Holēs en pantes (all in all)

The grammar may not be right but the concept is. The title may have your brain rooting around the English for an image that was unintended, but even that image may provide some insight.

Holes in panties (or underwear for the boys).

Nobody sees them but you know about them. The cliché is “make sure you have clean underwear since you never know when you might be in an accident.” Did your mom ever tell you that?  That is really strange and morbid if you think about it. The concept is profound however. Don’t let people see your hole ridden intimate apparel. People would then see you in a different light.

Don’t we do the same thing with God. Our hiding from Him, our desire for separation from Him is the essence of the darkness. Our blindness to His goodness has us hiding our flaws and mistakes and imperfections. Those “missing the mark” attributes are actually attached to us in our most intimate places. These “holes in our panties” are to never be seen by anyone anywhere anytime including God here and now and forever. Religion has us demonically sewing and patching and replacing so that finally our “panties will be perfect and clean and new and proper for the moment we stand naked in front of the judgment seat of horrors,” right (sarcasm intended)? Please Jesus open our eyes to the truth.

Call it inspiration, but the intent of the title was not this line of reasoning. Instead I just wanted to contrast and compare two Greek words that are often translated as the same English word “all.” Now I am certain that God put this ALL together. Let’s see where this leads us shall we?

Paul says this:

Rom 8:3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh (ESV)

He also says this:

2 Cor 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (ESV)

Here is the same verse in the Mirror Translation:

2 Cor 5:21 This is the divine exchange: he who knew no sin embraced our distortion; he appeared to be without form; this was the mystery of God’s prophetic poetry. He was disguised in our distorted image, marred with our iniquities; he took our sorrows, our pain, our shame to his grave and birthed his righteousness in us. He took our sins and we became his innocence. (Toit, Francois Du (2014-01-08). Mirror Bible)

Isn’t that beautiful.  There are many more verses that tell us the same thing.  Jesus went to our darkest places.  He went to our deepest hiding place.  He went to our most shameful moments.  He went to the very root of our condemnation.  There are no holes in panties He doesn’t know about.  There are no mistakes He hasn’t already seen  There are no messes that He isn’t in the middle of.  He is our salvation.  He brings Himself into our darkness.  He was actually there all the time.

John says this:

John 1:9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. (ESV)

We get to know Him.  We get to know the Father through the Son.  We are sitting right there now in the triune family enjoying the relationship of Jesus with the Father and the Father with Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the life of the party.

This word pantes in the Greek is translated as “all” in English.  Here is a cornerstone passage with this word:

2 Cor 5:14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. (ESV)

This word comes from the root word pas which is like “the all of many.”  It is the “all of all individuals.”  If you had 1000 pencils and you picked them up and missed none of them, you would “have all pencils” in you hand.  It implies our individual inclusion.  It implies our uniqueness and acceptance.  It is the “all of us” that we all cherish so much.  He knows each of us uniquely and includes us individually and accepts everyone without exception.

The word holēs is a very different word that is also translated “all.”  Here is the word in a passage:

Mark 12:29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (ESV)

Remember our love for Him comes from His love for us:

1 John 14:10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (ESV)

This word for “all” is a holistic word.  It means complete.  It means the whole of us.  Every cell of our being cries out in love for God.  Why?  Because Jesus is in every cell.  I believe this passage is shining a light on the truth of what Moses was declaring.  The one God who is three.  The union of God.  The oneness of God is the inclusion of the three.  His uniqueness is His complete acceptance of each other.  They are not only in union relationally but actually.  They share in each others person but don’t lose their unique identity.  When it says that Jesus is at the right hand of God it actually means He is coming out of the right side of God.  What an image.  What a union.

This is what we have with God.  In the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus were mysteriously and permanently joined to Him in every way.  We have or unique inclusion as individuals…pantes.  We have Him in us, in every part of us, in His acceptance and in His union with ALL of us…holēs.

I hope you are seeing how profound this “accident of word play” really is.  We are in Him and He is in us but we are also uniquely with Him and a part of Him as ourselves.  Each of our cells is filled with His light of life and each of our personalities included in His union with the Father.  There are no holes in panties (or undies).

This is how we can know His salvation.  This is how we can know He is salvation.  Even in our worst nightmare we should never question His location.  He will never leave us or forsake us.  That is really “all in all.”

Yay God!

Lance