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Salvation and the Cleansing of Our Spirit—Part 2

Salvation and the Cleansing of Our Spirit—Part 2

How Jesus Our Substitute Cleanses Our Spirit

In our last blog, we explored Salvation and the Cleansing of Our Spirit—how we are sanctified in spirit, mind, and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). We discussed how our spirit is our life energy, received from God, that invigorates and motivates us to action, and that our spirit can be either purified by the indwelling Holy Spirit or remain corrupted and defiled by our rejection of God and choosing that which is evil.

We also discussed that the Holy Spirit cleanses our spirit by taking what Christ achieved and reproducing it in us. When we surrender our hearts to Jesus, our spirits are united with His, His love casts out our fear, and we receive a new spiritual temperament invigorating us and motivating our lives. From Jesus, we receive a spirit of love, trust, loyalty, self-sacrifice, kindness, mercy, gentleness, and self-control.

In this blog, we want to examine how Jesus’ vicarious, self-sacrificial, substitutionary death provides for our salvation, for our redemption, rebirth, and cleansing from sin.

Let me be explicitly clear on this point: No human being could be saved from sin without the substitutionary sinless life and sacrificial death of Jesus.

I believe that Jesus became a real human and voluntarily put Himself into a position that was not naturally His own for the purpose of delivering us from the position that was naturally our own; that is, He took our place. He substituted Himself. We should never deny this—for it is eternally true!

The question is: Why was His death required to save us?

 

Becoming the Righteousness of God

My view is that Christ’s death was to accomplish what the apostle Paul described:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV84, emphasis mine).

According to this passage, the reason for Christ’s substitutionary sacrificial death was not a legal one; it was not for a penal reason. It was not a payment. It was also not to assuage God’s wrath or propitiate His anger, for God was never our problem. God has always been for us (Romans 8:31); God was in Jesus reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). God was not changed by Adam’s sin, nor did His law change. Rather, it was the condition of Adam that changed from sinless, loyal, faithful, and trustworthy to sinful, disloyal, unfaithful, and untrustworthy; he became a fear-ridden and selfish being. Adam no longer had a pure heart and right spirit!

Thus, Jesus became our human substitute, taking up the humanity that had been damaged by Adam, so that we might become the righteousness of God, so that humanity might be cleansed from sin and restored to His perfect ideal.

But why is it that Christ’s substitutionary death was required for us to become righteous? Why was Christ’s death necessary to save humans from sin? How did Christ’s voluntary and substitutionary sacrifice achieve the righteousness of God in humanity?

After all, if God is love and He loves the world so much that He sent His Son (John 3:16), if God is merciful—full of mercy (Deuteronomy 4:31), pardons freely (Isaiah 55:7), and does not keep a record of our wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:5)—then why couldn’t He just forgive us outright without the death of Jesus?

First, God did forgive us outright! It was His love and forgiveness that sent His Son to do what was necessary to save us.

But God’s forgiveness, extended freely from His loving heart, does not remove sinfulness from us! And salvation is something more than forgiveness—it is healing! Salvation requires that sinfulness, fear and selfishness, in us be replaced with sinlessness, love and trust, resulting in righteousness, purity, and holiness.

Thus, as John the Baptist said, Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29 NIV84, emphasis mine). Jesus came to take away sin, to destroy death (2 Timothy 1:10) and the cause of death (Hebrews 2:14), thereby healing this creation. And the fear and selfishness, which is the corrupting, elemental aspect of sin infecting, tainting, polluting, and decaying our spirits (hearts) and souls (minds), must be purged, removed, destroyed, eliminated, cleansed from humanity.

Jesus had to provide the truth to free our minds from the lies of Satan—in order to win us (morally influence) to trust in Him—but He also needed to provide, in order to save the human species created in Eden, a cleansed, purified, renewed, and perfected human spirit (life, heart, motivational energy) that we receive through our trust in Him.

When Adam sinned, he corrupted himself, infecting his life with sin. His spirit (life, heart, motivational energy) became contaminated with fear and selfishness; his energizing motives to action were no longer love-driven selflessness but were fear-driven selfishness, the survival-of-the-fittest instinct.

And every human being is an offspring, outgrowth, extension of that same life (spirit)!

We are all born infected with sinfulness, with fear and selfishness, with unholiness (Psalm 51:5). In order to save us from this terminal sinful condition, Jesus had to not only restore our trust in God by a revelation of truth, but He also had to purge, cleanse, remove, eliminate, eradicate, destroy the sinfulness (fear and selfishness) from humanity.

