Episode 6 – Free at Last
Welcome to the Proverbs 9:10 podcast! If this is your first time joining us, we’re glad you did! We’re your hosts and co-founders of Proverbs 9:10 Ministries, Chris Paxson and Rose Spiller. Today we’re continuing our discussion from last time about sin coming into the world when Adam and Eve ate fruit from the forbidden tree, and how that original sin affects all of us today.
If you were with us last time, you’ll remember that because Adam and Eve were the first parents of the whole human race, their sin affected – basically “infected” – the nature of all humanity from that time on. Instead of being born innocent, like the world teaches, we are all born with a sin nature that’s hostile to God that causes our relationship status with Him to be broken. It makes us like dead men, totally helpless at fixing that relationship; and the really bad news is, we’re all deserving of Divine judgement in hell. Rose, when we left our listeners last time, we left them with pretty bad news – that there is nothing we can do to help ourselves. So, with us being in this helpless, dead, condition, how is anyone saved?
To quote Jesus, “With man this is impossible, with God all things are possible. Chris, we can’t do a thing to save ourselves, and on top of that, we are walking around with a ball and chain hooked to us - we are bound to our sin. But thankfully, God doesn’t leave His people there. All the way back in Genesis 3:15, God revealed His plan for salvation. Genesis 3:15 is referred to as the protoevangelium – Which means the first Gospel. We think of the Gospel message as being in the New Testament, but here God reveals it in the first book of the Bible. It says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he will crush your head, and you shall strike his heel.” In this one verse, God says so much! The enmity between you (which is Satan) and your offspring and the woman and her offspring is a picture of the spiritual battle that will endure between Satan and the people of God. The end of the passage points to Jesus and tells of Satan’s certain defeat. ‘you shall strike His heel’ is a picture of Jesus being crucified – It was a blow, but not a fatal one. On the contrast, He shall crush your head’ is a picture of Jesus mortally wounding and defeating Satan at His resurrection. This verse shows the power of God verses the power of Satan. Satan will basically give Jesus a flesh wound on His heel, but Jesus is going to crush Satan’s head.
That’s right! All the way back in the first book of the Bible, God is showing us that the Law (which hadn’t even been given yet) was never meant to save people – quite the opposite. It was meant to show us we could never be saved by it, because we suck! God all along had a plan to save His people through a Savior, Jesus. He planned it before He even made the world. The Three Persons of the Trinity made an agreement, or in other words a covenant, between themselves to save a people for themselves. Rose, will you explain what we call ‘The Covenant of Redemption’?
This covenant has to do with God’s eternal plan. It wasn’t a covenant between God and humans, it was between the three persons of the Trinity, and it has to do with salvation of the God’s people. Each Person of the Trinity plays a role in salvation. According to Ephesians 1:4-5, the Father “chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will.”
And then this chapter gives us Jesus’ role in salvation as it goes on to say, in Jesus, “we have redemption through His blood the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us.”
And after that, Paul shows us the Holy. Spirit’s role. He says, “When you believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.”
In the Covenant of Redemption, the Father sent Jesus into the world on a mission to save His people. Jesus willingly left Heaven and came to earth as a baby to do the work of salvation, And the Holy Spirit applies that work to the His people.
And part of the work that the Holy Spirit does is to turn our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. Then, we will respond at some point to the proclamation of the Gospel message through preaching and teaching, or from reading Scripture.
And we call that work that the Holy Spirit does regeneration.
One example is Lydia in Acts 16, where Paul teaches her and some other women on the Sabbath. Acts 16:14 says. “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message,” Once the Holy Spirit opens our heart – or turns it from stone to flesh – we can and will, at some point, understand and accept the Gospel message. When this happens, it prompts a response from us
And that response is fully surrendering to Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
What happens when Jesus does become our Lord and Savior? Multiple things happen simultaneously! One of those things is that we are born again!
In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus it’s impossible to see God without being born again. Nicodemus misunderstood because he thought being born again meant crawling back into his mother’s womb.
Talk about “Ouch!”
Yeah, “Ouch!” Thankfully, Jesus wasn’t saying THAT! Because we’re born dead the first time, we need a re-birth where we’re born alive! And just like we had nothing to do with our first birth, we have nothing to do with our re-birth either. Our first birth we’re born dead with a heart of stone - ‘children of wrath.’ Our second birth is a spiritual rebirth where we’re born with a heart of flesh and are adopted children of God!
