God's Ultimate Intention With Creation
1. God’s Overriding Purpose Behind Creation
2. Dispensations vs Successive Revelations
3. Sin And Restitution In Christ
4. Unto Bridehood Relationship With Christ
5. Our Oneness With God’s Ultimate Plan
6. Historical Unfolding Of God’s Ultimate Intention
7. Constraints Under The Adamic Curse
8. The Work Of The Cross
9. The Way Of The Cross
Even though redemption through the blood of Christ Jesus is so dramatic an event in my life and in yours, we nevertheless must seek to understand it from His, not our, perspective! For when we view the entire Gospel of God's dealings and promises purely from the human point of view, God's work falsely appearsto be totallyredemptive. Whereas, in God's plans, redemption is not only not His primary objective, it is only a necessary prerequisite to enable Him to fulfill His original purposes in spite of the Fall. God's objectives are not to deliver mankind from sin per se, but rather (after having done that) to expand Himself through (thus redeemed) mankind!
1. God's Overriding Purpose Behind Creation
For the majority of Christian believers, a quite difficult area of our thinking or mentality or personal philosophy to be transferred to that of God's perspective, is our basic view of redemption through the shed blood of Christ Jesus at Calvary. Becoming redeemed and born-again totally affects us and is a powerful, complete, dynamic, even overwhelming change in our status and destiny.
God did not create us to redeem us, but to bring us unto far deeper and more wonderful purposes than just being saved and getting to Heaven! Sanctification is the next step, after basic salvation, toward those deeper and far more wonderful purposes! But sanctification simply cannot be fully understood when viewed from our human perspective. It is then but a deep mystery, a baffling set of experiences, a confusing path to walk. We must understand the current human condition from God'sperspective. God's dealings in our lives cannot be understood apart from understanding God's goals and plans and purposes from His point of view.
Sanctification, or maturing in His Sonship, simply cannot be understood when viewed from our human perspective. It is then but a deep mystery, a baffling set of experiences, a confusing path to walk. Yet 99.44% of Christian believers today view salvation and God's dealings in our lives almost solely from the human perspective - what it does for us. So we cannot go one step further, until we transfer our perspective, our point of view, our way of thinking, our vision of God's ways, to His perspective. For God did not create us to redeem us, but to bring us unto far deeper and more wonderful purposes than being saved and getting to Heaven! And sanctification is the next step, after basic salvation, toward those deeper and far more wonderful purposes!
The incarnation, Christ becoming flesh, was not just for redemption: it was centered in the Eternal purposes of God, purposed before the creation itself. Sin and the Fall did not alter God's Eternal plan; it only made redemption an additional requirement. Yes, the incarnation's purpose included our redemption; but it had first and foremost a far more reaching purpose in God's Ultimate Intention: to establish a blending of the human and the divine so that mankind can grow in relationship with Him. The Father originally purposed for everything to be accomplished through, and centered in, His Son. Hence, Christ Jesus was to become our very life, even if we had never sinned and required redemption in addition.
A vital starting point for our maturing in our personal relationships with our Lord Christ Jesus is our acquiring a vivid positive vision of Christ and His purposes, with that vision being from His perspective rather than from ours.
So let us first apprehend God’s overriding purpose behind the Creation of mankind.
Genesis 1:26-28 reads: "After Our 'image'". That means, among other things, "of the same mentality, interests, personal objectives, desires, goals, and emphases of operation". The modus operandum of the Godhead is: each member chooses by free choice to live and function totally for the other members. And, we assert, God's single overall objective in His creating mankind has been to obtain and have a family of sons (mature agents), each of whom, by free choice, lives and functions solely to effect and further His (God's) interests, and whom God can trust to be responsible over other portions of His creation as His agents.
How could God obtain such a family who by free choice would so choose such total oneness with Him and His objectives? God could create man: He could create man anyway He chose. But how could He create them to freely choose Him? He could create them as puppets to be automatically in oneness with Him: He already had done that (i.e., the hierarchy of angels: Lucifer over the fallen angels and Christ over the unfallen angels); but angels are in oneness with God by nature, not by free choice.
So, what God did was: (a) create man with a free choice in his nature; (b) confront man with a real, practicable choice and challenge; (c) allow man to try that alternative; (d) show man that His way (being a way of totally-self-abandoning Love) is so much more desirable a way even to man; and (e) by a tremendous practical display of that Love on His part, redeem men and women from their depraved state into oneness with Him. By that process, redeemed man, out of gratitude, would want to freely choose God's way of self-abandoning Love as his (man's) modus operandum as well.
