This is a picture of my garden last summer. It is my plant kingdom. In it is a little animal kingdom where goldfish multiply. My presence in it represents the human kingdom. The rock paths, and the water in the water garden represent the lifeless inorganic kingdom.

The living kingdoms ultimately return to the inorganic kingdom (“to dust”), but none can advance to a higher kingdom. Rocks can’t come to life; a plant cannot become an animal; a fish or a cat cannot move up to the human kingdom.  

True?  Yes, but the lettuce from the garden has nourished itself with inorganic minerals from the soil and made those lifeless inorganic kingdom minerals a part of its’ inaccessible plant kingdom. When I eat the lettuce, it necessarily dies to become a part of my inaccessible human kingdom.  But the higher kingdom must always reach down into the lower to elevate it. (Of course, when I drink water, eat salad or meat I do not have a gracious grand motive to elevate lettuce or chicken to the status of the human kingdom.)

There is a higher Life Kingdom, The Kingdom of God. It also is inaccessible unless the Life there reaches down into the lower kingdom. But when God takes a human life from the human kingdom into the spiritual Kingdom of God, He certainly does do it with a grand motive--to eternally show the glory of His grace to spiritually dead humans. He chooses to rescue us through His Son Jesus Christ, and to and lavish His chosen beloved ones with His amazing grace--because He is gracious!

He has invaded our human kingdom through Jesus. He has taken into Himself every repentant believer. He has “transferred that believer into the Kingdom of His dear Son“. With that transfer there is necessarily a death of the old kingdom life and a confident assurance of now belonging in the Kingdom of God.  In Christ, he becomes a “new creature“.

Jesus Christ IS our Spiritual Life; He IS our Eternal Life. Without Him we disinterestedly remain in the human kingdom and are just as helpless as is a lettuce plant, by trying really hard, to turn into a chicken, or a chicken, with great effort, into a human. (Neither of them could think of it or want to!)  He instructs us, “What is born of flesh is flesh; what is born of Spirit is Spirit”, and “You must be born again”, and “If any man is in Christ, He is a new creation; old things are passed away. All things have become new”.

 

Rae Edlin