The place of salvation
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CHAPTER FOUR
THE MIRACULOUS
Jesus said “… the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do…” JHN 14:12. A lot of people have the mindset that Jesus performed all the miracles He performed because He was the “son of God”. As much as we cannot deny His son-ship, or the fact that He is God, we must understand that the Lord did not function from that perspective. If He had function as the “son of God” a lot of things would not have happened to him, natural circumstances would not have happened upon Him. For example the Lord felt hungry upon the earth. There was a time that they didn’t have money to pay taxes, but what we see in all the natural circumstances that happened to Him is that He overcame them. None of those things would have dared to happen upon Him if he had operated as God. His God state was concealed in His humanity that’s why when demons saw Him, they cried “… have you come to destroy us before the time?” they could see beyond His human appearance. But that was not His mission at that time His mission was to point the sons of men to the kingdom, to show them the reality of the higher life. Christ showed us that we can live in this flesh, feel all its desires that bring a weakness and yet overcome them by the greater life that the kingdom offers.
The miraculous was not something Jesus did because He was God; it was a status that came with the citizenship of the kingdom of heaven; Jesus did not exercise His kingship on earth He expressed the citizenship of the kingdom. This is the life we have been called into in Jesus Christ, a life of the “supernatural”.
A lot of people said “if Jesus had come down from heaven people would have ran away from Him and not related with Him, this would have been difficult for Him to minister unto them”. I don’t know if that would have been the case but I know also that people would have believed Him and all the miracles that He performed, it would have also been easier for them to believe the fact that He was the son of God. This is not why Jesus came down in flesh! We live in the flesh and if there is any life beyond the one we see in the flesh, it was going to take someone in the flesh to show us that life.
Paul writing to the Corinthian church says “for ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich yet for your sakes He became poor that ye through His poverty might be rich” 2COR 8:9. A lot of people read this scripture with a wrong interpretation in mind. They imagine Jesus in a state of poverty. They think that Jesus abandoned His riches so that we can possess them and be rich leaving Him in total poverty. They have this pitiful image of Christ and have “respect” for the sacrifice he made for them. But this is not what Paul is saying at all. Paul is saying here “He became like you so that you will know how to become like Him”. He lived in the flesh yet lived beyond the weakness of the flesh as a pointer to the life that the kingdom offers, this is the miraculous that we have come into as citizens of that kingdom and as heirs of salvation.
A life of the miraculous is not something we must work for, it is a life that the kingdom of Christ qualifies us for by default. That becomes our nature. It is natural for a human being to walk on two legs, it is natural for a lion to hunt and eat raw meat whether or not he is surrounded by what makes for the food of other animals, that is as much as it is natural for us to live the supernatural live. It is a status that comes with the kingdom.
Let us learn an important lesson from the experience of peter and John at the gate called beautiful. The scriptures identified a certain lame man who was brought to the gates of the temple to beg alms. Here was Peter and John on a certain day about to go in for prayers and the man asked alms of them. Peter said to him “… silver and gold have I none but such as I have give I thee; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk… and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength and he leaping up stood and walked…” ACTS 3:6-8. Did you notice the possessive tone in peter’s speech? “… but such as I have…” That is incredible! Peter knew what he had, he didn’t have that before but when he became a citizen of the kingdom, he became a possessor of kingdom resources.
What this realm offers us are not worldly goods, not silver and gold which are the currencies of this world, this realm offers us eternal currencies that have no limit to what they can purchase. Silver and gold may as well stand for worldly goods which are obtained as a result of man’s effort. That means it is the struggle of man that will give him worldly possessions but the kingdom resources do not depend on any mans effort, they are a free gift for the citizens of this realm for the working of the miraculous.
A free gift
Jesus said “freely ye have received…” MATT 10:8
We read of the promises that the scriptures make, especially the promises that Christ has made unto us but a lot of Christians barely attain the reality of God’s word. It seems too far for them, they just sound like fairy tales in the ears of even the believers. The modern Christian feels he has to do some extra work, go an extra mile to walk in the reality of these promises, he feels that his effort must count at some point before he can enter into the rest that Christ has given. But this is a wrong ideology, just the same way Christ died to redeem us freely of our destruction, this is the same way he offers the reality of the promises. Paul puts it this way: “He that spared not His own son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with him also freely give us all things” ROM 8:32.
The kingdom of darkness and the world of the occult appear powerful because a lot of Christians do not know this fact. They begin to attribute even the works that are performed by the leading of the Holy Ghost to the devil. When a man appears to have understanding of these truths and begins to walk in them, they say he is of the occult just like the Pharisees said of Christ.
In the book of acts chapter 8, the people of Samaria had received the word of God so the apostles sent unto them Peter and John. When they got to Samaria, peter laid hands on the people and they began to receive the Holy Ghost. Simon a sorcerer was one of those that had received the word of God but when he saw what happened at the laying on of the apostles’ hands on the people, he offered them money to “buy” the same power and Peter replied: “… thy money perish with thee because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money” ACTS 8:20. This short experience between the apostles and the sorcerer tells us a great deal of difference between the gift (power) which God offers and that which the devil offers.
Whereas God’s gift is free, Satan’s gift comes with a price. At least for Simon to have offered money to obtain the gift of the Holy Ghost, it shows that he must have offered “something” to have obtained the powers of his sorcery. Oh but if only Simon had known that the gift of God was free!
Unfortunately a lot of Christians like Simon have not come to the realization that God’s gift is free, they still want to “pay” a price for it. But it is because we cannot pay the price in the first place that God had to send Jesus Christ so why should someone feel that they are obligated to pay a price now before they can walk in the freedom and power that God offers?
What Christ did was like saving a drowning man. We couldn’t help ourselves, we were drowning and Jesus jumped into the water and pulled us to safety. Our own effort could never have saved us.
A drowning man no matter how he struggles and beats upon the water cannot save himself, he will hold on to the tiniest twick floating in the river with the hope of floating along with it. You can imagine if this man was now pulled to safety and he is still struggling as if he were still drowning, this would not make any sense at all. This is how we appear when we try to pay some price for the free gift of God.
People want to pay a “price” because that is how we have been programmed by the environment right from Adam’s fall. God told Adam that he must sweat before he can eat, so man began to struggle from that point until the coming of Christ. But a lot of people have not realized that Christ has made a way as the second Adam, the limitations of the first Adam have been done away with in the second Adam. Anyone who was born in the first Adam is bou
nd by the weaknesses and limitations of the first Adam but those of us who have been born into the second Adam. We have been born into a life of limitless possibilities. This is the whole born again experience, whereas we were born into the first Adam by flesh, we have been born into the second Adam by the spirit.