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| First Aspect: Bible in your head is Doctrinal DNA, and thus is the 'superior parent' siring (as it were) out from the body life, a 'body' of Divine Thinking in your own soul: gold silver precious stones. Via the Holy Spirit, and due to being in God's System. |
This is how Christ got benefitted, HIMSELF. You see that fact in Isa53:11's five infinitives, especially the way the words are ordered, in the Greek: no prepositions (I inserted the "via" and "by" prepositions, in the above translation) between Him and the action done TO Him. LvS4d.htm has a "Combat" table which starts near the beginning of the page (text prior to it is important, so read it), to explain that the Cross ENLARGED His Soul, so that total rapport with Father could occur. It's Real DDNA conversion. Isaiah make quite a point of that fact, contrasting how He had no physical progeny due to the ABUSE cutting Him off, in Isa52:14, Isa53:8b -- but due to Greatest Abuse on the Cross, He bears all kids, Isa54:1. Hence we sterile, dead-in-sins humans, sire also: same Isa54:1! Fabulous, how Isaiah uses sexual/birthing analogies, throughout Isa52:13-54:1!
Ergo: Christ would not be as CAPACIOUS as He is in His Humanity, were it not for the VOLUME of the sins imputed to Him and judged on Him, Phili2:5-10, last half of Romans 5. What, you don't think Father would impute and judge His Own Son without it benefitting His Son, do you? Well, what was the biggest benefit to GET, but total rapport, in His Humanity, with Father? God is no sadist. So from His Perspective, each human being born was used to make His Son BIGGER; so it doesn't matter, what the human chooses -- the Son was Benefitted. Never forget that. Like Paul says in Gal3, it's "Seed", not "seeds". So now, that Seed can get into us. For, like Paul also explains in Romans 6, we Died In Him on the Cross, so now we Live In Him (see also 2Cor5). We need feel no guilt whatsoever: guilt is a sin anyway, but more a stupidity, since from God's perspective He says: I chose you in part to bless My Son, and thus you are used to make Him the Head of all (subtheme of Heb1-2). God profitted His Son by means of the very sins we sin, by ENLARGING His Son.. with maxed-out, DDNA. Kinda like what Joseph told his brothers, we meant sin for bad, but God turned it into good. Viral conversion of Divine Thinking on sin thinking made DDNA out of it all, Heb1:4, Heb7, 10. He became "more excellent" through His Victory on the Cross.
See, God is Omniscient. So He knows all that sin thinking. So what does HE do with it? Well, He assigns given MEANINGS to it, and BECAUSE of those meanings, He never wants to sin, Himself. You are what you think. Your capacities determine your relationships. God's Capacities determine His Relationships, so What He Thinks About Sin, Renders Sin Productive -- not of itself, but due to What He Thinks In 'Reply' to it. So That Same Thinking Was Built In Christ. As a result, when the sins HIT His Soul, His Thinking 'reply' Converted The Erstwhile Meaning Of The Sins Into The DIVINE Meaning. So He didn't sin, either. So the sin was converted into DDNA. Just As It Is, In God Himself. And this is the legacy of Christ to us, that we can get that same conversion 'physics' of DDNA. Awesome, huh.
Notice how the clause after the ".." is separated, double-entendre (like every word in this verse). Hebrew like Greek places words so they point backwards at prior words and forward at following words, to make multilevel meanings clear. So notice: on the one hand, His Body will be more brutalized than all mankind put together; but He is Beyond Human in Nature. It's a deft statement of how Father will ENLARGE and CONVERT into DDNA all His Son's Soul.. more than all mankind put together. So that's His Legacy to us. To Church. Beyond Human, no longer restricted to our puny thoughts and petty ways, always with the nose to the ground, qvetching. Salvation has truly come from the Jews. They were brutalized during their long history, and in self-defense, developed a psychological qvetching pride so cannot read this verse for the Fulfillment-to-Them-Promise, that it is. So it's normal, to react. But He Did NOT React, but Rather Accepted Like The Lamb Offering He is, the Full Hatred of Mankind into His Own Soul, thus Fulfilling (Isa53:10's) "im tasim asham", = Red Heifer Offering for all of Israel.. and all of us. How Blessed we all are, and we need not be guilty, says Isa54:1! For it ENLARGED Him Who Had No Descendents, to Owning Us all!
Much of the thinking as you age will be Bible-Initiated Thought. So it's not at all just some struggle with hitting thoughts. Bible just runs in your head, 24/7, John 14:26, eventually. It's not so much the recall of specific verses -- though that is quite enjoyable, witty, and frequent -- but the meaning, the principles, and above all the AWARENESS of Him you have come to know, 24/7. More real and closer than anyone else you've ever 'lived with' in any kind of relationship. It's not emotion, but a state of being. For relationship is a BEING, not a doing; and Your Capacity Is Increasing. So The Relationship Is Increasing In Depth, Height, Length, And Breadth. So like Christ, Who would not be as BIG as He is absent all that stuff HITTING Him, YOU will be made bigger due to what hits you.
Compatibility Requires First, A Compatible Structure. We all know from the glitches in Windows, how lack of backwards compatibility, wrecks your ability to use old programs and data. Well, sin wrecked the To-God compatible structure, in Gen3. So Christ had to be built, First. Having been built, His Compatible Structure Is Built In Us, beginning that first nanosecond we believe in Christ. But Surrounding That Compatible Skeletal Structure, Must Be A 'Body', So There Can Be Compatible Function, theme of Romans 8 and Peter's frequent "hupo" words (especially hupogrammos, a handwriting copybook for beginners, in 1Pet2:21). Else, it's like having an 'empty' body. So to Fill Up That Body/Building, is critical. But that Filling Up, has a structure of its own: wiring, placement, access routes.. a wide variety of things which must be in Precise Fit, so that the Function Is Free And Full. Rapport between two beings is essentially a 'body' of shared thinking; and we all know even a little bit 'off', strains a relationship. Well, God isn't going to have anything be 'off' between Himself and His Son! Philippians 4:19 in context and in Greek, tells us God GUARANTEES this is what He Will Do To Us. (Philippians is all about the DDNA results, and keys off Isa53:10-12 in every verse.)
So here's how Spirit Fulfilled The Rest of the Function of FULL Compatibility with Father, in Christ's Own Humanity while He was ON the Cross: the incoming sins were 'grabbed' by His Divine Thinking, kinda like RNA can 'grab' DNA. That Thinking was due to the Truth deposits of Bible as it then existed, all from the Holy Spirit, Who ran both the depositing, and the usage, with Christ's constant consent (hence the need to be sinless). So: think of the sins as thought-DNA by humans, hitting a Human whose DDNA was the stronger. Then, the DDNA, acting like RNA, acted on the sins' DNA to re-engineer the thought into More DDNA. So, He Grew Bigger in His Soul, hence had more CAPACITY for Rapport with Father. The problem was, to keep on persevering in the Divine Thinking (hence the need of the Holy Spirit empowering Him), until the sins' DNA was thoroughly re-engineered. So sin thoughts of humans, went to a Human who had a COUNTER-Thought of DDNA, and the former got converted in the Latter to even bigger capacity for total intimacy AS HUMAN, with Father. Hence Heb1:4, Eph1. All pre-announced, in Isa52:13 and following, with the crescendo verse (and our legacy) being Isa53:11. God's Intent, all along -- to make sons of His Son, via DDNA.
Back to the Cross and its conversion effect: Had He used His Own Deity instead of relying on the Spirit, all this wouldn't have worked (since the Humanity is finite, hence not Infinite Deity, it would screw up use of Deity, on its own). So since He did NOT do that, and the conversion occurred IN His Humanity, we can get that Thinking in us (again Phili2:5-10; 1Cor2:14-16; all of 1Cor13). Until He did this, that Thinking couldn't occur in humans, because He was the Author of all of it (Jn7:39, Heb12:2). He authored a NEW spiritual life in order to SUCCEED at the Cross (ibid, and Romans 5-8,12:1-3).
See, when sin occurs, it's triggered by some kind of allegation of relief or redress. One gets angry usually because one perceives a wrong done (i.e., to self), and feels self-righteous to be angry. Well, both the self-righteous motive, and the resultant anger, are both sins. Those are thoughts (body is but a bucket of biology, mindlessly carrying out thought). But a different response to the initiating 'cause' could be applied. Thoughts of virtue (esp., Lev19:18, Jas2:8) which Do Not Reciprocate with self-righteousness, anger, etc. So instead of rejecting, acceptance; instead of separating, marrying. So, HOLDING, GRABBING, the sin thoughts imputed, and thinking the Divine Response, changes the nature of the sin thought. Re-engineers it. Technically, 'atonement' occurs because the Counter-Thought occurs instead of the sin thought -- the latter being the 'trigger' for the former. Technically, the conversion of the sin thought into DDNA, propitiates, since Christ Becomes bigger. So, Reconciliation occurs (now the sin thought is converted, and it has its converted value in Divine Truth). So, Redemption occurs (new value of the sin thought, having been converted by DDNA). All this, you see in the very graphic original-language, inspired text of Isa52:13ff (through 53:12, chapters and verse numbers not being in the real Bible). So you see a lot of references to that text throughout the OT and the NT (i.e., in Rom5-8, 12:1-3, 1Cor2,6,13, all of Ephesians). Seed converts thinking in His Seed, which He bore on the Cross. DDNA, baby!
So here you are, in front of a computer. Things hit you, don't they? Glitches in Windows, dumb stuff ya gotta do, millions of gnats. Now you can get angry about it, or you can accept it. And the Same Holy Spirit Who Built Christ, can use all those gnats -- and the elephants, for that matter -- to Make DDNA In You. Father sees the same gnats, doesn't like them either -- so, shouldn't Father get Atonement, Propitiation, Reconciliation and Redemption of His Time in seeing that stuff forever? For unlike you, God is one Big Now, so there's no 'past' for Him. So DDNA conversion, gives purpose to the gnats (etc.) -- DDNA conversion purpose, Isa54:1! And it all can happen inside you, since YOU are the one being hit. Elegant solution, huh...
Christ basically paid for the entire "opportunity cost" of creation, on the Cross; you know that's true, else Father would have been cheated. Technically, it would have been the PRESENT VALUE of the "opportunity cost", forever. Because Christ Himself is LIVING (big point in Romans 6), this Payment is IN Him, and HE is the basis for everything (Paul starts that theme in last half of Rom5). So: you are a 'dividend' of Him. A DDNA dividend. So: dividends produce, too. So the DDNA the Holy Spirit puts in you is like a present-value relative to that MOMENT you get hit with gnats or elephants. So to 'fire' or 'spend' Bible-in-your-head-under-the-Spirit at those gnats or elephants Pays Big Bucks, in the only currency God likes, Matt4:4, Isa53:11. And You Get Those Bucks Added Into Your Own Soul (ibid). This is true wealth. Keyphrase "every spiritual blessing" in Eph1 tells you that: since if you get Spiritual Blessing, you also get every material blessing to express all the spiritual blessings you've accrued. Forever. Yes, think of this as money, because it's really bigger than money, and it's all reserved for you (my pastor calls this your "portfolio of invisible assets" and your "escrow" account). I like to think of it as your "Divine Benefit Plan"; LvS4a.htm and LvS4b.htm cover that Plan (search on the term in each page).
So God Sovereignly Wants To Clone His Own Attributes Into You, By Cloning His Son's Thinking Into You. He committed to do this in eternity past, For The Sake Of Christ. So He does this, to fulfill the "great ones" Contract Provision of Isa53:12. So it's not some sentimental whim, or nice dream you can later imagine arrogant, k? Your choice, how much of that Contract Fulfillment, to get.
"I have said, You are gods: and all of you are the children of the Most High", Ps82:6, quoted in John 10:34 by the Lord Himself. The context of His Quote is most illuminating. He had just finished telling them that He and the Father, are "one". Meaning, EQUAL. They wanted to stone Him for saying that, so He sarcastically asked them for which of His Miracles (demonstrating His Equality, k?) are they stoning Him. They reply that it's due to Him speaking blasphemy (denying His just-demonstrated Equality). So He quotes from Ps82, the PLAN of God, which even Asaph the Priest knew (the Psalm is Asaph's). For, the Lord is talking to priests, so they should know what their own priest, wrote! For the Son is to Make Sons. Again, Isa53:11. So It's Not Only NOT Blasphemy, But The Very Plan Of God!
So understand, since you are saved, you already have an extremely bigger nature than you were the second before salvation. Your human nature cannot sense how big you really are, because your Bigness is Spiritual. 1Cor2 explains how the non-spiritual can never apprehend the spiritual. So the only way you can comprehend your new nature and size, is via God's System. And even then, it takes some years of daily eating Bible under your right pastor, before there are ENOUGH SPIRITUAL CONNECTIONS made by the Holy Spirit so you can 'see the picture', spiritually. Meanwhile, you really are this gigantic person of enormous potential: Eph4:13, "fullness.. of Christ". It's not a joke. Take it seriously. So: you have this enormous Potential Rank of King. You are already your own priest, and can pray anything to God in Christ's Name. So: rank has its privileges, and its responsibilities. God can kill with a thought. By His Design, so can you. Better learn how to think, huh. Since you lost your brains at salvation and instead get God's Power and Attributes: get Christ's Brains to go with that power and responsibility.. or you are one dangerous, loose cannon! Cannonfodder, absent Canon-Feeder, Eph3:16!
Dunno about you, but I absolutely detest small stuff. Big stuff is fine: if I got cancer tomorrow, the only thing about it that would bother me was all those stupid hospital visits, filling out forms, etc. I could care less about the disease itself: it's the annoyance the disease produces, not the disease itself or the prospect of dying, that bothers me. It's the little stuff which makes me need 1Jn1:9 constantly. Little stuff is, why are you here wasting my time?! So I'm heartily glad to claim and name that DDNA is being made out of all that nonsense (especially governmental garbage, politics, petty junk people spread on others everywhere). I need to learn this lesson better, but boy oh boy -- what a relief, to know God is turning it all into DDNA! Hits, like sin! So hits me, so God has to see it all (everywhere, not just here), so doggone it, "Light, Be!" conversion like Gen1 -- DDNA, Be! out from all things!
Again, capacities determine relationships, and everything is RELATIVE TO those capacities and relationships. But you SET what those capacities ARE, because you are a Royal Priest to God. Your Choice, His Power, Eph3:16.
A whole lot of Christians are using their priesthoods to curse their home nations. Being priests, what they say, GOES. The world rejects God, and we are in the world, so what WE do, how WE grow, determines history. Part IV of the Thinking series (link at pagetop) proves that in excruciating, shocking detail. So if you don't have the Word in you, you can't BE competent at using your priesthood, so you are like a child with a machine gun, thinking it's a toy. Big mistake. LordvSatan3.htm (Part III of the Thinking series) explains more about what your priesthood means. It's pretty important to know who you really are, now that you've believed in Christ.
One of the many neglected doctrines in Christendom is what my pastor terms, "the Mediatorship of Christ". This doctrine is, like all doctrines my pastor teaches, upgraded every time he teaches it, which is often. Book of Hebrews is all about the EFFECT of Him becoming God-Man, and paying on the Cross. The type of Priesthood He inherited due to defeating Satan (Cross was also a conclusive Trial defeat of Satan&Co.), was BASED ON Him being Both God and Man. A mediator must be equal with BOTH parties in the mediation, or it won't hold. So as God, He's equal to God. As Man, He's equal to man. So is Qualified thus to be a King-Priest kata (of the order of) Melchizedek. Hebrews 5-10 explains what that means for us, since we are Royal Priests Under Him. Priesthood is in essence, mediation. Someone lower than you needs something from someone higher than you with whom you are well-connected, so your petition or involvement is sought. Well, for the higher one to listen to you, something CONNECTING the two of you must warrant that hearing. Such as, a wife to her husband. Such as, Church to Christ. Such as, Church to Father of the Husband to Whom Church is married, Eph5. So, see? We Are Designed to be equals, for nothing less, is good enough for God! So if we don't learn to think as befits our "high station" (tes anw klesews, phrase in Phili3:14), then our actions can't be recognized. For Rank has its Role, and if it doesn't play that role, it can't be Recognized. "Protocol Plan of God..due order and precedence, coupled with precisely correct procedure." (Quote from my pastor.)
So now you know why you are getting God's Attributes at such a high level, higher than all other believer groups. [Even the OT and Trib+Millenial people got God's Righteousness at salvation, but they don't get the level of Truth deposits we can have, so they are lower. It's a permanent difference. We have different human spirits -- made like Christ's Own -- so we need more Truth to function, as well. Odd thing about being bigger than another person, is that you need more of everything, just to be 'even'. If people knew that about wealth, they'd never be jealous of what others have.] So, you are literally being lifted up. You are in Hypostatic Union with the Hupostasis (term for Christ's Dual nature, in Heb1:3 or 4, and 11:1). Hence where Christ went DOWN to become Human, you are growing UP to God's Level, by agency of God (Holy Spirit) Himself, Eph3:16 again. Now you know why.
So clearly, God isn't into demeaning. God is into lifting up: if you look at the italicised words in Isa53trans.htm, you'll see Isaiah constantly employs a lifting up theme from Isa52:13-54:1. So God lifted Christ up on the Cross, so we could be lifted higher than even the angels. That was done to give them something HIGHER to enjoy, than they already had. When you look UP in life, you enjoy it more. Love is a type of Looking UP. Hatred, the archetype of looking DOWN. So if in your thinking you are looking UP, you enjoy your life more. If in your thinking you are looking DOWN (i.e., as most of the world looks), then you will enjoy your life progressively less, until at the end you are just a vibrating lump of reaction, upset by every little thing. By contrast, looking UP makes you become a Calm and Happy person, even when suffering. At that point, everything you see is ipse the reason to love it. Nothing can argue or stand against such Love: end Romans 8, Eph6.
And you know this already, for tell me: it is more enjoyable to fix up your house as a chore no one else enjoys; or, to fix it up for a party? It's innately more enjoyable to do something for someone else, than for self.. IF you love that Someone Else. Doesn't mean the activity will feel good. True love isn't a feeling, anyway, but a FOCUS. Different "f", and if you don't get the Word you'll flunk by thinking love a feeling.
And nothing is worse, than to be cut off from Someone you love. Well, here's the problem: people who don't believe in Him, cut themselves OFF. People who DO believe in Him for salvation, usually still cut off learning more about Him. So they are stuck with themselves, living down here, trying to make it make them happy. It never works, sheesh. So who will MEDIATE for them? Who will GET this Thinking Built so they can have more than themselves, to live for? Father must be paid DDNA dividends, right? Father got paid by Christ, but hey -- we're still here. And all those people who cut off from Him -- where's the dividend production? God must stand off from them, for they reject Him. So no DDNA is going in them. So what do we do with ourselves? Live for ourselves? Heck no! Paul says in 2Cor5. And by living for HIM, we are happier. By living for HIM, that propitiates for the temporary time granted so that others who are stuck living for themselves, can get OUT of that rut, by 'finding' Him. See? You're learning and living is a Priestly role, a Kingly Role. First, for Father. And second, for them.
For God would have you live to fix up the 'house' of your soul, preparing for the never-ending party that He intends your kingdom, to forever celebrate -- FOR His Son. That's what the Lord is talking about, in John 14:2. It's a Royal House of THINKING (analogous to 'bloodline', since thought=blood, in Bible), in which there will be RANKS. A place for everyone. Under you as one of the Priest-Kings. All of these Priest-Kings, under THE King of Kings, the High Priest-King, the Christ (main theme, Book of Hebrews). So that everyone, however much they rejected Christ down here but yet once had believed in Him, can 'find' a way to look UP and be happy. Forever.
