1.2 Designed by Word
© 2019 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
This text addresses two primary questions. First – what is it that blocks our Christian brethren from knowing the Salvation that lives inside of them and inside of which they live – the only thing real? If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have [already] become new. Now all things are of God… (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).
And second – how do we show them the Jesus of their hearts such that whatever it is that blocks simply vanishes away? Before we can place the second answer, we must have a full knowledge of the first. But before we can answer the first, we must understand what a born-again human really is.
God Is Word. John said that God is Word (John 1:1). That means that God is an infinite number of infinite numbers of thoughts, with each thought delineated by words, inside of a bubble or bath of Spirit Self-awareness. Yet every single thought that is God is all here now and utterly Personal. In fact, that’s part of what Jesus meant when He said that “God is Spirit.” All-here-now is a quality of Spirit as well as the word “Personal,” that is, “Self-awareness.”
A large portion of those thoughts inside of God is regarding His creation. No aspect of creation exists separately from those thoughts concerning it that are part of God Himself. As David said, “How precious also are Your thoughts concerning me, O God! How great is the sum of them” (Psalm 139:17)!
Thoughts Spoken. David was referencing those specific thoughts inside of God that were unfolding as David himself through the seasons of his life.
God’s thoughts are NOT, themselves, the creation. The creation can be found in its substance inside those thoughts, but the thoughts themselves do not and cannot cause creation to exist. The thoughts are substance; creation is appearance. Something else must exist in-between the thoughts that are part of God and the visible appearance of heaven and earth.
God’s thoughts must be “spoken aloud.” The “speaking aloud” of every thought inside of God, enabling that thought to become its form and season inside the outward appearance of every part of creation IS the Lord Jesus Christ.
All Things Become through Word. Here are two passages that demonstrate all created things coming out from God speaking Word, that is, Christ Jesus.
Inside the source or generation [of all things] is the word, and the word is actively towards God, and God is the word. …All become through Him {Christ Jesus – the Word spoken}, and without him not even one thing becomes that is becoming (John 1:1 & 3).
God… has in these [present] final days spoken us inside His Son… through whom He formed the ages, who, being the expression and revelation of His glory and the character or exact expression of His substance [the visible image of God’s reality], carrying and sustaining all things by the word of His power… (Hebrews 1:1-3).
The Pattern and Connection. The substance of God, coming through the exact expression of that substance, the Lord Jesus Christ, becomes us – God speaks us – and all things of creation, then, are sustained every moment by that good speaking that IS Jesus.
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light (Genesis 1:3). Light inside of God became light in creation through the speaking of Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, we call Jesus the Pattern, the Blueprint, the Bond of the Covenant, the Source or Beginning, and the Mediator.
The connection between God and His creation is always through the Person of Christ Jesus – No one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6). – without Him not even one thing becomes.
Pro-Knowing. The substance of all things is the thoughts inside of God that are God Himself, a quality of God’s Being that Paul refers to by the word “proginosko,” poorly translated as “foreknowledge.” The word, “foreknowledge,” in Romans 8:29 & 30, forces God Himself into time, making God a creature of time.
Instead, we use the word “Pro-Knowing,” and we understand that word to mean those thoughts inside of God concerning us, thoughts that are God Himself first, and then through Christ become us in the unfolding of our lives. Thus, the thoughts inside of God are the underlying substance out from which comes the appearance of everything that exists through the unfolding of the ages.
Between the substance and the appearance is Jesus in Person.
Before I Am. More from David in Psalm 139. – My frame {all the structure that is me in You} was not hidden from You, when I was accomplished [completed] in secret and woven together… Your eyes saw my substance [as an embryo], and all that I am is written in Your book [Your Pro-Knowing], my days [my unfolding] fashioned for me, before I am in them.
We exist in substance inside of God as His thoughts concerning us out from which we come into existence in time and space. Nonetheless, those thoughts do not become us in our appearance except as they are SPOKEN as the Lord Jesus Christ – sustaining all things {that’s you and me} by the Word of His power. At the same time, it is the Spirit who “gives life” (John 6:63).
