2025-08-06 - Jesus Christ is the Promised Messiah Part III: The Necessity of Total Obedience

In order for God’s promise to man of salvation, deliverance and sanctification to be fulfilled when the Messiah arrives, the Messiah’s actions will need to be conceived and delivered in total obedience to God’s will.  Perfection is the standard to which the Messiah’s actions must conform, in order to deliver man from the consequences of his sin.  This confirms that the Messiah can only be God incarnate, which is necessary to achieve the perfect state of obedience required to accomplish God’s will.  If God is sending a Messiah to accomplish His will, that Messiah will be outfitted for the task accordingly. 

Man’s salvation comes about through theosis, in which we are transformed to become like God.  Theosis can be thought of as a fusion of two distinct entities, the Creator and His creature, through the exchange of creative, salvific and revelatory communication from each toward the other.  The completion of theosis results in our salvation, but it must be complete.  There is no partial accomplishment.  We will be restored to a level of sanctification even greater than the innocence with which Adam was created, because we will be newly created and have received Christ Jesus, whereas Adam had not received Jesus. 

God’s promise to humanity is in the context of a covenant in which Israel will act as a conduit for all of humanity to come to God; fulfilling the Great Commission.  The rainbow sign was used to mark the inception of God’s covenant with Noah’s descendants, which followed God’s salvific action (no more floods), His creative action (the emergence of dry land from beneath the waters) and His revelatory action (Noah’s altar sacrifice to God).  The rainbow sign will be recycled at the Second Coming of Christ following God’s salvific action (the temptation of sin will be removed), His creative action (The New Jerusalem descends to earth) and His revelatory action (the restoration of the unguarded Tree of Life and the appearance of the rainbow sign).  The necessity of action on man’s part to fulfill this Covenant requires perfect fidelity to God’s Word and the ability to do so on behalf of all of humanity.  Only a fully sanctified, human embodiment of God Himself has such abilities. 

Old Testament man during the period of the first temple was given the chance for temporary atonement for transgressions against God’s Law, by animal sacrifice.  Unable to live up to the Law’s commands and prohibitions with perfect fidelity, man was cursed by that very Law.  When God departed the temple (Ezekiel 10:18), the possibility of temporary atonement was lost, and eventually the first temple was overrun by the Babylonians.  Escape from this desperate predicament required that God send a deliverance in the form of God incarnate (the predicted Messiah), and that this God-man act in perfect fidelity to God’s will for the restructuring and renewal of the Covenant.