Friday Morning Manna September 27, 2019 Nathaniel Fajardo
email: [email protected]
God in His Divine Sphere and Man in His Human Sphere
“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
2 Cor. 5: 21, N.K.J.V.
That, is, God the Father made His only-begotten Son who knew no sin, to be sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of the Father that resides in the Son. The Creator, in becoming the last Adam through the incarnation, became the human-divine Sin Bearer—who never knew sin by experiment and experience—not even in thought and imagination—became sin itself—not became a sinner, like the first Adam who experimented with sin.
This is the hope that does not disappoint: That we sinners, who know sin by experiment, experience, and practice might become the righteousness of the Father which resides and abides in, and was magnified as it was manifested “before the world, men, and angels” in Christ Jesus, is not only a promise; it is its assurance, because the requirement of empowerment has already been fulfilled for us,—Christ was made to be sin for us who knew no sin, which took place in the incarnation. It was God who made Him so, not Mary.
Understanding the Incarnation Helps Understand What Is Perfection
Since God Creator did not cease to be God when He became a Man, and man does not cease to be man – he does not become an “angel” or becomes “another god”—but remains a man, should inform all sides of this difficult topic of this one fundament truth: from the beginning, God and man occupy different spheres. The first is the Creator, the latter His creature. There are no “cross-overs.” And that relationship remains forever. Man does not and cannot become God, and God remains God even after His Son became a Man in the incarnation. We are, by His incarnation and sacrifice, to become perfect in our human sphere even as He is eternally perfect in His divine sphere. He is God; we are man. He is divine; we are human. But by His incarnation, the Creator mysteriously combined and inextricably united humanity with divinity in Himself, forever. And it is thus that we fallen humans are to become perfect in our human sphere even as He is eternally and unalterably perfect in His divine sphere. It was His adopted humanity that was perfected by the things which He suffered—the only means by which He became the author of salvation,” the Savior, “of all who obey Him.” Heb. 5: 8, 9.
This exposes Satan’s lie that has been repeated and rendered even more “pleasing to itching ears” in these last days by the plethora of shiny merchants and traders of spiritual snake oil that it is impossible for anyone to fulfill what Jesus preached in the Sermon on the mount: “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5: 48) thereby rendering Him a liar! Note that Jesus said that this “perfection” is not even the perfection of the sinless angels, much less the human perfection of mortals such as the dead who have been and are still being added to the unending list of “canonized saints.” This perfection, Jesus said, is the perfection of God the Father Himself. Or as the verse says, “even as.”
Are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit always truthful and speak the truth only (the third Person of the Godhead is also called “the Spirit of truth,” John 14: 17)? Or are they also capable of dishonesty, lying then denying they did, prevaricating, exaggerating and distorting, deflecting and dissembling, deceiving and misleading, perjuring themselves, making promises they know they can’t and don’t intend to keep, concocting myths and fables, and are inconsistent and opaque–unpredictable in their actions and inconsistent with their words? There will be three classes of answers: (a) Yes (b) no (c) not sure.
All who truly love Jesus, whom they have not yet seen face-to-face but who through constant study (as in eating three square meals a day), are individually obtaining fresh revelations each day of who is, and are experiencing a corresponding growth of a working faith relationship with Him, understand what God means when explained what He, operating in His divine sphere, and we, operating in our human sphere means that needs to become combined and united, even as it was combined and united in Christ at His incarnation. He made it clear by showing the distinction between “My” in contrast to “yours”:
“My ways are not your ways and My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are My ways, says the Lord, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isa. 55: 8.
Then He shows how truthful and sure His spiritual word is, illustrating it by the operations of nature which everyone is familiar with, whether he hails from a place where it snows or in where it only rains, as directly associated with the basic need of food, etc. Notice:
“For as the rain comes down, and snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” vs10, 11.
How shall God’s word of truth “prosper in thing for which He sent it, so that it shall not return to Him void? By this: “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake [not excuse, rationalize, justify] his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” vs 6, 7.
This is what “returning to the Lord” means as taught in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. These are the grounds God specified from the beginning, and which Moses, His spokesman, diligently taught Israel as part of the preparation to enter in and possess the promised land. These are the grounds upon which God’s mercy “that endures forever” and pardon and forgiveness full and complete for past and present sins that are repented of and confessed by the only means specified in the sanctuary service (never the “future” ones), are granted.
“Indulgences”– paying or working for the “self-atonement” and forgiveness of one’s past, present and especially planned future sins—absolutely have no place or space in the vocabulary of Biblical truth for such is not “the ways and thoughts of God!” They are an abomination to God! Unless quickly and thoroughly repented of, while He may be found and while He is still near, “the sin of presumption.” David called it “great transgression,” which is big part of the sins of “Babylon the great” that have almost reached unto heaven” (Rev. 18). These will be subject to “the judgments of the Lord which are true and righteous altogether” (Ps. 19: 13, 9) .
