The angels were overlooked or bypassed and God chose instead to appoint humans as His heirs—that He would select from among humans those who would be His heirs.  And these humans… the test of whether or not they were His heirs would be whether or not they would end up being of the same kind and nature as God Himself and that was always meant to be the matter of the human spirit resembling God.  Now this, however, was always going to be a proposition fraught with incredible dangers.  Why?  Because the vulnerability of God’s plan was in the very essence of His choice.  In choosing a lesser creature, His plan was vulnerable to attack from a superior creature.  The angels were superior to humans and these strategic advantages that they enjoyed could be deadly… could be lethal when applied to humans.  And God was obligated to operate within the parameters that were set forth.  For example, God couldn’t simply unilaterally forbid humans from choosing and it was the exposure of humans through choice that would make them vulnerable to the angelic, to those angels who had sinned. Now I want to point out here that only a third of the angels fell.  When I refer to the angels who fell I do not want to overstate the case but it was a dramatic turn of events needless to say because a third of the angels represent a formidable opposition to humans.  But we yet have two-thirds of the angels on our side and helping us and they are committed to God and committed to watching over the saints. 

     But how does God unfold this plan to prove that his choice of humans was the superior choice and how does it result in humans being of the same kind and nature as God himself and how does this, in turn, relate to the “new commandment” which is to love one another as God has loved us—the same standard for God as it is for man? (Inserted – actual verse—“A new command I give you:  Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” – John 13:34) Well let’s look at the book of Ephesians, chapter 3, the apostle Paul wrote the following:  let’s begin at verse 7, Paul said, “I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.”  Then he confesses that he is the least worthy to carry this grace, “Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me:  to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.” (Inserted-Ephesians 3:7-9)

     So the first step in this revelation was to understand where the mystery was hidden.  God did not breathe a word of this to anyone.  He hid the mystery in Himself.  You know there are many books in heaven.  For example there is the Lamb’s Book of Life, there’s also the books in which the record is kept of human’s lives; there’s an interesting book that is spoken of in the book of Daniel.  The angel Gabriel who came to visit Daniel assured him that the future events involving the nation of Israel prophetically, and by extension all humans was, “written in the book of truth”, so there are many books in the Scriptures referred to in heaven.  One of them is the book of truth. (Inserted – actual verse—“ ‘At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise.  There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then.  But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.” – Daniel 12:1)  God chose not to reveal the plan and write it down in any of the books that are in heaven.  Instead, He kept this plan hidden in Himself.  It is obvious that God knew that His plan would incite the rebellion of certain angels, but angels have choices just like humans do.  Their choice is not “to love” or “not to love”; their choice is “to serve” or “not to serve”.  The choice of humans is “to love” or “not to love” and the standard is the standard of God.  But God hid this plan in Himself.

     The only one who knows what is hidden in God is the Spirit of God.  That’s what the Scriptures say in I Corinthians2, “For what man knows the things of man save the spirit of man within him and who knows the mind of the Lord except the Spirit of God?” (Inserted – actual verse—“For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?  In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” – I Corinthians 2:11) You see, the demonic, like all the other angels, do not know what is hidden in the mind of the Lord.  God kept this plan out of the books and He hid it in Himself.

    Now in the fullness of time, Ephesians 3:10, God’s intent was that now, through the ecclesia—that’s the meaning of the word “church”, there’s only one Biblical meaning of the word “church”: it’s the church which is His body—it’s not an institution, it’s not an organization—it’s the church which is His living form in time and space.  God’s intent was that now, through “the called -out ones” the manifold wisdom of God should be made known. (Inserted – actual verse—“His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms,” – Ephesians 3:10)  So God hid the plan in Himself and now He wants the plan to be made known and He intends to have it be made known through the Body of Christ and here the description is that this will represent “the manifold wisdom of God”… “the manifold wisdom of God”.

     A manifold is where all of the gases come together—like in a welding operation—where all of the gases come together in a certain mixture and they ignite with such intensity.  Humans represent the place, this plan of God to demonstrate to the principalities and powers in the heavenly realms, to demonstrate the wisdom of God through us.  That plan represents the place where all that is to be the wisdom of God is most brightly seen.  We were meant to be the spectacular display of the wisdom of God.  Now to whom was this wisdom to be shown?  We know that God hid the wisdom in Himself.  We know that He intends to display the wisdom through the Body of Christ.  We know the quality of the wisdom; the wisdom would be the splendor of God, the unrestrained splendor of God—the wisdom of God seen in all of the glory of that wisdom.

