10. What are we as body, soul and spirit
A look back to this episode of the Garden of Eden in Genesis, can provide us with the answers to many questions about ourselves as to why we are what we are and why we do what we do.................
There is a great deal of treasure to be discovered and re-discovered by looking back in the Word of God to what is mentioned about what God did in the time of the Garden of Eden. Here it is that God's Word declares His purpose for the creation of mankind in the first place. Here it is that God's Word clearly describes why and how He created the first Man and the first Woman; and describes also what they became as a result of certain events. It is by re-visiting the garden that we can see and understand why we are today what we are. To start with, it is tremendously important to understand accurately what God did create as Man, so that we can dispense with all our myths and ignorance. In God's Light, we will see such truth and be blessed with such reality, that it will set us free. Personally speaking as a Christian, I love to go back to the Garden Era, because every time I do, I see something more or more clearly of what God has done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ to accomplish His purpose for creating us.
Starting at Genesis 2:7, we see here that God created the physical body of man from the dust of the Earth. The dust refers to the organic substance of the Earth, i.e. atoms and molecules that the Earth and all living creatures are composed of. Next, God breathed into this body the breath of life. Now this breath of life is not the Life of God, but animating life such as that which causes all living creatures to live. Now the next event produces the miracle of man. This is that special ingredient which gives man his distinction from all other living creatures. This is also that ingredient that makes man appear on the Earth in the image and likeness of God. Image is inward appearance and likeness is outward appearance. Unfortunately, man was only created in appearance of God, he was not created as God. If he had been then he would have had God's character and God's nature and never have had the choice to sin. God does not sin against Himself, God does not sin at all. Character is internal whereas nature is external. One relates to what we are the other to what we do.
The miracle of man, as the elite of all the living creatures that God created on the face of the Earth, was that when the breath of God entered Adam's body, it had a catalytic effect that resulted in the birth of the human soul. When the breath of Almighty God entered Adam, he became a living soul. The breath of life became his spirit, but that which reacted to the spirit entering the body became his soul. Many think that our spirit and our soul are fused together as one substance, no this is not so, although that is the way we might think and feel as a result of the effects of sin and separation from God for several thousand years. Some think that God breathed into man His own Spiritual Life but that is not so. If that were the case then Man's spirit would not have been the spirit of man but the Spirit of God. Man therefore, would not have been man, he would have been God. Only that which is born of God is God. Man was not born of God, man was created by God. That which is born of God does not sin. Man sinned.
In relation to the character of mankind today, we are still the same makeup as we were when God created us in the day of the garden of Eden. Evolution has not evolved us one bit. Outside of a relationship with God in Jesus Christ, man is still separated from God, man is still a sinner, man is still empty, vacant and incomplete. When God created man, He did not create him perfect, He created him innocent. God caused Man to have free will and placed him in the garden, in a state of nakedness to commission his will by choosing. Adam at this stage appears to be too content in himself as he is to want to choose anything. God has to create a woman from out of Adam, not just to be to be his helper but to cause him to choose. Their state of nakedness was given to motivate action of this free will. The woman was given to be an assisting loving and helpful companion and one to tell him what to do and to choose if he would do and choose for himself. Eve was created out of Adam. Eve was a part of Adam in another form. She was so much like him yet so beautiful and so desirable to Adam in so many different ways. Truthfully Adam could declare, " Wow!, this is the flesh of my flesh and the bone of my bone. This is that which I have so dearly missed and longed for ever since God anaesthetised me and took away a part of me. This is that which I now see standing before me as Eve."
God is not a living soul, He is a Living and Life giving Spirit (1 Corinthians15:45,46). Therefore the soul that God created in Adam is indeed unique. Adam's soul is in his own hands, not God's and not Satan's. Adam does not have God's will, or Satan's will; he has free will. Free will means an unencumbered will, that is a will that is not bound by allegiance to any other party but its own. This means that Adam has the power and the faculties of a soul from which he can reason, feel and choose for himself. He even has the power and the right to choose to be dependent or independent of God. The break up of the faculty of the soul is basically mind, emotion and will. Adam had soul life, which means he could: think and reason for himself, feel and desire for himself and above all he could choose for himself. Adam was not created by God to be a robot, he was created to have a self life with free expression and free will. Free will means that man has a sovereign right. God has the utmost respect for the sovereign will of man, that He Himself has created. Be it right, or be it wrong, be it good or be it evil; God will not violate or coerce man's free will. To interrupt Man's will in any way, would render man's will forced rather than free.
