6. The Perfection of God’s Original Blessing

“God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

There is nothing flighty or inconsistent about our awesome, living God. The utter Perfection of His eternal nature lets us know that the Original Blessing He gave to the human race in Genesis 1 is also eternal and perfect in its all-encompassing and total sufficiency. This aspect of how our Creator-God’s Perfection anticipates all of Creation’s needs and the way He gently cares and provides for and protects every creature He has created gives us a granite solid basis for putting total, airtight trust and confidence in Him.

The perfect living Word that He eternally speaks forth contains and imparts His Perfection and Fullness. So the Word Himself is the perfect Blessing that God has pronounced over all of us. And when we become one with God’s Word! God is one with us…and He is always with us and FOR us! Hopefully this will help us realize that in His eternal constancy and faithfulness, despite what the powers of Darkness may try to do to get in the way, God is always fully prepared and willing to walk us through everything we will ever face. He will be with us and for us, to protect and supply what is needed, every step of the way, through time and space. And thus He can lead us into the perfect eternal fulfillment of the purpose and destiny He had in mind for us since before anything was created.

How can we know that for sure? We can know it because Perfection never changes! Since God’s Original Blessing flows out of His perfectly faithful Nature, that Blessing can never be changed or thwarted or revoked! It stands forever! So all that is necessary for us to receive and abide in it is this: we must allow God’s Word and Spirit to re-position us so that we can remain in the proper position that enables us to receive God’s Grace and move into the perfect fulfillment of His Plan…on His Word’s terms…according to God’s Perfect revealed Reality, Authority, and Truth.

We can see God’s changeless Faithfulness by the way He reacted to Adam and Eve after they fell for the Serpent’s lies, joined his rebellion against the authority of God’s Word, and cut themselves off from their Life Source. After that fatal disaster took place, God immediately sent His living Word, the Perfect Blessing, after them to restore everything Sin had destroyed. False gods are imperfect and limited. That’s because they are conjured by the imaginations of deceived human beings. False gods are taken aback and outraged when our behavior isn’t good enough’ by their religious standards. So they retaliate and avenge themselves through their deceived worshippers who condemn and punish those that defy or displease them.

But the real God never changes! Because He is real and perfect and completely above and beyond whatever He creates, nothing we do or fail to do can surprise, insult, threaten or shame Him in any way. He is ever the same…always Perfect and far beyond our level of influence! He is everything to us, but we do not have it in us to add to or subtract from Him or to change Him in any way. He is always…Perfect! And that’s why He immediately sent His Word to look for Adam and Eve. And His living Word came after them, like a shepherd seeking His lost prize sheep! (See Ezek. 34 and Jn. 10) The real God gives Himself to us and for us, through His eternal Blood Covenant. He is our Eternal Covenant Friend…bound by Blood Oath to stand by us, no matter what… even to the death! But, since He is eternally changeless, His Lovingkindness toward us, is everlasting! (Cf. Ps. 136)

When we begin to grasp what a blood covenant is, and what it means and what it requires of its participants, we know that this awesome Perfect God will always be with us and FOR us…to apply whatever portion of the Original Blessing we may need at any given time. He will always be ready to fulfill His part of any Covenant into which He enters, to Perfection. He will rescue and restore us and cover any our every need and be there for us to deal with any situation caused by the dire consequences of Sin and our fall from His grace. He is always here, ready to realign us with the rightful purpose and destiny He originally gave us. He is always intent on completing His awesome love story with us…to meet His Perfect standards. He is much too great and transcendent to ever be threatened or ‘bent out of shape’ by what puny little demonic angels or humans may do or fail to do. He is Infinitely Perfect! No imperfect creature He has ever created could ever threaten, change or stop Him. God is God…forever…and there is no other.

Nevertheless, the Serpent is perpetually bent on removing God’s Word (our Original Blessing) from our minds and hearts. When he succeeds, he is able to twist and disfigure and destroy the Word’s beloved human image and likeness beyond recognition. But even then…even when we have sided with the Serpent against our Creator…God’s Word continues to obey His Father. So He pursues and woos us back to Himself because He is the same, yesterday, today and forever!

