In this discourse we set out to gather into one place the largest grasp we have from the Lord on the relationship of all creation to His eternal Plan, with special focus on the nation of Israel. This revelation is already offered us throughout scripture, but has yet remained largely hidden in plain sight due to our own frailty in approaching scripture—an approach that is fundamentally “humanly narcissistic,” that is, humanist.But God continues lifting veils from His overcoming remnant as we keep gaining toward rendezvous with glorified immortality, from which vantage we are to see all things far more perfectly and clearly. This coincides with the nearness of Father’s completed purpose in this age for the mortal nation of Israel—a people yet confined to atheistic unbelief—being an ever increasing intercessory burden rightly developing at this time in the larger church.
The gist of what we will say here has already been specially articulated by Paul. Yet Paul’s presentation, while inspired by the Spirit, is oft disjointed, consisting of “rabbit trail” digressions from incompleted thoughts, unsatisfying retorts to anticipated questions and even seemingly contradictory assertions requiring razor-sharp context discernment to rightly divide (—which is why Peter says Paul writes in a way “hard to understand!”)
This difficulty is by Spirit design however, so the true grasp of these things may only come by way of His revealing, not our own ability to understand what Paul is saying. Now, in our time, the Spirit sees fit to begin laying these things out “more plainly” for His disciples—even in accord with Jesus’ promise that He would eventually do so (Jn. 16:25).
Be advised though: in speaking plainly of the things “of the Father,” to the degree one remains humanly narcissistic in viewing God’s purposes in salvation—especially regarding Israel—he will be prone to offense, rejecting what we now move to outline. (Let the reader take heed.)
In all, there are but a handful—perhaps fewer than a dozen—spiritual truths we must comprehend to make sense of the divine cosmology as first projected to us by Paul. So let’s begin.
I. The Father’s Eternal Pleasure Centered in Christ
A baby, when first born and in his earliest years, is consumed with the centrality of his own existence. He has no other awareness than of his own needs and wants. But as he grows toward adulthood, he is gradually brought to realize—if he matures—that he is not the center of all existence. Life does not revolve about him. Rather, he must learn to conform to life realities that transcend him and which pre-date his birth. Eventually, if he comes to full maturity, he learns that he exists for the sake of others.
So too with the church in this New Covenant age. As babes first encountering eternal life through the gospel, we can see only one thing—our own need for salvation. We see only man’s need to be redeemed from a Christ-less eternity. We perceive God’s eternal plan to be completely centered on meeting that need. Through that lens we read all scripture, and to that end we conduct our entire concept of ministry.
But as we gain toward full-statured sonship—assuming we do so—we come to realize that we, mankind, are not at the center of God’s eternal plan. Rather, we exist for the sake of Another, whose Plan exists only for the sake of His own will, need and desire. We are brought to know that God’s Purpose does not revolve about our need, the church’s destiny, or mankind’s plight. Rather, our eternal need and destiny is agential to a Plan that transcends and pre-dates us—one centered specifically in Christ solely for the pleasure of the Father, for Whose sake all the inevitable tragedies of creation were otherwise allowed and tolerated:
Rom. 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility…because of Him who subjected it…
To this end Paul repeatedly writes about, but we just skip past, the majestic centrality of Christ and the Father’s own overarching pleasure, inside of which all else about creation is encased:
Eph 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us …5… through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace….9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth in Him, 10 regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. 11 … according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will… 3:11 This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord,…4:4 There is … 6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
Col. 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation: 16 for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18 He is also the head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. 19 For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, 20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven,
Rom. 11:36 For from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
(Rev. 4:11 (Rev. Geneva) “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power! For You have created all things! And for Your will’s sake they are and have been created!”)
