25.1 No Husband
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 1:16).
I am convinced that this is the central issue and the underlying foundation of all of our victory. It is the false husband in the church and in the world that has prevented God’s people from knowing Jesus alive inside of them. God is finished with human leaders. He has tolerated them for 6000 years, turning even their false definition of themselves towards His purposes. He tolerates them no more.
Husband Already
And Father put all things under Jesus’ feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which IS His body, the fullness of Jesus who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22-23). When I say “no husband,” I mean that Jesus IS Husband already, and He does not need wise and capable leaders taking His place.
If you were participating in a task with a dozen other people, and one of those other people was King Jesus, would you be telling him what to do? Would you be taking charge? Would you be running the show? Would you be telling everyone that, since Jesus is not here (even though He clearly is), then He has put you in His place?
Church Leaders
I look at ALL leaders on this earth and in the church, including those who are good and wise, and I see that NO ONE is taking me where I will go. Every “leader” there has ever been has diverted me down a path that does not arrive where I will go.
Here is where I WILL go. I will know God and I will walk with a people who know God – on this earth and in this age. And every “leader” forces one of two things into my path to prevent me. The majority claim that God has no such intention – all that is for heaven after I die. And the rest claim that “I” have to measure up to some sort of performance standard before God would ever allow me such a thing.
Victory over the World-Beast
Now, I am getting sidetracked immediately. So much has been coming to me that pertains to this topic and that could fit here. However, I have marked Session 27: Now Is Come the Kingdom, as the place where I will bring all this down to the brass tacks, down to me, and you, if you wish, into a forehead to forehead confrontation with this Fellow who claims that He is God and who claims that He does what He says.
This session is our victory over the world-beast, that is, all human leadership, which is and has always been false. You see, the image of the serpent as what God looks like is not just an idea ruling the thinking of theologians, it is the defining force of this world – the image of the beast.
The Great “Conversion”
Glance back at the chart in the last session. Here is the layout of this victory. First, is the elimination of all leadership in the church as Christ Himself becomes all our known connections. Second is the shattering of the hold the world has over our brethren as the institutions of this world in which they have trusted seek openly to kill them in order to rid this earth of the name of Jesus. And third is the bringing to nothing of all that is “great” in this world.
This great “conversion” from one age to the next, from the appearance of the old to the appearance of the New, happens by the operation of two powerful CALLS. The first powerful call is: Calling those things that be not as though they ARE (Romans 4), that is, bringing life from the dead.
No Flesh Glory
But the second powerful CALL is: Calling those things that ARE as they are NOT. Let’s bring in again that whole passage. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
ALL church “leaders” have been those few called from among the wise, mighty, and noble, and they have mucked it up for all.
Stop It!
If you are a church leader, then stop it. Stop it right now! The Lord Jesus Himself in all of His glory fills the least one among your followers, and you are pretending to lead Him? As Paul said, it would be better for you yourself, church leader, to follow behind the person who cleans your toilets than to impose yourself as the “vicar” of Christ.
All church leadership, right from the start, has assumed the absence of Jesus from His church. Thus all church leadership, right from the start, must maintain another Jesus, a faraway Jesus, and another gospel, a gospel where all these things God says in the Bible are known only after you are dead, but not here and not now. Here and now, you follow “ME.”
We Died
Here is the foundation of this assertion of no husband. For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband… – Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God (Romans 7:2 & 4).
Since we died, we now have no husband, and since Christ is our life, we walk as one flesh with Him – union with Christ. This, of course, does not mean, “It’s Jesus and me, and we don’t need nobody.” Jesus our life says, “Love one another.”
Two Writers
The apostle John was not a leader. It was always “James and John,” or “Peter and John.” And after escaping from the destruction of Jerusalem, John ministered quietly inside of Paul’s strongest churches in the province of Asia.
(Let me qualify “no leader.” There are many pastors who minister all they know of Jesus to their churches with all sincerity and without inserting themselves in Jesus’ place; God knows those who are His. I am not speaking of such faithfulness in giving the little they have as “leading.”)
While John was writing his accounts of the gospel to a church that had not yet possessed John’s gospel and epistles, one of his disciples in Ephesus, Ignatius, was also writing.
The First Bishop
Ignatius then took John’s place in Ephesus and made himself the first single bishop, that is one man over a large local church. Ignatius is known as the first church “father.” When you read John’s writings and then read Ignatius’ writings, you are struck by a significant difference. John knew Jesus; Ignatius knew about Jesus. The difference was not that John was writing “Scripture” and Ignatius was not. The difference was the knowledge of God. Ignatius never knew Paul’s gospel, though his writing is filled with good and “Christian” things, with much wisdom.
