Mortality versus
Immortality
Chapter 2
The flesh wars against the spirit, so that we
cannot do the things that we want to do. The soul unites with the body, using
it as the vessel through which it produces a manifestation of what it believes
itself to be, and denying the truth expressed by the spirit. The carnal mind as
an aspect of the soul, is actually an enemy of God, refusing to receive the
truth that would bring man into unity and oneness. Note that Jesus declared, "I
and my Father are one." This statement does not admit to any divisions
within his being at all. He refers simply to the "I" as a single
unit. Otherwise he could have said, "I," my spirit, soul and body,
and my Father are one. Let us remember that in creation Adam was male and
female. This means that the spirit representing the male, and the soul
representing the female aspect of man, were united as one, and did not function
independently. In view of this, Paul expresses man as a dichotomy, rather than
as a trichotomy, which is commonly quoted today in Christian circles. Paul says
we have an outer man that is perishing every day, and an inner man that is
being renewed every day.
Now let us look at Heb 4:12, "For the Word
of God is quick and powerful and sharper than a two edged sword, piercing even
to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and
is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." We are not
always capable of discerning that which is "of God," but the Word
(the Logos) can distinguish between that which has originated in Spirit and
that which has come from the soul. However, Paul does use the three parts that
are commonly referred to as man in 1 Thes 5:23. "And the God of Peace
himself sanctify you through and through, and your whole spirit, soul and body
be preserved blameless unto the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Here Paul indicates that the purpose of God is to separate us totally unto
Himself and not just certain aspects of our being. He goes much further by
emphasizing that each one of us is to be totally sanctified. He then states
that each aspect of every person, spirit, soul, and body, is to be sanctified
through and through. (To be preserved entire.) Paul conceives of the man being
an undivided whole, and not simply a combination of three parts, which has been
the concept of most Christians. This unity of being that Paul communicates to
us in his writings, appears to have been overlooked by most Christians today.
As long as we continue to live with this duality of having an "inner man"
and an "outer man," we will remain locked into our mortality.
Paul said in 1 Cor 15:51-54. Amp.,
"Behold I show you a
mystery. We shall not all fall asleep (in death) but we shall all
be changed or transformed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound
of the last trumpet call. For a trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will
be raised imperishable (free and immune from decay) and we shall be
changed or transformed. For the perishable part of us, must put on
the imperishable nature, and this mortal part of us (this nature that is
capable of dying) must put on immortality (freedom from
death). And when this perishable puts on the imperishable, and this
(that was) capable of dying, puts on freedom from death, then shall the
scripture be fulfilled that says, Death is swallowed up (and utterly
vanquished forever) in and unto victory."
How wonderful it is to contemplate that it is the
divine will and purpose that the "perishable" part of us will put on
immortality. The voice of the Son of God will penetrate the prison of our
Adamic graves calling us forth into incorruptible life. The tragedy is that we
have made a covenant with death, just as Israel did, believing that it has the
right to terminate our life whenever it so determines. This is because the
carnal mind cannot believe that death has already been defeated. The truth is
that we died in Christ on the cross, and we were buried in Him, and that we
came forth in resurrection life in Christ.
Now we can say with him, "I am he that
liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore and I hold in my hand
the keys of hell (the grave) and death." All that can rob us of
our victory over death is the carnal mind. Once our body has been released from
its mortality it is free to be united with the spirit and so be incorporated
into oneness with the Father.
Jesus took three disciples up on the mount, and he
was transfigured or transformed before them, so that out of his flesh and blood
form, radiated the divine light, brighter than the noonday sun. Hebrews 2:14,
confirms that He himself partook of the same nature as mankind, so that going
through death He might destroy him that has the power of death. This clearly
indicates that it is not this flesh and blood body in itself that prevents us
from entering into immortality. The Lord God gave form to the man created in
the beginning, out of the dust of the earth, Genesis 2:7. The man that was
formed was a manifestation of the Lord God himself, being energized by the same
spirit. The "form" in no way robbed Adam at that time, from living in
oneness and union with God, nor did it prevent him from being immortal. He was
told that the only thing that could bring him into death was to eat the fruit
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It had nothing to do with the
dust out of which he was formed, but death would result from embracing the
knowledge of good and evil.