Witness how thoroughly straight forward in largest reality Paul paints eternal purpose to be centered in Christ toward fulfilling the Father’s own pleasure from before creation—before man, before sin, before redemption. (This includes before Israel, which is the context of the Romans 11 cite.) Everything creational in these references is agential to, not focal to, God’s eternal purpose in Christ—a purpose that would bring both Father and Son an ultimate satisfaction obtainable only by staging the faulty creational drama which otherwise so captivates our mortal attention.
It is not our immediate purpose to outline all we perceive about what compelled the divine eternal will and pleasure to stage the human drama with its fall and redemption. We just want to clarify through the eyes of adult sonship that it was something to be accomplished (lit. “perfected” – Heb. 5:8-9) in and through Christ for the Father’s sake, for which core purpose our agential drama was devised before time. (Time fails to cite all Jesus’ statements to this very effect, whose sense of mission only ever centers in successfully satisfying His Father’s will from before creation.)
Our entire human tragedy with all its scriptural players and “thrones and principalities” of intergalactic angelic action was thus ever made but to serve that uncreated eternal Purpose. Our salvation drama was not and never has been the be-all and end-all of that Purpose.
This eternal truth will become indisputably clear once our sonship crosses the veil into immortality. Nevertheless and until that time, before we can unlock any further mysteries as to our own role as redeemed creations and God’s purposes for men at large or Israel in particular, we must begin here at this place of humility.
“It’s not about us. It’s about Him.”
II. The Eternal Father’s Yearning through Christ to Birth an Eternal Family out of Created Mankind
Our own human familiarity with the word “father” for describing God hides from us the significance of what this means prior to creation. Our heavenly Father is an eternal Progenitor. A progenitor is one who reproduces himself through what he makes, and more particularly through whom he births. An eternal progenitor holds that capacity before and outside of creation. His Seed is within Him outside of creational time.
Indeed, the Father reproduces Himself in both eternity and creation. But His eternal Fatherhood precedes His creational siring. Eternally, He is firstly the Father of His one and only uniquely begotten uncreated Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. But not only so, He is also the eternal Father of a further Seed from within His own eternal “loins” via His Son. The revelation of this additional pre-creational fathering is unveiled here:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world…. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored us in the Beloved—whose names have…been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world . Eph. 1:3-6; —Rev. 17:8
So saying, and in accord with our previous section, we will now advance that, from Their eternal view, the Father’s impulse to bring forth His further pre-creational Seed together within other Supra-glorious purposes to be realized in Christ, is the driving ulterior reason that Father and Son ordained the faultable creational drama. That is, creation was specifically ordained to serve these prevenient eternal purposes. (It was never its own self-standing purpose just thought up one day in eternity.)
For this section, this means that everything we already know about God’s fathering of a creational seed was wholly ordained to facilitate His yearning to birth this further pre-existent eternal Seed beside His Son. To understand this, let’s first outline the dimensions of the Father’s creational paternity.
God’s Creational Fatherhood
Not counting His birthing of Jesus through Mary, God is recognized as father in three large creational seed modes. The first is with respect to the angels. Angels are referred to as “the sons of God” (Job. 38:7). God is thus the “Father of angels.”
The second and most familiar mode of God’s fathering regards mankind. To this end we read in Luke’s account of Jesus’ lineage that Adam is “the son of God” (3:38). God is thus the “Father of all mankind.” Indeed, it’s on this basis that the world can refer to themselves as “children of God” (affirmed in Ac. 17:28).
The third and less obvious mode of God’s creational Fatherhood is a subset of mankind. This is where God specifically refers to the nation of Israel as “My son”:
Ex. 4:22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: “Israel is My son, My firstborn. 23 So I said to you, ‘Let My son go so that he may serve Me’; but you have refused to let him go. Behold, I am going to kill your son, your firstborn.”’”
Here is the very first time in scripture God actually refers to Himself as “father” of anyone! (By way of preview, we will note that this scripture doubles as a prophetic reference with hidden eternal meaning beyond adamic Israel, to be explained in our next section.)
