Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone should be loving Me, he will be keeping My word, and My Father will be loving him, and We shall be coming to him and making an abode with him"
Johns Account 14: 23, Concordant New Testament
At first I thought that my own realization of Christ in me was a bit hard to handle, and it was. I grew up surrounded by the mainstream church narrative where I learned from a young age that I was still a sinner, and that the love of God could be conditional. If I didn't pray enough, behave well enough or think bad thoughts, I was taught that my salvation in the Lord could be question. That's right, the very same God who had loved me so much that He sent His Son for the forgiveness of my sins could in the blink of an eye disavow His love and dispatch me to hell. There were many times that I even wondered, what kind of love is this? That was the environment which I grew up in. In what I would later recognize as the church separation theology. That it is our own sin which keeps us from close communion with God. It is this theology which I now recognize for what it truly is, the lie spoken by the mainstream church. I'm sure that it is this theology which made it that much more difficult to understand the truth of God's love for me. Not only that He would dispatch His Son for me, but that He would create me in His likeness {Genesis 1:27}. When I read the words spoken by the apostle Paul I began to understand the depth of His love for me. It is Paul who speaks to Christ dying to sin "Once for all time" {Paul to the Romans 6:10}. Jesus did not give Himself to death on the cross that sin would continue to abound in spite of His sacrifice. We must begin to accept the truth that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins past, present and future. THAT is the truth of the gospel of Christ. Once we are aware of this, it makes it that much easier to understand that special place where the Father chooses to make His home. That is in His children, in us {Johns Account 14:23}. It is Jesus who has spoken to our union life in the Father {Johns Account 14:20}. But more than that is the truth that His home in within us. This is where God chooses to call His home.
In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you
Johns Account 14: 20, Concordant New Testament
I think of the damage which the mainstream church has done to the beliefs of others and I cringe. I've written that many believers often see their own sin as the main stumbling block to an intimate relationship with the Father. Yet God has done away with that through the willing sacrifice of Christ {Paul to the Corinthians (2) 5:21}. Indeed, God took He Who was sinless and made Him to suffer the penalty of our iniquities. This He has done out of His love for us. In a perfect world, all would recognize this and rejoice in the truth of Gods love. But this hasn't been the case. For there continue to be those who will blindly follow the separation theology spoken by those within the church. One of the most damning statements which I've heard regarding the church came from author J Preston Eby. It is Eby who connected the passage we see in Revelation 18:4 as the Lords call for His children to come out of the mainstream church {The Unveiling of Christ Jesus 18:4}. After all, what is the church but that which has been created and propped up over the centuries by man himself. We know that God does not make His home in our places of worship {Acts of the Apostles 17:24-25}. His true home, that place where God chooses to be above all else in within His children. Within us. No longer burdened by sin, but living within those whom He created in His very likeness. This is where He has chosen to call home.
~Scott~
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