You see, as we speak what Paul and John wrote as Christ personal as us, we come to know the Jesus they knew.
“Protecting” Us from Jesus
And then when we read words ABOUT Jesus, we know they cannot be truth, even though they are technically “true.”
Ignatius was the first to write about a Jesus not here, a Jesus not now, a Jesus not real and Personal inside of you. He set himself as the sole bishop of Ephesus primarily to protect God’s people from error.
ALL human leadership bases it’s right to rule over others on the claim that it is “protecting” us from harm (mostly harm from ourselves.) ALL human leadership is based on the “absence” or scarcity of Jesus. The “church fathers” are the ones who brought into the church another Jesus and another gospel.
The Core Difficulty
I call those things that “are” as they ARE NOT!
Let’s get right at the core difficulty. I have a message from the Word of God and by the Spirit of God. I am sharing that message with a handful of people. Hundreds of people have glanced at what I share and gone their way. I continue to see readers “unsubscribe,” no longer hearing God speak to them from my letters (or so I assume.)
I have known all along that we will never know Jesus as He is without commitment to one another. And being “committed to Jesus” that does not translate into commitment to other specific believers is no commitment at all. I want to grab people and make them “hear” me.
My Confidence
You see, if I actually did that, I would come all apart inside and you would never hear from me again. I am able to send these letters out in confidence ONLY because I know from decades of experience how easy it is for God to stick out His foot and land me on my face in the mud. I am fully confident that if He needs to do that again, He will be in no way bashful about it.
BUT – when I set before you our NEED for one another, that we ARE each other’s weapon (Lesson 23.4 Each Other), I was not setting before you my need for encouragement. I always need encouragement, most certainly. But we NEED commitment to one another far more.
Submitting to One Another
Submitting to one another in the fear of God (Ephesians 5:21). – Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it (Matthew 7:14).
Let me define life – a fully successful Christian Church walking this earth. And fully successful means three things. It means all that God speaks fulfilled in her. It means brethren living life together in love. And it means being alive and not dead.
Let me give you one aspect of that NARROW entrance. Commitment without obligation. ALL leaders who have ever led humans have operated by enforcing obligation. When young men felt the need to return to their homes, George Washington ordered them hanged. Death is a great enforcer.
Escaping Obligation
You see, most Christians follow leaders, that’s why they don’t read what I write, they find no one telling them what to do. Those who read what I share, on the other hand, are those who have thrown off commitment in order to escape obligation. We understand each other. But without commitment to one another we cannot know Jesus as He is. Yet the moment obligation inserts it’s false claims into our commitment, Jesus also vanishes from view.
Owe no one anything except to love one another (Romans 13:8). And yet every leader that exists, when push comes to shove, will turn “love” into a whip of obligation.
The Loss of Everything
It’s a very simple reality. All leaders are invested in their own program – this is what God is doing after all. And the moment any follower’s foolishness threatens the success of that program, that follower must be brought in line – you are impeding God, keeping Him from doing this great work He has set me upon.
Let me connect again two realities. The prince of this world comes and finds nothing in Me – I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. The fundamental drive of all envy is “this is mine, this is my work.” This was Cain’s motive for killing Abel. One who stands before the God of the whole earth is always suffering the loss of everything.
Only Losers Will Enter
A leader is one who wins. A loser is one who loses. Only losers will enter the narrow gate into the Kingdom.
Jesus entered into life by losing everything, including all of His disciples, including all of these people to whom He had given everything now screaming for His death. No one follows a “leader” who loses. No “leader” accepts a challenge to his position, especially one by this faraway and impotent loser called Jesus.
I once followed leaders who promised to take me into life; yet they set aside the Word of the revelation of Jesus Christ to which I had committed my heart and led me instead into a quagmire of hopelessness.
Shattering the Image of the Beast
No leader will take us into life; we must make our own way there. And all who go with us into commitment to one another must do the same.
But let’s turn this right around. Jesus IS Lord; He IS the Head of His Church, living in and as each one whom the Father has given to Him. Jesus has come; He is alive on this earth and has always been. Jesus walks in perfect symmorphy with you and me, from the least to the greatest, and He does all things well.
When we embrace that reality IN all of our connections to one another, then the false image of the BEAST is shattered.