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A nine-fold identification

Matthew 5:312 is the text for this study.

A nine-fold identification

In studying the Principle of Identification, we come to that part of the Bible which is commonly called the Beatitudes. These are thought of as being sweet, encouraging and comforting. Though they are all of these things, they are far more than beautiful, poetic thoughts and sentiments. They give to us the first great Principle that of Identification with Jesus. In fact, a ninefold Identification with Jesus.

It is essential that we realise, in sharing these Beatitudes, that Jesus is not so much saying, “it is nice to be like this.” What He is really saying is, “This is what I am.” He is, in fact, revealing His characteristics to us. He is giving an analysis a breakdown of Himself so that we may understand more fully what it means to be identified with Him. This is why He says to the people in each case that they are blessed, because in each case they would identify with Him and with aspects of His life and character.

We are, therefore, in the Beatitudes, looking as the character and nature of Jesus and what it means to be identified with Him.

A spiritual heritage

Firstly, he says in verse 3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

That is it then to be poor in spirit? It is not someone going around looking as though he is poor in spirit, perhaps looking deprived. It has a far more vital meaning. Jesus did not go around looking deprived and poorly, as the term “poor in spirit” might very easily conjure up in our minds. Yet He was poor in spirit and to understand what this poverty of spirit was, we will look at Luke 14:25-35:

“And there went great multitudes with Him: and He turned and said unto them: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?

Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear”.

In that passage Jesus says some very strong words. He was, in fact, laying discipleship on the line. We need to remember that when Jesus sent His disciples out, He did not say, “Go and make decisions of all nations.” Jesus knew that a decision in itself is no guarantee of a disciple.  Though a decision for Christ may secure one’s place in heaven, yet in fact it may mean nothing so far as any meaningful walk with God in this life goes.

When Jesus saw a great multitude following Him, He didn’t get excited. In fact He very deliberately made these great demands of discipleship upon them because he knew there was a difference between people reaching out for God’s benefits and truly being prepared to forsake all to follow Him.

Jesus expects us to relinquish every legitimate claim upon our lives by every body and that includes our own claim. We are to say, “Jesus, you have the supreme claim on my life”. Can you look in the mirror and say to yourself, “You don’t run your own life anymore”? Even with our loved ones, next to the claim of Jesus upon us, they have no claim. This, of course, is not any excuse for irresponsibility and a self-willed rejection of parental authority or any other responsibilities. But it does place the emphasis of commitment and control on our lives in the only place it was ever meant to be and that is in discipleship to Jesus. Because of this, it is firstly our control and our claim upon our own lives that must be relinquished.

Jesus made an absolute statement when He said that if we do not make such a relinquishment, we cannot be His disciples.

Then Jesus went on to speak about the cost involved in true discipleship. We read about the man who began to build a tower without counting the cost. A tower represents reaching up to God, and it speaks to us of determining to build a life that reaches up to God and yet, with all of that determination, not having truly counted what it will cost us and, in fact, finding that we are not prepared to pay the price.

Many people start off with great ambitions to be a great success for God. However, there is no realism in much of their ambition and when the cost becomes evident, they stop in their tracks and their very incomplete Christian life stands as a memorial to their folly and their unwillingness to be disciples.

There are many Christians whose lukewarm, insipid Christianity is a mockery of what a true walk with God should be. Many of these think that, because they are still retaining some sort of relationship with God, they please God. But they are like that unfinished tower; their lives stand as proof of those who began but were not prepared to finish.

The fact is that there are many people who are just saved and that is all. It is not to their credit; it is to their shame because they are not disciples. No one builds a tower for God without paying a great price.

Jesus then went on to speak about a king who had ten thousand soldiers and was facing a battle with a king who had twenty thousand soldiers. No king in his right mind would move into such a battle unless he was convinced that, for some reason other than the number of soldiers, he had an advantage over his opponent; otherwise he would make peace before the battle even began.

