Perfect. That is what we are. Not in our performance, not in our thinking or perception or in our perspective. It is in Him where we are perfect. It is in Him. We only imagine perfection, even when we imagine being in His presence. “What Next?” That is the question. After we have resolved our internal conflict with our understanding of our relationships with each other and with the creator. So what happens next?
There is no next when God has done a thing that is final and complete and restorative and requires nothing additional. Either you, yes YOU! Either you believe the Word of God and the God of the Word or you believe someone else. Not something else, some one else. Adam and Eve had the opportunity to make that choice. You have the opportunity to make that choice. In First John we are told that when we sin we have an advocate to speak up for us and that in His righteousness we are free from sin. Yet it also says if we say we have no sin we lie. And yet if we agree with Him that we sin, He cleanses us from all sin. So that we are no longer in sin.
So, at this point, having read the last three blogs in this series, some folks are reading this and saying “Oh yah, I get it” and some are saying “huh?” Let me be as plain as I can. Restoration, meaning being in the completely perfect relationship which God the creator intends for us to be in with Him, means we are free from sin. Now from our perspective we have another ten or twenty or sixties or whatever years left in this life and as long as we are physically here on this earth we will, in our flesh, sin. We will hurt each other and say and do all manner of acts against each other. We will withdraw ourselves from the perfect present relationship with God and being separated, we will SIN.
Yet we do not have to do so. We have been completely restored and can choose to believe God and know that sin is not in us. We would need to be completely obedient to the Written, Spoken, Living Word of God. We would have to acknowledge what He said is right. His restoration did not make only the faithful perfect and righteous but it made all sin remitted. So why won’t everyone go to Heaven? Unbelief; If you do not believe you are restored, then you live your years in the presence of the sin of rejection. The rejection is of Jesus Christ, the Creator God of the Universe.
The trap is their sin. They are trapped in their sin of unbelief. The physical acts of the commission or omission of wickedness are symptoms of the sin. Eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not the sin that resulted in their expulsion. Unbelief was. God said, Satan cast doubt and Adam and Eve disbelieved God. Their sin was not that they believed Satan, it was that they did not believe the Lord. The reason the Bible says that if you are guilty of one part of the law you are guilty of the entire law, is because of the sin is unbelief. If you disbelieve God in one thing you are no longer obedient to the command to have no other gods before Him. In a perfect relationship between the Lord and His creation, every thought is captive to His love.
When we die, we are no longer constrained by the flesh. We are free to be one with Him and leave behind the temptations which we endure today. Yet we are at liberty to do the same thing today. We simply choose not to believe. If nothing else remains to be done by God to restore us to a right relationship with Him, then either we have become our own god who chooses to resist the true God, or we are restored, righteous, and redeemed.
Here is another unbelief for you: Hebrews six says if it were possible (indicating it is not) for someone to lose their salvation (indicating it is not) then they would NEVER be able to be restored. That’s up next.