The Restoration Of The Nature Of Jesus Christ

By Martin Cisneros

I can't help but think that we're looking at the subject of judgment and punishment all wrong in trying to grasp the depth, duration, and dimension of judgment and punishment. Judgment is simply the determined rule of God. Punishment has already been borne for all of mankind by Jesus Christ. The question that we must face is whether or not Jesus in His Rosetta stone teaching in Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8 conveyed that teaching to us with accuracy and faithfulness. If so, then the sower is the Son of Man. The seed is the Word of the Kingdom. And the brutality of this age doesn't come because of curses, karma or anything like that, but it comes to try to nullify the Word that was sown.
 
God's plan is for you to know Him, for you to learn from Jesus Christ, for you to obey Him, and for you to reflect His character in your character.

It is the will of God for you to have everything that you could ever possibly need in order to fulfill His will for your life.

It is the will of God for you to have everything that you could ever possibly need in order to have your basic needs of wisdom, food, clothing, books, shelter, and safety met.

It is the will of God for you to have everything that you could ever possibly need in order to have the needs of your relationship with God, and with your fellow man, met.

Health and strength to carry out the perfect will of God for your life and to be able to enjoy your relationships with God and with your fellow man are basic needs that God has set Jesus apart in order to fulfill those things in your life that you're yet lacking. Jesus will progressively bring fulfillment where there's only been needs up until now as He's progressively able to bring you to a place of being apart from all of the cries and dictates of this world around you. When His world is more real and demanding upon you, your time, and your resources than your own little dimensional stronghold in this universe, then His strength will become yours and nothing will be impossible to you - except disobedience to God.

The heart's cry to know God, His Son Jesus Christ, and to understand Wisdom will not be left unanswered. Each cry that comes up before the throne will be met by Mercy Himself, from Whom no being can be withheld or hidden forever. Cries of hatred will be answered with shame and punishment, while cries to become love will be answered with glory, inheritance, and immortality.

2Corinthians chapter 5 says that all died spiritually when Jesus Christ died, in order that they would be made the righteousness of God in Christ. The teachings of Jesus and of St. Paul both reveal that there are many stages of spiritual growth and many layers to the order in which God is doing things. And as all seeds don't come to fulfillment at once in regular crops of corn, grapes, olives, and wheat, neither will every person realize God's deepest intended state for them at once.

Paradise being restored for all of mankind is essentially the restoration of the nature of Jesus Christ within each of us. Though He's already promised to bring us a new world, as His own free gift, the nature of Jesus Christ sown and harvested from each of us would enable all of us together with Him to begin to multiply bread and wine at the same rate that He was able to provide for the wedding feast that He attended in Canaan or at any of the other times when He produced an alarming abundance as it became necessary to feed large crowds of people. With the character of Jesus Christ fully formed in each of us, our flesh fully crucified with Christ, and our hearts fully upon the Father of Mercies, the new world that'll come as a matter of His pure generocity and wisdom would at the same time be within the reach of our creating together with Him, had He not already reserved that right unto Himself for the coming world.

Genuine prosperity is the ability to walk with God, to have perfect humility before God, and to be able to obey God and inherit any promise and judgment from Him that He's spoken in the light of our inaugurated and continued obedience and relationship with Him. Genuine prosperity may reflect trillions of dollars of assets in the earth, or it may remain hidden all of the days of your life in your heart as you work in a carpenter's shop. Genuine prosperity is only defined by one's relationship with God. It's one thing to trust God, but what a rarity to be someone that God trusts!

That is the only genuine struggle in life [worth participating in]: to have a genuine, intimate, and growing two-way relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The privilege of obeying Jesus Christ is the only successful quest for immortality worth pursuing. To humble one's self before the One Who was mutilated in order to identify with the mutilation that your heart has known in this world, and so that He could lead the way towards both of you - Him and yourself - being restored to wholeness in the Father at the same time is honestly all that matters. Once you're restored with the power of God, then you'll be able to come back to Hell for those that you've left behind there and get them out with the same compassion and lessons that He taught you in bringing you out of your Hell.

