Do You Know The Real Jesus?

By Tammy Lacock

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” (John 12:24)

This week, Warren Litzman asks believers if they know the real Jesus. In fact, he emphasizes unless one has the revelation of the Apostle Paul’s gospel, what Paul calls the revelation of the mystery, we will never truly know Him.

In John 12:24, Christ gives us a glimpse into this mystery when He speaks of His coming death. Here He tells us that unless He (the corn of wheat) dies; there is no other way to bring forth His fruit. Because by dying, He can now literally live in every believer and bring forth His fruit through us. Christ is revealing here the mystery Paul shares with us throughout his epistles, that Christ’s death on the cross included our death too—to our old lives, the old man. And when Christ arose, we arose as well, to a brand-new life—a completely different life and divine nature—now bringing forth His fruit. By His death, burial, and resurrection, our old Satan sin-nature is literally uprooted, and Christ is planted as our very spirit, making us one spirit in Him (1 Corinthians 6:17).

“To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27)

The fruit Jesus speaks of in John 12:24 is the reciprocal love of believers as they come to know the Christ that lives in them now, the only way to know the real Jesus. We don’t get to know Jesus by what He does. We know Him by His life within us. Jesus’ outer works and miracles will not give us the revelation of who He is in us.

Only by the help of the Holy Spirit, through His work in our souls (where our minds reside), can we truly begin to know Christ and, therefore, freely love Him back. His love saves, not ours. Yet loving Him is how God created us to live, in a reciprocal loving relationship with Him. We now live, move, and have our being in Christ. It is only in this love affair with Christ in us where we can truly live out who God created us to be.

“All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” (Matthew 11:27)

“At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” (John 14:20)

Christ as our life and identity fully equips us to live our new life and new creation, composing the Body of Christ eternally.

“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” (John 17:21-23)