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March 14, 2008 ©Homer
Kizer Commentary — From the Margins
God is One! ___________ And one of the scribes came up and
heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well,
asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus
answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our
God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul [psuche—RLPH] and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second
is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There are no
other commandments greater than these.” (Mark 12:28–31) __________ The
command to love God with heart, life, mind, and strength is part of the Lord is one: does a person not make
him or herself “one” with that which he or she loves above all
else? And if the person loves God above all else, including above life itself,
then will this person not do what God commands, walking as God walks, imitating
God in all the person does? So if Jesus is one with the Father (John
17:20–23), then disciples who will be one with Jesus will walk as Jesus
walked (1 John 2:3–6) and will imitate Paul as he imitates Jesus (1 Cor
11:1; Phil 3:17) … does anyone disagree with this? And if anyone does,
what grounds supported by which Scriptures can the person cite? Surely no one
believes that a person can live as someone from the nations [a Gentile] and still walk as Jesus walked. Christians secretly chuckled when, following the
9/11 terrorist attack, Western news media discussed the tenet of Islamic belief
that has a man receiving seventy celestial virgins when he enters heaven. How,
Christians wondered, could anyone believe in such a nonsensical idea? Yet these
same Christians have no doubts that they will be in heaven with God when they
die. They claim to be one with Christ. And because of their faith, they
sincerely believe that at death they will be with Christ, who has gone ahead of
them to prepare a spot with the Father for them so that when He comes again,
they will be with Him. But while here on earth, they do not walk as Jesus
walked; they do not live as He lived; they do not even attempt to keep the
commandments while claiming that they love God with their whole heart, life,
mind and strength. Somewhere within a disciple lays a disconnected
circuit that interrupts logic when the disciple professes love for God while continuing
to live as a Gentile. It is as if the offense of fleshly circumcision had not
ended at This disconnect is apparent in the question, where
will Christ be when He comes again? Will He not be here on earth? When He comes
again, where else can He be but here on earth? So if Christ has gone ahead to
prepare a spot [J`B@<] for disciples so that they can be with Him when
He returns to earth, then, first, no one goes to where He works preparing a
spot until He returns. Second, if He goes to the Father to prepare this spot so
that disciples can be with Him when He returns, where will this spot be when He
returns, in heaven or here on earth? Since Christ will be here on earth when He returns,
then will not those who await His return also be here on earth while they wait?
Will they wait in heaven so that when He returns He can take disciples to
Himself where He is here on earth? This would mean dragging disciples out of
heaven and back to this earth. Jesus said, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God;
believe also in me. In my Father’s house [@Æ6\‘] are many rooms [:@<"Â]. If it were not so, would I have told you that I
go to prepare a place [J`B@<] for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
And you know the way to where I’m going. (John 14:1–4) And
what sort of “rooms” [monay—:@<"Â] are these? Are they apartments? Is the
Father’s house like a “house” here on earth? Do these rooms have to be built onto the
Father’s house as was done when a Hebrew son married and brought his wife
home to life with his parents? If God is one—and He is—then there is,
in Jesus’ words, a critical concept concealed by translation into English
and by 21st-Century Western cultures, but this concept is disclosed
in Believe in God; believe also in me.