Some Calvinists in days past have taken the parable of the sower to indicate that only 25% of mankind would ever be saved, but in reality the sower is the Son of Man. The reapers are the angels. If He doesn't like His crop, then He'll simply plow it under and regrow it. But that's more of a matter of how He'll behave in His High Priestly ministry in the administration of the Word of the Kingdom and the operation of the Holy Spirit in the world. The Son of Man didn't come to destroy but to save men's lives. John 10:10 is the great dividing line of the Scriptures. Jesus came to give life and that more abundantly, or as the Amplified Bible would say – to the full, until it overflows. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Jesus doesn't steal, kill, and destroy. And the thief doesn't give life to the full, until it overflows. James chapter 1 says that God doesn't tempt anyone under the New Covenant.

The heat of the day is borne by the precious seed of the Word of the Kingdom because the Word was with God and the Word was God. His Word is still given up for the life of the world as a sacrifice. Though His arrangements and methods may change, His principles and goals don't. Jesus said in Mark chapter 4 that if you didn't understand the parable of the sower, then you'd be hopelessly lost regarding anything else that He'd teach or that anyone would teach that He would send. And, unfortunately, the Church has been lost for nearly 1800 years regarding His teachings.

His Word is the group of laborers that's agreed with Him for a set daily wage; that at the end of the day it has to receive X-amount of pay. At the end of the day, the harvest has to come in and every single life must be accounted for in the Kingdom of His Father. Jesus said in Matthew 7 that His Word was the foundation for everything. His Apostles and Prophets are only the foundation for as long as they're faithfully dispensing the Word of the Kingdom. The sheep are everything produced by His Word, which is all of mankind – while the goats are everything that was produced by the carnal Adamic nature. Of all that the Father gave Him, none will be lost but the son of perdition, which is the carnal Adamic nature, so that the Scriptures would be fulfilled.

His vineyard is all of mankind. The messengers are His 5-fold ministry of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers that He kept repeatedly sending that were getting cut down by those that were supposed to be faithful stewards of His vineyard. His enemies that were supposed to watch over His vineyard are what we would know these days as the things of this life that collaborate with Death, Hades, and Apollyon. As He pours out His Holy Spirit in our day, that's how He's cutting down the cares, lusts, and ambitions of this world and the deceitfulness of riches that would try to tell us that all things aren't ours. That slave that was forgiven a great debt, but wouldn't turn around and forgive our $20 debts is this world's economic system. God's handing over the economic system of this world to us, which could be said to be a lesser vineyard, so that we'll be able to republish this message of the final restoration to every nation and individual on earth.

The bread and fish that Jesus multiplied are the people and assets of this world, so that although economic prosperity will reach levels, shortly, never before known by even Solomon – without His Word at work in our lives, it's all rotting flesh that'll stink. But, Jesus won't allow a single morsel to be lost because no life is insignificant and no coin that bares either His image or ours will go unaccounted for. He can make as many great fish as He needs to make in order to reclaim the Jonahs of His Kingdom, and contrary to popular opinion, He'll sustain every soul. The stone which the builders rejected is the Word of God, but it'll prove to be the cornerstone of how the Lord is reclaiming every life.

The Scriptures ask in Romans chapter 8 that if He spared not His own Son, then how will He not with Him also freely give us all things? If He were to refuse us economic prosperity, then He'd be saying that it was more valuable than His Son, Jesus Christ. If I may borrow a line from John Wayne at this point, "that'll be the day!!" He knows what we have need of before we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and while we're seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

The many or fewer stripes that each will be chastised with will be the testimony of how many of the stripes that Jesus bore for us that'll be testified to, to every individual in proportion to their needs, deficiencies, and arrogance. If His Word finds only shallow soil in our lives, then He'll simply sow more seed in the deeper parts of our hearts – even if it's not the particular Word that we presume in our arrogance that either we or they are needing. He'll find the deepest, most moist, best conditions in our hearts over the course of our lives until He receives the 100-fold crop that He's after of all of His Word – which is our salvation.

