No Existence Outside of Jesus

No Existence Outside of Jesus

Ephesians 3:5b

Let’s take a Bible please and turn to 2 Corinthians. And it’s verses that we know, but they relate to today’s study. 2 Corinthians 5:11, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men; but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to be proud of us, so that you may be able to answer those who pride themselves on a man’s position and not on his heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” May God help us to be that. Amen.

Will you turn to Ephesians 3 please? And you know sometimes I fight between wanting to keep you awake and getting down to the details of the text. But I think you’re interested in that, so I’ll concentrate hard this morning in repeating again some of the things we’ve said. Chapter 3 and verse:1 gives the context, “For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentile -- assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.” And his brief writing of it -- if you just keep your finger there, and then turn back to the end of Romans, you’ll see, I think, the letter that he was referring to where in Romans 16:25, almost as part of the benediction, he mentions the mystery: “Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery…” That’s what he’s mentioning. “According to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith -- to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.” That’s the brief writing that he’s talking about. Just there in the end of Verse 25, “According to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages.”

The secret I think is what you find in Daniel. And I can help you find Daniel. Daniel 3:25 is part of that mystery, you remember. It’s in the flaming furnace, the fiery furnace. “He answered, ‘But I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire.’” Three of them of course were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. “And they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” And that’s one of the references to what is thought to be an appearance of Christ Jesus, an appearance of Jesus. Because one of the translations is, of course, “Like the Son of God.” And that’s the mystery, that Jesus existed in Old Testament times. And that’s part of the mystery of Christ, that Christ is not just Jesus of Nazareth who lived those 34 years in Palestine but that he existed himself during Old Testament times. And he appeared there with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.

And of course, that is the mystery that he’s talking about, “Is made known to everyone.” In verses like John 17: 5, and again, it’s a verse you’re familiar with. And it’s Jesus’ prayer, you remember, “And now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.” And that’s the mystery that is made known through the apostle John when he writes of Jesus’s prayer here. “Glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.” It’s Jesus saying, “Lord, I existed with you even before Old Testament times.”

And that’s part of the mystery that Paul is talking about with us, you see. That’s what he’s referring to as the mystery of Christ, because he says, “When you read this you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” It was hinted at in former generations. It was hinted at by the reference to the “Son of Man” walking in the fiery furnace. It was hinted at even back in Genesis where God said, “Let ‘us’ make man in our image.” He was obviously speaking to someone. And, it’s hinted at in Isaiah 53, “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our pains.” And it’s hinted at there that Jesus, of course, existed ‘before’ he came to earth in the first century of our era. He existed before that. And he himself is saying, “I existed before the world was made.” So that’s part of the mystery of Christ.

And of course, that’s what we’re talking about here together in Verse 4, “When you read this you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.”

And the mystery of Christ of course is further than that. Paul is saying Jesus existed before the world was made. And not only that, but there’s something else. And he says it in Colossians 1:26, “The mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is…” And then he states what the mystery is, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

And then he goes on with that remarkable sentence, “Him we proclaim, warning ‘every man’ and teaching ‘every man’ in all wisdom, that we may present ‘every man’ mature in Christ.” And of course, we usually look upon that as just Paul’s hope, except that it is so persistent. The adjective that he uses, “Him we proclaim, warning ‘every’ man and teaching ‘every’ man in all wisdom, that we may present ‘every’ man mature in Christ.” And that’s what he carries on actually with in his emphasis, “How great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery,” because that’s really what he’s saying. He’s saying, “Everybody, every man, the Gentiles as well. Not just the Jews but the Gentiles. Everybody is involved in this person who is the great mystery of the ages, this Christ who spans the centuries. And everybody is involved in that.”

And of course, he makes that very clear, you remember, in the verses we read as a New Testament lesson in 2 Corinthians 5:14. “For the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all;” for every man, “Therefore all have died.” “Therefore every man has died.” And it’s just so blatant, so plainly and simply stated, “The love of Christ controls us because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.”

