What is God's Ultimate Intent for us?
Note: This is deep teaching that often requires foundation before building on it.
That we would be partakers of His nature. In others words that we would be like Him. What is He like? All we have to do to answer that question is look at Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the ultimate answer to man's wondering what God is like. He is the "image of the invisible God." He said to His disciples "If you have seen me you have seen the Father." Why? Because He is in perfect sync with everything the Father is up to and He was perfectly yeilded to the God's Spirit while He was on earth as a man. God's ultimate purpose occurs through the revelation of Himself in the Trinity. God is putting His nature on display so that we would be drawn to it. Eric Mumford describes how the teaching of scripture reveals this process of partaking in God's nature. He describes it as a fused onenes and he uses the power of fusion energy to help picture it. Fusion is the power that yields all light. God is light and in Him there is no darkness. God has placed a metaphor of Himself in how stars like our sun are fueled. This fuel comes from the fusing of independent atoms. If we take this as a metaphor for how God wants us to live the spiritual life it will lead us to several conclusions all taught all through the scriptures.
God is the source of all power and we need His power and His nature to function properly.
We are are by default selfish individuals as a result of the fall and our nature is deeply bent on self (Eros).
God wants to draw us to beauty of Himself (glory) such that we see that His life is on a totally different plane than ours (Holiness).
God wants to show us His love (agape) which is self-sacrificial and committed to benefiting those who align themselves with His ways.
When we see this beauty (glory) and understand how different (Holy) He is, His ultimate desire is to have us freely choose His life over our own.
This free will choice ultimately culminates through His grace in the death of our self. We die so that He can be raised in newness of life within us.
This newness of life only comes from a yeilding to God through abiding in Christ.
God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - Three persons who make up the one God.
The same way that they yield themselves in love (agape) to one another is how they want us to yield ourselves to Him
This fused oneness yields the energy of God which impacts the world around us through love.
Love is practically displayed as a byproduct of this fused oneness with Him.
The result of this is the fruit of the Spirit which is how God's nature shows up when we yield to Him.
This draws others to want such a beautiful way of life that is different than their self-centered (Eros) nature.
God draws men to Himself through us.
The message embedded here walks through the ultimate phases of what this fused oneness looks like and some of the interworkings of God's Kingdom as He manifests Himself through us.
God's Kingdom is a spiritual house that He is building of redeemed individuals who are seen as "living stones" who make up a spiritual household. Christ is the cornerstone of this.
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As God gets a hold of our hearts by drawing us to the beauty of Himself we can either choose believe that He is the greatest thing in the universe or we can try to find something that will temporarily satisfy our desires. God wants us to be so consumed with Himself as revealed in Christ that we don't want anything else. The free will choice of this is critical for it to function properly. This is not a law based forcing but a free response of gratitude for what one has been freely given to us in Him.
Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it are the sources (origins, the goings, the offspring) of life. (Prov 4:23, NET)
“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, hidden in a field, that a person found and hid. Then because of joy he went and sold all that he had and bought that field. (Matt 13:44, NET)
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Luke 12:34, NET) - See article about our "Jealous Glance" for what we glance at jealously is what we treasure and this is what really has our heart, regardless of what we say.
What is to be our treasure? It is not a what but a who. It is Christ Himself who is the image of the invisible God.
This is what we proclaim to you: what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and our hands have touched (concerning the word of life –and the life was revealed, and we have seen and testify and announce to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us).What we have seen and heard we announce to you too, so that you may have fellowship with us (and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ).Thus we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1John 1:1-4, NET)
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God's ultimate goal in creating us was to expose us to Himself. To reveal His beauty through us as earthen vessels. He wanted to show us who He is and cause us to want to be like Him. He does this because He knows that He is what is best for all of us and when we yeild to Him in oneness we get what we never could have imagined we would even want. When we do this it draws people to want Him as well. Like salt on the tongue the beauty of light as it travels through the prism of a diamond impacts others.
“I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony,that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be one in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one –I in them and you in me – that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they can see my glory that you gave me because you loved me before the creation of the world. (John 17:20-24, NET)
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey (watch over) my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him. (John 14:23, NET)
This oneness is a spiritual household that God desires for His Church to inhabit. Yielding is a free will choice the Church has to make. When it yeilds it is operating in a way that is consistent whith His will. When the body stays in self-centered (Eros) living it decays and experiences ultimately death. When we yield to His oneness we still die, but are raised in Christ to experience a new way of living that is much better than anything we have ever experienced.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life because of me will find it. (Matt 10:39, )
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God's ultimate goal is to conform us to the image of His Son. "because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters." (Rom 8:29, NET)
Barnes comments on this as follows:
That he might be the first-born. The first-born among the Hebrews had many peculiar privileges. The idea here is,
(1.) that Christ might be preeminent as the model and example; that he might be clothed with peculiar honours, and be so regarded in his church; and yet,
(2,) that he might still sustain a fraternal relation to them; that he might be one in the same great family of God, where all are sons. Comp. Heb 2:12-14.
God does have an eternal purpose that is being expressed by the Church to the Spiritual realm of angels and demons. Christ demonstrated what that looks like and showed us by the way that He listened to His Father moment by moment as He walked on the Earth.