1.1 A World of Life
© 2019 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The most fundamental aspect of the world in which we live is that God is not known. God is certainly “known about,” but that is part of the problem, not part of the solution. For that reason, we also have to say that the fundamental aspect of the Christian Church in this world is that God is not known.
This is age-unfolding life, that they may know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3). – For all shall know Me (Hebrews 8:11). God, in His Person, Father, seen and known, touched and handled in the way Father desires, is not known.
Defining Life and Death. We must define a world of death – God not known. We then define a world of life – God seen and known. And here, then, is God’s only doorway from not being known, to being known by all. He who has seen Me has seen the Father (John 14:9).
The disciples were looking at a Man, no different than themselves – except for one thing. Jesus knew and lived inside of and out from something the disciples did not yet know. Do you not believe that I am inside of the Father, and the Father inside of Me? …the Father who lives inside of Me does the works. But then Jesus said this: At that day you will know that I am inside of My Father, and you inside of Me, and I inside of you (John 14:10 & 20).
An Enemy. This text follows immediately after the last chapter of my previous book, Knowing Jesus as He Is, that is, rivers of living water flowing forth from us as the Church, setting creation free.
The Church of Jesus Christ upon this earth lives inside of all Salvation and exists so that Father Himself might be seen and known through her as Salvation to all. But our fellow believers in Jesus do not know that; they do not know it at all. We have an enemy, and that enemy, according to Jesus, has come to steal, to kill, and to destroy (John 10:10).
Why do dear believers in Jesus not know the Salvation in which they live and the Salvation which longs to show Himself through them?
Tares and Wheat. Here is Jesus’ further description of the present church. When the grain had sprouted and produced a crop {the Christian Church through the centuries}, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this’ (Matthew 13:26-28).
A tare looks just like a wheat stalk in stem and in growth. Only in the harvest are tares known to be without fruit. The purpose of this text is to understand the bad seed that we might replace it with the good in the hearts and minds of our brethren. To begin, however, let’s look again at the last points of knowing Jesus as you have studied.
Setting Creation Free.
11. Together we take our place as God’s authority, setting creation free, bringing life to all.
- 11.1 God placed humans as His authority over all. Changing our place never enters God’s mind. We have the authority of God to love one another and to call all things into goodness.
- 11.2 The work of God flows into all creation through humans. God reveals Himself, makes Himself known through us together, and His work is accomplished in creation by the sending forth of the Spirit as a River of Life.
- 11.3 The great task of believers is to set creation free. Our confidence is the first proof of Christ, and our loving one another is the second. As we love one another, so that River of Life flows out into all things, bringing all things into the glorious liberty of our Salvation.
- 12.1 Believers walk as if already resurrected, just as Jesus walked, by this response to every Word God speaks – Let it be to me. Having no sufficiency in ourselves, we know that God directs our every step in the celebration of victory.
- 12.2 Through humans God proves Christ against all that opposes. The accuser accuses the Word God speaks of falseness; we cast that voice down as the Church together. Jesus proves Himself true as we see Him as He is in one another.
- 12.3 The ministry of Christ is the sending forth of the Holy Spirit to accomplish all that Love desires. That river of the Spirit flowing out from Father and us together will transform everything with the knowledge of God-made-visible.
Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together (Isaiah 40:3-5).
The purpose of this book is to set forth how a world of death becomes a world of life with the entrance of Father seen and known, glory revealed, out from many individual persons together.
The Way for God. I want to look at three things inside this calling that is upon you now as Isaiah expressed it.
- 1. Turn the path in front of God into the right direction (the actual meaning of the Hebrew word translated “prepare”).
- 2. Raise up what is perceived low and bring down what is perceived high.
- 3. Make crookedness straight and roughness smooth.
Rejecting Jesus as He Is. If the way placed in front of God has been turned in the wrong direction, that is a crime committed entirely by humans. It is mankind who has turned God’s way in the wrong direction.
We see, then, that the Pharisees rejected Jesus because their “way” for God did not include any weak and lowly man. Most Christians today look for God to show Himself in the exact same way that the Jews of Jesus’ day looked for God. If Jesus were to show Himself as He is right now, most Christians would reject Him in the same way the Jews rejected Jesus – unless God enables you and me to turn His way in their sight into the right direction.
We must understand what that means.
The Cause. When Isaiah said, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, he was defining the cause of a world of life, as we have defined it – God seen and known. (And I am using the words, “world,” “cosmos,” and “universe” interchangeably, that is ALL created things, spiritual and physical.)
Look around you at the world in which you live. It is a world of agony and suffering, of wickedness and perversion; it is a world of death, split apart by “good and evil.” There is one cause of this death cosmos. By man death – in Adam all die (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). – through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned (Romans 5:12).
Two Ways. Paul gives us the picture of a river of death originating at a single point, a singularity, and spreading death into all creation, forming the world of death, the only world we know. The false way placed before God by humans is part of this same river of death.
But the gospel presents us with a different way for God to make Himself known, and another river, a river of life. It is safe for us to make the assumption that a world and a universe of LIFE, a world we have never known, is the direct result of that river of life, the Way for God turned in the right direction – God seen and known as He is. I want to give you a picture of these two rivers before explaining them further.
Two Rivers.
God’s first directive to humans was to “subdue all.” We also see that God placed a River that would flow out from Eden, carrying man’s decision into all creation. By man death, by man also the resurrection from the dead, that is, by man death, by man life (1 Corinthians 15:21).
An Irrevocable Calling. We now understand “subdue all” as meaning – bring all things into the knowledge of God, that is, into Life.
Then we understand this absolute regarding God – the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). The thought of removing humans as the channel of either death or life never enters God’s mind.
Now we can place Jesus’ words as well as their utmost importance to God – He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water (John 7:38). – Christ lives in your heart through faith (Ephesians 3:17). The entire universe will know God only as the river of life flows out from Christ in your heart.
Our Question and Calling. It is your eating of Christ your life, speaking and seeing only Christ, then, that turns the path mankind places in front of God from a way of death into a way of life.
Our problem is this, the way of death, the way that seems “right” to humans, still remains in the minds of our brethren, even though Jesus fills them with His glory and even though they live only inside the Goodness of all Salvation. Our question is, what is it that blocks their understanding, keeping them from knowing what is already and only true, as well as, how do we enable them to know only the Jesus they love, the Jesus of their hearts?
This book is written to equip you with the understanding you need to accomplish this most wondrous calling.
The Singularity. A world, a cosmos, a universe of LIFE is a world in which every entity in creation, animals, humans, and angels, know God as He is, God seen and known, Father walking among us as part of His creation, touching and being touched by all.
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
God has already given us this river of life and the authority to send it forth. What then is the singularity, that one action that changes everything? I would submit to you that one thing alone will break forever the sending forth of Adam’s river of death.
That one thing is LOVE ONE ANOTHER, God among us.