The Spirit of God whom we have now will, at the coming of Christ from Heaven, flow into our mortal bodies and then on and out to the remainder of the creation. We possess the "firstfruits" (after the Lord Jesus) indicating that what we have is the representative beginning, the "guarantee" of the Glory of God destined to cover the whole earth.

For we that are in this tabernacle [mortal body] do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed [die physically], but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life (II Corinthians 5:4).

The preceding passages are announcing our physical redemption. They are speaking of what will take place in us at the coming of the Lord from Heaven. "We shall be changed" at the last trumpet (I Corinthians 15:51).

Notice carefully that it is not the inner man but the outer man that is changed at the resurrection from the dead. One of the errors of current Christian thinking is that our corrupt moral nature will be changed when we die or at the appearing of the Lord. There is no basis in the Scriptures for this. It is our mortality, our material form, the physical creation, that will be made new at the coming of the Lord from Heaven. The inner man is to be transformed now as we obey the Holy Spirit in the work of sanctification.

Unnumbered multitudes of believers are passing into eternity under the mistaken impression that Jesus will wave a wand and they will be transformed from lukewarm, careless, spiritually lazy worldlings into majestic patriarchs who will govern the nations with a rod of iron. This is incorrect.

The coming change is not in our inner moral nature but in the physical creation, which is our body. Our flesh-and-bones body will be redeemed.

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. (Luke 24:39)

If God has given to the saints the entire material creation, beginning with their own bodies, and if the price of such redemption was paid in its entirety by the shedding of the blood of the Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary, why, then, are we not able to go forth and drive Satan and his demons out of every person in every nation on the face of the earth? Why should we permit the peoples of the earth to suffer in the chains of demonic oppression?

The price of earth's redemption indeed has been paid in full but Satan is retaining his possession of the material creation by lies. He is not willing to leave even though the price of redemption has been paid.

How can we go about redeeming the creation today? We understand that when Jesus returns, the creation will be released into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. But the Scriptures teach also that today is the day of salvation, of deliverance, of redemption.

Christ is waiting at the right hand of the Father until His enemies have been made His footstool. How do we put His enemies under His feet and bring into the present world the redeeming power and glory of the age to come? How do we become Joshuas and Calebs?

To be continued.