The Bread of God.

Because of our frailty, I suppose, we have made Christianity a religion in which those who do good go to Heaven and those who do not go to Hell. Of late, the emphasis has changed from doing good to taking the "four steps of salvation." If we want to escape Hell and go to Heaven to live forever we must take the "four steps of salvation."

But this is not the Christian salvation. The Christian salvation is the path that leads from spiritual death to spiritual life. The emphasis is not on where we are but what we are.

Don't misunderstand me. There is a Hell. The rich man was in Hell.

There is a Heaven. God, Christ, the saints, and the holy angels are there. However, Heaven is not our eternal home. If we are saved we eventually will find ourselves on the new earth.

But Hell and Heaven are not the focus of the New Testament or of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, did not mention Hell even one time.

Hell is a place of punishment and torment. Heaven is the Throne of God. These are facts of the spirit realm.

But salvation is not involved with Heaven and Hell, except secondarily. Salvation is God's mean of bringing us to eternal life. Salvation changes us from a flesh and blood human being into the offspring of God. We still are human, but it is a transcendent humanity. We move from the life of the soul to a life-giving spirit, and finally will be clothed with a body that does not use blood in its life processes.

The Lord Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. We are flesh being made the Word of God. We are being transformed. Our substance is changing from the dead adamic nature to the Nature of Jesus Christ. We have been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ and to be His brothers.

Adam died on the cross in Christ. The entire first creation died on the cross in Jesus Christ. When Christ rose from the dead, the new creation began. When Christ is born in us, this is an enlargement of the new Divine Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. We enter the Kingdom by being born again.

The people of the world are dead. Jesus Christ is the Tree of Life, the same tree that was in the middle of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve could have eaten of that tree, but they chose to eat of the Law of God, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Thus they experienced guilt. Consequently they were removed from access to the Tree of Life.

Christ came to bring us eternal life. That life is in His flesh and blood. We have to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood constantly. Every time we choose to turn away from our sinful nature, we are given His flesh and blood in the spirit realm. Every time we conquer, through Christ, the lusts and passions of our sinful nature we gain access to the Tree of Life. This is how we lay hold on eternal life. This is how we work for the food that endure to eternal life. This is how we labor to enter the rest of God. The rest of God is that state in which we live by the body and blood of Christ rather than by the natural, adamic life.

To be continued.