Creational vs. Eternal Fathering: the Difference
Seeing these three creational modes of God’s fathering, we now want to propound that a significant difference exists between God’s creational and eternal Self-reproducing. That difference is marked between the ideas of “making” and “birthing.” Consider:
God can indeed be called the Father of the angels, they being “sons of God.” But the angels are only fathered by an external act of creating. They were not birthed. This difference is accented by Hebrews where it says,
For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? .... And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, He says, “Let all God's angels worship Him.” Of the angels he says, “He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.” Heb. 1:5-7 ESV
In contrasting angels to His eternally birthed Son, God tells us He did not birth the angels. He only made them.
The same is true of God’s fathering of mankind. As Father to Adam, God reproduced His image in man (thus by extension in Israel) only by way of external fleshly formation. As it says,
“Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground…” Gen. 2:7.
See that God did not birth Adam (nor therefore adamic Israel) from within Himself. Mankind was not eternally birthed, only formed.
Eternal Birthing by “Creational Adoption:” Unveiling the Exact Purpose for Creation
This returns us to dwell on God’s eternal, pre-creational fathering intention, and from this to understand His subsequent creational fathering purpose. We have already established that the heavenly Father’s longing from before and outside of creation was to birth an eternal Family alongside and by way of His uncreated Son. This lay within His Being as the Irrepressible Life-giving Progenitor and Self-Reproducer that HE IS.
However—and this is where the mystery of creation’s purpose begins—in His progenitorial longing, the Father could not birth another uncreated eternal Son like unto the Unique Only Begotten Son. Rather, His further yearning could only be satisfied through His uncreated Son. Moreover, to birth such further eternal Seed also necessitated a creational “scaffold” wherein the Father’s eternal progenitorship must first be projected into a creational dimension.
Said differently, it was not possible for the Father to eternally reproduce Himself beyond the Son except by way of “creational adoption.” The Father must first form an unbirthed creational seed—one which by its inherent inferiority to His Eternality was doomed to futility by virtue of its own existence despite its perfect formation—into which He could then plant His eternal Seed, whence to birth a glorific adoptive eternal Family from out of a salvaged creational seed.
(Stop. Ponder long and hard what has just been said. For this is the inmost explanation for the universe from the eternal perspective.)
So much mystery is entailed within the previous statements impossible to detail in such a brief writing:
- The mystery of the pre-creationally ordained death of the uncreated Son at the hands of the created lineages,
- the mystery of all that Father and Son must work out between Their own Will and Passion requisite to fulfilling this pre-creational longing,
- the mystery of Their willingness to subject Themself to the unspeakable divine pain of a defaulted creation—most of which would never be salvaged
—just to accomplish this eternal Urge.
This is what it means to have a truly God-centered cosmology. The entirety of creation’s wretched story was permittedly ordained to fulfil the irrepressible divine Yearning for eternal Fathering. The internal divine drive to salvage created human souls, so core to us under the sun, was foreordained in subservience to this higher driving Necessity within the Godhead Themself “from before the foundation of the world.”
Thematic Derivations
It is from the Father’s necessity of a defaulted creation for birthing His adoptive eternal Seed that flows all we biblically understand for relating our present redeemed state to our ultimate forward eternal destiny together with our rearward pre-creational Seed conception within the Father’s heart. We close this episode by outlining some of the massive scriptural themes deriving from this hybrid eternal/creational realization:
- Natural and Spiritual
Consider firstly all that scripture teaches relating the natural to the spiritual. “First comes the natural, then the spiritual,” says Paul. The natural passes away and of itself alone is “profitless;” yet is indispensable to bringing forth the eternally spiritual. One must be born of natural seed before he can be “born again” of the eternal Seed of the Father (as says the Son).
Witness the intricacies between the spiritual and natural from the day Adam is formed right through to completed human redemption:
- The eternal Spirit breathes into dust to form a hybrid soul linking body with spirit.