Religion has taught us that we cannot be immortal
until after we die. First we have to get rid of this flesh and blood body, and
then in the "sweet bye and bye," we will be resurrected and taken to
heaven with a new heavenly body. But this cannot be true for several reasons.
One is, that Paul tells us, we already have our heavenly immortal body right
now, in 2 Cor 5:1. "For we know that if our earthly house of this
tabernacle be dissolved, we have (not will get) a building of God a
house not made with hands that is eternal in the heavenly realm."
Notice that the word "dissolved," has nothing to do with death.
However, it does mean according to Strongs, "To dissolve or to dis-unite
that which has been joined together."
Jesus said in Matt 19:4-6,
"Have you not read, he
that made them in the beginning made them male and female. For this reason
shall a man leave his mother and father and cleave unto his wife and they two
shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no
more two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put
asunder or separate,"
It’s about time we listen and hear what the spirit
is saying to us today. These scriptures are quoted at practically every
marriage ceremony. We interpret them as meaning simply, that God has now joined
these two people together, which could be questionable in reality. Then we say,
that no man has the right to break the bond between them. If we really believed
this, then there would be no divorce. However, we discover that the Lord God
spoke these words in the Garden of Eden, when Eve was brought to the man, after
God separated her from the one she was joined to in the beginning. So the reason
for these words was this separation of Eve from Adam.
In creation, we find that God had joined together
the male and the female, so God called them Adam, and not Adam and Eve. However
the soul and the spirit in the garden, have now become separated, and the soul
has prostituted herself by becoming one with the body, defying the purpose of
God in creation. The result of this change caused the body to be energized by
the soul through the blood, and no longer by the Spirit, and this resulted in
mortality. The Spirit that energized the body causing it to be
"light," was now replaced by the soul, and the "light"
became blood, through which the body was now energized. Thus was born the flesh
and blood body of our mortality, and limited to expressing only a manifestation
of the soul. Lev 17:11 says,
"For the life (soul)
of the flesh is in the blood!"
The carnal mind only reads the ink on the paper,
and never hears the spirit speak the truth into our hearts, so we read Gen
2:21,
"The Lord God caused a
deep sleep to fall upon Adam."
The Hebrew word used here according to Strong's
concordance means, "sleep or a trance," which is derived from another
word meaning, "to be unconscious." So it was while Adam was under the
influence of this "trance or unconsciousness," that the soul, or
female part of his being, tore itself away from the spirit to which it was
joined in the beginning.
Here is a picture of the Prodigal Son, taking all
that belonged to him to use according to his own will and desire, separated
from his Father. The "soul" had the capacity to think, to reason and
to bring forth a manifestation of itself in union with the body, but quite
apart from the spirit. This is what the Bible calls flesh, which is something
God never, created, but is the product of the living soul. Under these
conditions the image and likeness of God could not be expressed, for it is the
spirit that is the image of God. So without the union of the soul and spirit,
the likeness of God cannot come into manifestation.
What is it then that Paul says has to be separated
to release us from our mortality? The
answer should become obvious to those with ears to hear what the spirit is
saying to God's people today. There must be a leaving and a cleaving, before we
can function as we were created in the beginning. A man (mankind) must leave
his mother and father and cleave unto his wife. What is the spirit actually
saying to us? Our sense of birth through egg and sperm, (mother and father,)
must be abandoned, and another form of conception realized that is not of this
world.
The angel said to Mary, "The Holy Ghost
will come upon you and the power of the Most High God will overshadow you, and
therefore (because of this, immediately a conception will take place and) that
holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called The Son of God."
This is an immaculate conception, without egg or sperm, by the incorruptible
seed the Word of God, that liveth and abideth forever.
Just think about it, that Holy Thing that is
birthed in us at that moment is the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father and the
Prince of Peace, and upon his shoulder rests the government of our being and
every circumstance that involves us! Isaiah 17 & 23 says,
17."For behold I create
new heavens and a new earth, (speaking of us) and the former shall not
be remembered nor come into mind. 23.And they shall not labour in vain nor
bring forth for trouble, for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and
their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass that before they call I
will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb
shall feed together, and the Lion shall eat straw like the bullock, (the
nature of the wicked shall be changed). They shall not hurt or destroy in
all my Holy Mountain saith the Lord."
