Man's idea of salvation and God's idea about salvation are two totally different things. Man thinks that if he can be good, accept Jesus as their salvation, stop cussing and attend church, then maybe he can be good enough to get to heaven. God's idea of salvation is that no matter how hard man works at it, he can never be good enough to get to heaven.
God purposed that He Himself will remove the barrier of sin that holds man back. God purposed that the penalty for man's sin must be paid and that He Himself will pay it. God said that He will give life back to a dead spirit and then will restore the communication lost when Adam sinned in the Garden. God said that He will not only make man able to reach heaven, but that He Himself will restore heaven back to earth.
God says that He will take care of the people He made to be His family. He says that He will break the bond of death and sin and restore His family to grace, life and blessing. God never intended heaven to be man's home and thus He created the earth. Heaven and earth were to be one in God's mind. And, now God and man could inhabit the same space together.
We've been taught for much of our lives that God is a Holy God and because man is sinful we can never approach Him. This is very true. But, God didn't leave us sinful men. He did away with sin altogether for those who will believe in the finished work of His Son, Jesus. Somehow, though,we still act like we're not made righteous in Him. We say we're forgiven and then spend over half of our time trying to be forgiven. We confess that God made us righteous through Christ Jesus, but then say that "none are righteous."
That makes it impossible to enter into the rest spoken about in Hebrews 4:11 (Amplified) which says, "Let us therefore be zealous and exert ourselves and strive diligently to enter that rest (of God) to know and experience it for ourselves that no one may fall or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience (into which those in the wilderness fell)." Disbelief in God was all that was needed for the Israelites to perish in the wilderness and never enter into the Promised Land. Psalm 105:37 (Amplified) says that, "[God] brought (Israel) forth also with silver and gold, and there was not one feeble person among their tribes."
God was their Provide, Protector, Deliverer, Healer. He provided shade for them in the daytime as a cloud and heat at night as the pillar of fire. He made manna fall from heaven and provided water for nearly three million people and their livestock too. The Israelites lived in comfort in the middle of a desert and lacked for nothing.
The covenant we now have with God is the fullness of His promise to Abraham for Jesus. In his carnal mind, man still separates God and man. When he reads with his carnal mind that the fullness of the promise is the Holy Spirit, he doesn't understand the new covenant and separates himself into two places.
Religion separates the Spirit from the man. God's plan is to unite man back by the Spirit. The fall of Adam in the Garden separated man's spirit from the Holy Spirit. It separated the life of God from man because "the wages of sin is death." Adam's transgression shut God out of man's spirit. The promise of the Holy Spirit that God promised Abraham through Jesus, was to unite man and God as one again. Jesus was to be all that was needed to bring all things back to order.
Now, by receiving Jesus as our Lord and Savior, by faith, we have the very Spirit of God within our own spirit. We now have no longer need to sacrifice for our sin. We no longer need the Law because we live by grace. And, the Holy Spirit lives in the very heart (spirit) of God's people again. We don't need words carved on stone to tell us what is right or wrong because we have their very Author living in our spirit. Hebrews 5:13-14 (Amplified) says, "For everyone who continues to feed on milk is obviously inexperienced (of conformity to the divine will in purpose, thought and action) for he is a mere infant (not able to talk yet)." Verse 14 says, "But solid food is for full grown men, for those whose senses and mental faculties are trained by practice to discriminate and distinguish between what is morally good and noble and what is evil and contrary either to divine or human law."
The Holy Spirit will reveal to the spirit of man, the very thoughts of God Himself. When God reveals His thoughts and heart to us, it's not to say how we're to live in heaven, but how heaven wants to live in the earth. This was God's plan from the beginning and He doesn't have a plan B. Plan A is still working and will work much better once we stop fussing over going to heaven and allow heaven to be manifest again on earth.
