At the beginning of this article we asked the question: "How does the present condition of our spiritual life affect our resurrection from the dead?" How do the decisions we are making now affect the nature of our resurrection?

The answer is, if we, after having received Christ as our Savior, continue to live according to the adamic personality, we will die in our corruption. The Christians who live in the flesh, in the animal creation, have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

It is the new man of the heart, the Christ-man, who is the resurrection, who is the Kingdom of God, who will enter the new world. It is only as we cultivate and nourish the new man that we inherit the Kingdom.

Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding in all Christian theology is that God is saving Adam by imputed (ascribed) righteousness so Adam may be brought forward into Paradise in the new age. Nothing could be further from the truth. God imputes righteousness to the sons of Adam on the basis of the atonement made by Christ so the way may be cleared for God to re-create us as sons of the resurrection, not so we may continue as part of the sinful, rebellious first creation.

The Christian redemption is not the saving of the flesh and blood creation. The Christian redemption is the changing of the corruptible flesh and blood creation into another creation, a creation that lives by the incorruptible Life of the Spirit of God.

In the process of re-creation we die, the we that was born of our father and mother. The Kingdom of God, the resurrection, is the new man who was born "not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13).

Let us look more closely at how the process of re-creation takes place.

Man, the first Adam, the living soul, consists of spirit, soul, and body.

The unsaved individual is dead (cut off from God) in spirit, in soul, and in body.

When by faith we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, our human spirit is joined with the Holy Spirit. Now we can pray and communicate with God through His Spirit, and we have access to the Throne of God because of the atonement made by the Lord Jesus. Our spirit becomes one with the Holy Spirit and we possess the beginning aspects of eternal life. To understand what we mean by the beginning aspects of eternal life we must understand that eternal life is not perpetual existence but a kind of life the Life that is the Presence of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.

But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. (I Corinthians 6:17)

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:3)

Our body is left alone for the time being. Our body is dead cut off from God because of the sin that dwells in it. Our body is a prison of corruption we are compelled to drag around with us.

To be continued.