Ever since the separation of the soul and the
spirit in the Garden of Eden our body has been controlled by the carnal mind
that Paul says is "death." The soul consists of the mind, the will
and the emotions, that have no input from the spirit while the soul is
separated. From that time the soul has used the carnal mind to control the
body, through the emotions and the will, according to the knowledge of good and
evil and under the law of sin and death. For this reason Paul said in Rom. 7:18,
"For I know that in me
that is in my flesh (my body) dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present with me but how to perform that which is good I find
not. For the good that I want to do I do not do, but the evil, which
I would not, that I do. 20Now if I do that I would
not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 21I
find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is
present with me."
This is the law of sin and death that robs us of
immortality. Paul makes it clear that to be controlled by the carnal mind is
death, but to be controlled by the spirit is life and peace. It is the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that sets us free from the law of sin and
death, and therefore makes us free from mortality.
So Paul makes it clear that if our body can be
freed from its allegiance to the soul and the carnal mind, it can begin to
function through the spirit of life in Christ who dwells within us. Paul told
us in Romans 12:2,
"be transformed by the
renewing of our mind."
This can only take place as the soul is reunited
with the Spirit as it was in the beginning, when man was created male and
female as one. Paul expresses this in Gal 3:27-28,
"For as many of you as
were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew or Greek, there is
neither bond or free, there is neither male nor female…..for you are all one in
Christ."
The apostle John said in1 John 1,
"That which was from the
beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes."
Of course, that is not your natural eyes. Paul
said in 2 Cor 4:16,
“For which cause we faint
not, though our outward man perish, the inward man is being renewed
everyday."
So there are two parts to your being. There is an
outer man, and there is an inner man. The Greek word "inner" is
esoteric, which means hidden. Now you can have an MRI or an X-ray, but you will
never see that "inner man" for it is Christ, the reality of who you
are. Many people say they have come to understand that their true identity is
Christ. But it is just academic knowledge, as it has never become their living
reality. You can never live as Christ, until you have broken the illusion of
your mortality. We have to die to our mortality, in order to live as Christ who
is immortal.
Paul goes on to say in verse 17,
"For our light affliction,
which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight
of glory, while we are looking not at the things that are seen."
Paul is saying that our focus has been so
concentrated upon that which is visible to our natural eyes, that we have
missed that which is invisible, our true identity. Our natural body has hidden
the Christ from our view, so we continue to live out of our false identity as a
mortal human being.
Matt 16:13 says,
"Jesus came to the coast
of Cesarea and said to the disciples, Who do men
say that I the son of man am?"
And they said that the people did not really know,
but they thought he could be one of the prophets. The reason was that they only
saw what their natural eyes could see and that was the outer form called Jesus.
So Jesus turned the question around and looked right at the disciples and said,
"Who do you say that I am?" Peter stood up having received
revelation from God, looked into the eyes of this man standing in front of a
him and said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
But what was Peter looking at standing right in front of him? He was looking at
a man, who looked just like you and I do now, yet he could say, "You are
the Christ!" How did he see what others could not see? Because Father had
opened his eyes, and he saw into the reality of who Jesus was. While everybody
else was saying He was the carpenter's son or Mary's boy, Peter was able to
look beyond the physical and see that there was a reality beyond that outer
form.
Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ died on the
cross. But the body that hung there was not the Son of God, which is Christ. It
was the last Adam, the last of a race of people, who like Adam had become
mortal, functioning out of the knowledge of good and evil, and so were subject
to death. He died on the cross, and was buried, and we need to know that the
body Jesus had before the cross no longer existed for it had died. It was the
Christ that came forth in the resurrection, that rose from the dead, and His
body was spirit materialized. That which is planted must die before the new
life can come. So Jesus died that the Christ might be released in us, and the
body now freed from its allegiance to the soul is energized and sustained by
the spirit, making it immortal.