And as in ancient times, if He finds us obstinate, unyielding, and resistors of His promised rest, then His "eternal punishment" will be worked out in our descendants in those areas that it's not been worked in our lives. He'll chase us to the grave with His Word for each of our individual lives. And what He's not able to fully prune out of our lives, or receive in increase from our lives, He'll prune from the lives of our descendants until He achieves the type of grafts, harvests, and generational seed that He's after in real history with our family lines. If He has to scatter them (or us) to the four-corners of the earth, then that's exactly what He'll do. If He has to make slaves out of us and make us the servants of others through debt, then that's exactly what He'll do until we remember and turn to the Lord.

From now on, let no one trouble me. For I bare in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Galatians 6:17

There is rest that we can have from all of our enemies in this life.  The Bible says that Israel had it after they'd taken absolutely all of the land that God had promised them (Joshua 21:43-45).  It was short lived rest for them because they got into idolatry, did the very thing that God said not to do in Deuteronomy 8 with forgetting Who made them wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, started getting unequally yoked together with unbelievers, etc.  But He will make you lie down in green pastures, beside still waters, etc.

(Psalm 23 always comes after Psalm 22 in a believer's life.  If Psalm 23 hasn't come yet, then either you're not at Psalm 22, and have settled for something other than Psalm 22 because of your own carnal thinking or the carnal thinking of the religion that surrounds you, or your Psalm 22 hasn't ended yet.  Isaiah 54 should always come after your Isaiah 53.  And because of Isaiah 54, Psalm 112, and countless other passages, if anyone tries to say that the house that a believer has is too big that they've genuinely received from God through laying down their lives for others, then dismiss it as the Judas Iscariot spirit that claims to wish it sold in the behalf of the poor so that they can do what they wish with it.)

Where a lot of churches mistreat each other is by implying that that's where everyone who becomes a believer is supposed to start and that they're supposed to be maintaining a level that they've never yet inherited the substance of, and that if they don't, then they're all going to Hell in that Church, yada, yada... All of the promises of God that relate to this life for a believer are either contended for (1Timothy 6:12) or they're forfeited, but that has nothing to do with ultimate destiny, whether or not Christ is the ransom for all men, etc. 

For the joy set before me, I've endured certain crosses, but I don't expect to always follow the example of a crucified life, although that's heresy in many quarters for me to say that.  We're supposed to follow the example that Jesus left to us and not to follow the example of a crucifix that someone has on their neck that they've made an idol out of.  Life in Christ isn't about crucifixion.  It's about taking up your cross and walking the few miles of your life that you're supposed to walk with it, and then death is supposed to bow before you in every single area of your life.  Life isn't death. 

Life is a death that leads somewhere, even in this life.  I'm to the "It is finished!!" stage and half a second away from breathing the last of what I lived previously.  But I've got quite the tale that I could tell of a beating with a Roman cat of nine tails until they felt they were done, a horrible crown of thorns, nails through the most feeling nerves of my body, and being lifted up in front of others totally naked and mocked by both those that were dying with me and the religious crowd that wanted to scream their "if thou be the Son of God, come down from there" gibberish -- together with -- the ones that Jesus never faced that I've had to face -- the ones that have wanted to say that I'm not crucified with Christ because it wasn't with their particular brand of nails, their patented crown of thorns maker, and the type of hammer and cross that they believe that I should have been on far longer than I have been with far more agony in the ways that they think that my agony should have been suffered in order to be valid, etc.

The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning;  Great is His faithfulness! (Lamentations 3:22-23 NASB)

For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before Me, and the breath of those whom I have made.  (Isaiah 57:16 NASB)

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1Corinthians 15:22 NIV)

Here's a radical thought:  embracing the Lordship of Jesus is about embracing life and not about embracing death.  Passing through death in order to attain life is nothing more than passing from whom you've been into living life in and through and with Jesus Christ.

Jesus' yoke is easy and His burden is light!

Do you come from a religious background that makes the Christian life an intolerable ongoing process of death?  While there are further and further levels of life that are there for the taking, the embracing, the inheriting, and the becoming, yet it's a process of going from life to life and peace to peace and joy to joy and not an ongoing gory abhorence to all flesh, like something dreadful out of the movie "Stigmata."

