How We Grow! (In Christ)

"Let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God - what is good and is pleasing to Him and is perfect." Romans 12:2

"God wants us to grow up... like Christ in everything." Ephesians 4:15

"We are not meant to remain as children." Ephesians 4:14

.....God wants each and everyone of us to grow up. His goal is for us to mature and develop the characteristics of Jesus Christ. Sadly today, a lot of us are growing older, but are not growing up. Many are stuck in perpetual infancy, remaining in diapers, still needing to be bottle fed on spiritual milk, never converting over to eating the spiritual meat. The reason is that they never intended to grow.

.....Spiritual growth is not automatic. It takes an intentional commitment. A true want and desire. To grow, a person must make a decision, and a persistent effort towards that decision. Discipleship - the process of becoming like Christ - always begins with a decision. Jesus calls us, and we must respond, as the disciples did back then when they were called by Him.

.....When the first disciples chose to follow Jesus, they didn't understand all the implications of their decision. They simply responded to Jesus' invitation. That is all you need to get started also. Just decide to become a disciple.

.....Nothing shapes or defines your life more than the commitments you choose to make in your life today. Your commitments can develop you or they can destroy you, but either way they will define you. You will become whatever you are committed to.

.....It is at this point of commitment that many people miss God's purpose for their lives. They are for the most part, afraid to commit to anything, and just drift through life. Others make only half-hearted commitments and give in to competing values in their lives, which often lead to frustration and mediocrity. And then, some even make full commitments to worldly goals, such as becoming wealthy or famous, and end up disappointed and bitter. Every choice we make has eternal consequences, so take my advice, choose wisely.

God's Part and Your Part:

.....Christ likeness is the result of making Christ like choices and depending on the Holy Spirit to help you fulfill those choices. Once you decide to to get serious about becoming like Christ, you must begin to act in new ways. You will need to let go of some old routines, and develop new habits, intentionally changing the way you think. This can be done through the study of the Bible, which is the truth, and then the application of it.

.....The bible says, "Continue to work out your salvation, (or victory), with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose."

Notice the two key elements in this verse for spiritual growth. "Work Out," and "Work In."

....The "work out" is your responsibility, and the "work in" is God's role. Spiritual growth is always a collaborative effort between you and the Holy Spirit. God's Spirit works with us, not just in us.

.....The "With fear and trembling" part means to take you spiritual growth seriously, because of the eternal implications.

To change your life, you must change the way you think.

.....Behind everything you do today is a thought or reasoning. Every behavior is motivated by a belief, every action is prompted by an attitude. God revealed this thousands of years ago, before Psychologists, when He said, "Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts."

.....This verse was written to believers, and is not about how to be saved, but how to grow. It does not say "work for" your salvation, because you can not add anything to what Jesus did, and the "Finished Work"of the Cross.

.....Willpower alone can produce short-term change, but it will always create a constant internal stress because root causes of the behavior have not been dealt with. So the change never feels natural, causing you to eventually give up, like in diet, and exercising. Hence, you quickly revert back into your old patterns, not a complete lifestyle change.

.....That is why real spiritual growth starts by changing the way you think. The Bible says, "Let God transform you into a new person the renewing of your mind, through the washing of the water of the word of God." You must develop the "Mind Of Christ" that is within you.

.....This mental shift is called "Repentance," which literally means to change your mind. Technically, you repent whenever you change the way you think by adopting how God thinks- about yourself, sin, God, other people, life, your future, and everything else. You take on Christ's outlook and perspective. This begins when we stop thinking immature thoughts, which are always self-centered, and self-seeking. The Bible says that this selfish thinking is the source of all sinful behavior.

.....Paul worded this perfectly when he said, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, and I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put my childish ways behind me."

.....Today, many assume that spiritual maturity is measured by the amount of biblical information and doctrine one knows. While knowledge is one measurement of maturity, it is not the whole story concerning this. The Christian life is far more than creeds and convictions, it includes conduct and most of all, character. Our deeds must be consistent with our creeds, and our beliefs must be backed up with Christ like behavior. Christianity embodies a relationship, and a lifestyle. We must seek His Face and not His Hand for true spiritual growth, and God has given us His Spirit to help us and guide us, no longer thinking like the world thinks.
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Experiencing Life Together! (In Christ)

Each one of you is part of the Body of Christ, and you were chosen to live together in peace.
Colossians 3:15

How wonderful it is, how pleasant, for God's people to live together in harmony! Psalm 133:1

.....Life is meant to be shared. God intends for us to experience life together. The bible calls this shared experience fellowship. The true meaning of fellowship includes unselfish loving, honest sharing, practical serving, sacrificial giving, sympathetic comforting, and all the other "one another" commands found in the New Testament.

