The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Resurrection and Eternal Judgment, #28

So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: (II Thessalonians 1:4,5)

We have the same thought of salvation through tribulation, the tribulation being a judgment on our inner man, in II Thessalonians.

The persecutions and tribulations we endure are a sign of the judgment of God on us, making us worthy of His Kingdom. To receive the Kingdom includes receiving immortality in our outward man at the coming of the Lord.

After we receive Jesus as our Savior, God goes to war against our inner man. The blood of the cross has forgiven the guilt of our sin. But this does not change what we are in personality. What we are in our inner man must be reconciled to God or else we cannot enter immortality in the outward man. We cannot be allowed back into Eden and given access to the tree of life until our disobedient nature has been converted.

God goes to war against us, as He did against Moses after He had called him (Exodus 4:24). We cannot have lasting peace until that warfare has been concluded and God has won the battle against our inner man.

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. (Isaiah 40:2)

It is not true, as is taught commonly, that all the judgment fell on the Lord Jesus and we enter the Kingdom without being chastened soundly and thoroughly by the Lord.

The suffering for the guilt of our behavior fell on the Lord. He bore away the guilt of our sins. But what we are in our inner man still is in rebellion against God. There still are lusts in our flesh and soul. We cannot have lasting peace with God until the inner man has been converted and the outward man has been clothed with a robe of righteousness.

It may be observed that the Lord God did all the fighting for the Israelites when He called them forth from Egypt, which is a type of our leaving the world in water baptism.

But when the Israelites sought to enter their land of promise, which is a type of our seeking to dwell in immortality in the Kingdom of God, the Israelites, with God's help, had to do the fighting.

Total victory over our inner man cannot be gained by one stroke. We must "take the land" city by city. We must achieve victory over one area of our personality at a time, and then experience the forming of Christ in that particular area. If this process of deliverance and replacement did not take place we would be as a house swept and decorated but still open to the enemy.

To be continued.