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A Very Sound Basis
God is a God Who decrees. He keeps His promises. He is a righteous and legal God. And He has established rights for us to build our lives, our hopes and our faith on.
He is the heavenly Judge, Who has granted His children a sound basis for their hope.
We have to start our arguments somewhere, so this is where I will start.
Psalm 2, verse 7: "You are my Son; today I have begotten You - caused You to arise, to be born." (TAB)
When was this day? I believe it was on the day that God raised His Son from the dead.
There are many Scriptures that conduce to this view and I will try and list them all below. But let me first tell the story.
God was faced with a dilemma. Now do not think that it was very big for Him, He is a big God, so in comparison the dilemma was pretty small. But what was God's dilemma?
Simply stated: He wanted to save the old Adamic race without comprimising His holiness and righteousness. How was He going to do this?
If He had sent His Son Jesus into the world and asked Him to beget a whole new and perfect race, that would have been fine. God would have had a new perfect race in the world with which He could have communicated and fellowshipped. But that would have left the old race that had descended from Adam where it was, lost and on its way to hell. Can we begin to think how the two races would have related to one another? Two races on the earth, one perfect and one sinful? It doesn't take two seconds to think of what might have happened!!
No, He wanted to save the old race.
When Jesus walked on the face of the earth He carried in Himself the seed for a whole new race of people. But I have already argued that Him using that seed to beget a new race would have been fine for God and Jesus Christ, but no good for the old race. But just for the sake of argument, let's suppose He had begotten a new race of people. One day, we cannot think how long it would have taken, but one day someone like you and I would have come along. We might not have been born in the same era, but we would have known each other since we had eternal life, so one day we would have met and fellowshipped and talked about the wonderful God we served Who gave us life in and through Jesus Christ. And somewhere outside paradise, separated from us by the wielding sword of the angel protecting our paradise, there would have been a world where our other you's were living, had lived or were one day going to live. And the world would have been terribly divided. (Sounds like Back to the Future, doesn't it?)
What a preposterous picture, you say. And you are right.
And God was still faced with His dilemma: The old Adamic race, which He loved with a perfect love, was lost and on its way to hell.
What He did, however, was something totally different.
What He did was, He brought His Son into the world with the capacity to beget a new race and allowed Him to take upon Himself the sin of the whole world.
Consider Adam. God created man from the dust of the earth, breathed into him His breath of life and declared him to be son of God. For Eve He did not go back to the soil, He went to Adam. God started from one man, and in that one man He had put everything He was ever going to use. The whole human race was present in the one man Adam.
So also, the whole new human race was present in the one man Jesus Christ. And when you think about it, you, in Christ, suffered with Him when He was on the cross. Human reasoning, you say? Let's see what the apostle Paul says on the subject in Galatians 2:20,
I have been crucified with Christ - [in Him] I have shared His crucifixion; it is no longer I who live, but Christ, the Messiah, lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith - by adherence to and reliance on and [complete] trust - in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Fortunately this is not the only place we have where the Bible talks about this. In Ephesians, chapter 2 and verses 5 and 6:
(5) Even when we were dead [slain] by [our own] shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ - He gave us the very life of Christ Himself, the same new life with which He quickened Him. ...
(6) And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together - giving us joint seating with Him - in the heavenly sphere [by virtue of our being] in Christ Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One.
Note the words Even when .... God provided the new life and it was waiting for us to accept it. Do you know what the term ''born again'' means? The Greek really means: born from above. When you accepted Christ you accepted the life from above that was already lying in wait for you to accept it.
Seeing that you are a new creation in Christ, according to 2 Corinthians 5:17, we may conclude the following:
When Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, you were in Him.
When Jesus as a baby had to flee to Egypt, you were in Him.
When Jesus walked on the face of the earth, you were in Him.
When Jesus was reviled and persecuted, you were in Him.
When Jesus did not answer his persecutors one word, you were in Him.
When Jesus performed miracles, you were in Him.
When Jesus received His stripes, you were in Him.
When Jesus was crowned with the crown of thorns, you were in Him.
When Jesus was nailed to the cross, you were in Him.
When Jesus cried: Father, why hast thou forsaken me, you were in Him.
When Jesus was buried in his tomb, you were in Him.
When Jesus was raised from the dead, you were in Him.
When Jesus was exalted at the right hand of the Father, you were in Him.
Now, with what life was Jesus raised from the dead? He was resurrected with the life of the Father. On that day, called today (see above) above, Jesus received the life of the Father. Let's back that up with Scripture:
Look at Hebrews 2, verse 11:
For both He Who sanctifies - making men holy - and those who are sanctified all have one [Father]. For this reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
How was Jesus God's Son, in every way imaginable? I am sure He already was the Son of God before He was raised from the dead, but then remember He frequently called Himself the Son of man. I am sure He already was God's Son, since he displayed like no other the character of the Father. This is one characteristic of any son: he is like his father and mother. He contains within himself characteristics of both. But there was one characteristic Jesus did not possess: He had been given to have life in Himself (according to the gospel of John chapter 5, verse 26), but He had not actually been begotten of His Father. This is what happened when God raised Him from the dead. Then He truly and in every way conceivable became God's Son, begotten by the Father. And we with Him!! That is the point I want to make.
That is why we have an inheritance.
Look at the following Scripture taken from Romans 8, verses 29 and 30, and figure out for yourself how it fits in with the view expounded above:
(29) For those whom He foreknew - of whom He was aware and loved beforehand - He also destined from the beginning (foreordaining them) to be molded into the image of His Son [and share inwardly His likeness], that He might become the first-born among many brethren.
(30) And those whom He thus foreordained He also called; and those whom He called He also justified - acquitted, made righteous, putting them into right standing with Himself. And those whom He justified He also glorified - raising them to a heavenly dignity and condition [state of being].
You know what? This pretty much sounds like He did all of this in one single go, in one single act. And you know what? The Bible tells us so, and in a few different places too yet!
First of all, look at 1 Peter 1 and verse 3:
Praised (honored, blessed be) the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah! By His boundless mercy we have been born again to an ever living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead made us to be born again. That is, God provided the new life (remember that was the Father's own life, since all originate from One, according to Hebrews 2:11) by raising Jesus from the dead.
There is another reference to this fact in Acts 13 and verses 32 and 33:
(32) So now we are bringing you the good news that what God promised to our forefathers,
(33) This He has completey fulfilled to us their children by raising up Jesus, as it is written in the second Psalm, You are My Son; today I have begotten You - caused You to arise, to be born, [formally shown You to be the Messiah by the resurrection].
In one act of mercy all was done for us. As it is written: It is finished (John 19:30), or in an amplified rendering: It is perfectly perfect, it is completely complete.
Scriptures are taken from The Amplified Bible
