Is it a difficult choice? Curtain #1 - Satan is backstage arranging all the health, wealth, and prosperity that you could possibly stand during the time of your earthly existence, here today, gone tomorrow, then face the second death.
Or Curtain #2 - To be glorified together with the son of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, seated together in Heaven. God already has it all set up, but you will not see it lest you choose it.
If all that God has in store for his son is sitting behind Curtain #2 for you, which Curtain would you choose? Paul reasoned it out, and Paul chose to WAIT for Curtain #2 - his glorified body - health, wealth, and prosperity for a limited time held up beside eternal glorification.
Paul was eagerly awaiting God’s purpose for Paul, the glory that Paul knew would be revealed in him at the manifestation of the sons of God, when the sons of God receive their glorified bodies. A glorified body is God’s purpose for his suffering saints, a glorified body like unto Christ’s glorified body, that is God’s purpose for you down the road. Romans 8:18
So, suffering circumstances are working something in our life, while we are undergoing what we are undergoing and thinking it is the worse thing that can happen to us in our life, and we do not know the answer, and we do not know which way to turn, Paul says that it is working for us. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
We either have a relationship with the law or a relationship with Jesus Christ, but it is impossible to have a relationship with both at the same time. Christ freed us from an obligation to the law, when he satisfied all the law’s demands on our behalf.
In fact, Christ freed the entire human race from the law, he fulfilled the requirement of the justice that the law required for every law breaker of those under its jurisdiction, and that would be everyone in the human race. Christ became the ransom for all, so he satisfied the justice of God concerning that law contract for everyone.
It is law principle that actually stirs up the sinful emotions. The law principle itself incites the sinful nature that is within the human race. Most people suppose that if you want to eliminate sin, simply put forth a little more law.
Well, it is the other way around according to the apostle Paul, it is the law that stirs up the passions of the sin nature. The law actually ignites the passions of the sin nature.
The law is a good thing, the problem lies not with a holy and just law, the problem lies in the fact that while the law is good, the flesh is weak. This is why God had to devise a way to view us not in our flesh, but in his son.
Saved - what kind of salvation? Not saved in the sense of justified unto eternal life with our Savior, that is not what Paul’s talking about in Romans chapter 8, but saved in the sense of all the suffering circumstances that have been the thrust of this chapter all along; we are delivered from the suffering circumstances of this life.
We will be delivered from this by the preacher on TV! We will be delivered from these suffering situations by planting our seed faith! We will be delivered from these if our life becomes a song and we become saved! No! We are not going to be delivered from any of these by any of those things.
What is the manner of our deliverance, are we delivered from our suffering circumstances based upon the number of people praying for that deliverance? Are we delivered from those suffering circumstances by the persistence and protracted manner in which those prayers are being offered?
Are we being delivered from the suffering circumstances to which we have been subjected such that God will allow us to “see our deliverance” and tell those around us that we have just witnessed a “God-thing?” Is our deliverance the repair and the escape of the problems of the old or is it the hope of the new?
Which is it? Well, Paul answered it for us in verse 23 - even we ourselves groan within ourselves, WAITING for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of OUR BODY. - We are waiting for our new bodies, the body God has in store for each of us, the body that will be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body.
When we get our new bodies, we will be delivered from the suffering circumstances that adversely affect this old body in which we must dwell until we die or the gathering of the body of Christ occurs, whichever is first. It is not the deliverance of the old, it is the hope of the new today.
But, what is our hope again? Is it the fix of these old bodies? Or, is it the new body we get, with that life Jesus got, John 5:26. The first Adam got the human race cut off from that life the tree of life produced, but the second Adam got us access to that life, in new bodies. How cool is that.
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