Christianity Oasis Forum

[Netchaplain]

Presently, the Lord Jesus is the sole Human without sin, but soon “when He shall appear,” the believers “shall be like Him,” because they “shall see Him as He is” (1Jhn 3:2). “Like Him” in being “without sin,” for sin was imputed to Him when He first appeared in the humiliation of His earthly life (2Cor 5:21). But as “He shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Heb 9:28), so shall we also be “without sin” when we “see Him.”

This is said to be “unto salvation,” e.g. the full application of “salvation” being completed by “the redemption of our body” (Rom 8:23), for believers are presently completely redeemed in their spirit but not yet in their body which will be “changed” (1Cor 15:51, 52) into a “spiritual body” (1Cor 15:44), “that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body” (Phl 3:21). The Lord’s spiritual body is a new type of physical body (which we will have) wherein its “flesh and bone” (Luk 24:39) is incorruptible, unlike our present corruptible natural body.

The Resurrection is all about the bodies of the saints, for our spirits have been resurrected, in which Christ which will bring about the new human race (“the body, the church”), wherein the Lord Jesus “is the Head” for He has “the preeminence” (Col 1:18), and shall “present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:27). These are those who are “found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless” (2Pet 3:14), whose “mortal bodies” shall be “quickened” by “the Spirit of Him (Father) that raised up Jesus from the dead” (Rom 8:11).

In this life the spirits of the believers are as redeemed as they will ever be. Their spirits will not be any more “regenerated” (Mat 19:28) than they are now. But in the completion during “the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory,” their bodies will finally be regenerated, along with a New Heaven and Earth (Isa 65:17; 66:22; Act 3:21; 2Pe 3:13; 2Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1, 5).

Then will the purpose of creation and creature come to pass, which is Christ being “glorified in His saints” (2Thess 1:10), and the unbelievers departing “into everlasting fire” (Mat 25:41), who will go “away into everlasting punishment” (Mat 25:46), being “punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” (2Thes 1:9).

-NC