All Shall Be Made Alive
In the first message, I shared with you a passage which has become very controversial in the Church, and I want to pick up with that again. That is 1 Corinthians chapter 15, beginning at verse 20 and going through verse 23: "
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming."
You remember the question I ask earlier, is the "all" in Christ any less than the "all" in Adam? Because if we can take that verse literally, just as it is spoken, As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. the question is answered. And to understand how this could possibly be, how we all died in Adam, and are made alive in Christ, we need to go back to the very beginning of creation to see what God’s original purpose was for creating man.
I know we have all heard this, but God’s original design, intent and purpose was to create humanity to contain and express His life on the earth. That was His intention from the very beginning. "Let us make man in our image, and let them have dominion over the earth." So man was created to have the very life, nature and character of God, and then to be a possessor and take dominion over the earth. But we all know what happened: For as in Adam all died . .
That caused Adam to die? Every one of you could tell me that when Adam chose the wrong source for his life, it brought to him death, and then that death passed to all mankind, because we all choose to live by the knowledge of
good and evil. That is what the Word says. So that means that you had nocontrol over this life of sin and death when you came into this world. When you came from the womb, you had absolutely no control over the life that Adam gave to you. Now religion gives us a totally different picture. Religion tells us that you are a free moral agent, and God has given to you a free will, therefore you have the capability to choose right or wrong; you have the capability to choose either God, or a life of self; you have the capability and the free will to choose. We do have the freedom to choose, but as we will see, our will is bound up in the fall of Adam.
The Knowledge of Good and Evil Brings Death
When I was a struggling Christian with much bondage in my life, I was told, "The devil doesn’t make you do the things you do. You have a choice, and if you will choose to do what is right, then that will enable God by His Spirit to work in your life. But you have to make the right choices." And you know what? I never made the right choices! I often tried making the right choice, but I found that I seldom had the power to carry through with it. Now I know a lot of people do, but I didn’t have the character, nor the strength. I wanted God, but I also wanted the life that I had which was not compatible with the Christian life. I know a lot of people live at that place where I was. But all I was told was, "Gary, it’s up to you. You have the free will to make the right choice."
Then one day God revealed to me that my choice was made by Adam! Romans 5:12 says,"Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so in this way death came to all men,
because all sinned." Now I have to ask you again: What brought Adam into death? What in the world did he do that caused him to die and caused me to die with him? God placed him in a garden with various things to eat and gave him very few instructions. When God created Adam He didn’t give him a rule book, He gave him just a couple of words. He said, "Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat. But the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you are going to die." That is what brought death to humanity. I have been teaching this for years, and I still do not have the full realization of it; I still don’t have the full experience of it. But I’ll tell you this that the root of the darkness, and the alienation in our minds from the life of God, is the fruit of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now consider: "Knowledgeof good and evil". Think about the teachings of Christianity, or any religion in the world. What is the basis of their teaching, if it isn’t based upon the knowledge of good and evil? I know of no religion in the world, including Christianity that does not base almost everything it teaches on choosing the good over the evil. Yet God says, "The very day, that you begin to eat that fruit, the very day that you begin to discern the difference between good and evil, is the day that you will die."
Why did God call it a death? It is because when God created Adam, He breathed into him, and we know that the word "breath" is the same word as "spirit," so what God breathed into Adam was His very own life and His nature. It says there was a Tree of Life in the midst of that garden, which simply means that Adam could have chosen to depend wholly and solely upon the life of God that was in him, the life that God literally had breathed into him (and there is so much in that life of God!). The life that God breathed into Adam was simply everything that He was. He breathed into him His energizing, quickening life. He breathed into him His power, His authority. Adam was an example of everything
that God wanted on the earth. And God said to him, "Don’t partake of the knowledge of good and evil, because the moment that you begin to eat of thefruit of that tree, you will die." You will be cut off from My life. Your consciousness will be separated, and you will become in your consciousness separated from Me, as a separate entity. And you will begin, then, to live your life not by the knowledge of the life that I placed within you, for that will be cut off, and you will have nothing left but a knowledge of good and evil. You will struggle all of your life trying to discern and trying to choose the good over the evil, but you will be cut off from My life. And then you will take this nature that is separated from Me, and you will produce sons in your own image." That is what happened at the fall, and that is what the Bible says. Adam and Eve then produced sons after their image. They lost the image of God.