.....Authentic fellowship is not superficial, surface-level chit-chat. It is genuine, heart-to-heart, sometimes gut-level, sharing. It happens when people get honest about who they are and what is happening in their lives. They share their hurts, reveal their feelings, confess their failures, disclose their doubts, admit their fears, acknowledge their weaknesses, and ask for help and prayer.

.....People wear masks today. They keep their guard up, and act as if everything is rosy in their lives. These attitudes are the death of real fellowship. It is only as we become open about our lives that we can experience real fellowship with God and others.

.....The Bible says, "If we live in the light, as God is in the light, we can share fellowship with each other... If we say we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves.

.....The world thinks intimacy occurs in the dark, but God says it happens in the light. Darkness is used to hide our hurts, faults, fears, failures, and flaws. But in the light, we bring them all out into the open and admit who we really are. This requires two things, courage and humility. It means facing our fears of exposure, rejection, and being hurt again.

So why would anyone take such a risk today?

Because it is the only way to grow spiritually and be emotionally healthy.

.....The Bible says, "Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed."

.....We can only grow by taking risks, and the most difficult risk of all is to be honest with ourselves, God, and others. Nothing ventured, is nothing gained.

.....In real fellowship, we also experience mutuality. The art of giving and receiving, or depending on each other. Mutuality is the heart of fellowship. It includes the aspects of building reciprocal relationships, sharing responsibilities, and helping each other. The Bible is very clear on this subject, commanding us (over 50 times) in the areas of mutual accountability, encouragement, serving, and honoring. We are not responsible for everyone in the Body of Christ, but we are responsible to them. God expects us always to do whatever we can to help them. See a need, meet it.

.....In real fellowship, we also experience sympathy. Sympathy, or as some call empathy, is entering in and sharing the pain of others. Sympathy says, "I understand what you are going through, and what you feel is neither strange or crazy." The Bible says that we as Holy people are to be sympathetic, kind, humble, gentle, and patient. Sympathy meets two fundamental human needs: the need to be understood, and the need to have your feelings validated. Every time you understand and affirm someone's feelings, you build a new level of fellowship with that person. This increases your level of intimacy (IN-TO-ME-SEE) with them. It is in the times of deep crisis, grief, and doubt, that we need each other most. When circumstances crush us to the point that we find our faith in question, that is when we need believing friends the most. Friends who have faith in God for us, and to help pull us through. The Body of Christ is real and tangible for us today, even when God may seem distant in our lives, or our circumstances.

.....And the last thing I wish to share with you concerning real fellowship, is experiencing mercy and forgiveness. Fellowship is a place of grace, where mistakes are not rubbed in, but rubbed out. Fellowship happens when mercy wins over justice.

.....We all need grace and mercy today, because we all stumble and fall, and require help getting back on track. We need to offer that same mercy and grace to each other, and be willing to receive it from each other as well. God says, "When people sin, you should forgive and comfort them, so that they won't give up in despair."

.....You can't have fellowship without forgiveness, because bitterness and resentment always destroys it. Because we are all imperfect people who still sin, or miss the mark today, we will inevitably hurt each other when we are together for a long enough time, either intentionally, or sometimes unintentionally, but either way, it will take a massive amount of grace and mercy to maintain any fellowship throughout its lifetime.

.....The Bible says, " You must make allowance for each other's faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others." God's mercy is the key and the motivation for showing mercy to others. We will never be asked to forgive someone else more than God has already forgiven us.

.....Many people today are reluctant to show mercy and grace because they do not truly understand the difference between trust and forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past. Trust has to do with future behavior.

.....Forgiveness must be immediate, whether or not a person asks for it. Trust must be built over time. Trust requires a track record. If someone hurts you repeatedly, you are not expected to trust them immediately, and you are not expected to continue allowing them to hurt you. They must prove they have changed over time. The best place to restore trust is within the supportive context of a small group that offers both encouragement and accountability.