Any Christian who wishes to go places with God will come up against great opposition. All of the powers of darkness are arrayed against God’s people, and Jesus is here warning us that it is no small thing to align yourself with Him and to claim to be His disciple.

You will then inevitably become a target for Satan and His hordes and you will need to know the conflict into which you will be plunged and be convinced that you are in such a relationship with God and in such a state of commitment, that you will be able to withstand and win the victory in such battles. I can think of many Christians who once started well but who were soon swamped by the opposition because they were not really making themselves disciples, and they took too lightly the spiritual battle in which they had become involved.

The word “forsaketh” in verse 33 is better translated “renounceth”, and here Jesus sums it up by saying that anyone who is not prepared to renounce all that he has and to separate Himself in His heart from anything and anybody who has any claim upon Him, is not fit to be His disciple.

When that kind of renunciation has taken place, God is then free to do as he will with our lives. This means that He can work with all that we are and all that we have at any time that he chooses without us coming into conflict with Him over it, because the matter will already have been settled when we renounced all that we have.

It should be clearly understood that God has the prior claim on our lives, and we kid ourselves if we think or act as if we are our own. God has made it quite clear that we have been bought with a price and that we are not our own, and that we are not to live or think as if we do in fact have control of our own lives.

Jesus finishes by speaking about the uselessness of salt which is no longer salty. The point is this just as salt which is no longer salty is good for nothing, so every person born into this world is good for nothing other than to be a disciple of Jesus. If they do not become a disciple of Jesus, they are like saltless salt which has no other use and no other purpose. They will in fact have lived in vain.

There is no possible way any person’s life can even begin to be fulfilled unless they become disciples of Jesus. Our lives are not fulfilled by our being saved; they are only fulfilled by our becoming disciples.

This is the meaning of being poor in spirit. The one who is poor in spirit is the one who has died to everything else so that he might be a disciple of Jesus in order that the will of God might be done in his life. To be poor in spirit is to strip yourself of all your self-motivations, all your own ambitions, all your own claims upon your life. In so doing, you become utterly poor in spirit.

So Jesus, although He was God, stripped Himself of the advantage of being God. The Bible says that, for our sakes, though he was rich, yet he became poor so that he could do the will of God. Jesus is not asking of us something which he Himself has not done. He was poor in spirit He stripped Himself of everything so that He might identity with us, and as we identify with Him, in commitment and discipleship, we are blessed and we share His spiritual heritage.  So He was able to say – “theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.

Jim Elliot, who was martyred by the Auca Indians in 1956, had written words which have since become famous: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

So God gives us the opportunity to strip ourselves as did Jesus and in so doing to gain the kingdom of heaven which we can never lose, and so to share the heritage which Jesus has received from the Father.

Strength and encouragement

The second Beatitude: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted”.

Our modern usage of the word “comfort” has really taken away from the meaning which is meant to be conveyed here. It is not meant to convey some kind of a sympathy like a pat on the head and a shoulder to cry on, but rather it means strength and encouragement. God does not offer sloppy platitudes, but he does give strength and encouragement to those who need it when it is really needed. In other words, God does not give His comfort lightly as we can see in II Corinthians 1:37:

“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;  who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.

And our hope of you is steadfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.”

So often people are inclined to think they are in need of comfort when they are in fact just feeling sorry for themselves. Yet here we see that God gives comfort in tribulation. God strengthens and encourages His children when, in the course of living for Him and doing His will, they are stretched to the limit, when they look to Him not out of self-pity but out of a genuine need to be strengthened and encouraged, they then find what real comfort is. Note that, in the King James version, the words consolation and comfort are interchangeable.

When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, he was not feeling sorry for Himself but He had genuinely come to the point where He had been stretched to the limit and was greatly in need of comfort. And in that situation, an angel appeared to Him, strengthening Him. Here was the comfort of God to Jesus.