     But to whom was it meant to be shown?  And here is the answer:  “His intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms”… to those that said that God was wrong.  God will say, “You said I was wrong.  Here is the proof that I am right.”  And the proof will be that through the Body of Christ, God’s choice of humans as His heirs will display to them [those that said God was wrong] the superior nature of the wisdom of God.  The first revelation of this plan was accomplished in Christ.  Here it is in verse 11, “According to His eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.  In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” (Inserted – Ephesians 3:11,12)  And so Paul’s own note was, “I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.” (Inserted Ephesians 3:13)  Wow.

    So here Paul lays it out for us.  He says, “God’s plan was hidden in Himself.  God accomplished the right to reveal the plan through Jesus and now God will display the splendor of His choice. That display will herald the glory of God.  He intends to do that through the Body of Christ and He intends to do it to the principalities and powers in the heavenly realms and that resolves the question that was raised in earlier broadcasts about:  if you are right, how do you prove, other than by force, that you are right?  Force does not prove you are right, it just means you are stronger. But God took on the proof, not just to show that He was stronger but to show that the nature of His choice was right and because He is able to do that, He is entitled to bring His enemy to justice.  The proof being so obvious that the rebellion of His enemy would be seen to be only rebellion. It couldn’t be anything else, it couldn’t pretend to be anything else, it could not masquerade as anything else, it would only be seen as rebellion.

     Now what does this mean?  Go back now to the standard.  The standard is:  “as I have loved you.”  In this standard God requires us to love as He loves.  The way He loved was not, “love me as I love you.”  The way He loved is to prefer “the other” over yourself.  We mentioned that while Jesus on the cross called out to God in heaven, God in heaven refused to excuse Jesus on the cross because there was “another”.  This “other” of course was us.  While we hated God, God rejected the plea of God, on behalf of us…the undiluted truth that God loves us more than He loved Himself.  Whenever anybody today tells another, “Jesus loves you” or that, “God loves you”, he is declaring an obvious fact and it’s a proven fact.

    Now the commandment then is that we should love “another” more than we love ourselves.  Now what does this mean?  You could hear the pop-psychologists saying, “This is enabling gone wild.  There is no limit to the enabling that is suggested by your point of view.  You are worse than the worst enabler to say that you prefer another over yourself.”  Well there again, let’s wait until the whole matter is before us before we decide.  The Word says that Jesus, prior to His crucifixion declares, “A new command I give you:  Love one another. As I have loved you...” (Inserted – John 13:34a) Now if this is not referring specifically to the cross—even though the cross is perhaps the complete example of what otherwise was the character of Jesus’ life—but the statement nevertheless is made prior to His death on the cross. 

    So what does He mean when He says, “Love one another as I have love you…” I’ve been loving you this way all along.  What does He mean by that?  Apart from the cross—the understanding that comes from seeing Him on the cross—how can we say that He loved humans more than He loved Himself before He died on the cross?  And therein lies the answer to what the new commandment means and how the enemy himself is to be put down.  What did Jesus do that constitutes loving us more than He loved Himself prior to the cross?  What did He do?  This is what He did:  let me frame it with a reading from the 14^th chapter of John.  Jesus answered Philip—who had said, “Show us the Father and it will be enough for us.”—“Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?  Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?  The words I say to you are not just my own.  Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.” – (Inserted -John 14:9-11)

     What is he saying?  He is saying, “I committed my person to the Father.  I gave God a body out of which He could show to you, through my face, through my limbs, through my being; I gave the Father the right to use me to show His love for you.”  You see, God is a Spirit and yet it is the love of God, the love of the Father that draws us to Him and it’s the love of the Father that Jesus had come to display. The norm for us to think about Jesus, in showing the love of the Father, is for Jesus to do these wonderful things and then to say, “Well, you know, I didn’t do these things; it’s the Father.”  Jesus is saying it’s much more than that.  He’s saying, “Here is the essence of the thing:  I had a right to this body that I had.  I had a right, if I wanted to, to use it in this fashion or that fashion, to be married or not to be married, to love the leper or not to love.  I had a right to do all of that.  It was not sinful for me… I’m not talking about using my body in a matter of sin, but just to use my body to do what I wanted to do.”

