Salvation-What
is it!
"How is a man saved?" has
been the question that the Church has placed and debated for as long as
anyone can remember. Before people make a conscious or unconscious decision
wither they are
going to accept the traditions, dogmas, and creeds of a particular
church, they will have been influenced from there early childhood and
onward that the
Salvation that the Scriptures speak of and which has become formulated
into the different denominations, is a matter of "How" without
any regard to the "What". The concept of the Salvation of God has been tainted with
the presupposition as to
the goal of salvation. The goal is often assumed whenever two
sides do get together to discuss the salvation of God in its merits or
methods. Salvation for the churches
has thus become all about the divisive "how" which have been
passed down for generations within the church.
Presuppositions are as natural to us as is the air we breathe. Therefore
they are difficult to counter. The only sure measure to counter our
presuppositions is with the true knowledge of the scriptures found in
the word of God. There lies the conundrum. It is within the scriptures
themselves that men have derived there presuppositions concerning "what
they believe the scriptures say", verses, what the scriptures
actually teach". Every generation is responsible to
investigate for themselves and to contend for the faith that is to be
passed down to the next. This requires both effort and diligence which
is more then naught lost because as a people we are too complacent and
lazy. But worse, we are too willing to let others act as our
priest. And because of this the priesthood of the believer itself has
been nearly all but lost to the church. In its place is the presupposition that there
can be and should be a priest who will stand in the gap between ourselves
and God. In other words, let the "the hired priest" do
the studying, so
he can tell us what God has said and what we should do and we
will do it. Does this sound familiar to you? Have you heard the echo of
these words bouncing off the heights of Mt.
Sinai? The admonition from
the Apostles is and has been all along, "be diligent to show
yourselves approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Tim.2:15) The assumption
that should be derived here is that there can be a way to
"wrongly" divide the word, verse, to "rightly"
divide the Word of God. Therefore it is the responsibility of every
believer in God to do so.
"To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and
preserved in Jesus Christ... "you" are to contend earnestly
for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." (Jude
1:3)
What a man believes is what a man becomes. “Has
God said?” has been the question before mankind in which every
individual will be judged just as our first parents were. What has
happened in the church over time is that the Word of God has been
codified into statements of faith to clarify the doctrines of scripture.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the early creeds were
formulated in an attempt to stem the tide of heresies plaguing the early
church. But it still falls upon the writing of men, then and now, who
may or may not have been honest in their attempts, who believing they were contending
for the faith, where things have gone adrift as they have tried
to clarify the meaning of scripture. There was already a departure from
the faith (did God really say?) before the Apostles had a chance to die,
hence the letters from the Apostles and the warnings found therein. The
church since has continued to battle over time to divide over doctrine
and history has shown us that it did not take long for tradition and
dogma to replace the scriptures as the rule of life for those of the
faith.
As was stated earlier, the goal of salvation is assumed and one
can come to this conclusion simply by looking at the traditions and the
dogmas of the church. To clarify the goal of salvation would also be the
same thing as to explain and clarify what salvation is. It is true that
the prison guard in charge over Paul asked the question... "Sirs,
what must I do to be saved?" But even in the guards, "what
must I do...” (i.e. how can I be saved) tells us nothing
as to what the salvation is. You would have to read into the text and
make an assumption about the salvation found in the story in Acts
chapter 16. But given a little thought to the passage it may be possible
and very likely that the guard considered himself a dead man in the
light of Roman justice where the responsibility of the prisoners was
laid on him at the cost of his own life if he were to fail
in his keep. It was Paul who turned the guards more immediate need of
being "saved" from Roman justice to his
spiritual need, "Believe on the Lord the Lord Jesus Christ
and you will be saved...”
The idea or concept of salvation can be found in its various
tenses; these are some found in the KJV and the NKJ; saved (104) to save
(38) shall save (17) will be saved (14 NKJ) are saved (8) might be saved
(5) to be saved (2) are being saved (2 NKJ) many of these laps over each
other, especially when considering the various Bible translations. Jesus
Christ... "Came into the world to seek and save that which
was lost." But the questioned needs to be asked "saved
from what?" and more importantly "saved to
what?"
What are we being
saved from? It is a burning hell, a place of unending agony and pain? Is
it a place of constant reminder of what we missed out on because "we chose poorly"?
