Healing Nations

By James Tarter

The Bible shows God's plan to work through the Body of Christ to heal nations. God gives His plan especially in Ephesians, John, 2Chron. 7:13-14, and Romans 8. Every nation today is sick because the Church there has not yet followed His plan, which goes far beyond our imaginations or anything that has been accomplished up to now. Nevertheless, Ephesians shows God's commitment to fulfill His plan. This book shows all these things, specifically including how the Body of Christ is to heal nations and deliver people from moral corruption through Jesus Christ. This book also shows the Bible's strategy for individual believers in Jesus to help the whole Body of Christ go far beyond all that it has done up to now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257342181

Book preview

Healing Nations

Healing Nations

God’s Vision of the Church

Dr. James M. Tarter

Copyright Page

20th Edition

ISBN 978-1-257-34218-1

Copyright 2005, 2018 by James M. Tarter.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted to make copies for purposes consistent with furthering the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE® (1995 Updated Edition): 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation.  Used by permission.  (www.Lockman.org)

I call the New American Standard Bible the NAS.  I add boldface to specific words and phrases in Scriptures to add my emphasis for discussion.

A Scripture marked NIV in Appendix 1 comes from the Holy Bible, New International Version  1973, 1978, 1984.

Introduction: God’s Plan for Us to Heal Our Land

What is God really like?  If anyone has a terribly distorted idea of what He is like, it may be very hard to turn to the true God.

God has special ways to reveal His true nature to the world.  You can learn some things about the Creator by studying His creation, but Ephesians shows the two key ways that He has chosen to reveal His character and nature to mankind: Christ Jesus and the Church.

God calls for the Body of Christ to show people what He is truly like.  By observing real believers, people should be able to see how our invisible God is different from the gods of other religions, including an empty Christianity.

Few Christians realize God’s calling for us, which hinders our moving into it.  This causes terrible consequences: most people are left enslaved to moral corruption and sick nations are not healed – they cannot find or experience God’s liberating solution in Jesus Christ.  They will experience it when the Church moves into His great calling.

The Bible reveals this calling and plan in many ways.  This book shows it and explains how it works.

Chapter 1: A Vision of the World-Changing Church

God is ready to turn the Body of Christ on earth into something beyond all we ask or think.  When this happens, a poorly appreciated need of mankind will be fulfilled: to see what God is like. This will heal lands and free creation from its slavery to corruption.  Let us see more.

God makes Himself invisible to mankind.  This allows better ways to reveal His true nature to the world.  Ephesians shows two key ways: Christ Jesus and the corporate Church.  In both ways God reveals Himself out of human bodies – without intimidation instead of as an overpowering Judge or the almighty Creator of the whole earth and more.  This approach equips us to better see other qualities of His nature that we greatly need to appreciate.  Jesus was God who emptied Himself (Phil. 2:7), but in the Church everyone’s nature has also added some actions, so that each of us is a good or poor example of how God’s nature would be expressed in a human body.

Here is the most amazing fact: in Ephesians God commits Himself to take all of these imperfect expressions of His nature and put them together so that people can see what He is truly like.  If anyone sees God well enough to recognize and thereby turn to Him through Jesus, then God uniquely interacts with that person, so that he personally experiences God.  This can help others see Him, and this cycle can continue to expand until whole lands are incredibly transformed.

I personally would not make such bold assertions without seeing them clearly in the Bible.  Let us see the Scriptures that best reveal this key purpose for the corporate Church, the Body of Christ.

Christ Jesus: Showing What Invisible God Is Really Like

The Bible shows a key purpose that Jesus fulfilled by coming to earth as a man: to show people exactly what invisible God is truly like.

No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.  (John 1:18)

People normally are aware of God, but no one except Jesus has been with Him enough to know exactly what He is like.  For example, many see God primarily as a great punisher, and others see Him, Her, or It as punishing almost nothing.  Calling on an invisible God might be calling on someone very different from the true God.  Therefore who is the true invisible God?  What is His nature or character?  (They mean the same, but nature emphasizes the whole being and character emphasizes the qualities of that nature).  What is He really like?

