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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

God's Gracious Provision # 3

Life On The Highest Plane

It is a Life Conformed to God's Perfect Pattern

The God-man's surpassing perfection is seen again most transparently in His glorious victory and in His spotless holiness. Tempted in all points as we are, having no companionship but that of sinful men and women in a world of sin, tested by His Father and tempted by the devil, yet He came forth so victorious that both friend and foe alike acknowledged no fault in Him.

Luke 23:22, "And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him; I will therefore chastise him, and let him go."

1 Peter 2:22, "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth."

But the perfection of His character did not consist so much in the negative quality of sinlessness as in the positive one of holiness - a holiness so rare, so wondrous, so unearthly that it compelled His Father to break the silence of Heaven three times that He might speak forth His divine appreciation and evaluation of it.

Luke 1:35, "And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."

Matthew 17:5, "While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him."

The God-man's surpassing perfection is seen again most wondrously in His regal righteousness and in His sacrificial love. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." He was despised, persecuted, rejected and finally crucified by the very ones He came to save yet there was never a trace of bitterness, malice or revenge in His heart. Even from the Cross He prayed for His murderers. He was reviled, yet He showed no trace of retaliation; He suffered unjustly, yet He made no threats of redress. When He drove the money changers from the temple and when He spoke the scorching, scathing denunciations of the hypocritical Pharisees it was but the outward expression of His own regal righteousness. Whether dealing with friend or foe, in mercy or in judgment, Christ Jesus was always the perfect Pattern.

1 Peter 2:21-23, "For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps.  Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:  Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously."

But it was in His sacrificial love for men that the perfection of Christ's character shone forth even more than in His righteous treatment of them. Christ Jesus never pampered or pleased Himself. Though wear and hungry the soul need of a prostitute in Samaria would detain Him by Jacob's well while the others went on into town to buy food; His night's sleep was gladly forfeited that He might talk with the man who feared to come to Him by day; He did not stop short  with self-emptying and self-humbling, costly as they were, but kept on giving Himself even unto death, yea, the death of the Cross. The God-man pouring out His soul unto death in sacrificial love is the perfect Pattern.

John 15:12, "This is my commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you."

The spiritual man is the man who lives his daily life according to the perfect Pattern. In Him are to be found the same constituent moral and spiritual elements which were regnant in the character and conduct of the God-man. He has made the will of Jesus Christ the center and the circumference of his life, and so he is obedient. He acknowledges that he has no life apart from Christ and takes the Lord Jesus for everything in his inner life, his environment and his service, and so he is dependent. The spiritual man has crowned Christ Lord and placed his life completely under the control of his Master, therefore he is gloriously victorious. He has appropriated Christ as the Life of his life therefore he becomes the partaker of His holiness. The spiritual man has accepted Christ's commission as one sent into the world to save sinners even as Christ accepted this commission from His Father, so his attitude to all men whether friend or foe is based on Christ's principles of righteousness and love.

The spiritual man is one who is being conformed to the image of Christ, the perfect Pattern When this has been said, everything has been said. In God's reckoning there is nothing for man beyond conformity to the image of His Son. Christ is God's perfection and to be fully conformed to His image is to be perfect before Him.

The process of conformity is going on day by day in the spiritual man's life. It is a transformation from obedience to obedience, from dependence to dependence, from victory to victory, from holiness to holiness, from righteousness to righteousness and from love to love. As the spiritual man gets a larger vision of this perfect Pattern through daily study of God's Word, he takes higher ground along the line of the God-given revelation, so that his life is a continuous growing up into Christ in all things.

2 Corinthians 3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit."

Ephesians 4:15, "But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ."

The consummation of this conformity will not be experienced until the Lord Jesus returns to take His own to be forever beyond the presence of sin into the presence of the Saviour (1 John 3:2).

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with - "It is a Life Perfected by God's Holy Presence")

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