8. Our Path Home
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
I am writing this bridge because this transition God is taking me through, in passing from Galatians 2:20 to Hebrews 10:19-22, a passage that has included getting a close look at what the writer of Hebrews actually wrote set against the wicked deceit of the Calvinist translators, is likely the single most overwhelming and the biggest change in me in my writing career.
I want to take you, the reader, with me through this mighty transition. For that reason, I have started my explanation of what I learned from translating Hebrews 10-13 in Lesson 17.3 Knowing One Another and will complete that explanation in Lesson 18.3 A Gift Not an Office. This Bridge, then, is required in order to carefully pass all the pieces of understanding to you.
The RULE. Part of my purpose for this inserted “bridge,” then, is to set out how I now see these five Symmorphy courses working together. In order to do that, let me first explain why I continue making such a “big deal” about these “ten verses” that I claim are “the most important.”
You see, even as I just now translated Hebrews 10 into the JSV, I realized that I had continued to define the phrase “let us draw near” by a false RULE, even as I wrote the chapters of Purpose in which I made a first real stab at trying to figure out what on earth that complicated sentence was saying. It does no good to call these ten “the ruling verses” unless they actually do RULE underneath all our thinking.
Rules of Thinking. And my thesis is very simple. Everyone already has the ruling “ten most important verses.” Yet the “verses” that RULE all thinking about what God says in the Bible are NOT honestly appraised. Those actual “ruling verses” in the minds of most, even of those who teach “grace” and “union,” are dark, limited, and in opposition to Jesus as He is. The problem with the one who says, “Well, I see it differently,” is dishonesty, for they are not seeing what rules their thinking at all. They argue out from a RULE they do not recognize.
In contrast, I continue to be astonished and overwhelmed as the truth of God, gathered together by these ten incredible verses, just grows and grows in glory and wonder.
In the Grip. I am left speechless. I am left with the realization that I had nothing to do with “coming up with” these “ten verses.” I am left with the realization that I am seized in the grip of a very passionate Fellow who is determined to seize His people into life at whatever cost to me or to Him.
Yet all of these thoughts have left me curious as to what actually rules our thinking. And so, before I complete this course, I hope to include a lesson in which I attempt to set out the underlying RULE of conscious thought that is generated by each of the ten. And I hope to direct each rule in two directions – to the Bible and to the Church.
Life as It Is Meant to Be. Here is what is happening to me as I am completing this course, yet another rendition of “the ten most important verses.” I am seeing the reality of Church as God intends, Church upon this earth, Church now as FULL Salvation. And what I am seeing is so REAL and so powerful and so GLORIOUS and so spell-binding and so PRACTICAL and so beyond all beyond all.
I am aghast and astonished, enthralled and in awe. And I am overwhelmed at the extent that we have been ROBBED by another “Jesus” pushing another “gospel.” Yet that is only a momentary “overwhelming,” because the glory of what we are rushing into is just so real. Church – life as it is meant to be, life together inside of Jesus.
Discovering Purpose. So, here is what has happened through these five Symmorphy courses. The purpose of Purpose was to discover what these ten verses actually say. And thus I discovered that my perception of these verses must have been an inner knowing of something. BECAUSE – I had no real idea what any of them actually said. This was especially true of Hebrews 10:19-22. The result of laying out that long sentence in the first two lessons was that I “knew” less what it meant than before. Then, in writing Essence, Kingdom, and Covenant, these ten verses were simply there, in the background, showing themselves as all that they are all through the gospel.
Where They Belong. Yet now, in Symmorphy V: Life, we are again using the “ten most important verses” as the structure of the course, something I had no idea of doing until I was nearly done with Covenant. In essence, what happened in Purpose was that we shot the ropes of meaning regarding these ten undergirding laws of reality up into the air. The arc of those ropes then went over Essence, Kingdom, and Covenant, to where, now in LIFE, we are hammering them back down into the ground of real and practical life together where they belong. And it’s as if we are understanding them, now, for the very first time.
A Highway for God. Life together as the Church shows us these ten most important verses as they really are. Then I look at the exact halfway point in these five courses, a lesson that ended up being a complete turning for me. Symmorphy III: Kingdom, Lesson 14.3 A Highway for God.
You see, since I started writing out from union with Christ, I have seen my role in the Church as being a map maker, one who goes before, one who makes the crooked places straight, and the rough places smooth. And so, when I called my first book of compiled articles Our Path Home, I purposefully went through what I had written, seeking to remove any rubble that might have accidently fallen into that path.
