Part
2 of 16 -
Man’s
Need for the Blood of Christ
In
order to understand the importance and impact of the blood of Christ shed for
us at His crucifixion, we must view man according to God’s intention, as he
was created. Man was created with the intention of becoming a living human container
who would bear the very life of God – man would become a living vessel
suitable for God’s free expression.
For
this, man was created tri-part, with a body, soul, and spirit. God’s
intention was that one day God would place His very life into
the created man’s human spirit, thus making the created man to be reborn
in spirit – to be born of the very life of God Himself. God’s life and
nature received into the man’s human spirit would become expressed via
man’s soul faculties of mind, emotion, and will.
This
intention of God for man is first indicated in the Bible by the fact that God
placed Adam and Eve before the Tree of Life – a figure
of Christ as the bearer of the life of God to man (See John 15).
Here
below we see a verse that lists these three parts of man, but in a different
order than I have listed above.
1
Thes. 5:23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly (completely);
and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body…
We
should note from this verse, by a hermeneutic device called “the law of
first mentioning,” that the “spirit” is listed first, placing it as the
foremost part of man’s being. God intends that the life in the
spirit is to rule the faculties of the soul organ, and soul is to rule the
doings of the body. Thus, when religion tells us we need to “do things” or
“act in a certain way” in order to prove our being a Christian they miss
the focus of God’s plan that Christ articulated to Paul for we Gentiles.
That plan was that God’s life would indwell the human spirit of every person
who receives Christ’s Spirit, automatically producing the fruits of that
life.
This
then brings us to see the physical body as the least part of
man’s according to God’s eternal plan. Man’s body is to be the servant
of man’s spirit-life. It is in the members of the physical flesh body that
Sin as a nature dwells (Rom 7:17-23), needing to be ruled over by Christ from
within the believer’s spirit. The body contains the fallen nature that Adam
gained at the fall in the garden, and which came also to all mankind as being
of the lineage of Adam (Rom 5:12). Rom 8:3 …God sending his
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in
the flesh:
The
Sin nature in man’s flesh has contaminated the originally created man,
including his soul, producing the “acts of that Sin nature in His flesh,”
which we call sins. Now, Romans 8:8 (AMP) … those
who are living the life of the flesh [catering to the appetites and impulses
of their carnal nature] cannot please or
satisfy God, or be
acceptable to Him.
The
created man, created to be a living vessel for God’s expression, has become
a dirtied potential container of the life of God; dirtied by acts of Sin in
the flesh. God planned to gain “many sons” by placing the life-seed
of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into men. Thus, if God is to bring the
fallen created man into accord with His eternal plan, there is a problem that
first needs to be remedied – man’s sins.
God
told
Israel
, via Isaiah, your sins have separated you from God. Isaiah 59:2 But
your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your
sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. Paul
here speaks of the former condition Gentiles who have become believers. Ephesians
2:1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in
trespasses and sins;
God’s
remedy for man’s sins is the precious blood that was shed once by Christ at
the cross to remit, cancel, and take away all sins of
those who would only have faith in His blood.
Colossians
1:14 In whom we have redemption through his blood,
even the forgiveness of sins:
Romans
3:24-25 (NASB) being justified as a gift by His grace
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God
displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith…
