Salvation. God WITH Us.

"That God would live in us again."

WHEN GOD created man in His image and after His likeness, this was more than our physical appearance, although that is definite. We find references in the Word of God to His back parts (Exodus 33:23), His face, His arms, and His feet. But Jesus’ words in the Gospels must be included here, for He said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:21),” so these describe His spiritual form. He had no physical form until Jesus.

In Genesis, where the creation of man is told, it says God breathed into the dust that He’d formed, and man became “a living soul” or person (Genesis 2:7). Literally, “that which breathes.” We are dust which turns to dust. Jesus, too, physically died. But it is of the spirit of man of which I want to talk because it is the spirit which gives life to the body.

I am not one to repeat what’s been said the same way in the church many times, but a truth of what Jesus did when He provided salvation must be highlighted. When Adam sinned, and Eve through deception, the perfect balance of physical, mental, and spiritual in humankind was permanently destroyed. Sin brought death. Death to the spirit, meaning separation from God’s lifegiving Spirit, who had breathed life into man. And death to the body, which would age and, one day, return to dust.

Man as a spirit and a soul with a body is told in 1 Thessalonians 5:23. “And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God, in fact, has a plan to make the physical body eternal. Jesus’ body is our example. He has been made glorious, according to Philippians 3:21. This promise is also told in Romans 8 where it mentions the restoration of all the creatures on the earth as well.

Now, it must be said no creature except man has a spirit like God, and no being that is spirit has a physical body like man. The separation is definite and on purpose. God would have no contact between flesh and spirit happen outside of Him. Yes, that is what I said. All spirit being to physical man contact is known by God and in His control, though this thought is widely misunderstood and not a rabbit trail for today. I will simply summarize it to say He works to guide us in His Truth, even when we are far from Him and cannot hear His Voice. There is nothing to fear of the supernatural, but we must mature to have revelation of this.

The death of the spirit of man, of man himself, we should say, (for the body is dead absent of us), is the reason Jesus lived, died, and was Resurrected. He proved the Life of God, eternal, everlasting life, is greater than complete death. Being God, sinless and holy, and being fully saturated with the Spirit of God, He erased sin, providing complete forgiveness, and destroying all the side effects of sin, meaning sickness and disease. God took His mutilated human body and returned Him to it, healing Him of all the destruction of the cross. Though He was seen with holes in His hands and mentioned the hole in His side, afterward, He was also seen without them and was not recognized by those who knew Him. God showing that the salvation He’d provided is for every part of us. As He was healed, we are healed (Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24).

Salvation is much taught and in many incomplete ways. In many ways, it has become a byword people avoid. Just as soon as they are asked, “Would you like to get saved?” they walk the other way. Their life here on earth is seen all around them, their view of it in their job and their family and their entertainment interests more real to them. For many, it takes something desperate to turn their gaze toward the spiritual world that they cannot see.

But what Jesus did as God in human flesh was show us God. He was and is the love of God on display, love so great that though He is eternal, He would make Himself one of us, the Son of Man, in order to suffer death, and a humiliating death it was. He promised that God would live in us again, as He was in Adam and Eve at the beginning of time. It is not just that we accept His death and Resurrection and get a shot of Life in the arm then, being reinvigorated, have to figure out how to communicate with Him. But instead that He moves in forever.

Inside us now, when we invite Him to live in us, is everything He is. The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus called the Comforter in John 14, took what was dead and empty of God, our sinful spirit being, and made it into a holy temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). We have Emmanuel, GOD WITH US. To talk to (Philippians 4:6). To learn from. To worship. To be our Friend. We are never alone, not anymore. Never empty, devoid of peace or joy. We need never do without but can live the words of Psalm 91:16. Long, satisfying, contented lives.

“With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.” (Psalms 91:16)

“Length of days he shall have to content him, and find in me deliverance.” (Psalms 91:16, Knox)

“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle wee dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2 Corinthians 5:1)

Illustration by DA VECTOR on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com