God is all-powerful; He is the Creator. But He can create and He can also delegate. He can give His power to others for them to operate.
If you know anything about delegated power, you know that’s
a very threatening thing because, you know, you have micro-managers that want
to control everything and macro-managers that just tell you, “Here’s the goal—go
get it.”
When God created all things, Colossians 1:16 says, [16]
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth,
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or
principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
He created positions to whom He delegated authority to
work and have the “powers that be” be ordained of God, explains Richard Jordan.
What delegating His authority means is He’s willing to share
of Himself with others. When you think about God as a triune God, sometimes we
just think, “He’s trinity, holy, holy, holy, big deal.”
You need to understand how important it is; we’re not
just monotheistic, believing in one God. It’s not enough to say I believe in
God; Satan’s the “god of this world.” You might be believing in the wrong one.
You need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You can’t
even believe in “christ” because the devil is a christ in Ezekiel 28. You need
to believe in the Lord’s Christ.
The trinity is the demonstration of the trustworthiness
of the godhead. If there was only one person in the godhead and He said, “This
is it and it’s it because I said so,” how would you know He’s right and you could
trust Him?
Do you just take one person’s word for anything? It would
be an arbitrary statement. If somebody said it and another person witnessed it
and said, “Yep, that’s what He said and He’s pretty consistent,” you’d question
him because you’d wonder, “Well, are you all?”
But if you had a third person, these three people in the godhead
have lived together forever. They’ve seen everything the other one has done.
And they can testify of the integrity of the other members of the godhead.
That’s a good thing when you think about it. When one
member of the godhead said something you can trust it because you’ve got two
eternal witnesses to tell you, “He’s never said something wrong. He’s always spoken
out of His goodness. He’s always been a lover. Love works no ill toward his
neighbor. You can trust Him.”
It’s not an independent statement; it’s an eternal
witness. That’s why Jesus said, “If I testify of myself my witness isn’t true,
but I’ve got others to testify of me.”
So in the triune God you’ve got the godhead, and you know
what every member of the godhead does? They all live for each other. The Father
lives to exalt the Son, the Son lives to exalt the Father and the Spirit lives
to exalt the Son. Every one of them exalts the other; they all live spontaneously
for one another.
So the life of God is not lived to see what I can get out
of it. God’s life is to give to others! That’s the way God’s life operates.
So when you talk about His omnipotence, it’s not, “Get
all I can and can all I get.” You see, He has power to share His life.
Here’s the godhead and you think, “Why in the world would
they have made creation?” Because they want to take this life that they have
and spread it out—they want to GIVE it! They’re interested in moving out with
it and they have the power to do that. And they have power to delegate because God
is love.
If we’re the church of the living God it’s because we
have a personal relationship with Him and He’s good because He’s loving.
*****
The Bible is considered the greatest love story ever
written because it is all about real people choosing to be in a real love
relationship with the Creator of the universe--the one who says of Himself,
"God is love."
For those who believe the Book includes fables, concocted
characters and made-up allegories written by men, there's nothing really real
about their love.
A best-selling Christian memoir from the past includes
this passage: “With our own love stories, every detail comes alive. Our own
love stories are so poignant, so detailed, so unforgettable—at least to us.
When it’s someone else’s love story, however, we will be polite and listen, but
usually it’s entirely forgettable. It’s like looking at someone else’s vacation
pictures. When I have skin in the game, the outcome all of a sudden matters to
me and I become engaged.”
*****
Believers are in a special type of love affair with
the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who brings God into EVERY aspect, facet,
experience, etc., of life.
I John 4:7 says, “Love is of God; and every one that
loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” That means if you don’t know God, you
don't know how to love people.
When you live in a consciousness of God’s love for you in
Christ, it gives you an insight. You’ve got the information, and when you
believe it, it becomes the energy, the life, the transforming power
down in your soul that His life then works out through you.
It’s a love that abounds in knowledge and in judgment.
It’s a mental-attitude love. It’s the capacity to look at a thing and value and
esteem it the way God does.
At a Bible conference once I was asked during the Q&A
session, “What do you find the most exciting subject in the Bible?”
For me personally it’s to stand back and look at who the
Bible says Jesus Christ is and appreciate the fact that I’m in Him and that I’m
complete in Him. He is the source of all my blessings, and the source of my
true, real identity, and He's the one I have all my status in.
You see, the thing that's so wonderful about the grace of
God is that it makes Jesus Christ everything! And the Bible
says that it pleased the Father that in Him should "all fullness dwell.” If you
asked God the Father what is to Him the most exciting subject in all the
universe, He'd say, “My Son.”
Any way you slice it, dice it, look at it, think about
it, take it apart, put it together, Jesus Christ is the apple of the Father's
eye, as Psalm 17 tells us. He's the thing that causes the Father's heart to
rejoice. He's the one.
It's mind-boggling when you look at who the Scripture
says He is. It sort of numbs your mind. It's so big, you can just never get
your arms around it.
*****
When Jesus Christ came back to earth following His death
on the Cross, He said to His disciple known as “doubting Thomas,” “Just come
and feel me so you know I’m real.”
The reason Christ is called the Word is because He’s the
manifest person of the godhead; He's the one who brings God out of the
theory—the ether and the unknown—and down into the place where He could
actually enter into your experience.
He steps out of eternity where He is and steps into His
creation and literally takes it upon Himself. And that’s something my
mind doesn't grasp! He literally joins Himself in creation to Him, and in that
unique person of all of the universe—the celebrity of all time—He becomes the
man Christ Jesus.
When you look at that, you say, “Wow, I understand what
Jeremiah's talking about back there when he writes, 'Forasmuch as there is none like
unto thee Lord.’ He's saying, 'Man, there's nobody like Him! Nobody!’
You say, “Wow, God, thou art great—who wouldn't fear
you?! Who wouldn't bow before you and say, 'You're the man!'?"
After Thomas did as Christ instructed, he cried, “My Lord
and my God,” to which Christ responded, “Thomas,
because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not
seen, and yet have believed.”
When He says, “I'm the Lord, there's none like me,” He's
saying, “There isn't any room in my heaven and earth for anybody who says he's
me. No room out there. I've been all over creation; I've looked, I've seen;
there isn't anybody like me out there.”
When John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” the statement’s saying, “I
am the ultimate ground of all being and existence. Without me, there's no
existence. Without me there's nothing.”
Paul says in Colossians that “by him all things consist.”
In Acts 17, Paul says of God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.”
How do you know there's a God? Well, how do you know who you are?!
You see, whatever you call God—whatever you name Him and
whoever He is, if He's just that “holy other” that you can't contact and don't
know who it is, like the Unknown God of the Athenians, at least you have to
recognize there has to be some grounds for existence; some reason to believe
you exist. There are great philosophers in the world who don't believe you
exist. They believe all of this is an illusion.
By the way, when Jesus said, “I am the truth,” that's
what He meant. He wasn't talking about, “I’m just always right and you're
always wrong.” He wasn't talking about truth like “two plus two equals four.”
He was talking about truth in the ultimate basic sense of the ultimate ground of ALL of our being and who we are—the essence of our being—and Christ said, “It all resides in me.” Now, there's not a sane person on the planet who would ever claim that!