BIBLICAL BRIEFS 36
Remember – the kingdom of God can only be WITHIN you (Luke 17:21). Therefore, Jesus speaks in symbolic terms in regards to the manner in which the spiritual seed (or the origin of the kingdom) can take shape in a physical human being. 1 Cor. 2:14 is a good starting point to explain: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them.” Take note – he cannot do that, even though he/she is highly intelligent, or even a really good person, or an extremely religious person. It is simply as impossible for the ‘carnal mind’ to think on spiritual things as it is for a stone to produce life spontaneously. There has to be a transfer of life if a man wants to go from a natural sphere to a higher, spiritual sphere. Nothing of the earth can simply pass over into the kingdom of God – it has to be initiated from the higher spiritual sphere! The kingdom of God, the higher realm, must take the earthly realm by force (Matt. 11:12). In the seed of the Word (Luke 8:11) there exists a germ of the life of God. The seed that contains this germ of life is planted in the spiritually dead (= carnal human). As soon as it germinates, life begins to manifest in the seed through the principle stipulated in Rom. 8: 2 – “the law of the Spirit who gives life” and this then relieves you from another law that has worked within you: “the law of sin and death”. As this “indestructible life” (Heb. 7:16) takes shape and multiplies, it takes possession of the available elements in the ground (= natural man, adama), and then builds living tissue from substances that have never had life in itself. The inorganic dead substances become wonderful living spiritual tissue! Death is devoured by life (2 Cor. 5: 4)! The lifeless elements of your earth are transformed into the living substance of the “plant” (= the kingdom). The most minuscule of all seeds becomes the largest of all herbs! The plant that extends deeply into the dead world in which it is embedded, touches mortality with the mystery of life, and takes it to ABOVE in a transformed state so that it can exist in the living sphere. 1 Pet. 1:23 calls this rebirth, a process that enables “the life of Jesus” to be “manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:11). This life produces wonderful new mentalities within us through which we who are born through the Spirit can, therefore, see and enter the kingdom (John 3: 3 & 5). In Ef. 2: 1-5, it is explained clearly: “when we were dead … (God) made us alive in Christ … And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”! In this way, God planted a tree of life WITHIN you (Prov. 11:30) in which the messengers of the spiritual realm are comfortable at home.
Dr. Tom Gouws
