1.1 The Purpose of this Course
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The purpose of this course, Symmorphy II: Essence, is to establish in our hearts, in the bottom line of our thinking, the underlying definitions of reality. All humans think by specific ruling definitions, underlying assumptions presumed to be “true.” Thus all human knowledge and all Christian knowledge arises from these unexamined definitions or bedrock assumptions. Each one of us has our own perception of what things are and of the rules that govern how all things work.
What is God? – Everyone of us has our own rigid definition of “God”; few even know what their definition really is.
Underlying Assumptions
Each of us thinks by a unique pattern of thought, basing our understanding of every specific thing on fundamental laws that we deem to be telling us the truth. The underlying assumptions that we hold determine how we define everything, yet few people consider how they define things or what are the ideas they hold that rule over all their thinking. Most underlying assumptions, including ruling definitions of truth, of how we know truth, of what God is, come out of the arguments of the serpent woven all through Christian thinking.
As believers in Jesus seeking to know the One living in our hearts as He is, we know our thinking must change to fit His.
The Renewing of Our Minds
We are transformed by the renewing of our minds, that is, by altering the underlying assumptions by which we perceive all things, seeing, now, as Jesus sees.
Knowing God is age-abiding life. We want to know God and Jesus Sent; we want to know all things as the Father knows them. Can we claim right now that we know and see all things as the Father knows and sees them? If we cannot, then it is evident that the rules by which we define everything must change from what they are. But more specifically, the rules by which we define the verses of the Bible also must be examined and must be changed.
God’s Aim
God’s purpose in taking you through this course is to cause you to know Him as He is. And then, in knowing Him as He is, a knowing that will increase forever, God wants to change how you see everything, everything in the Bible, in yourself, and in the world around you. To make that change, God Himself arises in your own heart to be the light and love of your life.
God wants to change the underlying assumptions you hold in the bedrock of your thinking, the base definitions by which you judge everything you think you know. God wants to impart to you the mind, the thinking of Jesus.
Benefits for the Learner
Eternal life is to know God and to know Jesus Sent. LIFE is the greatest benefit anyone can receive; but life out from God is also abundance, abundance in every direction.
As you go through this course, you will explore the basic essence of things as they are. What is God? What is Christ? What is man? What is Salvation? What is creation? You will find that as God gives you His definitions, as He enables you to see all things through the eyes of Jesus, that your perception of everything will change dramatically. But most importantly, your perception of Jesus, of every Word God speaks, and what He is doing inside of you, will turn into ever increasing fountains of joy and goodness.
The Problem
Having accepted that we do not define things as the Father defines them, we then realize that we are not blank. Every human being is definite about knowing how things work, what things are, and what everything is all about. Just ask someone, and you will get an earful. But only the Father sees things as they really are.
If we humans define everything by our own rules, however, not even knowing the Father, then our underlying assumptions and rules of definitions must be false. The ruling definitions of most of Christianity, including those you and I have held, cannot be true, if they were true, all creation would already be set free.
Vanity and Perversion
A first question that must be answered is – how did we get so messed up in our thinking? The first problem is God; God is invisible and unknowable; thus even an innocent creation was subjected to the vanity of not knowing God.
Yet humans have replaced the vanity of not knowing God with the perversity of knowing all kinds of things that ain’t so. How did this happen? The perversion of human thinking came as Adam rejected Christ; in that moment two things, separation and outward appearance, took pre-eminence inside of all human definitions and thinking.
A Separated God
The separation Adam chose by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil altered the human “definition” of God. For instance, those who see God as a Thing “over there,” and His creation as something else “over here,” operating at least partly on its own (deism), will see everything God says as coming from far away to us and imposing itself on us, that is, they will see God by the tree of knowledge.
And those who see by outward appearance claim that we, weak and stumbling humans, cannot be God’s image. Then, when God appeared in the earth as He IS, in the person of the Lord Jesus, mankind hated God’s appearance so much, they put Him to death.
Outward Appearance
Humanity despises a God whose form is weakness, meek and lowly of heart, a God who esteems others better than Himself. Thus God, in His outward appearance, is rejected by all.
