11.3 Synergeoing with God
As humans, we are designed and created for work. That means, we have a job to do. And the incredible thing is that, if we are doing our job, then all creation is blessed with the abundance of life. But if we are not doing our job, then all creation is cursed with the paucity of death.
This text is based entirely on the assumption that, as real humans, we are doing that for which God created us to do. We are doing our work. And here is our work, in its essence, that is, one way for us to understand it. – Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it (Genesis 2:15).
To Tend and to Keep. Now, Part 4 of this text, “Human Expression,” is all about the “work” that we humans are made to do. This lesson is about HOW we do whatever it is we are doing in every present moment – synergeoing with God.
Let’s rephrase our work. – Then God placed His completed humans into the garden of the New Jerusalem, a living planet, now the entirety of heaven-earth, that they might synergeo with Him to tend and to keep all things inside this Garden.
To tend is the Hebrew “abad,” which means “to work, to serve.” And to keep is the Hebrew “shamar,” which means “to keep, to watch, to preserve.” There are few things I love more than to tend and to keep a garden, and the truth is, a classroom filled with eighth graders is much the same to me.
I Am Working. The next chapter is titled “War and Peace,” and it includes a consideration of our person and God’s Person together. As such, the first lesson will be “Peace.” From one point of view that lesson should come before this, but we will continue with our present outline and see what the Spirit of God shows us.
“My Father is working until now, and I am working.” Because of this, therefore, the Judeans sought even more to kill Him. Not only did He annul the Sabbath, but He also called God His own Father, making Himself equal to God… “The Son is not able to do anything of Himself, except what He might see the Father doing. Whatever indeed He does, these things the Son does also.” (John 5:17-19 – rough JSV).
To Be at Work. The word Jesus used in John 5 is a form of ergon, which means, basically, the outward part or result of work.
For God is the present and active Energeoing inside of you, both to desire and to Energeo for the sake of good pleasure and satisfaction (Philippians 2:13). This word, typically translated “working,” is the Greek energeo, meaning “to be at work.” Here is a further explanation. energéō (from 1722 /en, "engaged in," which intensifies 2041 /érgon, "work") – properly, energize, working in a situation which brings it from one stage (point) to the next, like an electrical current energizing a wire, bringing it to a shining light bulb. (From Helps Ministries, Inc. – I will switch it to Thayer’s later.)
Inward and Outward. It is clear to me that energeia, as we have brought it into English, and our English word, work, are two sides of each other, with energeia inward and work outward. I can want to work all I want, but it takes energy to perform that work. In this case, however, we have coined the word “energeia” as something more than “energy,” that is, as the life force that includes energy as one part of itself.
Now, look at the Judean reaction to Jesus’ words. They understood what He meant. If I said that Jimmy and I worked together framing a house, you would not think what the Judeans thought. Jesus was speaking of something far more intimate.
Deep Satisfaction. Then Paul’s words in Philippians 2:13 present probably the most impossible concept in the Bible. Yet Paul is speaking of the most fundamental nature of human work as we have defined the human.
Now, the Greek word translated in the JSV as “good pleasure and satisfaction” is eudokia, good pleasure. The word “satisfaction” is also in the list of synonyms. Productive and meaningful work, work that benefits others, always leaves a deep sense of satisfaction in the human at the end of the day. It is clear by Paul’s words that the good pleasure and satisfaction is shared by both God and us together.
Two Purposes. Paul said that “God is the energeoing inside of you.” The “present and active” are in the tense of the verb. And this God who is the energeoing inside of us is doing all this LIVING and WORKING inside of us for two specific purposes. God’s first purpose in actively and presently energeoing away inside of us is to be our desire. And from that desire shared by God and us, His second purpose is to be also our own energeoing.
So, there is God energeoing becoming our energeoing with a miraculously shared desire in-between. And as we have seen, that shared desire is a shared Jesus.
Reciprocity. God’s principle of reciprocity is ever-growing in our understanding. The initial principle is stated in this way. God first loves us, then we love Him in return. God-Love towards us lives in us as love. We make that love personal to ourselves and then love God in return out from His love in us. Every other God-human connection fits inside this principle, explained clearly in 1 John, as one aspect or another of God-Love.
God energeoes inside of us causing our energeoing to be. Then, in return, out from that God-Energeia inside of us, we synergeo with God. But in-between, we first make that God-Energia personal to ourselves as our own desire, that is, the Lord Jesus.
God with Us. Now, in verse 12, Paul said that we “work out our own salvation in fear and trembling.” The word “work out” or “accomplish” is a combining of ergon, the outer work, with kata, which means “down to the finest detail,” or, “in every particle and way.” Salvation is God with us. Salvation is the completion of God’s metaphor of the Ark of the Covenant.
What the Spirit of God is saying is that every outward work that you and I do in any aspect of “tending the garden,” comes out from God and us synergeoing together. And the result of every work is a deep satisfaction inside of God inside of us and inside of us inside of God.
