..I believe Jesus is God’s thoughts regarding equality; that the definition of equality is discovered in a triune God stepping into flesh and blood. And I think Jesus, fully God and fully man, displayed this equality through His union, oneness, and intimacy with Father and Holy Spirit.

I’m writing about the equality Jesus described in John 17:21 when He said, “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me…”

A triune God became one of us without leaving union. Then He prayed we would know this same union; this same equality with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and with each other.

When I write about equality with God I am writing as a created being about my Creator. I am not suggesting equality in the context of transactional thinking, or based on a measurement system, that would be foolish.

I am writing about equality in the context of relationship.

I am writing about the equality Jesus described in John 15:13 when He said, “There is no greater love than this, that a man should lay his life down for his friends.”

I am describing an equality that can only be discovered through sacrificial love.

The cross is what directs my thoughts about equality.

Jesus revealed love as sacrificial, laying his life down for His friends, you and me. Jesus’ love received and given is where equality is discovered and experienced.

Jesus revealed equality as a love that prefers one another, a love that involves free will, submitted to free will. It’s the equality of wives and husbands submitting one to another because husbands and wives love each other as Christ loved the church (see Eph 5:22).

Equality is realized when we lay our lives down for one another. “Take up your cross and follow me,” is how equality is implemented. Sacrificial love is the birthplace of equality and we love sacrificially because He first loved us this way before the foundations of the earth. (See 1 John 4:19 & Eph 1:4) Equality is the fruit of sacrificial love.

Can you imagine a church that practiced this equality?…

 

Excerpted from my forthcoming book, Leaving (& Finding) Jesus
CLICK HERE to Pre-Order Now

Jason Clark is a bestselling storyteller who writes to reveal the transforming kindness of the love of God in a world traumatized by the religious abuses done in the name of the love of God. He and his wife, Karen, live in North Carolina with their three children, Madeleine, Ethan, and Eva.