54. Walk as Jesus Walked

Covering 1 John Chapter 1 to 2:19:

I have four lessons for John’s three letters. This gives me space to expand if I so need. My plan is to write all four at once, a bit at a time, in conjunction with writing the lessons for John’s Gospel. I write the majority of the in-between first, which means that by the time I fill in the Gospel Comments in red, I will be further along in John’s Gospel. In fact, I can finalize the Comments for 1 John while I am writing Lesson 50. “Love One Another,” and Ruling Verse 8, part of which is 1 John 3:16.

I am beginning these four lessons while writing on John 7 and Ruling Verse 3. Since the anointing of the Spirit that enables us to know is part of John’s concern in his letters, Rivers of Spirit is a great starting point.

Being Made Like Jesus. Having just completed “The Bread of Life,” it is now clear to me, as I insert all the Gospel Verses into these lessons for John’s letters, that John’s topic is how we are to be like Jesus. This makes being made just like the Lord Jesus central to John’s Gospel, and not a peripheral and irrelevant side show. It also means that there are continual direct connections between the things Jesus says concerning Himself in the gospel with how we are like Him in the epistles. Being made like Jesus is the goal of the Gospel; it is the completion of our Salvation.

This is excellent because we are now able to look in depth at what it means to be just like the Lord Jesus, something that is completely different from the false imagery held by most.

Relationship with the Father. Through my years in the move fellowship, the injunction that we “ought to” walk just as Jesus walked was a threat, a great weight of obligation. The fact that we imagined failure made us then believe that we were at fault. Walking AS Jesus walked has nothing to do with outward performance, but everything to do with relationship with the Father. LIFE has to do with Source. Death is the back and forth of outward performance. “Walking on water” is sin for one whose source is not the Father, but self.

And this is exactly where John begins. He begins with Life and with the Source of Life. He begins by placing you and me into the very Fellowship flowing back and forth between Father and Son. Out from participation in this divine Fellowship, so we walk. Fellowship is the essence of our Source.

The Central Theme. I have one more thought before we start. I have titled these four lessons on John’s letters as “Walk as Jesus Walked,” “And We Also,” “God Is Love,” and “Our Victory.” Clearly, elements of our victory are found throughout all the chapters of John’s letters. The same is true of the other titles. When I wrote the lessons for Timothy and Titus, I found such goodness in framing each lesson by its title, even while showing how each of those topics is found in all three letters. We will find the same thing with John’s letters.

Yet the central single theme that prevails in all is 1 John 3:16, “And we also.” That is, we will be searching for the deepest understanding of how it is that the heart of being made like Jesus is sharing with Him in joining others with God. In fact I now know exactly what Father and Son did that saves us.

Our Fellowship. (Chapter 1) • 1 That which was from the beginning or source; that which we have heard; that which we have seen with our eyes; that which we have gazed upon to comprehend, and our hands have touched and handled encompassing the Word of life; • 2 and the life was made visible, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the life that unfolds the ages, which is reciprocating with the Father and was made visible to us; • 3 that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you also might have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is companionship with and among the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.

Consider now what I wrote in “Rivers of Living Water,” how you and I are saved by God giving us to Jesus even as Jesus gave us to God. We live inside the embrace of Father and Son.

The Meaning of Life. John is trying to convey the intimate qualities of the Person who is the Word of Life, in His relationship with John and the others. “Our hands have touched” makes that relationship personally real. We need a definition of “Personal.”

John also gives us a significant view of the meaning of “Life.” Since John’s overall topic is “Life,” we must capture his meaning. He repeats twice that Life was made visible to them, this very Life which continuously reciprocates with the Father. We see, we hear, we bear witness, we proclaim, all as part of our response to and relationship with that Life – who is now inside of us, living as us. But more than all of that, John takes us, that is, takes our fellowship as believers together, and places us into the Personal and Reciprocal Flow of Life and Love happening inside the Fellowship of Father and Son.

God Is Personal. Typically, fellowship and age-unfolding life would be topics inside of Kingdom, but here I want to place them in Covenant.

Definition: “Personal” is one’s awareness of self and those things that matter to one’s self. God is first Personal. And in knowing Himself and what matters the most to Him, He extends that same quality to every person whom He brings forth out from Himself.

