11. The Christ of Union
This is the Christ of union, the One who brings me in Himself to the Father and causes me, _Daniel Yordy , to be One with the God who fills me full, always arising, every moment, from within me.
© Daniel Yordy - 2014
I must say something further about myself at the beginning of this letter. – I am ignorant, and I am blind. I do NOT KNOW 99.999999999…% of what God means inside of our precious union with the Lord Jesus Christ. I simply don't have a clue. The tiny little bit I do know, I see only dimly, reaching with all my heart to know this One who has seized me in His grip and who fills my heart with His glory.
Never ever do we carry God around in our little box of explanations. This is it; there is no more. I can explain everything to you. It makes no difference how large one's box or how elaborate the explanations, God is not in the box. God is in Christ in our hearts, yes, but He cannot ever be in our ideas and explanations.
Never limit God. Never put bounds around Him or against His Word. Any limitations by which God limits Himself are His business. But when a man or a woman limits God, God is duty bound by His very nature to release His un-limitation through another man or woman in exactly the way the first has attempted to pin God into their box. That's what Jesus meant by“The words that I speak shall judge him in the last day.”
The stupidest statement ever uttered in all the history of heaven and earth was this: Did God really say that?
The smartest statement ever uttered in all the history of heaven and earth was this: Behold, I am Your maidservant. Let it be to me according to Your Word.
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In the first letter of this series, I spoke of the phrase, “Christ as us.” Although “Christ in you(us)” is found in Scripture, the exact layout of words, “Christ as us,” is not. I stated that I believe that “Christ as us” is justified by the meaning of what God actually says. Yet I must give my reason for continuing to use this phrase and not just that I picked it up from somewhere else.
In the first letter of this series, “Union AND Freedom,” I gave an account of the word “in” from the 1926 Webster's dictionary. Here I want to give a similar account of the word “as.” We must know of what we are speaking before we can discuss it.
“As” and “also” come from the same Anglo Saxon word meaning “as so.” The pronunciation ofeal swa, also, would have diverged into the simpler form “as” in its most common usage; the English tongue always tries to simplify pronunciation. Here are portions of Webster's 1926 definitions for as.
1. Denoting equality or likeness in kind, quantity, degree, or manner; like; similar to; in the same manner with or in which; in accordance with; in proportion to; to the extent of degree in which or to which; equally; no less than. “You will reap as you sow.”
In expressing an equality or comparison, as is the regular correlative word after such, (suchas, so as).
2. In the idea, character, or condition of, – limiting the view to certain attributes or relations; “the actor will appear as Hamlet.”
3. While; during or at the same time that. “He trembled as He spoke.”
4. Because; since; it being the cast that.
5. Expressing concession; – often nearly equivalent to though.
6. That: introducing or expressing a result or consequence, after the correlatives so and such. “Be so good as to come.”
8. For instance; by way of example; – used to introduce illustrative phrases, sentences, or citations.
Synonyms: BECAUSE and LIKE. As far as, to the extent or degree that. As follows, as comes next. As for, so far as concerns: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” As good as, amounting to; not falling short of. “As good as one's word,” faithful to a promise. As if or as though, of the same kind, or in the same condition or manner, that it would be if. As well as, equally with; no less than.
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Now, we can see that if we said, “We as Christ,” then all these meanings of “as” would flow right out of Romans 8:29, “Conformed to the image of His Son.” But we are saying, “Christ as us,” meaning, Christ is equal to us, to the same degree that we are, particularly definition 2, “Christ is limiting Himself to, Christ is appearing as Daniel Yordy.” Think of that: “the actor will appear as Hamlet.” We are saying that the One Actor of the Universe, Christ Jesus, will appear now as Daniel Yordy (put your own name in the blank).
And yes, I believe that such a thought is not only supported by New Testament Scripture, but it is the core of the Gospel and the Salvation of our lives. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ is how we know what He already is.
There is one verse in Scripture, however, that uses the word “as” in reference to Christ and us.
Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world (in this age). 1 John 4:17
Clearly, you and I are utterly AS the Lord Jesus Christ IS, right now, the ascended Christ, the King of heaven and earth. This is the perfection of love, the boldness of our hearts in the day of judgment.
But is this same Christ also now as us? If we are conformed in all ways to His glory and perfection, is He also conformed in all ways to our weakness and limitation?
Here is the definition of the Greek word kathos, translated “as” according to Strong's Concordance. 2531 kathos (from 2596 /katá, "according to" and 5613 /hōs, "as compared to, to the extent of") – properly, "in proportion, to the degree that" (J. Thayer); just as (in direct proportion), corresponding to fully (exactly).
