SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON 22 TOPIC: KNOWING THE MASTER, TEXT: EPH. 2:1-22 M/VERSE: 2COR. 5:16B&C

AIM: Many people know Jesus today just as Peter and John knew Him during His three year's walk with them. When He hung on the cross, they watched Him with sorrow until He died. But they did not see the tragedy of His being made sin, and the awful spiritual struggle that was going on. They only saw the Man, Jesus. This is the case with most today. They know the Man as Peter and John then, but not as Paul knew Him. “I know in whom I have believed”. 2Tim. 1:12 is one of the challenging statements in the Pauline revelation. Study yourself and examine if you know Him.

LESSON PLAN: 1. What characterized Jesus' life during His earth walk? 2. What was the significance of the cross? 3. What is the significance of the ?

1. Love ruled Jesus' earth walk. It was love at work in the man. Matt. 4:23-25 is a love story. We see Jesus come out of the mountain from the temptation and healing the sick and the broken hearted. He took our infirmities and bare our diseases (Matt. 8:17). Healing apart, He spoke and taught truths as no man has ever done. Some of His sentences stand out like mountain peaks. “All things are possible to him that be-lieveth”. “That the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life”, “I am come that ye might have life and have it more abun-dantly”. All of Jesus' teachings almost never touched the New Creation. Even Nicodemus was mystified when told him that he must be born again (John 3:3). As a result, no one received Eternal Life through His teaching during his earth walk.

2. A part of the church worships a dead on a cross. But the cross has no salvation on it. It was a place of failure, a place of death, a place where Jesus was made sin, a place where God forsook Jesus, because He was made sin. Satan apparently won victory over the man who had ruled him for three years. The cross was the place where the ages met or where the two covenants met- the old and the new. It was the place where the sin problem was fixed- becoming sin for humanity (Heb. 1:3). So for us to sing “Jesus, keep me near the cross”, is for us to be kept nearer failure and defeat (Gal. 3:13, Acts 5:30, Deut. 21:22-23).

3. Salvation is in the seated Christ at the right hand of the Majesty on High. It was not His earth walk; not His suffering on the cross that make us righteous. The cross was the beginning. It was where substitu-tion really began when God made Him sin with our sins (Isa. 53:4-6). He did not put away sin until He left His body and went to where the wicked would go if they reject Him. There He suffered for seventy-two hours until the claims of justice were fully met.

When they were met, Satan's dominance over Him ended. He has paid the penalty that the human race owed to justice for its sin (Heb. 10:12). After He had paid the penalty, then He was justified in spirit (1Tim. 3:16, 1Peter 3:18). Paul expressed it in Acts 13:33, 34 as in Ps. 2:7. Down in that dark region, Jesus was made alive in spirit, was be-gotten of God (Col. 1:18). Remember that Jesus died spiritually and physically on the cross and was made alive twice, in spirit and His body. He is the first person to be born again and the only one who has immor-tality now. It is in the resurrected and seated Christ that all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. With joy you can catch a glimpse of what it means to learn in a measure to know Him.

CONCLUSION: Be warned, Christ is coming soon. Why not repent and be saved. Read your bible daily.