Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 1 Peter 1:18-21.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Do this in remembrance of Me. Let Me put you in remembrance of My love. I am love and all My ways are love. My heart seeks you in love. And love seeks out what was lost to redeem it back into love.
Love wants to pull all into the perfect place of love, which is My rest. Perfect love casts out all fear, torment, and doubt. But love never operates against the will of the beloved. Forced love is no love at all. Love must be freely given by the Will of the beloved or it is not mutual love.
I do not force anyone into the Kingdom. That is your choice, but My love reaches out to give you easy access by a new and living way back to what you lost in Eden, that garden of delightful abundance without toil or pain.
But when I restore, it is better than it was before. Your loss in Adam is your gain in Christ. And that is My everlasting covenant of love. Covenant does not just leave the one joining it where they are, covenant shares all and lifts up and increases the lesser and weaker of the two to the level of the stronger, wealthier, and greater of the two. And in Jesus, that is what happens to you who join the New Covenant by taking Jesus as Lord and partaking of His body and blood.
The body and blood of Jesus. It all has to do with love that purifies and brings you up from death to life and to an everlasting inheritance of glory. It has to do with your sanctification—the removal of sin and being made holy as I am holy.
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:30-31.
And who is Christ Jesus? How did John the Baptist, who came to usher Jesus into the earth realm, announce Him?
The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’ I did not recognize Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water.” John testified saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.” John 1:29-34.
Jesus is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Jesus is the One who baptizes you in the Holy Spirit. Jesus is My Son and is One with Me. We are One. In seeing Him you see Me. I take away your sins in Him and remember them no more. I was in Christ reconciling the world to Myself not counting your sins against you by transferring them all to Christ’s account and taking them out of your account and taking His righteousness out of His account and transferring it to your account. I give My promise of the Holy Spirit to you by way of Jesus. Acts 2:33. And Jesus and are One, and I have handed everything over to Him. John 3:35.
And because I am the One who looks ahead and provides, as Abraham named Me by inspiration of the Spirit on him, for he was a prophet, I did all this only one way—through what I had shown from the beginning—the sacrificial unblemished lamb. And Jesus’ life fulfills and gives substance to that shadow, particularly as expressed in the Passover lamb by which My people were redeemed from the furnace of affliction as slaves to Pharaoh in the godless empire of Egypt to the freedom and rest in the abundance of the Promised Land. And to remember that deliverance I gave them the mandate of a memorial meal that would be celebrated perpetually for all generations so they would know the freedom that I purchased for them by the body and blood of the lamb. And that was what Jesus was celebrating, the Passover memorial meal, with His disciples the night before He gave His unblemished eternal life, and the life is in the blood, for your freedom from the slavery to sin and death, and He turned it into the perpetual meal of His body and blood sealing all who partake of it in all generations into the New and everlasting Covenant of Love.
Do this in remembrance of Me.
And just as the sacrificing and partaking of the Passover lamb did for the Israelites that night of the first Passover in Egypt so does the sacrificial death of Jesus and the memorial meal thereof do for you. The Passover took them from oppression to freedom, from poverty as slaves with nothing to a wealthy people laden with silver and gold, from feeble bodies broken down in the hard work of slaves to perfect health and no one feeble that night as they left Egypt among them, from darkness to light, from a future without hope to a glorious future filled with hope and good things freely given to them to possess. But best of all it led them into a close relationship with Me, the Covenant I made with Moses and the people whereby they became My people and I became their God
What does Jesus, the “Lamb of God” do for you? Everything wonderful. His Name shall be called “Wonderful.” He takes you from a fall to a rise, from loss to gain, from evil to goodness, from death to life, from condemnation to acquittal, and from wrath to favor. The whole plan is tied to the Lamb. Just as it was in the redemption from the slavery of Egypt.
For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the [s]saints in Light. For He rescued us from the [u]domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach. Colossians 1:9-22.
Jesus is the chief cornerstone. The world is built on the foundation of Jesus. Jesus told you that My Word, that is, hearing and doing My Word, is the solid rock foundation on which to build your life. Everything else is shifting sand that will not hold you in the storms and trials of life.
And Jesus is My Word. I made everything by My Word and for My Word and of My Word. I am the LORD who sees ahead and provides. I saw what was needed before time began. I see the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end. You needed a Savior, one like you who had eternal life to give for the one you lost. And I built everything, even the Church, on the rock of the revelation of My Son as Messiah and Lord.
Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” Matthew 16:15-18.
He is the stone rejected by the builders that became the chief cornerstone in the beginning and the end for every project on the earth. If it is not built on Christ it will fall.
“Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the Name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this Name this man stands here before you in good health. He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief corner stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:10-12.
Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, This became the chief corner stone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” Matthew 21:42.
And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:4-5.
The revelation of the Lamb is the foundation of the world and of your own life.
But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, [d]precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.
And where is Christ? In you, your hope of glory. And where are you? In Him, to appear with Him in glory.
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. Colossians 3:3-4.
When you eat His body and drink His blood, which was given for you, His body becomes your body and your body becomes His body on earth and your spirit joins as one with My Spirit.
I love you. I have much more to share with you in our next Life Lesson.