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You were once outside the covenant, and now you are inside the covenant.
Your own salvation and rebirth are proof against your own words ...
How so? Actually it is not. Because I am now in covenant, I can partake of what those outside of covenant cannot.
The point is, you must enter into covenant to get the fruit. How are you having trouble seeing this?
Last edited by sciotamicks; 02-13-2010 at 02:46 AM..
Yes. Man was created before the garden, but he was created in the world outside of covenant.
In the garden there is the Tree of Life, in the New Heavens and Earth, there is the Tree of Life.
Garden redeemed. First Physical, second Spiritual. Covenant Eschatology.
First, National Israel. Second, Spiritual Israel.
Adam's death was not physical, but spiritual, and covenantal. It was real, with real consequences still being manifested today without Christ. Man without "eternal life" is a most miserable man. He needs to "come in" and "drink" and walk "through the gates" where the restored Tree of Life, Jesus Christ, is. What we have in Christ through the established dwelling of God with men is another invitation to eat of that Tree - the results of saying "no" are devastating: the second death.
The Tree of Life in Genesis was a physical tree (an ordinary tree) through which God would have given Adam eternal life. But he chose not to eat. The "eternal life" that would have come through "eating" is the same that now comes through eating of the Body of Christ and drinking his blood in the Spirit. I believe the Tree of Knowledge was an ordinary tree. It was the "commandment" that made it a vehicle through which a "power" ("the power of the sin") obviously brought upon Adam fear, guilt, shame and the sense of "nakedness."
These things that Adam was involved in were solely covenantal, spiritual, and redeemed by Christ.
God never promised to restore another physical Tree of Life. That came and went. However, He did promise eternal life to be offered again, and here is where the new offer comes into play: the Tree is now spiritual (of the Spirit) and heavenly. It is Christ Himself. What has been "restored" is not physical creation (which is where the futurists miss the boat - they start with the physical and end with the physical). It is not, either, starting with the spiritual and ending with the spiritual. Rather, it started with the physical and ends with the spiritual - just as Paul stated - rightly DIVIDING the word of truth between flesh and spirit. See, now that the Tree is not subject to physical location (as it was), those who have eaten of it cannot be "driven out" - they cannot be "exiled" - Once we come in, we are in. If the Tree in the beginning was purely "spiritual" - then Adam could have never been banished from that which would have been always available in the spiritual realm. He COULD NOT enter into that physical Garden gate. He was PHYSICALLY UNABLE to overpower the Cherubim. By transforming the world and bringing down from heaven the offer of eternal life, and by making the Tree invisible life of invisible quality, we, by the Spirit, can enter and receive that which UNDER THE PHYSICAL we never could have received.
Typology, it is what God teaches throughout the entire Word.
Yes. Man was created before the garden, but he was created in the world outside of covenant.
In the garden there is the Tree of Life, in the New Heavens and Earth, there is the Tree of Life.
Garden redeemed. First Physical, second Spiritual. Covenant Eschatology.
First, National Israel. Second, Spiritual Israel...
Yes, I understand where your going now. I see your mission...LOL
Do you see any typology (using symbolic foreshadowing) being expressed when God covered Adam and Eve, as well as all of Adam's descendants, while in the Garden, with the righteousness of Christ?:
Gen 3:21 And Jehovah God doth make to the man and to his wife coats of skin, and doth clothe them.
My brothers and sisters (whether or not you believe you are),
The entire context under which you are approaching scripture and God is corrupted by the view that God is trying to subdue rebellious subjects . . . instead of train and educate His children to become mature adults. When our species were spiritual infants and toddlers we needed to be handled very differently than when we were small children and more so when we became adolescents (which is approximately where we are today). How we saw and understood the motives and actions of our Father should have changed as well (God doesn't change . . only His treatment of us) . . . except too many of us have stagnated in our understanding and ceased to mature for various reasons attributable to the "precepts and doctrines of men" in our various religions. God is our Father . . . NOT some overlord subduing His evil and rebellious subjects!!! What percentage of your children would you save?(Forgive my frustration.) God bless. Yours in Christ, Mystic.
Yes, I understand where your going now. I see your mission...LOL
Do you see any typology (using symbolic foreshadowing) being expressed when God covered Adam and Eve, as well as all of Adam's descendants, while in the Garden, with the righteousness of Christ?:
Gen 3:21 And Jehovah God doth make to the man and to his wife coats of skin, and doth clothe them.
Of course. Why do think Cain's offering was "unaccpetable" and Abel was
Would you also agree that Cain was, none the less, justified before Jehovah based upon what Jehovah did for him (in Adam) in the garden?
No. What Jehovah did in the garden has nothing to with justification, but only a type/shadow of what was coming in the temple ordinances and later to be fulfilled in Christ, with the shedding of His blood. This is typology at the very beginning of the Word. No one was sanctified until Christ spilt His blood, and for the church, complete, renewed justification ONLY happens/ed at the resurrection of the dead. The purpose of the old covenant was to foreshadow the new, as the purpose of the new was to fulfill the old.