“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

“They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the (Word of the) LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:6-9)

Make no mistake about this: the Serpent is out to destroy the human image and likeness of God’s Perfect living Word! He hates and contends against the Word. And His hatred includes His intended image and likeness. So the true God is never our enemy! It is the Serpent, the spirit of Anti-Christ (Anti-Word) that is our enemy. God wants His Word’s image and likeness to be restored and to thrive! But the Serpent wants to destroy it forever.

This is why God sent His Word to give Adam and Eve the Sin-covering that God had already anticipated and factored into the Perfect Original Blessing He imparted to them at their creation. And He protected them from eating of the Tree of Life lest they live forever in their current fallen Sin-corrupted state. Keeping them from the Tree of Life at that time was a temporary precaution. It bought time for God to work His Redemption into the fabric of our time and space dimension and into our Sin-hardened hearts, minds, wills and lives:

“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:21-24)

We Truly Are – Blessed People

The Blessing contained in God’s Word is always ours. What God gives, He never takes back. If we are deprived of it it’s because we’ve chosen to separate ourselves from Him, thus moving out of position to receive the endless stream of grace that flows out of His Original Blessing. But even though we as a race (through Adam’s covenant representation) repudiated and rejected God and are now born into that state of alienation and enmity with our Creator, nevertheless, His Word continues to pursue us incessantly, ready to impart everything we need to be restored. The Word has come to restore His own image and likeness and make sure our God-given purpose and destiny is fulfilled. As far as God is concerned, no matter what any of His fallen creatures do or fail to do, nothing in His perfect Will and Purpose as revealed by His perfect proclaimed Word will ever be changed or revoked. That’s because Perfection never changes. There is no need for Perfection to change. God gets everything right the first time! Whatever He began, no matter how the Serpent tries to prevent it, His Word will finish to Perfection. God’s Word has been given; and His Word and Will and Plan will abide and prevail forever!

So the question now is this: Will we repent of our rebellion against God and receive His living Word and come under His Authority so that the Life and the Blessing He is here to be to us can be applied? Will we allow God to rescue and save us from what we are, by our fallen nature? Will we forsake our state of delusion and follow Him back into His Truth and Reality so that we can receive from Him everything He knows we must have to be realigned and restored to our original ‘image and likeness’ of God stature and activity and destiny?

“…Who remembered us in our low estate,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting,
And has rescued us from our adversaries,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting;
Who gives food to all flesh,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
Give thanks to the God of heaven,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting!”

(Ps. 136:23-26)

If we submit to God’s Reality, Truth and Grace, His Word, our Master, will put us into the position necessary for us to receive God’s redemptive initiatives. Our Shepherd will find us and reclaim us as His own. Then He’ll go over every inch of us to make sure we’re able to grow into and enjoy the fullness of our God-given Inheritance. And the infinite fullness of the perfect Original Blessing will freely cascade upon us…once we become one with God’s living Word, as His image and likeness (Cf. Genesis 12:1-3; Psalm 23:6; 136; Isaiah 61; Jeremiah 31:2-4; Ezekiel 34; John 10:1-18; Hebrews 13:7-9.).

The Significance of God’s Perfect Nature and Perfect Judgments

Because everything God does flows from His perfect nature, His Judgments against Sin and all the lethal toxic things that flow from it, also flow from that Perfect Nature. This presents a problem for us Sin-corrupted people who are by our fallen nature, broken, flawed and very imperfect. That means that no matter what we try to become or do and no matter how many heights we may achieve on our very best day according to our imperfect worldly standards…the results will always be imperfect. Thus they will always fall far short of God’s perfectly perfect standards of Judgment.

