The Limitations of Jesus

THE LIMITATIONS OF JESUS

DURING Jesus’ earth walk He was dealing exclusively with the Jews-the First Covenant people. He was surrounded by men who had never been born again. No person with whom He dealt had yet received Eternal Life. They were all spiritually dead. John 8:44, 45 is Jesus’ description of them: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do.” How hard it must have been for the Master, whose great heart of love yearned over the people, to tell them that unhappy truth. He never conformed Himself to His surroundings or to the opinions of people.

He always spoke out from His Father. It has been an unhappy thing that so many of our teachers have spoken of those who walked with Jesus, as though they were already
Christians, as though they had received Eternal Life. If anyone could have received Eternal Life before Jesus died and arose again, then He would not have had to suffer, because everyone could have received it. It is not what a man has done; it is what he is by nature that separates him from God. They were all spiritually dead. Jesus was limited very largely to the physical realm with them. He healed their diseases; He raised their dead; He fed the multitudes, but He did not Recreate anyone.

He gave no one Eternal Life. Man was not yet Redeemed; the penalty of sin had not been paid. Men were by nature children of wrath. They were all in one class. The only difference between the Israelite and the Gentile was that the former was under the First Covenant.
He was circumcised; he was of the family of Abraham. He had a priesthood that made a yearly Atonement for him and laid his sins once a year upon the head of a scapegoat to be borne away into the wilderness.

But that did not make him a New Creation. It gave him a right to the New Creation.
You remember Rom. 3:25 declares, “Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God.” Then Heb. 9:15 explains the thing more fully. “For this cause, he is a mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.”

Christ died for the sins of those under the First Covenant. It was as though a promissory note had been given each year when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies to make the yearly atonement. Those promissory notes were all cashed when Jesus carried His blood into the Heavenly Holy of Holies. So all the sins under the First Covenant were put away, wiped out as though they had never been. You will understand this more fully in Heb. 10:1-4: “For the law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh.

“Else would they not have ceased to be offered? Because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins. “But in those sacrifices, there is a remembrance made of sins year by year.” Why? “For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.” (Verse 12) “But he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.” (Verse 14) “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” You get a perfect picture here of the man under the First Covenant whose sin was covered, whose sins were typically borne away.

Then Jesus comes and puts away all the sins that had been cov¬ered and He remits all the sins that have been borne away typically so that the Jews who trusted in the atoning blood of animals were saved by His sacrifice. Notice again that no one could receive Eternal Life and have his sins remitted until sin was put away until the claims of justice had been fully met. Heb. 2:17 perfectly illustrates that: “Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”

As a High Priest, you remember, He had first to meet the demands of Justice, to satisfy the claims of justice against the Jew and Gentile. When He was down in hell and Satan had been conquered, then man’s Redemption was a completed thing. That is when God accepted His blood, and He sat down at the right hand of God. But it was not yet complete while Christ was living, so it was of no value to anybody. The New Creation was not available.

There was no High Priest at the right hand of the Father with the blood to show that He had dealt with the sin problem. There was no Mediator at the right hand of God, and until
there was a Mediator, no human being could approach God. John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one can approach the Father but through me.” Acts 4:12, “Neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved, but the name of Jesus.” Jesus’ name was not yet available as a Savior. His Mediatorial work was not yet available.

Jesus was a prophet now. He had not yet become a Sin substitute; there was no Savior.
He dealt only in the sense realm with men. He dealt with demons. He cast them out of individuals. He broke their power over men, which was all in the sense realm. It is such a bitter thing for our hearts to realize that Jesus, during His earth walk, didn’t have one single spiritually-minded companion. Good folks loved Him, but their love was the love of natural man. It was a selfish thing. It was so selfish that when He arose from the dead they said, “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom at this time?”

He could not help men spiritually because they were dead in spirit. I think you can understand this Scripture now: John 14:12 “Greater things than these shall ye do; because I go unto the Father and ye behold me no more.” We are doing greater works than the Master did in His earthwalk because we help men spiritually. We bring to them the Word of Life and they are Recreated; they come into the Family of God. We help them to pass out of death unto Life. We teach them through the Word how God has made them His Righteousness.