Are we being saved from "grinding
our teeth" forever in our hatred for God who can't help go
against His own system of justice whereby He finds it necessary to
send those who "He created and loves" to a place of
unquenchable memory and regret? Is there really an
"afterlife" where all this is going to take place?
The "afterlife" has made the
Hollywood
movie business billions in revenue. But, it's not the movie business
that is to blame; the Churches have promoted, along
with every religion of man that has come down the pike of
history, a
belief system in the afterlife. Do we really Die? Is death only
a door into another reality? Are there billions of disembodied spirits
floating around in a place called hell or heaven? All of these questions
come into play when considering what Salvation is really all about.
One of the premier attributes of God is that He is all knowing.
By its very definition, omniscience is the ability to know the beginning
to the end. If God were not all knowing, then in Christian theology, God
could not be God. God himself tells us in the written word that He is
the creator of all that there is, including mankind. "Thus
says God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out;
he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that
gives breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk
therein:" (Isa.42:5) And it is the same Lord God who has
sovereign control over His creation... "Remember this, and
show yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O you transgressors.
Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else;
I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the
beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done,
saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:"
(Isa. 46:8-10)
Many of the denominations of the church for a very long time now
have taught that the all knowing God who created and loves all men,
would have them all to be saved, i.e. every last one. It is taught that
God yearns (for a lack of a better word) that men would chose to believe
and obey Him because God is not partial to any man or any group and
wants all men to be saved. It is also taught that God will not force
anyone against a mans free will, and thus (is it assumed and not
talked about very much) God is at the mercy of the
mans free will at the sake of and or at the expense of His very love for
the man who decides wither to believe Him or reject Him. And finally,
and in the same way, it is assumed under the churches teaching,
God is forced by His own justice to send the men who have
spurned His love (that He creates and loves), to an eternity of
darkness, pain, agony, suffering, remorse, regret, and lose, where those
men will grind there teeth in hatred for God forever.
In the final analysis, it is concluded that the very God who
loved them and wished them to be saved let it fall upon the gift
of free will that he gave mankind, for it is this gift as it is taught that separates man from the rest of
creation within the animal kingdom. If I understand the teaching of the
church correctly, the Free Will of man has a direct connection with man being made in the image
of God, thus the separation between man and the animal kingdom.
The under lying teaching is that the Free Will of man is the highest
expression of man being made in Gods image.
But this is antithetical to the
express image of God found in the beloved Son of God. Jesus Christ who
is the express image of God (Heb.1:3, Phil. 2:6-8) came to do the will
of the Father and was found to be in perfect obedience to all the Will of Father. It was Christ
doing the Will of the Father that
pleased the Father in all things. “This
is my Son in whom I am well pleased”. The Son came to do the
will of the Father (John 6:38) who could imagine that Jesus would have
decided at some point to express His own will and go against His
Fathers? Jesus, the son of man had His own will and hours before He was
to be nailed to the cross we can see how troubled He was when He prayed,
“not
my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22:42). The image of God is
found in
the obedience to God. The first Adam failed, the last Adam
prevailed.
With this
teaching of the Free Will of man in view, how can you escape the
God who knew in His omniscience those men who would and who
would not in there "freewill”
-chose wisely, but created them anyway "knowing"
they were Hell bound. So the Hell that the Church teaches of, will be
full of God rejecters; men whom God "knew" would
reject Him in there freewill and there unbelief; men (the sons of
disobedience Col.3:6) who God is supposed to love, yet the same
men in whom God must now and forever endure there scorn
and hatred for Him in the afterlife from the agonies of eternal Hell
fire.
Taking these things together any thinking person who claims to be
a believer in the one true God of the scriptures and His Son Jesus
Christ must come to the conclusion that the doctrine called the freewill
of man so prevalent in the churches is not a gift but a curse from God.
But perhaps worse then this, the church without admitting to it, would
have God creating and sending untold numbers of people to an eternity
where they will forever hate him for doing so. The
war will never be over, according
to the doctrine coming from the church, there will always
be a time and a place filled with sin, hatred, envy and strife.
The never
ending war which is portrayed in the underlying
teaching is simply a manifestation of the lack of or
shallow and or wrong teaching concerning Gods character, His
sovereignty, what salvation is really about, the freewill of man, the
afterlife; these being just for starters, all of which have been coming
out of the churches for generations.
