When the first man, Adam, disobeyed God and ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was like a kite that broke loose from its control and plummeted to earth in ruins. God had warned Adam of the consequences of disobedience: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). When he ate, Adam died spiritually and poisoned the race of mankind of which he was the federal head. Hence, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that ALL have sinned" (Romans 5:12).

All effort by Adam and Eve to cover their sin by making fig leaf aprons was useless. No work nor merit of any kind, no repair nor reformation could avail: the kite, so to speak, had crashed and was ruined! What was needed was a new creation, a new kite, by "the Second Man, the Lord from heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:47).

In the third chapter of John's gospel, the Lord Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of the necessity of being "born again," or, "born from above," in order to see or enter the kingdom of God. He spoke to him of how this would be accomplished, using an incident from the Old Testament as an illustration of salvation: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14,15).

In His resurrection from the dead, Christ became the Head of a heavenly race of sinners saved by grace through faith. The salvation of the ruined sinner is the result of His workmanship. (See Ephesians 2:8-10). Through these exceeding, great and precious promises the believer has imparted to him "the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), and can rightly claim his "citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20).

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a NEW creature" (2 Corinthians 5:17). His position is changed from under the condemned earthly headship of fallen Adam, to the heavenly headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. In contrast to the earthly, sensual and devilish propensities of his ruined nature, the believer's desire, aspirations and joyful delights are found in Christ and the eternal heavenly blessings he possesses in Him.

Those who choose to remain under the headship of Adam, the apostle tells us, "are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is their shame, who mind earthly things" (Philippians 3:18,19). Their eternal earth-dwelling character will remain under the judgment of the Son of Man (John 5:27; Revelation 3:10).

Those who choose to accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord, God accepts in all the perfection of His Son, and puts them immediately in identification with Him, seated "in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6).

This eternal position of the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is assured, for the strong cable of divine control can never be broken from the anchor already entered there. "For Christ is…entered…into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the Forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus" (Hebrews 9:24; 6:19,20). Nothing can ever separate the believer from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, nor cause him to crash to earth ever again. (See Romans 8:35-39).