The state of nakedness, relates to their lack of completion by God, their spirit was not as yet dressed with the Life of God. Their spirit was clean and they were innocent but they were naked and they were empty and they were incomplete; they lacked the Life of God that God is in Himself. God's Life was made available to them as the Tree of Life in the centre of the Garden. All they had to do was choose. This tree of Life relates to the Life that is born of God, not the life that is created by God. This tree of Life represents the Son of God because the Son of God is the only first born Son of God. Jesus Christ is the only first uncreated Life of God that has ever been planted on this Earth, Therefore that tree of Life was Christ. In opposition to the tree of Life, in the centre of the Garden, stood the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Both trees offered a solution for Man's desire to be complete. Both trees offered an adventurous, enterprising and exciting future for Mankind. However, God made it very clear that there was one disastrous condition attached to the tree of Knowledge.
In the day that Adam ate of that tree he would surely die. We are not told how long it was in time from when God created Adam to when Eve partook of the tree of knowledge, but one thing stands out for sure and that is that above everything else, God wanted Adam to exercise his free will and to choose his way of life for his soul. Before Eve was created it appears that Adam was too complacent in himself to be bothered to choose. Maybe he was a little bit too complete in himself and a little bit too content with his surroundings to desire to choose for his naked soul and subsequently choose for the future clothing for the souls of all mankind. God created Eve not just to be the object of Adams desire, but also to desire for him if he would not desire, and also to choose for him if he would not choose. We also need to know that Adam had tremendous soul powers in himself. He was able to be the sole administrator over all the earth as God had authorised, yet he did not make any decision for himself regarding his state of incompleteness or nakedness until Eve came on the scene. God needed Adam to choose. Adam needed God to provide him with a helpmeet. He needed someone else of his own type to assist him to choose. He also needed someone else to motivate him to choose.
God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep so that He could remove a part of Adam and fashion that part into Eve. When he awoke he was no longer complete in himself. He now needed to be united and joined to Eve in such a way that his original completeness as a natural man, could be restored to how it was. The uncompleted condition of Man bothered Eve more than it bothered Adam. Eve was obviously more aware of her state of incompletion than Adam. Adam was apparently still content in himself, especially now that he had his other half back as his wife. Eve was not so content and demonstrated this in her discussion with the Serpent. Not only was Eve dissatisfied with her condition, she was also dissatisfied with God and fed up with waiting for Adam to choose for their future. Whatever Eve considered was lacking she was determined to reason and to resolve. She knew she was incomplete and lacking in wisdom because she said so when she looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She knew that she was incomplete because she felt incomplete. Her knowing was based on her emotions.
Adam did not feel anything about his incompleteness, he just reasoned and knew logically that it was so. His knowing was based on his mind. This knowing through Eve's feelings was due to her predominate, emotional makeup. She acted on the hot intuitional impulse of her feelings in contradiction to the reasoning of Adam's cold mind. Whatever Eve lacked in completeness of reasoning and understanding, Adam made up for. Whatever Adam lacked in completeness of feeling and emotion, Eve made up for it. Eve lacked in wisdom because Adam had that wisdom of understanding inbuilt himself. Adam lacked feeling because Eve had that feeling of emotion inbuilt in herself.
Satan skilfully chose to deceive Eve through her mind and to cause Adam to disobey God through his feelings for Eve. Both these faculties of mind and emotion are of the soul realm. Satan caused Eve's soul to sin by seducing her will through a deceived mind. Satan caused Adam's soul to sin by coercing his will through his emotion of overdeveloped infatuation for Eve. If he had loved Eve with a pure love that only comes out of God's Life, he would have stopped her eating the fruit. Adam had over developed his desire, to the point of a dangerous infatuation for Eve in his heart or soul. Adam had not developed the same love for God. Adam loved Eve more than God. Adam's choice was to obey Eve instead of God. Man's frustration with his desire for fulfilment is seen with Eve, not Adam. Eve voiced her discontent on behalf of Adam by discussion and agreement with the Serpent. She was more intuitive than Adam. She knew her condition from how she felt. Eve expressed her attitude with her opinion when replying to the Serpent's question. She knew they were in a state of nakedness and as yet innocent. Nakedness relates to their character and innocence relates to their nature.