Knowledge is
built upon a foundation of basic precepts. "It is precept
upon precept, line upon line..." (Isa.28:10). In our case
with the question of “What is Salvation?” it becomes necessary to
check our foundation. The foundation must be strong and sure otherwise
the whole building is at risk. The omniscience of God and His
sovereignty over all that He has created is the keystone upon which the
believer builds his understanding and faith in God. There is assurance
and a comfort that
is immeasurable to the believer when you know that God is in
control of creation and that He will always do that which
is right. Does the all knowing God send men who he loves
to a burning Hell? The answer should be obvious in the light of the
Sovereign God who sees the beginning to the end; no, He does not send
those who He loves to endless punishing in a burning hell.
He never has and he never will. The scriptures are clear, the Apostle
writes... "According as he has chosen us in him before the
foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his
will," (Ehp.1:4,5) and again.... "But we are
bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of
the Lord, because God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation
through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:
(2Thess.2:13)
Whenever Paul
wrote, he always without exception wrote to believers as
he did here to the church at
Ephesus
and Thessalonica. The believers are the "who" of
salvation. "God has from the beginning chosen you to
salvation...” The "how" is found in, "God
has...chosen.. you to salvation." Salvation is
attained by Gods choosing one man over another. This flies in the face
of the churches (at least for many of the denominations) teaching the
freewill of man, and so the question is asked, "what will you
believe?" Does God do the choosing or is it left up to man? In
times past, much blood has been split over this very question.
In the providence of God a man moves in time and
space and makes the decisions which affect his life. One man is
found to be a believer as he moves through life as it is afforded him,
the other man does not believe even though the two men have been
afforded many of the same opportunities and shared in the same
"time and space realities" (they may have been neighbors who
sat next to each other on Sunday morning for forty years). But the texts
are clear when it comes to God's sovereignty in the way he saves
individuals, "According as he has chosen us in him before the
foundation of the world...” God chooses and then He calls. And
when the Lord Jesus says it, we hear it this way..."For many
are called, but few are chosen." (Matt.22:14) The two
neighbors sitting in church will have heard the same call,
but only the one was affected by the power of God and was given ears and
eyes to see the wisdom of God in the call that he heard. "But
unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of
God, and the wisdom of God." (1Cor.1:24) To the
believer who heard the call; the call is his very hope. "There
is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your
calling;" (Ehp.1:4) to the unbeliever who may or may
not have heard the call; without faith, he will die without hope. "...I
do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, lest you sorrow as others who
have no hope" (1Thess.4:13) All that happens to the
believer in the providence of God through time and space works toward
the believer for his good. "And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose" (Rom.8:28). At the end of the day
when time and space will cease to function as we know it and all war
will have ceased, the believer will be with the one who has called and
chosen him... "And these shall make war with the Lamb, and
the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of
kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and
faithful." (Rev.17:14)
There is the aspect
that Salvation is an act of God toward an individual which
was decided by God from the foundations of the world. Salvation is
achieved (the how), when the individual was... "Buried with
him (the Christ) in baptism, wherein also you are risen with him (the
Christ) through the faith of the operation of God, who has raised him
(the Christ) from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, has he quickened (made alive) together
with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;"
(Col.2:12,13). The "How of salvation" is in the
operation of God, whereby His Spirit baptizes the called of God,
into the body of His Son. "For by one Spirit are we all
baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be
bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.
(1Cor.12:13) The Believer in God, chosen from the foundation of the
world, has been made to drink (the) one spirit. He is spiritually buried
with Christ (in His death), risen spiritually (in His resurrection),
made alive spiritually by His spirit (which is the guarantee) and he is
forgiven by God of all trespasses; thus explains the word of God through
the Apostle the "how" of salvation. Salvation is
all of God; salvation is God, and it is through His Son Jesus Christ and
His Spirit. "For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish,
disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in
malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the
kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works
of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved
us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; (Titus
3:3-6) This text is clear as to the savior ship of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The declaration side of
salvation is according to God's mercy through His grace, not by works of
righteousness which we may have done. (Rom. 4:16; 5:15; 11:6 Ehp.2:5, 8,
Matt.18:10 Luke 19:10)
It is also true
that salvation is more then just an act of God upon
individuals. With Clear texts in view telling us something
about the 'Who' and the 'how' of salvation, there is the one aspect of
salvation least considered among believers filling the pews of the
church. The question must be asked among those "who are
saved", "...to what are we saved to?"