Now they can stand in His presence as though sin had never been. We are God’s agents giving men Eternal Life, making them masters of demons and of circumstances. We, through His Living Word, have been able to lead men into fellowship and communion with the Father through the New Birth. Our ministry is almost an unlimited ministry. His Ministry was a limited one. Jesus healed men’s bodies. We, through the Grace of God, heal men’s spirits. He raised men from the dead to die again. We show them that they were raised together with Christ. He fed the hungry with loaves of bread and fishes. We feed the spiritually hungry with His own wonderful Words. We have the Spirit in us who raised Jesus from the dead.

We have a legal right to the use of Jesus’ name. With that name, we do the works that Jesus wrought in His earth walk. But come back again to the thought of the limitations of Jesus’ friendships. His own Mother could not understand Him. His own brothers looked upon Him with suspicion. To those nearest Him He was a stranger. He knew them but they didn’t know Him. There can be no deep spiritual friendship unless we know each other.
Jesus’ limitations in His earth walk explain much of His teaching. It might be all right for us to contrast Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings on the subject of Faith.

Jesus demanded that men have faith in Him. He said, “if a man has faith as a mustard seed, he could move mountains.” In Mark 11:22 Jesus said, “Have faith in God.” You remember in the margin of some of our Bibles it says, “Have the faith of God.” The disciples couldn’t do that. No one can have the Faith of God until after they have been Recreated. You see, Jesus is the author and finisher of faith, and when we become New Creations we receive a measure of God’s Faith. (Rom.12:3).; We have His Nature, His Life, and with it comes His Faith. As we grow in Grace and in Knowledge, we understand the finished work of Christ. As our faith grows, it is really the Faith of God.

In the next verse, it says, “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith j cometh to pass; he shall have it. “Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”
That was a keynote of the ministry of Jesus. Mark 9:23, Jesus said to the father that asked for the healing of his child, “All things are possible to him that believeth.”

In Matt. 21:22 “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Paul never tells a believer to believe. He never urges us to have Faith.
That bothered me when I first noticed it; then I saw the truth. We are believers.
We had to have faith to get into the Family, but when once we come into the Family, all things that God wrought in Christ for us are ours.

You notice Jesus, speaking to the Church prophetically, (for the Church had not yet come into being) said in John 15:16, “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” In this Scripture and John 14:14 Jesus gives us a legal right to the use of His Name. It is the same as giving the power of attorney to one. Jesus actually does this to the Church.

But here is the strange thing about it. Take John 16:24 “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be made full.” (John 15:16 is Prophecy.) Jesus doesn’t mention faith. He doesn’t say that they must believe. Why? They are believers. Then all of our preaching about faith and the need for faith has been wrong.
We should have told the believer about what he is in Christ; what his rights and privileges are in Christ and his legal right to the use of Jesus’ name.

We should have taught him what it meant to receive the Nature and Life of God in his spirit, that it would make him an actual New Creation. Not only that, but the New Creation had become the Righteousness of God in Christ, so he who was once a sinner could now stand in the Father’s presence without the sense of fear, condemnation or inferiority.
He could stand there as a Son in fullest fellowship with his Father. If we had been taught this, we would not have had the long struggle for faith.

We would have known who we were and what we were in Christ. We would have learned how to take our place in the Family; and how to enjoy our privileges. We would have become acquainted with our Father. The great facts of Substitution and the New Creation and Redemption would have become spiritual realities to us. But instead of that, they have preached to us the messages Jesus gave to the Jews during His earth walk, and they don’t fit in. They keep us under condemnation. They make us conscious of our lack.

You see, if I do not know what I am, the Word confuses me, but when I know what I am in Christ, know what my rights are and my privileges, then you can bring no confusion to my spirit. There was no discord between the teachings of Jesus and the Apostle Paul because they were all of God.