And that’s what ties it up with the verse that we’ve repeated to each other so long, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” And then the whole set of verses in Colossians 1:15 where Christ is “the first-born of all creation,” and, “In him all things hold together.” And it comes home to you that what God is repeating again, and again to us is, “I put you all into my Son. I made you all part of my Son, everybody.” And actually Paul himself draws out the implications of this, you remember, in Verse 16 there of 2 Corinthians 5, because he’s just finished saying, “One has died for all; therefore all have died,” and then 2 Corinthians 5:16 he says, “From now on, therefore...”

So, from when we’ve seen this, we regard no one from a human point of view. We look upon nobody from the outside. We look upon nobody according to whether they’re gentiles or Jews… And then I would push you a little: “According to whether they’re Lutherans or Catholics, or Presbyterians or Methodists.” And then I would push you a little bit more, “According to whether they’re looked upon as Christians or non-Christians. And I know that it kind of sticks in your throat. It obviously stuck in the throat of the Jews. They said, “No, no, when we’ve circumcised a foreigner, then maybe they qualify to enter into the promises that we have received. But not until then.”

So, sometimes we don’t just say, “If they’ve been confirmed,” but sometimes in our heart of hearts we say, “If they believe… If they believe then they’re qualified to enter in… to Christ?” What if the Savior has them inside him at that moment? What if he carries them, and bears their sins at that moment? And we pontificate.

That’s I think, part of what Paul is saying, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”

I really still question Wigglesworth [Smith Wigglesworth, 1859 - 1947, British evangelist] trailing that lady around the hall [Pastor chuckles], which he did, you remember: “Walk in the name of Christ! Walk!” And he walked her around. I really question a bit his doing that, but it was the same spirit. It was, “In Jesus your sickness has been borne.” Maybe – we would maybe rightly question as him as the way he tried to bring about that realization in her, but it was the same spirit. It was the same attitude in him. “The Savior has borne your sickness and carried your pain.” That’s a fact. That’s a fact.

We would probably wonder, “Well, isn’t it up to God to manifest that in the appropriate way in his own good time, and Wigglesworth, not for you to force that timing?” But the heart of what he did was, “This is what has happened in Christ. You were created in Christ Jesus; you were crucified in Christ. ‘He died for all therefore you also have died,’ and, ‘Your life is hid with Christ in God,’ and, ‘Your sicknesses and your pains have been borne.’ And that is fact. And you have to decide whether to believe that fact or not. But the fact is unquestioned. And that’s really what Paul is saying, “From now on we don’t look upon anybody from a human point of view.”

And I submit to you that it does change the way that we look at our customers. I would submit to you that it does change the attitude we have to, what we say, is ‘the unbeliever.’ And I think I mentioned to you some weeks, if not months, ago that it does change ‘their’ awareness of ‘your’ attitude to them. And they do know whether you regard them as an outsider and whether you regard them as on the other side of the tracks, or as ‘one of them’ as opposed to ‘one of you’. They can tell that. And there is an awareness of your love and your ‘all inclusive acceptance’ that comes through your eyes, and your whole attitude to them; as opposed to the attitude where you stand back and you think in your heart, “How could they do that?” Which, I agree with you, is very difficult not to do, when you see their orange hair and their earrings stuck through their cheeks. But still, Jesus was the one himself who, in that situation, made no distinction between the ‘tax gatherer’ and between the ‘prostitute’ and ‘his disciples’.

And so Paul is saying, “Christ has done this for everybody.” And that’s really what we’re talking about when we say the ‘universal atonement’. And we try to make a distinction between that and regeneration. We say regeneration takes place when a person ‘believes’ that they have been universally atoned for in Christ.

But the universal atonement is true, that everybody has been born in Jesus and raised in him. And the only thing that is keeping them from enjoying that is their own non-belief. But that our attitude is based not on their unbelief but on the ‘fact’, on the fact that we have been crucified with Christ.