No lie is of the truth. 1 John 2: 21. God cannot lie. Titus 1: 2. It is impossible for God to lie. Heb.6: 18. Indeed, “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent! Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” Num. 23: 19, N.K.J.V. Only “the liar from the beginning and father of lies” (John 8: 44), and “the man of sin” who pretends to be God (2 Thess. 2: 3-9), and all their followers are those who “love a lie, the only available alternative to not receiving the love of the truth.” They live in it and will not only die, but will perish in and by it—unless they repent. As Paul wrote: They “will perish because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, and that they may all be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” vs 10-12.
These are those who live by the claim that it is absolutely impossible for any mortal to become “perfect” because (a) we were “born in sin” and have a sinful human nature that is but natural to sin, and unnatural not to sin. Such is the argument of a still-unregenerate and carnal mind that needs to be spiritually born again, transformed, and come into possession of the mind of Christ. (b) no man can be like God, but that this only when the moral perfection through obedience that God required of Adam and all man. But they openly contradict themselves by their own same set of beliefs, that certain men and women, by their own ways and thoughts, have transformed themselves into “demigods,” such as avatars and so-called “enlightened ones” while still in the mortal state, whom they venerate. Or for others, when such individuals die, become “like gods” or “return to their divine state,” whom they, again, worship, adore, and pray to as their savior-mediators. Such is ancestor-worship, etc.
On the cross, this is also what happened to the incarnated human nature of Christ:
“Suddenly the gloom lifted from the cross, and in clear, trumpet-like tones, that seemed to resound throughout all creation, Jesus cried, ‘It is finished.’ ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.’ [Luke 23: 46]. A light encircled the cross, and the face of the Savior shone with a glory like the sun. He then bowed His head upon His breast, and died.”
“Amid the awful darkness, apparently forsaken by God, Christ [the last Adam] had drained the last dregs of human woe. In those dreadful hours He had relied upon the evidence [greater than visible presence] of His Father’s acceptance heretofore given Him. He was acquainted with the character of His Father; He understood His justice, His mercy, and His great love. By faith He rested in Him whom it had ever been His joy to obey. And as in submission He committed Himself to God, the sense of the loss of His Fathers’ favor [one meaning of “grace”] was withdrawn. By faith Christ was a victor.“ Desire of Ages, 756.
Clearly conscious that He was just about to breath His last, the last Adam “commended His spirit to His Father’s hands, meaning, His authority and love. He commended, not recommended. Commend here is the Greek parathitemi, meaning “to place alongside, i.e., present by implication, to deposit as a trust or as a protection; to commit; set forth.” Strong’s Greek Lexicon.
As Christ “Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself [Himself made, as the Maker and Creator of all thing] of no reputation [condescended and humbled Himself] taking [even] the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness [opposite of unlikeness] of man. And being found in appearance as a man [first by the host of angels, then Joseph and Mary, after that the magi from the east], He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Phil. 2: 6-8. He willingly and voluntarily humbled Himself. He was humbled by the Father, much less by puny mortals who, narcissistically believing they are “the princes of the people” and “the great men of the earth,” thought and still think, like fools, think they are greater than Him!
While Christ commended His life to the Father, it was not for the reason that it needed any protection for He had “the power to lay it down and take it up again” at its appointed “fulness of time,” but more of the sublime thought and spirit of lovingly “placing it alongside with that of His Father who alone with the Holy Spirit, shared His divinity and immortality. He had no reason to recommend His life to the Father for it is what He shares with Him from the beginning as the Word—life original, unborrowed, and underived—and that His obedience unto death in His adopted humanity was already known to them beforehand by omniscience and as planned before the foundation of the world.
So Apostle Paul wrote, after it was made known to man by its occurrence on earth, as the very evidence and testimony of the fact to “the world, men, and angels,” and that is: “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” vs 9-11.
Central to the plan of salvation was that God Creator was to take the place of man if and when he fell, and that first called for Him to temporarily set aside His divinity when He incarnated into a Man, rendering His divinity quiescent during a predetermined period of time and only for special purpose, in the fulfilment of the gospel. He did not give it up, yield, or surrender His divinity to anyone, not even to His Father; neither was it in any way diminished, lessened or somehow lost by His incarnation, nor His sacrificial death by crucifixion.
This setting aside of His divinity was not make-believe nor cosmetic in any sense. It was, as everything about Him is, real, authentic, verifiable, and was attested to by both His detractors and enemies as well as His followers and disciples. The fact that the religious leaders of the Jewish nation accused Him of blasphemy for claiming to be one with God the Father, with the power to forgive sins, (therefore had to be promised Messiah), testified to the fact that they stubbornly chose to believe darkness, against the overwhelming light of evidence of His miraculous works and unsullied life, was only human, worse, an impostor, “the chief of sinners,” “Beelzebub, the prince of devils.” It was as impossible for Him to lose His divinity as it is possible for God to lie and Himself become a sinner.
That Christ, in His divine act of
condescending to partake of the human nature, even to the “form of a servant” subject
to temptation, with the possibility of yielding is not the same as Him having
the similar possibility of losing His divinity when taking up humanity.
This is clearly expressed of Him being “the same yesterday, today and forever.”
(Continued next week)