27.3 Designed by Word
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The design and pattern of God is Word. You and I are designed by Word far more than we have ever known. Here is an update of the JSV translation of Hebrews 1:2 – God… has in these [present] final days spoken us inside His Son. Notice that the “to” is not there, as in “spoken to,” as it is not required by the Greek. God speaks us, and we become. Just like Jesus, we are the speaking of God.
I have stated as a premise that we should place the most important things God says as the rule of how we understand and define all things. And thus each of these “rules of thinking” comes out from the most important verses. I will not include the primary verses since we know them well.
By creating these lists and definitions, we are not wanting to limit any word God speaks in any way. Our understanding of these words by which we are made will increase forever. Nonetheless, what we hope to do is to set forth what we presently know regarding each one of these words that we might rejoice in all the goodness of every Word God speaks by which we have become.
Romans 8:28-30
Rule 1: God’s Heart ruled by His determination is placed first above all things in all understanding of everything. The one word that best describes God’s Heart is Pro-Determination. Pro-Determination places God’s intention actively and presently engaged with every particle of heaven/earth and in every moment of time.
To the Bible: Always ask, what is God’s intention? What is God determined to do? What is God determined to have for Himself?
To Ourselves: Accept the overwhelming determination of God to accomplish all He intends. This is neither a “forced” submission to a “controlling” God nor to “fate.” Rather, God’s active but respect-filled determination works entirely together with our active faith.
To the Church: It is Jerusalem that fills God’s heart, the focus of His intentions, that is, the Church, the Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. For that reason, we find our own hearts filled with that same determination towards His Church.
True Image: Respect touching respect. (Michelangelo had it right.)
False Image:“God” controls everything and thus has already decided everyone’s fate; that is, “God” thinks more highly of himself than of anyone else. This essence of a “God” of arrogant superiority is the source out from which flows all else that is false.
Rule 2: Jesus is the pattern of everything, everything in the heavens, in the physical, and in our lives. The pattern of Jesus goes in three directions at the same time. First is the fulfillment of God’s desire to work all things in creation together with and through mankind. Second and most important is our sharing together of the same form, you and me symmorphosed in all ways with the Lord Jesus Christ. Third, this same pattern that is Jesus becomes the image and revelation of God to all creation through many brethren who are just like Him in generation, in action, and in relationship with the Father.
To the Bible: Every word in the Bible is Jesus, the all-speaking of God. To every word, we respond only with “Let it be to me according to Your word.” And thus every Word that is Jesus, He Himself fulfills in and through us as He shares form together with us through our faith.
To Ourselves: We seek for Jesus everywhere we look, in our own lives, in the Bible and in one another.
To the Church: The Church, which is His Body, the fullness of Jesus who fills and energeoes all in all. We define everything, in ourselves, in each other, and together as the Church, as only Jesus Himself.
True Image: A Man on His knees to serve. Man in weakness as the image of God. – He humbled Himself. – I am gentle and lowly in heart. – He that has seen Me has seen the Father.
False Image: You can become the likeness and image of “God” IF you follow a program of self-improvement by human performance. This claim by the serpent hides the LOUD but unspoken assumption – Adam, you are NOT the image and likeness of God; who cares what God says. Followed by, “But look at me, the highest and most beautiful heavenly creature, I am what God looks like,” also very loud, though also unspoken.
This FACT, that Jesus is the pattern by which Adam, that is, mankind, is fashioned, is the primary target of the serpent. By dealing his mighty blow against Jesus as God’s design of us, the serpent eliminated every other word God might speak. Over and over, when God says, “You ARE,” the serpent inserts the words, “You can be,” meaning, “You obviously are not.”
Rule 3: Everything is already finished. God never speaks anything that is not already fulfilled and completed inside Himself. Just as God exists, so, in the same way, every word He speaks exists fulfilled. This rule then must include John 6:63 – The Words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life.
