2. Salvation Revealed through Me Now

We begin our study of 1 Peter knowing what God means for us right now in our present season of opportunity, that we possess the right to be a son of God, and thus to share with Jesus in His sufferings for others.

Our statements of faith headings divide Chapter 1 into three parts, but I have added a fourth page and lesson titled “Faith and My Soul.” This first lesson and page covers 1 Peter 1:1-9. And for the first time I see clearly what Peter’s words are all about. 1 Peter Chapter 1 has always been one of the primary Bible chapters from which I have drawn, in the things that I share. It’s about to become a whole lot bigger for us.

1 Peter 1:3-5. We speak well of the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the One who, according to His plenteous mercy, has conceived us again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ out from the dead, into an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, that is being kept inside of the heavens entering into you. You are being guarded, watched over, and kept inside of the power of God and carried through faith into a salvation that is complete and ready to be unveiled inside of the final season of opportunity.

Peter did not say that our inheritance is kept for us “over there, far away in heaven, for some future time.” He said that our inheritance is kept inside the realms of Spirit, the heavens all around us, that which enters into us out from God every moment.

1 Peter 1:6-9. Inside of this salvation, you greatly rejoice. For a little while at present it is inevitable that you are distressed and grieved in various trials, so that the proving of your faith, which is more precious than perishing gold being refined through fire, that your faith might be found into praise and glory and honor inside the unveiling of Jesus Christ. Whom, not having seen, you love, into whom now you believe, though you do not see outwardly; moreover you exult with joy inexpressible and filled with glory, receiving the full completion of your faith, the salvation and healing of your souls.

Salvation is (1) ready to be unveiled, seen by all, (2) a place into which we are carried, (3) the place wherein we already dwell, and (4) defined as the healing and wholeness of our souls, our entire consciousness.

The Gauntlet. Peter has packed so much stuff into these seven verses. This is the first time I have looked at them as a whole, and yet we must also see them inside the larger whole of the first chapter and the entire book. Peter did not say anything in subsequent chapters that does not belong inside the truth of Chapter 1.

I think that there is simply no clearer picture for us of what Peter is conveying than that picture God gave to me in February of 1996, the story of Simon Kenton running the gauntlet of the Shawnees, and saved by blood covenant. This picture then enables us to find the most important phrase in Peter’s entire letter, and especially inside our present passage. That phrase is: – CARRIED through faith.

The Fire, the Agony, and the Love. First, Peter makes this salvation personal to us inside the agony and love of our own souls. And second, Peter shows us how our faith turns all our love and pain into sharing with Jesus in the sufferings of Christ. Yet it is inside this agony and this love that Peter shows us the real meaning of the Apocalypse.

After the statements of faith, we will have four boxes on the page titled “Salvation Revealed through Me Now.” Those boxes are “Carried through Faith,” “Proving Fire,” “My Healed Soul,” and “Salvation Apocalypse.” I had thought to put “My Healed Soul” first, but I find that I must know with God the meaning of the Fire, the agony, and the Love before I can come to healing and completion.

Statements of Faith. God personally chose me out from His Pro-knowing. God chose me because He has always known me. I speak well of my Father, for I come out from God and I live inside of hope. My inheritance is always entering into me out from the realms of Spirit.

I am guarded, watched over, and kept inside of the power of God, the very power that carries me through faith into all salvation, but especially the salvation of my soul. That salvation is revealed through me now in this season of opportunity. Today is mine and God’s day of all Salvation.

For this reason, I greatly rejoice even when I am distressed and grieved through various trials. My faith, more precious than gold, this faith of Jesus through which I am carried, is proven, even as I know and accept and love a God of Fire. My proven faith is found in all glory and honor inside of the unveiling of Jesus.

I love Jesus, even though I don’t see Him outwardly. I believe; I exult with joy inexpressible and filled with glory. Joy inexpressible and full of glory fills me to overflowing. That love and that joy brings to me the full completion of my faith, the salvation and healing of my soul.

Just out of Reach. We still must begin with our souls. What is “my soul healed?” What is the full meaning and experience of a SAVED soul?

Paul said that we are running a race, and that we are running it to win. A runner has his eyes on the finish line. Yet in our former Christian lives, on the one hand, we did not really know what that finish line meant and thus had little idea what every step of our run might mean. But “the other hand” was much worse, in that no matter what, the finish line stayed always just out of reach. Anyone claiming to have entered into full Devotion was “deceived.” That whole way of thinking is so bizarre, I can hardly imagine it any more. It is so contrary to God and the Gospel.

Our Souls. First, what is the soul? The soul is the mind, the emotions, and the desires, the story of self by which we know ourselves. The Greek word “psyche” should never be translated as “life,” but only as “soul.” The soul has no life of its own.