Again, this is the Isa53:11 Contract, For You To Be Made High For God, For Christ. So it's sheer arrogance to roll the eyes and declaim how one doesn't want to be 'high'. God Wants Only High, Since He Is High. No one likes incompatibility. To be compatible with God, Requires You Be Made High. And so you cheat Him (really, yourself, He'll just reroute the value to someone else, Matt25:28), by pious eyerolls and that yucky fake humility people preeningly display. It's a bizillion times more productive and harder to be rich; so those who claim some virtue in being poor, are just making excuses and calling it 'holy'. How gross. One can get away with that fake humility around stupid people, but not around God...
Practically every religion ever on the planet claims that if you follow its prescriptions, you will 'evolve' to become a god. But notice how they all focus on body stuff to 'get' you there. Some kind of 'magic' is assigned to all those rituals, food practices, chantings, etc. Like evolution, then, all these stupidities tell you that via your nature now, you can become higher than your nature now. But look: you are necessarily restricted to the capacity of what you ARE. So how are you gonna really get bigger in nature, on your own? You can't. You must be 'parented' by that Higher Nature, directly. Ok: so of what nature, are all the rituals, works, incantations on the planet? The same biological nonsense. So they cannot change you -- eating that stupid fruit didn't make man know something in the Garden, either. So all that stuff can do, is drain you of your money and energy, and make you crazy.. but not, make you into a god. A God Nature alone can do that changing.
Now you can see why the Holy Spirit has to 'parent' you. Truth is, you've no clue what Divinity really is, since it's Spiritual, thus undetectable to your human nature. So whatever you hallucinate 'using', will be at best a joke, and at worst a disaster (think of playing with a loaded pistol, the mistakes you can make). Now you can see why it's your thinking which gets transmuted, and your body is pretty much bypassed. And you can't do any of this yourself, since your new nature is undetectable, and your old nature is incompatible. So all that power, only God can run. And you consent. That's it.
Psychologists have done many studies on how suddenly a weak person can lift a car or something heavy, when trying to save someone else's life. How mental illness really changes a person's biology, such that you really don't know if the anomalies in the CAT scan, show causes of the mental problem(s), or results of the problem. Since diagnosis determines treatment, and since the treatment is antithetical if cause versus result, you can easily recommend the wrong treatment.
Complicating diagnosis is the fact that what you think can make your biology run very well: and yet the thinking is even more sick. So the problem can be easily misidentified, or.. not even seen. The real illness maybe takes awhile to show, then -- because it has this asymptomatic or nice symptomatic phase (i.e., bi-polar disorder). So it's not true that bad thinking will simply make you look like the Wicked Witch of the West. Maybe, you'll be that Witch, but look like Good Queen Bess. So looks and feelings are deceiving. The real illness, is nonetheless infecting you, just like cancer does -- only in the end-stage, do you see the illness for what it is. Satan's cancer of thinking doesn't make him look bad. So bad thinking, is (frankly) usually attractive, not unattractive. Strong, not weak. So you think you don't need it fixed. That's what the sin-in-Adam results, basically are. And since all of us are infected with this crazy wiring, we think ourselves 'normal', even 'good'.
But it's the need to be good, which is the hallmark symptom of spiritual death. Because, you don't need something you already have. So you don't need to be something, you already are. So the incessant drive to BE good, to GET good, to GET MORE are all proof positive that We Are Spiritually Dead To God; even as believers, who are in fact spiritually alive ("born again" in John 3), this spiritual death's residual effect remains in our very DNA. So the needs keep on going, like the Energizer Bunny.
Psychology has identified (usually 8) "defense mechanisms", which are used by volition to pretend a lie is the truth; the truth perceived is too uncomfortable to face, so it is 'cooked' by the "defense mechanisms", into a palatable 'truth' the conscious mind can volitionally accept. To do this, the 'actual' information is deep-sixed into the subconsious mind. So the problem with defense mechanisms, is that they don't solve the problem, they only bury the problem. So, it's garbage, in your subconscious. So the truth rejected (and sometimes you're rejecting a lie but thinking it true), keeps bleeping the conscious mind. Have enough of these rejections dumped into your subconscious, and your conscious mind will have tons of problems: lack of sleep, poor appetite, obsessiveness, etc.
And all of them, manifest as NEEDS. Because, You Were Originally Designed To Function On Truth; due to Adam's sin plus your own, you've rejected (what you consider) truth; so the need to face truth, goes unmet. It's a type of starvation, so has all the symptoms of starvation: obsessiveness, imaginations, prickliness, etc. So it is, with spiritual death: the first truth is, the uppermost truth is, We Need God; but Adam believed the lie that God was bad (and he rationalized that he'd share his wife's fate, to demonstrate love for her); so that lie believed, resides in us. Hence we fancy ourselves good, to hide the lie believed. So, the need for God, remains; which manifests in the Need To Be Good, To Cover It Up. But think: if it were true that we were good, we'd not need to tell ourselves how good we are; for, we'd not need to be good anymore. That's why it's so easy to disbelieve God. See how sick our minds truly are?
By far, the most common objection to the Gospel is variantly phrased, But I'm a good person. That's the defense mechanism called "denial", speaking. Good must cover up God, so like Adam, one can fantasize not needing God. So one can fantasize one's own good, is enough. So every time you hear an objection like that, you're hearing Adam speak at the very moment of his fall, through the mouth of the person you hear. Gen3 plays live, every day. LordvSatan2.htm's "In the beginning of Man" link/section explains the psychology of the Fall in much more detail.
So here's your soul: at any moment, some of the information you consider true is not true, or not true in quite the way you think it is. So think of your soul as a kind of puzzle, where some of the pieces are either missing, or misjoined to other pieces. More particularly, think of DNA, which is a whole Twisted Ladder Of Joined Puzzle Pieces, 98% of which is just fluff, but 2% of which is an Entire Instruction Manual For All Your Biological Life (98% maybe-junk DNA, 2% actual genetic instruction, per Encarta's "Genetics" article Sec.IIIC1). If ONE instruction inside that 2% was even a little mismatched or misused, you would get very sick, die, or mutate. Same is true for your soul. Which is why we need salvation, because "real spiritual death" means we have NO connection with God, hence ALL our soul connections, are jammed together. Like fused and broken wiring.
You have to choose to learn Bible, to get this DDNA process to occur, and whatever you choose to believe that really IS the Truth, God uses. Else, you're programming yet more or different lies into your own soul, if you believe them. That's okay: God can fix that, too. For we all learn imperfectly. But only the TRUTH portions of what we learn and believe, God uses for spiritual re-engineering. And as John repeats incessantly, He won't re-engineer anything, no matter how much you want Him to do so, if you are "off/out-of-bounds from the playing field" (proagw, verb in 2Jn9) -- outside of God's System. For we are finite, so need a system which only GOD runs, to be developed by God. It's spiritual DDNA surgery, Heb4:12, to be schooled in the Word. Which obviously means PRECISION.
So Bible is DDNA, God's Thinking, which then joins to your own soul 'DNA', so to speak, and works on it the way RNA works on DNA. So, you CONSENT to God doing that, by being born again, and then after that, using 1Jn1:9 and learning Bible in God's System. God won't fix what's wrong in your soul absent your consent, ever. Doesn't mean you know what He's fixing. Technically, whatever Bible you learn and believe, is a consent to that truth. It will bond, then, with what you know already, and eventually what you know already will CONFLICT with the Bible in some way. At which point, you make a decision pro- or con- the Bible information you believe. At which point, a DDNA replication (or malignant DNA replication, if you're not in God's System), occurs. Repeating, thousands of times a day in your head, with each thought you think. Over the years, your thinking thus "transforms" (transmutes, sumorphologew, Greek word in Rom12:2) into a reflection of God's Own, if you are in His System. That's why we get a Bible: to transform our thinking to become like His (ibid, see Rom121-3.htm for a corrected translation).
Like, as in LIKENESS, REFLECTION, CHILD. Not 'like' as in 'approximation', 'semblance'. God won't settle for less than His Son, and doesn't HAVE to. He could bing us all right now and get that. But He prefers, consent. His Sovereign Choice. So our choice. It's not a joke, but no one takes Him seriously, in Gal3:26 and John 10:34.
Belief in Christ makes you spiritually alive (John 3:16, Titus 3:5, etc). That means all your soul wiring can be fixed, so that you can be a whole person as God intended. More importantly, it means God can make you THINK the way He does. And the process for such "epistemological rehabilitation", as my pastor likes to call it, is to learn Bible in God's System. Line by line. Each line, a little bit is learned. Each precept, a little more. All these discrete learnings get KNITTED TOGETHER in you by the Holy Spirit. As these learnings grow (same process as how DNA replicates), they begin to impinge on all the soul garbage you still have. So then you feel a battle going on. You decide for the doctrinal answer as you then know it, or you reject it, in favor of some substitute. If the substitute, you've sinned; so, you breathe 1Jn1:9, which puts you back in the Divine Replicating Mode again. [Nerd Note: Satan&Co. really don't want anyone learning Bible in God's System, so don't ASSume that soul garbage in you is the sole cause of the conflict you feel; they might be urging guilt or wallowing in your past, so you will forget to just name 'whatever', and move on. Just treat the conflict impersonally. Doesn't matter if you are the source of the garbage or whether it's being thrown at you. Just learn to notice it, breathe 1Jn1:9 whenever you're in doubt, and keep choosing Bible as you know it so far. You don't need to wallow in self-diagnosis: that's a sure road to mental illness. Your body cannot hold Bible doctrine, it's a dead battery. So it constantly bleeps you with temptation. That's a given, a normal thing. Good news is, you get the opportunity to practice as the Lord did, in Matt4:4. THAT is victory. Just keep practicing firing Bible at the temptation. It's spiritual racquetball/NASCAR/name-your-favorite sport. Which you'll come to enjoy, as you become proficient in practice. Takes time, as anything worthwhile, always does.]
This DDNA process happens 24/7, ideally. You learn stuff in class, then think it over and try to use it throughout the rest of your day, using 1Jn1:9 as needed. For all life is Bible class. After some years, your thinking has gradually changed to be more like His. After some more years, your thinking has become a lot more like His. Bible likens this process to pregnancy, birth, childhood, and adulthood in myriads of ways. In 1Jn, then, John calls "children", those whose DDNA is relatively 'young' (basic, and little in quantity); "young men", those whose DDNA are starting to knit together as a lifestyle, having "overcome" the thinking-lifestyle of this world; "fathers", those who know Christ. For when DDNA is fully built in you, you 'see' Him via Bible you live on, 24/7. My pastor's term for this is "Occupation with Christ". You see Him you live on His Thinking, and you are aware of Him 24/7. Nothing else matters. Yes, you still sin. But your view is altogether different, from when you were back in spiritual childhood.
Notice a few things about this DDNA process:
Notice also how it is all an internal change, so it's NOT necessary to go crusading or 'correcting' others. Only God makes the change. So if a person is not changing, then they are refusing God. Well, if they are refusing God, they will refuse 'you'. So not only is it not necessary to go crusading or 'correcting' others, It's A Waste Of Your Time. No wonder the Lord counselled that we remove the logs in our own eyes, and leave off 'helping' our brethren to remove their 'motes' (Matt7, Luke 6)...
Now let's look at it from God's Point of View. Candles are like idols, getting all this robotic attention due to a falsehood which is patently stupid: what kind of God would I be, if I wanted people to light candles? Does no one realize that function insults "God"? So how refreshing it would be to You (pretending you're God), when this one person, finally wakes up! One less lifetime of stupid thinking about candles, to wait on. For, God will not coerce volition. And ho! This person is actually INTERESTED in You, unlike the billions who pretend interest to get something, engaging in all manner of insulting practices and rote prayers, learning Bible as if it were multiplication tables, etc. ad nauseam. But this one person just plain.. wants to know You. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles. So you lovingly respond, boy oh boy, with as much DDNA as that soul can then handle. Which in the beginning, is not much. But DDNA grows, and so does the amount transmitted, each time the person learns more Bible in God's System.
For God will never violate His Own Standard and force Himself on anyone. So how pleased is God, dya think? Rah-ther, Luke 15, all of 1Jn, widow-with-two-coppers story in Mark, and on and on and on. We like, like-mindedness. It's the basis for all rapport. We like, interested people. They don't have to be interested in us, but if they are interested, it's interestING to hear them. Well, God made all of us: from which source does your soul come? And if from God, you are like Him, structurally. So then what you like, He likes more (excepting sin, of course). So if you don't like boring, why treat God in a boring way? If you don't like stupid, why use stupid religion to have a relationship? For surely, God being the smartest of anyone, doesn't like boring and stupid.
So it must be INTERESTING to LEARN God. Who would by definition, be the Most Enjoyable Person to Know. And you've got this Great Book To Learn, which is all about Him! So, you can become like Him in your chosen thinking, too. One line of Bible Doctrine, at a time. One DDNA strand, at a time. 24/7, replicating like rabbits, if you want!
Back when I was in college, I first knowingly believed in Christ. (My mother had evangelized me when I was very young, but I didn't know that.) It was a pretty traumatic experience. But within a few months of running after all the wrong ideas of spirituality (from those dippy headless Bible classes to speaking in tongues), I realized during Italian class that I just needed to learn Bible. So I turned over my Italian book (you can tell I was bored in class), and wrote on the page edges, "Te Desidero Imparare", meaning I want to learn You. DDNA began for me then. It was a precious moment He still remembers, and always will.
Surely you have a parallel story. Think about it now, so You Can See How DDNA Has Been Working In Your Life, Even Until Now. That trip down memory lane will do more to explain the hands-on effect of DDNA, than a million more words from me.
So notice: gradually, easily, refreshingly, your 'body' of thinking changes into His Body of Thinking as you grow in God's System. You Learn to Love God that way. Because you Come To Know God that way, Eph3:15-21 via Eph4:11-16. Can't love someone you don't know, says 1Jn repeatedly. So learn Him, and you learn to love Him, because what you learn about Him, IS Love=Truth=Righteousness=Omniscience=Justice=Bible. In your own head, LIVING. You are never alone!
Getting this Word, this DDNA in you, also happens to be the Only Holy Thing You Can Do. The Body of a King, is Church. So requires the Riches of a King, His Thinking. Again: Capacities determine relationships, and everything is RELATIVE TO those capacities and relationships. So Royal Capacity for Royal Bride Relationship is required, and everything is relative to that. So to the Royal, go much wealth and much responsibility: "to whom much is given, much is expected." Not peasant thinking, but Royal thinking.
Children think like this. Children see pretty clothes and think that's being important, happy, 'good'. Tabloids count on childish thinking. Religions do, too. But those "rich and famous" don't think at ALL the same way. They have other stuff on their minds. The Royal learning Him is thinking about HIM, not about how good the self is. Kings don't think about themselves, but about their jobs. The wealth is there to free them to think about their jobs. But those viewing the kings, think the kings have the same childish mindset; so they imagine the kings are busy frittering away the money just as a child would do. Not at all: wealth which isn't invested, doesn't stay wealth for long. For the Body of a King really does require the Riches of a King.. due to Love. Love for the kingdom. The children of which, the King lives to serve. Lack of wealth is a burden. Having wealth, is a bigger burden, since the children are children in their understanding: the King would have them grow UP and grow HAPPY. Hence the deft expression, "heavy is the head who wears a crown."
This is a very long section. Here are its main subsections, in order; they function as an outline. Click on one of the items, to go back and forth between the subsections: for the content interweaves, and is sometimes confusing.
The more DDNA in you, the bigger your soul. The bigger your soul, the more capacity it has for everything. So you become King-sized, fit for THE King in eternity: so, fit to INHERIT a kingdom for eternity. Funny thing about being wealthy, or being a king: the more you own, the more what you own, owns you. You are not your own. And you are not your own, because by the time your soul is King-Sized, it's the KING you live for. Not for yourself. In a word, you have come to LOVE Him.
That's why people don't give a flip about content: be it the content of a person, the content of a book, the content of a job. They only care about their own opinions and comforts, so that person or book or job had better serve them.. or they are disinterested. That's why conversations are so typically banal and narrow; absorption of content is not desired. You can prove this pervasive fact quickly: interest in the Bible is slipshod, sloppy, narrow, lukewarm, and vile. Every century. The mistranslations of Bible show this up starkly. So if people have such a calloused attitude toward GOD, being so DISinterested in the content of Him, well.. they will be just as vilely disinterested in everything else. And not mean to be; and not know they are so vile. Welcome to the reality of Genesis 3.
For "original sin" was rejection of God in the name of love. Adam rejected God in the name of his wife, evidenced by the fact he took the fruit from her. So altruism is a rejection of God in God's Name, nicely hiding the true origin of sin. It's in the DNA, and that rejection reflex thus gets in the soul the first second a baby sins. From there, the mutated instruction set of rejection multiplies, dividing the human race. All in the name of altruism, mind you. For truest evil, is near-white in color, not black.
So Genesis 3 rejection of God, is the reason why everyone is so unhappy and unloving. Look: first thing Adam did when queried by the Lord after he'd sinned, was to accuse God and then his wife. Of course, the first thing she had done was to accuse the serpent (which God had made, and the serpent wasn't even to blame, it was just an animal). So she was lying -- she knew Satan used the serpent as a screen, he wasn't coy about it. So Adam was lying, too. So much for any love for God or love between them. This is our inheritance in Adam, and it shows. Thanks be to God, we have a new inheritance in Christ to replace all that tainted, no-love DNA in our souls, theme of Romans 5!
Hence LOVE Capacities determine RICHES relationships, and everything is RELATIVE TO those capacities and relationships. Love is a focus ON the love object. But the Integrity of Love depends on the other attributes of the subject. Since God by nature is Infinite, He is therefore Undivided in His Attributes: you can't 'separate' His Attributes. So His Love is characterized by ALL His other Attributes, which is why you can't change God's Love by who you are or what you do. By contrast, everything about finity depends on division, even DNA itself. Finity must be modular, cellular, to continue living. So man's attributes are necessarily divided, in order for man to keep on living. That's the heart of the problem in the infinity-finity dichotomy between God and man. So to get DDNA in you is a True Transmutation in Truth, which means in Love. For Love isn't really love, if it's divided, apart from virtue.
Thus man can change his mind and go positive to God. The body disintegration is incurable, but it is treatable, such that many positive decisions slow the body's deterioration (well, unless certain genetic mutations or injuries are too severe). You make yourself sick by what you think, as we saw in the previous section. But you also become more soul-healthy by what you think, and the body is often positively impacted as a result. The most important health, is health with GOD. There's really no other reason to want to live, else. We all die. So to live for this dirtball's preoccupations down here, is to cheat yourself. You can live for GOD, instead.
So the trick is, to get God's Truth in you, which produces God's Love in you. That Love thus TRANSCENDS your finite, divisive capacities, to MERGE, FUSE into a compatible capacity -- compatible with Him. Of course, for this transmutation to occur, you have to keep on choosing to know God, choosing to live in His System, wanting the Truth. It has to become more precious to you, than everything else. With God, it's all or nothing, by nature. So that change in the nature of valuing -- to Him, and away from all the divisive things which occupy our minds -- must occur. And when it does, line by line, you grow in a King's LOVE.
