AVoice
By Chip Brogden
“He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30).”
These seven words found in John 3:30 contain the entire mystery of God’s dealings with man from ages past to eternity future. “He [Christ] must increase.” All of God’s works are towards this end of increasing Christ.
In other words, everything God has done, is doing, and will do is related towards revealing His Son and bringing us into the full-knowledge (epignosis) of Him. The goal is for Christ to have the preeminence in all things, beginning with us individually as disciples, then with the Church, and finally with all creation, “that He may be All in All.”
He MUST increase. Isaiah tells us that there will be no end of the increase of His government and peace. In the beginning was the Word, and we can see how God has worked steadily from the beginning to increase Christ. From types and shadows in the Old Testament we see Christ coming into view. Then the Word is made flesh and dwells among us, and Christ is increased yet again. Next He comes to dwell within us, and this is a major increase. Finally, He begins to conform us to His own image through the indwelling Life. If we are growing up into Him then He is increasing daily. Eventually every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Beyond this, we are told that God will continue to reveal His Son in the ages to come, bringing us into depths and dimensions of Christ that we cannot fathom.
God is not moving backward, but in the Son and through the Son, He moves steadily forward. Christ MUST increase. This is the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. Just as we cannot have gravity without having the law of gravity, so it is impossible to have the Life of the Lord but not have the Law of that Life. And the Law of Life is that Christ must increase.
What Prevents the Increase of Christ?
“But I must decrease.” Why doesn’t God reveal His Son to us, in all His glory, all at once? What prevents Christ from filling all things and having the preeminence now? Why do we not yet see all things submitted to Him? Because we must be decreased. If He is to become greater then I must become lesser. When Paul says, “Not I, but Christ,” he is saying “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
Just as all things are working together towards God’s purpose of increasing Christ, so all things are working together towards decreasing us. It does not matter if we understand it or comprehend it. It does not matter if you believe in it or agree with it. You are being decreased just the same, and Christ is being increased. It MUST be so, therefore it IS so. Scientists call this decreasing “entropy”, and it means, “inevitable and steady deterioration”. We can observe this in creation. The present things are groaning and travailing in pain, deteriorating in order to make way for a new heaven and a new earth. We begin to die as soon as we are born. We can look in our own bodies for evidence of “inevitable and steady deterioration” as we move towards a redeemed body. But more importantly, WE, the “I”, the “Self”, is being decreased that Christ may fill us.
How are we decreased? Let us say right away that it is not your duty to decrease yourself, to become an ascetic, and crawl around in the dirt in abject poverty. It is not an outward decreasing, but an inward decreasing, a coming to the end of ourselves. The Kingdom of God belongs to the poor in spirit. Earlier, John said, “A man can have nothing except he receive it from heaven.” Now we may have quite a bit, but if we obtained it from a source other than Christ, it amounts to nothing. Only those sufficiently decreased, the poor in spirit, can see this. This poverty cannot be achieved through self-effort. In fact, part of the decreasing process is the realization that I can do nothing of myself, including decreasing myself. Just as I cannot commit suicide by crucifixion, so I cannot crucify my flesh. The only way to learn this is to fail hundreds, even thousands of times. Then we will learn to say, “I have no confidence in the flesh.”
In the world we will experience temptations, testings, and trials. We will experience persecution, tribulation, and afflictions of soul and body. We will experience mistreatment and misunderstanding. It is not a question of God allowing or not allowing things to happen. It is part of living. Some things we do to ourselves, other things we do to each other. Our Father knows about every bird which falls to the ground, but He does not always prevent it from falling.
What are we to learn from this? That our response to what happens is more important than what happens. Here is a mystery: one man’s experience drives him to curse God, while another man’s identical experience drives him to bless God. Your response to what happens is more important than what happens.
If we see that offenses are bound to come, that there is no way to live in the world apart from what happens, then we must see that the difference between overcoming and not overcoming lies in our response to what happens.
By Patti Amsden
Jesus commissioned His church to take the Gospel of the Kingdom into the whole earth (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15). He authorized His disciples to be witnesses unto Him “both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The early church obeyed Christ’s assignment to evangelize or to spread the good news (Greek – euaggelion) throughout the inhabited world, and they accomplished that task (Colossians 1:5-6, 23; Acts 19:10; Matthew 24:14; Romans 10:18). From that day until this present time, the church has been faithful to the mission of seeding the nations with the Gospel. The season is now upon the church to train the nations through the ekklesia to reflect the reality of the Kingdom of God every aspect of those nations. The Statesmen Project and the Global Council of Nations are committed to that discipleship aspect of Christ’s commission.In Matthew 16:18-19, Jesus identified His followers as His ekklesia, which literally means "called out," and gave them the authority to steward His Kingdom. The ekklesia of Christ was commissioned against the backdrop of the ekklesia of Moses. Jesus’ disciples would have well known that the nation of Israel had been called out of Egypt and that their nation’s forefather, Abraham, had been called out of Mesopotamia. Both the nation and its patriarch had been given the assignment of Kingdom stewardship. Both had been given authority to align their territory with heaven and to be God’s representative government for His Kingdom in the earth. Jesus was continuing this historical progression when He identified the next stage of the scriptural metanarrative of ekklesia.The former ekklesia, which were called out under Moses, had been given a particular spot on the earth known as Canaan as their assigned territory and their place of ekklesia governance. To understand why the sphere of their authority was limited to a single nation, we must consider what was transpiring in the earth during the days of Abraham’s call. The first several chapters of Genesis cover the stories Adam’s sin in the garden, Cain’s transgression against his brother, the pre-flood civilization’s rebellion against God, Ham’s iniquity against Noah, and Nimrod’s wicked Tower of Babel scheme against the Lord. Although this history is truncated, the theme of mankind aligning with fallen spiritual entities called elohim and rejecting their creator, the Almighty Elohim, can be seen again and again.