To the Bible: As we read the Bible, although we expect God to demonstrate what He speaks in space and time, that is, in outward appearance; nonetheless, we move and think in all ways as if this word God speaks that we are reading is already fulfilled in God and therefore in us.
To Ourselves: We are already all that we are inside of God in all fulness. There is nothing more that can be added to what we already are. The unfolding of our lives through the ages, then, is nothing more than an unending discover of everything we are.
To the Church: We see one another as already completed, already all that God speaks concerning one another. We relate with one another as we are the Lord Jesus Himself, knowing that our brother and sister are already the finished perfection of every Word God speaks.
True Image: Perfect rest – an infant in his mother’s arms protected by his father.
False Image: The Myth of Sisyphus. Laboring without purpose, failing and trying again, endlessly. Losing everything, and losing and losing, with no hope of recovery.
Ephesians 3:17-19
Rule 4: Jesus Christ is known only in and by the heart.
To the Bible: Every word in the Bible is the Lord Jesus, and thus every word in the Bible is already written as Him all through all the pathways of our heart. For that reason, when we respond to any word God speaks with “Let it be in me,” we know that it already is, even as we ask.
To Ourselves: When we look inside ourselves and especially at our hearts, all we ever see is Jesus. Our hearts are good; our hearts are filled with Jesus. Our unending joy is the continuous discovery of this Jesus that is our only life, all that we are.
To the Church: We regard one another as the embodiment of the precious Lord Jesus, the risen Messiah, the King of the universe.
True Image: The Ark of the Covenant. Christ Jesus written as Himself and as Word with Spirit ink all through our hearts of flesh.
False Image: Jeremiah’s words regarding hearts empty of God brought into the gospel as if they apply to those in whom Christ dwells. – “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” People staying away from their hearts and treating one another as evil.
Rule 5: God created humans weak for His purposes. – That the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. For that reason, God embeds our human weakness inside of His love as inside of concrete
To the Bible: Most of the story lines in the Bible are there to persuade us of our complete inability in our own human selves to please God or to fulfill His will. We read the Word, not as a condemnation of our human weakness, but as a condemnation of trying to relate with God out from any fake attempt to “suppress” that weakness and not out from Christ Jesus.
To Ourselves: God likes us exactly as He made us and wants nothing more than being with us in all togetherness.
To the Church: We not only accept, but rejoice in one another’s human abilities and inabilities, giving space for one another, that is, forgiving one another. Yet we see one another’s humanity entrenched utterly inside the love of God, inside a love surpassing all human knowledge.
True Image: A Man stumbling under a cross He cannot carry.
False Image: A worm. Man is scum. “God” loathes human weakness (yes, I have read this in Christian writing.) Paul’s words applied falsely and out of context – In me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells.
Rule 6: God created humans to be filled with all of Himself. Man is created to contain God; man is custom made to fit God; man is what God looks like when He appears inside heaven/earth.
To the Bible: While every negative word in the Bible is an exaltation of the absolute cross of Christ, every positive word in the Bible is an unveiling of God Himself as He lives inside of us. We read the Bible in an awe of incredible discovery of all that fills us full.
To Ourselves: This knowing of God filling us full comes into us only through our faith with no regard for human sight or judgment. Since we know Father by knowing Jesus, we know Father also only by heart, only by sharing heart with God.
To the Church: We see one another as the visible expression of all of God’s thoughts concerning each as they unfold in the seasons of our lives. We see one another as the very temple, the container, of all that is God.
True Image: A family of people loving one another with a pure heart fervently.
False Image: “God” as “transcendent” only, a bounded form, almost a humanoid demigod, superior in his opinion of himself, keeping himself aloof from humans, not deigning to “look upon” human weakness. A “God” whom we hardly know; a “God” before whom we quiver in an unholy fear and a disgust towards ourselves.
John 7:37-39
Rule 7: The work of God flows into all creation through humans.
