Adam and Eve were friends of God. Christ has come to restore our friendship, our communications with God. God’s plan was to save that which was lost, a wayward people who rejected him as their Creator. Although we were a people born in his image, outside of Christ, we reflected death, pain, devastation. Created to show our God, after the fall we lived finite lives, alone in the universe of time, unable to find a place of rest, peace. Paul describes this condition: When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. When knowledge of how to better ourselves, when wisdom of how to avoid the devastating nature of our species runs out as we kill and maim countless millions of people for our gain; God is there with a redemption answer. He sent his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die and rise again in victory over death and the grave. Every person in the human race requires an answer for our sinful nature. We all need to place our faith in One who is perfect, without the devastating nature of man, One who can create new creatures out of those who are lost in despair. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. The Good News is that we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ. The sprinkling of his blood on our unregenerate lives brings forgiveness, not judgment. Paul understood this gift of life when he wrote to his spiritual son, Timothy, Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. (1 Timothy 1:15) Jesus’ life was a substitute for our lives; his death was our death; and praise God, his resurrection was our resurrection. Because He is eternal, we also are and will be eternal. The law supposedly brought righteousness, or perfection, but it could not change hearts. God through Christ and the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit has made us perfect through his once and forever sacrifice. If we were bound to the law, we would be under constant condemnation, for we would have to be perfect not only in our activities but in our spirits as well, but IN CHRIST we have now come into the position of the sabbath, complete rest in Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath. Those who are IN HIM experience the sabbath, for we no longer have to strive to be at peace with God. We are at peace in Christ as we follow the Spirit, knowing, The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:3)
In heaven, eternally, we will have peace with God. We will be perfect because God is perfect. Which one of us can imagine fully such a situation? Well, God has paid a high price for that to happen. Jesus, the Christ, the Perfect One, the Lamb of God has fulfilled the plan of God. When we were lost and hopeless, enemies of God, God’s plan was to make us right in his sight through the blood of Jesus Christ. Through faith in God’s plan: Jesus Christ’s life and death, we are saved from the damnation that sin brings to every soul. We are saved from God’s condemnation. Rejoice dear friends in Christ. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. We are no longer just friends of God, we are in his intimate family. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Romans 8:14-17) We are not just to share in the suffering of the flesh, for all of creation groans to be delivered in this day and age from the contamination of sin. We are also to share in the great joy we have by believing in the works of God by faith. He has come to indwell each of us, so that we might know his fellowship as we walk this earth. We are not alone; we are not caught in the unknowable; for we have knowledge of the work of Jesus Christ. Consequently, we can put our whole faith and energy into serving the living God. If we are truly earnest in serving God as was Cornelius and his household, God will come to us in the form of his Holy Spirit, to abide with us forever. The Bible says Cornelius was a righteous and God-fearing man, and the angel who came to him said, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.” (Acts 10:4) We put our whole hearts and minds into knowing Christ as our Savior because we are the children of God and we have received the Spirit of God and we do call out, “Abba, Father."
As with Abraham, we have not yet set one foot in the Promised Land: heaven. We have the promise of heaven, we have the promise of God making us his own people, but we have not experienced the expected reality of that fact in this sinful world. People of the world do not know that you are a special person, that God has placed his nature in you through your faith in the Spirit’s work. We pray for you as Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus: I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19) Someday the full reality of God’s plan will be revealed to us. We will come to a place of joy — where the firstborn of the flesh, Jesus Christ, resurrected from the dead, fills the heavens with his glory, where countless angels abide. We will be in the place where God’s own adopted family abides, bought by the blood of the Lamb, with a special name given by God, as unique as our fingerprints. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it. (Revelation 2:17) Every human who dies: every soldier who falls on the battlefield who cries out God’s name in reverence; every abused, hurting, human who passes from this world, acknowledging God the Creator from the heart will see him. “Oh, God save me,” is all that is required. God is the judge of all things. He judges the quick and the dead. We who have been made perfect will someday occupy heaven in the presence of God as his victorious children. His penetrating eyes will search our souls, and He will know because of the work of the PERFECT ONE, we belong to him. The plan of God revealed in the Bible from the beginning to the end is a marvelous one: a plan of redemption, eternal life. Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him as righteousness. Believe God dear friends, not by sight but by faith. His plan is for you to step into eternity with HIM. When Mom was in the midst of apologizing to our son, Doug, when he was a very young boy, he stopped her, saying, “That’s okay, Mama. Everybody makes mistakes. That’s why we all need Jesus.” He was absolutely right. We all need Jesus. Seek him today while He can be found.
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