Now that we finally have a working definition of life, this is easy to see. Life is movement within and without. Our spirit and our physic, always together, move within and without. We can observe that movement in the physical and extrapolate the same reality for our spirits inside the heavens. Our souls have no movement of their own, within or without. Rather, the soul is CARRIED. Thus I have said that the soul exists at the junction of spirit and physic. Yet our soul is ourselves, our persons, and we are just like God as a person.

Cutting the Covenant. It is the Spirit that gives Life. And thus we see that the true beginning of the salvation of our souls was not being conceived of God, but was that moment when we invited the Spirit of God to flood out from our spirits into our souls, into our minds, our desires, and our emotions, thus enabling us to know the Father.

I want to refer back to Genesis 15 and the covenant God entered into with Abraham, the cutting of the covenant. Abraham cut apart the cow, the goat, and the sheep, but he left the dove and the pigeon whole. In the last lesson, I equated this picture with the soul being the only part of ourselves to be “cut apart,” with our spirit and our flesh untouched by our own hand.

Split Wide Open. I think we could say, for our present purposes, that the cow, being the largest, corresponds to our minds, the goat, being the most obstinate, corresponds to our emotions, and the sheep, being always willing on the one hand, and always a follower on the other, corresponds to our desires. – SPLIT WIDE OPEN!

Why? Well, that is what the author of a story does, splitting open the soul of the main character so that the reader can identify with who and what that person is. As in Genesis 15, it is God who then passes as a flaming torch, as a consuming Fire, through our split-open and hurting souls, claiming everything for Himself. You see, it is our story of self that is filled with things not True.

Whom You Love, Jesus Alone. I must continue to know God’s meaning in every moment of my life. The moment when God was finally free to begin to save my soul was in February of 1998 when, for the first time, I allowed Truth to enter my inward parts. I will not please God. I will never “do His will.” I will not be “making it.” And out from that Truth, came my decision that I need a Savior, I need to know Jesus alone.

Inside the unveiling of Jesus Christ. Whom, not having seen, you love, into whom now you believe, though you do not see outwardly… receiving the full completion of your faith, the salvation and healing of your souls. During my subsequent “season of healing,” John Eldredge brought Jesus to me, into every hurting place of my soul.

Our Thoughts. Here are the words, then, inside of which our souls are healed. – “This One who loves me, this One who gives Himself in trade for me, for my sake” (Galatians 2:20). Jesus shares soul with me. The salvation of my soul is KNOWING Jesus Sent into me (John 17:3).

What, then, is a saved soul? A “saved soul” thinks like Jesus thinks, His words made personal as our souls, every Word God speaks written upon our human hearts of flesh. We possess the nous of Christ; we allow His same phroneo to be Father known through us. We eat His words, making them our own, we drink of His Spirit, that we might know the Father, and our thoughts, the words of our story, are only God’s thoughts concerning us.

Our Emotions. The emotions are the tricky part of our souls, just like a goat. I have observed this, that one who called speaking Christ to be “just words,” also placed his own emotions as full and final evidence against what God speaks. If his emotions spoke the opposite of what God says, then the emotions of human judgment must speak the truth and the words God speaks are obviously full of nonsense.

This is why I say, over and over, that faith is the simple human decision to believe that what God says is the Truth, ~ I am filled with all of God ~, and if my emotions scream the opposite, my emotions mean nothing. My emotions are “saved” when they exist in whatever extreme, only for God sharing all with me – for the sake of others.

Our Desires. Finally, only Jesus causes our desires and God’s desires to be the same, God energeoing His Desires inside of us. This is the true miracle of our Salvation, the greatest accomplishment of the Lord Jesus as all propitiation. Union with Christ is the surrender of all our desires into God.

Here’s the thing, however. None of this is real except it be God Himself passing as a flaming torch through all the pieces of our split-open soul. Our souls become REAL as God Himself says, “I have devoted you to Myself. I have brought Truth, the Lord Jesus, into your inward parts. I have attended every moment of pain you have ever known with My Spirit, and I have declared that you BELONG to Me. Every part of your soul is Mine.”

Locked Away. During the summer of 1998, as I prepared to leave Blair Valley, I deliberately took the worst emotions I had known through the years of my community experience, locked them in an impenetrable vault, and threw away the key. That was the Lord, for I had to protect myself for my family’s sake.

I have not known those emotions since – until now, just after writing this: ~ My emotions are “saved” when they exist in whatever extreme, only for God sharing all with me – for the sake of others. ~ At the time when those emotions ruled in fear and loss, I could not have said, “God, this is Your Fire, sharing all with me for the sake of others,” for I did not know such a thing. To say it now has to be the completion of my faith.

Fire Becoming Love. God is FIRE. And that Fire must pass between all the broken pieces of our soul. Just as we perceived that the capstone of Grace was the harmony engendered by God present inside the full knowledge of a Community of believers walking together, so we can see now that the completion of our faith is our souls in full harmony inside every moment with a God who always answers us – inside of, with, and out from the Fire.

