It is Finished "

“For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6)

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:24)

That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:7)

But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they [The Gentiles]. (Acts 15:11)

Ephesians 2:5 states that “by grace ye are saved.”

“For by grace are ye saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8)

5:6). Here is a great key to opening this mystery. Faith is needed, but it must be faith that works and the only true way that faith can work is by love.

So we have saving grace which we receive through faith that works by love and the source of all love is God! “God is love” (1John 4:8, 16

So whence does faith come from?
Does it come from just a believing in something?
What defines True Faith?

This faith is not simply an acknowledgment of existence, for “the devils also believe (pisteuo), and tremble” (James 2:19).

We are not saved, because one day we believed. So what?
As James said, the devils "believe"
It is not our belief that wrought salvation to ourselves or anyone for that matter.
It was Christ faith, his trust, his love, that graced us ALL unto salvation.
Love and faith are equal, one cannot stand without the other.

So John writes, I John 4:7-13
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God.

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

9 Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

12 No man hath beheld God at any time: if we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us:

So let us examine, John 3:14-20 in new light.

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up;

15 that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life.

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.

17 For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him.

18 He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19 And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.

Now keep in mind, this passage is spoken by our Lord before He has been lifted up on the cross -this is ALL PRE-CROSS speech, while man and Jesus are yet under the law. Jesus is speaking in terms of man, as he stands there right before them a that moment in time.

Only those that accepted Him before he died for who He was were receiving His Grace while present, in that moment of time. They were being shown or revealed the death they were in, and were being brought into life, knowing the Father and the Son.
He thus says this defining what ETERNAL LIFE,is. He says nothing here about it being the opposite of after you die of going to hell versus you go to heaven:
John 17:3
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

See man's religious propensity is to always focus, on the what happens after you die. All religions have been built upon this premise, because it is the one unknown of mankind, no one has been there and returned to life to tell us, this is what it's like to die. Jesus did no explaining as to what transpired while dead.
Every known religion of mankind has been built on a premise of good and evil, hell and heaven. Jesus came to deconstruct religion and bring life. Culture and society has been built on or around death not life.
The Egyptians did the same, as any anthropologist can show you, religion and society has been built on the premise of death, not life in the here and now.

The difference is- Jesus revealed true death, but His emphasis was always not on our end, but on us being given a new beginning. All men.
He was here to make that new beginning possible and then the end the goal.
In the end, to wipe out sin and death, good and evil, and religion, and all of those things that have held mankind under bondage for lifetimes.

Paul writes this as proof of that for which Christ was about to do, as the new father of the entire human race in Romans 5:11-12

11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation Death Through Adam, Life Through Christ
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

Note he Paul doesn't say it would be any different as man have tried to re-interpret the word of God, for the sake of their tradition.
It says JUST AS.
What happened to ALL of us, not just a few of us, but ALL of us because of Adam?
We didn't get Adam's nature because we "believed in Adam", we got his nature as representative of all mankind, and that bloodline would run, until when, the New Adam was brought forth.
Note in these verses, the CHANGE the TRANSITION OF ALL MEN.
1 Corinthians 15:22
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

1 Corinthians 15:45
So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being” ; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.

Note something different about this Adam, this LAST Adam Paul calls Jesus, He isn't just a living being....HE IS THE LIFE GIVING SPIRIT.
He did what...He gave unto man a whole brand new nature that man had not held since before the FALL, He has breathed in us His Spirit, we have been restored, He said it is finished, and it is!

Paul again in Romans speaking.
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law.
Did Jesus fulfill the law or not?
Did he not remove the law and give us grace or not?
Did he only have you in mind, when He did so, or the whole world?
Were you saved only when YOU came to believe. Even the devils believe.

It wasn't my belief, or your mother's belief or anyone's belief that ever saved you, it was this new plan of God, this new turn around of all events, that saved us all, all of us. What a wondrous God He is, God is love.
Why do most man not understand this?
1 Corinthians 1:18
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
What is this perishing, what is this salvation but life from the death we have been in. We have re-defined scriptural meaning as to just what Jesus saved us from.
He didn't come to save us from hell!
He came to save us in our everyday lives, whereby we live here and now, from perishing, not being useful or graced with knowing God and the Son, intimately.
To keep us from such foolishness to think that somehow we are always the one's that can save ourselves from ourselves. For that which was the nature of fallen man, to live only as a good person or evil person, but all the same He could not ever be righteous.
That is the wonderful gift given to us, that we all have been graced with in Christ final proclamation of "It is Finished", but how will we ever know to come to experience this "so great of a salvation?"

When we see God graces us to understand it, this is the Sovereignty of God for this life, to some they will never understand it, for the purposes and plan of God, it is his choice but it has nothing to do, with them going to hell or heaven, it has everything to do with experiencing and having a knowing fellowship here now with God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son before death.
How could we ever become so stupid to believe that God eternal, only operates within the confines of our time and space. We must realize that His work in Christ is eternal, no man will ever, nor has any man died the death that Jesus died.