Another thing that happens, and this is an important one that doesn’t get talked about often, is that an exchange takes place. A lot of times we don’t think of this as an exchange – we talk about Jesus taking our sin away, and we leave it there. But we don’t talk about the fact that Jesus takes our dirty filthy rags of sin and He clothes us in His perfect righteousness.
This isn’t a perfect example of this by any means, but to give you an idea of what us getting Jesus’ righteousness looks like, my daughter is in the Army. Because of her military standing, she gets access to any military base, she gets military discounts, she gets admission into the USO lounges in airports, and a whole bunch of other benefits. When she got married, even though her husband is not in the military, her benefits were imputed to him and he received a military ID also. So now he enjoys the same military benefits she does without having to do PT in the morning!
As you know, we’re all waiting for my two boys who are in the Air Force to have spouses to share those benefits with! Especially the grandparents! They’re waiting…
You think your boys are listening to this and rolling their eyes right now?
Probably! But getting back on track…while this wasn’t a perfect illustration, Zechariah 3:3-4 is, “Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said ‘take off his filthy clothes’ then said to Joshua, “See I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.”
Your right, this prophecy points to the fact that when God looks at us from the point of salvation on, He sees Jesus’ perfection – not our sin! Not even when we sin after we’ve become a Christian! When we are in Jesus, God always sees us just as He sees Jesus. He never loves us any more or any less because of what we do or don’t do. There is nothing we can do to make Him love us any more or any less.
We call this Justification. An easy way to remember what being ‘justified’ means is –’just if I’d never sinned’! Justification happens the moment we believe. It results in permanent status change before God. We are now ADOPTED into His family. We’re adopted into God’s family as His sons and daughters.
Romans 8:16 tells us “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. We’re also told in Romans 8:29, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” So if you are an only child, you won’t be anymore!!
That’s great news for me, because I’m an only child! I mean, or I should say, I was an only child!
Having Jesus as a big brother is pretty cool! Chris, can you just define what the word “foreknew” means, when it says “God foreknew?”
Yes. Foreknew actually means foreloved – loved before the foundation of the world. Like the verse says, those that He loved before the foundation of the world, He predestined to be His children. This isn’t God looking down the halls of history knowing who was going to “choose Him.” This is God intentionally choosing a people for Himself, according to His “pleasure and will”, as we saw in Ephesians 1.
And that passage goes on to say, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” That means, we are heirs of our Father’s kingdom. And, we have an inheritance. The rich young ruler wanted to know what he had to do to inherit eternal life within God’s Kingdom. However, inheritance isn’t based on what we do, it’s based on being part of the family. So, we’re heirs to the kingdom because we’re part of God’s family. Chris, why don’t you briefly explain what the kingdom of God is for those who might be wondering?
The Kingdom of God is mentioned 126 times in the Gospels, and a total of 160 times throughout the New Testament. Most of these references coming directly from Jesus. First of all, I want to explain that sometimes, the Kingdom of God is referred to as the Kingdom of Heaven. Usually, it’s Matthew that uses "Kingdom of heaven," because he was writing his Gospel to the Jewish people and the devout Jews wanted to be sure not to use the Lord’s name in vain by mistake, due to the third commandment (Thou shall not use the name of the Lord your God in vain). So to be safe, they just used the word heaven instead. They even took the vowels out of YAWEH so as not to do it when they were writing! Mark or Luke that use "Kingdom of God." But getting back to what the Kingdom of God is, it’s God’s sovereignty and reign over His people. More precisely, it is God’s Redemptive Reign, and since God has always had a redemptive reign over His people, the kingdom of God has always been. Psalm 103:19 says, “the Lord has established His throne in Heaven and His kingdom rules over all.”
God’s kingdom has always been, but it’s also now. John the Baptist’s mission was to prepare the people for the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth. How was it coming? Through the Messiah, Jesus. But Jesus didn’t just usher in the Kingdom of God, He is the Kingdom of God. He is both the King and the Kingdom! Matthew 12:28 shows us He’s the king, “If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” And Luke 17:21 shows us He’s also the Kingdom, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
And, if that’s not enough to think about, there are elements of The Kingdom of God still yet to come! When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for the culmination of Jesus’ victory over Satan, sin and death at His second coming. It’s then that things on earth will be as they are in heaven: All hearts are following Jesus, all mouths are proclaiming Jesus is Lord, God’s enemies are a footstool beneath His feet, and Satan, evil, sin, and rebellion against God are eternally punished.