To the Bible: We begin to notice the many references in the Bible of God working together with man and man with God. More than that, we know that God never violates the place He gave to man. He did transfer that place from Adam to Jesus, but God still requires that all things which He might do must flow first through humans. Thus we read every action of God in the Bible as something that moves out to others through us.
To Ourselves: We define ourselves as workers together with God, turning everything towards goodness, confident that God is always working all things together with us.
To the Church: When God says that the Spirit works all gifts through all believers, we accept that what God says is true.
True Image: A fountain of water springing up and flowing forth.
False Image: God cannot be known by us now. We remain in ignorance; we cannot know what the Bible really means. We’ll know what it’s all about only when we die and go to heaven. Also – God has no need for humans. God performs His will separate from mankind.
Rule 8: Christ ministry is found only in the sending forth of the Spirit.
To the Bible: We notice all the wondrous behind-the-scenes working of God. We see the statement, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” underlying so many Bible stories.
To Ourselves: Our work is a 100% rest in God. We see the Holy Spirit always going out from Father and us together. We expect that the Spirit is doing all things well. Yet we accomplish far greater things through our trust in the Spirit than we ever did through our restless labor.
To the Church: We have no need to impose on or to manipulate others. We know that we are impacting all others with life through the Spirit always flowing out from us. We see every human quality and every human giving as a gift and giving of the Spirit. We receive Christ in abundance from the least giving of the littlest one.
True Image: Rivers of living water always flowing – the river of life flowing out from the source of life.
False Image: Religious manipulation and control. Obtaining compliance by a false “fear of God.” Using “God” as one’s whip.
Revelation 12:10-11
Rule 9: God placed humans as His authority over all.
To the Bible: Every expression of the authority of God in the Bible, we see that same authority as placed as Christ in us. We recognize the innumerable ways by which the Bible shows us that either death or life comes to all only through humans.
To Ourselves: We embrace fully the authority of God we possess to impart life to all. We embrace the authority to see all things good, to turn every mistake into blessing for others, entirely by faith. We have the authority to love. We have the authority to release from all bondage of sin.
To the Church: We make a safe place for one another, for each little one who belongs to Jesus. We walk together in reciprocal forgiveness. We practice the Mercy Seat together.
True Image: Our hearts, the throne of heaven, the Mercy Seat.
False Image: The arrogant Christ. Jesus as a dictator, forcing compliance, killing all who oppose. A Christ who demands that we rise up out of our weakness before He will deign to accept us.
Rule 10: Through humans God proves Christ against all that opposes.
To the Bible: On the one hand, we see in the Bible the journey as the witness of Christ, first the journey of the Ark in the Old and then the journey of the Church in the New. On the other hand, we see all the commandments of Jesus to His Church in a new light, as words that must be fulfilled in our lives and on this earth, especially “Love one another.”
To Ourselves: We are confident that standing unmovable against all accusation is the thing we do. At the same time, we increase our confidence in the Jesus who fills our hearts regarding each word that He is, KNOWING that He is bound by God to fulfill that word in and through us.
To the Church: We see the Church as the proof of Christ in the earth. We expect to see millions of Spirit-filled believers in Jesus entering into the fulness of Christ as we are coming to know Him. When we see one another, we reckon each other to be the evidence that Jesus speaks the truth.
True Image: A sheltering roof. A city of refuge.
False Image: Weeping under the altar or before the cross, “Have mercy on me.” A complete disregard of the victory of Christ. Completely useless to others.
Galatians 2:20
Rule 11: The Cross is absolute and complete. Every element of the old creation has already perished in totality upon the cross.
To the Bible: Every negative word in the Bible, every speaking against sin, serves one purpose, and that is to convince us of the rightness, the absoluteness, and the finality of our death already accomplished upon the cross. By every negative verse, we see the cross fulfilled and behind us.
To Ourselves: We never see ourselves as separate from Jesus. It is especially our SIN and our SHAME that we place entirely upon Him. We KNOW that we have already received the full penalty of the law, that we are executed. We know that our death is finished.
