God has all eternity in which to bring every saved individual into such change. We of today, with whom God is dealing so rigorously, are a firstfruits of what one day will be true to some extent of every person brought forth to eternal life on the new earth (James 1:18).

The true saints choose to die in this life in obedience to Paul's words in the sixth chapter of the Book of Romans. Our reckoning of ourselves dead is a real death. When we choose to die in Christ the work of judgment begins; for after death comes judgment. This is no mere play on words. It is an actual death and resurrection in the spirit realm.

Our present death on the cross with Jesus is as real as any death any person ever dies. After we by faith reckon ourselves to be dead, numerous dealings of the Holy Spirit transform our decision into living reality. The death of the cross is not a pleasant experience for our first personality. Our "old man" does not enjoy being changed into Christ's death.

Please keep in mind that the judgment that falls on our first personality, on the living soul, is not a judgment on our conscious "I." It is not a judgment on "us." It is Divine judgment on God's enemies, on the body of sin that dwells in our old man, in our first personality.

Two Kinds of Creatures

Let us think for a moment about the first man and the second man, the old nature, and then the new nature being created in us.

The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. (I Corinthians 15:47)

Two men: the first man and the second man.

The doctrine of two men is central to our understanding of the redemption that is in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no more profound misunderstanding in all Christianity than the one limiting the salvation that is in Christ to the forgiveness and future bliss of the first man (and today bliss and material wealth are being extended to our first man in the present world by the preachers of the "gospel"!). The traditional concept is, redemption is the forgiving and reforming of the first man with the end in view of bringing him to Paradise to live forever.

However, the Divinely ordained salvation is not a plan for forgiving and reforming the first man, the descendant of Adam. We must be born a second time in order to enter the Kingdom of God—or even to see the Kingdom (John 3:3).

While the forgiving of the first personality is an initial stage of salvation, the actual, eternal purpose of God, which is the Kingdom of God, is directed toward the second man—the man from Heaven.

In the creation of the Kingdom of God, two separate races, or kinds of creatures, are involved:

The living soul.

The life-giving spirit.

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a living [life-giving] spirit. (I Corinthians 15:45)

To be continued.