September 1st.

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the glad tidings I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By it you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I announced to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Something important to consider is what were the "glad tidings" that Paul spoke about, and what exactly was the word that he announced to those who were able to accept it? For Paul, according to this letter, that God's anointed One was sacrificed in order for the sons of God to be transformed away from the animal they were defined as because of their nature, into sons of God—those who are like Him so they can come near Him. The proof that he will do this finally (their bodies will be redeemed from the ground), is contained within what happened to him—he has already been redeemed, and the proof of that was witnessed by many other sons who have been chosen to be such.

Everything natural will be destroyed, and only the spiritual will remain. Our relationship with our new Father is purely spiritual. The only way we can know our Father and the Lord is not by anything we can do in the natural, not even by thinking our way to Him with our natural minds, which are tainted by its association with the self-loving, craving indulging, fear appeasing animal. It is only via the spirit that we know them because they are pure spirit. The Lord only ultimately dealt with 11 men in the natural, revealing the Father and His way to them. But the way of the Father instead of what? When we hear the words "sin," or "sinful nature," it's very obscure, because sin has by and large been defined by humans and evolved out of that original, misguided definition which is most clearly defined as what the "bad people" do.

To the humans, sinning, being sinful, having a sinful nature is regarded as acting or being a certain human way that the established order is opposed to because those actions threaten the group which must maintain control over them. It actually has to exist to them as an unknowable concept, because they aren't chosen to know. Because they think they can and must know what it is, it must be defined relative to what "good" is (what they have decided they are because they follow their man made rules—not the rules laid down in the words they claim to live by, what they claim their rules are formed from). Sin for the religious humans who have controlled, and still control the religious ideas of the particular society from which the majority of the other humans draw their ideas about things they don't know, is what the "bad people" do. The humans who are not in control leave it up to the "experts" to define what good and bad is, and count on the "experts" to be correct.

Other humans are not so superstitious, and see that the religious "experts" are bogus i.e., they know no more or less than anyone else about God, nor how God defines good and bad. So they have to define good and bad in terms of their own experience and observations about the world. That is actually what the religious humans do, just without religious terminology, and it doesn't make them better than the others, it just reinforces the truth that for the humans there is no definition of good or bad according to God, because they end up always defining good according to themselves as that which is good, from the bar room drunk to the snake oil salesman to the self-appointed church leader. However, according to God, what they are by their very nature is inherently bad, so there is no possibility of being good according to Him.

That is the state of the humans before God, what they naturally are according to Him—not inherently good, but inherently bad. Yet there isn't a human alive who would agree with that statement in the secret places of their heart where they hide what they think about who they are, because that's the place they define themselves before God as to what they are. And in that place they all think they're inherently good, no matter who they are because of what drives them to think that way—the animal that needs to survive so it must have that regard about itself or it wouldn't consider itself worthy of struggling to survive the way it naturally does by instinct. That deep place is where those instincts live on the most raw and true level (that which happens underneath the thinking process), that which makes each one think so highly of itself, is the place where they are being judged as to what they actually are according to the living God.

Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

What Jesus actually said about being right with God was, "Whatever is instinctual within you to do without even thinking, whatever you crave, whatever you are driven by nature to do, do the opposite of that." However, knowing what the opposite of that was is a secret that cannot just be found out. It certainly isn't what the religious leaders say to do, which is to be just like they act when they're standing in front of everyone like rock stars at a rock concert, all eyes up front on the one who by fear demands it from his followers who dish out their ego satiating pretense that they are actually interested in what pastor doofus is saying, as though they actually believe he knows the way to the Father.

Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.

The Son of God was speaking to the 12 men who were chosen by God to be able to hear and believe him, to see him and know who he was because unless God has chosen a particular human to be a son of His, hearing the voice of the true teacher will be impossible. The nature that all humans are born into is such that it is impossible to please God with that nature, which leads to the actual definition and understanding of what sin is, according to God—the animal nature.

This is why I speak to them in parables:
"Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: " `You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

The religious leaders' ignorance is fueled by their presumption that they can get something from their made up gods by taking it, by purchasing it and therefore owning it even though they claim it to be free. The price though is their devotion to a lie they force themselves to believe as though it were the truth, because it's what they want to get for themselves. There are so many presumptions that it's hard to list. Some are that God loves everyone and wants as many of the humans as possible to be with Him forever, that the humans themselves can decide who is redeemed by God and who isn't, that God doesn't actually choose His own sons for Himself. Because of these and other erroneous assumptions, they figure that the words and promises they read in the Bible are just up for grabs, as much for them as anyone else—that they extend to everyone the same. Because of that, there is no option for them but to misinterpret what the writers of the NT are saying, because they wrote to specific people under specific circumstances, which don't exist anymore, nor have they for a long time.

