What does Jesus expect?
“But I have this against you: You have departed from your first love.” Revelation 2:4, NET. Jesus repeated this phrase in three messages to the assemblies in Asia Minor, where John was a spiritual leader. At first, the believers in some of the assemblies accepted and fell in love with Jesus, whom John proclaimed to them. However, the self-proclaimed apostles and experts in scriptures infiltrated the Christian assemblies in Asia Minor. These so-called experts promoted the teachings that Jesus did not approve of or tolerate. Accordingly, the believers in those assemblies forgot what Jesus expected of his followers. While they did not openly denounce Jesus Christ, they, nevertheless, deliberately accepted teachings that minimized what Jesus accomplished on their behalf and what he required of them.
Jesus expects his body, the Church, to obey the two commands he gave while still here on earth. One command is “Remain in me.” John 15:4. God put the new humankind in Jesus at the incarnation. We could not, on our own, get into Jesus. We must remain in him. The works believers do while remaining in Jesus Christ are the works devoid of self. Therefore, they are the righteous works. Even the best possible and the noblest deeds we could do with our efforts are not good enough and do not deserve praise. To remain in Jesus Christ, we must die to ourselves to become a new creation in Jesus Christ. “So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away – look, what is new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17, NET. Only the born-again who have the life of Jesus Christ can remain in him.
Jesus gave us the second command: “Love one another.” John 15:12. The works devoid of self are the fruit of the Christian attitude often emphasized by the apostle Paul. “For by the grace given to me I say to every one of you not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but think with sober discernment, as God has distributed to each of you a measure of faith.” Romans 12:3, NET. Unity in the essential, the gospel, and liberty in diversity are signs of yielded believers being in Jesus Christ. The yielded believers are Christians by nature, not only proper religious persons. Religious people do their good works to show that they are good Christians. However, the newborn believers, by nature, do their work while sitting at the feet of Jesus. Luke 10:38 – 41.
The self-deception problem. Read the next blog.
