13.2 Through Faith Forever
God’s passageway from substance to appearance is made clearer to us by the anti-passage inserted by the devil in the garden.
God’s passageway is this. – When you KNOW that the Word is already true, then it will appear to you outwardly everywhere you look – and it will become sealed as the Resurrection. Satan’s anti-passage, sometimes called “making our position our experience,” is this. – Because you see that the Word is not fulfilled in outward appearance, it is now up to you to make it happen. Only your performance can make God’s word real.
God’s passageway is our faith in His Word already true. God cannot enter our world apart from passing through our faith. Christ lives inside of your heart through faith.
The Passage Through. It is the nature and design of the human heart of flesh to contain the Christ of God. And His entrance into our hearts is always that passageway called “faith.” The Greek preposition, dia, translated “through,” as well as becoming our “diameter,” that is, to measure all the way across, is almost always placed with the word “faith” – “through faith.” Faith is female, the receiver. The English, “by,” on the other hand, is the male, the one giving or doing.
Faith, then, is the passageway for the seed into the womb, and it is the passageway for the child, the life of the seed, out from the womb and into the world. Yet inside this Seed that is Christ is also the Father – coming through.
The Form of God. God, Himself in Person, is the Substance of all things. The Bible does not present a “co-equality.” Jesus said, “The Father is greater and mightier than I.” And Paul said that when Jesus has brought all things into submission to Himself, then by His own action, Jesus with all things will come under the Father.
Yet as substance, God is invisible. God must be invisible, that is, no means of detection in either the physical realms or the spiritual realms can isolate the boundaries of God to show where He begins and where He ends. A form is a form because it has boundaries. God’s “form” is all-here-now, wherever here is and whenever now is – all. And so the substance of God can appear inside creation in one way only, God must appear inside of and through others.
Concern over Appearance. Consider God’s deep concern about His “appearance.”
You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them (Exodus 20:4). – Then you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the midst of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness. And the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of the words, but saw no form; you only heard a voice. So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone (Deuteronomy 4:11-13).
Do Not Image God. When I was twenty, part of God teaching me His fear was that my mental images of “God” and “Jesus” were a form of idolatry, that I was “worshipping” my own mental image, and not God. From then until now I have entertained NO mental image of Jesus, and especially of the Father. Rather, I know the Father only as the voice that comes to me, sometimes gentle and sometimes fierce, in the midst of the fire of my life difficulties.
I have used at times different pictures of “Jesus” in order to illustrate the truth, however. The problem is that since I have not connected with a mental image of “Jesus” for over forty years, I have forgotten that others do. Creating an image, physical or mental, and then trying to line one’s self up with that image will ALWAYS block out God.
Not Sight. The reason images block out God is that God is invisible and an image is something we “see.” So long as we are engaged with what we see, we will not walk through faith in the Word. Never entertain in your mind any image of “Christ.” Christ is Word and Word fills your heart. We walk through faith and not through sight. In your past, God might have spoken to you through an image in one way or another. That’s because God will use anything at hand to show His love to you. Nonetheless, when the images remain past their “use by” date, one might say, they become “God” to us.
But consider Paul’s words in light of the passage from Deuteronomy. “NOT ON STONE” has a very specific meaning.
Filled with Faith. Words, yes, but words as Jesus inside the heart, not words on stone. Yet the picture of the Covenant remains.
Faith is a human quality. It is part of what makes us like God. Faith is the definition of the human psychology; I have never met anyone in my life not filled with great faith. I have never met anyone who is not convinced with great confidence that their own definition of reality, no matter how murky it might be, is the only true and correct definition. The amount of faith that it takes to BELIEVE that what “I know is true,” against all overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is astonishing. In fact human faith is the greatest opponent to the Word God speaks, for human confidence always ‘KNOWS’ better.
Which Word? Consider this line, then. – “What I ‘know’ to be true.” We are talking about the heart as the depository of word and meaning and definition. All hearts are filled with word, with definitions of everything. The question is always – which word?
You cannot be saved if you are not lost. You cannot be taught if you are not wrong or ignorant. You cannot be forgiven if you have not sinned. And the problem does not lie in what you have or have not done, but in what you ‘believe’ about yourself. When I think back now to that dark and lonely February of 1998, when I knew no hope at all, I now understand that it was hope in myself that had vanished. The blockage against hope in God was finally cleared out of me.
God’s Purpose. Let’s state very specifically the point of this lesson.
(1) God cannot be known by anything created, for He is invisible to all forever.