Jesus said that we humans judge everything “according to the flesh,” that is, by outward appearance. But those who see God as All Here Now, omnipresent Spirit filling all things with all of Himself, yet invisible, will see everything God says as Christ Jesus springing up every moment inside of us, that is, they will see God by the tree of life.
We will see, in this course, how separation and outward appearance are the strongest forces governing how Christians understand and define God and the Bible.
Tares
Jesus warned us in the parable of the tares that the enemy would sow lies all through the field of Christianity, and that those lies would grow with the truth, looking like the truth. Even Christian truths are woven together with Christian lies into a fabric of false assumptions in the Christian mind. This explains how we as Christians can have some knowledge of God by the Spirit even while being so mixed up in how we think about most everything.
Specifically, the purpose of this course is to discover and to root out all the false ways of thinking by finding and affirming the knowledge of God as Jesus inside of us, the One who is in us the essence and substance of Father and all things.
Essence
I first titled this course: Essential Underlying Definitions; however, I have reduced that to “Essence.”
Essence (Webster’s 1926): 1. That by which a thing is what it is. Used as equivalent to “substance,” or, that by which a thing exists; and second, as denoting the essential nature of a thing in definition or conception; as, the essence of the mind is to think. 2. Substance; primarily, a necessary constituent, or elemental substance; an element; secondarily, metaphysical substance; substance as distinguished from supporting attributes. Existence. 3. Existence as a characteristic; ground of existence. 4. Fundamental or intrinsic being; prime character; ultimate or intrinsic nature.
Substance
Essence is a close synonym of the word, “substance,” as in “faith is the substance of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
Substance (Webster’s 1926): (Latin roots: that which stands under.) 1. That which underlies all outward manifestations; substratum; the permanent subject or cause of phenomena, whether material or spiritual; that which is real in distinction from that which is apparent; the abiding part of any existence, in distinction from any accident (or whim, or changing appearance); that which constitutes anything what it is; nature; real or existing essence. 2. The most important element in any existence; the characteristic and essential components of anything; essential nature.
Discovering Essence
How do we approach this great task of discovering the essence of all things, that is, how the Father knows everything, so that we might see and know by the true rather than by the false? What rules of thinking do we follow in this course by which we can expect to discover what all things really are?
Rule 1: Nothing can be known as it is except we first know God’s heart, His purpose and desire, the ruling definition of who and what He is.
Rule 2: Therefore, nothing can be known as it is except we know it first out from Jesus alive in our hearts.
Rule 3: Jesus for real and personal in us is truth; He is every word God speaks. Any other way of knowing must be wrong.
Jesus, Personal in Us
The only reality that banishes separation from our defining thought patterns is Jesus, personal and real, now in us.
Rule 4. Only the Spirit knows the things of God; only the Spirit can cause us to know the essence and substance of all things.
Jesus said, “(Outward appearance) profits nothing, the words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). The rule of separation is defeated in our thinking as the Holy Spirit turns the words of the Bible into Jesus in Person alive in our hearts, words that, by Spirit, become the only life we are. And outward appearance is defeated in our thinking as we know that the Jesus alive in our hearts IS the only source and sustainer of all things.
Restatement of Purpose
Paul said that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds, a transformation of the way we think. All the ruling definitions we picked up from the darkness, definitions that send all the thoughts of our minds down pathways of separation and outward appearance, must be replaced with Christ personal in us. In every lesson, Jesus arises into our knowledge as the meaning and substance of everything that is real. As He appears in our minds and hearts the false simply is no more.
The purpose of this course, then, is to plant Christ our only life in our minds as the only ruling definition, the only bedrock assumption by which we know all things.
A Call to Action
Read this book; take this course. Spend careful time on each lesson; review and reflect regularly; tackle and complete each assignment. Engage directly with God in Person inside of you. As you do, the Lord Jesus will reveal Himself to you as the One who fills your heart with all of His glory.
This course, Symmorphy I: Essence, as you spend time in it, will cause you to know the Father, to see as He sees, to define things as they really are. And it will do so by showing you Jesus alive and real living in your heart, now your very and only life.