To the Church: As we relate with one another, we know that the cross is finished regarding our brother’s and sisters. We know that all falling short has ceased. We know that all things are brand new.
True Image: Our shield wall of protection, keeping all sin and death from ever touching us.
False Image: The crucifix. An endless dying. An endless crawling back up on the cross, and getting off, and then back on. The cross as a horror and an exaltation of death. The cross as a barrier before which unbelievers weep.
Rule 12: Complete and present union with Christ is the only age-unfolding life.
To the Bible: We not only find Christ Jesus on every page of the Bible, but we also find that on every page, God is speaking of Christ in, as, and through us. At the same time, the incredible mind-blowing statements of Christ our life lying hidden and shadowed through the Bible explode into our view as the great and overwhelming words that they are.
To Ourselves: We sink always into Jesus. We rejoice in our utter union with Him. Never do we see ourselves as anything except His expression. Even our stupid mistakes belong entirely to Jesus. Yet at the same time, all that He is belongs entirely to us.
To the Church; In the same way that we see Christ living as us, so we see Christ living as all who belong to Him. We especially see Christ as one another through the press of daily difficulty.
True Image: The full meaning of marriage.
False Image: Split asunder. Divorce. All alone.
Hebrews 10:19-22
Rule 13: The Blood removes all consciousness of sins.
To the Bible: We allow the Jesus Secret version of the book of Hebrews, that is, what the writer actually says – hearts sprinkled from an evil consciousness – to alter our understanding of the full reality of the atonement. We apply that same understanding, then, to every other part of the Bible.
To Ourselves: While we easily say, “I was wrong” in our relationships with others, we never allow any thought of sin or accusation against us a place in our thinking. When we do what is wrong, we place that automatically into Jesus dead upon the cross; we never place it upon ourselves. We understand that we are entirely and only INSIDE of Christ. We are not and cannot be inside of sin.
To the Church: We see one another as pure and holy, without blemish or spot. When another offends us, we practice the Mercy Seat, drawing that one into love above the Blood upon our hearts and setting him or her free of ourselves.
True Image: The precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot – the redeemed, precious, and perfect Bride of Christ.
False Image: – “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Calling the nature of the believer in Jesus as being ruled by depravity. A mind filled with the consciousness of sins both one’s own and all others.
Rule 14: The boldness of a true heart alone takes believers into everything inside of God.
To the Bible: We are bold, even presumptuous, in seizing every word God speaks as our own personal word of Christ alive inside of us. We leave nothing out that God speaks, except those things we do not understand or know that we have understood wrongly. Those things we simply leave in the hands of our very capable Savior.
To Ourselves: We grapple with and make part of our consciousness the absolute fact that God is pleased only with our bold seizing for ourselves of everything Holy and Living that we find inside of God. We live only inside the Holiest, inside all that is God, but entirely by faith, by the bold proclamation of our words, against all outward appearance and against all human judgment.
To the Church: A big part of all of God is inside of one another. We boldly “own” one another, not in any kind of disrespectful or selfish use, but rather, seeing one another as our greatest of treasures and highly valuing every single thing coming to us from all other believers in Jesus.
True Image: David the pirate, obsessed with possessing God, AND with bringing all of his friends into the Holiest, and not giving a fig about the consequences.
False Image: Religious and utterly fake humility. “I don’t want to presume upon God.” In fact, this is the very heart that Jeremiah was decrying.
Hebrews 3:6/14 & 2 Corinthians 2:14
Rule 15: Absolute confidence in God is the only thing that pleases Him.
To the Bible: We define “faith,” everywhere we read of it or see it in the Bible, as this same absolute confidence in God.
To Ourselves: We walk in absolute confidence in God here, God now, God Personal and present inside of us. God is utterly together with us in all things, sharing our lives with us in all ways. If we forget, the moment we remember, we continue in that same absolute confidence without missing a beat.
To the Church: We extend this same confidence in God sharing His Person with our persons towards one another, both in encouragement to speak being one with Father boldly, but also to seeing one another as one with Father boldly.
