John's Index Greater Emmanuel Email John

The Embodiment Principle
By John Gavazzoni

The entirety of Deity, everything and all that Deity is, without measure, dwells, resides, is at home, domiciles in Jesus Christ. Once, when I sought a personal explanation from God re the meaning of "Our Father Who art in heaven," the answer came, somewhat to my surprise, almost instantly, as if finally the moment had arrived for me to understand something that He, in His wisdom, up to that point in our relationship, had reason to withhold.

When He spoke, I was ushered instantaneously into communion with a Father-Presence of endearingly intimate Majesty. Without that conveyed sense, His answer might have come across as impatiently short, almost curt and dismissive. He simply said to me: "I dwell in the transcendence of My own glory." Period. Audiences concluded, except for the sweet-smelling perfume of His Presence still clinging to my consciousness.

What is that glory in which He dwells? It is a bodily glory. Yes, quite specifically a bodily glory, for "In Him (Christ) dwells the fulness of Deity BODILY." All the Excellency of the Divine Being, emanates outward and clothes Him as His habitation. That habitation is His Son. The Son is the BODILY fulness of the Divine Being. In Him, all fulness has permanently made its home.

Paul wrote of Christ, "who though He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped . . ." There can be such a thing as form without substance, as in "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof," but that's not the sense as quoted above. Christ existed in the form of God, AS Deity fully formed, of the Divine Nature embodied, the Divine Being in full form. All that God is had taken form in the Son of God. Paul goes on to write that He "emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man . . ."

Did Paul mean that Jesus merely took on human appearance, that is, that His appearance was not integral to who He was? Did he mean that He only briefly came looking as if He was a man? No, His very human form, was the out-forming of Deity. He appeared as He was, God AS True Man, not merely God, AS IF He was a man. We must not fail to note that His form was that of a servant also.

Can we grasp the truth, that servant-hood is also integral to the full out-forming of Deity? There was/is no inconsistency between the eternal Personhood of the Son of God, and His Humanity, His BODILY Humanity, His serving, ministering Humanity. [It is, of course, redundant for me to speak of bodily humanity, for there is no other kind.] But I'm using redundancy for emphasis.

I have been deeply impacted by the fact that Paul, in describing what is the nature of the oneness that underlies the unity of the Spirit - the Spirit which the church is to preserve, begins with "one body," and ends with "one God and Father . . ." One would think that he should have begun with "one God and Father, don't you think? But he doesn't. He begins with the one body, because it is in that one body that the God and Father is found, and all that the God and Father is over, and through, and in, is one body.

Let us be clear of this: Embodiment is intrinsic to Spirit. The incarnation was according to, and consistent with the Divine Nature. It was not God's concession as required to deal with humanity's emergency. God reconciled us by the death of His Son, and will save us all by His life, by being true to the embodiment principle within His nature. The mystery of godliness - that which has been hidden in God, but destined to be revealed, begins with "God manifested in the flesh."

The Embodiment Principle Part Two:
Bodily Increase

James wrote that "the body without the spirit is dead." Paul makes a statement of clear implication that the spirit has no increase apart from its embodiment. I'm referring to Paul's insight that "the body . . . increaseth by the increase of God." Spirit doesn't increase non-corporally. Spirit draws forth its own containment out from its own essence, and proceeds to increase itself thusly.

We have an improper perception of the relationship of spirit and body, of spirit and materiality, and that wrong perception is hard to put into words, but I've sensed that the various shades of that misperception tend to divorce body from spirit, but "what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." The body is the expression of the spirit's soulical individuality and identity. Within the ages, the body is the spirit visible, and the spirit is the body invisible. AND the body is the spirit's mode of increase, as paradoxical as that seems to be.

Usually we think of containment as being limiting, but when the spirit draws forth out from itself, it's own bodily containment, it, by that containment, sets in motion its own increase. Think about a seed. It contains life, and increases life. I've written on the subject previously (please check out the article on our web page, "The Increase of God)," but it bears repeating, it bears further emphasizing and intense scrutiny.

Paul, when he spoke of the body increasing by the increase of God, was not speaking of merely an increase FROM God, but of God's own increase, and that, in and by the body. Jonathan Mitchell's translation of that passage (Col. 2:19), expanding and amplifying the text, brings out a very strict rendering of the Greek, as the body increasing the increase of God. The Concordant Literal New Testament agrees that the dynamic which is at work, is God's increase.

The forward movement of Divinity is continuously unto incarnation, while most believers seem to think of spiritual advancement as going in the other direction, i.e., of the progress of Spirit/spirit having to do with entering a more ethereal and intangible state of being. The Word became flesh, because God speaks by embodying His thought. God's Nature is found in His thought - as God thinks, so is He - and His full thought was made flesh in Jesus Christ, and it was as flesh dwelling among them, that the early disciples "beheld His glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth."

This is serious stuff, because the denial of the above, is what John, in his first epistle describes as anti-Christ. There are shades of the notion that we must strip off our humanity in order to be spiritual, when all spirituality has embodied humanity in view as its goal. The fulness of this reality and administration was found in Jesus Christ in its pure Seed form, which Seed, going into the ground and dying, brought forth the enlargement, increase, expansion of Himself, and His Father in Him, by the many person-members of the greater body of Christ, the gathering together of all humanity as one body, one man, one humanity, with Christ as its Head.

If you are a biblically-based Christian Restorationist/Universalist, do not think that the salvation of all mankind in Christ, will stop short of incorporating the same all into the body of Christ, for if it did, it would not be a complete salvation. No one member of the human race can be made completely whole in the most absolute sense, apart from all the rest. Salvation is UNTO the wholeness of God's One New Man, God's One New Humanity. Without you, I am not whole, and salvation is about wholeness. I, as a member of the body of Christ, am whole as part of the whole body.

Don't diminish God's accomplishment in His Son, by perceiving salvation as two-tiered, the more favored by being included in the body of Christ because they came to Christ "on this side," while the others, though saved, shall be excluded. If you have that notion, and I were to ask you if all mankind, finally saved, each in his own order/rank will be part of the family of God, I'm quite confident your answer would by yes.

But there is no such thing as being a member of the family of God, without being a member of the body of Christ. They are two dimensions of the same relationship with God in Christ. Like Apollos, you need to have the Word explained to you more accurately.

John's Index Greater Emmanuel Email John