This growth will drive your soul crazy. Love is not native to man since Genesis 3. Instead, rejection is native to man. So when he nonetheless starts to love -- remnant of pre-Fall capacity, since sin is everywhere incompetent -- his sin nature must rebel the more, subtheme in Romans 7. Even between humans, any incipient love disorients the one who has it. So how much more, when Divine Love is growing in you? As Paul explains, the old 'husband', is rejection. The new 'husband', is the One Who Accepted Sin on the Cross. Sin can't take pardon, so it keeps on wooing the soul to regain its old tyrannical role. Paul records the inner battles, well.
Hence Matt4:4 is how you fight those battles. Word in you, the surgeon-soldier's knife, Heb4:12. Which you won't do, if you aren't learning to love the Word you're getting. Which you will do, if as you Learn that Word, you turn it over in your head in God's System, to better understand God Himself. That's where Christians divide, frankly. Many are big Bible thumpers, but they wouldn't know the Word if it bit them. They only want to thump Bible, not think Bible. Others fancy themselves thinkers, spouting verses and Greek-geek stuff, etc. But they don't turn over what the verses (etc.) mean, so they don't take the next step and learn about GOD HIMSELF. Instead, they use the Bible like a weapon to buttress ego, bludgeoning themselves and others, with it. That's not proper surgery. So, we're scarring ourselves and everyone else.
But a few nonetheless discover a love for God Himself. When that happens, they gradually forget about the "me" thing, because they become progressively engrossed in the HE thing. They go nuts, too, as Paul describes in Rom7. But if they persist in wanting to know God, the perpetual warring of the sin nature is met more and more by Matt4:4 'replies', and one grows in Love all the way up to the Eph3:19, 4:13 standard of Pleroma. At which point, one Loves the King, LIKE the King. No greater wealth, than to know the King. Hence the need for a body (kingdom) and Riches, to express that Love.
"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also", Matt 6:21, Luke12:34. "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His Ways beyond tracing out!" Romans 11:33. God's Heart, God's Love is beyond our radar screen, our comprehension, our accounting. So His Riches are, too. His Riches are His Love: as you'll hopefully see, in this subsection. Satan and all religion of any stripe would have you think God is the god of poverty. You know the gambit: if they scream on behalf of the poor, they are the holy ones and you are to feel guilty. But "My Ways are not your ways", He says in Isa55. Yeah, The Way to God is a PERSON, not a religion. That's why early Christianity was called, "The Way" after the famous phrase, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life". That Person is Seated, Now. So where should our heart be?
Sampling from what you can find on the web, airwaves, and church visits, 9999 out of every 10000 sermons aren't occupied with Christ. They are, however, rather occupied with human behavior, money-begging, nice emotional phrases, fire, brimstone, and thump thumps. "Christ" or "God" is spoken every once in awhile, to make it all sound 'holy'. Kinda like the talk on the floor of Congress. No love in all that, just ego rego. And if ego rego, then Pneuma nego. But the production of the Spirit is Love, Gal5:22. So no Spirit in all that. Just a lotta hot air, ballooning everyone up, to be tossed by each nosy, passing wind. [Eph4:14's Greek uses a sea-tossed analogy. It's exegeted in RightPT.htm, since you can't find a proper translation in English.]
As the Lord warned, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Bible keyterm "heart" always means thinking, with emphasis on what you believe in, and hence love. Your soul 'pumps' thought, but the kind of pumped thought you want, is where you 'put' your 'heart'. So if your 'heart' is on blaming people, on acquiring things, on promoting self, on buttressing ego, well.. that's the treasure you value. Again, beware of what gets your love, for it will lead you by the nose, everywhere you go. [Read Matt 6:21, 12:35, Luke 6:45-6 in the context of the surrounding verses. Then, if you have trouble understanding how Bible designates "heart" as the Believing-In Part Of The Soul, look up all OT "heart" and "blood" verses and their related concepts (i.e., 'longing' for the Lord by David and Hezekiah). It's not emotion, and sheesh -- there's no such thing as a "head vs. heart belief". Why don't we ever do our homework in Bible? Cuz we don't love it. So, we don't love Him, however mushy our endless songs.]
Childhood has a lot of warm fuzzies. It's a time of innocence, and for many it's the only time they were ever happy. So it's very hard to let go of falsehoods you didn't then know were falsehoods, because you grew to love them. So when the floodgates come crashing down on some cherished idea and you see its feet of clay -- especially, with respect to religion -- God gets blamed, people get blamed, and oh how hurt you are. At that moment, you are loving hate. And it will lead you by the nose.
People spend an awful lot of time and money trying to make themselves feel good about themselves. They do good deeds and say to themselves, "I did something good", kinda like Adam thought when sewing the figleaves. Years and years and tears and tears of striving and paying build up a sense of 'treasure' in what you spent all that money and time on. So to see it all go up in flames, is a grief beyond bearing. All that devastation from the tsunamis, hurricanes, floods: whole lifetimes wiped out in a few minutes. One doesn't recover well, if at all, from such disaster. Never again is it easy to just go back to the same ol' ideas -- for you know you just got mocked. So you become more hardened, and the martyr complex accelerates; or you become lala goofy; or, somewhere in between. But you are never the same. The trust you had, got broken.
Sometimes the feet of clay need to be seen, or a thing needs to break, to free you from your nose-ring, hooked on a way which is not His Way.
So God's HEAD Attribute, which at 'heart' is Love, Decreed that every verse in the Bible be about His Son's Heart-Making DDNA, instead of heart-breaking, religion: all to build and answer, Eph3:15-19, with focus on the ingressive aorist of ginoskw, "and to come to know the Love of/for Christ", in v.19. For Divine Love is Something you Learn. And it changes you. That's DDNA, baby. Coming from Wholly-Matrimonial Divine Love, God in you, answer to His John 17 prayer. So the Real Holy Matrimony, First Commandment, you in Him. Lived and Loved, 24/7, 1Jn4:19. Communion, never divorce!
For God's Love is a STASIS. To say "God Loves you" is even more meaningful, because it means there is NO compromise in His Love. So you can't earn it, and you can't lose it, either.
It would take maybe 100 years just to list the Bible-verse ties (i.e., tieing keyword in verse, key concept)!!
For, God isn't into magic. Relationships based on magic cause the magic, not the relationship, to be the 'god'. That's what distinguishes Bible from all other 'holy' books and prescriptives for 'improvement' or 'happiness'. Evaluate any other claim, and you'll find it's based on some magical idea which has no counterpart in reality. For the reality truly is, if you base a relationship on magic, then you have no real relationship: the magic, interferes. For the magical idea itself always disappoints, since there's no such thing AS magic. There's no magic product, magic promotion, magic job, magic house, magic spouse which will make you live happily even for five minutes, let alone, "happily ever after". Fairy tales are for children, not adults. So sooner or later even the search for such magic, will disappoint.
God is into Truth. Truth isn't magic. Truth can be learned. God's Truth is God's Level, so only God can teach it. So, He taught it to the writers of Bible, and then they wrote it. Because, the Word is God's, but it's not magic, it's Reality. So His Teaching it, is not magic. Your learning it IS supernatural, because The SuperNature Holy Spirit is your Teacher. But that's not magic. It rather, is a kind of discipline: line on line, precept on precept, DDNA on DDNA. Hence Bible never disappoints, because it isn't magic, so enhances all relationships, even creating them. Love isn't magic, then; it's not some gushy feeling which you can also get from a nice, romantic dinner, for crying out loud. True love is a constant, not an emotion; because Truth Builds Love (hence it becomes True Love, not a fantasy); so True Love, never interferes. Fealty is based on Truth.
This Love, therefore, is completely alien to the human race. Yet to have Rapport with God, we must come to have the love OF God, and FOR God. That is why Christ died on the Cross: to build this Love in us, forever -- one Word Deposit at a time!
So, 1John uses Paul's 1Cor metaphor of Bible Doctrine in your head as Love, since John is writing about 30+ years later: because "Love" is being completed with John's writings; and because "Love" is the First Commandment. For all love is based on knowledge, and all Divine Life And Love Comes Through Knowledge, Hosea 4:6 (book's theme). God's life and love, John 3:16. Hence you have life and can know Him. The circle of love, Rom5:5, is the circle of life, the Word; without Word=Love, there is no point in living, 1Cor13. Love is something you Learn, by learning Him (ibid). So 1Jn is on how things have come full circle (playing on Eph1), and hence Completing. For he knew he was the last author of Canon. (See how he plays with all that, in 1Jn2's incredible Greek.)
Practically every verse in 1Jn is a socratic equation, allowing the reader to substitute a protasis in one verse with a protasis in another verse, to learn more. Likewise, with the apodoses. So he's reasoning out for his audience, how "abide" in John 15 means Think Word, and thus is truly Love, truly spiritual. To do this, he crafts the equations in many facets, so they can see a) that they ARE abiding and hence Loving, and b) that they have a victorious Trial witness versus all the deserters-to-religion between 70AD (when the spectacular gifts largely ceased) and the 90's AD, when he's writing. So he also writes in a series of LISTS: each item is the first item on a LIST that the audience well knew. That's a Greek (and Judaic) technique all the writers use (see Heb 6:6's "repentance" in the context of Heb6:1's "repentance" for a quickie example). Saves time to just mention the first item in a list. [Sigh: Heb6:1 should say "repentance..dead works"; if your translation says something else, it's no good. Dead works is a major theme in the Book of Hebrews, and should have been picked up everywhere it appears in that epistle.]
Practice going through 1 John even in your favorite translation. List all the positive protases on the left, and all the positive apodoses on the right. Then notice how you can link up any apodosis on the right, with any protasis on the left. Then repeat the same exercise with the negative protases and apodoses.
You'll also notice another thing: the listing is PROGRESSIVE, and the protases ADVANCE as the letter goes forward.
As 1Jn deftly explains, historically everything "now" (=Church, its timeslot) is come full circle; because with Canon's completion, Church the Bride can complete IN the First Commandment. The wedding is on, fulfilling the purpose of that Garden wedding, "from the beginning"! So John is also showing his audience WHY everything comes full circle by means of all those FIRSTS in his socratic equations. Very deft. Very unlike modern writing, so 1Jn is routinely mistranslated and misinterpreted. Try reading the whole epistle aloud, and change all present-tense verbs to the English PROGRESSIVE tense, see what a difference it makes in comprehension.
Now you can begin to understand how Genesis 6 demon invasion, was no surprise visit to the human race. Civil war IN the human race, was going on: notice Lamech's pride over murdering a defenseless man and his son, calling it an avenging of Cain. So the demons didn't hide themselves: after all, Eve knew she was talking to Satan, so 'hiding' was never needed. So Greek mythology isn't quite so farfetched: the sons of the parent gods (Trinity, really) rebelled, and carry on their rebellion into man, playing out upon him. [Seduction of Isha was mental, not physical, as the Hebrew of her admittance to God, shows. Satan is an ascetic, anyway, and physical seduction doesn't appeal to him. Mental seduction does appeal, since he hates God. Your other big clue is that he used a cute pet of hers rather than show himself bodily to her: had he done that, her volition would have been overwhelmed, and she could be rightly said to not be guilty. Moreover, he had to appeal to her ego, so showing himself as superior wasn't politic: he would argue that God's Own Superiority is an ego trip against her, which is why God prohibited Satan's tree. So he only 'hid' his appearance from her.]
So now you know why 1Jn is so focused on religious sin&evil, and why he uses the example of Cain, in 1Jn3. Religious people won't see that strident message in 1Jn: you have to think over the letter as you read it, and be breathing 1Jn1:9. Religion is darkness, so religious people can't read anything. More technically, they are blinded by the 'brightness' of their own altruism and self-sacrifice, so they think themselves in the light (subtheme in 1Jn); hence they can't read, process, or hear truth (another subtheme). That's why they are so prickly about works, and can even justify murder, just as Cain did (another subtheme). That's why John focuses on warning against such people, throughout his epistles (and Gospel): Satan invented religion, in Gen3.
So now Church Is Bride, Body of Christ. So that means our fusion level is the same as His, in aggregate. So the failure in the Garden, is Reversed And Catapulted Into A Greater Bonding Than Adam And The Woman Had. [My pastor has taught this for years, even wrote a hymn about it. I can't tell who else recognizes this reversal purpose, but it's patent in 1Jn. Not coy at all. Deftly written "from the beginning" tips you off, which is a catchphrase the Lord used often, and is an OT catchphrase. It always has end-purpose and birthing significance. See how Paul uses it in Eph1, for John in 1Jn is playing off that, too.] On an even higher level (next section), this bonding between Christ and Church also will serve to catapult the bond between God and the angels -- which was always designed to benefit them more (subtheme in Heb1-2). So in the Millenium and in eternity, Church has many wifely roles, to effect a higher Synergy of Love than would otherwise obtain. So down here, we are to be training in that role by Learning Our Husband (theme of Rom5-8, most of Ephesians and Peter). To know Him is to love Him. On a Divine Marital Level, not just any ol' love!
So God LEVERAGES sin into GREATER LOVE: see last half of Rom5. That's how He thinks. That's our potential, rejectible, Destiny, to think like He does!
Oh, Holy Matrimonial Wit! Look: Christ is the Last Adam, so we as Last Wife (lol!), have to FIRST be His Kids!
That's why practically every Originator/parenting/caregiving keyword in Bible is also thesauretically used as a moniker for Christ: Righteous One, That One, Righteousness, Just One, justice, sirer, author, hope, love, riches, faith, salvation, clothing, food, shelter, husband-head, glory. For, even as the wife is the glory of the Husband, the Husband is the glory of the wife: "Christ in you, the confident expectation of Glory". Glory indwells you, Glory is your thinking now, so glory is your life (1Pet1:8 in context). And it's a glory, isn't it, that everything reflects Him so much, that everything is thus a moniker for Him?
So, the same Isa53:11 process occurs spiritually, in us; since after all, the GENNAW, siring, parenting, is spiritual! So you are to STAY AT HOME ("abide", "remain", "rest" are some English translations of Greek verb menw), and obey (hupomenw, to stay under): that's a wifely faithfulness, so.. heh.. staying in the Word, makes you become spiritually pregnant (Pleroma, see Eph3:15-19), your body life being like a 'womb'; thus those to be assigned to your kingdom in eternity, are seminally in you. To honor the Father, to fulfill Son's John 17 prayer. How rich a metaphor: Christ was pregnant on the Cross with sin; we are thus pregnant with Him in our bodies in this life, if we keep on keeping on, Phili3:14. What a great and dramatic life, ennobling even the brushing of teeth!
So John uses gennaw, "to sire" in fabulous wordplay, which you miss in English because English Bibles mistranslate the term, "to be born". So "sired by God" or "parented by God" is far more accurate than "born of God"; even the English connotation of "sired" or "parented" has its double-entendre meant in Greek and in Hebraic thought:
1John 3:6 isn't ever translated well in English. Trans should be corrected to go something like this: whoever is in fellowship with Him, is not sinning; whoever is sinning, is neither seeing nor knowing Him. You can substitute "in fellowship" with "abiding", if you prefer.
That's the point John keeps stressing in 1Jn. Christ stressed it in John 14-17, so convert verbs into the progressive tense there as well. [Nerd note: the gennaw participle is usually in the perfect passive, because it precedes your ability to be spiritual; hence you have to translate it in the progressive tense, to know in English what generative state you are in, which 'houses' the action of the main verb.]
Here's how you know it's progressive: first, look at Gal5:25, which is about 'walking' (a Hebraism for spiritual lifestyle); that verb is in the hortatory subjunctive, to encourage you to keep going back to doing it. So it's a dynamic. Next, its sister verse, Eph3:16 (corr trans): "that He would grant you, on the basis of the Riches of His Glory, to receive strength with Power through the Personal Agency of the Spirit inside [eis=destination] the inner man [your soul]." Paul prays a progressive prayer, for a process which God continually does TO you. 1Jn explains how this process works; the Lord first described its structure and function, in what comes down to us as John 14-17.
So when you read 1Jn3:9, correct the translation to: "no one being sired by God practices sin [at the same time].. and he cannot sin [during that time] because he is being sired by God." John's explaining that so long as you are filled with the Spirit, you are not sinning. When you sin, the "siring" stops until you (1Jn1:9)name the sin to God; at which point, you are abiding in Him again, and He's siring you again. [Greek verb menw is always a dynamic location verb, so it's always an living-in-progress.]
These verses show You Cannot Stop Sinning On Your Own; You Need God's Power Sustaining You At All Times. And you keep needing Word=Love Growing In You To Receive The Strength to resist sin. But in translation, you miss all this. What a relief to know one is helpless: He Alone carries you in the spiritual life!
Hence MARITAL Love capacities determine MARITAL relationships, and everything is RELATIVE TO those capacities and relationships. No marital capacity, no marital relationship, no matter how many carats are on your wedding finger. Marriage is the most intimate of relationships, so requires the most Love. Love is not native to man, though he fancies himself a lover. Hence the divorce rate. Those not divorced, usually just stick it out. A truly happy married couple shines like a lighthouse in a storm, and is just as rare.
Moreover, a marriage based on works.. never works. Marriage can only be based on Love, never works. There were no works in the Garden. If tit-for-tat, men-are-from-mars-women-from-Venus scorecards are used by couple, a constant negotiation takes place between them, and the marriage itself is a big lie. True marriage is Eph5: the husband throws himself down for the wife, and she for him. It's not negotiated. He does it from his own free will, with no strings. She does it from her own free will with no strings. Solicitousness must come from Love; not from negotiation, however seductively promulgated.
What human can love at so high a level? Some few have tried, but the human race is finite, so divided by nature for the sake of preserving freedom; hence PRICED love is all it knows. Enter the impossible, full-circle nature of Church. So for us, unlike all other periods in history, Christian marriage is suddenly a Spiritual Trial Issue. Need Word in you to 'do' the Church Marital Standard Of Throwdown in Eph5. The Church did not exist when Christ died for it. So it was UNconditional. Only God is unconditional love. Hence, the tenor of John 14-17, and 1Jn.
Think about it: marriage is a personal bond. Something in the soul of each party so fits the other, that life alone afterwards is inconceivable. So the soul tainted by the sin nature is utterly disoriented, since the definition of 'self', now must include this other person, in order to even THINK about the self anymore. [Hence the common "my wife", rather than her name -- evidence of that deeper bond, not a putdown. Some women talk this way as well; it was much more common early in the 20th century. Honor is evidenced, too; but the deeper evidence is the "my" plus office of the other person. Merging of self-concept with the other one, going beyond mere attraction.] So all the insecurities and inanities of the soul are irritated beyond measure. Yet it's here that one ignores all that need for the other, and instead without negotiation, throws self down? Whoa. Paul had never married, so God made him the marriage expert. If you've never been married, you can really see starkly this bond in a married couple. For better or for worse, they are INFUSED with each other. God help them, if they get upset with each other or divorce. Their lives are thereafter forever shattered. They gotta numb inside or become very bitter, to go on living. Awesome to witness. Scary thing, to marry: Paul is right, in 1Cor7:32!
My pastor likes to say you grow up three times in life: the third time, is in the marriage. How apt. For history 'grows up' and completes, in Church, and Church is the Bride of Christ.
Clearly it's God Who Makes This Happen. We humans can't even handle love. Notice how in our churches, we turn 'worship' into a dull chore with many shallow rotenesses, bad choirs, sour and solemn faces; or, the converse, lalalalalalala emotionalism, rah-rah Jesus. We don't even know what 'worship' is.
