Understanding the Gift that Jesus Christ is to Us

It is sad to realize that in a great part of the Church today, many people are still considering Jesus as a gift that God gave us for our needs. That is why we see the Gospel being diluted and confused with a solution message, according to which until we have a need that we seek to meet, Jesus has no purpose in being in us. Jesus is not a gift for our needs. If this was the
case, then it means we measure Christ according to our needs. But we can place no measure on Him. Therefore, He is not given for our needs.

God did not give us a gift for us to merely behold it and be amazed by it just once. When you are only amazed once at the gift that Jesus Christ is, and have no further desire to see more of
Him and know Him more, then you haven’t understood the gift that He is. If you pretend to know everything about the gift that Christ is, then you have not understood anything. The substance of the mystery, the “musterion”, the sacred secret revealed in Christ is that it is progressively and successively revealed to and understood by those who have the desire to know Him. The mystery of Christ in its beauty is not given to anybody. That is why when you have truly received it, or received it in truth, as Apostle Paul would say, you consistently seek to understand the mystery revealed. If we could understand it once, it wouldn’t have been called a mystery.

Ephesians 3:3-7

How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), Which in
other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel: Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.

Apostle Paul said he was made a minister. This means we also are to be made. Christ was given as a gift to us for us to be made. It is imperative for us to realize that Christ has been given to us for us to go through the making process of God. If we do not understand this, we will not seize the eternal value of the in-Christ realities. It is only through God’s making process that our soul is shaped to understand and yield to the priorities and the values of God. Paul said he was made a minister through four elements: the revelation of the mystery (Ephesians 3:3), the understanding of the knowledge he had of Christ (Ephesians 3:4), the revelation by the Holy Spirit of the message that was hidden in the past but is now revealed (Ephesians3:5) and the understanding of all men as partakers of God’s inheritance and His promise in Christ. Paul is the Apostle of the Church Age. Therefore, what he was made is the standard according to which we are to be made.

Once the mystery revealed is presented to us, we need to receive understanding. What builds and makes us is how this understanding is applied in us. We do not attend Church services to have a head that is full and a soul that is not impacted. We should not be those who seek to acquire knowledge without understanding the knowledge. The knowledge of Christ is not a school subject. Also, we are not to exclude others, but we should come to the understanding of the inclusion of all men in God to partake of Him.

God is making you. There is a shaping process that is going on now in your life. He is unveiling to you, progressively and successively, the things that the natural mind cannot understand. By doing so, He is building you up because His power is found in His message. The power to be built up, to grow, to be a mature son, to be transformed, to receive all the riches that are hidden in the glory of God is found in the consistency of your understanding of the mystery of Christ. The Father is bringing us as His Church into a new phase of the understanding of the gift that Jesus Christ has been made unto us. God reveals His gift in us and as it manifests out of us, we come to the clear understanding of what we’ve been called for.