23. The Cross and the Flesh

Covering Colossians 2 through 3:7:

The “gospel” that teaches us to “subdue the flesh” in order to “rise up” into God cannot be accused of giving license to sin. Paul’s gospel is always being accused of giving license to sin – by those whose minds are formed out from knowing good and evil in opposition to Life. The thought never enters such minds that God might have provided a completely different approach to our “being saved to the uttermost” than human effort that always fails.

I am pondering and writing the three lessons for Colossians-Philemon together. In all three lessons I am drawing out the extreme hostility and armed assault against God and the Gospel that is the mind of Nicene Christian thinking. I want my comments to present the Gospel as specific answers without entering into the “debate.”

Placing the Ego. Our King James verses from Romans and Colossians best describe the problem and issue of “the flesh” as most define “the flesh,” doing outwardly what you ought not to do. Yet Paul actually defines “the flesh” as doing towards God what only Jesus does. Flesh in the negative, according to Paul, is the “I,” the “ego,” replacing Christ Jesus towards God.

Consider Augustine’s words, “When I shall with my whole self cleave to You.” That’s first, then his goal comes second, “I shall nowhere have sorrow, or labor; and my life shall wholly live, as wholly full of You.” This is how all Christians I have ever known think, that if “I” will just “do” a bit more towards God, then “I” will achieve what “I” define as a “God-filled” life.

Dealing with the “I.” Then, consider those who want to get rid of the “I,” the “ego,” similar to Buddhism. Or those that place the “I” under the control of a hierarchy of others, as in, “Submit.” It is still the “I” trying so very hard to “get rid of” itself, and the “I” forcing against itself to obey. The “I” itself is unaffected. “When I shall with my whole self cleave to You.” – Augustine has thrown Jesus out of his consciousness. He has set himself to do what Jesus already does. His words are lawlessness.

Consider my words. “Jesus and I share life together. As I learn of Him inside of me, so I know that Jesus already connects me with God, and that my present life is what God wants. As I learn of the Father, so I discover that His purposes through my ‘sorrow, or labor,’ are the same as through Jesus.” “I” am found “cloven to” God. I have believed into Jesus.

Jesus Inside. I mean, how explicit can you get? – “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to, connects with, cleaves to, the Father except THROUGH Me.” Yet all the extensive effort over decades, that I knew in the Spirit-filled, hyper-Calvinist, move of God fellowship, to come into full agreement with God, even in the anointing of the Spirit, was through self, with Jesus Himself in us nowhere considered. The “Christ within” had taken His place.

“I” am filled with God my Father, and my good sorrows and my good joys are both on the side of Victory, for God is inside of Jesus inside of me, reconciling the world to Himself. – Without faith it is impossible to please God. – Faith is a living and personal relationship with Jesus inside.

God’s How. God’s three “HOW’S,” Ruling Verses 5, 6, & 7, the Cross, the Blood, and the Resurrection, are God’s answer to all human difficulty. They are the means of Paul’s Gospel. They are simple and obvious, known by all, but with no one paying attention. Why? Because “God” is a moral Judge, and “Jesus” is superior and above. In no one’s equation is found a Jesus who comes into union with us first, a Jesus who actually saves us.

Yet Paul’s explanation of the mystery of Christ Jesus inside of us through Colossians is so wondrously powerful, it takes a demonic spell to sweep all that aside in order to turn “mortify your members on the earth” into the entire “Christian life.” That verse, in this lesson, says something totally different.

Wealth and Treasure. (Chapter 2) 2 That your hearts might be encouraged, having been knit together already inside of love, • and into all the wealth of the full carrying of shared understanding into the acknowledgement, the personal and stated knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ, 3 inside of whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

When Paul says “Christ,” he means Jesus, and when he says “Jesus,” he means Christ. Romans 8:11 is all the proof I need that Jesus and Christ are the same. Paul is a bit wordy here, yet all of his exuberance has meaning. Jesus said the same, “Come to Me, you who are weary and heavy laden. – Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.” To Philemon Paul said, “Acknowledge all the good things of Christ inside of you.” – Wealth and Treasure!

