“Let us make man in our image and after our likeness.” Genesis 1:26
It is abundantly evident that God still purposes to make man AFTER HIS OWN KIND. Now, incredible as it may seem to those who do not understand the mystery, a body of inchristed ones are made in God’s likeness even now. This does not mean that they are gods. There is only one God, as there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Yet, Christ Jesus has a many-membered body, with Christ-filled members who are sons and daughters in God’s great family. God Fathered us all!
God’s personality is expressed through a variety of manifestations in the body of Christ, as He does reproduce Himself after his own KIND. Man’s spirit is the candle of God, where He begins reproducing us after His kind. It is within Christians that are led by the spirit who have the supreme potential of being part of the most divine family.
Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone of a spiritual house, the firstborn among many brethren. Jesus Christ is the first perfect out-ray that represents God correctly. And, others do out-ray God correctly. They have overcome to draw nigh, standing up to represent our Father’s perfect order. A host of overcoming Christians are now of His kind who are as Jesus is. They will be given great opportunity to express heavenly things of our Father’s Kingdom.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that God was speaking to them in a Son who is:
“...the brightness of glory, and the express image of God’s person...” Hebrews 1:3
The word “express” is from the Greek word “charakter”, from which we get our English word “character.” This means that God's Son is the exact CHARACTER IMAGE of God. God is a spirit with perfect character. His supreme intelligence is combined with holy and righteous character that distinguishes Him from every other life form. The course of supreme and omnipotent power is an eternally incorruptible life form. Yet, fallen corrupted men are without right CHARACTER, powerless to perpetuate anything but darkness and destruction in dangerous paths to death.
We understand that man’s nature is INHERITED while character is DEVELOPED. No person born of fleshly parents possesses the perfect godly character. Every child born into this world has or did have an earthly nature of the flesh. Even precious little infants have a selfish character. Hopefully as the child grows, his character forms a progressively mature disposition to put away childish things. Maturity gradually manifests itself through the actions of life that mature the child into adulthood. Christians can become individuals whose character develops throughout one’s entire life.
When we say we are a "born again Christian," we have just acknowledged an awakening that touched our inner spiritual being. We have been made to start partaking of God's divine nature in our inner spiritual person. While this new birth is the most astounding miracle of the ages, it is merely the birth or start of spiritual development in knowing God by the Spirit. Christians can then recognize our Father's divine character and are developed within to know God.
God is a Father who manifests hidden qualities and characteristics within the disposition of our inner being, making us know holiness. Our Father flows outwardly through our attitudes, words, behavior, and actions. Having a mature character formed within us is the most important crucible of our life's experiences. We can grow to full stature by learning from Christ in every circumstance we experience. The body of Christ now yields to following Christ from within. As Christ is the active agent of our spiritual life, it quiets our soul IF WE ALLOW:
"On this behalf am I bowing my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, after Whom every kindred in the heavens and on earth is being named, that He may be giving you, in accord with the riches of His glory, to be made staunch with power, through His spirit, in the man within, Christ to dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, having been rooted and grounded in love should be strong to grasp, together with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and depth and height-to know the love of Christ as well which transcends knowledge-that you may be completed for the entire complement of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19 concordant
That speaks of complete maturity in the inner man quickened by Christ. We recognize we are bona fide members of the original God family—the sons and daughters of our Father—who, like Abraham, look for a city whose builder and maker is God. It is no longer afar off, but fullness has come nigh by the life of Christ working within us. Thus, through this new birth, Christ has been so rooted in our inner being that we do follow on to know the Lordand truly become brethren, God’s offspring. We are a part of his family, after His kind, an EXTENSION of His kind.
I’ve been born of man and woman, so I have their genes in my fleshly body. I can move out of their house, change my name, alter my appearance, and so on, but the genes in my body have remained the same because I am a child of my parents. I’ve also been born in my inner spiritual being, starting to form a spiritual body within my hidden inner man.
God sees our hearts and writes on our minds the spiritual truth of scripture, and with those truths we form Christ within. We have a spiritual body that is rooted and grounded in love. We are the offspring of a heavenly Father. God is the Father of spirits, He fills us with the goodly fruits that can be produced by His Word and Spirit.
Men may call us rebellious garbage, great liars, tippy drunkards, little known heretics, in the swamps of sonship or lay many other religious judgments upon us. It is all absolutely meaningless in light of what matters: it is God’s judgment of us that matters! His approval is all that is needed for our spirit to change everything about us, until we rejoice with joy unspeakable for the true mercy being revealed in us. We can go beyond what natural minded man knows, into a mature stature in Christ that makes us sit down in the Kingdom with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, taking us right into what the Father of spirits knows:
"Yet shall we not much rather be subjected to the Father of spirits and be living?" Hebrews 12:9 concordant
Death is rooted in fallen man’s dark spirit, earthly minded soul, and fleshly body. Christ became the root of Life in our heart, quickened our spirit, changed our mind. If our spiritual body grows to abide, taking control of our inner life, it will quicken even our mortal bodies. To form a spiritual body within our inner being, God gives us an entirely new, unique, and exclusive order of life. We are freed now to be judged, being classified by our Father as a NEW CREATION. There is something making us living creatures full of eyes, having wings, who see the throne, taking us beyond all previous orders, all previous kingdoms.
Jesus’ Kingdom is created in a righteous order of true holiness that Paul called “a new creature”. The inner being is so quickened by spirit that we are placed as a citizen of God’s heavenly Kingdom. To grow, we come to know God as He knows us, becoming ourselves ambassadors of a lasting aristocracy classed as priests unto God, the greatest family of brethren.
