- Established and Perfected. Lessons from 1st Peter
May the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you”. And so He does.
4 Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin”. And so we do.
It is the will of God for us to be done with sin and suffering in our lifetime. “He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin”. And not when we die.
The anguish and the mental wrangling are transitionary and temporary. We do not put our hope in the next life as though it is not yet but must become after a death or a 2nd coming. Christ paid our price and delivered us the goods. Our curse with crown of thorns for His blessing to be crowned with Glory. We are begotten again to obtain His Glory while we are on planet earth. He took on our iniquity and our poverty for us to become rich with Him in Him. Joint heirs of the things of God. And it is the same God who said let their be light, and there was, who said so. He cannot lie.
So the word is true because He said so. His results are available immediately because thst is joe He operates . But because He is spirit and truth, immortal, eternal and invisible, we have a hard time accepting the immediacy of these facts without physical proof. Because these things are spirit. The Spirit of God in Christ rule over all subsectors everywhere anywhere all the time. This is His right He did not need to earn. He just came and prooved it.
Christ suffered in His flesh for us, and to as many as believe in Him, He gives power to become His Children.
Suffering is not part of our inheritance or our resting place as we wait for another. “He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin”. And so we do. Since God the Father accepted the price paid by the Son on our behalf, so should we. Sin has been eternally dealt with by an eternal entity. We who know Him know this. The 2nd coming does not put away sin, the cross does.
If this were not true than 1st John could not say “he who sins has neither seen Him or known Him” but we do see Him and know Him as He is in the beginning. That epistle also says “as He is so are we in the world”. Not as He was temporarily displayed before the cross wearing our shame and poverty. Oh no no no. He crucified that filthy rag with ours too. Didn’t we expire our old man at baptism to be raised in newness of life by identifying with his death? If we identified with His death, then surely He didn’t leave us there. We, the called, are raised up from death in this way to newness of life. So believe the gospel. Put on your heavenly attire that is yours free for the taking. Put on your cloak of righteousness gifted to you from God. “As He is so are we in the world”. Perfected, settled and established. Free of guilt, shame and fear. “He who fears has not been made perfect in love because fear involves torment”. But we have been perfected. If you can receive it.
It was Isaiah who instructed us to shake our self from the dust of the Earth in put on our Heavenly attire. So this is what we do. We shake off the adamic and put on the things in Christ. And Christ became flesh and dwelt among us to show us that someone in the human body can cohabitate with God perfectly. At least in the renewed rescripted mind in a carnal body can.
We see in the picture of the prodigal son who returned. “This child of mine who was dead has returned to Me and is alive. Cloth this child of mine with the finest garments !” Yes the heavenly ones. Our robe of righteousness. We were the prodigal who fed among the swine and now dine on heavenly delicacies called the word if life.
It is said in the book of Hebrews that the Fathers disciplines are for us to partake of His holiness for those who have been trained by it. So we do. “Those who cease from sin cease from suffering and partake of the glory.
The decree went out. The word wad spoken. “Father I pray not that you take them out if the world but that you keep them from evil”. And so He did. This word is fulfilled in your hearing if you allow it. We have the provision of this place of safety now. We need not wait for the after life. “As He is so are we”. Christ suffered once and showed us the way. Suffering is a tool of transition and not a lifestyle. It’s a biproduct of the fall. 1st Peter says that it is the Brotherhood in the world that are exposed to Satan but we are in Christ. In the world but not of it. Meaning the tools used by the fear driven fallen.
When we arise to our inheritance, we arise in the spirit by raising our understanding. We are “transformed and transfigured by the renewing of the mind” by the re-scripting of scripture. This is the purpose scripture. To rescript and renew our thinking.
As we are washed from old thinking patterns to receive our inheritance, we are rescripted and reformatted in the mind to view all things like our heavenly Father. To see creation as “good, very good”. To “that which is from the beginning”. This is the restoration. We are restored in this way.
It is because our views of Gods creation have fallen that we have to fight in this way. We have misunderstandings. For the weapons of our Warfare are not carnal But Mighty through God through pulling down strongholds and every High thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. And where does this happen? In the regions of the Mind, in the heavens of the Mind, our place for scripture.
The battles and the wranglings we are talking about are against fears and frustrations, doubts, worries and self-condemnation. These are satans tools to control you. Even as it says in Luke that we being delivered from the hands of our enemies and all that hate us could worship and serve the Lord Our God all the days of our life without fear and retribution. So we do. We learn to appropriate this. We cleanse our mind with this truth and walk in it. God’s enemies have no power over him and we are in him and have no enemies but wrong thoughts to be cleansed from.
But there are many without eyes to see that suppose the restoration to be something else. They are blinded by the God of this age. Those who do not believe, those who have faith less than the size of a mustard seed, receive nothing in the faith. However the gospel is appropriated from Faith to Faith like stones across a pond, or steps up a ladder. Christ who is the author and finisher of our faith Works in us no other way but by faith. Which is our invisible im becilical cord to the invisible God.
So then to “cease from sin” we need to understand what sin is more clearly. Sin is not a thing that you do but a thing that you think. Even as in the Beatitudes, if you think it in your heart you are guilty. Paul agrees in Romans 13 that whatever is not of faith is sin. So the Sins become the doubts the fears and the lusts, meaning inappropriately acquiring what you think you need because you don’t know or trust heavenly Father for guidance.
If we can learn to truly trust God without doubts, fears and condemnations, we received the things that we ask. “But let him ask in faith without doubting for a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let not that man think he’ll receive anything from the Lord.” So it is the Heavenly Father who “has given us every blessing in the heavenlies”, who “has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness,” and “of his fullness we have received, He has withheld nothing from us. We learn to enjoy what He enjoys. We partake if His delicacies. The things He enjoys. He has given us keys to the kingdom in this way. We looked at him on whom “was laid the iniquity of us all”. For the transformation, better yet, the transfiguration to take place. He bore our burden so there were things we shouldn’t have to carry. We set those down and pick up things to enjoy.
The price was paid not so much to please the father, but to silence the enemy in our mind of a guilty conscious. To shut up the voice of the man in the mirror of an evil conscience. Even as Christ said to the adultress, women “where then are your accusers? Go your way I neither accuse you.” When we accuse ourselves we become our own worst enemy. We give negative energy to empower our enemy to control us by doubts and fears.
In the book of Hebrews it says that “those once purged from sin would have no more consciousness of sin” and so we don’t. For those of us who know Him in his natural construct, we have seen him apart from sin for salvation, which is the completion of God’s work in us, back to the original purpose. The true restoration. And from 1st Peter, receiving the end of your faith the salvation of your soul.
It says that Christ appeared once at the end of the ages to put away sin from that time waiting for his enemies to become his footstool. Your sin is gone. Where then are thine accusers? They are products of the fall. Arise!
His enemies are your useless thoughts, your faithless thoughts. But He has provided for us the victory. This is where faith takes place. For all the promises of God are yes and amen. There are no delays to those with a Faith.
The kingdom of God is at hand to do so
The kingdom of God is at hand to do so