Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
What it means to be initiated into the secret of the mystery. Part 34. The baptism of the spirit and the analogy of the head and the body. .
Thursday, March 24, 2005
The analogy of the head and the body.
TLJC has three royal titles:
Son of God – Father, HS
Son of David – Davidic dynasty
King of kings and Lord of lords – Church
Since TLJC is the Head, the head is incomplete without the body and therefore, the humanity of Christ is incomplete without a Royal Family for Him.
The fulfillment of the head completing the body and the body completing the head is found in the prophecy by our Lord –
JOH 14:20 “You in Me and I in you.”
All Church-age believers are formed into one body and one Royal Family, EPH 2:16; EPH 4:4-5; EPH 5:30-32;COL 1:24; COL 2:19.
COL 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body(which is the church).
“Streams of living water will flow from within him” = prophecy of the filling of the Spirit – residence, function, and momentum inside the PPOG during the Church-age only.
The great power demonstration of the Church-age, which includes the baptism of the Holy Spirit, could not begin until the glorification of Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father.
First came the head in the great power demonstration of the hypostatic union.
Then came the body in the great power demonstration of the Church-age.
It forms the church universal, the body, the Royal Family of God, the new spiritual species.
1CO 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.
GEN 1:26 God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;”
So that there could be communion, fellowship and cooperation between them; with God sovereign and man subject to His will, which is perfect freedom.
As a result he immediately became self-centered instead of God-centered; dead to God who is the source of all life, and dead in trespasses and sins,
EPH 2:1.
GEN 5:3 When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image,
He brought forth a sinful, ungodly, self-centered race, born “dead in trespasses and sins,” ROM 5:12-19.
1CO 15:45 So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
Our natural birth made us members of the fallen, sinful first-Adamic race.
Our spiritual birth made us a member of the new godly race as the “new birth.”
COL 3:3-4 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
ROM 5:19 For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
Being born into Him through faith, we became “partners with the divine nature,” 2PE 1:4.
As the Lord Jesus is allowed to express Himself through us, then the world will see “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” COL 1:27.
1CO 15:49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthy [first], we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
Here is the “good” for which God is working all things together – His original purpose of making us in His own image, which is centered and expressed in His Son, Christ, who is our life.
Stage 1. GAL 4:19 – Christ being formed in your body [soul structure] –
Christ is formed in us as we develop a soul structure to think with God.
Stage 2. Spiritual autonomy – EPH 3:17 – Christ is said to be at home in your hearts or right-lobes.
Stage 3. Spiritual maturity – PHI 1:20 – Christ exalted or glorified in your body.
When we see that all things are working together for good to make us more and more like the Lord Jesus, we will not be frustrated and upset when some of these things are hard or difficult to understand, and often contain an element of death.
MAT 26:42 “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done.”
JOB 13:15 “Though He slay me, I will trust in Him.”
2CO 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
One of God’s most effective means in accomplishing His purpose for our lives is the process of failure.
Failure where self is concerned in our Christian life and service is allowed and often engineered by God in order to turn us completely from ourselves to His source for our life – Christ.
GAL 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;
God has a natural law in operation to the effect that we are conformed to that on which we center our interest and love.
If I am to be like Him, then God in His grace must do it, and the sooner I come to recognize it the sooner I will be delivered from another form of bondage.
Don’t try to be like Him, just look at Him.
Come to the Word for one purpose and that is to meet the Lord – not to get your mind crammed full of information.
PHI 2:13 for it is God [the Holy Spirit] who is at work in you, both to will [give you motivation] and to work [He gives you the ability to execute] above and beyond His good pleasure.
2CO 4:11For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
Self is the fleshly, carnal life of the first Adam, dead in trespasses and sins, EPH 2:1; thoroughly corrupt before God, 5:19-21; the life in which there is no good thing in the sight of God, ROM 7:18.
Paul, with God’s “Not I, but Christ,” GAL 2:20, was the total truth.
Introspection is not involved here, the Holy Spirit uses experiential revelation.
JOH 12:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
2CO 4:11-12, We who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.
The first step toward getting out of the struggle of the seventh chapter and into the victory of the eighth, is to realize the insufficiency and death of the self-life.
Self-revelation precedes divine revelation – for both spiritual birth and spiritual growth.
The believer who is going through struggle and failure is the Christian who is being carefully and lovingly handled by his Lord in a very personal way.
PHI 3:10 come to know Him, and the power of [behind] His resurrection and the participation of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;