"Give me liberty or give me death!" These words, spoken by Patrick Henry in 1775, really encapsulate what this Rant series is going to be all about. Because what we don't seem to understand is that we WERE dead before the cross. God told Adam, "But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest therof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). And as soon as Adam ate of that tree--the tree of death--he made all of humanity the walking dead. We were slaves to sin. We weren't free. I don't why there's this idea that grace is freedom TO sin, when really grace is freedom FROM sin. I think it stems from the idea that Jesus came to make "bad" people "good." As if to say, "evil" or "sin" is our default setting, and Jesus came to change us into something different. But here's why that idea is big trouble: A huge part of my ministry is trying to help people be who they are. So if you think you're bad--if you think you have a "sin nature"--then being yourself isn't going to work. But if you understand your true identity in Christ--Christ in you the hope of glory--then you can stop trying to be someone you're not and you can rest and just be yourself! I'm telling you right now, Jesus didn't come to make "bad" people "good." He came to make dead people alive. Ephesians 2:1 says it like this, "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." See, we think, "I've sinned so I'm going to die." But in truth, we sinned BECAUSE we were dead. Sin is unbelief, and before the cross we didn't have anything, or anyone to believe in. We tried to do the best we could with what we had... but when you bang your head against the wall all you get is a headache. So, at the appointed time, Jesus came to take away the sin of the world. And He took away the sin (unbelief) of the world by giving us something--someONE, Himself, Love--to believe in. He brought us out of death and into life by giving us His Spirit--the love receptor--so that we could know and believe the love of Christ! Remember, God always has and always will love us. That's not just what He does, that's who He is. But we couldn't receive that love. It seemed too good to be true. The only thing that made sense to our carnal mind was trying to earn that love and acceptance. Eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil... get enough knowledge so that we could do good and be rewarded, and stop doing evil and avoid punishment. But that's not what God wanted for us. He wanted us to eat from the Tree of Life. Because the Fruit of the Spirit is love. He wanted us to experience His love, and in that way experience His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life! So. Real life--Jesus' life in and through and as us--is knowing and believing the Father's love for us. And we know and believe this love through the Spirit. "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty!" (2 Corinthians 3:17). Love isn't a ball and chain we have to drag around. Love is what freed us from the bondage of sin and death!

It's not good that man should be alone. It's good that man should work together. When we work together we come into the unity of faith. The unity of ONE new man. And we are all members of that ONE new man's ONE body. Let me say it this way, to quote a movie I like, "Same team, Farva." The problem is that we still see things in the realm of duality. Good and evil. Us and them. When it's really just US. We "destroy" our enemies by making them our friends. I believe this is what the Apsotle Paul was talking about in Romans 12:20, "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." And I've heard this preached like this, "Be nice to your enemy, because God's gonna get him in the end!" When the truth of the matter is... God already got him. God got all of us when Jesus was raised up from the earth and drew us all into Himself. I don't know why we always and immediately think of fire as "hell fire." Hebrews 12:29 tells us that, "...our God is a consuming fire." So when I see fire in the Bible I think about God. I think about love. Like when death and hell were thrown into the lake of fire in the book of Revelation? That was just God consuming anything that wasn't... Him. And THAT'S what the coals of fire we heap on our "enemy's" head do. They don't burn him... don't punish him... they consume him. They purify him. I'm telling you, when somebody shows you nothing but love, it's hard to respond in any other way BUT love. Remember what Papa Smurf said, "We rise to the level of love that we're shown." If you show somebody love, you give them something to rise to. That's what love does: It lifts us up. It equips and empowers us with everything we need in order to experience the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life that IS the Father/Son relationship between God and man. God IN man. God THROUGH man. God AS man. And that's what happens when we work together. When we receive and release His love for us. When we receive His love for us by releasing that love to each other. That's what it's all about. That's the New Commandment. A New Commandment for a New Man. Love one another as Jesus loves us. Receive and release. Receive and release. Receive and release. Stop trying to get something you (think you) don't have and just start sharing what you do have! Let love connect us and bind us together. Stop hating your own body--we're all members of the same body--and start cherishing it. Start celebrating differences instead of trying to force conformity. Let people be who they are, even as you be who you are! Because we're all in this together. Jesus is altogether lovely. Every bit of Him. The bit I have and the bit you have. And when we put our bits together then He (we) is lovely all together!