Did you know that your mortal body has no more
life in it than a brick. Just think about that? It is something else that
provides the life for your body. Gen. 2:7 says,
"And the Lord God formed
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living soul."
A living soul must keep breathing air to exist. It
is recorded in Gen 7:22 concerning the flood, that every man in whose nostrils was
the breath of life, died. It was Job who said, "All the while my breath
is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips shall not speak
wickedness." So we can see that our life comes to us through the air
that we breathe, which means that it must be constantly replenished or we will
die. We have no way of storing "life," and what we have is only
sufficient until the next breath.
It is interesting that the word for breath, wind,
and spirit is the same word in the Hebrew language, "ruwach." God is
spirit and that spirit fills our universe as the air we breathe, filling the
entire universe. In The New Testament the word for wind and spirit in the Greek
is "pneuma." So as we breathe in the air we are receiving of God, but
very few people are even aware of it. The air we breathe not only sustains our
life, but we make use of it to speak and communicate. So in the beginning when
God spoke, the spirit went forth to bring into manifestation that which was in
the heart of God. Jesus was able to say that the words He spoke are spirit and
life. Now we are better able to understand that when our life is transferred
from the "air in our nostrils," to our true identity, which is
Christ, our life will no longer depend upon the air we breathe. In our mistaken
identity we cannot see that we have the source of life itself within us,
because Christ is our life. This is what Jesus said, "For as the
Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in
himself." Beloved we read these things, but most times without
understanding!
Man, born of a woman does not have life in
himself, for he must continue to breathe air (spirit) through his nostrils or
he will die. But the Son has life in himself, and is not dependant upon the air
he breathes to sustain his life. The Son is one with the Father, who is the
source of all life. So the Christ in us, who is our life, provides us with that
same life which is now resident within us. Therefore, Christ is our life, and
our body is now being sustained, not simply by the breath in our nostrils, but
from the fountain of life within. The transfer of our life source from the air
we breathe to the indwelling Christ will bring a change to our bodies, just as
Paul told us.
As we realize our true identity is Christ and we are
no longer a living soul, the body is released from its sense of duality and
mortality and becomes united as we were in the beginning. The soul and the
spirit are no longer separated, so together with the body we become one, body,
soul and spirit, functioning in glorious unity expressing the image and
likeness of God. With the spirit within now as the source of life, the body
becomes a manifestation of God. This change Paul says, will be in a moment, or
in the "atoms" of our body all of which are spiritual entities.
Endued by the spirit, the body will become spirit materialized, just the same
as the body of the Christ. Paul said in 1 Cor. 15:49,
"For as we have borne the
image of the earthy, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly."
This is what makes us immortal, for Paul says in 2
Cor. 5:4,
"For we that are in this
tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that
we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up
of life."
This means that as we are clothed upon by the spirit,
then our body will be no longer be simply flesh and blood, but it will be
"swallowed up of life." In other words the body will become
spirit materialized, and therefore it will be immortal. So the encouraging
words of Paul ring in our ears when he said in 1 Cor. 15:51,
"Behold I show you a
mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we all shall be changed, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump; for the trumpet shall sound and the dead ( who
live out of the carnal mind) shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be
changed."
John 1:12, "But to as many as received
him, to them he gave the authority to become something." It does not
say, "If you receive me, you are a son of God." No, it says, "If
you will receive me, acknowledging me as Lord, then I will give you the
authority to become something! Even to them that believe into his name."
You will have the authority to become a Son of God, but there is a provison
here, which most people have never noticed. Look at Verse 13,"Which are
born not of blood." If you are born of blood you cannot be a son of God.
John says, those that are born of blood, that is,
those that have been born of a woman, cannot be a son of God. In the natural
there is nothing in the world that you could do, or that I could do, to make
you my son, because you were never born into my family. God is Spirit;
therefore His sons must also be spirit! The only way you could be a son of God
would be if you were born out of God, and if God was your Father, only then
could you be a son of God. Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born from
above." However, this is not a formula for salvation, but a
statement of fact if you want to enter the Kingdom of God.
Let us go back to the epistle of John again in 1
John 1:1,
"That which was from the
beginning, which we have heard, and which we have seen with our eyes, and we
have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life."
