12.2 Father as Quality
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
God is always present in Person, the continuous source of every Word which is the continuous source of all things. At the same time, however, Father as He is, His Being, His personality, His characteristics, provides for us the foundation stones upon which we walk and by which we build the entirety of the New Creation, the ordering of the Kingdom.
Here is this very reality in John’s vision, Revelation 21:18 & 21. And the city was pure gold, like clear glass. – And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. The gold is God Himself in Person. We walk upon God; God is the source of the construction and materials of the entire city.
Placing Abundance
In studying Father to know the Kingdom, I want to look at three aspects of Father, His qualities, His characteristics, which we know of as principles, and His personality. Because of its importance to the rule of the Kingdom, one of Father’s qualities, abundance, gets its own entire session. Here we want to define “qualities” and to understand how Father’s qualities provide the “construction material” of the city of God and through that city, the ordering of the Kingdom. In that way we will understand where abundance fits.
And we understand that the Kingdom of God is a free society in which every member knows God and lives only out from the abundance of their own hearts.
Writing about Father
Before continuing, I must say this. I like writing about Father for a very definite reason. You see, Father, all of Father lives in me, fills me full with all of Himself, and walks as one person together with me. And Father is quite an emotional Fellow; that’s why we humans are so emotional, for He made us like Himself. And Father and I together get quite excited at the very thought of finally unveiling to the universe Father just being Himself.
The most powerful and life-changing things I have ever written have all been Father making Himself known to me. When I write about Father, I am transformed; when I write about Father, I can see creation being set free.
Distinctive Attributes
By quality, I mean those distinctive attributes that make up and identify Father in His constitution or essence, with a particular emphasis on high value. A primary quality of Father is Love.
By character, I mean those applications of the nature of Father that govern within each of the realms of His creation. A primary characteristic of Father is Faith, thus the law of faith is prominent throughout the created realms.
By personality, I mean the particular expressions of Father that make Him a unique Person as He is known to others. A couple of primary personality expressions of Father are you and me.
A False “Holiness”
As I consider what are those qualities of Father most applicable to the Kingdom, that is, to the joining together and ordering of all things, I am faced with a quality most of our brethren ascribe to Father. That quality is wrongly called “holiness,” but it is, rather, that essence of the most psychotic of serial killers, an essence that would bring forth billions of men and angels, each one with hopes and dreams, desires and concerns, (just like Himself), and subject them to a miserable life and then to screaming in unbearable pain and hopeless fear forever. Then I see how our brethren “justify” and “explain” this most evil and sickest of attributes, and how they fit it into all their doctrine and thinking and living.
A Necessary Contrast
We do not include in that picture God’s just anger against arrogance and pride, against people hurting people for momentary lust or self-gain. We share that same anger. But Father will NEVER show Himself as He is to those who accuse Him of such iniquity as “hellfire and damnation” does.
Hades is most certainly Biblical and is not a choice anyone wants to make, yet it has purpose and is for a season, and brings forth the full justice of God. I bring in this contrast, here, because those qualities of God that are most descriptive of the Kingdom of God are not found in the doctrines and definitions of Nicene Christianity.
Describing Father
The word “love” is not a very useful word because it is too large and too general and carries too many meanings. But Paul’s description of love, that is, of Father (1 Corinthians 13:4-8), is filled with usefulness.
Father suffers long, and Father is kind; Father does not envy; Father does not parade Himself, Father is not puffed up; Father does not behave rudely; Father does not seek His own; Father is not provoked; Father thinks no evil; Father does not rejoice in iniquity, but Father rejoices in the truth; Father bears all things; Father believes all things; Father hopes all things; Father endures all things. Father never fails. Let’s add one more – Father turns all things towards goodness (Romans 8:28).
Five Qualities
I want to draw five specific qualities out from this list, five qualities that are very much the source of the qualities of the Kingdom of God both in our togetherness and in the ordering of all things.
- Father is meek and lowly of heart and sees others as better than Himself.
- Father is kind to all.
- Father does not know envy or evil or lying.
- Father carries all.
- Father turns all things meant for evil into goodness.
Two Qualities
Contrary to Christian thinking, there is no “before and after” the cross for Father. Father is these qualities; the cross came into time and space, not to turn Father towards these qualities, but to show us the clearest picture of these qualities Father could devise.
There is no greater expression than the walk of the Atonement and the Cross of two qualities of Father I want to focus on. A God who carries all creation inside Himself through death and into life. A God who takes the greatest act of evil in all history, the murder of His own Son by the cruelest execution known to man, and turns it into life and joy and goodness forevermore.
