21.2 Willing to Be Symmorphic
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
At the end of the last session, I asked two questions. Who is willing to be symmorphosed? Who is willing to sign their name upon God?
But my name is false. – Put it upon God. But my name is dark. – Put it upon God.
But my name is sinful. – Put it upon God. But my name is wicked. – Put it upon God.
But my name is evil. – Put it upon God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God inside of Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Put Your Sin upon God. God already made Jesus to be all the sin and darkness that you are. Put your sin upon God. Then, and only then, will you be willing to be the righteousness of God found only INSIDE of Jesus.
Are you willing to be God’s image with NO sign of outward perfection and NO possession of your own rightness? Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power (Psalm 110). It’s His power to direct our every step, not ours at all. Are you willing to call your weakness, God now living through you together with you exactly as He wishes? Are you willing for God to be human?
Willing for God to Be Human. When my understanding penetrated John Calvin’s words to see the “God” he saw, I saw the serpent and not my Father at all. Outward perfection, external performance. – Inward ruin and the knowledge of sin.
Are you willing for God to be human through you? You are what God looks like, if you are willing. Yet we are not speaking of any arrogance of boasting in the flesh. To be God’s image is to step down from all rightness, to be willing to be wrong, to be a mess and call it God. Calvin’s “God” is arrogant. Arrogant people demand an arrogant “God.” My Father is meek and lowly of heart.
The Bottom of the Jordan. Symmorphy – Willingness – Humility. Same thing. The bottom of the Jordan.
Consider the model of the crossing of the Jordan as the Tabernacle of Moses in the form of this study. Come down off your heights of human rightness and human power, all this false boasting about how “you” are going to “obey.” And here, inside the Holiest of All, at the very lowest place in the human experience, having lost all hope in and for yourself, turn around. And from here arise to the heights of seeing one another as Jesus Himself, regardless of any and all “giants” in the land.
God Is Willing. Come down off your “righteous” self – accept God as He is inside of your weakness – love one another.
You see, God is fully willing right now to BE all of our present mess. That’s not in question; He has demonstrated His willingness in Christ from Gethsemane through the resurrection. The question is are we willing for God to be one with our mess?
Believe What We Speak. God fills us full, God Himself utterly symmorphosed with us as His image, ours the form, His the substance, only through faith, only by our firm and final decision that He IS.
I want to take you now into my own path of willingness, but first, I must address a bit of a problem. In a recent Star Wars movie, a character repeated constantly, “I am one with the force; the force is one with me. I am one with the force; the force is one with me.” Yet as I looked upon his face, I could see that he did not actually believe what he was saying – not until he sacrificed his life.
When I say that we should speak, “I am one with Jesus; Jesus is one with me,” I mean that we should pause and actually believe our words.
A Simple Human Decision. Chanting words has no meaning. Believing that our words are true and actual reality – because God says – means something only because God is what He says.
And believing is not some “great demonstration of faith.” That’s the same falseness as “I want to break through.” Believing is nothing more than a simple and very human decision. I can believe anything I wish. You can believe that humans went to the moon; I can believe that the story was entirely faked. Easy. Nothing hard about either one. Believe whatever you wish.
Does God say it? Then I make the simple and human decision to believe that it is my only reality. Am I insane? Who cares.
Choosing a Different Path. The whole world is insane and every human in it – stark raving mad. Trying to live in self against all the good speaking of Jesus creates insanities without end. If believing that what God says is true is insanity, then I am no different than anyone else. Except that I am choosing a different path for my insanity.
Here’s what I am saying. Since everyone “believes” whatever they wish, I simply choose to believe that what God says IS the only life I am, what God says is true personally in and as me exactly as I find myself to be in all of my mess. My God is not “above” me. My God is beneath of me, carrying me, filling me, choosing me, making Himself one with me.
As He Walked. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked (1 John 2:6). – If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me (Matthew 16:24).
I now understand exactly what this injunction means – and it is completely other than how I once understood. I walk in this way – as He walked – every moment.
You see, these two verses CANNOT be alone, but must be preceded and followed by two other verses. Before just as He walked comes the Son can do nothing of Himself (John 5:19). And after follow Me comes God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
The Reflection of Light. We must have the picture clear, for this course is Covenant. We cannot rely on personal experience, but we must be grounded in what God says. First, Jesus is NOT “fully God and fully man.” Jesus, the Man, was not walking around filled with “Godness.” God, the Father, is unseeable and unknowable. God, as He appears in creation, appears only as a Man. Yet in appearing as a Man, the Father appears in another Person, for God is Symmorphic.
