21.1 Soul with Soul
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
By this we know love, because Jesus laid down His life for us. “Laid down life” is, in the Greek, tithemi psuche, which could also be translated “set forth soul.” Laid down life has nothing to do with death. It is a way of living, not a way of dying. Jesus gives us His life; He does NOT give us His death.
But Jesus is not talking about “life” here, per se, but soul. Jesus gives us His soul. We are saved by His life and it is the Spirit alone who gives life, yes; yet we are not speaking of life, here, but of soul. Jesus sets forth His soul for us – what does that mean?
The Pivot Point
This session is the pivot point. Everything that has come before is one big waste of time without this setting forth of Jesus’ soul for us. Everything that follows after is only of God as it proceeds out from this set forth soul of Jesus as who and what we are.
We are not talking about the Spirit of Christ or about the flesh of Christ. But of His soul. Jesus’ soul did not “die” as His Spirit did not die. Only Jesus’ flesh died – and Jesus does not give us dead flesh to eat. But Jesus’ flesh died in a very specific way. For the death that He died, He died to sin ONCE for ALL; but the life that He lives, He lives to God (Romans 6:10).
Only the Spirit Gives Life
But we cannot even begin to know what Jesus’ set forth soul means for us unless we break forever one of the darkest spells of the evil one cast upon all who draw near to God. Here is the muttering of that spell. “Life comes out of death.” And its twin. “Light comes out of darkness.” When we KNOW what God says, we are never troubled by these veils of darkness cast upon so many who seem to be drawing near.
It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh, whether living or dying, has no profit one way or another. – God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. Life comes out of God; death comes out of sin.
Death Is Against Life
Die all you want, die, die, die, die, die, but none of that fake “dying” will ever bring forth life. Keep the law to perfection for a million years, and none of that fake “perfection” will ever impart life to you. You see, the spell of “life comes out of death,” as intoxicating as it seems to so many, does one thing only. It places DEATH as a barrier in-between you and life. And its only purpose is to keep your back turned against Life, to keep you always busy trying to comprehend “death.”
God is life; and it is God whom we seek to know. The cross of Christ is our barrier in-between us and sin/death, and we never “inspect” the cross as if it might not be “doing its job”; that is, as if God might be lying.
A Tiny Doorway
I use the term “laid-down life,” even though it seems to give the wrong impression to so many. I use the term because it is the picture of the Walk of the Atonement by which we know this Love for us and because “set-forth soul” means little to most. But we are speaking of a narrow passage, of taking that picture of God through a tiny doorway of understanding – all the way into knowing LIFE alone when we hear “laid-down life.”
A laid-down life is a way of Living, that is, Father; it is not a way of dying. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer… (Romans 6:9). There is no death in God. If you want to know Father, you must turn your back on death and close your ears to its siren song.
Tithemi Psuche
Having turned our backs on death forever, let’s begin to open up what Jesus meant by setting forth His soul for us.
Tithémi: to place, lay, set. I put, I place, I set, I fix, I establish. Tithemi and prothesis, the setting forth of the purpose of God, are cognates of the same root.
Psuché: the soul, the self. The human soul, the seat of affections and will, the self, a human person, an individual. A distinct personal identity, individual personality.
The human soul is not something in itself, but rather that which exists as the union of heaven and earth, spirit and flesh. Our soul is our identity, the story we tell about ourselves.
No “Getting Rid” of Self
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).
Jesus said that if we keep tight hold of our soul, our self-story, in this world, we will lose everything. But that if we lose the self-story of sin and death, and death and sin, then we will find our same life as the knowledge of God. Everyone who has ever attempted to “get rid of” their own self story has failed. Everyone who has ever attempted to “die to self” has failed. In fact, the effort itself serves ONLY to increase the twisted hardness of the self-story of sin and death. Everyone who seeks for life inside of death will find, to their utter ruin, only an increase of death.
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ
And thus we come to God’s secret Door. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, without consideration of what the flesh is or is not doing, without consideration of any self-story of sin and death in this world.
He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him – put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We are of His flesh, one flesh with Him – put on the Lord Jesus Christ. But neither spirit nor flesh is who Jesus is. Jesus is the Man, the human Person, who lives at the very union of heaven and earth. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days… (Isaiah 53:10).
Jesus’ Soul
What about Jesus’ soul?
Here is the formula in which we live: You in Me and I in you. We must first place our own self story, our soul, our self, all that we are as we find ourselves to be, including ALL of our sinfulness and All of anything that might be death, entirely and only into Jesus and entirely by faith. You make His soul an offering for sin means that God is offering us Jesus’ own soul for our sin. But we must first put our sin, our own self story, entirely into Jesus. Then we discover that our life, our psuche, our own story including every moment of our lives is now His story, His life, His soul – and ours as well forever.
Already Complete
In Purpose and Essence, we considered the truth of God in relation to our individual persons. But in Kingdom, we are looking at the larger picture, at the Body of Christ as one living whole. More than that, we are considering God’s approach to construction, that is, preparing each block of stone to its perfect measurement before bringing the final house together.
But in looking at Kingdom, we do not exclude our individual persons, for Kingdom comes out of members fully complete in Christ, members who discover just how much they already fit together. We don’t make ourselves fit together any more than we make ourselves “righteous.” We are already complete.
This Present Process
For in Him dwells all the fullness of a Personal God bodily; and you are completed – filled full – in Him (Colossians 2:9-10 modified from the Greek). “Fullness” and “completed” are the same Greek word, pléróma, a noun, the condition of God in Christ, and pléroó, a verb, the action of God in us.
