2.1 A Dwelling Place
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
A Dwelling Place. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him (John 14:23). – In whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22).
In the next session, we will consider “keep My word,” and this entire course is on “being built together.” Here we want to consider this extraordinary reality – a dwelling place of God. The Church, Judaic and Gentile together as one new man in Christ, is where God “lives.” And it is to this House that all must come to know God and to worship Him.
Knowledge through Faith. Now, we must know exactly what we are talking about. God fills all things; all of God in Person is found at every tiny point in all that is creation, both heaven and earth. Yet God Himself is forever invisible and unknowable.
So, when we say, “A dwelling place of God,” we are talking about two very specific things. The first is the knowledge of God and the second is faith. There is no such thing through all the ages to come as the knowledge of God entering into the experience of creation by any means other than through faith. Without faith it is impossible – for God to be known.
Transcendent? There is a sense, entirely inside of intellectual conjecture, in which God is utterly transcendent, that God is one thing and creation is something entirely other. The incredible thing is that a transcendent God cannot be known – at all. Thus EVERYTHING swirling around in anyone’s mind regarding this “transcendent God” is just a crock of excrement. None of it can be anything other than the creation of human religious imagination.
God cannot be known by anyone who believes that he or she falls short of God. God is known only by and through the one who says, “God walks together with me through all things, revealing Himself through me in every present circumstance.”
Immanent. And yet, anyone can make such a claim without any actual relationship with the Father. And thus such a claim, in and of itself, has no meaning.
At the very center of God-known is this word – fellowship. You can see yourself as one with God in union. You can see your every circumstance as God expressing Himself through you. But none of that is actually Father Revealed UNLESS in the middle of union and expression, in your heart, there is Communion with Father, sharing Hheart with God.
Only an immanent God can be known, and that, only by heart. Yet this immanent God is entirely Personal in Himself.
The Knowledge of God. In order to arrive at the understanding of God’s House we must have, we will develop these thoughts a bit more. And remember, we are assuming on truths already established in these Symmorphy courses, things we will use as building blocks in the present study without establishing them again.
When we speak of God, we are speaking of two entirely different things. We are speaking first, of course, about that Person who tells us to call Him Father, a Being of such vast remarkableness that His end will never be found, yet who fills us full with all that He is. But we are also speaking of the knowledge of God, and that is something entirely different. The knowledge of God unfolds in us from glory to glory through the seasons of life.
God as He Is. From the moment we are born again, we are able to say, in all truthfulness, “I know God.” Our problem is that we hold a whole lot of stuff in our heads we imagine God to be that ain’t God at all.
In contrast, from the moment our physical bodies are swallowed up by immortal and incorruptible life, we will be able to say, “I know God as He is.” Yet in saying, “I know God as He is,” we also know that our knowledge of who and what God is will increase in dimensions we cannot know now, and will do so forever. What we will not be dealing with then is the gradual removal of “knowing” things about God that are not.
The Covenant. God cannot spring the knowledge of Himself as He is upon anyone apart from the step-by-step commitment of their faith. This is why God has set seven steps in His Covenant with us, seven agreements between us and God by which we accept Him as He is. Faith is agreement expressed as commitment.
You see, we humans don’t like God as He is; we don’t like Him at all. It took Adam only a second to grasp fully that dislike. And thus our full commitment to God’s own Heart is essential the further we go in the signing of the Covenant. And each step of our agreement with God becomes a further unveiling of His knowledge in us and a further diminishing of those things we once called “God” that never were.
Seven Levels of Commitment. And so when Paul says that we are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit, we know that he is not speaking of God in His Essence. God fills all things with all that He is, and all things exist only inside of God. God cannot be found “more” in one “place” than in any other. Paul is speaking of the revelation of God, God as He is becoming known to all.
Anyone born again who says, “I know God,” is speaking the truth. Anyone who says, “I know God as He is,” while in a dying physical body, is not speaking the truth. And the progression between the two is seven levels of commitment to that revelation of Father.
One AND Two. Now, let’s look a bit further at God in His essence before we can understand how God begins to reveal Himself as He is. God is ONE. The implications of that word, ONE, are absolute and all-encompassing. Nothing exists outside of the Being and Person of God.
The Ekenosis of God, the unfolding of the knowledge of God into His creation is BINARY, Spirit and Word, always together, yet each distinct and personal, yet never without the other. That “binary” reality runs all the way through the fabric of heaven/earth, of all the cosmos and of our human experience. Binary is two, always together, light and darkness, spirit and flesh, heaven and earth, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, Father and me.