By contrast, notice the wit in 1 John. YOU ARE BEING SIRED! SAME SPIRIT! Every moment you are between sins, The Holy Spirit is SIRING you in the exact same way as He did Christ Himself. So what is there to be sour about? Yeah, it doesn't feel good to the terminally-insecure sin nature, which always has to beat up on something or someone, since rejection is all it knows, legacy of Adam's sin. But You Are Being Sired By the Spirit, so take THAT, you stupid Energizer Bunny, just keep drumming, and I'll just keep on ignoring you, theme of Romans 6-8! Isn't it nice to know that the dull life you have to live, its constant menialities, are being trumped by Your Sire? Hah!!
Would really be nice if pastors could show the wit in the Word. The wordplay in the Word is so delightful and witty, nobody would ever afterwards want to do the stupid Churchinanity thing again. Who needs lalala, when you have the Lalew of the Word? Who needs the sour, dour, oh-so-solemn shallowness of a Sunday service, when you can delight yourself in the Fatness of Divine Witty Word? Bible in the original is nothing like the sour translations, sorry. Gennaw, Siring! Kids of the Christ! Then, His Bride! That is witty, you know: God sires a Bride for the God-Man He Sired the Same Way. Yet it's not incest. Yet we are brothers. Yet His Father is the same Father as Our Father. Yet it's not sex. Yet it's greater intimacy than sex. Are you getting the wit, yet?
NO BOUNDARIES between God and you. That's closer than any marriage. No body boundaries, no gender boundaries, no social boundries, no sin boundaries, no status boundaries. Which, of course, makes it harder than ever, on the soul. Soul DIVIDED away from God in Adam's sin. So divorce is its nature, while at the same time, craving oneness. Torture! So the 'game', is to overcome the divorcing sin nature, and join to Your New Husband, theme of Romans 7-8.
The Marital Capacity for GOD is what's to grow, here. Wealth of Intimacy. That means, divorcing everything else in life. Cut out, Graft in. Cut out everything else, for it's a MARITAL relationship, exclusive to Him. Then THROUGH Him, graft in all else. The cutting-out takes the better part of one's lifetime, and the grafting-in makes the exclusivity, topmost at all times. But due to Love, not due to obligation. Hard thing to learn. Can't do it, except as God grows you. Can't do it, except by living on the Word to the gradual exclusion of all else in life, Matt4:4. But when you come to Love God, no other way of living, will ever suffice. For you are being INFUSED with Your Husband, Him.
God is always about marriage, and the Angelic Divorce Trial is about marriage, so the Garden couple's Marriage was on Trial -- was God more important, or not? The irony was, in the name of marriage, Adam took that fruit from his wife, rejecting God. So we've all been divorcing HIM.. ever since. Just like Adam did, we choose people rather than God, and we call that choice, virtuous. Replacing the Real "God" of the First Commandment with "people"! Expecting God to reward us, of course. Funny how we keep cutting the head off the Commandments, paying so much attention to the 2nd through the 10th, but ignoring, the First. So we have no marital relationship with God. So we have no love for people, either: main theme of 1Jn.
For the One Who First practices the First Commandment the Most, is God Himself.
Christ loved it, Matt4:4. So in the NT, Christ-Who-Loved-Word became the Word of the Cross (ho logos tou staurou) which is a Title indicating how He paid for sins (again referencing Isa53:10-12, from context of Isa52:13ff). He loved the Word so much, it sustained His Motivation on the Cross to complete the javelin-piercing imputation and judgement of our sins! So Hebrews 12:2, called the Cross a "joy". It's not hyperbole.
As explained at length in Part IVa of the Thinking Series (link at pagetop), Israel spurned Messiah when He came, so He announced His Call for 'Esther', in Matt16:18. Church thus plays an Esther role to Rescue Israel -- specifically, rescue her TIME (math is extensive for this, see Mirroring.htm's "To be or Not to be" table). So here we are. The Lord prostrated Himself on the Cross, so we get crosses, too. Royal Marriage, Royal Role Model, Royal DDNA, Royal everything. Including, crosses. So Royal Training in Love is required: hence the Royal Mentor-King, the Holy Spirit, "without limit", John 7:39 (and elsewhere). And rejecting HIM, means Col3:25 (Greek word adikia is "wrongdoing", rejection of His Ministry, see parallel John makes in 1Jn1:9). It's not exaggerated. There never was a "people" in the First Commandment, but until there was a Person Who could Fully Execute it, no people could, either. Until "now".
So the long human history of Divorce from God, comes back TO God in marriage, via Church. At this point, we've ALL divorced Him, and Israel is cut off temporarily -- but He is Faithful, since He is Truth. So with His Truth building in us, we can become that faithful, and thus bring history full circle. Via Our King-Mentor, all things are possible, and united.
So 1Jn explains that to develop Divine Marital Love, requires Marital-level Intimate Knowledge of God; and that, takes Divine Power to produce -- parallel is Eph1:19's "surpassing greatness" (wordplay on Christ as Head). [Whenever Paul uses huperbole, he's playing on His Head in your Head, the Head Attribute of God's Word=Love. Fabulous stuff!] See, first the Groom had to be developed, for the Bride to be able to 'copy' Him. Israel was supposed to be that Bride, but she played Vashti (Part IVa of Thinking series is on this topic). So now Esther gets developed. The Husband 'bought' His Wife on the Cross. So now she learns Her Husband, prior to the Wedding. It's an old royal metaphor: in ancient times, a royal betrothal took place when both intendeds were young, and the bride was often raised in the royal house of her future husband (i.e., "Mary, Queen of Scots" had been betrothed to the future King of France, so spent her childhood there). So now we are in training to become Fit Bride for Our Royal Husband. It's a lot to learn.
You can't think about anything, much less love, what/who you didn't first LEARN. You don't know if you'd like peas, until you 'know' the taste of them. You don't know if you'd like math, until you 'know' how it works. Get the idea? Even so: you don't know if you'd like Bible, until you 'know' what it says; and you don't know what it says, outside of God's System, period. You can fantasize you know: but 1Jn is pretty strident about the fantasizers, calling them very bad names (murderers, thieves, nice epithets like those). [1Jn3:6-15, wordplay analogy on the religious crowd, same rhetorical gambit as Paul uses in Romans 1-2, and the OT uses everywhere in the prophets. Idea that these people consider themselves pure, yet are the devil's own children, so are really murderers, thieves, etc. It's a common Bible theme, very.. um, abrasive. Isa64:6 sums it all up, calling man's righteousness, menstrual rags. My pastor spent a lot of time explaining that verse, so you know I'm not making it up. You can't easily find the true translation in lexicons, but all of the BibleWorks lexicons (even Strong's abridged, what a surprise) don't euphemize. All translations do euphemize "iddim" (ayin dalet yod mem), menstrual flow, rags containing (in plural).]
Thinking depends on Learning. Love depends on Thinking. Hence the First Commandment is only realized VIA Word, main theme of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet to Samaria (aka "Israel", the Northern Kingdom), during the 40 or so years before Sennacherib levelled the place. Hosea was actually commanded by God to marry an unfaithful woman, whose meandering took her all over the place; in the end, she was sold for the price of a damaged slave, and Hosea was able to buy her back. Gomer was her name, and she represented Israel's unfaithfulness. But note how Hosea 4:6 describes it: my people perish for lack of knowledge of Me. Can't be faithful to Someone you don't know, since Love Sustains Your Motive To Be Faithful, in the first place.
1Jn (and his Gospel) stresses that Word-Love connection which Paul had earlier explained in 1Cor13; which the Lord had first explained, in John 14-17. So it's not about human love, but Word In You. That is True Love. Nothing else. For "love" in Greek has different words to denote a different source for the love. In Greek, "agape" is never used for any other Source, but God. In Greek lit., "agape" was the love from the gods, and to the gods, but the latter was always a product of the former. That's why you have the "subjective and objective genitive" in classical Greek, which construction the Bible uses a lot (i.e., in every "love of God" or "of love"). The 'god' cycling in you, is the idea. So the proper English translation requires an adjective front the verb: Divine Love, not merely "love". [Typical of translations, to chop God out of the picture. Happens so predictably, you can set your watch. If the word "God" or "Divine" is part of the meaning of the word, you must translate it. But hey: no one does. Find even one translation of the word "agape" properly rendered, "God's Love" or "Divine Love", I dare ya. Everyone knows this word, so why is it continually mistranslated! Aarrrrrgggghhhh.]
Idea of RECIPROCATION. 1Jn is all about how that Reciprocation is Built: "we love, because He first loved us!" says 1Jn4:19. So you need the Word in you, to get the Love Of God Known, so you are thus Motivated to Reciprocate. Which you can only reciprocate, by means of that Same Word, just as Christ did, Matt4:4, per 1Jn2:6 (etc). For God IS Love, hence His Word is Love, hence His Word needs to be IN you, in order for You to love; hence CHERISH-GUARD that Word in you, 1Jn2:5 -- and then you ARE completely loving. It's a sine qua non. How genius the writing, in 1Jn!
Trial Gist, preview of coming attractions:
But sadly, all this meaning in 1Jn is missed, so we believers never wake up to why we are here. For in Bible English, "love" is a MIStranslation; the "Divine" meaning of "agape", is always cut out. So what's left for us to think? Oh, we naturally think of 'love' as emotion! Emotion isn't even human love, but a body reaction! Your body gets 'love' stimuli from any variety of extrinsic or intrinsic sources. That's why people get on drugs, go to revival rallies, overeat, and watch 'Christian' TV. Anyone can provoke a body 'love' reaction. Advertisers count on it, and design their commercials around what stimulates that reaction. Get real.
1Jn is deceptively simple, so in English it's doggone near unreadable. In Greek, the keywords stick out, so it's much easier to parse and understand. Deft piece of writing. For example, 1Jn's rhetoric is crafted in terms of beginnings or firsts. Sine qua nons, without-which-nots. On, or off. Alive, or dead. Light, or dark. Love, or no Word. Word, or no love. Very stark, very dramatic. Cast in socratic equations (which was the style of discourse at that time), John's seemingly-simple prose hits the Greek reader between the eyes like the highest epic play. The Real God really comes to dwell in you. Not deus ex machina. Real Love from Real God is Real Word living ("abiding", Greek verb menw) in you, climactic summary statement, 1Jn4:12-17, 17-19. For more tips on Bible definitions, especially in 1Jn, CLICK HERE.
How ironic: the first non-Gospel NT book written was James, and it was on the same subject; now here's the last apostle alive, the last one about to write the last book of the NT and knowing it, talking in the same way. Because the legalistic ascetics had religified the Word, so their malignant 'DNA' had spread: Christianity in Diaspora was apostatizing rapidly. So the theme of 1Jn, is to avoid that malignant DNA by 'abiding' in the Spirit, and thus in the Word, and thus in fellowship with Father and Son. STAY AT HOME in Him. In HIM, not in works. In Word, not in the world. And then, you are truly loving.
So it matters WHY you are learning the Word, not merely that you are learning it. Love is a WILL result of learning Truth. If that love is for GOD, then you keep on using the learning to learn more about God Himself. If there are other motives -- and there will be, so don't get upset -- the other motives will skew your developing love away from God and onto 'substitutes'. Again, this is a normal set of hazards in spiritual growth: 2nd Aspect will cover some of these hazards in more detail. As you catch onto them, just keep on reminding yourself WHY you really want to keep learning Him. As time passes, the other motives will get defeated.
So Learning the Word is the first "flank" of getting Divine Love. But there's a second flank: Believing In What You Learn. For Love always begins with a believing-in. If you 'abide' in believing-in, you eventually come to love, say the socratic equations in 1Jn4:7-19. From there, you 'abide' in the love, the same way you got there: "Love believes all things..endures all things", Paul writes in 1Cor13:4ff. Paul's main meaning level, speaks of the All-Things of Christ, His Word. Like the writer of Hebrews, John ties in the "believes" (in) and "endures" keywords, from 1Cor13:4ff: to explain how you can know you are loving God, especially in 1Jn4:7-19.
Big hint that God's definitions aren't like ours: if Bible were talking of human love, there would be no 1Jn or 1Cor teaching you how to know if you are loving God. Because, it's Divine Love, and you must learn IT by Learning the Word. Just as was always true, in the OT. But now, we get Christ's Thinking in His Humanity, a "new commandment" (term in 1Jn2, talking of the new covenant), to complete the First Commandment. Since He loved so much that He paid for sin, His Thinking can produce in us that Same Love, 1Jn4:19. Thus, completing us. Hence to get complete, means to get His Thinking completely in us (crescendo passage in 1Jn4:12-17).
Love is not a doing, but a BEING. Specifically, a State of Being, since God is Absolute Being, hence His Love is Absolute (unconditional, immutable, dynamically homeostatic, the essence of Infinity). So "God" is not a doing. Hence the need to get DDNA, to change your own being. So love is not a doing, but a Thinking from a DDNA being; for, God Thinks. And you can't abide long in anything you don't love thinking about, period. For to abide, remain, rest in BELIEF, means love grows. Even, human love. But especially, Divine Love, since the only reason you'll GET the Word and USE 1Jn1:9, is because you BELIEVE in the God Who Wrote the Word and in His Son, Jesus the Christ.
Believing IN, is not the same as believing. Bible uses the term so often, it concatenates the meaning to just state the verb, but the full statement is in places like Acts 16:31: pisteuse EPI ton Kurion.. kai sothese su. Meaning, Believe ON the Lord (Jesus Christ, in the text), and you are (that moment) saved forever. So "EPI" means ON, as on a FOUNDATION, 1Cor3, Eph2:10. I can believe a thing is true, and be negative to it. I can believe a thing is true and be positive to it. Like James writes in James 2, even demons believe.. and shudder.
Note how it's not whether you believe or even know a thing is true, only: but, What Attitude Do You Thus Have About What You Believe/Know? Two 'flanks' of development are required, not one. Water AND Blood, as John puts it, in 1Jn5:6. Water, the information, the Word (another layer of meaning in the verse). Blood, how your volition reacts or responds. As my pastor puts it, the latter is your "Reciprocal love for God", and the Former, is the Doctrine itself. So demons know the Word way better than all of us put together. But they ridicule it (especially in the fake holy books). Every second they breathe, they are ridiculing Him. So they believe Him, but not in Him. So they never develop into loving Him. They probably started out that way, before they sinned. Having sinned, they can change their minds, since they of course retain free will. But look how hard it is to change the mind back toward God, once He is rejected.
So all love -- even human love -- derives its staying power, from 'believing-in' the object. So: the second a wife stops believing in her husband, the husband stops, the child stops, the nation stops, the believer stops.. then the love stops, too. Real love never stops: but it first has to DEVELOP. Hebrews 11:1 is never well translated, but it says all this: estin.de pistis elpizomenwn, Hupostasis pragmatwn, elegchos ou blepomenwn. All those "wn" endings are plurals. Meaning many confident believings, many trials, many unseen evidences. All starting with believing. And not stopping. [Heb111.htm has the corrected translation.]
Like 1Jn does, let's next review the process of thinking-development from the believing-in phase, to Love. As a child, you first believed in your parents. They warned you and cared for you and you learned that what they taught you, proved true. Even, when you disobeyed. So you came to trust them (i.e., 1Jn2:1-6). As you grew older, you learned your parents weren't perfect, but you respected them, anyway. And as you became a bigger person (maturing), you came to love them. Not necessarily attracted to them, but.. well, anything they need, you want to provide. Love rarely feels good. But it remains. And, in human relationships, love is used like a weapon, unfortunately. But God is not people. And the First Commandment has no "people", in it. So, you worry less about people, as time passes. For you have a relationship with God Himself, and you know 1Jn1:9, so you can stay in that relationship. [1Jn is about living the post-salvation relationship, not about salvation. You can't lose your salvation. Some of the verses in 1Jn are poorly translated and so sound like you can lose salvation; most of these verses, unintentionally mess up on English verb tenses, so you can MISread the verses. So if you think you see a verse which says you can lose salvation: try changing the English tense to the progressive tense. For example, "sins" should be "is sinning": a very different meaning in English, signifying the act At The Moment -- which is what John means. See if you don't get a better 'read' on the verse. It takes too long to go through the specific verses.]
So now you, with sin, can learn.
So Love used as a metaphor for the Word means enough OF that dendritic Word has been built by the Spirit IN you, with the result that you maturely love even as Christ does: John parallels the goal of Eph4:13, Eph3:15-19, in 1Jn4:12-17. To show how the completion of Canon, leads to its completion in your head; leads to the completion of history. So you become a king in eternity, and get a Kingdom of kids to love.
Your human nature cannot perceive this Love. The world cannot perceive it. Under pressure, you will be blindsided and will need to just assert this truth to get through that pressure. In calmer moments, you will realize how true it is. Every day, maybe many times a day, this pressure-assertion process will occur. Because You Are Living a Supernatural Life, in God's System. It's Beyond Human, me ish! me bene adam! So Beyond Human Perception, so seems untrue, foolish, wrong, unproductive, goofy, whatever. But Bible exists, and you fire it at all those too-low arguments. Takes lots of practice.
True Love is Unconditional, which is impossible for humans: everything necessary to human survival requires PRICING. So only God's Love is True Love. So when the Word is referenced as "love", Bible is talking about a certain spiritual growth level. It's never talking about human love, or even human love for people -- but only Divine Love. Which is an absolute, every time it is "on", 1Jn2:5. And it is "on", if you are in the Spirit (1Jn1:9 used), and in the Word (a refrain, reminder of John 4:23-24). Then you are in the Vine, and in the Father, theme of John 14-17.
1Jn addresses three groups of varying maturity in that Love. It's true that God's Love is an absolute, but until Enough Word is in us, that Love doesn't connect enough to cross us over the maturation threshold. And there are three such thresholds.
When one becomes mature enough to marry and have children, an enormous change occurs. You stop living for yourself. Love is like that, 1Cor13:4ff. So, that's how it will be in eternity, too. For the Riches of a king are Love of a king. Loving, loved. A circle of love, due to a circle of Word, and it's all Priceless, Isa55:1-11.
Hence 1John's theme from Chapter 1 is thus the Completion of Canon AS Love, wrapping up history -- in you. Completion ("perfecting" in English Bibles) of a Written Contract which Fulfills the First Commandment, completes Canon, completes Church, completes you, completes God's Trial Answer to Satan&Co. Note how this Trinity Love Contract is expressed in Isa53:10-12: If you will give Your Soul as a substitute for sin, you will sire many, who will via You, get the Light of the Word. There's not one verse in Bible which doesn't point to this Contract, which was made between Father and Son in eternity past. John understood it; he's using "Light" in 1Jn to reference the (missing-in-translation) LXX of Isa53:11, since it's the Heart Of The Our Legacy In Christ; so when he repeatedly uses the Greek verb teleiow (=to complete, "to perfect" in legal sense), he's thus showing how that contract gets fulfilled first in (1Jn4:12), and then in association with, us (1Jn4:16).
Birthing, Building, and Trinity-as-Family wordplay are the three most common metaphorical structures in the original-language texts of Bible: now maybe you begin to see why. Infinity inside finity, and it's not a compromise? LOL no! It's a FULFILLMENT! God has Desires, and just because He can do a thing, doesn't mean He wants to go against volition!