Fundamentally, what is the believer in God being saved from, and to what
is he being saved too? For the Philippian jailer it was the immediate
need to be saved from the Roman justice that he was to face but where he
found more then he could have hoped for in the name of Jesus Christ. For
all who are the called of God, it is the Justice of God that we are in
need to be saved from in the light that we are found to be guilty
transgressors before a thrice Holy God. Adam left us with far more then
a sinful nature and the knowledge of good and evil when in his
disobedience he partook of the forbidden tree. He left us separated from
our creator, (i.e. broken fellowship). Being separated from our creator
as all men are when we come into this world left us with the prospect of
facing two things, the justice of God and death. The reality of death
goes beyond that of our physical bodies returning to the dust from which
they came. Because of the broken fellowship and resulting separation
from our creator the scriptures declare mankind dead to
the things of God... "And you, being dead in your
sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh," (Col.2:12).
Man's death and returning to the dust (Psa.90:3) is the result of being
dead in our sins to God. You may have heard it said, "We are but
dead men walking", or "a man is dying the moment he was
conceived" (i.e. the death clock has started). The truth of this
are inescapable by the fact that men are dying everyday and the
cemeteries are filling up with there graves. As it turns out, death is
the curse of God upon the children of disobedience of which Adam is the
father of all such. It is later declared in the scriptures that death is
the enemy of man (1Cor.15:26) for it is the last enemy to be destroyed
before God purges His Kingdom and makes all things good as they were in
the beginning before the fall of man. It could then be accurately said,
the believer in God is saved from death; it is just as
accurate that He is saved to life.
(Interlude)
If there is one
subject that people do not want to talk about, it would be that of death.
Most people would rather argue about taxes and politics before they
faced the realities of death. But the truth about death is all too real
to us; we all have an appointment and must face it in due time. There is
something unnatural about death which grips us in our secret moments
when nobody else can see us. It is unnatural because there is something
in us that defies its power and yet there is no way to escape its grip
on us. The fear of death is a deep seated psyche that has been passed
down to all humans and whereby the religions that man has conjured up
throughout history has at there base and for there main purpose to
build a refuge around death. Death's fear may be contained by
the brain washing of a religious creed or dogma which can temporally
unseat the fear at its surface, but the fear is always ready to reappear
at the given moment when the shield of the refuge is taken away; often
when death itself knocks at the door.
Death was created by God. Death is the curse of
God in His pronouncement placed upon our first parents. The God of love
which the churches would much rather talk about, is also the God who
kills. Many of the people who fill the pews do not want to talk about
the Sovereign God who kills and the scriptures that declare such. One of
many such sobering passages in found in Deuteronomy, "See now
that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make
alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of
my hand." (Deut. 32:39) All you really need is one passage,
but the concept that God kills is crystallized in His demand for a
sacrifice. Something has to die, and it is this God that
people would not rather talk about and where the whole thing is glossed
over in the teaching of the church. The scriptures tell us that God
killed an animal before Adam and Eve were dispelled from
the garden (Gen. 3:21). It was the skin of the animal which now became
necessary to cover there exposed nakedness. Adam's effort
(his works) of the fig leaves were a failure to cover the shame of his
nakedness, as all men’s works are, it would take God killing an
innocent animal and the shedding of blood to picture what
was to take place on the cross of Calvary with the shed blood and death
of His own Son. What the church forgets or avoids is the truth that it
was in the determinate
counsel of God that sent Jesus to the cross (Acts 2:23). By the
death of His Son Jesus Christ, God would once and for all be satisfied
in His demand for justice (Heb.10:1-22), there would be no more a need
for innocent animals to die and there would be no more need for the
sacrificial system which was the only way at the time to approach God
(Heb.10:4). Jesus entered into death itself (it
is Christ who has died;
Rom.
