5.1 A Symmorphic God
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
God is a very personal Person. – God is and will always be invisible. – God is a symmorphic Being.
The definition/description/knowing of God that you hold in your mind and heart IS the most important rule of your life and your future. If you are filled with all the fulness of God, then what and who is it that fills you full?
Let me give you another very serious warning. DO NOT speak of God except by the words God speaks concerning Himself. There is a habit among some to speak of God by human logic, and by “definitions” hammered out by powerful men, things God Himself does not say. Do not practice such a thing.
One God – the Father. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). – There is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live (1 Corinthians 8:6).
The relationship between God the Father and the Man, the Lord Jesus Christ is stated by Jesus – Do you not believe that I am inside of the Father, and the Father inside of Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells inside of Me does the works. Believe Me that I am inside of the Father and the Father inside of Me (John 14:10-11).
Person inside of Person inside of Person, two persons sharing the same form – or as Paul termed it – Symmorphy!
What God “Looks Like.” Inside of these two persons walking together as one, God the Father is the substance and Jesus the human is the appearance. When an invisible God, without outline or boundaries of any kind, all here now and Personal, shows up inside His creation in a bounded appearance, God appears only in and as a human.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion…” (Genesis 1:26). Man is just like God in his construction and man is the appearance of God in creation. Man is “what God looks like.” If you want to know what a human is, do not look at yourself or any humans you have known on this earth, none of whom have any idea what a human is. As John said, “You don’t know what you are.”
What Is Man? Only one Person is a human, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever He is, that is what a human is. According to Romans 8:29, He is the first of many just like Himself, the first One of our kind. Yet this Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, according to Paul, exists in the form of God, that is, a life-giving Spirit, all here now, and Personal in each one of us. And according to John, He is the Word that God is continuously speaking.
The question never has been, what is God, not really. The Biblical question is: What is man? (Hebrews 2:6). In order for us to know God, God sent us a Man. He that has seen Me, has seen the Father (John 14:9). We know God by knowing a Man.
A Personal Person. Let’s start with “God is a personal Person.” You and I are individual persons only because God Himself is an individual, private, and very personal Person. And when we think of God as a private and personal Person, we think of One who is gentle and lowly of heart (Matthew 11:29), we think of One who thinks more highly of others than He does of Himself (Philippians 2:3 & 8).
In tempting humans, the serpent presents himself as the image of God, that is, what God “looks like.” And in so doing pawns off the idea of a superior and arrogant being, a “God” who thinks more highly of himself than of anyone else. All we have to do is see Jesus, and we know that the serpent is and has always been speaking nonsense.
Utterly Invisible. Next, we must know that God is invisible utterly and forever. “Invisible” means that no created being can perceive Him. God has no boundaries of any kind, no place where any created being in heaven or earth can identify Him, where He starts and where He ends.
So, if God is absolutely and utterly invisible, how can He be known? You see, this is a big problem for God – God’s earnest desire is to be known by all. How can an invisible God be seen and known by all? The answer to that question is the single most difficult and wondrous, most agonizing and glorious reality that there is.
A God of Travail. Consider this statement of Paul. – The Spirit also joins as help together with our weakness… the Spirit itself brings us in line [with Father] for the sake of others, with inexpressible groanings (Romans 8:26). The word “groanings” refers directly to a woman in travail to give birth.
What is a God who groans in travail? What is a God who wants something He does not have, an invisible God who longs, with all of His heart, to be seen and known by all?
When writing his letters, in order to give understanding of a God in travail, Paul, by combining Greek word parts, invented two words that had never been used in Greek before. Those two words were symmorphos and ekenosen.
Symmorphy. We bring Paul’s coined words into English as symmorphy and ekenosis. These two words are central to all reality. “Symmorphy” means two persons sharing the same form. And “ekenosis” means an invisible God being made visible.
God becomes seen and known through another Person. Jesus was the revelation of the Father because first, that is His design, and second, God the Father filled Jesus in Person. Thus Jesus was the outer appearance to us of the Father.
Yet we have seen that Word and Spirit, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the Son of God and the Spirit of God are always entwined together and can never be separated. And because God is a Person, He can reveal Himself only through persons.
Together, In, and Through. The Spirit, however, always remains in the background. We are to know Christ Jesus Sent into us; the Spirit causes us to know Him, and the Spirit is the writing of His Word upon our hearts. Neither does the Father dwell in us “alongside” of Jesus, but only inside of Jesus. And though it is Jesus we would know as He is, for we are just like Him, we never think of Jesus except as utterly entwined together with the Holy Spirit.
And thus God the Father dwells in and reveals Himself through Christ Jesus dwelling in and revealing Himself through many persons, you and me, of His same kind. God is seen and known through us who believe in Jesus.
The Ekenosis. Here is the passage of the ekenosis, the calling forth of an invisible God into being seen and known by all.
Christ Jesus {as a Human life-giving Spirit}, who, existing in the form of God {that is, all here now and Personal in us} thought [in His gut] {in the essence of His inward story} that being equal in substance with God was not something to be actively held onto. Thus, having willingly taken to Himself the form of a servant, Himself ekenosen, Himself called forth an invisible God into visibility, and became [by the faith of others] the likeness of men, and having been found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself {He acted just like God} (Philippians 2:6-8).
The appearance of God in creation is a Man who humbles Himself.
The Visible Expression. Paul began the account of the Ekenosis, the calling forth of an invisible God into being seen and known by all, with these words – Let this same mind be in you. It is your love for Father, that is, Jesus alive in your heart, by which you call forth through your faith and desire, an invisible God, the Father, into being seen and known through you. This is God’s purpose and intention towards you. In fact, God wants to reveal Himself through you, entirely through your willing permission, more than you can know.
The Spirit and the Son are always the connection between an invisible God and His creation. And you and I are the visible expression of a God entersing our knowledge through Spirit and Son.
Filled with Kindness. So what are you full of? You are full of a God who is gentle and lowly of heart. You are full of a God who thinks more highly of others than He does of Himself. You are full of life laid-down and love poured out.
Here is one of the most wondrous expressions of God’s appearance found in the Bible.
And be kind with one another, tender-hearted, forgiving [giving favor to] each other, in exactly the same way that God inside of Christ gives favor freely to you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children and walk inside of love, in just the same way that Christ also loves us and gives Himself to us for our sakes, an offering and a sacrifice to God, into a sweet-smelling aroma (Ephesians 4:32-5:2).