These form new heavens and bring new conditions to earth. They rule the earth with exclusive royalty because a divine one is ruling in living creatures. God is manifest to His sons who are those He matures and brings forth to grasp the full potential of His Life. They are changed within to see with spiritual eyes how He appears. There will be nothing impossible for those crowned with creative powers like our Father.
Jesus lived and twice demonstrated, out of a few rolls of bread and a couple fish, that He could create enough food to feed over five thousand people — and he said we would do the same!
“...the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” John 14:12
Inner revelation by Christ shows the righteousness of His love, as our Father grants the power of resurrection life to be released within our own being. We come to know Him by experience. We know He is raising us from within, from every dead thing, because that’s just how His spirit works. With powerful conviction He brings us face to face with the light shining gloriously on our path toward the city of the King.
From earliest times we earthly humans have had a thirst for the new and undiscovered. Very few will probably ever have the opportunity to travel to the moon, yet we can all take the most rewarding journey of all, this spiritual journey within our own being. This is one that Christ inspires, a life of spiritual explorations that reaches into the realm of convincing us of its truth.
What uncovers the reality of God’s Kingdom to make it available? In the Bible we find beneficial teaching exposing us to God’s thinking, correcting us and disciplining us through inspired stories of people who took journeys of every sort in obedience to God’s bidding. Abraham was certainly a good example of an explorer:
“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went...for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Hebrews 11:8
We are also with Abraham looking for a city built of God, longing to be with a family of brethren who are not divided, willing to obey God and follow the spirit’s leading. The body of Christ is coming as the clouds of heaven. They were drawn from every generation of overcomers during the church age. We will find them embarking on impossible quests in reaching out from their spiritual homeland. Through their sufferings, they learn to reign with Christ over the inner dwellings of darkness to find places of peace and promise from within.
Quick obedience to our faith stirs God’s provision that inspires a granting of anointing many times stronger than foundational teachings built in our lives through church. We must MOVE ON to truths built in our lives BY SPIRIT. We live in spiritual precepts that rather keep our mind from being obsessed with material ambition and seeking human prestige.
It takes courage and vision to be a real spiritual pioneer. We need pioneers to follow the paths that are new. They are laid down, now only paths, but we can follow on to eat spiritual substance given today from on high. God speaks to our heart to strengthen His people by giving them crowns of greater understanding so that they fully attain an agreement with God’s glory in order to abide in approved truth, being made one spirit.
This lasting glory did not belong to the church dispensation. Those heavens have waxed old because of their fallen state, and these old heavens are ready to vanish away from us. Yet sadly, we find everywhere that Christian men and women are clinging to old traditional ways that need to pass away. Like drowning men they cling to precious traditional interpretations of scripture at all costs.
Religious men are among the Lord's sheep. They love the sound of their own voice. They make their followers into great fellowships and love to instruct the crowds with endless messages that become legalistic and wearisome. They have traditional worship in meetings of endless special numbers to revive the missionary program or build a new building. The candlestick churches all fell far short of the city whose builder and maker is God.
FALLEN IS BABYLON who dominated nations with her name of CHURCH to commit spiritual adultery with the rulers of the nations.
"For we have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us." Acts 6:14
Church leaders can become like the religious priests beholding Jesus and his apostles. They had great fear that Jesus would change their beloved customs handed down to them from former generations. They cared not about God’s further purpose for the world, but cared mostly that their place in this religious system would be maintained. When Jesus was buried, they took every imaginable precaution to make sure he did not rise. However, He arose in spite of their care and ever lives on high and in the spirits, hearts, and minds of His chosen people.
Going on from the worship found in present orders of church, we find the Spirit marking our thinking and guiding our walk toward the Heavenly homeland. This is the New Jerusalem, the city built in love, where peace abides, and joy abounds, in a city of light. “COME UP HITHER,” Jesus still says to His own people in the Laodicean church. Come up to see God in the spirit of truth, in the light of the city, the city of God.
The New Jerusalem order is UP from the realm of the candlestick church's traditional worship, UP to a fuller supply of spirit, UP to a complete complement worked out within us. Look UP from within for the fullness of God. He is coming swiftly to those who see His clear images. Knowing of what is revealed by His Son, they fully expect to be like Him:
"The one who is conquering, to him will I be granting to be seated with Me on My throne as I, also, conquer, and am seated with My Father on His throne." Revelation 3:21 concordant
"For the premonition of the creation is awaiting the unveiling of the sons of God." Romans 8:19
These are wonderful phrases that speak powerfully about HOW FAR IT IS POSSIBLE FOR A MAN TO GO. We look to Jesus to see what GOD FATHERS. Jesus is the only trailblazer on the road to true heavenly life:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:6
Christians actually have been invited to take a spiritual journey to the Father. This real experience breaks through all of our physical and mental limitations that dominate natural minded people. The Kingdom of God is placed within our mind by being led by His Spirit. THIS is the cost of being established within the body of Christ. It is past time to learn patience, casting off the old standards within us delivered from the mists of yesterday's manna.
We have moved upward in Godly intelligence and onward into the next stage of unfoldment in a new age. The next feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, will feed us the lasting things of God’s Kingdom. In the spirit of the LORD’S DAY, God helps us to arise. He strengthens us to come up over our old mindsets. We must let Him mold us to fit into a perfect order.
Are you fit for the Kingdom order? Our Father promised from the beginning to make us fit into the perfect order. He helps us learn how to let go of the things behind so we do fit into the image He had in mind from the beginning:
"And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion’…" Genesis 1:26
"Now whenever maturity may be coming, that which is out of an installment shall be discarded." I Corinthians 13:10 concordant
"But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away."I Corinthians 13:10