, as Adam did. But He was without sin, not because He was born of a sinless mother, but because He suffered and overcame temptation so that He could be our faithful and merciful high priest.

Jesus was not conceived through a human father but through the Holy Spirit. He had the nature of God and was fully God, but He was born of a human mother, which gave Him the nature of man. She carried Him in her womb for nine months, and gave birth to Him as does every human mother. He was suckled at her breast and nourished with human food. He had to learn from infancy to be a human being as does every other child.

In the course of His growing up, He had to learn the power of temptation and suffering in order to qualify as our faithful and merciful high priest. How much more intense it must have been for Him, as the son of Mary and the Son of God, to withstand the subtleties of Satan’s deception from a tiny child onwards! He could not give in to the temptation to follow the example of His peers and react as they did in the rough and tumble of life not even for a moment in His thoughts, attitudes and actions.

He did not just suffer (experience) temptation; He suffered when He was tempted. That made temptation far more intense to Him than for us because He had to resist to the end. Our temptation ends when we give in. His temptations never ended because He did not give in.

Listen to the testimony of His Father after thirty to years of growing up from infancy to manhood in a normal human family, through the ‘terrible’ twos’, the teens and early adulthood, with awakening hormones coursing through His veins, and sinful people all around Him and pressing in on Him:

As soon as Jesus was baptised, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.’ (Matt. 3: 16, 17)

Jesus had no one to mentor Him, not even an earthly father and mother who were without sin. He was wholly dependent on His fellowship with His heavenly Father, of which He was aware from His earliest years, and the union He had with Him, to take Him through His growing-up years without faltering.

His own conscience bore witness to His perfect record. In the heat of debate with His ever-present opponents, the religious leaders, He challenged them:

Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? (John 8: 46)

Much to their frustration, no one could! No sin, Jesus? Not even a stray thought? Not an under-your-breath threat or insult? Never an attitude of hostility – never? Always, always, nothing but perfect love? Yes! With a perfectly pure conscience He could challenge them and be met with . . . silence! This must have angered them even more, because their own consciences screamed at them and refused to be silenced.

No need then, ever, to replace Jesus as our high priest. He does the job to perfection because He is one of us; He succeeded when every other high priest failed, and died; He qualified as both a sinless human and a perfect sacrifice. He fulfils the office of high priest perfectly and forever. He didn’t just offer blood to atone for our sin; He offered His own blood, once and for all. No other sacrifice and no other high priest is needed.

And, what’s more, because He is also God, He helps us – with the power of His own Holy Spirit, to overcome just like He did. He understands the inner strength of the temptations we face because He’s been there. He knows how to ‘succour’ (King James Version) those who are tempted. The Free Dictionary defines ‘succour’ as ‘giving help or assistance, especially in times of difficulty.’

That’s it! That’s what He is able to do because He was made just like us. . .

No Fear Of Death

February 18, 2015Bible Studyfamily, fear of death, flesh and blood, holy, humanityLuella Campbell

NO FEAR OF DEATH

Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says:

‘I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in Him.’ And again He says, ‘Here I am and the children God has given me.’

Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might break the power of Him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Heb. 2: 11-15)

No fear of death! Wow!

Why does the believer in Jesus no longer need to fear death? Because he no longer fears punishment! Jesus shared our humanity and took our punishment so that we are free to come home to the Father and to His perfect love.

There is no fear in love. But perfect loves drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4: 18)

Death has lost its terror since Jesus faced death for us and overcame. Death was the devil’s trump card because he knew that death was final and sealed the fate of all humanity. There was no escape and no return from death. Jesus took death on the chin for us and came back in a resurrection body that can never die again to tell us that He conquered death once and for all.

The devil went one step too far by having the Son of God put to death. He thought he would destroy Him forever and the chance for mankind to be rescued from his clutches. Death is the penalty for sin, but Jesus did not sin. Therefore death could not hold Him forever. He passed through death and returned to declare that God’s estranged children were free to return home. The Father’s wrath against sin had been satisfied. Satan no longer had the power to hold us in death.

This was God’s final and most powerful act of perfect love. What seemed to be folly and weakness was the most powerful power in the universe – the power of love. Love accepted the worst that sinful people could do to an innocent man without retaliating. Jesus bore the injustice, the insults, the physical agony and even the horror of being abandoned by the Father with nothing but perfect love. He forgave in the midst of His pain and died without a murmur or a word of rebuke or a threat of revenge.

When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly. (1 Peter 2: 23)

Everything Jesus accomplished through the cross culminated in one thing – God’s children are free to return home. The implications are huge. Home! That means back to the Father’s dwelling place where we are safe in the Father’s care and eligible to participate in all the benefits and blessings of family life together with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

God is a family. He made us to be part of His family. He gave us His name; we are free to live with Him in His home; we have an inheritance with the Son; we share in all the resources, privileges and blessings of life in the family of God and we have the responsibility of representing the Father to the unbelieving world by demonstrating what it is like to live in God’s kingdom.