And in order to do that, Jesus had to partake of the humanity, of the very life (spirit) given to Adam in Eden, that Adam had corrupted and to purify that life.

 

Humanity as a Family

God can create new species any time He wants.

After Adam sinned, God was free to gather up some dirt, form a new body, breathe the breath of life into that body, and create a new sinless human being—but such a being would not be part of the creation He had made in Eden. It would not have been related to Adam and Eve but would have been a new, similar, yet distinct creation. Creating a brand-new human would not save Adam, Eve, and their descendants from their terminal sin condition; it would not save the creation God had made in Eden. It would not purify the life given to Adam.

When God made Adam, He breathed into him the breath of life—or life-energy—and every other human being has received life from that same breath of life given to Adam. Eve was not formed out of dirt, and she did not receive her own breath of life. Instead, she was formed from the living tissue of Adam’s body, tissue that was already alive—an extension of that same breath of life (life-energy) that God breathed into Adam.

The Greek (pneuma) and Hebrew (ruwach) words for “breath” are the same words translated as “spirit.” The life-giving energy from God was given to Adam pure, holy, undefiled, with the resonance, aura, quality, character, and motivation to love. The breath, the spirit, is the internal motivational energy that both animates and invigorates all of us. Adam came to life in Eden with a spirit of purity, holiness, and love. His natural desires and motives were perfectly in harmony with God and heaven. And Adam was capable, in his own God-given human strength and ability, of saying no to temptation and, in his unfallen state, developing a mature, holy, and righteous character, thus settling his spirit into eternal purity and loyalty to God.

Adam and Eve were supposed to develop a mature and holy character at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was at that tree that they were to exercise their God-given abilities to think, reason, and choose for themselves. At that tree, they were to choose either to know, by experience, love, trust, loyalty, faithfulness, righteousness—thus solidifying themselves in holiness and retaining a pure spirit, a sinless life—or they would choose to believe Satan’s lies and break trust with God and thereby know, in experience, in their being, fear, selfishness, distrust, guilt, shame, and evil—thus, corrupting their spirits, their lives, the breath of life that God animated them with and gave to them.

Because God gave Adam and Eve procreative abilities, that same “life” breathed into Adam is shared with every single human being. We are extensions of Adam, and the sad reality is that Adam altered the quality of that life-energy. His sin changed the motivational energy from pure love to a life contaminated with fear and selfishness, and we are all born with this motivational drive of fear and selfishness, with the spirit of fear. And such a spirit (life) is out of harmony with God and heaven. Fear causes selfishness, which is the opposite of love; it is out of harmony with God and His design for life and results in ruin and death (Romans 6:23; James 1:15; Galatians 6:8).

 

Jesus and the Human Family

So, what was needed to save humanity from this terminal sin condition?

A human being who is part of Adam, part of this creation, a human being who partakes of that same life, that same spirit or life-energy, that was breathed into Adam in Eden, that life which is now infected with fear and selfishness, and who then overcomes and eradicates the contamination and purifies that life, thereby destroying the terminal condition, purging the fear and selfishness, and restoring God’s perfect, pure, undefiled love back into this human creation, by perfecting/cleansing the spirit—the life given to Adam and shared by all of us.

Thus, Jesus came as the second Adam, partaking of the very same life that was given to Adam and passed down through David (Romans 1:3; Hebrews 2:14). He received His human life through His mother Mary—a humanity, life, that has been damaged by sin, infected with fear and selfishness, and terminal because of Adam’s fall (Galatians 4:4). Jesus’ human lineage through Mary is how He was able to be tempted in every way just like we are (Hebrews 4:15), and we are tempted by our own evil desires (James 1:14). Jesus’ humanity, life, received from Adam was capable of tempting Him with fear and selfishness, which was revealed in Gethsemane when He suffered terrible human emotions and anguish tempting Him to act in self-interest and not go to the cross.

But because the Father of Jesus’ humanity is the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18–20), Jesus was also born with, invigorated with, a pure, undefiled spiritual life-energy. As a real human being, partaking of the life passed down from Adam and the life given by the Holy Spirit, Jesus was able to face temptation and use only His human abilities to say no to every temptation coming from the infection in the human spirit (life) he received from Adam and yes to God and live a holy, pure life (Hebrews 4:15) in harmony with the Holy Spirit. (We receive that same ability to choose to live in harmony with God at conversion when we are reborn with a new heart and right spirit—when we receive the new life/spirit—by the indwelling Holy Spirit.)

