Book 3 of Musings Adamic Life and Eternal Life

There are two kinds of life, adamic life and eternal Divine Life.

Christ came to rescue us from adamic life and to fill us with more abundant Divine Life. Thus the Christian discipleship becomes a struggle as we seek to overthrow our adamic life and live in the new Divine Life.

Let's think about what a human being is. He or she has a backbone and is a mammal, that is, the female nourishes her young with her own milk. He is warm-blooded, having a mechanism that maintains a body temperature.

His brain is superior to the other animals. He has a soul, a source of moral judgment and will. His natural inclination, until he is persuaded through education that he should not do this, is to pray when he has needs. He has a spirit that under the right circumstances can enter union with the Spirit of God.

His life comes from the energy derived as cells are burned in the presence of oxygen. The program of metabolism operates as blood picks up oxygen from the lungs and circulates it through the body. Blood-life is corruptible. This fact may be noticed when blood is collected after the body dies. It soon become putrid.

We Christians believe when the adamic man dies his spiritual nature continues to exist somewhere, while his body remains in its place of interment, awaiting the resurrection and final judgment.

None of the above is eternal life. Existence after death is not eternal life. Resurrection in the Day of Judgment is not eternal life. Perhaps we have eternal existence after we die, but that is not what the New Testament means by eternal life.

The Lord Jesus Christ came to give the members of the adamic race eternal life.

"Yes, we know."

I don't think we do. I think we picture Jesus Christ coming into the world to take us to Heaven when we die, where we will live forever.

This is not eternal life. This is not what Christ came to do. The Lord Jesus Christ did not come to earth so we can escape Hell and go to Heaven.

Since there is no basis whatever for such a gospel, why are we preaching it?

We must be spiritually blind!

If eternal life is not eternal existence, or residence in Heaven, precisely what is it?

Eternal life is the Life of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the very personification of the Life of God. He is filled with the Life of God. As far as I am concerned, Christ is the Tree of Life who was in the Garden of Eden.

Christ did come to earth in an adamic form. While He was here He lived two lives. He lived as a flesh-and-blood son of Mary. He also lived as the Son of God, the Fullness of eternal Life.

Christ came as a Bridge between the two kinds of life so we might be able to cross over to Divine Life.

Escaping Hell and being permitted to enter the Presence of God when we die are rights we acquire when we are filled with Divine Life. The emphasis is not on escaping Hell and entering Heaven. The emphasis is changing from an adamic creature to a new creation that lives by God's Life.

If there is any truth more needed in today's Christian teaching, I don't know what it is.

We have millions of Christians who have been taught they are free from the threat of Hell and on their way to Heaven. Yet, they have little or no eternal life. Eternal life is a kind of life, like physical life. You can tell when someone is filled with eternal life. They don't behave like the children of Adam. They behave like Christ and are of Christ.

We are given a Seed of eternal life, we might say, when we first come to Christ. Then it is up to us what we do with that Seed If we, having received Christ and His Life, then continue to live in our adamic nature as always, spending our time eating, drinking, playing, working and reproducing, giving little time to prayer, reading the Word, and fellowshiping with the saints, that Seed of Life will wither and die. Read the parable of the sower.

If we give our attention to nourishing the Seed, we will reap eternal life. We will reap life one hundredfold, or sixtyfold, or thirtyfold, depending on the diligence we apply to it.

Our goal is to be filled with life. The adamic world died on the cross. The death of the adamic world is not evident, in that people still are breathing and moving around. Nonetheless, the adamic world died on the cross. In the future the earth and heaven we know now will be no more. That marks the end of the adamic creation. When we are raised from the dead in the final judgment we will not be standing on the earth, for there will be no earth at that time. We will be suspended in the spirit realm.

The adamic race never was meant to be permanent. Its purpose may be twofold. First, to provide a stock into which eternal life can be grafted. Second, to give God an opportunity to test His children; to see what they will do when they enter the true world; to develop character in them.

But the present world is no more than this. The worse possible mistake any believer can make is to clutch the perishing things of the present world, neglecting the eternal life that Christ can to bring.

Eternal life is related to righteousness. This is why the Apostle John says no one who hates his brother has eternal life in him. This is what I meant by saying you can tell if someone possesses eternal life by the way he or she behaves.

It is common for the children of Adam to hate their brothers. But no individual who possesses eternal life hates his brother or sister.

Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know no murderer has eternal life in him. (1 John 3:15)

Many church people have hatred in their hearts. This means they have no eternal life.

What if they have accepted Christ? It does not matter. They have no eternal life.