God's Character is Holy and His nature Righteous. Eve's desire for both of them was to be as whole and as perfect as God. She wanted them to be complete and to be perfect in everything that they were and in all that they did. She was conscious of the void or vacuum in her heart and the ongoing unfulfillment for her life. She knew they were not complete and not perfect. She knew they were incomplete and that they lacked the type of Life that God had in Himself. She believed that there had to be something more to life than just roaming around the garden with a man that would neither decide for himself or for her. She decided that she would do something for both of them. She entertained the suggestion of Satan on Adam's behalf. She agreed with the Serpent and ate. Eve voiced her agreement with the Serpent by her act. She agreed that God was a liar with an evil intent as to why He had forbidden them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Eve ate on Adam's behalf and Adam ate on our behalf. Adam's sin was a result of what Eve had decided; our sin is a result of what Adam did.
The same problem, that Adam bequeathed to us, is true in our lives today. We come into this World, born of the heritage of what Adam had become as a result of sin. We come into this world with a hole in our heart, that is, we have an inbuilt vacuum within, which is a void spirit that does not know God because it lacks God's Life. We try desperately to fill this void with all sorts of achievements and things. Nothing either fills or satisfies this void in our life. We put our wife or husband or family in there, we put our careers in there, we put our wealth or money in there, we put all our activity in there, yet we discover when we are honest with ourselves, that nothing we do or achieve sustains our Life with satisfaction for very long. All our glint of so called happiness and contentment is but short temporary joy. We discover, shortly after the glint has worn off, that we are still just as empty and unfulfilled as before. The problem is we are trying to put a square peg in a round hole. We are attempting to make exterior things fit and fill an interior space. There is a huge space or a colossal area of vacant real estate in each one of us that is a void or vacuum. That space or piece of real estate is our spirit. There is a sign on that estate which reads, 'Reserved for Jesus Christ'.
Jesus is the all sufficient answer for our every need. He is the only one that has the means, the power and the ability, to make us whole, complete and perfect in every way. He said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life". He satisfies us completely because, not only is He God's Truth and God's Way; He is also the Life of God, Himself. Jesus is much, much more than just the Son of God or our personal Saviour. He is the Life of God Himself and the round peg that fulfils our life completely. He is the Life that the whole of humanity craves for. He is the Life that Eve hungered for and He is the Life that Adam missed or lost out on in the Garden. He is the one and only answer for the World today, there is no other. When we are born again, we receive something that Adam never had. We become a "full shilling" for the first time in our lives. When we receive Jesus Christ in our hearts, we get to receive God's very own uncreated Life into us. This is that which causes us to be complete and constitutes us as Holy and Righteous forever. His Life is eternal Life. His Life is in us through new birth. This is not something we did for ourselves, but something that He came and did in our place, that we can now choose.
Its good to know that there is at least one good thing within us that is Holy and Righteous; something in us that has never sinned and does not even know sin. We are now complete in Him who loved us and gave His Life for us so that we might have Him to be the source of our new Life by being our new spirit. There is so much more in store for us than just being forgiven sinners who have escaped hell. We now are made to be complete in Christ, and re-made to be partakers of God's Divine Life by the achievements of the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection Life. We are now complete in Christ, there is no more that God can or will do for us. From the positive point of view there is no more that God can do for us, once He has restored us and given us His Life. From the negative point of view there yet remains much in us that is not in agreement with either what God has done or given. For example, at first light our head does not match our heart, and our mind tends to argue with God's truth with doubt. We seem to need a lot of convincing after we are born again, that God has indeed really done for us all that He has said He's done. The fact is, we are exactly and absolutely what God has made us to be by including us in His Son. Everything that contradicts that fact is a lie. We are the Christians or the 'of Christ's', that is the established fact but, the problem is we feel or think differently and it is our thoughts and our feelings that lead us astray. The answer is we need to know in order to grow.
To know is spiritual, to grow is to have our mind and emotions obey the Truth and express the new Life. Our mind and our emotions need to come into alignment with what we now know. To know is Spiritual, not mental. To grow is to allow our accumulating Spiritual knowing to govern our mind and our feelings. We call Spiritual "knowing" to be Spiritual Knowledge, but it is not to be confused with the mental kind of knowledge we obtain through the exercise of the reasonings and understanding of the mind. All Spiritual 'knowing' (Spiritual Knowledge) comes by revelation from God's Holy Spirit. If Spiritually knowing is our faith, then revelation is the seeing or hearing part that precedes it. Believing with the mind is not always Faith, but to know in the heart is. Revelation sees God and the things that are of God. Faith knows God and the things that are God's. Revelation occurs when God's Holy Spirit unveils something that God knows. That which is seen is that which is unveiled. Revelation is illumination about what God has done with us in Christ and confirmed by what His Word says He's done. God uses light to illuminate and unveil the hidden mysteries of our union in Christ. God's Light is Truth. His light is pure truth, not the light the enemy uses to deceive many of God's people.