Fire always shows itself as it really is – Love.

Everything I have shared this far is for all the topics on our Jesus Secret page. Before we can describe the qualities of a “saved” soul we must know how the Fire turns into the outpoured Love of God.

Anguish. I am hit in the forehead with a 2 by 4. As God is bringing back to me those emotions that I had willfully buried and forgotten, I first thought it was for deliverance. But I just said, “Father, these emotions are You sharing Yourself with me as Fire, for the sake of others.” It was not demons that I locked up, but my own inability to know God.

There were several different kinds of overwhelming pain, but as I try to express their core, I realize that one line says it all, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Can I not believe that the anguish I knew was God inside of me saying, “My son, My son, why have you forsaken Me? And can I not then turn that shared anguish into LOVE, as Jesus did, for the sake of these with whom I interacted?

Where Is God? What does it mean to be CARRIED through FAITH, to be carried into Salvation? All humans live a life of pain. The picture of the gauntlet describes the reality of every man, woman, and child who has ever lived. Where is God inside of that picture, inside of every single one of those desperate runs through striking blows ending only in failure and death?

God is the One who carries us. God is the One who takes the lion’s share of the blows. God is the One who shares His own emotions with us, that we together might LOVE these who are causing so much hurt, that we together might carry them all the way through.

Equating God with Demons. Okay, I have just begun to read A Tale of Three Kings again. Yet it is Gene Edward’s view that we need first. Let me translate his concern into our discussion. Many, even most, imagine themselves to be casting out the demons, getting rid of the false, when, in fact, it is God whom they are “casting out,” and it is not Saul, but David whom they are rejecting.

Now, we must fill in our boxes on the page, and so this discussion must continue throughout this study of Peter. For myself, I will read A Tale of Three Kings slowly, from one lesson to the next. It is overwhelming to me. What is the seed, planted as inheritance inside the depths of one’s heart? It is the seed of giving thanks.

Inside David’s Soul. I must return to my thinking mind in order to actually write this page. Yet here is this same dilemma inside David’s soul.

O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger, nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled; but You, O Lord—how long? Return, O Lord, deliver me! Oh, save me for Your mercies’ sake! For in death there is no remembrance of You; in the grave who will give You thanks? (Psalms 6:1-5). What does “return, O Lord” actually mean? It means that David is grappling with the UNTRUE thought, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Yet he knows where the Truth is found – to give God thanks.

God Saves Me. The essence of a saved soul is that we live in pure and perfect harmony with a God of Fire such that He always shares Himself with us and proves Himself as Love through us, inside our minds, our emotions, and our desires.

Here is what all this discussion has brought me to. My soul, having come a long way, carried by power, carried by grace, still does not know such harmony. I could not rejoice in all my distresses because I did not know God and imagined Him to be not-good. Rather than sharing God’s emotions with Him, I called them horrific and buried them deep inside the caverns of my lostness. The fact that God is showing this to me now gives me the greatest hope I have ever had, for I know that God saves me.

Carried through Faith. I do not yet know the full salvation of my soul, but I am confident that God is carrying me into such a salvation. I also know that my own soul will find its place only as I share with God my Father as we together carry others. This faith through which I am carried is the faith of the Lord Jesus, God’s confidence in Him becoming the same confidence inside of me. I know that God is always and utterly good; I know that He makes me to be like Jesus.

Inside of Fire. It is inside of Fire that the God of the Bible receives all that we are, given to Him. We imagined that the Fire was not-good, yet we are now grappling with the fact that Fire is the entrance of Love through us, that sharing God’s emotions is the travail we bear for others. Even now I am bringing out all those buried emotions and placing them into the Fire that is my Father. I trust utterly that He will consume me into Himself. I know that Love will prove itself through me in power.

Yes, the demonic was involved, but not as the emotions of my anguish. The demonic was the voice that whispered to me that God is not-good. The demonic was the lie abut God. I cast down the lie, but I receive the emotions as God-with-me.

Proving Fire. As I offer all the parts of my soul to God, He receives me through Fire. God shares with me His own emotions of distress and pain, for He carries the distress of all inside Himself. As I receive the Fire that is God, as I rejoice in all the distress of my emotions, as I love a Jesus whom I do not yet see, so the faith of the Lord Jesus is proven inside of me. Even as Grace carries me through Fire into God, so the same Fire carries God as Love into my world.

As a Prayer. God is bringing my entire soul into harmony with Himself, but I do not yet know myself as such a Salvation revealed. It is through faith alone that I assert that my receiving of a God of Fire, a God who carries pain, will become a God of Love revealed through me into my world. Fire is called “the trickster” because few have been willing to share the sufferings for creation that God is. Most hide themselves, refusing to know such a God.