So here's the Deal They Struck:
So, just as ON the Cross, it's a CIRCLE, a CYCLING in aggregate of Word in us, which makes this process complete. Last two sections of this webpage will explain more about the process and its testimony, siring results. For now, just notice that "from the beginning" this Love Contract gets completed, in and with Church. Technically: because the First Commandment got fulfilled by Christ in HIS Body, He gets a Body to Administer that Love: we are that Bridal Body. It's an award to HIM, part of the "booty" promised back in Isa53:10-12.
Hence "Completed": passive voice, Holy Spirit brings you to completion via Word-Love in your head: tieing to and playing on "It is Finished!" which Christ said on the Cross (tetelestai). Really bald statements that Doctrine in you=Love, and that's what completes you, testifies, and gets you "confidence" (of reward) at Bema (1Jn4:17, climactic verse). The DDNA angle comes from menw and agape and many intimacy/pregnancy allusions like "in", "abide", "children", "seed" in 1Jn3:9: so long as you abide under the Spirit who made Christ from a virgin, you too abide in the Word-Seed; and so, during that time you not only cannot sin but you are caused bear spiritual kids of your own -- inside yourself! Spiritual DNA! What a witty way to play on Isa53:11's "me amal" (labor pains of the Seed bearing all sins on the Cross)! [1Jn3:9 treats the Holy Spirit as birthing learning 'seed' of Word, Sanhedrin aphorism -- see gennaw in a lexicon. There's an ancient Judaic concept which comes from the Bible, that those who teach the Word 'sire' children who learn it. Bible stresses that about Abraham, and Paul uses that Judaic concept to write 1Corinthians, Romans 4, Galatians and Ephesians.]
Something else gets completed, due to the completion of Canon: Church. And Church, completes God's Trial argument to Satan&Co. about Why Love Triumphs. John's tying Church back to eternity past, to the Trial, and hence to the Garden couple, just like Paul does in his witty Book of Ephesians. [LvS4a.htm begins Part IV of the Lord vs. Satan Trial, very long, very comprehensive on this topic.]
Remember what was said earlier, quoting James on how demons believe Him, but not IN Him? How they ridicule the Word? Well, look: we have believed in Him. So as 1Jn4:12-19 dramatically sketches, We Are On Trial For Believing In The Word: will we 'remain' in that belief, 'remain' in the Love the Word builds IN us, 'remain' as evidence of Him, overcoming Satan&Co. while still IN the world? That's our real testimony, and the real culmination of history (main theme of 1Jn and John Chaps 14-17). As you'll see better in the next section, it's not testimony to people, but to God. God First. Which is why we are on Trial: is God the One Who's First? If no, our testimony runs the football into Satan's endzone, and the demons laugh their heads off. But if YES, it demonstrates to Satan&Co. that their rejection of their version of the First Commandment, is wrong. For they were (and still are) higher in nature than we puny humans.
First Commandment has no one but "God" in it; no angels, and no people, either. Deut 6:5 follows the dramatic Deut 6:4, the command to Hear The Word, saying: No other object, and none of you left, either. The Lord's Humanity changes Deut 6:5 to UPGRADE it, since He will be our DDNA. For He says,
So "dianoia" means DDNA as an entirety, the 'body' of the thinking HE's made in you: the 'Divine throughput' of your soul. It's no longer the old Deut6:5 standard, your own strength. It's HIS Strength, same as the Holy Spirit did to Jesus Himself. Which is why He changes the last word in First Commandment. [Interpretative quoting tells you how to use the quote. It's not like our modern practice of merely repeating a quote everyone already knows.] You'll need to trace "dianoia" throughout Bible, to see this specialized meaning. [Well over 200 occurrences of cognates, i.e., Isa55:9 uses dianoemata, rendered "thoughts", body-of-thinking; 122 occurrences of morphed dianoia words alone; sometimes they are rendered "heart", as in Isa14:13, 35:4. A telling use of dianoia is in Isa57:11, where God 'chides' for the lack-of-thinking ON Him (NASB trans is cool). So, whew: start with Heb101517.htm, to see the Holy Spirit's Writing Role so you can tell it's about the DDNA dendrites and data. Then Paul's letters are next easiest.]
So note how nothing of 'you' remains left over to 'give' to people. Oh, how 'Christians' would bristle if they knew the First Commandment, since they want everything to be about people! Yeah, well.. 1Jn has a lot to say about how if you don't love God, you cannot love people, partly for this reason; so if you do love God, then you ipse truly love people. So it's God-First, and God-only. Takes time to grow up in the Word enough for this God-First (a state of being, not emotion) to become true; but baby, if you don't seek to grow there, you'll never know anything but ennui. You're not designed to be less than God, which is why the First Thing He did, Was Give You His Own (and Christ's Own) Divine Righteousness, 2Cor5:21. So you cannot be fulfilled, unless you are filled up with Word, Rom8:4. So you cannot love, until you love God, 1Jn4:19.
Christ didn't cave into the to-people arguments of Satan in Matt4. Every one of those Three Temptations was a claim that Christ didn't love people, if He didn't a) make stones into bread, b) do a flashy jumping display so people would believe in Him; c) take over the kingdoms of the world on behalf of defeating Satan himself (oh, how Satan loves to be the messiah) and on behalf of caring for people. We Christians fall for these Three temptations immediately, every day. See The Difference The First Commandment Makes? It's only about God, never people -- for the better sake of people. God made us. God is the One who takes care of people. To substitute someone else, makes one Just Like Satan.
For True Divine Love will always CUT OUT, GRAFT IN.
So of course, our Plot, our Script, our Story is rather dramatic. Fitting, for a Trial By Combat. The Script/Plot/Story nature is one of WAR. Specifically, CIVIL war. The story of this war and our role in it, is comprehensively explained in the "Thinking" series, accessible from the Home Page (upper right teal box); the first page in that series, is LordvSatan1.htm, which furnishes you with an overview. This DDNA webseries is the 'micro' side of the Thinking series, to explain how you are DDNA-transmuted; but the war is over WHETHER you DDNA-transmute. For that's the same war angels had before mankind was created: back then, Satan decided that God's DDNA-transmuting plan for the angels, was evil. So he along with 1/3rd of the angels, rebelled against it, Isa14:13-14. ["Satan" is a title, not a name: means "adversary" as in "opposing attorney" in a trial. But his real name is Haylel ben-Shachar, which name can be rendered "Shining Son of the Dawn", Isa14:12. LXX renders it "MorningStar, Descendant" -- well, the LXX uses incredible wordplay, you'd better just look it up.]
Frankly, Satan himself is the best witness to prove how yucky and gross a thing it is, to pursue 'deserving' or being 'proud' of yourself. Look: the 'deserving', 'proud' mentality of Satan makes him his own god; he clearly craves that conclusion. Ok, now put yourself in his place: you are this god. Therefore whatever goes wrong, you have to fix. But you can't fix all that goes wrong. So you have nothing to be proud of. You failed, see. So you don't deserve to be god. And by the way, even when you do fix something, it doesn't stay fixed for long; or what you fixed, isn't the thrill you expected.. afterwards. So you are always huffing and puffing for no reward, constantly being disappointed. Welcome to the reality of being your own god. Satan also testifies that he does not like being his own god: see the Third Temptation in Matt4. He tempted the Lord to zap him into oblivion by the crass insult of 'offering' all the kingdoms of the world which by rights the Lord owned anyway. So Satan was expressing his own death wish. So will you, if you make yourself. See? Pride and deserving ideas suck. Better to be a drunken bum on Los Angeles' Skid Row, than to seek all the kingdoms of the world...
Again, capacities determine relationships, and everything is relative to those capacities and relationships. What makes life hell, is that we have no soul capacity for life. Instead, we are bundles of urges, needs -- all due to the sin nature. That nature is an incessantly-needy tyrant, infecting our DNA; so when it gets in the soul, it mindlessly plays tyrannical instructions from that DNA. The first sin's imprint is a combination of Adam's original sin urges residually stored in the genetic material, plus a mutated residual storage of all the urges of all the other people whose genes you inherited. Thereafter, however, the imprints vastly mutate based on your own volition, and no one else's. So you can be tempted based on the genes, but only if your volition assents, will such temptations have any power in your soul. The power is weak, at best, even so. It takes many repetitions of your YESes, to give that nature power. But you are spiritually dead to God from birth, not from your first sin, because of your genes. [Again, no one goes to hell but for lifelong refusal of the Gospel, John 16:9. So babies who die obviously go to heaven.]
So, mutating the meanwhile, your DNA-based sin nature mindlessly bills itself out as a god you must obey, kinda like a huge urge to pee, eat, sleep, etc. Hence we mistakenly call it 'good' when needs are met. And while they remain UNmet, we call that 'bad'. But true good only occurs when the need itself no longer matters, whether met or unmet. For so long as the need itself matters, it tyrannizes you. Freedom thus only occurs when your soul has sufficient capacity. For only then will it no longer matter that you need: the need can't interfere with your happiness, anymore.
You know how hard it is to undo a past bad habit. How hard, to exercise and diet and otherwise 'war' with your body. Well, one war you cannot win, is the war with the old sin nature. You can redirect its trends, but when you do, the new trends are even more powerful at blinding you. The world's prescriptions for dealing with sin all make the 'solution' an even bigger tyrant, than the thing it allegedly solved. That's why welfare programs don't work, why multiple, choking laws don't work, why do-goodism doesn't work, why nothing works but to make life worse, not better. It's all picking-at-pimples, to try to solve the sin nature and its natural 'children', the problems in this world. But so long as one wants to be the god, rejecting the Real God, well.. one will fantasize he is fixing something. Just like Satan does.
Man can't solve the sin-nature problem, since his very body-and-soul DNA, is now infected with this sin-tyranny (called "flesh" and "old man" in Bible). So God is out to make us Christ-capacious; for on the Cross, all that horrendous need which sin produces and urges, Lacerated His Soul Utterly -- Yet Didn't Even Dent His Love. So instead, the True Solution was accomplished, and is on 'reserve', as it were, for every human born: DDNA conversion. That will make you Christ-capacious, so even while hurting, you are content. That's what happened to Him, that's His Legacy to us (main theme of Book of Hebrews and Ephesians). It does mean that God's Heb4:12 surgery, will continually (progressively) be uncomfortable. But each moment of it, pays a bizillion dollars forever -- because Father wants it to. God is One Big Now, doesn't like suffering, loves blessing, so it has to pay bigtime to Him, if one of His sons (from The Son) suffers. See, you are much loved, theme of Eph1!
Satan thinks God's 'solution' to man's problem, is evil. So Satan&Co. promulgate their own 'solution', which is to make man's needs become works which deserve a reward. So, the world rewards such works, as you well know. Whether those rewards are better than what God does, is the substance of the Trial, and we of course are constantly voting between God's solution, or the world's (Satan's 'solution'). You'll end up loving the one and hating the other. There is no middle ground. So your capacities will end up reflecting one or the other: you will either end up 1) having no capacity for God and total capacity for only the world, so you'll hate God but love the world; or 2) having only Capacity for God and no capacity for the world, so you'll Love God and Not Need the world -- even while your human needs are maxed, analogous to Christ-on-the-Cross.
So this is the biggest and foundational, classic Love vs. hatred story: everything else down here therefore plays the same script. So it's about marrying and birthing kids; it's about politics and power; it's about struggling against your enemies. Classic epic. From which all other plots, derive. Hence the Hero's challenge: do you Love God despite the fact He's way superior? Or do you hate Him for that? Underlying fact giving rise to this plotline: God didn't make Himself. And you don't make yourself, either. But Satan claims to make himself superior to God, Isa14:13-14. So, we're here to pick either his choice.. or God's. Either way, you're picking WHO will remake you: God's Remaking, is DDNA. Satan's remaking, is dDNA. Which, of course, he believes superior to God's DDNA. So it's about Real Love versus real hatred; Real Marriage (here, Christ and Church) versus real divorce; Real Wealth versus real destruction/poverty. Lasting, forever. It's as big a Production to Love, as can be.
God does all the work to endower this Bride. But the Bride, must consent. So Satan is out to abort this consent, so to abort the production of DDNA kiddies, to abort God's Rulership, itself. For if Satan can do this aborting, then he wins over God. That's the deal. We know from Scripture Satan won't win, but God isn't even trying to stop Satan; God is out to help Satan&Co. to subordinate, since that will truly make them happy. But it's Satan, who's always out to refuse God's never-ending offer. That's why there is a hell. Because, God really never accepts divorce. It's inimical to His Sovereign Attitude concerning His Attribute of Infinity: which Sovereign Attitude, thus desires to "fill all in all", end Eph1.
Hence God's Wealth, Kingship -- us -- are always under satanic attack. Hence even down here, "rich" are always on Trial, accused of not 'giving' to the poor. Wealth of DDNA -- Bible in your head, run by the Holy Spirit -- is the highest wealth there is: resulting in Love, God's Own Attributes. So we saw in the previous section, God purposed to make this DDNA in us back in eternity past, via His First Son, Isa53:10-12. By contrast, Satan's out to make his own brand of wealth, thinking that by so doing, he defeats God in the Trial.
Love is most abused in and by the human race. What passes for love is a calculated user game, Pro23:7 (in context). So most of us know we have been the victims of such clever users, by the time we are in our 30's. And then, horror of horrors, we discover (hopefully) that we too have been such users! Most of us don't grow past that educational experience, to learn how God's Love is nothing human. Humans thus project their user mentalities on God, so bandy about "God loves you" the same way, and for the same calculated reasons, they bandy their own love -- to get something. Love has nothing to do with it. Love is just something you use to get something you really want. Slam, bam, thank-you-m'am. Welcome to reality.
Division is necessary for finity to exist, so that freedom will exist despite conflict. Conflict occurs because finity GROWS in its attributes, whereas God is Infinite at all 'times'. Finity has a beginning, so has volition reacting or responding to its own attributes, to the attributes of others, of things, and most of all.. of God. Volition must always chose for and against, so needs division as protection to make that choice, to keep volitional independence, and hence stay free. Sin shatters that independence because a rejection of God is a derivative of negative volition against an Object far greater than the volition being negative. However, because God made finity of divided nature to start with, the volition can remain intact, and much of soul-body function can be stable. It progressively disintegrates over time, if negativity persists; but it takes a long time for this disintegration to occur: see Gen2:17's warning in Hebrew.
For if you love, you are thinking of how wonderful the object of your love. If you love food, you think about IT. If you love someone, you think about that PERSON. If you love God, you think about HIM. In short, the object of your love occupies your brain, and the more you love that object, the more it occupies your brain. You can learn a lot by listening to people talk. What occupies their conversation, is what they love. And what they love, sustains and changes them. Love is powerful. Beware of what object, 'gets' it. For what you love, will lead you by the nose, everywhere you go. So if you learn to love God, The Spirit Does All The Leading: and you desperately need your nose in His Book.
Because humans are terminally dumb, when they see "Love" as an Attribute of God, they completely misdefine it as being like human love. Human love is based on attraction. God's Love, is NOT. God's Love is completely independent of attraction. His Love is a CHARACTERISTIC which represents His Sovereign ATTITUDE, with or without, any object. So there doesn't even have to BE an object. If there is an object, it is Loved. If there is an attractive object, it is Loved. If there is an unattractive object, it is Loved. The qualities in the object will be referenced by God's Love, but those qualities never influence God's Love in any way, degree, or direction.
There are literally thousands of these verses squarely on the topic of God's Love being His Head Attribute, His Integrity, which is why building the Truth in you, makes your head like His Son's. For Truth is Love and vice versa, in Undivided Infinity. No divorce in God, so as you learn Him you will come to love Him and you cannot be divorced FROM Him, in your own thinking. No matter what assails you.
My pastor kept using all these keywords from about 1997 until the day he retired, and always in context of 1Jn4:12-17 and Christian marriage (which is a paradigm, a corporate spiritual test topic in the Church Age). Took me years to grasp what he meant, and it drove me crazy the meanwhile. No more! So this section will be a challenge to understand, sorry. Some helpful hints on better understanding 1Jn will be covered later, but for the moment know this: 1John is all about FIRSTS. First thing first. Sine qua non. First of importance. First in sequence. First in Value. First in practice. First in origin. First and Foremost Love.
See the contrast, the Advance, the Completion? See how the discourse comes full circle, even within the letter? Awesome stuff!
Remember how, back in Genesis 3, the man rejected God in favor of people, represented by his wife. That rejection reflex and substitution of people as 'god' has gone on, ever since. Thus the First Commandment is largely replaced.. by altruism, the nearest-white of evils. You'll see that altruism's true evil face from the Genesis 4 roster. Acquirer ("Cain") rejects God, so what does he do? Well, after murdering his brother Vapor/Emptiness/Vanity for not rejecting God ("hevel" in Hebrew, "Abel" to you), Cain builds a city for his son named "Inaugurated/Dedicated" (Chanokh in Hebrew, "Enoch" to you). So Cain worships his son, to reject the God Who will 'bear' and thus 'inaugurate' the Son of Salvation, on the Cross! [You see all this in the Hebrew and LXX, but the translations screw it all up. For example, English Bibles don't translate the names; and especially not, the sexual pun Eve makes of Cain's "spear" name, in Gen4:1! So of course Genesis 4:7 is blasphemously mistranslated, and is key to understanding what Cain is doing. Gen4:7 should say, "The Sin BEARER is laying by the door" -- waiting for Cain to believe in the One Abel's lamb depicted -- but of course Bible translations always Cut God And Christ Out Of The Verses! So notice how the same sin that Cain is warned about in that verse, is committed by the translator, who leaves out "BEARER"! The lexicons were available; there's no excuse for this verse to be mistranslated. You can set your watch on man's arrogant disinterest in the Word! Of course, over the centuries this mistranslation has not been fixed, for oh -- then we have to admit some past greybeard translator, was (probably quite tired and hence) wrong! Yeah, man is still more important than God, every century! Same sin as Cain's, every century! Again, this isn't to excoriate the translators. Rather, the point is to show how mankind as a whole repeats Gen3 behaviors (here, not fixing an errant translation), pretending himself still the intelligent one, the lover. What a crock. So Satan&Co. can make a translator commit the very SIN as is covered there in Gen4:7, laughing at the poor guy the meanwhile. We are all satanfodder, absent God's System.]
That Cain BUILT A CITY tells you much. It means he was a hard worker, and had a very engaging personality (he got ticked off at God for not accepting his produce as a sacrifice). For a city, needs to be populated with people, which means Cain was POPULAR. So among his sisters and later brothers, he'd gained something of a fan club; so they aggregated with him. Now, all this city-building didn't happen until after he'd murdered Abel, so you also know another thing: they allied with him in his murder of Abel. Big division in the First Family, then. Which, Gen4-5 deftly show (notice how so many of the kids in Gen4, have the same names in Gen5, and some of the Gen4 kids defected over to the Gen5 families). So Cain was not a nasty guy, in the eyes of his siblings. He was a leader, and he loved his family. Yeah, but not God. And neither did they.
So on a macro level, God has been reversing that fissional effect of sin, into a FUSION of Love back to Him. Christ is the Person Who Accomplished That Full Fusion, on the Cross. It's not simply about sin. It's about resolving the Infinity-finity dichotomy, so that man's necessary divided nature won't hinder full rapport with the God Who loves him. So that happened IN Christ: which is why, as we saw in the previous section, the Cross converted everything into DDNA. Why, the OT people couldn't know God as well as we Church can, John 7:39 (and theme of all Hebrews, Ephesians, Romans 5-12, etc).