And on the cross, Jesus chose only the pure life, the pure energy of love, that He received from the Holy Spirit and, thereby, destroyed the death-causing infection, the impure corrupting quality, character, inclination, motivation of fear and selfishness contaminating the life-energy breathed into Adam (2 Timothy 1:10). At the cross, Jesus destroyed the carnal terminal sin nature and arose in a purified humanity and became the new head of humanity (Hebrews 5:9), and He now stands in God’s presence, not only in His pre-incarnate position as the Son of God but also as the representative head of humanity—Jesus, a real human being, sinless and perfect. He stands in the heavenly counsel as Adam’s substitute, fulfilling the role that God had originally designed for Adam.

Now through faith, each one of us can receive that same pure, divine life-giving energy (spirit—life) via the indwelling Holy Spirit, who takes what Christ achieved and reproduces it in us, invigorating us with a reborn new spirit. Christ is the vine and we are the branches (John 15:5), who, being grafted into Christ by faith, receive the new invigorating spirit (life) from Him through the indwelling Holy Spirit. We die to the old spirit of fear and selfishness and live a new life with a new spirit of love and trust. As Paul wrote,

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves [no longer live the life of selfishness] but for him who died for them and was raised again (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15 NIV84, emphasis mine).

We, with our new life, our new spirit, our new purified spiritual energy are motivated, animated, compelled with new desires, attitudes, and priorities so that we become literal partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). As our spirits, our internal life-energy, our motives, drives, desires now come from Jesus and no longer come from what we inherited from Adam, we grow daily in godliness and, despite ongoing temptations from our old habits and conditioned responses, our renewed reborn spirits are no longer captive to fear and selfishness. As Paul wrote,

For God has not given us a spirit of fear [that we inherited from Adam], but of power and of love and of a sound mind [that we receive by faith/trust from Jesus] (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV).

We are literally changing from a life, spirit, of fear and selfishness to a life, spirit, of love and trust via the indwelling Holy Spirit.

And this is possible only because Jesus, as our human substitute, took up humanity infected with fear and selfishness by Adam and purified that life. Jesus revealed the truth to win us to trust, and He provides us with a new spirit, a new life, sinless and pure.

Thank You, Jesus!

So I encourage you, if you already haven’t done so, to open your heart and invite Jesus in, to ask for the cleansing and washing by the Holy Spirit to purify your spirit, to renew you with new desires and motives, to invigorate you with love for God and your fellow man, to partake of the divine nature, a new, purified, Christlike spirit of love and trust!

 

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God lead me to your book “The God-Shaped Brain” while I was searching for another book about the brain and then to your interview about your book on HeartWise Ministries [where] I found out about [Come And Reason Ministries]. I’m now devouring the webcasts of your Bible studies. I have been so greatly blessed and I thank God so much for your courage to speak the Truth in love no matter what. Listening to you contrast the two opposing systems (laws) and digging deep to unearth the hidden treasures in the Bible makes me so incredibly happy and I feel very blessed to be part of your Bible Study Group although I live far away. I am just so excited that there is a group of people that is spreading the Truth about the character of God and it saddens me how few realize what our Father in Heaven is really like.

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Testimony 32

The message [of Come And Reason Ministries is] for all Christians (and those who may become Christians) and not just Adventists or any other group. It is difficult to imagine why any [anyone] with intellectual and spiritual honesty could find fault with the way you explained the healing substitution concepts and the truth about God’s character, though I know some will reject and criticize. On behalf of those in our group near Tacoma, WA, thank you and your staff for all of the hard work and for sharing the Gospel in this manner. God’s message of healing love will be carried to the whole world and then Jesus will come – He promised it.

Terry U., Tacoma, WA, USA

 

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Testimony 29

Thank you for all of your work to correct misconceptions about God’s character. So many people that my husband and I have talked to seem to be against the natural law construct and view it as “errant” and “dangerous.” Having learned more about it through your blogs and lessons, I don’t really understand why they view it that way, except that it means they have to relearn theology they have known for their entire lives. But I’m so excited to relearn this. For the past few years I have been questioning how I could trust a God who punishes arbitrarily and is full of wrath for those who don’t obey His commands. That view made me afraid to “mess up” or “not be good enough,” even within my relationship with God. I really appreciated the point you bring out about God not wanting us to serve Him because we are afraid, but because we love Him.

