2. I Am a Son of God

I am a son of God. What does that mean? First, it means that I am conceived of my Father. I am birthed out of and by the genes of God. I am a partaker of the divine nature.

 

God contains inside of Himself everything needed to form us as sons. There are places in God beyond what we can comprehend, places of pain and suffering, places of unspeakable joy and unending hilarious laughter, places of great pleasure, places of great sorrow.

God did not intend for Adam to fall. There is no shadow of sin in God. All that He does comes out of righteousness and love. God did not “set Adam up” or do him wrong.

God did know that Adam would fall, and God did provide Adam the opportunity to make the wrong choice, knowing that he would. Yet God also provided fully all the protection Adam needed through His word to Adam and a far better alternative every step along the way. For every downward choice Adam made, God had already provided a way Adam could easily have taken that would have led him to redemption and life.

Our business is to know our Father personally and intimately, but it is not our business to figure out and explain an intellectual relationship between God’s predestination and His fore-knowledge. People who play tiddly winks with God do that and build sects and wage war over such things. We believe all that God speaks as He speaks it.

I am a son of God. I have no connection to Adam. I did not come from him. I came out of my Father. He sent me into this earth from Himself to fulfill His purposes in the earth.

There used to be a guy who inhabited this body and who went by my name who had a connection with Adam. But that guy is dead, crucified on the cross of Christ. And God sent me to take his place.

I am the new man and that new man is Christ.

As a person, as an individual human being, Adam’s fall was not God’s intention or will. Yet Adam’s fall did not hinder or thwart or affect God’s purpose in any way.

And it was God’s intention and will from the beginning, before anything was created, to place me out from Himself under the wreckage of Adam’s defeat, for a season and for a purpose.

When I began my journey I thought I was the other guy. I thought that God had shown me mercy and was taking me to a future I did not deserve. I didn’t realize that God had done no such thing. God did not show mercy to the other guy that used to go by my name. God ended him by the most gruesome death possible – crucifixion. God had no mercy on the guy who came from Adam.

I am crucified with Christ. Christ did not take my place. Jesus did not die on the cross so that I would not have to die. On the cross of Christ, God ended the old me by death, exactly as He had warned Adam.

I died in Him. You go to a funeral and you look at a dead body, in fact, envision that dead body rotted and filled with worms, permeating the air with its stench. That is exactly what happened to the old me. I, the one to whom God had imputed the death of Adam, died in that same way. That person is no more.

And this is the horror called Christianity. Christianity would keep me tied to that same Adam. Christianity would keep me worried over the worms and the rot and the stench, trying so hard to clean it up, to rid myself of it. Afraid to walk with God because I imagine that I stink. What a horror! What a nightmare.

But Paul said that I was also buried with Him. A corpse chained to one’s back is not buried. But a buried corpse is quickly forgotten.

There is no dead body. There is no connection to Adam.

I am a son of God.

At the very moment that I died with Christ, I arose from the dead. I live. Yet it’s not me, it is Christ. I am sent into the world in the same way that the Father sent Jesus into the world. That is what Jesus said, and I believe it.

God sent me into the world to inhabit a body formerly inhabited by one whom God caused to cease. God is not having mercy on me; God is revealing His mercy through me.

God sent me into a body containing the likeness of sinful flesh in exactly the same way that He sent Jesus into the likeness of sinful flesh. (Romans 8:3) God placed me under the vanity of this world, under the futility of all creation in the same way that He made Jesus subject to all the limitations of flesh and blood.

God has a specific purpose for me here. I have a mission. I am a son of God.

God warned me not to identify with the futility of this world. What club did Jesus join? What cause did He espouse? What flag did He wave? He came for one purpose alone – to prove the will of God in the physicality of this world.

God sent me for one purpose alone – to prove the will of God in the physicality of this world. I am just like Jesus. (And when I say, “I,” I assume you know I am not speaking of myself only, but that I am placing those words into your mouth. When you read, “I am just like Jesus,” you are speaking those words as yourself.)

I am not an earthling trying to “get to” heaven or to become more heavenly. I am a heavenling sent by God to prove the will of God in the earth.

