It is one thing to quote the Bible in saying that Jesus is the Door of our salvation, but another to truly understand the manner in which that unfolds as a daily living reality for believers. I’d like to talk to you about just that – the plan God sealed in Jesus for us to enter into His kingdom to have access to God and how that way of salvation is tied to His new covenant.

We often hear it confidently said that God offers only one door to salvation and that door is Jesus, but the connection is not made to the new covenant and Jesus’ one doctrine. Instead, many strange doctrines are taught in the name of Jesus.

Hebrews 13:9
Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.

What are strange doctrines? It is not the doctrine of Christ and His covenant; it is reconstructed teaching or reconstructed knowledge that does not start with covenant but rather starts with man’s fallen nature.

Strange doctrines are built from asking questions about God’s direction, what a person feels is an undeniable truth, without referring to God’s map (Jesus’ covenant terms) and then coming up with answers from Bible searching. For example,

– I should fear God – that’s an undeniable truth. Let me find out what that would look like.
– I should desire God’s will over my own – that’s an undeniable truth. Let me find out what that would look like.
– I should love freely and forgive without prejudice – that’s an undeniable truth. Let me find out what that would look like.

Strange doctrines are the many doors that Satan opens to give answers to a person’s spiritual quest apart from covenant. As God awakens believers by His grace to bring them into covenant with Him, a shift in foundation building takes place and we see real change in how a believer builds a relationship with God.

Looking at the common doors that have been opened by strange doctrine, we see that Satan targets man’s appetite to reciprocate his own fallen nature. Most believers came into the faith learning how to reciprocate to God on the grounds of many self-referencing questions.

But now the tide has changed. Reciprocation is by the anointing, and speaks of the joining of the record of Jesus (knowledge) to the witness of the Spirit (empowerment) present in the true apostolical character.

Fruit bearing through God’s daily, active involvement in our lives is our experience as covenant believers. We actively experience the operation of grace in our heart when we touch Christ’s sanctified tools for contact with Him. This is a living reality, because the tools are living and empowered by God to transform the soul and to know Him by this knowledge.

This is our hope that is given substance as we build and bond with God. This is our confidence obtained in Christ as we reciprocate to God, that our faith meets His mark of excellence and perfection in Christ, and by meeting the standards of God our faith is accepted as perfect in His sight, for though His inner work of regeneration in our growth cycles, old things have passed away and all things are made new.

2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

I want to stop here for a moment: Apostle Paul made a vital connection between being “IN CHRIST” and a “NEW creature’’. He is bringing out that in order for spiritual transformation to be made effectual, a believer must be joined to the power that does that inner work within the soul – and that joining to God is through His knowledge and the effectual power of the Spirit.

Another crucial part of that joining is set in God’s elect stewardship – seen here in how Apostle Paul, as a living apostle giving instruction to the saints in Corinth, established that vital connection between the record and witness of Jesus that God sanctified for faith, and spiritual transformation.

Likewise, the same distinction by the anointing, is made for the saints today in covenant with God, His restored government teaching that while we are building a living relationship with God based on the record of Christ, we put to death the habits of the old man to trust his own record to build faith after his own likeness, so falling short of the glory of God. This means that sinners reflect and express their ignorance by the flesh, using their own efforts with the record of man to present false regeneration as a divine work of God, which it is not.

We cannot build a relationship with God by our own design and nature. That is why we need proper knowledge (grace and truth) for faith that provides the function at the altar of Christ, by which we experience transformation that is not aspiration driven but empowered by the anointing.

Contrast is provided by how the natural man uses the flesh in vain by which to try and bridge the breach between God and man, to connect with God, to build a relationship with Him on the basis of ignorance – to how — our relationship with God is forged on the basis of knowledge that is reciprocal, in order to reflect Christ, against whose record, our faith is measured and weighed. He is the touchstone for our faith that is His fullness and the value God ascribes to our fruit.

Quoting from the IDCCST Course, Week 7 (Lesson Guide page 69):

There will always be this battle between Jesus and the kingdom of the flesh. While man is inclined to use his own record as a platform to define and defend his faith, God uses Jesus as the true paragon, and the elements of the gospel as the crucible for spiritual transformation.

Jesus’ holy knowledge works within us the newness of life in Christ that makes us a new creature, a new man; made after His own likeness according to His divine record. God never intended for us to know Him by our own design, so He placed His power and substance in the record He provided for the new covenant through Jesus. We know God by knowledge, and He knows us by our fruit.