Jesus shows us exactly what God the Father is like.  How?

…Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.  (John 5:19)

Jesus did only what the Father did, and did it in the same way.  By looking at Jesus, one can see what the Father did without any added impurity, and can see how the Father did it.

In His life on earth, Jesus showed invisible God’s nature so exactly that Heb. 1:3 calls Him "the exact representation of His nature" (other translations of nature include substance, being, or person).  Therefore Jesus could tell His disciples: "…He who has seen Me has seen the Father…" (John 14:9).  The disciples had seen the man Jesus for three years, but at this point they needed to look further and perceive His nature and character, so that they could see the Father in Jesus.  He adds in v. 10: "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works."

For our benefit, Jesus’ exact representation of the invisible God did not include some features, so that we can more fully see God’s true nature.  Heb. 12:23 and many other Scriptures show that God is the Almighty Judge, but John 12:47 shows that Jesus did not exercise His role as the Judge while here physically.  This actually helps the world to see God’s true nature much better, because some qualities in His full nature overpower people.

Consider this further.  The fact of being eternally blessed or else condemned to eternal torment with no escape overpowers our ability to appreciate many other qualities of God.  People around the world try to be right and at peace with their image of God, or angrily rebel at their image, or try to believe that He is not real or will not judge them.  Why?  With our sins and sin nature, being justly judged forever is so important to us that it distorts what we see as God.  This is like trying to examine the sun by looking directly at it: it overpowers our eyes so much that we cannot see anything.  Likewise, God’s almighty power in judgment keeps us from being able to learn more about His true nature.

These qualities reveal much more about what God is really like: His totally unselfish love, faithfulness, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, mercy, and compassion.  He also is just, righteous, the Truth, the very best Provider, and the very best Father.

Therefore God came to us in a human body that clearly did not create the whole earth, and Jesus did not condemn people in judgment.  Being careful to not overpower us, Jesus came gently with ordinary human strength and manifested (openly revealed) all the qualities of God that we need to see and appreciate.  Jesus did teach the truth about God as the almighty Judge (Luke 12:5, John 5:18-30, etc.) and about His other qualities that were not manifested in Jesus’ human body (being everywhere, knowing everything, etc.). Because of our limitations, not manifesting overpowering features of God’s nature actually helps us to see His true nature more fully: Jesus manifested "the fullness of God" for us (Eph. 1:23, 3:19).

Now everyone has personal factors from his experience or nature that limit or distort what he sees in Jesus as well as in invisible God.  But as we shall see in this chapter, God has a gentle way to overcome these problems through His yielded people.

Examining the life of Christ in the Gospels shows much more about how He manifested God’s true nature in His body.  For example, we can examine how He loved His disciples, the multitudes, and even the hostile religious leaders.  I recommend such a Bible study, but here let us keep on our purpose.

Who Does God Call to Manifest His True Nature Today?

2000 years ago Jesus revealed the Father’s nature to the disciples and other people in Judea.  Since then God has provided the Bible to mankind – a fully reliable, accurate record of what He is really like.  Today the Bible helps to show His nature to believers in Jesus, but is not God’s primary way to show it to those who have not yet experienced Him.  The Bible itself shows that He has a different way: through the Church, the Body of Christ.

Even as the Father abided in and manifested His true nature out of Jesus Christ, He now lives in each believer, and God will manifest His nature out of each believer who abides in Christ.  And as we shall start seeing from Scripture now, God will manifest His full true nature out of the Body of Christ – all believers corporately – even as He manifested His full true nature out of the body of Jesus Christ to the people around Him long ago.

The clearest Scripture about the Church’s corporate calling is Eph. 4:11-16.  Individual believers are to grow up in Christ, but notice how v. 11-16 specifically describe the growth and building up of the whole Body of Christ, which involves individuals as parts