Placing the Covenant. Please understand that synergeoing with God is not a subject I know a whole lot about. For that reason, we are simply putting the things God says about it out there where we can see them. Then, as we plant this understanding of what God means in our hearts (place the Covenant that I give you) He Himself shows us what He means.
Thus, at this point in our learning, we are fitting together everything God says in Romans 8:28, Genesis 2:15, Philippians 2:12-13, and now Philemon 1:6. Such that the fellowship and sharing [koinonia] of your faith might be energeoing inside of the acknowledgment of every good thing that is inside of us, inside of Christ.
Faith Is the Passage. Paul said, “Every good thing.” The best “good thing” inside of Jesus inside of us is the Father. And the Father does not just “exist,” the Father lives, He ENERGEOES.
Then, faith is the channel, the passageway, going in two directions at the same time. Faith is the passage through which the knowledge of God enters into us to become us (shared desire, Christ as us). Then the same faith is the passage through which the knowledge of God enters our world that all might know Him. So this placing of the word “koinonia,” sharing and fellowship, upon our both-direction faith is something for us to ponder.
Acknowledging His Desire. The key word in this entire arrangement in all of our verses, then, is our “acknowledgement.” Wow, let’s bring a fifth verse into our kaleidoscope as we seek to understand God’s incredible PURPOSE – Colossians 1:9-11. That you may be filled with the acknowledgement of His desire inside of all wisdom and spiritual understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord into all desire to please in every good work, bringing forth fruit and increasing in the acknowledgement of God, being empowered with all power according to His glorious might of completion…
Ultimately, God wants one thing of us. He wants us to acknowledge that He, in Person, is part of our lives, sharing everything together with us and we with Him.
The Work of God. Here is that same wanting of God expressed in a different way. Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent” (John 6:28-29). Believing that Jesus is Sent into us is always making Father part of our lives, sharing everything with us and especially sharing with us all that we do. Here is acknowledgement. – We believe, therefore we speak (2 Corinthians 4).
I have been going through a great internal press the last while, except the thought that my Father shares all of it with me never leaves my knowing and acknowledgement.
They Don’t Want Me Here. In Ezekiel 10, Ezekiel sees a vision of God departing, bit by bit, from Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. But in Chapter 8, God tells Ezekiel why He has to leave. – To make Me go far away from My sanctuary. – “They don’t want Me here. They don’t want Me to be part of their lives. They will not acknowledge My presence with them.”
Yes, God is angry, as any normal person would be angry at their hard refusal against Him, but before the anger there is a sorrow so deep and so great that no human could ever fathom it. And what do they want instead of “Father with me, sharing my life with me?” They want every perverse fantasy they can imagine in their own fake story of self and self-worship.
No Separation. A person who says, “God, tell me what You want me to do today,” is placing a barrier of sin between himself and God. That barrier is found in their self-concocted imagination only; they want a life lived separately from God-Energeia inside, a life under their own control.
Jesus did no such evil thing. Here is what Jesus said. The words that I speak to you, I do not speak from Myself, but the Father dwelling inside of Me does His works (John 14:10). And again – My Father is working until now, and I am working.” – “The Son is not able to do anything of Himself, except what He might see the Father doing. Whatever indeed He does, these things the Son does also.” “The Father does; I do. I do; the Father does.” No separation.
You Are with Me. We never say, “God tell ME what to do.” We always say, “Father, You are with me, part of me. What I desire to do, You are sharing Your desire with me. And what I am doing, You are doing together with me. More than that, Father, what You are doing, I am doing also.”
God is ALL HERE NOW. God is already all with all. Jesus is already sustaining all things by His power-filled Word every moment. All human wickedness comes out from the hard refusal to acknowledge and to know this reality. All fake stories of self, created in the human imagination contrary to Christ, are the “prize and treasure” wanted by that hard refusal.
Acknowledging God. We are the opposite, just like the Lord Jesus Christ. We synergeo with God in all things BECAUSE we acknowledge that God synergeos with us first. This acknowledgement, this koinonia faith, is forever.
And that brings us back to the premise of this chapter, that we and God must come together, our human authority and the power of God’s Spirit, in order to accomplish our shared desire in all creative and nurturing work. A human, then, is a being who never leaves God out of his or her picture, AND who never treats God as “someone else.” Rather, a human is always enjoying and resting in “Father with me,” and is always seeing all things through that togetherness.
Our Work. As humans, we have the God-given authority to do the work before us, the work we wish to do and how we wish to do it, out from a pure, meek and lowly, heart. But God Himself can be known by others through us only as we joyfully acknowledge the personal immediacy of “God with us, energeoing us and the work in all things.”
This continuous, joyful acknowledgment, then, of “Father with me,” is the source and cause of the rivers of Spirit flowing out from me in power, accomplishing all that Father and I desire together. And that is all God ever wanted, to be a joyful part of our lives in all out-poured abundance.