Feb 15
21
GRACE EXPERIENCED IS CHRIST REVEALED
Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the apostle, experienced the mighty work of God’s Spirit. God brought this rebel sinner to bow before Him in the dust and revealed Himself in Paul. He gives confession of this in his letter to the Galatians: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, 16To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:” This all came to pass at God’s appointed time (“when it pleased God”) and according to His purpose and power of grace (“called me by His grace”). Butwhat did God do in this man and what was the result of this great work? God revealed the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul says, “in me.” The result was that Paul never stopped talking about, believing in, glorying in and preaching the Lord Jesus Christ. At the center of his experience was the revelation of Jesus Christ! While his experience was the same experience for all who are born of God, Paul did not focus on the experience itself but the One who was revealed to him and in him. God revealed Christ to Paul as the One who is God manifest in the flesh. He saw Christ as the true God, as the only Savior and as the very righteousness of God freely given to him. He was brought to forsake his old religion, his imagined righteousness and his own way. Experience for experience sake is nothing. Only that experience which leaves a sinner talking about, worshipping, following, believing, glorifying, trusting in and resting upon the Lord Jesus Christ is the experience of God’s grace wrought by the Holy Spirit. The blessed Spirit takes the things of Christ and shows them to us. Grace experienced is Christ believed on! Balaam also had a mysterious experience on a road when the ass spoke to him about an angel but he perished. Balaam experienced an experience, Paul experienced Christ! Christ revealed is Christ believed on because both are the work of God’s Spirit. Can we not hear the Savior say, “Look unto me and be ye saved….” Gary Shepard
Concerning our trials, Robert Hawker said, “God lets believers see what mere feathers we are in the wind of temptation, if the LORD for a moment withdraws the arm of his strength, by which our faith is upheld.”
HOPE OF HIS CALLING
Ephesians 1: 18:…that ye may know what is the hope of his calling.
Believers have a good hope because of who called us—“the hope of HIS calling.” This is not the invitation of “Pontius Pilot preaching” where they say good things but then turn our Savior over to the will of the people. This is the effectual, internal call of God’s sovereign, irresistible power and grace.
Believers gather to hear the gospel—“For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” (Rom 15: 4)
Believers need to know what our hope is because our heavenly Father says—“Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” (1 Pet 3: 15)
Our hope is God our Savior, Jesus Christ—“Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.” (Ps 130: 7); “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.” (Jer 17: 7; Ps 38:15; 1 Pet 1:21; 1 Tim 1:1)
This hope of glory begins when Christ is formed in our inward man–“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col 1: 27); “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” (Rom 5: 2)
Christ is the hope of the gospel, who grounds us and settles us through the preaching of the gospel till that day he presents us holy and unblameable to God–[Christ shall] present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister; (Col 1: 22-23)
Therefore, by God’s grace, we patiently wait for the hope of righteousness by faith—“For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” (Rom 8: 24-25); “For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” (Gal 5: 5)
As we hope in God’s mercy we have the assurance of knowing that God continually watches us to protect and preserve us—“Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy; To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waiteth for the LORD: he is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in him, because we have trusted in his holy name. Let thy mercy, O LORD, be upon us, according as we hope in thee.” (Ps 33: 18-22; Lam 3: 21-26)
Our hope—our inheritance, even Christ himself—is reserved especially for us in heaven—“the hope which is laid up for you in heaven.” (Col 1: 5); “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Pet 1: 3-5)
There is no guarantee in the carnal, vain hopes of temporal life. But the believer has God’s full guarantee of eternal life. This is not presumption. It is confidence in God’s word—“In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” (Titus 1: 2); “That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.” (Heb 6: 18-20)
The hope of God’s calling is the hope of resurrection and eternal life with and by Christ Jesus—“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thess 4: 13-18; Heb 9: 28; 1 Cor 15: 22-26)
“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” (Rom 15: 13)