Purchased possession

“If the moment you got saved God gave you your resurrection body, where would you have to be?” Jordan reasons. “You’d have to be in heaven! Because II Corinthians 5 says you’re going to get a body eternal in the heavens. So when you get that body, you’re going to be up there.

“So if the moment you got saved He gave you that and you’re up there, what would happen to the ministry the Body of Christ down here? Well, you wouldn’t have gotten saved because the guy who gave you the gospel wouldn’t have been there to give you the gospel because he’d be in heaven!

“That’s why we suffer and travaileth in pain together with all of creation. Not because God doesn’t love us.

“You are His purchased possession, but He just hasn’t finished the work on you, so you’re in that little limbo period in there. That's why He says ‘as those alive from the dead.’ If you are a LIVING sacrifice, wouldn’t you be the walking dead?

“It’s an understanding of this identity God has given you and you ‘present your body’; you take the life that’s in you and say, ‘Lord, I’m going to use my body in the reality of who I really am. I’m a living sacrifice.’

*****

When Jesus was 12 years old and had just returned with His parents to Nazareth following His visit to the temple, Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”

 

Jordan observes, “If He increased in wisdom there must have been some wisdom He didn’t have before then. That’s kind of shocking. The answer is in Hebrews 5:8-9: ‘Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.’

 

“How was He perfected? Well, He learned in His experience what obedience was. You see that contrast? ‘Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience.’ He’s God but He’s also man and it’s His humanity that had to be educated, not His deity.”

 

*****

 

In Philippians 2, Paul tells us that while Christ “thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”

 

Jordan says, “There’s no question about the deity of Christ, but there’s something in this passage that allows you and me to come in contact with deity in a way we couldn’t otherwise do.

 

“It says, ‘But he made himself of no reputation.’ I love that. The first way you think like God thinks is you don’t make yourself of any reputation.

 

“Jesus was right; He was never wrong. He never did anything to offend anyone but when people were offensive to Him He could have stood and said, ‘You got no right!’ but He never did that. He never defended Himself against evil accusations. It says, ‘As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’

 

“He didn’t take His reputation and say, ‘I’ve got to be proven right.’ He said, ‘I didn’t come for that.’ He made himself of no reputation but took upon Him the form of a servant.

 

“Notice the verbs. He MADE himself and TOOK upon Him. Nobody forced Him to do this. Jesus Christ—now get this terminology in your mind—voluntarily of His own free will laid aside the free and independent exercise of all of His attributes as God.

 

“He purposely chose to live as ‘the man Christ Jesus’ in absolutely complete total dependence on what His Father told Him.

 

“He doesn’t know everything. Here’s God the Son, who has all the infinite knowledge of God—knows everything God the Father knows, everything God the Holy Spirit knows, everything they planned—but in order to be your Savior, in order for that Word . . . that expression of God to become flesh, He made a choice. He made himself of no reputation. He said, ‘I’ll not use my personal attributes.’

 

“He willingly chose to be a servant and one of the characteristics of a servant is He does not know everything there is know about the master’s plan. He’s going to live in total dependence on what the master tells Him.”