Jesus equates believing in God with believing in Him. He makes believing in one
the equal to believing in the other: “one” is the
“other.” Not by any trick of magic, but by Jesus not being ashamed
to make Himself equal to God (John 5:18; Phil 2:6), “one” and the
“other” become the same. How is it possible that one and the other are the
same, for this seems as illogical as seventy celestial virgins awaiting a
suicide bomber? The house of God is one house, not many houses. And
in the Father’s house dwells the Father, as well as Christ Jesus, who has
gone ahead of disciples to prepare many monay,
or mones, which would be better
translated as “legal stays” of death sentences, or as contractual
adoption papers, but because a “house” [@Æ6\‘] has “rooms” in our psyches not stays
of execution, “rooms” is how that passage reads when translated
into English. But within “rooms” being assigned as
the best English linguistic icon to represent the object the translating team
thought Jesus meant when John records, :@<"Â, is the entirety of a physically circumcised
Israelite dwelling in a house in Egypt or in a tent in the wilderness forming
the lively representation of a born-of-spirit son of God dwelling in a
“tent” of flesh: the Father and the Son dwell in a house or
tabernacle that is analogous to the tent in which either a physically or a
spiritually circumcised Israelite dwelt or dwells. The profound implications of the preceding sentence
is that the house in which the Father and the Son dwell is in heaven and is
composed of “spirit,” an overworked linguistic icon. The timber and
stones, daub and wattle, brick and mortar, lath and plaster—the substance
of every type of home construction in this world is of the same elemental
elements as are used to produce the air-breathing occupant of the house. But a
brick is not a person even if both are composed of the same atoms. An animal
skin tent is not a person even if the tanned hides from which the tent is sewn
once covered breathing creatures that shared breath like that which humankind
has. In the case of a physically circumcised Israelite
in a house in While debate will exist over whether a circumcised
Hebrew was higher than an uncircumcised Egyptian, look what happened when the
death angel passed over all the land: firstborns not covered by the blood of a
paschal lamb were slain. Trees and stones do not have firstborns. No timber was
destroyed; no stones were cleaved in-two. So a clear separation existed between
the elements from which houses were constructed and the same rearranged
elements from which living creatures [nephesh]
were constructed, with a second division or separation occurring between
circumcised and uncircumcised human beings. The second separation between living creatures not
circumcised and living creatures that were circumcised made no distinction
between man and beast: all firstborns not covered by the blood of a paschal
lamb perished, so the death angel made an equal separation between the Egyptian
and his livestock and the Israelite and his livestock as existed between stones
and living creatures. The above can slip by too quickly: circumcision
represented “life” with uncircumcision representing death, or the
non-living. Although Pharaoh as the earthly representative of the prince of
this world held power over Changing referents for a word is called
equivocation, something at which Greeks excelled and Romans hated. The Apostle
Paul uses equivocation throughout his writings, and the Apostle Paul wrote that
the visible things of this world reveal the invisible things of God, even His
attributes—and the visible things of this world reveal a difference
between a man and his or her house even though both are composed of the same
atoms. The visible things of this world also reveal a mostly concealed
difference between a circumcised Israelite and every male of “the
nations” [Gentiles], a difference made by acts of the hands of other
Israelites, a difference that should have caused the man to walk uprightly
before God rather than bent and twisted by sin and the superstitions of this
world. Moving upward from two-dimensional shadow to a son
of God dwelling in a tent of flesh, the new creature born of spirit is no
longer in the same unfurled dimensions as is the tent of flesh: the new
creature is not composed of atoms as is the tent of flesh. Rather the new
creature is like thought itself … Native American artists conveyed
“sight” [observation] as little arrows that caused animals to duck
away. At a time of heightened awareness because of the danger involved, I
“felt” (as if a hand were laid on my shoulders) eyes watching me,
eyes that I couldn’t easily locate, but eyes that prevented me from
continuing until I located and killed the observer. So “thought”
that is transmitted through observation is detectable under certain conditions
and in certain situations by human beings, but is regularly detected by prey
animals. As far as can be determined, this “thought” does not exist
as the movement of atoms, but as some form of an energy transmission.
Unfortunately, today this is the domain of parapsychology, a mostly discredited
field of study. Being born of spirit
has, as its literal referent, birth by the spirit of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø], a non-physical
birth that cannot come from the first Adam or from the elements of this world.
