Death precedes life … and with life comes judgment

The Bible is spiritually understood through typology, through the night/day, darkness/light metaphor, which has death preceding life. With life comes judgment, which is today upon the household of God (1 Pet 4:17 — baptism is into the death of the old self, crucified with Christ Jesus). Sin or lawlessness (1 John 3:4) requires death. The man Jesus of Nazareth was sacrificed at Calvary as the paschal Lamb of God. He who had no sin was made sin by taking on the lawlessness of the world, consigned to disobedience for a season (Rom 11:32). Thus, drawn or called sons of disobedience are made holy through the sacrifice of the Lamb. These drawn sons of disobedience are the many who are called (Matt 22:14); they are the invited guests to the wedding supper. But the called sons of disobedience can be likened to the physically circumcised nation that left Egypt. This nation didn't enter God's rest, but was rejected because of unbelief that became disobedience (Ps 95:10–11; Heb 3:16-4:11). Likewise, the old self or nature of the called son of disobedience, crucified with Christ Jesus in baptism, must die in a spiritual Wilderness of Sin. The new man, a son of God born-from-above into the same tabernacle or tent of flesh possessed by the crucified old man, will cross the Jordan and enter Judea, a mental landscape determined by Sabbath observance, where he will live as a spiritual Judean. This son of God is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, free nor bond—all of these traits pertain to the tent of flesh. Again, it is the tent that's plumbed male or female, that's physically circumcised or physically uncircumcised (the meaning of Jew and Greek), that's slave or free. The person living inside the tent of flesh, spiritually dead before being born-from-above, was defined by the tent in the natural world; the old self had an intimate relationship with the tent. But the son of God born into this tent is not defined by the tent. Rather, definition comes from the Oedipus-like act of breaking the legs of the crucified old self, of mentally crossing the Jordan, and living in the mental topography of spiritual Judea, the capital of which is the Jerusalem above. Disciples are to pull the stakes of their fleshy tents, cross into Judea where the new son of God is spiritually circumcised as uncircumcised Israelites under Joshua were circumcised before taking the Passover (Josh 5:2-7). This new son of God will begin living as a Judean, repeated for emphasis for failure is live as Judeans is the error that the greater Church has inherited through historical exegesis.