2. Dispensations vs Successive Revelations
This, though a gross oversimplification and understatement, is the essence of the one plan behind God's dealings with mankind during the first 6000 years of human history. One plan, overriding all dispensations, not a separate plan for each dispensation or step in its unfolding. But over time, God has presented successive revelations of His plan to mankind and successive covenant relationships with men and women. Throughout the Church Age in particular, God has moved many times, each time tailoring His moving to the needs of the particular human situation; but each time calling His children afresh to seek Him and deepening His revelations of Himself (in Christ Jesus) and His ways to mankind. God is never static.
So, even if sin had never actually entered into the human experience, God had to allow for the possibility of sin, and to somehow reveal to mankind the awful consequences of sin. For only then would His sons be able to truly and freely choose Him out of love. The Fall, having occurred, indeed gives every man and woman that contrast, that choice, that opportunity.
God is now working to bring men to see this contrast, and the people called "Israel" in the Bible are His primary instrument to that purpose. Oneness with Him requires our living the "Way"of theCross! All "whosoever" of true "Israel" (including gentiles who are grafted into His people by appropriating Christ's death on the Cross - Romans 9:6-8 & 24-29 and 11:17-29) are being brought into the Wayof theCross by the blood covenant relationship with God in Christ Jesus.
3. Sin And Restitution In Christ
God of course foreknew man would sin, and hence He planned for it through Christ. So, not only is God's glorious Ultimate purpose to be realized through His Son Christ Jesus and our expanding Christ's Sonship in Him; when redemption became necessary Christ was central to that also. But that in no way changed His original purpose: Christ being our total life and we being embedded with Him in His Sonship.
We are being brought into the Waynow in this life, albeit in an imperfect sense until the final stage of our redemption, (i.e., of our bodies: Romans 8:23 and Philippians 3:21). We are, that is, if we are willing to move from our state of being in Israel under the Old Covenant to being in Israel under the NewCovenant, and to seek the Kingship of Christ Jesus over all aspects of our lives.
We of course do not treat lightly the destiny of those who do not choose God. Those who do not choose His way and the advantage of His great redemption, can never be brought to the point of being useful to Him for His Eternal Purposes; hence we must be "discarded". This is suggested by one of the Old Testament Hebrew words for "hell": Gehenna was the name of the Jerusalem town dump or rubbish heap and incinerator. But those who do choose His ways, He can use, and He will do all that He must to prepare them for that use.
God is drawing us into this Blood Covenant relationship so that He can use us to show the contrast, to others of the world, not by our words but by our lives (being witnesses, not doing witnessing). Thus it was in the early New Testament church. That is what God is now trying to accomplish: by our lives, joyously radiating Christ Jesus in the midst of utter chaos. Those are the characteristics of the church of Christ as the "Bride of Christ" when she becomes matured. And that is the very essence of what our Lord Christ Jesus is effecting in His people today: bringing His Bride into that maturity!
Christ's dealings to adjust us to maturity, to sanctify us unto His Lordship, comprise a life-long process over time, whereby He works into us His very Holiness. This personal holiness in character and action is a holiness unto Christ, not a holiness from the world. Holiness is not a legalistic obedience to certain laws and taboos. Holiness is first and foremost an inner union with Him, Christ Jesus the Person. Only as we are, will, and indeed can come into that union with Him, shall His Holiness (as well as all other aspects of His Person) be manifested in us and through us unto the world about us.
His first workings in any of our lives, therefore, is to bring us unto a companionship knowledge of and personal relationship with Him. "Faith", upon which this must be based, is our seeing Him in His Spiritual reality, our total trust in Him as a Person, and our total obedience to His every will, far beyond trust in our knowledge about Him or in church or in our fellow Christians and far beyond our dependence upon our abilities, talents, finances, etc. That in turn requires each of us individually to become totally committed to Him. He must work that into our attitudes first, so that He can then bring us unto cohesive local Body units with horizontal covenant relationships.
The name of the game is relationship, not religion. Being sanctified unto Holiness means unto inner union with Christ Jesus. The Way of the Cross is first and foremost our total faith-commitment to Him: our total dependence upon Him and sensitive obedience to His will; that we be so secure in Christ that we dare expose ourselves to our fellow believers in horizontal covenant commitment; and so that He can mature us into being His Bride.
4. Unto Bridehood Relationship With Christ
At this time, His children are at widely differing stages in their personal relationships with Him. So, our Lord Christ Jesus is working in many ways with individual believers and groups, each way diverse from all others. He carefully tailors His dealings with each of us according to His knowledge of our current state and needs. He has the blueprints for each of our lives.