Melissa H., IN, USA

 

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We really appreciate your views on the judgment and they make good sense considering our free choice.

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Testimony 41

I have been blessed by your ministry. I have experienced personally, and deeply resonate with, the God of love and the beautiful picture of God’s character that you present. I have seen your seminar series on YouTube, read ‘The Journal of the Watcher’ book, used your mobile app, and also listen/study the bible study lesson with you each week. I concur with many of the thoughts and perspectives that you share. I understand your conclusions on natural laws vs imposed law and the legal/penal substitution (incorrect diagnosis). This makes perfect sense to me.

Bless you for all you do.

Melissa L.

 

Testimony 61

I grew up in a prominent protestant church and had what I like to call religious anxiety. I’ve always had questions about God and Salvation that no one could seem to answer.  I didn’t know how to find resolution. During 2020, at the height of my anxiety, I fell to my knees and begged God to show me truth and light and to give me the hope that I’ve been longing for. Days later, I stumbled upon your online videos and it was like a veil was lifted and EVERYTHING made sense! For the first time in my almost 39 years of life, my religious/spiritual anxiety has lessened. I feel a sense of freedom and peace I’ve NEVER had before… and it’s all because my view of God has changed. Thank you!

Ashleighn C.

 

Testimony 53

I was so blessed by a friend who gave me your book, “The God Shaped Brain,” while I was sitting in church asking God to please help me learn more about Him and help me not to be so confused and scared. That was about 2 years ago. Your books have helped me to love God even more. I’m not confused or scared anymore! I have listened to all of your bible study classes and feel like I know the wonderful people that attend every week. Thank you for all that you’re doing in spreading the true message about God and His law of love. God bless you and your whole class.

Elssy P., Modesto, CA, USA

 

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I just wanted to personally thank you for your teachings and insight into scripture. I came across your website via my cousin who suggested I look into “Healing the Mind” information. My youngest daughter has been struggling over the last couple of years and it all came to a head this spring. When I started listening to the “Healing the Mind” lectures my own life began to be transformed. I began sharing with all my daughters the concepts you laid out so clearly. I ordered your book and soaked it up. I just want to say “Thank You!” My walk with the Lord has been refreshed and renewed. Your obedience to the Lord is a blessing to so many.

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Testimony 40

I was brought up in a different faith and have been petrified my whole life of God. I believed that I would burn in hell for eternity. When I was 12 I started pursuing the things of this world, but for the next 45 years the Spirit was always calling me, as I knew there was a God through nature. I could see the vast sea of stars in the universe and knew there was something bigger out there. Five years ago, through a Revelation seminar, I was blessed to learn about God’s character and government.

Then I found Come and Reason Ministries and have come under some extreme pressure when I speak about the ministry. One time a member sent me an internet article titled “Whats wrong with Tim Jennings?” I asked her what she thought of it and she said “I don’t know, I didn’t read it.”

I have always wanted to find out for myself the truth about God, so I stayed with the Design Law construct and have been liberated to understand the big picture. Once we consider Design Law, all other Bible stories and prophecies seem to fit perfectly. It is truly beautiful to see people grasping how God operates this Universe of Love and the liberation it has provided in their lives. It blows my mind to see how consistent Design law is with what our founders believed. I hear statements like “This makes so much sense.”

Tom W., Mt. Pleasant, MI, USA

 

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Liz H., Port Angeles, WA, USA

 

 

Testimony 26

Your teachings about our heavenly Father have changed my life. Thank you sooooooo very very much! I know He’s doing some serious healing in my heart and life and I look forward to each new day to learn something new about Him and to just hear you speak about Him. Thank you, forever.

Nancy S.

 

Testimony 70

I have been watching you for many years and have learned to love God with all my heart. I was raised by a loving Christian mother that had been lied to about who God really was, so our religious upbringing was hell fire and damnation. As soon as I was old enough and moved out, I not only left the church, I ran as fast as I could to get away from it. Sad to say, it wasn’t until the past couple of years that I learned and understand who my Father really is and how much He loves me. I understand God’s Design Laws (which make sense) and when I’m teaching my church Bible study class, I’m able to really put to use the things I’ve been learning and Holy Spirit is leading. Thank you for introducing me to my Father of true, pure love. Everyday with Him is new and exciting. One thing that breaks my heart is that I didn’t know Him sooner. God Bless you and your ministry!

Judy Phelps, Reno, NV, USA