When the apostle Paul was in the boat that was being tossed about in the sea and was about to be wrecked, the Lord appeared to Him and promised Him that His life and the lives of those in the boat with Him would be saved but that the boat would be lost. That was the comfort of God. Although it still promised the shipwreck, it promised that God was with Him and God was going to see Him through.

Comfort comes when you are utterly at the end of yourself whilst being in the will of God.  There are people who are waiting for God to comfort them while they have in fact paid very little if any price for their walk with God. They are being overwhelmed by their own weakness and smallness and feel that they continually need a ministry of comfort to assure them they are going to make it.

God has purposed to call us to maturity, and He knows that if He were to cater to our self-pity and to our feelings of weakness and inadequacy, He would be providing sympathy which is ultimately destructive. It would not cause us to grow up and mature. God does not cater to our self-centredness but His comfort and strength and encouragement are for those who truly need it.

When Jesus had been fasting in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, the devil appeared and tempted Him severely at a time when Jesus had come to the end of all His strength and all His resources. Angels then came and ministered to Him, giving Him comfort, strength and encouragement.

Jesus said that those who mourn shall be comforted. The mourners here are not the “poor me’s”, not those who feel sorry for themselves, hut those who know what real loss is, what real hardship is, not because they are trying to make martyrs of themselves but because they have given themselves totally to God.

In Psalm 23;4 we read: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

God’s rod of authority and His staff of provision are our comfort. It is not in avoiding walking through the valley of the shadow of death but in going through deep, dark and fearful circumstances that we learn to prove the greatness of God’s authority over all circumstances and the infinite ability of God to provide for all our needs at all times. Knowledge and experience of these things in the valley of the shadow of death are true comfort.

Surely if the Father had wanted to rescue anyone from hardship he would have rescued His only begotten son. Yet Jesus was not rescued from hardship, but He knew what it was to be strengthened and encouraged, to be truly comforted in the midst of great hardship. He learned obedience by the things which he suffered.

Likewise we should not understand the Christian life to be a bed of lilies, a walk in which God rescues us from every hard and hurtful situation. Gary Glason of Toronto Outreach beautifully coined the phrase when I once asked him how he was getting on, and he replied “It is not getting any easier, but it’s getting better”!

This is indeed the paradox. Walking with God gets better by getting harder, and those who seek a soft and apparently easy way by avoiding great demands and true cost in their walk with God, do not really know what it is to receive his benefits. God does not give his comfort to self-centred people.

An earthly heritage

Then Jesus said: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” Who are the meek?  In Luke 18:28-30 we read:

“Then Peter said, Lo, we have left all, and followed thee. And He said unto them, verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.”

What Jesus is saying here concerning the meek is that blessed are those who claim nothing, for they shall inherit the earth. Meekness is when you relinquish your rights to the things that everyone normally understands they have a right to, so that you might do the will of God. It has often been said that meekness is not weakness, and this is certainly true here.

The meek person is the one who has chosen to relinquish rights to many of the things for people strive, that he might do the will of God. He is not the one who could not have what he wanted but the one who chose not to want. When you know that you could have everything and yet claim nothing so that you might do the will of God, then you know what true meekness is.

When Peter reminded Jesus of what he and the others had left to follow Him, Jesus made it clear to them that what they had left was nothing compared with what they would inherit.  Yet, please note that they had to leave these things first and trust God for their inheritance.

There are people who are seeking to claim God’s promises of provision, God’s promises of manifold more in this life and in the life to come, but who have not even left what they have at present. God never adds until you take away!

Meekness is to let go of everything so that God can trust you with an earthly heritage. We have already seen that there is a spiritual heritage for the poor in spirit those who strip themselves of all to do God’s will. Now we see that those who specifically turn away from their earthly rights receive an earthly heritage also. In our relinquishing of our rights to things, God promises that we will lack nothing. There is no way this can be experienced but by doing it.