So keep that duality in mind when you read 1Jn. It's real important to know the duality, since "abide" (Greek verb menw, always about staying at a location due to a positive attitude) is about post-salvation FELLOWSHIP, not getting salvation; so if you're not under Your Sire, you've no fellowship, either.
Try this corrective technique: whenever you see "born of God" in 1Jn, translate it instead, "being sired/parented by God", because this is a progressive BUILDING of those spiritual dendrites the Holy Spirit is doing TO you. Translate also any other verb used in parallelism in the same verse in the same progressive tense.
Marriage has no limits within the couple, so the bond is meant to be Total, Indissoluble. It's all or nothing, at all times. That's why it's sacred, exclusive. That's why sex is only between the two (heterosexual) spouses. Depicting, Infinite God and (heteros, different-kind-of-being).. finity. So finity-finity preferences, are like homosexuality, evil. So all this to-people stuff is like homosexuality. For GOD should be the object, not people. There is no "people" in the First Commandment God wrote. So religion is same-sex also, hence excoriated all over the Bible (i.e., Rev17, all of Hosea and Hebrews, etc).
and the Angelic Divorce Trial is about Marriage,
so the Garden and hence Church's Marriage to Christ,
was and is.. On Trial.
Everything has always been about the First Commandment. Back before there were humans, the angels had the same commandment, and 1/3rd of them rebelled: more on that rebellion follows below. Point is, this divorcing between finity and Infinity preceded man's existence and is the proximate cause of man's existence.
Israel was to spiritually train to become Messiah's 'bride', which is why she got the Exodus and the Mosaic Law. That's why so much of the OT vocabulary to Israel is marital. Therefore, way back when Moses taught the people their eschatological marital role (for the 1st Advent), he continually stressed the Word being "near" (i.e., in Deut 30), so you were to think it day and night, "when you get up" and "when you go to bed". Hence the many reminders to think Word, like tfellin, tassels, all those rituals and details. They were mnemonic devices, teaching many things as well. Which you loved, if you loved what those mnemonics meant. Which you hated, if you hated the meanings. Manna, for example, depicted the daily provision of Word. Many hated it (i.e., Num11:6).
requires Marital-Level Intimate Knowledge of God,
which takes Divine Power to produce.
Since love depends on knowledge, no child loves: trusts, is attracted to, needs, wants -- but not loves. What passes for love between strangers, cannot be: they don't know each other. For not even human love develops overnight, since it IS wholly dependent on knowledge. No one knows God but God or has ever even seen Him (i.e., John 1:18, 5:37, 14:7-9, 1Jn4:12). So it takes GOD to give you knowledge OF Him. Until you have knowledge from HIM, you cannot love Him (another theme in 1Jn and his Gospel). And you don't have ANY knowledge of Him, if you are in a state of 1Jn1:8,10; and you have no knowledge of Him, if you're not learning the Word (main theme in 1Jn and his Gospel, even in translation).
And since Love depends on Thinking, and Thinking on Knowing, well.. if you spend your time knowing not-God, then you are not-My-People (name of one of Hosea's kids, tweaking Israel). So your loyalties are elsewhere, naturally. So-called Christian 'backsliding' occurs for but one reason: not learning and living Bible in God's System. It's impossible to 'cure' sin; it's impossible to even treat sin. Only God can do that. And His Operating Table, is Heb4:12. Period. The only alternative is the romphaia (Divine Discipline, depicted as a broadsword). Your choice. [One of the funniest ideas in Christianity is the revival/retreat concept. Idea that you throw some faggot on the fire, vowing to change your life of 'sin' -- narrowly defined as the gross ones, of course. So what really happens, afterward? Your sins merely change to the worst kind, legalism. Note the Lord's oh-so-fine sarcasm in Matt12:43-45, Luke 11:23-26! Well, see the context from Luke 11:14, to get the full meaning.]
but Word in You, which IS Divine Love.
THAT is On Trial.
We also have the subjective and objective genitive in English. Look: "the Love of a King". Is that the King doing the Loving (subjective genitive), or the subject OF the King, loving Him (objective genitive)? Often in the Bible, both ideas are in view, but one of them is first in view, depending on the verse. Latin has this same circular wordplay inherent. James Joyce made use of the Latin version, in the first chapter of his novel, Ulysses ("amor matris" line).
1Jn4:12-17 says all this, and the last two sections of this webpage will explain these Love Dimensions in much more detail. For now, notice the Impossibility of a sin-nature human loving at ALL, much less having the Prostration Love that characterises God and Christ. Especially since God is Invisible, someone loving Him that much is considered nuts. Just as Noah looked, when he spent 120 years building a silly boat miles away from any water. Faith is in WORD, else you really will go nuts. Faith needs Reason to survive, especially if the Object IS invisible. That's true in lesser attitudes like honor and respect for mere principles. Far more true, when the Object is the Source of All Honor. Worse, when visible proof is manifest and obvious (like the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall, which scream that Daniel 9:26 occurred), well.. absent the Word in you, you can't tolerate that proof. And, we prove we don't. [LvS4a.htm, which is Part IVa of the Thinking series, sometimes focuses on the Dome of the Rock and Dan9:26 as a threaded theme, to show how God orchestrates time to rescue Israel via Church, since the structure stares us in the eyes, every TV day.]
Second "flank" is Believing What You Learn. Believing-in, is the 'heart' of Love.
It's really important to grasp early on that this Love is not possible for a human to 'do'. Save yourself a lot of angst over the many failures you'll experience every day. You cannot do this of yourself. That's why you have to learn it, and then IT does the work via the Spirit. DOCTRINE WORKS, main theme of James (always mistranslated and interpreted by legalistic, non-loving Christians). It worked in Abraham, it works even higher in us, theme of James and John (really, everyone in NT). The sooner you grasp that fact, the sooner your life will relax. This is a real DDNA transmutation. You can't do it yourself. You can only Vote For It, using 1Jn1:9 as needed, to keep on keeping on. God will do it. That's the Isa53:10-12 Contract.
In relationship with God, as you come to know Him in His System, you realize there is No Risk. Finally, Love is free to BE Love, 1Jn2:2. Sure, you might rail at Him from time to time. Sure, you will get very emotional from time to time. But it's always a closeness, and that closeness occurs because of what you know about Him, from being in His System and learning His Book. For that is How God Thinks. Phrased, for human consumption. Yes, it IS possible for Infinite Thinking to be reduced to writing, and only because a Human went to the Cross, having Developed in That Thinking, and completed it. Without sin.
This is God's Nature Which Is Growing In You, And Your Nature Cannot Handle It. Hence the need of being in God's System, 1Jn1:9, etc. As time passes, this fight will give way to more subtle fights, and it never goes away. You will mature in the fighting, but it never ends, this side of heaven. Spiritual life is a marathon race, not a sprint, Heb12:1-2, Greek. So it helps to know now that you're in this for the long haul. No magic in God's Love, for God's Love is way better than magic is even imagined to be. For God wants DDNA, not magic. IN You, not in works. For YOU are the works HE wants to work, because He loves.. YOU. You, not works. So forget about works, sin, etc. Just learn Him. By the end of this webpage, you'll see what a huge testimony that is, outweighing all works, and accomplishing the Greatest Work of All Time: "Christ in you, the Confidence of Glory", defeating Satan&Co., Col1:25-27 (see context).
the Spirit has Built ENOUGH Dendritic Word in you,
such that you maturely love, even as Christ does.
True Love never thinks in terms of price, so status is but a tool to love the better. Notice how God uses His Godness to Prostrate Himself. Father, for Son. Son, for Father. Spirit, for Father. Father, for Spirit. Son, for Spirit. Spirit, for Son. We insecure humans with our constant yearning for power, cannot therefore love. So we don't 'get' this Love. We think it's grovelling, rather than FREEDOM. So we can't do this love. That's why 1Jn4:19 is so dramatic: we Divinely Love because He FIRST loved us! Circle. Full circle of Infinity inside finity. So no need for power, when you have Love.
Greek word "dianoia" means A Thinking Structure That Functions. DDNA is a Structure of Instructions, and when you are Sufficiently Instructed, That Structure Forms. It's kinda like cell division occurring often enough that an aggregate body is produced. Takes time, and in the beginning everything is confusing. Just keep on keeping on. It does get clear and consolidated. Back seven years ago, I knew a lot of Bible doctrine, because I had a good pastor; but only since the last seven years, has it all consolidated so very much. Overwhelming, actually. Fluency is fast, high, even in my sleep. I didn't produce one whit of any of it. Holy Spirit does it. So it works. And I'm still the same doo-doo brain I was at salvation, hence the moniker "brainout". It works. Doctrine Works. The Dianoia Gets Built, so get in and stay in God's System, see for yourself.
Completion of Canon AS Love,
wraps up history,
via First Commandment Living in You.
Trinity as Family is so widely played on the OT you'd have to take five sabbaticals just to list the salient wordplay in all the OT verses. I think I stopped counting after about 500 verses, deciding I could never list and explain them all in TrinityCites.htm. The wordplay doesn't port over into English, so you can empathize with the translators, here. You can't even list all the categories of wordplay methods: I started to try, and then flat gave up. Come on! One of the Hebrew months is named "Father" (Ab, in Hebrew)! In that month, both Temple destructions occur because the Son was rejected! How the Jews can deny Trinity with so much wordplay in the Hebrew on Ab, and Breath (ruach, ruach-elohim being one way the Holy Spirit is designated), I'll never know. Most of Bible's OT Divine Humor is based on Trinity, marriage, fathering, birthing: FAMILY, get it?
This is the Divine Sense of Humor: I, Holy God, did not make Myself, so there's no such thing as anyone making himself, either. I, Holy God will make them, and thus they will be Made Like My Son. Shouldn't Holy God get that? Of course. But not, based on deserving -- but based on Love. With all Three, Wholly, Holy Participating. Which is what births us. David claims this No-Work Deal as the basis for his petition for Divine Aid, in Psalm 40:5-9, showing that the Word got IN him. [Section 85 in the Mormon holy books is a ribald satire on Psalm 40:8's Hebrew And Greek, so of course no Mormon could know that. The Bible verse is mistranslated in the English to say "heart": but in the Hebrew and Greek, the term rendered "heart" should have been translated "inner parts", "womb", "guts". The verse is referenced in Isa53:11, therefore. So Section 85 satirizes both Ps40:8 and Isa53:11 in both the Hebrew and Greek! For Section 85 says it's Joseph Smith -- not Christ, Who is depicted in Ps40:8 and Isa53:11 -- but it's Joseph Smith, who has a "fountain of truth" in his "bowels". In other words, truth is doo-doo in Joseph Smith. What demonic wit: they always but always mock those who believe in their fake holy books. Poor Joseph Smith didn't know Greek and Hebrew of Ps40:8 and Isa53:11; nor could he, because at that time, the Bible IN those languages was just then being collated overseas, by Samuel Tregelles and other Bible people. So this was a demon who made up Section 85. More on Section 85 is in SatStrat.htm.]
"You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." "You shall love the LORD your God in (by means of, in the sphere of) ALL your heart (believing-in),
and in ALL your soul and in ALL your Understanding/Thinking-Of-Doctrine."
[Matt22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27.]
That purple capitalized text is really the pithy Greek noun "dianoia"; the term is usually fuzzily truncated in English as "mind"; but "dianoia" is not merely the faculty of thinking. Rather, the term stresses the CONNECTIONS in the thinking, how the thinking 'moves', and the CONTENT of the thinking; here wrought by all those spiritual dendrites and data the Holy Spirit makes INSIDE you.
Preview of coming distractions: the biggest evil -- and the one which felled Israel -- is to replace "God" with "people", all in the name of the First Commandment. Very deft ploy. It's Satan's ace trump, and he plays it well. While we are spiritual children, Satan limits our idea of 'spiritual' to people-stuff; so we never get those spiritual dendrites and data from the Holy Spirit. For to get them, requires us choose God over-and-against people, like the Lord did in Matt4. Adam didn't pass that test, he chose his wife. We don't pass the test, either. So DNA remains DNA, no one gets DDNA, so no one remains in GOD'S Love. For God's Love is DDNA, only. True riches, as Christ puts it so often in the Gospels. Satan would make it dDNA, the devil's DNA -- in God's Name, of course!
I submit to you that this seemingly-cruel exclusivity of GOD ALONE FIRST -- demonstrates more love for people than all the acts of love and charity since Adam's Fall and forever afterwards. So lookie what happened as a result of cutting people out -- all mankind can be SAVED! So we must cut people out, God being first. First before everything and everyone else, the same test as in Matthew 4. THAT is what's On Trial.
Hence both the Riches AND Love of a King, are always under attack.
More specifically: ON TRIAL. As in, Legal Trial.
The rebellion is based on priced love, essentially. Satan claims there should BE a price to love. Since God is Infinite, the price God 'asks', is too high. Notice how to justify rebellion, Satan changes the truth. God is Infinite, and God does all the work, for FREE. We choose to get that done TO us, or not. Love never coerces. Does it really BUG our finite nature to submit to this process? Yes. You can't become bigger than what you are, without it bugging what you are. Growing pains means going against what you are 'now', in order to become what you are not. But that doesn't mean you earned anything. If you love something, you don't call it a cost, you call it a GAIN. If, by contrast, you hate something, you twist the truth to make a cost. Hence you can say that the One growing you, is 'asking' a price OF you. Thus priding yourself on your hatred. Pride and hatred always go together. The common urge in the media, by popular psychologists, etc. that you 'deserve' and should be proud of yourself, etc. is sheer satanic salesmanship, period. Recipe for misery, every time. John 3:16+2Cor5:21 makes you as good as God, so you don't need to ever think in that miserable, puny, sickly, 'deserving' way! Read all of 2Cor5, if you've any doubts.
So it has always been a war/struggle over whether Superior God makes you like HIM, or whether you make yourself your OWN way. For God is infinite, but you are finite; so if you love God, you want to be more like Him FOR Him. If you hate God's superiority, you want.. divorce. So you can be your own god. Satan&Co. will gladly 'help' you be your own god. In fact, you'd then need their help, for you can't improve yourself on your own. [Adam was created perfect, so no improvement mechanism inside himself was created. It wasn't justifiable. Any further growth would be beyond his then-current nature, so such growth would have to come from God.] You aren't your own, and weren't designed to be on your own, so you always need either God's Power, or Satan's. There is no middle ground. See, you were designed to be a King-Priest. No king owns himself, but his kingdom owns him. So if you want to be made like the Most High FOR the Most High, God will do that TO you and FOR you. If, by contrast, you want to be made like Satan&Co., they will do that TO you and FOR themselves. Your choice.
Notice how this is the same issue as faced Adam and the woman in the Garden. Two trees. For us, the "Tree of Life" is the Cross, John 3:16 being the vote for it. For us, the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" is refusing the Cross. Post-salvation, it's the same choosing, but with this upgrade: "Tree of Life" is Romans 8:4, getting filled up with Christ's Thinking in God's System. Satan's tree is thus (still) the world's thinking, and you choose to get filled up with that. Historically, 99.9% of Christians have opted for Satan's tree, and so are filled up with satanic thinking.
So: in this Culminating Phase of the War-Trial, God is out to build a Bride for His Son, which is Church. Then, to marry her off for all eternity; at which point, she keeps on birthing DDNA kids; starting, Down Here And Right Now. For in that first nanosecond you believe(d) in Christ, you marry Him. What kind of marriage ensues after that, depends on how much DDNA gets put in you. The marriage, is absolute. The way it forever plays on and for you, is a matter of your consent, every second you breathe. You can always reverse a prior vote, but many prior votes of course will take time to nullify. Meanwhile, every positive vote you make has a bizillion times the effect. Which you know, because God took your first vote for John 3:16, and saved you forever. So how much more now will He do with your subsequent positive votes! For you are not your own, but His, now.
So this spiritual siring by God, occurs amidst a Divorce Trial which Satan&Co. filed; hence we were created. Hence the human race has always been "evidence" in the Trial. In this phase of the Trial, we Church are being developed and then presented in evidence (by both sides, actually) to show the results of Love as Word IN you. Or, the lack thereof. Word, not works. Love=Word, not works.
Love itself does all the work. Question is whose Love and whose works? And, what's the Quality Of The Resulting 'Children'? God says that His Love Must be Built in you; else the resulting 'children' have the 'quality' of menstrual rags, Isa64:6. Satan counters that God's 'love' is masochistic and sadistic, so offers his own dDNA 'seed'. Both sides in the Trial agree that what man does, is worthless in and of itself. Neither side in the Trial really faults us for that, we're too puny. It's not about how small we are, it's about Where Our Consents Go. The quality is entirely based on who remakes us; that Production Result is Trial Evidence. So in this Trial, we are 'operated on' by one side or the other. So we vote for who remakes us every second we breathe, by believing in one or the other side's tenets. So notice how in any event, It's the Believing, and not works, which develops you. As a result of which believing, works result (main theme in James, always mistranslated). So the resulting Trial Evidence shows 1) who is developing you, and 2) whose works thus result. That's the 'game'; you are always deciding who will do it TO you: whether you know that, or not.
So what's on Trial, is God's LOVE. Satan contends God lies, and does not love, essentially. So it's a big battle over the works of God, versus the works of Satan&Co. That's why Satan tempts the Lord in Matt4, with works! You can see where this argument is heading, can't you? Do you Wait for God to Work, or .. do YOU work? Satan was trying to break the Lord's waiting on Father...
God's Work, therefore, is to Produce Children Of Love. That means, Happy Children. Truly happy, not automatons. Truly happy, therefore independent. Irony of how total dependence on God produces maximum independence, is Christ Himself (thesis of Book of Hebrews). So His Victory on the Cross, demonstrated Maximum Happy Independence via Maximum Dependence, Heb5:8-9, Heb12:2. So he defeated Satan in the Trial (Heb1-2), but.. now the kiddies get produced (ibid).
Judicially, the issue is related: The King Who Made You is being refused. Christ's many parables on this topic in the Gospels, explain that issue. So what is at heart a Loving Father's discipline, is judicially, a warring: hence the last half of John 3, is about that warring 'match' Justice would require. So the hating world can see in its own 'language', what Justice must ensue. And its children-of-God, get blessed (and spanked, of course). So the hating world can see the advantage -- again, in its own language -- of making peace. Frankly, the West only developed due to the few believers in it. The US is not of itself, powerful. Same is true of any other nation. The sons in the nation are the only source of blessing, because it's a Justice Issue. Founded, by Love.