So there is nothing any of us can do to redeem or justify or save ourselves! We do not have it in us to satisfy God’s perfect requirements perfectly. So if there is to be any hope for us, it will never be found in ourselves, or in any other creature that is as needy and empty and imperfect as we are (See Ps. 1 and Jer. 17:5-10). As creatures, we must look to another…to our Eternal, Transcendent Creator. He must supply whatever we need. And that is why God’s Original Blessing, which is actually His living, creative Life-imparting Word, is always so vitally essential and important to us. God’s Word is The Tree of Life to us. He is the Root and the Vine to whom we must be united and bonded as living branches. This is why the living Word of God made flesh emphasized this to His disciples:

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am The Vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” (John 15:4-8)

The blessed reality is that there is Another upon whom we can – and must – rely. He is the only human that can (and already has) satisfied God’s perfect standards perfectly. This Redeemer is God’s living Word who was made flesh. He is God. And He is our Covenant Representative, our Messiah. God went to that much trouble to redeem and restore those that are made to live and operate as His own image and likeness. But how can that happen unless we truly forsake our rebellious radical independence and agree to become as one with Him in God’s Covenant?

“The LORD said to Moses, ‘Is the LORD’S power limited? Now you shall see whether My Word will come true for you or not!’” (Numbers 11:23)

“Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified.” (Matthew 17:4-6

Our Blood Covenant Covering

If any fallen, Sin-contaminated human passes God’s awesome Judgment against Sin, that person will be allowed into God’s awesome, perfect, holy Presence completely free of guilt, shame and condemnation. But that can only happen if that person has submitted to God’s eternal, perfect Word and relies on Him to act as his or her personal Representative in God’s Eternal Covenant. This legal covenantal reality must truly be in place in that person’s life. Genesis reveals that this is what makes our salvation possible. God chose to deal with the fallen human race through a Blood Covenant pattern. Genesis reveals the Bible to be a Blood Covenant document and all Scripture should be understood and interpreted in that unique sense.

A blood covenant in the Hebrew world was and is a unique relationship structure that bonds two individuals or two groups into one corporate unity. An example of this is the betrothal in Israel. It is a blood covenant agreement that bonds the two parties in the marriage bond even before the ceremony and physical consummation take place. The covenant agreement transforms and blends a man and a woman into one corporate unity. They enter into a blood covenant union for life or for death. They become one with each other legally. And at the same time, they also act as blood covenant representatives for their respective families. The union of the man and woman also unites their respective families. The two clans become one new permanent unit thanks to what the two representatives did. Whenever many people enter a blood covenant, such as two families, tribes or nations, the many are represented by single representatives. In that sense, the many are contained IN their representative. Our first Covenant representative in time and space was Adam. And that is why, when he fell into Sin and was mortally wounded…so were all the unborn descendants mortally wounded in this Covenant sense…IN Adam! What he did…we did.

A Good Example of the Blood Covenant Mentality

If two separate tribes decide to become one new, united people, each group selects its covenant representative, or champion. Then a blood covenant ceremony is performed by those two individuals in the presence of witnesses. Covenant mentality saturates the Bible. It can be seen working in a variety of places. It underlies what was taking place between the army of the Philistine nation and the army of Israel in 1 Samuel 17. The two armies fought and the lives of all were deeply impacted afterward. But everything was done through the combat that took place between two representatives – Goliath and David. When those two fought in the valley of Elah, the armies and nations they represented were considered to be ‘in them’. So whatever the representatives did as they fought to the death, the two nations also did. When David killed and beheaded Goliath, Israel killed and beheaded the Philistine nation, and the God of Abraham, exposed, discredited and defeated Dagon, the false god of the Philistines behind which the Serpent was hiding and manipulating things. So the conflict between the true God and all the other false gods that are actually disguises used by the Serpent is what is really taking place. And that means we’re back to the Garden. It’s always the same issue…God’s living Word versus the rebellious, disobedient Serpent.

“He (Goliath) stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel and said to them, ‘Why do you come out to draw up in battle array? Am I not the Philistine and you servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will become your servants; but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall become our servants and serve us.’” (1 Samuel 17:8-9)

The armies of the two nations were present to witness the event. But instead of having all the troops fight each other, the two nations fought vicariously, through their respective representatives, Goliath and David. This was the typical Middle Eastern blood covenant mentality and practice into which God chose to place the revelation of His living and written Word. Through this pattern, God begins to reveal what He has to do, according to His standards of Perfect Justice and Righteousness, to save us from ourselves and from the death-grip of the coils of the Serpent into which all sons of Adam are born:

“Then the Philistine came on and approached David, with the shield-bearer in front of him. When the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him; for he was but a youth, and ruddy, with a handsome appearance. The Philistine said to David, ‘Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?’ And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine also said to David, ‘Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field.’

