8.1 To Win the Heart
It took Jesus 48 years to convince me that He loves me, counting from 1975 when I first became aware of His pursuit. The picture of my antics that comes to mind is that of a greased pig at a county fair, running and twisting and squealing against – the love of Jesus towards me.
I count my complete rest inside of that Love to have come only last year, 2023, when I heard the same voice speaking inside of me in the same way that I first heard at age 19, on the front of Snow Peak, saying to me, “My son.” That same voice said, personally and deep, “I have loved you, Daniel, with an everlasting love.” Only now do I truly know that He does and has always done.
The Task of Redemption. Redemption is everything Jesus does and has done to win our hearts utterly to Himself that He might join us with Father. Nothing Jesus did was “for God” in the sense of “appeasement.” Everything Jesus did was for us, to convince us to love Him in return, that He is worthy of our desire.
Jesus’ death was the most visible demonstration to us that He loves us, yet, still, we were not persuaded. Then we realize that Paul said in Romans 5 that it is not Jesus’ death that saves us, but His LIFE! It is Jesus Himself, living inside my heart, who through all my years of squealing loved me, and treated with me as if I also loved Him. That is the first task of redemption, to win my heart.
The Completion of Symmorphy. This text is a study of the completion of Symmorphy, however, and thus we are now concerned with this same love of Jesus coming through us towards our Christian brethren.
1 John 3:16 is an absolute game changer. Among the ruling verses of the Bible, it is, I think, the one that effects the greatest change inside of us and towards everything. Yes, we know its meaning only in the context of the other ruling verses, and thus Romans 8:28-30 remains the larger picture inside of which 1 John 3:16 functions. Nonetheless, “And we also,” is visible all through the Ruling Verse.
Whatever Jesus is – And we also. Whatever Jesus does – And we also. This is a depth that never ends. – By this we have KNOWN Love.
Always Is. By this we have known love, because He set forth his soul, His story of self, for us, for our sakes; and we also are committed to setting forth our souls for the sake of our brothers and sisters.
First, this Word is living and energeoing, and second, it is the deepest expression of the Reciprocity, the LIFE, that is God. Yes, it was a historical moment when Jesus set forth His soul for us, and we go ever deeper into the structure and actions of that moment to know how we do the same. Yet Jesus is not “past tense,” but rather All Here Now, yet not just All Here Now, but Personal and ALIVE inside of us. What He is, He always is; what He does, He is always doing.
Sharing Hheart with God. Yet this particular Reciprocity, this Giving that is God, always expecting a return, is not just a reciprocity of outward things, nor even of Word, but rather, this is a Reciprocity of Covenant. It is a Reciprocity of Blood.
The term morph-form, as in symmorphy, sharing the same form, is a general concept applicable in many directions. Yet there is no deeper or greater form to share with Jesus than the form that His redemption takes towards others. It’s called sharing Hheart with God.
Before we look at how this same Love that is God comes through us towards our Christian brethren, let’s address the more prosaic question – What’s in it for us?
The Cycle of Reciprocity. By this we have known love. When we say, reciprocity, that is, living and energeoing, dynamic, giving and receiving, we are speaking of something continuous and all here now. Thus we could paraphrase 1 John 3:16 in this way. Because we know how much Jesus loves us, we give that same love to God for the sake of our Christian brethren, but as we do, we discover ever greater depths, the ever greater extent of just how much Jesus loves us.
And so the cycle of Reciprocity only increases. – The increase of knowing Jesus’ Love for us will never end, an increase that comes through loving our brethren the same way.
Sheep without a Shepherd. Seeing our own foolishness as a squealing greased pig is appropriate towards ourselves. But Jesus does not see us that way and we do not see our brethren by that metaphor. The metaphor Jesus uses is that of a lost lamb, of sheep wandering without a shepherd, frightened and lonely.
It’s no longer a question of how we might know just how much Jesus loves us. Completion means that we ask the question – How will we convince our Christian brethren just how much God comes through us towards them? Right now they are NOT convinced. In fact our confessions of God through us are not even “on their radar.” If they heard us speak Christ, they would not believe a word of it.
Why Did We Run? Symmorphy then means – sharing the same frustration Jesus faces in convincing His own that He loves them. So how do we do it? How do we convince our Christian brethren that the Love that is God comes through us now towards them. You see, Love rules; they know that instinctively. They trust us even less than we trusted Jesus.
Consider the rich young ruler. “Sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and follow Me.” And he went his way very sad, for he had many possessions. We apply that only to ourselves. This is the entire reason why we ran from Jesus’ love. We did not want to give up our “stuff” in this world. We deemed it more valuable than Jesus.
Set Forth Soul. Well, 1 John 3:16 tells us exactly how we convince our brethren that God loves them through us, how we go about winning their hearts – to our rule. – And we also. Tithemi psuche. Set forth soul. To translate this phrase as “laid down life” is not wrong, it just leaves things as an outward view and does not show us what Jesus really did.
Psalm 22 is more extraordinary, I think, than any other chapter in the Bible. God NEEDED us to know exactly what took place inside Jesus’ soul upon the cross, and so He took David there, a thousand years before Redemption showed Himself in human history, and David knew Jesus’ soul in that moment as if it were his own. (See “Setting Forth our Souls.”) David shared Hheart with God.
From Faith to Distress. There are two things next to each other in the gospel narrative which I have taught over and over, but I have never before seen that one comes directly out from the other.
