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The Origin of Humanness
Part Five
Deficiently Glory-Bound
By John Gavazzoni
| Origin Of Humanness Series | ||
| Part 1 Adamic Development |
Part 2 A Living Soul: Its Problematic Dimension |
Part 3 First The Natural Than The Spiritual |
| Part 4 Humanity's Commission |
Part 5 Deficiently Glory-Bound |
Part 6 Searching the Depths of God |
For all veered off the mark (everyone fails; everyone sins), and they are continually posterior to, falling short of, inferior to, and wanting of God's glory." (Romans 3:23 From Jonathan Mitchell's New Testament Translation). Jonathan's version of this verse, which, in more conventional translation forms is so familiar to evangelical Christians as quite singularly useful for presenting to men their need of salvation, provides an excellent springboard into this fifth installment in our series.
Particularly, the last phrase pointing out the continuing condition of man being deficient in (wanting of) God's glory, as accompanying his sin(ning), raises the question, of which came first, the sin or the deficit. Also, it seems to me that man being "continually posterior to" the glory of God, suggests that the easily observable pursuit by man, in and of himself, to gain God's glory is futile. He continues to be posterior to, always behind that which he is pursuing. That mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, allows for no contributing effort on man's part toward the goal.
Conventional theology admits to, and insists upon man having been created with a vulnerability to sin(ning), but the explanation that said vulnerability is to be understood as the tragic misuse/abuse of man's so-called free will, suffers from a pitiable deficit of understanding re: the absolute sovereignty of God. In this series, I've sought to address the relationship of man's want, and man's sin
The truth is little understood among believers that there exists in the plan of God for mankind, a divinely-ordered, passionately-determined element of deficiency that is, by its synergistic working, strategic to true humanness reaching its potential of fully sharing in the glory of God by joint-heirship with Jesus Christ. The natural mind not only cannot receive such a thought, but, left without enlightening grace, it will inevitably reckon it as scandalous nonsense.
Arriving out from eternity at the gate that opened into the ages, by reason of that very transference from eternal being, into eonian existence, man, as it was, was in a deficient state out of the gate. Imagine a thoroughbred full of expectancy at running the race, and that victoriously, within seconds of the gate being thrown open, a previously existent, but not discovered bone deficiency causes a crippling fracture, and he pulls up lame.
We began this series pointing out mankind's two-stage emergence out from the dust of the ground, or better translated, out from the soil of the ground. Even at that stage when God formed the man before breathing into his nostrils the breath of lives, the stuff of his humanness was the glory of God. The whole earth is full of God's glory, declared the prophets, and the soil of earth's ground, from which the man was formed, was Divine Glory incognito. Indeed, observed one of the prophets of Israel, "Thou art a God who hides Himself." All things created were formed out of the glory of God in the sons of God. God creates from what He births. All creation has a birthed origin. It is the glory-substance of the Son of God, and, in Him, all the sons of God, from which God formed all things, and particularly man's own earthen humanness. This is why all creation is waiting expectantly for the unveiling of the sons of God in the liberty of their glory, for it is sonship that gives meaning to all things.
In man's first-stage of existence, without that particularity of soulness unique to him by God's very personal inbreathing of lives, that set him apart from every other creature (actually every other "soul" in the Hebrew), even at that stage, his earthiness was glory-constituted, but he was completely without any sense of his eternal origin. That sense had not yet been awakened in him yet. One would be chosen out from among the species of first-stage humanness, to receive by God's inbreathing, and from that inbreathing, would emerge an intuitive sharing in that very quality of God's own soulness, His own self knowledge.
The divine inbreathing, awakened in him a sense that he was more, and meant to be more than that which he was informed by his physical senses. Vibrations of divinity rose up within him, and deep called to deep as his yet-to-be explained eternal Origin made itself felt. But He was sent forth on his eonian journey deficient in what would seem to be a requisite knowledge, that knowledge that comes from intimacy of communion with his Father and creator.
