The Genesis

In this post, we are simply investigating:
1. Why we find it difficult to transit from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant?

2. …from the Law to Grace

3. …from Unbelief to Faith

4. …from Egypt to Canaan

5. …from Sin to Righteousness

6. …from Slavery to Freedom

7. …from Shadows to the Substance

We saw from the last post, our rejection of the common priesthood we share with all believers, our rejection of God\’s offer of Himself, and our rejection of the New Covenant.

This rejection is the fruit of unbelief

This trend of shrinking back from the living God and refusing Him (Christ) who is speaking today, is actually a symptom of a much deeper problem. And we can trace it back to the Garden of Eden, where man listened to the serpent and ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:1-6).

Unbelief: the source of all man\’s struggles

Eating from that tree is the main origin of all that man struggles with today. The basic unbelief that quietly began on that day with Eve is the real gulf that stands between God and man. Even when men have been saved, of which he had to believe in order to receive salvation and new life, he continues to deal with some measure of unbelief in his heart as he presses to lay hold on God\’s eternal promises for his life (2 Peter 1:4) and that for which Christ has apprehended him (Philippians 3:12).

The thing is, God has great expectations concerning your life here on earth. Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 8:19, 1 John 2:6

And it is with His promises that you are able to know for sure what He has willed for you generally as a member of God\’s family and what He has called you to achieve specifically for Him. Hence, both the materialization of our New Creation status in concrete, physical experience, where our position in Christ gradually becomes our experience, and our Life\’s assignment, requires us to daily walk by faith and not by sight or else we may not see the glory of God.

In the beginning…

Let\’s get back to Genesis. In chapter 2:9, we see that God made \”…every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.\” Please note that they were all \”pleasant to the sight and good for food\”, including the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Which means the first decision man will ever make was not about good or bad, it was about good or good. That\’s right! And it means, among the two good options, there was one that was better, simply because God said so. All the trees in Eden were good; what makes one better is that God expressly told Adam not to eat of it (Genesis 2:16-17).

When God speaks, it is sufficient to gain your faith and obedience

When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, they instantly lost their capacity for communion with God, for when God came down looking for them, Adam said, \”I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.\” (Genesis 3:10). Hiding from God meant that there was something now missing within their lives that makes it functionally impossible for them to (remain in) fellowship with God. The knowledge of good and evil that they received withdrew them from divine fellowship and partnership. And the basic seed of that knowledge is what the writer of Hebrews call \”an evil heart of unbelief\”(Hebrews 3:12).

Since it is by unbelief that man partook of that tree and became separated from God and His purposes, to break free from that separation, it must be by faith. It was by faith that they lived in the Garden, under God, in complete dominion of the earth and pleasing to God before they entertained the tempter\’s suggestion and by that new rule, unbelief, entered into another way of life. Everything was now by sight. They now saw that they were naked and immediately made their own covering for themselves (since they had just lost the glory) unlike what the scriptures said earlier about them that they were not ashamed (Genesis 3:7, 2:25).

Living by faith…

Living by faith, therefore, begins primarily by repenting of our sins (which is actually the heritage of unbelief conferred on us as a birth right) and this repentance means to make a U-turn from the life of sin to the life of righteousness. All of these is possible when we believe and call upon the name of the LORD; there is no other price to pay, and no deed to perform (Acts 2:21, 16:31). We are instantly given a new nature which lives by faith and not by sight, and if we allow the New Life to be (to lead), the traces left by our old lives will lose the power to enforce or reenact our old ways.

Now based on this foundation of salvation, living by faith is, therefore, accepting our new position in Christ, with all the merits of Christ credited to our accounts, by the grace of God, and never again seeing ourselves as we used to be (without Christ, without hope and without God in the world). Ephesians 2:1-5, 11-13, 19

Before the fall, Adam and Eve did not have to see their own nakedness because they were covered by the glory of God, which is Christ, being the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) and the brightness of God\’s glory (Hebrews 1:3). So, we see that what makes it inherently difficult to accept the full privileges of our redemption is a native unbelief we have within us as part of the nature of sin we all received from Adam.

Take charge and renew your mind

While our salvation sets us free from the nature of sin, the most basic element of that nature, unbelief, requires a deliberate intake of the Word of God to neutralize it in our minds (Romans 10:17) This is necessary because our minds have been used to this way of living, so even when our spirit is willing to go in God\’s direction, our flesh (which is our body and mind working together) is weak (Matthew 26:41) because it feeds on the previous experiences already lodged in the mind, inspite of our salvation.

Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4). That is just the truth! The new man will only live by the word of God, which produces faith and neutralizes the generational unbelief that is upon the entire human race.

God has made all things ready, done everything that needed to be done, to \”redeem\” you from the universal influence that unbelief has over all mankind. The journey to fully partake of the nature of God begins by being deliberate to withdraw yourself from things and media that feeds unbelief, while exposing yourself to God through His word and personal communion, as well as sharing fellowship with God\’s people around you.

Make it your goal to fully accept and experience the priesthood of the believer, to accept and experience God personally (not reserving it for the clergy) and to fully make that necessary transition to the New Covenant.

Hebrews 4:1-2 KJV

[1] Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. [2] For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it .

Scriptures:

1. On our priesthood: 1 Peter 2:5, 9; Revelation 1:6, 5:10, 20:6

2. On experiencing God personally: Exodus 20:18-21, Deuteronomy 4:10-12, 36; 5:4-5, 23-27, Matthew 11:27-30, Hebrews 1:1-2, 4:16

3. On transiting from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant: Hebrews 8:7-13, Jeremiah 31:31-34

Questions for further meditations

a. Why (do you) refuse (to accept) a personal access to God?

b. Why (do you) delegate your personal access to the \”Moses\” (the clergy) of our times?

Delegating your access to God is a very painful thing to Him (Deuteronomy 5:28-31); while it was terrible enough for those in the Old Covenant, it is much more terrible for us today, if we refuse the privilege to know God, because Christ has opened a new and living way to God, through His life, death, burial and resurrection. And refusing to draw near to God will not be because of anything that God has left undone, it will simply be because of a mere reluctance, which is unbelief, to do so.

c. Why do we still hold on to the shadows when the substance, Christ, is here?

These are physical symbols, that was necessary before Christ came, to represent the works of God among men. Refusing to drop these things for Christ, now that He has come, only points to our over infatuation with \”what we can see with our physical eyes\”, instead of living by faith. I will get into this in a future post.

Picture credits: lightrains, lovethispic, Share A Verse, wideawakechristian