The Lord Jesus has made one sacrifice for sins for all time. Now He is sitting at the right hand of the Father. He is waiting for the Father to bring down His enemies and make them a footstool for His feet.

The Father has been working for two thousand years to put all enemies under the rule of Christ. The last enemy to be destroyed is physical death. When a warlike remnant of the believers have entered the rest of God, having attained the early resurrection from the dead by putting down all of Christ's enemies that are in their personality, the Lord Jesus will return from Heaven and redeem the bodies of His victorious saints.

The purpose of this essay is to explain why the word "attain" appears in Philippians 3:11. The return of the Lord and the accompanying resurrection of the saints are ordinarily viewed as a calendar event—something that will take place at a specific date independently of the actions of Christians, not an experience that must be attained. We would like to advance the thought that, while the Father already knows the date and time of the Lord's return (since He knows all things in advance), the date and time will depend on the willingness of the victorious saints (always a remnant!) to follow the Lord Jesus to the fullness of salvation.

The land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey, symbolizes our change into the moral image of the Lord Jesus, perfect rest in Christ in the Father, the attainment of eternal life in our body, and the possession of the nations and the farthest reaches of the earth as well as all other things. No aspect of this inheritance can be ours until we, through the Spirit of God, have driven out the enemy.

Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's. (I Corinthians 3:21-23)

Eternal life in the body is one of our goals. Since the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the Resurrection and the Life, attaining the resurrection is the same as attaining Christ.

Notice how the Scripture presents the attaining of Christ (attaining the resurrection) as being the end product of the program of redemption.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win [gain] Christ, (Philippians 3:8)

"That I may gain Christ"!

For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; (Hebrews 3:14)

"Partakers of Christ." Share in Christ!

In a very scriptural sense we cannot count ourselves as being eligible to partake of Christ until we endure to the end of our trials. We are protected from the wrath of God the moment we place our trust in the blood of the Lord Jesus. But we have not attained the goal of salvation until we receive the redemption of our mortal body.

To be continued.