Behind the Scenes of Biblical Scenes, Pt. 7
Study Guide, October 6, 2024
Pastor Clay Olsen
One of the great study series for Churches was developed by Ray Vander Laan, who developed the curriculum – ‘That the World May Know’. He did on-site Bible studies of various ancient lands and cities. The Chapel has gone through several of these studies together. Some examples are like these ancient sites of Jericho, and Athens, and Ephesus. And many of the Bible studies talked about what God had done there so that the world may know…may know God and what God wanted in His dealings with people the world over. It’s like Pastor Robert pointed out last week that God has given all people the world over the witness of Creation and the witness of Conscience in order that they may know that there is a God and Creator whom they need to seek and to come to know.
But then in relation to those who have already come to know God as their Lord and Savior, there is something in particular that God cares deeply about that He especially wants His children to come to know. In fact, God had one of His Apostles dedicate an entire New Testament Epistle or Book to this special truth that God wants His children to know. And it’s this: 1 John 5:11-13- “And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” NASU
So, a question: You that have believed in the name of the Son of God, do you know that you have eternal life? Do you know…are you sure…do you have assurance…are you secure…are you eternally secure? One more question: Does God want you to be secure about your eternal security? The answer to that is exactly what God had the Apostle John write to you and to me and to every person who has turned to God in repentance and trusted in Jesus Christ through faith to be their personal Lord and Savior.
In fact, as the Apostle stated, it is very important to God that you have assurance of your salvation. Why? Well, let’s take a look behind the scenes of the Biblical scene of our Salvation in order to see what we can see through our eyes of faith.
Think about it: One of the most amazing things about our awesome God is that our God, who has no ‘needs’, did have a particular ‘want’. And that particular ‘want’…was you! Dwell on that a moment. Actually, dwell on it all the time…but for now, dwell on this fact; that even though God does not have any needs, still, He wanted ‘you’! God wanted you to become His son or daughter for all eternity! How significant is your ‘sense of significance’ now?! That pretty much maxes out our sense of significance!
Yes, what our God wanted most is that our God wanted a ‘family’…both a spiritual and a physical family. And thus, His creation of a physical universe and a spiritual and physical human family. That’s why you and I even exist. It’s not just that our parents wanted a family, but even more…God wanted you in His family. Some people have grown up wondering if they were ‘wanted’ or ‘just came into being’ for another reason. But know this: if you have been ‘Born Again’ through faith in Jesus Christ, you can be absolutely assured that you were ‘wanted’ and are ‘wanted’ as a son of daughter of God’s, more than you can even imagine.
And this is essential to know, because in order to properly understand our personal salvation we have to understand it from God’s personal point of view, not ours. In fact, here’s a mental habit that will change your life: ‘You need to start looking at you from God’s point of view!’ ‘Look at you through God’s point of view!’ In other words, stop using your own reasoning about matters that can only be understood through Divine Revelation. Or, in order to rightly understand our personal salvation, we have to understand it from God’s revelation about it, and not from our own reasoning about it.
So what we are going to do in our look behind the scenes of our salvation is to peer into the provision of our salvation and then to peruse some implications of our salvation. So, are you ready to ‘peer’ and ‘peruse’? Has anyone ever asked you that before? I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that either…Anyway, here we go. What we clearly know is that soon after God created His spiritual and physical family, with the freedom to choose to love God most or the freedom to choose to love ‘self’ most, His children soon chose ‘self’, and the wants of ‘self’ above the will of God…and thus, human sin entered the world. And ‘sin’ brought death to both the spiritual life and the physical life of humans.
How strange, that after thousands of years of human history, most people still do not understand what ‘sin’ did to both the human spirit and the physical body. When our first parents sinned, when they chose ‘self’ above God, their human spirit died immediately. Sin killed their human spirit. Their spiritual life was separated from the spiritual life of God…or they became spiritually dead. And that has continued to be the condition of all spiritually unsaved, or spiritually unregenerate people throughout history.
And their human body, which was created as an ‘immortal body’ immediately became ‘mortal’…meaning that it was ‘dying’. Therefore, what sin did to the human spirit is that sin ‘killed’ the human spirit of mankind. And since all people have sinned, sin has killed the human spirit of every human being. We’ll come back to the fallout of that shortly.
The other strange reality is that most people have no understanding that from the moment of conception the body begins physically dying. From the moment of conception, the body they have is a ‘mortal body’, which means that it is not only temporary, but that it exists in a state of decay. Say what? And why? In theology, Adam is referred to as our ‘Federal Head’, meaning, that Adam was the representative human being. He did what every human being would do and chose what every human being would choose. That’s why the Apostle Paul explained this in Rom 5:12- “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” NASU All sinned ‘in Adam’, our Federal Head, the Representative Man.
Sometimes you hear people challenging the reality of the sin nature of human beings. But they do so without considering the implications of what they are saying. Think about it: If someone were to think that if they had not inherited Adam’s sin nature…then what? Do they think that they would they have lived a perfect and holy moral life of sinlessness? Do they think that Jesus would not have had to die for them…that they would have lived a sinless life, like Jesus did? Do they think that they would have been morally superior to Adam and Eve…like – “I would not have done what Adam and Eve did.” Oh my! But isn’t that called ‘self-pride’, which is the chief of all sins? No, they would not have been morally superior to our first parents at all! They, too, would have sinned, for the sinfulness of every human that has ever lived, apart from Jesus Christ, is clearly seen and it is clearly stated: Rom 3:23- “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” NT The Psalmist also knew of the truth of the sin nature of all human beings as he said: Ps 51:5- “For I was born a sinner—yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.” NLT The point was that the sin nature was and is present from conception.
