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The Church Age believer's identity with TLJC in his Priesthood and as a member of the New Spiritual Species

John 1:14 - And the Word (undiminished deity) became flesh (true humanity), and dwelt among us (the Incarnation), and we (James, Peter, and John) beheld His glory (the visual manifestation of the Uniform of Glory), glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (Bible Doctrine).

In our previous lessons we reviewed the doctrines that relate to TLJC in his first advent when he was incarnated via the virgin birth in his first advent.

We started our study with a discussion of the doctrine of the virgin birth that was necessary for there to be no transmission of the OSN and then took up the doctrine of the hypostatic union that explains the mechanics of how undiminished deity and true humanity reside in the person of TLJC and then discussed the doctrine of the kenosis that defines God the Father's protocol for the deity and humanity of TLJC in hypostatic union.

In the context of these doctrines, we have been looking at some of the names and titles for our Lord Jesus Christ in order to see more clearly what God has done for us through him, so we can more completely understand who TLJC is and what he has done for us, and from our knowledge of him have our confidence established in him by being occupied with him. Heb 12:2;

For the past several lessons we have been discussing TLJC as the Royal High Priest and believers who are in union with him as members of the Royal Priesthood of the church age and eternity.

Previously in our study we noted that TLJC our Messiah is the Great High Priest Heb 4:14; and church age believers are believer priests 1Peter 2:5-9.

When we stopped last time we were discussing the fact that Jesus Christ as God indwells the body of every Church Age believer ("Christ in you, the confidence of glory")

The result of this is that the believer's body becomes sacred because God the Holy Spirit indwells the believer's body to make it a temple of God. This is why we are exhorted by Paul to present our bodies as living sacrifices. Rom 12:1;

We have seen that the ministry of God the Holy Spirit is also involved in the spiritual life of Israel in the millennium.

In Jer 3:16; Jeremiah prophesied about the new covenant to Israel when he said that the ark of the covenant would not be remembered during the millennium.

v16 "`And it shall be in those days when you are multiplied and increased in the land,' declares the Lord, `that people shall no longer say, "The ark of the covenant of the Lord." It will never even enter their minds or be remembered, It will not be missed nor will another one ever be made.

In the millennium there will be a temple and a priesthood, but there will be an empty Holy of Holies because reality is the person of Christ who will be ruling in Jerusalem.

The ark of the covenant has not existed since Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 B.C. and will never exist again. The ark was built by craftsmen who had the enduement of the Holy Spirit so it could not be duplicated after it was destroyed.

The message of Jeremiah to Israel is that in the future they will not need the ark of the covenant. They will know the doctrine in their souls.

In the new covenant to Israel the law of God will be in their minds and written in their hearts. The Holy of Holies is empty because the Jews in the millennium have Bible doctrine in their soul.

There is a new temple constructed in the millennium, but it is not a sacred building. It is described in chapters 40-44 of Ezekiel. It has a Holy Place, a veil, and an empty Holy of Holies, but it is an empty room because believers in the millennium will have a spiritual life that is similar to that of the Church Age.

So the empty room also represents the spiritual life of the millennium.

Ezek 39:29; and Joel 2:28; explain the spiritual life and resultant empty room of the millennial Temple.

Ezek 39:29, "`And I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I shall pour out My Spirit on the house of Israel,' declares the Lord God."

Joel 2:28, "And it will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions."

The Lord first pours out His Spirit on all Israel, and then on all mankind. He can do this because every person who enters the millennium will be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ so everyone who enters the millennium will have this spiritual life.

Church Age believers have a spiritual life that is greater than the spiritual life of the millennium because church age believers have additional resources including the indwelling of God the Father and God the Son, but both systems have the filling of the Holy Spirit in common. The empty room indicates that the two spiritual lives are similar but not identical.

We have seen this in Heb 8:10; that quotes Jer 31:33; concerning the New Covenant to Israel, "For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days (the Tribulation),' says the Lord. `I will put My laws in their minds; I will write them upon their hearts, then I will be their God and they shall be My people.'"

This explains the revival of the Levitical priesthood and the Levitical offerings during the millennium. But it also explains their forgetting of the Ark of the Covenant because the true Holy of Holies of the millennial Temple is the personal presence of the Lord Jesus Christ on earth as the God of Israel, and as the Shekinah Glory as he is now by his indwelling of every church age believer.

The next identity that church age believers have with TLJC that we will look at is their membership in the "new Spiritual Species" that forms the Royal Family of God.

In previous studies we have seen TLJC has three royal patents and along with those royal patents he has three royal families.

