5.4 Engaging with Symmorphy
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
You and I are seized in the grip of the most powerful and determined Being in the universe, who is meek and lowly of heart. This mighty Being, who has set His intentions upon us, sets everyone free of Himself, loses everything, recklessly hurls Himself into their rescue, and, in the end, wins all things back. Yet He does all of it without ever pushing anyone around. God cannot sin. And this mighty Being, who Desires to know us and we Him with a Desire beyond all the passion in the universe, would negotiate with us face to Face, at our level, by Covenant.
What Do You Want?
God wants to form you together with His Son, Christ Jesus, to make you One together with Himself. God wants to live in you, His Person inside of your person. God wants to reveal Himself through you, to show the universe, all that is spiritual and all that is physical, who He is, His kind heart, His gentle touch, forever. God wants everyone to know who He is – through you.
What do you want? God will never ever violate your wishes. He gives you only what you want. Yes, He will win you in the end, but He will do so only by love.
Relating by Covenant
God relates with all individual beings only through covenant. Those who expect blessing from God and therefore bless others receive blessing from God. Those who expect cursing from God and therefore curse others receive what they call “cursing from God.”
Two words always placed together apply to all beings.
Let it be to me according to Your word.
Let it be to you according to your faith.
Let it be to you according to your faith.
Those who expect that God has already seized them for His purposes, will find that God moves through them with all recklessness, for the sake of His Bride.
Our Part Is Faith
This is entirely beyond us. This is way too much for us. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 2 Corinthians 4:7
Yet God cannot show Himself through us, apart from our active human consent, our own personal engagement with this God who just overwhelms us with what He says. Our part is faith. Our part is to say, “Let it be to me according to Your word.” Our part is to believe that God is telling us the truth. Those who expect that God is conforming them to the image of His Son ARE being conformed by God with that very image.
We Do NOT Transform Ourselves!
God knows how to be God, we don’t. In fact we don’t even know how to be humans. – We do not know what we are! God knows how to conform us to the image of His Son, we don’t. And those Christians who “try to be like Jesus” create only an outward form of pretending that God does not know. God calls it self-righteousness, and He hates it. When we try to transform ourselves or each other, then we always put on appearances God does not know and we always put off parts of the human God made just for Himself.
God’s Definition of Image
Here’s the problem with most of the definitions of “image.” Most definitions of image are one thing appearing in resemblance to be like another thing. God has far more than that in mind.
Jesus defines His quality of being the appearance of the Father by these words: I am in the Father and the Father in me. Then He defines us by these words: I am in the Father and you in me and I in you. We can know what He means only by one word: symmorphos. Let’s turn the most important word in the gospel into the most important word in the English language.
Symmorphy
| Synchrony | Synchronize | Synchronous | |
| Sympathy | Sympathize | Sympathetic | |
| Symmorphy | Symmorphose | Symmorphous | Symmorphic |
| Noun | Verb | Adverb | Adjective |
Symmorphy (noun):
- The state or condition of a human being fused utterly together with God such that the two persons, God and the human, exist and express themselves together as one.
- Two persons, God and a human, sharing the same form.
Symmorphose
Symmorphose (verb) – symmorphosed, symmorphosing:
- The initial processes by which a human being and God are fused together as one.
- Being formed together, formed together with, having the same form, being fashioned together.
- To actively engage with God as one person with you.
- Contributing to or corresponding with symmorphy with God.
- Involving or exhibiting symmorphy; having the qualities of being fused together with God.
Let’s bring symmorphose back into covenant. Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:27-28).
My blood of the new covenant – Drink from it, all of you.
Blood is at the center of symmorphy; blood is at the center of covenant. Blood, the force and agent of Life, flowing out of Heart, Intention, Purpose, flowing always out of Jesus, the word God is always speaking, life laid down and love poured out – drinking this blood and symmorphy are the same thing.
Drink My Blood
He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. John 6:56-57
Symmorphy! – Take the definitions of symmorphy and symmorphose through these words of Jesus and see that they are the same. To eat His flesh and to drink His blood requires active engagement with the Jesus who lives right now personally and for real in your heart. It requires being entwined together with Him. It requires covenant; it requires commitment.
Hammered by God
I think you realize that these things have always been the truth of the gospel, the only truth of the gospel. I think you realize that the “ask Jesus into your heart – go to heaven after you die” paradigm never was. I am fully aware that for those who may be new to the strength of engaging directly with God concerning the beyond-all things that He says may feel as if you are being hammered by God. You are feeling quite correctly. God is serious about His intentions towards you, to conform you to the image of His Son, to merge you together with Jesus, Person inside of person. God responds, then, only to the same level of seriousness.
Engaging with God
Engaging with God directly, face to Face, or shall I say, face to floor to Face, is our one option when faced with the Fierce Determination of this most powerful Being. – And yet, He lifts us up and says always to us, “Do not be afraid, you believe in God, believe also in Me.” And we have the courage to look God in the eye and say to Him with all sobriety, “Look now at me, God; I belong to You. Let all that You speak be fulfilled in my life, now and forever.”
Yet there is a doorway – the door flung wide open, Our Host beaming at us from within, “Enter in, My dear and precious friend.” But the threshold remains, and you must step across.
Speak!
If you can say the following with a heart of faith, longing to know the living God, trusting utterly in Him, then He will do everything else. Your part is faith, believing that Christ Himself fulfills all that He speaks in your life. Put your own full name in the blank and speak these words out loud to God and to the universe.
"I, _______ _________, will be just like Jesus. I will walk just as He walked, right here on this earth, in this age, and in this life. I will walk without sin, just as Jesus walked.”
And Keep on Speaking
“I, _______ _________, will walk revealing the Father just as Jesus walked. I will walk in open ministry as a manifest son of God, just as Jesus walked. The Spirit will move through me without measure, just as the Spirit moved through Jesus without measure. I will know and reveal God, just as Jesus knew and revealed God, right here on this earth, right now in this life, me, as a human being BEFORE the resurrection, just as Jesus walked in all these things before His resurrection.”
“God symmorphoses me together with Jesus and Jesus together with me.”
It Is Our Right
We will learn in the “HOW” of God’s great mystery, in the sixth and seventh most important verses in the Bible, that God requires assertive boldness and overwhelming confidence on our part regarding His Covenant. If God speaks it – then we DARE!
As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name (John 1:12).
We have all right to be sons of God. We have all right to be symmorphosed with Jesus and Jesus with us. We have all right to be the image and revelation of Father God.