2.1 The Thesis of the Universe
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Let’s define “thesis.” Thesis (Webster’s 1926): 1. A thing laid down; a statement; a proposition; specifically, a position or proposition which a person advances and offers to maintain by argument. 2. An essay or dissertation written upon a specific or definite theme. 3. An affirmation or enunciation not proved, but assumed as a premise.
A thesis is first words, spoken or written, a proposition, something the author intends to prove. The definition of thesis means that as God speaks Christ, He speaks with the intention of PROVING all that Christ is.
All Here Now
These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God (Revelation 3:14b). The words “In the beginning,” in Genesis 1:1, clearly do not refer to time, but rather to Christ. Thus, we do not look at “the history of creation” to find out “what happened,” but rather to know Christ, God’s Thesis.
More than that, there is no such thing as “God back then.” All of God is all here NOW. Inside of God, the earth is without form, that is, it is only a thought, a desire, an intention, a proposition (thesis). Before what God KNOWS inside Himself can appear, two things must also be in full operation, Spirit and Word.
Hovering Spirit
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light (Genesis 1:2b-3). That which was known only inside of God, unseen and unknown in any outward form, now becomes visible in outward appearance to all.
Verses 2 and 3 should not be split; it is one line. God speaks His Word through the hovering Spirit of God. Through the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters, God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. – It is the Spirit who gives life; the (earth is void). The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63).
The Thesis
The thesis of the universe is John 1:1-18 with Hebrews 1:1-3 and Philippians 2:5-8, and with specific lines that show us the nature of Spirit and Word together.
John begins His gospel in the form of a Greek philosophical treatise, in a manner that would have been instantly familiar to a Greek-speaking audience. Theos was the Greek word for the supreme God, the Creator of all things, and Logos was the Greek concept of how this supreme God makes Himself known.
John is sharing with us the nature and being of the first creation, culminating in this Logos becoming FLESH. Darkness not comprehending light defines the first creation.
God Is Word
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
Let’s bring this into God IS, drawing from the Greek. The Greek, pro, translated “with,” means “interacting with”. The Source is Word, and Word interacts with God, and God is Word. He (a person) is the Source interacting with God.
John did not say that the Word is God; he said that God IS the Word. This line does not show us “the Trinity,” but how God, the Father, makes Himself known, always in the form of a servant, that is, through Word, and through another Person.
What Is Word?
From Webster’s 1926: An articulate sound or combination of sounds which, as symbolizing an idea, is taken as an ultimate independent unit of discourse; the smallest particle of speech that has meaning when taken by itself.
This does little for us except give us a framework of thinking. First, we will combine a word spoken and a word written as the same thing. Then, a word has meaning by itself and is used for “discourse.” Finally, a word symbolizes an idea. What is an idea?
A word is a symbol, a metaphor, an articulate sound or combination of sounds that represents something else.
Communication
It is clear that we cannot know what a word is by looking at a word, and thus, the most important concept to draw from the definition is the word, “discourse,” or communication. A communication is a bridge that carries ideas from one person to another.
I watched a TV show in which one said, “People don’t understand me.” To which another replied, “Because you don’t let them in.” There are two ways only by which we KNOW one another. The first is by words, by communicating, by sharing heart through speaking ideas carried in the form of symbols or metaphors we call words.
God Becoming Known
God is all here now, but invisible and unknowable. God has no outward appearance, no form of any kind by which creation can know Him. Yet God is a Person, and we, just like Him, are also persons. How does God pass from unknown-ness into being known by us? God enters His creation through a series of symbols representing ideas, that is, communication – Words.
The other means by which we can know another is through the intimacy of marriage-bed union, and thus the Word is the seed, the sperm of God, carrying His life into us.
Again, What Is Word?
Thus we define word in this way. A word is a carrier of meaning from one person to another. A word carries a knowing from one heart and plants that same knowing in the heart of another.
The Pro-knowing in the Heart of God is translated into a symbol, a metaphor, a carrier of meaning – an articulate sound or a combination of letters representing that sound. That symbol or metaphor, that Word, then passes across to another, but must be received by the hearer and translated into the same knowing anew. BUT – that Word cannot be the same knowing in the hearer except by the hovering Holy Spirit.
Word Is a Person
God is Word. This is a big deal. Refer back to the Annie visions in “The Shaping of the Human Heart,” – “That Most Holy Thing.”
For God to be known, for the knowing inside of God to pass out from God to become available to another, God must change His form. God must seize hold of the form of a servant, must be beaten as fine gold into the form of the Mercy Seat. And Word must be received by the hearer and be known in the hearer as the same life that word IS inside of God.