His HolyTemple, His Body, His Bride, at this time is far from mature and complete! Not a single present structure of local manifestations of His Body even remotely represents what He is bringing us ultimately unto. Oh how hard it is for us to receive that. But all present religious and demographic structures and contexts of His children are but momentary, interim steps in His Bride-perfecting process.
During this process, He also deals with us collectively: (1) first to build us as living stones into His Holy Temple (dwelling place on Earth); and (2) second to order us as members of His Body (physical manifestation on Earth). He is building and perfecting His church on Earth! This first form of adjustment emphasizes our relationships with one another, and that we become fitted and adjusted to one another; the second form of adjustment emphasizes our functioning in ministries and service to one another and to the world. This is what is meant by "... through us completing the Eternal Sonship of Christ Jesus".
It was to complete the Sonship of Christ Jesus, to be matured unto His Bride, that we were created! We were created with the potential to grow unto that full relationship with Him. And redemption merely brings us, once again, to what Adam was upon creation: a vessel with that growth potential.
It is possible - indeed is overwhelmingly common - for us to be redeemed unto that state and yet never grow into that Ultimate Intention of God. When we (falsely) view redemption as the primary purpose of God for our lives, we do not expect, let alone seek, anything further from Him in this life. The Biblical promises of full relationship with Him are then put off to the future - in the "heavenlies bye and bye". So we barely cooperate with what He wants to work into us here and now. Yes, we have great glories from ourposition in Christ; but to experientially mature in His Sonship is another matter.
5. Our Oneness With God's Overall Plan
What are God's overall plans and intentions, with which we must be in harmony?
God's overall plans and intentions have in times past been a secret (Greek: Musterion) - a secret known only to certain persons (i.e., initiates) (Ephesians 1:9). But now it is available to us all: that all things be summed up, culminated in, centered around, Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:8-10, 19-23)! That every thing, in Heaven and on Earth, has meaning and purpose only as related to Christ Jesus our Lord, our Head, our All in All.
The mid-1960's saw the publication of perhaps the clearest books up to then on this subject. One of those, THE ULTIMATE INTENTION by DeVern Fromke[1],is in my opinion a most significant foundational treatise. It should be prerequisite reading for any serious study in sanctification. Reprints of it and some associated publications by Fromke (See Fromke[2], Fromke[3], Fromke[4], and Swindoll[5])are currently available through Christian Literature Crusade. We also recommend more recent publications by Billheimer[6] and Edwards[7] as excellent parallel treatises. Since these resources cover such a foundational and necessary basis for the rest of this lesson, we devote this section to summarizing their main points, with a few comments and interpretations of our own.
In the diagram we briefly sketch God's ultimate intention for us, how He started to unfold it, how it was interrupted by the Fall of mankind, how He redeems us unto it through the "Work of the Cross", and how He now is effecting it among His redeemed people in the "Way of the Cross". Under the ultimate Fatherhood of God, we see ourselves: first as His creation; then as His redeemed; then as His sons and daughters; then as His heirs; finally as His Bride! How far along in it are you right now?
Before we fully discuss this plan and its details, we must first set some further foundational attitudes and understandings. We have barely begun to fully apprehend the Work of the Cross of Christ at Calvary, let alone walk in the Way of the Cross as a way of life that we are to live in Christ!
Our individual purposes for living - and all other spiritual riches of life - are impossible to fully apprehend outside of our ultimate standing in the Sonship of Christ under the Fatherhood of God! Salvation, grace, faith, eternal life, baptism, prayer - these words have no meaning whatsoever apart from one's personal relationship with God in Christ Jesus. That is the one theme of our study of God's Word and Ways: the ultimate Fatherhood of God, ever underlying all of human history (and before), and now culminating in the Sonship of Christ Jesus, with each of us a vital extension of that Sonship in this 4-dimensional space-time domain.
Being in Christ and apprehending God's purposes for us in Christ - the key to which is our choosing out of a pure motive of love to do His will - is an entirely new way of living for most of us. Each of us, born in sin, comes from total deception and hopeless separation from God (Ephesians 2:1-3 and 11-12). Saved through faith in Christ Jesus, we have been raised up by Him in new life now with Him in Heavenly places (Ephesians 2:4-10; Romans 8:10-11). Everything we now are derives from our ever-deepening personal relationships with Him. That is what Paul really means by our putting on the "new man" (Romans 6:4-6, 2 Corinthians 4:16, Ephesians 4:22-24, and Colossians 3:9-10). Not just "being saved", but living in the Spirit, that is, totally under the control of and enlightenment by the indwelling Holy Spirit of Christ Jesus.