Things work out better when we work together. Especially when we understand that we are all in this together. We are all working--whether we realize it or not--for the same goal. I'm convinced that the cry of mankind's heart is the desire to be loved. To be accepted. Unfortunately, that gets us into trouble a lot of the time. Because we look for love in all the wrong places. We try to earn something that is freely given, instead of simply receiving it. And this is where the Holy Spirit--our love receptor--comes in. This is the truth that the Holy Spirit leads and guides us into. And this is the truth that only works when we work together. Guys, our EPIC (Eternal Purpose In Christ) destiny, the reason we are here, is to be loved by God and love each other with that same love. So in order to fulfill our EPIC destiny, in order to have that sense of meaning in our lives, we really need to understand Genesis 2:18, "And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." You can't experience love without giving love. Because love IS giving. And you can't give if you don't have someone to give to. It's not good for us to be alone, because if we're alone then we can't receive or release the love of the Father. See, we receive BY releasing. Because you can't give what you don't have, and you can only give what you do have. So if you love somebody that means--on some level--you know and believe that you are loved. Otherwise you wouldn't have any love to give them. And that's why it's so important that we understand that we are all in this together. When we connect on that level--Spirit to Spirit, holy to holy... the Jesus (or love) in me connecting to the Jesus (or love) in you--that's when we truly function as one body. That's when we truly grow up together in faith into ONE new man. It's not, "I'm a new man, and you're a different new man." It's, "WE are ONE new man." He is our head and we are His body. Look at Matthew 8:20, "And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." He didn't have a body. Until He finished the work on the cross. Until He presented us to Himself as a bride without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing. And now, think about this, how does Jesus operate? Through His body. My mouth is HIS mouth. My hands are HIS hands. I don't have to try to follow in His foot steps because my feet are HIS feet! And the same is true for you. Because there are things I'm not good at. And it's very likely that the things I'm NOT good at... you ARE good at. So when we work together... there's nothing that can stop us. When we bear each other's burdens then those burdens aren't very heavy. Which is what Jesus said. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Because HE'S the One carrying it. Because we all are helping each other carry it! Because we're in this together and we're working together!

I've heard it said that boys look for reasons to be friends, and girls look for reasons to be enemies. I'm not sure if this is true--certainly it's not true 100% of the time--but it definitely seems like in the church world we want to make enemies with everybody. We seem to have thrown down a gauntlet that says, "Agree with me completely or don't speak to me at all." And I don't really understand this mindset. Because even as a pastor, even as someone who writes a daily Rant about Jesus, I've always felt like... I'm gonna love you, and if you want to know what I believe--if you ASK me--I'll tell you. Unconditional love is what God is all about. In fact, it's who He is. Watch this, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Christ didn't wait for us to choose Him. He chose us! When people say things like, "Let me clean up my act and then I'll go to church," I want to shake them and say, "How in the world are you going to clean up your act without the church!" (The church, of course, being the place where you go to hear the truth, the gospel, the good news... and the church being your brothers and sisters who edify you and love you.) What I'm saying is, Jesus already cleaned up your act. He presented you to Himself as a bride without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing. He translated you out of the power of darkness and into His Kingdom. He did it all so you could get it all. And now that you have it all... it's your duty to share what you've got! Let me say it like this, "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another..." (Romans 13:8). Love is not for people who fit in your box, or for people who believe the same way you believe. Love is for everybody. Because we're all in this together. And love is what binds us together. God loved us when we were yet sinners--before the cross. When we were unbelievers because we didn't have anything to believe in. The best we could do with what we had--the carnal mind--was to try to do good in order to be rewarded and not do evil in order to avoid punishment. But then Jesus took away the sin of the world. He took away the unbelief of the world by giving us something--someONE, Himself, love--to believe in! He showed us that we are in this together. That we are all different parts of one body. HIS body. And, "...no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones" (Ephesians 5:29). When we love each other... THAT'S how we love God. Because we are His. He loves His own body by loving us, and we love our own body by loving each other. I'm telling you, when you love someone... that's the best, most real way to feel love. Because we're all in this together!

