MID-WEEK MANNA FROM PASTOR NAT’S DESK:
September 20, 2023
God’s Saving Enmity
Part 36
GRACE IMPARTS ENMITY AGAINST SATAN AND SIN
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not ye yourselves; if [grace] is the gift of God [even as eternal life is, Rom. 6:23]: not of works, lest any man should boast. For WE are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus UNTO GOOD WORKS, which God had before ORDAINED that we should WALK IN THEM [the good works ordained in us, His workmanship].” Eph. 2: 8, 9, KJV [all emphasis and words in brackets mine]. Adam and Eve, mankind’s parents, were alone “created in the image and likeness of God” as the crowning act of His “workmanship” in His 6-day work of creation. Both were certainly “created in Christ Jesus,” the Creator, that is, in His image and likeness. But in the fall of man in Eden by transgression of God’s command in yielding to the temptation of Satan disguised as the serpent, man instantly lost his original immaculate character-image of innocent purity that was manifested as a soft white light covering their bodies. This garment of light instantly disappeared when they sinned, exposing themselves as naked, a symbol of guilt.
In God’s omnipotence, omniscience, “mercy that endureth forever,” and mysterious “love that conquers all,” His plan of redemption, “prepared before the foundations of earth were laid,” immediately kicked in. “The moment there was a sinner, there was a Savior!” God’s kingdom of grace instantly begun, inaugurated in Eden by the first lamb offered, typifying and certifying in its substitutionary death and spilled atoning blood that “the “wages of sin which is death.”
Four thousand years later, “the only begotten Son of God” and the “Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world,” as the promised “Seed of the woman” who the serpent would “bruise His heel,” died on the cross of Calvary, the antitypical altar of sacrifice. His death and the blood of God shed for the remission of sins—-which was first inaugurated in Eden as the KINGDOM OF GRACE [that saved Adam and Eve from instant death] was now RATIFIED—no longer with the typical blood of sacrificial animals, but with the antitypical, all-atoning blood of God in Christ Himself in the New Covenant!
Thus the Mosaic, Levitical, Ceremonial law with its system of sacrifices and earthly priesthood under the Old Covenant of the Old Testament dispensation was “nailed to the cross.” The death of Christ, “the Lamb of God” at Calvary was the transition point from the Mosaic-Jewish dispensation to the the New Covenant in the New Testament Christian dispensation. The former presented and preserved the gospel in symbols, as with the muted light of the moon at night; the latter, the gospel in substance, as in the glorious light of day!
We who are still alive today are living at the very closing hours of the New Testament, Christian dispensation. The ENMITY or the “great controversy between Christ and Satan” and their respective “seeds “ or followers is soon to reach its prophesied stupendous climax in “the time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time” (Dan. 12:1; cf. Rev. 7: 1, 2, 13: 1-18; chs. 15, 16).
Have you diligently appropriated the divine principle of enmity imparted by the Holy Spirit that alone enables us to “put on the whole armor of God,” “fight the good fight of faith” “fight the battles of the Lord where champions are few,” daily “overcoming the world, the flesh, and the devil” “by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony”?
This is major aspect of preparing to receive the seal of God in our foreheads—verily our “passports” giving us “the right to enter in through the gates into the city and eternal access to the the tree of life! Indeed, “saved by grace.”
To be continued next MWM, God willing. Bless all, NMF.