Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.  He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.  If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be: if any man serve Me, him will My Father honour.  (John 12:24-26)

In the Church today, few have experienced the true meaning of being joined together as members, one of another, in the body of Christ.  A membership into an organization is about all that occurs, leaving its members disconnected and abiding alone.  Whole organizations are growing, but not the Church.  Nothing is farther from God’s design.  The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Church at Ephesus wrote: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.  (Ephesians 4:13-16)

Man made doctrines that have crept into the Church have brought about a form of godliness, yet denying the power thereof.  In the beginning of the Christian Church, there was such power in its connectivity that any trying to enter in with impure motives were destroyed.  This is revealed in the first few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles.  When the Apostle Peter had preached the death, the burial, and the resurrection of the Lord—the true doctrine of the Lord—men’s hearts were pricked.  They asked, “What shall we do?”  Peter’s response was not, “bow your heads and pray this prayer.”  He said, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.  For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.  And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.  (Acts 2:38-40)  Those first believers received the Apostles’ word gladly and were baptized and continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.  The Scripture tells us that fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the Apostles.  It goes further to say that all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, as every man had need.  And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people.  And the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved.  (Acts 2:46-47)

The Church in its origin was not operating in its own love and wisdom; it was operating in the love and wisdom it had received from the glorified human, the man Christ Jesus.  (Keep in mind, the Apostles had spent three and one half years under Divine instruction; they were what the Lord had left in the earth to impart His seed, the Spirit of truth, into.)  When they gave what they had in Jesus name, it either made people shouting glad or fighting mad; some mad enough to threaten them to no longer to speak nor teach in the name of Jesus.  But Divine purpose is what drove the early Church, not religion, not money, or any other voice.  When persecutions came, they would congregate together and lifted up their voice in one accord.  And so powerful was their accord in prayer that the place shook.

And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the Word of God with boldness.  And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.  And with great power gave the Apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.  (Acts 4:31-33)

So powerful was this accord, that to join it, required all.  You could not pretend affection for the doctrine of the Lord, and inwardly retain affection for the things of self.  This is made explicitly clear in the life of Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, in Acts chapter five, who sold a possession and kept back a part of it.  They agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord and both were destroyed.  After they buried Sapphira by her husband, the Scripture states that great fear came upon all the Church and upon as many as heard those things.  And by the hands of the Apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch.  And of the rest durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them.  And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.)  (Acts 5:12-14)

Once we rightly discern the Lord’s body, realizing we are members one of another, we will realize that salvation is more than a mere confession of the mouth; it is a process.  If we will look at the picture the entire Scripture reveals, we will see the same gestation process of the birth of an infant.  We will understand the difficulty Nicodemus had with the Lord’s statement, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.  Nicodemus understood something about the birth process, for he asked:  How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?  Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.  The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.  (John 3:3-8)

Once the seed, which has in itself the image of the whole, enters the egg, it will continue multiplying and fructifying cells until the embryo comes into the full image of the desired end—each cell miraculously connected together supplying toward the whole.  This is the message the Lord taught before He prayed what we know as the high priestly prayer in John 17.  A marriage between the seed and the egg had to occur, and when it would, there would be a proceeding forth of love.

The Lord gave this new Church a new commandment:  A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.  By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.  (John 13:34-35)  When they began to be troubled about not being able to follow Him in the glorification, He would go on to say:  Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.  And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.  (John 14:1-4)

The Father’s house is the Church—in us individually and also universal.  Had not the Lord finished the work He had come to do, preparing a place, we could not be saved.  He not only taught the way, but by the steps He endured, He left us a prototype.  Hence, the belief that salvation is merely a free gift and is merited to man because he claims it, only seals man in his own evil nature and impedes him from ever experiencing the new birth.  While it is true that had not the Lord come, suffered, died and rose from the dead no human being could be saved, it is not true that any individual can take unto himself the Lord’s merit as though it were stored up for him.  A salvation by faith alone does not save.  There is no salvation unless a man examines himself, sees his sins, acknowledges them, repents, desists from them, and enters on a new life.  One may acknowledge the Lord and think he is saved, but faith without works is dead.  If we do not keep the commandments of the Lord and live from His doctrine, we will be mixing holy things with profane, and our acknowledgment will be in vain.  (see Matthew 7:22, 23)  Man cannot serve two masters!  The Apostles began to warn about this before their departure.  They saw many antichrists.  They were well aware the Church was under great assault.  John wrote:  Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.  They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.  (1 John 2:18-19)