Word is a Person – the Lord Jesus Christ, God become a symbol, a metaphor, carrying the knowing of God into us. How does God change His form?
The Form of God
Here is what Paul says about this incredible transformation of God as we look at the Greek words of Philippians 2:5-8. Christ Jesus, who, being in the form – morphe of God, and considering Himself equal with God, then, having taking on Himself the form of a bondservant, He called the no-boundary God out into visibility, coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself.
Jesus makes God visible. The only outward appearance of God towards His creation is through a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ – and He inside of us.
Let’s return now to the thesis, remembering that thesis, Word, requires proof. Thesis requires witness.
Ginomai
God speaks by His Son, through whom He made the ages; who upholds all through Himself by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:1-3, condensed and modified).
– All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
Ginomai (made): to come into being, to happen, to become, to emerge. According to Martin Vincent, ginomai means to come into being or into manifesting, implying motion, movement, or growth. Ginomai is that which comes out of God and shows itself in time and space.
All emerge through Him. Apart from Him, nothing emerges.
Proving the Thesis
This is absolute. This is always NOW. Look around you; look at all humans across this earth. Everything that exists originates inside of God and then comes into what it is through the constant speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word, carrying God’s Heart into being known. This is how we must know and see all things and all people. Certainly, people do not KNOW this Word out from which they emerge every moment, yet they come from nowhere else.
The Thesis must be proven; God intends to prove His Thesis through us. God intends to make Himself known by us. See everything ONLY by God’s Thesis, by Source, by Word.
What Is Life?
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
There are two human words that are VERY hard to define: the word, “life,” and the word, “idea.” A word is a symbol, a representation of an idea found in the heart of another. The word, “light,” represents the idea having passed from one, and now becoming known by the other – the “lights turn on.”
But what is life? Life is the energy by which all things are sustained – sustaining all by the Word of His power. – My words are Spirit and they are Life.
The Right Questions
It is clear to me now that this explanation of God’s thesis is creating more questions than answers. That is good. No answer can ever come except in response to the right question.
You see, when I ask the question, “What is God,” I don’t want you to provide an answer; rather, I want you to hold that question upon your face before God. Do NOT place ideas around the question, especially fictitious ideas of “heaven” and “glory.”
Only Word coming into us can convey to us God. Thus we cannot know God without first knowing Word, that is, Jesus Sent.
Not Seizing Hold
The darkness did not seize hold of the light. Lambano (comprehend): to seize hold of something.
Darkness in itself is not evil; God cannot be known. But all evil found in creation comes because that which is inside of darkness does not seize hold of the light. All sin and death came upon creation because Adam did not seize hold of the fruit of the tree of life. Adam refused Christ.
He was in the cosmos, and the cosmos was made through Him, and the cosmos did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.
Proof
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe.
God placed a witness before He made His Word known; PROOF is a bigger deal to God than we have realized. A Thesis, Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, is a proposition, an idea, that must be PROVEN. But I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me (John 5:36). PROOF that the Father has sent Me.
Faith
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born . . . of God. There is a Bible word for “received Him”; that word is faith. Faith is not a nebulous whatever. Faith is the capacity of the human to receive into itself a specific word from God as the Lord Jesus Christ in Person.
Our faith is God’s Proof; God proves His Thesis through us. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). What we want is the word “substance.”
Substance
God has spoken to us by His Son, who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power . . . (Hebrews 1:1-3 – condensed).
Hupostasis (person): substance, the underlying reality of anything. Faith is the hupostasis, the substance, the Person of the Father inside the Person of Jesus inside of us.
And thus we come to the most incredible line in God’s Thesis. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Became Flesh
The Thesis of God became flesh. In appearance as a man, He humbled Himself. – For I am meek and lowly of heart. The Pro-knowing of God becomes the knowing inside of us as the Person of the Lord Jesus, now the glory of our hearts and the only life we are.
But God’s Thesis is not finished; it awaits the final proving. That proving comes out of Jesus’ prayer in John 17, the Thesis of the New Creation, a proving we will explore in Symmorphy III: Kingdom. You and I are the proof of God’s Thesis – our faith in Jesus.
Pro-Thesis
I have hardly scratched the surface of what is to be found inside the Thesis of the Universe, yet this lesson has gone longer than I had planned. Through the next five lessons I hope to come at this same Thesis from entirely different viewpoints. Then, through the rest of this course, we will expand on and further define God’s Pro-Thesis, His set forth purpose, by looking at the meaning and definition of WORDS.
Word is a conveyance of knowing from one heart to another.
God’s Thesis is a series of Words setting forth God’s Heart, Ideas (Jesus) that must be seized hold of inside of darkness and then proven through faith, the Word become flesh.