29.4 Looking Forward

© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute

As I complete any series of lessons, I typically look back across what has been written to know what God has taught me through the experience. And I usually find one major thing that has increased my knowledge of God and another major thing that has significantly transformed my life.

In the last course, Symmorphy I: Purpose, the first was the model of the DNA that shows us how Jesus connects us to the Father in all ways and the second was the reality of symmorphy, Father walking as one person together with us. Completing this course, Symmorphy II: Essence, however, I find myself considering something a bit different.

Our Foundation
Rather than leading me “forward” in the knowledge of God, I sense that writing these responses to these questions has so broadened and deepened those things God has already taught me. I find that my foundation in the knowledge of God has grown and been strengthened deeply.

It’s as if God is saying, “We’ve learned some wondrous things, but now, before going forward from here, let’s strengthen the foundation of all I have taught you so that you might stand firm in the proving of Christ coming now through you.” I feel as if I am filled full with Word, and that Word anointed by Spirit.

Ekenosis
Yet there are some things that stand out for me, most certainly. One is my knowledge of the ekenosis, both the verses of the ekenosis and its reality as shown to us by a Christ revealing a God who stumbles under a cross He cannot carry. God, coming out of invisibility, becoming seen and known as the One who places Himself beneath of each to carry the load.

To know God in this way is to live, every moment, only inside of Love, to know that every step we take is carefully hovered over, guided, directed by absolute Love. And it is to know that the God who reveals Himself through us is not as they imagine, but rather gentle, tender, and kind.

Our Beloved Cross
Another reality that has grown in me is the meaning of the cross as our protector, our guarantor of freedom to live only inside of Jesus.

That increase of knowledge came, in fact, from the picture of the terrible use of the cross as we have known it in Christianity, to split us apart and to drive us far away from Jesus. By fleeing from that awful Christian evil, we find ourselves tucked so much more deeply inside the Jesus in whom the real cross has so utterly placed us. For years the “cross” was a burden I could in no way bear; now it is the eternal entrance into all our comfort and joy.

Jesus Is a Man
When I first began writing this course, I latched onto the ambitious idea of writing two courses at the same time, Essence and Kingdom, going back and forth between the two. That lasted as far as the prayer of Jesus in John 17, but from then on, I did not find the Holy Spirit attending my ambition.

Yet I knew I had needed a key piece of understanding before I could write about what is God and what is Christ. That key understanding came to me as I wrote the first four chapters of Kingdom; that key is that Jesus is an eternal and omnipresent Human, all here now and Personal in us. The second MAN (the last Adam) is a life-giving Spirit. It is a MAN seated at the right hand of God.

Looking Outward
Then, as I have come to the end of this course on the essential underlying definitions of our reality, I see something of great importance to govern all my thinking as we return to and continue on with Symmorphy III: Kingdom.

The tendency and the easy thing to do, when writing about the revelation of Jesus Christ and our full and present union with Him, is to focus on each one of us as individuals in our relationship with God. That focus is, of course, essential, but it cannot be the whole picture. Christ is not an individual. Jesus is an individual; you and I are individuals, but the Christ of God is a many-membered Body.

Our Mission
And the Christ of God, this many-membered Body of Jesus walking this earth right now, is on a mission. That mission has three parts.

The first part is the only witness of Christ that will convince the world, and that is God Revealed through the interconnections of relationships among us as God’s elect. “My, how those Christians love one another!”

The second part is the intense watch-care of the Lord Jesus through us over His people, stumbling now under a darkness they in no way comprehend. And the third part is to set all creation free from the curse of sin and death.

Established in Our Mission
Those three elements of the mission of Christ now through us are the structure and fabric of Symmorphy III: Kingdom. For that reason, as we return to the writing of that course, I find the intensity of my soul focused on turning all the truth of Christ outward. Outward to our connections in God together, outward to our brethren fleeing before the vomit of the serpent, and outward towards all creation, that creation might be delivered from the bondage of corruption into our glorious liberty.

My goal is to so set my face on the outward that you and I are fully established in our mission, to seek and to save all that is lost, beginning with the only witness of Christ, love among us.

Called by Name
Then, when we have gained the full understanding of the Kingdom of God that the Spirit intends for us to have in this exercise, we must turn again to the inward, to that perfect bond of the Covenant between us and a God who reveals Himself to all through us.

Never do we as individuals ever vanish into some “force” or group or collective. The Body of Christ, while being many walking together in love, yet those many are always members in particular. God reveals Himself through many and their relationships together; God reveals Himself through one, through each one, you and me, called by name, as valuable to Him as all.

Covenant
I know that Symmorphy IV: Covenant will be an incredible course. How my heart longs to spend time in it, yet I am seeing little regarding that course at present. I know that will change when it is time to write it.

I want to know the real meaning of Paul’s words: Pro-Thesis, Pro-Knowing, Pro-Determination, Symmorphy, and Image. I want to know Romans 8:29; I want to know the depths and the power, the heights and the strength of this Bond that exists connecting me to Father and Father to me as one person together, sharing the same form, living in the same body.

I want to know the Covenant.

Walking with God
My outline for Symmorphy IV: Covenant runs in the opposite direction of anything I have written before. Typically, one starts a course at the beginning and then proceeds through each step until one reaches the end.

The problem is that in the Covenant, our end is God’s beginning and our beginning is God’s end. I want to write Covenant from God’s direction. Thus we will begin at the end and, as we proceed what is to us “backwards” through all the steps, we will arrive, finally, at our beginning, and understand it, now, as we never have before. And I can tell you now what we will find when we arrive, finally, at the beginning – we will find FAMILY.

God Is Family
In the beginning, Elohim created heaven/earth. Elohim is plural; Elohim, God, is family.

The crown of this series of courses, the crown of my life, is family, the community of Christ. For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you before our Lord Jesus inside His Presence? For you are our glory and joy (1 Thessalonians 2:19-20 – modified to fit the actual Greek wording).

And thus Symmorphy V: Life will, by the grace of our Lord Jesus, be the capstone of Symmorphy and the joy of my writing. And by that same grace, I expect to be living inside the Christian community of which I write.