"His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem" (Song of Solomon 5:15). Jesus, our beloved, is altogether lovely. But here's the revelation God gave me about this verse: He is altogether lovely... and He is lovely all together. It takes all of us to make up His lovely body. Together. And look at what our verse said, "This is my friend." When we truly begin to understand this connection of love--when we truly begin to understand that love is what binds us and holds us together--then we can be friends with any and everybody. I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who said, "I destroy my enemies by making them my friends." And look at the beginning of our verse: "His mouth is most sweet." Whoever said, "Stick and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" obviously didn't know what he was talking about. Ecclesiastes 8:4 tells us, "Where the word of a king is, there is power..." And Proverbs 18:21 defines this power, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue..." What you say DOES matter. It CAN hurt people. And it can also heal people. Proverbs 15:1 in the Amplified says, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger." So a sweet mouth, full of soft words, is a really good way to make friends. A really good way to connect. A really good way to get--and stay--together. I'm really kind of sick and tired of theological arguments. As if one person is completely right and the other is completely wrong. Come on guys. God is bigger--LOVE is bigger--than what you've been able to figure out. (Or what I've been able to figure out.) Figuring it out isn't even really the point. Letting God--letting LOVE--reveal Himself to you and in you and through you and as you is the point. And watch this: If I have a piece, and you have a piece... and instead of fighting about which piece is right we instead SHARE our pieces... now you've got a bigger piece and so do I! Now we are starting to become lovely... all together. Love doesn't build walls, it knocks them down. Love doesn't break things apart, it puts them together. Love doesn't put a hard yoke or a heavy burden on us, it offers us an easy yoke and a light burden! And here's the key to the yoke of Jesus being easy and the burden being light: It's easy and light because JESUS is the One carrying it! Even as He carries us! As He holds us up and keeps us from falling. As HE keeps our words soft and sweet because He IS the Word! The (single) Word of God is LOVE! And when love is on our lips... I'm telling you, it's hard to be mad at someone who is showing you nothing but love. It's hard to stay seperated from that kind of love. That kind of love... binds us together. Holds us together. Keeps us together. All together!

I think one of the biggest truths that Jesus came to show us--He IS the truth, after all... what's true about Him is true about you--is one that we have a really hard time grasping. And that truth is that we are all in this together. Let me say it like this, "And we are members of his body" (Ephesians 5:30 NLT). One body, lots of members. One New Man. One new creature. Watch this, "And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 11:19). One Spirit. One heart. The Father's heart beating with love in our chests. There's no Jew or Greek. No male of female. There's just... us. We are One. Jesus said, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30). He came to get rid of any sense, or any idea, of seperation between God and man. How could there be seperation between God and man when God lives IN man? And let me bring this around to where I always end up anyway: How could there be seperation between LOVE and man when LOVE lives in man? That's not just what God does. That's who God is. God is love. So anytime we're talking about God, we're talking about love. When we're talking about Jesus we're talking about God in the flesh, love in a body. God in OUR flesh. Love in OUR body. Because we are HIS body! We are all in this together, and when we work together it all comes together! Because even though we have an unction from the Holy Ghost and we know all things, we don't understand everything we know. And some of the things I don't understand, you do. So when we SHARE our understanding--instead of using it to build walls that (you got it) seperate us--when we share that understanding then we learn and grow. We mature. "Till we all come in the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). Did you catch that? Until WE come into the unity of faith, which is the knowledge of the Son, A perfect man. WE are A new man. Because WE are Jesus. Before the cross the Holy Spirit lived in ONE human body. Then through the cross the Spirit was poured out on all flesh. Now He dwells in ALL human bodies. We aren't just in this together because we all live on the earth. We are in this together because we are connected by that Spirit. We are connected by love. Love is what binds and holds everything together. Love is where we can connect with each other--Spirit to Spirit, holy to holy. The Jesus in me connects to the Jesus in you and that's where we find our bond. We can let differences drive us apart OR we can celebrate them. We can try to get people to be who they're not and force them to find things in common with us, or we can teach people about who they really are. We can fill them up with the love that we are full of and watch it flow out of them naturally! We can try to do it ourselves (and fail), or we can work together!

