Infinite Fellowship Ministries

God’s Eternal Purpose – Part 5: Sermon By Apostle Gobanga

[For my concern is] that their hearts may be braced (comforted, cheered, and encouraged) as they are knit together in love, that they may come to have all the abounding wealth and blessings of assured conviction of understanding, and that they may become progressively more intimately acquainted with and may know more definitely and accurately and thoroughly that mystic secret of God, [which is] Christ (the Anointed One).

 Colossians 2:2 (AMPC)

Christ is the mystery of God and it is God’s will that Christ is the centre of all things. He is meant to be first in everything in our lives. Jesus should be all and all.

He also is the Head of [His] body, the church; seeing He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead, so that He alone in everything and in every respect might occupy the chief place [stand first and be preeminent]. 

Colossians 1:18 (AMPC)

God has wrapped up everything in the person of Christ.

In Christ there is clarity – Christ in us revealing things in us. When we know Him we will know everything. All things must emerge from the revelation of Christ in us.

Christ was never known in previous generations in the Old Testament as He is known in the New Testament.

For if that first covenant had been without defect, there would have been no room for another one or an attempt to institute another one. However, He finds fault with them [showing its inadequacy] when He says, Behold, the days will come, says the Lord, when I will make and ratify a new covenant or agreement with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their forefathers on the day when I grasped them by the hand to help and relieve them and to lead them out from the land of Egypt, for they did not abide in My agreement with them, and so I withdrew My favor and disregarded them, says the Lord.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will imprint My laws upon their minds, even upon their innermost thoughts and understanding, and engrave them upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And it will nevermore be necessary for each one to teach his neighbor and his fellow citizen or each one his brother, saying, Know (perceive, have knowledge of, and get acquainted by experience with) the Lord, for all will know Me, from the smallest to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful and gracious toward their sins and I will remember their deeds of unrighteousness no more. 

Hebrews 8:7-12 (AMPC)

There is a difference between the old and the new covenant in that there is a new reality with the new covenant where the law is written in the hearts of men. The major emphasis is inward as opposed to the old covenant that focused on external works.

In the Old Testament, anyone who observed the external requirements of the old covenant was saved. The Old Testament wasn’t addressing deep seated issues of the heart. The Old Testament could not deliver people from the bondage of sin because all that is legalistic cannot deliver people. That which is legal that doesn’t lead to reality is null and void.

New Testament provides a solution that the old covenant could not provide for the deep issues of the hearts of man. In the New Testament, He is now giving Himself instead of the law.  In the new covenant, God is giving Himself not stone tablets – laws. New Covenant is based on an inward reality where God gives of Himself and men know that he is God.

By having Christ in us, the power of sin is overtaken. When we are saved we are not to carry the systems of our old life. 

Until we capture the Spirit of the word we will not find life. The reality of Christ’s death must be alive in you. When you come alive each and everything that’s yours will be yours.

God is not calling us to works to be saved. God wants us to live out the life of Christ that is in us. It is not about do’s and dont’s.

Worship is a Levitical ministry. Worship is drawing Christ to people. Worship has a lot to do with having a broken heart.

Making known to us the mystery (secret) of His will (of His plan, of His purpose). [And it is this:] In accordance with His good pleasure (His merciful intention) which He had previously purposed and set forth in Him, [He planned] for the maturity of the times and the climax of the ages to unify all things and head them up and consummate them in Christ, [both] things in heaven and things on the earth.

Ephesians 1:9-10 (AMPC)

God intends to put all our and His enemies under the feet of Jesus so that Jesus becomes the Lord of all.

Salvation means being one with and in Christ. When you are saved, you are and Christ is inducted in ones life and you receive life. 

Salvation is not the act of man but of God. The life of Christ will deal with bondage.

Justification is God’s judicious act that declares us just. The reality of justification is freedom in God. God has judiciously acquitted you through the blood of Jesus. There is no condemnation. There is change of position from darkness into the light. There is also change of condition from the fallen state appetites such as the greed for sin, confusion and fear to redeemed appetites for heavenly things.

The difference between condemnation and conviction is that with conviction one turns away from sin. When the law is in our hearts, we are convicted of sin. Conviction leads to repentance. Jesus did not come to condemn but came to the world that we would be saved. The mystery of Christ in you activates the package of Christ in you. He comes with righteousness and activates who we are meant to be when He made us – the purpose of God.

Christ is personified as righteousness. When Jesus comes, He comes with everything. If you miss out on reality, you’ve missed out on purpose.

When Christ activates the diversity of potential and all that was deactivated in ones life as a result of the Adamic nature you have, no devil can stop you from accessing our destiny. The enemy blinds us from perceiving what is in us.