“Then David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. This day the LORD will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the LORD’S and He will give you into our hands!’” (1 Samuel 17:41-47 Emphasis added.)

Two Kingdoms…Which One Are You In?

As far as God is concerned, it’s the spiritual conflict that rages between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Darkness that is our greatest threat. The temporary head of the powers of Darkness is the Serpent – Satan. He is called, among other things, ‘The god of this world’

“…the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the Light of the Gospel of the Glory of Christ, who is the Image of God.” (1 Cor. 4:4 Emphases added)

And so God, through the letter of James, gives us this dire warning:

“You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He jealously desires the (image and likeness of His Word’s) Spirit which He has made to dwell in us’”? (Jas. 4:2b-5 Emphasis added.)

The Eternal Head and Lord of the Kingdom of Heaven and all of Creation is, ‘The Light of the World’. And in His perfect wisdom, God chose to deal with our imperfections and render us worthy to partake of His eternal perfection, by means of an eternal Blood Covenant He made with Himself…through His living Word. God began to reveal this to Abram in Genesis 15.

So what took place between Goliath and the Philistines vs. David and Israel has embedded within it, more revelation of that Eternal Covenant God that revealed to Abraham and into which He included him and his family. The Eternal Covenant is the deeper more far reaching and tremendously more impacting Reality underlying this local battle that took place between David and Goliath. Thus passage reveals more of the depths of what is in God’s Eternal, Infinite Loyalty to His Chosen People…and through them…to the rest of humanity. God reveals Himself…through the events of Israel’s history, such as this battle  in the Valley of Elah. It reveals the antagonism between God’s Truth and the Serpent’s Lie…the struggle between the true worship of the one and only living God…which leads to Eternal Life versus the false worship of the demonic Serpent…who acts under the guise of a variety of false gods upon which deluded, decapitated humans choose to put their faith, hope and trust. Regardless of which false god behind which the Serpent disguises himself, he is doing it to keep his coils wrapped around those that have fallen for his deceptive lies. Make no mistake: when we forsake God’s Word in favor of some satanic lie, we are being  led to our Eternal Death! There is only one God and there can never be another. So it’s vitally important that we enter eternity clinging to and aligned with the real one!

The first book of Samuel, on the surface, tells us of the battle between David and Israel versus Goliath and the Philistines. But at a deeper level it is telling us about the battle between Dagon, the false god of the Philistines and Yehováh or Yahweh…the living God of Israel. David represented Israel and the Lord, while Goliath represented the Philistines and Dagon, behind whose false façade lurked the Serpent. According to the Biblical blood covenant structure and mentality, the rule is: ‘Whatever happens to your representative…happens to you.’ If your representative wins, you all win. If he loses, you all lose. Each group rises or falls with its representative. When you regard the representative, you’re also regarding the entire group he represents. They are all contained in him. Whatever he does, they all do. Even future unborn offspring are considered to be included in this covenant. The covenant is open to those unborn descendants…once they arrive and are able to deliberately choose to enter and honor the terms accepted by their ancestors. So now, just as the living Word, Yeshua, was revealed through the lives of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Joshua, now, God is reveals Him through the life of David. So ultimately, this is the story of the ‘Marriage’ between God and those Jewish and non-Jewish disciples that become one with His Word, with all of their heart, soul and strength. The Eternal Covenant makes us one with, ‘SALVATION HIMSELF’!

