If a spirit refuses to trust Christ's Spirit as one's Teacher and Lord, then that faithless one will not learn to love rightly and effectively, in God's wise, just and pure way. The faithless elect children of God will remain far more foolish, unjust and unloving than they could potentially become, and they will practice the exploitative, unjust, harmful sins of the world, which God hates and condemns. Of course, when it comes to elect spirits born of His Spirit, God often intercedes to prevent this kind of life. He stops them from doing some sins, and delivers them from some consequences of sin. For an elect child's lack of faith is often unintentional, through ignorance. And their ignorance is often caused by the world suppressing God's truth, not by the elect spirit's direct and wilful rejection of Him and His truth. But spirits born of Satan's spirit will always wilfully rebel and wilfully remain ignorant of God's truth, since they hate God and His truth. So their wilful ignorance even makes all sins done in ignorance into intentional sins. Thus, children of Satan are always condemned by God, because of what He finds in the minds of their spirits, for all of them love darkness rather than light.
So I repeat, this is precisely why Jesus declared:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name [i.e., in the authority, power, character, love and words] of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God” (John 3:16-21, ESV).
To believe in the “name” of Jesus is to trust and put confidence in His words, wisdom, authority, power, love and all that He represents. If we believe in His name, we have faith in His love for us, in His will to save us, in all He says or teaches, as well as in His ability, power and authority to do all He promises to do. If our spirits develop this kind of faith, Jesus is definitely saving us. And, even if this faith is as small as a mustard seed, or is not known by the mind of flesh, Jesus will grow that faith until it becomes as large as a tall tree. But non-elect spirits hate the bright light of Christ's true wisdom, since they love the world's dark delusions and lies instead. So how can they be saved?
Regardless, all spirits shall exist eternally after the flesh dies. But a spirit born to hate light and love darkness will die “the second death” (Rev. 21:8, 20:14), even while it continues to see, hear, feel, desire and think thoughts forever. In other words, that kind of spirit will be cast into hell. And this “second death” must forever endure the same spiritual darkness it cherished and nurtured during its life on earth. For that spiritual darkness worked the death of flesh, and later will keep the wicked spirit's new body, made of an eternal substance, in a spiritually dark emptiness and death forever.
A spirit that hates God and His light will gather many cherished, dark, spiritual delusions and lies during its life on earth, to replace God's truth. Then these delusions stir up many lusts and desires. At the heart of all these delusions and lies is a lust for power, a desire to be one's own god in control of one's own destiny, even a god who strives to rule over the lives and destinies of other people, usually accompanied by a powerful longing for high self-esteem and glory. The outward expressions of these inner desires and lusts are sins. Yet these strong lusts and desires will continue in hell, unabated. So the stronger they are allowed to grow on earth, the stronger they will be felt in hell, after death. In hell, one will feel desires in direct proportion to how much one built up and fed one's lies on earth.
Thus, the dark delusional desires of the world order will be the torments of hell. The greater they became on earth, the worse hell will be for them. For, in hell, it will never be possible to gratify any of the lusts or desires of those delusions, since the only way to gratify them would be through the unjust exploitation and abuse of God's good creations. But hell is an empty void, a bottomless pit, where none of God's creations exist, not even the dirt of the ground—nothing but other spirits born of Satan, in their imperishable bodies which they receive after death, with all their delusions. The “lake of fire” is a spiritual lake, an endless, dark, churning sea of their delusions and lies burning in their spirits. And, since their delusions consist of contradicting principles, nothing real can ever be created through them, nothing that would not fall apart and destroy itself through its own lack of harmony and consistency. So all these God-hating spirits will never again have anything real to exploit, abuse or destroy for their own pleasures, through their core desire to be gods ruling people and things. They will drift endlessly through a void, longing to fulfil their own dark, worthless and unworkable delusions, but never able to gratify any of them, forced to endure forever all their unjust and unholy desires burning in their hearts, eternally gnawing at their minds like undying worms. So we cannot be jealous of Satan's children when Satan's world order gives them all their flesh desires, since they are merely receiving a greater damnation and pain for their eternity in their home of hell.
