Were we to consider the implications of “for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die” and such as being coupled with being dead in sins and trespasses, our confidence in the flesh must surely wither.
If we have any disposition toward some qualifying of this death as “spiritual” in any sense of making it less than actual, but only of a certain category, we are already upside down in not knowing that what is true spiritually is the all and only that is true…and real.
Oh, do not be deceived and confused as to biological motions having any “life” in them in God’s esteem. But it is so; that only what God esteems as true and/or life is all and only what is true or alive. And what is dead or He may call dead or in death…surely is in that reality of death.
What then? The man “feels alive” to himself…and in some form of consciousness or even thinking so that he bristles at the thought of being, or being addressed as dead. Yet, the truth of it remains.
We can see, if we can, that any preservation of anything (such as we might even call a remnant) is in all and every way owing only to the grace of God in its preservation. And for its preservation.
And it would be remiss to hold any notion that “dead” to God means non-existent, or absent from any of His knowing. No, it has the estate and state of dead(ness). But we are not (for the most part) used to thinking in these terms, we have in all the sense the dead are “no longer with us” and cannot, by any of or effort(s) be made to be back with us.
But what is before God…is well…before God. And there is nothing in creation (or beyond if one cares to know) hidden from His sight.
How then is anything done or what we may believe done or having been done (the record and recording of the scriptures, the testimonies of men) possible “among the dead”? It again, is all and only owing to the grace of God. And alone of His sustaining.
God does as He wills, does as He purposes…and (unless one has a rather small god) answers to no one. God has nothing over Him for owing…as author of all and reason for all, nothing can “hold Him” to anything (and surely not you nor I) but, He has, and does only toward the believer, made His word known. No sense of man’s reason, no sense of man’s rightness or fairness…or even such as what man would call mercy…can God be held to. God knows what all these things mean in reality, including “love”…man of himself having no clue. None at all.
But yes, He makes His word known to believer:
Even this:
For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.
Even in that we understand but have care, lest we foolishly misunderstand to some contrariness “See, there’s something God cannot do! He cannot swear by one greater!” If we have any view of God with a ceiling above…even such as we might say…”But…well…no one lives upstairs of Him” we need light. No, our conceptions are most often shown very small…but any true conception, small as it may be, as must be and can only be given by God…is a start.
Who despises the small beginnings? There is yet joy ahead.
Our definitions tend to have lines around them, as a container might…to separate the thing described by definition, from all others…to “hold” the thing being defined. Dog doesn’t bleed into cat, nor vice versa. And if, even if, we may still see “all” (Who is the all in all?) as definable to our limning…God is faithful.
Go ahead, and do an experiment…it may be lifelong, God knows. If one cares to know the Father, cares to know the Son (and such care has its origins not “of man”)…look, see, seek, ask, knock and one will find there is no “line”, no space for defining one as opposed to the other or different, no placing of one “here” and another “there” as you might look at them to see difference. Or find a place…even if one think they are “tight”, a slimmest piece of paper (or thought and reason) can slip between. For then a man could occupy what no man can…that “space” between the Father and Son. It’s simply…not there.
Don’t try to insert yourself into non being…but hey…it’s your lab. I can make no law. But I can tell you about my experiments.
So I think (if I may be somewhat topical) of a story. It was called the “Sixth Sense”. Do you know it? I hate to give away spoilers, but at this late date…who doesn’t know?
Basically we follow a man and a boy…and such a man who doesn’t know he is dead. Other of the “deads” pop up along the way, but the story essentially revolves around this fellow not knowing he is dead. And we are, for the most part (I’d like to meet someone who says “I knew from the beginning wwhat it was about and what would happen”) so taken in by its set up, that at the end, when the man finally sees and learns that he (as well as we watching) was living in, or watching an illusion or delusion whereby everything was so well crafted as to give one appearance, while at the end…we finally see. It even provokes one to “go back” and look at all the scenes where we may have thought communication was taking place between this dead man and the living…but see…Oh, it was all an assumption according to the ways the scenes were constructed.
What we thought was happening…wasn’t really…at all.
Now, in some ways, except it was all so entertaining and rather engrossing (even in our delusions, watching) in construction as to “keep us” to the end…that one could say…the author is prankster. Or devious. Yet, it was interesting and interesting enough to keep us watching while not even barely aware of the great twist coming. That makes it even so much the more…interesting…and considerable.