So not only has every person shared in the representative sin of our first parents, but everyone has also personally sinned and fallen short of the righteous standard of God. And just like with our first parents, sin killed our human spirit, separated us from God’s spirit and eternal life…and made our human body become mortal…in a state of physical decline and decay due to the presence of sin in the human body.
Which, by the way, is such an ironic thing about mankind’s quest for immortality, because, apart from removing the sin-nature of humans, the human body can never become immortal, for it is the presence of sin that is the cause of the body being subject to sickness and disease and decay. Sin and disease are symptoms of the decay, not the source. The presence of sin within the sin nature is the source. And only the Creator of the human body will be able to one day remove the sin nature from those humans who have become reunited with God’s spirit through their New Spiritual Birth, and thus, granted a new spiritual nature that is without sin in its union with God. At death, your new spirit and your new nature are separated from your mortal body and your sin nature. And your new nature will also then be clothed with an ‘immortal body’ that will never decay nor be subject to any sickness or disease or pain or suffering ever again!
Now back to the condition of the human spirit. The Apostle Paul made this clear when he told the newly Born-Again Ephesians this: Eph 2:1-2- “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” NASU And from the ERV: Eph 2:1- “In the past you were spiritually dead because of your sins and the things you did against God.”
What God has revealed to us here is that every human being who has not become reunited to God through repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ, the only Messiah, is still separated from God in their spirit, or their human spirit is still dead in trespasses and sin. That is why salvation is first a matter of spiritual birth and not first a matter of human behavior. And the confusion of this has always been the Achilles heel of religions throughout history. Or this has been the ‘cart before the horse’ problem of religions. Or, this has been the ‘train cars before the train engine’ issue of religions based upon human works instead of the Gospel of Grace.
Now, permit me to use these simple illustrations to clarify the confusion that false religions have made of Biblical Salvation. Mark it down: Behavior cannot take people where they need to go without first being Born Again any more than a cart can take itself where it needs to go without having a horse to take it where it needs to go, or without train cars having an engine to take them where they need to go. Behavior follows Spiritual Birth, like the ‘cart’ follows the horse or the ‘train cars’ follow the engine. Yes, these are simple illustrations, but they have profound implications, because just like without the New Birth, behavior will not take you to God, just as without the horse or the engine, neither the cart nor the cars can take them where they are meant to go!
But here is where it gets really strange, because how do false teachers of false religions teach people? What do they speak to people about? What do they focus upon concerning how people become right with God? They focus on religious behavior. They talk to people about religious works, as though it’s their religious works and behaviors that will take them to God. But again, that’s like talking to ‘carts’ and ‘train cars’ about what they are supposed to do and where they are supposed to go, before they become connected to a horse or an engine! The cart or cars have no power in and of themselves to do that!
Now, let’s take this a step further by way of this stark illustration, because it gets even stranger. Realize that Paul revealed to us that when we are talking to spiritually unsaved people that we are actually talking to spiritually dead people. And so the real question is, what does a spiritually dead person need? And the answer is that spiritually dead people need spiritual life through the New Birth of their spirit!
So now picture this: Again, the reality is that people who have not yet been spiritually Born-Again are people whose spirit is still dead. But again, false religious teachers the world over talk to spiritually dead people like they are talking to spiritually alive people, all the while they are still dead, telling them what they should be believing and what they should be doing in their behavior and such. But that is like a religious teacher going to a cemetery and preaching to those who are entombed there about what they should be believing and what they should be doing in their behavior. How absurd is that?! Those who are buried there are dead! Rehabilitation is not what dead people need. What dead people need is ‘Regeneration!’ They need to have their spirit brought back to life.
That’s what Paul went on to explain to these Ephesian believers, who had recently been ‘Born-Again’, or had recently had their human spirit regenerated, basically spiritually resurrected from the dead. Notice: Eph 2:4-6- “But God is rich in mercy, and He loved us very much. We were spiritually dead because of all we had done against Him. But He gave us new life together with Christ. (You have been saved by God’s grace.) Yes, it is because we are a part of Christ Jesus that God raised us from death and seated us together with Him in the heavenly places.” ERV
Until a human being is spiritually resurrected, until new life is given to their ‘dead spirit’, they are still ‘dead’…separated from the eternal life of God. And that is what false ‘behavior based…or works righteousness’ religions and religious preachers and their followers are neglecting or rejecting in their religious teaching.
Paul revealed this truth again in Titus 3:4—“But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” NASU
Spiritual resurrection…spiritual regeneration is the work of God the Holy Spirit that is performed in the human spirit of one who turns to God in repentance and trusts in the saving grace of Jesus Christ. And this gift of salvation is God literally ‘spiritually birthing us’ into union with God’s own eternal life and eternal family. And thus, this gift of God’s own life is the basis of our personal security…our eternal security. For, again, what God gives to us in His ‘gift of salvation’ is His own eternal life! And that is one of the foundational reasons that our salvation is secure…eternally secure. When we are ‘Born Again’ we become united to God as our spiritual Father…birthed into God’s forever family. Thus, our very identity is forever changed, and this spiritual life that has been given to us is, by definition… ‘eternal!’ And our eternal life, of our soul and spirit, begins, not after we physically die, but when we are ‘Born-Again’, before we die.
We are going to continue this look behind the scenes of our salvation, because we have much more to say and much more to celebrate about our ‘Eternal Security’.