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An Other Comforter - Part One
By John Gavazzoni

Although I would think it obvious, nevertheless I want to make it completely clear, that I have deliberately chosen in the title of this article, to separate the simple compound English word "another," into its two constitutive parts, in order to better convey the truth of really Who is the Another Comforter that Jesus promised to send to His disciples concurrently with His "going away." (for now, for familiarity's sake, I'll stick with "Comforter" as the translation of the Greek: "Parakletos").

His coming as concurrent with His going is made crystal clear in especially Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament, and The Concordant Literal Translation of the New Testament. It would be well for the reader to check out John 14:3 in both. Jesus said "I am the Truth...." and He promised that the Spirit of Truth would come, and when He would come, He would not speak of Himself (that is as separate in Personhood from Jesus), but would take what belongs to Jesus, and show it to us. THINK: Who is it that gives us His flesh to eat, and His blood to drink? Who is the True Vine, of which we are the branches, and Whose Life is it that flows to us in that relationship?

Whose Name is it to which we cry to in our time of need? What springs from our lips is not "Holy Spirit," but "Jesus," Oh the subtleties of pseudo-orthodoxy that distract us from the real Presence of our Lord within each of us individually, and corporately, and among us, His brethren.

A misunderstanding of EXACTLY Who that "Another" One is, will leave a believer in an confused state - though most often being unaware of his/her confusion - of the relationship within the Nuclear Family which is God, and consequently that Family's extension of Itself by the One Seed, Christ, in the many children of God who are the whole of humanity.

The tightly sealed model-box of Trinitarian teaching, that has presumed to explain the interplay of Divine Oneness and Divine Plurality, has tended to keep believers in a state of ignorance re: the how Deity, within Itself, relates/communes. An inadequate, and really improper sense is conveyed by the classic Trinitarian explanation of the relationship between "the three Persons of the Godhead."

A more accurate explanation is along this line: The Holy Spirit is God becoming the Father to the Son, and God becoming the Son to the Father, with the undeniably implied involvement of God's Motherhood.

In both our eternal being in Christ, and in eonian experience, the Holy Spirit IS the Person of the Father, and the Person of the Son, becoming all that They are to us. Jesus promised that He would send the Comforter, and also said that He would pray the Father that He would send the Comforter.

It is clear that Jesus promised that in the coming of the Spirit of Truth, He would come to them - He, Himself, would not leave them orphans. As I've written elsewhere, His coming was concurrent with His going, as He would transition from being an external Presence to them, to being their very life within.

Of course it is right and proper and needful that we ascribe Personhood to the Holy Spirit, but we must not do so in a way that makes an improper distinction between the Person of the Holy Spirit, and the Persons of the Father and the Son. To repeat, the Holy Spirit IS the very Personhood of the Father and the Son becoming all that They are to us, so as to bring us into participation within the very communion that is the life of Deity. This is "the communion of the Holy Spirit."

So it is, that the promised Spirit of Truth, sent by the Father and the Son, IS An Other OF Jesus Himself. Jesus, by His death and resurrection, as the Primal Seed that had to go into the ground and die, in order to not abide alone, became an other of Himself to us all. Jesus Christ our Lord RETAINS His Divine Individuality as our Lord and Savior, while having BECOME Another of Himself to us as our indwelling Life.

There is Jesus Christ as individually and uniquely the Head of His body, the church, AND there is Jesus Christ the Life of the body throughout all its members. Both are Jesus. He is the "another" of Himself; an other of Himself.

"I have walked alone with JESUS, in a fellowship divine,
Never more can earth allure me,
I am His and He is mine.
I have seen Him, I have known Him,
For He deigns to walk with me,
And the glory of HIS presence, will be mine eternally.
Oh the glory of His Presence, Oh the beauty of His Face.
I am His, and His forever, He has won me by His grace."

Further confusion is added by making an improper distinction between Jesus and Christ. When one reads the epistles of the New Testament, it is so abundantly clear that the writers use "Jesus," "Jesus Christ," "Christ Jesus," "Christ Jesus, the Lord," "Our Lord Jesus," and "Christ," essentially interchangeably, but with each description highlighting a dimension of the One who Peter confessed to be ".....The Christ, the Son of the Living God."

"Jesus" highlights our Lord's Savior-hood (Yeshua: God saves), and His human individuality. "Christ" highlights the fact that He is the Anointed of the Father, anointed by His begotteness with the Life of the Father, to save us by that Life. (The anointing by the Spirit that came upon Jesus at His baptism, was His eonian experience of His inner eternal Reality). As "Lord," we understand that we belong to Him; as "Jesus Christ," the ascent into the glory of the Father of His Humanity is emphasized, and as "Christ Jesus," the descent of that eternal Humanness that is at the heart of Deity, into the world, and into the likeness of sinful flesh is emphasized.

