57. Our Victory
Covering 1 John Chapter 5:3 to 3 John:
Our Victory, Ruling Verse 4, Revelation 12:10-11, is the action, the deepest meaning of following Jesus, of being just like Him. Although it includes our personal victory against all accusation, it is much larger than that, for it is Victory over all accusation for the sake of our brothers and sisters all over the world. Our Victory is the certain outcome of “And we also.” It is the deepest union with the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.”
We will see that John continues to write out from the deep metaphor of Jesus planted inside our earth as every Word God speaks now become each of us in our individual distinctions and all of us together as the Church.
The Completion. The standing forth of many new seeds, just like Jesus, is the Completion of Jesus and our Victory.
I want to look at everything in the remainder of John Chapter 5 as the culmination, the completion, of the many seeds now like Jesus, as His Life flowing through them, as the Church of Jesus Christ, the end result of all God’s meaning and Desire. This is not the Church as the plant in-between, a Church who does not know what she is. This is the Church as the Completion, the Revelation of the Glory of God forever.
That is our view, yet we still must apply everything to our present in-part ability to see and to know. Also, I am completing this lesson at the same time that I am completing Lesson 51, “The Spirit of Truth.” These two lessons are incredibly related together.
The Demonstration of Love. Then we have this most exciting development, that our study of “God Is Love” has given to us a range of different and specific qualities of what Love out from God really is. To be “conceived out from God” is to be conceived out from Love.
Yet consider Revelation 12. What is the first thing we do coming out from God-Love into creation? We are flung head long into war, into casting down the accuser for the sake of all Christians, into the agony of travail, that the Church might be clothed with God. “And we also,” “set forth soul,” the Resurrection Seed-Life of the Lamb through us, is the central CORE of Ruling Verse 4.
Revelation 12 is the demonstration of Love.
Two Huge Verses. (Chapter 5) • 4 For all who have been conceived out from God overcome the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith. • 5 Who then is the one who overcomes the world, if not the one who believes that Jesus is the Son out from God?
These two verses are huge. We must take them apart bit by bit. To be conceived out from God is by a Living and Energeoing Word, that is, this Flow of Gospel Word becoming the Word of our testimony. To “overcome the world” is not an escape; it is an expulsion. Here is that expulsion. These possess the authority to the heavens, that no rain should fall in the days of their prophecy (read all of Revelation 11:5-6 in this meaning). We cause the flow of anointing upon false theology to cease.
Victory Is Faith. Victory is faith; faith is Victory. We must define both as applied to Ruling Verse 4, the final demonstration of Love.
4-5 Ruling Verse 4: 1 John 5:4-5 defines for us the personal meaning of “to overcome” as it is used in Revelation 12:11 as well as Revelation Chapters 2-3. We enter into the meaning of “to overcome” out from knowing the Flow of Gospel Word by which we are conceived out from God.
4 Definition: Victory is our faith. Our faith is Victory. The depths of this meaning will increase forever. We are speaking of victory over the world, of casting all demons out of the human experience, and all Victory over death itself.
4-5 Definition: Jesus out from God is every Word God speaks. Faith connects directly with each Word, asking and knowing that it is True, that it is Jesus making us to be just like Himself.
The Mighty Flow. Believing into Jesus seems a small and simple thing, and it actually is. Yet it is also the most powerful thing given to humans, vast in its extent, and unending in its depths. The term “the Son of God” can mean a separation between Jesus and us. But translating the possessive as “out from,” that is, “the Son out from God,” a fully accurate translation, means the mighty Flow of God through Jesus through us.
4-5 Definition: To overcome is to believe that Jesus, as the mighty Flow of every Word God speaks, causes our lives to be with Him for the sake of His Church. To overcome is to live turned around inside of God, now God’s way into creation.
5 Ruling Verse 4: We overcome, we defeat the world, not by “fighting against” anything humans are doing to each other, but through the mightiest “deliverance service” in history.
Removing the Break. • 6 This is the one who has come through water and blood; not inside of water only but inside of water and inside of blood. • And the Spirit is the One testifying, the witness, because the Spirit is the Truth. • 8 The Spirit, the water, and the blood: these three are together into one [the Church].