The kingdom of God does not run on a seven days free trial plan: God looks for our move first, a move of faith which demonstrates to Him that we really believe His promises. And once we have made that move, we are to consider it irrevocable. Jesus was truly meek – He laid claim to nothing. When a man came to Him and was wanting to follow Him wherever he went, Jesus quickly reminded that man that he didn’t know where he was going to sleep that night.  Sweeping generalities in our commitment to Jesus can be meaningless. He looks for those who understand the specifics of their commitment and gladly follow Him, having relinquished all their rights.

Right standing plus

Now we come to verse 6, where Jesus said; “Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”

“Righteousness” means right standing with God. How important is it to you to have right standing with God? Not from the viewpoint of retaining your salvation or avoiding punishment from God, but from the viewpoint of keeping God happy? Is it really important to you to have right standing with God? Jesus said that we need to hunger and thirst after this right standing with God. To have a right relationship with God is to mean more to us than anything else. Jesus then promises that this desire will be satisfied and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled.

In Matthew 6:33 we read: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

If you seek God first and make Him your top priority, above all your needs, above all your future plans, above the most immediate necessities of yourself and your family, you will have an understanding of the vital top priority of having a right standing with God.

The glory of it is that, in seeking this right standing with God above all other things, then all the other things are added as well. To concentrate on what we understand are the necessities whilst neglecting to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness will mean that, ultimately, even the things that we concentrate on will be lost. The one thing that was worth seeking will never have been gained.

Jesus said: “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.” To please God, to live in right standing with God, was more important to Him than eating. Not that He did not need to eat and not that He did not have food to eat, but because His priorities were set and He gave Himself to do God’s will, knowing His needs would be met anyway.

Jesus never worried about where His next meal was coming from. The disciples sometimes did, but He knew that as he kept His priorities right, all the other needs would be met. Jesus promises that we will be satisfied, we will be filled, if only it matters to us above all to have a right standing with God.

Do you really believe that you could not possibly miss out on all of your needs being met if you would only make God your top priority? God has guaranteed it. There has never been a time in my life when a move that looked like it would deprive me and my family of necessities has in fact done anything but expose us to more of God’s goodness. So, whatever price we seemed to have been paying, it has not been a price in comparison with what we have gained.

Eagerness to respond

Next, Jesus says: “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.”

A definition of “mercy” is “eagerness to respond”. This gives us the picture of God on his toes in heaven, eager, wanting desperately an opportunity to respond to the need of His people so that when anyone genuinely cries out to God for help and really needs Him, God is so quick to respond to their cry and their need. God is not reluctant to respond to need. He is not deaf to the cries of His people because He is a merciful God.

This mercifulness is the nature of God, and here Jesus shows us how much it was a part of his nature with which we are to identify. We cannot know true identification with Jesus if we do not know what it is to have this same eagerness to respond to every genuine cry, every genuine need brought to us by God. God expects us to recognise genuine need and to respond eagerly to it. 

In Hosea 10:12 we read. “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy”. We reap from our right standing with God which we are to hunger and thirst after. In learning to respond eagerly to need, we recognise needs which God brings to us to meet.

A heart with on desire

Next, Jesus says: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

The pure in heart are not necessarily those who look the most angelic: The word “pure” means to be unadulterated or without alloy as in the case of a metal which has all impurities and all other metal removed from it. A pure heart is one which is unmixed in its motives. To have a pure heart is quite a simple thing, for it means to have only one real desire, and that is for the Lord. It is to have no other motivations, to be without mixed motives, and to be without ulterior motives. God knows that he can trust people who have unmixed motives and whose only desire is Him.

In Exodus 33:911 we read:

“And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”

Moses had a pure heart. He had made up his mind that he was going to live only for the Lord;  so that when God saw Moses heading for the tabernacle, he was delighted with the opportunity to fellowship face to face with one who had a heart like His heart. God could say, “My friend Moses is coming to talk with me” because that exactly is the relationship Moses had with God.  So the pillar of cloud would come down and stand at the tabernacle door when Moses went in, and God and Moses would have face to face, and therefore heart-to-heart, fellowship. Unfortunately, the people were not pure in heart and their motives were mixed. They were looking to see what was in it for them. They were very conscious of their own need, very conscious of whether or not God seemed to be looking after them. They were suffering from mixed and ulterior motives.

