The Daily Word of Righteousness

Our Christian Pilgrimage, #12

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. (Galatians 6:7,8)

If after having received Christ we choose to continue to live our customary life in the desires and energies of the flesh and soul, not experiencing death to the world, to sin, and to self-will, we truly will die when we die physically. Our hopes, our goals, our relationships, our knowledge, our joy, our service, and every other dimension and aspect of our being and thinking will cease. They will cease because they pertain to our untransformed nature. Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, is not in them.

Our spirit will survive and exist somewhere because it is eternal. But all that the adamic nature views as "life" will perish. When the Day of the Lord comes there will be no Christ-filled personality on which to place an immortal body. As Paul declared, "For if ye live in the appetites of the flesh, ye shall die."

Notice carefully the following statement:

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

Now, let us consider the implications of the above verse. The father of mankind, Adam, was a living soul. A living soul is a kind of creature.

A living soul is not a life-giving spirit, and a life-giving spirit is not merely a living soul. These are two different kinds of creatures.

The purpose of God, as far as His elect are concerned, is not to bring them to Heaven. The purpose of God is to change what they are from one type of creature to another.

Because the purpose of God concerning His elect is that they be transformed from living souls into life-giving spirits, the new covenant is a covenant of transformation, not of a change in location. We must die to the old in order that we may receive the new.

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)

It is vain to argue that God loves us and saves us by His grace, if we mean by this argument that God will bring our untransformed nature to Paradise; that God's will is accomplished in us whether or not we cooperate with the daily program of death and resurrection. God does love us; and because of His love He is not seeking to save what we are; He is seeking to change what we are. What we are brings misery and doom on ourselves and the rest of the creation. Flesh and blood cannot enter the Kingdom of God. It is only the new creation that can enter the Kingdom of God. In fact, the new creation is the Kingdom of God.

To be continued.