Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship (13 page)

After three days of probably frantic searching and inquiries, Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the Temple, sitting with the teachers. No doubt those teachers had never had a boy of such understanding, wisdom, and insight in their midst before! Even in this setting, Jesus was in subjection as a son. He was the Son of God, yet He took on the role of a learner, listening and asking questions.

The Scripture says that Mary and Joseph were astonished when they saw Jesus. But they did not grasp the significance of what was happening. Instead, they scolded Him for making them so anxious concerning His whereabouts. Jesus’ answer was simplicity and innocence itself: “Did
you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?”
Some Bible versions translate the verse,
“Did you not know that I had to be about My Father’s business?”
Jesus was in training for His Father’s mission—the mission of announcing and ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven and introducing people to the Father’s love.

Apparently, Jesus’ parents did not know; they did not understand what He meant. They took Him back home with them to Nazareth where He
“continued in subjection to them.”
Jesus learned obedience “from the things which He suffered.” We usually think of suffering as experiencing something painful or unpleasant, but the word also means to endure, to tolerate, or to put up with something. By “suffering” His parents’ authority until He was 30, Jesus learned obedience. He was an obedient, faithful son to His earthly
parents. He knew that in order to enter into His inheritance with His heavenly Father, He first had to be a son to His earthly parents. Then, at age 30, Jesus would be ready to be released fully into the work for which His Father had sent Him to earth.

Whenever we accuse or judge our earthly parents for any reason—abuse, indifference, lack of understanding and empathy, failure to accurately model the love of Father God, or whatever—we reject the spirit of sonship and become subject to our own mission in life. Later in life, this can become the dry rot that can sink our vessel. Jesus knew He couldn’t go that route. He knew that the first step to being subject to His heavenly Father was to learn to be subject to His earthly parents. The result was that Jesus grew “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”

Favor with God is preceded by faithful submission (being underneath and dependent) to earthly parental authority. For 30 years, Jesus was subject to His mother and father even though they did not have nearly as much spiritual insight and wisdom as He did. For 18 years, He labored in the carpenter shop, learning the trade and assisting His father in various carpentry projects to help support the family. He suffered patiently in waiting and working in His father’s house in spite of the anointing, gift, and call of Father God on His life. For 18 years, He postponed His own ministry in order to be in subjection to His earthly father; for if He could not be subject to Joseph’s mission, neither could He be subject to Father God’s mission. Death to self-centeredness, self-consumption, and to being self-referential begins to occur when we become subject to someone else’s mission.

Now, at 30 years old, the time appointed by the Father had come, and Jesus was ready to move from slavery to sonship. The
favor of God was upon Him, a fact demonstrated by another significant event in Jesus’ life.

John knew he was not worthy to baptize Jesus because to do so would put him in a place of spiritual authority over someone greater than he. In another place, John confessed that he was not worthy even to untie Jesus’ sandals (see John 1:27)—a menial task for the lowliest household slave. Yet Jesus insisted that John baptize Him. He continued to subject Himself to the spiritual authority of someone inferior to Him. He submitted to the spiritual authority of one whom God was using at the time to bring revelation and repentance to Israel. Jesus’ submission was part of His spirit of sonship. He would not allow dry rot to enter His soul.

One characteristic of a son (or daughter) is a teachable spirit, a willingness to receive and learn from others even if they are less skilled or knowledgeable. Virtually everyone has something to teach the person who is willing to learn. Learning is the key to continuing growth throughout life. Those who stop learning stop growing, and those who stop growing start drying up while dry rot sets in.

People sometimes say to me, “Jack, you have an international ministry; you have counseled and helped bring healing and
deliverance to thousands around the world. Why do you continue to position yourself frequently to receive ministry? Why do you still sit under others for prophetic prayer ministry and for marriage and family counseling?”

The answer is simple. How can I minister to others what I am not willing to receive myself? I have learned that I cannot effectively breathe life into others that which I am not willing to get underneath in humility and submission and receive for myself.

Humble subjection before God begins with humble subjection before legitimate human authority. John says that
“anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen”
(1 John 4:20b) A funny thing about love—you can’t receive it without humbly submitting to it. Love always involves humility and submission. To paraphrase John, then: How can we have a heart of submission to God, whom we can’t see, if we don’t have a heart of submission to man, whom we can see?