When a hatred-based person is attracted, he must beat up the object of his attraction. Therefore the more you do for a child of misery, the more you will be hated for it, and the more you will 'make' him miserable. So at some point, you must stand off. Conversely, whatever mistakes you make (and we all do), the more those mistakes will be blown out of proportion, to justify further hatred of you. So again, at some point you must stand off. When a love-based person is attracted, he must leave free the object of his attraction. So the children of love, are quiet; but the children of misery, are loud. The children of love, put UP (and put up with) the objects of their love; but the children of misery, must put down the objects of their attraction. Seduction of any kind is a put down; flirting, compliments, you-name-it, are done to manipulate, and are all coming from misery. For misery seeks power. Love seeks to avoid power, since it already has too much and wouldn't want to influence the love object in any way. So that's yet another reason why God stands aloof from the world, sending His blessing only through the children of love. God is not like the children of misery, but since those children are clamoring and loud, they can't 'hear' His Quietness. So all they 'hear', is their own language. Yet, He demonstrates He Himself is not like them, by leaving them free to clamor, etc. Sooner or later, many of these children (of which we all once were) will catch onto God's Quiet Freedom. For lightning doesn't strike them down, the wicked do prosper, especially the religious wicked. They need space and time to see that God is Quiet, because He is Loving. So they need that contrast, even as they need the seeming 'warring' in their own language. The 'mix' between the two varies all the time, for God knows when you need to 'hear' Him 'mimic' your own miserable nature, and when you need to 'hear' Him be Quiet. No one, but no one, goes UNloved by God. Not even in hell. |
There's an unbelievably-gigantic difference between God's DDNA-Love-Production works, and Satan's dDNA version; because, God's love and Satan's, are antithetical. Again, this is Trial Evidence. And your own Trial witness/production is this: How You Vote. How Do You Vote.. and Keep Voting? For GOD'S works.. or for Satan's? It's Evidence, hence Legal: you're voting for Who Rules you, every second. Therefore Because Of You, 'in your name', Works get Produced. The works of 'you' are always bigger than whatever you do, good or bad. Because this is a Trial, and what's getting done TO you is always the Bigger Power. So if you're getting dDNA, that's a bigger power than anything you personally are doing -- Satan&Co. are doing works through and in you, and that's the Evidence 'you' are producing. Conversely, if you're getting DDNA because you're voting for God by Being In His System, then that Power is Producing IN and FOR you, Works IN you and in the world. And that is Evidence, as well. So at no point are you the product of what you do. You are only the product of what gets done TO you, and most of the time you can't even see what's happening to you, or what's being done in the world 'in your name'. Welcome to reality. It's exhilirating and humiliating, and it's the truth. The Real Truth. You are simultaneously both bigger, and smaller, than you think yourself. Play on the Hypostatic Union, dual-natured value, per the Greek of Heb11:1. [See Heb111.htm for a corrected translation, since no translated Bible I can read, but screws up that verse.]
Satan&Co. also wanted the internet, but to denude us of privacy, to homogenize us: we all can be more easily herded into their be-your-own-god altruism: pattern of Tower of Babel, George Orwell's 1984. If they can get us all on the same altruistic page, we will be so busy looking at ourselves and making ourselves gods, that we will be like ancient Rome. The 'world' size in our eyes thus dazzling us, we will forget all about God, and even shake our fists at Him whenever He does some weather or disaster warning. Pattern of the people in Revelation Chapters 6-19. For this body is very susceptible to the world's siren songs, being as we are all infected with the sin nature.
Consequently, all the people making money due to the internet, and those who invented it, are needed for the internet to exist and continue. So they are blessed by both sides. So they won't realize that's the reason, of course, and will congratulate or curse themselves or others based on banalities like stock price, or what kudos Fortune or some other magazine, gives them. They work very hard to make this internet thingy go, and they thus think they earned whatever they get. But they cannot earn it, since the very purpose of their success is not related to their own working.
Not that working hard is pointless, but.. the point of it is something else -- which is UNseen. So never think that what you do, is the value of it. Even brushing your teeth in God's System does far more than anything you could do in a body. Even earning a billion dollars on your investments does nothing of value, if you're in Satan's system -- you're just making touchdowns for good-and-evil thinking, for all your hard work. But don't hate money and material stuff, either: because it all does have a more valuable purpose, than the one you can see. Instead, Vote For The Right Team. And then, whatever you do, will be truly valuable.
Parts III and IV of the Thinking series (link at pagetop) go through the importance of a believer in God's System, in terms of what value he is to the world. It's enormous, this value: only believers make history (forget the history books!) and only believers in God's System can buy time for the world to go on living; for only believers are the source of blessing or cursing by God to the world. Here in this webpage, only a teeny bit of that value will be explained via examples. See, if God is pleased, then He expresses His Pleasure. And since He's Infinite, His Pleasure is Infinite, so He expresses Himself in a Gigantic way. After all, only One Person paid for all the sins of History, and He did it with Thinking, not doing. So never underestimate the Pleasure of God.
Never underestimate either the Pleasure or the Power of God. Absolute Love is more powerful than anything in the universe, and Love loves obedience. God 'obeys' because He wants to. Absolutely. So this isn't a God Who's keen on condemnation: Romans 5, Rom8:1, 2Pet3:9, Isa45:7, Isa55:9, Eph3:15-19, 2Cor8:9, Rev2:9. Even the Dome of the Rock gets to stand in mute and utter testimony to the Christ's Victory on behalf of the whole world: Matt24, Dan9:25-26. Anyone can see it.
Meanwhile the world, Christians included, largely votes for Satan: people rely on people rather than God, so they vote for Satan rather than God, so.. touchdown! for the enemy side.
In the Bible, it's easy to see the past testimony: the qualitative 'children' of God's building-UP works, versus Satan's destroying works. Not so easy to see this evidence in the world around us. Yet the evidence is everywhere. Look: the world is constantly doing works for mankind. Why, we're falling all over ourselves to help the poor, the hurricane victims, the tsunami victims, the name-your-brand victims. Every piece of legislation, every TV program, internet site, radio show is all full of good-deeds pushes. And with what motive? So we can fancy ourselves, gods. For if we really cared about the human race, we'd be Voting For God's Help, rather than trying to do it ourselves. So sure, beneath this i-am-god attitude, there's lots of altruism. But altruism is only there to serve guilt, ego, the need to feel good by beating up someone else. You can see this ulterior ego motive trump any alleged love for the victim quite easily: next time someone tells you what good deed he did, don't reply by complimenting the person. Then, watch his reaction.
They crucified the Lord for not complimenting them, you know (Isa53:2-3). He didn't fawn over or even kowtow to their very very many good deeds. So they violated every juridical law IN the Law, granting Him no witnesses. They violated even the Passover itself -- the penalty for which should have been, their own deaths -- in order to grant Him a lot of punches, blindfolded! They also granted Him bribery -- which a dull populus greedily accepted -- to free a murderer (Barabbas). [Details are in PassPlot.htm.] Even like, today's works crowd. Works people love to and need to condemn others. It's a trend of history.
Post-crucifixion, the Christians quickly forget about Christ altogether; they retreat back to the Law, go hog-wild for works, and the Judaizers among them -- the very people who did the most works -- were those who beat up Paul on the Temple steps! You can see this sordid story play out in that Book of Early Christian Failure, aka "Acts". Paul (with Luke, Timothy, a few others) got straightened out. Later, Peter and John got outta Jerusalem, realizing that works don't work: the Bible records Peter going to Antioch and later Babylon (never to Rome, that was Paul's territory after God shipped him there in chains). John ended up on Patmos, exiled there by Domitian. But the others all morphed into the Church Fathers: we all know how That Failure turned out.. Rev17, preening live even today, still wearing the same colored clothing. [Does no one read the Bible, anymore? Would you wear those colors and then call yourself the true 'Christian' church, when even the colors and the behavior you exhibit, exactly match Revelation 17? Sheesh: Satan&Co. sure do like to mock our disinterest in God, huh.]
Moreover, the works themselves are incredibly stupid. Whether some silly bell by the United Notions people, the silly laws each country passes (do ya need a law in Argentina mandating clothiers sell larger sizes?), every candlelight vigil -- not to mention, the silly lawsuits people filed against the airlines whose misfortune it was to ferry the terrorists -- we prove we don't care about the 'victim', or about competence. We sure like wasting money, though. Same ol' same ol'. For works, preening and accusing, go together in any century. Century after century. Just turn on your TV, see for yourself!
Worst of all, the more we work, the more DISsatisfied we become. Sin eliminates the capacity for soul satisfaction, and substitutes a capacity for DISsatisfaction. So the more you give into sin (moral sin fuels works), the more DISsatisfied you become. Hence in the last 50 years we've made more technological progress than at any time in man's history: yet we've never been so dissatisfied and unhappy. The more we advance, the more we retreat. Whatever successes we enjoy, are ever-sooner cut off by some new goal; so that past success becomes ever-more-quickly, passé. Been there, done that, what's next... It's just like the effect of prolonged addiction/fornication. The 'thrill' becomes instead an urge, with repetition; and you never get the satisfaction of that 'first time'; so your only pleasure becomes anticipation, instead of attainment. Quite some production to love in Satan's system, huh.
Insanity, results. That's why the world adopts insane projects like a bell made by polluting the air to melt down children's coins, in the name of 'global ecology'. That's why we pass insane laws to choke our lives by the millions. That's why we keep throwing money away on anything to buttress ego -- the altruistic cause actually being harmed by the activity, not helped. We can't get satisfaction, are ever more desperate for it, and in our attempt to ease the urge constantly besetting us, we'll grab any idea which feels good. Because, we don't feel good, can't feel good, can only feel like martyrs. Welcome to Satan's reality. This is what the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil produces. This is why God outlawed it for consumption by the Eden couple. For, this is why Omniscient God, Who Really Knows All About that Tree, never sins. It's not satisfying, but destructive.
God Himself directly fathered every soul. Only God can create the soul, and He does it every time, no helpers, Gen2:7 -- when the fetus is outside the womb (on the ground as it were, fully formed). So God Is Our Mutual Father. No one else, Isa63:16ff (great Trinity wordplay in the Hebrew). So God has the Father's Rights. God is Perfect, so His Rights are Perfect. But what does He do with His Rights? Love. Grant the world who hates him, Time.
So let's look at this judicially, since the Love thingy throws us for a loop. Ok: here's the judicial brief. God wants sons for His Son. That's what HE wants. The world wants God to be a dog, 'fetching' for them. Well, God won't do that. So the world would not be here, and will not be here, one second longer than it takes for God to get what He wants, theme of Ephesians 1. We can hate Him or love Him for that, but.. hey, He's God, we're not, that's what He wants to have creation FOR. Call Him bad or good, He's GOD.. and we're not. So: notice how the hating-Him world, gets another day and another day and another day.. simply because God is busy making progeny like His Son. Not too bad a blessing, huh? These hating-Him folk can do whatever they want, while God does what He wants to do. And since we are in this world and we are OF this Son -- courtesy of Him, not of ourselves, but we did vote to be saved -- well, we need the world to go on longer. So, He grants Time. Not all the works on the planet from Adam through the end of the Millenium could even add one second to life, Matt6:27. [Greek verb merimnaw really means to be concerned about, to care for, so He's not talking about the act of worrying per se, but the actions of taking care. So all that caring, and the works resulting from it, don't add a whit of time.]
As Paul quips often in his letters, heh: we were just like 'them', once. We were hating God, far away from Him, shaking our fists. So: wouldn't we want them to get another day, another chance, another fertilization on the fig tree? For what if we didn't get the time we needed to wake up and believe in Him? What if we were cut short in our spiritual DDNA-growing time? So why would we want them to be cut short? Ahhhh, that's a Priestly motive. And we are priests! So guess what? We can pray about that need for them!
So look at the Evidence Quality, the 'child' which comes even from a simple prayer. For golly gee whillackers, anybody who's ever 'done' John 3:16 can PRAY! But few care to learn how. There's a protocol for prayer, and if you respect God, you follow it. In essence, you
We don't know Bible, so we don't know prayer protocol; so of course 99.9% of prayer goes no higher than the ceiling. And when we do know, we don't ask. So only an idiot has the courage to pray something big. Yeah, and God Loves Idiots, 1Cor4:10 (NIV, French Darby). His Son paid for them.
But Daniel prayed for Israel after the Temple was destroyed in 586BC; at that point, because Time Depended On Israel's Existence As A Client Nation To God, the entire world had only 126 years left; but even that much time, was contingent on Israel reconciling to Vote For The Lord, by a deadline of 516BC (when the sabbatical years completed, Dan9:2). Daniel knew all that Divine 'Mirror' Accounting for time; so Daniel prayed, following the protocol above. (The essence of the protocol is the same, but the expression was different, in the OT. You should be able to see from Daniel 9 the astonishing similarity: he addresses Father, names the sin of Israel, and the prayer is about the Christ, so is obviously acknowledgement of his standing solely due to Christ -- the only juridical basis for the prayer. So the prayer is answered because of Christ, as well. Btw, "Christ" means "Messiah" which means "Anointed One", it's a title. So the term "Christ" is IN the LXX of Daniel, 9:25-26.)
So in Dan9, God answered Daniel's prayer by granting the entire planet, another 490+70 years! Just one request, and the world lasts another half-a-millenium? [For the derivation and accounting of the 560 and the 126 years, see the "To Be or Not To Be" table in Mirroring.htm, and the text just after that table (so you see it all balance to 30AD, fulfilling Dan9:26a). God's accounting is very precise, so it will take time (heh) to absorb that material.]
Whoa, what we could do instead of ringing Satan's bells, Matt7:7ff, Matt 17:20ff, Luke 17:6ff, Mark 11:22-24, John 16:23! Tell me: What Works Could Ever Buy Time? And all you have to do, is ASK?
Oh yeah, you'll say -- that was Daniel, a Bible great: He'd never do that kind of thing for me. Oh really? Guess what. I was a complete dufus back in 1984, and so I stupidly prayed God would break apart the Soviet Union because I feared Gorbachev's popularity in the US; I wanted Russians to freely get Bible, but Gorby's glastnost and and perestroika initiatives looked like they would keep the Soviet Union chained forever. So for one week, six weeks, six months -- I don't remember -- I daily spent time laying on my bed, knowing very little Bible, and prayed. Then, I forgot all about it.
So what happened? Well.. on my birthday years later, I overslept in a hotel room long enough to be stuck there.. just in time to see live on TV, Gorby going under house arrest and then 'rescued', by Boris Yeltsin. Down came the USSR. Then I suddenly remembered that old prayer from years prior, principle of John 14:26. God timed it so I'd be stuck in a hotel room on my birthday, so I could see the show... [I didn't watch TV or read the news in those days. Would have not known, absent that 'weird' circumstance. Would not have seen it still, but because I overslept I missed Bible class in Houston -- I was there on business -- so woke up 'just in time' to see the 'coup', etc. on CNN. I didn't even have cable, at home.]
Now the diplomats of the world would not like to know some dippy Christian's prayer got answered, and all their hard work counted for squat. But that's what the Bible says (scathing passages in Isaiah Chaps 30-31, 36-37, for example). ASK GOD not man, for help. So.. didn't God's Work count for more than all that money and machination? It's hard work to be in diplomacy, I initially trained for that in college -- but God had other ideas. What a sense of humor. Guess He didn't want my BA in international relations, to be wasted; after all, wasn't the world owed something -- especially since it was a full scholarship -- since He nixed my going into that field upon my graduation? LOL. See, only GOD thinks like this. This is exactly His Sense of Humor you see displayed all over the original-language texts of Bible.
Never underestimate God's Accomplishment In Christ. Pray your brains out, k? So what do you really want? Ask HIM! Think carefully about what and why you pray, given the Enormous Power.. then Practice Praying. It's a Priestly Function, a Kingly Function.. so Think Like A Priest-King. Forget how puny 'you' are: it's not who you are of yourself, it's who you are in Christ. Again, never underestimate God's Accomplishment in Christ, 2Cor5:17 (really, the whole chapter). Christians totally underestimate the Victory of the Cross. Don't join them. Even were you an axe-murderer but a Christian who did the prayer protocol, you'd be heard.
Because you really ARE a "son of God in Christ Jesus", Gal3:26. Old things, remaining oldnesses you see, are completely irrelevant, 2Cor5:17 (read whole chapter for context). God's Work Is Bigger Than Anything You Do. No matter how good or bad what you do or did or will do, you are not God. So don't put yourself in His Place, by judging what He should or should not regard of you, based on you. For He Is Your Father. You didn't father yourself. You don't make yourself. You vote who makes you, and you can vote therefore as a Royal Priest (2Pet2:5,9, Rev1:6, Rev5:10, all of Book of Hebrews); and you are a Royal Priest, because Christ made you into DDNA on the Cross: Isa53:10-12, theme of all Romans 6-8. Accept it, do the prayer protocol, and you will be heard. Reject it, and all your self-touted, mere-DNA (or dDNA) good deeds are cast out of court: you will never be heard so long as you are rejecting, Ps66:18.
Which brings up the other biggest reason prayers don't get heard: we really don't believe God will answer us. Ok, then: He won't! We really hate it that someone 'inferior' to us can get something nice -- you know, like an axe-murderer -- you know, like a prayer answered. Ok, then: He won't answer our prayer, but will answer the axe-murderer's prayer (parable of the Pharisee and the publican, look it up). Matt7:1-2 always plays in the Supreme Court of Heaven, 24/7. So if you adjudge God wrong to answer, well.. then He won't answer you!
It will be a real surprise when we get to heaven, to find out how history really was shaped. Nothing like the news and history books, that you can be sure. Maybe some serial murderer used the protocol and asked God to make the Word accessible to anyone in the world for free, and that's why we even have an internet. Maybe a charwoman back during the Dark Ages used the protocol and asked God to free people from the Catholic Church, and that's why we have the Reformation and Real Bible In The Original-Language Texts. Do you see where this line of reasoning goes? The Lord said we could Ask For Anything In His Name, and He'd Do It (John 14:14, 16:23). Let's not be embarrassed at the Bema for not asking, k?
Even though God didn't make Himself, so He utterly rules out deserving as a valid justice criterion: God being Infinite, should be Infinitely Matched. That's why you got His Own Righteousness that first nanosecond you were saved, 2Cor5:21. So even if you think you are puny -- big lie, since you are as Righteous as God which is why you Can Pray Anything in Christ's Name -- even if you still persist in believing you are too puny for God to answer you, He is not puny. So your prayers should be big, not small -- matched to HIS Size, not your own. After all, you are a Priest To Him. Asking for yourself is not small, either. Asking for others is not small, either. But aim as big as possible, think big like a king would: because, you really are in training to become a king. So practice is essential. Prayer is much more than asking for stuff; David used it like conversation, which is by far the best nuclear device for accelerating spiritual growth. Yet, you also need training in thinking about What To Pray, so pray often. 24/7, really: thinking toward God is like prayer. Conversation, awareness, Living With And In Him, 24/7 is the spiritual life. Hence the need to be in God's System.
What have we learned in this subsection thus far? That life in Satan's system, leads to insanity: the evidence in world history is enormous. By contrast, we've also seen something of the Fact That The Christian's Power In Christ, Is Even More Enormous. That, it is accessed by living in God's System, growing in as much DDNA as you can get, baby. And because you are doing that, since God's Goal is sons, well.. the world is being blessed due to you. You just breathe, you are a dufus, drooling or growing into spiritual adulthood, whatever -- but You Are In The System. Whereas the world, rejects God's System. They adjudge Him of no account, Isa53:2-8; but you adjudge Him your God, and you're learning Him. So He blesses them due to you, and answers your prayers but not theirs. It's that stark, that simple, and all TIME depends on it.
My pastor likes to say that God is training us to be "spiritual Atlases." Very apt. Frankly, What God Makes Of You Personally For All Eternity Is Far Far Far Bigger Than any prayer you can pray. So it's still, not what you do -- not even prayer -- but What He Makes of you, that's the biggest prize of all. And you, don't you want to just know Him as much as possible? Well, that's why He makes you bigger, really. Again, still not what you do -- but for Love. Just because, just to be intimate. Forever and ever and ever. The Atlas function is actually.. peripheral. Infinity is all about INTIMACY. The Cross Is Maximum Intimacy. So go for the intimacy, "and all these things will be added unto you", Matt6:33, Luke12:31.