As I listen to or read almost all conversation and teaching in Christianity, I see the thinking of the earthling trying to become heavenly.

When Jesus said, “I send you in just the same way that the Father sent Me,” that is the incontrovertible truth of God. Jesus put no limit on what that means. You can go to the furthest depths of possibility and reality in agreement with all that God speaks and you will not plumb any limits on the sending or on the “in just the same way.”

We are of heaven, and we are sent by God to inhabit a particular body, a particular set of circumstances in a particular time and place in order to reveal Christ and to prove the will of God in this earth in our bodies. Our thinking and conversation must change to reflect this reality.

Each of us as individuals has a particular measure of the will of God to reveal in this world. Jesus was sent to be the sacrifice for sins. You and I are sent to reveal all that Jesus the Christ is to the world. We do that in three ways. First, we do it by being ourselves in the simple, mundane, ordinary facets of our human life in this world, giving glory to God for His goodness towards us at all times, His favor that is always coming our way. Second, we do it by being a channel through which the power and love of God moves to touch others and to bring healing and life and joy wherever we go. And finally we reveal Christ to the world by casting down the accuser, the one who accuses us of sin and God of lying. As we cast that accuser down out of our own minds and hearts, we are setting all creation free.

Those who attempt to cast the ruling spirits out of their natural city in this world are wasting their time. What good is it to flail against spiritual darkness when we allow in our hearts and minds the firm belief that God lies, that He does not mean what He says? As we cast down the accuser out of our own heavens until we believe all that God speaks without shadow or limitation, Michael and those with him do the job God assigned to them. When we allow accusation against ourselves or our brother to remain in our hearts, when we harbor unbelief against the word God speaks, we prevent victory in the heavens. That’s how it works.

On the other hand, I catch just an inkling of sight into the heavens, and I see the powers of darkness giving way, collapsing, as a battle line, turning to run, because sons of God are casting the accuser out of their own individual heavens. This is right now as never before in history. My refusal to consider in my own mind and heart any form of accusation against myself or against my brother, my determination to believe every word that God speaks, as He means it, fulfilled in me in all fullness, is sending massive missile barrages deep into the enemy camp. They have already, in this July of 2010, lost their grip and are fleeing in confusion and fear. That’s why it seems to be getting “dark” in this world.

And so you see, although I have no connection with Adam, God placed me into and under the wreckage of Adam specifically for two reasons that go always together. First, that I might know Him inside the great sorrow He Himself bears, and second, so that I might release Him to redeem and to bring life and healing and joy to all those caught under that same wreckage, and thus know Him even more.

You can see, then, the great danger we face as sons, that we would imagine ourselves to be connected in any way to Adam or to this fallen world, or to the death that remains in our bodies. It is that “connection,” that false identity that we are not, that is meaningless in itself, but that can cause great harm by its deceit, that we cleanse ourselves from, that we cast off in the “putting off ” of the old man. We are not getting rid of the carcass; we are getting rid of the memory.

I am a son of God.

(Always place yourself into that word “I” in every confession of faith that you read in all that I write.)

What does that mean? First, it means that I am conceived of my Father. I am birthed out of and by the genes of God. I am a partaker of the divine nature.

Peter says in 1 Peter 1 that you and I are “born from above” by an incorruptible seed. That word “born again” all through the New Testament is the Greek word gennao, which should be translated “conceived.” The Greek word for coming out of the womb is tikto, translated “brought forth” as in “Mary brought forth a newborn son and laid Him in a manger.”

The process of my conception happened in this way. First, the Holy Spirit came upon me. All life and the work of God is generated through the hovering presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came upon me with three (four) things. First, He came with the blood of Jesus. That means that God can envelop and come into union with a creature that was once sinful and unclean. The blood removes ALL uncleanness. Second the Holy Spirit came upon me with the cross of Christ, that is, everything in me that came from Adam died. My fallen human spirit died. It ceased to exist. For an infinitesimal moment I was not. Finally, the third thing the Holy Spirit brought into me was the seed of Father God, a Word out of His loins, and in a flash of light I was conceived a second time.