Life: Life is utterly personal to Jesus and to us. – “My hands have touched.” We value Jesus because He values us first. Inside of personalness, we KNOW the Father, which is Life, for Jesus continuously connects Father with us, sharing Life.

Covenant: Jesus places us, by Covenant, inside the embrace, inside the dynamic Fellowship of Father and Son. We live only inside the reciprocal Flow of Their Love for One Another.

Our Joy Complete. • 4 And these things we write, that our joy and delight might be made full and complete.

Joy – Complete! These are loaded words, filled with great meaning. – Who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross (Hebrews 12). Jesus’ joy and our joy is the Church. The word “our” means Father, Son, you, and me. “Complete” always means the end result of all that Salvation is and means.

Kingdom: Our joy and delight is the same shared with Jesus, that is, the Church set before us (see Hebrews 12:2). In fact, “our” refers to all of us, Father, Son, and you and me together. Our joy is a Church made full and complete, many walking in daily life together, loving one another with pure hearts fervently, the revelation and Glory of the Father.

The Community of Christ. Now, John places our fellowship as believers together into the Fellowship of Father and Son. This means family; it means Christian Community. Consider how John begins his introduction with Source and ends it with Fellowship. Life is Source, AND – Life is walking daily together. Life is God in Fellowship inside Community, brethren walking together in unity, Life forevermore.

The Form for God through Jesus: Life is Personal. Life begins with God as Source and then, through Jesus, becomes Fellowship, God inside His Church. The fellowship we share together inside Christian Community is found always inside the Fellowship of Father and Son. Life is God in Fellowship inside Community, brethren walking together in unity, Life forevermore (see Psalm 133).

The Message. • 5 And this is the message that we have heard from Him, and declare to you, that God is light, and inside of Him is no darkness, not at all. • 6 If we should say that we have fellowship with Him, and yet should walk in darkness, we lie and do not do the truth. • 7 If, however, we should walk inside of the light, as He is inside of the light, we have fellowship in companionship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin and disconnection from God. • 8 If we should say that we do not have sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not inside of us. • 9 If we should acknowledge our sin and disconnection, He is faithful and just, that He might remove from us our sins and might cleanse us from all injustice and hurt.

I found that I could not separate this, but need it as one thought together in order to draw out its full meaning.

Light, not Sin. Many of our Christian brethren have isolated 1 John 1:8-9 from anything John says before and after and use it to define themselves as “sinners by nature,” adding to their wrongful use of Paul’s “struggle against sin” in Romans 7. Early on in my Christian life, I saw that John states his reason for writing these things in the next chapter. – “I am writing so that you do not sin.” – A life without sin is the reason.

The Flow of Gospel Word then shows us that everything in verses 5-9 is a whole together, and we find the meaning only as we go from living inside of divine Fellowship to the full meaning and scope of the Propitiation in 1 John 2:1-2. But the meaning of verses 5-9 is not ruled by vague definitions of “sin,” but rather by a profound and clear definition of God. – God is LIGHT.

God Is Light. As we have seen, the setting is the Community of the Church inside of the Fellowship that is God. “SIN,” then, does not possess an amorphous, all-pervasive meaning like “spirit.” Rather, “sin” is very practical – anything that disrupts or hinders the good flow of fellowship and joy.

God is Light, and inside of Him is NO darkness.

Light is the ability to see. Light is consciousness; light is the awareness of personhood. Light is the recognition of self and others. Light understands the heart of each. As I walked through Walmart yesterday, I observed the shadow of sorrow on individual people. I saw the grief of their hearts and their longing for Life and Love. I saw that the one who condemns is anti-God, for God is the One who carries.

Understanding God First. We cannot understand “sin” if we do not understand God.

Definition: God is Light, and inside of Him is NO darkness. Light is the ability to see. Light is consciousness; light is the awareness of personhood. Light is the recognition of self and others. Light understands the heart of each.

Definition: God knows nothing of any hiding or of any twisting of His thoughts. God sees and knows fully every thought He possesses concerning each one of us forever. Those thoughts are God Himself before Jesus speaks them as us. God sees us only by His own thoughts.

