First Love

Narrator (Female): Welcome to First Love with Dr. Robyn Kassas and Dr. Nathan Kassas, where faith meets real life. In this week's broadcast, you'll discover practical and spiritual keys to reclaim God's story in your life, deepen your relationship with Jesus, and encounter Him as your first love, whether for the first time or all over again. No topic is off-limits as we make Jesus real, relevant, and relational. Stay with us. Your journey back to first love starts now.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hello everyone and welcome to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I am sitting in the studio with Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you today?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, I'm doing really well. I'm looking to see God is moving very powerfully.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, and it was just recently Mother's Day. So again, Dr. Robyn, also aka Mom, happy Mother's Day.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Thank you very much, and happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. Yes, definitely, happy Mother's Day.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: What you're doing is so important, and we just want to let you know that we see you, and Jesus sees you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's true. He sure does.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So Dr. Robyn, we've been talking about Jesus and coming to a new understanding of His role in our life. Not just His role, but His person.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: His real self.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We are so excited because our ad campaign, Jesus is Speaking to You, Real Relevant Relational, is now live at the Lincoln Tunnel on the big billboard as you drive into New York City. We're hoping to impact the world, especially the Tri-state area with that message. We want people to know Jesus, not just God, but Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And we want them to know that He speaks. He's the one that speaks, and we want that to be known. We want us to know, all of us to know, that He speaks. Father speaks, Holy Spirit speaks, but so does Jesus speak.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That is important.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Why do I say that? It's because we know that scripture that says everything's done in the name of Jesus. Even words are done in the name of Jesus and deeds are done in the name of Jesus. You can't accomplish anything unless you do it in the name of Jesus. There is no power other than that.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's right. You've been quoting this scripture now three times as an important scripture for the last three episodes to do everything in the name of Jesus, both in word and deed. Very important.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I find it so important. I don't think people realize how important it is because we want to talk about a subject tonight: Jesus being fully man. What does that mean? Let's tie it in with the second part of our message: His relevance. He's relevant in our lives. Why is that so?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I think what we could start by saying is we have to understand that when He's fully man, He's fully man. Sometimes when you watch these movies or you watch these kinds of depictions about Him walking on the earth as a man, you still get this hyper state of God-ness.

It's not that He wasn't God, but He was fully man and fully God. He took off His deity, and He came under the limitations of what mankind lives under.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's what made Him fully man. He came under those limitations.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: He never subjected Himself to sin but had to live the human experience under the limitations that sin had caused.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And sometimes in that, He had to be subject to man. That's why He would meet with His Father every day so that He could do that.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Today we're primarily discussing going beyond the effects of Jesus and going beyond the benefits of Jesus. We're actually getting to the core reason why Jesus can be exalted to the position that the Father has given Him, not only because He is Himself the spoken-out expression of God, because you can't separate the Trinity even though they are three individuals, they are three in one.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Like three workings.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Exactly. But what we're bringing you to an understanding of is that when Jesus is allowed to be fully human through you, Christ in you the hope of glory, He receives full expression of Himself.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Therefore, He's fulfilled in that part of His personality. You said about fully man, and we said three parts and expression, but there's personality there too.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Persons, most definitely. An important understanding is that when we don't see Him in this way in our lives, we live in what's called a hypostatic state. What that means is we vacillate between "God knows me" (the slogan "He gets me") and then we also vacillate between "God doesn't know me."

He's unable to locally assimilate with what I feel. What does that mean? He can't understand my pain, He can't understand my hurting, He can't understand my sorrow. But there's a scripture that I was reading, and it just stuck out to me because it says even unto death. He said, "I am exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." That shows that He actually felt the weight of sorrow. He felt it. He didn't get to bypass it or mask it. He actually felt the weight of what it did in His nervous system.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Was that weight to do with what man was doing, the sin of man, or was it the weight of what He had to experience for man?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Both. He was feeling the limitation that man had put on himself through sin, but He was also feeling the second thing that you've just mentioned, what He was experiencing was also the sorrow of the Father towards man's lack of trust and lack of faith. He was experiencing the sorrow that is in reference to the weight of having to go through what He was going to go through in the crucifixion experience.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and that's why we must look at His side of this today rather than what we benefit from Him being fully man.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We're always looking at the benefits that His humanity can bring us, and that's not wrong because that's what He's come to do.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But that's not balanced. It's not relationship. We're going into that next week, but do you know that's not balanced? The thing is, if you have relationship or you have communion and such like that, there's got to be two parties involved. If there's just what we get out of everything rather than what we co-get out of everything, then there's no relationship and there's no communion.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: What's important as we go into the break and we're warming your heart up to hear what the Lord is showing us here is that when we allow the Lord to become fully expressive in us and through our life, we actually allow Him to be fully Him. He can't be fully Him until we stop holding on to what's not Him.

