Why did Jesus Christ pray to the Father when He was the God Himself?

      We can see Jesus praying to the Father, why does He have to pray if He is God Himself?

 

Matt 14.23

Standing in the position of man (Mat 4.4), the heavenly King, as the beloved Son of the Father (3.17) needed to pray privately to His Father who was in the heavens, that He might be one with the Father and have the Father with Him in whatever He did on the earth for establishing of the kingdom of the heavens.  He did this not in the deserted place but on the mountain, leaving all the people, even His disciples, that He might be alone to contact the Father. 

 

Mark 1.35

To fellowship with God, seeking God’s will and pleasure for His gospel service.  The Slave-Savior performed the evangelistic service not by Himself, independent of God and according to His own will, but according to God’s will and pleasure by being one with God to fulfill His purpose

 

Again in Matt 4, we see Jesus was led up into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil.  As the Son of God, Satan cannot stand against Him to challenge, but as the Son of man, The Lord Jesus intended to follow every human limitations to make His life, death and resurrection a successful mission.  In Matt 4.3, we read that the newly anointed King fasted in His humanity, standing on the ground of man.  On the other hand, He was also the Son of God as God the Father had declared at Christ’s baptism (3.17).  Thus under this criteria, He had to accomplish His ministry for the kingdom of the heavens.  He had to defeat God’s enemy, the devil, Satan as a man as He was the sacrificial Lamb of God for the redemption of Mankind.  Hence, He stood as the Son of man to confront the enemy of God.  The devil knowing this clearly tempted the Lord time and again to leave the standing of man and assume His position as the Son of God.  At the start of the forty days wilderness period, the subtle tempter took the declaration of God the Father that Jesus was His beloved Son to be the ground to tempt Him.  If Christ had assumed His position as the Son of God before the enemy, He would have lost the criteria to defeat Him and save His creation. 

 

Later we read that on many occasions, the evil spirits tried to expose the Lord as the Son of God.  However, Christ’s mission was to accomplish where the first Adam failed by becoming the Second Adam.  As the Second Adam, He submitted to every human limitation, endured trials, and prayed as a man on earth.  This also set a pattern for us today in our walk with God to be like Him. 

 

Summary

Jesus praying doesn’t diminish His glory, but as the incarnation of God on earth, His mission was to accomplish what we couldn’t due to the Law.  He stood on the grounds of human limitation and thus prayed within that limited premise to know the will of God the Father and go on with His mission.

Need for Christ's Crucifixion?

          Why was their the need for Christ’s crucifixion when God can forgive the sins of the people from His throne itself?

a)      God is an all powerful, infinite Being perfect in everything and there is none like Him.  All the positive things that we can think about, God possesses that attribute in perfection.  For example, let us consider love; everybody loves, but God’s love is perfect and infinite.  Among all the attributes of a divine Being, love, mercy and righteousness are three major attributes in my understanding.  If God can forgive any sins of men, then he is infinitely merciful, but if the sins are not dealt with justice or compensated, then though God is merciful, He is compromising with His perfect righteousness.  For a just and perfect God, He cannot forgive sins and overlook it by simply commanding it from His throne in heaven.  Having said that we know that our God is an infinitely loving Being.  In the Old Testament, we can see time and again, that our God is rigid against sins like disobedience, idol worship etc.  He is uncompromising and deals harshly with people who have sinned.  He simply cannot overlook the sins, because of His perfect nature.  Christ’s life, death and resurrection are crucial steps for our God to be perfect in all aspects.  With the crucifixion of the Son, God can love and show mercy to sinners without compromising His perfect righteousness, because every sin was paid by the blood of the Lamb.  God can now be merciful and at same time uphold His perfect righteousness.  The fact that our God came in the flesh, lowered Himself to our level and suffered and later rose again, shows us His perfect love for His creation.  Thus Christ’s crucifixion is also a requirement of our infinitely righteous, infinitely merciful and infinitely loving God to deal with His creation.

b)      We understand from the Bible, the Second Person of the Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ was from the beginning (John 1.1).  However, He took on flesh and manifested to us in the old creation as the Second Adam.  In His resurrection, He became the firstborn Son, which means there will be many more sons to follow Him.  Hallelujah.  This happened after His resurrection.  Now, we in this age needs to be in the resurrected Christ to become the brothers of Christ.  This corporate entity will culminate into the final glorious New Jerusalem (Rev 21.2) which will be the bride of Christ.  The whole point of the Lord’s life and death is to produce the New entity the church which will issue in the New Jerusalem, which will be the partner of the Lord for eternity.  Again, we can see that the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ is accomplishing this.  Hallelujah to the wisdom of the Lord.