Do you see how it is that the insertion of a false and un-Biblical line denoting “the Trinity” breaks the meaning of the Gospel, preventing all from knowing that the Spirit is on our side of things, and that God’s focus and glory is the Church. Indeed, the insertion of verse 7, which John did not write, for it was not in his mind or God’s, contributes also to breaking our victory away from our love for all our Christian brethren, and forcing it into “the great struggle against sin” practiced by those who eat of the tree of death.
Out from Jesus’ Side. The outcome of all Victory is the Church, communities of Christ among all the peoples. Verses 6 & 8 together are again a vast picture to us, one which we must fully grasp. Verse 6 begins by speaking of the Son out from God, coming into us through both water and blood. Verse 8 is speaking of the Church in Acts 2. We must begin with what John asserted was True. – But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear and immediately out came blood and water (John 19:34).
6-8 Definition: John is referring directly to his powerful assertion that he indeed saw blood and water flowing out from Jesus’ pierced side, flowing down into the earth (John 19:34). This picture is the same as shown in Genesis 2, that God draws Jesus’ bride, the Church, out from His side.
Our Beloved Church. The Church is three things together, the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood. These correspond to the Blood of the Lamb, the Word of our Testimony, and – sharing with the Travail of the Spirit.
6 Ruling Verse 3: The “water and blood” (Word and Life) picture the Church out from Jesus’ side. The Spirit into the Church is the fulness of Christ (see Ephesians 1:23). Church and Spirit are always together and cannot be separated.
8 Definition: The Church, the assemblies of believers, is the Bride of Christ, you and me just like Jesus, with all our brethren in our hearts carried into God. The Church, our Beloved, receives Seed from God (see 1 Peter 1:23), that she might bring forth Life, the knowledge of God, into all.
8 The Form for God through Jesus: The Temple, the Body, the Church, the Bride, many sons inside of glory, all speak of God’s form inside of creation.
We Have the LIFE! • 11 And this is the testimony, that the life unfolding the ages God has given to us, and this life is inside of His Son. 12 The one who possesses the Son has the life; the one who does not possess the Son out from God does not have the life. • 13 These things I have written to you who are believing inside of the name of the Son out from God, that you might know that you possess age-unfolding life, and that you might actively believe into the name and character of the Son out from God.
John is writing Chapter 5 “with all guns blazing.” Verses 11-12 are again huge – the possession of LIFE!
11-12 Ruling Verse 10: John is referring back to John 5:26. This is God’s own LIFE, given utterly to us, that every next step, we share LIFE with God. Verse 12 is another way of saying John 14:20, the Source and Place of LIFE!
A Covenant of Life. The Life of God, that is, His movement and Flow, always with purpose, is not something apart from God Himself. To say “God-Life” is to say God living and energeoing, that is, God always Self-causing AND always causing all. But note, we have God-Life only because we possess the Son. Thus the Covenant is a Covenant of Life.
11-12 Life: Life is movement with purpose, within and without. The Life of God, His movement and flow, is not something apart from God Himself. God, living and energeoing, is God Self-causing and causing all.
13 Covenant: The Life of God is inside of Christ Jesus, this One into whom we believe, that is, who makes us to be like Himself, His name and character. This Son is our Covenant of Life, that we share every next moment with God forever.
The Deepest Level of Asking. • 14 And this is the confidence, the freedom to speak boldly, that we have towards Him, that if we ask anything concerning the details of His desire, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears us, we know that whatever we might ask, we possess the requests we have asked upon Him.
Refer back to Lesson 51, “The Spirit of Truth,” to slides “Sliding Scale” and “Step by Step Forever.” We now take our asking into the meaning of Victory, the Community of Christ coming out from “And we also.” John is preparing us for the mind-blowing reality hidden in 1 John 5:16.
14-15 Ruling Verse 7: God’s DESIRE is the Church, His dwelling place forever. God’s DESIRE is a highway into His Church, that He might come Home. We ask for nothing less, and in asking, we possess utterly all that we ask.
The Giving of Love. 1 John 5:14-15 are incredibly clear and powerful to all that I teach. God WANTS His Word fulfilled; God WANTS His Church made pure, that He might be God through her. To ask out from God’s DESIRE is to share Heart with God. This asking and knowing is God’s Door into revealing Himself.
14-15 Kingdom: What does God WANT? What God wants is the Covenant fulfilled (see Hebrews 8:7-12). God wants His Word proven True in our hearts and His Church made pure as His dwelling place, filled with His glory revealed. For this fulfillment of God’s desire, Jesus gave Himself.
