5.1 Foundations of Word
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word … All things were made by Him; nothing was made without Him (John 1:1-3 modified). Jesus is the All Speaking of God; Jesus is every Word coming out of God’s mouth. God creates all things by speaking Jesus; God sustains all things by speaking Jesus; and God orders all things by speaking Jesus.
We are focused on the Kingdom of God, on the ordering of all things in heaven and earth by Father just being Himself. The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life (John 6:63).
It Is NOT Good
The most telling verse in all the Bible is Genesis 2:18. And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” NO sin or death exists. God has said over and over, “It is good, it is good, it is good.” How is it NOT good?
The most telling action in the entire Bible is Jesus as the revelation of Father stumbling under a cross He cannot carry. And the most stunning reality we discover about Almighty God is that He is disabled, that disability is an essential part of God, a disability that God Himself calls “Not good.” God has NO body!!!
Disability
Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—In the volume of the book it is written of Me—I delight to do Your will, O God, and Your law is within my heart’ (Hebrews 10:5b-7 with Psalm 40:8 added).
Let me define disability. A disability is the quality of not possessing something that is possessed by another. I do not possess the quality of suberacity. But then, no one in the universe possesses the quality of suberacity (a made-up word). Therefore my lack of suberacity cannot be a disability. God gives to one what He does not give to another so that we might NEED one another.
A Shared Need
God has NO body. God gave us bodies. We are NOT God; we cannot fill our own hearts. God is God. Therefore, the whole crux of the universe is that God needs us and we need God. This mutual and shared NEED is the meaning of everything.
Consider the second commandment as “Thou shalt not steal.” Do not steal from God His invisibility. Do not give God any form. Do not outline Him, do not geographize Him, do not place Him into space or time. Yet God desires a form, a body, above all things, that He might be seen and known, listened to and touched.
This Mighty Contradiction
It is this MIGHTY contradiction of God that drives all that God does in creation. God was the Word. – And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we BEHELD His glory. – God manifest in the flesh.
We are building a foundation of Truth upon which to build all our understanding of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is every particle and every energy and every connection in all the universe coming out of the tree of life and relating together entirely within and by the tree of life. Yet the tree of life is also a metaphor – a metaphor of that same Word from the beginning made flesh now in us.
The Tree of Life
The Tree of Life is the personal, immediate, and continuous knowledge of God, God the Father seen and known by all. The Tree of Life is the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is Christ? We asked that question in Symmorphy II: Essence and made a present attempt to give it some answer. Yet we understand fully that we will be giving an answer to that question forever and ever. And each time we do so, our answer will be at a different level and for a different purpose. Our purpose in asking here – What is Christ – is that we might know the Kingdom, that outflow of God that connects all things together.
Four Aspects of Christ
Christ Jesus, as the sustaining and ordering of all things, is four things, four aspects of Christ. Christ is every Word God speaks. Christ is our life, the One who lives as us. Christ is a Spirit of power. Christ is a many-membered body.
Now we have stated four seemingly quite different things, yet it is all the same One Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, there is only ONE resolution to God’s great contradiction, that God NEEDS us as much as we NEED Him. That only resolution is Jesus.
Learn of Me
Our problem is Jesus’ instruction to us: Learn of Me. You see, we cannot learn of anything unless we are able to take that thing apart into its constituent parts, to see what each part is and how it works together with all other parts.
But that study, though vital, cannot teach us of Jesus. For to learn of Him, we must, having understood each part, then put them all back together that we might behold the entirety of Christ all working together as Life! And we BEHELD His glory. That is why any college course creates meaningful application assignments. But for us, the real assignment is to love one another; there alone we see Christ as He really IS.
Together
Now, to understand Christ, we must look at Word and Spirit separately, yet we immediately put them together, for they are never separate. And we look at Word and Us separately, yet then immediately together, for they are never separate. We look at Us and Spirit as well as Us and Body separately, and then immediately together, for they are never separate. And we look at Spirit and Body as well as Word and Body separately, and then immediately together, for they are never separate.
And we look through this Christ to all things in creation ordered together in the knowing of God, that is, the Kingdom.
The All-Speaking of God
We begin with Christ Jesus as every Word God speaks. God “opens His mouth” to cause Himself to be known, and out from Him comes Christ Jesus as the Personal embodiment, the form of a servant, containing in Himself the Father that He might reveal Father to all.
This Word calling forth an invisible God to be seen and known we call the ekenosis. Refer back to Symmorphy II: Essence, the sessions “What is a God of Travail” and “A Fathering God,” to re-ground yourself in the meaning of the ekenosis. Yet the all-speaking of God is not now in terms of the original creation, but rather the New Creation.
Jesus’ Prayer
Thus, when we say now, “every Word God speaks,” we refer directly to the Words of Jesus’ prayer in John 17, the Words out from which the New Creation proceeds. Placing John 17 as the source does not in any way remove any other word God speaks. In the volume of the book it is written of ME. Rather, every Word God speaks finds its meaning and reality only out from Jesus’ New Creation words.
And what do we find strikingly different from all previous words in the words of Jesus’ prayer in John 17? Father. An utterly Personal God in Whom our persons are found in every utterly personal way.
A Personal Father
There is no more enveloping knowing of a Personal Father, utterly personal in His connection with us, us in Father and Father in us, than speaking out loud the prayer of John 17 as is laid out on pages 389-390 in Symmorphy I: Purpose, one assignment of “Abiding in Christ.”
Placing ourselves personally into a Personal Father through the words of Jesus’ prayer comes first. But then, knowing what those words mean comes second. And seeing those words flow through us to form and shape and energize the Kingdom of God comes third. Thus, as part of this lesson on the Foundations of Word, I want to re-iterate the principles of reality found in John 17.
Our Fellowship Together
1. The core essence of the New Creation is our fellowship together with Father and Son and each other INSIDE the perfect symmorphy of a Personal God. We know from Romans 8:30 that this perfect symmorphy is already our only reality. Our first job is always to discover the next measure of our symmorphy with God and each other so that we might reveal to others that next aspect of Father as He wishes.
2. We know that the outflow of revealing Father is always glory, that is, the Father’s heart made known, and it is always by glory, a job well done, that is, life laid down and love poured out.
Glory Revealed
3. Glory revealed is directed towards the world, the present arrangement of all things, that those in the world might first believe and then KNOW that God sent Jesus. The world cannot KNOW, however, without first the full acceptance of the cross of Christ by which all that is of the old creation is already vanished away.
4. Since the cross is already finished and complete (authority over all flesh), we understand that God is free to re-order all that exists into the Kingdom of God.
5. Inside that transition, however, the world hates us; that is, those who dwell inside the old creation arrangement hate the revealing of the sons of God even while they eagerly wait in all expectation for that glorious liberty. It is inside this enormous contradiction, then, that God has placed all the tools and patterns for forming the New Creation, for establishing the Kingdom of God in full appearance.
Father Into Us
6. Yet the trigger, the catalyst, the mechanism by which all this works is found in our absolute confidence, our FAITH, that we are KEPT by Father and sanctified by Jesus, even while we walk inside a world in which we have no part. The confidence that we are KEPT is our outer parts, however. Our inner core is far more meaningful.
7. Jesus speaks Father into us; that is, Father loves us with the same love with which He loved Jesus when Jesus walked this earth. Father Love IN us – together with Jesus.