Acknowledging Jesus. Let’s reduce Paul’s wordiness. – Inside of the love you share together, acknowledge together the treasures of wisdom and the knowledge of God that are found inside of Jesus inside of you.

Acknowledging Jesus inside of us, at the personal level, is wondrous and must come first. But when, in fellowship together, we acknowledge Jesus filling our togetherness, then we KNOW God at Home among us. To acknowledge means to regularly speak Jesus to be already True, whether inside yourself or out loud together. Yet every expression of “holiness” I have ever heard claims that “Christ” cannot be true in us unless we (“I”) have first made Him true. Adam’s rebellion became Christian theology.

Filled with Treasure. I had not realized how frequently Paul uses “acknowledgment.”

Definition: Faith shows itself through acknowledgment first before it can show itself through love. To acknowledge is to accept that God has already accomplished all through Jesus and then to declare it True personally and together.

Covenant: Christ Jesus sent into us is our Covenant Bond with God our Father, yet as that Covenant, He Himself is filled with infinite Treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This Jesus says, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart” (Matthew 11:29).

The Form for God through Jesus: It is as we know Jesus together, sharing the understanding of the mystery of Christ, not just in each personally, but also in our togetherness, that our hearts are knit together and Father finds His home.

So Walk inside of Him. 5 I am together with you in spirit, rejoicing and seeing your good order and the firmness of your faith into Christ Jesus. • 6 Therefore, just as you have aggressively received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk inside of Him, 7 having been rooted and constructed together inside of Him, standing firmly in the faith just as you were taught, abounding inside of it in speaking good grace and giving thanks.

In the move fellowship after Brother Sam’s passing, “faith” became defined primarily as obedience, even though it had before held a strong connection to Life and to the anointing. Nonetheless, Verse 6 became a directive of works, another exhortation to “obey” with little reference to what precedes or what follows. Yet this faith is a living relationship with Jesus, something we share together.

A Living Relationship. We are compelled to continue defining faith. Indeed, through all my writing, I have felt compelled to define several things over and over, faith, God, man, sin in the flesh, Christ, salvation, etc. All are different from what we once knew when we allow the Gospel to be what it says.

Definition: Faith is a living relationship with a Jesus who dwells in Person inside our hearts. We cannot walk inside of Jesus unless we first KNOW that we live only there in all.

Ruling Verse 7: We received Jesus into ourselves as we believed that He already is, that God speaks the Truth, regardless of any outward objections. We walk as Jesus walked in the same way, convinced that God always leads us by His Spirit, regardless, that we are part of Christ to the measure that we are convinced we are part of Christ.

Watch Carefully. 8 Watch carefully, lest anyone of you should be taken captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the fundamentals of the world and not according to Christ. • 9 For inside of Him dwells all the fullness of a Personal God bodily, 10 and inside of Him, you are made full, fulfilled, and complete, who is the head over all influence and authority.

Just as there are two trees and two minds, so there are two opposing definitions of “the cross and the flesh.” Paul’s deep emotional contention through Galatians and Romans is for one definition in opposition to the other. “Watch carefully” is the most frequent commandment in the New Testament. In this case, we can reduce it all down to – “Watch out for anything not Jesus.”

A Spirit of Great Evil. Consider this Gospel Comment from Romans 1 against Augustine’s words. • To look straight at God and to refuse to believe Him is to “not glorify God.” This refusal leads immediately to the next, refusing to give thanks, hating the way God made us and the circumstances of our lives. Immediately our thinking and our hearts are at war against God. This is the sin of (Augustine).

When we are confronted with the opposing definition of “the cross and the flesh” – “Get your flesh back on the cross, loser,” – we are NOT facing a debate over Scripture, rather this. – For the mystery of “the law of sin and death” is energeoing, according to the energeia of Satan inside of every hard forehead (2 Thessalonians 2:7 & 9 – paraphrased). – We are confronting a spirit of great evil.

