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Emmanuel, Part two
Nothing Lost
John R Gavazzoni
Oct. 16, 2002
Thousand Oaks, CA
Science informs us that though all things are in a process of decay, wearing out, wearing down, disintegrating, perishing; yet it has been firmly established that nothing is ever truly, finally lost.
Annihilation is a philosophical concept with no basis in reality.
Nothing ever ceases to exist, it only changes form. It is from the scriptures though, that we learn that the downward spiral of things bottoms out in the basement of despair, where God makes His point regarding the necessity of grace.
During the progressive, downward spiral, the necessity of grace is seen in dim outline, but there is that final, full disclosure at the bottom, as sovereign circumstances and the Spirit of God join to convince all creation through its federal head, enChristed humanity, that there is no other place to turn but to the grace of God. Without grace, nature becomes a compost heap, helpless to escape its existence and impotent to consummate its destiny.
Where is its Creator in all of this? Where is He who is responsible for this pathetic futility and impotence? The Spirit of God is drawing back the curtain of revelation still further in this hour to reveal a Creator who, not only initiated this state of affairs but who, in subjecting all things to the bondage of decay, subjected Himself, in solidarity and in hope, immanent to and along with the cosmos which He loved.
In the beginning, where was the Beloved Son of God? The answer lies in the genealogy of Jesus by St. Luke in which he traces the Son of God back to Adam and declares that Adam is the son of God. (I have chosen to go along with the traditional small case "s" in son as pertaining to Adam). Our Father God Creator, coming to the conclusion of His creation of all things, stoops down and takes the soil from an obscure planet within the universe and from it forms man, breathes into his nostrils the breath of life thus causing him to become a living soul, and then declares, by the inspiration of the Spirit through the disciple Luke, that this One is the son of God, and this One testifies of Himself in the book that concludes the new testament record, "I am the first and the last" (Rev. 1:17); "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 21:6).
Where was He? He was there; in, and as, the Beginning. Where is He? Here, in the body of Christ. Where will He be? There; in, and as, the End. In Him all things originate and in Him all things are gathered together and summed up in the destiny of glory. The progression that the Spirit is permitting us to see in this hour, is that first, the creation is sent forth in and by God's Word and released out of that Word into existence in the frame of the ages.
The central stage of creation's moderated display of glory is the relatively obscure planet, earth; and we find a consistency of divine principle in God's choice of the equally obscure, yet strategic land of Israel and its tiny town of Bethlehem in which to bring forth His eternal Son whose pre-advent was as the created One, but now is as the birthed One, in whom, that which is in heaven, comes to earth.
He comes, first, as the zenith of God's workmanship, and second, as the Son of His love. The biblical principle is that first comes the natural and then the spiritual, BUT, the spiritual was hidden within the coming of the natural, later to be revealed. Central to the nature of all things, the Son of God, is the fruit of God's loins and the work of His hands. You do understand, dear reader, that the Being of God and the Work of God are both in heaven, and the purpose of God is to send them both to earth. This He has done in Him who is the first and last Adam.
On planet earth, God centralizes the focus of His eternal purpose and draws forth out of the soil (the constituent of the ground of earth), a man. It must not escape our notice that the soil, from which this man is formed, is the glory of God incognito. We know this because "The whole earth is full of His glory" (Isa. 6:3). In scripture to "be full of" means to be constituted by. This man, this first appearance of the Son of God in created form, is the earliest preview of glory as created personhood.
Millenia later, when His Father completes the unfolding of His Personhood, the writer of Hebrews will discern that this One is "the radiance of His (God's) glory..." The Son, so to speak, begins at the bottom in His Father's enterprise; He begins, sharing in creation's concealed glory, and ends up being the full embodiment of His glory in majestic display as the first fruits of all that is the fruit of His loins and the work of His hands. He is indeed, "the first born of all creation" (Col. 1:15), and, sharing creations corruption, He leads it out of corruption into glory as "The first born from among the dead" (Col. 1:18)
.Stay tuned for future serious, seminal samplings.
John Gavazzoni
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To contact John send email to: John R. Gavazzoni For more writings by John : Click Here...For His Web SiteOr you can write by (snail mail) to:
John R Gavazzoni
758 N. Woodlawn Dr.,
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360.
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