Remaining Blessedly Unoffended

"Blessed is he who is not offended at me." is Jesus' reply to a disallusioned, suffering, isolated man; a man who had served the Lord faithfully, and even more... a man who was suffering because of following the Lord. (Matt. 11:5-15)


Jesus was healing multitudes of unbelievers. "The blind see, the deaf hear, the poor are hearing the good news." But seeing and hearing Jesus do these things for others didn't change the situation he was in. He was still sitting alone in his darkness, seeking assurance, asking Jesus "Are you the savior I was waiting for, or should I look elsewhere?" But for this faithful suffering follower, Jesus would do nothing. He would send him only this word, "Blessed are you if you are not offended at me in the way I handle your life." This is a difficult test that those who follow the Lord must sometimes face.

How can we put this in perspective? First, we must realise that the whole of the Christian life is found in remaining in our union with Jesus Christ. Our Lord was crusified and raised in order to become a "life giving spirit" 1 Cor. 15; in other words, Jesus is now our indwelling source of spiritual life, making us partakers of the divine nature. Our entire Christian life consists in practically participating in the indwelling life of Christ to share that life with others.

What is more, God now handles our life for this one all consuming purpose: that we who posses the indestructible eternal life of Christ within us may be conformed to His glorious image by practically living in our spiritual union with Christ. Year by year, month by month, day by day, even moment by moment, God is hand picking our circumstances and handling our lives for this one purpose. Which means this: Everything in our lives is working FOR our practical communion with Christ and the display of that life for His glory... not against it.



So what's our problem? I would suggest two things, that are closely related: 1) We don't live by the Spirit. We don't abide in our spiritual union with Christ crying, "Abba, Father". 2) We develop reasonable expectations of how God should treat us because we are his children. The offense surfaces in a multitude of ways: "If I were truly saved, this wouldn't happen to me..." or "I must have missed God's will when I married him, or our marraige wouldn't be like this", or "How could God allow that to happen to me?" or "I know God heals, but why isn't He healing me?", etc. The troubling thing is, all our offenses can seem reasonable, at least to our mind, so it's very important that we understand the heart and ways of our heavenly Father.

God's word to us in every trouble is this, "I AM GOD. I have ways and purposes that do not center around you individually. I am with you and am using even your sufferings to reveal my glory. I am aware of your suffering and pain. I take no delight in the pain, but take great delight in the union of love we share that is so powerfully displayed as you wait for me. I know you have questions and expectations of me I haven't met. Here's my word to you. Surrender your expectations of me to act according to your plans. Trust in me. Cling only to me and relinguish your expecations and evaluation of me. But only remain in your union with me; believe that I AM WHO I SAY I AM; do not take offense at my dealings in your life... and you WILL be blessed! I am working for your blessing, now and forever. Believe that."

Like any good parent, God does not hesitate to act for our own good, even when that good purpose means allowing cold, dark, isolating circumstances with only a word, "Blessed is he who is not offended at me." What parent doesn't have to offend their children out of love... even if they kick and scream?

After we've made the journey into discovering how to live in union with Christ, our great temptation is to refuse to relinguish expectations, to take offense at man and God.(Remember, it is God who directs the afairs of men. Don't forget that John was in prison because a man put him there. John expected this, but what he was having difficulties with what that and Christ Jesus himself was leaving him in prison for now.) We all need eyes to see that only from the vantage point of the cross and ressurection and our eternal glory with Christ can our present circumstances make sense. We need a living faith to embrace our life in ETERNITY in the midst of our temporal circumstances. If we will simply "humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, casting all our anxiety upon Him, because He cares for us" and get out of our fleshly reasonings and grumblings by taking our stand with the Spirit, and cry, "Abba, Father" until that attitude of trust, love, surrender, hope, and fellowship saturate our vision of life, we will indeed be blessed, unoffended and abiding in Christ.

God's vision of the Chrisitian life for us is eternal fellowship in union with Christ. We can partake of that even now no matter what circumstances we may find ourselves in by taking our stand in our union with Christ and crying "Abba, Father". As we do so, we will experience the witness of the Spirit in our spirit confirming our sonship with God, which thereby allows us to have the practical enjoyment that we have become heirs of God and coheirs with Christ. We will have this blessed fulness of heart... if we suffer together with Him. Saint, don't suffer apart from Christ. Give up your offenses at God's handling of your life. Surrender your unmet expectations. If the hand of God has allowed suffering in your life, suffer together with Christ that you may have the "fellowship of sharing in His sufferings." We must trust God in our sufferings and seek to find Him in fellowship in the midst of them.

God is ruling over our circumstances and working in them to make us like Christ. We follow a Lord who went to the cross and requires us to join Him on that road. The question for us is "Are you offended at Him?" Beloved, "Blessed is he who is not offended." Amen.

The Cross and the Highjacked Planet- A meditation on 2 Cor 5:17

Imagine, if you would, that you have the great privilege of viewing human history from the vantage point of an angel from near the throne of God. As you take a moment to scan the horizon of the material world, you glance across the myriads of galaxies to behold the vast display of the glory of the Creator. With your angelic vision, distance is irrelevant. Whatever you fix your gaze upon becomes immediately present.

The worship turns to uneasy concern when, in a medium sized swirling galaxy, rotating around one of it's less significant stars, you notice a small, pea sized planet that is dramatically out of step with the the rest of the universe and the Throne Room of Heaven... something you've never imagined was possible until now... something in God's creation not doing His will. Unthinkable! Unimaginable!