New Creation Realities – EW Kenyon
Kindly follow, like and share.THE LIMITATIONS OF JESUS

DURING Jesus’ earth walk He was dealing exclusively with the Jews-the First Covenant people. He was surrounded by men who had never been born again. No person with whom He dealt had yet received Eternal Life. They were all spiritually dead. John 8:44, 45 is Jesus’ description of them: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do.” How hard it must have been for the Master, whose great heart of love yearned over the people, to tell them that unhappy truth. He never conformed Himself to His surroundings or to the opinions of people.

He always spoke out from His Father. It has been an unhappy thing that so many of our teachers have spoken of those who walked with Jesus, as though they were already
Christians, as though they had received Eternal Life. If anyone could have received Eternal Life before Jesus died and arose again, then He would not have had to suffer, because everyone could have received it. It is not what a man has done; it is what he is by nature that separates him from God. They were all spiritually dead. Jesus was limited very largely to the physical realm with them. He healed their diseases; He raised their dead; He fed the multitudes, but He did not Recreate anyone.

He gave no one Eternal Life. Man was not yet Redeemed; the penalty of sin had not been paid. Men were by nature children of wrath. They were all in one class. The only difference between the Israelite and the Gentile was that the former was under the First Covenant.
He was circumcised; he was of the family of Abraham. He had a priesthood that made a yearly Atonement for him and laid his sins once a year upon the head of a scapegoat to be borne away into the wilderness.

But that did not make him a New Creation. It gave him a right to the New Creation.
You remember Rom. 3:25 declares, “Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God.” Then Heb. 9:15 explains the thing more fully. “For this cause, he is a mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.”

Christ died for the sins of those under the First Covenant. It was as though a promissory note had been given each year when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies to make the yearly atonement. Those promissory notes were all cashed when Jesus carried His blood into the Heavenly Holy of Holies. So all the sins under the First Covenant were put away, wiped out as though they had never been. You will understand this more fully in Heb. 10:1-4: “For the law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh.

“Else would they not have ceased to be offered? Because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins. “But in those sacrifices, there is a remembrance made of sins year by year.” Why? “For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.” (Verse 12) “But he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.” (Verse 14) “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” You get a perfect picture here of the man under the First Covenant whose sin was covered, whose sins were typically borne away.

Then Jesus comes and puts away all the sins that had been cov¬ered and He remits all the sins that have been borne away typically so that the Jews who trusted in the atoning blood of animals were saved by His sacrifice. Notice again that no one could receive Eternal Life and have his sins remitted until sin was put away until the claims of justice had been fully met. Heb. 2:17 perfectly illustrates that: “Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”

As a High Priest, you remember, He had first to meet the demands of Justice, to satisfy the claims of justice against the Jew and Gentile. When He was down in hell and Satan had been conquered, then man’s Redemption was a completed thing. That is when God accepted His blood, and He sat down at the right hand of God. But it was not yet complete while Christ was living, so it was of no value to anybody. The New Creation was not available.

There was no High Priest at the right hand of the Father with the blood to show that He had dealt with the sin problem. There was no Mediator at the right hand of God, and until
there was a Mediator, no human being could approach God. John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one can approach the Father but through me.” Acts 4:12, “Neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved, but the name of Jesus.” Jesus’ name was not yet available as a Savior. His Mediatorial work was not yet available.

Jesus was a prophet now. He had not yet become a Sin substitute; there was no Savior.
He dealt only in the sense realm with men. He dealt with demons. He cast them out of individuals. He broke their power over men, which was all in the sense realm. It is such a bitter thing for our hearts to realize that Jesus, during His earth walk, didn’t have one single spiritually-minded companion. Good folks loved Him, but their love was the love of natural man. It was a selfish thing. It was so selfish that when He arose from the dead they said, “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom at this time?”

He could not help men spiritually because they were dead in spirit. I think you can understand this Scripture now: John 14:12 “Greater things than these shall ye do; because I go unto the Father and ye behold me no more.” We are doing greater works than the Master did in His earthwalk because we help men spiritually. We bring to them the Word of Life and they are Recreated; they come into the Family of God. We help them to pass out of death unto Life. We teach them through the Word how God has made them His Righteousness.