Lowly and Kind
But first, let’s look briefly at the other three qualities. The first two are counterpoints to each other. A God who is meek and lowly of heart and thinks more highly of others than of Himself, then turns and responds towards others with little acts of kindness at all times and in all ways. Kindness is the right word, because kindness is found in little things, not in big things. Big things have little meaning where kindness is concerned. Rather, the essence of kindness is the regular, ongoing, everyday actions of tenderness and regard, of the touch of comfort, the sharing of laughter, the shoulder to cry on, a cup of cold water.
We are talking about God. And we are talking about a definition applied to every aspect of the Kingdom of God.
The Ignorance of God
Father thinks no evil. The implications inside that one little statement are enormous, and they are staggering. God does not know good and evil. Treating anyone at anytime, now and forever, in any other manner than kindness out from a lowly heart, is not found in God’s mind. God does not think it; God does not know it.
God does not know sin or lying or, especially, envy, that center quality of the serpent. God has no idea what those things are. And if God does not know what those things are, how can they possess any real or lasting meaning? We will discover our victory over all sin and death inside this incredible quality of our Father – God’s absolute ignorance.
A God Who Carries Me
The two primary qualities of Father in the ordering of the Kingdom are a God who carries and a God who turns.
I had never heard of or known a God who carries me, and all, until September of 2011, the season of Tabernacles. I was thinking about “What is God,” but in terms of Jesus’ statement: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” And I was thinking entirely out from the depths of autistic pain and vulnerability as I hurt, all through myself, out from the memory of that false Christ who did NOT carry me, a false Christ that had been thrust at me over so many years, a false Christ thrown in my face by a short email. And I was thinking about being inside this revelation of Father.
God Is Beneath Your Feet
And in a moment of revelation, as I saw that Jesus’ carrying me inside Himself was, in fact, Father carrying me through death and into life, everything turned for me 180 degrees. For the first time in my life, I was standing right side up. I, along with all of my brethren had been attempting to know God while standing on our heads, seeing everything upside down.
Look down, God is beneath your feet. Father bears all for all. Father carries all for all. Father endures all for all. Father never fails.
Jesus cannot be anything in Himself except that is first the Father in Himself. Jesus shows us Father. It is Father who carries me in all my griefs and in all my joys.
The Laughing Lord
One of my favorite story books is The Great and Terrible Quest by Margaret Lovett. In that story the “Laughing Lord” is sent to find the true King and to carry that King in his arms past all of his enemies and into the gates of his city. That picture of the laughing Lord carrying his young King, bruised and frightened, in his arms through the gates of the city is my picture of my Father carrying me all the way home, the Kingdom of God.
Of course, this quality of Father is not temporal but eternal, that is, continuously revealed through every moment of time. Father bearing all for all is not God “putting up with a bad situation”; it is the very essence and quality of our Father, the base rule of all of His Kingdom.
Pro-Knowing
You see, God knows absolutely nothing about any “bad situation.” Father is not reactive; He is pro-active. And Father’s pro-action, in turning all things meant for evil into goodness for all, comes out from His pro-knowing, out from all things found inside His heart.
I am coming to dislike the word “foreknowledge” for it is Calvinist and smells of the evil one. God did not exist “a long time ago.” God is all here now. And this all here now Father doesn’t know anything about any evil action or thought or word. Yet His quality is turning every single evil action, thought, or word towards the outcome of goodness.
Turning Everything
Just like a fish swimming through the water is constantly pushing the water with its fins, so God is constantly pushing everything towards goodness, with no knowledge of that thing being evil or false. So if God doesn’t know evil, how could we know evil?
Yet this quality of God in no way eliminates His anger against treating other people badly or His determination to prove Jesus faithful and true against all accusation that God lies. This Fellow who tells us to call Him Father is most strange, and we must stretch our hearts wide to know His paradox. Yet God simply speaks Jesus, without thought of the accusation, and all accusation fails.
Watch Me
In fact, God’s continuous response to accusation, that is, the good speaking of Christ sustaining all things, continues without knowledge of that accusation inside of God’s pro-knowing.
Yet for us, as we hear the accusation and see Jesus faithful and true, it seems to us that the very worst in creation is constantly drawing forth the very best inside of Father. We hear our brethren say, “God will never make you to be the same as Jesus,” and we hear our laughing Father as He carries us next to His heart, “Ha, Ha, watch Me prove them wrong.”
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2).
Father Just Being Himself
We are never more like Jesus than when we carry one another inside the Mercy Seat of our hearts in love turning every offense into unending goodness. Father believing all and Father hoping all are the power underneath this turning of all things.
As a school of fish swims in the water and as a flock of birds flies through the air, so the Kingdom of God exists inside a bath of these five qualities. The nature of this bath in which we live is first meek and lowly of heart out from which comes gentle acts of kindness. Not knowing anything about evil, this bath that is Father carries all the sorrows and joys of all, turning everything wrong into the result of goodness. – Father just being Himself.