You see, this is not something that John was told
about. This is not something that John heard Paul preaching in some great
cathedral somewhere. This is John saying, "I have heard something that was
from the beginning, and I have seen something that originated in God. I have
seen it and I have handled it. This is my reality!" Until this becomes our
reality, there is nothing that we have that will interest the world. Not until
we can go out there and people recognize that we have came from God!
Christ is in every man and is the identity of all
humanity even though they do not know it. Beloved, you are the word God spoke
into existence in the beginning, created in Christ Jesus. You are created in
the likeness and the image of God, with dominion over all things! You have got
to break out of this illusion that says you are just a mortal human being and
the limitation, which it puts upon your life, and begin to live out of the
spirit, which is Christ.
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:16, "Wherefore, from this time on"... From this moment. Mark it on your calendar, "From this moment on, we are to know no man after the flesh, even though we have known Christ after the flesh we do not know him that way anymore." If Peter could look into the eyes of the man called Jesus and say, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God," we also must begin to see Christ in each other. That is the proof that you have begun to break the illusion. The Christian world has never let Jesus go, they are looking for that same human form that walked the dusty roads in Jerusalem, to return out of the sky because they do not know the ways of God.
We read in Acts 4:12, "Neither is there
salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among
men, whereby we must be saved." I thought that his name was above
every name, and that "at the name of Jesus every knee would
bow." The Greek word translated Jesus is "IESOUS," which
means Jehovah is Salvation. Jehovah comes from the Hebrew "Jehoshua"
who led Israel into the Promised Land. It is interesting that the man created
in Gen 1:26, is called Jehovah Elohim, which is a compound name. It represents
a union of God and man functioning as one, just as Jesus declared, "I
and my Father are one." Jesus Christ was a true representation of man
as he came from the Creator’s hand in the beginning, for indeed He was a
God-Man. This is Christ the Son of the Living God, whose dwelling place has
always been the man God created. We are the many mansions, or abiding places in
"Father's House." Christ has prepared a place for us in Father's
house by obtaining a perfect salvation for us, destroying him that had the
power of death, releasing us from our mortality and restoring us to our
original place in God in the beginning.
Jehovah or Jesus is the man-ward aspect of God,
and that is what Jesus was in his life on the earth. Christ is the God-ward
aspect of man, expressing himself through the body that was prepared for Jesus.
In exactly the same way today Christ in us, purposes to express what He is
through us, for we also have a body that was prepared for us just as it was for
Jesus, see Hebrews 10:5. So we are told that God does not want sacrifice and
offerings, but he wants our body to be the vehicle through which he can express
himself. This is what salvation is all about, and the testimony of Christ on
the earth is dependant upon our body being liberated and available to bring
forth a manifestation of Himself.
So today is it not simply Jesus Christ who was one
man who yielded himself to become an expression of the Christ life and blazed
the trail for us to follow. For now we have Dave Christ, Don Christ, Sheila
Christ etc., etc. And you can simply add your name as you come into the
realization that you were created in Christ Jesus, in the beginning, and you
are that Word that was spoken into existence by the Creator.
You have got to meditate on these things. You must
spend sometime in the presence of the Lord, and say, "Lord I understand I
have been deceived, creating an illusion that has had me bound. But now Lord,
open my eyes to see reality and give me light to see the way I must walk to
follow the footsteps of the Master, to fulfill the divine purpose for which I
was created." This experience will produce the miracle of change, as this
mortal puts on immortality, and we find ourselves living again in Father's
house. This change is nothing less than a "metamorphosis," which is
the word used by Paul in Rom 12:1-2. This is the changing of the caterpillar
into the butterfly, and it is a divine work. I am not telling you that you can
just shake your head and change your mind and you've got it. I'm telling you
that you have to begin to search for reality in God, in the Christ that is your
identity! You have to see into that Christ, who is the likeness and image of
God. You have to look into your own eyes and see Christ in there. You have to
know that this is your true identity. You have to begin to live out of it
instead of out of this mortality. And then things are going to change!
May the Lord bless you, encourage you, and set you
free.