How amazing that we are actually brothers and sisters of Jesus and, what’s more, He’s proud to call us His brothers and sisters! How can that be? Because, through His death He has made us holy! Holy? Yes, holy, set apart for and belonging to God. We have share in the nature of God (2 Peter 1: 4). We have the same nature as the Son. We are part of a new race made in the image of the last Adam, our elder brother Jesus.

And we are free! Free to live life to the full because we have no fear of punishment or death. When death comes, we go home to the Father’s house to dwell with Him forever. And we die in the hope of resurrection because our Brother, Jesus, rose from the dead – and He is the firstfuits of the resurrection and the guarantee that we, too, will rise again.

But We See Jesus

February 17, 2015Bible Studydeath, everyone, perfect, sons to glory, sufferingLuella Campbell

BUT WE SEE JESUS

But we do see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God He might taste of death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what He suffered. (Heb. 2: 9, 10).

God’s purpose for mankind is a lofty one – to rule over His creation as His vice regent. But we have a creation in rebellion, triggered by man’s rebellion in the beginning.

The writer to the Hebrews caught the vision of David’s song of praise to God, recorded in Psalm 8. As great and immeasurable as the universe is, God created mankind to have greater glory than the majestic grandeur of the universe. He made man in His own image and gave Him a role that not even angels have been given – to manage the earth for Him as kings and priests.

But it has not yet come to pass as God intended. Man has squandered God’s resources and mismanaged His creation. He has interfered with the interconnectedness of the created order and brought destruction instead of maintaining order and harmony. God’s intention still stands but it would take a cataclysmic event to set everything right and get it back on track again.

This is where Jesus comes in. God’s sons and daughters failed to fulfil His mandate, choosing their own rules and messing everything up. God needed one obedient Son to put it all right, so He sent His own Son, made an exact replica of the original man, to do what the first man was supposed to do. Obedience to the Father was the key.

Just as Adam was the representative of the human race, but failed and brought disaster on us all, so Jesus was the representative of the human race to undo what Adam did. He lived the life of a perfect son, and then took the rap for all our failure. God accepted His death as a substitute for us and reckoned us to be perfect sons and daughters just as Jesus was a perfect son.

Angels can never be what God created man to be, and angels can never do what Jesus did to put right what went wrong. Jesus, as representative man, the last Adam -and there will never be another beginning to the human race because Jesus achieved what He set out to do – leads the charge to fulfil God’s plan for the whole of creation.

God never gave up on His plan to have a family of perfect sons and daughters, free of sin and living in union with Him, with all mankind and with all of creation. Through suffering as a human being, subject to the weaknesses of humanity, and suffering for the sin of the world as our perfect substitute, Jesus pulled off God’s rescue plan. Sin and its penalty gone, He is free to bring ‘many sons to glory’. What does that mean?

Does it mean that He will take us to heaven when we die? That and much more! Glory implies the radiance of who God is – His character and attributes. As heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, we have an inheritance that is our right as His sons and daughters. What is our inheritance? The Bible only hints at the nature of our inheritance in Christ, using all-inclusive words like the following:

1. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32) – God has given the kingdom to His true sons, but not to those who lives, not their words, deny their allegiance to Jesus.

2. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Matt. 5: 5). Those whose strength is harnessed for service will have a part in managing the earth for God.

3. He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? (Rom. 8: 32).

4. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1: 4).

These are all-inclusive promises summed up in Paul’s words:

‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived ‘- the things God has prepared for those who love Him. (1 Cor. 2: 9).

The summit of our inheritance as God’s children is that we will once again be bearers of God’s image and His divine nature as he intended. Jesus will lead us into our inheritance as God’s perfect children just as He is.

The Ministry Of Angels

February 16, 2015Bible Studyangels, crowned, glory, honour, lower, mankindLuella Campbell

THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS

It is not to angels that He subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified:

‘What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him? You made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour and put everything under their feet.’

In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. (Heb. 2: 5-8)

Angels have their place in God’s order of things but, unlike mankind, they do not rule. They are spirit beings but they were not created in the image of God. They praise, worship and serve God; they rejoice over the works of God; they are instruments of God’s judgment; they carry out God’s will on earth; they protect God’s people and accompany those who have died. Although they are spirit beings, they are personalities who possess intelligence, emotions and will.

Whatever the Bible says about angels in the context of their most important function, to serve God, one thing is clear – they have a lower position and function in God’s order of things than human beings. They may be beautiful and powerful in their specific roles but they are lesser beings than mankind for three very good reasons:

1. They were not created in the image of God.

The glory they have is not the glory of God which He breathed into the first human pair at their beginning. God’s glory is manifested in His nature. Although the whole of mankind fell from that glory when Adam and Eve sinned, it was always God’s intention to restore Him image in redeemed humans so that they may be a reflection of Him to all of creation, and especially to the fallen angels who are against God.