Angels of light are not of the Lord Jesus but of Satan as the great architect of this World. Lucifer, who is now called Satan, was the original light bearer to the Earth, but his light was extinguished when he sinned against God. What he causes now is not light but darkness. What was once his light is now the darkness of this World, and the unseen rulers behind its system. Satan's so called light is full of lies and deceit because the truth is not in him, he is the father of lies. He works by deception, using camouflage as cover for counterfeiting the real and true. God will answer all our questions in only one way, and that is by revealing to us more of who the Lord Jesus is and what He has achieved for us. What we are now as a consequence of what He has done. The Bible says that Faith comes to us by hearing and hearing comes to us by the Word of God. This hearing is a perception of what is unveiled not what is audible or mentally absorbed from what is read. It is a seeing or sighting of something new or fresh which has to do, first of all, with the Lord Jesus and secondly, with us included in Him. The Word of God here is not the words of the Bible, not the letter, but the Lord Jesus in the Person of His Holy Spirit. Today He is the Living Word of God. He is not just the 'Logos' but the 'Rhema'. The Bible as a book is not the Living Word of God, its the dead letter of God. Without the Holy Spirit, the words that are read will kill your spirit by condemning your conscience. The word without the Spirit cannot give Life. The letter kills but the Spirit gives Life; it reveals what is behind the written Word, or reveals what is meant in the written Word.
The Spirit gives Life and produces Faith because He first gives revelation. Revelation is seeing. Faith is apprehending what is seen. The Lord Jesus is both the Author and the Finisher of our Faith. He does this in His Person as the Holy Spirit. He is Himself the Light of God, just as He is the Way, the Truth and the Life of God. He is Himself our Faith. We need to get it right about these several points if ever we are to know so as to grow. Too many there are that never come to the knowledge of the Truth. The knowledge of the Truth is knowing Jesus by revelation. Those who know God are those who have received revelation. Those who have no revelation are those who have no Faith, they don't know God. We are today the Church, the Earthly Body of the Lord Jesus and as such, we are the corporate Man that God originally purposed in His creation of Adam. The Last Adam, the Lord Jesus, secured for God all that the first Adam had lost and missed. God has provided a total redemption, a complete deliverance and a new Life for all those who are born into this World, who are of the genealogy of Adam. Out of Adam and into Christ is what God has achieved for all humanity by the life and death of His Son on Earth. What a fantastic transaction for all who chose to accept!
If only we Christians would keep it that simple, by just accepting. We need to know by revelation that we are complete in Him now while we are alive, we don't have to wait until we die before we know it. When we do die and go to be with Him, we will have to agree exactly with that fact. We will then, at that time, see it all as it is, but many will have tears in their eyes because they did not accept and appreciate that it was that pure, that easy and that simple. They did not love the Truth because they never came to the Knowledge of the Truth. Many will be those who worked so much, who tried so hard.
Listen friend, if you have spiritual ears that can hear and spiritual eyes that can see; know this now, that the Christian Life is not a changed life but an exchanged one. We can change nothing because He has already exchanged everything regarding us. We need to have a lot more confidence in what He has done and a lot less faith in what we think we can attain to. God can do a lot with a little, but He can do everything with nothing. When Eve went to the tree of tree of knowledge, she was enticed by the serpent to consider knowledge as the answer for life. She was told that, once the eyes of her understanding were opened, she would be complete and be like god. She was given a first hand glance into what knowledge could do for her, and for Adam's future. She saw how good things could be for both of them and for all who would follow after knowledge. She had a vision of the developed World that knowledge would bring. She also visualised that with the opening of her eyes of understanding, they would surely be complete because they would know both what is good from what is evil. Satan had told her so and she believed his lie to be the truth. She considered that independence from God and the pursuit of knowledge was the best way for the World to develop.