.....I hope and pray that after you read this, you step out in faith and use this message as a tool to guide yourself into a deeper aspect of fellowship, experiencing it, with God and others in the near future as you apply it in your own life and journey today, and forever.
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The Spiritual Kingdom Of God!

.....One area of understanding that still needs to be clarified today is in regard to the Spiritual Kingdom of God. This Kingdom will reign on the earth, beginning at the return of Jesus Christ. However, those living on the earth will not be in that Kingdom. They will merely be ruled over by it. Many in traditional Christianity do not understand this message because they teach that the Kingdom is about heaven. Much of this confusion comes from scriptures that refer to the Kingdom in the context of heaven. Therefore, they believe they must go to heaven to be in the Kingdom. They simply fail to grasp that the Kingdom comes from God. It receives its power and authority from God, but it will come to reign on the earth at the end of this age. But what is that Kingdom?

Let's start with this scripture...

.....“Then Jesus said unto His disciples, verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:23-24).

.....Jesus Christ is explaining how difficult it is for the rich to follow the way that leads into the Kingdom. Being rich physically or spiritually, in this context, represents an attitude about oneself. It is an attitude of pride—how human nature sees itself. It seeks to justify self. Human nature tends to see itself as right; it is wealthy in its own eyes. So much so, that it will not listen to instruction and correction from God. A mind of inflated self-worth cannot be changed against its will, yet God makes it clear that we must repent of our ways and receive the one and only true way of God, which will lead us into His Kingdom. But again, what is that Kingdom?

.....The “Kingdom of Heaven” spoken of here is the Kingdom of God. It shows the same origin—it must come from God out of heaven. Such expressions are speaking about the same thing. This is easier to see when you begin to understand the role of the Messiah. He will come to this earth to rule in a literal Kingdom, as the King of kings. That Kingdom will rule the earth— rule over mankind for 1,000 years. But what is difficult for people to grasp is that the Kingdom of God is spiritual. God the Father—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—Yahweh (the Eternal God) of the Old Testament is a spirit being, composed of spirit. His power, by which He created the universe, is of the spirit. It is often called the Holy Spirit because it reveals the source as coming from God, who is Holy. The Holy Spirit is the power that proceeds from God. It is not a separate spirit being (sometimes called the Holy Ghost), as some believe. God the Father is a spirit being, and He created other spirit beings, called angels. There is a spiritual realm. Angels dwell there. Some of those angels, along with Lucifer, rebelled against God and were cast to this earth. They became known as demons, foul spirits and fallen angels. Lucifer became known as Satan the Devil. Although these things are clearly in the Bible, few people really believe them.

.....Yet, God is spirit, and His Son, Jesus Christ, is now spirit. Jesus Christ was born into a physical world. His Father was Yahweh (the Eternal God) and His mother was the virgin Mary. He lived as a physical human being until He was killed—put to death as the Passover for all mankind.

.....The apostle Peter spoke of this by saying, “For Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

.....Jesus became the first person to be resurrected, as a spirit being, and born into a spiritual family—above that of the angelic realm. After His resurrection, He manifested Himself in human form to the disciples and taught them for forty days. Spirit beings can appear in human form when God gives them the power to do so. When these beings are in their spirit form, physical human beings cannot see them.

.....After Jesus was resurrected from the dead, He appeared to Mary the following morning and told her to go tell the disciples that He was now going to ascend to His Father and their Father. Later that same day, as evening drew near, Jesus came upon two people walking and He began to talk with them about the events of the past few days. However, they did not know that it was Jesus who spoke until He departed from them. But notice how He departed. “ And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him; and He vanished out of their sight” (Luke 24:31). He simply disappeared before their very eyes.

Later that evening, Jesus appeared before the disciples. Notice the account.

.....“Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and said unto them, Peace be unto you” (John 20:19). The doors where the disciples were gathered together were shut, yet Jesus Christ suddenly appeared in their presence and spoke to them.

Here is another account of this same occasion.

.....“And as they thus spoke, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and said unto them, Peace be unto you. But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit. And He said unto them, Why are you troubled? and Why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see me have” (Luke 24:36-39). The disciples were so shaken that Jesus had to calm them down by letting them know that they couldn’t see a spirit and showing them that He had literally manifested Himself physically to them.