Still, while we are kept to reality, to the basic, modest needs of the flesh and simple pleasures of warm fellowship, we must realize that, while the elect live on earth, all whom Jesus chooses to save will also experience some of what that these hell-bound spirits experience. For all God's children also sin and get caught up in some delusions of the world order. All begin life by thinking and acting in the same way as the children of hell. Upon creation, the minds of all human spirits are ignorant babes, unable to see and grasp the spiritual realities created by God. Then the minds of their bodies are worse. Even in maturity, a brain of flesh is only capable of thinking of ways to satisfy and gratify its own desires, or the lusts of the rest of its body, and cannot comprehend much beyond that. The flesh is totally blind to spiritual realities. As a result, all the elect, whom Jesus is saving, begin life as loveless, sinful, selfish, unjust souls, living a life much like the lives of the children of hell. And the only difference is the work of Jesus beginning inside the elect children of God, even before birth.
This is why God's Word tells all the elect children of God: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air [who is Satan], the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:1-3, ESV, comp. Rom. 3:9-18). So all the elect know what hell will be like. But the children of Satan can never know anything about God or His heaven. God’s children are granted knowledge of both good and evil, just as God also bears this knowledge. But no other created beings, other than God and His children, can know this.
Yet, because of our personal sins, because each of us actually hurts God's people and God's creation in unjust ways, because we personally offend the God who created us and is saving us, we need a just forgiveness of those sins, one which involves a just payment for those sins and a restitution for all the damages we caused. Of course, God takes responsibility for the actions of His children. So He will restore a hundredfold for all the loss His children caused, replacing the loss of temporary earthly life and things with eternal heavenly life and things, that is, for all who are worthy. But that still does not meet the needs of actual justice. For true, godly justice not only restores the loss, but also ensures that the sinners never cause these losses again. True justice needs to either change a sinner into a righteous person, or utterly remove the sinner from all the people and all the things that the sinner could possibly sin against. Since Satan’s children cannot be made righteous, they are separated from God’s creation by being placed in hell. But the spirits God’s elect are able to be made truly righteous. Their spirits bear an innate ability to become holy like God. Only their flesh cannot be made truly, permanently and consistently righteous. Consequently, God will first permanently remove elect bodies of flesh. In fact, God will eventually destroy the whole of the material creation. So no sin will ever come from our flesh again. However, God will not separate the eternal spirits of His sinful elect children from all His creation, and cast them into hell, to prevent them from sinning again. For God has another option. God is able to thoroughly teach and train elect spirits to behave in His good and loving ways, even to utter perfection, until they joyfully and spontaneously do good at all times, and never sin. He completes this perfecting work on the long judgement day before they enter heaven.
The spirits of God's children were made in a way that gives them the ability to grow. The principal aspect of salvation—Christ's teaching and training of our spirits in our hearts—ensures that we will eventually become like God, utterly righteous with a holy love, never again unjustly hurting anyone, fit for heaven. Yet our bodies of flesh were made without any ability to be fully just and righteous.
Our minds of flesh have no ability to truly love. Yes, our bodies can be sanctified too, in two ways, forensically by forgiveness and during the times when our spirits can occasionally express godly love through our bodies. However, there is no way the mind and body of flesh can ever learn to love consistently, unconditionally and justly, like the elect spirit can. So, for salvation, our flesh must be separated from God's heavenly creation forever, prevented from ever sinning again, done away with in death to meet the needs of justice. It is the only way we can be granted a just forgiveness of sins.
Jesus bodily death brought a just forgiveness and atonement for our spirits, and this forgiveness is granted to us during life on earth and for all eternity in heaven. But this forgiveness is for our flesh only during life on earth. Yet our flesh will partake in the sufferings of Christ, those He experienced from birth to death on earth, because we are like Him. We are spirits from God living in bodies of flesh, like Jesus was the Spirit of God living in a body of flesh. So Satan and his world order will treat us like Him. Then, eventually, this flesh must be done away with altogether, so it may be replaced with a “spiritual” body fit for heaven. As Jesus gave His bodily life for us, we also must give our bodily lives for Him and His people. If we do it right, like Jesus did, surrendering our whole lives to the works of God through God-like love, then we find abundant life. Jesus said, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25, ESV). “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it” (Luke 9:24, ESV). Worldly selfish ambition steals life from the elect. There is no real life in it. Its earthly rewards are fit only for the spirits born of Satan, so they may heap up their own pain in damnation with them. But the rewards of the elect, paid for by the sacrifices of the flesh, are all spiritual, for true and lasting joy of the spirit in the heart, even eternal treasures of God-like love.