His patent as the "Son of God" has the Trinity as his royal family.

His patent as the "Son of David" has Israel, the new racial species as is royal family.

His patent that represents his battlefield royalty and title of the "Bright Morning Star" has the Church, the new spiritual species as his royal family.

We have seen under the doctrine of the virgin birth that Jesus was born filled with the Holy Spirit. Church age believers are born again as a new spiritual species filled with the Holy Spirit.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the basis for the new spiritual species, the royal family of God, and the protocol plan of God because it is established in the precedence he set during his life in unglorified humanity in the Hypostatic Union.

At salvation, the believer's pre-salvation sins are forgiven and the believer is baptized by the Holy Spirit and placed into union with Christ thereby creating an new member of the new spiritual species. Paul describes this in:

1Cor 12:13; For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

2Cor 5:17; If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature (kaine ktisis) a new creation, or spiritual species); the old things (archaios: the status quo of unbelief) have passed away; behold, new things ( kainos: divine power to execute imputed spiritual assets) have come.

Ktisis is the Koine Greek word that is equivalent to the Hebrew word "bara" that refers to creation ex-nihilo or creation without reliance on preexisting materials, it means "to create from nothing." The believer in Christ is created by God from nothing as a new spiritual species at the point of their salvation.

The transformation that occurs at second birth is made possible by the baptism of the Holy Spirit that places believers into union with Christ. This is described in Scripture by the prepositional phrase " en Christoi" that is translated "in Christ."

This is also referred to as positional sanctification and current positional truth, and insures every believer's eternal security.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit results in a "new creature," indicated by the words kainos + krisis : a new spiritual species.

Notice that "in Christ" comes first. The only sense that we are considered a "new creature" is through the baptism of the Holy Spirit that places us into union with the resurrected Christ.

"Kainos" is defined in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Vol. 3, pages 447,449,451as "what is new and distinctive" as compared with other things. Kainos is new in nature, different from the usual, impressive, better than the old, superior in value or attraction.

Kainos is the epitome of the wholly different and miraculous thing which is brought by the time of salvation. Hence "new" is a leading teleological term in the apocalyptic promise: a new heaven and a new earth, Rev. 21:1; a new Jerusalem, Rev. 21:2; and a new name, Rev. 2:17.

New creation is the glorious end of the revelation of God's salvation. Thus kainos becomes a slogan of the reality of salvation which we know already in Christ.

"Kainotes", translated "newness," in the New Testament is found only in Paul. In accordance with the use of kainos, it denotes the fullness of the reality of salvation which Christ has given to Christians in comparison with the worthlessness of their former condition.

Rom 6:4 - We have been buried together with Him through the baptism of the Holy Spirit into His death in order that as Christ has historically been resurrected from deaths, through the glory of God the Father, so also we might have the option to walk in newness of life.

An Expository Dictionary on New Testament Words says "kainos" denotes new, not new in time, but new at to form or quality, of different nature from what is contrasted as old.

That which is "new" is said to be the "creature," translated from the Greek word" ktisis"

An Expository Dictionary on New Testament Words, "creature" In Scripture, to create, always of the act of God, whether in natural creation or in spiritual creation.

In 2Cor. 5:17 the reference is to what the believer is in Christ; the result this creative act is that he has become a new creature.

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology p 385 states that Where a person belongs to Christ, new creation is a fact. Former things which previously determined his life have passed away.

In Christ the old privileges that men use to erect barriers between themselves such as race, gender and economic status are no longer valid. Only belonging to him as a member of the new creation or the new spiritual species counts.

The past has been cancelled by the cross. Ktisis therefore refers to a creative act of God. In the hostile environment of the devil's world, believers are instantly changed into a new spiritual species by the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Members of this new species have new characteristics, new qualities, new assets: with a newly created human spirit, they are trichotomous ,they have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the availability of the filling of the Holy Spirit, the imputation of divine righteousness, membership in the Royal Family of God, possession of eternal life, sanctification for service to God, citizenship in the heavenly community, ordination into the royal priesthood of the believer, election to privilege, an eternal destiny, inheritor of the eternal escrow, and adoption into the body of Christ.

All of these and much, much more, are new things associated with the new spiritual species and is in direct contrast to those things that previously characterized their fallen condition.

This contrast is mentioned by the last phrase of 2Cor 5:17, "the old things have passed away, look, what is new have come."

"Old things" is one word in the Greek, the plural neuter subject "archaios" that is defined by Arndt and Gingrich in the A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, as what has existed from the beginning, or, from ancient times.