Definition: To walk in darkness is to refuse to acknowledge God. God has no comprehension of such a way of thinking. To walk in darkness is to live in and by God, yet twisting all our thoughts as if we are a self without God.

What We “Do” with Sin. Definition: To walk in the light is to place ourselves in full acknowledgment into God, in all that we are, as we find ourselves to be, including all of our sin and our shame. “This is me, God, and I belong utterly to You. You alone save me.”

Ruling Verse 6: Jesus Himself, by Himself, cleanses us from all that is sin and connects us utterly with the Father.

Ruling Verse 2: To dwell inside of Love and to be filled with all of God requires no sufficiency in self, but all sufficiency in God. This quality is John’s meaning in verses 5-9.

Definition: To call one’s self as, “I am a sinner, I am a sinner,” by these verses is to refuse Jesus and to walk in darkness.

Ruling Verse 6: The recognition that “I NEED Jesus” is our part of being carried by Him into no consciousness of sins.

The Resolution. (Chapter 2) • 1 My little children, I am writing these things to you, that you might not disconnect from God, and if anyone should sin in disconnecting from God, we have One close to us, always connecting us with the Father [and Father with us], Jesus Christ, the Justly Innocent One. • 2 And He is the propitiation and resolution [the Mercy Seat], encompassing and rendering inoperative our sins and disconnection from God; but not encompassing ours only, but also encompassing the sins of the entire world-cosmos.

If sin were a “thing” in itself, an all-pervasive “nature,” a black morass from which there is no escape, then the hopelessness of Nicene Christianity would be justified, with death as the only escape. The horror of such a way of thinking is that “sin, sin, sin,” is actually worship, making sin to be source or “god.”

Our Propitiation. But if sin is nothing more than the refusal to acknowledge God this moment, not placing ourselves in all that we are into God, not acknowledging Jesus our only life, then it is as the Bible says, psychotic schizophrenia for no reason whatsoever.

Definition: All created things live inside of God, inside of Light and Life and Love. Sin is nothing in itself, rather it is refusing to acknowledge God as all and to place ourselves into Him. To make sin to be “something” is to worship sin. To make God to be everything is to worship God.

Covenant: Jesus is our Propitiation; Jesus is always connecting us with God. God is more than we can comprehend; Jesus is one of us. Jesus wins our hearts to Himself and then shows us our Fellowship with the Father. In so doing, He makes sin to be obsolete, rendering it null and void.

You Have Answered Me. Definition: The last temptation of Christ was to believe falsely that God had forsaken Him. Out from this horror then came self hatred and contempt for others (see Psalm 22). Those things were not yet sin, for in the midst of them, Jesus called upon God. And then He spoke the words that joined us with God. “You have answered Me.” In giving Himself in all His human agony to God – through Faith, with us inside of Him, Jesus eliminated our disconnection from God.

Definition: Propitiation means the resolution of all differences, so that we can share life with God. It is the quality of Christ Jesus “giving Himself” to the Father for the Father’s sake and for ours. It’s meaning is shown to us by the Blood shed for us. This continuous giving of Himself forever, to join us with God, is called “the Lamb slain, yet now ALIVE.”

From Jesus to Us. The next lesson is, “By this we know love” – “and we also.” As we absorb this love into our consciousness, making it to be the only way we think and live, so we are able to become the same giving of ourselves to the Father for the sake of others. This transfer from Jesus to us, this organic sharing of “life given,” then becomes the cause of the Kingdom, which reaches out to include the elimination of ALL disconnection.

Ruling Verse 9: “Also encompassing the sins of the entire world-cosmos” is absolute, larger than all. Nothing can be excluded. By this Propitiation, we set creation free.

Kingdom: The Propitiation of Jesus is larger than the universe and absolute. As we reach out to include all created things, so the Blood brings all into the Kingdom, into a world of Life in which all know God as all inside of all.

The Same Relationship. The verse that is the topic for this lesson, walk as Jesus walked, can now be understood only out from the profound meanings John has just set in place.

• 5 The one who keeps, guards, and watches over His word, however, truly the love of God inside of him has already been completed. Inside of this [rest in completion], we know that we are inside of Him. • 6 The one who says, “I live and remain inside of Him,” is committed to walk in exactly the same way He Himself walked.