What was the very first thing that Jesus did on the day of resurrection? The Word says in John 20:22 that on the eve of His resurrection, He appeared. The doors were closed, but He appeared in the midst of the disciples, and the very first thing that He did, it says, is He breathed on them and said,"Receive ye the Holy Ghost." That act restored back to those men what Adam had lost in the garden! Jesus once again, as God did in the beginning, breathed His
life into them. 1 Corinthians 15:45 says, "Christ was made aLife-giving Spirit." And that’s why Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life. Do you really want to live by God? Then you have to know how to eat of Me. Do you really want to live, do you really want life?" He said, "As the Father has sent Me, and I live by the Father, whosoever will eat of Me will live by Me." That is the promise—if you eat of Me, if you learn to assimilate My life, you will live by Me.
This is why Paul said, "Don’t be as the gentiles, walking in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God." To be alienated from the life of God means that you believe in your consciousness that you and God are two separate entities. To be in death simply means that
you cannot possibly even imagine that you and God are not two entities, but one. But that is how it was in the beginning; Adam was a full replica of what God wanted in humanity. That is why he was called "the first Adam," and Jesus is called "the second Adam" and "the last man". Jesus fulfilled that which Adam failed to do. Jesus restored man back to the Tree of Life. Humanity can once again live by the life of God, instead of trying to choose the good over the evil.
Now, not only did Adam make a fatal choice, but here is where Christianity as a whole has made the same mistake. Very, very shortly, just within a few years—in fact even beginning within the lifetime of the Apostle Paul, men began to revert back to the knowledge of good and evil, rather than learning how to discern and live by that life that was breathed into them by the new birth. Religion tells us this: "God loved you so much that He sent His own Son to die for you on the cross." And we are told that for the joy that was set before Him, Jesus endured the cross. But the magnitude of that victory, in the Christian’s eyes, is so limited, because we have been fed for two thousand years from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. "If you are good, God will bless you; if you aren’t good, God won’t bless you." The magnitude of Calvary’s victory, according to the religious eyes, is that, yes, Jesus died for the world; He suffered on the cross, but His victory is limited only to those who, first of all, receive Him as Savior, and then after that learn to live by His rule book.
The book of Ephesians talks about the eternal purpose of God. The eternal purpose of God is that man would live from the flowing of God’s life within him. Paul mentions several times in the Book of Ephesians, especially in chapter 3, the "mystery" of the gospel. We all know that if something is a mystery, it is sometimes not that easy to figure out. The Gospel is a deep and hidden mystery, especially from religious eyes, especially from people who have been trained all of their lives to discern the difference between good and evil. Now I know that there is a verse in the Bible which says that some have exercised their senses to discern both good and evil. But it doesn’t say that they have learned to
discern the difference between good and evil. It says they have learned to discern good and evil, yet both are from the same source! It’s not too hard to discern evil, but it is very, very difficult to discern the truth about good sometimes. The truth is that you can be very good, and still not have God’s character and His substance formed in your life.
If what the Word teaches us is true, just as sin entered into the world by one man, and through that sin death passed to all men, then what passed to all men was that seed that Adam took into him from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are born into this life with that seed in us. I know this is a repeat, but we must hear this and clearly get an understanding of it. Before God’s people can ever grasp fully the reconciliation that He wants to bring through them, they have to understand His heart, because if you don’t understand the heart of God, and you do become filled with His authority and His power, you will use it to judge, and you will not judge righteously.
To be continued
Related Subject Matter : http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-like-itbut-it-isnt-tree-of-good.html
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