Everything in the Bible is about Christ. So we have to know who He is: Christ the appointed and anointed one. The Son of God accepted from the Father – from eternity – the Messiahship, the One who would come and through whom everything would be created and in whom everything would live and to whom everything would go and then when it fell into sin, through whom everything would be redeemed: every tree, every cloud, every acre of land, every human being, every angel, except the fallen ones who have made an eternal decision. When an angel decides not to love God, it is forever. They can’t change that.
Now on that basis, John 16:15 our Lord said “All things that the Father has are Mine.” All things, not the Father but the things of the Father. When the Father brought forth continually out of Himself His Son, His only begotten, He gave Him all things that He could give Him. He gave Him the basic attributes of God, the basic capacities and faculties of a divine mind, divine emotions, divine will. He gave Him the equipment for a divine heart, divine faith, hope and love; the capacity for these things.
Love gives all that it can give but He could not force Him to exercise faith, hope and love the way the Father thought, the way the Father felt, the way the Father willed. He could not force that on His Son. He could equip Him to be God also then He had to leave it to Him to decide how He would use these things. How He would be as God too.
Love, divine love, gives everything it can give. “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.” Not only gives it but it is under the Son’s authority from now on forever, until He turns the kingdom back to the Father. Everything is under the authority of Christ, He is in charge of everything. The Father has turned it all over to Him.
THE GREATEST RISK
You see divine love risks everything too, there is a risk in this with the Father – the greatest risk that was ever taken, because when He gave these attributes of God, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, all the faculties that the Father had – He gave these to the Son; but He had to leave to the Son how He would use them.
Let us just take the one capacity for love. Love certainly can’t be forced on someone. Someone has to be willing to receive it and to return it. The Son could not be a robot and the Father just put everything of Himself on the Son. No, love requires a willing response. But the Son had to be free to decide what sort of lifestyle He was going to have, if I may say it that way, what sort of lifestyle as the Son of God. How He would love His Father in return, in His way of thinking what was best to do. That was the question and on His decision, the greatest decision that was ever made, rested the future of God and of creation, everything, God included, rested upon the decision the Son would make. And I cannot tell you how He made the decision, perhaps we will know some day, perhaps it is too great a thing for mortals to know, even resurrected mortals.
If He chose to be God in the way that He thought best as the Father’s Son, the source of love and divine life and light would be forever confined to the Father because the Father had chosen to put all things into the hands of the Son.
THE ISSUE IS THE SAME TODAY
The issue was between the things of God and God. Between the gifts of God and a relationship with the Father. That is the question for you and me. That was the question for the angels, every angel had to make that decision between loving the gifts and using them as they thought best – that is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or saying, “God I want to be with You, I want to know You. You are worth more than all Your gifts.”
Luke 10:22 No deeper scripture is in the Bible than Luke 10:22 – “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, (do you know why? Because the Son is hidden in the Father) and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
This is that intimate fellowship that has been forever because Christ chose that above everything.
Philippians 2:6 & 7, really beginning in verse 5 – Have this (mind or) attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, (it is not “was” in Christ Jesus in this translation it is; “is” in Christ Jesus forever) who, although He existed in the form of God, (that is to say, He was God too) did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, (He was equal to His Father but is was not something that He took and used Himself) but emptied Himself, (denied Himself and said, “I will not express Myself as the Son of God but rather, I will receive all that You can give Me Father so that I can express You and I Myself choose a hidden relationship with You Father because I want to know You and continue to go on knowing You and You knowing Me. I want You Father. You are worth infinitely more than these precious divine gifts that make up God.”) Emptied Himself taking the form of a bond-servant.
WHAT SORT OF BOND-SERVANT?
That is what He did in eternity, when He made His decision. Not a bond-slave, a servile bond-slave that does medial things. Not that kind, but with the heart of a bond-slave who willingly for loves sake, sets aside his own things in order that he may live by His master. Live as His master lives, be known as His master is known.
There is a scripture back in Exodus 21 beginning in verse 2. God in Exodus 20 has given the ten commandments saying, “Do you know what the first ordinance that He gave after the ten commandments? The first ordinance after the ten commandments is “If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment. Well that is a funny thing isn’t it. That is the first ordinance. Verse 2, On the seventh year he must be set free. Every slave, every Hebrew that you have enslaved and many had to indenture themselves because of debts and so forth, to be slaves.
“But (in verse 5) if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out as a free man,’ (not freed, he was free to be, to go and have his own life now. He says, “No my freedom, is to continue as a slave for loves sake because I love my master and my family,” and that is what Jesus did. As Christ, the eternal Son of God) then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently. He will listen only to his master, out of loves sake now, not because he was a slave, he is free! He stays on as a free man but with the heart of a bond servant.
Who is this ordinance talking about, of course it is talking about Christ, that is why it is the first one.
If the Son of God had not made this stupendous, limitless decision to seek nothing of His own and to be satisfied with living hidden in His Father, in order that He might hear His Fathers heartbeat and hear what His Father was saying and let it be said through Him, through Christ. And what the Father wanted and planned and hoped for, so that He could do those things and please His Father in every way, if He had not done that, we would not know of the love of the Father and you and I probably would not be here today. There would be no creation because there would be two Gods; the Father and His Son – who was a different kind of God than His Father. And there would not be the absolute perfect unity between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as there is.
THE RULE OF DIVINE LOVE
So the divine love must rule, expanded because the divine love is the person of the Father and, of course, Divine love is alive and there is no end to divine love filling a limitless universe. There is no limit to the love of God and He will fill the New Heaven and the New Earth forever.
Take that scripture Ephesians 3, that’s what it means, Ephesians 3:18 and 19, Paul prays “I want you to be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,” (of the love of God. Four dimensions, not just length, breath and height. That fourth dimension is a living dimension, it moves, it expands and Christ through His decision, set it free.) and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
That’s the decision, there is only one truth; and that truth is in Christ Jesus. One truth; that we can only live by dying to ourselves because human beings were created to live by the life of God. Now we don’t have any trouble “existing” but “to live”, we must die to ourselves, as Christ did from eternity and we were created in His image were we not? So, as He is, so are we. As He lives so are we to live.
