7.2 The Third Response of Faith: Study
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
We could say that the third response of faith is to study to know the Lord, to take His yoke upon us and learn of Him.
I want to set before you that path of learning through the Bible Studies program inside of Christ Revealed Bible Institute. The Bible Studies program is divided into six modules of three courses each, for a total of eighteen courses designed to cover about two years of normal study. If the Lord Jesus directs your heart to this study, you would take the three courses in each module at the same time, but each module must be completed before venturing on to the next.
We begin by knowing our precious union with the Lord Jesus.
Module I. The educational names of the three courses of Module I are “Living in Union with Christ,” “Seeking to Know the Lord,” and “Hermeneutics,” or how we study the Bible. These three courses are an introduction to the pathway and study ahead.
What is this thing called “union with Christ?” Is it really Biblical? Is it what the gospel teaches us? How does union with Christ connect with everything we have learned about the Christian life before now? You will spend time in this course with two wonderful teachers of the gospel of Christ Jesus now living His life in ours, Dan Stone and Fred Pruitt.
Knowing the Lord and the Bible. So you want to study to know the Lord Jesus? What does such a study entail? Seeking to know the Lord is, in its essence, a journey of desire, a journey of heart. God can be known only by heart. Yet God is also known through His word and by His Spirit. How do we combine word, Spirit, and heart into one pursuit of knowing God?
You will learn of heart from Jean Guyon and John Eldredge and of the journey from Hannah Hurnard. But in the text Knowing God by Scripture you will learn that for both word and Spirit, we must come to Jesus Himself.
Module 2. The three courses of Module 2 are “College-Level Writing,” “Symmorphy I: Purpose,” and “The Feasts of the Lord.”
Teaching writing at the college level is the most enjoyable job I’ve ever done. And since Jesus is Word, a word we know by the Spirit, learning that you can write well and learning that Christ is your life are surprisingly similar and compatible. College-level writing is not that hard, and I will show you exactly how to do it.
But then notice that word, “symmorphy,” a word invented by Paul, the most important word in the Bible. It means, that you and I share the same form, spirit, soul, and body, with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Purpose and Feasts. It’s not possible to know where any verse in the Bible might fit unless we first know God’s purpose for everything. And it’s not possible to know God’s purpose for anything unless we first know His Heart. Your study of Purpose, then, is simply an expansion of these ten most important verses in the Bible that you have considered in this text. We want to know exactly what they say and how they govern all the many other verses of the Bible.
It is also necessary for us to know God’s other great pattern in the Old Testament, the seven feasts of Israel’s religious year in order to truly understand what God is doing with His people. In that study, George Warnock will be your first teacher.
Module 3. The three courses of Module 3 are “College-Level Writing II,” “Symmorphy II: Essence,” and “Studies in Hades and Judgment.”
You might think that I am taking advantage of you in my enjoyment of teaching writing. That may well be so; nonetheless, you will find that writing and thinking go very much together, and that defining the essence of things is a practice inherent in college-level writing. How do we think? And what rules undergird how we think about anything? You have discovered in this little booklet that underlying definitions can turn any verse in one direction or another. How do we know God?
Essence. In the Essence course, we will seek to define many critical concepts in order to know what God means by what He says. We will ask many questions – What is God? What is man? What is Jesus of Nazareth? What is faith? How we “define” God is how we will define everything else.
And that topic requires an answer to the questions of – What is hades and judgment? For that reason, you will spend time with Dr. Stephen Jones and George Ritchie in a study of hades and judgment. Preston Eby is also a wonderful teacher of the Bible. The deceit of the serpent in the garden in defining “God” has had greater disastrous consequence than you might think.
Module 4. The three courses of Module 4 are “Science and Logic: A Christian View,” “Living in the Holy Spirit,” and “Symmorphy III: Kingdom.”
The Greek word “logos” means both word and logic. Jesus is the “logic” of God, - sustaining all things by the word (logos) of His power (Hebrews 1:3). In Essence you will be introduced to the fact that the universe is entirely electrical. In fact, we will find that there is a perfect fit between knowing the universe as logical and electrical and knowing our own lives flowing out from Jesus as Spirit and as Word. This booklet you have read is based on the assumption of logic, that is, of underlying definitions that rule our thinking.
Spirit and Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is the ordering of all things by the Spirit flowing out from Father and from us. Living in the power of the Holy Spirit is something we must experience. The Holy Spirit is eminently practical AND the demonstration of the power of God. To learn of the practical nature of the Holy Spirit, you will spend time with two awesome teachers, Kenneth Hagin and Bill Johnson.
Then, the expansion of Paul’s word, “symmorphy,” into the ordering of all things in the creation, including our victory over death and the setting of creation free, will be the topic of Symmorphy III: Kingdom. This course contains the pivot point of Symmorphy – a highway for our God.
Module 5. The three courses of Module 5 are “Studies in John’s Vision,” “Symmorphy IV: Covenant,” and “Preparation for Service.”
The book of Revelation is nothing more than John presenting his understanding of Paul’s gospel in a third form. Everything John saw in his vision is simply heaven’s view of Paul’s gospel, we in Jesus and Jesus in us. So much hurt has come out from Christians using this vision for every false purpose. Yet God has set it in our Bibles as a precious outline of the revelation of Jesus Christ. God does not “predict” the future. God speaks Christ, and everything proceeds out from that speaking. As we know Christ, so we call Him forth into the human experience.
Covenant. Covenant is that binding agreement that is Jesus Himself, connecting us with God and God with us as one Pperson together, sharing the same form, the Bond of Symmorphy. We can accomplish nothing except we know the terms of the Covenant we signed with God and He with us.
But then we discover that this Covenant is a Blood Covenant and that a Blood Covenant must be “cut,” first in the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross and second as the breaking of our own hearts. The best teacher I know of in a study of brokenness is Gene Edwards. You see, we have to know the answer to a critical question – What do you do when someone throws a spear at you?
Module 6. The final three courses, Module 6, are “Ethics in Service,” “Symmorphy V: Life,” and “Studies in Christian Community.”
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the elimination of our own human performance, our own false attempts at “acting” our own righteousness. Nonetheless, we are the body of Christ, and the fullness of Salvation, we will discover, is not “heaven,” but rather, life together as the Church. And in walking together, we will discover that how we treat one another is how we are treating God. Inside this context, it is fully appropriate for us to learn how to walk in righteousness towards one another.
Life Together. This booklet is “The Ten” most important verses; nonetheless, the eleventh and twelfth most important verses of the Bible are where everything God speaks is fulfilled.
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body …and have all been made to drink one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:12-13).
The fullness of salvation is life together as the Church – life forevermore. And thus the final two courses of this Bible program are an investigation of that wonderful experience God intends for His Church – Christian community.
Let Us Go on to Know the Lord. It takes a lifetime of study to know the Word God speaks, as God means it, all through our beings.
God’s people receive so little word; the people are famished, though they don’t know it. Oh, how I would teach and teach and teach until every child of God knows the Lord Jesus as their only life, until every believer in Jesus crosses through the Jordan and into life together as the House of God.
Yet this journey is not about me, but about Jesus, filling you with His glory and teaching you of Himself. And He does all things well. Let us join together, then, to know the Lord.