Man cannot do anything to be what God thinks in His mind; we cannot be holy by focusing on the do's and don'ts recorded in the law. God gave us a faithful representative of what He thinks in His mind: Christ Jesus. He freed us from the demand of the law which was based on performances: the do to be paradigm. We are to be what the Father thinks of Christ in our daily walk by acknowledging our likeness with Christ.
Every believer is NOW a partaker of Christ. We co-echo Christ in our union with Him. We resound the thought of the Father concerning Christ by mirroring Him. We are not Christ but we are by grace what He is by nature. We first partake of the person of Christ before partaking of His attributes and benefits. The word "partakers" comes from the Greek word " Koinonia". It refers to what we have jointly received in Christ because of our togetherness and our oneness with Him. It is the sum up of our union and participation with Christ.
Apart from being partakers of Christ, we partake of His divine nature. Christ is the brightness of the GLORY of God and the expressed image of His person. The whole cosmos is upheld by His word. He is our authentic relationship with God, the Father. He gave our soul the potential to receive spiritual life, the life of God. When the metamorphosis process happens in our soul, the knowledge of God shines in us by outshining every knowledge we have of ourselves or the world. We become the expressed image of His person. He is the chief of the things that are SACRED and we are partakers of the calling of the commissioner. We share into the present-day ministry of Christ for the world. We are in His assignment to reveal the first intention of the Father which is to bring forth a family of sons to be the brightness of His image.
In this week's podcast, Dr. Annie Smith does an exegesis of our partaking of Christ. She reveals how we partake in the person of Christ, in His suffering and death but equally in what His death and resurrection brought which is His glorious life.