14. Two Fathers
(This is the audio from the Zoom meeting. It is unedited, and so you get all the normal noises of a service.)
If you look at Chapters 8 and 9 together, you see that Chapter 8 is a contention over fathers, or sources, either the devil/lies or Abraham/God. Then, Chapter 9 could be viewed between two “sons” or outflow, either the Pharisees/blindness or the blind man healed/the Lord Jesus. As such, we are considering the contention that is the setting in which John places his weave of the thread of life. It is clear that the things Jesus says, through these two chapters, are directly related to this contention or opposition.
The Ways of Opposition. In calling this session an “in-between,” however, we are not referring in any way to the story of Jesus and His ministry, but rather to the thread of life John is weaving from start to finish. In the very first line of Chapter 10, Jesus introduces the thought of “the way” to life. And that way exists because of the press of opposition.
Our goal in this lesson, then, is to consider all the ways of opposition found in these two chapters and to place Jesus’ words against them. We are looking for God’s thinking towards the issues of our world.
Response to Opposition. Having just completed the JSV version of these two chapters, I also see that my first thoughts were right. John is setting up this issue of the opposition of the powers of this world against Jesus and Jesus’ words in response to their opposition. Jesus’ words are not the thread of life as before and after, but rather, they are words of our victory.
We will now have two lessons on these two chapters, and we will divide them thematically. This lesson continues as “Two Fathers,” that is, two sources, and the next I have titled, “Restoring Sight,” by which I mean the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, the removal of the cover that blinds people to present reality.
The Topic of Sin. This study begins with SIN – and Jesus’ response to sin. Interestingly, Chapter 9 also ends on this same topic. You know the story of the woman caught in adultery who was brought to Jesus by the Pharisees. We want three things from this story, first, the manipulation of the Pharisees, their purpose and their strategy, second, Jesus’ response, and then, the meaning of Jesus’ words, “Go and sin no more.”
At the same time, the blind man whom Jesus healed was plucky and courageous; I have no doubt he was in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost. His story Jesus then used to address again the issue of sin.
What Jesus Said. Here are the specific things Jesus said about “sin.”
- “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on, sin no more.”
- “For that reason I said to you that you will die inside your sins. Unless you believe that I Am, you will die inside your sins and your disconnection from God.”
- “Let it be so, it is so, as I say to you, everyone doing sin, that which is disconnected from God, is a slave of sin. Now, the slave does not remain in the house into the age, but only a son remains into the age. If the Son makes you free, you will be truly free.”
- “Which of you shows Me to be guilty of sin?
- “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made visible inside of him.”
- “If you were blind, you would not possess sin; Since you say, ‘We see,’ however, your sin and disconnection from God remains.”
The English Word “Sin.” The problem we have here is that the English word “sin” is not a correct translation of the Greek word “hamartia.” The Greek word, hamartia, is simply “missing the target” in an arrow-shooting contest.
In contrast, the present English word “sin,” inside the Christian mind, has gained a whole history of religious meaning over a thousand-year period. Since our “target” is a living covenant connection with God, I am convinced that “disconnection from God” is the true meaning of the New Testament term. Yet “sin” is not un-useful, but here is it’s real meaning.
The Entomology of “Sin.” (from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=sin)
sin (n.) Old English synn "moral wrongdoing, injury, mischief, enmity, feud, guilt, crime, offense against God, misdeed," from Proto-Germanic *sundiō "sin" (source also of… German Sünde "sin, transgression, trespass, offense"), probably ultimately "it is true," i.e. "the sin is real", from PIE *snt-ya-, a collective form from *es-ont- "becoming," present participle of root *es- "to be."
The semantic development is via notion of "to be truly the one (who is guilty)," as in Old Norse phrase verð sannr at "be found guilty of," and the use of the phrase "it is being" in Hittite confessional formula. The same process probably yielded the Latin word sons (genitive sontis) "guilty, criminal" from present participle of sum, esse "to be, that which is." Some etymologists believe the Germanic word was an early borrowing directly from the Latin genitive. Also see sooth.
Where You Stand. The word “sin,” then, is an inflection of “to be,” or the Greek, eimi, that is, I am, which, in this case is “I am guilty.” And yet the statement, “I am guilty” is bright shining LIGHT; it is the very honesty that God requires in order for us to enter into Christ who is our “tugchano,” our always hitting of the mark.
“Sin,” then, is not what you do or what you do not do, but rather, where you stand, in honesty or in dishonesty, and who is your source, that is, your covenant connection with God or with deceit. The most important line, however, is “Go and sin no more.”
Consider the One Speaking. The meaning of those words, then, Jesus amplifies just a bit later when He said, “If the Son makes you free, you will be truly free.”
Consider the One speaking to the woman caught in adultery. Everything that exists comes out from His words, everything that exists is sustained by the power in those words. Because all things come out from His own speaking, Jesus was able to silence the entirety of the old creation upon the cross and to speak the new creation into anyone who will HEAR Him, as Moses said.
