Word for Life in Love— Scripture Meditations By Stephen Brown
Those in the body of Christ will not taste death when the body takes its last breath. We are one with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who never die. Our body is what keeps us here on earth. Once shed of its weight, we will be with the person of Jesus Christ in heaven just as we have been with the person of the Holy Spirit here on earth.
When He returns to the earth, we will be with Him. At that time we will be joined with our new and resurrected bodies, the new earth of creation.
Revelation 3:15-16 (ESV)
“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
Jesus is speaking to the Church. He is speaking to each of us individually. One cannot be lukewarm as a believer without being in danger of being ejected and rejected from the body of Christ. This is the experience of the one who shows up at the wedding feast without the required wedding clothes and hearing Jesus say, “I don’t know you.”
2 Corinthians 6:16 (ESV)
What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
We have become the temple of God, His dwelling place on the earth. Worship in this temple is true worship of Spirit with our spirits, the worship that the Lord seeks.
Therefore we are holy because He is holy. Being holy is to be set apart from the profane, to become part of the divine other. This describes the body of Christ.
Matthew 25:14 (ESV)
The Parable of the Talents
“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property.
The Lord has given life to us, each life with gifts according to His pleasure and purpose. When we are reborn we become His property, the body of Christ. He entrusted us with His life and has gone away for a while, but will return and see what we have done with what He gave us.
Those who have been productive with His property will please the Lord and receive His praise and be invited to enter the joy prepared in advance for them before the foundation of the earth. For those who do nothing with their new life, they will not please the Lord and what they were initially given will be taken away.
Let us hear what the Spirit says and be transformed according to His word.
Ephesians 2:8 (ESV)
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
Through our faith we receive the grace of God. We grow in His grace according to our faith. His grace and our faith come from God. It is not our doing, but the work of the Holy Spirit.
Titus 1:16 (ESV)
They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.
The works of a saved person will change according to the changes in him, which takes place over time. The longer we walk with Him, the more we will walk like Him. His light draws us to Him, envelops us in His love, and leads us in the way we should go.
The work of an unsaved person will not have the benefit of the light that can lead him through and out of the wilderness. He will grow more entrenched and comfortable in the darkness of the natural man.
John 14:21 (ESV)
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
We must do something for the Son of God to reveal Himself. By having His commandments and keeping them, we show our love for Him. God the Father has already shown His love by giving us His only Son. We give ourselves to Him to become His sons. In due time, the sons of God will be revealed and we will be like Him.
