Keep My commands

Sons and Daughters of God in God’s Son Jesus

Part 1

I live to see the spirits of people glow. I have friends whose spirit is larger than their body and whose inner man is younger and more healthy than the body that carries them. With such people Jesus is their resurrection and their life. They are sons and daughters of God and as such represent His Kingdom and authority.

This morning as I lay in bed, my wife called out, ‘It worries me, you know that the people I work with think that Jesus’ command, ‘keep my commandments’ means the Ten Commandments.’ It worries me too because it doesn’t and it concerns me because they live much smaller than they are.

I would have believed the same before I got to know the scriptures and the power of God. My wife’s concern reminded me of what I had seen recently on a white board in an Adventist church. Someone had written the words:

‘Hebrews – rest = Sabbath.

Strange, since the message of Hebrews is that Jesus Himself is our Sabbath and that we find rest from every law of Moses by living in the Son of God.

Jesus did say, ‘If you love me, keep my commandments.’ The commandments He was referring to where the commands inherent in His teaching about Himself. Specifically are these commands the teaching that He is the way the truth and the life.

The teaching that no one comes to the Father but by Jesus.

The teaching that He is life in itself and  the teaching that those who walk (live) in Him will never walk in darkness but have the light of life.

It is this life, light and security that Jesus was referring to when He said,

‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand’ Matt 7.24-26 NIV.

We can build on Jesus and have a house on the rock or build on Moses and all kinds of performances and build a house on sand.

Adventists along with quite a few others assume that the commandments Jesus is speaking of here are the commandments of Moses. But if this is so Jesus is confusing us when He says,

‘For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven’ Matt 5.20 NIV.

Again Paul would seem to be a heretic for writing, ‘If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing’ (Gal 2.21).

The writer of Hebrews must surely be in error for penning an epistle that plainly teaches that eternal life is not found in Jewish law or temple but in Jesus: ‘The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming-not the realities themselves’ Hebrews 10.1 NIV.

Did Paul get it wrong by he stating emphatically that the written code and its regulations ‘are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ’ Col 2.17 NIV.

No. None of the above are in error, which should prompt us to consider the possibility that we may have attached ourselves to false doctrine and another gospel. If so we have bound ourselves to live in religion rather than in the authority and power of Christ the King. Our call is to live in reality not shadows. Reality is Christ because the Kingdom of God is Christ incarnate in His people through the Holy Spirit. Paul declared that the magnificence of God’s Plan is CHRIST IN YOU. It important to grasp this because the reality of Christ in us is the reality of the Kingdom of God in the world. We either promote shadows or we multiply reality.

Adventism is an identity driven religion. Whether aware of it or not Adventism interprets the Bible through the Sabbath and Jesus through the law. Given this it should not surprise us that Adventism transplants Moses into the New Testament. It has a hidden curriculum motivated to establish its adherents in the certainty, safety and identity of its beliefs. Adventism is about your identity as an Adventist. Adventism is about Adventism. But the Kingdom of God is about your identity in Christ.

Since adherence to the Saturday Sabbath is the core of Adventist identity, its ground of being  has to be the Mosaic law. Adventism needs the law to be Adventism. But for the abundant life we need is Jesus.

Adventism cripples itself because it interprets the New Testament through Moses rather than Jesus. Adventism has a small jesus [sic] because it believes in a Jesus who is smaller than the law. In the Bible Jesus lives from His Father. In Adventism Jesus lives from the law. A small jesus produces small people. But the sons of God live in God’s Son.

Jesus said that when He is lifted up he draws all people to Himself. Jesus does not lift up the law or draw people into the law. He draws people into Himself and by so doing draws us into the Father. Jesus declares that He is our life and His command is that we eat Him to be filled with Him.

‘And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself’ Eph 4.10 NLT.

Genuine holiness is a product of the Spirit. Genuine holiness is a manifestation of Jesus by the Spirit. Authentic wholeness is personal because it is a manifestation of the Person of God transforming believers into sons and daughters of God.

You can’t mix Jesus and the law. The Kingdom of God is not a law and Jesus sandwich. It is He who fills the entire universe with His Presence. The one who is supreme in all things. His desire is to fill you with His Presence. You can rob God and rob yourself by living from Adventism or you can be a son of God by living in God’s Son. When Jesus is the life of God in you, you are the Kingdom of God in the world.

‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ’ Gal 1.6-10 NIV.

Part 2: Identity in Jesus

You have unlimited worth. The Psalmist said ‘You are fearfully and wonderfully made because your being is formed in the image of God. You are a daughter or son by creation and by redemption. We are twice Fathered. Once when the Father breathed Himself into the earthen Adam and once when the resurrected Jesus breathed Himself into the disciples.

‘Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person’ Genesis 2.7 NLT.

‘And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit’ John 20.22 NIV.

The most important thing about any person is their identity. Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Who do people say that I the Son of Man am?’ Peter replied, ‘You are the son of the living God!’ Jesus asserted that His identity had been revealed by the Father and that knowing Jesus as God’s Son is the authority of the sons of God over all the power of the Enemy.

We see the Father’s identity expressed in Jesus. Jesus is the son of God and son of man in the Father. We are sons and daughters of God to the extent that Jesus is our life. Authentic personhood, genuine identity and completeness of personality is found among those who are found in Christ. When we are found in Christ with the roots of our being extended into His Person, our being is in God and we are formed into the likeness of His sons. Sons produce righteousness but the law does not produce sons. As sons we are never cardboard cut-outs, robots or crippled in our person. We are complete. We are growing into the fullness of Christ.

‘In the Kingdom of God the person who rests in Jesus lives a holier life than the one who is striving desperately to please God.’

Under the knowledge of good and evil many live under the delusion that our identity is the sum of what we do. So we do good things and avoid bad things. We work hard, are honest, help the poor and have the right positions on doctrine. Having done these things we feel righteous and accepted by God. Some will say that we are Christ-like. But we are not. In God’s Kingdom identity is found in who you are.

‘Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ John 6.53 NIV.

Jesus lived in His Father and from His Father. He was a son. He and His Father were one. His words and actions were ignited with life because Jesus lived from who He was: He was His Father’s Son. Jesus actions were the fruit of His person and He was whole because He lived in God. Every thing Jesus did was the fruit of the fact that He was the Son of God.

‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57

You have an identity. Your real identity is not found in what others think of you or what you think of yourself. It’s not found in what you do. The identity of the sons of God is not found in your membership of church or denomination. It is found in Christ.

You are the kind of person that is a son of God to the extent that you live in the Person of God’s Son Jesus without dilution. Jesus is supremely personal. It is His Person that rejoins you to yourself and joins you to others in healthy relationship. So important is it to live in Jesus that He commanded us to eat Him – the living bread who came from heaven. He said, ‘Feed on Me and you will live because of Me.’

‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him’ John 6.56 NIV.

Keith Allen, September 11, 2011.

Isaiah 61 Ministries, North Ringwood, Melbourne Australia.