3.1 God Initiates All

Human sin, in itself, has no meaning to God or affect on Him, for He does not know it. Sin is not found inside of God’s thoughts, and He has no idea what it might be. The effects and consequences of sin mean everything to God, for every pain borne by any particle of creation is carried first by God inside Himself. The pain God carries as a result of the actions of human sin is beyond our comprehension.

But God has a purpose for mankind, and no human action can thwart that purpose or turn it aside or even slow it down. Just as from the start, God was overwhelmingly eager to be known by humans, and to be known by creation through humans, so He is eager now and has always been.

Because of Salvation. We then make this absolute assumption. That NOTHING God gives us of Himself now inside of the redemption of Christ, beginning with Jesus entering our hearts to be our life, has anything to do with human sin, but is the same in every way as if no sin existed. Yet because of the tangled horror of our psychotic lostness, and because of the continual threat we have posed to God, in that we would use God for our own lusts if we could get our hands on Him, God has moved very slowly to pierce our darkness with truth and with love.

Thus God introduced two things into our sphere, not “because of” our sins, but because of His Salvation and for our sakes, first was a limited expression of law, and second was the outward visibility of the Sacrifice of Love.

Jesus Loves Me. The title of this chapter comes from 1 John 3:16, “By this we have known love, in that Jesus set forth His soul for us.” The meaning of our salvation is found in this line, “Jesus loves me.” Our Glorious Salvation is only the extension of this love..

It took sixty years of Jesus working His love inside of my psychotic lostness before I could come to this place now, where I live inside of “Jesus loves me” in utter rest. But “Jesus loves me,” by itself, could never have brought me out from my constant arrogant but purposeless assault against God, for if I had been allowed, I would have seized that love and kept it inside my lostness. Through sixty years, Jesus was also the “bony finger” of God contending with me every moment.

Utterly Personal. Love and surrender are two things always found together; you cannot have one without the other for both to be of God.

Now, God our Father is utterly Personal, we know Him through a Personal Jesus Sent into us. We also are utterly personal, for, as Jesus said, He calls each of us by name. Just as Paul gave himself as a personal example of a true interaction with God, so I do the same. It is my hope that you also will be brave enough to make EVERYTHING personal between you and God. Because it is and has always been. From the moment you were conceived in your mother’s womb, coming out from God’s thoughts through the good-speaking of Jesus, God your Father has initiated personally towards you ALL Salvation Now.

Immediately After. Immediately after the horrors of Genesis 3, we go into Genesis 4, into the personal lives of the first two humans born on this earth, Cain and Abel. Towards the firstborn we see the bony finger of God, God personally, contending, contending, contending. But in the second born we see the first clear picture of Love and Surrender always together, the first clear picture of “By this we have known Love,” the visible Sacrifice of Jesus.

See how personal God has made His entrance into our lostness, for we know Abel by name and we know, deep inside our own hearts, the cry of his heart towards God. Through this chapter we will trace out these two things, contention and sacrifice, in history and in our lives, but first we must know where God is to be found in all of this.

It Is God. God initiates everything. It is God who poured out His Spirit upon us; it is God who SENT Jesus into us to be our life. Become familiar with the picture below, a rough picture and moment, a man stumbling under a cross he cannot carry. Then consider this line. All things are out from God… God was inside of Christ reconciling the world to Himself, considering nothing of any transgression (2 Corinthians 5).

Jesus said, “The one who sees Me sees the Father.” You are looking at the face of God. And where are you? You are inside of that Man, inside His Heart, inside of the Father.

Beauty. There is a gospel word that conveys to us the deepest essence and meaning of the Lord Jesus Christ, who and what He is, coming out from the Father every moment. In the Greek, the word is hilasmos. It is found in four different forms, two times each. Those eight passages give to us an incredibly clear definition, clearer than most Bible terms.


In a general way, hilasmos means “resolution,” which is the meaning of the Lord Jesus from the beginning. But the Greek hilasmos places the resolution that is Jesus into a context. For that reason, the best English word by which we know the Jesus inside of us is – propitiation. Propitiation, the meaning and essence of Jesus, is the most BEAUTIFUL quality there is.

Love out from God. But before we can weep over the wrenching BEAUTY and AFFLICTION that is this Jesus inside of us, in the full meaning of propitiation, let’s see what it means to God.

Love is always flowing out from God… In this way the love of God has been made visible among us, in that His Son, the One Seed-Kind whom God has sent into the world-cosmos that we might live through Him. Inside of this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as the propitiation, the resolution, encompassing our sins (1 John 4:7-10 – reduced).

The Greek word is not “for” our sins, but “peri,” all around our sins, swallowing them up inside the only place they can exist, inside the empty, empty grave.

Propitiation at the Center. In Romans 3, Paul places propitiation, that is, Jesus, at the center of God’s overwhelming eagerness to convince us that we are without sin inside of Him. In Hebrews 8, propitiation is the center of the Covenant – God knows nothing about any separation we might imagine between Him and us. In Hebrews 9, propitiation is the Mercy Seat with Blood sprinkled upon it, our hearts, the very throne of God. And in Hebrews 10 God contends with us that we live only inside that Mercy Seat, without consciousness of sins.

Propitiation, Jesus, means that there is NO separation between you and God, period, no separation in God’s mind, no separation in your mind. God shares your life with you.

Your Right and Power. Go back to the consideration of your self, your soul, from the last lesson. That boundary of your soul is an essential part of God’s design of you. Inside that boundary is the one POWER God has given to you to accompany your authority. You have the right and the power to refuse entrance into your soul and you have the right and the power to grant entrance. Nothing and no one is able to violate that right; doing so never enters God’s mind.

Yet here is God, pressing all around you as overflowing Love, the only place in which you exist. And what does this overwhelming God want? He wants fellowship – with you. God wants to share life, you and Him together as one, inside of Love.

Beauty and Affliction. Yet what have you done against God? You have turned the God-given boundary of your soul into an attack fortress, filled with cruise missiles and tanks, with fire bombs and boiling pitch, whatever you think you need to KEEP GOD OUT.

Inside of that picture, consider these words. ~ There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction. ~Simone Weil (1909-1943)

It is Jesus who pierces your heart as propitiation, as the deepest expression of Beauty and Affliction joined together as could ever be. This is who He is, always, out from the Father. And He comes into you to be the continual resolution between you and God, that you might share life together inside of all Joy.

Jesus Must. Here is Peter trying to express the meaning of this Beauty and this Affliction, joining us with our Father. You were redeemed… by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, a Lamb Pro-Known from the foundation of the cosmos [from the all-here-now knowing of God], but that then became visible in these present final times for you, for your sake. Through Him you believe into God as the One who raised Him up out from the dead and gave Him glory. For this reason your faith and hope are penetrating with purpose into God.

Your Father says to you, “I want to walk with you, I want to talk with you, I want you to know that I am your own.” This is why Jesus must convince you that He loves you.