Let´s take a walk back through what we have called the
gospel road. First let’s make a few underlying
statements that may need explaining as we go.
1.Man hides his self righteousness behind his sin.
2.The Godhead said let’s make man in our image. “OUR” should
be noted.
3.God had a plan from the very beginning to make man in the
image of the Godhead. God did not say I
will make man in my image. He said let’s make man in our
image. What is that image?
4.If we are made in the God heads image. What does that look
like?
Theologians have done us a disservice. They have explained
the Godhead as a trinity and it is feeble listening to Christians trying to
explain the trinity. They say ,water, steam and ice and such attempts to
explain just don't do it. There is no natural explanation for the Godhead and
the closest example we have is what the bible translators could not translate.
There is no English word for spiritual koinonia. This word
arrived in the bible in Acts 2 right after Pentecost. Perhaps a great way to
bring understanding is to say it this way. Godhead and koinonia could be seen
as the same. Koinonia is God delivering Godhead to man or ¨let’s make man in
our image.¨ This is true church and intimacy with God and man. So church if it
is correct can only be explained as you would explain the Godhead. To limit it
to our humanistic ways is to put the God head into mans sardine tin.
So without entering koinonia we are not completed as being
created in God’s image. We have looked naturally at what God said and have
missed the spiritual side of the statement. So there are a few things that are
essential in getting a small understanding of the journey to koinonia.
1.
Without having independent identity we
cannot be Godhead koinonia. The Godhead has individual identity that they have
laid aside to be one with each other. They are separate but they are one. Their
individuality is transparent as they choose to lay it aside to be one. In
koinonia we cannot be united with the godhead until we have had independent
identity and laid it aside. The only way to have independent personality is for
us to break away from God and to think we can do it ourselves. How this
happened is completely amazing really.
2.
But before we start out in talking
about this lets remember God is completely all powerful nothing happens that He
does not or has not allowed.
So the first step of creation was to use lucifer. Lucifer
became self righteous and was thrown out of heaven. He took a third of the
angels with him and it always puzzled me how these angels would agree to go
with him. Lucifer was in fact playing a very important part of creation without
even knowing it. God had a master plan to create man and man needed identity to
be in the Godheads image.
So Lucifer now known as satan came into the garden The same
garden of Eden where you have to ask yourself why did God put a tree there that
he knew satan would make man eat from? I suggest God needed man to enter the
self righteousness of lucifer. In heaven sin never existed and never will but
obviously self righteousness did. Lucifer became self righteous and was thrown
out of heaven. Now Adam and Eve entered the same self righteousness as lucifer
and were thrown out of Eden and separated from God.
God’s creation was going according to his plan and man now
had identity separate to God. Man had become self righteous on his journey to
become God righteous. In that self righteousness man thought he could be one
with God and craved to be like God. In fact he still does, many churches teach
people to be more Christ like and this is the initial self righteousness that
God allowed man to establish to reveal his plan.
Adam and Eve knew they were not Godhead and lucifer had
fooled them into thinking he had a way for this to happen. I suggest they knew the
godheads plan to make man in their image and knew they were not complete. So let’s
now jump to God bringing about his plan. Man desired to be part of the Godhead
and I will paraphrase. God met man in his righteousness and says OK you want to
be like me and one with me. I will give you 10 commandments. There are only 10
and if you can keep them we will be all good.
Is that not a beautiful thing? God knew he better keep it
simple while revealing to man he was self righteous and in being such his self
righteousness is offensive to God.
Man tried his hardest and failed. Man made a focus of the
failure and tried even harder to be righteous.
Just like we see today in church systems based in mans
righteousness. They will always make a focus of sin or the lack of to attain
for God. So we know ultimately man failed and I will jump up to John the
Baptist and Jesus.
Jesus was an amazing piece of the plan and had been from
before the creation of man. Man was at the point he needed to be exposed in his
self righteousness and that could only be done by removing his sin. Sin really
is a place all men hide their righteousness. Think about it all our sin is
somebody else´s fault. We blame our parents, friends, life you name it. Sin is
indeed a problem that defines man as he hides from God in it.
So Jesus comes to do away with sin. He did not just forgive
sin he did away with it completely and passages like 1 John 3 show us. This
passage says if we see sin we have not seen God. You see sin is what defines
man and as long as we can see sin or the lack of it we will always think we
have attained something or are pleasing to God. This is a compete lie man
created. God does not care about the sin he cares about the righteousness and
all our attempts at religion feed mans righteousness.
So Romans tells us sin comes via the law and if there is no
law there is no sin. Romans then reveals to us how Jesus fulfilled the law. He
completed the righteous requirements of the law and in so doing the law was absorbed
into Christ. Jesus became the law and did away with the law and in so doing he
took away any knowledge of sin. This is troubling to the self righteous part of
man. We need our religion and our good works to become like God. As we work on
sin, as we see sin in others, as we define sin or our lack of all we are doing
is strengthening our self righteous core.
In Jesus we no longer have an excuse for self righteousness
and Jesus himself said it is better that I go as I will send you a comforter
who will teach you what I say and will come alongside you and will be in you.
If Jesus had of remained the focus of sin would have remained with Him. He
needed to go so that creation could be competed by the Holy Spirit coming to
work and unify with us.
When we finally see we just can’t figure life out and that
our self centered actions are limiting us we are able to give up. To say Jesus
I don't have the answers my sin has run my life and is a chain that keeps me
bound to myself and the systems of the world around me. Then I can turn my life
over to Jesus. As man enters Jesus and Jesus enters man amazing things happen.
Man via Jesus can now see he can’t do life in his own strength. As man lives
his own ways he remains in the power of sin and lives in the carnal knowledge
of sin. But in abandoning life or losing life we find life. I lose self to find
God self.
The amazing journey continues as Jesus left the and sent the
Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit now brings us to koinonia and this word arrives in
the bible for the first time in Acts2. The day of Pentecost is all about
walking koinonia. Man in his self righteousness makes it about manifestations
or knowledge but in reality it is the first step in Holy Spirit life.
The baptism of the holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking
in Tongues shows us we can’t make our new salvation and unity with Christ about
us. I must abandon control to speak in tongues. Sure I can still control and tongues
does not force itself on me. But my first lesson in spirit life is that I must
live God righteousness by the state of who I am not by what I do. The issue we
have created as humanistic men is making Pentecost about manifestations or doctrine.
It is not a movement of knowledge the Baptism of the Holy Spirit s all about a
romantic Holy Spirit co-joined life. It is about surrender of my righteousness
and assuming of God righteousness. Now I am free to find my true identity.
So the Spirit filled church becomes self righteous in their
claim to power and manifestations and the non-spirit filled church becomes self
righteous in their claim to solid bible teaching they can grasp with their self
righteous heads and the true church of koinonia refuses to make natural
doctrine of God romance. They live Holy Spirit doctrine and the koinonia true bride just enters the flow of love
and becomes the flow of love. Koinonia church understands God completes us as
we complete God and it is this way as the God head chooses to make it this way.
Chosen vulnerability.