“For as a young man marries a virgin, So your sons will marry you; And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, So your God will rejoice over you.” (Isa. 62:5)

“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Rev. 21:2)

So in order to cover us and all of our needs in time and space, God made a Perfect Blood Covenant in eternity with His own living Word, to insure our total, perfect provision and protection even before we began to exist in time and space! But because we were IN Adam (in time and space) when he was mortally wounded by Sin, we too are born in that state of Sin. Thus from conception, we are aliens, separated from God and His Kingdom and Inheritance. So God continually sends His Word, the Son. He beckons to us to ‘marry Him’, to accept and own our true place that God had already reserved for us IN His Word, in His awesome Covenant that has always been available to us in Eternity! So God invites us to give our hearts and souls to His Word, to ‘marry into’ all that His living Word is and does and has, so that by being one with Him, we become one with Almighty God and His Perfect Eternal Righteousness.

“Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the Eternal Covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Hebrews. 13:20-21 Emphasis added.)

And so the Word was eternally commissioned to be our Covenant Representative even before physical Creation took place. That’s why He had to become flesh and appear in our time and space dimension as Yeshua of Nazareth, the Messiah of Israel. God’s Word came from eternity to bring the Eternal Covenant into time and space to reveal and demonstrate it to us in human form and flesh. This enabled Him to truly represent us. And God progressively reveals the significance of this eternal fact through the temporal lives of His incarnate Son and the Son’s chosen disciples from Adam and Eve, to the present.

The Word is the Eternal Representative, chosen and commissioned by God to act on behalf of Israel and all Gentiles that will believe, repent and become one with His People. He will lead us all in our Exodus from this fallen world system and its false gods. When we complete our Exodus, we become full participants in God’s Covenant and Kingdom and spiritual Inheritance (Cf. Gen. 12:1-3; Lev. 19:34; Romans 9, 10, 11; Ephesians 2).

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the Darkness, and the Darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1:1-5)

Perfect Provision for imperfect humans

The Word of God is our Creator, Sustainer and Provider. He is also our Perfect Covenant Representative, Redeemer and Eternal High Priest. All of this was contained in God’s Original Blessing. The Word (The Blessing) serves as our perfect Sin Atonement and Salvation. Through His sacrificial life and death as the ‘Son of Man,’ He cancelled out our part in the Serpent’s Sin and Death. So He contains in Himself all we will ever need. He is all that was expressed in The Blessing that God pronounced over Adam and Eve through His living Word in the beginning.

“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Genesis 1:26-28)

Once God’s Perfect Word is commissioned and spoken forth by God…the Word stands forever. Whatever God has said will be done to Perfection by His Perfect Word. This is a marvelous, reassuring aspect of God’s eternal Perfection:

“…so will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty,
without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” (Isa. 55:11)

“Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” (Jn. 5:19)

Adam was our Sin-corrupted, fallen human father and temporary, earthly covenant representative before God. But God’s living Word, who appeared as ‘The Son of Man’ and became flesh like us, is our Eternal Heavenly Representative. Adam was a type or shadow of the coming Reality of Yeshua, the living Word of God made flesh, is the True Eternal Reality:

“For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; there they have dealt treacherously against Me.” (Hosea 6:6-7)

“So also it is written, ‘The first MAN, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” (1 Corinthians 15:45)

“Therefore, just as through one man (Adam) Sin entered into the world, and Death through Sin, and so Death spread to all men, because (in Adam) all sinned— for until the Law Sin was in the world, but Sin is not imputed when there is no Law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.” (Romans 5:12-14)

“For if we have become united with Him (Yeshua) in the likeness of His Death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His Resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to Sin; for he who has died is freed from Sin.

“Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; Death no longer is master over Him. For the Death that He died, He died to Sin once for all; but the Life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to Sin, but alive to God IN Christ Jesus!” (Romans 6:5-11 Emphasis added.)

“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ IN God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4 Emphasis added.)

One with God! In and by the Living Word, The Son

So throughout all eternity, God’s living Word, who appeared in various forms in time and space and who we know as, ‘Yeshua the Messiah’, is our Eternal Blood Covenant Representative. We abide IN Him. And since He is one with God, we redeemed humans, through our Eternal Representative are also made to be one with God! In the Hebrew world, when a man and woman are betrothed and wed, they become ‘echad’, one. Since they’re one, the husband is to love his wife as he loves himself, and vice versa. This is a blood covenant oneness, a ‘composite unity’ to which all participants are bound and which they are required to observe and honor. Yes, there are two individuals; the man doesn’t become the woman, nor does the woman become the man; but they are considered to be ‘one flesh’, one legal unity. What belongs to one, belongs to the other and so they share their common fate together and are never to be separated in this life.

