Inheriting and Demonstrating God’s Eternal Kingdom And Escaping The Eternal Torments Of Hell
The
Apostle Paul tells us,
“Don't you know that you
yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If
anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's
temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”
(1Corinthians 3:17)
The universal Christian church is the sacred
temple of God. It is the dwelling place of God’s Holy Spirit. It is
made up of individual Christian believers who have been justified
(made innocent) by grace through faith in the blood and name of
Jesus. Christian believers have also been called out and set apart
(sanctified) by God to be living stones in this sacred building as
we confess Christ before humankind, practice Christ’s teachings and
keep His commandments, and witness to the world through a lifestyle
of faith, hope, and love.
This is accomplished through seeking and receiving the baptism with
the Holy Spirit, praying in the Spirit and with the understanding,
as well as remaining filled with the Spirit through singing with
our born again human spirits (in the languages of both men and of
angels) and also with our understanding (in our native language).
All of these disciplines, along with our knowledge of, and
obedience to the Word of God will result in our living and walking
in the Spirit. So, it can also be accurately stated that in the
same way corporately, as the community of Christ, we are the temple
of God; as individual Christian believers each one of us is also a
temple of the Holy Spirit. This requires great obligation and
responsibility on our parts as to how we treat our bodies and how
we behave with our bodies. Why? Because they are temples of the
Holy Spirit!
Paul exhorts
us,
“Do you not know
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom
you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought
at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
(1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
Now, “God is not willing that any should perish
but that all should come to repentance,” but regrettably, “many
are called but
few
are chosen.”
This is because “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that
leads to destruction and many take that
route, but small is
the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life and
only a few find
it.”
God’s will is that all Christian
believers be “chosen
vessels of honor, sanctified, set apart and prepared for the
Master’s use. But in a great house there are many vessels, some for
honor and some for dishonor.” Nevertheless, God’s will is that we all be
sanctified, as well as consecrated vessels of honor.
We must understand that sanctification
is God’s
part, and consecration
is our
part. After we experience
our justification
by grace through faith in Christ’s
accomplished atonement for our sins, both of these processes of
sanctification and consecration in operation are the means by which
we inherit God’s eternal kingdom and escape the eternal torments of
the garbage dump that Jesus called Hell (Gehenna). In this
terrible, dark, and odiously odiferous place “the fires are never quenched and the worm
never dies.” It is the
place where all unrepentant sinners and all unrepentant professing
to be, but not practicing “Christians” will spend eternity! These
are those individuals who are unrepentant non-believers, as well as
“Christian” hypocrites, heretics, backsliders, reprobates, and
apostates. Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise or tell
you differently regarding this matter. If anyone does, it is a lie
from Satan that has been propagated through false teachers in the
church!
Again, Christ is made unto us sanctification, and
the God of all peace has promised to sanctify us wholly, spirit, soul, and body unto the coming
of the Lord. “Faithful is
He who calls you who will also do it.” But we must also choose to consecrate ourselves unto Him - spirit, soul, and body - by
yielding to the promptings and leadings of the Holy Spirit and not
to the dictates of the flesh (sin nature). This means that Jehovah
God desired to sanctify us through His Son Jesus Christ, and that
is what He did through the cross. He still desires to sanctify us
through His truth (Word) and through the workings of His Holy
Spirit who will lead us into all truth, and that is what He is
doing. His will is to do this for our entire being - spirit, soul,
and body - unto the second coming of Jesus Christ by setting us
apart as pure, devoted, and dedicated vessels of honor for His
plans, purposes, and pursuits.
As Christ has sanctified Himself that we might be sanctified, God
has and will continue to sanctify us in Christ in order to
demonstrate what is His good, and acceptable and perfect will in
the earth. But we have a part to play in this process! Our chosen
consecration unto Him means that we give ourselves - spirit, soul,
and body – daily, in obedience to Christ’s commandments and to the
Spirit’s directives and thereby live and manifest the gospel of the
kingdom, not in word only, but with a demonstration of the Spirit
and power!
I hope that we are beginning to understand the spiritual dynamic
between what God is working in us, and what we are to be working
out in Him!
The scriptures are clear,
“Work out your salvation with fear and
trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to
work for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12)
Jesus Christ testified that the fulfillment of
the law is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”
and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus came to fulfill the law, and that is exactly what He
did!
Paul also said, “the
righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us, who do not
live according to the sinful nature but according to the
Spirit,” and he exhorts
us,
“Brothers, we have an obligation—but it is
not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live
according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit
you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because
those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God.” (Romans
8:12-14)
He goes on to
write,
“I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your
reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what
is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
(Romans 12:1-2)
The Holy Spirit’s job is to
“lead us into all
truth,” and our job is to
follow His lead! “He will
not speak of His own, but will only speak what Jesus
speaks.” Notice, if you
will, that this is just like Jesus during His public ministry on
the earth, He “did not
speak of His own, but only spoke what He heard the Father
speak.”