Identity. If you know who you are then you don't have to try to be somebody else. And if you know who you are you don't have to prove it to anybody else. That's the problem I think we sink into sometimes--we try to prove how good we are by proving how bad someone else is. Jesus said it like this, "Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: 'I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else... But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, 'O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.' I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justeified before God..." (Luke 18:10-14 NLT). The Pharisee was full of SELF righteousness, and needed to put someone else down in order to prove how "good" he was. But the sinner--and listen, I'm not saying you're a sinner, because sin is unbelief so if you're a believer then by definition you're NOT a sinner--had no illusions about himself. He knew he needed a Saviour. Fast forward to this side of the cross. Fast forward to Jesus finishing the work and taking away the sin of the world. Fast forward to God making us kings and priests to reign on this earth. Now we don't have to beg for mery. We don't have to try to earn acceptance or love. We have been equipped and empowered to BE who we really are. We have been filled with the Holy Spirit--the love receptor--and now we know and believe the love of Christ. Now we know who we really are. Now, instead of trying to earn self-righteousness through our works and labor, we can reign in righteousness. Now, instead of judging things according to appearance (good and evil), we can rule IN judgment. We can execute the judgment (an abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life sentence) that was handed down on the cross from Father to Son! Guys... we are lighthouses. The light within shines out when we simply know and believe that it's shining within. When we receive it and release it. When we receive it BY releasing it! And that's what it means to truly reign. Not a king who demands service from others, but a king who serves others! Not putting people down, but lifting people up! There is no condemnation in Christ. It's not my job to modify your behavior. And, really, it's not your job to modify your behavior either. Because behavior modification doesn't work. It doesn't last. It isn't real. It can't come from the outside-in. It has to come from the inside-out. Not self-righteousness that you do, but the righteousness of God in Christ that you ARE! It's an outworking of the indwelling Spirit. It's being filled to overflowing with the love of God--the love that IS God--and filling yourself with the fulness of that love by sharing it with others. Reigning in righteousness is not about what others can do for you. It's about what Jesus has already DONE for you, and what you can do for others because of what Jesus has done for you. It's about taking the gift we've been given and experiencing it by sharing it!

What it all comes down to is identity. If you don't know who you are--or what you're capable of--then you'll spend your whole life trying to be someone your not. Trying to get something you think you con't have. But if you DO know who you are--God's beloved Son in whom He is well pleased--then you don't have to try to be anybody, or get anything. You can live an abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life by letting Jesus live His own life in and through and as you! Rather than trying to get something--that, again, you already have--you can simply enjoy the gift you've already been given. And the most real way to enjoy the gift is to share the gift! To receive it and release it. To receive it BY releasing it! And that's what it means to reign in righteousness and rule in judgment. Serving others. Loving others. I don't know why we have this idea of authority meaning we're up here and everybody else is down there. True authority doesn't come from putting people down, but from helping them up! True authority isn't about being served, it's about serving others. That's what Jesus demonstrated when He got down on His knees and washed His disciples' feet. He showed what it's really all about. See, Adam was a son who thought he was a servant--or, really, a slave. His identity was all screwed up. He thought he needed to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. He thought he had to DO in order to BE. But Jesus was the BELOVED Son because He let Himself be loved. He knew exactly who He was. He was a Son with the HEART of a servant. He didn't serve because He HAD to, He served because He wanted to. Because He loved (loves) us. My best understanding of the term, "righteousness" is simply, "right standing." Which to me means we know who we are, we know where we are, and we know why we're here. That's why I wrote the Answer Trilogy. Because it's vital that we understand these three things: We are Jesus, we are in the Promised Land, and we were here to be loved and to love one another. Our right standing with God doesn't come from what we do. It comes from who we are. And that's really pretty amazing because what we do flows from who we are. Or, really, who we BELIEVE we are. If we don't believe we're loved, we'll spend all our lives looking for love in all the wrong places. But if we know and believe the love of Christ, then we can go straight to the source, fill ourselves with the fulness of God (that we are already full of) and share what we have. We can reign in righteousness. I'm in right standing with God... and so are you. We can rule in judgment. Not judging things... but executing the judgment that was handed down from the Father to the Son! As kings and priests we are equipped and empowered to reign on this earth. We have been given everything we need in order to help the ever expanding Kingdom of heaven expand! We are lighthouses, and wherever we go the light shines and the darkness flees!