God’s living Word contains all of God’s nature, life and perfect fullness, everything He does is perfect. And in His perfection, whatever He does, the Covenant imparts and imputes to those of us that He is free to legally represent. In that sense, God’s Word is our Head and we are like His Body. If He did it, we did it too. If it belongs to Him, it belongs to us. He is the Source, we are His image and likeness. And we live and think and act and react and interact with Him and IN Him…as One!

That is why when Adam and Eve tried to cover their shameful, Sin-corruption ‘nakedness’ by their own devices, their ‘covering’ fell far short of God’s perfect standards. It was a radically independent, self-originated, ‘Head-less’ act. And therefore it was a spiritually dead act, coming from a spiritually dead source. An image and likeness does not have an independent life of its own. It must always reflect what it receives from its Source. The Source must be the initiator at all times and in all things…and the image and likeness must reflect back what it continually receives from the Source. That is the relationship a disciple learns to have with His Master, God’s living Word.

But instead of looking to their perfect Creator and Covenant Representative to supply their need, just like the Serpent had before them, Adam and Eve took matters in hand and tried to meet their own needs. Thus God sent His living Word, their Original Blessing, to seek them out and provide the Perfect Covering that only He could be for them. Only through the eternal Covenant could that need be fulfilled in righteousness. They had to be perfected by their Eternal, Perfect Blood Covenant Representative the living Word of God. He has become the Perfect Lamb that God gives to His beloved humans, so that we can have a Perfect atoning Sin-Offering to give back to Him:

“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:21)

“…John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and *said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:35-36; see also Matthew 22:1-14)

As our perfect Representative, God’s living Word lived the perfectly obedient, image and likeness of God level of human life that the rest of us were designed and created to live before our fall into Sin and its mortality made that impossible. He was born, not of Adam, but of His Heavenly Father. So our Messiah was conceived in the Word’s Sin-less perfection. Our Representative did not inherit our Sin-corruption, guilt and liability in Himself. Thus the Serpent and Sin had no hold or claim on Him. And He was able to crush the head of the Serpent and break his death-grip on the human race. He had the fullness of God’s Perfect Holy Spirit abiding within Him, so He was empowered to obey God’s Biblical commandments perfectly all the days of His life on Earth and remain perfectly Sin-less…in our name! And by His innocent, Sin-free death, He became our perfect immaculate sacrifice to God who made perfect atonement and satisfied God’s perfect standards of righteousness, perfectly…as us…and for us! When He died and made atonement to God, so too did we die. We could only do it properly and righteously…IN HIM. So happily, Adam and Eve allowed Him to cover them properly in Genesis 3. And the rest of the Bible unpacks the meaning of the significance of what that ‘Covering’ consisted of and what it means to all the rest of us.

Because of the Covenant, our Master Yeshua makes it possible for all of us to participate in what He accomplished, even though we were not yet born. And if we choose to embrace Him as our Representative on God’s terms, and abide with Him on that basis, the Covenant makes us one with God, through Yeshua. And the risen Lord can live in and through us in our daily activities, by the Holy Spirit. So we become like living branches that bear the fruit of the Eternal Vine. When Yeshua obeyed God and made atonement for all Sin, guilt and condemnation, we did it too, not in ourselves, but in Him. What we could never accomplish by our own strength, devices and efforts, we have already accomplished in and through our Perfect Messiah, God’s living Word made flesh. And He abides and reveals Himself from within us, to produce the fruit His Father sent Him to produce for us, and in us and through us. As soon as we forsake our radical independent ‘living death’ existence, the Word of God takes on our Sin and its guilt so that in exchange for that, He becomes our Righteousness and eternal Reward:

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His Glory, Glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of Grace and Truth. John testified about Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’ For of His Fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law (the written Torah of God) was given through Moses; Grace and Truth were realized through (the living Torah of God) Jesus Christ.” (John 1:14-17)

So What Have We Learned So Far?