14-15 Ruling Verse 8: We ask God for our brethren, all whom He has brought into our lives and all in heaven-earth, that God would use every moment of our lives, given to Him inside of Love, for their sake, that they also might know God.
Life for Others. • 16 If anyone should see his brother sinning and disconnecting from God, though not towards death, he will ask, and He will give him life for those not disconnecting into death. There is a sin, a disconnection from God that goes all the way into death; I do not say that he should ask for life encompassing that one.
Consider this wickedness. Carnal men have read these words through the centuries, and yet never considered receiving LIFE from God that they might give LIFE to their brethren. Instead, they played the game of inventing the “seven deadly sins.” Magnifying sin means that they gave death to their victims, with no LIFE in their minds whatsoever. Yet for us, this verse contains the essence of our great task coming out from God and out from His throne.
The Song of the Lamb. We get LIFE from God, that we might give that LIFE to our brothers and sisters. The BLOOD is God’s answer to “sin.”
16 Ruling Verse 3: God gives us Life, that we might give that same Life to our brothers and sisters. It is the Spirit that gives Life. The words God speaks into us are now the same words we speak into our brothers and sisters that they might LIVE, that they might KNOW Father with them.
16 Definition: Only one who refuses God elaborates on “the seven deadly sins.” Sin is refusing God. Refusing God kills, that is, it leaves such a one in hating God for no reason.
16 Ruling Verses 6 & 8: The Blood of the Lamb Slain, the Jesus who shares all that He is with us, is God’s antidote to all sin and death, already accomplished. “And we also” (1 John 3:16), is the expression of our deep Love for all who belong to Jesus.
A Mighty Contrast. • 18 We know that everyone who has been conceived out from God does not sin, does not fall short of complete connection with God, but the one who has been conceived out from God, God Himself protects and guards him, and the evil one does not touch or influence him. • 19 We know that we are out from God, and the whole, entire world-cosmos is set inside of the evil one.
What a mighty contrast. Refusing to live inside the embrace of Father and Son is SIN. Because we live inside the Flow of Jesus as the Vine, through us the branches, becoming His Love through us for one another, we are KEPT by God.
In being kept by God, we know that whatever twisted emotion we might feel, it belongs to God, and never to evil. I am beginning to know this mighty contrast between living out from God and the utter darkness of this entire world.
Sons Defeating the World. I contend with you, dear reader. Do not believe ANYTHING the world tells you; do not support anything this world does. Do not be found at war against the Lamb. The entire world is found inside the sway of him who steals, kills, and destroys.
18 Definition: A son of God lives inside of and comes always out from God through Jesus. Refusing to live inside the embrace of Father and Son is SIN. Because we live inside the Flow of Jesus as the Vine, through us the branches, becoming His Love through us for one another, we are KEPT by God, and we know that whatever twisted emotion we might feel, it belongs to God, and never to evil.
19 Kingdom: The Kingdom and the world are opposed in every conceivable way. Do not believe ANYTHING the world tells you; do not support anything this world does. The entire world is found inside the sway of him who steals, kills, and destroys.
The Entirety of John’s Gospel. • 20 More than that, we know that the Son out from God is presently and actively come [is present, has already arrived] and has given us an understanding, a through-mind, • so that we might know Him who is the true; and we are inside of Him who is the true, inside of His Son, Jesus Christ. • We are speaking of the true God and the life that unfolds the ages.
In this one verse, John sums up the entirety of the Gospel unveiled to him. Even the Calvinist translators could not alter these words into a Jesus NOT come here and now.
20 Ruling Verse 3: It is the Spirit that causes us to know. The entrance of the Spirit into us, then becomes the entrance of Jesus Christ, as the Spirit causes us to know Him as our only Life. The word John uses is dianoia, through the mind in our brains – into our hearts, into our knowing that Jesus inside of us is REAL.
Defining Jesus Here and Now. As I am writing this, I am also about to write the comments for John 17:1-3, the definition of age-unfolding life. I see that those three verses are tied directly to 1 John 5:20. We must place them together to have the larger picture.
20 Ruling Verse 10: God sent Jesus into us that we might know God through knowing Jesus. In order for that to happen, the Word God speaks must pass through our intellectual knowing, by the Spirit, into our heart-gut knowing. God becomes True inside of us when we believe that He is.