For example, as we go into the break, I just want to warm you up with this idea: if I hold on to fear and I hold on to anxiety as my expression, in reality, He is peace. He's not of peace, He's not part of peace, He doesn't give me peace, He is peace.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Therefore also, we hold on to unteachableness too. We're going to come back and we're going to open this up a bit more because He's the one that gives us hope as He resides in us.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So by holding on to what I'm holding on to as my expression, I've actually stopped Him from fully expressing Himself in my life. Let's go to a break and we'll come back and dive in deep.

Narrator (Female): You're listening to First Love with Dr. Robyn and Dr. Nathan Kassas. The story isn't finished yet, and neither is what Jesus wants to reveal to your heart today. Let's jump back in and pick up right where we left off.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Dr. Robyn, we're coming back and we're going to continue this conversation about what it means for Jesus to be fully man. Throwing it over to you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think it comes to a place where we understand what "Christ in us is the hope" really means. The hope in us is Christ. It's not Him bringing hope; He is the hope.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's not compartmentalized.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No. Therefore, there has to be a participation in this relationship. We always think about what we gain, but God spoke Himself into Jesus and therefore there's a purpose. The purpose is that He gets fulfilled in this. How does He get fulfilled? He becomes the ability, and we become the one that makes that ability through us available.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I think it's important to mention that the reason why Jesus became man is so that He could show as a man, you can experience the full range of human emotion and not sin.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He did exactly that.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We have to take into effect that He experienced sorrow. He said, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death." Then He experienced loneliness and even abandonment because He said to the disciples, "What, you couldn't even stay awake for an hour?"

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He also experienced rejection.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Oh, Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He also experienced hunger.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: These are the limitations of humanity that God is experiencing in the flesh. He's experiencing it so that we can know it is possible to feel without letting the feeling lead your life.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And He experienced these things not just for us, but He experienced them for Himself.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, and when He experiences them and He gets to be Himself, because He can't not be peace, that's who He is, He gets to fully express who He is in our hearts.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's very important. When we take off something, we lose something. I'm not saying that Jesus lost it when He took off His deity. No, He didn't. But just think about this: what if we took off our identity? How would we feel?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It baffles the mind.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'm going to tell you what we'd feel: very, very vulnerable. And that's why Jesus met with His Father every single morning so that He was ahead and not behind.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: There's one thing that Jesus, even though He comes into the human experience and He takes it on as His own, there's one thing that He doesn't do that we all do. When sin entered through Adam and Eve, the place that we live from, a place of rest and a place of trust, a place of knowing our security and our identity in Christ, was jolted.

Now everything is a threat. Life looks at God's voice as the threat because that's what Satan essentially said to Eve when she ate. "God knows that you will become like Him," lying to her. He was basically saying to her, "God is threatened by your greatness. God is threatened that you will become like Him." They were already like Him.

But that programmed into her mind: His voice is the threat. Not my voice, His voice. Every human being since then has been born with this programming: His voice is the threat. Then you have Him come in the flesh through Jesus Christ and He lives the human experience and He feels the same emotions, but here's the key: He doesn't believe that the Father is the threat. He believes what the Father says about Him.

If He does that in full expression, then I can feel all those range of emotions, but I can through Him allow Him to be the expression through me so that God is no longer the threat of my life.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: There it is. Christ in us.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The hope of glory.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Let's look at just one of the things that people do not think about: was Jesus ever vulnerable? Yes, He was, because He was going to be put in the hands of man. Not because God left Him, but because He was going to be put in the hands of man.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Prophetically that's seen because David was the same. David said, "I'd rather be put in the hands of God than the hands of man." He wasn't fearing the cross because He was being put in the hands of His Father. He was apprehensive because when you put man in the hands of man, man has no limitation.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So He was experiencing, not fearing, He was experiencing vulnerability.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So what does Jesus get out of experiencing my feelings the way that I've experienced them? It's called experiential intimacy. It's an intimacy that can only come through experience.