Christ as Us. It is in this practical way, then, that we are able to say that “Christ lives as us.” We exist in substance (in embryo form) as thoughts inside of God, thoughts that are God. We are designed, then, in every expression of the unfolding of our lives by Word, that is, the thoughts of God spoken as the Person of Jesus.
That is one aspect of what we mean by “designed by word,” but there is a second aspect as well, directly related to this first. To introduce that second aspect, we go back to Genesis. The earth was without form, and void… 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 1:2-3).
Implanting Life. And so we have two things, form that is not yet form and Spirit that has not yet made alive. Yet both of these are ready and waiting for something. They are ready and waiting for the Word God speaks into them – “Let there be light.” Those are WORDS coming out from God, words that are the Lord Jesus in Person, entering into form and spirit in order to implant life and meaning.
John said the same thing. – In Him was life, and the life was actively the light of men (John 1:3-4). This takes us, then, to our formation. – And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).
A Living Soul. We have form, “the dust of the ground” and spirit, “the breath of life,” but then we must know what God means by “a living soul.” What is a living soul?
First, let’s bring in Paul’s definition of God and of humans created just like God. …for the Spirit searches all, even the depths of God. Who indeed among men knows the things of the man if not the spirit of the man that is inside of him? Even so also, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. More than that, we have… received… the Spirit who is out of God, that we might know the things having been given to us by God (1 Corinthians 2:10-12).
Our Story of Self. My human spirit KNOWS my “things” inside of me. God’s Spirit knows God’s “things” inside of Him. What are those “things?” Those “things” are words, our story of self.
Paul is defining human consciousness and in doing so, asserting that human consciousness and God consciousness operate in the same way. Human consciousness is a story of words inside of a spirit self-awareness. God consciousness is a story of Words inside of a Spirit self-awareness. And the connection between the two is Jesus, God’s story of Words spoken and becoming our story of words – God speaks us… sustaining all things by the Word of His power.
Is that not what you are, a story of words rolling around inside of a bubble of self, a bubble of spirit-self-awareness?
A Human without Words. There are accounts of human beings who were completely isolated at birth and thus grew up without ever learning any words, not until they were in their twenties. Then, once that individual learned human words and could communicate with others, he became real, one might say. His memory of himself prior to possessing words was little more than of a vague series of feelings. A vague series of feelings is not what makes us human or like God.
This person’s real human life began for him with the introduction into him of words, of a story of himself rolling around as thoughts inside his awareness of himself. Feelings remain, of course, as part of the human, but as the color and sensation of the words.
Word inside Our Mouths and Hearts. What are we, then, as human believers in Jesus?
The word {Christ, the Word God speaks} is near you in place and time, inside of your mouth and inside of your heart; that is, the word of faith which we proclaim. That, if you speak the same word in your mouth, speaking the Lord Jesus indeed… (Romans 10:8-9). – It is fully made visible that you ARE a letter of Christ, with us under your service, having [already] been written… with the Spirit of the living God… inside tablets of hearts of flesh (2 Corinthians 3:3 – condensed).
This Word, then, coming out from God’s thoughts, the Lord Jesus Himself, is inside our mouth and written all through the pathways of our hearts.
Word Became Flesh. We are designed by Word, we live by Word, we speak words, and we are a story of words. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us – that is – story.
Story is the unfolding of meaningful words into the drama of a human life (design). Story is the words that are our knowing of ourselves, words that we think, words that reside all through our hearts (life – a living soul). And our story is that which we speak as it comes out of what we know regarding ourselves (story as the witness of Christ).
Paul said that the word we speak is Christ in our mouth, homologia – speaking the same word. And we are witnesses of Christ, speaking the same word, because the Spirit of Christ has come upon us (Acts 1:8).
Spirit Words. Word and Spirit are always together in God, in Christ, and in us. They are utterly part of each other. As believers in Jesus, we are designed entirely by the Word that is our Father coming into us through Christ Jesus, a living Spirit Word, living personally in us as all the fabric of our human hearts, that is, hearts of flesh.
God is an infinite number of infinite numbers of thoughts, thoughts that are a living part of God in His Being. Jesus is those thoughts spoken aloud to become form and meaning as all created things. You and I are the outward expression in appearance of those thoughts of God now Christ as us.
We are designed entirely and only by Word, by Spirit Words.