.....So when Jesus Christ comes in His Kingdom, as King of kings, to reign over this entire world, He will manifest Himself in physical form, just as He did to His disciples. Jesus Christ will be the King of kings in this Kingdom. But others, who are part of this Kingdom, will also come to this earth with Jesus Christ.
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The Day of Restoration! Easter Sunday!

.....Today is the celebrated day of Restoration for all of mankind. Easter Sunday is the time to rejoice and contemplate the victory, and resurrection, of the finished work of the Cross, through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Savior.

.....Restoration can also be seen in Creation as well. Genesis 1:1-2 says, "In the beginning God created the Heaven and Earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep..."

.....We can see in Genesis, Chapter 1 a picture of restoration. I am convinced after exhaustive study that there is a great gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. God does not create things without form and void.

.....In verse 3 of Genesis, we see the first day of creation. The first day can be likened to the incarnation, "Let there be light." When Jesus Christ was born into this dark world there was light manifested at that moment. God now had a body to reach the world. The incarnation is what proves to us that Jesus was legally qualified to represent us.

.....In Genesis 1:7, it says, "And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so."

.....We can see from this verse, the crucifixion of Christ pictured here. We can see Jesus as hung between Heaven and Earth on Calvary's Cross. The crucifixion was God getting rid of what was wrong with us. It was God judging the world in Christ. It was getting rid of who you used to be. It was when God separated and divided your "old man" from the "new creature" you have been made to be in Christ. Before you can enjoy who you are, you have to know how you got rid of who you used to be. A Christian is not somebody who just gets a little spiritual salve put over them and are just forgiven. We are new creatures in Christ. Romans 6:6 says that we were crucified with Christ.

.....Genesis 1:11 says, "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."
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.....Today is the third day, and is the resurrection, which points to the reality of who we now are. When Jesus came up from out of the tomb, the Bible says we were raised together and made to sit together with Him in Heavenly places, Ephesians 2:6. He is the seed of which brings forth fruit of its kind that is now upon the earth through us bringing glory to God.

.....Genesis 1: 14-16 says, "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.

.....The two great lights today point to the Ascension. Not only did God plan for there to be an incarnation, a crucifixion, and a resurrection; but God also wants us as believers to rise up and become one with Christ in His Ascension. The fourth day of creation points to this because there are two great lights referred to here. The sun points to the Son of God, Jesus.

.....The moon represents us, the Church. The moon was created to rule the darkness, the night. But the moon rules the darkness with no light of its own. The only light the moon has is the light that is reflected from the sun. With that light, it rules the darkness on this earth. This clearly points to the Church. You and I today as believers are a part of the Body of Christ, and we are to rule and to reign with the light that is not our own, but given to us by the Son of God. We do not have any light of our own that is capable of driving out darkness. Any light that we have today that will drive out darkness is a reflection of the Son of God, that is on us and in us. This is what we are to grow up into. This is what Ascension Life is all about for us today.

.....Judges 5:31 is a beautiful verse concerning this today, and says, "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love Him be as the sun when he goes forth in His might." In other words, let him that loves the Lord reflect the light of the sun (Son), everywhere he goes.

.....So what about the stars mentioned in Genesis 1:16? If the sun is Jesus and the moon is the Church, then those little bodies of light up there must parallel this concerning us in some way also.

.....From my studies, the Spirit of God spoke to my heart concerning this. A star is a body that has been placed in the Heavens and given light for the purpose of making people look up. Stars are also used to help us and others to navigate and gain direction in the darkness while journeying on this earth. God has a great need today for people in the Body of Christ, to cause others to look up. Christians as well as the rest of the world, need people who will draw them to a Raised and Seated Christ, giving guidance and direction as spiritual beings, having a physical experience while on this earth today. We have to start thinking differently today, raising our expectations in our own lives, causing our ways and our thoughts to rise up. May we start thinking more like God and less like the world as we enjoy the celebration of this day.
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My God! My God! Why Has Thou Forsaken Me?

Today is the quietest day of the church year....

.....The Bible contains not one but four accounts of Jesus' death. They agree on the essentials: Jesus died on a cross at a place called Golgotha, hung up between two other men with a sign above His head. "King of the Jews," it said. The charge was treason against the Empire. The method of execution was Roman. People were so sure He was not coming down that they divided up His clothes where He could see them. He was offered some sour wine before He died and then He died, just before sundown on the day before the sabbath.