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Love is Living

Love is a Living Being

Bible Reading 1 Cor 13:4- 13:7

We see the true definition of Love in the above Bible passage.  Among the greatest of all gifts of the Spirit, Love has the first place.  Instead of looking at Love as one of the characteristics of a good Person, we should understand Love as a living being.  The phrase, 'God is Love and in love He had created everything' is familiar to us which explains love as the Person of God.  We need to be imitators of this love, which means we should become love to love others.  

In the beginning of the verse from the above passage, we read 'Love suffers long.  Love is kind; it is not jealous.  Love does not brag and is not puffed up;.....This makes sense, when we look at Love as a living entity.  Love itself has characteristics of its own.  It makes even greater sense when we replace the word love with our names.  Understand the above portion of the scripture by replacing your names with the word 'Love'.  This is what you should aim to achieve in the Lord in your Christian life.  

Do not love others with your natural love which will sooner or later is destined to fail.  Love others with Jesus Christ, who is the Love of God.  When we love others with the Love of God, it will never fail and we will bring glory to God.  Under such a setup, the demands of the love as mentioned in the verse, will not be a burden to us, but it will be so natural to us that we will not feel even the slightest pain.  Such a love will be flowing from a Christ filled life effortlessly as a natural response.  The bottom line is that we should aim to gain more Christ which will result in a natural flowing of pure love like fountains of cool spring in an arid desert from us.  Hallelujah.

God's residence is the Glorious Church

The Church is the foretaste of the coming Kingdom of God.  It is the most precious living entity on Earth today and we are fortunate to be part of it.  When the church gathers, the Lord is in her midst (Matt 18:20).  This shouldn't be a mere assumption or a vague idea, but rather, the fact that the living God is in our midst like every person gathered in the name of Lord should be our firm belief.  But, most often we search the altar, or ponder over some message to vaguely feel the presence of God and in reality living Christ is in our midst. 

Church is the right setup to experience the presence of God where saints gather to glorify God and help others to glorify God effectively.  There is no other place on earth where one can experience Him richly.  When I attend the church, my focus is not on the material, physical stuff, but the invisible but definite presence of God.  The physical and material things are nothing but expressions to worship God in the spirit.  He is not even at a distance from me as far as the altar, but He is near me and He is in my spirit.  These words should not be a mere soothsaying, or an objective wish, but rather, a real experience because it is the truth.  

When we see the church as an Entity which is already in the Heaven (Eph 2:6), we will start appreciating it because the Lord is in her midst.  We know that God resides in an inexpressible glory, in the middle of an unapproachable light (1 Tim 6:16).  When God is among the people who have gathered in his name, He is in such a glorious state.  If only we have a vision of the glory that we are participating, we will lead our church life with a joyous trembling as we are experiencing something that is more real and meaningful than our own lives.  When we fail to see the true vision of the church, we would engage with the fellow believers in a careless, evil and in a futile worldly way.  Our conduct in the church is not a matter of being an exemplary, rather respecting the presence of God in a real way.  May God grant us the vision of the church life and how much He has blessed us to become part of His holy Church.  Hallelujah for the church life.   

