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Separation is Good
By John Gavazzoni
Genesis 1:3, begins an inspired account of how God, by His Word, focusing upon the earth within the whole of His primal creation, sets out to make of that earth - whose surface is described in verse 2 as watery, vacuous, desolate, and covered over by a blanket of darkness---and the solar system within which it lived, to abound synergistically with life of spectacular beauty and diversity, all along seeing His handiwork as "good," and finally upon the creation of man, as "very good." Shortly after, in the account, we notice the appearance of a thread pertaining to both the natural and spiritual, that will continue to show itself within the tapestry of God's handiwork: the thread of separation. Early on, we read in verse 4, as per the NAS version, that God separated the light from the darkness. [The KJV has it as "divided the light from the darkness." In the whole, the Hebrew text conveys a separateness of division and difference.] And it was very good that He did so (vs. 31).
The thread appears very strikingly when God separated Eve out from within Adam. It was a good thing, for it was not good for the man to be alone (Gen. 2: 18, 21, 22). Oneness was never meant to be aloneness. Oneness unfolds its richness through separateness, but a separateness (of great diversity) that is relational, and that maintains oneness of nature, of essence, with that from which it is separately joined. This pertains to the sequential unfolding of nothing less than the glory of God. Paul described that sequential unfolding as Christ being the glory of God; man being the glory of Christ, and woman being the glory of man.
Note: One glory, unfolding relationally. With each stage of the sequence, God's glory advances toward its knowledge filling all the earth. Very dark, indeed, is the religion that deprecates the place of the woman, for she is glory's most advanced stage. "And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared AS A BRIDE ADORNED FOR HER HUSBAND." (Rev. 21:2 KJV) That city is described as "having the glory of God" (Rev. 21:11) and, to re-emphasize, that city descends As A BRIDE. The flower of God's glory reaches its fullest existential unfolding in that greater Eve, the Bride of Christ, who has been taken out of the side of that Greater Christ, Christ in and as, His corporate body.
God does not intend to return all things to a oneness that would amount to aloneness. Seeing as far as one is permitted to see, short of "when that which is perfect is come," Paul describes what God is intent on doing and becoming, that is, to be "All in all" ( 1Cor. 15: 28). As brother J. Preston Eby has so clearly pointed out in written and spoken messages: There are two "alls" in Paul's description. To quote our brother Eby's explanation of the two-alls factor: "God, who was All, created another all, so that He might become All in all." And in a complementary statement: "God projected Himself out of Himself that He might be Himself in another dimension, and He did this by His Word." The second all, came out from within the first All, the advancement of God's glory being the result. "Because, forth from out of the midst of Him, then through the midst of Him (or: through means of Him), and [finally] into the midst of Him, [is; will be] the whole (everything; [are] all things; or: = Because He is the source, means and goal/destiny of all things - everything leads into Him)!..." (Rom. 11: 36a; Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament: Expanded, Amplified, Multiple Renderings)
The oneness which is of God, is a oneness of union, so that when we seek to understand, and explain, the oneness of God in an overly simplistic way that does not highlight the factor of union, the truth of oneness suffers at least some obfuscation, and the longer that factor is neglected, the further we drift from what oneness is all about. Union is the goal, not aloneness: One coming forth from out of Another, to reunite in union, and that one who has come forth out of Another becomes many more who are to be included in the reuniting union.
I am one with God in Christ, yet clearly, I am not God. But I am a treasured part of the all to which, for which, and in which, God is All. "He that is joined to the Lord, is one Spirit." There it is: both "He" (the one joined to the Lord) and "the Lord" (to whom that one is joined) who are, WITH DISTINCTION, "one Spirit." "For as the body is one and hath many members... so also is Christ" (1 Cor. 12: 12). Contemplate: The One Spirit that joins us all together in union with Christ is the Spirit of the one body of many members. Both from scripture and from the science of biology we know that the members of a body are distinct from one another, yet joined together as one body. Union with complementary distinction. It delights God that He has made it so.
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