As you have therefore received Christ, [even] Jesus the Lord, [so] walk (regulate your lives and conduct yourselves) in union with and conformity to Him. Have the roots [of your being] firmly and deeply planted [in Him, fixed and founded in Him], being continually built up in Him, becoming increasingly more confirmed and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and abounding and overflowing in it with thanksgiving.  (Colossians 2:6-7 Amp)

The Bible teaches a growing process of sinking your roots deeper into Christ and into your new life through thanksgiving, and through embracing the infinite grace of God that is already abounding towards you.  And you grow in this thanksgiving and in the consciousness and experience of His grace through knowing and growing in obedience to His Covenant of grace.  Your knowledge and growth in obedience to His Covenant of grace grows in your heart through spending quality time in His Word so that you are progressively yielding up your life to His Word and His Holy Spirit more and more fully throughout the rest of your life.

You ought to get your Bible and find the book of Colossians in the table of contents and from there turn to the book of Colossians and read verses 12 through 17 in the third chapter again and again and again.  That outlines for you the extent of your responsibilities throughout your whole life as a Christian.  And that is your success formula for everything that ever has or ever will be important to you as you pursue your life in Christ:

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.  (Colossians 3:12-17 NKJV)

Putting on love as the bond of perfection and letting the peace of God rule in your hearts is only going to be accomplished to the degree that the Word of Christ dwells richly in your heart and to the degree that from that you're saying and doing everything that you're saying and doing in the Name of Jesus. This short passage of Scripture mentions being thankful twice. That's not without significance. Giving thanks for the finished work of Christ and your stand of faith for your deliverance as the necessary consequence of His shed Blood and broken Body goes a long way towards your putting on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another.

You're either nursing and rehearsing the curse that's trying to work it's way into your life, or you're actively participating in the redemptive processes of the New Testament towards seeing the application of the Blood of Christ to every relationship that you have, to everything that you own, and to every purpose of God for your life. You'll not deal in both bitter and sweet water at the same time. Either your tongue is set on fire of Gehenna or your tongue is set on fire from the Holy Spirit. At absolutely all times you're either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. For every situation that you can think of, and for every person that you can think of, if you're seated with Christ in heavenly places, then you're either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. What you curse, you will not inherit a blessing from or regarding.

You ought to read Colossians 3:12-17 out loud for at least 30 to 45 minutes a day for one to three months, or until it starts sinking in that the Christian life is a romantic joy and a journey as well as a continual act of self sacrifice.  Too many Christians seem to focus on the self sacrificial part to the everlasting exclusion of living an easy going, carefree life.

Don't worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel. Finally, my friends, keep your minds on whatever is true, pure, right, holy, friendly, and proper. Don't ever stop thinking about what is truly worthwhile and worthy of praise. You know the teachings I gave you, and you know what you heard me say and saw me do. So follow my example. And God, who gives peace, will be with you.  (Philippians 4:6-9 Contemporary English Version)

You can be true, pure, right, holy, friendly, and proper.  Holiness and friendliness are not opposites!  Your heart is your garden.  And it is your responsibility to cram the Gospel of Christ into it, so that eventually all your words, your deeds, and your presence are reflecting [little more than] the Words, Deeds, and Presence of Christ.  The Gospel, in it's pure form as found in the Bible, will never produce legalism.  The Gospel, as contained in the Scriptures, can never produce religious and political venom.  Christians have often slipped into traditions that have brought venom into the local fellowship of believers, and consequently to the society at large.  Because the Bible says to be holy, then interpretations have been layered to texts that required all kinds of legalistic applications that dried up the fountain of any genuine Gospel being treasured in the hearts, mouths, and minds of believers.  And then it became a matter of looking religiously acceptable and focusing on appeasing and maintaining and spreading traditions that had no reflection of the life of Christ and no positive consequences on the genuine flow of life between and from believers.

Tread softly on applications of Scripture and be teachable your whole life long in how to express the Biblical truths of Redemption through Christ.  Don't just stay flexible when it comes to new methods of bringing others to Christ.  But stay flexible regarding how you pursue the application of every truth.  The specific concepts in the Bible of our redemption never change.  But none of us fully understands all that there is to be understood of the full depth of all that Christ has accomplished, will accomplish, and will yet express Himself through each of us from generation to generation.  Again:

As you have therefore received Christ, [even] Jesus the Lord, [so] walk (regulate your lives and conduct yourselves) in union with and conformity to Him. Have the roots [of your being] firmly and deeply planted [in Him, fixed and founded in Him], being continually built up in Him, becoming increasingly more confirmed and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and abounding and overflowing in it with thanksgiving.  (Colossians 2:6-7 Amp)

If you'll do these things then Jesus' yoke being easy and His burden being light will not only clarify more and more to your understanding and how you express Christ to others, but you'll start to experience it.  And as you begin to experience it, then you'll find yourself, one day, truly enjoying newness of life!

