The Secret to Success?

After losing heaven on earth, man is constantly trying to find his way back, through his own means. In other words, he continues to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God's very clear instruction, they committed an offence against an Eternal God, which then meant that this offence has become an eternal one. From that point on, there just was no turning back for man. He had truly crossed 'the Rubicon'. He had declared war against the kingdom of God. He had become a cosmic rebel. As steward over creation, all of creation, under his federal head-ship, now reflects the effect of his disobedience against the Eternal One, who created the heavens and the earth. All of the heavens and earth is now contaminated with 'hamartia', the offence.

And can man try through his own efforts, his own 'free-will', to right this eternal offence? Can man, through his own fallenness, and now under the dominion of the evil one, exercise from this fallen faculty, any movement towards God for his own salvation, let alone the salvation of others?

God has already planned to counter this rebellion. The cost was great. In effect, the cost was eternal. The cost required that a member of the divine god-head take on humanity, live the life we should have lived, and die the death due us, so that because of His life and work on the cross and through His resurrection, we now, through sheer unmerited grace, receive, on His behalf, His rewards, which is His righteousness, and the rewards thereupon.

See why this is such good news? Only in and through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And the secret is to let God lead our 'free-will', to acknowledge that it is indeed our desperate attachment to 'free-will' which stands in the way of us experiencing and enjoying the 'abundant life' Jesus said He would give to all who believe upon Him.

To believe upon Christ is believe Him in totality, that apart from Jesus, there is no salvation for us. And this means that we lay down our will and let Him rule and lead our lives for His glory. Only then can we understand why Paul said that in everything, whether in word or deed, we do all in His name, with the goal being His glory, and not our comfort. And yet, in His great wisdom, when we live such surrendered lives, wholly by and through the grace of the LORD Jesus Christ, we experience the rest of heaven, and we enter the promised land, the very Eden of heaven, on earth.