We are capable of so much more than we think. There's a sign in my mom's living room that says, "If we did all the things we were capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves." And I absolutely agree. The problem, it seems, is that we keep waiting for God to do something for us. When, in truth, He has already done everything He needed to do. Everything He's GOING to do. I heard one preacher say it like this, "People are always asking me what God's going to do this year. And my response is, 'What are YOU going to do this year?'." Jesus said it like this, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father" (John 14:12). What Jesus (already) did is what empowers us to do what we need to do! He gave us His Spirit so that instead of Jesus being one man in one human body, He could be one NEW Man in ALL of our bodies! The King of kings made us kings and priests so that WE could reign on this earth. The Father passed the righteous judgment down to His Son and then equipped and empowered US to execute that righteous judgment. To reign in righteousness, and rule in judgment. But, again, we don't seem to know who we are or what we're capable of. We're afraid that a distant, angry God is going to judge us. Even though Jesus said, "...the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22). It is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment. On the cross Jesus laid His life down as a sacrifice. Then the Father judged Him. And the Father's judgment wasn't AGAINST Jesus (and us in Him), it was FOR Jesus. The Father's judgment was to raise the Son back to life! To give us that abundant, eternal, everlasting, Resurrection Life that is the gift of God. And because Jesus gave His life for us--and gave His life TO us--now we can do everything He did and GREATER things! Which brings me to John 15:13, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." This is what Jesus literally did for us on the cross. He laid His life down (so that He could pick it back up). He proved His love to us by giving His life for us (and to us). And now we can do this for each other. Both literally--because there have been many martyrs in the church's history--and in the sense of esteeming others higher than ourselves. Putting others first. Ruling and reigning by loving and serving. Not trying to earn anything from God, not trying to make someone else look smaller so we look bigger, but simply receiving and releasing what we already have. Sharing that love that we have been filled with. And by sharing it, we fill ourselves with the fulness of God! I think we're afraid sometimes that if we put ourselves out there--if we love someone else--we might lose what we have. They might not love us back. But that's not true, Godly, agape love. Because true love flows from the love that we already have. That's we're already full of! We can't lose it, even when we give it away!

Reigning in righteousness and ruling in judgment. That's what we have been equipped to do as kings and priests on this earth. That's the kind of authority and dominion our Daddy has given us. That's what it means to be IN the Kingdom of heaven and to BE the Kingdom of heaven. Because, guys, the Kingdom is simply the realm where the King rules and reigns. And that's what I want to talk about today. Because I think we almost have a twisted perception of what it means to rule and reign. It's the old adage that says, "absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's the idea where as soon as we have a little bit of power we can't think of anything else to do with it but use it to make others look smaller in order to make ourselves look bigger. But is that reigning in righteousness? Is that ruling in judgment? Is that taking the righteous judgment--the eternal, everlasting, abundnant, Resurrection Life sentence--that was passed down from Father to Son and executing that judgment? Preaching the gospel--or sharing the Good News--isn't about getting people to do stuff. It's about letting people know what Jesus already did! If we could stop telling people what to do and start telling people who they are... I truly believe everything else would start to flow. We wouldn't need to try to make ourselves look better if we understood that we're all in this together. We're all different parts of the same body. We're all connected. And because of this connection--because of what this connection IS--we don't have to draw lines in the sand or build walls. We don't have to deal in seperation because we have been reconcilied! See, the biggest difference between what our idea of a king is and what God's idea of a King is goes like this: Our idea of a king is people serving the leader. God's idea of a King is a leader who serves His people. A leader who leads... by carrying. That's why Jesus could say His yoke is easy and His burden is light: because HE'S the One who did (and in a sense continues to do) the heavy lifting. Jesus did it all--everything that needed to be done--over 2,000 years ago on an old rugged cross. And because He did it all, we get it all. And because we have it all, we don't need anything else. We don't need to lord over anybody else. We don't need to make ourselves look better. We don't need to demand authority or respect from anybody. Because true authority (and the respect that comes with it) doesn't come from making demands. It comes from laying down your life. THAT'S how we reign in righteousness. By serving. By caring. By loving. Jesus said there's no greater love than to lay your life down for your friends. That's what He did in a real, literal way on the cross. And that's what we do in a practical way every time we esteem others greater than ourselves. Every time we put someone else first. Every time we execute the righteous judgment of life that the Father passed down to the Son. When we love... that's how we reign in righteousness and rule in judgment.