Paul wrote, When you were slaves
of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you
getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of
those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have
become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end,
eternal life. For the wages of sin is
death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Rom 6:20–23 emphasis added) If a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3),
consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32), thus placed under the dominion of
sin—if this son of disobedience brings forth the wages of sin (i.e.,
death) until set free from sin to become servants of God, receiving as the
wages of this servant’s service to God eternal life in Christ Jesus—then
from whom and from where did the son of disobedience receive eternal life prior
to receiving it in Christ Jesus as the gift of God? The first Adam was
told that because he ate forbidden fruit, “‘By the sweat of your
face / you shall eat bread, / till you return to the ground, / for out of it
you were taken; / for you are dust, / and to dust you shall
return’” (Gen 3:19). Dust does not have an immortal soul or any
immortal quality about it in a world that is passing away (1 John 2:17). And
Adam was driven from the garden before he could eat of the Tree of Life (Gen
3:22–24); so Adam was dust, which is what Solomon wrote about man: I said in my heart
with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see
that they themselves are beasts. For what happens to the children of man and
what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They
all have the same breath [ruwach],
and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to the same
place. All are dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit [ruwach] of man goes upward and the
spirit [ruwach] of the beast goes
down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man
should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what
will be after him? (Eccl 3:18–22) The dishonesty of the
translation is evident: it would never do to have Solomon say that beasts and
man have the same “spirit,” for then it would be obvious that since
they have the same breath or spirit their fates would be the same. Either both
would go to heaven or neither would go. And Paul says that “flesh and
blood cannot inherit the Humankind is composed
of the elements of this earth, thus sharing the fate of other air-breathing
creatures which is death of a sort that has the body returning to the dust of
the ground—and God tests men and women to see if this is what they
believe about themselves. Pharaohs will not become stars in the cosmos. The
dead will not become shades in a kingdom of the underworld, such as Odysseus
visited. There is neither extreme cold nor heat in the realm of the dead. There
is only unconsciousness, for the dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5). There was nothing
about the first Adam that was immortal, so he had nothing he could impart to
his descendants that was immortal. Yes, there was a non-physical aspect of him
that might have been felt by a gazelle, a non-physical aspect like that which
King Nebuchadnezzar had about him that was taken from the king when he was
given the “nature” of an ox for seven years (Dan chap 4). But this
non-physical aspect is possessed by both men and beasts: it is their
“natures” that will be changed (Isa 11:6–9) when the Holy
Spirit is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) when the kingdom of this world
becomes the kingdom of the Most High and of His Christ (Rev 11:15; Dan
7:9–14). And these natures separate cats from dogs and man from God so
that man is not one with God when humanly born. Being born of spirit
is not a renewal or regeneration of an immortal soul received from a man having
his way with a woman, for the concept of immortality implies having everlasting
life which, within the framework of Christendom, only comes as the gift of the
Father through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is only by dwelling in the house of
the Father that a person puts on immortality—and dwelling in this house
with the Father requires a stay [monay]
or canceling of the record of debt that stands against us with its legal
demands (Col 2:14). Every person is under
sentence of death because of dwelling in the house of the first Adam, a house
consigned to disobedience when Adam was driven from the For we know that if
the tent [house of the tabernacle—@Æ6\" J@Ø F6Z<@LH], which is our
earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building of God [@Æ6@*@:¬< ¦6 2,@Ø], a house [@Æ6\"<] not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our
heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For
while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would
be unclothed, but that we would be
further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who
has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a
guarantee[1].
