… just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:4-6). We are not called according to the flesh to glory or to the failures of the generations before us. We are called according to the adoption of grace into the Christ – sons because of our Lord’s relationship with the Father and our relationship with the Son. Our inheritance is from the blessings of heaven and not the curses or blessings of the earth. Our relationship is in the Spirit and not in the flesh taken from the earth. Jesus redeemed us in the flesh (died) so we would be adopted into the Spirit; for God is Spirit. Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, and we were in Him, adopted as sons, before there was sin in the world. Our inheritance is not the reward of this world, but the world in the kingdom of God in Christ (where we can live now in Him).
Our holiness is not in our acts, but in our dwelling place. We are made complete (holy) in Him. Through our relationship with the Christ we have access again to the Father whom sent Jesus to redeem us to the family of God; adopted outside of the law of blood by the blood of God made man. We were grafted into the tree of the Promised Seed and not into the blood of Abraham by law. God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4b-5). The Promise came before the law to redeem those under the law – Jesus, being born according to the blood line (under the law), redeemed us all by spilling all the blood out upon the earth. The Promised Seed did not begin with Abraham, but with Seth born of Adam and Eve another seed from Able whose blood was poured out upon the earth. What the blood of Able was not able to do, another Seed would do – a Seed prepared before the foundation of the earth.
The tree we are grafted into is from the Promised Seed. Abraham himself was born of blood and redeemed into the tree of life by the Promised Seed. Abraham left the home (inheritance) of his father by the law of blood (see Genesis 12:1-3), and became by faith a son of God by adoption looking forward to the Promised Seed – And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:8a). Abraham’s son by Sarah was a son born by promise and redeemed by grace, because God provided the sacrifice for Himself (for His name sake we are redeemed). The law required blood, and God provided for Himself a burnt offering. The tree of life was planted (the Promised Seed) before the foundation of the world, and was available to Adam and Eve in the garden. The Seed was carried through Seth (another seed), through the forefathers of Israel, to Jacob (who became Israel), to King David, to Mary, and is Jesus the Christ.
Understand this; in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and on the first day He called to the Light of the earth to shine. In Genesis 1 it is written “God made the firmament” and “God made two great lights” but it does not say God made the light that dispels the darkness. The first light is Jesus the Christ the Son (seed) of Promise. The Promise was before there was sin and before there was the law. Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). On the seventh day God rested, and at a time yet to come commanded the nation of Israel to rest according to the law. The seventh day was created, as were the other six days of the week, in the beginning. In the beginning the Sabbath was set apart (sanctified), but there was no law of observance. We do not enter into the rest by law, but by grace. It is not by observing the moon and the sun that we enter into the rest, but by living in the Light called to the earth, to be created in the earth, to redeem those created from the earth. The day is the evening and the morning according to the first Light and not the lights created on the first day (see Genesis 1:5).
© 2011, Tim D. Coulter Sr.