Those who eat of the knowledge of good and evil imagine that Jesus walked by outward performance – Hear and obey. But John places us into God and God into us, that is, the Tree of Life. To walk as Jesus walked is to walk inside the same relationship He enjoys right now with the Father.

How We Walk. Concern over self, the need to “get it right,” turns sin into something of itself. “That is sin.” Then, when God appears to them, they call themselves by sin, and thus get rid of God.

To keep guard over Word, that Jesus fulfills all that is God-Love already inside of us, is then to be concerned about loving one another. We no longer reference things as “sin.” The thing that matters is, does Love show itself in practical ways for those whom God has sent into my life, those who are God made visible to me? If Jesus had walked by law, He would have made everything evil. Jesus walked out from Spirit, already given, already glorified; therefore His concern was always other people. We take every next step shared with God, knowing the Father as Jesus does, thus we think about Loving others.

Light versus Darkness. If Jesus had walked by “hear and obey,” He would have been no different than the Pharisees, defining everything by “sin,” and being useless to God and to us. As we go forward through John’s letters, we set the issue, NOT as “sin,” but as all Light shining upon us, that we might know and experience God-Love flowing through us, lifting others up and meeting their needs.

When God said to me, “Son, you have a sectarian heart,” I placed myself into God, utterly and completely. “Yes, Father, You are right.” I trusted in Him, and He saved me. DARKNESS says, “It’s your fault. It’s my fault. – I did not. I do not. – No way. – I will try better next time. – I am such a loser.” Darkness is the worship of self inside the very presence of God. Darkness twists and perverts God’s thoughts concerning us.

From Covenant to Kingdom. Covenant: To keep, guard, and watch over the Words that are Jesus, His Gospel Words flowing into us, is first to believe that they are True, that God is telling us the Truth. Second, it is to acknowledge Jesus as those Words now written in our hearts as all Word fulfilled. Every next step with God then comes out from all Gospel Word fulfilled as Jesus inside of us.
 
Definition: How did Jesus walk? Jesus walked always out from a continuous, intimate, and acknowledged Fellowship with God inside of Him and He inside of God. Jesus never attempted to “obey” external word, for He could do nothing of Himself. Rather, He walked only out from the continual acknowledgement of “God through Me into My world.”

Kingdom: We walk in every next step as Jesus walked, KNOWING that God shares our lives with us in all.

The Issue Is Contempt. • 10 The one who loves his brother, lives and remains inside of the light and there is no means of stumbling [no ability to disconnect from God] inside of him. 11 The one, however, who contemptuously despises his brother is inside of the darkness [of dishonesty], and walks inside the darkness; and he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Adam chose wickedness because of his contempt. The issue is contempt, meaning “with scorn,” or “to cut away from one’s self as beneath.” This is no little thing. We give ourselves to God in tears and in faith, that GOD HIMSELF would remove all contempt from our hearts. What Adam saw in the Tree of Life and rejected was Jesus giving Himself to God for the sake of others.

Refusing to Be Like God. Look at Psalm 22. Contempt for God first, contempt for self second, and contempt for others third. It is inside of contempt for others that the great contest is found. Adam reached for control that he might cut down other people. Jesus reached for God – to give Himself for our sakes. It is a simple issue, yet it is the meaning of all Life or all death.

Adam REFUSED to be like God. We stay inside of Jesus.

Definition: Adam refused to be like God. Rather, he chose contempt for all others arising from unthankfulness. From the moment he tasted control, he chose dishonesty. We stay inside of Jesus; we choose to be like God.

Ruling Verse 8: To be like God is to love one another; to love one another is to be like God. Love requires honesty. Love walks in no sufficiency in self, but all sufficiency in God.

A Great Contrast. • 15 Do not love the present world-cosmos, nor the things in the world-cosmos. If anyone should love the world, the love of the Father is not inside of him. • 16 Because all that is in the world, the desire and passionate longing of the flesh, and the desire and passionate longing of the eyes, and the boastful ostentation of biological life, is not out from the Father, but is out from the present world-cosmos, • 17 and the present world-cosmos is temporary with all its desires, but the one who does the desire of God lives and remains into the age.

