The gospel message has been garbled over the ages. What we proclaim to the world must be rooted in what Jesus and His followers actually believed. It was a Hebrew frame of reference quite alien to our western outlook today. The legacy of that teaching has been buried under centuries of ignorance brought on by the manipulation of those who seek to keep us enslaved to their plot against their own Lord.
TL;DR — The key to peace with God is feudal submission to Christ as Lord. It is not a matter of coming to embrace orthodox thoughts. It’s not at all a question of what’s in your head, but what’s in your heart. You must commit to Him as Lord. It’s personal.
Now for the background.
One of the biggest blocks to serving Christ is the western mental framework on sin and salvation. That flawed orientation is written into most English translations of Scripture. The very word choices lend themselves to an erroneous grasp of how God sees the whole thing.
We are not born into a contractual standing before God. Sin is not transgressing the provisions of a contract. Sin is a status or condition. Your need is not a matter of paying penalties but of healing and restoring fellowship. The original Hebrew concept in the Torah was a matter of personal feudal relationship with God.
The OT sacrificial system was meant to instill a feudal perspective. Feudalism is not evil; it is fundamental to God’s Creation. Western thinking does not allow for the head of household to own his family. He simply has provisional custody; the family members are on loan from the government. That kind of thinking pokes God in the eye. You are supposed to be His family and He owns you.
So, it’s not as if He is pissed at your behavior. He’s disappointed and grieved that you are enslaved to His opponent in a dispute that centers on the very existence of humanity. It’s not as if humans are neutral territory at birth. We are born mortal; that mortal condition starts us off as on the wrong team. We are born the provisional property of the Devil. That’s where we start. He already holds a claim over us and our lives in this world.
This whole context — “this world” — belongs to the Devil as a feudal grant from God. The existence of a fleshly mortal body makes us the property of the Devil. He owns all flesh. The beginning point of redemption, escaping this slavery, is recognizing that there is something in us that doesn’t belong to the Devil. We must develop an awareness of eternal existence that is separate from our mortal condition.
The only way you can do that is if God calls out to you and awakens that eternal awareness. He awakens His own Spirit within us. We begin to long for something outside the slavery to the Devil. We find ourselves trapped and call out to our real Father for rescue. Then, we spend the rest of our lives remaking ourselves into the image God shows us.
The fundamental question is feudal loyalty. You declare yourself the property of the Father and swear your allegiance to Him. It’s an act of rebellion from the lord of our mortal birth. That false lord will use all he has to interfere, but your task now is to begin the process of reclaiming your existence from that slavery to the fleshly nature.
It’s not a question of what you believe in your head, but your voluntary willful submission to Christ as the rightful Lord you serve. You alienate yourself from the fleshly nature, dragging it along reluctantly into something it does not want. You cannot satisfy the logic and reason your flesh demands. You squelch that demand with a passionate drive against all the limits of reason to seize a divine heritage, a high privilege of power and authority over your own fleshly nature.
You end up living in a fashion that defies what makes sense to your fleshly intellect. You silence the whining of the flesh and drag it kicking and screaming into divine service. Your flesh is not you. Your intellect is not the real you. Your conscious awareness is no longer in your head, but in your heart. That’s where you’ll find an open connection to God as a Person. The flesh must be subjected to the demands of this new unity with God. It becomes the slave instead of the master.
It’s not the triumph of reason over emotion; those two are actually allies. It’s the triumph of faith (commitment, feudal submission) over the flesh. You now represent God as a ruling power against weaker opponents, a host of forces working in alliance with the Devil. He is making a point in a debate; you are backing a declaration that He is right about everything. You are taking sides in an eternal dispute. You are declaring Him just in how He handles dissent on His staff.
