Genesis 1:26-28 (Amplified) says, "God said, Let Us (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), make mankind in Our Image (after Our Likeness), and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the (tame) beasts, and over all the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in His Own Image, in the Image and Likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God Blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, using all its vast resources in the service of God and man, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth."
The "Blessing" and mandate of dominion and authority that God gave, was Love's way of providing and caring for His children. God wanted a family and children, to fellowship with and lavish His Love upon. We're in God's family and He sees us as the most important part of His creation. We're so special in God's heart, that when Adam sinned in the Garden, our Father forfeited His Own Blood and Body as a Ransom, in order to gain us back. The new covenant and family relationship we have now through Jesus, cannot be broken like it was before. This one is eternal, by the very Blood of our Eternal Savior.
God didn't make this new covenant with man, because man couldn't keep his end of the covenant. This time God cut covenant with the Blood of Jesus, Who was Man and God in One. The Father can't break this covenant and Jesus wouldn't break it. It's eternal in the Heavens, because God cut this covenant with His Own Blood, that was breathed into the Christ child by the Holy Spirit. Jesus wasn't born by the seed or sperm of man, but by the Seed of God, which was without the stain of sin in or on Him. God produced a family incorruptible in God Himself, by the Quickening Spirit carrying the Seed into mankind through the birth of Jesus Christ.
The Blessing could flow unrestricted, back into the family of God by His Word and His Spirit, because the sin problem had been dealt with. Everything that was in the Spirit world, is now manifested into the new creation spirit man/woman who is produced by faith in Jesus, as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Everything we can see, feel, smell, hear, and taste in the carnal realm, was created and produced from the Spirit realm. We've been slow to understand this, after being ruled by our senses for so long. It is nonetheless, Truth. The miracles of the loaves and the fishes, finding gold in the fish's mouth and Jesus' speaking to the Fig tree, were all manifestations of the provision in the Spirit.
This was and is, God's source of providing for His family. He and He alone, was to be our Source of Life and Provision. Adam and Eve never needed anything that God had not provided, before Adam's fall. Even today, we're watching, protecting and providing for our own children, like we learned from our Heavenly Father, because we were made in His Image and Likeness.
Today's Church has missed so much of what the Father did in our lives, by the Sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus paid the Price for our sins, in His Own Body, but many are still struggling to pay for their sins in their own flesh. We struggle with self-abasing, guilt and condemnation, as we try becoming worthy enough to inherit the Promises of God. We're new creation people, but we carry the baggage of the old man and bring the past into our new life in Christ. When we received Jesus as our Lord and savior, our sins were wiped clean, but we're still weighed down by things that are no longer part of us.
We're constantly trying to qualify and be what Jesus has already made us to be, in His Own Redemption for us. God's Original Intent for His family, has been restored to us, by the Very Blood of Jesus. We keep wondering what we must do to inherit God's Promises, because we don't understand that we've already inherited them, in Jesus. Many believe that these things are only for after we die and go to Heaven, but we can read Jesus' Last Will and Testament in Galatians 3:15-16,22 (Amplified). Thus it says, "To speak in terms of human relations, brethren, if even a man makes a Last Will and Testament (a merely human covenant), no one sets it aside or makes it voice or adds to it once it has been drawn up and signed (ratified, confirmed). Now the Promises (covenants, agreements), were decreed and made to Abraham and his Seed (his Offspring, his Heirs). He, God, does not say, And to seeds (descendants, heirs), as if referring to many persons but And to your Seed (Descendant, your Heir), obviously referring to One Individual, Who is none other than Christ the Messiah."
These Promises of inheritance, were made to Jesus, as the Seed of Abraham, the Seed of Promise. Verse 22 goes on, "But the scriptures picture all mankind as sinners, shut up and imprisoned by sin; so that the inheritance (Blessing), which was Promised through faith in Jesus Christ (the Messiah), might be given (released, delivered, and committed), to all those who believe (who adhere to, and trust in, and rely on) Him." When we, by faith, trusted and received Jesus as our Lord, we not only qualified for the Promise, but we've become joint heirs with Christ. Romans 8:17 (Amplified) says, "And if we are His children, then we are His heirs also; heirs of God and fellow heirs, joint heirs, with Christ, sharing His inheritance with Him."
Jesus qualified and joined us back into God's Original Intent for His family. The things we do in the flesh, in order to "qualify" for His Blessings, are just wasted rituals and actually a show of distrust in what Jesus did for us. We've been taught things about who and what we really are in Christ, that are not true. We hold onto the old sinner reputation, along with the unworthiness it brings, thinking we're being humble. We become unwilling to receive by Grace, the Sacrifice Jesus made for our total liberty.
We've been trained to learn and not to think. We've learned from traditions of men, instead of taking responsibility for ourselves and going to God's Word and His Spirit for ourselves. Isaiah 1;18 (Amplified) says, "Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet; they shall be white as snow; though they are read like crimson, they shall be like wool." God tells us in Isaiah 55:8-9 (Amplified), "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts."
God never told us, "Don't think," but He told us to think with His thoughts and reason with His reasonings. We live so far below what Jesus delivered us into, believing it's surely the right way. God told us that, "Your ways are not My ways." We've been given a list of things we must do, in order to walk in and inherit in God's Blessings. There is nothing for us to do, but believe in Him. He has already done everything that needed to be done. It's not what we need to do, but what we need to know.
We must strengthen the spirit man/woman, with the Truth of the Finished Word of Jesus, in order to bring the flesh into subjection. We spend much of our lives, trying to "fix" the old man, instead of burying him/her with Christ and allowing the Spirit of God to raise him/her a new creation child of God. Let's allow God's Word and His Spirit to teach and lead us into the Truth of His liberty. Let's allow the Lord to bring us into His Truth of who we are now, instead of who we used to be. Jesus took care of who you used to be, at His death and Resurrection. We need to bring the flesh into line with the Spirit, but we do this by the spirit and not just the flesh. God's Word tells us to renew our minds, to the things of God. He instructs us to "Use the mind of Christ" and "don't allow yourselves to be adapted to or transfigured into the world's image, but into the Image of Christ." We must accept by faith, what Jesus has made us to be and stop "trying to become" what we are already born to be.
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