Living from the Inside Out, Part 1

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…

Jesus said the Father is a Spirit, not Spirit, but a Spirit. (John 4:24) - An individual, with a spiritual body, on a throne, in heaven. That’s in another realm, not this physical plane of existence.

The problem the Father had is this: How does He, a Spirit in the Spirit realm, who created a physical universe, move about in that physical universe he had just created?

Did He think “Oh no, now that I’ve created a physical realm, how do I get around in it!”? I don’t think so.

His answer was elegant: Create spirit beings designed to live and operate in His spiritual realm, but put their spirit & soul in a body of the physical realm. They would be the bridge between two realms, and if the Father could live in their spirit, and they could train their minds to think like Him, and then they could do His will in the physical, thus allowing the Spirit-Father to manifest Himself in the physical universe.

They would be living temples, living houses of God, each one a living poem and lovingly created to manifest aspects of the Father’s personality unique to them, who along with gazillions of other people each manifesting aspects of His personality unique to them, would together present the whole of the Person of God in the physical universe.

Great plan, but…

You know what happened. These bridge-people, the ones created to be the bridge between the Spirit-Father and a physical world, committed treason, in essence kicking God out of their spirit and physical world, and instead letting another spirit (Satan) have access to the physical world through them. (Hosea 6:7)

Thus they became the bridge for God’s enemy to manifest in the physical world, a being who was previously limited to only the spirit realm too. He too needed physical beings who could operate in the spirit and physical realms, and he got them.

The solution

Man had done the deed, so man would have to pay for that deed. The whole of the universe is created with a law, outlined in the laws of thermodynamics, that says for every action there is a reaction. A seed dies in the ground, life springs up. You hit me, I hit you back. You work, you get paid.

We call it ‘what you sow is what you reap’, and it is restated throughout Old and New Testaments in various ways: “God is not mocked; If a man sows to the flesh he will of the flesh reap corruption; if he sows to the Spirit he will of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” “Give and it shall be given (back) to you, good measure, pressed down, running over…” and so on. (Gal 6:7-8, Luke 6:38)

(People sometimes think incorrectly that just because our sins are forgiven everything in our physical world should immediately line up with that. But money, relationships, possessions, and their consequences are here in the physical world. The forgiveness of sins removes the guilt of sin, but not the injury of sin. We must do that ourselves by confessing our sins to those we sin against, learning how to make wise financial decisions to undo the bad decisions we made in that realm – then the physical will begin lining up with the spiritual)

So a man would have to kick the enemy out and restore mankind to the ability of walking as bridge-beings with God inside them. Hmmm…how to do that? Death came into the world by that sin, so sin has passed to all mankind – how can man get out of that trap?

There was no other way than for God to become man. To be legal and fair, God would have to lay down His authority and rights and privilege as God, and walk as a normal man. The blood line is passed on by the male, so He could not be conceived by man’s way as the blood in His veins could not be tainted by Adam’s sin. He would have to fertilize the egg Himself, thus the blood coursing through His veins would not be tainted.

He would have to be a 2nd Adam, walking as a man with God, anointed by God, so He could undo what the first Adam did.

Thus God gave His only born Son to become a man. The Son lived as a man anointed by the Holy Spirit, and legally paid for the first Adam’s treason, allowing all that will to become the children of God. The “in the Spirit” Father God could once again live in these spirit-physical beings called humans, to accomplish His will in the physical world. That’s what Pentecost was all about, God moving (back) into living temples; people!

Back up the bus: A whole lot happened between Adam and Pentecost

Way back when man kicked God out he was compass-less and his condition could be summarized by the twice-made statement in the book of Judges…’In those days there was no king (in Israel); every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (17:6, 21:25)

The Lord had to find a legal way to get back into mankind’s life, and since He had originally delegated the earth to man, He had set in motion the principle of “what you loose (or bind) on earth is loosed (or bound) in heaven” - meaning earth (each person) controls how much God is involved in our lives. You don’t want God, He won’t bother you. You seek Him with all your heart, you get all of Him. You only want enough of God in your life to not cramp your style, then you get exactly that much God in your life.

Enter Abraham who turned his heart to the Lord and became the father of our faith. In ancient covenants the covenant-heads, the 2 who made the covenant, would exchange their most valuable possessions. By necessity with the earth controlling heaven’s involvement, Abraham on earth had to offer his son of promise in sacrifice so that God could be loosed from heaven to give his Son of promise to be sacrificed. (Gen 22:16-18)

But mankind was still compass-less. Mankind still was not back to the place where God lived in man as living temples to do His will. The then-new nation of Israel was wandering in the desert without moral or spiritual direction in terms of nothing down in print for them to live by.

Then Moses received the 613 laws given to mankind to live by. Yet they were given for a much larger reason than merely guidelines for worship, moral living, and health issues. Romans 3:19-20 says the law was given for one reason from God’s perspective: “…that all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the law shall no one be justified in His sight; for by the law came the knowledge of sin.” The law did little more than remind people how imperfect and without God in the world they are.

Remember the plan

Remember – the Father was still trying to legally maneuver mankind around to where He could once again walk with mankind from the inside out – so He at some point He had to show them how far they’d fallen, and how impossible it is to regain that lost ground on their own.

No person can be justified by keeping the law. All it did (does) is show us we need God. Paul would later say it was merely a school-master to bring us to Christ, but once in Christ we have become the children of God, loving Him and living with Him from the inside out. (Gal 3:24-26)

What began on Pentecost with God moving out of the temple in Jerusalem and into people as living temples, completes the circle of original intent of the Spirit-Father from that realm seeking to live through people who (amazingly) are both spirit and physical beings.

And this is where we must pick up next week, with the realities of Christ in us, and all the New Testament says about living from the inside out. Learning to be accountable to Christ in us, learning how to walk with our Father, the realities and responsibilities of grace…my what fun! Stay tuned.

Blessings,
John Fenn

Please send all personal emails or questions to me at cwowi@aol.com