- The eternal Son must enter and unite with a creational human body as “son of man” to bring forth His own Imperishable Glorified body en route to satisfying the Father’s quest for an extended eternal Family.
- We ourselves—our natural souls—must receive the planting of the Father’s eternal Seed that holds our precreational identity, thence to outwork the self-same struggle of flesh and spirit unto completing our hybrid eternal glorification.
- Shadow Type and Reality
It is also here that scripture’s theme of earthly type vs. eternal reality finds its source. We learn that earthly things are but a passing image or shadow of eternal things both “to come;” yet which “precreationally were.” This typing is a property of all created human lineage, particularly of Israel, as we will detail in our next section.
For us now, this means that, if we have been “born again,” then on one hand we have become someone on earth we never were before (on earth); yet at the same time, we have been brought forward into the earth from our precreational place in the “loins” of our heavenly Father. Thus where Jesus could declare “before Abraham was, I AM,” so too we, by way of mystery, are able to say, “before we were, we ARE (in the Father’s pre-creational heart).”
- Resolving the Election Conflict
This leads to our last observation, which is that our eternal pre-existence in the Father’s heart is the derivation of the biblical mystery called “election.” This term “election” (or “choosing”) is not the human concept of “picking and choosing” or “voting” centered on created man (as carnally believed and thus carnally debated). It is rather a term of pre-existential eternal Seeding entirely outside creational capacity to perceive “whence it comes, and whither it goes.”
It is impossible to rightly comprehend election from a view of eternal purpose centered on human salvation, in turn centered on the mechanics of human engagement with the word; nor where failure exists to comprehend the abolishing of our original identity in Adam (to be discussed later). Said otherwise, it is not possible to grasp election without grasping (as Jesus did) the direct prevenient role of the eternal Father in spiritual awakening and conversion.
But once we are opened to see our pre-existent spirit conception in the Father, that such conception preceded anything to do with our soul’s created place in Adam’s line, and that saving our created soul has been ancillary to the Father’s pre-creational spirit conception of us, then the confusion over election ceases. And soon, we will awake to see who we really were from before the beginning.
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In our next segment, we look at Israel’s unique role relative to the Father’s purpose to plant His eternal Seed in men from every tribe, tongue, kindred, language and nation.
III. Mortal Israel Ordained to Typify the Faith-born Eternal Family from out of All Mankind
Which are a shadow of things to come; but the (real) body is of Christ. Col. 2:17 KJV
Nevertheless death reigned…over those who had not sinned in the likeness of…Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. Rom. 5:14
At last, we are ready to comprehend the true purpose, significance and nature of the nation of Israel from the eternal View as pre-ordained before the foundation of the world. Seeing how central Israel has been and remains to the historic outworking of God’s purposes among men, we are inescapably obliged to understand Israel’s meaning from that View.
Previously, we established that the Father’s yearning for an extended eternal Family could only be realized via His Son by way of first making a creational likeness of Himself. The eternal Family to be birthed out of that likeness would of necessity be a hybrid “adoptive” family composed of eternal Seed and clay. (We quipped that, due to creation’s natural inferiority compared to the Creator, it would inevitably default on that image, for which cause the preordained eternal Family could only be birthed via a preordained redemption through the Uncreated Son.)
Father’s need to first form a clay Self-image in order to birth His eternal Family also set up the full cosmologic contrast between “reality” and “type” (or “shadow”). From the outset of its existence, the creation was a model of invisible eternal reality. More pointedly, mankind was specifically formed as an image of the Eternal One, i.e., the Son Himself. None other than Paul tells us that Adam was in reality but “a type of Him who was to come.”
In identifying Adam, the forefather of all mankind, as a type, Paul is establishing that everything that descends from Adam is also a mere shadow of eternal identity in Christ. That which God creationally forms of the dust of the ground only images that to which He gives eternal Birth.