Jesus gave His body over to a brutal death as a substitute for all whom He names and calls His people. He died in their place, so they would not need to die themselves in the body while they lived on earth. If His body did not die for our sins, then our holy God could not enter our sinning bodies of flesh to teach us His ways. We would need to cast off this flesh before our spirits could be taught His ways. Because Jesus’ body died for our elect spirits, we can now justly fellowship with our Father and with Jesus. Our spirits can be taught and trained by Jesus’ Holy Spirit while dwelling in our “houses” of flesh. Jesus purchased all the flesh that was once hunted by the just wrath of universal justice, destined for its silencing gallows. Of course, the flesh will indeed die eventually, and its every particle will perish forever with the material universe in the end. But, when flesh dies, we will be completely done with sin, through Jesus. This is not true for the non-elect, who will still have their sins of their flesh clinging to their spirits for all eternity. Jesus' body took the blows and the death that all our bodies of flesh should have received for our sins done through our flesh. And only His body of flesh could do this, not our own bodies, nor the bodies of any others. For only the body of Jesus was a fit, just and acceptable sacrifice. Only His flesh could truly pay for all the sins that we do during our whole lifetimes. Our flesh, nor the flesh of anyone else, could do this for us, because:
All our sins are paid in full by a sinless body of flesh. Now we can get busy and learn, through faith in Jesus and His words, to do good through His power. His resurrected life of His body of flesh can sanctify our bodies, making our spirits able to do His works on earth. Yes, our bodies will still sin, but less as His power and teachings grow in us. Nevertheless, our temporary and inferior bodies of flesh also will die and every atom in them will be destroyed with the earth in the end. They will never exist again. Rather, in heaven, we will receive new bodies made of a different substance, made of a spiritual substance (I Cor. 15:35-50). So all our sins have been condemned to our flesh, which will soon vanish into nothing (Rom. 8:3). Therefore, with the barrier of our sins gone, our holy God can work inside us, on our spirits. Our spirits are now able to receive God's principal promise of salvation, which is His writing of His law upon our spirits, making us fit for heaven (i.e., teaching and training our spirits to be like His Spirit). All our sins will be forgotten forever after our bodies die, all cast aside with our flesh. Thus, with the death of Jesus' body on the cross, there is now no condemnation from God for any of the elect spirits being saved by Jesus' Spirit (e.g., Rom. 8:1-2).
Nothing is left for us to do for our forgiveness and the atonement of our relationship with God, for our right to become God's children and enter heaven. Nothing can be done for our own salvation by our own hands or by the hands of any other man. Jesus did it all, and is now doing all that is needed. In Jesus, we even find forgiveness for all our intentional sins, for He has caused or will soon cause our repentance, to change our intentions. He teaches us to intend against our sins, which makes them become unintentional. Although God cannot justly forgive any intentional sin until the evil intent causing that sin is gone, all that evil intent will eventually fade and disappear from the hearts of all God's elect. All will change their intentions through repentance into the truth, a change which Jesus continuously grants. As we learn God's truth and His loving ways, our intentions and motives of our hearts become increasingly right. We begin to turn away from sins through godly sorrow. As our Teacher and Trainer writes His truth and His ways on our hearts, we cannot help but repent away from our sins into His ways. Our evil intentions change into good intentions, which is repentance.
Since repentance makes our intentional sins into unintentional sins, God joyfully forgives them.
The work of Jesus on the cross restores our relationship with our God, and God then does the work of salvation in us—which is the writing of His law on our hearts. That is, Jesus' sacrifice on the cross allows His Spirit to enter us, and allows us to approach the Father of our spirits, leaving us with nothing to block or inhibit this relationship. After all, God has no ability to help intentional sinners, even His own dear children. For, if He helped sinners, He would be aiding and abetting their sins.