    But He said, “I chose to give my body up to God the Father who is invisible but whose love is more real than the visible, but absent a point of contact with you, you couldn’t possibly know what was in the heart of the Father toward you.  So daily I removed myself from consideration—every day, moment by moment and I allowed the Father to take full possession of my thoughts, of my emotions, of my body—knowing full well that on any given occasion, at any moment in time that that use of my body would imperil me to the point of death.  Nevertheless, never once did I grasp the right to use this body because I had given it to God and I fully trusted God’s use of it because I fully trusted God and I’ve been doing this all along.

     Therefore, Philip, when you ask me to show you the Father you are hoping that somehow the Father could just step out from behind me and say, “Here I am.”  But that’s not necessary and even if He were to do that He is a spirit and you couldn’t see Him.  But what is true is because I have so perfectly yielded my person to Him.  Everything you have seen me do, that you attribute to me, was the Father who was living in me who was doing these things, and I offer you this proof—if you don’t believe the words that are coming from my mouth, that this is so—believe the works that I am doing because they testify of me.  Now they testify that it’s the Father living in me.  Because, Philip, everything that I have done defies the ability of humans to either understand it or to do it and being found in the form of a human I would not be able to do these things any more than you can.  I didn’t choose to retain an ability to do anything.  I didn’t choose to “help” God in any way.  I didn’t have a way of improving on the perfect showing of the love of God because He who is love, whose nature is love is the one who has been inspiring everything that I have been doing; it’s in fact He who has done it.

     So, for example, you saw Him feed 5,000 people.  What was His purpose for feeding 5,000 people?  He wasn’t trying to get you to believe in my gospel.  He just wanted to show you that because you were hungry, He would feed you—a pure act of benevolence.  You are hungry, He is God, He loves you, He has the ability to feed you, and He fed you.  That’s what you saw.  He wasn’t trying to get me to start a ministry to feed people so that they could be somehow manipulated by observing this goodness that I actually did and then said it was Him.” You notice, unlike modern adaptations of the love of God, it’s all done on the strength of what humans could do and then the results are attributed to God.  What Jesus did, by contrast, was miraculous.  That’s why He could say, “I don’t do these things on my own.”  And the people could not say, “Aw, you’re just kidding us.”  People looking at Him saw that something greater than man was operating here.

     We have the testimony of none other than Nicodemus who comes to Him and he says, “We know that you’re a teacher come from God because no man can do what you are doing unless God be with him.  The proof that you’ve exceeded yourself is that we know what humans can do but you are not operating by what humans can do because you’ve moved beyond that ability.” (Inserted – actual verse—“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.  He came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God.  For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.’” – John 3:1,2) and that’s what Jesus was saying.  Jesus was saying, “Philip, humans cannot do what I am doing and I as a human cannot do what I am doing, so I tell you the reason that I am doing the things I am doing is this:  it’s the Father who is living in me who is doing what you are seeing.  So don’t think that I have fed the multitudes.  I have no ability to break bread and watch it multiply; I am just like you in that matter.  It’s the Father who lives in me who can have me use these hands to break bread and the pieces will multiply, and He will do it to show you simply this:  you are hungry, He feeds you, He loves you.  He will change nature to show you His love.

     So how did Jesus love us?  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  He presented His body as a living sacrifice so that God could live in Him and out of Him God could do what showed the love of God.  That’s why our response, then, and how we are to love is just as simple.  “I beseech you therefore brethren,” Paul says in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies living sacrifices.” (Inserted – actual verse-“Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” – Romans 12:1) Present them to whom?  Present them to the Lord Jesus Christ so that the Spirit of God might dwell in you and you might become a useful vessel in which for Him to live and act moment by moment.  It is in the fact that we are willing to present ourselves so that God may live in us and direct us that we keep the new commandment as perfectly as Jesus kept it.  “Love one another as I have loved you” because there will be times when God will love against your will… this is the new commandment.  We’ll continue our discussion, I’m Sam Soleyn and I’ll see you next time.

Scripture References

John 13:34
Ephesians 3:7-9
Daniel 12:1
I Corinthians 2:11
Ephesians 3:10-13
John 14:9-11
John 3:1,2
Romans 12:1