The blessings, curses, harvests, and destinies of each of us are blessings, curses, harvests, and destinies that are family-wide. He's blessing families and not just individuals. Each individual will be blessed or cursed for their deeds, but those blessings and curses will be worked out in our families. If the Old Testament teaches us anything, it has to teach us this. Israel is a picture of His dealings with the nations; with families and with individuals. His rewards and punishments are a generational system, although obviously an individual may distinguish themselves with Him and become a judge, saviour, and the prosperity of his/her generation by hearkening diligently to the voice of the Lord their God.

The Word deflects so much punishment from our lives, that I really don't think that any of us have any idea of how the Word of the Kingdom ever-liveth to make intercession for us. As it grows in our hearts, it saves our families and us. The Word is the source of our prosperity, whether it's the Word that's grown in our hearts or in the hearts of our ancestors. There is no prosperity without the Word of God. The problem has been with not knowing where that river was flowing from, or where the figs were falling from. The Word bares the chastisement of the heat of the day. What we're so often interpreting as chastisement is simply the cries of the flesh or the cries of a demon that's leaving our lives or our families. The Word is what the devil is trying to choke. Not you. If he can choke it, then he can bring with himself 7 others more wicked than himself and create a horrendous generation in your literal and figurative families. It's the Word that'll raise everyone in the last day. I'm not talking about the Personification of the Word. I'm talking about the actual Word Whose existence is seen and verified by your ears and by your eyes in the Book, but which divides us to the level of the thoughts and intents of our hearts, or the joints and marrow of our lives.

Christ the healer is the same yesterday, today, and through the ages. Where ever He's needed, by whom ever He's needed, and no matter the cause of the need --Christ is the Savior of all, the restorer of health, wisdom, and wholeness in every area of life and in every area of being and possessing. Whatever the curse has taken away from you and whatever your own disobedience to God has taken away from your life --whether by God's eternal punishment or by the simple consequences of inconsistency with the divine nature-- Christ is your answer, He's your Savior, and He's interested in setting you free, teaching you exactly how to obey God, and in walking with you as your Shepherd and Friend.

In walking as the Scriptures term "worthy of the Lord," we must not search the Scriptures for what's permissible, but rather for what's commanded by our Lord. We must listen for the heart of the Lord and not look for what He chooses to forego dealing with 'til a future age or some future step of grace in your life. When we make all of the intents of the Lord to be purely eschatological and remove them from the practical, then we hold to philosophies rather than a living faith, hope, and love. Too many people are preoccupied with trying to push off God's perfect will into as far of the distant future as they think that they can get away with. God does have short-term goals and long-term goals. Some of the long-term goals are dependent upon what happens in the present. But some of the preferences of our Lord for the present are merely conscientiously compassionate gratuities of our Lord that are reflections of His tenderness and not necessarily matters of ultimate intent.

Not all of our actions, as an example, are focused firmly on gathering towards ourselves the most prosperous retirement package and provisional "nest egg" as possible. In the same way our Lord is fully conscious of what relates to His ultimate intent, what works towards His ultimate intents, and what pertains to His and our present peace of mind, wholeness of being, and contentment of life, knowledge, and family. Some of it overlaps, but it's not for us to degenerate into dogmatisms as to how God will fulfill His ultimate purposes of reconciliation and sanctification and an utter-oneness of all of Creation.

It should be enough for us to know what He's commanded of us to say and to do and to preoccupy ourselves with the times and seasons that He has ordained for our lives; clinging to the immediate promises that He's made for our lives and our immediate relationship with Himself. Focusing on what He's given to us each day from previous ages to do, to be, and to fulfill will train us to understand His ways and to anticipate His ultimate intents of destruction, purification, and restoration (in the orders, manners, means, and modes where they apply, and have their essence and being).