Creating “No-Sin.” When Jesus said to her, “Go and sin no more,” He did NOT mean, “Go and stop doing what you were doing,” or, “Go and try to do better,” or, “Stop giving in to temptation.” Jesus’ WORDS created “no-sin” inside of her, for she surely heard Him.
I have no doubt that this woman never again thought about committing adultery. The whole idea of it was fully repugnant to her. From that moment on, she was free from sin inside her own person. “If I make you free, you are truly free.”
The question then becomes, “What do you see?”
What Do You See? And that, in essence, is the challenge Jesus put before His disciples at the beginning of Chapter 9. – What do you see, a sinful man or the works of God made visible? Where do you place yourself? (What is your identity?) What do you hear? What do you see?
These are the mighty issues inside all human life in this age and these questions are come to their fulness now in the completion of this age. Even now God is confronting me with this very issue. What do I see, Christ or sin? This is not a cover-up of someone hurting others, but rather the fundamental issue of identity.
From Whence Do You Come? And the fundamental issue of identity is – who is your source? From whence do you come? Who is your father?
Christians are taught to be schizophrenic, double-minded and double-hearted, not by the gospel, but by unbelievers presenting themselves as Christian ministries. And such we were. – “I am of God, AND I am of the devil!” As James said – “Ain’t so.”
Before continuing with Jesus confrontation with the Judeans concerning source, I want to place that confrontation into our present day, for indeed, we are in the final dispensation called the completion of this age.
The World Hates Me. We have a statement of faith coming up that John and Jesus together consider to be at the core of our present position in this world.
THE WORLD HATES ME!
This does NOT mean “victimhood.” “Oh my, everybody hates me; I am a victim.” How can the ones who are swallowing up death in victory think any thought of themselves as “victims?” “The world hates me” is not our identity, but our position. And we will see what this “position” means in our prayers from here forward, for we are the aggressors.
Our Onslaught. From here on out, demons and death are fighting for their existence against our wholesale invasion and onslaught.
They will not succeed.
Yet it is neither demons nor death that are the visible face of our enemy in this world, that face, rather, is the beast. The beast is what we see outwardly, yet it is NOT the beast against which we are fighting, but DEATH!
We are fighting the absence of the knowledge of God. We are fighting all fake disconnection from God. We are shining the light on all things as they really ARE!
Seeing John’s Vision. And so before returning to the question of source, or “father,” I want to place the term “for fear of the Judeans,” as found in Chapter 9, into the present completion of the age.
Along with that, I want to point out something of critical importance. Yes, John wrote his gospel before he saw the visions which he recorded in Revelation. But the unveiling of Jesus Christ was burning in his spirit before those visions came, nonetheless. We are going to see POWERFULLY how John’s vision must be interpreted entirely out from John’s gospel and entirely by the definitions John gives in his epistles. And that seeing is going to amaze us overwhelmingly.
For Fear of the Pharisees. We are translating the term “for fear of the Judeans” into “for fear of the Pharisees” in our world today for two reasons. The first reason is that the faction of the Pharisees as it exists for real in the present world contains in it very few, if any, Judeans, even though these people still claim to be “of Moses.” And the second reason is that there is more need to “fear” now than there was in Jesus’ day. The fear of the Pharisees then would get you kicked out of the synagogue, today it will get you killed – or worse.
The Wrong Enemy. We CANNOT win if we fight the WRONG enemy. Sun Tzu said that if you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will lose every battle.
In the early 1200’s, the Chinese had built a mighty fortress in the mountains between China and Mongolia to keep the Mongols out. Any invading army would have to pass through a ravine miles-long flanked by two high walls behind which stood thousands of archers. Genghis Khan simply gave them the wrong enemy. He gathered 80,000 Chinese men from the lands already captured, dressed them as Mongols, and sent them through.
Wasting Their Strength. The Chinese wasted their entire strength killing the wrong “enemy.” And when their real enemy came, they had no arrows left.
Because the Canadian truckers do NOT KNOW who their real enemy is, they are targeting the politicians in Ottawa. This is intended, for all their strength is being directed at a meaningless target. Replace all politicians with a new set, all swearing to uphold liberty, and the moment they are in power, the fear of the Pharisees will come upon them and nothing will change. You cannot wage war against the Beast. Already, the truckers have been infiltrated, and they don’t know it.
Stay With Me. Awhile back, I played a clip from Gladiator in which Russel Crowe said, “Hold the line. Stay with me.” You are with me by your own choice, therefore I say to you again, “Hold the line. Stay with me.”
I need you to be true and honest and real. I need you not to turn aside to the lies of this world or to be distracted into fighting stupid fights against irrelevant things. We are bringing down DEATH, and to win, we must know ourselves and we must know our enemy – that is, identity.