Anyone who helps a sinner to sin becomes a partaker in that sinner's sin. So a helper of a sinner becomes a helper of sin, and becomes a sinner oneself, causing sin together with the sinner whom one helps. But our loving and sinless God's heart will never allow Himself to sin, to become unjust and unloving. Therefore, a just, full payment of a sinner's sin had to be made first, to justly allow for the restoration of our relationship with God, before God could begin His principal saving works in our hearts, in a way that also causes our full and true repentance. The death of God's sinless body on the cross was the only way this separation between the Father and His children could be reconciled.
Because Jesus justly paid for all our sins, God can approach us. Because He can draw near to us, He can work in our hearts to permanently stop our spirits from sinning, making our spirits fit to enter His holy heaven. For no sinful spirit can enter the holy place of heaven until it learns to stop sinning. And, when we receive new spiritual bodies after our flesh dies, those new bodies will not be unruly like our bodies of flesh. So we shall never sin in heaven. Christ's bodily death makes our salvation into heaven possible. God's power, in Jesus and as the Father of our spirits, now bears the right to teach and train our spirits, and cannot fail to make us utterly holy and loving like Him. God can do this justly, without ever partaking in our sins, without aiding and abetting our sins done in the flesh. At times, whenever we sin, our God’s Spirit may need to withdraw a little distance from our spirits in our hearts. But He still talks to our spirits even then, calling us to repent. If we do not heed Him, He may even stop talking until we respond. But, as soon as we repent, He then returns to our hearts.
Only through Jesus' death on the cross, can we be considered, in an entirely just manner, to be clean enough to allow God to help us. With the full penalty of all our sins paid by Jesus, we have nothing left owing, and possess complete legal freedom from our debt for our sins. The demons and their children may plague us with accusations and condemnation. And we also still need to repent from all our sins. But all of us surely will repent from all our sins, through the teaching of Jesus in our hearts. If an elect one is so impulsive that he or she sins seventy times seven times a day, and repents every time, still God will forgive, and has already purchased that forgiveness long ago, in full, on the cross. His predestined death on the cross even paid for the sins of all the elect born on the earth from the time of Adam until Jesus walked on earth. Abraham knew God only because Jesus paid for his sins, which allowed God to work in his heart. For Jesus' predestined death on the cross was as good as done from the beginning. So, in the reality and justice God created, we surely are truly and actually forgiven our entire lifetime of sins, and are also now being made subjectively righteous by Christ, through His teaching and training of our spirits. We have received, and are continuously receiving, our sanctification, by His power to make us holy. And God cannot fail to complete this saving work.
Therefore, we stand on faith in Jesus, in the truth that it is only because of our forgiveness through Jesus' death on the cross that our just Jesus can now justly approach us, draw near to us and teach us His ways for our sanctification and salvation. Because Jesus’ body of flesh rose from the dead, His Spirit can enter our flesh, and He lives to teach and train our spirits in our flesh. It is all because of Jesus alone that we can and will be saved into heaven. No sacrament or magic prayer can cause God to do this. By the choice and will of our God, by the will of the Father of our spirits, in Jesus alone, who cannot fail, we are being made holy and fit for eternal life in heaven. By His works alone are we are being saved in a way that cannot fail. Now, by His works and will, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for those being taught His ways in their spirits, for those He is saving.
The pagan teachings from middle Platonism about a supposedly “free will” are false. Man is not made holy by his own will. “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that One has died for all, therefore all have died; and He died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised” (II Cor. 5:14-15, ESV). The love learned from Jesus compels us to live for Him. His will is to love us and to teach us to love Him, His words of truth, and all His creation, especially our family, all His elect children. So it is only His will, power and teaching that compels and changes our spirits in our hearts, that causes us to love, that causes us both to will and to work for God's will, while we live on earth and forever.
This also means that, above all, our hope rests in Christ's resurrection, perhaps more than His death. Because Jesus' body rose from the dead, He now lives eternally, and He is well able to personally teach His ways to each of our spirits individually, even while we live in these bodies of flesh. His resurrection of His flesh resurrects our flesh that was dead in sin, condemned and without hope. So