Salvation is not a rescue solely of the spirit. When I found this out, when this fact hit home, I was enraged that I had been taught otherwise. The life had been sucked out of the One True Way by saying it amounted to a golden harp and a big fluffy cloud for all who were “saved” …
FOREVER! As a kid, I was afraid to ask, but I was a little concerned that I’d be bored out of my mind …
FOREVER!
Even when I found out that, in fact, Heaven (as we know it) is a holding tank of sorts where Christians go if they die before the salvation process for earth is complete, I was a little discouraged. In fact, we’re all coming back to live on earth eternally. But even so, only the location had changed, I’d still be bored out of my mind …
FOREVER!
My big revelation came when I discovered the truth about the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ of our existence. Why were we created, and what are we? I began to think of everything with a more eternal perspective, considering this present age of fall and redemption to be a blip, a detour, a hiccup, a purification, a test. What began with Adam, including all the intentions for and capabilities of his life, will continue on when all is said and done. The salvation process is to restore us to Original Adam, redeemed and regenerated Adam, and for us to continue on in his eternal destiny – our eternal destiny.
God created Adam. And it was good (good is an absolute, synonym of ‘perfect’, because God does not create imperfect). After a while living on his own, long before the infamous 'fall', God saw what had become of Adam, an unqualified degeneration, and for the first time in recorded ‘history’, God said that what Adam had become was ‘not good’ (imperfect, slightly flawed, synonym of ‘evil’). If I lost you, see my perspective on the word ‘good’
here.
My point is the inference here that either God changed His mind about the perfection of Adam, or Adam changed, and the solution was a change to Adam's body and a creation of Eve. Suddenly Adam was not perfect, and his form needed to change. If God had intended to create man as animals in the first place, why not make a man and woman together initially? Why change the good if it was still good?
‘God created His image and likeness in a single man. Adam was a man and also a woman; for God did not, in the beginning, make man and woman; He did not create them at the same time, because the life in which the two properties of masculine and feminine are united in one, constitutes man in the image of God, after the manner of the Father’s and the Son’s property, which together are one God, not divided; for perfect love is not found in one property, but in the two, one entering into the other.’ *
Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage…” Matthew 22:29
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ **, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one.” Matthew 19:4-6
‘[Adam] could no longer live in obedience to the will of the Father; his lust for the earthly fruit overcame him; and he sank into a deep sleep; and God saw that it was not possible for him to live in obedience, and let him sleep; sleep signifieth death.’ *
‘During his sleep, the woman was made out of Adam, and the image of God was destroyed. The man and the woman were made into creatures of this outer world, fashioned into mortality’. *
And so, the dual nature was introduced - the eternal struggle between the intentions of the heart and the instincts of the [now bestial] body. A switch to natural sustenance, a new need to be fed, an inescapable impulse to procreate, and the potential to die, were it not for the strength their spirits had maintained. Born was a greater potential for character flaws with the 'survival' animal mentality - selfishness, greed, lying, stealing - let's call it sin. A life lived for love looks far different than one lived for duration. A life that may end is lived much differently than a life without end. Born was the distraction brought by all these things, and the loss of focus on Creator, on Dad, on Love. Soon Love would not be the centre any more.
(And funny enough, if Adam had believed that God loved him as He did, wouldn't he have trusted His command not to eat from the tree? The root of disobedience is the doubt of God's love for us. We cannot believe it's true, and we fall. To Adam the question was posed, "Did God really say...?" and His intentions were challenged. God is holding out on me? God doesn't want me to be like Him? Well then, let me eat! Our
fall out of love manifesto.)
The truth is, Adam was made in the image of God. God, who is whole and complete and perfect in Himself; God, who does not require any form of sustenance or energy; God, who neither sleeps nor slumbers, never tires or grows weary; God, who speaks into existence any and every thing of physical or spiritual substance; God, who alters the universe of creation with a thought; God,
who exists forever and ever. Adam was a child of this Father, and if our own lives teach us anything, children grow up to be the same creature as their parents. It’s the law of offspring.
The only need God ever had, as the One who is Love, is for an object of affection. And this one and only need brought us into being. What is love without an object? What is the love of one towards none? What is the light and warmth of the sun without terrestrial bodies to catch its rays? Light finds purpose in other things, in giving to other things. The same with Love, the same with God. We were created to be loved.
‘No knowledge of any evil was in him; no lust, no covetousness, no pride, no envy, no anger, nothing but love. The celestial image clothed him with divine power. He could have removed mountains with a word; he could rule over the sun, moon and stars; all was in his power, the fire, the air, the water and the earth. Every living creature feared him. His life fluid was heavenly. His will was in God, and God was in him. He was in paradise, clothed with heavenly glory, the light of the majesty of God … he knew no woe, no sickness, no death; he lived in joy and delight, without toil or care.’ *
I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Mark 11:23
Let Jesus describe to us who we are becoming - by His life and actions. Healing the sick was never a doubt in His mind; walking on water took the effort of walking on land; when crowds of haters backed him to the edge of a cliff, He disappeared and reappeared elsewhere. He raised Himself from the dead.
At the resurrection, ‘the perishable [will] clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality’ (1 Corinthians 15:53). And in the meantime,
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:18-25
Finish it well Jacob…
‘O great and holy God, I pray thee, set open my inwardness to me; that I may rightly know what I am; and open in me what was shut up in Adam’ ** Jacob Boeme: The Image of the Heavenly** In the beginning, God did not make them male and female, he made them male and female. All you have to do is read the 'and' differently to find a new meaning.
