6.3 Entering the Land
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The greatest enemy to be faced by any Community you become part of is your belief that you are “right.”
Now, your being “right” in natural things, though a pain to everyone else, is subject to the back and forth of people learning to get along. There is, however, a deeper expression of “I am right” that is far more dangerous to your brethren. That great enemy, a giant in the land, is any belief you might hold that God has put you in charge because you are right. Or that your spiritual gift places you as superior over your “lesser” brethren. Or that your vision for the community must be pursued if the community is to be successful in God.
NOT Your Image. Let’s get specific. Many, upon hearing of Church life, imagine that it must be wonderful, people just loving one another. It doesn’t take very long in walking together, however, to have all that hot air blown out of your balloon by these individuals who are NOT like your image of what good Christians ought to be. You will despise your brethren long before you ever actually come to love them. And you will despise them because, by outward appearance, they are a prostitute bride, just like you are.
Adam rejected the tree of life BECAUSE he was disgusted with Eve. Why else would he cover her beauty with fig leaves? Death began with Adam the very moment he turned away from Life to look at his prostitute wife – and despised her.
Two “Christs.” In complete opposition to Adam, life began in Gethsemane when Jesus turned away from good and evil (My will against Your will) to look squarely at His prostitute wife – as the Joy set before Him.
When you see the uncleanness of your brother and sister, their propensity to do things that offend, their weak and vacillating devotion, their habit of so often letting you down, you will always find inside yourself a contention between two “Christs.” Your every inclination will be to reach out your hand to “fix” your brother or sister’s “problem,” first by telling them what’s wrong with them, and then by instructing them in outward performance. – And thus binding them to yourself by the law.
Jesus lays down His life, taking all offense upon Himself.
Our Promised Land. Now, God has placed in the Old Testament, at great cost to Himself and to many people over many years, a vivid and specific picture of what it means for us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. That picture is Israel entering the Promised Land. Our Promised Land is all that Christ Jesus is and means, that is “the fulness of Christ.”
Think of that term “the fulness of Christ.” What images does it evoke? Yet God gives a very specific and exact definition of “the fullness of Christ,” that is – Church. The Church, which is His body, the fulness of Christ who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:21). The entrance of the promised land is our entrance into Church.
Problems. This reality of God – that symmorphy, One expressing Himself through many, requires many together as one, that is, koinonia – that symmorphy-koinonia connection is where all the problems lie.
I am filled with all the fullness of God, then, I turn and look at you, one who opposes me and threatens my “right” ideas. If I am the one filled with God, then you, obviously, must be “of the devil.” (And we Christians have innumerable ways of saying that another Christian is “of the devil.”) 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? (1 John 4:20)
Jericho. As we established in prior courses, we must go back to God’s patterns to understand how the verses of the New Testament fit together. The patterns of God work so perfectly.
Salman, the forefather of David and Jesus, married the prostitute of Jericho – Rahab, the mother of Boaz. Rahab, redeemed by Salman from the destruction of Jericho, became the foremother of the real Jesus. And the first enemy the children of Israel faced in their entrance into the land was that same Jericho out of which Rahab was redeemed.
Jericho is the image of the super Christ forced upon the prostitute. Jericho is the most dangerous enemy in all the land.
I Am Right. Here is the lesser of two enemies inside of Christian community, this interplay of symmorphy with koinonia. I AM RIGHT and MY WAY IS RIGHT! Yet, God claims, by symmorphy, to have come into union with Mr. I-Am-Right and with Mrs. My-Way-Is-Right.
You see, if Jesus is living as me as I am in all my foolish mistakes, then your foolish mistakes must also be the same Jesus I love. And thus God placed into the pattern of the journey of Israel and their entrance into the Promised Land, two things found at every beginning of life together – the humiliating circumcision of Gilgal versus the hard forehead of Jericho.
The Giant of Jericho. Inside of Nicene Christianity, Jericho always rules over Gilgal. You see, there is a second enemy, a giant in the Church, far bigger than the average Mr. I-Am-Right or Mrs. My-Way-Is-Right. That giant is the hard and unwavering certainty that God has anointed ME in His Church BECAUSE I am right and BECAUSE my way is right. These are the powerful people in any gathering together, people with strong foreheads who imagine that God anoints them in His Church to rule, however “rule” might be defined.
It’s not wrong to feel “right.” That’s part of how God made us, just like Himself. The problem inside of any gathering together is the human propensity to impose on others the model of the arrogant Christ.