Jesus was, and still is, the bridge connecting God and man, heaven and earth. God didn't send the Holy Spirit to remind us of our sinful past, but to reveal our sinless future. The Holy Spirit isn't to help us get to heaven, but to allow heaven to walk the earth (through us) once again. The earth isn't a sinful place, but because the enemy's lies, man has manifested it here. This earth was created as our home; not heaven. Romans 8:19-21 (Amplified) says, "For (even) the whole of creation (all nature) waits expectantly and longs earnestly for God's sons to be made known, (waits for the revealing, the disclosing of their sonship)." Verse 20 says, "For the creation (nature) was subjected to frailty (to futility, condemned to frustration) not because of some intentional fault on its part, but by the will of him who subjected it-(yet) with hope." Verse 21 says, "That nature (creation) itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and corruption (and again and entrance) into the glorious freedom of God's children."
Adam subjected the earth to a bondage of corruption when he turned his authority into the hands of satan. This earth was made to produce all of the beauty, supply and comfort that God's children would ever need according to Romans 8:19 (Amplified). It tells us that all of creation is waiting to do what it was created to do. It's waiting for the "revealing, the disclosure of the sonship of God's children and for God's sons to be made known."
"Yes, but Brother Jim, that's for when we get to heaven." NO! It means that the earth is waiting for God's sons to be revealed. "Well, yes Brother Jim, that's what I mean. When we get to heaven we will be God's sons." NO! When we got born again, we became God's sons. Now we are called to do what His Son Jesus did and bring heaven to bear on this earth again.
When are the sons of God to be manifest? When we get to heaven? To whom are we then to be revealed? Everyone who is born again will be made manifest already. We are to reveal the manifestation as God's sons here on this earth.
God wants His children to walk with Him and He will walk with them like He did with Adam before his fall. If we will rest in His finished work and allow the truth of His Word to truly be made manifest in our lives, then the whole of creation will rejoice at the liberty of what Jesus has done.
The only hope for the manifestation of His glory being made manifest here for us, is when we enter into His rest. As long as we are determined to keep this separation of spirit and flesh, we will never see His glory in all of its majesty. Before his transgression, Adam walked in his flesh and blood body with God in the Garden of Eden. Jesus walked with God here on this earth in His flesh and blood body. God and Jesus were One. You and I are now one with God and He is one with us in these flesh and blood body. Now, it's no longer me, but the Father in me, Who does the work.
The Father can reveal Himself through His children again by the promise of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 3:14 (Amplified) says, "To the end that through (their receiving) Christ Jesus, the blessing (promised) to Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, so that we through faith might (all) receive (the realization of) the promise of the (Holy) Spirit."
The promise of the Spirit is the born again promise Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about in John 3:3 (Amplified) where He said, "I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, that unless a person is born again (a new, from above) he cannot ever see (know, be acquainted with and experience) the Kingdom of God."
Now that we're born again, we're back in the family of life through Jesus and restored to what our Father planned in the beginning. Once again, God and man can walk together as one. God Himself can once again walk this planet like He did through Jesus. John 10:30 (Amplified) says, "I and the Father are One." Now, because of Jesus, a man can be born again and his spirit can receive the life of the Father once more. Now, through the new birth, God's very Spirit is united with man's born again spirit. We've now become one with God on this earth because God's very Spirit is united with man's born again spirit.
Jesus said in John 17:21 (Amplified), "That they all ay be one, (just) as you, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, So that the world may believe and be convinced that You have sent Me." John 14:17 (Amplified) says that, "The Spirit of truth, Whom the world cannot receive (welcome, take to its heart) because it does not see Him or know and recognize Him. But you know and recognize Him, for He lives with you (constantly) and will be in you."
This doesn't mean we must go to heaven to receive this blessing, but now heaven has come to earth in the presence of the very Spirit of God and all of heaven's blessing and abundance are made available to man by His presence. The curse has been fulfilled in Jesus. The sin debt has been paid, the death penalty was met and now, through Jesus, the blessing can flow unrestricted from the very presence of God's Spirit from within. Grace and mercy reign now through our accepted Lamb Who has become the door to all the Father has.
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