True Image: He that has seen me has seen the Father. The Father and I are one.
False Image: The third servant. – “Look, here is what you gave me; I kept it ‘safe.’” Treating God as a miser, pretending that complete disregard is “being respectful.”
Rule 16: Believers walk as if already resurrected by this response to every Word God speaks – Let it be to me.
To the Bible: As we read every word of Christ in the Bible, we ask God to fulfill that word as Christ in, as, and through us. As we do so, we believe that we have received all that we ask. Then, we speak as if we are what God speaks until that is the only thing we know. The word, what God Himself says in the Bible, becomes most precious to us.
To Ourselves: By speaking the resurrected and ascended Christ as all that we are, utterly together with Him inside of God All-Carrying [the correct rendition of what was once “God Almighty”] we begin to think that we are, in fact, already resurrected, entirely in spite of our present dying bodies, yet never despising the weakness God has crafted us as.
To the Church: Our view of one another is changing in direct correlation with our knowing of Christ as us. We see one another as the full and open embodiment of the resurrected Christ of God, the King of creation, Jesus walking this earth as He is.
True Image: Jesus walking this earth in us together now as He is.
False Image: Strange fire. Presenting human performance to God. All that the Lord has spoken we will do. “I seek God’s will and not my own.” Trying, lying, and crying and calling it “God.”
John 15:12-13 & 1 John 3:16
Rule 17: The essence and meaning of God is love.
To the Bible: We never read any expression of God’s anger as something equal to and separate from His love, this false Holiness – Love dichotomy. Rather, we see every reference to God’s anger as a small, but necessary part of Love, a great grief at all the loss and hurt of sin. Then, we place the Love of God as the beginning and the end, as the reason for everything. The same LOVE we discover through Jesus, we place as the essence in which every word God speaks in the Bible exists.
To Ourselves: Rooted and grounded in Love. This is not our “fallback,” but our only position ever. God LIKES me; God thinks that being with me, being part of me, sharing my life as His own and His life as my own is just the best thing going. How can we be the river of life except from here? How can a different universe come forth except from here?
To the Church: We cover all for all; we hope all for all; we believe all for all; we carry all for all.
True Image: A Lamb slain. Jesus, walking through the Atonement, carrying us inside Himself through a way we could not go. Jesus, stumbling under a cross He cannot carry, carried by Father carrying us.
False Image: A split-soul and psychotic god. A god who might be love but is much more wrath. Defining God’s holiness by the serpent’s accusations. A god who demands what we cannot produce and then punishes us for not meeting his grossly unreasonable expectations.
Rule 18: As believers love one another, so they share Hheart with God.
To the Bible: We redefine the Bible to us, every part of it, as an instruction manual on how to love one another. Love alone is the fulfillment of the law. We see in every story a testimony of life laid down and love poured out.
To Ourselves: We KNOW that we are the Mercy Seat of God. We practice being that Mercy Seat on a daily basis. We place loving one another as our greatest desire and goal. We speak “And we also lay down our lives for the brethren.”
To the Church: We see one another, not just as the embodiment of the living Lord Jesus Christ, but also as the embodiment of Father’s Heart. We practice being the Mercy Seat together. We lay down our lives, set forth our souls for one another.
True Image: Life laid down and love poured out. The beating Heart of Father. To the pure all things are pure. Seeing as God sees; seeing through eyes of Fire.
False Image: Spots in your love feasts – foaming up their own shame. Viewing and treating with other believers as false.
Romans 8:18-22
Rule 19: God accepts nothing less than all creation restored back to Him.
To the Bible: We translate the Greek aeon as it means, a period of time or the unfolding of time. We place all the vague and uncertain idioms and metaphors under subjection to the statements of Paul. We place Paul’s statements of God all in all as the rule over everything negative we read. “Destruction” means the elimination of the old creation by the cross, not the elimination of the person.
