Truth revealed through fire: The spiritual realm is the true substance; the physical realm is but a fleeting shadow.

“For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

– 2 Corinthians 4:18

What is seen is temporary. What is unseen—eternal.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.”
– Matthew 6:19-20

The Old Testament, with all its laws, rituals, and symbols, was never the final word. It was a shadow, a foreshadowing.

As Hebrews 10:1 declares,

“The law is only a shadow of the good things to come—not the realities themselves.”

These old systems—they’re rooted in flesh, bound by material signs—were copies, symbols, types.

But the fullness? That belongs to Christ. The fullness of what???

Colossians 2:17 says it without apology:

“These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”

Before faith came, we were imprisoned under the law—confined by flesh, chained to the visible.

But now? The veil is torn.

The light has come, and light exposes shadow for what it is: impermanent.

As it is written in 2 Corinthians 3:6:

“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

We are not ministers of a fading covenant carved in stone, but of the living Spirit that resurrects the soul.

Jesus is the Light of the World— not a symbol of light, but the Light itself.

He reveals the spiritual reality behind the physical symbols.

He exposes the temporary nature of the material and brings us into contact with what is eternal.

Even the sacrifices—bloody and endless—were never the end goal.

Hebrews 9:23 makes the distinction clear:

“The copies of the heavenly things were purified with earthly sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves require better sacrifices.”

And that better sacrifice is Christ Himself—who did not enter a manmade sanctuary, but Heaven itself.

This is the arc of the Gospel from creation to revelation, from shadow to light.

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

John 8:12

From death to life.

The physical was the womb. But birth comes through Spirit. This is what it means to be born twice.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water (womb) and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

John 3:4-7

What once served as a veil is now obsolete, abandoned, transcended.

“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst; and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

Matthew 9:16-17

Christ has brought us from death into life—not metaphorically, but metaphysically.

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’”

John 11:25-26

So I say let’s live no longer according to the flesh, but by the Spirit.

Let us not cling to the image of humanness when we have access to the essence.

Let us no longer fear the law and live by it, for we have entered into grace to live in.

“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

John 1:17

The goodness of God is not proven by material blessing, but by His initiation into the eternal.

The physical is the symbol. The spiritual is the substance.

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
– John 6:63

And through Christ, we are called to live in the Real not as contrived.

“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”

– John 4:23