13 Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my
tribulations for you, which is your glory.
He tells them not to be dismayed at the suffering he is going
through for them. There is an age old literary device copied from the Bible
where in a secular novel the hero, a type of Christ, suffers for the heroine, a
type of the church. He who is stronger and powerful and noble and righteous
sometimes even lays down his life for the object of his love, who can not do
that for herself. He would sacrifice all for her glory. Paul, as a type of
Christ, suffers for the little church bodies he has planted. He desires that they
faint not.
14 ¶ For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Paul is in awe of God’s plan and in the position of worship
for God’s glory.
Psalm 95:6 O come, let us worship and bow down: let us
kneel before the LORD our maker.
Notice the connection of “worship” and “bow down” by “and” making them synonymous.
Isaiah 45:23 I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out
of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee
shall bow, every tongue shall swear.
Romans 14:11 For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord,
every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
Philippians 2:10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
Modern versions of the Bible lending authority to Westcott
and Hort’s Critical Text eliminate, “of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ based on a few
corrupted manuscripts from the 4th, 5th, and 9th
centuries.
15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth
is named,
This is the only time the word, family, is used in the New
Testament.
The family
of God are all those who are on earth and who have gone on before which are
God’s whether they be an Old Testament Hebrew or your saved grandfather who
passed away or those sitting here, hearing or reading this who are saved.
The Church
Triumphant is in heaven and the Church Militant is down here still doing
battle, according to the old ways of looking at this.
You have a
group of Gentiles before the Law from Adam to Enoch who believed God, as an
example. Then you have Gentiles who become Hebrews such as Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. The next group are Jews under the Law. You have Gentiles under the Law
who placed their faith in God. You have then the church, the bride of Christ,
which we are.
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is
neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in
Christ Jesus.
You then have Tribulation Jews and Gentiles under the Law.
Then, there are millennial Saints walking by sight as Christ is right there.
Paul has told us previously that we are already in heaven
even though we are also here on this earth. What was said for chapter 2, verse
6 bears repeating here.
Our future
is waiting for us in heaven. If you don’t believe you can be in two places at
one time then read this;
John 3:13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he
that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
Your dead
spirit was born again and saved and now you are waiting for the redemption of
your body in real time. We are there already, though, in the sense of eternity.
It’s already happened from the perspective of eternity, but as a temporal
creature we have to wait, in time.
You’re already in heaven with Christ from this perspective.
Hebrew 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the
city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company
of angels, 23 To
the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
An angel is
an appearance, a presence, as in Isaiah 63:9, of persons, sons of God,
churches, children, God Himself, and, I’m sure, many other things which somehow
are projected by the representation that an angel is somewhere else in
space-time.
Job 1:6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came
to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.
John1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he
power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Perhaps the saved will replace the sons of God who, “kept not
their first estate,” and, “the third part of the stars of heaven,” who followed
Satan in Revelation 12:4, stars representing angels as in Revelation 1:20.
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