5:6, 8; 1Cor.15:3) for His people and opened the new way to approach God
the Father (Heb.10:20). The veil has been rent; we can now as
believers approach the throne of God boldly without fear of being struck
down. The sacrifice has been made, there is no need of another;
fellowship between God and
men has been restored, God
is satisfied (Isa.53:11)
(End of interlude)
At this point, the
objection will be raised, "But to be saved from death that's
too simple or that's not enough! Surely you have left out the hope of
the church that we are saved so that we might be like the angles and go
to heaven." Is
it not automatically taught, with the exception of a few, that
heaven is the goal for the believer? All you need to be
convinced is to go to a funeral of a believer, i.e. former church
member. But the diligent believer will be hard pressed to find
scriptural support for this "presupposition"
that has been embedded in the doctrine and the dogma of the church. The
Lord himself said, “No man has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven,
that is the Son of man” (John 3:13). Either the church dogma
is correct and Jesus was wrong when speaking to Nicodemus or there is
something seriously amiss with the churches understanding of the goal of
the believer. According to the Lord, believers who die do not enter into
heaven upon there death; the simple truth is, no mortal man has ever gone to heaven; mortality cannot not
inherit immortality.
The goal has always
been life. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is
coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father has life in
himself; so has he given to the Son to have life in himself;"
(John 5:24, 25)”And you will not come to me, that you might have
life." (John 5:40) It is the Son of God who has been given
life through the Father, the one who is life, to give life.
"I am the way the truth and the life" (John 14:6)
the only place that a man can go to for life is in the Son. If there was
ever a declaration for the purpose of Jesus Christ then it would be
found here, "I am come that they might have life, and that
they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10b) "But
these are written (the scriptures), that you might believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might
have life through his name." (John 21:31) Life is to know
God. It is as
simple as that. It is the very heart of the gospel but the very
thing which the church seems to have missed when it preaches the Gospel.
Heaven is not the goal, life is the goal, to know God and to walk with
God and to be one with God is the goal. To be a partaker of the Divine
nature is the goal (2Peter 1:4).
What was lost in the garden was life. It was the
relationship between God and man that was lost. What is gained in
believing in the Son of God is life with the restoration of that
relationship in our fellowship with God. To know God is life. “This
is life eternal, that they might know you the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
What really happened in the garden? You will not be able to
appreciate and see the goal of life unless you can see and understand
what happened in the Garden of Eden. Immediately after God set Adam in
the Garden with the charge to tend and keep it (protect), he commanded
saying to Adam... "Of every tree of the garden you may freely
eat:" But with one stipulation, "But of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the
day that you eat thereof you shall surely die." In the
original Hebrew the word for die appears twice in the text
(almost always for emphasis). The more definitive way that it reads
would look like this... "for in the day that you eat thereof
you shall die die." The Young's literal translation has
taken the first instance of the Hebrew word H4191 tAmm' muwth {mooth},
to where it reads like this... "and of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, thou dost not eat of it, for in the day of thine
eating of it--dying (mooth) thou dost die (mooth).' (YLT Genesis
2:17). The KJV took the first instance of "mooth" and
translated it "surely", i.e. "surely die", which
everyone is familiar with. What is often missed in the
text is the concept of death that the Sovereign God who
created death expressly told Adam about... "In dying you
shall surely die". With this in view it would clear up the
notion that there is something amiss to the truth that Adam did not drop
dead on the spot when he eat of the forbidden tree. The critics love to
point back to the fact that Adam did not indeed drop dead
(in the day he eat) but lived on for many hundreds of years producing
his progeny. But with the text saying (as it was intended) "...for
in the day of thine eating of it... (We all know about that day
and the story that follows)--dying (mooth) (the day we all
know about and will personally face as Adam did, ((Adam meet his day;
Gen.5:5)) thou dost die (mooth).' What God was simply
saying to Adam, "...In dying you shall surely die".
It is that death that God saves His people from through
belief in His Son Jesus Christ who came to grant life to those who would
believe in Him. That is the Gospel of God.
”I come that they might have life...” Jesus Christ
came to set us free, we who where captive to death and the grave. It
is the Gospel of which the believer need not be ashamed...
"For it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who
believes..." (Rom.1:16). The Gospel is the good news that
there is deliverance from death and the grave.
