5.3 God Is Word
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
In the beginning is Word (Jesus) and Word (Jesus) is with God (Father) and God (Father) is Word (Father) (John 1:1).
In this session we are referring only to God the Father; Jesus is not God. There is one God, the Father. Jesus cannot be, either in Himself or in us, anything that God is not first inside His own self. Jesus is the sending forth of God out from Himself to be known; we will explore this relationship in the next session. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself (John 5:26).
What is life? – Life is to know God.
Life in Father
In Word is Life, and Life is the light of men (John 1:4). The Seed is the Word of God (Luke 8:11). Now, I want you to see how we have left the topic of Father and are looking at ourselves (knowing God) and Jesus (birthing the life of God in us). This is not what I want to do here.
What is life in Father? Is Father’s life found in knowing Himself? Life is that which animates, that which sustains. The Father’s life is expressed by these words, I Am that I Am, the name of God.
I Am
And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” Exodus 3:14).
God-Life is often referred to in this way, “the Self-existent One.” “I know Myself – I AM.”
The opposite of life is death; there is NO death in God. God has nothing to do with death or any part or use of death. Death is separation, confusion, uncertainty.
God is One. God IS. Pro-knowing. God KNOWS. God IS. God is alive.
No Life in It
When readers respond to me at an intellectual level, raising questions against what I said, or responding with a mental knowledge of things about God, I am put into a great struggle. I attempt to answer, but find that I am either defending myself or “correcting” them at the same intellectual level. Whatever I might write, I erase, and do not reply; if I did, I would be placing myself into confusion. More than that, any returning reply to such a response from me I could never open because debating about “God” at an intellectual level is death to me, utter confusion and separation from life.
Now, I say to myself, “I cannot respond or connect because there is no life in it.” – What do I mean?
The Spirit Gives Life
It is the Spirit that gives life (John 6:63). What I think I mean is that there is no personal and intimate knowing of Father and Jesus Sent inside my words or the words of the reader who is responding out of intellect. And that absence of an intimate knowing of Father by heart is because of a blockage against the present miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit causing us to KNOW the Person of life. In complete contrast, another reader might send me a simple question, and I find rivers of life pouring out of me in response.
The Father has life in Himself – something I clearly do not understand; thus, I place these thoughts before you, that Father might reveal Himself to you through Jesus and by the Spirit.
God Is Logos
I want to take, now, a different tack. God is Word – God is Logos. God is logic and all rational and orderly reason. God is science; God is pattern and order; God is mind.
Our problem is this – we know these things only by reference to separated humans operating inside of death and not life. Thus we must find another word, a Biblical word, in order to know what God is.
God is wisdom. Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom out from God (1 Corinthians 1:30).
What Is Wisdom?
Jesus cannot be anything in us except the Father is that first in Himself.
What is wisdom? As I pondered “logic and word” my mind turned to the great literary writers of human history. Of the top four, Tolstoy and Homer are known for the great depths of wisdom coming through their stories, whereas Shakespeare and Cervantes mingle much wit and humor with the deep understanding of human nature they impart.
Wisdom begins with seeing the whole picture. Proginosko– pro-knowing– seeing the end right from the start – bringing the start out from “it is finished.”
The Whole Picture
I know where I came from and where I am going … You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And yet if I do judge, My judgment is true; for … I am with the Father who sent Me (John 8:14-16).
Of truth – life (I am) and wisdom are very close in meaning. Judging “according to the flesh” is making decisions or accusations based on momentary outward appearance with no reference either to substance or to what God is really doing or to the end of the matter. It is foolishness.
When you finish reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, you carry a sense of completion, of having considered the entire picture, of knowing how every detail fits and what it means.
God Knows
Proginosko, translated “foreknowledge” could just as easily be translated “wisdom.”
Inside of His heart, God knows all. Every tiny part already has its perfect place. We are really looking at the relationship here between the eternal of God and time. Time is simply the moment by moment unfolding in perfect flow of all the elements inside the whole picture inside of God, each detail in its season.
Because God knows all inside Himself every moment, everything coming forth from God, whether the physical galaxies and stars or the substance of spirit in the heavens, everything is itself perfectly ordered.
Set Free
Science exists because God is wisdom. Everything is orderly and purposeful, every tiny detail. But everything is set free from God at the same time; nothing is “controlled.” Thus a swarm in nature operates as if it is one, yet with no central control over the members of any swarm. It is this aspect of God, His wisdom, by which He can be Himself entirely in us as ourselves in sweet communion and perfect oneness without ever violating the integrity of either His Person or our persons.
God is Word also means that God is faithful and true; God is certain; a sure path, an immovable rock; rooted and grounded in love.
Through Father’s Eyes
God IS wisdom in us. When we sink ourselves utterly into the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, casting ourselves in all that we are into Him alone, then we find ourselves sinking into the wisdom of God. That means first that we begin to see the larger picture.
Seeing through Father’s eyes means we are seeing through wisdom, seeing through all that God speaks, seeing the end right from the start. We know that all things are restored back to the Father that God might be all in all; thus we know that all things are already restored. We see the end in God regardless of the present moment.
Defining Wisdom
Wisdom (Webster’s 1926): Quality of being wise; ability to judge soundly and deal sagaciously with facts, especially as they relate to life and conduct; knowledge, with the capacity to make due use of it; perception of the best ends and the best means; discernment and judgment; discretion; sagacity.
Wise (Webster’s 1926): Discerning and judging soundly concerning what is true or false, proper or improper; choosing the best ends and the best means for accomplishing them.
I discover in these lines a knowing of God that I have carried inside for many years, an assumption I knew must be true. There are no alternate universes. What is, is – because God; and what ain’t, ain’t.
Purpose
Everything that is comes out of purpose, out of the knowing of God, out of wisdom. There is no alternate universe in which Adam refused the tree of knowledge and ate, rather, of the tree of life. Contemplating such a universe is without purpose or meaning.
We are not talking about creation, yet, but of God. Yet we will never understand creation until we know God.
Wisdom: “Choosing the best ends and the best means for accomplishing them.” What I mean to say is that we cannot know anything unless we know Purpose, unless we know what God wants. And all things work towards that Purpose.
All and All
God controls nothing; God orders all things. God sets all things free; God wins all things back. Purpose rules the universe and all things that exist. Purpose – the Pro-thesis of God.
The greatest debate in Protestant Christianity is between “free-will” and “predestination.” I detest both terms BECAUSE the heart of God, the Father’s desire is never considered in the arguing, the divisions, the bloodshed. Some say only “free will,” others say only “predestination,” and all of it is “who goes to heaven and who goes to hell” – death. I use different terms, but it is ALL “free-will” and ALL “predestination,” in perfect harmony – wisdom, God.
God Is Life – God Is Wisdom
God-is-Word means God is life and wisdom; inside of God-is-Word we find the name of God. Name is a metaphor for nature, the nature of God, but “name” is something I never understood or knew where to place. I have declared to them Your name (John 17:26).
God-Life, the self-sustaining One, I am that I am; God-Life, the all-sustaining One, giving life to all. God-Wisdom, the self-knowing One, I am that I am; God-Wisdom, the all-containing One, bringing all things forth out from Himself, each in its season.
Creation is an essential part of God’s Heart, sustaining all things by the Word of His power.