06.05. back cover

-back cover- God presently has two firstborn Sons - Christ (Hebrews 1:6) and Israel (Exodus 4:22-23). Christ is God’s firstborn Son through procreation (John 3:16), and Israel is God’s firstborn son through adoption (Romans 9:4). And God is about to bring into existence a third firstborn son through adoption - the Church (Romans 8:14-15; Romans 8:19; Romans 8:23).

“Sonship” implies rulership. Only Sons can hold regal positions in God’s kingdom - past, present, or future. That’s the way God established matters in the beginning, and that which God has established in this respect never changes. In the human realm though, something additional was added - a “firstborn” status. In the human realm, unlike the angelic realm, an individual has to be a firstborn Son in order to rule and reign in God’s kingdom.

Angels alone (sons of God because of creation) have ruled throughout God’s kingdom in time past (both over this earth and elsewhere in the universe). But, with man’s creation - an entirely new order in the universe, an individual created in God’s image, after His likeness - a change in the order of rulers within God’s government was made known. Man was created for regal purposes (Genesis 1:26-28); and, though sin subsequently entered, resulting in a ruined creation (Genesis 3:1 ff), God did not and will not change His mind concerning the reason He brought man into existence (Romans 11:29). The whole of man’s salvation has this high end in view, whether salvation past (the spiritual birth, presently possessed by all Christians) or salvation present and future (the saving of the soul, not presently possessed by Christians but awaiting realization). Man has been, is being, and is about to be saved for a revealed regal purpose. A new order of Sons is about to be brought forth (Romans 8:19; cf. Hebrews 2:5). And only then will God’s purpose for man’s creation (in the beginning) and His reason for man’s subsequent salvation (following his ruin) be realized.