8.1 Two Mysteries

No one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14). The meaning in these words of Jesus is absolute and literal. If Father shares your life together with you in every moment and circumstance, that happens by one cause only; Christ Jesus causes that sharing together to be. Jesus is the cause of that Fellowship with Father I enjoy that then causes my human soul to be human.

In this chapter, we want to discover how Jesus operates as our in-between, in-between us and God, others and ourselves. God set two trees in the garden and two mysteries through the human experience, not to “try” us, but to show us what we are.

Two Trees. …The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9). –…Great is the mystery of godliness: “The One who was made visible inside of flesh, was made just and innocent inside of Spirit… (1 Timothy 3:16). – For the mystery of lawlessness [iniquity] is already energeoing; but is only presently restrained until it might become out of the midst (2 Thessalonians 2:7).

Paul is referring to two mysteries that come out from the two trees in the garden and work inside the human experience from then until now. These two mysteries are best understood the first time they appear, in the story of Cain and Abel.

Eat from the Tree of Life. Consider the tree of life. Consider Abel. Few do. In all the sermons I have heard preached, almost all defined me by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and by Cain and God’s rebuke of Cain. Few place the tree of life as the definition and meaning of everything or Abel’s action as the normal human response.

To the one presently and actively overcoming, I will give him to eat out from the tree of life, which is inside the paradise of God (Revelation 2:7). God placed life before Adam, not as a commandment, but as in invitation, for Jesus could not live inside of Adam to connect him with God apart from Adam’s active permission.

Feed on Me. The one eating My flesh and drinking My blood abides inside of Me and I inside of Him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live through the Father, so also the one feeding on Me, even he will live through Me (John 6:56-57).

Jesus is clearly presenting Himself as the tree of life of which we must eat. But what does that mean? How do we eat of life? God sets the contrast for us just as clearly. You see, since the resurrection of Jesus, any human not eating of the tree of life is, in that moment, eating of the tree of death. And we are very experienced at eating of the tree of death, for we are encouraged to do so even by the preaching in the church.

What does it mean to “eat” of the knowledge of death?

Fellowship with Demons. I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons (1 Corinthians 10:20-21). In this lesson I want to place a severe chasm in-between drinking the cup of the Lord and drinking the cup of demons. Paul is clear, we do NOT go back and forth. James also said that a double-minded man (one who tries to drink of both cups and eat of both tables) is unstable in all his ways.

I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes into Me shall never thirst (John 6:35). “Bread” is Jesus as Word. To eat of Him is to make His word part of our self-story, part of our very soul.

Speak the Same Word. On August 6, 2006, when I heard “Speak what God says you are,” and when I placed what I am in my finished state before my eyes, just like the Lord Jesus, in that moment Jesus gave me to eat of the tree of life, and I have not stopped eating since. I had no idea what it meant with my mind, but I knew in my spirit that this was God my Father giving life to me. To eat of Christ is to speak the same word He speaks (homologia) with all boldness (parrhesia) made personal as me (prophéteia). As I have done that, the words that are Christ Jesus have become part of my own self-story. At the same time, I have become horrified by all words that are not-Christ.

The Tree of Life. Here is the tree of life. – Know that I am inside of My Father, and you inside of Me and I inside of you (John 14:20). Let’s paraphrase that. – KNOW that I connect you utterly together with God on the inside of you and on the outside of you.

Out from this confidence, then, we speak the same words God speaks, made personal as us, and, over time, our mind is transformed, as Paul said, and we think as God thinks. Then we turn and look at our Christian brethren drinking of the cup of demons and eating at the table of demons. We remember that we also once partook of those evil words as our self-definition, and  we are horrified.

The Lamb Slain. The example of the mystery of godliness versus the mystery of iniquity set by God for us in the story of Cain and Abel is very simple. Abel placed the Lamb Slain between himself and God, and thus between himself and everything else, including himself. Cain placed himself before God as himself and as the work of his own hands, and God told him, “Your life, now, is all about sin. You live inside of curse.”

Abel’s life was all about “Father with me,” Cain’s life was all about me with me, that is, sin. This contrast thus far is the issue of redemption, and it is Jesus who saves us. I now want to frame this in terms of what we are.

I Am a Fabric of Words. We are a story of words inside of a spirit self-awareness. Words are always anointed by some spirit. To speak words of cursing and accusation against one’s self, against others, or against God, is to speak words that are ANOINTED by demons. To say, over and over in one’s mind, “I am fallen short of God,” is to eat of the table of demons and to drink their cup. It is a profound refusal of Jesus as our absolute In-Between.