This takes us back to the very beginning of our fallen condition in the Garden of Eden. What has passed away is something that came into being in the most ancient of times, the fall of Adam.

Therefore, the "old things" refer to the original sin, the sinful nature, and spiritual death. At the moment of salvation the characteristics, qualities, and assets of our fallen condition "pass away," the aorist active indicative of the Greek verb "parerchomai" means "to pass away, to perish, to come to an end."

The aorist tense is culminative; and views the event in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of its existing results. We were born spiritually dead and remained so until the point of our salvation at which point it "came to an end."

The active voice indicates that the old things related to spiritual death produce the action of the verb at salvation. They "passed away, perished, and came to an end."

The indicative mood is a statement of biblical fact. Our sinful nature is dead according to Rom 6:2; How shall we who have died to the sinful nature, how shall be still live in it?

v 3 Or are you ignorant that all of us who have been immersed into Christ Jesus have been immersed into His spiritual death?

v 4 Therefore, we have been buried together with Him through the baptism of the Holy Spirit into His death in order that as Christ has historically been resurrected from deaths, through the glory of God the Father, so also might have the option to walk in newness of life.

v 5 If we have become intimately united with Him in the likeness of His death, and we in fact have, not only this but also we shall in fact be intimately united to the likeness of His resurrection.

v 6 Be knowing this, that our old self (the sinful nature) has been crucified together with Him in order that the human body with reference to its sinful nature might be rendered powerless for the purpose that we should no longer be slaves to sin (our old self).

In 2Cor 5:17; Paul uses the Greek verb "parerchomai" to refer to the passing away of the "old things," ( the sinful nature and resultant spiritual death). At salvation, the new believer's "old things" pass away and come to an end. The believer's "newness of life" begins as a result of becoming a "new spiritual species."

And according to Col 2:13-14; the thing that makes all this possible is that God forgives us at the moment of salvation of all our presalvation sins:

Col 2:13; When you were dead in your transgressions ( spiritual death ) and the uncircumcision of your flesh ( the body of corruption ), He ( God the Father ) made you alive together with Him ( positional sanctification through the baptism of the Holy Spirit ), having forgiven ( aorist middle of "charizomai" ) us all our transgressions ( presalvation sins ),

v 14 having cancelled out the certificate of debt ( the Greek "cheirographon" referring to what the law says we owe God ) consisting of decrees against us ( because of the sins we have committed ) which were hostile to us; He has once and for all taken it out of the way ( aorist participle of "exaleipho" that refers to a permanent cancellation of the debt ) and nailed it to the cross ( the imputation of our personal sins to Christ ).

This all takes place at the moment anyone expresses personal faith in Jesus Christ. The tyranny of the sinful nature is broken, spiritual death comes to an end, the believer "in Christ" becomes a new spiritual species and the opportunity for a new life begins.

This transition from the "old things" over to the "new" is the result of faith alone in Christ alone, God forgives every believer of all pre-salvation sins.

Col 2:13-14; informs us that God took our sins and imputed them to Christ on the cross. Then, at salvation the new believer is baptized by the Holy Spirit into union with Christ and God forgives him of all his presalvation sins.

The new believer is also described as a new spiritual species according to 2Cor 5:17a; "If any man is in Christ he is a new spiritual species."

Notice that the baptism of the Holy Spirit comes first. Once the individual is "In Christ" then the adjective "new" referring to the creative act by God makes the believer a member of this new superior creation.

As a member of the new species, according to Rom 6:4; believers are then given the "option to walk in newness of life." This "newness of life" is better by comparison with the worthlessness of the former fallen condition.

As a new spiritual species the former things ( the archaios) that previously determined the life have passed away (parerchomai) having been cancelled by the cross.

The "old things," or those things that have existed from the beginning, the fallen condition of spiritual death, have come to and end. The new believer as a member of this new species enters into the Christian life in the status of spirituality an environment where every believer has equal privilege and opportunity to grow in grace under the mentorship of God the Holy Spirit.

In this status of spirituality the believer has fellowship with each Member of the Trinity. Fellowship with the Father is personal love for God, fellowship with the Holy Spirit is being filled by the Holy Spirit, and fellowship with the Lord is occupation with Christ.

The use of the word "species" to describe the church is based on the fact that a species is a class of individuals having common attributes that are designated by a common name.

Mankind was created as a new rational species to resolve the conflict between God and another rational species called angels.

 

© Copyright 2007, Michael Lemmon Bible Ministries. World Rights Reserved.  This document was created on 2/17/2010