John 1:1-5 In the very beginning God was already there. And before His Face Was His Living Expression. And this Living Expression Was with God, yet fully God! They were together— face to face In the very beginning! And through His creative inspiration This Living Expression Made all things, For nothing has existence Apart from Him! Life came into being Because of Him, For His Life Is light for all humanity. And this Living Expression Is the Light that bursts through gloom— The Light that darkness could not diminish! (The Passion Translation)
In this translation Simmons uses the phrase “Living Expression” for the Greek word “logos” which is usually translated as “word.” Recently I heard an amazing teaching by Brian Zahnd (check out his posts here) where he defined the word logos as “the divine logic of God.” I like that. In English the word “logic” comes from the Greek word “logikos” so Zahnd was both accurate and inspiring.
logikós (from 3056 /lógos, “reason”) – properly, logical because divinely reasonable, i.e. “what is logical to God” (logic working through the divine reasoning known through faith).
Now when you put “Living Expression” with “divine logic” you begin to “see” a picture of the WORD of God. Just so we are very clear, the WORD of God is Jesus. God’s living expression is Jesus. God’s divine logic is Jesus. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life of the divine triune being, God. Jesus shows us who God is. Jesus reveals the Father to mankind. Jesus is the man-God representation of God. Jesus is all the fullness of God in a man who is from God. There is no nature of God outside the nature of Jesus since Jesus is the perfect representation of God. We need to look no further than Jesus to know God. We come into a relationship with God the Father in Jesus the Christ because Jesus is the very living expression of who God is to us. The pinnacle of God’s divine logic and living expression towards man is Him dying on a cross at the hands of mankind. Our systemic Sin, our fallen-nature, our insistence on an angry God, our obsession with religion over relationship, our irrational fear of God Himself, our offenses and anger and wrath and violence …. killed the very source of love. Jesus let it happen. He took everything we could dish out. He took every sin of Sin upon and into Himself. We gave it to Him and His response was “forgive them.” He took all that junk to the grave. He killed it in Himself. Then He rose again to prove God’s love is greater than any Sin that gives death as a paycheck. God’s payment system is Grace and mercy through love. God’s wages are life from love. God’s expression towards us is a glorified Jesus leaving the tomb and coming to us. God’s very nature as expressed towards mankind is a self-sacrificial death, complete forgiveness and inhabitation by Himself.
That is why the good news is Jesus Himself. The good news is the revelation of a God of love instead of a God of wrath. In our fallen nature we instead on a God of wrath. When presented with the truth of God, we killed Him. When God’s love was demonstrated towards us, we beat Him. When God showed us His nature to forgive, we picked up stones to stone Him. When God healed them all, we challenged His adherence to the rules. When God showed us His heart, we hung Him on a cross. Are we doing the same thing today? Has religion and fear and manipulation and bible worship driven us to the same place as the pharisees of Jesus? It is a thought maybe we should consider.
The good news of the good news is we can press in now and “see” God in Jesus as He intended. We can see the love of God in faith. We can know Jesus in relationship. We can receive revelation of the God of love and hope and reparation in Jesus. We can know reconciliation in Christ. We can hear our Father’s voice in the glory of a risen Jesus. We can know that we know by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can be filled to overflowing with the fullness of God found in the love of Jesus. Come on! That is a really good word. Check out this most famous passage:
1 Cor 13:4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (ESV)
Can I stretch your brain for a moment? What purpose would there be for prophesy or speaking in tongues or any other “gift of the Spirit” when we are no longer breathing and/or inhabiting this body? Even in a “resurrected body” in the New Heaven and New Earth, what would be purpose of a “Spiritual gift?” It is a logical question. You know Jesus, the divine logic of God and the living expression of His nature, so what does Jesus say?
What if this passage is really for now and today and not tomorrow? What if our revelation of the perfect love of God as revealed in Jesus is the “that which is perfect has come?” What if our receiving the Gospel and seeing the true nature of God takes us from dim mirrors and instead we step into the “image of Christ?”
Rom 8:29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (ESV)
In the passion translation (at the beginning of this post) the text said that “they were together face to face.” What if when we can “see” God our Father like Jesus saw God His Father, face to face, we will be conformed to the image of Jesus? What if when we are like Jesus we operate like Jesus? Jesus said this about us:
John 14:12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. (ESV)
When you see someone hurting, don’t you want to help? When you see someone afraid, don’t you want to bring them peace? When you meet someone who insists on an angry God full of wrath, don’t you want to demonstrate the opposite? I do. I want to see the storms calmed, the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the broken fixed, the angry justified, the victims vindicated…all just like Jesus. He is in me as the Holy Spirit. Is it possible that the only thing that holds me back is me? Is it possible that “seeing” God for God and not for some angry imitation is the very thing that has me step into the shoes of Jesus? Could it be that God has just been waiting for a time such as this where there would be a group of people bold enough to declare JESUS IS KING and stop arguing over an angry non-Jesus god? The pharisees rejected the love of God in Jesus. Bible worshipers today want to do the same thing. Jesus is who we worship. I pray I can see the Father like He does. James says this talking about the WORD (living expression, divine logic, not bible):
James 1:23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. (ESV)
Jesus insists that we have from Him what we need to know the Father in Him. We aren’t religious, sacrifice-seeking, ritual loving, tradition following servants. We are His friends:
John 15:15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (ESV)
When we see the goodness of God in Jesus we are being transformed. The glory of Jesus, His manifest goodness, His goodness expressed to mankind, His revelation of a God who does not hate us…transforms our very nature!
2 Cor 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (ESV)
So I won’t quit seeking the Kingdom of Heaven. I won’t give up on discovering more of the goodness of God. I won’t give into religious fear and bible worshiping idolatry. Instead I seek the WORD of God to know God. I want more and more of Jesus. He is the way. The good news is He shows us the way too.
Yay God!
Lance
alancetotheheart 