13.3 Because You Have Done This Thing
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The MOST IMPORTANT action in the Old Testament was Abraham offering Isaac back to God as an offering at the very location where Christ was crucified. Because you have done this thing – God sent His Son according to His promise to Abraham.
The MOST IMPORTANT action in the New Testament is the walk of the Atonement from the prayer on the path to Gethsemane to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Because You have done this thing. – Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow (Philippians 2:9-10a).
The Hero
The hero of any story is best known by his path of utmost conflict and sacrifice. We know Jesus best by His walk through the Atonement, and thus we know the Father best in that same way. We must know what we are seeing.
But we can know this walk only as we are utterly inside of Jesus as He walks, from Gethsemane on, looking out through His eyes. Those who look “at” Jesus from outside of Him, imagining they are seeing the “results of their sin,” remain utterly in death. As we look out from Jesus’ eyes, we know we are seeing Father.
Substance and Appearance
Again, we must fine-tune our understanding of the relationship between substance and appearance. Angels and all heavenly glory are certainly a form of God’s appearance, revealing to us God’s creative interests. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge (Psalms 19:1-2). But those things are peripheral to God. Nothing of heaven, except for the human spirit, can reveal God in Person or God’s Heart. We know that all appearances, as God intends appearance, come only out of the substance of God, the speaking of Christ.
The Appearance of Father
Yet, in spite of all the appearance of heavenly glory, and in spite of all the appearance of earthly beauty, Father remains unknown. All the glory of heaven and all the beauty of the earth remain nothing more than vanity, for Father is yet unknown.
Father Substance made known by appearance, as Father really is, by Heart, by Person, by Desire, came into view to both heaven and earth in one form through one moment of time. Father as He IS, the substance of His Heart, appeared to heaven/earth in the form of a Man stumbling under a cross He could not carry, driven by whips to a place of execution. This is, indeed, a mystery.
Evil Serves One Purpose
Does evil, then, show us God? The answer to that question is first a very resounding, “No – God forbid,” and second, a qualified, but clear, “Yes.” Evil does not show us God, but evil served its purpose in that one action that does show us God, God bending all actions of evil into the results of goodness. A Man laying down His life, setting forth His soul, for His friends.
But – Jesus was not murdered. The Romans did not kill Jesus by either whip or cross or spear. Those things appeared only for our sakes, that we might believe.
A Laid Down Soul
Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again. This command I have received from My Father (John 10:17-18).
Again, this is not Jesus’ zoe, or life, but rather it is His psuche, His soul, His self-story. I set forth my soul, my self-story, that I may seize it back to myself again. I have authority (not power) to set forth my soul and I have authority to seize it back again. Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit (Luke 23:46).
Father revealed is life laid down and love poured out.
Out from Jesus’ Eyes
The revelation of Father begins in Gethsemane. Peruse back through “One Day in Gethsemane” in Symmorphy I: Purpose. This course is, however, a definitional approach to these things, thus we will turn from story and onto defining what we are seeing as we look out from Jesus’ eyes. Indeed, there is no Godly definition of the Walk of the Atonement for those looking at it from afar.
First, we are inside the only complete and true appearance of the Substance of Father’s Person and Heart granted to creation, the Lamb Slain. Second, inside this only appearance of Father’s Heart, we are being carried by Jesus from death into life.
Judgment Unfolding
Third, we are looking out from the pivot point of Judgment and Blood unfolding inside of space and time. God has so many purposes inside this moment.
Fourth, Jesus did NOT crucify Himself. All Jesus did from the moment He rose to His feet in Gethsemane, with you and me utterly inside His heart, was put one foot in front of the other in the direction in which He was pushed.
Fifth, Jesus walked every step in utter human weakness, stumbling and falling much of the way. More than that, Jesus rejected all power-over. When He told His disciples that He could ask the Father for legions of angels, He signified that He walked this path only through weakness.
The Path I
In order to know ourselves inside of Jesus through the Walk of the Atonement, we need a clear visual layout of that walk.
| 12 AM to 3 AM Friday | 3 AM to 6 AM Friday | 6 AM to 9 AM Friday | 9 AM to 12 PM Friday |
| Stroll to Gethsemane | Gethsemane | The Trial of the Lamb | The Lamb speaking from the Cross. |
| Hymns being sung. Jesus speaking forth the Kingdom by His prayer. | Our transfer out of the old and into Jesus’ own heart. | The Passover Lamb (and us) inspected and found spotless. Jesus found guilty of being the image of God, a crime. Jesus stumbling with us under a cross He cannot carry. | Jesus becoming the curse for us, yet speaking life into all whom He sees. |
Jesus’ prayer we will explore in Symmorphy III: Kingdom. Our oneness with Jesus through every step is a central part of Symmorphy IV: Covenant. Gethsemane and God’s crime of appearing in human flesh, we studied in Purpose.