But life does not come out of one seed. Life comes out of the union of two seeds. Before that flash of light happened, before I was conceived a second time, that Word, that incorruptible seed out of the very loins of God Himself, went searching inside of me for the seed of the woman. That seed of the woman is faith. When the Seed from God found that human seed, the seed of the woman, inside of me, it penetrated the wall of that female seed, entered into it, and in a flash, out of a fused union of the two seeds, I was born again. Very quickly, the union of two seeds divided into new cells, more and more it multiplied and grew. And inside my belly, in my innermost being, a son of God formed and grew. That son is fully the child of the Father’s seed, and fully the child of the mother’s seed.

Fully God and fully man. This is the GREAT Mystery of the gospel. Christ is in me. What does that mean?

In the beginning, the breath of God came into union with the dirt of this earth and man became a living soul. Man, the human, is the union between God and dirt. But specifically, a union between the Spirit of God and dirt.

But Christ, the anointed One, is a second union, this time between God and man. Christ is the union between God and man. But specifically, a union between the Word God speaks, that is the incorruptible Seed out of His loins, and man.

Man is the union between God and dirt. Christ is the union between God and man. No other created being is anything close, neither angelic in the heavens nor animal in the earth.

But we need to look more closely at the seed of the woman inside of us.

Paul says in Galatians 2 that the life I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loves me and who gave Himself for me.

In other words, the Holy Spirit slipped a fourth thing into me before I was born again. He placed there, deep in my innermost being, the seed of the woman, the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which I might be born of God as a pure human before Him.

My humanity comes from the Lord Jesus Christ; my divinity comes from Father God. I have no connection to Adam. In that moment, Adam ceased. Old things passed away.

In that moment a new creation was conceived inside of me. Both the seed of the mother, my humanity, and the seed of the Father, the incorruptible seed from God, came into me NEW the moment I was born again.

In truth, I am not redeemed in the manner in which I used to understand redemption. That is, God did not have mercy on something that should have died. No, God had no mercy at all. He put to death that which ought to have died, and He birthed me into myself, brand new.

I am conceived brand new; BUT I HAVE NOT YET BEEN BORN! I am in the womb of the church, in a dark place, a place of growth and development, but I have not yet been brought forth into the full light of DAY.

In 1 John 3, John says that I do not know who I am.

Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be . . .

One of the most important revelations you will ever receive from God in this life is that YOU DO NOT know WHO YOU ARE! Whatever you and I think about ourselves as humans in this world CANNOT be true. The only possible way we can know who we are is to see Jesus.

You and I are fetuses developing in the womb. A fetus has eyes that are developing, and that are completely eyes within a few weeks of conception, but they cannot see the light of day until the child is brought forth out of the womb. And that is why, if people could comprehend it, I place Revelation 12:4-5 as the MOST Important verse of the Gospel, of our passage in this life from conception, from being “born again,” to our birthing into the full light of day.

The Revelation, the Unveiling, the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore (tikto – brought forth) a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne.

When we are born again, the gospel begins in us. When we are brought forth out of the womb of the church into the full light of day, the gospel is completed in us.

Gennao - Development - Tikto; that’s how it works. No woman conceives a child to carry that child around inside her forever. Every woman looks to the end of the process, to the moment that child comes forth from the womb and a son or a daughter is born into the world.

The conception is wonderful; but it’s all about the birth.

I am a son of God. But I am in development inside the womb of the church; I have not yet been born; I have not yet come forth in the full light of day. I do not know what I am.

Do not ever imagine that you have some sort of handle on what and who you are. You have no idea! Nothing is as it seems. How can the pressing, sticky details of the womb define any form of reality? Only those who think they can see are truly blind, as Jesus said.

Right now, all we can do is believe what God says.

That is why I continue to be flabbergasted by anyone who would speak in any way that would malign or belittle or poo poo anything God speaks, whether it be “a bunch of verses” or “words on the page,” or any such reference to the Word God speaks. Certainly, receiving the word God speaks with the natural mind and trying to be “Christian” by surface and empty mental gymnastics, yes, that is something to speak against. But to ever speak in any way concerning anything God says that does not conclude with “believe all that God speaks in all that He means by the power of the Holy Spirit in whom you are immersed” – well, I will say no more. 

