The land of Canaan represents the “Life on the Highest Plane,” as Ruth Paxson called it, for the New Testament believer. The land of promise for the Christian is the life that Jesus lives in the power of His resurrection manifested abundantly from within our souls. Even though the spirit filled life is not void of daily battles, it is a life of glorious rest within, as the Risen Jesus Himself manifests His victory, setting us free from the weary and heavy laden life of futile self effort. Even though experiencing and manifesting the fullness of our union with the life of Christ is our birthright and should be enjoyed from the first moment we become Christians, it is a sad reality that many of us have to spend many years in the wilderness of striving before we finally, out of sheer spiritual exhaustion, come to the place where we cross the Jordan personally and began to celebrate on a daily basis all that Jesus is and all that Jesus has.
This life of experiencing and manifesting our union with the resurrected Jesus is both a crisis and they walk. For the Hebrew people they had to cross over the Jordan, which was a one time event, but then one step at a time, by faith, they were to appropriate and actualize all that had been given to them. Joshua 1:2-3
in Joshua the 3 they came to the edge of the Jordan River, which was flooded at that time of the year, and they camped there for 3 days. The people were told that the ark of the covenant of the Lord would be carried by Levitical priest to the edge of the Jordan, and as they saw the ark being carried they were to “set out from your place and go after it” with one restriction; “However there shall be between you and it a distance of about 2000 cubits (300 yards) by measure. Do not come near it, the you may know the way by which you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.”
I have heard many sermons over the years about dying to self, but the truth is, Jesus went before us 2000 years ago and took care of that when the Old Man that we were was crucified with Him at Calvary. The condemned, independent, self-willed person who tried to manage life by his own wit, and self effort, died on the Cross, and our new life in Christ (our spiritual land flowing with milk and honey) arose on that first Easter morning. It we are going to ever enter into all the fullness that Jesus purchased for us in His finished work, then we must see what he has already done, so that we can simply, by faith, enter into all of the good of it. The ark, of course, in Joshua is a type of the Lord Jesus himself, and we are told in Joshua 3:16 that when the priests who were carrying the ark put their foot into the Jordan the waters stood and rose up in one heap a great distance away at a city called Adam. We are also told in that verse that before this miracle, those waters flowed down toward the Dead Sea. The old flesh life always ends up in spiritual stagnation and death.
This is what Jesus accomplished for us at the Cross when the old fallen self was crucified in Him. The life flowing down from Adam that always lead to spiritual death was cut off. The person that we once were under the reign and Empire of sin was crucified and buried, and the decision to cross over into the land of promise was the result of simply seeing from a distance what Jesus (the ark) had already accomplished in His finished work, and by faith saying yes personally to that reality about you. As new creations we are already in union with the life of the Victorious Risen Lord Jesus. All we have to do is to stop believing the lie from the enemy that we are some kind of independent self that has the right to our own will, or our own sincere self effort to live the Christian life. Crossing over the Jordan for the believer is to by faith surrender to our union with the Son’s submissive nature to the Father’s will, that we might on the other side of the river, know the Son’s all sufficiency to live His life of victory one step at a time through us and our unique personalities. Seeing from a distance Jesus called for the waters of the Jordan to stop flowing; believing what we see, hearing His invitation for us to follow, we cross over, saying yes to His victory over the fallen self-willed self, laying down what He has already nailed to the Cross, into a land where we move from victory to victory and glory to glory.