Some people argue that you should never do anything beyond what your Lord tells you to do.  Some would say that to Him belongs the "second-mile" of any and every service that you could possibly ever render, that if your Lord asks for your coat that you should be all of the more ready to give Him everything else besides.  Some would say that "yes, you need to obey God but..." and their "but" that follows is to imply that while there is most certainly a divine timing of things, that you should still be doing this or that for the advancement of your Lord's work, being watchful to pull aside from this or that, at your Lord's command, to do this or that, that He may command of you.

The bottomline to all obedience and all perfection, however, is spending time with God.  Worshipping God is where you as an individual are going to gather how much or how little He's desiring to hold the reigns of your life;  how tightly or how loosely.  Spending time worshipping God is where His Personality will be revealed to you and those aspects of Himself that are private (i.e. for your eyes only) and those aspects that He wants you to preoccupy yourself with both understanding and sharing.  Your healing isn't in an abundance of formulas, though God does use formulas with those whose minds are only quieted by a sense of structure to their lives.  Your wholeness in every area of life, or rather what constitutes the mystery of wholeness for your life is only going to be found in the time that you spend worshipping Him.  You should never stop worshipping until there's genuine intimacy between you and God.

That intimacy will reveal itself in fruits of wholeness, understanding, contentment, and unconscious Christ-likeness.  When you're at peace about how you personally are to hear from God and that you personally have heard from God, then you know that your worship has achieved it's firstfruits.  Contentment isn't blind resignation to either the times or to a certain stage of life with either an eonian or eternal perspective.  True contentment should be a reflection of God's contentment in His time with you.

True contentment isn't something only achieved by the "spiritually elite."  In some ways, one might say that it's more precious than either love, hope, or joy.  Wisdom gives hope and sometimes joy, but contentment is born from having your spiritual and emotional needs met from your God.  Love gives hope and sometimes joy, but contentment stops the aging process because it's the sign of having entered into God's rest.  Ever illusive and ever coveted, contentment isn't anything more or less than having the internal stability that God has.  It's the root to perseverance, yet itself a firstfruit of Christian maturity in intimacy with God.

Obedience doesn't produce intimacy with God and neither does it produce contentment, though I can scarcely perceive of one continuing in a state of intimacy with God who isn't striving for obedience towards God.  Contentment is the sole possession of the worshipper of Christ. Clinging to His promises won't even produce perfect contentment.  His promises facilitate obedience towards Him by imparting the measure of faith, hope, love, and wisdom.  Worship towards God alone will produce contentment.  Intimacy [itself] with God is manifested many times as contentment.

Intimacy isn't always produced by (i.e. manifested in) visions of the apocalypse or the regeneration of all things that follows all of that. And contentment is deeper than a sense of well-being.  One can often have a sense of well-being:  peace of mind, health and strength of body, fullness of financial prosperity, and perfect joy in every earthly relationship and reputation -- and still be lacking in contentment.  Perfect wholeness begins and ends with worship towards God and His Christ.  There is no getting around it.  There are no built in short-cuts for life and contentment.  Find a hiding place as soon as possible and as many of the ol' time Pentecostals have creudly said in generations past "stay on your knees until God walks in!"

There seems to be a growing trend to read Galatians 3:13 as if it were exclusively talking about deliverance from the law itself.  That would seem to dismiss the curses associated with it automatically, yet we don't find this to be the case in the lives of Christians.  The chapter begins with asking if those performing miracles are doing so by the hearing of the Spoken Word or by the rituals of the Mosaic Law.  The chapter describes the blessing of Abraham coming upon the Nations through Jesus Christ. 

An important question for us to consider is what a first century Jewish Apostle [with a memorized Torah] would have considered to have been the curse of the law, if not the curses contained within the law when we consider that he's discussing the working of miracles among the people.  He's dealing with legalism issues, without a doubt, but he's also dealing with the promise of the Spirit which would, contextually, be all of the blessings of the Old Testament.  Since the blessing and the curse are contrasted within this chapter, and we have other statements within St. Paul's writings where he's calling the law itself "holy, just, and good," (Romans 7:12) then he's evidently speaking of the very curses that they all dealt with on a daily basis in coming to terms with what Jesus said was soon to befall the generation that saw 70AD.  All that happened to Israel leading up to 70AD is covered in Deuteronomy 28. 