His was to be that experience described by Paul, as feeling/groping after God (Acts 17: 27). God had not yet opened to the man, the passionately loving quality within the lives that had been breathed into him. He had not yet been told that he, and all those still in his loins, were the delight of His Father's heart.
Why this God-designed deficiency? Why not tell the man, "You, and all the children to be born from your seed, their lives already in your loins, have been with Me from eternity, for you have always been gathered around My table, with My Uniquely Begotten Son, your Elder Brother, now go forth into your journey with the full knowledge of your Origin, that you are the fruit of MY loins, and the work of MY hands?"
Why not? Because deficiency creates need, and it is only by neediness that we can fully assimilate the wonder of His love, and the glory of His grace. There is a principle that is intrinsic to our earthiness entering fully into the riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Let's call it the dragging principle. We must be dragged into all that God is, and all that we are in Him. There is a synergism that combines God's passion to glorify us, with our confused resistance.
The mind of the flesh cannot imagine such a thing; it is beyond our imagination, and is therefore a strange and fearful thing to us. The operation of that synergism is such that Divine Love fully reveals Its depths by, at the supreme cost to Itself, overcoming our resistance. We must come to know the love of God in the determination of Its passion, but God's fiery passion frightens us as we become aware that He will not quit until He possesses us fully.
So we must be made to understand that the same passion that will not stop short of fully possessing the whole of us, is the passion that will not stop short of giving the ALL of Himself to us. THAT can only be known as we dig in our heels against such a dragging.
Our first-stage humanness is still with us. It was to that first-stage, formed of the soil of the ground, that God added His inbreathing, granting the man his unique quality of a shared soulness with Him. God did not discard the first stage man. That flesh man is part of who we are. That's the part devoid of the resonance to vibrations of Divinity that was integral to our second stage.
We might come to a greater clarity re: our present human condition, if we ponder the relationship between Paul's use of the word "flesh," and that first-stage man. We cope with an animal quality of humanness. That part is simply of the earth, earthy, without any heavenly awareness. He is natural, in tuned only to nature's surface dimension. He cannot hear heaven's declaration of God's glory, nor see His handiwork in the firmament. Both stages of our humanness are joined together.
Calling for serious consideration is just what kind of correlation is there between the above, and Paul's explanation of the relationship between the first man, and second Man, the first Adam, and the Last Adam. They are not two contradistinctive humanities. They must be understood as stages of a fully emerging, singular, glory-constituted humanness. I have to wonder how this relates also to Paul's teaching in Philippians about Christ's self-emptying, or self-stripping. How far back does that go?
There's the saying: "Some folks are so heavenly minded, they're of no earthly good." Some wisdom there brethren. We need to be "in touch" with both our first man and second Man humanness. A lot of spiritual quest amounts to trying to leave behind us that which is our Beginning, for the sake of our End (Goal), but in so doing we are out of sync with God's working. God has not abandoned the natural man, for the sake of the spiritual man.
Have you considered that it was in the second stage that "by one man, sin entered the world, and death by sin?" Who led whom into the present human condition? It was not the first man that led the second Man into sin and death, and cursedness, it was just the opposite. Who was it that chose to become sin for us all, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him? It is not our natural state that provided the entrance point for sin, it was our spiritual state. It was that inbreathing of God that set us up to try to hit the mark.
We need to erase much of how we've connected scriptural dots to form our present theological picture of God's relationship to man, and what we conceive to be the answer to the questions, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him . . . ." We need to be in touch within ourselves, not only with Who is doing the dragging, and who is being dragged. Have I got you thoroughly confused? Good. A little confusion can lead to a needful next-stage understanding.
| Origin Of Humanness Series | ||
| Part 1 Adamic Development |
Part 2 A Living Soul: Its Problematic Dimension |
Part 3 First The Natural Than The Spiritual |
| Part 4 Humanity's Commission |
Part 5 Deficiently Glory-Bound |
Part 6 Searching the Depths of God |
| John's Index | Greater Emmanuel | Email John |
