2.2 The Fifth Signature
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The Fifth Signature. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you (John 15:12). – The church, which is His body, the fullness of Jesus who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:23). – In Jesus you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22).
Church cannot exist for each one of us without commitment to one another. Jesus said, agapate allēlous. Allélón is more a grammatical signifier than an actual word. Allélón means 100% reciprocity. Church is not a building; church is not a group of people getting together. Church is COMMITMENT together; church is love one another – AS I have loved you.
Issue and Problem. God has NO dwelling place, no place of rest, apart from believers in Jesus being built together, joined together, knitted together. Those three Greek words, sunoikodomeó (Ephesians 2:22), sunarmologeó, and sumbibazó (Ephesians 4:16) are the entire study of this course.
Before we can enter Church, we must understand fully the issue and the problem. God designed the Covenant to give full answer to both sides of both. Our issue is that God is NOT known; our problem is that we humans don’t like God. God’s problem is that we are free of God; God’s issue is that He is determined to be known through us.
Entering Salvation. We understand that God is eternal, that is, all-here-now. Yet we are also faced with the fact that, in the unfolding of His knowledge through time, God has never lived in full symmorphy with humans together. Symmorphy and Koinonia are, in a sense, as much brand new for God as they are for us.
Now, we don’t understand that at all. Neither do we understand a God who wants to be part of His creation, a God who fits Himself into space and time, into heaven and earth, to be part of our lives. Church is a Salvation that has not yet been revealed. And we enter into that Salvation, Church, the revelation of Jesus Christ, through the seven commitments of the Covenant.
Let It Be to Me. Receiving Jesus, faith, commitment, and Mary’s response, are all the same thing. Here comes a Word from God, “being built together as a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” We don’t understand it, we don’t like it, and we probably don’t “witness to” such a thing, not with our past experience of “church.” Yet that Word is Jesus and we receive Him into us by these words, “Let it be to me according to all that You mean by what You say.”
This lesson is on our fifth signature of the Covenant, our signing our commitment to God’s commitment signed upon us, regarding this entity called the Church.
The Steps of Our Covenant. Let’s trace the steps of our covenant with God through the first five signings in terms of our problem and our commitment. (I cannot really teach you about the final two signatures since they are not yet part of my experience.)
My problem was that, being ignorant of God, I thought I was perfectly fine in and of myself. In other words, I was lost. Yet God could not force salvation on me. I, of my own volition, had to receive Jesus into my knowing as my Savior. I did that when I was seven years old – “Jesus come into my heart.”
My problem was that, continuing ignorant of God, I thought I could figure God out with my brain by figuring out the Bible. In other words, I lived according to the flesh.
Ever Deeper Commitment. Now, don’t ever confuse the essence of God with the unfolding of His knowledge through time. God has redeemed all. God’s redemption has no meaning to anyone personally until they KNOW it. More than that, our knowing of God at each level increases over time and is expressed in ever deeper commitment inside of each level.
When I was nineteen years old, I received Jesus as a living Spirit Word in my full immersion into the Holy Spirit. That was my second signature upon God. Yet my commitment to a Spirit Word, to the Bread of Life and the anointing of the Holy Ghost grew across many years of time.
Liking Myself. Yet I was past 40 years old before I could even begin to grapple with my real problem. I did NOT like God – a fact fully expressed by the reality that I, the image of God, did NOT like myself.
Through an exercise lasting nine months, in 2008, when I was 51 years old, when Jesus merged together with me and I with Him as one Pperson together, I finally chose to like God, that is, to like myself. I accepted (and fought for) my full union with Christ. I called my flesh His own and entered through His flesh into the Holy of Holies. And there, bit by bit, God became the One who always carries me. For the first time in my life, I had begun to like God.
Liking God. But I still did not like my circumstances. Calling my present situation, all the boring and crappy details of my life, God through me reconciling the world to Himself, did not become my full commitment until the summer of 2013.
Look at all those Christians who don’t like God/themselves. They hold out for some “super-Christ” image they can aspire to, something far better than their sorry appearance now, which is already what God looks like.
Our third signature upon God is accepting ourselves, Christ as us, that is, liking God. And our fourth signature upon God is embracing our circumstances, including all our foolish mistakes, as God through us, that is, the Mercy Seat, that is, liking God.
Our Problem. Then God hits us right between the eyeballs with this Word.
We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also (1 John 4:19-21).
And we cannot escape the fact that if Jesus lives as me, then Jesus lives as my brother also. Here is our problem. We do NOT like God, not at all. Our commitment to church, that is to one another, to be built, joined, and knitted together, is our commitment to God.
Because God Says. I do NOT teach Christian Community, life together, because I like you and because I want to spend time with you. I don’t like you/God at all, not where the rubber hits the road.
I do NOT teach life together because I am enamored with some dreamy “ideal.” I KNOW every contortion and difficulty, every hurt and agony, every disrespect and manipulation inside of ANY gathering together at any level – far more than most.
My problem is I don’t like God; I don’t like Him at all. I teach life together, a practical commitment to Church, for one reason only – because God says.
My Only Response. God says, “Being built together into a dwelling place of God,” and my only response is, “Let it be to me according to Your word.”
God says, “Joined and knit together by what every joint supplies,” and my only response is, “Let it be to me according to Your word.”
God says, “You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house… to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God” (1 Peter 2:5), and my only response is, “Let it be to me according to Your word.”
God says, “Love one another in exactly the same way that I love you,” and my only response is, “Let it be to me according to Your word.”
My Fifth Signature. If the only way I can know God as-He-is is to like you, then God must fill my heart. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 5:5).
