Are You Ready To Take Your Place Up There? - Kenneth Copeland Ministries

by Kenneth Copeland

I have a message for you today directly from the heart of God. It is a message that captures the very purpose of Calvary. And yet, it is one of the most difficult messages of all for Christian people to believe.

If you’ll dare to receive it, however, to meditate on it and to act on it, it will radically alter your life. It will take you from religion to reality.

What is this message God has given me? It is this:

            Tell My people they are everything to Me that Jesus is.

Those are the exact words that the Lord used when He spoke to me. They are powerful words, words that will send a shiver of excitement up the spiritual spine of any Christian who’s bold enough to believe them. The message they convey is not new. It is as old as the gospel itself.

 In fact, once you begin to understand it, you’ll see that it’s actually the very centerpiece of the gospel!

The Apostle Paul preached this very message again and again throughout the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, for example, he put it this way: “For [God] hath made [Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” And he drove the point home again in Romans 8:17 by calling us “joint-heirs” with Jesus!

Although most of us are familiar with those statements that Paul made, very few of us have let the truth of them sink in. Few of us have actually believed them. We’ve uplifted Jesus. We’ve exalted Him—and rightly so! But at the same time, we’ve unwittingly belittled what He did by not allowing Him to bring us alongside Him.

We’ve insisted that we’re nothing more than “just old sinners saved by grace.” We were taught cowardice in the name of humility so we’ve adopted an attitude of false humility that has kept us groveling around in the spiritual dirt. Yet according to Ephesians 2:6, God has “raised us up together with [Jesus] and made us sit down together [giving us joint seating with Him]…” (The Amplified Bible).

That was God’s purpose at Calvary: to bring us alongside Jesus. To make us what He already was.

You see, Jesus didn’t need exalting. He was exalted before He ever came to this earth. He was already one with the Father. He didn’t need to get authority over the devil—He never lost it!

What would He have needed with a physical body? Why would He want to take on something He’d have to feed and clothe and drag around everywhere He went? What did He need with all those limitations?

He didn’t need them! He took them on for us!

He put on a physical body so that He could come to earth as a man and gain authority over sin and sickness, demons, fear, poverty and all the other curses that came when the law of death moved into the earth—and He did it. He succeeded! He mastered everything in the spirit world, everything in the world of the intellect, everything in the physical world.

Before He ascended He said, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18, New King James Version). Then in Mark 16:15-18, He told His disciples:

Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

By giving us His mighty Name He gave us His authority. You and I are the reason Jesus came to earth, died and lived again. He didn’t do it for Himself. He did it so He could bring us alongside, so we could wear His Name and wield His authority on the earth. He did it so that we could stand before God and be everything to Him that Jesus is.

Now let me make a qualifying statement right here. Even though you’re everything to God that Jesus is, you need to remember that you’re not everything to the Church that Jesus is! He and He alone is Head of the Church. There are a number of folks who have tried to be head of the Church, but they’ve failed because that’s one thing we’ve not been given the authority to be.

Even so, there are two sides to that. Just as He can be the Head and we can’t, there’s something we can be that He can’t—and that’s the Body. According to 1 Corinthians 12:21, the head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of you. So although it’s true that we need Him (God only knows how much we need Him!), it’s also true that He needs us.

For most of us that’s a startling thought. In fact, it’s almost inconceivable because we’ve continually thought of ourselves as helpless nothings, unworthy, inept and, though possibly a tiny bit more righteous than unbelievers, certainly not much more.

            Listen to me. When you were born again, you weren’t half-reborn. You weren’t made half-righteous or a quarter righteous. You were made the righteousness of God in Christ! You were made a “joint-heir with Him.”

Jesus went to the cross to give you what He already possessed. He rose again so you could be re-created in His image. You are the victory of Almighty God! You are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. You are everything to the Father that Jesus is. John 17:23 actually says God loves you as much as He loves Jesus.

“But Brother Copeland,” you may say, “how could He?”

I don’t know! You’ll have to ask Him. I just know that’s what He said, and I believe it. By faith it’s mine! His victory is my victory because He said it was. If I don’t believe it, then He wasted His time. If I don’t believe it, then Jesus went through hell to win a victory He already had. He didn’t need that victory. I did. He won it to give it to me. The moment I believe it, that victory is mine. Until I do believe it, I don’t have any victory at all.

Once you dare to accept that fact, your life will be forever changed. You’ll no longer be satisfied to just sit around whining and wishing things were different. You’ll want to step up to the position of authority that Jesus has given you, to take your rightful place beside Him and learn to operate the way He does.

As His people, we are everything to God that Jesus is. We are His love in action.

If we’ll receive that message, if we’ll dare to believe it, if we’ll dare to put it into action—the world will never be the same again.

Reference : Kenneth Copeland Ministries