2.2 The End of the Covenant
We are asking the question – What did Jesus see as He walked the path of the Atonement? What was the driving motivation of His heart, the prize He was determined to achieve? The short answer to that question is that He saw the Church.
But then, we must also ask the question – How does this course, specifically, look at that answer? This course is not a re-teaching of the purpose of God or of the Church in the outworking of the Kingdom or as Communities of Christ. For that reason, we assume that the learner draws the meaning of “Church” out from prior Symmorphy courses. Here we want to know what is man and what constitutes our makeup.
A Gathering of Humans. Because this course is meant to be a Biblical/experiential extended definition of the human, we consider “Church” only as it relates to the personal life experience of individual humans reaching out to and connecting with other humans.
The Church is a gathering of humans. But what are these entities we are calling humans who gather together as Church? We assume that Jesus saw each one of us as individuals, separate from all others, but also as one together. Jesus carried us as individuals inside Himself, yet He also carried us as one gathered together.
Yet Jesus saw us as much more than redeemed. Rather, He saw us as the end of the covenant; He saw us in our completed state, the full meaning that God intends humans to be.
Covenant Beings. Let me state specifically the topic of this lesson. – Humans are covenant beings. – Say that to yourself, “I am a covenant being.”
Any attempt to understand the human separate from covenant, not covenant in-part, but covenant in-completion, is to know neither the human nor God. We spent an entire course on the meaning of a symmorphic covenant, yet all we accomplished was to gain some familiarity with what is involved in such an incredible concept. The meaning of Covenant will increase for us forever, and thus the meaning of being human will do the same.
The Connection. But what is Covenant in its essence? Covenant is that which connects a human together with God and God with the human such that the two share all of life together.
Covenant is the in-between bond. Covenant is what makes God my Father part of my life; Covenant is what makes me part of Father God’s life.
To understand the essence of this Bond, we must go back to the beginning. In Genesis 1:1-2, God sets the state of a neutral creation ready and waiting for the entrance of God. Then, Genesis 1:3 is the entrance of God into creation. – And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. “Said – Let” is Covenant; it is also the entrance of God.
The Entrance of Word. Let’s clarify the meaning of “Said – Let.” “Said” is the Words that are God, now spoken, that is the essence that makes up God now become that form that can enter into creation. And “Let” is the permission of creation to receive the entrance of that Word.
And so we could say “Covenant” in this way. Christ Jesus, every Word that is God now in its voiced state, lives inside of creation, inside of your heart, as every Word that He is, through your freely given permission. Or, to simplify, we might say it like this. – “Christ lives inside of your heart through faith.” Genesis 1:3 and Ephesians 3:17 are the same.
What Does Jesus Want? Let’s bring this back into our question – What did Jesus see? This is a real human man walking this path, carrying all who belong to Him inside His heart.
All human action comes out from human intention and desire. And so, a different way to frame our question is – What did Jesus want? What constitutes His “JOY?”
We know precisely what that is, for Jesus’ final binding agreement with God, moments before Gethsemane, tells us. Father, I desire that those whom You have given Me might be with Me, that they might behold My glory that You gave Me. – That the love with which You loved Me might be inside of them, and I inside of them (John 17:24 & 26).
Reciprocal Devotion. The wanting of Jesus is the drive of everything we are and everything that exists in our lives.
Let’s place this “wanting” in terms of God as Peter quoted Him. “Be holy for I am holy.” Or, as we understand the meaning of “holy,” – “Be devoted to Me in just the same way that I am devoted to you.” The wanting of Jesus IS the devotion of God to us; our response, that gives God permission to be part of our lives, is that same devotion given back to God.
God always initiates everything; that is, it is always God moving towards us, shaping Himself to fit us. But we cannot KNOW God’s devotion except as we give it back in return.
Singing with God. Here is a brief definition of the human, and, in giving any definition of “human,” we always make it personal. A human is one who sings in response to and in harmony with the singing that is God. And we use the word “sing” rather than simply “speaks words” because a song is a dynamic and harmonic flow of living words, one might say, and that is how we exist.
Then, we would say it this way. – God speaks us inside of Christ, that’s our existence, what we are and where we are. As Hebrews 1 says, In these present final days God has spoken us inside His Son… This Son is… bringing forth, carrying, and sustaining all by His power-filled word.
Our Response Back. God speaks us inside of Christ. Then, God speaks Christ into us, that’s the Covenant, the Words of God entering our knowledge through our permission. Then we speak Christ back to God as our response of devotion. – A human being, then, is one who speaks Christ back to God. –
God speaking us inside of Christ does not make us humans. Jesus sustaining us by His power-filled words does not make us humans. The thing that makes us what we are is our response back to God, that is speaking Christ, that is, the Jesus Secret, that is, the knowledge of God.
Not Real. “Humans” who speak words of accusation against God, against others, and against themselves, cannot be real humans, no matter how “born again” they are. “Born again” is “conceived”; it is a seed, it is potential. But they cannot be real humans, for they are not living as Covenant Beings, that is, they don’t KNOW God.
Before we can give the answer we must have to the question “What did Jesus see,” we must now bring in the words of our Covenant with God, the binding agreement, the sworn oath, by which God has bound Himself to us. It is these words that are the center of what we mean when we say “human.”