What I am pointing out is the damage religious thinking has done to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our religious teaching is that if we "accept Christ" we have eternal life, even if we hate our brother. But the Bible, which we profess to regard as the inerrant Word of God, announces that no murderer has eternal life in him.

We are messed up! We are teaching a religion about Heaven and Hell, similar to many other of the world's religions. Meanwhile many of God's people in America have little or no eternal life.

Why do many of God's people in America have little or no eternal life?

Because they are following their sinful nature. They are trusting their religion to save them. Meanwhile they are worldly, full of the lusts and passions of the flesh and soul, and self-willed-extremely self-willed!

But won't they go to Heaven by grace?

The issue is not Heaven. The issue is not Hell. It is the adamic man who desires to escape Hell and go to Heaven. The adamic man wants to go to Heaven so he can eat whatever he wants and not get fat. Yet the adamic man is not logical in his desires, because the things he cherishes are not found in Heaven but in Hell.

The issue is eternal life! Until we are filled with eternal life we cannot perform the Kingdom tasks for which we have been created.

Learning to live each day in the Spirit of God, in eternal life, is not easy. A thousand pressures and distractions seek to pull us down into the adamic life. It is a fight of faith, a warfare against many enemies.

Each day we have to choose life. We do so by refusing to follow our sinful nature. We pray continually, seeking the Presence of Christ in all that we do. We are cultivating eternal life. We are sowing to eternal life. Eternal life is growing in us.

We are becoming as Christ was when He was here. Christ had an adamic nature but not a sinful nature. In the beginning, Adam and Eve had an adamic nature but they did not have a sinful nature.

As I said, Christ had an adamic nature. He also was filled with the Fullness of God. We are to press forward into that resurrection life until we are prepared fully to be raised when the Lord comes. Now we have a sinful, adamic nature, and a new nature. Each day the one strives against the other. Each day we assign victory to either our sinful adamic nature, or else our righteous eternal life.

Eternal life is a genuine form of life! It comes to us in the form of the body and blood of Christ. We are given more life every time we choose to turn away from our fleshly desires and do what we believe Christ wants us to do.

Our goal, as was true of the Apostle Paul, is to attain to the resurrection. Paul is not speaking here of the general resurrection of the dead that will occur at the end of the thousand-year Kingdom Age. Rather Paul is referring to the first resurrection-that which will take place at the beginning of the thousand-year Kingdom Age, that is, when the Lord next comes to earth.

Why do people want to make their eternal residence in Heaven? Simply answered.

This present world is the valley of the shadow of death. It is a struggle to survive from the moment we are born. Who wouldn't want to go to a wonderful world of beauty and peace and escape the problems we all face.

But moving from the earth to Heaven solves nothing whatever from God's point of view. God has several Kingdom tasks that are waiting for people who can perform them, such as serving as the dwelling place of God; being a brother of the Lord Jesus Christ; being a member of the Wife of the Lamb, of the Body of Christ, of the Servant of the Lord-the One who will bring justice to the nations of the earth.

These are extremely important needs that must be met before there can be peace in the creation, and there are many more such needs.

Adam cannot serve as the dwelling place of God. Will God dwell permanently in a mammal?

Adam cannot serve as a brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Son of God and Son of Man. So it must be true that every one of His brothers is born of God and born of man.

Adam cannot serve as a member of the Wife of the Lamb. How can the Lamb marry that which is unlike Himself? How can the Lamb marry a warm-blooded vertebrate? The Lord Jesus is the Tree of Life. Can the Tree of Life become one with that which is filled with corruption?

Can Adam, who cannot cease from war, who is always seeking his own glorification, bring justice to the nations of the earth? The thought is ridiculous!

But everyone who is filled with eternal life, the Life of Jesus Christ, indeed can serve as the permanent dwelling place of the Father.

Everyone who is filled with eternal life indeed can be accepted as a brother of the Lord Jesus.

Everyone who is filled with eternal life indeed can enter total union with the Lamb and serve for eternity as a counterpart, a complement of the Lamb.

We understand, therefore, that our goal is to be filled with life and with more abundant life.

Heaven and Hell merely are places. They have their respective roles in the scheme of things. The real issue is what we are as a person. We must be changed from an adamic creature to a new creation in which all things are of God.

If we are not changed, then we still are waiting for Christ to enable us to escape the adamic personality and become a new creation. This is true whether we are on the earth or in Heaven. We are not changed by going to a place. We are changed only through our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

He Himself is eternal Life. He Himself is the Resurrection unto eternal Life, the goal of the striving of the Apostle Paul.

Let us make sure we take advantage of every opportunity the Spirit gives us to set aside our adamic nature and to put on the new Man, the new Life that has come down from Heaven that the spiritually dead children of Adam might live.

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25-26)