If you are a born-again child of God, you have recieved all of Christ as your life. He is sealed in your Spirit, and you have also been placed "in Him". (I will discuss this more fully, in another blog post). When you received Him, you received everything that He is. You have and can do everything that Jesus is and can do because it's produced by Him as we learn to yield our wills to His and allow His Life to flow in us and through us to accomplish His purposes.
Romans 8:17, "If we are God's children, we will receive blessings from God together with Christ."
You have been made a joint-heir in Christ A "joint-heir" is a co-participant, or a co-sharer; a co-partaker with another. In Hebrews 11:9, it speaks about Isaac and Jacob being joint-heirs due to their relation with Abraham. It's used when a wife is a joint-heir with her husband, for example. 1 Peter 3:9, talks about this. In Ephesians 3:6, Paul speaks of gentiles being joint-heirs with Israel.
According to Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, (10th Ed.) 1997, an "heir" is "one who receives or is entitled to receive some endowment or quality of a parent or predecessor ." The heir is also entitled to receive property, and any rank, title, or office that may apply.
A "birthright" is the "rights of the firstborn". In the Bible, Esau is an example of one who "showed how little he cared/valued the rights and privileges as a firstborn son." (Gen. 25:32-34; Heb.12:16).
In the ancient Hebrew culture, in addition to receiving property as the first-born son, he also had conferred upon him the rights of acting as the family priest, which shows the authority he was given over the younger siblings.
In the Old Covenant, the firstborn was a type of Christ as God's Firstborn, and High priest. This is also a picture of us, as Christians.
Hebrews 12:23, "You have come to the meeting of God's firstborn children whose names are written in Heaven."
Since we are "joint-heirs" with Christ, then take a look at the following scripture:
2 Peter 1:3-4, "...His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory, and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of 'the' divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust."
Children of God, ("Believers"/"Christians") have a brand new nature. Your nature is Christ, living inside of you. God's Divine Nature lives fully in your Spirit. 1/3 of you is wall-to-wall God indwelling us. Your Nature is the same as HIS. We are Who we are because of Whose we are, and Who it is that lives in us.
Our "Birthrights" are everything that is HIS DIVINE NATURE. They are In Christ. He is fully in you. As you partake of HIS Divine Nature, you will experience your birthrights, right now, in this present life. They are powerful expressions of Himself. You can't experience any of them apart from Him, and is why it says in John 15:5b,"....apart from Me, you can do nothing."
If you think of yourself as a prism, and God's Divine Nature (in you) as "the Light", then in our daily earthlife experiences, what you need in any particular moment is an expression of His Nature to meet that need. Those expressions are your "birthrights" flowing through you full of power for experiencing Kingdom Life, now.
Knowing what you have inherited is a process of discovery. Valuing your inheritance is vitally important to your being able to experience them.