Does the author have that “right”? To make or do according to his will…with no rule “above Him” (or that we might even place there) to keep Him to whatever sense of congruence we might like to enforce? Do you have a god too small?
For now I cannot let this consideration go. At least till I am made able.
Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound.
O, but man would say…even must say “Why…or who (even) tell another what to do knowing they cannot (are not able) or worse, knowing that the instruction will cause them to do all that is not of the doing, but take the form of provoking greater disobedience and trespass? This is not, nor ever can be to man’s reasoning. “It’s not fair to tell a toddler (or in this case, the dead) to lift a car”. There’s no reasonableness to it, in fact…it shows (as far as man is concerened) all lack of reason, opposed to reason…and making the speaker all of unreasonable to man.
“Why tell what another cannot do…and put it in such a way as it would seem you expect them to?”
But as a brother has said “The telling of a thing to do does not of itself have any provable presumption necessary that their is ability to do” In so many words.
How do the dead learn…they are “really dead?” Not sorta, not kinda like, not in some figurative way, nor some simulacrum of deadness…but…dead? Of all disability?
Paul saw and learned some things (if you find him a faithful seer and learner) that did (I have little doubt) set him so far against or opposed to the streams of natural reasoning…that thanks be to God, God had him record them, and God has preserved them.
And I have no doubt such strenuous opposition to Paul’s sight and understanding was not experienced by him. Oh, he knew very well how he was esteemed.
We may think of Paul in the foolish way we so often do (at least today)…that red carpets would be rolled out to him at every so called “church”…if God were disposed to present him to us again.
Oh, but you haven’t been a very good watcher if you are at all disposed to think so. Re-watch the story. Go back and look. See if you have not been taken in by what you thought was there and happening…but actually was not at all.
(This is too painfully obvious of Jesus, the very Christ, also)
But if you think Paul, the “great” apostle with whom you’d like to “share” your pulpit (and have in your pulpiteering and use of him to elevate yourself) has had anything to do with those excursions…think again. There’s still time to re-watch the story.
When he wrote to one of those few he trusted as entrusted, he said
Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity.
That “I speak the truth and lie not” is very telling…making appeal to his son in the faith that he is/was indeed an apostle. For no doubt much had gone out (even at that time) to question him, his revelation(s) and his calling. Doubt this? OK.
Many “super” apostles had emerged, men taking advantage for their own advantage of gatherings of sheep, whereby they might feast among them, and upon them.
Jesus does not lie.
Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute: That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.
Pulipiteers are not unlike profiteers, or pirates…taking what they may in advancing themselves as a “something”.
Using…to establish themselves. Even using callings now as their “titles”. Like a first first name.
Beware. The King is indeed coming.
“Depart from me I never knew you” only has the preserving power of warning to those who believe and know the terror of it is not beyond Christ’s saying.
That would be an unwelcome twist ending.
And therefore, we labor and strive…to really see the story…as it is, and not as we would like. Or presume. God hasn’t lied.
But He knows how well we can lie to ourselves. And He is not “beneath” (or above) even sending strong delusion.
Is He…allowed?
Now, that’s funny.
Allowing God to do…what He says.
How do the dead find out they are?
He speaks.
If this is yet troubling in what needs to be troubled by the notion God does as He pleases, speaks as He will(s) without any consideration of how another might receive or be disposed to it…especially if the presumption is all upon the hearer’s part (is it not?) that God is not such who would speak of matters that a man has all inability to do…yes…that must be troubling to what must be troubled. Taking even offense if need be.
But beyond that, this place where God leads a man to what is all untenable to himself, is where is found even that purpose for such…the revelation of the grace of God in abundance.
But where sin abounded…grace did much more abound.
God’s pleasure in leading a man into all of his own inability serves His great pleasure in the revelation of His son “full of grace and truth”…and where man finds what he cannot do is what leads him into all that only God can do and does. The ministry of grace through Jesus Christ.
And of the 30 odd translations available at hand to me, in every case it is that past tense that does not escape being used.
did much more abound
abounded
multiplied
overflowed
did overabound.
As a dear apostle used to remind me and any who could hear…”sometimes you gotta get really mad before you get glad.”
God has handily handled…sin. By even its provoking to an overwhelming response to its extinguishment through Christ. By the death of His Christ.
He flushes out all unlawful hands.
Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:
Predetermined that He would be delivered…even into hands of all unlawfulness, no less determined.
And they were cut to the heart.
Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law?
Through Paul (as in Christ) God has also given us…
God knows.
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