32. Knowing Salvation Together

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32. Knowing Salvation Together - for Notes

32. Knowing Salvation Together - PP

  
We are about to look at the Door again, this time as the face of Jesus Christ through us His Church, walking together now as the visible expression towards heaven and earth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have an idea for a third book in my series of Knowing Jesus as He Is titled Our Glorious Salvation. Yet my ideas for that text were muddled and were not coming together. In writing these four topics at present, however, this Tabernacle Teaching, my life story, A Highway for God, and The Jesus Secret II, suddenly great clarity came to me.

We must know Salvation as complete even before it began.

A Glorious Outline. Basically, then, in this lesson, I want to share with you an outline of what I hope that book, Our Glorious Salvation, will be. This outline is best titled “Knowing Salvation Together.”

I have divided that final little text into four parts, with three chapters in each part. It will follow the exact layout of the prior two books in the series. Here are the four parts.

Part 1: The Path to Salvation
Part 2: Salvation inside Each Believer
Part 3: Salvation as the Church Together
Part 4: Salvation as Father Revealed.

The Four Parts. The path to salvation is the path we have studied from the Gate all the way to living only as the Ark of the Covenant. Then, the salvation inside of each is our season in the Holiest with God for others, having turned around.

Salvation as the Church together is the present topic. Finally, salvation as Father revealed is our going forth as the face of God with His knowledge flowing out from us upon all the earth as rivers of living water.

In this outline, I will not attempt to fix a layout for that actual book. Rather, I will just list a number of things to be found inside each section that could become lesson topics.


The Path to Salvation. The path to salvation we know of as redemption, or, as we have seen, our emergency rescue into the knowledge of things already true.

This path of learning who and what we are begins for us the moment we are born again. In that instant, everything of God and the gospel is now the reality of our lives, we just don’t know it.

Our learning passes through three stages in an ever deeper knowing of God with us. The first stage is becoming aware of the Atonement and the Bible. The second is the great sifting of the Spirit of Pentecost inside an in-part church. And the third is our grappling with the all-ness of Christ.


Three Entrances. The three entrances, representing our putting of the Lord Jesus Christ upon ourselves, speak of the three great contentions of God with us through our lives, that we would receive life from Him.

In each of these three entrances, we are blocked by an opposing word. God requires us to close our ears to that opposing word and to continue on to know the Lord.

Living inside of our Glorious Salvation means sharing Hheart with God, and it means possessing the authority through which God moves into His creation. This place can be known only by those who allow God to sift them all the way through.

Five Things to Learn Quickly. Inside this passage into the full knowledge of our Glorious Salvation, God has placed five things for us to learn.

Those are the meaning of the atonement, the place and role of His Word in our lives, the knowledge of Christ as living bread, the anointing and light of the Holy Spirit, and the dealings of God to bring us to let go of our false self-story.

At no point in this passage does God require any completion or any proving of performance. The only proof of Christ is our union with Christ inside the Holiest. Instead, we see this passage as a spiral learning curve into the knowledge of Christ as already all that we are. That means we cannot be satisfied anywhere along this way.


Salvation Inside Each Believer. Because God never forces His knowledge on anyone, all the way through forever, He allows each one a “probationary period” in each place of knowing Him. That way, each is free to draw back, if they so wish.

Inside the Holiest, that place is the willingness or not of receiving all who believe in Jesus as Christ living as them. Only when we have proven that we are willing to see Christ living as those Christians who offend us, does the true knowledge of God begin for us.

And that true knowledge of our Salvation begins when God turns us right-side-up and we see Him as God All-Carrying.


Five Things to Know Personally. We live, then, in the full consciousness of being always inside the presence of a God who carries us, regardless, and of our being filled with all the fullness of such a God.

In this Most Holy Place, God has five things for us to know about this Glorious Salvation that is now inside of us as the definition of everything we are, just like the Lord Jesus.

Those five things we learn are the absoluteness of the atonement as it is applied to ourselves and to creation; the meaning of the Word God speaks written upon our hearts; the realization, in one blinding flash, that we are entirely God-with-us for others; sharing Hheart with God as His Mercy Seat; and seeing the Church as Jesus Himself.


Just Like Jesus. All five of these wondrous realities of Full Salvation inside of us were ours in totality from the moment we asked Jesus to live inside our hearts. Nonetheless, the depths and meaning of Salvation filling us full as all that we are, individually and personally, will grow ever deeper and ever broader in our knowing forever.

