Grace - Not What We Expected

Hi Everyone,

Here's a quote from Malcolm Smith:

"We were born two thousand years after [the covenant between Jesus and God the Father] was made.  We were born into the family of Adam, crippled by the lie and ignorant of the covenant.  We lived in darkness with a distorted image of God, never knowing of His love or of His designs of love toward us.  We lived in our wilderness, lost and dead to God....  But He never gave up His pursuit of us, and finally we were summoned by the Holy Spirit to hear the Gospel.  We believed we would hear the words of an angry God; instead we were stunned by the words of His love and forgiveness.  Our track record of rebellion and disobedience had been forgiven, dismissed in the covenant made before we were born in our representative head, the Lord Jesus.  And all the riches earned by the Lord Jesus were turned over to us; we have become heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus.

We are not treated as individuals in isolation; we do not have a private covenant with God.  The covenant was made, its terms and promises made sure in Christ 2000 years ago; in all that He did, He acted for us and as us.  The Gospel called us to personally enter the covenant because we were in Christ when the covenant was made.

Our decision was our response to the covenant that divine love had made:  to say yes to the yes of Jesus, the covenant head, to die in His death to independence and disobedience, confessing Him as Lord and in Him submitting to the Father.  It meant nothing short of a death and resurrection, actually changing families.  We died to being part of the family of Adam, the old man, to being included into the royal household of the new Man.  Such a response meant incurring the wrath of the family of sin and darkness that we were once a part of.  They would, in fact, treat us as they treated Jesus.

This takes place by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit.  We, who live two millennia from the making of the covenant, are united to Jesus, our covenant head, and made part of His history, partaking of His life.  We take our place at the royal table along with the royal princes and, basking in the love of our Father, we eat the meal of covenant."

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy