1.1 Defining Life
The Bible and human history are a great cataclysm of LIFE versus death. You yourself, dear reader, are in a fight for your life, for death is trying to kill you.
God spoke through Joshua, “Choose life, for why would you die?” Jesus said, “Those who believe into Me shall live and not die.” Paul said, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is life.” Paul said that the last enemy to be defeated is death. Jesus said that the prince of death has come to kill you. Paul said that death is swallowed up in victory, that death is defeated by LIFE.
What is death? And what is life? For you will surely die if you do not know what LIFE is.
Life and Death. Life and death were placed before Adam and Eve by God right from the start. It had to be that way because of what Life is and how Life works. God could not just put Life into Adam, he had to want it first; Adam had to give God his permission for Life to enter.
I am convinced that Adam and Eve were real as the first humans and that the facts of science confirm and will confirm this. I am also convinced that the two trees were actual trees. Yet the two trees in the garden are also metaphors. That means God starts with something concrete so we can understand, and then He applies that same truth to everything everywhere. The trees of life and of death have been in front of us our whole life, and we eat of one or the other.
Only Life. It is my intention, through the pages of this book, to contend with us, that we would possess LIFE in all that God means by Life and that we would defeat death forever. I will do that by placing Jesus with you and me in every lesson, by His blood shed for us. And I will do so by taking us into the great verses of the power and dominion of LIFE that are found in Paul’s gospel and confirmed by John and the writer of Hebrews.
Yet we must also venture into the dark abyss of death, for you and I have lived long in it’s noxious fumes. Only Life will draw death out from you, but we must know just how evil death is so that we will rejoice as it vanishes from us.
What Is Life? This lesson is titled “Defining Life.” What is Life?
Before we attempt to answer that question, I want to share a bit about myself. I care about two things, and my care for these two things is proven out through the decades of my life. In saying this, I am not boasting of myself, but of God who is Faithful in me. I care first about God my Father, His Heart, what He wants, what He is determined to do. And I care second about His Word, for God has magnified His Word above all that He is. I really care about what God says, as He actually says it and as He means it, and I really don’t care about anything else.
Personal with God. It is for this reason that I have always dealt straight with God, face to Face and forehead to Forehead, for He has always made Himself Personal to me.
I was nineteen when I first heard God speak to me, just two words, “My son.” Only now at age 65 can I articulate what He meant, though I always knew it in my heart. He meant, “It’s all personal between you and Me, My Son.”
It is the same with you, God is always personal with you, but you also must deal straight with Him. Never take God’s words as ideas to talk about. When God speaks in His Word, it is God speaking directly to you, Person to person. Contend with Him concerning His Word.
Let It Be to Me. For decades, I hid God’s Word in my heart, and not my head, refusing to “know” what it has to mean, but asking God with tears to write it upon my heart, that I might know Him. And I have responded to every Word God speaks in the only legitimate manner, the only way that pleases God, as Mary did, “Look at me, God; I belong to You. Let it be to me according to Your Word.”
I want you to know that I take God’s Word seriously, as my only absolute. Just like Jesus, I can do nothing of myself, and just like Isaiah, I tremble at His Word. God alone does what He speaks inside of us, and He does so by His Spirit.
One Definition Only. There is ONE definition of age-unfolding LIFE in the Bible, only one. The application of this LIFE unfolds in specific directions, all of which come only out from this one definition.
Here is the only definition of LIFE as it applies to humans. – This is age-unfolding Life, that they might know You, the only True God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3).
Life is knowing God; knowing God is Life. Conversely, again for humans, death is not knowing God; not knowing God is death. Now John also says that God is life, but God as life does us no good at all. Life becomes ours only as we KNOW God for real.
Eat of the Tree of Life. The next question follows – What does it mean to know God? This book is titled “Eat of the Tree of Life,” and I am writing every page in it for one purpose – to give some answer to this specific question – what does it mean to know God and how do we accomplish such a thing – that we might eat of Life and live.
To the one presently and actively overcoming, I will give him to eat of the tree of life, which is inside the paradise of God.
In this introduction, then, we want to give a basic Biblical understanding of two things, knowing God and Life, much of which comes to us from John, although both qualities are essential elements of the New Covenant. The term “age-unfolding” we will save for later.
Sustaining ALL. Let’s start with how we must understand the reality of all things created, the spiritual things of the heavens as well as the material things of the earth. – All through Him [Jesus – every Word God speaks] become, and without Him not even one thing becomes that has become. Inside of Him is life actively, and this life is the light of humans (John 1:3-4).
Then the clincher. – In these present final days God has spoken us inside His Son, whom He appointed heir of all, and through whom He forms the ages. This Son is the shining forth of glory and the character and exact reproduction of God’s substance, bringing forth, carrying, and sustaining all by His power-filled Word (Hebrews 1:1-3).
Everything that exists comes out from and is sustained every moment by the good-speaking of Jesus, by His present utterance of Words of power and Life. This is absolute truth regarding everything – BUT, it is Life for us only when we KNOW.
Life inside the Father. Now, let’s look at what Jesus and John say about this Life itself.– Just as the Father possesses life inside of Himself, so also He gave to the Son to possess life inside of Himself. – For just exactly as the Father awakens and gives life to the dead, in this same way, the Son also gives life to whomever He desires (John 5:26 & 21).
God has given Jesus His same LIFE, and Jesus gives that same Life to whomever He wishes.
Possessing the Son. Then, Jesus makes this same Life, the very Life of God, utterly personal. – You diligently search the Scriptures, for you imagine that you will discover age-unfolding life in them. Yet the Scriptures also give witness concerning Me, but you have no desire to come towards Me, that you might possess Life (John 5:39).
John continues with these same thoughts. – This is the testimony, that the Life unfolding the ages God has given to us, and this Life is inside of His Son. The one who possesses the Son has the Life; the one who does not possess the Son of God does not have the Life. …that you might know that you possess age-unfolding Life, and that you may actively believe into the name and character of the Son of God (1 John 5:11-13).
Jesus Causes Us to Know. All of these verses give us only the second part of the one definition of age-unfolding LIFE found in the Bible – That they might KNOW — Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
What about knowing the One True God, that is, the Father?
Consider Paul’s ruling statement along these same lines. – Christ lives inside of your heart through faith — that you might be filled with all the fulness of God (Ephesians 3:17-19). Then we bring in another most incredible verse, 1 John 5:20. – We know that the Son of God is presently and actively come and has given us an understanding, a through-mind, so that we might KNOW Him who is the True; and we are inside of Him who is the True, inside of His Son, Jesus Christ. We are speaking of the True God and the Life that unfolds the ages.
A Metaphor of the Real. Now, I have said that I am convinced that the tree of life in the garden was an actual tree. Some think it was a thorn tree, and to reach its fruit high up, one had to pierce one’s hands and feet in the climb, and thrust one’s brow into the thorns. In fact, this is a description of the acacia tree, of which the Ark of the Covenant was made.
Nonetheless, that actual tree itself was only a metaphor of the REAL. And I’m sure you have guessed by now what is the real Tree of Life in the Bible – John 14:20. KNOW that I am inside of the Father and you inside of Me and I inside of you. I am writing this book so that we might KNOW together.
“To Know.” Let’s talk just a bit, now, about this word “to know.” “To know” is one of the largest words in all human languages. In fact, “how we know and what we know” is one of the central questions of human philosophy and the study of consciousness.
“To know” is a sliding-scale concept. To be aware of something such that you turn and face it, to consider it, is fully the meaning of “to know.” Yet there is another level of “to know” beyond that, and another beyond that, and each level is the meaning of “to know.” In fact, sexual intimacy is a much deeper level of “to know,” even in Scripture, than the first “being aware.”
Yet “to know” goes far deeper than that.
The Most Precious Promise. It is KNOWING God our Father that is LIFE! The extent of what that means is simply out of this world and far beyond the limits of human comprehension. Yet John said that Jesus causes us TO KNOW.
That brings us to that double promise of Jesus most precious to us. – The one who possesses My full completion [of words] and keeps guard over them, He is the one who loves Me. Even more, the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will appear in person and make Myself visible to him. – If anyone loves Me, he will keep, guard, and watch over My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make Our home in intimate participation with him (John 14:21 & 23).
The Doorway into Life. Let me bring you now to the Doorway into the fulfillment of this most wondrous promise Jesus is making to you, that He will make Himself visible to you and that He and the Father together will make their HOME in intimate participation with you.
It is that moment, the most important moment of your life, when, in overwhelming despair and in heart-wrenching sorrow, you come to the full realization, “I cannot keep His Word.”
Then, and only then, does Jesus arise in you, Jesus alive already inside your heart, and He says to you, “But I can, for I am every Word God speaks, and I live inside your heart, inside the very place where God our Father makes His Home.” And in that moment, we never ever look at ourselves again, but only at Christ Jesus, now our very and only LIFE.