PART  VI  –  TRANSITIONAL ASPECTS OF THE MODEL

SUBPART E – MESSIAH-BODY;  Trumpets unto the Day of Atonement

Article 1 – The Healing of Creation   

By Daniel Irving

a.  God Will See the Man

b.  God’s Work is Finished

c.  Yet But a Short Work in the Earth

d.  True Healing is the Sabbath

Article 1 – THE HEALING OF CREATION

a.  God Will See the Man

I have seen His ways, and will heal him; I will lead him also and restore comfort unto him and to his mourners,                            Is. 57:18

God declares these words concerning the sinner separated from Himself, of whom He said in the previous verse:

For the iniquity of his covetousness I was wroth, and smote him; I hid Me and was wroth.                                            Is. 57:17

Why was God “wroth”?  Why did He “hide Himself”?  The reason for God’s anger and His being hidden from the man is clearly stated by the words; “I have seen his ways”.   It is not insignificant that God sees a thing!  Consider the very story of creation!  God made all things, and yet they were not established as “good” until it is stated that God “saw” them:

And God saw the light, that it was good:              Gen. 1:4

And throughout the process of creation it is continuously stated that God “saw” what He made and that it was “good”, until finally stating:

And God saw every thing that he had made, &, behold, it was very good.  and the evening & the morning were the sixth day.                   Gen 1:31

Even before God had taken His rest from all things, He; “saw every thing that he had made, &, behold, it was very good.”  This raises a great question to consider.  When God saw all of His creation, did He see it as we would see it?  Did He see His creation in a specific moment in time and with literal eyes?  Or does it mean something else?  What did God see?  Did He see as we see?  Did He see the confusion, the violence, the sickness and suffering of this world?  Did He see the hatred and strife of unbelief?  If so, then how could God have called what He saw “good”?

As natural creatures we see only an infinitesimal – and that, poorly.  We see the corruption of a world defiled by sin and existing under the condemnation of Death.  Do we see better than God sees?  When given sight of his own condition within nature Job declared:

I have said to corruption, ‘Thou art my father’; the worm, ‘Thou art my mother, and my sister.’                                             Job 17:14

God is a Spirit,[1] and He is timeless.[2]  To whom is God referring when He says; “I have seen His ways”?  The answer lies in verse sixteen.  God refers to “the souls which I have made”. This Hebrew-word translated “made”[3] is the same word used throughout the story of creation, e.g.

And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made;           Gen 2:2

For these souls which God has made He has provided a redemption that has been paid before their very creation.  Therefore His timeless and eternal being “saw everything that he had made, &, behold, it was very good”.

b.  God’s Work is Finished

Are we to understand from this that God is not finished with our creation?  He is finished as the completion is Christ; “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”.[4]  Peter explains that the coming and crucifixion of Christ was an eternal truth manifested within the natural world.  He writes:

But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish & without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,                                I Peter 1:19-20

The “finished work of Christ” is an eternal truth transcending natural principles of Law. This is consistent with those principles discussed by Paul when reasoning with the Galatians:

And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ,  the law, which was 430 years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.                        Gal 3:17

In fact, the; “foundations of the earth” are even the very work performed on the cross.  We read in the epistle to the Hebrews:

  And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:                Heb 1:10

The “foundations of the earth” stand metaphor for the work-of-Christ performed in the earth; His life, His death, and His resurrection.  Even the elect themselves are foreordained from the foundations of the world:

  According as he has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world,  that we should be holy & without blame before Him in love:            Eph 1:4

This is because not only is the work of Christ finished, so are its fruits complete in the eyes of God.  Therefore the “kingdom of God” in all its glory is a completed truth.  The kingdom of God was prepared by God before we were even created.  Thus in its fuller revelation . . .

  Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand,  “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you  from the foundation of the world:                                                                                     Mat 25:34

What is the “foundation of the world”?  Simply that which was performed in the world by the eternal and living God that survives the age of natural things.[5]  This is the incarnation of God in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the work He performed on the cross, and the Father’s demonstration of power to raise Him from the dead; the Lamb of God that was “slain from the foundation of the world”.

Who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, & gave Him glory; that your faith & hope might be in God.                    I Peter 1:19-21

The object is clearly; “the Lamb” that is Jesus Christ.  While He; “was manifest[ed] in these last times” for the sake of our faith, His truth has always been.

