Day 7 - Jesus and the Father are One
For Christians: Rededicating Ourselves to Living a Crucified Life
Today we light the 8th candle.
Jesus walked into the temple on the Feast of Dedication, Hanukkah, and made a startling declaration: “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30). He declared to the Jewish people that He and God the Father were of the same nature. He was saying that He is equal to God in all respects. The multitude was taken aback and wanted to stone Him. The Jewish people considered it blasphemy for anyone to declare himself to be God. After all, it had only been a couple of hundred years since the Maccabean revolt when someone else had claimed to be “god manifest,” Antiochus Epiphanes.
Prior to that, Jesus also said something else that alarmed the Jewish religious men, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to
Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.”
To follow Jesus is no small thing. He says in Luke 9 that if anyone would come after Him, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Him. Where did Jesus take His cross and expect His followers to do the same? To His death, which meant their death.
To truly follow Christ is to carry our cross to our crucifixion...to die to self. Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me! (Gal. 2) Paul later says in Galatians that he is also crucified to the world, and the world is to him. Paul disentangled himself from everything to follow and serve His Lord.
The Maccabees loved not their life unto death. They were prepared to lay it down for the God of Israel. Jesus and the God of Israel are one. Are we prepared to lay our lives down for Him?
Take a moment and light the 8th and last candle. Is your life crucified to Christ’s? Do you choose to follow Him daily, take up your cross, and die to self: selfish ambitions, self glorification, self importance, selfish gain? Where do you need to disentangle from the world? What still needs to go on the cross for you to experience full surrender?
God Bless You Today.
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