18. One Body
© Daniel Yordy - 2014
I have talked much about the Covenant, including writing an entire book on “The Covenant.” In that book, I believe, I also stated that I have no idea what I am talking about. That is true. I have always felt that I did not have the actual core reality of the Covenant clearly in view; thus I have been writing to learn.
Last night Father showed me the core of the Covenant. It is fitting that this portion of our union with Christ, one body, begin here.
We could not know the core of the Covenant because we did not know God. – God is invisible.
The second commandment, “Thou shalt make no graven image,” Moses said was predicated on the fact that, when they heard God speak, they saw no form. God wants us to entertain no form of Himself BECAUSE He is without boundaries. Thus any form we evoke, including a heavenly form, cannot be God.
When I contemplate the Father arising out from unknownness into being known in me, arising in my heart out from God All Here Now and Personal in me, Person inside of person, with my heart, the Mercy Seat of heaven as the place where I know Him, in my heart first and then, secondly, in my mouth, then I conjure up no image at all, but rather, the upwelling joy of my own heart filled with all the Love of God.
God in you is not God to me. God, for me, is the One always arising in me. God for you is the One always arising in you. I do not worship you, but God, and the place wherein I worship God, the place God has chosen, is the joy of my own heart. Thus, when I see you, I recognize the same fountain of joy arising in you as arises in me. Our relationship with each other, then, is one of joy and fellowship.
Now, in all of my contending with God concerning my union with the Lord Jesus Christ, and all of my writing and teaching on union, from the start, I have never imagined, for one moment, that “I” am God. The amazing thing is that some do; some go around in their services, saying, “Hi, God” to each other. Some even think that they themselves, separate from Father, become some sort of ascended being.
There is a reason why I have never thought such a thing. You see, I may be a failure at most everything I have put my hand to in life, but there is one thing I am not. I am not a blithering idiot.
Those who imagine that they, separate from Jesus and separate from Father, are to become some sort of ascended “god-like,” that is angelic being are, let me say this gently and kindly, recklessly STUPID. Have they never looked in the mirror or considered the serpent and the coffin? One can only conclude that they have not.
All created beings are filled with All God Here Now and Personal. No created being knows they are. It is not natural for a created being to know God, for God is invisible. A detectable “god” would be a god with boundary lines. Sin need not enter the picture. Sinless angels do not know God, though they also live only in Him.
Sin and fixing sin has never been the issue. Yes, redemption is most certainly an integral part of the picture, but it has never been the core of the issue in this counterbalance between an unknown God and a creation that lives only in Him. God can be known only through Covenant. Covenant comes first before God is known.
There are and have always been two covenants, two ways by which any created being can know God.
However, one covenant is for angels and animals, and the other is for humans only. The covenant between God and angels is not meant for humans and the covenant between humans and God is not meant for angels, rather angels and animals will know God only out from that bond between God and humans.
Not knowing God is vanity. All creation groans in travail for the knowledge of God.
What causes sin?
I have and continue to testify that the more I turn my back on “sin,” never allowing anything I ever do or say, even if it is wrong, to place any shadow between the bond, the full union, that exists between Christ and I, the more I face Christ and see Him alone, regardless of all outward appearance, the more those things that hindered me without resolution over many years slowly fade away.
Now, I have noticed recently, and I say this with all thanks to the Father, that I have not been aggravated by my wife's remarks lately as I had been for so long, responding to her wrongfully to the distress of my heart. Now, as I think, I don't recall anything she has said recently that aggravated me.
You see, because I had learned to expect “correction,” I always felt, instinctively, that words from others were meant to accuse. Thus I always responded to words that I perceived to be accusation in a defensive manner. Of course, from my wife's point of view, she always spoke out from her heart in which no accusation existed, thus my response was, to her, harsh and controlling. This is how it works.
But let's look at this from my point of view only. My wife has not said things for some time that make me feel uncomfortable, therefore I have had no reason to react. True or false? – FALSE!!!
My wife's words have never caused me to react. My propensity to react caused my wife to say things I did not like. My own propensity drew the wrong words from my wife. What I myself feared came upon me regularly. The claim, “If you would just stop doing that, then I would be okay,” is pure dishonesty.
God sets the two covenants before mankind over and over, all the way through until now.