What will happen to death and dying, the thing that plagues and
strikes fear into every man? The day will come when both death and the
grave will have no more place as they must give up the
dead found in them with the command of God who will cast both into the
lake of fire to be consumed (Rev.20:14). There can be no more
place for death and the grave for they must go away
to be consumed in the fire that is the righteous God. For our God is a
consuming fire (Heb.12:29). All things that offend will and must be
purged from the
Kingdom
of
God
upon the return of the King at the end of this age (Matt.13:41, 42).
This will be the fulfillment of ... "And God shall wipe away
all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former
things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4).
With Jesus
Christ coming in the flesh (the Word) and proclaiming to be "...the
life", perhaps it would be necessary to ask if there is any
other kind of life. In other words, is there some kind of life apart
from Jesus Christ and that which God the Father grants to all that which
is living. To be specific and if we take seriously what God has said
about "in dying you will surely die", can there
be or is there some kind of afterlife beyond death and the
grave? Is there a place where men can live outside
of the sphere of God and His sovereignty, where there is consciousness
and memory of the one who created them? Is there some kind of "lesser
life" beyond the grave then that which Jesus himself
proclaims to be? Can you see the problem if you answered 'yes' to any of
these questions? Can you see that it would take away who Jesus
proclaimed to be and His purpose of being the life giver for lost
mankind? Can you see how this would diminish the truth of the
Gospel with its promise and hope of life?
The promise of the
Gospel is Life. The Hope of the Gospel is to be raised in that Life. The
Goal of the Gospel is to be with God in His Life. "And I
heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God
is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people,
and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. (Rev.21:3)
As we see here in the culmination (the finality) of the Revelation, the
goal has always been to be with God. It is the promise of the New
Covenant with His people who He foreknew before time began (Rom. 8:29).
It will be a "return" to the garden where everything was
declared good and there was complete unison where God and man walked as
one. Adam did not know himself apart from God until the forbidden fruit
had passed between his lips and it was only then that he was afraid and
saw his nakedness of which he was ashamed. His shame was a result of
knowing himself apart from his creator. The Gospel is the hope and
promise of removing that shame.
Redemption is the
reversal of what happened in the garden, its goal is to be one
with God. It is the return to the garden where Adam walked with
God as one without shame. To
be one
with God is the realization and fulfillment of the New Covenant in which the blood
of Jesus Christ ratified (Heb.12:24, 13:20, 21). What Jesus did was to
bring an end to the old covenant where the relationship between God and
His people could only be met through the sacrificial system with the
killing of innocent animals. But the blood of all those animals could
never take away our sins (Heb.10:3, 4). Jesus is the only acceptable
sacrifice in which God's justice has been meet (Heb. 10:10-14). The
promise of Jesus to the disciples the night he was betrayed and taken to
be condemned to death is found in His great priestly prayer in the upper
room, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which
shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as
you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us:
that the world may believe that you have sent me. And the glory which
you gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that
the world may know that you have sent me, and has loved them, as you
have loved me." (John 17:20-23) The prayer of our
Lord uttered before he would see the sun rise again in His resurrected
body, would be fulfilled by Him becoming sin for us
(2Cor.5:21) taking upon the judgment of God and entering death,
whereby He satisfied the demands of God's justice, and became the
justifier of His people taking away the sin (Isa.53:11). When He did
this it was the ratification of the New Covenant of which His blood was
the witness (Heb.12:24). It is the Christ who has died. God is
satisfied. We know that God is satisfied because He raised Jesus
Christ from the dead. It is the resurrection that has declared
Jesus to be the Son of God with power. The Resurrection is the great
hope of the Gospel. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again
to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead," (1 Peter 1:3). It is in the resurrection where our
life will be realized when the one who is the resurrection
and the life (John 11:25-26), appears to come and fulfill His
promise to raise His own from the dead (John 6:39, 40, 44, 54). Within
the context of scripture, there in no life apart from resurrection
(Ehp.2:1, Col. 2:13). It is that simple. You must be a partaker
in the first resurrection, raised in the newness of Christ’s life at
His resurrection (Col.2:12), before you can be a partaker at the last
resurrection (Rev.20:6, 12-15).