God has given the whole world over to the beast. Those who fight against the beast are attempting to annul God’s purposes; their only success is to become irrelevant.
Let It All Fall! We do not want any kind of return to “the way it was.” DEATH is the way it was. Death is being exposed; let it be exposed. The lights are turning on, do not seek to turn them off again.
We will have only a world of life.
And in that world of life, there is no thought ever again of “the United States of America” or any other part of the kingdoms of Satan in this world. Let it all come to ruin, for by John’s vision of the revelation of Jesus Christ, there is found in the ruin of death and prostitution – NO ONE! – No one at all.
Two Sources. Two “fathers,” God or the devil. Two sources: truth, that is, every word Jesus speaks, or the lie, words that have no meaning and carry no sense of reality.
You are out from below; I am out from above. You are out from this world-cosmos; I am not out from this world {of death coming out from Adam’s rebellion}.
I directed a new reader towards the mini-courses I posted at teachable.com. Because of that, I watched all the videos in those three courses to see what he would be seeing. I was overwhelmed with the profound clarity of the truth, and the unmistakable delineation between these TWO.
Two Identities. Here is Jesus’ identity. – That which I have seen in the presence of the Father, I speak. Then Jesus describes the other identity. – You are of the “father,” the devil, and the desires of your father you choose to do. He was a murderer right from the start. He does not stay inside the truth, for there is no truth inside of him. Whenever he might speak a lie, he speaks out from his own person; for he is a liar and the father of lies.
There is no “truth” inside anything created. Truth is one thing only, the entrance of the Lord Jesus Christ through faith. Those who refuse Life, do not stay inside the truth.
Eliminating Nonsense. Some who like to accuse God of knowing evil, of course, use this passage to claim that God took evil out from Himself and made Satan evil by substance. Such thinking is utterly abhorrent to those who know God. At the same time, many ascribe some sort of meaning to “the lie.” No, it is called a “lie” because everything inside of it is pure and utter nonsense.
Those of us who live inside of God and who are always coming out from Him do not know or see sin, though we grieve over people hurting people. Our fight, then, is to eliminate pure and utter nonsense, that is, “not-God,” from all human identity.
The Power of the Gospel. Therefore, if anyone is inside of Christ, he is a New Creation. The old things are already gone; look and see, the New has already become. And all things are out from God, the One who has already reconciled and reconnected us to Himself through Christ, and has given to us the ministry or service of reconciliation and reconnection [that is, no hamartia] (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).
The power of the gospel is absolute. We are coming out from our Father, we live through our Father, and we enter into our Father – every moment. And with great power, we cast down death and nonsense.
Reading for Next Time. The next lesson is titled “Restoring Sight,” yet I mean by it the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, removing the cover so that what has always been true and real is clearly visible to all. I hope to continue in this same line of thinking across Chapters 8 and 9, so I would suggest that you read them again, especially now that you see the power being extended to us in these seemingly random accounts.
Things often change when I begin to write, but what I would like to do, as I see it now, is to present a number of principles out from Jesus’ confrontation with these people that are applied to our present war as we bring this dark age to a close, as we swallow up all death with LIFE.
Our Prayers. I do intend to continue with going back and forth between prayers of metamorphy, that is, our response to Jesus as He transfers His substance to us in every moment, and our synergeoing with God making all things good. Nonetheless, I am more specifically making these prayers into our present WAR. For we are on the offensive and now is the time to strike and strike and strike and not draw back.
You see, Genghis Khan knew himself and the power at his disposal quite well. He had a secret weapon whom he sent into that maelstrom after the decoy had served its purpose. That secret weapon was a twenty-year-old Subodai at the head of the fiercest warriors in history.
Let’s Pray Together. I am turning the meaning of that illustration to ourselves. Let’s kill death and a whole lot of nonsense as we synergeo with God and with one another.
“Father, look upon us, for we belong utterly to You. As You have sent the Lord Jesus into us, so we now speak His words, for His mind and thoughts are now ours.
“Lord Jesus, we speak You as authority in all heaven-earth, the authority that sends forth the Devoted Spirit in power to convict all and to reveal You. Our enemy is death, that is, the absence of the knowledge of God. Against death, we speak His knowledge into every place. We speak with all authority, with no need for human ability.
“Father, this world belongs to You and every person within it. Yet we also see the beast, with all its armies, and the evil one with all deceiving spirits arrayed against the entrance of the Lamb into this world through us. We know their strategies; we take into account all their doings. And in Your authority, Father, now given to us, we take away from them the outcomes of all their evil, and turn it all for GOOD, beginning with their complete and utter overthrow.
“Father, we speak Jesus Sent into our world, for we are His form as He shares form with us, that the very LIFE of the knowledge of God might flow out from our bellies as our Devoted Spirit, swallowing up all death into LIFE forever.
“Let it be so; it is so, even as we speak.”