We’ve learned that:

1. God is perfect in His nature and perfect in all that He does through His perfect living Word.

2. The Original Blessing contained in His Word is also perfect. He contains everything we will ever need to fulfill our God-given purpose and destiny.

3. Because God’s nature is perfect, so are His standards of righteousness perfect.

4. And because He’s perfect, His judgment of Sin must reflect His perfection.

5. Therefore, Sin-corrupted fallen, decapitated humans fall far below God’s perfect standards and can do nothing in their own strength or efforts to satisfy them.

6. God’s Original Blessing contained everything necessary to deal with our corporate and individual sinfulness, thanks to the eternal Covenant God made with His Living Word. Now, through that awesome Eternal Covenant, we can be legally represented by God’s perfect Word as soon as we believe His revelation and submit to His authoritative Headship over us, and embrace Him as our eternal Lord, Owner and Blood Covenant Representative. Then the perfect power of God can be transmitted into us and through us, by God’s perfect Holy Spirit, so that Yeshua, our perfect eternal Blessing from God, can do what He was sent to do to us, in us and through us. Then we are no longer radically independent of God but are one with Him through His Word. That is why, like living branches, we are never to act independently of the Vine. We are made to receive everything from His Life…then His Life can produce the perfect Fruit that is acceptable to our perfect God, that only the perfect Vine can produce. We bear His Fruit alone, and offer nothing alien to God from now on. (Cf. John 15:6-11)

7. Since God’s standards are perfect, only God can satisfy His perfect standards perfectly. As our Representative, God’s Word fulfills those standards in our name through the Holy Spirit. So we share in His Perfect Performance thanks to the Covenant. When our Representative fulfills those standards, so do we…never in ourselves, but always IN Him.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us IN Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us IN the Beloved. IN Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.

“In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed IN Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things IN Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. IN Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope IN Christ would be to the praise of His Glory.” (Ephesians 1:3-12 Emphasis added.)

When the Word of God came after Adam and Eve and brought them out of hiding, He covered them with all that He is and all that He has done in eternity on their behalf and that of the entire race that would descend from them. That is how perfectly, our perfect God’s Original Blessing had provided for us all. That helps us see the awesome significance of ‘The Seventh Day’, the Sabbath of God’s Perfect Rest (Gen. 2:1-3). God has imparted His Eternal, Infinite Perfect Peace and Rest upon us. Adam and Eve were born into it, as the end of the sixth day. From their very beginning, God bestowed His perfect Love Inheritance upon them, through His perfect Creation and the impartation of all that we would ever need through His Word-Blessing. The Word is our Perfect Creator and Sustainer and Protector. He is our Perfect Covering, our ‘Blood Covenant Wedding Garment’ that consists of His Perfect Performance and Righteousness of the Perfect Lamb of God…with whom we can be one.

“So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” (Romans 8:12-17)

The initial revelation that God’s Torah gives us in its very first book (Genesis or, Bereishis or Bereshit) contains the seed of revelation that the rest of the Bible will keep developing and explaining throughout the other books. Thus you can see that the written revelation of our Master, God’s living creative Word who proceeds from the Father and became flesh…begins with Gen. 1:1 and continues throughout all of Scripture. Whenever God acts or speaks, He does it through His living Word. And so our Master Yeshua starts to be revealed from the very beginning of Scripture.

“In the beginning God created (through His living Word) the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1)

“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (Jn. 5:45-46 Emphasis added.)

Because God initiates everything for us through His Word and His Covenant, we Sin when we disregard and bypass our Representative. That’s what ‘decapitates’ us. Anything we try to do in that separated ‘Head-less’ state is never acceptable to God. It falls far below His eternally perfect standards. Since only God Himself, through His perfect Word, can meet His own standards perfectly, our radically independent actions continue to keep us locked into the depths of ‘Sin’. Whatever originates from that state of radical independence from God is called, in Scripture, ‘Flesh’. And that is why falling for the delusions contained in the false religion of ‘Humanism’ and the worship of every other false god and false religion is such an eternally fatal blunder.