Life is to be with
God, God is life, outside of God there simply is no life. The life that
He has promised to the believer is now "hid with Christ in
God" (Col. 3:3). If a man is not found
within the grasp of the Gospels promise of life then there is only one
alternative; he is too perish. To perish goes beyond that
of death and the grave, as of today they have a place in
our reality. Death and the grave are currently holding both the
righteous and the unrighteous, those who have died in there sins and
those who sleep in Christ (1Thess.4:13-16, 1Cor.15:17-18). But the day
is coming when death and the grave will not have a place, and they
must give up those found within them (Rev.20:11-15). The last
trumpet will sound (1Cor.15:51-52) with the cry of the archangel and the
dead in Christ will be raised in life (1Thess.4:13-18). This corruption
must take on incorruption and this mortality must take on immortality.
Then will be fulfilled the saying, "death is swallowed up in
victory" (1Cor.15:55). It is at the second resurrection
(the final resurrection), which only those who have had a part in the
first resurrection will partake (Rev. 20:6). Because it is then that the
second death will be the death of death. Upon the resurrection at the
last day Death and the grave will be no more as they will
give up all within them. To those found in the book life, they will be
raised in life. To those not
found in the book of life, they will be raised in condemnation
only to be cast along with death and the grave into the fire of God
which is God. Nothing has and nothing ever will exist apart from God.
Death and the grave came from God and they will go back to God in the
fire that is God, there to be consumed. “For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb.12:29).
But there is
more to our Salvation.
Of all the promises that are found in the gospel of God, salvation,
redemption, justification, forgiveness, glorification, there is the one
promise of God which is overlooked, almost
completely. It is the promise that began with the declaration of
God found in the first Chapter of the Bible. "And God said;
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion..." (Gen.1:26a) The first Adam taken from the
earth was not the fulfillment of God's declaration here, it would be
found in the last Adam (1Cor.15:45) who is the life giving Spirit. It is
that life giving Spirit in which we have been raised in the newness of
life (
Rom.
6:4, 7:6) in which God has seen fit that we should walk in it. It is
nothing less then the fulfillment of the promise found in the New
Covenant. "But this shall be the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put
my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be
their God, and they shall be my people. (Jer.31:33). God would
not be denied His people and the New Covenant is the declaration of that
intent.
The New Covenant is the promise of the new heart, whereby His
people would be willing in the day of His power. "A new heart
also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will
take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart
of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in
my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments, and do them”
(Ezek.36:26, 27). Christ was raised from the dead, in fulfillment of the
New Covenant, to sit at the right hand of the Father where He is the
mediator of that Covenant. The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at
my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The LORD shall
send the rod of thy strength out of
Zion
: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Thy people shall be willing
in the day of thy power," (Psa.110:1-3a). God has made an
everlasting Covenant with His people, it is a Covenant of Salvation, it
is a Covenant of Promise, and it is a secure Covenant where God has
promised not to turn away from the people with whom He has Covenanted
Himself with.
"I know my sheep, and they follow me...” it's
because of the New Covenant. God will not lose a single one for in that
Covenant is the promise that His people would not depart from the True
and Living God. "And they shall be my people, and I will be
their God: And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may
fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after
them: And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not
turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their
hearts, that they shall not depart from me" (Jer.34:38-40).
The New Covenant is
the promise of Salvation whereby God foreordained in ages past and
predestinated a people to be conformed to the image of the Son of His
Love. According to the Apostle, we have been made partakers of the
Divine Nature which is according to the exceedingly great and precious
promises given to us (2Pet.1:4).
This is what
Salvations goal has been all along. With the declaration in the
beginning that God would make man in His image that declaration
was fulfilled not in the first Adam but in the Last Adam, the
Adam to which the believer in God is being conformed too. "And
so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last
Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is
spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is
spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the
Lord from heaven." (1Cor. 15:45-47) It is the man from heaven, Jesus
Christ to which all those of faith, chosen from the foundations, whose
image we are to be found when we awake in His likeness at the
resurrection of Life. "For whom he did foreknow, he
also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he
might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did
predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also
justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Rom.8:28,
29).
It is in this
knowledge that we grow and walk drawing our comfort and assurance
whereby we can lie down and sleep, knowing that we will awake in His
likeness being one
with our creator. This is what Salvation is all about. "As
for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied,
when I awake, with thy likeness" (Psa.17:15).
Original
posting 8/6/06
Revised
12/17/06
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