Beloved, we are [even here and] now God’s children; it is not yet disclosed (made clear) what we shall be [hereafter], but we know that when He comes and is manifested, we shall [as God’s children] resemble and be like Him, for we shall see Him just as He [really] is.

1 John 3:2 (AMPC)

God is not calling us to work to be saved. God wants us to live out what we have through grace.

For the law of the Spirit of life [which is] in Christ Jesus [the law of our new being] has freed me from the law of sin and of death. 

Romans 8:2 (AMPC)

The law of life in Christ Jesus takes preeminence over the law of sin and death. The law cannot condemn when we have  Christ.

Unless we touch base with the heart and mind of God in Scripture, we miss out on life and life in abundance.

To have Christ in you is to experience Christ in all His power and His holy presence. This means there is no law that will have power over you, you experience His power so whatever the law couldn’t do, Christ begins to accomplish it in you and anything that was impotent in you comes to life. We are no longer controlled by emotions or circumstances and if we continue to live controlled by them we suppress Christ’s power. Christ via the Holy Spirit enables one to overcome and subject our emotions to His Lordship.

The mystery of the dimension of Christ vested in our inner man is the hope of glory that we will manifest now and more so when He comes back. The life of God produces a glory in you and a new person (Christ in you). This new person produced in us becomes increasingly glorious and is able to reign in Christ in glory.

Holiness is imputed into an environment and person by the presence of God.

It is not about the physical appearance of a place or person. It is not how you dress that matters, it is the heart of the person.

He puts us in a local church so that we can experience the fullness of Christ wherever we are. The unfortunate thing in the Church is that we discourage young believers as they grow.When we are in Christ He becomes the scepter from the centre of ones persona and ensures that every aspect is brought under captivity to Himself. When Christ is in you, His wonderful presence transforms your person and causes us to love the truth of God. We should allow His truth to deal with our minds.

When Christ is in you, the sovereignty of God is established. The sovereignty of His rule is in you. 

Freedom only comes when we submit to His Lordship. God has called us to unity and oneness. You cannot be in Christ without submitting. When you submit to Christ, you do so on His terms. His terms are for our benefit.

It is not downgrading but a privilege to give of yourself for God to exercise His sovereignty that creates the atmosphere for function. We do not submit to oppression in God but we submit to the grace of God; to a prophetic atmosphere so as to operate.

Relationships are the tangible context of submission. We submit one unto another. We are not called to be self-sufficient but to fellowship and submission. God has called us into community, oneness and unity not to being renegade.

We need to submit to people we see and experience their physical presence. God wants us to submit by bringing us to our local church to  discern people in Christ and partake of the fullness of Christ in others.  Submission causes us to see what others have that we do not and we are able to discern each other in the spirit.

People want to identify with talent but do not have the capacity to handle one’s mess. New believers need to be taught God’s word before serving. Church is about people.

When the Lord comes in He gets rid of stinginess and pride. When we have Christ we will not be stingy, not just at Church but even to people we find in need. We are called to support each other.

God said, Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the [tame] beasts, and over all of the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man]; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth. 

Genesis 1:26-28 (AMPC)

God does not want to only save you from hell but to make you magnificent. God is saving you so you can reclaim your dominion. Christ wants to give us the embodiment of life. He wants you to live out the life vested in you to find expression through you.

Who is Christ?

1. Christ is the incarnating principle of the God-man.
2. Christ means the anointed one.
3. Christ is a principle and is incarnated and was incarnated 2000 yrs ago. Christ is man.

There is a present continuous incarnating process of Christ the God-man not just God and keeps incarnating in the life of someone who is born again; that is how people see Christ and not you. He lives in us through the person of the Holy Spirit.

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.

John 3:16 (AMPC)

People are meant to see Christ in us. He is the perfect word and idea of God. This idea and word of God measures up to the standards of God and is blessed with eternal life. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of all divine ideas that are in eternal existence in the Godhead.

Jesus is the individual/human expression of the idea of Christ. He is the audible thought of God. It unfolds into the true man in righteousness and holiness. He fulfills the law of righteousness.

Christ is a divine man. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of all divine ideas that are in existence in the mind of God and is the only begotten son and the living principle working in man.

Jesus is the name that represented the individual expression of Christ the divine man. Christ is a multiple but Jesus is singular. Christ existed before Jesus. 

Christ Jesus – this is how it appears in the Scripture to distinguish who came first. We are to walk in the expression of the idea of Christ. Christ has distributed Himself in all of us – the Body of Christ – the Church.