Saved…

Part 6 – So Jesus can live his life in us     

We see what our human potential is in the life of Jesus, because he lived what his Father created us humans to be. 

But we didn’t live it. We blew our potential right off the bat in Genesis, and since then “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23.  

So the Father gave Jesus the job of restoring the glory we’d fallen short of. But how, when Jesus was the only one who’d lived it, and none of the rest of us had? Well, the solution to Jesus was obvious, as we see in his prayer to his Father in John 17:26, that “I myself may be in them.” Simple solution: live what he had so successfully lived as a human, in us. 

And it’s not surprising that Jesus came up with that as the obvious solution, when in his own human life it was trusting the Father to live his life in him that had enabled Jesus to be so successful (John 14:10-11). So if we could trust Jesus for the same reason, then as Jesus said,“anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing,” John 14:12. We could be, and live, like him.

He explained how he’d make it possible too: it would be through the “Spirit of truth” living “with” us and “in” us (John 14:17), “taking from what is mine (all that Jesus is) and making it known to you” (John 16:13-14). The Spirit takes everything in Jesus’ life – every teaching, command and example – and fills our minds with them too (John 14:26). And that’s how Jesus lives his life in us. 

Which is what Jesus wants to do. Using his own analogy in John 15:5 – “I am the vine; you are the branches” – he’s constantly feeding who and what he is into us. And by trusting him to do that, through the Holy Spirit, we “will bear much fruit.” More and more we become like him and what the Father intended us humans to be, thereby restoring the glory of our potential that we lost in Genesis. 

The key to it being verses 7-8, that “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish (to become like him), and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory.” Because what gives glory to the Father is the unfolding of his plan in humans becoming like his Son…(continues tomorrow)