Angelic Conflict part 302: Reigning in life – Rom 5:20-21; Eph 1:18-23; 2:4-7; 3:1-11; 14-19; 4:11-13; Isa 6:1-8; Ecc 1:2-3; 12:13-14.

Title: Angelic Conflict part 302: Reigning in life - ROM 5:20-21; EPH 1:18-23; 2:4-7; 3:1-11; 14-19; 4:11-13; ISA 6:1-8; ECC 1:2-3; 12:13-14.

 

 

ROM 5:20 And the Law came in that the transgression might increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

 

A fourth motive for superabounding grace is that the Church completes or is the fullness of Christ.

 

EPH 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

 

EPH 1:19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might

 

EPH 1:20 which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,

 

EPH 1:21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

 

EPH 1:22 And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,

 

EPH 1:23 which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all.

 

A royal King without a bride is not complete. The Church is His bride.

 

This in no way indicates that Christ needs us, for on the contrary, it is us who needs Him. But it does indicate, for example, that a Savior is fulfilled when one is saved through Him. A vine is fulfilled by a great harvest of fruit, yet the fruit completely depends on the vine. The vine could be fantastic and healthy, but if there are no branches, there is no fruit, but it is the vine that gives the branches value, the branches do not contribute to the vine. The Father is the vinedresser and Christ is the vine and they are both perfect and spectacular and need no one, but the wine they make together would be the fullness of their perfection and direct proof of their love and grace.

 

No human or earthly analogy is perfect since they are finite and flawed, but they help us to visualize something infinite and full of amazing grace. The Church is the fullness of Him, the Head, and He fills the Church, His body. We simply accept this by faith.

 

A King of kings without a royal family is not complete. The Church is His royal family.

 

A King who wishes to represent Himself but has no ambassadors is not complete. The Church is His earthly witness.

 

A gracious King who desires to give gifts but has not recipients is not complete. The Church is co-heir with Christ.

 

We could go on with more of  the same. The High Priest without priests is the only Priest. The King without a kingdom is alone and no one receives the benefit of His rule. A cornerstone without walls is just a stone and not a structure as is a foundation alone without a building. Christ is perfect and victorious as all these things and the Church is the manifestation of that perfection and victory.
 

What amazing grace is implied when it is stated that Christ is not complete without His Church.

 

EPH 1:22 And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,

 

EPH 1:23 which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all.

 

The Church has received His fulness.

 

JOH 1:16-17

For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

 

COL 2:9-10

For in Him all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete [pleroo = full], and He is the head over all rule and authority

 

The mature believer will be filled up with all the fulness of God and Christ:

 

EPH 3:14 For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father,

 

EPH 3:15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,

 

EPH 3:16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;

 

EPH 3:17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

 

EPH 3:18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

 

EPH 3:19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

 

EPH 4:11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,

 

EPH 4:12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;

 

EPH 4:13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ.

 

The Church is the fullness of Him in that she is the recipient of all He gives and shares as His bride, His body, and His witness on earth.

 

A fifth motive for the superabounding grace of God is that the redeemed are to be exhibits of the glory of His grace forever.

 

EPH 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

 

EPH 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

 

EPH 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus,

 

EPH 2:7 in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

 

1PE 2:9

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light

 

God's supreme motive is nothing less than His purpose to demonstrate before all intelligences, — principalities and powers, celestial beings, and terrestrial beings, — the exceeding riches of His grace and you are the chosen vehicle by which He has purposed to reveal it.

 

This God will do by means of that gracious thing which He does through Christ Jesus. All intelligences will know the depth of sin and the hopeless estate of the lost. They will, in turn, behold men redeemed and saved from that estate appearing in the highest glory, — like Christ. This transformation will measure and demonstrate the 'exceeding riches of His grace.'

 

We have the opportunity to do this in time or we can wait for eternity. The greatest honor is for those who chose to do so now, with the confidence and courage that can only come by means of grace.

 

ISA 6:1 In the year of King, Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.

 

ISA 6:2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

 

ISA 6:3 And one called out to another and said,

"Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts,,

The whole earth is full of His glory."

 

ISA 6:4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.

 

ISA 6:5 Then I said,

"Woe is me, for I am ruined!,

Because I am a man of unclean lips,

And I live among a people of unclean lips;,

For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."

 

ISA 6:6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs.

 

ISA 6:7 And he touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven."

 

ISA 6:8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

 

1CO 15:10

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.

 

The supreme purpose of God is to be realized through the salvation of men by grace alone. So fully does that supreme purpose now dominate the divine undertakings in the universe that everything in Heaven and in earth is contributing solely to that one end.

 

To gain the realization of this supreme purpose, this age, which continues from the death of Christ to His coming again, was ushered in.

 

The long centuries of human struggle in the CA were decreed for the one purpose of revealing the all sufficient grace of God and the insufficiency of men.

 

No vision which is less than this will prove sufficient.

 

Rome was glorious until the Empire was split and eventually Rome was an abandoned home to empty buildings that were ghosts of what used to be. The Middle Ages brought the black plague and poverty which combined to wipe out a third of the population of Europe. The Holy Roman Empire, which wasn't holy, Roman, or an empire limped along and conflict ensued in the Hundred Years War. Man in his renaissance and industrial revolution thought he had accomplished all he needed and that utopia was in reach and then WWI happened. At the end of the war the League of Nations was created so that it wouldn't happen again and then it happened again. The United Nations was made after WWII and it prevented nothing as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Soviet War in Afghanistan, and the multiple other wars all over the globe occurred without anything but incompetency and corruption from the UN.

 

Men with blinded eyes do not see afar off. To such the world is moving on by mere chance, or to the supposed consummation of some human glory in the earth. Eyes that are thus blinded see nothing of the glory of Heaven; minds thus darkened see nothing of the supreme purpose of God in the demonstration of the exceeding riches of His grace.

 

But when this age is consummated it will be clearly seen by all beings in Heaven and in the earth that these centuries of the on-moving universe have been designed for no other reason than the realization of the supreme purpose of God in the salvation of men by grace alone.

 

In the story of Cinderella a common girl is married by the handsome and powerful prince and she becomes beautiful, admired by the prince's subjects, and she adorns the prince by being the recipient of his grace and so her beauty is really a manifestation of his virtue and grace, and so it is with the Church.

 

I have no doubt that in the ages to come — what we might call billions of years from now — there will be angels who will look at you and me with awe and wonder, and say to each other, "There are two of the saints! They were on earth in the times of the rebellion. They were dead in trespasses and sin. They were ungodly sinners, the enemies of God. But He loved them when they were like that. Think of that! How marvelous is His love! How great His excellence! How free His grace! He did all that for them!"