Joined with God inside of Jesus. Then Paul sets against the evil, towards which we are always on the lookout, an incredible description of what happens with us inside of Jesus – a most “blasphemous” statement.

Definition: All human folly, the fundamentals of the world, comes from living with one’s back against Jesus sustaining all.

Ruling Verse 10: We know that Jesus dwells inside of God in all, and that we are inside of Jesus in all. We know that all the fulness of God dwells inside of Jesus and that Jesus dwells inside of us, that we are His body.

Covenant: As we are inside of Jesus with the Father, we learn that Jesus joined us together with God inside Himself, in the agony of His own Soul. Inside of Jesus, we are already complete, already joined in Life shared with the Father.

Baptism in Water. • 11 In whom also you were circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands, in the setting aside of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ, 12 having already been fully buried with Him inside of immersion, in which you were raised together with Him through the faith of the Energeia of God, the One who raised Him out from the dead.

The very act of baptism in water is meant for one purpose, to seal in our minds that absolute and finished reality of God’s redemption, that all that once opposed God has disappeared into the empty grave and that all that we are now lives only inside of and as the Life of the risen Lord Jesus. Baptism in water is the strongest single picture that our life is NOT “sin in the flesh,” but something entirely different. Coming up out of the water, “now all things are of God.”

The Faith of Pro-Determination. The BIG thing in these verses is “the faith of the Energeia of God,” which is the biggest faith there is. The faith of the Consuming Fire of God raised Jesus from the dead; that same FAITH has already done the same for us – Pro-determination.

Ruling Verse 1: It was the faith of the Energeia of God Himself, God’s Pro-Determination, that raised Jesus out from death. As we come up from the waters of immersion, we KNOW that same Pro-Determination energeoing us into Life.

The Covenant: Jesus is the Bond of the Covenant, but the Covenant is God towards us. The fierce Love of Jesus towards us is only an expression of the far fiercer Love of God – God’s Pro-Determination – already causing our union with God, having already caused the removal of all that opposes.

Our Adversary. 13 And you, though you were once dead inside of the false steps and the lack of circumcision in your flesh, yet He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all the false steps, • 14 having erased and obliterated the legally written and binding decrees against us, which were set against us as our adversary, and He has removed it out of our midst, having already fully nailed it to the cross. • 15 Having renounced and stripped away the influencers, the sources, and the authorities, He exposed them, having triumphed over them in the speaking of confidence.

“The legally written and binding decrees against us” is the law, for the law has already condemned us to death. The testimony of the law, the fulfillment of the law, is one thing only – the decree of your EXECUTION as a criminal.

The Triumphus. Paul references the Roman “triumphus” a second time, followed by the word “parrhesia,” the speaking of confidence.

Paul is saying something extraordinary about the law. The serpent did not place the tree of the knowledge of good and evil into the garden, God did. Neither did the serpent give the law, the knowledge of sin, of right and wrong, to Moses, God did. Yet the serpent uses both to twist humans away from Life. The accusations against God and against His word, coming against all Christians, use the law as their hammer or whip. The influencers and authorities use the law to convince people to turn from Christ to self and then condemn them as failures. In the Triumphus, as all such anti-warriors are enchained, all the people shout in great celebration of all Victory already all.

Our Protector and Our Faith. Definition: The Cross is our protection from all that opposes, NOT our failure to “obey.” The law seeks to kill us, NOT the Cross, which has already “nailed” the death of the law. It is an evil spirit that turns our Protector into our adversary!

Ruling Verse 5 & 7: In the intimacy of entering into union with us, Jesus gives us His Faith, that all that opposes is gone. The joining of that Faith and the Cross then becomes the Triumphus, the shouting celebration of all Victory, that all lying influencers are stripped and silenced.