20 Definition: Jesus is all here now. If He were not, if Jesus were far away, up there “somewhere,” coming only “someday,” then we could never know God and we could never live. Jesus has come to us with the Father to make their Home in intimate participation with us (see John 14:23). Do you believe this, that God is True?
Our Response. • 21 Little children, keep yourselves from the idols. – This is our response to the mighty things John has written into us all the way through 1 John. – We run into God.
What is an idol? An idol is a mental image to which is imparted meaning, even though it has no meaning. It is every carnal way by which God is perceived, a “God” who knows evil. We see God only through Jesus inside of us, sharing all with us, having already carried us out from death into all the knowledge of God. We see only out from God, with eyes of Fire.
Ruling Verses 5, 6, & 7: An idol is seeing God through any other image than the Jesus inside of us, who shares all with us, having already carried us into the Father. We see Jesus alone, already sharing intimate union with us. We have run into our Father, kept already from all that is evil. We walk entirely out from God.
Our Victory. 1 John 5:1-2 is the bridge between “God is Love” and our Victory for the sake of the Church. We Love God; we believe into Jesus; we love one another out from God, and all who belong to Jesus. Before continuing into 2 and 3 John, let’s list the incredible things God plants into us through all of Chapter 5. Yet for our understanding, I want to adjust the order from John’s circular thinking to a more linear thinking.
1. The overall topic is our Victory for the sake of the Church, God preparing us in all for Revelation Chapter 12.
2. The place of our Victory is living inside of Jesus, but in a very specific way. We are conceived out from God by the Flow of Living Word, making us like Jesus. Yet inside of Jesus, we see and love all who are here with us as well.
Bringing Everything into God. 3. The goal of our Victory is the Church made pure and prepared for a God who fills her with His Glory. We return always to Jesus as His Bride drawn out from His side.
4. Because Jesus Himself is inside of us, we possess as our own the very Life that is God, His movement with purpose energeoing us inside of us and in the sharing of every next step together.
5. We ask God for the sake of our brethren. We ask God for LIFE that we might give that same Life, knowing God-with-me, to all our Christian brethren.
6. We dwell inside of God, kept from all evil.
7. We know the Father through knowing Jesus Sent into us, that we are just like Him. Like Jesus, we bring our brethren with us into the Father, that we might know God together.
Believe and Love. ( 2 John) • 4 I rejoiced exceedingly because I have learned of your children walking inside of truth, just as we received full completion in intimate participation with the Father. 5 And now I implore you, my lady, not as if I am writing a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the start, • that we should love one another. 6 And this is love, that we should walk according to His full completion. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the start, so that you should walk inside of it.
John’s second letter is a repeat in short form of his first. The two bullet points here are the same work of God. – Believe into Jesus and Love one another. John said that the Spirit is Truth, thus we walk inside of Spirit. I want to add to our understanding of Ruling Verse 3.
To Walk in the Truth. There is a mind that turns these instructions away from loving one another out from God, and all the doing such Love brings with it – into human deeds performed in order to, somehow, connect with God.
We have already received full completion in intimate participation with the Father.
4-6 Ruling Verse 3: To walk in the Truth is to walk in God’s Spirit given to us, causing us to know every Word Jesus is, now made complete inside of us. To walk in the Truth is to live turned around, to be now that channel for God to enter into our world and into the knowledge of all.
4-6 Ruling Verse 8: Loving one another is the full completion we have received inside this LIFE now shared in intimate participation with the Father.
Journey Well. (3 John) • 2 Beloved, I pray that in all things you would journey well and prosperously and be wholesome and of good health, just as your soul journeys well and prosperously. 3 For I rejoiced exceedingly when brothers came and testified of your truth, just as you are walking inside of truth. • 4 I have no greater joy that that I should hear of my children walking inside of the truth.
In his third letter, John places a new little spin on the same word in all three letters. I love the expression, “Journey well.” Age-unfolding Life means to journey well forever. Inside of the word “journey” is every next step we share with God. And inside of the word “well” is all the goodness of God flowing through us into the lives of others, a goodness in which we dwell, a goodness that fills our souls and our daily life together.
Abundance Flowing Through. God is Abundance flowing through us to others. When God Abundance is for others, then we are made whole. Our own prosperity comes from the prospering of others inside of God. Every next step is God through us forever.