In the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” Genesis 4:3-7
Cain was attempting to connect with God by his own labor, by the covenant Adam had made with the serpent, to eat of, to regard the covenant of angels, a relationship based on “hear and obey.” Thus God, in speaking to Cain, reinforced the reality of that covenant to him. – If you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. – These words are the law, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a word meant only for angels; living by these words IS the cause of sin in the human.
When a person relates with God on the basis of not sinning by the knowledge of what God expects, that covenant results ONLY in sin and death. “Not sinning” causes sin; it causes both good and evil, both of which are sin. Doing good is as sinful as doing evil, oftentimes more sinful, for the one “doing good” is building his or her own self-righteousness, his or her own claim on God – that is, covenant – because I did, then You must.
The fear of sin causes sin, drawing sin out of self and others. Notice that no such thought ever entered Abel's mind. Abel approached God only by the Covenant God intended for man.
The Covenant has nothing to do with sin or no sin. Sin in no way “required” Jesus' passage through the atonement, although that passage is redemption; Covenant always did. And that Covenant is the Heart of God.
Any Christian who approaches God on the basis of sin/no sin, even using Jesus as the crucifix inside of that mix, “I must rule over sin – and You must help me,” is living by the Old Covenant. Jesus carries them by the New and even relates with them as He is able by the New, but they do not know it. This includes all who teach any form of “cleaning up the outer man” or “getting rid of the old skin.” Their backs are turned against Christ; thus they are doing the opposite of what they say. “Getting rid of sin” serves only to increase sin.
Let us turn our backs on the Old, on Adam's choice, on hearing what God says and being sure to do it.
There is a totally different Covenant Bond by which we walk together in pure and perfect relationship with the Father. My Bond with Father is absolute, it is complete, it is utterly pure and holy without shadow of any kind, ever. It matters not what I feel like when I awake in the night for whatever reasons, I look at Father in me and I see that my Bond with Him, utterly bound together in perfect Covenant union, Father and me, that Bond remains perfect and complete. And that Covenant Bond alone causes sin to vanish from our experience.
His name is Jesus.
Picture the water molecule, H2O. Actually, here is a representation of it: HOH. The H on the left represents Father, the H on the right is me, the O binding the two of us into one vital force is the Lord Jesus, God and man merged, 100%-100%, in one. The Bond of the Covenant, the Lord Jesus living in my heart, binds Father and I together utterly as equals at the level of Covenant. This Bond is entirely inside of me, Person inside of person.
Water is likely the most useful substance there is. It is so adaptable in form, altering itself to fit so many circumstances and needs, yet always remaining as that very simple, very powerful bond. The electrical frequency of water is highly adaptable, conforming itself to the frequency of anything with which it comes into contact. That quality makes water both healing and destructive. If man-made chemicals have been in a cup of water, though you remove every molecule of those chemicals, yet the water will retain the frequency of those chemicals and cause the same symptoms in you as if you drank the chemicals. In like manner, water will adapt itself to the healing frequencies of plants and thus carry that frequency into your body when you drink it.
The human body is 80% + water. The frequencies of the water-based liquids and foods we put into our bodies affects our physical health enormously. The microwave savagely and instantly alters all the frequencies of anything put in it. Those who eat microwaved food regularly are not wise.
(My hope in every rabbit trail is to see God; He shows up in such surprising ways.)
Now, it is very hard to break the bond between HOH, but it can be done. What do you have when you break that bond? One oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, the very ingredients of FIRE.
Water, the full bond of the covenant, is the best thing there is to put out fire.
When the ingredients of water are not bound together in covenant bond, then the slightest spark causes instantaneous and massive fire.
Now, let's try a different bond, let's put into the mix of God and us the bond meant for angels – H2S, represented in this manner – HSH. Here is the first line in the Wikipedia definition of HSH.
“Hydrogen sulfide is the chemical compound with the formula H2S. It is a colorless gas with the characteristic foul odor of rotten eggs; it is heavier than air, very poisonous, corrosive, flammable, and explosive.”
When I lived at Blueberry, a Christian community in northern British Columbia, we were (and those there still are) under the continual threat of hydrogen sulfide from the local natural gas wells situated above us. Typically, the hydrogen sulfide was cleansed off the gas, but if the systems failed, it would creep down into the valley. If it failed, we had about twenty or so minutes to evacuate or be dead. Thus the gas company paid for an all-weather road to the community to ensure that we could escape. Of truth, there was little danger that the safety systems would fail, but we were fully aware of the reality of hydrogen sulfide.
Do you see how all of Jesus' statements concerning Gehanna, fire and sulfur, are referring directly to the two covenants?
