What happens when we receive Christ as our personal Lord and Savior? Our sins are forgiven. Our spirit is joined to the Holy Spirit. Christ, the King of the Kingdom of God, is born in us.

But our physical body, that which is of the outward material creation, remains dead, cut off from God, because of the sin that still resides in it.

Salvation already has begun in our inward spiritual nature. But we stated that the outward form of the Kingdom of God is the material creation while the inward life of the Kingdom of God is the Spirit of Holiness, the eternal Spirit of God.

If Christ is in us our spiritual nature is alive because it has been joined to the Holy Spirit of God through the atoning authority of the blood of Christ. The Kingdom of God now is in us and we are citizens of that Kingdom.

But the outward form of the Kingdom of God, which is our body and the material environment of our body, still is dead because of the sin that is in it. It is cut off from the Presence and Life of God.

To enter the Kingdom of God is to begin to bring the rule of the Holy Spirit, which has been formed in our inward nature, into our physical body, and then into the spiritual and material environment of our body, that is, into the peoples of the earth and the earth itself. "Thy will be done in earth." It is as straightforward as that.

If we adopt the attitude that the Christian salvation is a blanket pardon of our sinful state so when we die physically we will be permitted to make Heaven our eternal home, we will not make the effort to enter the Kingdom of God. We will not work with Jesus and the saints in bringing the rule of God into the earth.

We will miss the Glory of God if we take that attitude. The sinning, disobedient, unclean Christian is not entering the Kingdom of God and has no part in the Kingdom of God. He does not possess a righteous inward nature that he can bring into his physical body. He is wasting the opportunity that God has given to him to bring the rule of God into the earth.

When we understand that the redemption of the material creation is one of the principal goals of the Christian salvation, our outlook and behavior will be transformed. Each day of our pilgrimage will become a new opportunity to enter the Kingdom of God.

Through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we will lay aside the demands of the world and our flesh and begin to seek the power of God so we can govern our behavior. Then we will be able to bring the will of God into our immediate surroundings.

Our part is to pray, use the faith that God gives us, and act, speak, and think in the will of God. Christ's part is to send from Heaven all the wisdom and power we need to overthrow the rule of darkness and to install the rule of God in the material realm.

To be continued.