Flesh vs. Spirit

So note this well: God will never accept anything from us that we try to offer to Him that originates from independent initiatives that bypass and omit His Word! That is flesh! He only accepts what is Spirit. What God first gives to us, through His perfect living and written Word, as transmitted to us by His Holy Spirit, is ‘spiritual’. It passes His perfectly Perfect Standards of Righteousness. But if it doesn’t come to us from God in that way, He considers it to be an alien thing from an alien source…a ‘dead soul-driven work of the flesh’. We will see this in a later lesson, in the story of Cain and Abel. It doesn’t matter how ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ we may try to make our works of flesh appear. If what we do originates in any source other than God’s perfect living Word and Holy Spirit, it can’t meet God’s perfect standards. And if it falls below His standards, it will not pass His Perfect Righteous Judgment! That is why even the Heavens and the Earth…all that has been contaminated by Satan and all other unclean spirits…and Sin-corrupted humans…will have to be replaced by God’s New Creation:

“Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.” (Rev. 21:1 Emphasis added.)

“For the wages of sin (radical independence from God) is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:22)

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8)

We will continue to examine these inescapable facts that first appear in Genesis, in other teachings. For in truth, what Genesis introduces, the rest of the Bible will continue to unpack and unfold. God requires every fallen child of Adam to ‘die’ or, ‘be crucified’ to the Sin that is expressed as we operate in radical independence from Him and His Word. Our perfect Covenant Representative had to take our Sin and guilt upon Himself to make things right for us. And because He was representing us, He took on all responsibility for all the Sin, Guilt, Curse and Condemnation we had coming. So when God rejected and condemned and executed the Perfect Humanity of His beloved Son, He was actually doing it to the entire sinful human race…IN Him!

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me (Us)?’” (Mt. 27:46 Emphasis and amplification added.)

This is why our Messiah is everything to us. This is why everything must be about Him and the perfect all-sufficiency of what He has already done in our name. Whatever we are or have or do in the future must always first come to us from Him – the Perfect Man…the only Man in whom the Father is well pleased. That is why He must be our ‘The Vine’ and we must be ‘His branches’. This is what His disciple and apostle Paul tried so hard to teach and explain to the confused, carnal believers in Corinth:

“…when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the Power of God.

“Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s Wisdom in a mystery, the hidden Wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the Wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood, for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Corinthians 2: 1-8)

Every disciple summoned by God’s living Word with the words, “Follow Me!” must know these things not only mentally and theologically, but in a deeply experiential way, a living way. Disciples must be living demonstrations of the very same crucified, Spirit-filled and Spirit-led lifestyle that their Master lived when He walked the Earth. He is here on Earth still…to continue to live that life in and through each of His disciples! That’s why we must die to the self-adoring, self-reliant ways of this humanistic, demon-possessed world, and be fully trained in the discipline required of those who will walk continually in and by the Holy Spirit…embodying God’s living Word before the Father in a blameless way. When we understand this as well as God wants us to know it, we will understand the significance of Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel)…and God’s Covenant with them and their descendants. And we will understand the New Covenant of Israel’s Fulfillment which Jewish and non-Jewish disciples of the Last Days must be ready and able to demonstrate and teach.

“Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me and be blameless. I will establish My Covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.’

  “Abram fell on his face; and God talked with him…” (Genesis 17:1-3 Emphasis added.)

Because God requires disciples to be ‘blameless’, we must be taught and trained with precise, accurate Biblical authenticity. We must be able to give proper witness to God as we live and operate and proclaim our Lord and Master in The Last Days Arena of Testimony. We must understand and embody the Perfect Blessing of God…who is Yeshua Himself, our indwelling Master. Disciples must be completely identified with Him…even as He has already so profoundly identified Himself with all of us. When we, in our own minds and hearts are truly one with Him, He can become our Life and our Motive and Agenda and Righteousness…in everything we think, say and do. And when He prevails and presides and acts from within us at that level…He will be the Light that shines through us…into the Darkness that surrounds us, and IN Him…we will prevail!