3 ≠ What Jesus Knew

 

Seeking to construct and grasp a fresh view of how Godπs life is joy, overflowing joy.

 

Jesus knew something important that ≥we≤ donπt know today, and it matters a lot.

 

Our nature as humans is fundamentally spiritual.

            The spiritual is:

∑      Nonphysical

∑      The ultimate power

o      Leverages the physical

o      Creates meaning

∑      Thought

∑      Valuing -- leads to choice, intentionality, will

The center point of the spiritual in humans as well as in God is self-determination, also called freedom and creativity.

 

God: I am that I am.

 

The heart, or will, simply is spirit in human beings. It is the human spirit, and the only thing in us that God will accept as the basis of relationship with him. It is the spiritual plane of our natural existence, the place of truth before God, from where alone our whole lives can become eternal.

 

As a spiritual being, I am most alive as this spiritual character of thoughtful, valuing, choice interacts with Godπs thoughtful valuing choice character. ≠ This is living in the kingdom of God.

 

We ought to be spiritual in every aspect of our lives because our world is the spiritual one.

To fill your mind with the visible, the åflesh,π is death, but to fill your mind with the spirit is life and peace. (Rom. 8:6)

 

As we increasingly integrate our life into the spiritual world of God, our life increasingly takes on the substance of the eternal. We are destined for a time when our life will be entirely sustained from spiritual realities and no longer dependent in any way upon the physical. Our dying, or ≥mortal condition, will have been exchanged for an undying one and death absorbed in victory.

 

Of course that destiny flatly contradicts the usual human outlook, or what ≥everyone knows≤ to be the case. We find ourselves hopeless and of no account.

 

 

Fundamental to the teaching of Jesus:

Every event takes on a different reality and meaning depending on whither it is seen only in the context of the visible or also in the context of Godπs full world, where we all as a matter of fact live.

 

 

The idea of an all-encompassing, all-penetrating world of God, interactive at every point with our lives, where we can always be totally at home and safe regardless of what happens in the visible dimension of the universe, is routinely treated as ridiculous. When we live by our competencies we are soaked with secularity. The ≥real world≤ has little room for a God of sparrows and children. To it, Jesus can only seem ≥otherworldly≤ ≠ good hearted, but out of touch.

 

To receive Jesusπ teaching, I must believe him to be competent.

 

Jesus shows his apprentices how to live in light of the fact that they will never stop living.

 

To become a disciple of Jesus is to accept now that inversion of human distinctions that will sooner or later be forced upon everyone by the irresistible reality of his kingdom,

How must we think of him to see the inversion from our present viewpoint? We must, simply, accept that he is the best and smartest man who ever lived in this world, that he is even now ≥the prince of the kings of the earth≤ (Rev. 1:5) Then we heartily join his cosmic conspiracy to overcome evil with good.