The Word (John 1:1) – Part Two

As we saw previously, there is an emphatic stamp when using “the” before a noun in Scripture.  Consider that Jesus is not “a son of God”, but “the son of God”.  There is a greater specificity when using “the”.  God did not rest on “a seventh day”, He rested on the seventh day”.  Much like the exegetical “law of first mention”, where the first time something is referenced in the Scripture is significant in setting the context by which every mention thereafter can be understood, we can learn a lot about the fine details of the Lord’s craftsmanship by the “filler” words in the Scriptures.

There are certain Scriptures that say things that if we take them for what they say, and realize the implications behind them, our current opinions on how things work would get violently confronted.  John 1:1 is one of the Scriptures which has implications to it that are honestly kind of daunting.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  This verse first acknowledges that there was a beginning.  That makes sense to us because we think about everything as having a beginning and end, limits where one things starts and another thing ends.  Two objects cannot be in the same place at the same time.  Thirty years ago I did not exist.  Thirty months ago, my brother’s marriage didn’t exist.  Thirty minutes ago, this sentence didn’t exist.  All these things had a beginning.

However, the Word already existed in the beginning.  Let’s say, just for arguments sake, that the Word existed exactly at the beginning of the beginning.  The curious part about this comes when you look at the nature of words.  Words have one purpose, to communicate.  They come from someone and are intended for someone.  So the Word proceeded from a Source that existed prior to the beginning.  This means that the beginning was not really the beginning.  But then, how far back does it go?  The Source had to have a beginning, right?  If you let your mind try to go back and back and back, it can get a little freaky.  Realizing that God has been around for eternity past can trip a breaker in your head.  Think about the wisest person you know.  They are wise because they have either had more birthdays than you or because they have been through more wisdom-giving experiences than you.  It is no wonder, then, that when we read Proverbs 8 about the personification of wisdom it sounds like the description of Jesus.

Out of His nature of Divine Wisdom as the Word, the Communication of God, Jesus was already reaching out to us to tell us Who the Father is and who we are to Him.  He was crucified before the foundations of the World.  His mind was already made up before wood, nails and whips existed.  What do you do with Someone who is in no hurry because a millennium and a day feel the same to Him?  He doesn’t get bored, He doesn’t get surprised or anxious.  And what if this same Person took that eternal nature and stuffed it into us?  What changes when we be content in every circumstance because we have no limitation of time because we have become like God, having His nature and likeness?  I’ll tell you what changes, we become consciously eternal people that have a perspective that produces peace that doesn’t make sense.  We become unoffendable, immoveable, immortal, and confident beyond understanding.  Jesus said we are already clean by the Word He has spoken over us.  Maybe our greatest need is to hear that Word echo out of eternity and into our innermost being.

*Word of God, reverberate within us and shake everything in us that can be shaken so that we can find discover that which will remain and live from there.

The Promise of My Father (Luke 24:49) – Part Two

If the Father was willing to put His Name on the line by promising something, it is probably safe to say that whatever was promised will be fulfilled and that the fulfillment of that promise is worth being a part of.  The First Covenant with Israel was directed towards a specific people group, God’s chosen people – from whom the Messiah would come.  But the New Covenant was open to all people.  Jesus blasted the doors wide open for every son of Adam to become a son of the Last Adam, thus becoming part of the Last human race.  One benefit of the New Covenant is the Indwelling Spirit.  This is not really even a benefit of the New Covenant, it is the New Covenant.

Without the Indwelling Spirit, we are without a transformation agent and therefore can not live free of sin, free in power, empowered by love or superimposed over death.  It is Jesus’ Father who promised us the Spirit.  It is Jesus who made a way for the Spirit to unite with our spirit.  It is the Spirit who is the Seed that supernaturally re-incarnates us.  Before you stop reading because I just said that we are re-incarnated, think about it.  New Age understanding of re-incarnation is that we die and come back with the same spirit and soul, but as a different species.  This is exactly what the Spirit does for us.  We are baptized into His death and we are raised up with Him.  We are resurrected into a new race of men, a race that never existed prior to Jesus.

Just yesterday I was telling a friend of mine that the difficulty in being a New Creation is that I forget to act out of my new nature.  We don’t change physical form and almost nothing changes externally, the immediate change is internal and even deeper than the cellular level, so at first it is hard to live differently.  When I was in college a friend of mine used to say, “It is not hard to be a New Creation, it is hard to stop acting like an Old Creation.”  This is why it is important to be in community with people who are pursuing supernatural life, because in community we provoke each other even when we are not aware of it.  If you compare two runners that run about the same speed on a mile, individually they will run a good mile when they are trying to get a good time.  But if you put them next to each other and tell them to run a mile, even if you do not tell them to beat the other person or get a good time, they will run faster because they will both be trying to do a little better than the other.  Community is an incubator of excellence.

In Luke 24, Jesus told the disciples to wait for the Promise of His Father.  He told them to wait as a group for the Spirit to come upon them.  If He had told them to individually go back to their homes and wait and then come together to discuss it, it is very likely that most of them would get impatient and distracted.  But because there was 119 other people waiting for the same thing, though I’m sure it got awkward and some had doubts, those 120 people experienced something that changed the world.

It is interesting that Jesus called the Spirit the promise of the Father.  It is as though the Spirit was the ultimate result that the Father had intended for us.  He has promised may things, all of which He will do, but this was “the big one”.  It is one thing to be a president of the United States, it is something altogether different to be the President of the United States.  There is a present-tense nature to “the” that highlights the importance of  what “the” is pointing at.

*Jesus, give us a love for the Presence of the Promise that will stir up a hungry addiction to You that will not be quenched or satisfied by anything but Your fulfillment.  Amen.