What would have been more important, more profound, more edifying, more hope building, more encouraging, and more delivering both from the standpoint of the signs and wonders that they were starting to walk in through daily communion and abiding in the Words of Christ on a daily basis than the knowledge that the Deuteronomy 28 curse, which included everything that was to happen to Israel leading up to 70AD as well as everything that believers in Christ were being sanctified away from; being translated out of and conveyed into the blessings through their growing preaching among themselves of the Gospel of the Anointed One and His Anointing?

Because the nature of the blessings, though being spiritual, pertain both to this life and to any age that we might ever find ourselves within the context of, then the nature of the curses that the blessings address is an important point to clarify.  In Deuteronomy 28 we find every form of spiritual curse, mental curse, physical curse, financial curse, and social curse.  They were the curses of disobedience, but because of the issue with Hebrew verbs as to which are causative and which are permissive, according to Young's Analytical Concordance of the Bible, then we've got both issues addressed in the one section of Scripture in Deuteronomy 28 that neither will God cause the curses to come upon the new man in Christ, neither will He be a passive participant in just watching what happens and what you're going to do about it. 

James chapter 1 says that under the New Covenant God is not the source of evil and affliction for anyone.  God has no New Covenant Jobs.  God has declared us justified freely by His grace, justified freely to resist and cast out the devil, justified freely to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has set us free, and justified freely to overcome all things and to inherit all things even in this life.  Overcoming and inheriting aren't eschatological or "end-times" scenarios.  They're what we're going to be judged for, as to whether or not we rightly discerned His Body, or if we continued with an Old Testament paradigm of going from affliction to affliction, worry to worry, frustration to frustration, curse to curse, and death to death.

Does this mean to do stupid and wreckless things that imperil one's health and level of wealth?  ABSOLUTELY NOT!  All things that are done in response to the promises have to be in response to the Holy Spirit's clear direction and leading.  If He's not guiding a wreckless action, then you better not get stupid out of excitement over the promises.  Keep every care cast upon Him and meditate upon all of your cares having been cast upon Him as well as the exceeding great and precious promises of His grace, mercy, and peace that cover your situation.  He'll let you know when it's time to stomp on any shackles. 

If you're leery of overly/overtly zealous evangelists, then He understands that too and can speak directly to you without the healing evangelist pulling you out of your safety/comfort zone.  A safety/comfort zone isn't bad.  It isn't spiritually dangerous.  What's bad and spiritually dangerous is presuming on the timing of when a promise of the Word is coming to harvest in your heart.  It's never occured to some people that these things have to grow in people's hearts, according to Mark chapter 4.  30/60/100-fold is grown into.  It's not imposed by an eager bombast that's aware of the promises but not of the ways of God and of His peace, joy, and love, but is simply wanting to be looked at.  Just keep speaking God's promises that fill out your life of all that it's been deficient in, according to Joshua 1:8, Proverbs 4:20-27, Mark 11:22-26, John 15:7, and Colossians 3:12-17, without neglecting the other areas of a Christian lifestyle that lives at peace with all men and loves everyone fervently from a pure heart, expecting the outpouring of His Holy Spirit upon all flesh.

Yes, Jesus Christ is the great alchemist that'll make of every life the purest gold, and that'll see to it that every life is accounted for in His new creation. But the Written and Preached Word has a story all it's own to tell of it's struggle for the salvation of every single individual in the entire cosmos. The Word of God is literally the Word of God and has no more apparent contradictions than any of the rest of our lives. Who are any among us [that would consider ourselves scholars by any stretch] that we should be able to cast the first stone and accuse the Book of imperfection, as if we knew and understood all of the dimensions of perfection or knew how to best harmonize all of reality? The translational issues that exist with the Bible are analogous of the translational issues that exist with each of our lives as we put off the old man and put on the new man. Our struggle with finding the right balance between letter and spirit is analogous with our struggle to learn the right balance in relating to one another as the new man in Christ that we really are, because "it is finished!"