12.3 After the Cross
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
We will look more closely at the Atonement in an upcoming session; here we want to continue attempting to understand how God deals with a shattered creation through the passage of time. God did not create in order to lose what He had created. God has no intention of losing anything.
The problem for God is that nothing remaining inside of Adam’s creation can be saved. For anything marked by the sin of Adam and the serpent to be “saved” two things are required: blood and judgment. Being saved means being transferred from the old creation to the new creation.
The Entrance of Life
He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Colossians 1:13).
Now, God determined 4,000 years of time through which to unfold into the human experience blood and judgment coming to bring all mankind to the Cross, guilty before Him. From the cross on, the Blood is full and the Judgment is complete: It is finished; I have been crucified with Christ.
However, a third factor has entered the picture. Life – Resurrection life, a return to the tree of life. Yet we see that God has also determined 2,000 years of time through which to unfold into the human experience Blood and Judgment to bring His elect to Life.
The Unfolding of Life
Just as the unfolding of blood and judgment to death over 4,000 years followed a very full history filled with individuals who knew God and the people to whom they spoke, so the unfolding of Blood and Judgment to Life over 2,000 years follows a very full history we call the church.
Now, I say 2,000 years, but we are actually looking at 2,000 and 1,000 years, that is, three days of creation. God brings forth His elect to life through two days first, then takes the earth into its Sabbath rest for that final day before bringing all mankind through Blood and Judgment to Life. Everything inside that final Life is already always all inside the pro-knowing of God and inside the Seed that is Christ.
Proving
God has a New Testament term for what He calls each moment of Christ as that moment flows out from its already completeness inside the pro-knowing of God into its place in the ongoing story of man; that term is dokimion, or proving. That the PROVING of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is PROVEN through fire, may be found penetrating all praise, honor, and glory with purpose INSIDE the revelation, the unveiling, of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:7 – modified from the Greek).
It’s quite simple, really. God has appointed the unfolding of 6000 years, 6 days of creation, to draw humans out of the tree of knowledge and into the tree of life without losing them.
Understanding John’s Vision
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God (Revelation 2:7).
Let me give you a simple and constant rule for understanding anything found in John’s vision. We never interpret John’s vision in itself; neither do we interpret it by the world. Every item in John’s vision must be known out from John’s gospel and epistles first, and then out from other Scriptures.
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith (1 John 5:4).
Eating of Life
Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has age-abiding life and I will raise Him up in the last day… He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him (John 6:54-56). We need go no further. It is clear that our reality works in this way: He who eats of the tree of life will be actively overcoming. Eating of life does not come after successful performance, for we are dead. Rather, subduing all things flows out from eating of life.
When Jesus said, “In the last day,” He meant that that which is already true, inside of Him inside of us, will unfold into our experience at the appointed time.
A Pharisee of the Pharisees
Before continuing our look at the unfolding of Life through time, let’s set before our understanding the enormous break that came between death and life in the knowledge of humans.
Paul called himself a “Pharisee of the Pharisees.” We understand that the Pharisees were immensely zealous regarding fulfilling the law of Moses by perfect obedience. We know that young men in the beginning of their strength are always convinced that they can “do it.”
It is unlikely that any human who has ever lived kept the law more intensely than did Paul as a young man. And every Christian Paul delivered over to death, he did so entirely out from perfect obedience to the law.
Violent Opposition
Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. – And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank (Acts 9:4-5 & 9).
Paul could hardly handle the intense realization that perfect obedience to the law not only produced NO life in him, but actually led him into violent opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what I meant when I said that those ministries who preach prefect obedience will never succeed – BY the mercy of God. To one who is “perfect in obedience,” the tree of life is the enemy.
Soul-Contradiction
We know from Paul’s later sharing that the faces of those dear believers in Jesus whom he had delivered over to suffering and death never left his heart. And it was this enormous soul-contradiction inside of Paul that led him, then, to reach deep inside of himself, deep into the Lord Jesus, to draw forth the gospel of Christ in us, Christ, the only life we are.
When I say that “hear and obey” is not found in the New Testament, in the gospel of Christ, but only in the Old, and that obedience to word on the outside of us is not Christ, I do not mean, then, a reckless pursuit of those things God calls sin. I mean that we live only IN Jesus and Jesus IN us, something entirely different.
Salvation Revealed
You, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:5). The word “revealed” is apokalupsis, taking off the cover, removing that which blocks from sight that which is and has been already true and real and HERE all along.