It turns out that this planet had a pilot, a guide and director made to represent God Himself, who was given a charted course to lead the planet into the most beautiful display of the glory of God. But something went terribly wrong. The planet was secretly boarded by malicious hijackers. The pilot initially resisted the hijackers, but somehow it seems that the hijackers actually enlisted the pilot to willingly join in their suicidal rebellion against their Sovereign Creator. The pilot and the planet were hijacked by the enemies of God.

The course of the planet was now horribly clear. The hijackers intended to use the planet to fly directly into the very Throne of God, turning the planet and all it's passengers into a missile aimed at eliminating the good rule and direction of the Lord in His own creation. What's worse, it seems, at least from your angelic perspective, that nothing could be done to stop this wicked attack. God's own appointed ruler for this planet had betrayed the Lord, the passengers, and the planet.

To your angelic mind, there seems to be no resolution. God however is not limited to angelic ways of thinking. As you ponder the horrible possibility of this evil challenge to the authority of God, you look back to the hijacked planet and see a most inexplicable wonder; the Son of God has gotten on board the runaway planet as one of the passengers.

To the other passengers, He appeared as one of their own. But inside this passenger lived the Son of God. As it turns out, although no one had fully realized, the Lord God Almighty had created the passengers unlike any other life form. They were created to contain Him. So it was possible for the Divine Son of God to place all of His Divine life inside the material world inside of one of these passengers. This unique passenger's name was Jesus Christ.

Once on board starting from the rear of the planet, He immediately walks straight to the cockpit. All the hijackers recognize that a new pilot had arrived. The gig was up. When He took control of the cockpit, what do you think He might do? You may be surprised. Instead of stearing the planet back onto the original coarse, the glorious Lord plunges the planet straight down into the ground, terminating everything that ever opposed the will of the Lord- the original pilot and all the passengers, the hijackers, and all the wickedness that lived in their hearts- gone forever in an explosion of fire and putrid black smoke. In His own death, as the pilot, the entire planet died. The old creation had passed away.

But after a short time, something wonderful happens. Up from the ashes of the newly destroyed creation, the Lord of Glory rises up. Unlike the wicked hijackers and the passengers, the Lord of Glory had the power of an "indestructible life". But now, the Lord was somehow different. At first it wasn't clear how, but then you recognize it. He's still one of them... He's not only divine, but He is a raised and transformed passenger. He is forever part of the creation as a passenger. Yet now, His divine glory, instead of being veiled was fully manifest through His passenger life form. The creator had become one with the creature. Creation? Yes, but a new creation made out of the resurrected life of the Son of God.

But a closer look reveals there is still more. Could it be possible? What looked at first to be the singular reemergence of the glorious Son of God from the wreckage of the old creation, become clearly something more. Yes, it was the Glorious Son of God shining through His passenger life form... but not just His own passenger life. Because the new pilot entered the planet from the back, as He made his way forward to the cockpit, he touched passengers from every row. Though it was not plain to the eye, in His touch, He was planting the seed of His indestructible life inside of other passengers. Now, because His life was placed inside of them, there now appeared in Him hundreds of thousands of passengers raised up in His indestructible life. His divine glory is now being displayed in myriads of passengers raised up in a corporate display of the awesome beauty of the divine life of the Son of God.

Then, from the depths of the Son of God and innermost being of all those sharing His life, one unified shout arose that reverberates eternally in the ears of angels and saints alike, "If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation! Behold, the old is gone and the new has come!"
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The Lord Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, cleansed the leper, made the blind see and the deaf hear. Most however misunderstand the meanings of the miraculous; then and now. Many then and many today chase Jesus with the misconception that He came into this world to fix our old lives and make them better.

What does Jesus say? Less than a week before His death, a group of Gentiles asked to see Jesus. He responded in a peculiar way. He said, "Now has the hour come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." John 12:23-24. Do you realise what Jesus is saying?

Here is the eternal Son of God, having lived on the earth for over 30 years, having healed multitudes, having raised at least 4 people from the dead, having taught in such power that even His enemies were silenced. And Yet our Lord looks back on His entire ministry and says that up till now He is FRUITLESS. Why? He alone was dwelling in the eternal life of the Father. He would have to die to give that life to others. His miracles were simply signs of the Life He was dying to put inside of us; the indestructible, saving divine Life of Jesus Christ.

When He died, He died as the head of the old humanity. He was the Last Adam. In the eyes of God, Adam's race ended on the cross of Christ. The death sentence for the race who conspired to hijack the planet earth was fully carried out. God's solution for the old creation was the cross.
Jesus Christ did not chose to fix the old creation with His power, but to use His power to carry it up to the cross and terminate it that it may not linger on in God's eyes forever. When taunted, "Come down off that cross and we will believe in you" Jesus continued to hang there until His work was finished. Rather than come down and rule in the old creation He chose to rule over the old creation in the New Creation.

We who believe in Christ have been placed into His death to this creation. We are now raised up with Him. The new creation race is a resurrection race. We now posses resurrection life in Jesus Christ who dwells within us. That life is a life of righteousness, holiness, joy and peace which flows from fellowship with the Father. Although our Father does still heal and give signs and wonders, we err to think His purpose is ever to fix the old life. His healing wonders are signs of a new creation, pointing us away from the temporal towards the eternal. God has no intention to fix what He has already terminated. He does His work in accordance with His work at the cross, not in contradiction to it. So too now, we who know the Lord and posses His life ought to more fully cooperate with that Life, praising and thanking our Father who has loved us with such gracious love. We should be wholehearted to press on to know Christ, and Him crucified as our very own life as we live in the power of His resurrection and sharing in the fellowship of His sufferings. The grain of wheat has died that He may not live alone in the bosom of the Father, but that we may join Him in His life there. Let us then live in union with Him.