(2) God wants to be known by His creation more than any other desire expressed in the Bible.
(3) God created humans for the express purpose of living inside of them, sharing form with them, so that He might be known through many together as their love for one another.
(4) God is Word. And God comes inside of and as Personal Living Spirit Word, the Lord Jesus, into our hearts as Word, as the definitions of everything.
(5) We receive that word THROUGH faith to be written as our own hearts.
Knowledge through Faith.
(6) We engage personally with the Personal Living Spirit Word now recorded all through this incredible object we possess inside our bodies, the human heart of flesh, until that Word becomes the definition and meaning of all our story of self.
(7) Because our whole life and the definition and meaning of our hearts, of what we KNOW, is Christ as every Word God speaks, we, by nature, cause Christ to be known everywhere we go.
(8) God is now seen and known inside His creation, that is, the knowledge of God, through our faith in His Word and by our love for one another.
This is the purpose of the human, to be the knowledge of God to all created things. Knowledge always comes through faith.
Our Human Capacity. – We know that we are of God, and the entire cosmos is set inside of the evil [one]. More than that, we know that the Son of God IS presently and actively come and has given us an understanding, a through-mind [a spirit-mind capacity], so that we might know [Him who is] the true; and we are inside of [Him who is] the true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. This is [we are speaking of] the true God and life that unfolds the ages. Little children, keep yourselves from the idols {from the false images and definitions of ‘God’}. So let it be. (1 John 5:19-21).
Jesus said that the life that unfolds the ages is the KNOWLEDGE of God. Here John says that we “know” seven things. And this knowing is a human capacity, given to us by Jesus, that is, a “through-mind.”
Seven Things We Know. Human faith believes anything it wants. The Faith of the Son of God, given to us as our own faith, believes only what the Father speaks. And what the Father speaks is shown to us as the ruling verses of the gospel and all the wondrous Bible verses that support those ruling verses or are known by them.
Here are the seven things John says we KNOW. And remember that we are speaking of the knowledge of the heart, knowledge that comes through faith and is expressed outwardly as human confidence and action.
(1) We know that we are out from God.
(2) We know that the entire world is set inside of evil and lies.
We Know God Who Is True.
(3) We know the Jesus who is already come, presently and actively inside of us.
(4) We know that Jesus gives to us His faith, that is, a through-mind, an understanding, this quality of our humanity that is the channel and passageway for God All-Carrying to enter into the knowledge of all created things.
(5) We know God who is TRUE, through this faith of Christ.
(6) We know that we are inside of this TRUE God and inside of His Son, Jesus Christ.
(7) We know that this passageway of God through our faith is forever, that the ages to come unfold out from the LIFE inside of us that is the revelation of the Father.
‘Science.’ Consider point 2 – We know that the entire world lies.
Science, as an honest study of what is observed, had its beginnings inside of Christian thinking, thinking that everything is orderly and has purpose out from God. The primary purpose of the men who were responsible for both world wars was to shatter Christian thinking in the Western psyche. They were incredibly successful. Today, so-called ‘science’ has little connection with observation or truth, except for engineering. But the marvels of engineering, then, are spun as proof that all so-called ‘science’ must be true. Science, that is, human knowing, is divorced, in our day, from truth, and even from observation, and has become a mighty god in the earth to which all must bow. Yet they are lying.
The Setting. September 11, 2001 was the key point when Christians saw one thing with their eyes and believed the opposite with their minds. From then until now the lies are huge, obvious, and constant, for they have little opposition, yet all ‘believe’ with fervency, devotion, and fear.
It is in the midst of and against this false so-called ‘science’ that the knowledge of God comes through us into our world. And this knowledge of God comes through weakness, as it always has and as it always will. It is a knowledge written all through our human hearts of flesh as every gospel word God speaks. “Thy Word have I planted in my heart, that I might be the expression of Your Desire in creation, O my Father.”
Out From Our Hearts. All humans have hearts filled with word, word defining everything in every way. And all humans are convinced, with all fervent confidence, that their own knowledge is true. Jesus, inside our human hearts of flesh, turns all that capacity around and makes the word of our hearts, the definitions of our story of self, to be the knowledge of Father coming through our confidence into our world. Jesus said, “I am the Door.” This is that Door – the Faith of the Son of God, now our confidence that God is telling us the truth.
The glory of the knowledge of God, covering the earth as the waters cover the sea, comes from one place only; it comes out from our human hearts of flesh, speaking that Word through the confidence of our faith that all might know the Father.