Israel: Shadow and Reality
The Book of Hebrews is dedicated to showing how the Law and its priestly ministry prophetically foretype eternal realities in heaven fulfilled by Christ:
Heb. 8:1 Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, 2 a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord set up, not man.… 4 … [T]here are those who offer the gifts according to the Law; 5 who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, “See,” He says, “that you make all things by the pattern which was shown to you on the mountain.” 6 But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, to the extent that He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises….9:23 Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these things, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ did not enter a holy place made by hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;
Paul also affirms this to the Colossians:
Col. 2:16 KJV Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: 17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the (real) body is of Christ.
True as this is, it is not until we connect this to the foretypical nature of all adamic lineage that we fully appreciate who and what the nation of Israel is from the eternal Viewpoint. For not merely was Israel given legal and ceremonial types, but being in Adam’s lineage (himself “a type of Him who was to come”), the entire people of Israel was specifically set apart in the earth as a type of the eternal Family God intended from before creation to birth out of all mankind.
This single truth lies at the heart of the mystery Paul was commissioned to bring forth. He understood that it was in fact to an eternal Seed of the Father named “Israel,” elect from before creation, Spirit-birthed forward into redeemed creational souls from all mankind—by means of spirit aware faith—that the human nation of Israel was raised to both typify and to give initial nurture in the creational realm. (Israel’s prophets did not understand this when prophesying about Israel’s restoration to come.)
Paul outlines natural Israel’s role as a type by comparing the nature of the two seeds born through Abraham, one the shadow, the other the substance:
Rom. 9:6 … For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; 7 nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants shall be named.” 8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants…Gal. 3:16 Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed…. that is, Christ…. 4:28 And you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise.
Isaac’s miraculous fleshly birth to Abraham by faith typified the eternal Spirit-birthing from all mankind to the heavenly Father by faith. Thus in the very genesis of Israel, we are presented with type upon type.
Isaac typifies Christ Jesus who was to come. “Father Abraham” typifies the heavenly Father. (This explains why Abraham remains the common global reference point among Jews, Muslims and Christians.) By extension then, Israel typifies the Father’s Seed from among all mankind, being the real Israel from eternity. This typification of eternal Israel by national Israel completely derives from Adam’s creational typification of the eternal Christ at the beginning.
Expanding Israel’s Typology
Under the sun, the natural foretype precedes that which is spiritually born. Thus Adam precedes Christ, Abraham precedes Christ, David precedes Christ, and the nation of Israel precedes the manifestation of God’s global eternal Family, aka, the church.
But from the eternal View, that which exists of eternity precedes that which is to later typify it. Thus, Christ precedes Adam. Christ is before Abraham. Christ is the root of David. Likewise, the eternal Family held in the loins of the heavenly Father precedes the nation of Israel. Said differently, eternal Israel precedes natural Israel.
The point here is to understand that, in its many naming and tribal characteristics, national Israel is derived from the Israel of heaven. The name Israel given to Jacob did not originate with Jacob. It originated from eternity with Christ! Christ is the One who has struggled and prevailed from eternity. And so have His spiritual descendants by faith, held from eternity within the Father’s heart. All the Father’s spirit-children through Christ comprise eternal Israel. But instead of being called Israel (“to struggle with God”), they are called overcomers with God. (“Overcomer” is just the name Israel in a different language.)
Likewise, the tribal names of Jacob’s sons have their origin in heaven. The eternal Family has spiritual tribal identities according to specific natures and callings in Christ. (Even today we recognize prophetic callings according to the tribes of Israel, such as “sons of Issachar.”) The same applies to the naming of key leaders in Israel (such as “David”) and to Israel’s places—especially its capital Jerusalem! All of these mirror eternal identifiers that precede Israel on the earth and which belong permanently to the eternal Seed of the Father.
