Jesus is the perfect will of God released in the earth. His being is the undistorted reflection of the Father’s beauty and the undefiled example of what it looks like to walk with the Creator in uninhibited fellowship. The life of Christ was always, and will eternally be rooted, grounded, and overflowing in every fruit of the Spirit and in the increase of the love of God. In His earthly life, Jesus was intimate with the Father, out of which He received and understood His identity. Out of confidence in His identity, He yielded to his Father’s way of holiness and became like Him in every way through perfect obedience. In the beauty of holiness, He did the work of justice, becoming in His death and resurrection the perfect wisdom of God demonstrating the perfect justice of God-- setting the captives free by His Father’s compassionate lovingkindness and mercy, and restoring the lost sons and daughters to their Father’s house.

Following Christ’s example both in the flesh, in the Spirit and forever in eternal life, we have established and grow our hearts and our community on these four pillars:

1 | INTIMACY

We were created for intimacy with the Divine. The very first commandment, according to both the Old Testament Law and the New Covenant is that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. This kind of undivided love for Him is only possible when it is birthed out of invitation and encounter with the God who Himself burns, and did first burn, with love for us, in the beginning.

Jesus said that “to know,” (Greek: “ginosko,” and Hebrew: “yadah”), the Living One; to have a seed-bearing love; to have reoccurring, face to face exchange that causes one to be intimately acquainted through experience with the One true God and with the Son whom He has sent, is eternal life. Intimacy is the seed bed of all true and abundant human life. It is also the fulfillment of the deepest desire of God’s heart, and glory’s precious hope.

(Deuteronomy 5; Deuteronomy 6:5; Luke 10:27; Mark 12:30-31; Matthew 22:37-40; 1 John 4:7-19; Genesis 1:1; John 1:1; Genesis 4:1; John 17:3; 1 Corinthians 13:12; John 17:24; Psalm 27:4; Colossians 1:27)

2 | IDENTITY

It is only out of true God-given identity, born in the place of intimacy, that our lives can pour forth in worship as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. The scriptures say creation groans, waiting in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. It is the Spirit of sonship, made manifest in and through us, that satisfies creation’s groan to see God. Before Jesus’ public ministry on the earth ever began, He stood, in an appointed time, before all of heaven and earth, and the voice of the Father released true identity over Him, pronouncing: “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.”

It is essential for every child of God to come into a recognition and receiving of their identity as a son or daughter, as a beloved bride and as a priest of the Most High in order to be able to walk in true freedom and authority, in union with a relentlessly tender but vehemently jealous, righteous and holy God. Identity secures our understanding of the unmerited position we’ve been given before the throne and it grounds us in the incomprehensible love of God.

(Romans 8; Malachi 4:5-6; 1 John 3:1-2; Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22; 2 Peter 1:17-18, Galatians 4; Ephesians 1:4-6; John 8:35-36; Romans 8:14; Hosea 2:16-23; Isaiah 54:4-5; Song of Solomon 7:10; Revelation 5:9-10; Ezekiel 44:15-16; 2 Chronicles 29:11; Ephesians 2:6; Ephesians 3:17)

3 | HOLINESS

After Jesus stood between heaven and earth and was publicly and unapologetically declared the “Son in whom all the fullness of God’s pleasure resides,” He was driven into the wilderness to be tested, to be anchored in His identity and to prove the purity and power of a life set firmly in the Way of righteousness. He faithfully responds to His Father’s ancient command to “be holy as I am holy,” and paves the way for us to walk in the light of the glory and the upright paths of our Eternal Father.

Holiness is the essence and aroma of a soul that dwells at rest in the finished work of the cross and in complete trust of the all-sufficiency of Christ. Holiness is the manifestation of the life of the Son of God through one whose identity has been authored and bestowed upon him by the Spirit of Truth within the intimate chambers of divine love. Holiness is a being, not a doing. It is a receiving and releasing, not an achieving. As we walk by faith and in surrender to our Father’s will, we find that the power to fulfill this audacious command to "be holy" rests within the very Word that summons us to live in reckless abandonment and selfless devotion to our burning God.

(Matthew 3:17; Matthew 4; Isaiah 6:1-7; 1 John 3:2-3; 1 Peter 1:14-16; Leviticus 11:44-45; Leviticus 21:8; Leviticus 20:7-8; Hebrews 12:1-2; Luke 22:42; John 15:1-17; Galatians 2:20; Philippians 3:7-11; Romans 8; Isaiah 55:9-11; Song of Solomon 8:6; Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29)

4 | JUSTICE

Jesus is the justice of heaven, His fleshly body a sign and a wonder of the curious kindness of God, His life and death the marriage of His father’s perfect judgment with His untamable mercy. In the flesh of Christ, both God’s wrath and His compassion were completely satisfied. He justified every life stained by sin, while simultaneously punishing every crime committed against Him to the full extent of His own perfect law. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne and they are the plumb-line of His kingdom. However, instead of distancing Himself from us on account of His equity, it is in righteousness and justice that he has betrothed us to His Son forever, binding us to His heart in an eternal covenant of love and devotion. During his earthly ministry, Jesus displayed the justice of God by inviting the guilty and shameful into the inheritance of the honorable, by clothing the sick and the broken in extravagant beauty and inexpressible joy and then, dying a sinner's death, surrounded by criminals, convicts and cohorts, by voluntarily pouring out his own blameless blood at the cross of Calvary.

Justice is the arm of the Lord extended in the earth to execute judgment on all that hinders love, to bring healing to the afflicted and to gather the poor, lost, broken, forsaken, dying, outcast and wounded into the healing embrace of the One who is Himself Love. God’s justice is executed every time a life is brought into unashamed intimacy with the Father, unmistaken identity and uncompromising holiness. Justice is released through us when we partner with the Father through our union with Christ and the power of the Spirit, to bring others into the transforming realities of God’s love, mercy and unconditional acceptance that we ourselves have experienced and press on to lay hold of in their fullness.

(Acts 10:38; Isaiah 61:1-11; Isaiah 61:8; Isaiah 58:6-14; Zechariah 3; Zechariah 9:11-12; Psalm 89:14; Hosea 2:19; Ezekiel 16:1-14; John 14:12; John 15:5; Ephesians 3:7; Colossians 1:28-29; Colossians 2:2-3; Ephesians 1:17-19; Ephesians 3:14-19)

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