These people, who were not fit to meet with God face to face, stood in the doors of their tents to worship. They could not have lived in the presence of God because their hearts were not pure. Moses was able to freely fellowship face to face with God because he had a pure heart and was not afraid to be in God’s presence. Rather, it was a very natural and normal place for him to be.

It was not that Moses was perfect in all his ways as we might think of perfection. But rather that he had a pure heart, a perfect heart, a heart with unmixed motives and with just one desire to know God face to face and to fellowship and relate to God in openness and honesty. His genuine desire for God was the thing which made him qualify for fellowship with God. It is the pure in heart, those people with unmixed motives and with a genuine desire for God, who can see God face to face.

In II Corinthians 3:18 we read:

“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

An open face speaks precisely of an honest face to face relationship. We might use the term “looking someone in the eye”. A father who has caught his child or is suspecting that his child has done something wrong, might try to look his child in the eye while making some enquiries, and he will find that the guilt that that child feels causes him to want to look anywhere but right into his father’s eye! When we can look at God eye to eye, face to face, with an open heart, rather than feeling that we do not qualify to be in his presence, we have an open-face relationship with him.

Then we come to God with an open face, not pretending about ourselves, not thinking more of ourselves than truth and reality show to be so but being able to say, “God, I am not pretending to be what I am not, but you know that I really love you with all my heart and want you so much”, and God knows that it is true, then we cannot help but be transformed from one degree of glory to another. It is His job to make us into the image of Jesus as we, in sincerity and in truth, fellowship in an open-face relationship with Him. It is by looking at God’s glory in open fellowship with Him that we are changed into the image of that glory.

Peacedoers

The next Beatitude says: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

A slightly more accurate translation of the word “peacemakers” is “peace-doers”. Peacedoers is perhaps a word that represents action a little more than peacemakers. By creating peace, we are to demonstrate that we are the children of God.

II Corinthians 5:18-19 says:

“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.”

We are to create peace between men and God and between men and men.

There is a principle which is unavoidable, and that is that we can only take people where we have already been. Therefore, if we are living in some kind of constant conflict between ourselves and God, we are kidding ourselves if we think that we can teach other people how to live in harmony with God. Likewise, if we are living in conflict with other people, we cannot teach people how to live in harmony with others. No matter how accurately we present the way of harmony and peace to them, the very fact of our not having attained it will hinder them finding it in their own experience.

The peacedoers are those who understand what the ministry of reconciliation is because they, having been reconciled to God and to men, are busy reconciling men to God and to one another.

There are so many points on which our relationship with God and our relationships with one another fall foul unless we learn how to live in harmony. Even two truly happily married people know that harmony in relationship does not come in a day, a week, or a month, but it takes time and a process of working together. In fact it has to be worked out on a continuous basis because their two personalities are so intricate and complex that when they have to relate at many different levels and in many different situations, some of them intellectual, some of them emotional, and so on, there is a need for a constant coming to terms with one another.

Living in harmony is a process which needs constant discipline and application and much self-giving. We ought not be surprised, as we progress in our relationship with God, to find more and more things which seem to need working at to create harmony between us and God, as against the very simplicity of the initial conversion experience, when everything seemed to have arrived at a point of peace and harmony. This is because, as we get to know God better, we understand more of His nature and character and we gain a greater insight into ourselves.  The reason for this is quite simple. As we progress in our relationship with God, we get to know Him better and begin to understand more of His demands on our lives. In addition, we gain a greater insight into ourselves as God sees us. As a result, there arises a constant need to maintain a relationship of harmony and peace.