(2 Cor 5:1–5 emphasis added) The tent
of flesh in which each disciple dwells is analogous to the adobe house in In the many :@<"Â [monay] in
the Father’s house are baptized disciples: Paul said that disciples are
the temple of God, the tabernacle of God, with each person now being a house of the temple, making the temple
not a collection of fleshly tents but a building that incorporates every
“new nature” or “new self” that has been born of spirit
as a room or apartment in a spiritual skyscraper that is the Father’s
house. This is a “hive” or “colony” concept, with the
hive or colony being identified by the umbrella icon /God/. The Father’s house or outward body (analogous
to a disciple’s fleshly body) is God; thus, the Father is God for He is the Most High. The Son is
also God, for He dwells in the house
of Father at His right hand. And here is where Evangelical Christendom has
problems with Paul’s argument: if the disciple is born of spirit,
receiving life from the Father through the earnest of His Breath, then the
disciple is a son of God, having been adopted by the Father through the Father
drawing this person from the world. And if a son, then the disciple dwells in
the house of God as a son whereas angels are servants, ministering spirits, and
are not sons. For an angel to say, “‘I will make myself like the
Most High’” (Isa 14:14), the angel commits blasphemy. But when a
son declares himself a son, especially after the Father has declared the
disciple a son, no blasphemy is committed, for a son is truly a son. And since
this son will dwell in the house of the Father, with the house [@Æ6\"]
identified by the umbrella icon /God/,
then the disciple, being one with the
Father and with the Son (John 17:20–23), is “one” through
dwelling in the same house as the
Father and the Son dwell. God is one, but in this house [@Æ6\"] dwell both the Father and the Son, making the
linguistic icon /one/ a description
of the house, not of the Father who can be likened, although at a higher
taxonomical level, to the new creature, new nature that dwells within the disciple’s
tent of flesh in this world. God is not a family though that analogy has some
merit, but the analogy also has the fatal flaw of feuding cousins occurring
within a family’s framework … if God is not one, God is divided and
will fail (Matt 12:25); so God can only be one, but He cannot be one in the
common sense of the word describing a solitary entity, with this entity
restricted to being the Father, who was not known to Israel or to any human
being prior to Jesus revealing Him to the first disciples. Christology, primarily
concerned with the nature of Christ, also addresses how the Father and Son
relate to each other. But the Bible has been a sealed text with neither natural
The concept of the
Father and the Son dwelling in the house [@Æ6\"] of the Father, with
this house being God, is almost too simple for disciples to comprehend its
significance: one God, one house, not many houses; one house forming one city,
New Jerusalem, the city adorned as a bride (Rev 21:2). The Father dwells in His
house with His firstborn Son, the first of many brothers, all sons of the
Father, all dwelling in the Father’s house, all one with the Father and
with Christ Jesus, all covered by the roof of the building identified as God,
all forming New Jerusalem. In his vision, John
the Revelator says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them,
and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them’”
(Rev 21:3) Note: the remainder of the sentence, as their God does not appear in the Greek. What appears is: [*@× (Behold) º (the) F60<¬ (tabernacle) J@Ø 2,@Ø (of God) :,J (with)
Jä< •<2DfBT< (men), 6"Â (and) F60<fF,4 (he will tabernacle) :,Jz(with) "ÛJä< (them), 6"Â (and) "ÛJ@Â (they) 8"@Â (people)
"ÛJ@Ø (his) §F@<J"4 (will be), 6"Â (and) "ÛJÎH (he himself) Ò 2,ÎH :,Jz(God with them) "ÛJä< §FJ"4 (will be). The tabernacle or
house of God will be with men, and he will “tabernacle” [used as a
verb] with men, and they will be his people, and he himself will be God with
them — he will be Immanuel (Isa
7:14). But what are the
ramifications of, he himself will be God
with them? If he himself will be
God with them, then they will all be God. Yet God is one! This
cannot be said too many times. And for a human being to cross dimensions and
enter into heaven as part of the harvest of firstfruits, the person must be
born of spirit as a son of God, initially domiciled in a tent of flesh, but
further clothed in or by the Father’s house when glorified as if the
Father’s house were a garment like Christ’s righteousness. And
unless a person is born of spirit as a son of God, the person cannot understand
the things of God, cannot entertain the thought of God being the Father’s
house that is to him as a disciple’s fleshly body is to the disciple. But
this is what has been revealed. * "Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©
2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved." * * * * * [ Current Commentary ] [ Archived Commentaries ] [ Home ] [1] Or, “God, the one having given to us the earnest of the spirit [B<,b:"J@H]” — the earnest of the spirit is given as earnest money is given to secure a contract. It is not the full amount of moneys, but it is real money. So God has given disciples life through receiving a figurative puff of His divine Breath [B<,Ø:" 2,@b], thereby disclosing that His Breath or His Spirit is not a personage to be fully received at once but an activating force that is dispersed as moneys are paid out to fulfill a contract. |