I am made, as a human, by the fabric of the words that I speak. This is NOT “positive thinking.” “Positive thinking” is as absent of Christ Jesus as “negative thinking,” that is, “good AND evil.” I am made human by speaking what God speaks made personal as me by Christ Jesus living in and written upon my heart.

Jesus as Word. The Word becomes flesh. The Word proceeding forth from the mouth of God becomes my entire identity, my knowledge of myself, here in this world. Yet, even as that Word becomes me in all my identity, I never separate it from the Person of the Lord Jesus, for He is that Word and its fulfillment, and He alone connects me with God. I eat of Jesus as Word; I become what I eat. I drink of Jesus as Spirit; life flows out from me.

Now, my self-story does include my human weakness, as God made me. I do not “speak Christ” in order to fantasize myself as the “super-Christ.” But to speak not-Christ concerning myself, including concerning my human weakness, is to fellowship with demons.

An Unnecessary Hades. The human soul is not made for the anointing of angels, but for all the fullness of God. By speaking a story of self that is not-Christ, a human does not make themselves into “something else.” They do nothing more than keep themselves inside of an utterly unnecessary hades. Speaking not-Christ in all the conversation concerning one’s self going on inside the mind does nothing more than prevent the knowledge of God. It makes the human blind and deaf, living in a universe of True and Good and willfully knowing none of it.

Yet Christians who eat of the table of demons are convinced that you and I, by speaking Christ as our only life, are the ones “blaspheming” God. This is emptiness, and nothing else.

Only Jesus. Consider the statement made at the ending of the last chapter. – Communing with myself is communing with Father. Communing with Father is communing with myself. When I KNOW that, then I am human, just like Jesus. –

To most Christians, this statement is pure blasphemy, making myself “one with God.” And it would be blasphemy if I imagined that such a thing is true apart from Jesus In-Between, apart from the BLOOD of redemption, apart from my All-Connection with God. But I never think that way. In all my speaking of Christ in every Word God speaks as my ONLY life, I speak only of Jesus alive in my heart, causing me to know Father and myself.

We Ourselves Speak. God gave Adam the tree of life, and if he had eaten of it, he would have become a completed human. The problem for God is that “you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” You can give a human life to eat, but you can’t make him eat.

Eating of life is on our side of the equation; it is something we alone must do. God gave us His Word all through the Bible, so that we might become what He speaks. But our human soul, our self-consciousness, becomes filled with all that God is only as we ourselves speak His words and think His thoughts – as ourselves through Jesus.

Adobe InDesign. God designed us to be part of our own creation as His sons.

I use the software program, Adobe InDesign, to create my books. It is my favorite tool. InDesign sits in my hard drive, fully ready for me. But I cannot use it in the hard drive. It’s there, it’s real, it’s for me, but yet it remains completely useless for the present moment. Adobe InDesign at present is sized at 1.68 Gigabytes. That is all computer code, that is, word. If that code were printed on pages the size of my Symmorphy texts, it would amount to around 1.5 million volumes and fill my house 12 times. What I’m getting at is that’s a lot of word. InDesign is the same amount of word as over a million Bibles.

Calling in the Word. So – InDesign is sitting there in my hard drive, entirely available to me, but completely useless. Meanwhile, there is my RAM, that is, random access memory, capable of holding all that word and more besides, but empty of word. When I click on the InDesign emblem on my desktop, a call is sent from my processor into my hard drive, calling every word that is InDesign to arise out of the hard drive and to enter into the RAM. It actually takes a bit of time for all the Word to flow in.

The RAM is my human soul, the Word is Jesus inside of God inside my heart. For that Word that is Jesus to flow into and shape all my soul, I must call it in; I must speak Christ. This is eating of life; this is the mystery of godliness.

A Massive Inflow of God as Word. Yet this word filling my soul as my own self-story, though it is WORD anointed by Spirit (the enabling power of that flow), and a whole lot of Word at that, yet it remains Christ Jesus, my Savior and my Friend, the One upon whose breast I lean. And because that Word flowing, now, into every part of my soul, millions and millions of pages of Word right out from God, out from His Pro-Knowing of Himself, of me, and of God inside of me, remains the Lord Jesus, my All-Connection, I REST inside that Word, for I know that He does all things well.

And I sit here, inside of Jesus, knowing that this massive inflow of Word that is God Himself, flowing into my soul to become all that I am, is GOOD and TRUE, and that I am SAFE, here, sitting upon the BLOOD shed for me.