This is not “us versus them” or “good versus evil.” This is the profound CONTRAST between the darkness of the world and the Fellowship of LIGHT that is God, between Life and death. It is the choice of which tree from which to eat.

A Vast System of Hatred and Murder. But let’s step back a bit to see the larger picture. John is hitting very hard, very hard indeed. First he places two against each other, stark and unmistakable. Love versus hate. Love gives self to God for others; hate cuts others down to spite God for self-worship, that is, murder. But then John brings in that vast system of hatred and murder called “the world.” Most of our Christian brethren are consumed and swallowed up by the world. We give ourselves to the Father for their sakes.

Definition: The world is a vast system of hatred and murder, sometimes called “politics,” that is, the conniving of one against the other vying for control. The world is the vast sets of relationships among humans and demons. It includes all human associations, including political and ecclesiastical.

What Matters Most. Definition: Two things are always in full opposition; each individual possesses either all of one or all of the other – the love of the world – OR – the love of the Father. The love of that vast interplay of human/demon interaction begins with self out from self, judges everything by human seeing and judgment, and holds all others in contempt. The love of the Father begins with all-sufficiency out from God through Jesus, judges everything by the Word of Christ, and loves ALL believers in Jesus. The love of the Father is a soul given for others.

Covenant: To have the Love of the Father inside of us, defining all that we are, flowing out from us to bless and give life to others, is worth more to us than all human gain.

Definition: “Temporary” means specifically that the flow of energeia causing the world system ceases in a single moment, being replaced by the flow of the authority of the Kingdom.

The Twist. • 18 Little children, it is the final and furthest hour, and as you have heard that anti-Christ is coming, even now many anti-Christs have become, whereby we know that it is the final hour. 19 These [many anti-Christs] went out from among us, but they were not really from among us. For if they had been from among us, they would have remained with us. Rather, that it might be made visible to all that these [anti-Christs] are not part of us.

Consider David’s claim that God twists things to expose those who are twisted. Think of the contempt one feels for “those who have left the fellowship.” That contempt is anti-Christ. We could say it this way. As we twist God’s thoughts away from what they mean inside of Him, so, to the same measure, God twists our thoughts away from what we think they mean.

Defining Anti-Christ. Christ is Jesus speaking God’s thoughts as us. Sin is the twisting of those thoughts, the internal belief that “I am my own source; I do my own thing.” Anti-Christ goes further; anti-Christ speaks against Christ as the speaking of God. “Anti-Christ” means, literally, to contradict Jesus.

Definition: Christ is Jesus speaking God’s thoughts as us. Sin is the twisting of those thoughts, the internal belief that “I am my own source; I do my own thing.” Anti-Christ goes further; anti-Christ speaks against Christ as the speaking of God. “Anti-Christ” means, literally, to contradict Jesus.

Definition: The Apocalypse is the eyes of all being opened to see what has been True all along. Those who live and abide inside of Jesus see Him True in all. Those who live by self in the world see all they have become as empty and false.

One – or – the Other. In my last semester of college at Blueberry, I was given an assignment to define the word “conscience” by the Bible only, without reference to what anyone says, including the move ministry. I immediately did what I always did, I wrote out every set of verses containing the Greek word translated “conscience,” so that I might ascertain the meaning from the context. I saw clearly from all the contexts, that the Greek word meant ALL good – or – ALL evil. Never was there any “going back and forth,” or choosing between the two.
 
When I wrote that conclusion in my paper, I was rebuked before the whole class and my grade marked down, because I had found against the teaching of the move ministry. But John is far more STARK than that study. He places ALL into one or into the other, with NO going back and forth.

Flee into God. Life or death. Truth or lie. Love or hate. The Father or the world. Jesus or anti-Christ. We live in one inside of Jesus or we live in the other inside ourselves.

John concludes this letter with “flee from idols,” that is, flee into God. Yet inside of fleeing into God, John presents something so unimaginable, so out of this world, so beyond all human thought. John presents us, made like Jesus, walking as He walked, giving ourselves as He gave Himself, living inside of God as He lived inside of God, loving one another as He loves us.

In fleeing into a God who alone saves us, inside of all Light, we discover that EVERYTHING is so different than our stupid imagination. We discover a God who shares all with us.