2.4 Paul's Salvation
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
In the last lesson we looked at one way of understanding Paul’s gospel; in this lesson, we want to approach the same things in a slightly different way. Consider the following chart.
| Effect/Appearance: | By grace through faith | The Church |
| Cause/Substance: | The Atonement | Saved by His Life |
The Atonement from Gethsemane to Blood on the Mercy Seat is the underlying cause of God placing us into Christ, a grace we receive through faith. (By this we know love.) Then, the Life of Christ in each individual member, Colossians 1:27, is the underlying cause or substance of the expression we are calling “Church,” the Body of Christ, the Temple of God.
The Atonement. The Atonement, however, is not a single past-tense action. Rather, the Atonement is the expression in time and space and inside the old creation of the all-now Being and Action of God. Out from the pro-knowing of God, the one sacrifice for sins for ever is continuously in action and will be in action in the experience of everyone in the new creation in the present moment forever. It is the nature of God.
For it pleased the Father… by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:19-20). The constant “therefore” in Paul’s letters is – because Christ died, therefore.
Saved by His Life. The Atonement is, however, a negative. That is, it’s purpose is to negate that which divides or separates, that which accuses or casts down. And thus the thing Paul wrote about even more than the Atonement of Christ or “by grace through faith,” was the Life of Christ expressed as His Church.
For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life (Romans 5:10). It is the Life of the Lord Jesus, then, that fills us now and that connects us together as the one Body of Christ, the dwelling place of God. Thus “saved” means becoming the Church, God’s House.
A Door. The cross of Christ, then, for Paul, was a Door. We do not live in or before the Cross. The Cross is not for our continual “dying.” Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more (Romans 6:9). Rather, the Cross is for stepping through that we might live always in Life.
The purpose of putting the old creation to death on the cross of Christ is NOT so that God can have an ever-dead old creation. Yet that is a delusion in which so many live. The purpose of putting the old creation to death on the cross of Christ is so that God can transfer each individual person out from the old and into the New Creation, that God might be known by all.
The New Creation. And thus we come to the source of the New Creation, which is the heart of the Covenant and the heart of Paul’s gospel.
For He Himself is our peace, who has made both (Jew and Gentile) one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two (Jew and Gentile), thus making peace (Ephesians 2:14-15).
Now, therefore, you (Gentiles) are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens (of the House of Israel) having been built on the foundation… Jesus Christ …in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22).
To Create IN Himself. Salvation, the goal of the gospel, is being the dwelling place of God in the Spirit, not being dead in heaven. And this goal comes out from one place. So as to create in Himself one new man (verse 15).
Revelation 2 says that Jesus is the beginning, the source, of the creation of God. Genesis 1:1 says that in the beginning, the source, Jesus, God created heaven and earth, the old creation. Thus we see the same thing that took place in Genesis 1:1 happening again in Ephesians 2:15. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God… (2 Corinthians 5:17-18a).
Just as Christ. Then Paul turns, always, to the Church, the joy and suffering of his own heart. And yet, this concern that believers in Jesus would enter into the full salvation of God, a fully successful Christian Church walking this earth as the fullness of Christ, was never separated in Paul’s thinking from the personal Jesus he knew. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. – And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us (Ephesians 4:32 & 5:2). – Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us (Romans 15:7).
Real Salvation. This Word of the Lord, coming through Paul, is not some nice idea for us to think about and occasionally apply at church once a week while we are “on our way” to the “real salvation” of being dead in heaven. The agony of Paul’s heart, these Words that ARE Jesus, are the only real salvation there is, a description of how we live together inside this present heaven/earth as the Body of Christ, the House of God.
Certainly, death was taking dear brethren away, but not “to salvation.” Paul’s constant assurance was that they were coming back. The Salvation of God is Christ in fulness expressed through His Church living in glory inside this heaven/earth.
Salvation Revealed Now. Thus we see that Paul had translated the first words the Lord Jesus had spoken to him in this way. I am Jesus, and I live in and as My Church. Everything Paul wrote came out of his knowledge of a personal Jesus who lives in His Church. And thus we can read all that Paul says about the Church and about brethren walking together in love out from these words, I am Jesus, and I live in and as My Church.
You see, a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle was not a far-in-the-future, after-Jesus-comes-back or after-we-are-dead-in-heaven event to Paul. A Glorious Church as the Fulness of Christ was to Paul all Salvation revealed NOW.