The foundation of the World and its system is based on the evolution and accumulation of knowledge. Today, the developing World is still heading flat out in the pursuit of knowledge and racing toward destruction. Today, we have advanced to the place where we have gained the necessary technology to annihilate ourselves, the Earth and everything on it. The World has always been, and will always be, a robot to knowledge. The World acts completely independent of God. Walk into any large shopping centre complex and ask the question, 'Who needs God when the World provides all this?' What Satan didn't tell her about gaining knowledge from an evil source, was that their state of nakedness would be exposed and they would be full of guilt. Adam's disobedience to God and obedience to the Serpent would make them partakers of Satan's own evil nature of sin, and open them up to be influenced and motivated by his evil character of pride and rebellion. The World and its system would now become an enterprise of Pride and Rebellion against God. It's yoke upon man would force man to be proud, selfish, angry and yet full of fear. The only motivation the World offers for success is to burn with lust. Man's choice of self as the centre of his environment provides Satan with his greatest asset. Lust is not lust in relation to sex, but refers to all burning desires in man which are outside God's control.
The achievements of all great men and women who are recognised by the World, can be attributed to their good or evil burning desire. The motivation technique of the World operating system is based on desire. By the operations of the World, Satan turns legitimate desires into lusts and then rewards the lustful. The influence and impact of the World upon man's heart causes him to develop and express anger and fear, be it ever so subtle, hidden and controlled. All our temperament ailments and traits can be traced to anger or fear. Anger and fear both stem from a spirit that is either proud or rebellious or both. The Adamic creation became subject to Satan by submission. Satan was enthroned as the god of this World by what Adam did. A new arrangement or World order was made. The dominion of the Earth passed out of Adam's hand into Satan's. Adam was the original traitor for the whole human race. He sold us out to Satan in exchange for the knowledge that comes via the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even the knowledge of good and evil itself is evil, if it comes from an evil source and does not originate with God and remain under His control. God's command and warning to Adam was that when He partook of this particular tree, then in that day, he would die. Natural Man has been dead to God and alive to Satan ever since.
We are now in the day that the Lord Jesus has made for us, and we have been ever since He died for us on the cross and rose again. Prior to that, we were in the day that Adam had made for us, by giving his allegiance to Satan to become a partaker of Satan's nature of sin. Adam had chosen to obey Satan in preference to God. Adam declared his choice by his act; he was not deceived, he knew what he was doing. He thus allied himself to Satan by complicity. God had given Adam authority to have dominion over the whole Earth and everything upon the Earth. Adam gave this authority to Satan at the time he gave him his allegiance. To the one that we we give our allegiance, to that one do we submit and subject ourselves. To the one we are in subjection too, then to that one have we given authority over not just ourselves but all that belongs to us. The one that has authority over us, then to that one goes control over anything that we posses or plan to do. Satan desired control of the Earth upon which to establish his base. His base is the World and its system. His desire is for the World to be his home and for mankind to be his vehicle for his mode of operations. He needs man to express, display and exalt his evil character and to perform and to do the things that are of his sinful nature.
Unregenerate man is a puppet to Satan as the god of this World. Satan controls Man as if he was his pawn. Man is his house and the World is his workshop. The things of the World are his tools with which he skilfully moulds and shapes man into his image and his likeness. Satan's desire is to possess man's will so that he can manifest himself by expressing himself on Earth in man's body. Without the use of man Satan is powerless, he has no other suitable vehicle on Earth in which to express his vile self. To gain the body of man for his use, Satan must first gain possession of man's soul, especially the instrument of Man's volition which is Man's will. When the evil spirit becomes the source of expression in a person's emotions, or the dictator of thought in the mind then the capture of that person's will has occurred and they are possessed. Spiritual possession occurs when the will is frozen from making a free choice and is instead welded to express the obsession of the mind or compulsion of the emotion. Obviously there are varying degrees in relation to the loss of control of the will which is less than total capitulation, these are the oppressed.
This then is our heritage, our position, our condition and our state that we are born with, when we make our entrance into this World. Nevertheless, God so loves the people of this World, that He sent His only Son to the Earth, so that all who choose to accept Him will not perish, but receive new Eternal Life from God. When we have accepted the Lord Jesus into our heart, we are in possession of His resurrected Life. Those who do not have the Spirit of Christ do not belong to Him and are perishing with their sins, even while they are still alive. They are destined to die in their sin. There is only one new testament sin today for mankind and that is, to not be in in possession of the new Life God has purchased for us through the death of His Son. God can only justify those that have the Life of His Son, all others are already under judgement. Jesus didn't die for us because it was fun, He died on the cross because it had to be done, to give us God's own uncreated Life. Salvation and redemption is not an end in itself, its just the start.