On the other side of glory, those precedential eternal realities come into full force of manifestation. Most obvious will be the descent of New Jerusalem, on whose gates are written the names of the twelve tribes of eternal Israel, and on whose foundations are written the names of the twelve apostles. And let us remember that in that realm, previous names will be exchanged for new eternal names:
Rev. 2:17 ….To the one who overcomes… I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows except the one who receives it. 3:12 …and I will write on him… My new name.
All overcomers from all ages will be receiving new names, as will Jesus Himself. Therefore let us not be surprised if we find that the names of the twelve tribes and of the apostles written on New Jerusalem are not as we know them now! Moreover, as glorified eternal Israel finally comes forth with Christ to inherit the kingdom and the Promised Land, we can expect the names of lands and cities and places throughout the world to be changed.
The Type Always Fails …
If there was one thing understood from eternity, it was this: As necessary as creational imaging would be to Birthing an eternal Family, that imaging would unavoidably fail, necessitating a Redeemer to bring forth that Birthing. All further typification would also thus fail in process of bringing forth the eternal manifestation. Therefore Adam would fail. And later, Israel, the most detailed typifier through its native lineage, law and priesthood, would fail. And still later, the eternal kingdom as imaged by mortal flesh-laden believers called “the church” would fail—worldwide!
Yet though the type would always be known to fail, the Father in His inscrutable wisdom would never fail. He would still succeed at planting and bringing to birth His eternal Family from the ashes of all the failed typifications in every age that would make a temporal mockery of Him. Here, we are mindful that this price of “in your face” creational failure—requiring horrific redemption through His Son—was to the Father nevertheless worth it to resolve the impulse of His own eternal Yearning to Reproduce Himself.
…Yet It Endures
Even though the creational type and its subtypes through mankind fail, the Father sees to it that every type endures until it has accomplished servicing its purpose. This brings us to our concluding observation on national Israel as a failed type.
Even though Israel on a whole has proven a failed type of the eternal Seed (even to crucifying the Redeemer and rejecting the eternal Seed), not only has God not failed to obtain His intended remnant eternal Seed from their midst, but God will not allow His national adamic type through them to be exterminated. Moreover, He will not cease His operations regarding them until He has obtained a conclusive full national remnant body who in their entirety will double as eternal Seed.
The reason God will never allow the extermination of fleshly Israel is “for the sake of His promise to the patriarchs” (Rom. 11:28).
“But why does that matter?” one may ask. “Do not the patriarchs still have their true eternal Seed, and is it not that Seed which ultimately matters to them regardless of their past human lineage in Adam?”
While the answer to this question is “yes,” the reason the national type still matters is because the patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac, are specifically types of the Eternal Father and Son. As such, the Father’s promise to Abraham is by proxy a promise to Himself about His eternal Seed.
God cannot allow a type of Himself to go unfulfilled in type. If Israel as the type could be exterminated, it would message to the powers and rulers and principalities that eternal Israel could also be exterminated! It would say that the entire cosmological purpose for the extended Family could fail! Therefore to this end, all are warned not to adopt a carnal prejudicial attitude* against the national people of Israel despite their state of failure. To do so is to adopt such an attitude against one’s own eternal Israeli identity in Christ. (Just don’t do it.)
(* This is not to prohibit judicious prophetic confrontation with the people of Israel as required by the Spirit evidenced by Christ Himself. Let the reader discern his spirit.)
Some day it may be in ages future, that no more mortality will exist in the new heavens and earth. Such time may come when all earth death is swallowed up by eternal Life. Only then will mortal Israel cease. But until such time, mortal Israel will retain its calling as a shadow and type of eternal Israel promised of the Father, and He will succeed at bringing their entire surviving remnant forward with dual eternal Israeli identity in consort with establishing His manifest reign over the Promised Land.
IV. Eternal Birthing Requires Both Spirit-Identity Replacement and Soul-Personality Salvation
Ezk. 36:26 Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.… 29 Moreover, I will save you from all your uncleanness…32 I am not doing this for your sake,” declares the Lord God; “let that be known to you….