Here is Gehenna (signifying the curse): “I must rule over sin – and You must help me.”
The only thing that can result from this covenant for the human is fire and brimstone.
Adam, though innocent, was not connected in any direct way with Father arising in him. Thus God put in front of Adam his own choice of how to connect, whether by MCF or by MLF, that is, Man-Christ-Father or Man-Law-Father, both bonds being a form of word, internal or external, the first a Person inside, the second knowledge about what God expects. A Covenant can only be entered into. Without the signature signed by the willful and fully cognizant deliberation of each party to the Covenant, there can exist no Covenant in the way God intends for this incredible and dynamic relationship between Him and us.
I have taken the time to lay out this picture, because I want to bring Covenant all the way home for us, to the real Covenant Bond God intends to exist between Father and us and between you and me.
God made Jesus the High Priest – with an oath by Him who said to Him: “The Lord has sworn and will not relent, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek’, by so much more Jesus has become the surety of a better covenant.Hebrews 7:21-22
The word “surety” is the bond of the Covenant, the O that binds the two H atoms in water, Father and me, Father and you, together with Himself in an inseparable bond, as springs of water ever arising within.
This Bond is the tree of life and the lamb offered by Abel; it is John 14:20.
Because so much of the Bible is written to bring all creation guilty and silent before God, put to death upon the cross of Christ, Christianity has so tried to re-state the New Covenant in terms of the Old.
But the New Covenant is not an idea or a command or a list of words to read and to know or even a voice to hear and obey. The New Covenant, the Bond of that Covenant, is a Person. And that Person is found for us in ONE PLACE ONLY, one place with two parts, our hearts and our mouths.
“Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) . . . But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach). Romans 10:6-8
Do not say, “Go to heaven,” as if anyone will find Christ as our Covenant Bond with Father “there.”
Christ Jesus, the Bond who binds us utterly together with Father and Father utterly together with us is found only in our own hearts and comes, then, by expression, out of our own mouths.
There I will meet with you. – The Mercy Seat.
Father and I are one. And we are made one by the continual presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in and as our shared Heart. We know it by faith, by the simple human decision that God is telling us the truth.
And if we will not know it by faith, then we will not know it, but are left to the horrors that must come out of Gehenna: “I must rule over sin – and You must help me,” the garbage dump of Jerusalem.
The knowledge of God, something not granted first to any other part of creation, including almost all humans, and even too many Christians by choice, comes up from within me out from one source alone, my heart, which IS Christ Jesus, the Mercy Seat, a Heart I share entirely with Father. And that same knowledge, then, flows through me by which creation knows Father, and thus is set free.
Now I want to enter into this Surety, this Bond, the Mercy Seat of God, my heart in me and your heart in you. For here we find something so utterly marvelous, so incorruptible and holy, something we had never considered.
We are the Body of Christ, one Body together. – God is in travail.
Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:26-28
Wow, I've never put these two truths together (travail and working together), as Paul so obviously does here.
God is in travail to be known by His creation as He is.
All of creation's “definitions” of God are so ungodly. God is not known. Any idea of “God” anyone on this planet holds cannot be God or godly, for God is not known.
These verses in Romans 8 are just one more description of the Mercy Seat, the throne of the Lamb, my heart and yours. God has chosen you and me, our hearts, to be the place wherein He becomes known, the firstfruits – that is, if we want Him to. If we don't want Him to, then that's fine as well. It is our own simple choice. Jesus still carries us all the way into life.
I don't want “life,” that is, a life of bliss and abundance; I want God's heart beating in my chest. I want that life and abundance of God that flows out from me to others.
I want life laid down; I want love poured out.
I want to know God, not in His outer parts, but by Heart.
Now, I am NOT a naturally giving person; I have always been very much-afraid. At the same time, I desire many, many things inside a life of bliss and adventure. Thus, if I am to know God by Heart, then it is Father alone that I must know. Thus my choice is to know Father – regardless. As I know Father's Heart alone, I also know this: all other things I desire are also of Him and they will come back to me multiplied and forever.
I can tell you exactly what fills Father's Heart, that is, the Lord Jesus enthroned in and as my heart, right now, in this year of our Lord, 2015. I don't have to “feel” anything to know because I know that Jesus is the All-Speaking of God.
The bowels of the Lord Jesus yearn with all desire over His Bride walking this earth right now in her hour of greatest need. And you and I are seized utterly in the grip of this MOST passionate Person in the universe.