Ruling Verse 4: Demons twist the meaning of “the Cross and the flesh” into the hearing of many, teaching them to “list their sins,” to weep over failure rather than celebrate Victory already complete. With the Faith of Jesus, we cast those accusers down. We leave them no place among our brethren.

All Kinds of Fakery. • 20 Since you have died together with Christ away from the fundamentals of the world, why do you subject yourself to rules as if living in the world? 21 ‘You shall not handle! You shall not taste! You shall not touch!’ 22 These things decay with the use, according to the religious injunctions and teachings of men, 23 which indeed contain a word of wisdom in religious self-desires and [false] humility and harsh treatment of the body. But these things are not of any value towards the filling up or satisfaction of [God’s purpose for] the flesh.

Paul is describing everything we once did as Christians in the fake practice of “subduing the flesh.” And he calls all of it “the fundamentals of the world.” The law of sin and death is always at war against the law of the Spirit of Life. The Galatian departure from Christ was towards “subduing the flesh.”

God’s Purpose for the Flesh. But consider my insertion of the words “God’s purpose for” the flesh. This is something Nicene theology does NOT allow, that God has a wondrous purpose for human flesh. Yet it is Colossians 1:24-29 joined with Romans 8:23-27, Romans 12:1-2, and 2 Corinthians 5:17-19 that allows us to make such a bold insertion, entirely out from Paul, of the meaning of the flesh.

Definition: The world lives by the knowledge of right and wrong, by external rules and by the fear of punishment. In response to this way of thinking, some abuse their bodies in a failed effort to somehow “please God.” Human flesh, our dying bodies, are for God’s purposes, however, as a living offering given to God for the sake of others (see Colossians 1:24-25 & Romans 8:26-27 & 12:2).

God and Us Made Visible. (Chapter 3) 1 • Since you have already been raised together with Christ, seek and enquire of the things above, where Christ is sitting inside of the right hand of God. • 2 Think in your gut, in your own self-story and identity, the things above, and not the things upon the earth. • 3 For you have already and fully died, and your life has been hidden together with Christ inside of God. • 4 When Christ your life becomes visible and clear [to you], then you also will become visible, clearly with Him inside of glory.

The word “above” is metaphorical or figurative. As Jesus said, “Everything I have said about the Father up until now has been figurative.” The walk of the Atonement, then, is God literal. What humans call “above,” God calls idolatry, and what God calls “above,” humans despise as “beneath” of them. 

God Becoming Our Story of Self. Colossians 3:1 must be understood only as Ruling Verse 6, that Jesus has already carried us into God, and that here inside of God, we are directed to approach everything we find, to know God and to make God our own. In fact, Paul is directing us to make the things of God to be our story of self.

Ruling Verse 6: Jesus alone carries us into God, and He already has, for we are inside of Him in His resurrection and ascension, even in His authority. Our task inside of God is to learn of a God who is meek and lowly of heart and who walks beneath, lifting others up. This quality that humans despise, God calls “above.”

Speak Christ: Our task is to bring the Words that God speaks into our own consciousness, into our own story of self, without reference to what is already dead, but knowing that we LIVE life inside of Christ inside of God.

Defining Christ Jesus. We must also change our definition of “Christ,” for Jesus is not some little entity far away somewhere “at the right hand of God.” This infantile and perverse definition of Christ Jesus is truly evil, the most powerful success of the spell caster. You see, we cannot know ourselves without knowing Jesus first.

Ruling Verse 10: We know the Father by knowing Jesus Sent into us. Christ “at the right hand of God” is not some little thing far away from us. Just as God is all here now, so also Christ Jesus shares form with God as a life-giving Spirit. We are inside of this Jesus and He is inside of us right now. His authority is alongside of God inside of us.

Ruling Verse 5: Christ Jesus is our life, our only life, for everything not-Christ is already gone. We know His union with us in intimacy, and as we know Him so we are with Him.

