THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE COVENANT OF BLOOD


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE COVENANT OF BLOOD

                `”The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the Holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.” Luke 1:35.

                With this announcement to Mary, the angel shows us that The Holy Spirit was to come upon Mary and the power of the Father would overshadow her and the result would be a holy offspring known as the Son of God. We know from our last article that the entire godhead was involved in this incarnation. We also know that Jesus was truly born into the Human race with a human mother but a heavenly Father and that in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form. (Col. 2:9)

                Incredibly, on the day of Pentecost, Jesus sent that same Holy Spirit to come into us and to conceive in us the Seed of the Father so that we too could become children of God. John 1:12.

                This arrangement was brought to us by covenant, for indeed it required infinite power to restore to us what Adam had lost in the fall. It took infinite love and grace and an infinite sacrifice to be made in our place and infinite blood to cover our sins and an infinite Holy Spirit to give us new birth, placing a new spirit in us and dwelling in our hearts to draw us to God and to transform us into His likeness from glory to glory.

                Much of what the church calls “getting saved” today falls quite short of the magnitude of our salvation through the covenant of His blood which is brought into us by the Holy Spirit and planted in us by the Word. We don’t just get saved. We enter into a covenant with God, signed with the blood of Jesus.

                There is no other access to God outside of this covenant made by the death and resurrection of Jesus and the receiving of His Holy Spirit. But the Holy Presence of God cannot dwell in sinful human lives that are not covered by blood of Jesus. His holy presence would literally destroy us instantly, just as every first born son would have been destroyed in Egypt if not for the blood on the doorposts. We live under the curse of the death angel and only the blood of Jesus can spare us from this death.

                There are some who rebel against this process, calling God a bloody God, a demanding and heartless God, but that is only because they do not understand the infinite depths of our sin and the infinite separation that it brought, literally ripping the universe in two, bringing death and entropy to every atom of creation. Everything decays as a result of our sin and this was no arbitrary act on God’s part. He had to withdraw to protect us. In Him we live and move and have our being. To choose separation from Him is to sever ourselves from our only source of life.

                We did more than lose our spirit when we sinned. We became filled with the spirit of the rebellion and rightful subjects of Satan and his kingdom. We sold out. We committed treason. We did so by choice. Therefore, in order to reverse this disaster, we must repent of our rebellion. We must choose our Savior Jesus Christ. We must be reconciled back to God through His death and covered by His blood. Just as we chose to defect from His kingdom, we must choose to rejoin it. We must renounce the kingdom of Satan and of darkness and we must embrace the only means of our restoration and salvation and that is Jesus Christ who was and is the only perfect Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.

                As we chose to be subjects of Satan and since he legitimately got us to join his rebellion, God has no permission to interfere with Satan’s ownership of us and the world unless we ask Him to. This is what Abraham, the father of faith did. He came out of the world by choice and entered into covenant with God and through Him the whole world has been blessed. God used the faith of that one man to build a single nation through which He brought His Word and His Son.

                This Son, Yeshua, the Messiah of the Jews has become our Savior.  (“God so loved the world.”) The Torah brings us the law to define our sin and to show us the nature of God’s salvation plan. It all pointed forward to the arrival of His Son. The Law served as a tutor to lead us to Christ where a New Covenant was enacted in His blood. He then sent down His Holy Spirit to write His law in our hearts and to produce in us the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. He, the Seed of God  is producing the character of Christ in us by His Holy Spirit.

                If only we knew the depths of our salvation, we would understand that only God could pull this off. Only God in human flesh could die for our sins and still be the God of life and of creation. Jesus is the Word made flesh. He is the same Word that created all things. In Him dwelt all the fullness of the godhead. In Him there is nothing missing and the Father has given all things into His hands until all has been completed and then God will be one and we will be one with Him and He will be all in all.

                The Bible provides the articles and instructions for the Covenant. It tells us God’s part and it tells us our part. Our part is to believe in Him whom God has sent (Acts 16:31, John 3:36)and to repent and to come out of Satan’s kingdom…(Mark 1:15, Rev. 18:4) to receive of His Holy Spirit (Acts 238) so that we can walk in the covenant by faith the way Abraham did… and more specifically the way Jesus did.

                We no longer live under the Levitical priesthood that God set up to minister the Law and the types and shadows. Instead we now live under the Melchizedek priesthood that Abraham lived under. Jesus now operates as our High Priest under the order of Melchizedek. It is a priesthood of the Spirit rather than the letter. In this covenant we must be transformed into the likeness of God’s dear Son. (Rom 8:29, Rom 12:2)

                Jesus came down in our likeness  (Rom. 8:3, Phil 2:7) so that He could raise us up into His likeness and for this He has sent His same Holy Spirit to shed His life abroad in our hearts.(Romans 5:5) As such there can be no such thing as casual Christianity. We are either walking by the spirit or by the flesh. We are either in covenant or we are not. We are either living in His kingdom or we are still in the world. In reality Christianity is radical. It requires death to this world and self and a new life in Christ. (Gal. 2:20, 21) It requires absolute faith in God and His Word. We cannot do any of it in the flesh and so we must live in the Spirit and by the Spirit. (Rom. 8:5-14) Many churches are selling the true Gospel short so that people live in tacit mental agreement, but are not engaged in the Holy Spirit’s saving program. They will prove to be foolish virgins in the end. (Mt. 25:1)

                We can read the Word intellectually and gain many facts, but transformation comes about as the Word is made flesh in us by the Holy Spirit. We know that when He comes we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. 1John 3:2. So for now we are being transformed into His image by the Holy Spirit and by the Word as we walk in Him, learning to live by the Spirit and not by the flesh. (Rom. 12:2)

                “Therefore also God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. So then my beloved, just as you have always obeyed not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” Phil. 2:9-13

                It is the Holy Spirit that is causing us to will and to do His good pleasure and the Holy Spirit never exalts Himself. His mission on this earth is to exalt Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord and to transform us into His image so that we can appear before Him in glory as sons and daughters of God. Romans 8:19-23.

Shabbat Shalom

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