Upon Their Hearts. First, we consider the quoted words of Jeremiah. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days says the Lord, I will place My laws in their minds, and upon their hearts I will inscribe them; and I will be God inside of them, and they will be people inside of Me. And no one will teach each their neighbor and each their brother saying, ‘Know the Lord’; because all will be aware of Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, because I will propitiate [eliminate by atonement] their acts of injustice, and their falling short [their failure to hit the target] will not be in My thoughts anymore (Hebrews 8:10-12). These are Old Testament words, however; we must bring them into Paul’s gospel confirmed by John.
What Does Father Want? Three gospel verses, then, reword for us the essence of the New Covenant first spoken by Jeremiah. This is the desire of My Father, that everyone beholding and experiencing the Son, and believing into Him, should have age-unfolding life. – For this is age-unfolding life, that they should know You, the One true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 6:40 & 17:3). – Clearly you ARE a letter of Christ… having already been written… with the Spirit of the living God – …inside tablets of hearts of flesh (2 Corinthians 3:3 – condensed).
A human is one who KNOWS God through knowing Jesus Sent into them as every Word God speaks written upon the heart.
Pro-Determination. That’s the first way of looking at the Covenant, but the second way we understand the Covenant is what God has spoken by Word and sworn by Oath that we ARE.
First, the ruling verse of the Bible, the core of the Covenant, the Oath by which God causes us to BE – in expanded form. – Because, these who are summoned out from God’s Pro-knowing, knowing God’s knowing of them, God Pro-Determined them, with all the passion of His Being, to be symmorphosed with, merged together with, sharing one form with the image of His Son, the revelation of Father, into the reality of Christ Jesus being the firstborn among and inside of MANY brethren, the first one of our kind.
The Covenant is the Pro-Determination of God.
Just Like Him. Then we place the two other words of this same binding Covenant together, for they must be known always together. And remember that the Pro-determination of the All-Carrying One hurls God into the fulfillment of these words.
Beloved, we are now children birthed out from God, and it has not yet been made visible [in outward appearance] what we will be. We know that if He becomes visible [to us], we will be just exactly like Him, because we will be seeing Him as He is. – We all, then, having been unveiled in face, are reflecting the glory of the Lord [to one another] as a mirror and are being transformed into the same image from glory into glory, just exactly as from the Spirit of the Lord (1 John 3:2 & 2 Corinthians 3:18).
Do What Where? The end of the Covenant, that which Jesus sees, the joy set before Him, is you and me just exactly like the Lord Jesus Christ in all that being just like Jesus might be, except for that place of honor which He holds. This is what we are, this that Jesus sees.
But being a human, though it begins with what we are, cannot remain there, for being human must also include what we do. We are beings of action, and we are known by our doings. Jesus saw what we are, but He also saw WHERE we belong, and what it is we DO in that place of belonging. Where are we? Jesus saw us, through every stumbling step, where we ARE. Where ARE we?
Inside of Father. That where I AM, you might also BE. – KNOW that I am inside of the Father (John 14:3 & 20). A human is a being who is WITH Jesus INSIDE OF the Father. Okay – so – what do we do in this extraordinary place where we live, where we BELONG? Two more lines tell us exactly what we do inside of God.
First – That all might be one, as You, Father, are inside of Me, and I inside of You, that they also might be inside of Us… And the glory which You have given Me, I have given them, that they might be one as We are one; I inside of them, and You inside of Me, that they might be perfected, brought to full completion inside of one… (John 17:20-23).
Sharing Fellowship. Then the clincher. – That you also might have fellowship [koinonia] with us, and truly our fellowship is with and among the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3). What did Jesus see? What compelled Him to stumble forward every step of the way? What great desire consumed Him? What was the Joy that filled His heart?
What is a human? – A human is a being who is just like the Lord Jesus Christ, sharing all form with Him as the revelation of the Father, a being who knows God, containing in heart every Word God speaks, who lives inside of God, a being who shares in the fellowship of Father and Son, living inside Their Symmorphy, and who shares that same fellowship with other humans living with them inside of God.
Stand Upon Firm. Listen, that answer to what is a human is 100% Biblical, that is, what the Bible says, and comes right out of the core verses of the gospel. Yet there is one more aspect of Covenant we must bring into our picture, that is, seeing what on earth Jesus sees that motivates Him with passion all the way through.
That one more aspect is the little phrase, repeated twice in Hebrews 3, that can be translated in this way. – UPON FIRM WE STAND. – Covenant is ROCK. Covenant is absolute confidence. Covenant is FAITH, the entrance of God, Himself in Person, into us and into our world.
Revealing God to All. Jesus saw God, through us as individuals and us together as the Church, God through us into the knowledge of all creation. – That ALL might know Me.
A human is one who believes that God is telling us the truth, a being who stands upon firm, revealing to all the essence and meaning of a forever invisible God, made known forever through their forever weak humanity. A human is the Ark of the Covenant, the Word made flesh, God-revealed as He is to all.
And the Church, the joy set before the Lord Jesus, the completion of all His desire, is these humans loving one another with pure hearts fervently.
The Completion of Covenant. Here is what we are saying. Covenant is not something peripheral to being human, not something added on. The fabric of the entire human, the warp and woof, the cells and organs, the spirit and mind, the heart – all that means “human” begins with and comes out from and is ordered by – COVENANT. –
Yet that Covenant cannot be there except it be written, and it cannot be written except by human permission. Humans are a mess because there is no Covenant in them. Christians are a mess because they do not live by Covenant. What Jesus saw was the end completion of all that is Covenant inside of us together. He saw humans loving one another.