The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Inner and Outer Kingdom of God, #20

That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)

The transformation of the saint.

The transformation of the human being from the race of Adam to the new spiritual creation is the heart of the new covenant.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (II Corinthians 3:18)

The adamic race never will enter the Kingdom of God. It is the new creation, that which is born of Christ, that is the Kingdom. The new creation results from the entrance of Divine Substance and Life into the human personality. The corruptible elements of the human being wither and die and are replaced by the Divine Nature.

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening [life-giving] spirit. (I Corinthians 15:45)

It is a new race. The Kingdom of God is not a reforming or modifying of Adam. It is a crucifixion of Adam and the birth of a new kind of personality. The new personality is Christ in the sense that it is born of Christ, is of the Substance and Life of Christ, and is to be the eternal habitation of Christ.

My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, (Galatians 4:19)

Christ is the Word, the personified Law of God. The new covenant is the placing of the law (Christ) in the mind and the writing of the law in the heart. The Christian salvation is not, except for an initial period during which the Word is germinating, an adapting of Adam to God's law. Rather, it is a killing of Adam, a radical restructuring of the human personality.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: (Hebrews 8:10)

It is a new humanity, a humanity in which all that is worthwhile of the human personality is permeated with Divine Substance and Life until the law of God is kept by nature. It is the flesh made the Word. Adam is crucified with Christ and henceforth it is Christ who is living. This is the heart of the new covenant.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

To be continued.