Let us be clear about one thing as Christians, God did not create man just for the benefit of man. God created man for His own benefit and pleasure. God had a definite plan and purpose for creating man in the first place and God still has this same plan and purpose today. Jesus did not come to the Earth to prove Himself as God, but to prove Himself as man and to complete God's plan and purpose for His benefit and for His pleasure. As a proven man, the Lord Jesus now represents us in Himself on High; and on Earth He lives in us in the person of His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Resurrection Life of Jesus Christ. Yesterday, this Man died on the cross and secured our redemption by paying the price of our sins through the shedding of His precious Blood. This Man also died to give us His Life by including us in Himself on the cross. Today this Man sits on the throne with all power and authority over all. This Man is the Lord Jesus Christ. This Man is the last Adam and we are Born Again out of Him due to His resurrection. The Lord Jesus, as the New Man on the Earth, has not only restored us to that state Adam had before he sinned, but has given us that uncreated Life of God. This is something which Adam never had.
When the Lord Jesus was in the flesh, He always acted in the capacity of man. Satan showed Him all the kingdoms of the World in a moment of time and offered to give them all to Him, if He would just fall down and worship Satan.(Matt.4: 8-11). The fact that Satan could make this offer proves that all the kingdoms of this World belong exclusively to him, and the 'fall' of verse 9 means to submit as in subjection. This is the same fall that Adam experienced in the garden, which ended up putting us under subjection to Satan and caused us to lose God's Presence. The Lord Jesus turned the tables and brought Satan back into complete submission by commanding him with God's commandment, 'You instead shall worship the Lord who is your God, and only Him shall you serve'. The temptation of Man in the wilderness ended up as a reversal of the temptation of man in the garden. Redemption is the work of God through the death of the Lord Jesus to restore man. Resurrection is the work of God in the Life of the Lord Jesus to complete man, by giving man back access to the tree of Life that Adam missed in the Garden. This tree of Life is the Life of the Man on the Throne. This tree of Life is the same tree that was planted in the Garden that Adam failed to choose. This Tree of Life is the Vine, of which we are the branches. This tree is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
In the garden, Satan as the Serpent, deceived Eve and coerced Adam's will so as to lose God's presence and his Authority over the Earth. But, as a result of the Victory over the same temptation by the Lord Jesus in the wilderness, Satan ended up losing his authority over the man and over the Earth. The Lord Jesus effectively ended Satan's career as the sole mastermind of man, by commanding the devil back into into subjection to God's Word on this Earth. Satan has now, no authority and no power over a believer's Life. Satan's presence on this Earth is now terminal as a result of what the Lord Jesus achieved as a Man. It has been left up to the Church to enforce upon Satan the Victory of the Lord Jesus and to cast the devil out. When God is satisfied that the Body of Christ has done its work as the Church, then the Kingdoms and Governments of this World will fall, the World itself as an institution, system and organization will fall and the Kingdom of God will take its place. The Lord Jesus has given us His victory over Satan to be our victory in His name.
We are to be the police force of the Lord Jesus over Satan, enforcing upon him the victory of the Christ. God will one day soon, present to His Son a Glorious Church without the stain or effect of sin. The glory that God has for the Church is that She will rule and reign in co-operation with the Lord Jesus over Satan and cast him out of this Earth. Satan is still here because we, the Church, have not completed the work of the Kingdom of God. God is so very patient with us, He has been waiting for nearly two thousand years for the Church to complete the work she was commissioned for. The Lord Jesus has made us to be on this Earth as He is in Heaven, by giving us His Life. All of us who are identified by God in His Son, through the means of the cross, have the same power and authority over the devil that the Lord Jesus does. This power and authority is not of us, yet it is in us. The Lord Jesus has won back the authority for us that Adam lost for us in the Garden.
It is still God's expressed purpose for Man to rule and to reign over this present Earth. It is the Body of Christ, in co-operation and in conjunction with the Lord Jesus as the head of the body, that will rule and reign. There is so much that can be seen and understood from the experience of Adam in the garden; we are only able to touch on one or two things here. One thing you would have to agree on is that the whole World's development and achievement has its roots in the tree of knowledge. Every thing that is of the World, that is in the World, which has been developed, has evolved from the knowledge of what is considered good from what is considered bad.