.....Those are the bones of the story, which each gospel writer fills out in a different way. Matthew and Mark's accounts are almost identical, except for a few differences in phrasing. Their Jesus is a broken man, who is so injured in every way that He needs help carrying His cross and whose only word from the cross is a cry of abandonment at the end.

.....In Luke's gospel, Jesus has more to say. Luke adds a word of pardon from the cross—"Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing"—as well as a conversation between Jesus and the two men dying with Him that the other gospel writers do not mention. When Jesus dies, He does not ask where God has gone. Instead, He uses his last few breaths to commend His spirit to God. Luke's Jesus is as gentle and forgiving in death as he was all his life.

.....In John's gospel, however, Jesus is neither broken nor particularly gentle. He is brave, omniscient, and in charge all the way. John does not say anything about Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus' cross for Him. Jesus is strong enough to do that for himself. Nor does John allow anyone to mock Jesus while He dies. Even on the cross, Jesus is in charge. He arranges for his mother's care, says He is thirsty (in order to fulfill the scriptures), and when He dies there is no question about where God is. God is on the cross, pronouncing that "It is finished."

.....While all four of these accounts report the same event, they are not easily harmonized. They are four alternative readings of that event, so different from one another and yet so faithfully told that the editors of the New Testament decided that none of them could be left out. By including all four, those early shapers of the gospel sent us a message between the lines: namely, that there is more than one way to view what happened on the cross, and all of them are right.

.....Even if they do not agree on everything—not even something as important as Jesus' last words—their very disagreement preserves the mystery of what happened on this day. There is no one definitive word. There is no one answer to the awful questions raised by this day—chief among which is why God allows the innocent to suffer. In the case of Jesus, we are asked to believe that God not only allowed the suffering but willed the tortured, humiliating death of the Beloved.

.....You have heard the same explanations I have heard. Before Jesus, sinful humanity was so deep in debt to God that no human being could pay it all. So God sent Jesus to die for our sins, erasing the debt once and for all. This is the most traditional view of the cross, but it does not answer the question of suffering. What kind of father demands the death of a son in order to pay off a debt to himself?

.....According to another view, it was God who died on the cross, putting an end to divine bookkeeping through the voluntary sacrifice of divine power. But if Jesus was God, then whom was he talking to in the garden and from the cross? He clearly believed that someone else had the power to remove the cup of suffering from Him, or at least to be with Him while He drank it down--but who, in both cases, declined to do so.

.....I don't pretend to understand any or all of it. Sometimes I think that the suffering of Jesus was not God's will at all. It was, instead, the will of those who were arrayed against Him—those whose patriotic values He had offended, whose sense of God He had betrayed. It was the will of ordinary people like you and me, who prefer dead messiahs to living ones, since living ones are so much harder to tame.

.....It seems entirely possible to me that God's will for Jesus was a long and fruitful life, brimming over with the divine justice and love He was born to embody. When the world opposed that justice, however—when the world reviled that love—God's will did not give Jesus a license to stop being Jesus. God's will supported Him to go on doing justice and loving mercy even in the face of deadly opposition. So in that sense, I suppose, it was God's will that Jesus suffer and die—since suffering and death turned out to be the unavoidable consequences of being who He was. It was God's will for Jesus to be fully who He was every day of his life—even if the fullness of that life shortened the length of it.

.....But if that was the case, then where was God at the end? According to at least two gospels. Jesus believed Himself forsaken by heaven as well as earth. Couldn't God have spared one angel there at the end? Couldn't God have whispered one comforting word in Jesus' ear, just to help Him get through the last few awful, parched hours? It happened at His baptism in the river Jordan. It happened on the Mount of the Transfiguration with Peter, James and John. "This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." Where was that same voice at the end, when the Beloved was panting His last few breaths? What difference might a word have made?

.....But there was no word, except Jesus' own. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It was a quiet day for Him too—the quietest day of His whole life, when He asked for bread and got a stone. Whatever else it was, it was the death of hope—that God might intervene, might stop the suffering, might at least say a word that would make the suffering bearable. None of that happened. God was, for all practical purposes, gone—and yet Jesus died seeking God. He died talking to the Abba who would not talk back to Him, giving us the stripped down vision of faith that remains at the heart of our tradition.