Our Living is Our Building

Bible reading:  I Corinthians 3:11-15

11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13 each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. 14 If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

The above portion of the scripture clearly indicates that we are buildings of God under construction, which summarizes our whole lives in a nut shell.  To begin with, we have been given the same foundation, which is our Lord Jesus Christ, and apart from Him, there is nothing.  This foundation is the basic gift given to all of us by God who has predestined us to be His chosen ones.  Now, believe it or not, we are building on this foundation daily no matter what our spiritual conditions are at present.  Some are faithful; some are worldly; some are outwardly while a few others are deep and genuine in their relationships with God.  Therefore, no matter what our descriptions as believers in the Lord are, we are building our lives daily.  While the faithful and spiritual ones are building with Gold, silver and precious stones, the worldly and outward Christians are building with wood, hay and straw.  This will continue until the DAY of the Lord will dawn upon the world suddenly.  This Day will be dreadful, as it will be revealed by the testing fire which will put to test our buildings, which we had built throughout our lives.  The works that endure this testing will receive rewards and the ones with works of wood, hay and straw will be destroyed by the testing fire and they will suffer loss.  Don't consider this loss as a small one.  In fact, when the Holy word of God mentions it as a loss, then it will be hurtful indeed.  Imagine when we lose something precious, how bad we feel about it and as time passes by, say a few months or years later, we may find the pain had eased out.  However, the loss that is mentioned in the verse is a devastating one and we are spared narrowly by this fire.  We may think about the people who had survived severe burns in fire accidents and how sorrowful their tales are.  

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, dread the Day of the Lord which will bring with it a testing fire.  However, I am going to give you some good news.  You have an opportunity here, to alter your lives, to build it properly now, since there is a little time left.  Make sure that we get up every day and be mindful of our foundation, Jesus Christ, and the manner in which we need to built upon.  Hallelujah.   

Grace - meaning & its application in life

>> What is Grace?  Is it a license to Sin?

Rom 6:1-10, Gal 2:20, Col 2:12

There is quite a lot of buzz about this word, ‘Grace’ in the Christian world.  The word ‘Grace’ means experiencing God in Jesus Christ in our lives.  Grace is Jesus Christ dying in our stead, thus we are at peace with the Almighty.  It is something that we received freely.  It is not a license to sin, but rather a provision to lead a holy life.  When I was explaining the meaning of grace years ago to a brother, he was offended thinking that I am proposing some kind of restrictions akin to law.  That was a shallow understanding.  Law has been fulfilled by the Lord Jesus and now we are not in the Law which is the oldness of letter (Rom 7:6), but rather we have been discharged from Law and now we need to serve the Lord in newness of spirit (Rom 7:6). 

We are born in the old man which is the realm of the first Adam.  Then one day we believed in the Lord and proceeded to receive baptism.  This baptism into Christ is, in reality, a baptism into Christ’s death.  We have been buried with Him through the baptism because in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we might walk in the newness of life.  If somebody says to you, ‘brother, you took baptism in the Lord, so you ought to walk in the newness of life’, then do not be offended because it is not law.  When we have grown with Him in the likeness of His death, indeed we will also be in the likeness of His resurrection.  So walking in the newness of life is grace.  I request all the brothers and sisters to understand this deeply, - 'Grace is experiencing God in Christ and this is possible when we walk in the newness of life.’  Gal 2:20 says, ‘I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.’  Is it Law?  Absolutely not, this is the newness.  Grace does not mean that you can keep sinning because Christ has paid the price for your sins that have been committed and will be committed in the future.  Yes, it is paid in full and then some.  It is the perfect sacrifice to the satisfaction of God.  Therefore, Grace is our reaction to this perfect sacrifice on our behalf by the Lord Jesus Christ. 

How can we walk in the newness of life?

Knowing that our old man has been crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves (Rom 6:6).  Have you come across anywhere written in the Bible that you are free to go around and sin without inhibitions, as the Lord Jesus Christ had died in your stead?  No!  We need to believe that in our baptism, our old man has been crucified with the Lord and we are no longer slaves of sin.  We are free in the Lord and we have newness in life and a responsibility to walk in it.  Further, since we believe that we have been crucified with the Lord, we also believe that we will live with Him.  For the death that the Lord died to sin was once and for all; but the life which He lives, He lives to God.  Hence, we who are in the resurrection of the Lord, live our lives to God.  This is Grace.  Amen.