Because I do not yet know the completion of my faith, I will cast the box titled “My Healed Soul” as a prayer, an offering of every part of my soul, split-wide open, to God my Father, that He might pass through all my pain and claim every part of me as His own and as Himself shared with me.

My Healed Soul. God, my Father, through Jesus love for me, I give You all that I am in my humanity, spirit, soul, and body. Father, I am already one spirit and one flesh with the Lord Jesus, yet You have also sent Your Son into all the broken pieces of my soul. Jesus’ full Devotion to You has become my devotion; His Fire defines me. My soul is at peace inside of You. And God, my Father, my mind is in harmony with Your thoughts concerning me; Your Word is written fulfilled all through my heart, as the Lord Jesus humbling Himself. My emotions are Yours, shared with me for the sake of others, and Father, You energeo all my desire. Jesus makes my choices and Yours to be the same. Father, You carry my soul through all; Jesus shares soul with me.

Ready to Be Unveiled. Finally, we are able to turn to the Salvation that is God, coming through His Fire shared with us, and becoming God-Love inside our world. Only now do we understand the meaning of this page. The word Apocalypse is found three times in 1 Peter Chapter 1, first as the apocalypse of salvation and then twice as the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. We will consider the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ in the next lesson.

Carried through faith into a salvation that is complete and ready to be unveiled [apocalypsed] inside of the final season of opportunity. There is so much in this verse and we hardly yet know what it means.

Already Complete. First, this is not first our season of opportunity to ‘get saved,’ rather it is God’s final “chance,” one might say, to reveal Himself through Fire as Love. Then, Salvation coming through includes us inside God’s final season of opportunity.

Specifically, Salvation is not yet made known to anyone, yet it is COMPLETE and has been complete from the start (Romans 8:30). When the cover is removed, the cataracts on people’s eyes and the veil upon their hearts, then they will see Salvation Complete as if it just then became. Yet they will know such Salvation coming through those who have loved and believed the One whom they could not yet see.

Salvation Apocalypse. Salvation is the Father made known through Christians loving one another in daily life together. Apocalypse is the removal of that which blinds so that people can see what has always been true. Because I love my brethren, God through me, I am that Apocalypse. The Salvation of God, Love revealed, comes through me now into my world. And when humans on this earth see God through the Love shared among us, then our glorious Salvation prevails on this earth, a Church clothed with Jesus, knowing Father and one another.

Not Letting Go. As I have shared, God is in the process of removing an obstacle from inside of me that has constrained me for twenty-seven years. Yet I know that even this obstacle was of Him, His path into my knowing of Him. That process is not finished. That is, I am not letting go of God until He opens to me fully all that He meant inside all of my anguish. For that reason, this “troubling” of my soul will continue as we go forwards in our study of 1 Peter and more particularly, our look into David’s soul.

At the same time, I am already experiencing something profound inside myself that I once knew while in the move fellowship, but have not known since. It is a taste, yes, but it carries the expectation of a full release.

Reading for Next Time. The next lesson is titled “Grace Carries Me.” Read 1 Peter Chapter 1 in the JSV again and continue reading A Tale of Three Kings if you have not yet finished it.

The Greek word Peter used was pheron, which means to carry and to sustain. The problem in translating that verse, “grace brought to me” or “grace carrying me” is Peter gave the verb a strange passive tense. Passive means that someone is receiving the action of another. I decided in my translation, now, to use both, for Grace is a very large topic, God Himself sharing all with us. Grace is carried to us by Jesus, and Grace carries us.

– The grace being brought to you and carrying you… 

Let’s Pray Together. God, our Father, through Jesus love for us, we give You all that we are in our humanity, spirit, soul, and body. Father, we are already one spirit and one flesh with the Lord Jesus, yet You have also sent Your Son into all the broken pieces of our soul. Jesus’ full Devotion to You has become our devotion; His Fire defines us. Our souls are at peace inside of You.

And God, our Father, our minds are in harmony with Your thoughts concerning us; Your Word is written fulfilled all through our hearts, as the Lord Jesus humbling Himself. Our emotions are Yours, shared with us for the sake of others, and Father, You energeo all our desire. Jesus makes our choices and Yours to be the same. Father, You carry our souls through all; Jesus shares soul with us.

“But Father, we also know that our souls cannot be in complete harmony with You inside ourselves until Your own Soul is at peace. And we know that Your Soul at peace is found in Your dwelling place, as You become the pure and perfect harmony among us as Your Body.

“Father, be at Home in our hearts, be at Home in the midst of our life together. But most of all, Father, be at Home inside Your entire Church, inside the harmony and Love of all who belong to Jesus throughout all heaven-earth. Father, we are willing to share the Fire and the Agony of Your own emotions so that Love might enter Your Church through us. Father, we carry all who belong to You even as You carry us.

“Thank You, Father, for Your Grace in full Devotion to us.”