Here's what Pastor Tony said last night, very, very powerful: like a husband with a wife, and we are the bride of Christ, until that union is one, the person is incomplete. We have to realize that until we allow Christ to experience His life through us, He is not complete.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's correct. That's what the Lord was telling me this week. It is a relationship. It's co-heirs with Christ, but it doesn't mean we get to be on top of Him in this relationship. It means we work it together. We become available; He becomes the ability.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's how it works. But we have to see that. We don't believe that Jesus needs to have fulfillment.

The thing that the Lord said to me was He not only came to save man, but He came to gain man. I can save you without even gaining you. I can save someone as a lifesaver, I could save someone drowning and then not have a relationship with them.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And so it's all about this "co." It has to be "co." Co-heirs, co-communication, co-relationship. But of course, we only get to experience fulfillment when He's fulfilled.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is important, Dr. Robyn, because we're understanding now that He became what I am so He could express through what I am. He can't express who He is until He became what I am. Then when I allow fear and I allow those things that aren't Him to be expressed in my life, I cut short Him from being fully expressed as "the man" in me.

Even though He felt every emotion, He never surrendered His identity to reaction. His identity was always governed by love. This is the difference: our identity is governed by defense. Everything in life is to defend what we've built as the confidence in which we live life from, whether it's a good place or a bad place.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And fear.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Well, fear is defense. Can you imagine not living from a place that's governed by defense?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, I can't. It's impossible, right?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Because the brain is set through the sin nature. And all things are becoming new.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's something that I like very much. It's a process. Jesus works with us with the process, and we work with Jesus with the process.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And you said something really powerful in that becoming transition. It's actually He's not becoming, but in that becoming, because He's already full, all things are by Him, for Him, through Him, in Him. But it's in the becoming in me that He gets to fully express every day who He is. If I cut short the becoming new and I just jump to, "Oh, all things are made new," I miss out on the relational experience of Him expressing that becoming in me from the moment I wake to the moment that I go to bed.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I agree with you. But one of the things I want to say about this "becoming," the relationship with that one, is not tied up just with Jesus. It's tied up with His role as our bridegroom. Our bridegroom. And when that happens, the bride and the groom become one.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So important. When I don't allow, and I'm getting this revelation right now even as I'm saying it, when I don't allow Him through me to be fully expressed, I'm robbing Him. This goes back to what we've been talking about: He wants to create the moment. The creative moment that He wants is He wants to give you a moment where He can fully express His nature in you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And when we say "co-heirs," I want to say that even though we're working together, He's the senior partner. And so we have to allow that to permeate us and know it's through Him expressing through us His ability.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So an important thing that we have to realize here is this great mystery. This "fully man" means He felt emotion, embodiment, touch, hunger, grief, compassion, a nervous system experience.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Especially vulnerability.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Human relational connection. But Jesus did not become less God by becoming man.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Becoming fully man made Him more fully God.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: But what He did in that emotional range is He revealed what man was always meant to be when fully yielded to the Father's love. That's the original plan. Can you imagine feeling grief without despair? Can you feel anger without hatred? The scripture says, "Be ye angry, but do not sin."

We're allowed to be angry, that's the part of the human experience, but the problem is when we take vengeance and we move from anger to bitterness, to vengeance, to hatred.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that comes with activation, doesn't it?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And so the scripture here that we want to close on before we get to final words is, "We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin." And that's Hebrews 4:15. Throwing to you, Dr. Robyn, for the final words.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, I think that what we need to say finally is this: vulnerability we have not explored. And this is what we will explore in our lives when we realize He was vulnerable only because He was in the hands of man. And if we don't allow Him to be that senior in our life, then we don't help Him to fulfill who He is in our life.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So He not only wants to forgive your emotions, He wants to inhabit them.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Definitely. Not visit, but to inhabit.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And so what you're saying here is that unless He's allowed to live fully, then His humanity is not fully expressed.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's exactly what I'm saying to you because this is what the Lord said to me: what does it mean to be fully man?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Never not because He is incomplete in Himself, because He's eternally complete, but His expression in you is what becomes incomplete.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right. Because He is who He is.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow. So when you refuse to let Jesus express through you His life fully, you keep Him in the role of Savior, but you deny Him the indwelling role of Lord.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And our bridegroom.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: He wants to feel through you without sin ruling you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: You got it. You got it. Please take notice of what we've said today. This will change your entire mindset.

Narrator (Female): Thanks for spending time with us today on First Love. And as you go, don't forget: the one who loved you first is still loving you best.