As part of our inheritance, God has restored His nature to those who are reconciled and reconnected to Him by faith in His Son. Through His very great and precious promises we appropriate that nature and, by doing so, we escape the corruption that is in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1: 4).

2. They were not created to be one with God.

In His great love, God opened the Trinity to the human race to become one with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to share the love and intimacy they enjoy with God and with one another, just as there is perfect unity and perfect harmony within the triune God.

Jesus’s prayer on the eve of His crucifixion reflects God’s highest intention for the human race.

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one even as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17: 20-23).

3. They were not given the mandate to rule over the earth.

God created the human race to be managers of His world. They were not to control one another but to rule over the natural world and to manage it under Him and for Him. Although the first human pair fell for Satan’s deception and changed allegiance, God did not withdraw His intention for them to rule. Whatever we have done with God’s creation, He holds us accountable for the way we have managed the earth and used His resources.

His intention has not yet been fulfilled. Humankind has squandered God’s resources through our greed and desecrated His world but there is a promise or restoration and renewal yet to be fulfilled.

Watch this space!

A Loving Family

February 15, 2015Bible Studyangels, binding, drift, escape, message, punishmentLuella Campbell

A LOVING FAMILY

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. (Heb. 2: 1-4)

Perhaps even more treacherous to the faith and faithfulness of the believer than outright temptation, is the tendency to drift. One of Satan’s most effective ploys is to suggest that it is important for us to ‘serve’ the Lord. O yes, he comes to us as an angel of light. ‘God will be pleased with you if you are busy ‘serving’ Jesus,’ he sneers. Unfortunately, we don’t hear the sneer in his voice.

What is the message we heard? Believe in Jesus and receive Him as your personal Saviour so that you can go to heaven when you die? Really? Is that the reason Jesus came? This is not the message of my Bible. Jesus called me to follow Him, to learn from Him and to imitate Him. For what purpose? So that I might have fellowship with the Father as His daughter, redeemed and reconciled to Him through the blood of His Son.

Being a son or daughter of God was His original intention, ruined by Adam’s disobedience, and restored through Jesus the Christ. God wanted a family of humans who would resemble Him and be one with Him so that, through them, He would govern His creation. Living in harmony with Him, with one another and with the world would be a witness to the fallen angels that He is a loving Father, and not a cruel tyrant who evicted them from heaven for their rebellion.

How does a family maintain its loving fellowship? Surely it is by obeying the Father and keeping in touch with Him and with one another! The Father’s greatest pleasure is to see His family being a family. The greatest heartache for any parent is to lose touch with his children and for them to lose touch with one another. Busyness causes them to drift apart and it happens slowly and subtly.

God is a perfect Father. His family is His greatest joy and delight. He gave His people His ‘Torah’, His instructions for living in harmony with Him and with one another so that they could show the world what the true God was really like. They missed it. They were more interested in the pagan gods around them who pandered to their fleshly lusts and selfish ways.

God sent His Son to be the model of a true son who would live every moment in a loving and intimate relationship with Him so that He could know and do the Father’s will. He called twelve men to follow Him. He both taught and showed them how to be sons of God and how to live under the authority of the heavenly Father. They discovered that His way really worked. When the Holy Spirit came on them as He had come on Jesus, they also had the power to imitate their Master.

They went everywhere, living and passing on the good news that Jesus was God’s Son and that He had come to set them free from the shackles of sin so they could return to the Father and to Father’s house. They taught those who received the message what Jesus had taught them. The way to maintain their fellowship with Him and with the Father through Him was to ‘remain in Him’ (John 15: 5).

Of course that would take discipline and perseverance. The other alternative was to drift and lose their closeness to Him. The problem with drifting is that their natural bent was towards selfish and self-centred living, following and satisfying their sinful desires. If they did that, they would drift back into the ways of death. Sin leads to death. If they did not maintain their life in Jesus, they would surely die.

This salvation was no human invention. The Old Covenant, given to God’s people from Mount Sinai was accompanied by awesome signs which terrified them, Violation of that covenant was serious enough to bring judgment – and it was mediated by angels and ratified by animal blood. What of the New Covenant, sealed by the blood of God’s perfect Son? Who will escape and how will they escape if they drifted away from obeying that covenant?

Obviously there is no answer. No one will escape. God is inescapable! Why should anyone escape? God cannot treat anyone leniently who ignores or despises the blood He Son shed to bring us back to Him. The answer? Don’t drift! Walk with Jesus one day at a time, remaining in Him and in His word.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and me in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15: 5, 6)

Ebenezer Family Church

HE IS RISEN!