Except this, that propensity to in any way make light of the word God speaks in whatever form it appears, does not come from God, it was another who first said such a thing, it went like this “Did God really say that? —Yea hath God said?”

To make light of any form of God’s word, whether it be Spirit or letter, is to accuse God of lying. That practice is very familiar to almost all Christians and woven into every part of “Christian” thinking.

The Word God speaks, every word on the page, lifted into the realm of Spirit by the power of the Holy Ghost, is the SEED of the Father, coming out of the loins of Almighty God. Every Word, every verse, contains inside itself the LIFE, all the genetic code of Father God, and it has the power inside itself to bring forth all the life that is in it inside of us – when it finds, penetrates, and comes into union with FAITH inside of us – the faith of the Son of God who fills our hearts.

The Word God speaks – every verse – is holy.

To regard God is to regard what He says.

How many times over all the years I have walked with God have I taken every word that He speaks, New Testament and Old, and pressed it into my heart with deep longing and tears to see everything that is God and holy and pure and LIFE inside that Word birth and bring forth inside of me all the life and power of the Son who is that Word?

I am very weak; the Word God speaks – every word – is true inside of me, though I see it not. However, even though I do NOT know who and what I am, I DO know what God says at the level at which I can receive and understand it in the present moment.

The jeopardy of the gospel says this. All that God speaks is fulfilled in me IF I rejoice with all confidence of joy that it IS true in me in all that God speaks THOUGH I SEE IT NOT. And IF I keep my expectation high all the way to the end, always boasting exultantly in all the victory of Christ inside of me.

God says that I am a son of God, conceived by an incorruptible Seed out of His loins. God says that it is the faith of Jesus Himself that generates the life I presently live in this flesh. God says that old things (all that is fallen and Adamic) ARE passed away, that I began at my conception as a brand new person before Him.

God says that I am filled with all the fullness of God. God says that rivers of living water – God Himself – flows out of me bringing healing and life and joy to all creation. God says that I cast every voice that accuses God, myself, or my brethren, down into dust.

I have no idea what all that could possibly mean. But I believe that it is true with all the faith of Jesus that fills my heart. And I rejoice with confident expectation that I will see God fulfilled in me in ALL fullness with my eyes in this body of flesh, standing right here on this earth. I am a son of God, and nothing else. But right now I am in the womb of the church.

Every part of the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the New Testament refers to and points to the moment of birthing, the coming out of the womb into the full light of DAY, the unveiling of Jesus Christ. It is mentioned, clearly, over and over. Yet it has remained unseen.

Christians do not see it, though they read it over and over. They do not see it because they do NOT believe what God says. “Going to” heaven is Christian unbelief, the very opposite of faith. And so when I teach what God clearly says over and over, many think I am teaching things God does not say primarily because they have no idea what God does say.

If what God does say were taught in the churches, every believer in Jesus Christ would have his or her eyes fixed right now on Revelation 12:5 — and she brought forth a manchild . . . and her child was caught up unto God and to His throne.

That child is fully developed, more than we understand. Right now his head is pressing through the birth canal. Right now the water is breaking; right now the woman is in travail.

But here is a great mystery revealed through Isaiah – the child is birthed before the woman herself enters into the pains —

Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before her pain came, she delivered a male child. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children. “Shall I bring to the time of birth, and not cause delivery?” says the LORD. Shall I who cause delivery shut up the womb?” says your God.” Isaiah 66:7-9

I am caught up unto God and to His throne (Christ in my heart) AS the final storm hits the whole earth. The storm is upon us; God is doing all that He says.

Great is the mystery of godliness: God manifest in the FLESH!

Man is the union of God and dirt. Christ is the union of God and man. Christ is who I am. These are things beyond our ability to comprehend, yet we know they are true because God says.

My humanity comes through Jesus, His faith that fills my heart; my divinity comes through the Word my Father speaks. Jesus Christ unveiled in my flesh is the completion of all the gospel and purpose of God.