As I completed writing Symmorphy IV: Covenant, God, taking me through a series of circumstances of great importance to me personally, led me to articulate my fifth signature upon His signature upon me. To articulate my commitment as Christ to His Church.
From the Gate to the Mercy Seat, we are learning Christ as us, that is, “You in Me.” And from the Mercy Seat on, we learn us as Christ in His Church, that is, “I in you.”
The Heart of Father. Every purpose I had in Symmorphy II: Essence, in giving an answer to the questions What is God, What is man, What is Christ, and What is salvation, was to bring whosoever will into this place of living always and only as the Mercy Seat of God.
To know Father as He is inside themselves as they are. To share Heart with God.
And every time I have written the words, “turn around,” beginning in the fall of 2013, I have meant exactly this same thing – Be the Mercy Seat. To go forth with Father in the fifth signing, then, is the journey of this Ark, this Heart of Father, beating always as us.
No Community of Christ can exist apart from this Hheart.
A Flaming Sword. From the Gate to the Mercy Seat, it’s been mostly about what’s in this Covenant for us. From the Mercy Seat on, it becomes what’s in this Covenant for Father. And this great TURNING AROUND for us upon the Mercy Seat takes place at the tip point of the pillar of fire, a fire that consumes all that false image we once called “God,” that is, the exaltation of self, the arrogant “Christ.”
For our God is a consuming fire, a two-edged flaming Sword, that splits us apart between the tree of life laid down and love poured out versus the tree of the arrogant Christ. At the center of the revelation of Jesus Christ, at the heart of Church right now, stands this flaming Sword that splits apart between the humility of love and the superiority of arrogance.
The Arrogant Christ. The root of our dislike of God is our arrogant desire to be superior to all those carnal fleshy Christians. You cannot draw near to the tree of life without coming into the presence of the arrogant Christ. You cannot be drawn to the arrogant Christ without coming near to the tree of life.
When visiting in New York, I read Preston Eby’s recent writing about the harlot of Revelation 17 and 18. Eby was seeing the prostitute church, all those flesh Christians out there with all their religious nonsense, through the same eyes by which Adam looked upon a wanton and filthy Eve. And Eby reached for the exact same arrogant Christ as his answer to her that Adam reached for in the garden.
Two Trees Together. The tree of life and the tree of arrogance are intrinsically tied together. There is no having of one without also intermingling with the elements of the other.
All deeper truth ministries I have known, in drawing near to the tree of life, have chosen the rebellion of Adam in rejection of their human weakness and have reached for a “Christ” that placed them as superior over all those weak Christians out there, and with contempt. I left the move of God fellowship in large part because of my great distress over that contempt.
We will never know Father as He IS if there is any desire in our heart to be superior over our brethren or any arrogance in our definition of the God whose image we are.
God Contending with Us. Now, I am being momentarily fierce. God indeed is contending with us, Forehead to forehead. “You say you love Me. Great, now LOVE one another.” Whatever you do, think, or say to or concerning the least of these My brethren, you ARE doing it to Me (Matthew 25:40 - paraphrased).
We place ourselves, entirely by faith, inside of and as the fifth signature of God upon us, that stepping forth into His church, now with the fruit of the tree of life as our very hearts to give that fruit to His PROSTITUTE Church, including to all those ministries who have pimped the arrogant Christ on her. For, although they see through impure eyes, we do not; we see even them only as the Lord Jesus Himself.
Knowing Father. Here is the place where alone we know Father utterly together as one Pperson with us. Father and I together with you bear all for all; Father and I together with you believe all for all; Father and I together with you hope all for all; Father and I together with you endure all for all – for the sake of Ooour Church. It is here in this place that I am utterly at Home with Father and Father is utterly at Home with me.
If you are at fault in any way, Father and I together take full responsibility for that fault, carrying it here, above the Blood, upon our shared Hheart. And through your difficulty, Father and I together set you free to sing Jesus with all your heart as the only song you know.
FIRE and I. I am struck, here, with the weight of responsibility resting upon all those who would present Christ to His Church. What Christ are we presenting?
The Christ I would know is a Man on His face in the mud under a cross He cannot carry, carrying me inside Himself carried by Father, all the way through my agony of death shared fully with me into His very life now. Then Jesus says to me, “Okay, now let Me be that same Christ through you to all who belong to Me.”
Our fellowship is with FIRE – that Sword is the only entrance. How then can we be saved? Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me (John 14:1).
Commitment. Let me repeat here from Session 1.
I am writing to those who, having come to terms with the knowledge that the Passion of Jesus towards and over His Church is now the fabric of who and what they are, step forward AS the Ark of the Covenant into the Church of Jesus Christ. Never leaving their knowing of Christ as them, never leaving their knowing of Father with them as the Mercy Seat, they enlarge their knowing of themselves to know that they are now as Christ in His Church.
And in that knowing, they COMMIT themselves, signing their signature upon God’s signature upon them the fifth time. “I commit myself without reservation to Your Church as You, Jesus, my Lord and my Heart, as ALL that You speak regarding her.”
Our Beloved Jerusalem. I am writing to those who are ready and willing in the Day of His power, as the spontaneous arising of Christ through them, committed now, not just to the Church universal, but to that essential expression called the local church.
They are committed to Christian Community in some way, as Christian Community unfolds itself in endlessly varied appearances, yet always the same core reality, that is, brethren, perfectly free in Christ, bound to one another by their own desire and volition, walking together in love, married.
The unfolding of Christ as us becoming us as Christ in His Church has only just begun. And just as Jesus set us as the Joy of His Heart, so we also set life together with one another as our beloved Jerusalem.