We wrap up this presentation by discussing the two pillar concepts marking the Father’s eternal Birthing plan inside of creation: identity replacement and personality salvation. The first is a matter of spirit, the other of soul. Both are vital to and completely align with God’s parallel eternal / temporal purpose stream we have outlined throughout.
Both ideas are well outlined in apostolic teaching on salvation. Sadly however, their distinction is rather muddied in the minds of most believers and Christian teachers. Thus we are prevented from discerning between what God actually births in salvation—what he redeems of us, versus what He does not redeem, but instead abolishes.
In the man-centric view, salvation is one generalized operation of human “makeover.” We believe that in “saving us from our sins,” God has made a judicial decision to forgive us (which He has), and has “added” a new spiritual awareness of who He is (only partly true). But otherwise, we remain essentially who we have always known ourselves to be from birth—an undivided spirit-soul being that we call “born again” (completely false). And from there, we just keep working on perfecting our soul behaviors (with His help) and maybe developing more spirit-gifting prowess (if we are Pentecostal).
Spirit-Identity ReplacementBut under the actual plan of eternal Birthing, God does not just “add” to us a new spiritual awareness of Himself, while leaving us otherwise the composite spirit-soul we have always been. Rather, as the indwelling Word, the Father divides our spirit from our soul (Heb. 4:12). And in that division, He abolishes and replaces our dead spirit-identity with our precreational spirit identity in Him, while also salvaging our soul. Listen to these words of identity abolition:
Gal. 2:19 For through the Law I died to the Law…. 20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live…. Col. 3:3 For you have died…. Rom. 6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him…into death… 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him…7:4 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death…
These are not statements of makeover. Likewise, the statements following these (on being “raised to life with Christ”) are not statements of makeover, but of replacement, seen most clearly here:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. II Cor. 5:17
The word for new in “new creation” literally means “of a new kind, unprecedented, unheard of.” Thus it cannot be a makeover of our adamic spirit. It is also impossible to have two spirit identities, retaining one from Adam, while “adding” another in Christ. There is no such thing as dual adamic-Christ spirit identity. The new can only replace the first. That is exactly what God’s word through Ezekiel says:
Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone… Ezk. 36:26
This all means that the newness of spiritual awareness we receive by new birth is not an addition to a past dead spirit nor an awakening of a dead man. It is rather the becoming of someone never before seen in the earth through Spirit-seed deposit, although found from eternity in the loins of the Father. It is the bringing forward from eternity of that identity into time, wherein we now have direct spirit descent from the Father through Christ—without respect to any human lineage:
…in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free, but Christ is all, and in all. Col. 3:11
Thus at new birth, we don’t just “receive” the Spirit, but have “become” a new spirit man in Christ, a becoming that first requires “abolishing” and “replacing” who we used to be in Adam. By that abolition, we have no more spirit lineage in the Adamic line of mankind. (That is the meaning of Ezekiel’s “removal” of the “heart of stone.”)
Only by means of that new spirit-becoming by way of first spirit-removal and replacement may we speak at all of “awakening;” and only because of that unprecedented becoming do we have actual knowing of the Father, which is eternal life. (Eternal life is not a “commodity” to be possessed or lost.)
Soul-Personality Salvation
In tandem with the swapping out of our spirit-identity, our soul-personality is what is actually “saved” in the course of our redemption. (Our adamic spirit-identity, being itself but creational type and shadow, is not saved.) As the object of salvation, our soul-personality is preserved at new birth by the initial washing of the blood of Christ, and then is ongoingly transformed from sin’s power and effects through the soul-crucifying and cleansing replenishment of Christ’s Life by the Holy Spirit now within us—all woven on the loom of our reborn spirit identity. (This is the parallel “saving from all your uncleanness” to which Ezekiel refers).