Within the first three hundred years of the Church, it no longer appeared as the glorious Church it had begun.  Profanation had become common place because of the tribulations it was enduring.  Yet, God has always had a remnant; His holy seed, He protects!  Never let it leave your thinking:  God only has one end in view.  Revelation chapters 21 and 22 spell it out.  Take time and read the end of the book.  God’s Divine providence always works toward this final end.

Under Constantine’s reign in the failing Roman Empire in the 300’s, what appeared as, a Christian nation began to be established.  The Emperor Constantine had had a vision, bringing about his conversion to Christianity, and the ruthless persecution, the Christian Church had been enduring, ceased.  The world had entered the Church or the Church had entered the world, nevertheless, a crusade had begun to make an entire nation Christian.  The reality of an indestructible body had now become the means to save a nation.  Positions of great influence in the government were now being given to the once persecuted Christian leaders.  The line had blurred between the world and the Church.  Keep in mind:  The love of control always wants to maintain a rigid grip upon people.  (see John 11:45-48)  History tells us that Constantine favored those who favored him, and when a dispute arose regarding the Lord’s human, and a sect began to be drawn away, Constantine convened a council at Nice, Italy to resolve the schism.  This brought about what we know as the Nicene Creed.  This creed set forth a trinity of gods—God in three persons, (delegating total authority to the papal, as the mediator), rather than ONE GOD, in whom there is a trinity.  Only delegated officials were allowed to read or interpret the Scripture.  This caused the Church to go into the dark ages.  Any bishop who refused to sign the creed was banished.  From that time forth, those who came into the Church were primarily compelled because of political or social opportunities.  It was by the Lord’s divine providence, through Martin Luther, a protest occurred.  Though the pendulum swung in the total opposite direction, proclaiming a salvation by faith alone, at least men were once again reading the Holy Scripture.

Unless men see God’s eternal purpose, there is no salvation.  The Holy Scriptures are a Divine revelation of that purpose.  Though many still wrest the Scripture to their own destruction, still many are finding the way of salvation.  From beginning to end, the Scripture have only one end in view—the regeneration of man’s soul.  1 Peter 1:18-23 states: Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, Who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.

We note in Genesis chapter one the successive states of God bringing man into His image, after His likeness.  God cultivates a Church by brooding upon the faces of the waters, at which time there was no Church.  There was a void and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  Through six successive states of combat, however, love finally gained dominion, and God ended His work.  A connection between heaven and earth was established.  The Church created in God’s image, after His likeness could be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and this through the sustenance provided by the Lord.  However, the serpent of the senses subtly seduced the Church to reject the tree of life and to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It was this that closed the consciousness of their life coming from God; now they began to think of themselves as gods.  With the same passion they had toward God, they now had toward self, which ultimately destroyed the Church.  Man’s freedom to choose was under the rigid control of his senses.

The Lord’s redemptive work (buying back what was at the point of eternal destruction) opened the way for mankind once again to have freedom of choice.  He prepared the place and by His human made the way.  Once and for all, eternal salvation was provided, and man could choose life or death, blessing or cursing.  However, if man wants life and blessing, he has to follow the same order of successive steps the Lord underwent in putting off the heredity evils He assumed when taking on the nature of Abraham.  He must do this as of himself, yet knowing all the while, it is the Lord’s redemptive work that does the work.  The heredity evils in man are not evils in and of themselves, but tendencies toward evil.  It is the man’s choices that make them evils.