Abraham’s call followed the event at the Tower of Babel. That Tower was a ziggurat, which was a man-made mountain or staircase used by pagan worshipers or priests in their attempt to break into spiritual domains and make contact with evil spirits. On these ritual mountains, leagues between men and lesser gods were made for manipulation of and control over the physical realms. The architects of the Tower succeeded in getting the attention of the heavens, but Yahweh rather than lesser gods responded. The Most High God appeared and scattered the people of the earth into the 70 nations known as the original table of the nations (Genesis 10). Not only did God disperse any unified effort of the people, He also separated any collective effort of the fallen gods. God separated the nations “according to the number of the bene elohim” (Deuteronomy 32:7-9; 4:19-20). Each people group was assigned earthly land and a spiritual deity. For example: Ashtoreth was the elohim of the Zidonians; Chemosh was the elohim of the Moabites; and Milcom was the elohim of the Ammonites (I Kings 11:33). Mankind had continuously chosen to align with other gods, and the Lord allowed them to inherit what they desired. As for Yahweh, He chose Abram and his lineage for His inheritance (Genesis 12).After the dispersion and disinheritance of the nations in Genesis 11, the Scripture records the call of Abraham. This called-out patriarch, who became the progenitor of the Lord’s inheritance, was promised that “in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). The plan to redeem and reclaim all the nations began immediately after the dispersion and in the covenant made with Father Abraham. The children of the patriarch multiplied into the nation of Israel and, in due time, occupied the promised land. That spot on the earth was considered holy ground. There, man met with God in the tabernacle. There, God talked with man from the glory throne by way of His prophets. From there, the called-out ekklesia of the Old-Covenant era were given authority to align their territory with heaven and to be God’s representative government for His Kingdom in the earth.To understand God’s view of the earth or ground of Israel, a quick review of the story of Naaman the leper is helpful (II Kings 5). Naaman was the captain of the army for Syria, which was a pagan nation that often warred against Israel and which was a nation assigned to one of the fallen gods named Rimmon. Naaman was a leper. Syria’s king, Ben-Hadad II sent a letter to King Joram of Israel requesting that Joram arrange for the healing of his captain. Joram was troubled by the request fearing that Syria’s king was trying to set up a dispute between the nations should the request go unfulfilled. The prophet Elisha heard of the king’s distress and asked that Naaman be sent to him.
Elisha instructed Naaman to dip himself in the Jordan River seven times, and through this action, the captain was cured of his leprosy. Naaman responded to the miracle by acknowledging that there was no God in all the earth but in Israel. The revelation and proclamation were quite extraordinary during that post-dispersion time when all nations had gods and all geographical lands were under the management of fallen elohim. Knowing that he was returning to Syria and would be required to accompany his king into the temple of Rimmon, Naaman requested that the prophet pardon his actions in advance. Elisha granted him this pardon.Naaman also requested two mules to carry dirt from Israel back to his nation. The captain not only acknowledged the set apart, holy nature of the only true God but he also acknowledged the set apart, holy nature of the land of Israel. Under the Old Covenant order, God’s inheritance included His chosen people functioning as an ekklesia to align her appointed territory with heavenly patterns, and it embraced the idea that the land managed by a faithful ekklesia could have the curse rolled away by God’s power at work in the very dirt. Naaman wanted his standing to be that of a covenantally adopted Israelite, so he took a portion of the holy land into his Rimmon-infected soil. In a land under the management of a fallen elohim, Naaman could stand on non-cursed earth and serve the only true God.The order of the Old Covenant radically shifted at the coming of Christ and His substitutional sacrifice at Calvary. Scripture presents Christ as the near kinsman who paid the redemption price for family members and family lands. All the heirs and all the earth lost in the first Adam were regained by the Last Adam. Through the lineage of Father Abraham came Christ; and through Christ, the promised Abrahamic blessing came to all nations. The New Covenant reality means fallen gods have been stripped of all right to rule (Colossians 2:15), and disenfranchised ethic groups have been invited to participate in God’s family, the Kingdom of God, and covenantal life (Ephesians 2:11-18). The soil of every nation has the potential to be called holy ground.