Orphans, or Sons and Daughters?

 

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:18.

 

As a reminder, these verses and passages, as all Bible passages, ought to be read and pondered again and again in their context – that is, in their extended passages. This one verse is connected to its immediate context (the verses immediately preceding and following it) and it is a thread of a glorious tapestry revealing Jesus Christ. The man or woman who is born again of the Holy Spirit can never exhaust the depths of Jesus Christ in the Bible – Jesus Christ is forever and always coming to us afresh in and through His Word.

 

Someone recently said to me, “I read the Bible once and I know what is in it.” What can we say in response to such a statement? Such a statement is likely the result of ignorance or arrogance, or of both. No doubt I have lived in both places, ignorance and arrogance, not realizing the depths of Jesus Christ in the Bible, thinking foolishly that the Bible is a matter of information and data, thinking like a fool that the Bible was something I could “apply” the way I might “apply” mathematics or logic or the laws of physics or the rules of accounting.

 

Jesus calls us to obey Him and His Word, not to apply it. Jesus calls us to receive Him and worship Him and say, “Not I, but Christ.” Jesus commands us to deny ourselves and follow Him, to live as those purchased by His blood, no longer belonging to ourselves.

 

Those who know the Scriptures, realize they know so little of the Scriptures – for the depths of the Bible are the depths of eternity and the Eternal One. We may be, at some point, “wise master builders,” but even then we know that we are such because we sit at the feet of the one true Master…our Master. To be mastered by the Master, that is to be most desired. Don’t you think?

 

As we ponder John 14:18, I am struck by Jesus saying, “I will come to you.” Isn’t this a theme of the Upper Room? Jesus is always coming to us, He is promising to do so, to always do so.

 

In 14:3 Jesus says, “I will come again.” In 14:21 – 23 He speaks of disclosing Himself to us and coming to us. In 16:16 – 22 He again speaks of His coming to us, of us seeing Him. And then, in John 17 Jesus calls us into the depths of union with the Father and with Himself, into the holy koinonia of the Trinity. Also, throughout the Upper Room Jesus is speaking to us of the Holy Spirit coming to us and living within us, and of the Father living within us.

 

We, individually and as His Body, are to experience His coming to us as our Way of Life. But O how many of us live as if we are orphans! How much of our teaching and preaching dumbs us down rather than raises us up! Why do we not know and experience and embrace the overwhelming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives – as individuals, as families, as congregations?

 

Dearly beloved, we are the sons and daughters of the Living God and Jesus Christ is our elder Brother who has redeemed us and brought us back to our Father. We ought to banish forever the thought that we are orphans, that we have no Father…or that we have a Father who is far away from us, a Father who does not care for us, a Father who does not desire to be in deep communion with us every moment of every day.

 

God came to earth in the Incarnation some 2,000 years ago, and He has never left…He lives within the Body of His Son Jesus Christ. We are no more orphans than Jesus is an orphan.

 

O beloved, the enemy would rob us of our identity in our Lord Jesus Christ. If the enemy cannot rob us of our salvation, he will seek to rob us of the riches of our salvation – he will seek to blind us from the fulness of our inheritance in Jesus Christ. And let us make no mistake, this is not about us or our glory, this is about the glory of God and the blessing and salvation of others – for if we are debilitated then our witness is debilitated and muted.

 

If we ponder this passage before us, if we consider the flow of John Chapter 14, indeed of the entire Upper Room discourse, we will see that Jesus calls us to hear and see and live beyond the veil of natural hearing and seeing and understanding – “After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.”

 

We simply cannot afford to live as earth dwellers, as bottom feeders, as orphans.

 

Can we not cry out to Jesus to raise us up on the winds of the Holy Spirit? Can we not cry out to Jesus to make His words in the Upper Room a present reality to us? Can we not plead with Jesus to set us free from the bondage of our natural understanding, including our natural “religious” understanding (see 1 Cor. Chapter 2), and to transform us into His image from glory to glory? (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; Rom. 8:29 – 30).

 

“For you have not received a spirit of bondage leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons [and daughters!] by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God…” (Rom. 8:15 - 16).

 

Let us, in Christ, live as the sons and daughters of our glorious Father today – let us not deny our birthright in Jesus, let us confess our Lord Jesus and our Father and rejoice in the Holy Spirit!

 

Glory!!!!!!!