Let’s be clear here about heredity evil.  All a human being provides in the reproductive process of another human is the kernel that carries the life.  Life, in and of itself, belongs to God.  (John 5:26)  The very origin of propagation is from the Lord.  Because it is the kernel that transports the life, the heredity properties (truths and goods / falsities and evils) from the parent are also successively transmitted to the offspring unto the third and fourth generation; the receptacle is in the form of the parent’s love.  The inmost heredities are provided by the father’s seed, and the external heredities are provided by the mother’s egg.  Just as the earth as a womb receives into itself and clothes a seed, so the soul of a child is provided by the father, and its body is provided by the mother.  It also may be noted that it is the seed that determines the gender of the child.  Once the seed, which has in itself the endeavor to multiply and fructify, enters the egg, a body is put on accordingly—male or female.  Consequently, the soul of a male differs from that of a female.

It is the hereditary tendencies toward evils in the human nature that summon an influx from hell.  Had not the Divine Life itself assumed the human nature, a receptacle of life, (the Divine Life, without the vehicle of a human seed, entered the egg) no temptation could have been assailed or overcome.  (God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts He any man.  James 1:13) The Lord was born of Jehovah the Father.  As to His internals, He was Divine; as to His externals, He was as every other man, receiving heredity tendencies by birth through the Virgin Mary.  Hebrews 4:15 states: For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.  The intensity of love to save the human race from total damnation caused the temptations He endured to be more grievous than what any human man could ever endure, yet He fought them alone.  Although existing in the form of God, He did not regard that equality with God a thing to be grasped.  He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.  Hebrews 5:7-9 tells us: Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared; Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; And being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.

Through successive acts of redemption, unto the final temptation of the cross, the Lord put off the human He had assumed from Mary and put on a Divine Human.  There had to be the death of one, (the human nature, even as to the body) before there could be a resurrection of another.  Those things which did not agree, impeding the internal man from acting into the external, had to be removed in order that the internal and external might act as a one.  As the Lord resisted the evil tendencies in His human nature and drove them out, the Divine from His inmost would flow in and replace them, until He no longer was the son of Mary.  No longer would He be just a receptacle of life; He had become life itself.  The Son of man had been glorified the Son of God.  God highly exalted Him and gave Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  (Philippians 2)  The Divine Human had become the mediator for mankind to approach the Divine.  All authority in heaven and earth had been bestowed upon this glorified man.  This is what is meant by glorification in the Scripture.  Take a moment and read John 12:28, John 13:31, 32 and John 17:1, 5.

Many today are thinking that their physical bodies will be resurrected from the ground; yet, this is not what salvation regards.  Salvation is the death, burial and resurrection of our evil natures.  The physical body is merely the outmost of the external nature.  After it has served its use, it is put off that there might be a continuation of real life.  The death of the body allows for one to pass from an obscure life into one that is clear, thus allowing that life to be perfected.  The Lord revealed this plainly in raising Lazarus from the dead.  Every miracle the Lord did introduced spiritual law into the natural mind.  Raising the dead merely showed that those who would otherwise perish would become living.  A relationship between a bother and his sisters had been affected by the resurrection power of the Lord.  This same must occur in us individually.

Lazarus sisters, Mary and Martha sent unto the Lord saying, Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.  When Jesus heard that, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.  Yet, we see the Lord remaining in the place where He was for two days.  Until there is a death and judgment is revealed to the lust, there can be no resurrection.  (John 11)  How difficult it is for our affections to allow the rituals of our heredity tendencies to die!  We, like Martha will say unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my bother had not died.  It is only as our lust die and are brought to judgment that the charity of the Lord can come in and replace it.  He is the resurrection and the life.  He that is joined to Him in love and faith, though he were dead, yet shall he live.  (John 11:25)

Had not Jehovah God descended into time and space and assumed a human, and through acts of redemption glorified that human, we could not be saved.  Oh, thank God, He did!  He finished the work whereby we could have freedom of choice and follow Him in the regeneration.  (Matthew 19:28)  The impotent areas in our lives can rise and walk.  When we hear His Word, (hearing entails obedience) and believe on Him that sent Him, we will not come into condemnation, but pass from death unto life and have everlasting life.  Because the Lord did not give in, but resisted unto blood, striving against sin unto the final suffering of the cross, and was raised with a glorified human, authority to execute judgment was given to Him.  All that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.  (John 5:28-29)

Thank God, as we partake of the Divine Human of the Lord, the passages of John chapter 17 are fulfilled: That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.  And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me.  Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.  O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee: but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent Me.  And I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.  (John 17:21-26)