The meaning is plain. We are, in all possible ways, just like Jesus right now. AS HE IS, SO ARE WE. God says it exactly that way, and He always tells the truth. We are as He.
Thus, the definition that you and I are the actors who are appearing AS Christ, is 100% Biblical. Daniel Yordy is appearing as Christ. (Put your name in the blank.)
But is Jesus just like us first – or not?
Does Jesus come into union with us BEFORE He causes us to come into union with Him?
Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren. . . Hebrews 2:17
Of course, we can say, well that was a PAST occurrence, He cannot be like me right now.
But look again at the words: AS HE IS, SO ARE WE. Look at yourself in the mirror. Is it true? Are you looking right now at exactly what Christ Jesus, the ascended and victorious Christ IS?As He is, so are we – ?
Of course it is true, 100% true right now. (Unless God lies.)
Well, hey, Christ sure looks like you, doesn't He?
It is a necessity that Christ be exactly as you are right now for you to be exactly as He is right now. We cannot be one without the other. We cannot be as Christ and Christ not be as us as we presently appear.
If A = B, then B = A. If we are as Christ, as the Bible says, then Christ is as us.
I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ.
Look in the mirror. “You” are dead. “You” are alive. Yet the you that is alive is Christ.
What you see is only Christ. You live as Christ; Christ lives as you. Christ, who is our life.
The real problem is our hesitance to allow Jesus to BE our sin and our sinfulness, to BE our human flesh. But it's either us or Him. Either Jesus IS all of our sinfulness, or we keep it all for ourselves. You can't give just a little bit to Jesus. It's all or nothing. Either all of the sinfulness of my flesh belongs utterly to Jesus or none of me belongs to Him. What else, may I ask, do I have to offer? I cannot offer Him “obedience” because I would be lying to Him, and lying, according to Revelation 21 and 22, simply causes Him so much pain.
Yet, if I allow Jesus to BE all of my sinfulness, then, and only then, does all of it disappear into an empty, empty grave. You see, neither the Father nor the Father revealed through Christ, lives according to time. The Father is continuously what He is, ALL HERE NOW.
One sacrifice for sins forever. – All always ALL Now.
But these things are all of logic and of theology. Logic, logos, word, is of vital importance, but we live only inside of Heart. What is “Christ as us” by Heart?
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Ephesians 3:17
The Greek word translated “in” is en. From Strong's: 1722 en (a preposition) – properly, in (inside, within); (figuratively) "in the realm (sphere) of," as in the condition (state) in which something operates from the inside (within). – Word Origin: a primary preposition denoting position and by implication instrumentality.
There you have it: “instrumentality,” which means – serving as the means, the agency, the cause of what comes forth. BE-CAUSE.
You know, this line is so little in Christianity, Jesus lives in my heart, a cute phrase for nursery school, but for most adults it means simply the high regard one carries for someone far away and high above. For me, this line has become the entirety of my present existence. Christ Jesus is the instrumentality, the agency, the cause of all that I am in the present moment. Christ Jesus is the cause of me.
If that is true, if Christ does dwell IN my heart, then all that I am is coming only out of Christ.
But that's back to logic. We can know heart only by story. And the story of God is Gethsemane, a Man rising to His feet. Oh my Father, if we could but know what this means.
You see, I KNOW that Jesus' rising to His feet in Gethsemane is a billion trillion times more than what I can grasp right now. I am so ignorant and so very very blind. But here's the thing, we can talk about the definitions of “in” and “as” in an understandable manner. But Jesus' rising to His feet in Gethsemane is not found in the dictionary; it is found only in story. And story can be known only by being LIVED.
The only way I can know the final Action of Gethsemane is that this same Jesus, demonstrating for us by Action all the will of God, would live now as me, that the same Actor would appear now as me. No other thought causes my heart to melt than this, that Jesus would take me entirely upon Himself, personal and real, now and here.
In the first letter of this series, I talked about how we are, by the tree of knowledge, responsible before God.
You see, one who says, “But I have a responsibility before God, I myself,” is being as dishonest as the serpent. They do not believe that for one moment. Look at their lives and their walk. They go along as if everything is mostly okay, and they justify themselves by a strange and non-Biblical “Christian” theology.
My God, I have known my responsibility before God all of my adult life, and it puts me in one place only – on my face in silence and trembling before a Holy God who cannot be fooled or gainsayed or lied to.
I KNOW I do NOT and canNOT keep that responsibility. I KNOW it all through the reality of my life.
So when this same Jesus, arising to His feet in Gethsemane as ALL the will of God, says to me, “Daniel, I have become and I will be all of your responsibility before God. Daniel, I AM responsible for you, for all that you are,” then I embrace this Jesus as my SALVATION with all the intensity of my being.
You might wonder what an overdose on LSD experienced by an angst-filled sixteen-year-old boy would have to do with the revelation of Jesus Christ now at this end of the age of human folly. You see, I have never experienced anything in which I did not maintain full responsibility over myself; I was in no way “out of control” that night. Yet I saw the gates of the heavenly city. They were closed tightly shut, and I was on the outside, forever barred out. I was not “afraid” that night; I spent those eight hours entirely in control of myself, yet in the substance and essence, in a universe, of Fear.
Although that experience resulted in fifteen years of internal torment, yet it carried no smoke upon me; that is, I was never ruled by that experience in my pursuit of God, except in this way. I KNOW that the ONLY place I MUST be is inside the Heart of Father and Father inside of me. Any alternative is not acceptable to me.
I, bearing all responsibility for myself every moment of my life, will never accept an un-Biblical definition of “going to” heaven while LYING about myself and God on this earth as a substitute for being found in the ONE place in which I must be found, in Father and Father in me.
That is what God means by “the fear of God.” And it is that fear, that knowing that Father alone is where I must be, NOW, that causes me to melt in all weeping joy when Jesus, my Heart and my Salvation, comes into me, in all that I am, and says to me, “Daniel, from here on out – and always before, I am the One Acting as you. I AM all of your responsibility before God.”
Only the lost know Salvation; only the forgiven wash His feet with tears.
This is the only Christ I know. Everything He is, He is that only out from my own heart first.
Yet here is my reality. This Salvation, this engagement with the Lord Jesus Christ bearing all of my responsibility and living as me, is every moment. I do not “believe in” union with Christ as a philosophy of life. I engage with the Person of Christ Jesus as my very and only life in active engagement every conscious moment of my existence. And yet this engagement that I express, this communion, has caused some who teach “union with Christ” to bounce off of what I write immediately. For those, “Christ” is a philosophy to live by, not the Person of Jesus carrying them inside Himself and He inside of them right now.
This letter is on the Christ of Union. For that reason, I want to place Christ Jesus into this wonderfully illuminating illustration of God and us, the light bulb.
Christ Jesus is the wire and the transformers. He is the only possible way we can connect with this God who fills us full without our being blown all to pieces by the experience. Some think of God “all in all” as if it is perfectly normal. If fried is normal, then God all in all is just ho-hum.
So, the electricity coming into us through the wires is INVISIBLE. No one knows what it is. DC current is described as the slow movement of particles, charged ions moving through a wire. AC current is described as waves, moving back and forth from the generator to the discharge point at the speed of light – just by the excitement of particles against each other. Yet these are only attempts to describe what is happening. No one has a clue what electricity actually is, yet electricity is the cause and the substance of all things.
No one has a clue what God actually is, yet God is the cause and the substance of all things.
Thomas Edison tried 1000 times to determine what substance could show the power of electricity to us as light upon our way, and 1000 times he failed.
I have lived for years without electricity as an adult by choice. It would not bother me in the slightest if I was told that I would have to live the rest of my life without a flush toilet. I know the difference a bit and brace can make to one's standard of living. Without a bit and brace, one must open one's door by pulling a leather thong coming through a hole punched through the door. But with a bit and brace, one can install a handle that operates from the outside to the inside. You may think that a small thing, but it is not.
Having lived in subsistence simplicity for years, only one invention means more to me than any others.
Even carrying one's water entirely by buckets and carrying out the waste water, that is, living without an electric pump or even drain lines, is not the most important.
The most important modern invention to the comfort of our lives is one thing – the light bulb, especially for those who live in the north. (Understand that, if push came to shove, I would insist on a chain saw before a light bulb; however, a chain saw is for the necessity of work and thus of survival, whereas a light bulb is for the comfort of sight. And I speak as one who can make you a home using anything at hand, mud, rocks, snow, brush, anything except sand – and even with sand, with access to lightning bolts, it is theoretically possible.)
Yes, one can make light with a candle or with Coleman gas. Even better, one can make light with propane gas, but only if you can buy copper tubing already made and tanks and gas and mantles. But you try living through the northern nights of 18 hours or more of darkness with only the dim and flickering light of gas or oil or wax, especially as one who loves to spend those long hours of darkness writing out the word God speaks, and, in the end, one twelve-volt electric light bulb is just the best thing there is.
You see, we cannot know God by dictionary definitions, as important as they are. We can know God only by the personal stories of our lives, by God lived. That's what Jesus meant when He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
Jesus is the wire that carries that knowledge of God into us. And Jesus is the transformer that brings the mighty power that God is down to that which we simple-hearted ones can know, as we are able to drink.
Yet the light bulb has another part besides the bulb and the filament. The socket that connects the filament to the electric wire is also a part of the light bulb. The socket is our spirit, the bulb is our outer human person, and the filament is our heart.
It took Thomas Edison 1000 tries, 1000 failures, before he discovered the substance that would sustain the dynamics of turning electricity from heat to light.
God tried for 3000 years before He discovered the same thing – I have found Me a man after My own heart.
Today, incandescent light bulbs use a tungsten filament, but Edison's 1000 failures led him to a carbon filament made out of carbonized (burned) bamboo as the first workable electric light. But here is what the Wikipedia article says about the invention of the light bulb.
Historian Thomas Hughes has attributed Edison's success to his development of an entire, integrated system of electric lighting.
The lamp was a small component in his system of electric lighting, and no more critical to its effective functioning than the Edison Jumbo generator, the Edison main and feeder, and the parallel-distribution system. Other inventors with generators and incandescent lamps, and with comparable ingenuity and excellence, have long been forgotten because their creators did not preside over their introduction in a system of lighting. —Thomas P. Hughes, InTechnology at the Turning Point, edited by W. B. Pickett
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And so the revelation of God through us comes only through the whole package of engaged relationships.
Now, electricity becomes light only by passing through some form of “filament.” In fluorescent lights, that “filament,” is mercury vapor combined with one other heavy gas. But Edison's discovery is most useful to us.
We know the human heart as a heart of flesh., thus Edison's burnt carbon coming from “grass” (bamboo is of the grass family – all flesh is grass) is simply the best illustration there is of that filament God seeks ever to find.
When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith in the earth?
Clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. 2 Corinthians 3:3
You can see why the serpent has worked overtime to convince Christians that the human heart, a heart of flesh, is EVIL. It's the only way he can keep the knowledge of God from ever being seen.
By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us.
Those words, “laid down His life for us,” we have not known. If I could convince you and me that we DO NOT KNOW what those words mean, I would surely try. And then, maybe then, God can become real in us.
God becomes real by Story, by the pictures He has given us.
The Mercy Seat – the human heart – the throne of heaven.
Let's look again at those words that are the entirety of the gospel and of life and salvation.
Jesus lives in my heart.
Yes, it's possible for us to conceive of the reality that our born again spirits, that part of us that connects us with the Spirit of God, are one spirit with Him. We can even agree that our outer human form will someday shine forth all the light of God. But when we speak of the human heart, we are speaking of FLESH, fickle and wayward. And there we stumble and fall short.
Flesh of His flesh – tablets of flesh.
How do I know the Love of God? I know the Love of God only because Jesus became my own heart of flesh. Yet “became” is a past tense word. There is no past tense in God. Jesus is always becoming, every moment, my present human heart of flesh.
Do you see why I love Him?
“Laid down His life” cannot be a past tense act. It is ONCE for all – FOREVER. That is, the same once in every present moment in the life of every person in the universe.
Jesus' rising to His feet in Gethsemane, was the Action of WILL by which Jesus is forever becoming me as I am forever becoming Him. We are talking about dynamic LIFE, not a static human philosophy.
Only as Jesus is, right now, my own heart of flesh, can I know God and thus become a normal human being, God revealed.
How does Jesus become my very flesh?
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live BE-CAUSE of Me. John 6:53-57
Okay, do it. Right now. Take some of Jesus' flesh and eat it. Take some of Jesus' blood and drink it. Right now.
Your response is likely the same as mine, “I would, but how? I don't know how?”
The Catholics solved the problem by the doctrine of transubstantiation, that the bread and wine of communion becomes the actual, physical blood and body of Jesus present here on this earth after the priest blesses it. During the English Reformation, this was the critical question – anyone who denied that the Mass was the actual physical body of Jesus by which we gain eternal life was considered a traitor to the king and liable to be burned with fire.
The Protestants solved the problem by saying that Jesus' directive is figurative only and thus dismissed the whole idea from their doctrine of salvation. Thus most of our fellow Christians simply assume that because they are “saved” they have done whatever Jesus meant and that's that.
I believe 100% in the doctrine of transubstantiation. I am convinced that Jesus' actual physical body and actual physical blood appears on this earth by a miraculous transformation. – I am the one who has been transubstantiated. Jesus' physical body has become mine and His physical blood has become mine.
Isn't that what the Bible says?
You are the body of Christ – ?
There is one body and one Spirit. . . Ephesians 4:4 (Not two and not two billion.)
When Jesus' physical body died – the body without the spirit is dead, God, for 36 hours, ceased revealing Himself through Jesus' flesh. Then, after 36 hours of God not manifest in the flesh, God swallowed up that very same flesh with a higher level of His revelation, incorruptibility, God Himself, and that very flesh now reveals God forever.
We are that flesh.
If God could raise Jesus' dead flesh up into incorruptibility, then why is it so impossible for Him to make our flesh that same flesh? – We become what we eat and drink.
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Romans 8:11
What life? – Clearly the life of Christ.
If it is the Spirit of God now giving life to our present bodies, how is it that our very bodies are not, then, the appearance of God? Do we stumble over incorruptibility? Is the life of Jesus manifest only in incorruptible flesh?
Or is the life of Jesus revealed through our mortal flesh, as the Bible says?
“And the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:31-32
I want to hammer this thing all the way through. You see, almost all Christian groups and theologies I know are convinced that God lies. Thus they come up with pretty little explanations as to what these things “have to mean” since they cannot possibly mean what they say.
Let's go back up to the how. – How, Lord Jesus, do we eat Your flesh and drink Your blood?
Remember that God is Omnipresent Spirit – ALL HERE NOW and Personal inside of us. Remember that the whole point of everything is to KNOW this invisible God always arising inside of us and that we know God by knowing Jesus Sent. And remember that the knowledge of God increases forever.
I am convinced from the Word and from my own experience with God in the Spirit that we eat of His flesh and drink of His blood by one means only. – Faith working by love.
What is the strongest muscle in the human body? – The womb, measured by intensity of action.
What is the second strongest muscle in the human body? – The heart, measured by endurance of action.
Faith is NOT “belief.” Faith is the womb. Faith is the bringing forth of God into manifest appearance.
Faith is the evidence of God. God is Action.
And this faith is always working by Love, by God Love in fellowship always arising within us. And thus we come to the mightiest Action of faith ever seen in all of heaven or earth.
– A Man rising to His feet in Gethsemane. –
Can we see God? – “I will do Your will. I will drink Your cup.”
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. John 12:24
How? – By becoming the plant. – By becoming us. By rising to His feet in Gethsemane, Jesus drank all that we are into Himself. No part of us, including our sin and our shame, can ever be found outside of Jesus.
But by that ACTION, you and I also became the fierce JOY of His heart. We are not and have never been anything else. If Christ is my life, then I am the appearance of Christ.
It is true because God says first, and because I have decided that it is true, second. And thus I conform all of my thinking to that obedience, that I must be the appearance of Christ. Yet it is Christ Jesus alone to whom I am referring, and thus His same mind is in me, the mind that humbles Himself to serve.
There is one way only by which I can get to where I MUST BE. There is one way only by which I can get into Father and Father into me.
Through the Lord Jesus Christ.
And those words contain no metaphorical or spiritualized meaning. They are 100% literal in every possible way, spirit, soul, and body, in all that is heavenly spirit and all that is earthly flesh.
Thus I speak what God speaks. My flesh IS Jesus' flesh.
Why do I have to “understand” before I will speak? Who gives a rip!!! I do not. If God says it, I could care less the folly of my action. I will speak Christ my ONLY life against ALL outward appearance, against all human judgment, and against all unbelief.
I will not be kept out of those gates. I will know this God who fills me full.
Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth. Revelation 12:2
This IS you and me, and this IS right now.
Faith working by love.
There is only one way I know of to eat Jesus' flesh and to drink Jesus' blood. It is the way of Mary, “Let it be to me according to Your word.” By her Active engagement with the Word coming into her, that Word was birthed inside of Mary's body.
God says that I, Daniel Yordy, am flesh of Jesus' flesh. He says that this is a mystery, something I cannot understand first. First, I speak what God speaks concerning Christ living now as my very flesh, His Body having become my body. Then I conform all of my thinking to the obedience of Christ. Then, by the mind God has given me to know Him, I see and I know, and I worship Him in the Joy of Love.
Appearance can change in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. But substance is the only thing real. And substance is determined only by faith – my active engagement with the specific Words of Christ my only life.
God said, “Let there be Light,” and there was Light. – In (Christ) was Life, and the Life was the Light . . .
He who has the Son has the Life. – You are the Light of the cosmos. – God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
This is the Christ of union, the One who brings me in Himself to the Father and causes me, Daniel Yordy , to be One with the God who fills me full, always arising, every moment, from within me.