Many Brethren. The binary of God, however, does NOT include good and evil or life and death. Darkness does not mean wicked actions; it means the absence of the knowledge of God. “Good and evil” is the false fire attempting to replace the rightful knowledge of God with false knowledge. And death is the splitting apart of God’s binary revelation of Himself. We will use the word “duality” to speak of such falseness.
Then, the expression of God into His creation as He is, as He desires to be known, is MANY. And that many is family. We know that the expression of God is family because God is Father; and inside of Romans 8:29, we are symmorphosed with Jesus as many BRETHREN together.
God is ONE, the unfolding of His knowledge is TWO, the expression of His knowledge is MANY.
Union – Communion – Expression. Here is that exact layout. Hear, Oh, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart… – and you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:29-31 - condensed) God is One. Loving God must be two, for how can God love me and I Him except we be two together. And the expression of God is many – love one another.
Union – Communion – Expression. Except at this point in our walk, we are saying it in this way. I am one with God in union; I walk together with God as two, He and I, in sweet communion; I am one with you in fellowship as we together, many, are God’s expression, God as He IS.
Fellowship. And thus, “being built together as a dwelling place of God” is clearly speaking of the third, God as MANY, God as He IS, that is, God as He WANTS to be known.
This understanding brings us to the verse that must be at the very center of Father at Home. That you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3). The Greek word is koinonia, which we will leave in full and call it now an English word. “Fellowship” is an Anglo-Saxon word, and “communion” is Latin. All three words are the same in essence, and interchangeable. Yet each one can carry its own shade of meaning, and thus all three are useful to us. Koinonia – Communion – Fellowship.
Communion. This course is the expression of God, that is, many walking together as one, that is, life together. And we will develop each of those three words as it applies its shade of meaning to life together.
Here, however, we want to know the essence of what they mean inside of Father at Home in me, and for that we will use the word “communion.” God cannot be known in creation except He be known in His Church. And God cannot be known in His Church except He be known in each one of us individually. And thus Father at Home in ME (each one of us personally) is the fulcrum, the turning point of everything. And Father at Home in me is my communion of Hheart with Him.
The Real Question. The fellowship we enjoy with one another comes out from the communion each one of us partakes of with Father. The knowledge of God that comes to all creation comes out from the fellowship we enjoy with one another. And thus He calls our fellowship together “His dwelling place.”
And so the central issue of the universe is how do I, personally, know God – and that, of course, is the Covenant. Yet now we are talking about life together, and thus, we could call this session, “My communion with Father expressing itself outwardly as my fellowship with you.” There is a far more important question than “What is God?” The real question is, “What is my fellowship with Father?”
Godly Reasoning. What a wonderful question. How I love following Godly reasoning to the essence of things. What is my fellowship with Father? Our answer to that question will develop forever; here we want to continue with the larger issue of a dwelling place for God in the Spirit.
The completed dwelling place of God through which He is seen and known by all creation, then, is our fellowship together as the Church. Our fellowship together is the only means by which God will be known AS HE IS by any created being or entity. Yet what is this dwelling place?
Temple and Body. Two Bible terms are fully synonymous and merge always together – temple and body. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? –Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? (1 Corinthians 6:15 & 19) – Christ is a many-membered Body.
Both body and temple are outward forms that are the dwelling place through which a person reveals him or herself. My body is where I live. A brother wants to fellowship with me, but he cannot do so unless he gets my body to his house. If he can succeed in getting my body to his house, then I will be there, in my body, and we will fellowship together.
Body AND Spirit. It’s not my body the brother is fellowshipping with, but me. Yet he cannot fellowship with me except I am present in my body. When he looks at me and I at him, it is our bodies we are seeing. Nonetheless, we know that the essence and expression of one another is coming at all times out through our bodies.
I know my brother by his face. Interestingly, I always knew my students, not by their outward appearance or performance, but by the person coming to me through their eyes. And thus my body alone is not how I am known, but also my spirit – For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? (1 Corinthians 2:11) Body AND Spirit – binary.
The Place of Rest. Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest? (Isaiah 66:1)
Lots of really good questions here. Where is the place of My rest? Having the right questions is the largest part of arriving at the right answers.
Who has known the mind of the Lord…? But we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). – The Son of God has come and has given us a through-mind, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ (1 John 5:20).
Father at Home. Now, we know that we know Father only by the means of Christ Jesus sent into us, that is, by the Energia of a Personal Spirit Word writing Christ all through the fabric of our beings. And we will investigate both aspects, Spirit coming as Word and Word coming by Spirit, as Jesus Sent relates to our life in Community together in the next two sessions.
It is by Word first, and by Spirit, second, that we know this wondrous communion with Father that we enjoy and that is the whole point of everything.
Father at Home in my heart. Mull over those words; let them filter all through your mind and your heart. – Father at Home in my heart. –