So it is with our relationships with other Christians. It often seems that the more we have to do with other Christians and the better we get to know them, the more need there is to work at harmonious relationships. This is simply because we are living personalities, just as God is, and there are continually new situations with which we need to come to terms.

It is God who teaches us the way in which we are to come to terms with one another. As we learn to apply reconciliation in many practical ways, we need to learn to concentrate on relationships, for they are so basic. It is a constant temptation for people to argue about rules rather than to work out relationships.

Likewise in marriage, a man will often retreat into something a little less demanding than a proper relationship with his wife by getting involved in his work or hobby or sport. In the same manner, a wife may allow herself to be taken up with aspects of family life rather than having to properly relate to her husband.

Many parents fall into the trap of retreating into the outward aspects of being dutiful and proper parents rather than in fact giving themselves to an intimate, personal relationship with their own children.

People baulk at right relationships because to relate to another person in reality and truth and to maintain harmony, is a very demanding thing. And yet, to be a peacedoer, to know how to promote genuine harmony and peace between men and God and between men and men, is so fundamental to the ways of God’s kingdom and was so real in the character of Jesus. It is recorded that he grew up in favour with both God and man.

Of course as Jesus moved into His ministry, not everybody was in harmony with Him, but He was in harmony with them. He didn’t bear any grudges and he didn’t have any wrong attitudes. Not so that we might be frustrated by His example but that we might be inspired to understand that God has called us to identify with Him. It is not only perfectly possible, but it is a command of God that we should walk even as Jesus walked.

The peacedoers shall be called the children of God because God can look at them and say, “That is my boy. That person is truly my child. He is truly a reproduction of what I am.”

The blessing of suffering

We then go on to read that: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Persecution is fine when it remains a theoretical thing, but as a reality it can be very real and very frightening for those who face it and have to endure it.

It would, perhaps, have seemed enough if Jesus had simply warned us about persecution, almost with an apology, but He did not do that. He made it clear that persecution is a privilege and a blessing from God.  The Amplified Bible amplifies the word “blessed” as “happy, and to be envied”. We may find it hard to think of ourselves as ever being envious of someone who is undergoing real persecution for his faith. It is one thing to be jealous of someone else’s obvious blessings, but could you ever think of yourself as being jealous of his persecutions?

Jesus said that persecution is a blessing. In fact, persecution only looks bad from one viewpoint because of a lack on our part in understanding our true relationship with God. If Jesus had lacked an understanding of the true value of His relationship with God and of God’s love for us, He would never have gladly embraced the cross. He would have considered it far too great a price to pay. But Jesus had His priorities right and it was no trouble for Him to see things from God’s viewpoint and to see suffering for the will of God as a blessing and a privilege.

Jesus has earned the right to speak to us of persecution as a blessing because, even though he spoke these words before the cross, He did endure suffering and the cross and showed that He indeed lived the reality of this truth about persecution. He regarded it as a blessing, He was gladly persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and He has shown us that it can be our blessing and our privilege through our identification with Him.

In II Timothy 2:12: “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him; if we deny Him, he also will deny us.”

Fellowship with Jesus means nothing other than fellowship with Jesus. It does not mean fellowship sometimes. It means fellowship all the time. The way some people prefer to fellowship with Jesus is the same way some people prefer a love affair to a marriage. They want to have it when it suits them and to not have it when it does not suit then. This is precisely why there are numbers of people who would rather have a casual love affair or even a longer-term love affair which is not binding, than a marriage. They do this because they understand that to marry is “for better or for worse”, and whereas they might like the idea of the “better”, they prefer not to have to handle the “worse”.

To have the kind of casual relationship which allows a way of escape when things get tough, can never be regarded as any kind of commitment, either in a marriage or in our relationship with God.

The apostle Paul demonstrated His commitment to Jesus with these words:

“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.”

He knew that to go all the way with Jesus meant there could be no parting of the ways when things got tough. Jesus went through suffering as He walked in the will of God, and we cannot walk with Him in the will of God if we prefer to part company when it comes to suffering.