"Christ," according to Paul in Galatians, is the One Seed from which eternally sprang the Only/Unique/Single-begotten Son of the Father, who BECAME Jesus of Nazareth, our Lord. We belong to Him, because only IN HIM, are we complete. We've been in Him, from eternity, chosen in Him. His Personhood is the Origin, Containment Field, the Means To, and Arrival At the destiny of all men.

I stand adamantly opposed to all considerations that there might have been, or may be other Christs who came/come to various cultures, some of whom it is said that they died by crucifixion and rose from the dead. Many notable and even distinguished individuals, I'm sure, have been unjustly murdered at the stake, but only One died for us all, and was resurrected bringing all men in Himself, into the glory of the Father. Only One is the Last Adam, Who in Himself, buried all Adamic oldness, and renewed the same to be the One New Man of the vision of God.

If there has been light that issued forth from notable figures down through history, and I believe there has been, He, Jesus Christ, is that light, the light that lighteth every man coming into the world.

Much confusion lies in misunderstanding the relationship between the exclusivity and inclusivity factors in the administration of God, and therefore, many are led astray, thinking that all claims of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ tend toward a dead-end exclusivity. They go tromping through the fields of the beautiful flowers of the apostolic witness, with heavy exegetical boots, trampling underfoot the Son of God.

Seeking some new way to affirm inclusivity, they abandon the truth that there is One IN WHOM are all included in God's love and grace. He is the One who gives all things their cohesive oneness. It is IN HIM, that all fulness is pleased to dwell. Does that sound too exclusive? It ought not, if you respect the grandeur of the New Testament witness, that we all ARE the fulness that is pleased to dwell in Him.

An Other Comforter Part Two - Tracing the Seed
By John R. Gavazzoni

With God, all beginning has the quality of continuance in that all things, having been created out of His Spirit Substance, therefore carry the impress of the Divine Nature within them so that within Him, they also become a beginning within themselves. God bestows the qualities of Himself to all His creation - He is THE Beginning.

I invite you to meditate with me on the Primal Stillness, the Undisturbed Perfection and Unmarred Beauty which is God, and then see a movement "out from within the midst of" (Jonathan Mitchell) that Divine center of Being. We're suddenly grasped by the awesome consideration that absolute Perfection is unveiled to us not as a thing statically fixed, but as the Beginning of a journey on the Way to being more of Itself, out of the depths of Itself.

Primally, "the Son of His Love," the Firstfruits of His generative and creative power is the Beginning of all things, the Beginning FROM the Beginning. It should be noticed that Christ is spoken of in scripture as "the Beginning," and also as "that which was FROM the Beginning." All that God begins, He begins in His Son, who thus becomes in turn that Personhood which is the Beginning and End, the Commencement and Consummation, the First Step Toward, the Way along, and the Destination of all things.

Now look with me and see a Babe born in a manger, then behold the Loveliness of all Childhood at play in perfect, joyful innocence, but do not turn away from the later scenes of a Man despised and rejected, a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief. You must continue to look - no, do not shield your eyes and turn away, but see "as the shadow of a cross arose upon a lonely hill."

In THAT death, death becomes and is revealed as not an end of life but the artesian well out from which springs life eonian. In turn, the flow from that well, becomes rivers of resurrection life, of joy unspeakable and full of glory, seated above all the heavens. HE, the crucified One, IS the Beginning of life, in all the fulness of glorious abundance.

He, inclusive of His earthly experience in the eonian Spirit, from Beginning to End, is the Holy Spirit of the present dispensation, "the Lord, who is the Spirit" within you new every day, fresh as eternal springtime. And you, in union with Him, are one of God's new beginnings.

He Who is the Beginning, came from a Beginning. Everything God does, He does within Him, so that all that proceeds out from Him has the quality of a new beginning, of God doing "a new thing in the earth." The Beginning out from Beginning, that "momentum of Being" that belongs to God (a marvelous phrase I've borrowed from brother Mark Eaton) is by the gushing passion of Divine love carrying the Seed of the Divine Nature. The Beginning, and all beginnings have the Nature of impregnation, conception, gestation and birth.

It is right to speak of the power of the Holy Spirit, but we must keep in mind the One who Paul declared to be "the power and wisdom of God." He, Jesus Christ our Lord, is that very Spirit of wisdom and power. He became the Comforter. He became the fulfillment of His own promise to us of the coming of the Spirit of Truth. He has come to us to make His abode in us, as the Logos, the Summary of the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God.

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