A Positive Intention in Salvation
Ephesians 2, states how He “…hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew forth the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 2:6-7 KJV.
Because we are so sin-conscious, we tend to view grace in a negative light. But grace is the kindness that God will be showing us in Christ for the ages to come. So, long after sin is removed and never again mentioned, God will continue to show forth grace.
What is grace? John says, “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” John 1:16-17 KJV. Grace is not just something God does for you; grace is someone God has given to you, which is Christ. God in Christ, having passed through incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection, is now grace. Grace was in the Old Testament, but now, because of the spirit, we have the reality, whereas they had the shadow. Old Testament saints still have their salvation and inheritance, but we have something special. Grace baptized us into the death of Christ and raised us up together with Him to be a part of a new creation. This new creation is called the “new man”, the body of Christ, which is His fullness through which He will fill all things with Himself and through which He will head up the whole universe (Eph 1:23). This entity is to the praise of God’s glory. It’s called His poema, His masterpiece (Eph 2:10).
Yes, we fell into sin and Christ died for our sins, but even before sin, God’s intention was to give Christ as life to us. Adam was a type of Christ and it was not good that He was alone, so God put Him to sleep, took a rib out of His side, and built a woman. He called her “Eve” and when Adam awoke, she was there and he said, “This is bone in my bone and flesh my flesh. She came out of me.” That was a positive creative act in which Adam was put to sleep as a type of death and resurrection to produce Eve. This was a picture that pointed to the death and resurrection of Christ, who said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” John 12:24 KJV.
This is a positive aspect of salvation — a positive aspect of the death of Christ. It isn’t related to sin or anything in the negative, but it is related to God’s positive intention to distribute the life of Christ. This Life was released in death and resurrection to produce a harvest called the Church — the Sons of God. This was based on the everlasting covenant that the Father made with the Son in eternity past. The plan all along was to send the Son to be the shepherd of the sheep, to bring many sons into glory. This is why He created the universe — it was to be the incubator for the glorious manifestation of the many Sons of God, who are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ and glorified and to share with Him in His glory. This is the Church! These are the brothers of Christ, God’s inheritance — His masterpiece, His eternal purpose.
All this purpose existed even apart from sin. It’s still salvation even without respect to sin. However because of sin, Christ’s death also accomplished other critical things like reconciliation and redemption, termination of the old creation, circumcision of the flesh, putting off the body of sins through His death, stripping the principalities, and blotting out the handwriting of ordinances against us. All of this was necessary for us to be reconciled us to God, so that God can fulfill His original, positive purpose.
We tend to think God’s purpose is to redeem man. No, God’s purpose is to have the Church! He created the universe with that in mind. Even if sin never entered, there would still have been an administration or dispensation or “economy” in which God would arrange for Christ to become the life of His many members, to make His body.
Christ was presented as the tree of life to Adam. We don’t fully understand what that was, but it depicts the life of God. Christ is the vine tree. The tree of life has been restored to us. Christ said we would eat His flesh and drink His blood so that we can have life in us. In the type of the Tree of Life, God showed that His intention even before the fall of man was that His life would be “food”. In this picture, He showed us that God intended to be a kind of food for man…a nourishing supply of life. God’s intention is to dwell in man. He created man with His image in His likeness and gave him dominion. Every other animal was created after its own kind, but man was created after God’s kind. Man wasn’t created after his own image, he was created after God’s image because man was intended to be a vessel to contain and express God’s life. God also set him before the tree of life, showing there’s another life that man was created to receive. This is what we’ve been given in Christ. Resurrection is the beginning of something wholly positive – God as Life in Christ entering into us to produce the Church.