“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”
(2 Pet. 1:2, NKJV)
In the previous teaching we had an extensive look at the law of biogenesis, that mysterious law that keeps and regulates the gates of the living world, from a spiritual perspective. We used it to particularly illustrate how that which is in the helpless realm of the “dead,” is completely cut off from the realm of the living. We pointed out that there needs to be a transferal of life before the inorganic, non-living mineral elements of the earth can be resurrected in the organic kingdom of living things. In the seed there is a germ cell of life. The seed that contains that germ cell of life, is planted IN THE EARTH, in the lifeless mineral sphere or realm, the kingdom of the dead.
Spiritually speaking that seed that is also planted in the living dead, they who have “no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12), is likewise a mystery. This seed that brings about the rebirth, is Christ (Gal. 3:16)! This means that Jesus, WHO IS A LIFE-GIVING Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), penetrates the material and mortal body of the degenerate man from the spiritual realm – it is the Germ Cell, the Living Hope (1 Pet. 1:3) that brings about that “the dead will be raised incorruptible” (1 Cor. 15:52). Becoming born-again is thus a process that cannot occur through mortal seed of any nature, but only through immortal, incorruptible seed, which 1 Pet. 1:23 calls “the word of God which lives and abides forever”. But contained in that Logos-seed (Jesus) is the fullness of the Rhema-seeds (Christ)! (More on this wondrous mystery later.) We need to properly understand this specific mystery of God’s will (Eph. 1:9), as it is the mechanism through which “in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him” (verse 10).
Think through this with me, again, in accordance with the second-to-last paragraph, Jesus, who now moves IN THE MANIFESTATION OF A LIFE-GIVING Spirit, penetrates from the spiritual realm, into the material and mortal body of the degenerate man, and this brings about that the living dead are now ALREADY resurrected in an incorruptible state (1 Cor. 15:52). If this resurrection occurs now, ALREADY, when we are born again, it is clear that it can NEVER be at issue in the mortal and the material – the visible is always temporary (2 Cor. 4:18). Through the law of biogenesis, it must necessarily be planted in the mortal realm, but from WITHIN this unfolds a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). As 2 Pet. 3:11 notes, “since all these things will be dissolved …” God creates, through Christ’s life-giving Spirit and from the mortal body, an eternal, invisible body (2 Cor. 4:18)! Therefore, Paul can say, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.” (2 Cor. 4:16).
Now it is finally absolutely clear what Rom. 8:11 – which the last couple of teachings has been concerned with – actually means: “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” The believer receives the Holy Spirit when he becomes born-again (through the laying on of hands – Acts 8:18; Heb. 6:2), and this endow(n)ment from the spiritual realm must be rooted WITHIN you, who are in this physical, mortal realm. The mortal is not changed into the immortal – according to 2 Cor. 5:2 – the mortal is “clothed” with the immortal. It is now absolutely clear what this Scripture (which is often misused to argue something it does not state), actually means.
This truth concerning the germ cell of the Christ-life in you is something you would not understand unless you are truly born-again. In addition, it is also very interesting that if you “abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment” (Phil. 1:9), that “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Pet. 1:2)! This Manna cannot bring this about, but if the truth recounted in these teachings touch your heart, as with the visitors from Emmaus, and you can honestly say, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?”, it has the inherent power to transform your entire life. When you can truly understand the revelation of the theoretical fact of his “quickening spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45, IAV), it will transform your heart and you will be able to start living from that source. It changes absolutely everything.
To get a natural, mortal person, with their carnal thoughts that constantly ponder death, or “the things of man” (Matt. 16:32), “vain things” (Acts 4:25), “earthly things” (Phil. 3:19) into the higher kingdom, is humanly speaking impossible. By nature man’s “understanding [is] darkened, being alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18). Paul argues the following in Rom. 8:5-8: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
It is necessary that the immortal seed of God be implanted into man’s carnal nature, and that it then transforms into something completely new, that contains that higher life of consciousness. Therefore, Paul keeps on reiterating: “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:2), and in Phil. 4:8 – Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” Then also remember Prov. 23:7 (AMP): “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”
It is then also important to remember that the entire creation, which, according to Rom. 8:20, is “made subject to futility” (ACV), “subjected to frailty (to futility, condemned to frustration)” (AMP), “made subject to imperfection” (TCNT), is exactly in this state because the entire creation can be set free by the sons of God. Verse 21 in the Amplified Bible alas paraphrases the wrong order of this process of deliverance: “That nature (creation) itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and corruption [and gain an entrance] into the glorious freedom of God’s children.” It is impossible for the fallen dead and corrupted world “to gain an entrance”. There needs to be a movement that extends from the higher realm (here represented by the enlightened sons of God), to the lower realm.
For this reason, we know that the entire creation has collectively been in labour up until now (verse 22). In the decay and death of the entire creation the sons of God are planted as “living hope” (1 Pet. 1:3) so that, through the spiritual application of the law of biogenesis, salvation on earth can take place. This is the mechanism that God put in place!
The fact that we still today, two thousand years after the power of the resurrection became available to man (Phil 3:10), cannot move within it (verse 11), means that we still do not understand the source and scope of this immense power, and thus cannot use it to set free the earth.
Please understand this well – the new creation is much more than the eternal and incorruptible life that is manifested within people. It is also the new creation life that is planted in the earth, which takes possession of the earth and penetrates it and changes and transforms it in order to restore it to the full resurrection power, according to God’s original plan. Jesus is the pattern of this. His deliverance work was not just to save people from eternal death, but also from the carnal, fallen nature of man, and have it consumed by the victorious life of the Godly nature! Through this God brought about that the entire fallen earth could also be delivered. [The dust of the ground, from which man was made, and to which Gen. 2:7 refers, was pure, eternal dust – it had not yet been contaminated by sin and death! This happened only later, after the fall – “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.” (Gen. 3:17; also see Gen. 5:29). It is man who caused the earth’s contamination; therefore the higher function life needs to return to the lower function existence of the earth, through the restored man.] Indeed – “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field …” (Matt. 13:31)!
Lying ahead of us there is thus a dispensation where the manifested resurrection power must be dramatically visible. It must happen in our time! Our expectation is, according to the prophecy of Hos. 6:1-3, that it will occur two prophetic days after the death of Jesus, on the third prophetic day of unlimited resurrection power. From 2 Pet. 3:8 we know that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” thus we now find ourselves in the seventh day after Adam, and on the third day after Jesus, the last Adam, the life-giving Spirit.
The prophet Hosea (6:1) spells it out for us: “Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up.” The past two thousand years have been marked by the fact that the Christendom have lived under God’s tender hand of grace. Sometimes He tore us apart, but He also dressed our wounds, the process of educating His sons into maturity: “And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?” (Heb. 12:5-9).
But now, on the third day of resurrection power, the collective of mature sons (with all those that preceded them encouraging us in the cloud of witnesses – Heb. 11:39-12:1) must start to function in a mode of higher existence, of which Hos. 6:2-3 prophesies: “After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.” To this immensely important theme we will shortly return!
To thus circle back to the original question of Rom. 8:11 – until now, two thousand years after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, there has been a promise that “He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also QUICKEN YOUR MORTAL BODIES by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Through the law of biogenesis we realize that it can start happening now, on the third day!
- Selah: Perhaps this is the most awe-inspiring truth we’ve discussed in the teachings thus far!
- Read: 25-33
- Memorise: 26:5 (what is the typological meaning of this?)