To Ourselves: By eliminating all thought of “eternal damnation,” we are free to know Father as He is in us. At the same time, we reckon with a God who is travail, and that this travailing God has seized us in His grip, that He might reconcile all to Himself through Christ as us.
To the Church: We recognize that Jesus IS Lord, that He IS the Head of His body, and that He does all things well in each one who belongs to Him.
True Image: Every knee bowing in submission to Jesus and every tongue speaking Christ.
False Image: The consummation of all things split forever between an utterly good “heaven” and an utterly evil “hell.” The present-day caricature of “Adolf Hitler” as what God looks like. The final end of all things coming out from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the tree of death. The complete victory of the serpent over Christ.
Rule 20: The great task of believers is to set creation free.
To the Bible: We see the instructions of the Bible regarding our witness of Christ in a new light. We see the great purpose in which we are caught. The verses of the determination of God become larger and larger to us. At the same time, we recognize that so many things in the Bible that are “negative” are simply God’s utter frustration with a way of living that does not accomplish His desire, that does not bring all into life.
To Ourselves: We see our every moment as caught in the great task of God, setting all things free. We embrace the travail of God through us. We speak in every difficult circumstance that Father is travailing together with us to set creation free.
To the Church: On the one hand, we see all the suffering of our lives as for the sake of the Church. On the other hand, we see one another as that same travail of God for all creation. We together ARE the tree of life out from which a wondrously new universe flows.
True Image: We see a creation of unending beauty and delight and a future of incredible adventure. We take upon our shoulders the responsibility for all things as our own personal possession forever. – Also, the Lake of Fire that is God, consuming all that is contrary inside Himself and releasing all into freedom, each one in his or her season. That same Fire now the Energeia of our lives.
False Image: The lake of fire, not as God Himself, but as an image of unending torment. Making God out to be hopeless pain. – Then, a description of “heaven” as eternal “bliss,” of the emptiness of playing harps on clouds forever and ever. Banality and boredom.
John 14:20 & 15:4a & 17:3
Rule 21: Knowing God and God made known is the consummation and fulfillment.
To the Bible: Everything in the Bible is about our knowing God and about God making Himself known through us. We apply every verse to this one goal. We recognize the Heart and desire of our Father, that He does not yet possess the one thing He longs for – being known to His creation as part of His creation.
To Ourselves: We place knowing God as the one and only drive of our lives; we place God known through us as the one and only drive of Father’s life.
To the Church: We see the gathering together of the Church as the embodiment of God, the place through which God enters His creation and is known by His creation. We place life together as the pinnacle of the consummation of God. We value life together with the same valuation as God.
True Image: The Temple of God among men – the Church – the gathering together. A family of people loving one another with a pure heart fervently, that is, God Himself.
False Image: The outward perfection of “heavenly glory,” superior and “above” and before which everything and everyone grovels. God forever arrogantly superior; God forever NOT KNOWN.
Rule 22: Believers live only inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of them.
To the Bible: We understand and apply the principle of placement to every verse in the Bible. God placed Jesus “under the law”; therefore, He was subject to sin. God placed us into Christ; therefore, we are not subject to sin. – Every word is Jesus; every word is us.
To Ourselves: We see, we speak, and we know that every particle that we are, especially our sin and our shame (until we no longer know them), but also our joys and our abilities, our weaknesses and our humanity is found entirely and only inside of Jesus, inside ALL that is Jesus. And this same Jesus, in ALL that He is, is found entirely and always inside of every particle that we are, spirit, soul, and body.
To the Church: We see one another in that exact same way. You are as Jesus to me. But more than that, in the same way that each one of us lives only in Jesus and Jesus in us, so do we together as each local gathering together and as the entire Body of Christ.
True Image: Jesus as a human life-giving Spirit, living in our hearts as us and as Himself.
False Image: “Jesus” as a humanoid demigod, small and confined, sitting somewhere far away from us.
