To be loved this way . . .

Galatians 2: [20] I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

[21] I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

This life that we call the "Christian life" ("Christ who is our life") is a life of dependency. It’s the only life of dependency that really makes any sense and it’s the true cling of dependency. Everything else is just trying to counterfeit for the true, for the real.

In our makeup, in the way God made us, there's a part of us designed to know Him, and when that part doesn’t function, there’s an empty place.

God put in us a knowledge of Him; a place for Him. Romans 1:20 says, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”

You’ve got the information and when you really BELIEVE it, it becomes the energy and the life and the transforming power down in your soul that His life then works out through you, explains Richard Jordan.

God says, "Get yourself out of the way and I WILL love them through you, but it isn’t your love that’s the issue. It’s MY love and, by the way, it’s my love for you."

When you get loved that way, and you realize how you love that way, you begin to love back. And you begin to think like He thinks.

You begin to love the things He loves, not because you have to; He just begins to love them through you, and you begin to think about them the way He thinks about them and you know what, that’s what love is!

All you are is the fruit-bearer and He’s the fruit-producer. It’s an interesting thing about fruit. Fruit is seasonal. It’s not always on the tree. But it’s constant. It comes back every season.

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In John 4, Jesus Christ informs the woman at the well that it isn’t about religion and outward stuff. He says, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

When the Bible says you’re going to worship God and the essence of God, the idea is He’s a Spirit. You’re not going to know Him in the physical realm. So a fool, somebody who thinks that all there is the physical, material world to relate to, says, ‘There is no God!’

Because God is a spirit, in order to be qualified to work with Him you have to connect with Him at that level.

What the New Covenant does is it brings us the spiritual qualification; the spiritual status whereby we can work with God, who is a spirit. When you work with Him, that’s where it ALL has to start!!

Paul says in Ephesians 3:16: "That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man."

That word "might" Paul uses there is the same word as the verse that says, "Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ."

You see, the powerful working of the power of God in your life . . . Paul tells the Thessalonians to do the work of faith with power, but that’s a spiritual power in your inner man. It’s not moving cold fronts and snowstorms kind of stuff. And it’s not coming in and zapping you and making your hair stand up on end.

There’s this inner working of the power of God, but all of that is according to a plan called "wisdom," and God’s essence works together with all that.

When you understand the essence of God, then you understand Jesus Christ is God the Son, the second person of the godhead, who took upon Him the essence of man--spirit, soul and body-- and holds each together in one person. That’s our contact point.

Our point of contact with God, when you think of His essences, is not His love; it’s His justice. We think of God’s love like our love, and it isn’t like our love. God’s love is the motivator of His other essences, and it’s the love of God that motivated the justice of God to develop a plan.

When you think of salvation, justification and our redemption in Christ Jesus, and you begin to watch the different essences of God work together, His love motivates God. It motivated His omniscience; God’s all-knowingness.

Omniscience is His wisdom. He has perfect wisdom, so God’s love motivates His wisdom to devise a wise plan of redemption and reconciliation and restoration. His justice is going to be motivated to develop a plan whereby lost, sinful man can be restored. The plan is called grace.