17th May, 2022
Minister: Pastor Olusola Ogidan
Colossians 1:23-28
The mystery that was once hidden is now made plain to us because of Jesus Christ. As such, there are gaps in our lives that have to be filled with the secret things God has manifested to us. We are sanctified once the Holy Spirit indwells us; as such, we are supposed to have access to God’s truths. That which has left God must reach us.
Christ is the only one that personifies the glory of God and that is why He is the express image of God. We can talk about glory because of the experience of having Christ in us.
2 Corinthians 4:4
Christ is the image of God because He’s the one that bears God’s glory in its fulness. The glory we are coming into is not man’s glory; there is no other glory for man outside of God’s glory. God will not share His glory with another that is not Him; He can only share His glory with His Christ and those that allow His expressions in them. If we can partake in His image, we are entitled to His glory.
When we got born again, we became something else with the capacity to live differently. A new seed that causes a drastic change in one’s course of life is implanted at new birth. The Nigerian Church is largely nominal and that is why we are not making serious impact on our society.
1 Peter 1:22,23; Galatians 4:19
When a person is born, genes are transferred to live a particular kind of life. Since we have been born again, we have to continue building on the foundation that has been laid. Once you have been born again, a life has been planted. As such, we need to take the experience further and deepen it.
The new birth is a spiritual experience and it cannot be sustained with fleshly emphasis like prosperity and physical fitness. This new life can only be nurtured and sustained by the acquisition of Christ.
A newly born child has all his organs in place, he only needs to grow so that those parts can be fully formed. The Galatian Church became foolish because they stopped growing in the things they were established in so that they could follow Judaism (Galatians 1:6).
Galatians 3:1-5
It is good that we have Christ in us but it is better that we advance by having Christ formed in us. For Christ to be formed in us, we must be well grounded having the basics in place. If the foundation is not well laid, the whole structure will crumble.
The formation stage can be quite problematic as organs begin to take shape. That is why the first trimester is the most challenging for pregnant women. It is pathetic to go through the pains of pregnancy and still lose the baby. That was the story of the Galatian Church that suffered a lot for Christ’s sake and still got distracted. Christ, the hope of glory, must be formed in us by faith (Ephesians 3:14-17).
Ephesians 4:17-20; Hebrews 5:8
As Christ is indwelling and being formed in us, we also have to learn Him. Learning Christ is following the order of Christ who learned obedience through the things He suffered.
Obedience is not first about doing; it is conformation to a set template. Jesus was not born with the fulness of God’s glory, He had to submit Himself to process to acquire that fulness. Jesus allowed the Father to make Him what He should be.
Obedience does not begin with ministry; God was well pleased with Jesus because of what He became not what He did. Jesus had not done anything; He had not started ministry when God declared Him as a Son He was satisfied with.
Jesus could not do anything by Himself not because He lacked ability but because He was not permitted by the Father. He subjugated His will and made Himself subservient to the Father; He didn’t always have His way. It can be pretty difficult to wait on God for instructions when you have ability to do things by yourself. It can be quite difficult for anointed people to submit to Christ’s constraints because they almost always know what to do.
Hebrews 12:5-8; Colossians 3:1-4; Galatians 2:20
Chastisement is not just about spanking; it is a whole curriculum of formation. It involves correction, rebuke, reinforcement, etc. If we can submit to chastisement, we will be treated as God’s sons. When we follow God closely and walk by faith, a lot happens on our inside than we can imagine.
When Christ appears to us, glory would no longer be our hope but our reality. It is not enough that Christ lives in us, we need to advance by living in the flesh by His faith. Christ in us should find expressions in the way we live our lives in the flesh. Anything that has not manifested in the physical has not appeared. Until Christ is seen in our lives physically, He has not appeared in our reality. What we have not seen in the flesh has not appeared.
The outward manifestation of Christ dwelling in us is what will attract glory. The flesh has always been the problem of man and the ground Satan stands on is that we cannot live the life of Christ in the flesh. If we can live the Christ kind of life in the flesh, glory will manifest.
God is not hoarding glory; glory will respond to the manifestation of Christ. When Christ shall appear, we will appear with Him in glory. God is not going to glorify us because we have Christ in us but that Christ has been formed in us so much that we live His life in our flesh.