Another Question On Salvation Through Jesus
Saturday, March 13th, 2010Sorry I have not yet created the audio I promised. I have been very busy with travel and I am also creating a new site. I can’t wait to share the new site with you but it is not quite ready for an unveiling. However, I did want to continue our discussion on questions readers have sent to me.
Here is another question sent in by a fellow Bible Ascension Blog reader
Question
Following up with the question about salvation. So do you believe that those who don’t confess the name of Jesus as Lord and savior are not going to heaven and don’t have the in-dwelling spirit of God?
Answer
Remember, it is not so much what I believe but what you believe. I told you in my last post that I had decided to believe the Bible instead of things that I learned from other sources. It is my choice to choose those things that I believe and the Bible is what I have chosen to believe.
So to answer this question, lets look at what Jesus said concerning salvation in the scriptures.
Just a quick reminder… salvation is much more than escaping hell and getting to heaven. What we are describing on this Bible Ascension blog is about a new birth into a new species of beings… Divine beings birthed into the kingdom of God.
Read the scriptures with this image in mind and some of the old fears and resistance to the scriptures on salvation will be washed away.
Jesus as the Bread of Life
I personally love the gospel of John, so lets look there.
In John 6, Jesus describes himself as the Bread of Life. Starting in verse 27 he tells his listeners not to “labor for food which perishes but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”
Everlasting life is not chronological time… it is the very life of God that is birth into the new species of Divine Beings.
When the Jews asked him how they could do the works of God he answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” Vs 29
In verse 33 Jesus tells us “For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” In verse 35 he says, “I am the bread of life.”
Verse 40, “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who see the son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Verse 47 -48, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life.”
Verse 50-51, “This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
So in these verses Jesus is making the claim that he is the bread of life, that he will give his flesh or body for the life of the world and that he came from heaven to do the Will of God which is to give those that believe in him everlasting life.
Believing On the Son Brings Everlasting Life
In chapter 3 of John Jesus makes very similar statements about who he is and why he came to earth. This a great chapter to study more on the new birth. But for our conversation to day, lets look at John 3:16-19.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. ”
A New Species of Supernatural Beings of Light
So what does all this mean. I believe that the Bible is clear that Jesus is the incarnation of the Christ–the only begotten son of God. Christ took on the form of a man in order to complete a mission that began before the foundation of the earth. This mission was to redeem us from the curse of the human condition and translate us into a new species as members of the kingdom of heaven/or God.
When Jesus says that the one who does not believe is condemned already, I believe that he is referring to the curse. All human beings are already operating under the curse. If you reject being redeemed from the curse of the human condition, you are still cursed.
What Is Condemnation?
In verse 19, Jesus describes the condemnation. “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” The light comes into the world but it is rejected because people prefer to believe the dark thoughts produced by the world beliefs.
Even many of the Jews who studied the ancient scriptures did not recognize who Jesus was when they met him. In John 5: 38-40 Jesus tells his listeners, “But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”
The New Believer
Jesus describes what a new believer will look like in Mark 16:15-18. Go read this for yourself. It describes a supernatural race of beings that have the ability to heal the sick, speak in tongues, drink poison with no ill effect, and to handle deadly snakes with no negative consequences.
It is obvious to me that these folks have stepped out of the human condition of struggle and fear into a supernatural ability to overcome the effects of the curse… not just for themselves but for others too!
The Holy Grail Is The Holy Spirit
As for the question of the in dwelling Spirit of God, let me refer you to Galatians 3:13-14.
“Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree), That the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
The in dwelling of the Spirit is the Holy Grail. It is the thing that Jesus came to give to us. The in dwelling of the Spirit is what takes us from the human condition into this new species. The Bible refers to the Holy Spirit as a deposit or guarantee of salvation until the transformation is complete.
The natural human being is created in the image of God. This image is extremely powerful. Human beings have great creative power because we were created in God’s image. The Bible does not say that human beings were born of God.
Christ The Only Begotten
Christ is a part of the God Head. Christ was the only begotten Son of God because all other species were created not begotten. Christ was birthed out of the Spirit of God. Adam was created with many of the attributes of God. Adam was not born neither were the angels.
This new species of Divine beings are birthed through faith into the family of God, as children of God… not born through natural means but through faith in the finished work of the Christ, incarnated as Jesus.
It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that enables this new birth to occur and empowers the believer with supernatural force.
The Holy Spirit has always been visible on the earth, teaching, guiding the children of men. However, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit comes through the work that Jesus completed in His ministry on earth. Without this work we would never be able to transformed into this new species.
Humanity Is The Root Stock
The amazing thing to me is that the human condition is the root stock out of which this new species is being created. It is a blending of the human species with the Divine. The Divine seed is the Holy Spirit being birth into the root stock of the created, fallen human being.
The work of Jesus was to cleanse us of our karmic debt making it possible to be transformed by something as holy as the Holy Spirit. Without that cleansing power of the blood of Jesus, a human being would have been killed — destroyed by the power and purity of God’s Spirit.
The power of the purity of the Spirit is demonstrated many times in the old testament. Specifically, you can see this in the rituals of protection taken by the high priest of the Temple. More on this at another time.
After the resurrection, the Bible describes Jesus as being the first born of many. Born into what… this new species. Jesus was the first born into this new species.
Christ had to incarnate into the root stock of humanity and pay the karmic debt as a human being. Then through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, the man, was born into this new species making it possible for others to follow through the power of faith.
Faith in what? Faith in the work that Jesus had accomplished on earth… through the cross, the resurrection, and the ascension.
The Real Question Here
If the questioner is at all like I was in my journey to understand the meaning of the Bible message, the real question is “What about those who are not Christians? Are they separated from God? Are they without the spirit of God?”
This is a great question and I will answer it in the next post.
In His Glory,
Marty Dow
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