How is this life in its fullness expressed or experienced? By loving God and our neighbour as ourselves. Not two isolated commands but one. Loving our neighbour who is also part of the Godhead, as one in seamless union with the Father and the Son (John 14:20). This is joining Christ in close companionship in your daily walk, this involves perceiving Christ’s mission as fully representing you. Get over and done with any idea of ‘self’ that contradicts your true I-am-ness. Trying to keep ‘the self’ of your own making alive is futile, but losing yourself in Me is realising that I am the source of who you are by design (paraphrased Mirror -Luke 9). You disown your ‘self’ life completely, giving up your life for the betterment of another, thereby discovering true life. Throughout the book of Deuteronomy we find the same theme: This is how to live life, with the admonishing in ch. 30:19b,20: ”So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding close to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, so that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”(NASB). This great revelation is not only his love for us but also his love in us for others.
Matthew 25: 35,36,40(NASB), “For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you took care of Me; I was in prison and you visited Me.’ When did we see You sick, or in prison, and visit You?’ And the King will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.”
So I can be dead and alive at the same time. Dead to my old ‘self’ I was trying to be, and alive to the eternal me which is Christ in me. Co-crucified in him, now co-alive. Completely infused in me, in my life. This is the condition we are in now. Having His life in us in all its fullness. By His divine engineering he gifted us with all that it takes to live life to the full. His intimate knowledge of us introduces us to our true selves again, and elevates us to a position where his original intention is clearly perceived. Restored participation in our godly origin (from 2 Peter 1:3-4 Mirror). This fact that Jesus died our death is equally valid to those who are awake to its effect or still fast asleep in their indifference to it (Francois du Toit based on Gal 2:20). “The benefits of knowing the wonders of Jesus and to experience the overflowing power of his resurrection working in me. I will be one with him in his sufferings and become like him in his death. Only then will I be able to experience complete oneness with him in his resurrection from the realm of death” (Phil. 3:10-11,TPT). John 11:26, “Whoever is alive in the life that I am, shall never die”. As Christ is alive forever, so are we.