The definition of sin and the sinful nature is a mistake they make based on their erroneous assumptions that they can just say they're sinful when they don't even know what it means, which means that they don't actually believe they're sinful, but that they can just say it and therefore fulfill what they think the requirements are to go to heaven (get something for themselves in the manner of the animal that is always trying to get something for itself). They must assume it's about good people (them and those who don't threaten them and their institution) vs. bad people (those who do, who aren't like them, those who cling to a different set of lies), which was the mode established by other humans a long time ago that they follow. There's no way for them to understand that the humans are sinful according to God because of the nature they evolve into when they go from child to adult and take on the animal nature fully, as the identity which defines them.

I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

So across the board all adult humans are bad, sinful according to God, because they are merely animals, and the kicker is that this condition cannot be erased by mouthing a few words you don't actually even believe, then it's gone. Children are only potentially good to Him, but since they always pass over from their condition and become adults, there also is no hope for them because they just die like the rest when they go through the same human process that is revered and lauded by the humans as something good, ironically to how God sees it. Jesus was the only human who didn't ever go through that process.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

The humans want to follow each other and their own way. God has nothing to do with the humans and their ways of self-preservation, selfishness, needs, cravings, lusts, impulses and urges to run after everything they think is valuable. Within them is bred all of the animal instincts that make them base and unclean to God, unable to ever be brought near to Him because of the nature that lives in their heart. That is what defines them as animals who are powerless to please God because they're always and continually only able to look after their own way and interests, so can never even think to consider what God's interests might be. The biggest catch-22 of the whole process—that which keeps them what they are—is that they assume God's interests must be aligned with their own. However, they fail to consider that all the humans think the same way—no matter who they are or what they do, believe or think about God, he is always on their side. So even in terms of human logic, the human way doesn't make sense.

For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

It may not seem fair that nobody has any chance of being right with God, but that's just human thinking, that everything must be fair, according to how they want to define it. He created everything the way it is, and has the ability to create or destroy, so He can do and have things the way He wants them to be, and He does. The humans are consistently unfair and preposterous in their idea that they can decide how things are going to be, who is and will be right with God, that they can design how things will be for God. That's part of the animal nature already discussed, and just another one of many examples of how they are unable to ever please God.

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being" ; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

Now the Son is in the form of pure spirit (like the Father always was) so he can give life to, then commune and instruct the sons without the physical limitations the humans are bound to—because the spirit is not subject to those natural, earthly limitations. He is not bound by space or time or anything natural. He is invisible, unobservable to the humans, and can be many places at once (important in that he can live in the bodies of the sons of God and teach them how to be good sons). That's what happened in the first century, before that phenomenon went away.

Before Jesus was resurrected, he was limited to the natural—he could only instruct and reveal the Father to a certain group which the Father had chosen for him. After his resurrection he was as free from those limitations as the Father, because he was made one with the Father. He gave the Son all those powers that go with his new body as a reward for being a faithful son whose heart was always turned toward Him, away from the animal—away from sin.

The only thing that matters is a son's heart searching for God, turning toward his Father and away from the animal that wants to continue to rule him by instinct. A son's devotion and trust, according to his choice for the Father instead of the alluring animal within, is the thing that God cannot make. He doesn't want to force His sons to love Him. Why would any father want forced devotion or begrudged love? What father wants his son to give him love reluctantly, out of force? At the same time, what father wouldn't want a son whose heart is turned toward him—who loves and respects him more than anything else, and who would do anything for him—even deny himself? As is the case for the natural father, so is the case for the spiritual Father.

You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

One substantial part of the suffering is losing the nature that we have grown up with and love without even thinking. What God asks His sons is that they give up the things that natural men run after according to the instincts that are naturally in them, because in doing so they are defining who they are—mere animals as opposed to sons of God. The Father wants His sons to recognize that they have been born of a new Father, into a new place, with a new nature. The way they know that for sure is because of a new spirit living in them (of the good Son), urging them toward being pleasing to the Father, instead of being led by the old nature, of the animal instincts.

The son of God gives up these things as he progresses and becomes mature, as a genuine response to his new Father, who originally initiated the communication with the son. This is part of the process of the proactive assault on his Father's enemy, that which continues to define the son as an animal. It is also termed by Paul "the flesh." It is the nature of the humans who are in the world, which is the natural creation. It started with the original animal, the snake of the Genesis account, who is termed the devil, which is the nature that all of the humans are born into and which becomes fully them when they become mature, adult animals and learn the way of Adam rather than the way of Jesus.

The sons have to be transformed back into what they resembled when they were little children—dependent, vulnerable creatures who loved and trusted their father because they didn't know any better. So in a very real way, what was programmed into them and they became because of their animal instincts has to be rooted out of them. They have to be transformed from what they became into what the Father wants them to be, and they are all specifically chosen to go through that process by Him alone i.e., they cannot decide they want it and then go just do it (which is one of the main fallacious assumptions of all religions), because it's impossible to change the very nature of an animal from one thing to another, unless there is a miraculous presence of the life changing force of the spirit of God existing with that human to do it.

Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence.
For the king trusts in the LORD; through the unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken.

