“I was wounded in the house of my friends” (Zec. 13:6, OAV)
God chooses a very interesting way of crushing the wheat kernel, so that your carnal shell is obliterated and the germ cell of Christ’s life can be released within you. Your brothers. Yes, you read that correctly – He does this through other believers that walk with you.
Ever heard any of the following expressions: “I’ve been so hurt in the church”/ “I trust no businessman who calls himself a believer” / “Christians are a hypocritical bunch” / “I want to have a relationship with God, but I have no interest in his ground crew” / “He/she was so offended …”? It’s common-place.
Heb. 10:20 explains that the veil typologically points to the Body of Christ: “through the veil, that is, His flesh”. Because the Bride is his Body, “members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones” (Eph. 5:30), it is necessary that as He was crushed – “it pleased the Lord to bruise Him” (Isa. 53:10) – we also need to be crushed. What Jesus endured: being rejected by society because He was a so-called illegitimate child; being taunted by the Pharisees, the church people of his time, because He did not want to conform to their religious system; unfair and untrue things that were attributed to Him, that He was for instance an alcoholic and a glutton; close friends who, rather than assist Him in a desperate hour of need, would rather sleep; a beloved disciple that eventually betrays Him with a kiss. You could teach Jesus nothing about offence.
Jesus had to endure all kinds of offence without being offended. Offence draws it towards oneself, so that it can have no effect on you, so that it can rob you. John Bevere calls it the bait of Satan in his book with the same name. If you fall for the bait of offence, you are in the enemy’s grip, and this gives him absolute power over your life.
In his book Crucified by Christians Gene Edwards discusses this state in the Body of Christ. A few core quotes that really hit home: “Being crucified by fellow Christians is one of the deepest pains a child of God will ever know. It can so profoundly affect you that it can mark the end of your life as a practicing Christian … Place your crucifixion in the realm of the invisibles, in realms unseen. Only there will you truly find the person who deliberately caused you to be crucified. Only in the realm of the spiritual will you find the perpetrator. When you were crucified at the hands of men, in reality you but entered into His crucifixion. Consider the circumstance which led to His crucifixion. Who caused His cross, His crucifixion? Who was it that plotted His Golgotha? It was exactly the same person who plotted yours. The Father willed His own Son’s crucifixion. And yours.”
Phil. 3:10-11 remains an absolute guideline concerning spiritual authority and mantles: “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead”. You need to die with Him, before you can reign with Him.
- Selah: Have you dealt with all the instances where you get offended?
- Read: 51-52.
Memorise: Jer. 51:1 (Note the synchronicity – who commands the enemy
