MID-WEEK MANNA FROM PASTOR NAT’S DESK:
April 3, 2024
The Law of God and the Cross of Christ Series – No. 5
THE FIRST AND SECOND ‘WAYS OF ESCAPE’ SUMMARY
The first “way of escape” God provided for our first parents and all their children, mankind itself, was the divine “enmity” He immediately “put” between Satan disguised as a serpent, the first of all spiritualistic mediums thereafter, between the woman Eve, the mother of mankind and their respective “seed.”
This enmity had no existence prior and neither were Adam and Eve originally designed and made from the dust of the ground (never from “spirit”) physically or especially spiritually, programmed or wired so to speak with this one-off function and power, or even a special gift” as “a way of escape.”
The word itself “escape,” meaning “to break free or flee from,” “unshackle,” gives the transformed yet finite and mortal (no longer carnal) SPIRITUAL MIND of the true follower of Christ and diligent student of the Word some idea of this great “mystery of iniquity” in stark contrast to the “great mystery of godliness” as was and is manifest in the incarnated Creator Christ Jesus.
Hence the absolute indispensability of a genuine and full conversion of the sinner previously possessing a “carnal mind,” being “transformed by the renewing of that mind” into “the mind of Christ” (Rom. 12:2, 1; Phil. 2:5-2). Only such a mind can “discern spiritual things,” and “set their affections on things above” that are eternal, not temporal in value. (Col. 3:2; 2 Cor. 4:18). Paul reminds all: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be.” (Rom. 8: 6-8).
The second “way of escape” God provided for man after the fall in Eden was intentionally both visceral and instructional, divinely-designed by its shock value to emphasize the exceeding sinfulness of sin and thereby cherish hatred towards it—-the killing and shedding of its blood of the very first yearling male lamb as a burnt offering on the first stone altar, set up just outside the gates of the garden of Eden.
If revealed to the fallen father and mother of mankind that indeed “sin is the transgression of the law” and that its “wages is death.” That the only hope the transgressor has is not “to do away with the law” but for someone pure and innocent of any sin to volunteer to take the place of the guilty and condemned one as his substitute and surety.
This is the only living-sacrifice, ransom and redemption price demanded by God’s immutable law of righteousness that had been transgressed: the life of the transgressor. Nothing else or less could suffice or could take its place as the only acceptable atoning sacrifice. It was only then that indeed “the law was to be magnified and made honorable” by the Law giver himself. (Isa. 32:21).
It was this first of all typical animal sacrifices, especially and specifically the lamb, in contrast to the other specified clean animals such as goats, bullocks, and doves. All were types or “shadows” of the great Antitypical Lamb of God who would offer Himself four thousand years later at Calvary’s Cross!
At this pivotal point in the plan of redemption type would meet antitype, shadow its substance when all the system of sacrifices and the system of the priesthood, instituted by Christ himself under the ceremonial law governing them, would be “nailed to the cross” with Christ.
The GOSPEL IN SYMBOLS—-with the law of Ten Commandments originally written with God’s finger on two tables of stone secreted within the ark of the covenant/testament/testimony that stood alone in the most holy apartment of the earthly tabernacle/ sanctuary on earth, that was always set in the midst of the encampment of Israel and preceded them in all their travels—-as taught in the Old Testament of the Mosaic-Levitical dispensation to and through ancient Israel as a nation—-would then transition to the GOSPEL IN CHRIST through the Holy Spirit in the New Testament Church of the Christian Era till Christ returns in His second advent.
To be continued next MWM, God willing. Bless all, NMF.