We are not “waiting” to be perfected. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:15). Being sanctified, then, refers to this present process in which we are engaged, putting Jesus’ soul, His self story, upon our own soul, our own self-story. The “offering” is Jesus’ soul.
Jesus’ Soul in His Body/Spirit
Let’s take this picture of a Human Jesus, then, into the full expression of the Body of Christ. Here is a diagram from Symmorphy II: Essence, but reworked to fit Kingdom.
| The Flesh of Christ, you and me, one Body on earth |
Passion, the Desire of Christ |
Consciousness, Jesus’ Self Story |
Faith, of the Son of God |
The Spirit of Christ, you and me, one Spirit in heaven |
||
| < Body > | Emotions of Christ | < Mind > of Christ |
Will of Christ |
< Spirit > | ||
| ^ Heart |
^ Heart |
^ Heart |
||||
This is really quite incredible. We are picturing Jesus’ soul, His personal identity, His story of self, as it is spread across the entire Body/Spirit of Christ, you and me together. Yet you and I, our own self story, our own personal identity, is in no way missing from this picture.
Soul IN Soul
Jesus does not replace our own soul with His. Jesus fills our own self story with His, making ours entirely His as well as all that is His entirely ours. Our soul IN His Soul; His Soul IN our soul.
People try to say, “Live only in the now; don’t worry about your ‘past.’” They are deceiving only themselves. Every moment of our past is written all through our mental consciousness as well as our physical body. Your past rules your every present moment, whether you think so or not. So – is your past self-story to remain your own, or does it become Jesus’ own self-story?
An Offering for Sin
When our own self-story, every moment of our lives, becomes Jesus’ own self-story, given utterly to Him, then we turn to one another and discover how PERFECTLY we fit together. You have made His soul an offering for sin.
Let me deal with the most wicked moments of my life, when I was 16 and 17. When I was 16, Jesus overdosed on LSD together with me, it was me, yet it was He, and, standing before the gates of the Holy City, we saw them barred against us. And Jesus took our sin into the empty grave, but it was ME through that experience, regardless of the sin. It was me and it was Jesus.
God Always Intended Me
When I was 17, Jesus and I kicked a young man in the testicles, just because he was a freshman and we were a senior. When I was 17, Jesus and I talked a 13-year-old boy into taking amphetamines, an illegal drug, to get “high.”
I want you to know that in writing these words, my face is wet with tears and I cannot keep from sobbing out loud.
You have made His soul an offering for sin. God never intended my sin, but He always intended me, even inside of those terrible moments, with no regard whatsoever for the sin, having already placed it into an empty grave.
You see how I have let go of my own self story, making it entirely His and thus receiving His as my own.
A New Name
And the day will surely come when Jesus and I together will give those two now grown men life overflowing in place of whatever we stole from them. And now that I know that those eight hours of black nightmare and lostness, Jesus shared utterly together with me, I know without any shadow, that none of it was true.
And the sobs and the tears do not stop. Soul WITH soul. Jesus has never been so real to me.
Yet we must continue with this Kingdom lesson. To him who overcomes… I will give… a new name written. – I will write on him the name of My God and the name of… New Jerusalem… and My new name (Revelation 2:17 & 3:12).
Identity
Having placed Jesus together with me through some of the worst moments of my life, I now find many other moments crowding in to be filled with Jesus with me. And as Jesus shares my story, the sin vanishes, but I remain, and my true self is given back to me.
We like to place the gifts to the overcomers as static and future events, sort of an unearthly award ceremony – that is, fantasy. The Word God speaks is practical and real to our lives now. “Name” is identity, who and what we are, that is, what we tell ourselves and others that we are.
And all the horrible events of my life are crowding in right now that they might be filled with Jesus together with me.
And Three More Names
They were always my own “name,” hidden away, unseen, yet always working their woe, always imparting their false identity. And as I receive Jesus’ set forth soul given to me into every one of those places, a new name, a new identity, a new Daniel Yordy is given back to me.
Yet as I receive Jesus’ soul as my own through every moment of my life, I discover three incredible things about my new self. Yes, it is me, received back to myself, a Daniel Yordy that is pure and holy and good, but as I receive myself back from Jesus – He shall see His seed – I discover three other names inside my new self, three other identities, three other self-stories.
And as the despicable “me” vanishes forever, I turn and am left speechless.
Fitting Christ to Christ
You see, it is not just that Jesus gives me back myself out of every moment of my life brand new and holy, but He also gives me His own name, His own soul, His own self-identity. And inside of this Jesus’ self, comes another most incredible name – God, written upon my forehead, upon all my thinking and doing, that is, Father. Father’s identity, Father just being Himself.
But there is a third name that is now mine as well. And this third name is you, that is, the New Jerusalem, all who also love Jesus and worship God in the Spirit. So long as the moments of my life retained a despicable “me,” I would never be able to fit, Christ to Christ, with you.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ
You see, I am no longer me by myself, even pure and holy and good, I am now me you and you me. I am with you the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And it is from this place of you and me fitting perfectly together as all the purity of Christ, not by our performance, but by our faith in Jesus’ own set-forth soul, it is from this place alone that AND-WE-ALSO now proceeds. And we also ought to set forth our souls for the brethren.
They always tried to convince me that it was my “false flesh that had to die”; I always knew that it was an incorruptible Christ alone, you and me bound together as Jesus’ own soul, that was the only offering of God for His creation.