To Put to Death. • 5 Regard as already dead (put to the one death of Christ), therefore, the members which are upon the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil, strong desire, and covetousness or desire for advantage, which is idolatry. 6 Through these things is coming the angry opposition of God on the sons of willful refusal and unbelief, 7 in which you also once walked when you were living in them.

The word is nekroó – to death. “To put to death, to render ineffective, to deprive of power.” The ENTIRE question is HOW? One method of fulfilling this Gospel command flows through faith into completion and LIFE. The other method rejects Jesus and worships sin and self in utter dishonesty. I KNOW both methods.

Seeing Jesus. Yes, Christians fornicate and lust and seek to dominate others for malicious reasons and practice every wicked thing under the sun, and then go to church the next Sunday. And yes, God wants us NOT to practice those things.

The entire question is – HOW? How do we stop doing wicked things? How do we stop abusing other people? All Christianity recognizes the role of Jesus in some way, but then they send Him away from themselves. They place “moral responsibility,” the tree of knowing right and wrong, upon themselves; they all IGNORE the Tree of Life.

Life is something entirely different. Life is Christ Jesus inside of us for REAL, actively saving us, actively engaging with us first, actively connecting us with God, actively making us to be just like Himself. To look “above” is to SEE Jesus inside.

A Greater How. There is only one death, Hebrews 10:12-14; we place ourselves only into that one death, yes. But putting that one death upon ourselves means far more than we have known. It means HOW God comes through us into our world.

The Covenant: There is only one death (see Hebrews 10:12-14). The entire question is – HOW? How do we stop doing wicked things? How do we stop abusing other people? One “way” is self-dying that is worse than fake. The other Way is Life. Life is Christ Jesus inside of us for REAL, actively saving us, actively engaging with us first, actively connecting us with God, actively making us to be just like Himself.

Speak Christ: We acknowledge that Jesus already placed our sins into His empty grave, that He already carries our ongoing sin as our Scapegoat. Jesus alone saves us from doing wrong.

Ruling Verse 6. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to, connects with, cleaves to, the Father except THROUGH Me.”

There are two ways to deal with the actions of sin. One “way” is self-effort, “mortifying” our own evil propensities. This “way” is entirely fake, leaving its victims in death. The other Way is a Living Way, that is, Jesus Himself.

By His own Blood, through His own Flesh, in all that we are, including our sin and our shame, Jesus has already carried us entirely into God. We are inside of the Father inside of Jesus. And here inside of God, Jesus causes us to know the Father even as we know Him. We give all ongoing actions of stupidity to God, as David did, knowing that God alone saves us; we do not save ourselves. As we place our “earthly members” only into God, we discover a God who SAVES.

Only One Way. Every time in my life when I observed “self-mortification,” I was struck by how WRONG it seemed to be, how untrue, how twisted, somehow. I realize now that maybe the best way to set out God’s choice between two, two trees, two minds, two covenants, is to use “two ways.” You see, “two ways” allows us to place the issue of “the Cross and the flesh” into the light.

It’s evident to all that the way of self-mortification accomplishes NOTHING, because, as Hebrews points out, you have to keep doing it over and over forever, like Sisyphus. Every moment spent “listing your sins” is a moment NOT spent knowing the Father, which alone is LIFE. But to convince our brethren that Jesus actually is the Way, we have to show them Jesus Himself already inside of them.

Let’s Pray Together. “God our Father, we thank You that Jesus has carried us into You, that we live every moment hidden entirely inside of You, that You are our Safety and our Joy. Father, we ask that You would take our every moment inside these bodies of flesh and make it to be Your path into Your Church, that all our Christian brethren would know that they also live only inside of You.

“Father, our lives, including every moment of pain and every moment of joy, belong to You. And in every moment, we give You the authority You have given to us, that GOODNESS might flow through our life in the flesh for the sake of others. Father, You are meek and lowly of Heart, You lift others up, and we are hidden forever entirely inside of You.”