I will now speak ONLY about born-again believers. Until now, a vast majority of Christians does not know and does not understand not only the difference between the Redemption and Salvation, but does not understand, does not “see” even the Redemption Itself. I‘ve sufficiently described in my books the differences between the Redemption and Salvation; hence, I will not repeat these again. Rather, I will now focus on what the Lord desires to give us by His Spirit concerning the Redemption alone and its consequences in every redeemed believer.
In the first place, I have to declare the fundamental fact of the Redemption, which is also applicable to the Salvation of man. After his redemption, every believer keeps living in his “old man“, his natural being. His spirit, soul and body were not changed in any substantial manner, nor were they renewed in the Holy Spirit. That believer was “born-again”, which means, he received into his spirit a “New Spiritual Man” which was never before in him, and into his heart he received the earnest of the Spirit by which God as it were “sealed us” (2Cor. 1:22 + see Part 4-First fact). That fundamental fact is that all God’s promises from the entire Scripture apply ONLY to that New Spiritual Man! Because all promises of God are YES and AMEN. In Christ, there was always only YES (2Cor. 1:19-22). Hence, outside of Christ, no promise of God is applicable! That’s why, especially at the beginning of our road to Salvation, it could have seemed as if God was not always with us and did not give us what we wanted, because He did not deal with our old man as He deals with our New Man. After all, our Redemption does not start with our being born-again, rather, it starts with our believing in our heart that God raised up Jesus Christ from the dead and confessing this faith with our mouth (Rom. 10:9,10). Only then God bestowed upon us righteousness, wrote our name into the Book of Life and gave us the earnest of His Spirit into our heart by which we were sealed (Eph. 1:13-14). Then it was necessary to repent and be baptized. Then God gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), Who brought us the birth of the New Man into our spirit. This was the real “day of our Redemption” (Eph. 4:30) because without the Holy Spirit the Redemption does not exist.
The Redemption could be compared to a housewife, which goes to a market to buy staples like meat or vegetables to prepare a lunch. Those food items are not a lunch! And if she brings home some potatoes and raw meat, these are not a lunch either. That raw potato and raw meat are a potential lunch. They need to be cleaned, baked, cooked, fried, etc. They need CLEANING and FIRE. When we are redeemed we are like that raw potato and raw meat, which need CLEANING and FIRE in order to become something useful, eatable, to bring nutrition and life to us or to someone else. The Redemption can also be compared to a rich Prince who went to a slave market and bought a slave. That slave changed his master, but the new Master does not want just to bring him to his farmhouse that he may work there, but he wants to bring him to His own house so that that slave would become His brother! Such a thing has never happened in the history of mankind that a Prince, who bought a slave at a slave market would like to make him His brother – a family member! True? But THIS IS God’s Redemption of man and His Purpose. That’s why we, as former slaves of Satan, experience things which never happened to any other slaves!
The Redemption is only the beginning of Salvation! The Redemption provides us with an “open door to our Salvation”. Furthermore, the Redemption is not a beginning of “heaven on earth”, nor is it the end of our problems, conflicts and suffering, nor is it a guarantee of our future salvation and perfection, nor of our entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, nor into the Heaven itself. But it is the beginning of our war with hell through our faith. By faith we have begun the salvation of our soul (Eph. 2:8), by faith we must also finish it (1Pet. 1:9). These spiritual facts are NEVER preached, taught nor explained in any way because the Church and her leaders in general do not even perceive them; hence, they do not even believe them though they are clearly written in the Word of God Almighty! THIS IS THE TRAGEDY OF THE WHOLE CHURCH OF THIS DAY… and believers remain deceived.
There comes time in the life of every redeemed believer when he does not know, where he is and what is happening to him. His Christian life goes through complications, perplexities, problems, uncertainties, unexplained or worrisome even illogical events. What he begins to find in the system of Christianity does not bring any peace, any love, any happiness, any understanding, any satisfaction to his soul, any fulfilment of his desires, any solution to his problems; rather exactly the opposite, it brings disillusionment, suffering, misunderstanding and disappointments in many directions, which bring him into a chaos, fear, worries, dissatisfaction, even into indecision of what to do. The Christian life ceases to be a simple, straightforward, casual even easygoing life, in other words, a “heaven on earth”, which we expected. Nothing seem to be clear as we thought or imagined. What does all this mean and why is it happening?
Because in us, there now lives a New Man – NEW PERSON, which was never in us before and which is COMPLETELY AND RADICALLY different, than are we! So, now we have to get into the NEW MIND of that New Person, whose mind is also totally and radically different from our mind, which we now have to abandon and escape from it. It should be considered alright if we start “losing our mind to get the mind of that New Person”! (1Cor. 2:16/ Phil. 2:5). Should we start losing our mind without any other purpose, it would bring us into a psychiatric hospital. But should we start „losing it” in order to gain a mind of an unimaginably higher quality, capacity, unimaginably broader and deeper wisdom and view, a mind which understands heavenly and eternal things, it would take us out of the psychiatric existence of this earthly life and bring us into Heaven. Therefore, that redeemed believer, which desires to remain at all costs in his natural, old mind and refuses to step out toward his perfection (Heb. 6:1), is by his Saviour and Lord compared to a fool, who will never leave his foolishness; also to a dog, which keeps returning to his vomit; even to a sow which, after being washed, desires to return to her pit and wallow in the mire (Pr. 26:11/ 2Pet. 2:21, 22). Do we see this? Do we believe this? Do we?
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To be continued next week
brother Hanola
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