How are we one body? We are one body by the Mercy Seat of God, our Hearts, the Bond and the Surety of the Covenant, binding Father and us utterly together in one unbreakable Bond filled with all the passion, might, and victory of God outpoured.
The same Mercy Seat in you is the same Mercy Seat in me.
I know it because it is true.
God in travail.
God in travail to be seen and known and touched.
God Incarnate. – God manifest in the flesh.
When I know God by His travail in me over you, by His love poured out through me towards you, by His life laid down in me for you, then I really know God. And you as well. That is, you will know the same and we will know one another.
This reality come to full measure, this knowledge of God Heart fully expressed through us IS the climax of God's story. It is our experience dead ahead. It is Salvation Revealed.
The climax of God's story will NOT disappoint.
Christ Jesus binds me utterly to Father and Father utterly to me inside Himself. That bond is far greater, infinitely greater, than the bond by which the oxygen atom binds together the two hydrogen atoms in water.
Earlier I wrote a letter titled “In Christ.” Here is the greatest “in Christ” there is.
No Christian will dispute the bond of God/Man that Jesus is. Yet this same Jesus drank me into Himself, into His humanity, as He arose from Gethsemane, becoming me. And I drink this same Jesus into myself, into my humanity, becoming Him. In like manner, this same Jesus is fully the becoming, the ekenoson, the called out of the invisibility of Father, and when we see Him we see the Father.
The word Paul invented, symmorphos, and used twice, once in Romans 8:29 and once in Philippians 3:21, is not incorrectly translated as “conform,” similar to metamorphos, that is, “transform” as found in 2 Corinthians 3:18. But why would Paul invent a word for those two super-critical places, when the powerful and incredible meaning of metamorphosis was already available to him?
Meta means “across,” but sym means “together with.” Meta means one thing becoming something else, but sym means two things becoming each other. Sym means God and Man fused together as One in One Body.
Is that not the Covenant and the birthing of the New Creation?
That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. John 17:21-23
The bond is not one plus one, addition; the bond is one and one, fusion.
How, then, are we one body?
The same bond that binds you and me to Father also binds you and me utterly together as one inside this same Jesus. Here is our chemical formula. (Place Father against the C in your mind.)
FATHER
YOUCME
If Christ is Father's Heart, if Christ is my Heart, and if Christ is your Heart, then, guess what, we share exactly the same Heart, all together. I never share Heart with you apart from sharing that same Heart with Father; you never share Heart with me apart from sharing that same Heart with Father.
You have loved them as You have loved Me.
This bond of the Covenant between us is absolutely and completely true, whether we know it or not.
All the problems of the human race, all the problems of the universe, are caused by not knowing God and by not knowing the Bond of the Covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin and death flowed out of Adam's choice to place a relationship of “You tell me what to do and I will do it, but You have to help me” between himself and God, a relationship we can rightly call Gehanna, placing “self by knowledge” as the bond instead of Christ.
Here's the deal. Salvation is wholeness, the knowledge of the Person of Christ alone as the bond. Salvation includes all physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual healing. There is no wholeness known in ignorance.
Ignorance of God, ignorance of the Bond that fuses us together with God, Christ Jesus, ignorance of this same bond that fuses us together with each other, is not godly. Yes, we know that Christ lives as us, regardless. We can walk in ignorance of everything and Christ will still carry us HOME.
But that's just it. Home IS the knowledge of God inside of us. Home is NOT anything else. All those who are expecting to “go home” after they lose their physical bodies are the one's whistling Dixie. It doesn't happen. Losing one's physical body does not result in any further knowledge of this Bond between Father and us inside of us. In fact, that knowledge must wait until the physical body is restored.
This is the place of God's choosing: God manifest in the flesh. Thus it is silly to talk about Christ carrying us “Home” and then to resist with all of our pig-headed stubbornness any effort of Christ Jesus to cause us to KNOW that Bond that fuses Father together with us and us together with one another.
Life is one body together.
If Christ is carrying us all the way into life, then He is carrying us into one body together. How can those who have no bodies be one Body together?
The point is Christ walking this earth in His Body, not Christ living in heaven-only having lost His earth Body. Christ has not lost His earth body. We are it, as Paul so clearly says, if we would just believe him.
