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Birthed and Created
John R Gavazzoni
Feb. 8, 2002
Thousand Oaks, CA
Spiritual illumination can come to us suddenly, granting an almost instantaneous realization of an aspect of truth, a flash of divine light as it were, but not necessarily. It can also come as a gentle nudge by the Spirit opening us up to a whole new consideration. At the first nudge, you immediately know that the Spirit, mingled with your spirit, is searching out the deep things of God and that what is happening was not initiated by any decision on your part.
Father, in effect, says: "Son, the time has come for you to see something more." There is at that point a hint of new light, but just a hint with the promise of more to follow. Part of the process involves the mind of the flesh inserting itself with a lust to know things about God for its own glory, and so its intrusion must be rejected and denied. This at times requires a complete dropping of the subject at hand and waiting quietly on the Lord to grant true knowledge that gives life instead of that which inflates the religious ego.
But there is, we could say, an incessant presentation of that which the Spirit says must become part of our aionian relationship with the Father. We cannot escape it. Over and over again the mind is turned to this new consideration, and in the turning we feel the stirring of new life. This has been the writer's experience in regard to the subject of this chapter.
The still small voice within whispered time and time again these very words, "The fruit of His loins and the work of His hands." I understood that I was about to be shown a distinction within the unity of personhood that is ours in Christ, a distinction that does not detract from true oneness but in fact enriches it. The following is where the Spirit has taken this child of God to date:
We are eternal sons in union with the eternally Begotten One. We are birthed ones, the fruit of His loins. We were not birthed in time because of a decision for Christ on our part. We were birthed in eternity, in Christ, and we began our earthly experience of the same at that moment in time when our hearts were opened to receive Him in whom "we live and move and have our being." Our Primal Origin (Barth), became our eionion existential experience and we were "saved," "born again," "converted." The terminology is not the important thing, the reality is.
But, while affirming that we are the fruit of His loins, we are not to neglect or deny that a dimension has been added to our essential sonship, the dimension of creatureliness. We are also the work of his hands. We are divinely crafted earthlings by which we live out our relationship with our Father in the eon.
Our Father has perfectly and completely imaged Himself in His Son, not as an act of creation, but through divine impregnation, conception and birth combining the gender completeness of the Godhead birthing a Son who is the fullness of Deity. We, the many sons, included in the only Begotten, share in the full expression of our Father for we are seeds within the Seed. Nothing less than birthed ones can give full expression to God.
That which is created can only provide a hint at all that He is. But, to repeat, in Father's infinite wisdom, He has added a dimension of creatureliness to our personhood that became integral to who we are without diluting in any way our essential eternal sonship. Godly awareness begins on the plane of sonship and extends to and embraces creaturehood for the creature cannot raise its own consciousness to realize its sonship.
The child of God knows his Father and informs his own creatureliness that it is graciously and lovingly included in the Family. The creature, even in its state of sin, corruption and death is accepted in the Beloved, accepted and loved without revulsion as it awaits helplessly to be shown the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. Sons of God begin to be manifested first to the creation/creature WHICH THEY ARE, before being unveiled to the creation beyond themselves. Sons of God are not confused by the insecurities and ambiguities that their creatureliness has been subjected to.
They look and observe and know who they are NOT. In their flesh exists a counterfeit lie of personhood which demands attention and respect, but the Son of God is not impressed for He has the Spirit that cries "Abba," Daddy. There has occurred in the mingling of our essential divine childhood and our creatureliness a state of being that only the Word of God can discern.
The living, operative Word divides between soul and spirit and discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. In that division, the created has nothing to say and nothing to contribute to the personhood. It receives by grace, and, wonder of wonders, it, the lowly creature, divided from the Spirit-Son is shown that it is One with the Son. That Word is our life and we have the mind of that Word. Our Father knows us and that is enough for us. Now we know as we are known (I John 3:2).
The creature cannot seek this out. When it dares to approach the light of glory it is faced with Him who dwells in Light unapproachable, the Light that repels all approach and which refuses to be gotten but delights to give. One can only proceed out from that Light embracing all to which One is sent. Sons of God do not seek to enter the Light. They do not seek after the knowledge of God. They are One with that knowledge and they are What is known. THEY ARE THE LIGHT.
They are identified with Him who said, "I am the Light of the world" (John 8:12; 9:5). He identified them with Himself saying, "Ye are the Light of the world" (Matt. 5:14). The sons of God are free from the guilt and shame that the flesh of their creatureliness carries. They confess it, but they do not confess it as having anything to say about their relationship with their Father. They confess its existence but they do not confess it as their Reality.
The Son in whom they dwell, looks down from the transcendence of His glorified humanity and knows that He has born it and carried it all away, and the sons know also for they sit with Him conquering all that is earthen by the power of the Light of love. We beam the light of glory to all creation. The glory of the Lord is revealed in us and all flesh shall see it together. (Is. 5:40). Yes, together, flesh is caught up into the unity of the sons in the Son in the Father, and the created and the Uncreated become One.
This final word to confirm that which you already know. Creatureliness does not alter sonship. Sonship transforms creatureliness into its image. But wonderful wisdom it is according to which our Father has received to Himself the creature with the same love that He receives His eternal Son(s), and by so doing, enriches Himself by His own creation; creation that, itself, has its origin in the unfolding of all that God is.
This is the only manner of purpose that is worthy of His love, wisdom and power. But we will not fail to proclaim that this is the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus by His death and resurrection (Eph. 1:20). What we speak of is not empty philosophy, no mere noble idea, but eternal Reality that entered time in the Person of our Lord by whom the Father accomplished the desire of His heart on earth as it is in heaven.
Our faith rests in the Eternal and is manifested in history. Religions claim among themselves to offer a better idea of what ought to be. The Christ, the Son of the living God, complete in His body, is the Reality of what must be, because He IS what must be.
Stay tuned for more serious, seminal samplings.
John R. Gavazzoni
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John R Gavazzoni
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