3.2 The Riddle of the Father

How can we be coming out from God’s thoughts every moment and yet remain completely free of God? How can God direct our every step and yet never control us?

Both sides of these statements are absolutely true and remain true forever. And the answer to this great riddle is the mystery of Christ, that is, Symmorphy.
 

A transcendent God.	<>	An ambitious human.
Made of words as thoughts.	<>	The appearance of those thoughts.
Cannot know the human.	<>	Cannot know God.
Carries and directs all.	<>	Free and independent.
< Christ Jesus joining both together in Himself >

Symmorphy. Symmorphy – God shares form with Christ Jesus. Symmorphy – we share form with Christ Jesus. Hence, inside of Christ Jesus, God and we MEET together.

The entirety of Chapter 5 covers our human construction and the ongoing flow of our lives as we are in our relationship with God’s thoughts concerning us. Christ Jesus causes a transcendent God to be known by us and to be immanent inside of us.

In this brief lesson, we want to position the reality of a transcendent God who creates humans who are just like Himself, yet who are not God and who can know neither themselves nor God.

God’s Thoughts. You see, inside of a transcendent and thus unknowable God are one set of thoughts that are infinite and that are all about you. Every aspect of your being and of the course of your life forever are found in and as those thoughts. Yet those thoughts are not you, rather, you are a perfect image or reflection of those thoughts.

God’s thoughts are an essential and substantial part of God in His makeup and Being. God is a Story of words inside of a Spirit self-awareness. (We know that only by knowing Christ.) When we say, then, that man is the mirror image of God, we are saying that each human is a perfect expression inside space and time of those thoughts that are God separate from man.

Speaking of a Transcendent God? Now, as we continue speaking of a “transcendent” God, we confess that we are “cheating” as one might say, and we can do that because we know Christ Jesus, that inside of Him we are filled with all of God and our Father shares our lives with us. In the context of the classroom, however, where we must separate between things in order to understand how they fit together, we must continue a bit to speak of this transcendent God who is NOT us and whom we are NOT, yet He fills and carries us separate from any human knowing. And we can do such an impossible thing, speak of a transcendent God, because Christ lives inside of our hearts through faith.

All present humans have defined this transcendent God, then, by the Accuser, that God “knows good and evil.”

God Knows No Evil. There is one thing this transcendent God does not know, and there is one thing He cannot do. God does not know evil, and God cannot sin. And in making that statement, we place it into transcendence, a reality completely separate from any human knowing. Yet, though we cannot know what such a God is, we do allow those words to be absolute.

God does not know evil, and God cannot sin. How can these words be absolute, even though they are human words reflecting human knowledge? This brings us to a critical element in the riddle of God.

Close Your Mouth. “But the Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him” (Habakkuk 2:20). There is only one appropriate response from the human to a transcendent God. That response is “CLOSE YOUR MOUTH, shut up, do not say one word” (Exodus 14:14 & Romans 3:19).

It never enters God’s mind to control or manipulate you or to hurt anyone. For you are a perfect reflection of His thoughts concerning you, and should He disrespect you, He would be disrespecting Himself. Such a possibility cannot exist. God is meek and lowly of Heart and He thinks more highly of you than of Himself.

Evil Actions. Now, the presence of evil in the human experience, humans controlling, stealing from, and hurting one another, is real and awful and must be met with full answer. Nonetheless, that is not the topic of our study, and will come into its place later, but only as we consider the design of our humanity.

Evil actions exist because God cannot sin. Rather, God sets all free of Himself in the moment of their creation, and then God bears inside Himself all the cost of their freedom. Out from that, evil actions exist because humans cannot know a transcendent God apart from faith, apart from the human inviting Christ Jesus to live inside of them.

The Fear of God. It is appropriate, then, that we place the fear of God right here inside this picture. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; that is, the fear of God is the beginning of our knowledge of God and of ourselves.

The true fear of God, then, shows itself in three actions of the human towards the reality of a transcendent God who cannot be known. First, that we keep our mouths tightly closed towards this transcendent God, that we never speak anti-Christ towards Him. Second, that we do only that which pleases God, that is, to speak Christ back to Him with all confident boldness. And third, that we never seek to control or steal from or do intentional harm to any human, who is, to us, as God Himself.

A Heart Like God’s. We must ask ourselves, why did this look at the Riddle of the Father just take so severe a turn? Very simply this. God’s end goal is to share Hheart with us and we with Him. In order for that to be possible, God has to design our human hearts to be just like His own.

The initial result of a heart just like God’s is called human ambition, and human ambition is fierce, just like God’s Pro-Determination. A human heart, then, devoid of the knowledge of God, is far more wicked than Satan ever could be. Yet this incredible God wants above all things to share Hheart with us. Our silence is simply appropriate.

The Answer to the Riddle. The riddle of God, then, is that humans are the perfect reflection, the mirror image of God in space and time, yet we are NOT God Himself. More than that, humans are designed by God specifically to contain all the fullness of God and to reveal God to all. For us to be what we are, then, we must KNOW God Himself.

And the answer to this entire riddle is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ. – He who has seen Me has seen the Father.

Now that we have separated a transcendent God, however, for critical reasons, as we have seen, we never leave Him there, for this same God lives inside of Jesus inside of us and shares every particle of our lives with us and we with Him.