Peter is saying that God is bringing into our experience at the most opportune or suitable time a Salvation that has never before been known. Neither Peter nor Paul nor John knew anything about this Salvation ready to be revealed through us, except by seeing it from afar. We will look further at that Salvation in an upcoming session; here we want to frame the unfolding of LIFE through time.
Cryptic Statements of Jesus
And He said to them, “Go, tell that fox (Herod), ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected’ (Luke 13:32). – For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40).
The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain (John 12:23-24). – “Does this offend you? – It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (John 6:61&63).
The Larger Picture
The words of Jesus always refer to the larger picture of the unfolding of God’s purpose through time. Applying those words only to what is seen in the moment is the flesh profiting nothing. When Jesus said, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, He did not mean that He must die on Wednesday so that a literal present three days and three nights would pass before He rose from the dead. Jesus is always speaking of LIFE unfolding out from God through judgment and by the Spirit. Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow means 2,000 years of living as His in-part church.
Judgment to Life
“Casting out demons” and “performing cures” is figurative of the larger picture of bringing individual persons out from the old and into the new creation. Now, and the third day I shall be perfected and three days and three nights planted in the earth means something slightly different, something we know from other New Testament verses. Let me just state exactly what I am driving towards. For two thousand years, Judgment to Life unfolds inside an in-part church until, in the early morning hours of the third day, the firstfruits of Christ, you and me, enter into the full outward expression of LIFE.
The Sabbath Day of Rest
But the proving of Christ is not finished. It is that final 1000 years, the seventh creation Sabbath Day of Rest, through which God proves in full outward experience all that Christ IS. Thus Christ continues planted in the earth through that third day, even though His elect walk through that Day in the full expression of Life.
This is my present understanding of the unfolding of God’s judgment from death into life through the three thousand years of the church age. And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them (Revelation 20:4a).
A Sword
The full proving of the Rest of Christ in all God means by every Word that He speaks unfolds through these to whom judgment is committed – through the Sabbath Day of Rest. That’s you and me – because we eat of Jesus, our only life. But that Sabbath of Rest begins with life laid down and love poured out, the full proving of the victory of Christ; in other words, the Salvation that is to come, now come into heaven/earth through us.
I want to return, however, to that sword that has been splitting me apart the last few weeks, slicing between and driving far apart from each other two things. LIFE – and – death.
Substance versus Appearance
Let me position our present substance. 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). The new creation is the ONLY thing that exists by substance through the 2000 years of the in-part church age. The old creation is the ONLY thing that is seen by appearance through the 2000 years of the in-part church age.
Paul discovered, 2000 years ago, the shocking truth that obeying the Scriptures with all his heart did nothing more than place him in total opposition to Christ. Yet Paul looked again and discovered Christ hidden in the Old.
Life and Death
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life (John 5:39-40).
John wrote these words after all the other disciples were dead; none of the others had remembered them. Yet this is exactly the SHOCKING realization that God had unfolded through time for Paul. LIFE is NOT found in the Bible; neither do many of the words of the Bible speak life into us. The Bible is life AND death. The sword of God cutting between these two is cutting me all apart.
Another Ruling Verse
A statement made by Paul, a passage that I have willfully IGNORED for years, was thrust back upon me by the Lord. I realize now that this passage is the RULING verse over all the Bible for all in-part Christianity.
And this passage, out from Paul, in the midst of incredible statements of the gospel of Christ alive inside of us, ELIMINATES everything that I teach. And it eliminates everything that I teach by AXING out every verse in the Bible from which I teach – by three methods. Romans 8:29 is utterly twisted by this ruling verse; Ephesians 3:17-19 is successfully ignored by this ruling verse; and John 14:20 is no longer there, not even seen at all, by this ruling verse.
The Cutting of the Sword
I will lay before you in full contrast this ruling verse of in-part Christianity with my claim that LIFE comes only out from “Jesus lives in my heart,” by one means only. Doing so will cut me to pieces; it will be by laying down my life, by setting forth my soul, for you.
The next three sessions answer the questions: What is Jesus of Nazareth? (inside of which is: What is the Atonement?), followed by What is Redemption?, and What is Salvation? Then we will explore this time period of in-part Christianity, a time of continued death, a time we know of as the church age.
But, I will warn you, for the rest of this course, we will know the cutting of the Sword, cutting apart between death and Life.