We attain the first resurrection from among the dead by allowing the Spirit of God to press our earthly personality into the death of the cross. We learn to cultivate and nourish, and to live in, our new resurrection life in the Spirit of God. We are to look always to the Lord Jesus for guidance and consolation.

God does not just hand eternal life to us. Rather, God makes it possible for us to enter life. The atonement, the reconciliation, is not only a legal state we accept by faith. The atonement is an opportunity for us to bring down to death the enemy of God in us, and to enter eternal life by receiving Christ who Himself Is the Resurrection and the Life.

Meanwhile, the blood serves as the propitiation (appeasement of God's wrath) for all of our sins—past, present, and future. The atonement is one whole. We cannot avail ourselves of the propitiation and then refuse to enter Christ's death and resurrection. Yet that is the impression being left by current teaching. It is as though we could receive the forgiveness of sins apart from sharing in the Life and sufferings of Christ, apart from experiencing Divine judgment on our personality.

We experience the power of Christ's resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. Death, and life! Death, and life! Death, and life! If we choose to save our soulish, fleshly life, our first personality, we will die spiritually. If we choose to walk in the Spirit we will attain eternal life.

The cross is the place of Divine judgment. When we assign our fleshly nature to the cross we are handing it over to Divine judgment.

Our soulish personality, our "old man," hates and rejects the life of the Spirit. Therefore God subjects our old nature to the fiery trials of the cross of Christ. God casts down our whole first personality, the evil and the good of it, until we can say in truth, "I am crucified with Christ."

This is how the sufferings of the cross of Christ, which are the sufferings that proceed from the righteous judgment of God, save us from sin. It is necessary for Christians to suffer. We must suffer because we possess a human nature that is sinful, deceitful, and rebellious. The sufferings of the cross that we share in Christ slay our sinful nature. They purify our soul and spirit and teach us obedience to God.

We are exhorted to believe to the saving of our soul. We are required to endure to the end of our appointed tribulations and imprisonments.

But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition [destruction]; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul. (Hebrews 10:39)

When we die, our soul passes into the spirit realm and appears before the Lord Jesus Christ. If we have walked on this earth in humility, obeying the Lord throughout the fiery testings that have been our portion, we are ready to walk with Him in white.

To be continued.