Consider “a splash of light on a north wall.” No one has ever seen light. We see only the reflection of light bouncing off of something else. Jesus’ humanity was, as a Man, the reflection of Father, Father bouncing off of a human Person to be seen and known.
Nothing of Himself. Jesus did not make Himself the image of God. And He especially did not question His steps as if He might “fall short of God.” Jesus walked in the supreme confidence that He had NO idea what He was doing. The Son can do nothing of Himself was NOT a declaration of works, but a statement of fact.
Because I KNOW that – if my being filled with all of God is dependent on my obedience then I am UTTERLY LOST – I never consider my anything at all. My being filled with all of God is dependent on one thing – God Himself fully responsible for me.
Jesus Was a Man. Now, Jesus “chose” to walk to Gethsemane, but from Gethsemane on, He went only where He was pushed. Yet Jesus did not “ask God” where He should go, nor did He “hear God say” – “Go to Gethsemane.” Jesus went to Gethsemane because He liked going to that Garden to pray. Because Jesus never once trusted in Himself, He walked in full confidence that God was in Him, directing His every step regardless.
BUT – as Jesus was pushed towards the cross, consider His faith. For a little while He carried His cross, then He fell unable to carry it further. Jesus was a man; He was NOT filled with His own “Godness.”
By Faith Alone. Jesus had NO indication or sign or knowledge that the pain and the blood on His back, the stumbling steps, the failure to do what He had told His disciples to do, were anything other than something happening to Him as a human in the present moment.
By faith ALONE, Jesus believed, with all His Heart, regardless of any human feelings or judgment, that God Himself in Person was inside of all that He was in the present moment, and that through all this MESS, God was reconciling the world to Himself. NOTHING told Jesus that, He simply believed it to be true.
This is how I walk. In every moment, regardless, I place ALL that I find myself to be upon God. “God this is YOU!”
Willing to Share. Whenever my thoughts tend towards myself, Father in me, which is often, here is what I think without regarding any momentary forgetfulness.
“Father, You share all things with me. I place all that I am upon You and accept You in and as all that I find myself to be. My shame is Yours; Your love is mine. My sin is Yours; Your Heart for Your people is mine. Father, all of this awfulness of my frail humanity is You, sharing Your own travail with me, and through me, You are reconciling the world to Yourself.”
I say these things, even in the awfulness, because I choose, by my own simple decision, to believe NOTHING else at all.
Living in Rest. I am a pirate, like David. I will possess all that God is in all that I am as I find myself to be and I will know nothing else at all. The result? I live only in rest. I know only peace.
Yes, there are changes, more changes in my present life than I ever saw in all the years of living under falling short of God. But I do not measure myself by those changes, though they are good. I measure myself only by Jesus, and He is all the sufficiency I will ever need.
“Carry your cross” MEANS to call every present moment, every circumstance, every failure, every pain, every miss-step “God in me reconciling the world to Himself.” “Carry your cross” means to write your name upon God.
I Don’t Care. Someone might ask me – “How do you know that it’s so?”
I DON’T CARE!!!! I will have my Father in me and I will not have anything else. So I’m angry. So I’m frustrated. So I do things inadvertently that hurt other people. So I am a leper, riddled with sickness. I cannot and will not live as if my Father is separate from me. I CALL all things, every circumstance, every moment, every foolish mistake and every blithering idiocy I am capable of producing, “God in me reconciling the world to Himself.” And I call it so by faith, by “deciding” that it is true, through ONE THING ONLY – because I want to.
Because I Want To. Because I want to. Because I am incapable of getting anything right and because I am unwilling to be alone.
And when I consider those who continue singing that awful song of rebellion, I realize that they hold to the fantasy that someday, they will get it right, and they are willing to tough it out all by themselves until they do. And when I look now at that dark and cold February of 1998, I see the most precious and golden moment of my life. The exact bottom line of my thinking in that darkness was, “I cannot ever get it right and I am unwilling to be alone.”
I am willing to be symmorphic, to be the very human image of God. I am willing to write all my name upon God.