2 Kingdom: To journey well is Kingdom, God, just being Himself through us into our world. God is Abundance flowing through us to others. When God Abundance is for others, then we are made whole. Our own prosperity comes from the prospering of others inside of God. Every next step is God through us forever.
4 Ruling Verse 3: To walk inside of Truth is to walk inside of the Flow of Spirit causing us to see and to know God inside of Jesus inside of us. To walk inside of Truth is to see and know that we are just like Jesus, God through us into our world.
Seeing Further. Just as we did in our study of 1 John in Writing the Jesus Secret, so we now want to place the massive meanings of John’s letters as our entrance into John’s vision of the Apocalypse, which he defines clearly in 1 John. In this Flow of Gospel Word, we see far more than in Writing the Jesus Secret, yet that enabled us to know this now.
For years I defined the Unveiling as God removing the cover of our outer flesh nature so that Christ would be seen in us. As I have written out from union with Christ and no consciousness of sins, I have realized that the “cover” is the blindness of our eyes, that we do not see what is already True. But now, through such seeing, and through this Flow of Gospel Word through John’s letters into John’s vision, I see something further.
The Riddle Again. In planting Jesus as the One Seed of God inside of us, God planted more than “Life,” He planted Resurrection Life in us. Resurrection Life – is – that which carries others into God. And it’s not just “seeing Jesus,” but much more, seeing the Love of Jesus for us. In fact, in Ruling Verse 2, Paul places KNOWING such Love in-between Christ in our hearts and being filled with all the fulness of God.
“By this we know Love” has become very, very large.
Let’s go back to our riddle, from John 14. ~ It was impossible for Jesus to show us reciprocal Love, for there was none other like Himself. God is made fully visible only as MANY “Jesus’s” Love one Another. Thus we have the words, “This is My full completion – that you love one another exactly as I love you.” ~
The Light Bulb. Then this, also from John 14, “Inside of Me.” ~ Being made compatible with God, now we can KNOW Him. Now we can sing with His singing, write with His writing, laugh with His joy, care with His compassion. There is no end to God, nor an end to what He shares of Himself with us. ~
The evil statement “Jesus is God, and you are not” comes out from a truly wicked perception of God as one who knows evil.
Let me give the illustration of a light bulb as our full compatibility with God. Edison’s first successful filament was carbon, which was replaced later with tungsten as the discharge point that turned electricity into light. Both carbon and tungsten speak of our humanity. The flow of electricity-in is God as our Source, but it is our humanity that turns that power into Light – God made visible.
The Discharge Point. Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world.” Yet no one believed that they saw God for real when they looked at Him. It would be 65 years before Christians knew that Jesus said, “The one who sees Me sees the Father,” not until John wrote it down. Yet this same Jesus had been planted in the Church, to make us to be just like Himself.
The “discharge point,” where the electricity becomes light, is not a solitary human, but rather RECIPROCITY, the discharge point is LOVE going back and forth among believers in Jesus. By this we KNOW Love – And we also. By the end of 2011, 1 John 3:16 had poked its nose under my tent and kept sticking itself into my writing, uncalled for. Now it has become EVERYTHING inside our tent forever.
The Unveiling. There is another word for “By this we know Love” becoming “And we also.” That word is Resurrection Life – and the Apocalypse – the Unveiling, and God manifest in the flesh, and the Song, the Symphony, of the Lamb. We are utterly COMPATIBLE with God as humans forever, for it is the FLOW of God, passing from one to the other as Love Among us, that becomes God seen and known to all creation forever. – Life forevermore.
And no chapter in the Bible shows us the real, the raw meanings of this LOVE for One Another that is God made visible than Revelation Chapter 12. Ruling Verse 4 is the action of the discharge of God upon us.
Clothed with the Sun. Finally, consider the electrical theory of the universe, that our sun does not generate light out from itself. Rather, the sun is the discharge point for the flow of electricity coming down the arm of the galaxy. The sun itself is a giant gas “planet” like Saturn. Because it is the largest object in the solar system, it receives most of the discharge of electricity. That means that the light and heat of the sun is a garment, far out beyond the body of the sun itself. This fact is confirmed by all evidence.
Thus we are saying that the flow of God-Life and God-Love, discharging upon the Church of Jesus Christ, BECOMES God-as-Love-Among-Us, the woman clothed with the sun. And in her LIGHT, all will be gathered, as Isaiah said.