Tares in the Field. Yet we have a problem. The translations of the Bible that we possess are the work of Christians who see God through the lens of the serpent. And thus many times the Greek words that speak of Jesus here and Jesus now have been altered to say the opposite of their meaning, to a Jesus only-someday. The central focus of the serpent, that is, Calvinism, is to keep a faraway, far-above Jesus in the mind of Christians, and thus to keep them under fear and under control. Yet, as we have seen, there are still correctly translated statements of Paul that seem to speak of a “someday Jesus” if we did not know the reality of heaven through us. We will address this problem further as God steps through the veil, our flesh, into the Holy Place.
The Fulness of Christ. Thus we see that the fulness of Christ expressed through His Church right here on this earth, right now in this age, is a central component of Paul’s gospel. Without seeing such a reality, we do not see Paul’s gospel.
Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). – The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22b-23). Becoming what we already are.
Those who do not teach this, both as our present reality and our being-formed-into experience, are teaching only another gospel coming from another Jesus, whether they teach grace or works.
The Issue of the Kingdom. The one great issue of the Kingdom inside of our study of Covenant is convincing our brethren to embrace Paul’s gospel, that is, Jesus, all here now, completing in us all things that are God. Part of why they cannot now hear is that the gospel has never been preached to them. Here is what happens to Paul’s biggest verses, which are many and are NOT believed.
The Great Divide. We need to look a bit more closely at this great divide, at its cause and at its outcome.
To know Paul’s Jesus is to know Paul’s Church. It really is a choice between “heaven” someday or Church today, entirely one or entirely the other.
Symmorphosed. I am Jesus, these people you are treating with contempt. Paul thought long and hard on this reality of Jesus in His Church and devoted his life to its fulfillment. When he was sitting in a prison cell, as he wrote his last revelatory letter – to the Philippians, Paul drew again from his heart the most incredible concept he had introduced into the human experience. Symmorphosed, sharing the same form.
In upcoming sessions, we will spend time inside of each one of Paul’s three uses of the word symmorphose. Here, we want to place this ultimate reality of sharing the same form with Jesus into the structure of Paul’s gospel.
That I May Gain Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being symmorphosed with His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 2:8-11).
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me… I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:12 & 14).
Symmorphosed with His Body. For our citizenship is in the heavenlies, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be symmorphosed with His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself (Philippians 3:20-21).
Having been symmorphosed with His death – are being symmorphosed with His image – will be symmorphosed with the body of His glory.
Obviously, most read this passage with a someday Jesus and a faraway “heaven” in their minds. We do not. Eagerly waiting is calling those things that appear not as though what God says is the only thing true.
Substance or Appearance. And that really is what God means by this distinction between those who “set their mind on earthly things” and “our citizenship in the heavenlies.” Those who see God in all things and call forth His Word, the Lord Jesus Christ into outward appearance, look forward to inheriting the earth. Those who judge everything by outward appearance (earthly things), not regarding the Word inside of them, look for the “escape to heaven” provided by death.
But that is not our concern. This “citizenship” and this “glorious body” with which we are symmorphosed are the same thing – the holy city, the New Jerusalem, the Body of Christ.
Together with His Church. In verse 21, Paul speaks of two different things. First he speaks of the TRANSFORMATION of our “lowly” body, our outward physical form. And then he speaks of our being SYMMORPHOSED with the Body of His glory.
There is an element of symmorphy that applies to the transformation of our physical body, swallowed up by life. Put on immortality (Paul’s gospel, part of put on the Lord Jesus Christ), does mean sharing Jesus’ physical body that rose from the dead, now our own bodies (the life of Jesus even in our mortal flesh).
But His glorious Body is the Church. Symmorphosed together with His Church! The goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Paul’s salvation!
Knowing Paul’s Gospel. As you have read through these three lessons on Paul’s Gospel, I want you to understand something. I have not attempted to give an intellectually-contrived, bottom-line explanation of all that Paul preached in “his gospel.” Rather, I have written this session out from the present moment of the Holy Spirit and in correspondence with things I am thinking regarding Covenant.
Other explorations in my previous writings of Paul’s gospel add other dimensions to the same thing. In particular, “The Two Covenants,” included again in Appendix B, is of specific importance.
Our study of Paul’s Jesus out from Paul’s gospel will never end.