And so that’s the heart of what Paul is saying. And we come down then to Ephesians 3:5, “The mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” And Verse 6, “That is how the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

And of course, he’s simply saying the ‘non-Jews’. We have a tendency to think, “Oh, he’s speaking about the gentiles who are some kind of nationality there like the people in Thessalonica and people in Galatia, and the people in Ephesus. But no, the Gentiles are the non-Jews, that is, how the non-Jews, how everybody who is not a Jew, everybody, “Are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

The difficulty I see with us being exclusive is, if Jesus has borne the deepest sin of the worst murderer, if he has borne that inside himself and held onto that murder and kept his arms around that murder, then who are we to say that that murderer is somebody that we should not deal with, respect, or love. The indication here is that they are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, and that that’s the attitude God wants us to have to them.

Just one last thing: Sometimes – I’m sure you’ve found the same. Sometimes during the night God makes things real to you that you haven’t seen before. And I just saw very, very clearly that each one of us is in Jesus, and Jesus is the biggest thing in our lives, the biggest thing in our heart and our mind every moment, as opposed to ‘us ourselves’ being the big thing and the important thing. And that our being in Jesus is everything. We are him. We are not ourselves. We are him, and what he has in his mind, and his thoughts, that’s the precious thing to us. And I saw that in prayer time too, that is what is overwhelming in our minds. We are either in Jesus and we live in that reality or we’re not in Jesus and we don’t live in that reality.

The fact is, all of us are in Jesus but we can sever ourselves from that fact and all the benefits of that fact by thinking of ourselves inside ourselves. And I thought too, even in the prayer time today, I thought, “I wonder how many of us are like a little guy coming into the king’s presence? And then we duck in and out.” We like to call it our wandering thoughts: we just can’t keep our mind on Jesus. But I wonder if it is like that? It’s really like ducking in and out of his presence. And yet of course, we would think that would be a terrible thing.

I suppose most of us can think of it most realistically, even though many of us have not had the privilege of being Catholics, we think of it as with the Pope. He’s such a dear man, and he looks in a way now so indefensible and so vulnerable. But you could think of ducking in and out of his presence. You go in, and then you duck out again, and you come in. And we just say, “Oh, it’s our wandering thoughts.” But really we’re either in Jesus every moment in which case of course, his head, through the Holy Spirit, fills us with his thoughts, or we’re preoccupied with ourselves and we live primarily inside ourselves, and we’re filled therefore with deadness of ourselves.

In fact, that’s what came home to me during the night. There is no reality outside Jesus. We do not exist outside Jesus. And that’s why it’s so dead for us either in a prayer time or in our own inner life. It’s so dead because there is ‘no existence outside Christ’. There is actually no existence, and we are actually in non-existence when we aren’t in Jesus, when we aren’t consciously in him. So maybe God will give you light, and me, on that. Let us pray.

Dear Lord, we thank you for bearing us all inside yourself. We thank you Lord, that the reason the worst murderer in New York City has life today is that you, in unbelievable grace, continue to bear him inside yourself and give him life and sustain his life. Lord, we see that in the home that is full of cursing and swearing at this moment, in the business office that is filled with dishonesty, and with crookedness at this moment, you are there, not only feeling the atmosphere in the room, but inside each person, bearing the pain and the agony of their thoughts of hatred and hostility. And we see Lord, that all around the world you have everything inside you and are bearing it all. And we see Lord, that you continue to sustain us even as we are wrapped up in ourselves and preoccupied with our own concerns, you continue to bear us.

So Lord, we see there is only one reality and that is ‘us in you’ and ‘you in us’. And we see Lord, that it is not just a case of good manners, it is a case of honest respect for you, that we would see our hearts are open to you every second, and we would make those hearts places that you are at home in, places where you enjoy being, places where you can share delight with us. And oh we would thank you this day our Father, for all the truth that you’ve revealed to us, and especially for this reality that everyone we meet today and tomorrow, and the next day and the next day, is someone whom you are bearing inside yourself, someone whom you have already changed, and as we look upon them no longer from a human point of view, but as new creations in you, we would pray that, by your Holy Spirit, you are able to impart that same faith to them, so that the work that you have done will be manifested here on earth.

And now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with each one of us now and evermore. Amen.