In a Christian's life, his source should be that of the Tree of Life for his knowledge, where God Himself is the authority and provider of what is good for him or not good for him. As Christians, we are Born Again into a garden of Eden type experience. We are confronted once again with two similar trees, Knowledge and Life. The tree of Life is where the Lord Jesus is as the vine and the source; but many mistake the tree of knowledge for the tree of life, just as Eve did. The tree of life now is in the shape of a cross. Self will have to experience death and separation from our soul, before we experience Life. This way leads to Eternal Life, Freedom, Joy, Victory and Peace of heart. The other tree of knowledge is for the self that chooses to live on independently of God, and for its own sake. This tree when applied to Christianity organises and corrupts the Christian's heart. It promises all kinds of good and exciting things to stimulate growth but it gives no Life. It promotes all the good doctrines for the head but provides no Life to the heart. Or on the other hand, it charges emotion with good feelings but delivers no Life. The religious life must be lived by the principle of the law and the commandments of God, the principle of God's Grace is conveniently outlawed.
Religion is not a reality and not of God, but a persuasion set up by Satan to capture and to hold all who accept the Lord Jesus as their Saviour. Today there are two main streams of persuasion. One is directed at the intellect through the mind, the other is directed at the feelings through the emotion. One is shaped by mental reasoning and understanding, the other is moulded by feeling and sensation. One is traditional and rational the other charismatic. Both are in error because both cater for the soul of man in place of his spiritual heart. Both are incapable of ministering Life to the Christians Spirit. Both are from the tree of knowledge and both poison the heart of the Christian by injecting death into his Spirit.
In the 'Super church' of the World today we see supernatural manifestations of great power with signs and wonders being advertised and performed as never before. This is all being headed up and led by good sincere men of God who end up ministers of righteousness and angels of light. We do not deny the manifestations but we do question the source. Many today are duped by the sensation of seeing supernatural wonders performed. The supernatural is the psychic realm or sixth sense realm of man. God is not psychic to start with, God is Spirit. God does not perform supernatural miracles, He works Spiritual Miracles. The supernatural is for the cults and is itself occult. The real, great, warfare of the body of Christ today is emerging as a battle between what is Spiritual and what is psychic. Many there are that are already deceived by this aspect of the tree of knowledge, just as Eve was in the Garden.
Today the Spiritual Armageddon is psychic supernatural power verses Spiritual Life. In today's so-called spiritual Church of supernatural signs and wonders, few there are who proclaim that Christianity today is still the day of receiving personal revelation from the Lord Jesus as the Living Word of God. Few there are that have the reality of their boast. The one who walks by revelation is the one who walks in the Truth and has the Life. The Christian is always confronted and confounded with these two sources of knowledge, one is mental and psychic, the other Spiritual Life. One comes from the outside in, the other from the inside out. That which is spiritual arises from our heart, that which is mental comes via transmission of thought from someone else's mind. The mind can only produce what is mental it cannot give Life. Only the Spirit gives the Life. A renewed mind is directed by the will to be governed by intuition and to follow after revelation from the spirit. It is a mind that is as a servant to the spirit and no longer a slave to a person's independent reasoning.
We need to be clear here about one thing, less we be confused. All 'knowing' is spiritual and all reasoning and understanding is mental. The mind is our faculty that we use to think with and to reason and to understand with. The Spirit is our faculty for knowing and it does so spontaneously through intuition and conscience. The garden experience we have related to here, shows us that once again the Christian Life is not a changed life but an exchanged one. Adam choose to disobey God and change himself. He set out to over develop his soul with the pursuit and achievement of knowledge and be independent of God. This gave him Satan's nature of sin and caused him to be separated from God. This caused the Adamic couple to be expelled from the garden in a totally uncompleted sinful state and to be forbidden access to the Tree of Life. The Lord Jesus came to the Earth as a man to be the second Adam. He choose to obey God and to qualify Himself as the Man, the Savour and the Lord . Those who accept Him and come to His cross, choose Him to be their Life and they are now those that have continual access to that same Tree of Life. They are Born Again to be complete and whole men and women, not uncompleted as were Adam and Eve.