Rule 23: Believers put the Lord Jesus Christ upon themselves entirely through faith.
To the Bible: While every negative word in the Bible causes us to rejoice that the cross is finished for all, every positive word in the Bible must be speaking about us, for every word is Christ. We disregard utterly all outward appearance. We place every word of Christ upon ourselves entirely by the confidence of faith.
To Ourselves: By placing Jesus upon ourselves entirely by faith, we walk as Jesus walked. We put forward every step as utterly inside the love of God. We put Jesus upon all that we are, upon every moment and circumstance of our past, upon every present and ongoing circumstance. We put Jesus upon our bodies and upon every nuance of our own self-stories. We sink into Jesus with every step and every breath.
To the Church: We see one another in that exact same way. You are as Jesus to me. But more than that, we place Jesus in the same way upon our gathering together. We call our assembly together as the local Church by the Lord Jesus Christ.
True Image: Symmorphosed with His Glorious Body. The true drinking and eating of communion fulfilled in life together.
False Image: Getting in line to “see Jesus” someday. Or, a “cloned” Jesus completely separate from us. Also – crows snatching up the seed sown on hard ground. “God is not talking about you.”
1 Corinthians 12:12-14 & 12:25b & Ephesians 5:25b
Rule 24: Christ is a many-membered body; believers are part of one another.
To the Bible: We see the Church all through the Bible. We see God’s heart for family and for community on every page. So many verses that we once applied only to ourselves as individuals, we finally surrender to the obvious fact that they are all speaking of life together.
To Ourselves: We see ourselves not just as individual expressions of Christ, but as members of His body, as members of one another. We know that we will discover ourselves as we really are only by walking together with others.
To the Church: The Church is the end of all salvation; we are saved into Church. Church is the dwelling place of God forever. Church is Father made known. We bend every verse and every metaphor in the Bible to its fulfillment as us together. At the same time, we see all other believers as bound together with us, as much a part of ourselves as Christ Jesus is. We care about one another. We share the suffering and rejoicing of all who belong to Jesus.
True Image: Christian Community. Many small families of people walking together through daily life, loving one another with a pure heart fervently.
False Image: Me and Jesus got a good thing going. Don’t need nobody. Suspicion and isolation, keeping people “at arm’s length.”
Rule 25: Believers live in and by the same One Spirit.
To the Bible: The words of the Bible are Spirit and Life and can be known only as such. The Bible becomes visible by the living Church.
To Ourselves: We see ourselves in all ways as one Spirit with the Lord.
To the Church: The Church is Spirit and Life and can be known only as such. The Church is more the Bible than the Bible ever could be. We see each other as belonging to each other. We drink of the same Spirit together. We see the entire Church across the earth as one Spirit and one body.
True Image: Clothed with the sun, that is, many, many pillars of Fire, all flowing out from God into God seen and known.
False Image: Tribalism. “God bless America.” “Jesus and the Jews.” Imagining that the church is split all apart into warring factions.
Five More Rules of Thinking
Rule 26: God is Personal, invisible, and Symmorphic. We must know God as He is in each of these three specific ways.
Rule 27: Heaven and earth are part of one another. We must understand rightly the cosmos in which we live.
Rule 28: Sin is falling short of fulfilling one’s place, “trying” to become what we already are. Evil is any action against another for selfish gain. We must know what sin and evil actually are, that is, a momentary action that ceases and not a substantive nature. Yet both sin and evil come out of strange fire, self-energeoing, the creation of a false and accusative story of self inside our bubble.
Rule 29: God is travail. We must know what God is through us, turning everything intended for evil into the result of goodness, seeing all things good, bearing the cost of love.
Rule 30: The Bible can be the Word of God to us, but only as it comes into us as Spirit and through faith, becoming Jesus Himself in Person inside of us. – The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life. To the false the Bible can only be false, a tree of knowledge.
I do believe that seeing our individual persons, one another, and all creation in the way set forth here is to live in an entirely different universe than that which present Christianity perceives.