No one has been justified, that is, no one has come to know God, through obedience, and no one was ever meant to. God had imposed many rituals, ceremonies and regulations upon His people under the Law, but God nowhere taught that obedience -even perfect obedience- could result in eternal life. Instead, God intended the Law to instruct His people toward faith and to lead them through their history to Christ.
And even though the old covenant brought death and the New brought life, we should not infer from this that the old was evil. The old covenant, or the Law, was man's school master, intended by design to be incomplete in and of itself, and temporary in purpose. It heralded the way for the New Covenant and led God's chosen ones into it. It was in perfect agreement with the New Covenant, as a shadow is in perfect agreement with its object. The old things passed away, true, but not because the old covenant was bad or a failure in its purpose, but because it had served its purpose; its King had come to dwell among the people, fulfilling all the prophecies and all the laws of the old covenant with His own Presence. Even though the old covenant was glorious, holy, just and good, it vanished because it dimmed in comparison to the brightness of the glory of the Presence of Jesus Christ - Who was the Meaning and the Fulfillment, indeed the very Heart of the old covenant.
Now since the two covenants therefore did not refute each other, but served each other, we may conclude that the New Covenant was not given to introduce a salvation, or a salvation plan, that was alien to that of the old covenant. Jesus established His Covenant with His people upon those things which were firmly rooted in the old covenant. The old covenant saints were, and we ourselves are justified in the same one Way (Jn. 14:6; Acts 4:12).
It is appropriate in light of this truth, that we examine our view of how one is saved. If we find our understanding of how we're justified presented only in the New Testament but do not see it springing forth from every part of the old-covenant writings, we should soberly re-evaluate our understanding of that way of justification. In order for the New Covenant to be valid, it must be the revelation of the old. Or as we have often heard, the old covenant was the New Covenant concealed, and the New Covenant is the old covenant revealed.
Thus, there was always one Way of justification, as there is one God, one human family and one Eternal Covenant. That salvation was predicted, foreshadowed, and proclaimed in the old testament and it was a salvation that would be fulfilled and realized at the Cross of Christ, and fully consummated at His Presence/Parousia in the end of the old-covenant age in A.D. 70 (futurists point this resurrection forward, so no matter how you slice it, justification is not FULLY completed for them, but for myself, it is).
That Salvation is the heart of the old and New Testament.
What is the difference between how people came to know God in the Old Testament and how people come to know God today?
Whether Adam, Abraham, David, Paul, or you and me, we were all justified by grace through faith, in the Eternal Covenant. The old and the New Covenant teach the same Salvation of God; the old looked forward to it and the New Covenant realized it, but both covenants declared the same salvation. This is why Abraham is said to be our father even though he lived before the old covenant and we live in the new. Abraham was justified - he came to know God - by faith before he was circumcised, i.e., before he met any covenantal conditions. Abraham was justified by God freely and unconditionally, and that is how sinners of all ages are justified, for the Bible tells us that God's covenant of grace with Abraham was not for him alone, but that it is for all believers. The Bible also tells us that God's Covenant of grace with Abraham was never abolished, not even when God gave the Law to Moses at Mount Sinai (See Romans chapter 4, and Galatians chapter 3.).
God's unconditional Covenant is His eternal Covenant with man. God is one and He changes not. "But to one working, the reward is not counted according to grace, but according to debt. But to the one not working, but believing on Him justifying the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." (Rom. 4:4, and 5)
No. What Jehovah did in the garden has nothing to with justification, but only a type/shadow of what was coming in the temple ordinances and later to be fulfilled in Christ, with the shedding of His blood. This is typology at the very beginning of the Word. No one was sanctified until Christ spilt His blood, and for the church, complete, renewed justification ONLY happens/ed at the resurrection of the dead. The purpose of the old covenant was to foreshadow the new, as the purpose of the new was to fulfill the old.
This is where I think you are not seeing with eyes of faith. The Old covenant manifests, as well as foreshadowes, our spiritual blessings in Christ. We were justified and we were sanctified in Christ in God's eternal will, before the foundation of the world:
Eph 1:3 Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who did bless us in every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
Eph 1:4 according as He did choose us in him before the foundation of the world, for our being holy and unblemished before Him, in love,
Christ was slain for us from the foundation of the world:
Rev 13:8 And bow before it shall all who are dwelling upon the land, whose names have not been written in the scroll of the life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world;
The manifestations of our spiritual blessings, ie: justification, sanctification and glorification, are revealed to us in time. Justification (objectively manifested) at the cross, reckoning (subjectively so) at regeneration, and our glorification (subjectively so) in the resurrection.
In God's divine counsel, all of these events have been completed. They are all past tense:
Rom 8:30 and whom He did fore-appoint, these also He did call; and whom He did call, these also He declared righteous; and whom He declared righteous, these also He did glorify.
How so? Actually it is not. Because I am now in covenant, I can partake of what those outside of covenant cannot.
The point is, you must enter into covenant to get the fruit. How are you having trouble seeing this?
I am not having any trouble ... I believe as you entered into the covenant from without, and just as you entered the kingdom from without, so will all people enter into the covenant and the kingdom from without.
But you already know this ...
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