For the wages of sin is death, separation from the Father, while under the Law, we were DEAD in sin and trespasses, but now that the Law has been removed in Christ, he has set us free, all of us, from sin.
This isn't saying we can't do evil, nor does it say we can't do good, what it says, we are no longer under that condemnation as man anymore, NOT ONE, because of Jesus. We are no longer defined by what we do, but Who He Is and who we were in Him and who we are in Him now.
When you grasp that, you will have abundant life, age lasting(aion)life, because you will be experiencing fellowship with Him.
Please don't perish in THIS LIFE, you can do so, if you please, but God is love, and in the end, when you step out of this door into eternity, he will still be there, with the Gospel, man's death has nothing to do with the nullifying what Christ has done.
You know it in your heart, and have longed for this truth.
Here is what God has done, as Paul states, not as man and tradition states:
2 Corinthians 5:19
that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
Reconciliation is done, it is complete, there is nothing that separates any man from God anymore, that was grace.
To enjoy it, to experience this reconciliation, here and now in this life, however we do have to place our entire reliance and trust upon that which He has done. So trust pays a part to acquisition of that which is ours.
Paul writes this in Romans 3:21-25
23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
25whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;

Note is the word "people" used here to mean an exclusive people or an inclusive people meaning ALL PEOPLE? In light of the other scriptures it surely means ALL!
Inclusive I say to you. "It is Finished".

What yet is it that belongs to you and I and that all men need to pray and ask God is to make this grace known to us in grander measure so we can know it, experience it, think it, live it, walk in it, abide in it, so that Paul writes this in Romans 3:26-28
26for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
27Where then is boasting? It is excluded By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.
28For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.
So, God has reconciled all men, all men are justified, but how can they have faith, to know this, and experience this new exchanged life, of justification and know that their old one life has been removed in Christ, and their new one given freely by grace in Christ, the last Adam, the life giving Spirit.
By only one means: Romans 10:11-13
14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
We read Romans 10:17
17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.
Notice "the word about Christ"... it is the message of "It is finished" that we are to preach, of God's reconciliation, finished, completed in Christ, not about some wild story, about did you know Jesus died so you won't have to go to hell.
No! that is not the Good News, that is just a confabulated messed up presentation of the truth made up by men and their vain imaginations, that presents none of the truth that Paul was preaching nor that we should be preaching.
Paul in all his writings, doesn't mention at all, HELL, once. Why has "christianity" so failed to miss the GOOD NEWS.
I tell you why?
19 And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.

Awake oh! body of Christ and let us present the Good News and let us present not the God of the dead but the God of the living.
Matthew 22:32
‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ ? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
Mark 12:27
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”
Luke 20:38
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

Colossians 3:1
[ Living as Those Made Alive in Christ ] Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Thinking, teaching, preaching on salvation from hell is surely not thinking on that which is above!
God saved us from who we were, to make us who we are, in Him.
So that we might have life here and now and forever.
Let us preach, Christ crucified, let us preach, the truth of Universal Reconciliation and faith needed to enjoy it in the here and now.
Yes there is no more sin and death, your physical death has no meaning in relationship to sin, it is the separation from which man was from God their loving father, that was death, and thanks be to our Lord, no man is under that penalty anymore.
This is universal reconciliation- it is finished.
However, for it to become real for you or for me, or to others, to know what it means daily to walk in that knowledge of God's love, and that we are not what we do, but who we are now in Christ Jesus, there must come trust, reliance upon- faith, love to experience that, and bring it into our lives and the lives of those around us and the world we live in.
So, yes faith, has everything to do, with experiencing this grace, but has nothing to do with creating this grace for which Christ has freely given unto all men. It is when we begin to experience it, that is the meaning behind the word salvation, here, not there on the other side of the grave.
Jesus said that part - "It is Finished"... the rest He is still working out in us, through us, and by us, with Him in us, as we realize and walk in Him, knowing WE WERE IN HIM THEN and WE ARE IN HIM NOW.
Isn't it wonderful to experience so great a salvation, why would you want to exclude others with some false presentation of the gospel, which as Paul said it no gospel at all, instead tell them of God's universal reconciliation and that it belongs to them as well, and let them experience eternal life as well, right now.

Why make them wait until time to start for that is after they leave here, save God the work of having to tell them the story, when they stand in the presence of the one who reconciled us to Him, and they have to say, Geez I didn't know, and God will say, that's OK Son, now I will tell you and show you the GOOD NEWS....welcome!
Will there be a judgment, yes, and that is for another time, and another article, but it is the same as ours who have come to know Him, temporal and corrective, not eternal and punishment.


Joseph Black D.D.