Jesus spoke these words out loud, on the path up the Mount of Olives, just a few feet from Gethsemane. “Father, I DESIRE that those whom You have given Me might be with Me where I am… And… that the love with which You loved Me might be inside of them, and I inside of them.”
What happened a few moments later? – He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26).
Drinking the Father’s Cup. What does it mean to drink the Father’s Cup? Why do Christians avoid giving an account of their lives in the presence of God like it’s “the plague?”
I cannot put Jesus upon a moment of my life that was horrifying to me except I receive that other person, whom I once blamed for all my hurt, as the Lord Jesus Himself. “I DESIRE that _____ (put any name in the blank) might be with me, Father, that he or she might share the glory of Jesus together with me as best friends forever.” From beginning to end, in writing my life story, I drank my Father’s cup. I received each one as Jesus to me, in agony of soul, taking many breaks in the writing because of my deep sorrow and distress.
Sharing Gethsemane. Symmorphy – sharing the same Gethsemane together. When Jesus said, “I want Daniel Yordy to be with Me where I am, here inside of You,” God sealed Jesus into that choice. Immediately, God brought me to Jesus, there in Gethsemane, and said to Jesus, “Okay, Son, here’s Daniel, rebellious, selfish, grasping, pig-headed, squealing every time You try to love him. Drink him into Yourself, all of him, and carry Daniel inside of Yourself all the way through the darkness until he finally KNOWS that You Love him.”
In the narrative it says simply this, “When He rose up from prayer” (Luke 22). Yet we know that this action was the loudest words ever cried, “Father, I drink Your cup. Here am I, I AND Daniel whom You have given to Me.”
Something Even More. And we also – for our brothers and sisters.
Jesus received me into Himself in Gethsemane, and He demonstrated that He had done so by rising to His feet. Yet on the cross, when His soul was split wide open, Jesus did something even more extraordinary. – My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? – Teetering on the very precipice of DEATH.
The words that David then heard were very small, almost a footnote. Yet they were Jesus’ absolute bottom line. “Be with Me… Help Me… – You have answered Me.” On the cross, Jesus received the Father into His human agony through faith, to share all with Himself, including me.
A True Inclusion. By THIS I have KNOWN Love. By this, our brothers and sisters will know that God comes to them as Love through us.
I was not consciously aware when Jesus received me into Himself in Gethsemane and then joined me with the Father inside Himself upon the cross. That doesn’t matter. My inclusion inside of glory, as Paul said, “already glorified,” happened by Jesus’ faith, regardless. Those individuals in my life story do not need to be presently aware that I included them with me inside of the Father. Their inclusion is for real, by the faith of the Son of God in which I live, regardless.
The Foundation of Love. How on earth could Jesus put up with me squealing against Him like a greased pig for decades? You see, no matter how many times I fell on my face in the mud, in humiliation and by my own stupidity, I noticed, over time, that Jesus always paid no attention, but continued right on with me, loving me, as if nothing at all had happened.
He did so because He had already established His position by including me with Him in His prayer that birthed the Kingdom, by drinking me into Himself out from His Father’s Cup, and by joining me with the Father inside the agony of His very human soul upon the cross. It was easy for Jesus to love me my whole life because He had already done so.
The Run into Love. And we also – for the sake of our brothers and sisters. – This is My full completion, that you love one another in exactly the same way that I love you. The ruling verses grow ever deeper without end.
Look across the earth. See a hundred million or more believers in Jesus. They are a mess. Yet we cannot love them in general except we first receive those whom God entrusted to us, those we know by name and face, with whom we have had even a small interaction. To win the hearts of the few is to win the hearts of the many.
That mighty RUN, in through the Doors of the Feast flung wide open, is a run into Love.
Reading for Next Time. I am, to say the least, gob-smacked.
And now I must write one of the most terrible lessons I will ever have written. The next lesson now bears the title, “The Demon at the Heart.” There is nothing more evil in the universe than the Nicene definition of redemption, the core of the Covenant. Just as I have been thinking about this lesson for the last year, so I have also been thinking about the next. Just as the meaning of this lesson has grown exponentially in me over the last few days, so has my seeing of the evil of the next.
Be sure that you have finished reading/listening to all of Chapter 7, “The Purpose of Human Folly,” before next time.
Let’s Pray Together. “God, our Father, we have been so foolish, for we have not believed that You sent Jesus into us to demonstrate the Love that You are, that is already filling us full. Yet Father, You never left us alone, but You share all things with us through Jesus right from the start. And You have been faithful to us beyond comprehension. Your mercies, Oh God, are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness, our Savior and King.
“And now, Oh God, You are this same Love inside of us towards our brothers and sisters inside of Jesus. Father, we are so grateful that we do not produce this Love; it is simply You as You are. Father, You LOVE through us!”
“Lord Jesus, as You have loved us beyond all comprehension, so You now love our brothers and sisters through our own set forth souls inside of You. Lord Jesus, the costliness of this Love is You synergeoing with us and we with you. We do nothing of ourselves, but You do all things together with us.
“Lord Jesus, be our everything, as You always are, that we might be the open doorway to God, that God-Love might enter into Your Church as us. Lord Jesus, even as we, together with You, set forth our souls for our brethren, giving ourselves to be WITH the Father in all for their sakes, so we know that You are KING; You are All-Salvation now.
“God, our Father, You have answered us.”