Turning the Path. As we saw, the word “Prepare” means to turn, to turn the path God would run into the right direction. That was what we did in Purpose. Then, in Essence and Kingdom, we brought the high places of an arrogant “Christ” down. And in Covenant we raised up the low places into which our hearts and Father’s heart had been cast.
But none of that is any good unless we follow the road to its end with our Father, unless we come Home to Church. Our Path Home – to life together – Father revealed.
A Strange Idea. As I have come to clearly understand each of these ten most important verses, finally, in the writing of this course, I am tempted to think that maybe I should now re-write Purpose. Yet that would defeat the whole point. For the Path Home must start for every person where they are. And if my understanding has had to grow piece by piece, so others must be allowed to follow a similar path.
It is only recently that I have begun to realize that I have always had an unusual and strange idea about God. I have always considered God to be a real Person, a Person contending directly with me and me with Him. And I never really knew that most others, apparently, do not think of “God” in that way. When I see God saying something in the New Testament, I am all ears. I never understood why no one else was the least bit interested.
A Covenant with God. And so, in my foolish delusion of seeing God as a real Person connecting directly with me and me with Him, from the time I was twenty, I have covenanted with this Person.
Now, to me, to Covenant with God is to say what God will do. Covenanting with God cannot include tit for tat, trade for trade, as the old covenant did, a covenant which the writer of Hebrews claimed was disgusting to God. And so, my Covenant with God included this injunction upon Him. God – You WILL make all the agony of my life to be a doorway for others into Your life and joy. And God Himself has proven out that Covenant over the trauma of forty years of contending with the Almighty.
Going Home. I want to go home.
I was with my wife in labor four times. That’s it for me. I have done my duty. Our first grandson will be born this summer; I will let my wife go be part of that. Just let me know when the little guy is laughing. I have been forty years in labor to bring forth what I am writing about in this course, Symmorphy V: Life, the fulness of Christ in the gathering together of Church.
I want to go home. – I want to go to Church. And it is in the writing of these patterns of home as life together that everything I have always KNOWN Church is meant to be has come flooding in so overwhelmingly. Life as it is meant to be. – Home.
So Glad to Be Home. Once, when I was living in a small Christian community in the high plains above Albuquerque, New Mexico, I had flown “home” to Oregon to help my dad do a job in which he needed my assistance. Yet when I returned back to the context of life together, the commitment of brethren walking together in a third feast word in hope of the revelation of Jesus Christ, I sat there recuperating from my journey. Such a sense of Home arose in me. I said, “I am so glad to be back home.” That sense is what I mean now, yet that was only a taste of the real.
A Vision of Life. In these sessions, I am giving you a vision of life as God means it to be, of the full expression of the Salvation of Christ, as has never before been put into words in the human experience. Home IS walking together in all things with other believers in Jesus inside this word of union with Christ on the one hand and the revelation of Christ on the other. Home is Christian Community.
Our path home began with Purpose. We had to know, what is God’s heart? What does God want out of this whole thing? What arrow strikes the target of the intentions of God? But we are stuck because we cannot know, unless we know what God is and what we are, and in Essence we came to know Jesus as He is, and we just like Him.
The Unfolding of Word. Yet that knowing of Jesus as He is was not sufficient for us to arrive home. We had yet to explore the great issues of the outflow and the inflow, of the Kingdom and the Covenant. What is the unfolding of the Word and what is the Word that unfolds?
When I wrote Purpose, at first, I did not even notice the word “Pro-Knowing.” After writing Covenant, Pro-Knowing, living in the Pro-Knowing of God, the unfolding of all of God’s thoughts, the very essence of Father Himself, into the expression of our lives – this indeed is a most precious unfolding of Word.
A False Story. There is a saying that “it’s not the arrival, but the journey,” a claim I have always considered to be nonsense. Tell that to a woman laboring to bring forth. “Meaning is found in the agony, sister, get your mind off of the baby in your arms.” Yea right. Tell that to a little boy who wakes up to see home before his eyes at the end of seven thousand tedious miles stuck in the back seat between his two big sisters. He might not have the words to say you’re full of baloney, but he will know exactly that (and Father thinks the same).
We certainly walk together, Father and us together, but in every step, we ARE inside our HOME – forever.
Home at the End of the Path. I now know exactly how God becomes known, how God becomes seen and heard, touched and handled. There is a session, coming up soon, 21. The Ekenosis, a session that will be the single most holy thing I have ever ventured into. It will be the completion of Session 23 in Purpose, Shaping the Human Heart. The Ekenosis is God’s Heart coming home.
Home is one thing; Home is life together. Purpose and Essence, Kingdom and Covenant, then, are our path home. Life together. – Home for Father in us together and Home for us together in Father. – Home at the end of the road.