Part of the inheritance we received when we’re adopted into the family of God is to be citizens of God’s Kingdom. And just like salvation, this citizenship can never be lost! As Daniel 7:18 tells us, “But the saints of the Most High will receive the Kingdom and will possess it forever – yes, forever and ever.”
Amen to that! And speaking of things that can’t be lost, another thing that happens once we’re saved, is that we have access to the Father! In Old Testament times, only the High Priest had access to God in the Holy of Holies. This was a room in the Temple that was blocked by a heavy curtain where the presence of God rested. No one else was allowed behind the curtain! The priest would go behind it once a year to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat, for the forgiveness of sin. He wore a robe with bells on it, and there was a rope around his waist because if he hadn’t atoned for the sins properly, the people would hear the bells hit the ground, signifying that the priest had dropped dead, and they would pull him out from behind the curtain with the rope! That was the only thing they could do because no one else could go in without dropping dead, not even to retrieve the body! Thankfully, we no longer have to go through a priest for access to God, because the Perfect Sacrifice and Great High Priest, Jesus, is seated at the right hand of the Father right now, interceding for us as Paul tells us in Romans 8:34!
I read a great line on GotQuestions.org. It said “Jesus did not go to heaven after His earthly ministry and “take a break” from His role as eternal Shepherd to His people.” Everything Jesus said He would do for His people He is actively doing in Heaven!
Right, He’s not sitting on His LazyBoy with His feet on a footstool eating bon bons!
Yeah, He constantly pleads the case of His people to His father. 1 Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” But Jesus isn’t just our Great High Priest, He’s also Prophet, who has declared an end to all our sin, and He’s the King, Who’s blood breaks the power of our sin!
And that’s the freedom we talk and sing a lot about! Our chains are broken and we’re set free from sin! Psalm 107:10-11, 14 says, “They sat in darkness, utter darkness; prisoners suffering in iron chains, because they rebelled against God’s command… He brought them out of darkness, the utter darkness, and broke away their chains.” The iron chains are the chains that we had when we were spiritually dead. They kept us enslaved to sin, and under Satan’s dominion, in rebellion to God’s commands, and unable to do anything that was pleasing to God. But when we’re born again, we get a new nature, and that new nature is freed to be able to choose righteousness. In other words, we are freed to live for God and obey His commands!
That’s an important point to make. This isn’t freedom from our sicknesses, our credit card debt, our loneliness, or freedom from obstacles you feel are holding you back from fulfilling your dreams! God certainly can heal you or change things in your life if He chooses to, but sometimes He’s using them for a purpose. The chains that are broken are the ones that tethered us to our sin. That freedom allows us to obey God – something we were powerless to do before we were saved. And that leads us back to Romans 8:29, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,…” Now that our bondage to sin is broken, and we are freed to choose righteousness and live pleasing to God, what’s the result?
Obviously, we don’t always make the right choices – we still fight against the old man, our old nature! But we are not that old man, we are a new creation, with a new nature! And with the Holy Spirit indwelling in us, our new nature is being “matured” in a way, or made more and more holy, and we call this sanctification. Sanctification is the life-long process of being transformed to be more and more like Jesus. Part of this transformation is wanting to choose righteousness more and more and hating our sin more and more.
While God is also sovereign over this process, as 1 Corinthians 6:11 says, “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God,.” we certainly cooperate by striving to grow in our faith.
Right! And one more thing that we don’t want to neglect to say before we run out of time is about something else we’re freed from - having a fear of death! When we have Jesus as our Savior, we are going to be at His side the moment we pass from life to death! Our days on earth are a gift from God, and we’ll be with Jesus at death! Either way, it’s a win-win!
If we are saved by Jesus, we are blessed beyond what our imaginations could come up with! Yesterday’s episode may have seemed like a ‘downer’ but it’s only when you understand just how bad the news really is, that you can truly appreciate everything that Christ has done for you! In fact, it makes it all the sweeter! Thanks for joining us today!
In the next episode we answer the question, “Can our faith really move mountains?” and “is repentance necessary for salvation?” If you have any questions or comments, we would love to hear from you.
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