The Path II
This course, Essence, is more concerned with these next four steps of the Atonement, things pertaining to Judgment and Hades.
| 12 PM to 3 PM Friday | 3 PM Friday to 6 AM Sunday | 6 AM Sunday | 6 AM to 9 AM Sunday |
| The Lamb silent upon the Cross. | The Lamb in Hades. | Jesus returned to His body. | Jesus before God. |
| God making Jesus sin for us. Jesus placing His spirit in God and giving up His soul. | Jesus speaking to many in Hades. His body dead in the grave. | Jesus’ body swallowed up by life. Many in Hades born again, being given new spirits, following Jesus out. | Jesus sprinkling His blood upon the Mercy Seat of heaven, upon our hearts. |
An entire upcoming session will seek to answer – What Is Hades? Here we want to know two things: Judgment and Blood applied to us.
Made Sin
We know first that Jesus became you and me in Gethsemane BEFORE He became our sin upon the cross.
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). God made, manufactured, constructed, caused to be, Jesus sin – for us, for our sakes. Leading directly to us ginomai, becoming, genÅmetha, aorist subjunctive middle tense, in other words, Jesus Himself actively and definitely causes the result – the righteousness of God IN Christ.
What does it mean that God made Jesus sin?
For Our Sakes
Jesus was made harmatia, sin, by God. And Jesus entered thanatos, death, by His own authority. More than that, by being placed on the cross, Jesus also became the curse. We defined sin, death, and curse in Session 11: how are these definitions of sin, death, and curse applied to Jesus?
And in all of it, we must place the word huper, for us, for us, for our sakes, we who were already inside His own heart by all substance and reality. – I and the children You have given Me. We begin with one of the most monumental statements in the Bible. There was silence in heaven for about half an hour (Revelation 8:1b).
Silence
Silence means that God is not speaking. Silence means that the story Jesus is continually speaking by which all things are sustained every moment – ceases. What does that mean? And how can such a thing be? I don’t have a clue.
But I do know this. God was not “punishing Jesus” with the punishment that “should have” come upon us, as those who look at the Atonement from afar have claimed. We are looking at Judgment, at the passing of all things out of the old creation and into the new. And we are looking at Blood, God’s metaphor of life laid down and love poured out.
The Exchange
And we are looking at those two things at the pivot moment inside of space and time, inside of heaven and earth. What is this exchange that took place inside of me inside of Jesus, there upon the cross, whereby God took from me my sin, placing it upon Jesus, and whereby Jesus, the Father’s righteousness, became me in its place?
Sin, in its essence, is rejecting one’s God-made identity in order to form one’s own self-identity. Sin, in its action, is to steal from others their God-made identity or those things pertaining to God through them. How did God make Jesus sin for us?
Sin Cannot Pass
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God (Romans 6:10). Real answers come only when the right questions are asked. – He died to sin once for all.
Sin did not leave the cross; sin did not and cannot pass through the cross.
Jesus became everyone’s false story – set forth His soul – that He, by going silent against that false story, might cause it to cease. – Jesus became our SILENCE! before a holy God. – Our old creation self, our sin, ceased by the silence of Jesus.
Propitiation
With His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12). – Christ has… entered heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us … He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:24-26 condensed).
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:14). – Having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus… let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil consciousness, an evil story (Hebrews 10:19-22 condensed).
And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole cosmos (1 John 2:2).
Judgment
And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once… (Hebrews 9:27-28).
I have no idea what it means that God made Jesus sin for us. But I do know this: my sin is GONE. And my judgment is complete – one sacrifice for sins forever. That Blood sprinkled upon the Mercy Seat of heaven is also sprinkled upon my heart – same thing.
Jesus died once for all. – My appointment with death has been kept. And my judgment is this – I am transferred entirely out from the old and into Christ. – I am placed ONLY in Father.
Placed IN Father
God placed Jesus under the law; Jesus placed us inside of Father. Huper/hyper (for our sakes) is the essence of Father’s heart. That where I am there you may be also. Jesus places you and me entirely inside of Father.
God, the Father, places Himself beneath of us at all times and in every way. Father’s heart utterly surrounds us, carries us, lifts us up. We dwell utterly inside of the continuous personal attention of a God who thinks more highly of us than of Himself: Love. We who walk IN Christ by faith walk IN Father, entirely separate from all sin.
Authority Transferred
I want to tie the Walk of the Atonement back into the larger picture.
Because You have done this thing. Because Jesus brought the entire old creation to an end, placing us inside Himself first, God transferred all of Adam’s claim to authority, given to him by God, entirely to Jesus.
All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18b). – That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ IS Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11).
We Are His Body
Yet this Jesus, formerly of Nazareth, now dwells in us entirely as a Man, a life-giving spirit, omnipresent and eternal, all here now, and we are His body, Jesus walking this earth right now. The Second Man IS a life-giving spirit, and we ARE His body. And God always leads us in triumph, diffusing the fragrance of His knowledge through us into every place we go.
Yet we know that God has appointed 2000 years for the unfolding of the fulfillment of the Atonement into the experience of mankind on this earth. The new creation, all the brand new good speaking of Christ, is the only substance, even while the old is the only appearance.
We walk knowing that Christ is our only life.