Introduction

What does “knowing Jesus as He is” mean to you? 

John said that when we see Jesus “as He is” we are made just exactly like Him. Paul said that as we see Jesus as He is, we are transformed into that same image. Paul also said that God is determined that we share together with Jesus being the image and revelation of God.

These ruling statements of the New Testament are the central point of the covenant God entered into with us through the Blood of Jesus. – These ruling statements of the New Testament have no place inside of Christian thinking as I have known it throughout its breadth in this world.

All my adult life I have sought to know the Lord partly by seeking to know what He actually says in the Bible. And because Jesus said that His words are Spirit and life (John 6:63) and that the Scriptures testify of Him who alone gives us life (John 5:39-40) and that life IS to know God (John 17:3), I have sought to know what God says through these definitions.

A primary means by which I would know what God actually says is that I write out Scripture myself, word for word, something I have done for more than four decades. Yet I have also sat under much Bible teaching as well. I estimated once that I have spent more than 30,000 hours of my life in an intense study of the Bible out from a desire to know God through what He speaks.

I share that, not to boast in myself, for I have nothing to boast about. Rather, I want to give the context for where my study of what God actually says has brought me.

I live, now, inside a knowledge of God and the gospel that is glorious wonder and liberty, as Paul said it is. I know Jesus alive in Person in my heart. I know the presence of my Father with me every moment sharing all things in my life with me. 

And I am angry, for we believers in Jesus have been robbed by the evil one.

For here is what I have found. The thinking of present-day “Christian” theology does not fit with what God actually says in the New Testament, and what God actually says in the New Testament does not fit with “Christian” theology.

And when I say “Christian” theology, I mean the thinking of almost all Christians since after the first century of the church, but particularly that which is out from the Nicene Counsel and as defined by Augustine.

Somehow, somewhere, the belief that the serpent spoke the truth in the garden, that the serpent’s words to Eve give us the true definitions of God, of man, of Christ, and of salvation, took root and by the time of Constantine had become the underlying definitions turning everything God says in the Bible in the wrong directions.

It is my joy to tell you that the serpent was speaking complete and unadulterated nonsense. There is nothing real in his words. God does NOT know “good and evil.” And man IS the image and likeness of God, not a low worm who wants to be like a “God” of arrogant superiority.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is something entirely different from the un-Biblical nonsense of “escaping hell” and “winning heaven.”

Now, these are astonishing claims, I well know. But what if they are true? What if, upon discovering that I am telling you the truth, you were to enter into a Salvation of goodness and joy that never ends?

I would ask you, then, for Jesus’ sake, to read the entirety of this book.

I can promise you these things. First, you will find the Lord Jesus Christ honored on every page. Second, you will find everything in this short text to be utterly Biblical. And third, you will find the Cross and the Blood of Christ to be central to everything.

Yet you will also find an understanding of God and man, of Christ and salvation, that is quite different from what you have known inside of “Christian” thinking.

Again – I promise you this, in spite of the utterly different view of God and salvation that you will see if you read this entire short book, the Jesus you will find in its pages IS the very Jesus you have loved your entire Christian life.

The thinking of “Christian” theology takes place entirely inside the mind of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The thinking of our Salvation that you will find in this book takes place entirely inside the mind of the tree of life with no reference to the arguments found in the knowledge of “good and evil.” 

You see, all the verses in the Bible are arranged a certain way inside the mind of mental knowledge and death, but those very same verses fit together in an entirely different arrangement inside the mind of life, that is, knowing Jesus. More than that, the BIG verses of the New Testament, noticed by few, take their rightful place in the arrangement of life.

And so I have taken as my approach the point of view that I am explaining the gospel of knowing Jesus as He is to someone who knows absolutely nothing about any Christian thinking in this world. Rather than “exposing the false,” I hope to win your heart to the Lord Jesus in fullness through the unmixed sharing of the true.

You owe it to yourself to read this book in its entirety, and to see the gospel through the weaving together of the most important verses of the Bible. For the Salvation in which you already live is more glorious and wonderful than you have ever known or considered.