Now they can stand in His presence as though sin had never been. We are God’s agents giving men Eternal Life, making them masters of demons and of circumstances. We, through His Living Word, have been able to lead men into fellowship and communion with the Father through the New Birth. Our ministry is almost an unlimited ministry. His Ministry was a limited one. Jesus healed men’s bodies. We, through the Grace of God, heal men’s spirits. He raised men from the dead to die again. We show them that they were raised together with Christ. He fed the hungry with loaves of bread and fishes. We feed the spiritually hungry with His own wonderful Words. We have the Spirit in us who raised Jesus from the dead.

We have a legal right to the use of Jesus’ name. With that name, we do the works that Jesus wrought in His earth walk. But come back again to the thought of the limitations of Jesus’ friendships. His own Mother could not understand Him. His own brothers looked upon Him with suspicion. To those nearest Him He was a stranger. He knew them but they didn’t know Him. There can be no deep spiritual friendship unless we know each other.
Jesus’ limitations in His earth walk explain much of His teaching. It might be all right for us to contrast Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings on the subject of Faith.

Jesus demanded that men have faith in Him. He said, “if a man has faith as a mustard seed, he could move mountains.” In Mark 11:22 Jesus said, “Have faith in God.” You remember in the margin of some of our Bibles it says, “Have the faith of God.” The disciples couldn’t do that. No one can have the Faith of God until after they have been Recreated. You see, Jesus is the author and finisher of faith, and when we become New Creations we receive a measure of God’s Faith. (Rom.12:3).; We have His Nature, His Life, and with it comes His Faith. As we grow in Grace and in Knowledge, we understand the finished work of Christ. As our faith grows, it is really the Faith of God.

In the next verse, it says, “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith j cometh to pass; he shall have it. “Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”
That was a keynote of the ministry of Jesus. Mark 9:23, Jesus said to the father that asked for the healing of his child, “All things are possible to him that believeth.”

In Matt. 21:22 “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Paul never tells a believer to believe. He never urges us to have Faith.
That bothered me when I first noticed it; then I saw the truth. We are believers.
We had to have faith to get into the Family, but when once we come into the Family, all things that God wrought in Christ for us are ours.

You notice Jesus, speaking to the Church prophetically, (for the Church had not yet come into being) said in John 15:16, “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” In this Scripture and John 14:14 Jesus gives us a legal right to the use of His Name. It is the same as giving the power of attorney to one. Jesus actually does this to the Church.

But here is the strange thing about it. Take John 16:24 “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be made full.” (John 15:16 is Prophecy.) Jesus doesn’t mention faith. He doesn’t say that they must believe. Why? They are believers. Then all of our preaching about faith and the need for faith has been wrong.
We should have told the believer about what he is in Christ; what his rights and privileges are in Christ and his legal right to the use of Jesus’ name.

We should have taught him what it meant to receive the Nature and Life of God in his spirit, that it would make him an actual New Creation. Not only that, but the New Creation had become the Righteousness of God in Christ, so he who was once a sinner could now stand in the Father’s presence without the sense of fear, condemnation or inferiority.
He could stand there as a Son in fullest fellowship with his Father. If we had been taught this, we would not have had the long struggle for faith.

We would have known who we were and what we were in Christ. We would have learned how to take our place in the Family; and how to enjoy our privileges. We would have become acquainted with our Father. The great facts of Substitution and the New Creation and Redemption would have become spiritual realities to us. But instead of that, they have preached to us the messages Jesus gave to the Jews during His earth walk, and they don’t fit in. They keep us under condemnation. They make us conscious of our lack.

You see, if I do not know what I am, the Word confuses me, but when I know what I am in Christ, know what my rights are and my privileges, then you can bring no confusion to my spirit. There was no discord between the teachings of Jesus and the Apostle Paul because they were all of God!