This comes as a new kind of impulse in the son, not toward the animal but as a genuine response of love toward his new Father as he begins to actually know that he has been given this new birth because of the presence of that spiritual force within him. That's what he begins to live for instead of the myriad of worthless things he used to love and run after when he was dead. It accomplishes many things within the son, the most important one of those being the guarantee that he indeed is a son of God. He knows it for sure because of the spirit's enlightenment in the secret places of his heart, about the things that are being shown to him, versus the things that everyone else thinks are true, all he could ever know before God came (that which can be seen and comprehended with the natural faculties).

Before he is born of God, the son shares the same things with all natural men—rights, privileges, dreams, aspirations, opportunities and advantages in the natural. He asks that he give up things of the natural world that the humans naturally live for, run after and love. These are the things that are generally alluring and appealing to the humans, what the animal nature is naturally drawn to in its constant state of surviving—getting, taking, living. These are the things that the humans naturally have a right to, but for the son they are things that will indeed turn his heart away from his Father, and back to the animal nature, away from which the Father desires to pull him.

Simply put, when the son of God engages in the things and ways of the humans, he is being led by the animal nature, and allowing himself to be defined as such. That is why so many of the NT writers wrote about certain things to not do, even calling them sinful behavior. Actually, though, what's bad according to God—for His sons—is not a static list of things that are bad and applicable to everyone across the board. What's bad for the sons is the particular things they learned to love and run after, according to how their own instincts formed them, and which by doing so defines them as an unclean animal in God's eyes, one which cannot come near Him. There can be some general guidelines in the definition e.g., the preservation of, and/or participation in ego, natural appetite (all types and levels), and the allure of riches in whatever form; but the details remain highly dynamic and relative to the son in question.

This is only true for those who have been chosen to be sons of God. These are the ones to whom the Lord is, has or will reveal their real Father. These are the ones that the Father has chosen to be His sons, just as He chose the 12 for Jesus to reveal Him to long ago. It is not by any man's will that God has sons, but by His will—by His desire and choosing. We cannot know the criteria for why God picks certain humans over others to have this gift given to them. We only know that it is according to what God wants, not any man or group of men. To the humans the sons appear—because of what they know as a result of the spirit's teaching—as a crazy group of people who think they have something exclusive from God (because they do, but only they know it), and that sonship is not open to everyone who might want it.

Because God is merciful and perfect, He gives His sons the ability to know beyond  what all natural humans are limited to. While natural man is limited to what he can understand and become with his natural senses and abilities, the son of God is given a power that allows him to see and understand things not available to the humans. This is the spirit, which sets him free from the prison of the natural. The spirit is the secret, invisible force that allows the son to comprehend spiritual things. Spiritual things are merely the things about God, because God is the spirit. It has nothing to do with the "holy spirit" god, made up and preached by the christians, who think it is another god altogether, apart from the Father (what they think Jesus is too).

God is spirit, and God's world is spiritual. It is a different dimension than anything in the natural. It cannot be seen with natural eyes, nor can it be comprehended by the natural mind. Only the spirit can allow the son who is born by the spirit—a new citizen of another place—to see what is invisible. That is the kingdom of heaven, which is the kingdom of the spirit (heaven=spirit). Heavenly just means godly, spiritual in nature rather than natural. So it can be called the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of the spirit. It is where ultimately the natural is no more, and the laws and limitations of the natural do not exist any longer. It is where the spiritual, which has already begun in us, is culminated and we become spirit instead of this mixture of spirit and animal, which all sons must become transformed into in this life. The kingdom of God is the effective rule of God over the sons, instead of the animal nature, which otherwise, as humans, they are a slave to.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

Until that time, we who were once pure flesh and blood (without the spirit living in us), now live for another purpose: to be transformed from the unclean animals that God has no purpose for, who cannot be drawn near to Him, to sons whom He can love and be an actual Father to. That can be contrasted to the life of the natural man, who can only live for natural things, because that is all he is. Even though he may say he is a son, or wants to be a son, he cannot be a son according to God, because he is merely an animal (and can't even know it).

I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

All hope is not lost for those who are not actual sons of God, closest to Him, those who will be His house, who will become one with Him as Jesus became one with God. The body of sons, because of their new position and nature (God's nature), will be the judge of all those who are to be given life, to be redeemed and live forever, to not be merely forgotten by God. The sons will justly judge because they will know God's justice, and apply it to those who have ever lived and died and who have not been chosen to become the actual body of God.

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

Because we have been given so much, much is required of us too. That list begins with beginning to give up the things that are constantly pulling on us back to the earth, making us remain earthly, that which defines us as animals instead of who we are, sons of God. We begin to understand and take on the things of the spirit, being taught to us by the spirit, which allow us to gravitate upwards toward God, and to be defined as a true son of God. Ceasing to run after the things that come impulsively to us and beginning to separate ourselves from all of the things that reinforce the way of the animal in us may seem on the surface to be negatives, but only if we're still predominantly being led by the animal nature, which hates the things of God, and so it makes sense we'd feel that way.

I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.