We are not gathered together in Christ in order to be “turned into” one body. We are gathered together in Christ to learn, to know all the life and power, all the love and joy, all the overflowing realities of Salvation as One Body, Father walking this earth inside of Jesus inside of us, and all the rivers of living water flowing out of Christ, our shared Heart.
Learn of Me.
Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. Matthew 11:29-30
The yoke of Jesus is the Bond by which Christ Jesus fuses you and me utterly together with Father and Father utterly together with us.
It all boils down to this. – If we want to know and experience life, then we want to know and experience one another in this same bond of togetherness, for there alone is the release of Life, out from the Covenant Bond, out from the Body of Christ, One Body Together.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. Ephesians 4:4-6
Remember that the word “above” is not literal to us, but figurative. Father through us and in us is the highest expression of reality there is. It's easy, though, to tell which one is Father. He's the Guy, there, see Him, the One down on His knees to serve. He's the One running with all of His might towards the slightest cry from even the most obnoxious and rebellious loser.
There is one body, not two and not two billion, ONE.
Christ Jesus, our very Heart, binds us together with Father and He with us and we with one another.
He who has seen us, His body, has seen the Father.
Not one of the disciples in that upper room imagined that they were not looking at Jesus' body, or that Jesus was something other than this Person appearing before them in this body of flesh. Every mind in that room registered only this underlying base assumption, that when Jesus said “Seen Me,” He meant, seen His body, the only dwelling place of Jesus.
Let us go back, then, to symmorphos. I first explored this word in the letter “A Body Prepared for Me” in Through Eyes of Fire, and then again in the letter “Christ Jesus,” in The Two Gospels.
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Romans 8:29
The Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. Philippians 3:20-21
Symmorphos image; symmorphos body.
Symmorphos means “jointly formed,” according to the dictionary writers, but then they throw in their unbelief with the word – (figurative), calling the Father in us and through us, “figurative.” They cannot believe that God fuses together with man and man with God. They cannot believe in Jesus.
Now, we must also extract the meaning of the word, “image,” Greek, icon, out from the definitions of separation as well. Here are the words we seek, from biblehub.com, – (like a "high-definition" projection).
Consider that. The word “image” means that the prototype, that is, substance, the original image of the film in the projector, is now seen as the appearance, image, on the big screen.
Image means that when God shows up in the universe, He is a Human, fully of both heaven and earth.
God made visible is a Man or a Woman. – God has no other visible form.
The only way to see God, then, is to see His Body, you and me, walking together as One Body.
People say they want to “go to” heaven in order to see Jesus, yet they refuse to know Him either inside themselves or in the brother sitting next to them at church. They are not honest; that's why they don't see Him.
Then, not only are we fused utterly together with the Image of God, Christ Jesus becoming us and we becoming Him, He becoming us always first out of which alone we then become Him. But we are also fused utterly together with the Body of God, Christ Jesus becoming our body and our body becoming His. Again, His body must become ours first before ours could ever become His.
And in all of this, the word “become” is not a time word, but a source word. Become does not mean, “now it is not and later it will be so.” “Become” means ever arising from within, All God Here Now and Personal in us.
Jesus' glorified Body is ever becoming my body, this body of flesh sitting here in this chair typing words onto the computer screen, and my body of dying flesh is ever becoming His glorious body of resurrected, incorruptible flesh, flesh of His flesh.
At the same time, and in exactly the same way, we together are being fused together in Christ Jesus, our shared Heart, as One Body together, the revelation of Almighty God.
Now look back at Ephesians 4:4-6. Isn't that exactly what God says and has always said, the Father in us and through us as one Body? And why could we never read those words as they are? BECAUSE we held fiercely to a false image of “God,” the image of the highest of the angels, the image defined by Augustine, the image of separation in the imagination of our minds, a separated, outlined, and measurable “god.”
Yes, there will be a moment when our faith so connects with the Word God has already spoken and is always speaking, and our bodies will be transformed, metaschematizo, as well, in all outward appearance.
But we don't need outward appearance to know that it is absolutely true.
Our physical bodies, each one individually and all of ours together ARE the very body of Jesus, the self-same body that rose from the dead and ascended into the sky, reappearing now as our own present bodies, the life of Jesus being revealed in our mortal bodies.
We are One Body together. A corporate body of humans is the ONLY representation of God.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. 1 John 4:7-12
My dear brother and sister, we do not know God by “going to” heaven; we know God by loving one another.
Let us love one another; let us know God as one body together.
Salvation Revealed is the Body of Christ.