This is the foundational knowledge upon which our building in faith is sound, because it is the blueprint God provided for the product of faith to reflect none other than Christ. It is by His record that we are enabled to reflect and express Christ, because God equips our faith with this knowledge and tools that reflects Him (truth being the facts that are consistent to God’s character, purpose and plan).

The flesh speaks of our first birth into the kingdom of sin and darkness (which is ignorance). The natural man operates by these natural powers present in the soul: the signature, the moral-code, the God-Code, the knowledge of the world, and the fruits of iniquity. These 5 features of the flesh operate in unison with one another. Satan exploits the vulnerability of man to follow instinctively after the natural rhythm. As long as sinners remain unaware of the undercurrent of these powers that work within them, Satan is free to corrupt their souls with his brand of knowledge.

On his own, the natural man cannot escape the influence of these powers upon his soul, because it’s part of who he is in the world. This is what he knows. This is what he is familiar with. His confidence is anchored in what he knows by the experiences of his life. That’s why God provides His brand of knowledge, that gives that vital contrast for discernment between the 2 kingdoms and natures – that of the flesh and that of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:17
For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

Jesus provides this way of escape through the provision of His covenant knowledge and tools. We escape the lusts of the flesh during our growth cycles as we put to death the old man through the spiritual labor of faith by which we remain strengthened and kept by His grace and peace.

Without the grace of God and the process that the Spirit works with for the new man to be formed, believers’ efforts to better themselves can only bring about change in behaviors but cannot change the state of the soul (where the true need is at). God’s design in Christ is what works spiritual transformation whereby the soul is healed of the fruit of iniquity and increased in the fruits of the Spirit to mature unto the virtues of Christ.

Let’s stop for a moment to look at the phrase “God’s design in Christ” to clarify what God means by “in Him”. I will be drawing from the EVA Terms Glossary where Apostle Eric vonAnderseck writes:

The word ‘in’ speaks of a point of access for function to which we agree. An easy way to learn this is to think about what it means to be in a bank, or in a library, or in a doctor’s office. Each provides access to a very specific function. For example, we would not go to a bank to see a doctor. Even so, Jesus provides us access to God.

In Christ means in covenant, in His temple with His tools. This is where Jesus stimulates and nourishes our faith. Jesus is the one establishing a testimony for us in Himself. Man does not possess the virtue of God. Man is not born with this virtue; it is not in him. It is granted to us by faith – and faith needs the tokens of Christ. This helps define faith as our ability to observe Jesus in his new tools.

To be IN Christ means to be hidden in Him, we are concealed within the womb of His covenant, given refuge within the present oversight of His elect stewardship; shielded from the convincing powers of Satan’s false knowledge industry, by the scale and anchoring of His truth.

This is not to say that we will no longer experience challenging circumstances or disruptions in our lives that may enflame the emotions or unsettle the heart. God created both light and darkness, and so too does the contradictions of death’s presence remain as contrast for the testing and rewarding of our faith. Satan, by his suggestions, presents a challenge by offering opposing knowledge to resist the grace of God. God tests hearts by giving us the revelation of His knowledge, which we labor with to bring distinction for Christ as the anointing grants pure discernment, carrying our faith unto a fruitful increase.

There are 2 contrasting kingdoms; therefore there are 2 contrasting knowledge systems. Each system progresses with its own opposing record, either that of Christ and or of the flesh. Truth brings contrast to false knowledge. God allows contradictions to remain for the purpose of presenting the opportunity faith’s choosing. This is where our labor of faith stands as our consent to the work of the Spirit within; removing the damage of iniquity in the heart, and forming in us the beauty of the nature of Christ.

When God removes the fruits of iniquity, He gives something in return. His fruit adorns our soul with His beauty and glory. The fruit that is formed within the soul is eternal and becomes a permanent fixture of our soul for as long as we continue to follow the due order of regeneration with the expression of charity. Fruit is matured unto the virtue of Christ through the progression of our cycles of growth that speaks of the consistency of a believer with the knowledge and tools that follows the pattern of revelation, resistance and reward. We take on His divine nature by His divine power.

2 Peter 1:3-4
³ According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

⁴ Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

These are the great and precious promises by which Christ is our point of entrance to God. We rejoice in this liberty in Christ, knowing what God has separated us from, by freeing us to serve and worship Him according to the record of Christ. No longer are we slaves to the influence of the natural powers of the flesh, and the powers of sin and darkness by which Satan was once our master.