God is unchanging both in respect to His Person, and His work.  Therefore God’s dealing with man has always been on the basis of the blood of His cross.  Therefore it was on this basis God dealt with; David when he sinned with Bathsheba, the children of Israel when they provoked Him in the wilderness, and even Adam when he was ejected from Paradise.  The basis of our interaction with God must always be through the eternal blood of God’s lamb, whether in ages past, the age present, or in the next.

c.  Yet But a Short Work in the Earth

Although God’s work is finished, there is still the matter of our material creation; and while we are speaking of God’s finished work performed by Christ recall that while the Lord walked in a physical body, He said:

  . . .  “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, & to finish His work.                                                                                    John 4:32-34

The true spiritual “food” upon which Christ subsisted was not only “to do the will” of His Father, but even; “to finish His work”; the “finishing” of which would be His perfecting by obedience unto the death of the cross that lay ahead.  Therefore not only was His obedient-life His spiritual food, so was even His death.  In turn Christ became; “the living bread” made accessible to men.  Men – by reason of sin – could not have received the life of God any other way than that that life incorporate the spiritual-knowledge of God Himself having atoned for man’s sin through the blood of the cross.  Thus the knowledge of the atonement is foundational to the life of God being made accessible to the man.

That the life of God be made accessible to men required that Christ perform a work within nature.  For man’s nature was fallen and unable to sustain any life that God would give.  Therefore man cannot abide in a condition of life but for the witness of the Holy Spirit teaching his heart that His Creator has satisfied the debt of sin through the travail of His own Son.  Through this knowledge – ie. the knowledge of God – man may abide in life through doing the will of God given a blameless-conscience.  Thus Mt. Zion is “without fault”[6] and “without blemish”.  As such, they may follow the Lamb of God through the doing of the will of God.  This is their sanctification; the eating of the “food” of their soul which is Christ.

But this holiness of the Living God would never have been made food had not Christ come down from heaven and delivered His body unto death; all for the purpose that His Father might resurrect and multiply the work of His only begotten Son.  Thus even though the work of redemption was performed before creation, it was needful that God manifest for a brief moment within creation for the purpose of a very short work.  And this “short work” must be performed within the soul of every man that is to be sanctified.  Thus the apostle writes:

  For he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.                    Rom. 9:28

d.  True Healing is the Sabbath

Once God has “seen” what He has made, He may apply the remedy of His own Being to give life unto the soul that He has made.  The nature of God becomes the operating principle upon the nature of the man whose ways were those of death as estranged from God and His ways.  Therefore the prophecy says:

I have seen His ways, and will heal him; I will lead him also and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners,                        Is. 57:18

Therefore God beholds what He has made.  God observes that what He has made is good.  Rather, very good!  But that which is very good is in need of healing.  This sounds something of a paradox!  But in it we find insight into the Divine meaning of Divine healing.

When we use the word “healing”, what do we normally intend?  Normally, we mean the fixing of something that is broken.  But what – according to God’s creative-pronouncements – appears to be intended?   The perfecting of something that is “very good”.  God has performed His work and He awaits the response of His creature.  What is that response?  Faith; as that which is responsive to God’s eternal-Word that is sent into the earth.  Faith is that which; 1) believes what God has spoken, 2)  confirms God as faithful, and 3) finds its completion in God’s eternal-Word expressed before the world’s foundation.  Thus faith is that which demonstrates that God is Faithful.  It begins in our justification, progresses in our sanctification, and allows God to vindicate His faithfulness in our resurrection!  In this, the completion of creation is Christ the Sabbath.

In ministering physical-healing Jesus Christ responded as follows to those objecting that healing should be performed on the Sabbath:

“Thou hypocrite, does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, & lead him away to watering? & ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, lo, these 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?                                                  Luke 13:15-16

If the diligent-guardians of the Law had leave to rescue & give nurture to their beast on the Sabbath, why did God not have the same liberty?  But God does have the liberty to intervene in natural-affairs in order to proclaim the “acceptable day” of His salvation; the Sabbath day!  Therefore the ministry of Jesus Christ was characterized by physical healing to the multitudes upon their hearing the news that God was completing the eternal-work of His creation; a thing much more significant than physical healing!  Physical healing was given them as a sign of the greater work.

Recall that when men dug into the roof above Jesus in order to lower a paralytic, the Lord’s response to them was surprising:

When Jesus saw their faith, He said unto the sick of the palsy,  “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee”.                                    Mark 2:5

Undoubtedly, the immediate issue in the mind of the people was the healing of this poor young man laid out on a pallet and who could probably not even toilet-himself.  Yet in the mind of God the most immediate issue was the forgiveness of his sins!  This sent many in the house into theological-stewing over the presumption they perceived in Jesus pronouncing God’s forgiveness:

  & immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, He said unto them, “Why reason ye these things in your hearts?  Which is easier to say to the sick of the palsy, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee’; or to say, ‘Arise, & take up your bed, & walk’?   But that you may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins,  (he said to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto you,   ‘Arise, & take up your bed, & go your way into thine house.     Mar 2:8-11

This intervention-in-nature had purpose quite beyond anyone being physically healed.  If that had the purpose, the purpose might better have been served by the man never having been sick!  But the purpose of the Divine intervention in nature was for faith unto the eternal-work.  The physical-healing was but a means of instilling regenerating faith in the hearts of men.  The miracle was not the purpose, but an evidence aiding the natural-man in trusting upon the Person and work of Jesus Christ to fulfill God’s purposes in their creation.