With this in mind
consider these words of Jesus Christ,
“Then he called the crowd to him along with
his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever
wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for
me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to
gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give
in exchange for his soul?’” (Mark 8:34-37)
And again, the words of Jesus
Christ,
“Not everyone
who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but
only he who does the will of my Father who is in
heaven.” (Matthew
7:21)
If we don’t want to lose our souls and our lives,
we will have to get real good at following the leading of the Holy
Spirit! We will not be able to die for Christ unless we are willing
to live for Him. Living for Christ means denying one’s own will and
doing God’s will instead. Again, the will of God concerning the
Christian believer is our sanctification, and only those who do the
will of God by consecrating themselves unto Him in denying
themselves and taking up their own cross daily and following Him
will inherit the kingdom of Heaven. Selah (Think long and hard
about this!)
The writer of Hebrews exhorts us,
“Make every effort to live in peace with all
men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the
Lord.” (Hebrews
12:14)
And consider this exhortation from Paul,
"I speak after the manner of men because of
the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members
servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now
yield your members servants to righteousness unto
holiness." (Romans
6:19)
And,
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should
obey it in the lusts thereof.” (1Corinthians 6:12)
Another word for holiness is godliness, and
Christ Jesus is the perfect expression or manifestation of God in
human form. If you will, the Lord Jesus Christ’s character is the
perfect human expression of God’s character. The way God thinks and
behaves is revealed in the way Christ thought and behaved while on
the earth, and the way Christian believers are supposed to think
and behave is the way that Christ thought and behaved! Again, this
is accomplished through yielding to the power of the indwelling
Holy Spirit and conforming ourselves in obedience to the word of
God. We are to strive to live our lives as Christ lived His life,
free from sin, and not live our lives apart from His example or
influence.
Jesus taught His
disciples,
“Be
perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is
perfect.” (Matthew
5:48)
Another definition for the word
perfect, as used in the scriptures, is the word
mature, and Paul tells us that Christian maturity is
defined as our not having arrived at the goal, but by being in the
practice of “pressing for
the goal of the heavenward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
No one but Jesus
Christ, the Son of Man, has ever achieved the goal of sinless
perfection this side of glory, but as His followers, we are all
called to “grow in God’s
grace,” to
“pursue peace with all men and
holiness,” and to
“press towards the goal of the
heavenward call of God in Christ Jesus.” In other words, we are to be in the business
of “perfecting holiness in
reverence of God!” Anything short of this practice means that we
have “received the grace
of God in vain.”
Jesus said,
“To this present hour, the
kingdom of Heaven allows pressure, and those who press into it take
it by force.” If we are
not in the diligent business of pressing into the kingdom of God
and taking it by force, we are in the business of backsliding. In
the words of Bob Dylan, “You’ve either got faith or you’ve got
unbelief, and there ain’t no neutral ground.”
This is why Paul instructs,
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in
the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is
in you--unless, of course, you fail the test?”
(2 Corinthians 13:5)
If we are not presently “in the faith” through daily living and walking in obedience to
the Holy Spirit’s leading and the Word of God, then according to
the scripture just quoted Christ is not in us! So we see that it is
entirely possible to fail the test if we are not in hot pursuit of
Christ and His kingdom that resides within us as born-again
believers. This pursuit will result in the transformation of our
characters and the transfiguration of our beings into a state of
true holiness and godliness.
Now, if any of us, dear readers, after careful examination of
ourselves, find that we are “failing the test,” it is still possible because of God’s mercies to
repent and become faithful to God’s calling by appropriating the
sanctification that has already been provided for us by grace
through faith in Jesus Christ. Again this is realized by our
choosing to live a consecrated life unto God by confessing and forsaking our sins. If we will do this, we will truly be
the elect, the chosen of God, and not just the called of God. We will be in the company of the
few who find the road to life instead of in the
company of the many who choose the road to Hell! Consecration is what
God requires of us if we are to inherit the eternal kingdom of
Heaven and escape the eternal torments of the Lake of Fire.
Repentance from our sins and a consecrated life unto God is still
possible for all of us who still have breath in our lungs and have
not denied Christ before men because, “God is love,” “His mercy endures forever,” “His mercies are
new every morning,” and “mercy rejoices against
judgment.” So concerning
our consecration unto God, I beg you, in the words of the Nike
commercial, “Just do it,”
and please pray that I will
also!
In this exhortation I have spoken much about giving ourselves to
God, spirit, soul, and body so that His will be done in earth as it
is in Heaven. I will leave you with a few final scriptures to
contemplate from the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Don't you see that
whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the
body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the
heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come
evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false
testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating
with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.’” (Matthew
15:17-20)
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off
every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that
does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You
are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain
in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by
itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit
unless you remain in me.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me
and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do
nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that
is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown
into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain
in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to
my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to
be my disciples.”
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my
love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as
I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have
told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be
complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for
his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no
longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his
master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for
everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and
bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you
whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each
other.” (John
15:1-17)