Again, this distinction between spirit and soul operations in new birth and salvation is critical! Where spirit identity is abolished and replaced by new spirit-seed birthing from beyond, our soul is not swapped out, but is renewed or “made over.” Thus the elements of our soul—our minds, our emotions, our wills—are saved. In this, our soulish life force left over from our past identity is indeed drained out, but the soul itself with its elements is not abolished and replaced. We do not receive a “new soul” from heaven.
Where the spirit is the seat of our identity, the soul is the seat of our personality. Where our identity is abolished and replaced, our personality is made over and renewed. This is why that, on one hand, our new identity makes us unrecognizable to the world, even as complete strangers to those still in Adam; yet our renewing personality remains recognizable to the world, even as it undergoes the transformation process in accord with the nature of Christ.
Our soul personality describes who we are in our natural habits, thoughts, desires and proclivities. Because it is not abolished and replaced, we still know what we know, who we know, and remember what we remember from this life. It’s why we still like what we like and don’t like what we don’t like—why we feel like what we feel like and don’t feel like what we don’t feel like—with respect to this life. All of this undergoes salvaging in conformity to Christ, yet our reborn identity is about none of this! Our new identity is keyed only to our eternal life in Christ that transcends all our soul issues.
The Key to Comprehending Eternity’s ShadowComprehending the truths between spirit and soul in our own salvation is essential to grasping the Father’s vast purpose in the cosmic eternal / creational design covered in this article. For the twin aspects of our salvation are completely derived from the duality we have studied between God’s eternal and creational fathering—something especially pertinent in our relating to “Israel.”
Under the commingled man-centered view of salvation, tunnel focus on what God redeems of us blinds us to what He abolishes and replaces. God’s work to save our soul-personality from hell is erroneously imputed to our spirit-identity which He does not save, but removes so as to birth anew out of eternity past.
Under such ignorance, believers seek God to preserve seats of adamic spirit identity that He is sworn to replace. We fail to see that by His eternal new Fathering, God has severed us from the core identities associated with His creational fathering of the family of this world.
Thus, in the name of “saving men,” we reinvest spiritual energies to persuade God to preserve our historic ties with Adam’s race and systems. We seek to sanctify identities God says cannot be sanctified, from which we were severed as a reborn people from another world. We become bogged down in culture wars we can never win, entangled in the affairs of culture, believing cultural salvation to be the meaning of “revival.”All this carries over to the constant confusion regarding “Israel” and the continual strife engendered thereby. Reborn saints stumble and fall on the sword of adamic Israel, whether “for” Israel or “against” Israel. God’s eternal children do not understand their own eternal identity as Israel, regardless of national origin. Saints haggle over adamic definitions of “replacement theology,” failing to understand that all God’s eternal children have been birthed by “replacement.” Without identity replacement, there is no salvation.
But those who find awareness of their essential identity in the eternal Father—finding renewed heart and mind to discover who they truly no longer are after human lineage—these find deliverance from all such fleshly errors and entanglements. They find true rest within. They stop falling on swords of familial and national and cultural issues, including those of adamic Israel, refusing to become entangled again therein. They know how to choose and learn how to win the only battles that count—the battles that perfect their sense of eternality in the Father through Christ alone.
To Conclude…The overview of cosmic reality painted in this complete discourse is nothing more than the following of our eternal reality in Christ to its true source and conclusion in Him as “the first and the last.” It is the result of removing man and human salvation from the center of our sense of cosmic purpose. Everything about anything is for the sake of the Father and His Son—especially for the Father’s will, need and desire as Eternal Progenitor from before time.
Those of us who have been sovereignly and graciously rebirthed inside this creational matrix derived from the Father’s pre-creational progenitorial Urging can do nothing but fall down at His feet of mercy as dead, thence to stand in awe and gaze in eternal amazement before His Throne.
May these ponderings lift all our vistas toward that which is fitting for those aspiring to imminent manifest sonship and brideship.
Selah.
Chris Anderson
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry
05/23
Webmaster littleflock@netzero.net
Page created August 15, 2023