.....When all of our own hopes have died, we still have this faith that seeks nothing for itself—not wisdom, not spiritual power, not rescue from suffering. "Success" is not in its vocabulary. This faith seeks nothing but God, to whom it is willing to surrender everything—up to and including its own cherished beliefs about who God is and how God should act. This faith is willing to sell all that it owns and bet the farm on one chance for union with God. If God plays hard to get, then this faith will never stop its wooing.

.....Purged of all illusion, weaned from everything that is not God, this relentless faith will devote itself to doing justice and loving mercy no matter what the consequences are, and if the consequences turn out to be a cross, then this faith will hang there for however long is necessary, asking God to be present, asking God to speak, regardless of whether or not God chooses to answer. This kind of faith, embodied by Jesus, is what makes Him the Christ—God's own Being of Light, God's own Anointed One—whose self-annihilating love for us and for all creation is never more vivid than it is on this day.

.....I actually know people who come to church on Good Friday and who don't come back on Easter. Easter is too pretty, they say. Easter is too cleaned-up. It is where they hope to live one day, in the land of milk and honey, but right now Good Friday is a better match for their souls, with its ruthless truth about the stench of death and the high price of love. It isn't that they don't care about what happens on Sunday. They do. They just don't believe that God is saving all the good news until then.

Today, on the quietest day of the year, we have come to sit in the presence of one who was the full embodiment of who God created Him to be every day of His life—who loved God with all His heart, and with all His soul, and with all His strength, and with all His mind—and who loved His friends so much that He stepped into the oncoming traffic of death in order to push them out of the way. He furthermore did it all with no more than the basic human equipment—a beating heart, two good hands, a holy vision, and some companions who could see it too—thereby showing the rest of us humans that such a life is not beyond our reach. Whatever else happens on Sunday, here is enough reason to call this Friday Good. Amen.

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The Divinity Of Jesus!

.....Today we will discuss the passage of scripture from John 5: 16-47, concerning the Divinity of Jesus, especially in the statement Jesus made in John 5: 17, where He stated, "My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working."

.....According to the Jewish wisdom of Jesus' day, although God's work of creating ceased on the 7th day, (Genesis 2: 2-3), His providential, care taking work did not. The Rabbis taught that two ongoing works of God were giving life and judging, and He performed these duties even on the Sabbath day. Because there was only one true God, (Exodus 15:11), the work of life-giving and judgment were prerogatives belonging to God alone.

Let's look at the Jewish reaction back then, which was from the words that Jesus spoke from the passage of scripture above.

.....When Jewish leaders accused Jesus of healing, and therefore, working on the Sabbath, (verse 16), Jesus responded that like God who works on the Sabbath, He works too, (verse 17). Jesus asserted His right to perform a divine activity, establishing an identity between Himself, and the Father. The Jewish leaders understood the implicit claim, charging Him with blasphemy, and then tried to kill Him, (verse 18).

.....Jesus' response was significant. He did not correct the accidental misunderstanding, or back away from His profound claims, but emphatically reasserted the point. In this passage, Jesus claimed an equality with the Father in activity, (verses 17-19), in honor, (verses 22-23), in authority, (verses 22, 27, 30), and in perspective, (verses 36-37). Most important, was the two main assertions Jesus made about Himself to grant life to the dead, (verses 21, 25-26, 28), and His right to judgment, (verses 22, 27, 30). - The very two works listed in the Old Testament that were attributed to God alone, (2 Kings 5:7, Ezekiel 37:13, Deuteronomy 1:17, 32:36).

.....The key here in the passage of scripture provides us with one of the most exalted statements of Jesus and His RELATIONSHIP with Father. All that belongs to God from the Old Testament, - Sabbath work, honor, power to give life, and authority to judge, - belong equally to Jesus, and us who are in Him today. His claims are unlike any other, for they are nothing less than claims of Deity shared with the Father. Without this important understanding, says Jesus, even the most diligent study of scripture will produce only lifeless results, (verses 39-40).

.....I would only hope that today's study would help to elevate you to contemplate the full Divinity of Jesus, the Son of God, and our identity, to us who are in Him. Your understanding of this can make all the difference in the world today. For those who understand and believe in the equality of the Father and the Son, have Eternal Life, and the love of God dwells in their hearts, (verses 24, 39-44). This is the power, from His Deity, confirmed through the Death, Burial, and Resurrection, that He brings to us for consideration, our identity through the resurrection life, which is to be celebrated on this upcoming Easter Sunday. May God Richly Bless You, through the Revelation of this.
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