The New Testament says a lot more about suffering than preachers are normally prepared to speak about in the proportion to which they speak of other, far more attractive subjects. Yet suffering is a principle that runs right through the New Testament. We need to understand that, as Christians, we live in an alien, God rejecting world system. In some places, it is more outwardly civilised than others and so there is not the outwardly violent or physically uncomfortable persecution and suffering that is found in other places.  Yet, basically, the same evil motivations exist and we need to understand that, one way or another, we must find ourselves in conflict with the godlessness of this world, and we must realise that we could at any time be vulnerable to actual persecution and suffering.

We need to understand that the devil’s attacks on Jesus are carried out by his attacks on the church which is his body and, as the devil has the world’s society in general in his control, that will largely be the instrument of his persecution and of his attacks on the church.

God has not guaranteed to rescue us from suffering, but he has guaranteed that there is persecution for Christians generally and he has promised that there is a blessing in suffering.

We need to remember that God condemns cowardice because He knows that no matter how full of fear and weakness we may feel, He supplies all the grace and all the strength that is necessary for the performance of His will, whatever the price may be to us in performing that will. In the ultimate sense, the only thing that would cause us to back off from doing God’s will would be cowardice, which would be self-preservation, self-protection, and a lack of trust and commitment to Him.

Suffering can only be beautiful to those who love Jesus because, in the final analysis, only the motivation of true love is sufficient to pay that kind of price and to regard it as a blessing.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad

The final point in this Principle of Identification is found in the eleventh and twelfth verses of Matthew 5, where Jesus says:

“Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely; for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

This point is a continuation and an enlargement of the previous one. Only here we are commanded to rejoice and be exceeding glad in these things. To be reviled and slandered, to have our name dragged through the mud when we know it is not true, is hard enough for us to take. Our reaction to something like that would more than likely be one of righteous indignation!

God taught me the reality of this by giving me a genuine enemy a man who hated me violently and slandered me unmercifully and would, I suppose, had he had the opportunity and been prepared for the consequences, have done me physical harm. I found myself reacting to this man’s accusations and slander. I found myself wanting to justify myself and tell the world that the things he was saying were not true. Then God showed me that He had given me a privilege in that I had to learn to love that man, I had to learn to pray for Him, and I had to learn to bless Him in the name of the Lord.

It is a privilege to be reviled, persecuted and slandered when it is for Jesus’ sake. He says, “and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward”, for God, who knows when you are paying a price for following Jesus, knows what it is costing, and he is a God who gives reward.

In Acts 5:4041:

“And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.”

These men considered it a joy and a privilege to have been trusted with suffering for Jesus.  They had been beaten, they were bleeding and they were bruised, and yet as they walked away from that beating they were rejoicing together in the fact that God had trusted them with suffering that day. Their blessing came when after having been beaten, they could look back on it and realise that God had given them a privilege and that their love for Jesus was stronger than ever.

Identification with Jesus

In bringing all of these Beatitudes together in this Principle of Identification, we turn to Romans 8;16,17,28 & 29:

16,17: “The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

Many times people speak with excitement about what it is to be children of God and joint-heirs with Christ, and yet not quite so often do they speak of the condition  “if we suffer with him, we shall be glorified together”. It is easy to talk about bearing the glory of Jesus and identifying with Jesus. It is one thing to make positive confessions such as “I am the righteousness of God in Christ”, “I am a new creation in Jesus” and so on. But the question that would come to us from Jesus is: “Are you as I was? Are you as I am?”

The Bible says, “As He is, so are we in this world”. He knows when you are identified with Him. It is not enough to identify with Him simply as your substitute on the cross, even though that may get you saved. We kid ourselves if we think that God will trust us with the great inheritance he has given to Jesus unless we are fully identified with Him. After what Jesus went through to gain that inheritance, he is not about to make it available on the cheap.