These are the real Christians, who bear not just the name as an empty jar does a label, but they bear His Name because they contain His Life. These are those that are called by God with a new Name. The name of Jesus is now their name. To be clear, we are not saying they are now the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, but what we mean is that because they have His Life they bear His Name. To the one who's Life we bear, then to that one our name is legally ascribed. The Body of Christ, as the Church, bears the name of Jesus. That which is of Christ is Christ. To those who belong to Him, He is the tree of Life. He is their Holiness, He is their Righteousness, He is their Joy, He is their Peace of heart and He is their Life , their everything. To the people of the World, God has presented them also with the tree of Life, but it is not like a beautiful maple tree or a golden ash, it is in the shape of the cross. To the Born Again Believer, this tree means Life, but to the citizen of the World it is stupid, foolish and repugnant because it means death to self and decay to everything that emanates from self. It means exactly the same thing to all who are Christians in name only that subscribe to a church, but are in reality just empty jars with labels.
These are those who call themselves by the Lord's name, but God does not, because He cannot, because they are not as yet identified by Him in the death of His Son through tree of the cross. The Lord Jesus choose to do God's will on Earth, which is the perfection and Glorification of man, in Himself. To achieve this, He had to qualify Himself as a perfect and acceptable sacrifice, which is a perfect and whole man without sin. Not only did He have to be God to be that whole and perfect Man, but He had to also live a Holy and Righteous life on the Earth as a man, to redeem mankind. Next, He then had to die as a man to be a living sacrifice and pay the wages for the sins of mankind. Thirdly, He had to go to hell as a man and then be resurrected as a man. He had to come back on Earth as a man. Lastly, He had to ascend back up to Heaven as a man and to be exalted and glorified as a man. Today a glorified man is on the throne and soon there will be many glorified men seated in Him on His throne.
History and the Bible confirms to us that the Lord Jesus did it once for all, not for Himself, but for us. The Lord Jesus did it right for all mankind, including all that God created on this Earth for Adam. Finally, for all those who belong to the Lord Jesus and still worry about the prospect of Hell, because they think or feel that they have not achieved all that they perhaps should have, or that they have not been as good as they perhaps could have, let us assure you that although you have failed, the Lord Jesus is both successful and faithful for you. He has achieved all and secured everything for you on your behalf. Once again, the Christian Life is never achievable but only obtainable. It is not a Life that is arrived at by us trying to change ourselves, but by allowing Him to exchange us for all that He is. It is not a Life to be attained, but a Life to be acclaimed. Let us assure you that not only has the Lord Jesus died for you, He has also been to Hell for you, that means instead of you or on your behalf or in place of you. God did not create Hell for mankind, but for the Devil and his angels. God is now the justifier of all who know the Lord Jesus as their Saviour; He is now no longer their judge.
So, let's go on with the Lord Jesus as our tree of Life. He is now the source of all our knowledge as He is our reason for living. The tree of Life that was originally planted in the Garden of Eden has been re-planted on Earth at Calvary as the cross of Christ. This tree of the cross is now the gateway to the River of Life that flows from the Enthroned Giver of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ. What God is offering His whole creation of Mankind, is not just a redemption but a whole new and complete Life on a different dimension. Spiritual Life is abundant Life on a higher plane. Adam was created a living soul, that is he had his life in his soul and we have shown what he chose for that life and the nature of sin he gained in return. The Lord Jesus was not created by God but born of God and He was born a Life giving or Living Spirit. He came from Heaven to the Earth as a man but He differed from Adam as a man because His Life was in the dimension of His Spirit not confined to the dimension of His soul. Adam's life was confined to self of the soul, he did not have Spiritual Life in his spirit. Although the Lord Jesus had soul Life and free will in Himself, He never once chose to make self the centre of His Life, but always chose to act according to His Spirit as His source through His intuition. His Life was therefore always the Life of God in His Spirit. His mind, emotions and will were governed by the Life that He had in His Spirit which was the Life of God, His Father. His soul drew upon His Spirit for its life and sustenance while He was in the flesh upon Earth.
The cross stands at the gateway to the Kingdom of God. Only those who come to the Lord Jesus by surrendering their lives at the cross are born again. Those who have not surrendered their wills and claim to be Born Again are so in name only, they have no reality, which means they have no on-going Life experience in their spirit. When these are asked to define what the Kingdom of God is, they have not got a clue because not only are they not in it but they have never seen it. We need to be extremely careful which path we choose when we come to Christ for salvation and redemption. Those who continue to partake and cleave to the tree of knowledge will continue to be the carnal and of the flesh, these are the pious and religious. Those who choose Life in preference to knowledge are pedestrians of the cross and they have within themselves the Life Giving Spirit, who is the tree of Life. The Lord Jesus as that Life Giving Spirit is that Tree of Life, that He might become the river of Life.