We have always been just like the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that we see Him as He is, we walk as it is true, for Father’s sake, and for the sake of others.

Everywhere we go, each one of us is the Ark of God’s Covenant and the authority of His Mercy, forever.


Salvation as the Church Together. Salvation inside of each of us personally is matched fully, then, with Salvation as the Church Together. Even though Salvation inside comes first as the source of the Church, yet we cannot know its real meaning apart from our sharing with one another, Christ with Christ.

Once God has caused us to know God-with-me, He takes us right into knowing God-among-us together.

Jesus said, “This is My full completion that you love one another just as I have loved you.” A full and ongoing reciprocal love among each local gathering committed to each other is God seen and known.


Five Things to Share Together. Paul said that we are built together as the visible form of God in heaven-earth by the energeia coming through the sharing from every part in each local assembly.

As the Church together, God has five things for us to share.

Two of those things we each know personally, the Word of Covenant upon our hearts and the authority of Mercy. Nonetheless, they become far more meaningful as we walk together as those things side by side. Three things, however, are known only in the sharing, and those are intercession for one another, together, the light and warmth of belonging together, and the sustenance of the sharing of word together.


God Seen and Known. Creation will never see or know God except through the Church, for God seen and known IS believers in Jesus loving one another with pure hearts fervently.

To weaken the sharing of life together is to dim God seen and known; to strengthen the sharing of life together is to brighten God seen and known.

It is only inside of a local fellowship of believers, each committed to Christ in the gathering together, that each individual believer finds the meaning of full salvation. Yet this commitment is not obligation, for each is free to follow Christ living as them. Love holds each one in the highest regard, regardless.


Salvation as Father Revealed. Salvation in its full expression, however, does not remain only as the Church together, for the sharing together of each local gathering is the light of the world.

Salvation revealed is the knowledge of God-with-me and God-among-us going out from each local assembly to impact the entirety of the heaven-earth in which they live.

The ordering of the cosmos as the kingdom of God flows organically out from the sharing together of each local Church. This kingdom is defined as God being Himself through His Church, that is, abundance poured out. Forever, this knowledge of God will come through Church.


Five Things to Show to All. As believers together, then, God would show five things through us to all as His knowledge in every place.

First God would show His Heart through us together as intercession for all, the aroma of Christ in every place. Second, God would show the light of His Spirit as purpose and belonging for everyone. Third, God would show the sustaining power of every Word that is Jesus as that Word goes forth from Jerusalem, each local assembly.

Fourth, God would show the good ordering of all of society in both heaven and earth by that Word and by that Spirit. And fifth, God would show through us the Sacrifice of Jesus as His frontal position in every place forever.


Rivers Flowing Out. From His Church, then, as Jesus said, as Ezekiel saw, as John saw, and as Isaiah said, rivers of living water will flow out from each local Church as the knowledge of God covering the earth as the waters cover the sea.

This River of Life is the ordering of all creation as God intended from the beginning, out from the tree of life.

That River flows out as each local assembly calls the knowledge of God in all goodness into the knowledge of everyone. And as they see every part of creation as good, so life and healing, the wholeness of all Salvation, God-Among-Us will be known by the entire creation.


A Good Pattern. This layout makes for an interesting poem.

Five things to learn quickly; five things to know personally.
Five things to share together; five things to show to all.

Or again,
Five things to learn; five things to know.
Five things to share; five things to show.

I do like a good pattern. – See that you make all things according to the pattern shown to you in the holy mount of God. – God’s Tabernacle pattern of the gospel is perfect.

Love Together First. Right here, inside our shared life as the Church together, and before we step out through the Door into a transformed universe, we must know together the full meaning of the Glorious Salvation in which we live and that fills each one of us full.

The world cannot know God as Love unless we together know God-Among-Us in all ways as God intends.

And this sharing together as small and local groups of believers living as Christ Community becomes deeply intimate in quality of life, loving one another with pure hearts fervently. Only then does creation see and know their God.


Before the Door. In this completion of Ephesians 4:16 together, becoming the Body of God-made-visible through the reciprocal sharing from every part, we now stand breathlessly waiting before the Door.

Only this time, we are not seeking to enter; rather, God is about to send us out to creation as God seen and known. We wait together upon the opening of that Door, the manifestation of the sons of God.

Even though God has more to teach us regarding both Door and Gate, yet we see pro-resurrection and resurrection as the same as we call God through us into our world. We must ponder more about this Door-Gate together.