Jesus understood this connection. He knew that part of His submission to His heavenly Father was to be in submission to His earthly parents and, in the case of His baptism, His cousin John. That’s why He told John,
“Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”
Because Jesus was subject and obedient as a son to legitimate earthly authority, He received powerful affirmation of the favor of His heavenly Father. The heavens opened, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, and a voice from Heaven said,
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

The process of Jesus’ life toward entering His inheritance and becoming the source of eternal salvation illustrates the sequence of the Great Commandment preceding the Great Commission. First, at His baptism, He experienced the expressed love and favor of His
Father, and then He was released to ministry. So often today we reverse the process—we seek release into ministry hoping to find God’s favor by what we do or achieve. This process characterizes orphan thinking and can easily turn to dry rot.

Assured by the favor of His Father on His life, Jesus had one further test, one further training ground before He was released fully into His ministry—He had to endure a “dry season” in the wilderness. When we first receive the experiential revelation of Father’s love, it seems that His love is the only love and affirmation we receive for a season, while many of the support structures that have been comforting us and feeding our need for attention and identity are ripped out from under us. Dry seasons help us discover whether or not we truly believe that Father’s love is really all we need, so the Holy Spirit leads us into a wilderness season. Here the enemy will try his hardest to steal from us our spirit of sonship by enticing us with orphan thinking and counterfeit affections. This is exactly the tactic he took with Jesus:

Just as he had done with Adam and Eve, satan tried to create doubt in Jesus’ mind about the integrity of God and His Word. He began by appealing to the passions of the flesh and enticed Jesus with the idea of focusing on meeting His own personal needs. After 40 days of fasting, Jesus was hungry, so satan suggested that He turn a stone into bread. Jesus responded that there was more to life than food.

Satan’s next tactic was to try to coax Jesus into abandoning His Father’s mission by promising Him wealth, power, and influence without having to work for them. All Jesus had to do was become subject to satan’s mission. Jesus refused, saying that God alone was to be worshiped and served.

Finally, satan appealed to the “shortcut” spirit of the orphan heart by tempting Jesus to take the easy way to winning the acclaim of men. If he would jump from the roof of the Temple, angels would save Him from death and everybody would acknowledge that He was the Son of God. Jesus refused again, saying it was wrong to presume upon God.

Three times Jesus was tempted, and three times He resisted orphan thinking. Through it all, He maintained His identity as a son and remained faithful to His Father’s mission. Jesus passed the test of sonship and was ready to be released into His ministry. He was ready to receive His inheritance.

Luke 4:14 says that Jesus returned from the wilderness
“in the power of the Spirit”
and began teaching in the synagogues. His time had come; His ministry had begun. One Sabbath, speaking in the synagogue of Nazareth, His hometown, Jesus described His ministry in the words of the prophet Isaiah:

It is important for us to understand the progression in Jesus’ life from slavery to sonship and into His inheritance, because our progression is the same. Jesus’ heart of sonship is the prototype for every person ever born. Whatever we see in Jesus is ours as well because we are fellow heirs with Him. He went to the Cross to make it possible for each of us to bear our own cross and to crucify self-love. Let’s summarize this progression in Jesus’ life:

1. Jesus submitted to the authority of His earthly parents. For 30 years, He willingly made Himself subject to their mission.
   

2. Jesus submitted to the spiritual authority of one who was less than He—John the Baptist.
   

3. God the Father affirmed Jesus in His Sonship after His baptism.
   “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased”
   (Matt. 3:17b NAS).
   

4. Jesus endured and passed the wilderness test, which determined whether or not He would be subject to His
   Father’s mission. In the wilderness, Jesus did not focus upon the enemy or upon His own authority; He focused upon being a faithful son.
   

5. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus was equipped and released into His ministry and calling. He began to walk in the fullness of His heavenly Father’s inheritance.
   

Notice that Jesus received affirmation of His Father’s love and favor
before
He sought to overcome temptation in the wilderness. None of us can consistently overcome temptation either in life or in ministry without the revelation of how much Father loves us; sooner or later orphan thinking will wear us down. Many people in professional ministry succumb to sexually inappropriate behavior during their ministry. Few people who enter the ministry in their 20s in North America will retire from ministry; they burn out and leave the ministry, never to return. Most seminary graduates who go straight into the ministry leave within five years never to return again. What is the main reason for these statistics? Too many put the Great Commission ahead of the Great Commandment. They are released into ministry (or release themselves) before they are affirmed in sonship. The dry rot has never been removed, and when the power is turned up, it threatens to blow their rear end off and sink their ministry.