Greetings!
Jesus overcame the power of sin by direct exposure to its poison. The earthly picture of this spiritual truth is our body’s ability to produce immunity. Our physical blood is the battleground between the immune system and invaders such as viruses or bacteria. When illness invades your body, your blood produces antibodies specifically designed to defeat that exact invader. Once your blood has built up enough antibodies against a specific disease, that disease will never have the opportunity to develop in your bloodstream. When you are exposed to that disease, it will be met with an army of destroyers already in place. You are immune. It may invade your body again, but it is defeated before it even makes an appearance.
You have overcome that disease.
The overcoming power is in your blood. Immunity works by employing the blood’s ability to build up antibodies against a specific invader, rendering that invader powerless in future encounters. Should the disease ever show up again, immunity is already in place. The germ has no time to procreate and invade the body before it is destroyed by the antibodies. You might say that your body is “dead” (unresponsive) to that disease.
In the spiritual realm, the disease that invades our lives is called sin. God wants to defeat sin in each individual life.
God Himself is never exposed to sin.
He cannot be tempted by sin (James 1:13). In other words, the life of God cannot develop an immunity to sin because the sin disease has no access to Him. That’s why He came in the form of man, in the shape of flesh. So that He could place Himself within the reach of sin, combat it head-on, develop a spiritual immune system that could be passed on to all who would be born again and accept His life as their own. He has overcome the sin disease and longs to transfuse you with His sin-immune life.
Jesus’ Spiritual Immunities
God used temptation as a training ground for His Son. Jesus had to face and overcome temptation so that He could be the victor. His life had to develop immunity to sin by exposure to the sin-germ so that He could pass along to those who obey Him eternal salvation (freedom from the evil one). The life that flows through you and me — His saving life — has already conquered sin. Andrew Murray, in his book The Holiest of All, puts it this way:
As Adam never could have brought us under the power of sin
and death, if he had not been our father, communicating to us his own nature, so Christ never could save us, except by taking our nature upon Him, doing in that nature all that we would need to do, had it been possible for us to deliver ourselves, and then communicating the fruit of what He effected as a nature within us to be the power of a new, an eternal life. As a divine necessity, without which there could be no salvation, as an act of infinite love and condescension, the Son of God became a partaker of flesh and blood. So alone could He be the Second Adam, the Father of a new race.
Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. He withstood the punishing onslaught of the evil one in order to bring us peace. He fought and won the battles that would have doomed us to death so we would not have to fight them.
We can stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.
Every time Jesus faced the enemy, it was for you. Every temptation Jesus endured and triumphed over was for you. Victory by victory, the antibodies against sin were being formed. Encounter by encounter, your salvation was being worked out in the life of Jesus.
Oh the Love That Drew Salvation’s Plan
Every base covered. Every detail planned for. Every contingency provided
for. Nothing left to chance.
Full spectrum salvation
that provides a Savior for the full range of the sin problem. “Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for [intervene and stand on behalf of] them” (Hebrews 7:24–25).
The Son of God became like us so that we could become like Him. The first Adam was man made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). The last Adam was God made in the image of man (Philippians 2:7–8). The Son came in the likeness of flesh, so we could be transformed into the likeness of the Son. Only His life in us can make us like Him.
I am always moved by Calvin Miller’s depiction of Christ’s condescension:
“Give me your vast infinity My son; I’ll wrap it in a bit of clay. Then enter Terra microscopically To love the little souls who weep away Their lives.” “I will,” I said, “set Terra free.” And then I fell asleep and all awareness fled. I felt my very being shrinking down. My vastness ebbed away. In dwindling dread, All size decayed. The universe around Drew back. I woke upon a tiny bed
Of straw in one of Terra’s smaller towns. And now the great reduction has begun: Earthmaker and his Troubadour are one. And here’s the new edeeming melody —The only song that can set Terra free. “The Singer,” Calvin Miller.
from the collection “A Trilogy: The Singer, The Song, The Finale.”
Bask in the love that paid so high a price to set you free. Soak in the reality that Jesus was willing to fight
for you and take on your enemy in hand-to-hand
combat because He treasures and cherishes you.
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Jennifer Kennedy Dean 2019
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