Bill Bremer
Senior Member
Joined: 02/29/2016 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 81
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Posted: 09/05/2016 at 1:46pm
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Jesus
was and is full of grace and truth. Out of His fulness, we received
grace in place of grace already given. The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his
glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father,
full of grace and truth. John testified concerning him. He cried out,
saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes
after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'” Out of his
fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who
is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has
made him known. John 1:14-18 ISV There,
John tells us we, out of Jesus' fullness, receive grace in place of
grace already given. That is the contrast of the grace of God toward
His Old Covenant people and the grace of God brought to us through
Jesus Christ in the New Covenant. We
received, not New Testament grace instead of Old Testament grace; nor
simply, grace added to grace; but new grace imparted as the former
measure of grace has been received and improved. "To have
realized and used one measure of grace, was to have gained a larger
measure (as it were) in exchange for it." Consequently,
continuous, unintermitted grace. VWS
Grace has two sides to it.
The first side of grace is; our being is God’s doing. God has made us what we are by His grace, not our works. The second side of grace is; God empowers us to do good works in which He long ago planned for us to live.
But
God, who is rich in mercy, loved us with such a great love. He made us
who were dead in sins alive with Christ. [You are saved by a gift of His
grace.] And since we are in Christ Jesus, He raised us with Him and had
us sit with Him in heaven to show in the coming ages the immeasurable
riches of His grace by being kind to us in Christ Jesus. You are saved
by a gift of grace which you get by faith. You didn’t do it. It is God’s
gift. It isn’t because of anything you have done, or you might boast.
He has made us what we are, creating us in Christ Jesus to do good
works, in which God long ago planned for us to live. Eph 2:4-10 AAT
The first side of grace illustrates God’s love.
It is, “The higher Christian signification, based on the emphasis of
freeness in the gift or favor, and, as commonly in New Testament,
denoting the free, spontaneous, absolute loving-kindness of God toward
men, and so contrasted with debt, law, works, sin.” VWS
By His grace, God gave
us faith to believe He sent His Son Jesus to shed His blood in our
behalf as the sacrifice without spot or blemish for our sins (Heb 9:14; Heb 10:22; Heb 13:12; 1 Jn 1:6-9) and sent the Holy Spirit in our hearts (2 Co 1:22) and sealed the gospel of our salvation with the Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13; Eph 4:30), who is the Spirit of grace (Heb 10:29).
The second side of grace is; God empowers us to do good works in which He long ago planned for us to live. He fills us with what we need to grow up in all ways into Christ and do the work He sets before us. That power comes to us out of Jesus’ fullness. As we saw from John, Jesus is full of grace and truth. “Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.” The Greek for that fullness is “pleroma.” The use of that term shows how God helps us become complete in Christ.
Jn 1:16 KJV And of his fulness /pleroma have all we received, and grace for grace.
Ephesians 1:8-10 AAT He poured out the riches of his grace
on us giving us every kind of wisdom and understanding of His will. It
was His kindly purpose in Christ to manage everything in heaven and on
earth in such a way that when the right time/pleroma would come it would all be organized under Christ as its Head.
Eph 1:22-23 ASV
and he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be
head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness/pleroma of him that filleth all in all. Context Eph 1:15-23
Eph 3:14-19 ASV For
this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in
heaven and on earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the
riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit
in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to
apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height
and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that
ye may be filled unto all the fulness/pleroma of God. Context Eph 314–21
Eph 4:7-16 AAT But
each of us has been given the gift measured out by Christ who gave it.
So it says: He went up on high, took prisoners, and gave gifts to
people. Now what can ”He wen up” mean but that He had gone down to the
lower parts of the earth? He who went down also “went up” above all the
heavens to fill everything. And He gave us some men to be apostles, some
to speak the Word, some to tell the good news, some to be pastors and
teachers, in order to get His holy people ready to serve as workers and
build the body of Christ till all of us get to be one as we believe and
know God’s Son and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the
fullness/pleroma of Christ. We
shouldn’t be babies any longer, tossed and driven by every windy thing
that is taught, by the trickery of men and their clever scheming in
error. Let us tell the truth with love and in every way grow up into Him
who is the Head—Christ. He makes the whole body fit together, unites it
by every contact with its support, and to the extent that each part is
working He make the body grow and builds it up in love. Context Eph 4:1-16
Col 118-20 ASV And
he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the
preeminence. For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in him
should all the fulness /pleroma dwell;
and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace
through the blood of his cross; through him, I say , whether things
upon the earth, or things in the heavens. Context Col 115-20
Col 26–12 ASV As
therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord,’so walk in him, rooted and
builded up in him, and established in your faith, even as ye were
taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Take
heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you through his
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the
rudiments of the world, and not after Christ: for in him dwelleth all
the fulness /pleroma of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full, who is the head of all principality and power:
in whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with
hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision
of Christ; having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also
raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
2 Peter 1:2-7 AAT As you know God and our Lord Jesus, may you enjoy more and more of His grace and peace.
By His glory and might He once gave us very great and precious promises and now has called us. When we got to know Him, His divine power gave us everything for life and godliness to help you escape the corruption that lust brought into the world and to partake of the divine nature. In view of that, try very hard to supply to your faith moral power to moral power knowledge, to knowledge self control, to self control endurance, to endurance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness love.
__________________ Bill Bremer Kingdom Relationships http://billbremer.org
billbremer04@yahoo.com
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