Reflections
How does one receive revelation from God? Does reading the Bible impart to us revelation from God in a way that will transform us into the image of Christ? Reading the Bible is essential – because it contains all of God’s revelation of Himself to man. But that alone isn’t the way, for some of the biggest heretics read the Bible. It is entirely possible to memorize the Bible and yet have no faith in Christ. How about praying? Also essential. But people in cults pray and remain deceived. How about meditation? Can we sit in a trace, clear our minds, and chant something to God over and over to discover Jesus Christ? Is, “contemplative prayer,” the answer? Nope. Other suggest worship. It has been wrongly stated that it is during a worship service that God shows up and reveals Christ. But some of the biggest error is present today among those who have the biggest worship services.
These are all WAYS people use to try to know Jesus. But Truth cannot be dragged down from heaven through any efforts of men. It cannot be absorbed from the pages of the Bible, nor from another Christian. Neither can we muster up Truth from out of our natural man – there is no Truth in natural man. And it is likewise impossible, even if we know that Christ is in us, and that HE IS the Truth, to develop some method by which we can draw from Him the Truth. So what is the way to know Jesus? There is no WAY – in the sense of a how-to or religious rite — to know Jesus, because Jesus Christ IS The Way. If you are saved, Christ is already in you – and if Christ is in you, then the embodiment of all Truth is already in you. Now you can begin to know Jesus Christ. But the question remains: How to we grow to know Him? The answer is that we must decrease that He might increase. We must lose our lives in order to find them in Him.
Here is how Paul said he came to KNOW JESUS: “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” (Phil. 3:8-11) Paul came to know Jesus by renouncing his own life – suffering the loss of himself – and being brought down to nothing. But when this happened to Paul he did not merely grasp true doctrines. More, he was actually SHAPED anew by seeing Christ – that is – he was MADE TRUE UNTO GOD by the Truth.
If we want the Truth, then we have to renounce all of the UNTRUTH that is in us. Chief among the untruth in us is that we belong to ourselves; that there is any righteousness in us. The first thing the light of God is going to do is expose us for who we are, where we are – so that He can deliver us. Scripture states continually that if we want LIGHT we must have HIS LIFE – and in order to have HIS LIFE, we must lose OUR life. This is what it means to pick up our Cross daily and lose our life in order to find His. Prayer and Bible study are not substitutes for faith in Jesus Christ. Indeed, both will absolutely direct us to the Cross as the gateway to life and light in Christ.
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