There is no cheap way to the inheritance that we have in Jesus. We are not speaking about an imitation of Christ. We are speaking about genuine identification with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who lives forever and who identified with us that we might be fully identified with Him, not as a heavy thing but as a joyous act of love.

vs. 28,29: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

Many speak lightly about “all things work together for good to them that love the Lord” as if it applied to anyone who was a born-again Christian. But it does not say “all things work together for good to them that are Christians”;  it says, “all things work together for good to them that love God”, and you don’t love God by talking about it. You love God by doing it, by loving in deed and in truth. God knows who will respond to Him. He always knew. Not because He preprogrammed them but, being God and knowing all things, he already knew who would, of their own free will and by their own choice, make a response to Him. He has therefore already called them and predestinated them for this purpose, to be conformed to the image of His son. But this is not an automatic process. We are responsible as to whether or not this process works in our lives.

Jesus was not intended to be a once-only production. This does not take away from His uniqueness in the Godhead but, as the firstborn among many brethren, He was to be the beginning of a whole new creation, and we are to be made into His image.

It has been so easy for people to speak of the deity of Jesus as an excuse for differentiating between His deity and our humanity. But if, in fact, Jesus did not fully identify with us as humans, then He might as well have stayed in heaven, for the incarnation would have been a farce.

The glory of the incarnation is that he stripped Himself totally of the advantage of being God so that He might become truly man. If it was not possible for Jesus to have sinned, then His temptation in the wilderness was an ugly joke played on us by God. The devil certainly knew better than that, and he was not participating in a playact or a theological exercise when he tempted Jesus.

Jesus could have sinned but did not; not so as to frustrate us but to show us that we need not sin. It can be convenient to set Jesus apart  to place Him quite apart from human beings and in so doing, though it comes with the appearance of glorifying Him, to excuse ourselves from the obligation to be like Him, to be conformed to His image. Then we can say things like, “Jesus was perfect but we will never be perfect”, or “Jesus never sinned but we will always sin”, in which case God would stand accused of being unreal and dishonest in presenting Jesus as the one to whom we are to conform.

It is indeed the Holy Spirit’s work to change us into the image of Jesus, but he can only do that as we gaze on the glory of Jesus in our identification with Him.

You will never learn to live like Jesus by reading books about Jesus, or hearing sermons about Jesus, but only by intimately fellowshipping with Jesus. It is in living with Jesus and relating to Him totally that God is able to do His transforming work in us. In so doing, God can complete that which He has begun in our lives and so it is that the present identification with Jesus assures the sharing of the future inheritance with Him.

The way in which you identify with Jesus now will be the measure and the gauge of any claim you can make on an inheritance to be shared with Him in the future.

Can being a Christian be as real and as full and as glorious as the Bible says? It can, but it does not come on the cheap. It will cost you all you have, all of the time. Identification with Jesus is like a marriage. In marriage two people become one flesh, and the Bible says that he who is joined to the lord becomes one spirit with Him. As in marriage, where two people become one flesh for the rest of their lives, so with God we become one spirit for eternity. They will need to work throughout their marriage at identifying with one another, and with their lifetime bond as the basis. It will not just happen because they are living under the same roof and sleeping in the same bed. They have to work at it. And so we are called to work at our relationship with God just as He works at His relationship with us. If we cease to work at identifying with Jesus, then nothing can make up for it. There can never be a substitute for true identification with Jesus.

About the author

Tony Kostas was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1941, where at the age of seventeen, he committed his life to Jesus at a Billy Graham Crusade. In 1967 he founded the Melbourne Outreach Crusade, a non-denominational evangelistic outreach. This later grew into Outreach International, which is now a worldwide body of believers, who share a God-given calling and are committed to live in love with Him and with one another.

Tony’s life is a true expression of all that God has revealed to him throughout the years, in its purity and focus on loving God. His passion is for God to have the desire of His heart: a people who truly represent Him because they are His and His alone.