“You Owe Me.” Now, we are positioning the wall of Jericho as the hard face of the “super-Christ” and the rulers of Jericho as the propensity in each one of us to impose two things on one another. The primary thing each one of us imposes on others in every connection together is obligation – “you owe me.”
And each one of us, then, creates our own image of a “super-Christ” – what you would do IF you were “like Christ” – which we then use as our whip to compel others to give us what we have determined that they owe us. At the same time, in our disgust for the way God made us, each one of us embellishes our “Christ” of obligation with elements of “high heavenly glory,” or “super-Christness.”
A Blight. Let me make this personal. I stated that the giant is the hard certainty that “God has anointed ME in His Church BECAUSE I am right.” Now look at that. Everything in me cries, “You owe me, dear reader, for look at the great wealth I have delivered to you.” Sometimes I write in that way of thinking. I never want to send you such writing, though sometimes it might slip through. Any shadow of “you owe me,” especially the religious version, will blight the knowledge of Christ in community.
– Here is the actual reason why God anoints me. God anoints me to enable me to give to you what is already yours, that is, the knowledge of Jesus Himself already your life.
As He Is. If I want to know Jesus, then I will always say “NO” to that desire in me to require obligation of you or to force my image of how you should perform in order to “be like Christ,” or to place in front of you the false image of the “high, heavenly Christ” to which we hope, someday, to ascend. If I want to know Jesus, then I will always bow myself to the reality that YOU ARE Jesus as He IS to me.
Whatever you do to the least of these My brethren, you ARE doing it to Me. It is by knowing you as you ARE that I will know Jesus as He really IS. And yet this is not a subordination, but entirely reciprocal – members of one another.
Gilgal. Gilgal is the lowest spot on dry ground on earth. The only spot lower than Gilgal is the Ark of the Covenant on the bottom of the Jordan.
At that time the Lord said to Joshua, “Make flint knives for yourself, and circumcise the sons of Israel again the second time.” – So it was, when they had finished circumcising all the people, that they stayed in their places in the camp till they were healed. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” Therefore the name of the place is called Gilgal… (Joshua 5:2 & 8-9).
Gilgal is the circumcision of Christ, the cutting away of all desire for self-righteousness, the willingness to be clothed with Christ Jesus alone – our full and present union with Christ.
God’s Problem. Here is my problem. And in fact it is God’s problem, far more than mine. And in fact it is the core of this entire problem created by a God who is symmorphic, a God who is Love. Symmorphy is the biggest problem in the universe. Symmorphy through Koinonia means we love one another without obligation and in the exact same way that Jesus loves us. Symmorphy through Koinonia means we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
You see, symmorphy means that God has placed His will in our will, yet leaving us free of Him. And symmorphy through koinonia means that God has not just placed His will in one human’s will, as He did with Jesus, but in many, many, all of whom seem to oppose one another,
My Dilemma. Precious readers have expressed their desire to me to be part of a community of Christ as soon as God makes it possible. Here is my dilemma. I will NOT have anything to do with any community or even church structure that is not flowing out from this Word that fills my heart. I do not trust most other “ministers of Christ.” I have placed myself over many years under the direction of many different such ones, and they have NOT taken me where I WILL go. I look at those who are sharing some things similar to me, and I see that they are not taking their hearers where I will go. And so I am unwaveringly jealous over the vision I carry.
He Humbled Himself. Yet in the same measure, I am FULLY aware of the constant cry of “you ought” that arises in me against other people who walk with me beyond momentary fellowship. The vision I carry would give you LIFE as you have never known life. The “you ought” I carry would impart endless confusion.
Gilgal – He humbled Himself.
There is no such thing as two or more humans working together on anything without clear lines of authority and leadership. There is no such thing as life forevermore without those who possess authority laying down their lives every moment for the least deserving – even for the bullies who push the arrogant Christ.
Love One Another. I can assure you of this, these are the GREATEST issues any two or three gathering together inside of Christ will face. I have watched Jericho triumph over Gilgal (almost) every time. Time and again I have seen the super Christ, the ascended Christ, the “above you” Christ win out over God’s people, bringing them under the control of the whips of obligation. And I see myself attempting to do the exact same thing now towards my wife and my children, or at least wanting to do it.
Love one another as I have loved you is the greatest problem and the most impossible proposal in the universe. Love is not love unless it is God Himself in Person. Oh my Father, let it be to me according to Your Word.