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1.5 Jesus’ way
When you follow Jesus’ way, you will begin to experience the dynamic power of his Kingdom. There is the future of time and eternity. We want to see which plan, which purpose is waiting for us.
When Paul reminds the congregation in Ephesus in Ephesians 4:1 to the ‘calling they have been called with’, he ends with saying something remarkably deep.
The church was introduced to the ‘first principles’, especially where it considered the baptism in the Holy Spirit (see Acts 19:1-
“When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues [3] and prophesied.”
They had focused their faith on the person, the thoughts and the work of the Lord Jesus, were baptized in [4] water and after that baptized in the Holy Spirit. This is the start of God’s great Plan for all people, for every believer.
Through the well functioning of the Church, where the Holy Spirit can fully work by the active input of her members, God works up to:
• unity in faith;
• unity in fully knowing the Son of God;
• coming to the unity of the perfect person;
• coming to the fullness of Christ.
As it says in Ephesians 4:13:
N.I.V.: “…until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ”, or:
T.E.V.: “And so we shall all come together to that oneness in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God; we shall become mature people, reaching to the very height of Christ’s full stature.
That is quite a lot. We are immediately offered a choice. Do I accept these words of God as leading in my life and faith, or…would I rather reason with ‘human’ logics?
And/or would I, just to be sure (…), stick to the ideas and teachings I “inherited from my forefathers”?
Many people don’t or hardly take God’s thoughts into consideration. Too bad!
God wants to convince us to ‘take that chance’ with Him, to live out of Him and to make use of His possibilities. Then all things will be and will become possible for who believes! All things that are necessary to fully participate in God’s Plan.
To be able to reach God’s purpose and the accomplishment of his Plan in our lives, it is ,of course, necessary that the foundation of our faith is in God. In Hebrew 6:1 and 2 we read: “Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.”
After this, we can, individually and altogether, have part in the growing of the Body, the Church, in which and from which Jesus Christ will become visible.
To support the growth of the Church, God has assigned ‘people that serve‘: apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers.
3 .Tongues: By this we mean: Languages inspired by the Holy Spirit, spoken by believers who are baptised in
God’s Spirit.
There is a ‘diversity of tongues’, which means that there are several spiritual languages.
4. To baptise in: Baptizing is the same as to push under. One never baptises with a liquid, but one always baptizes in a liquid.
We also see this back in the original text. It says ‘in’. Baptizing ‘with’ finds its origin in the baptism of
children where water is being poured over a baby’s head. This is not biblically founded.
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