John's essential message, is this: God is not seen, but abides in us; His Love in us is being brought to completion when we love each other, which is out from the Spirit (tie to Rom5 and Rom8); so we nonetheless have seen and known and testify (in the larger Trial, not merely to our fellow humans) of Him, because we have come to know and believe the Love-Canon (v.16, ties to Eph3:15-19); which itself is brought to completion and thus Brings Love Itself To Completion In And In Association With Us, v.17. So we'll be confident at the Bema (ibid). [John's rhetorical style requires above-normal Greek-techie knowledge; and, Bible software that allows you to research all the "MSS" for John's Greek words. Each writer of Bible uses previous definitions in Bible to craft his letters. John thus uses specialized vocabulary in Greek, so you can see John making use of Church and priesthood and Canon keywords. Light, for example, is an OT moniker the Word, both Incarnate and written (i.e., in LXX of Isa53:11). 1Jn1:9's katharizw was used to sanctify the OT Temple (and is also in Isa53:10); so just that verb also incorporates by reference, the Church/Body concepts Paul had explained in 1Cor, Ephesians, etc. 1Jn4:12's "and" (kai) should be better rendered "in fact", since it will be bookended with v.17. So v.12 would be better rendered "in fact, His Love is brought to completion IN us." "IN" also signifies by-means-of, location-of, sphere-of; so John again stresses Church/Body as Paul had. 1Jn4:16 parallels Eph3:15-19, so John literally incorporates by reference the entire book of Ephesians in 1Jn4:16. So now v.17 makes much more sense: "By this [v.16], Love is brought to completion associated WITH us." Verses 13-15 are the means of v.16-17's achievement. My pastor kept on returning to this passage over and over, from 1997 onward. So if you are under him, you might want to get his "1992 Spiritual Dynamics" tapes. Begin in 1996 (circa L.800) and go sequentially forward from there. These webpages couldn't exist except due to those lessons, and are corollaic to them (albeit via independent due diligence).]
"Love" is a Progressive Thing, and it's only and always a mental attitude. Soul has no body itself, so emotion is felt solely from the body, which sends that feeling to the soul. Body reacts to any kind of input, which is why you can be tempted, too. So here, what you learn changes how you value everything: especially, how you value God. As you value God more and more, you want to reciprocate TO God. But, you really can't reciprocate to God, the way you can to people. So, needing an outlet, you want to reciprocate to people to express your desire to reciprocate to God. It's something you need as an outlet, not works. You need food, and you need to express yourself. Here, you need to express love: to HIM. That's why the Cross meant so much to Christ -- the maximum outlet to express His Love (in His Humanity) toward Father, and toward us.
That's the point John is making about loving the brethren: pattern is set up beginning in 1Jn2:28, parallel to Christ. Point closes in 1Jn4:17. So it's not works John is talking about, but the Word-in-You DDNA results of Transforming Your Thinking. Of which, one of the symptomatic results, is that you will love the brethren, when enough of this Word has been built in you. My pastor classifies this development in 8-9 stages (the last two are a unity, so maybe only 8), and the "loving the brethren" stage he calls, "Impersonal Love". In other words, it doesn't matter how 'deserving' the object is, you love anyway. That reflects God's love, and there's absolutely nothing like it ever, in the human race.
As we just saw above, altruism's dark side is ego. Fake love is actually hatred with a smile on. The second you don't 'deliver' the expected pay or compliment for a person's good deed, beware the sudden venom, Prov23:7ff. By contrast, true love is relieved to have something to do, so has no expectations of reciprocation, 1Cor13:4ff. The person who loves, IS reciprocating for something he feels he already got. Moreover, even the reciprocating thing the person gets to do, is in his mind, a gift; not, something he's giving. And he doesn't want to be complimented by the recipient. His attitude is like the angel who chided John, "Don't do that!" (lit., don't see me that way!, very strong) in Rev 19:10,22. Compliments or 'worshipful' attitudes given to the self, are utterly disgusting. God Alone gets those. That there should be any other recipient, is laughable. See the difference in attitude?
See, God didn't make Himself Infinite and Perfect, He just IS that way. So There's No Such Thing As Deserving. Sure, justice requires a matching; but 'deserving'? It's downright hilarious that Satan thinks he can make himself like God, since even God didn't make Himself Who He is, get it? So whatever puny 'me' seems to make is laughable, as well. On the other hand, at no cost and without any effort -- it takes no effort to 'do' John3:16, k -- I am saved forever. Moreover, at no cost and without any effort -- it takes the Spirit's power to 'do' Word in my head -- I am growing up in the relationship with God. So the erstwhile need of the sin nature is gradually replaced with a need to Thank God for what I've already gotten. But I can't thank Him. So HE HE HE -- Father, Son, Spirit -- do what thanks Them and the world, on my behalf. So if I get some little token of refreshment as well, it's like a nice meal. See the difference in attitude? And the 'me', 'I' is any of us. God never loves unequally. We are the ones learning to love Him, from Him, so we are the ones loving unequally. But that doesn't matter, since God needs no reciprocation. It's just an enjoyment to have. Not, a need. Salvation obliterated all need, even while needs remain. Word in you develops that fact in you, and by the time you mature, you'll have needs and not at all care that you do. Someone Else is occupying your mind, now. Love is an attitude, and it truly does conquer all.
So with this attitudinal difference, competence is freed. Competence is freed, because the person isn't looking at himself, anymore. He's looking up at GOD, instead, Phili2:5, Heb12:2. See, most of what complicates competence in life is insecurity and immaturity. A child can't concentrate, because everything is too 'big' for him, and since he has a sin nature, he's focused on himself. The child only grows up if he learns to go against himself -- which means, going against his urges. Well, the only sustaining motive for that, is a burgeoning trust, which leads to respect, which leads to Love -- outside himself. How much more, this transition from childhood to adulthood, needs to occur spiritually: to God Himself. The "me" thing has to give way to the "He" thing, in the spiritual life. So if this transition does not occur, a childishness remains. So incompetence remains, so insecurity remains, so the thinking is eventually retarded. So we arm our airports with all kinds of ineffective screening, and strengthen the cockpit door -- but forget all about, the latch. So we are no safer. And cannot be. But we are insecure, so we grab even any fantasy of 'safety', and call it 'good'. It's not good. But incompetence and fear, will do anything to get relief. Except, the one thing that works: look UP to God.
And we are crazy puppies, to boot. Always fantasizing some explanation, we insecure puppies thus feel good about ourselves. And we see not how insane, our explanations. Just like Adam's neurotic figleaves 'solution', we modern adams continually cock up the wackiest ideas in religion, politics, medicine, science, philosophy, childrearing, even fashion -- drugs, really, all those ideas -- and go on not learning a thing. However smart we imagine ourselves, we learn nothing. 2000 years of failure in the Middle East, should have taught us that, by now. The Dome Of The Rock Evidences Daniel 9:26, yet the smartest folks on earth, the Jews.. learn nothing from it. Even though Chanukah, is based on the abomination of desolation. The Lord even pointed all that out, in Matt24 (explaining the then-future outcome of Dan9:26). But they didn't learn from Him then, and they still don't. So if the God-Gifted smartest people on the planet still aren't learning.. then none of us are. So much for 'human wisdom and achievement'!
This building-up of Sons will result in an aggregate Body for the Eternal State. The Third Aspect sketches out the nature and function of that aggregate Body. So the Rapture occurs when that Body's Structure completes, which is why no one can 'predict' its 'date'. Part IV of the "Thinking" series furnishes a lot more detail on this topic. Here, the objective is to see what micro, internal goals God has per person, and how such goals relate to the Trial against Satan&Co.
So it's never never never never about 'earning'. "Earning" is what happens when the "L" for "Lord" is missing. If you don't learn this ASAP, you will waste your time and have a lot of later regrets. The world lies: it's not at all about works, since the work is what God works in you -- building that Love up, one precept at a time, every second you breathe. No matter what you do. So if you don't breathe 1Jn1:9 and live in God's System, you are as evil as Satan -- a threaded theme throughout 1Jn and James. You can even see it in the Gospels, when the Lord excoriates the religious types. Example: in Jn8:44, He calls their father, "the devil". Hint hint.
Hence Satan&Co. are out to make it about "earning", so to abort God's Progeny. But at the same time, they mock us for not Learning Bible. Their strategy and tactics are not at all hidden. Rather, they advertise their involvement to Deride the spiritual life, to Imbalance the spiritual life, to Obfuscate the spiritual life, and finally to Substitute their own viral dDNA, in lieu of spiritual DDNA; so the poor soppy Christian, has no excuse for his votes against God.
A larger discussion of these "Seven Content Signature" characteristics, is in SatStrat.htm. Here is a summary list:
These Greco-Roman concepts are very much replayed and recast in the following: Tongues, the prolife movement, the holy rollers; Kabbalah, Sufi, Dervish; and most all of modern eastern religions. But also in the concept of the almighty 'Terminator' hero, the inordinate worship of sports celebrities, etc. Rome had a lot of virtue concepts, but they were heavily laced with ennui and craftiness. Such ideas are pervasive in society, even today. God is nowhere to be seen, but everywhere to be bandied about. All in the name of self.
Hence, we Christians get derided openly by them for not reading our Bibles. Thus Catholicism, most other denominations' tenets, prolife, baptism, works-salvation, faith+ 'gospels', and a wide variety of other commonly-believed falsehoods are fairly easily proven false if one just looks at Bible for a little while, even in translation. But we don't. So we are proved the fools.
Non-Christians are mocked even more than we are, because all the holy books actually point to the Bible, and in very sophisticated ways. The pointing is always satirical, derisive of both Bible and the person who believes in the fake holy book being authored. The wit is sheer genius. For example, a demonic specialty is to have the text in the fake holy book, play on the Original-Language Texts Of The Bible: only those texts are inspired, really from God. Translations, are not. Every demon knows this. Almost no humans, do. If you missed the earlier example of Section 85 (among the Mormon holy books), go to pagetop, search on "Section 85", read that note. Then, search again, to return here. So very often in the fake holy books you'll find outright references to words in the original-language texts.
Some demonic references are instead to specific old translations of Bible; there, the references sometimes play on the translations versus the original-language texts, to correct the translation, lol (the Section 85 example is one of them). Then there's the common fixation on Bible in all of the post-Crucifixion holy books: inordinate amounts of text praise Christ or Bible or some Bible hero, with unbelievable derisive twists so you can see both the admiration, and the derision, side-by-side. Or, these books say other stuff which only a demon could know well, but again -- in some twisted way. Like, the fact that the Bible is "adulterated." That's true, but you'd have to be very familiar with the original-language texts, to know that. Not one in a 100 million people, are. Truth is, we have so many copies of the original-language texts we can tell where and how one text is adulterated, but another one, is not. So in aggregate, the Bible is infallible and inerrant. But of course a demon wouldn't tell you all of that; he just wants to imply you have an Excuse To Reject the Bible; he never quite accuses IT. So: notice how these implied accusations sit side-by-side with the fixation on Bible and Bible people. So.. do no brains turn on, wondering why all this fixation? All this pointing to one 'holy book' out of all the others out there? Guess not. They like the implied accusations, see.
A good index of man's negativity historically, is his embrace of books which claim to be of the Bible, but patently are not. These get the most demonic promotion, so that you think you're looking at a book of the Bible, but are not. Such books have the most glaring evidence of their being fake (i.e., in the pseudipigrapha). So there's even less excuse than none, to even read those books for longer than 10 minutes -- well, unless you had a bad day and need to laugh. It's like Mad Magazine, to read them. So anyone who takes those books seriously -- and millions do! -- is proper satanfodder.
Then there's the demon-sponsored version of ghost=spirits=aliens=Bible demons' characteristics. These are commonly portrayed in the media, and are very popular, currently. Humans mix in their own ideas, as well. Hence the importance of the seven characteristics for proper identification. For in a demon-sponsored version, the same characteristics in a 'ghost', are in 'the aliens', are in the demons of the Bible. The Bible, not some other holy book. Only Biblical demons are cast as ghosts, not another holy book's demons; only Biblical demons cast as aliens, not another holy book's aliens.
Evolution itself, is Isa14:13-14, sold to the human race; worse, it's sold to intellectuals, yet is but a recast version of animism and reincarnation, stripped of God words. So how 'intellectual', is it? The intellectual prides himself on not being 'religious'. Yet, is more religious than the primitives were. See the derision? Now, look at how irrational. Since no set can contain itself, even math proves evolution is a fraud: adaptation, yes; hybridization, yes; mutation, yes; TRANSmutation, no. Hence there is no such thing as evolution, since NO being can become bigger than what he already is, absent a larger 'set' in a parent. Doesn't matter if you believe in the Bible, or even if there was a Bible, evolution is a fraud on its own terms. So look how pathetic, how embarrassing: and again, those who believe in the substitute, are mocked.
So what gets proved, is how much we want any excuse to reject God. No matter how silly. So we are all mocked for not knowing Bible. By, those who most hate God.
So do this: when you see what looks like a verse pro- human works, dig into the original- language texts. Jas2:22, for example, uses sunergew, a God-Works-Together verb. Every good lexicon for the verb sunergew (even Thayer's) will tell you that the "sun" prefix on a verb always and only means a Divine Actor. So the inspired text means Doctrine Works, since the Actor, is Divine (here, the Holy Spirit). God worked the Word in Abraham, which is why Abraham was able to sacrifice his son. So why isn't it translated, "Doctrine Works" or "Word-believed works", so you know that God is doing the work? Because then you'd know human works aren't desired, get it? So the translation makes it appear that Abraham himself did something, and turns "faith" into a work. So for centuries Christians have used this verse to justify their works claims! Satan&Co. are herding the translators' 1) natural works-orientation; plus 2) their natural fear of disagreeing with 'tradition' (past translations). It's a common ossification problem in academia and science, every century. But since you can prove that same obvious mistranslation persists for centuries -- our lexicons are usually old too! -- man's arrogance is being herded by a power greater than himself. We selectively ignore something old we respect (and preserve) that's right (the lexicons), in order to grab something old that is WRONG (past translations); thus we prove ourselves the arrogant fools, so Satan&Co. are not to blame.
So the AIDS spreads as time passes: we preserve and propagate it, lovingly. Just you try explaining the God-Breathed-Text of James 2:22 in a 'Christian' chat channel, see what opposition you get. People love their ignorance, and consider it holy...
There's true and false abortion. False abortion: to claim there is soul life in the womb. That idea is not in the Bible, but instead originated in ancient pagan religion (i.e., mother-goddess cults, transmigration of souls). Bible only and always says that life begins at birth, with the Breath of God breathing your soul into the body which exited from the mother. But -- and this is demonically clever, boy oh boy -- Bible is almost always Reverse Translated in all womb verses, so you can't easily know it's untrue, unless you read the Bible God wrote. Again: the God-breathed texts say repeatedly that no soul life is in the womb; rather, God breathes soul life á la Gen2:7, after the body is formed and outside. Bible says this thousands of times, often using a deftly-placed preposition (min, in Hebrew, ek in Greek). [Since "min" is often a prefix, you can't even count how many in a Bible search. "Min" by itself is used at least 709 times in the OT. But the prefix occurs many times more often than the "min" form, and every time I've run into it -- practically every verse -- there is always a wordplay on Birth of some kind; birth of an idea, birth of sin, birth of blessing, etc. God is always about Begetting, so "min" constructions are extremely frequent.] So when a fetus spontaneously aborts or is taken out in any other way, God is no murderer, and neither is anyone else. It's just biological tissue: see Caveat4.htm if you doubt this and need info.
But there IS such a thing as true abortion. To Abort The Spiritual Life Is Worse Than Murder, and the Bible spends a lot of text on that fact. Because, you are already spiritually alive, Titus 3:5. Paul spends Romans 8 in Greek explaining that this spiritual life, 'begets' a new pregnancy period, to give birth to eternal progeny. So beginning in 8:11ff, he explains how the spiritual life's adult phase, is like labor pains (a frequent theme in his other letters, too, viz., Gal4:19).
So: only a Live Christian Rejecting God, Can Commit Spiritual Abortion. And when he does, he is far more vile, than any murderer. Paul, James, John, Peter, Jude use the grossest possible words to describe these folks. The Lord called them "whited sepulchres" (pretty tombs), and many other vile names. So Bible is pretty rife with excoriating detail you should be able to find even in translation. So the prolifers commit spiritual genocide in spades. Satan thus aborts the prolifers, by getting their eyes on people who they consider evil -- always his tactic -- so they get their eyes OFF God, and thus become more evil than those they accuse -- all in God's Own Name, lol! Many countries in the world are literally dying from the spiritual infection these people spread, especially in the US. Which is all the more tragic, since if the infectees only knew their God-Written Bibles (not translations), they'd quit the prolife stance faster than a cobra can spit. But they like being their own gods, so they don't read the Bible -- they just use God to make themselves powerful: Jude likens them to the orgiastic folk before the Flood (Jude verses 4-20). So they will live as spiritual babies in heaven forever, unless they wake up to their delusion, 2Tim2:26-3:7.
Next, regarding the Corporate Abortion: a mistrial verdict means the entire Premise of the trial violates the Law of the Trial itself. Or, that the Judge of the Trial is somehow so Corrupt, that the Trial itself, is More Guilty than any Potential Guilty Parties IN the Trial. It's the biggest kind of victory an attorney can win. "Satan" means "opposing attorney", in Hebrew (that's not his name, it's one of his titles).
As 1Jn3 reminds everyone, Rapture can occur at any time. From Rev 1-3 we know that It Occurs For Two Reasons: 1) Christian apostacy is too great to justify time continuing (it's never about the unbeliever, he has no legal standing, he's not to blame); and, at the same moment, 2) God has Finished His Trial Arguments to Satan&Co. Part IV of the "Thinking" series (LordvSatan4.htm is the header page) spends a lot of time on that topic. Basically, when John wrote 1Jn in the 90's AD, Christians were tiring of waiting for the Rapture; were tiring of life with God: like Israel tired of Him and wanted a human king, circa 1050BC. So some believers went apostate and split, tempting those still faithful in the Word to peel off, too. You can tell by 2Jn and 3Jn that the condition only became worse. Jude and Peter's letters of a generation prior, echoed this sad aborting condition. Satan&Co. were Religifying Christianity, so the Relationship with God, was being Aborted. Religion always cuts God out of the picture.. but in His Own Name, of course! The sordid history of Christianity from the 90's AD onward is the outcome: Scripture would stay under lock-and-key until about the last half of the 1800's. Little breakouts here and there, and of course any individual who wanted the Book, well.. God is God, and He handled it! So this letter is more relevant to us Now, since we have an Unprecedented Access To The Original-Language Texts. And we can tell by the prolifers' ignorance of those texts, how Satan AbortS them all. So this abortion method is used across-the-board, but what a nice derision 'flavor', to use the topic of abortion itself! Yes, they really are that petty and cruel. We are all being derided, 24/7.
[Nerd Note: the Reformation was a big deal, but it quickly apostatized into mega-religions like Lutheranism and Calvinism, which in their own way, suppressed Scripture by their rigid, anti-Bible interpretations. The Calvinists in 1610 really screwed up what Calvin had written when they invented TULIP. Beza's probably in heaven right now screaming at us down here to wake up and fix what he (or his people) screwed up! Calvin, Beza, Luther, all the so-called fathers are probably totally chagrined that their followers are so puerile, treating what they wrote as ceilings of spiritual grandeur, rather than as adolescent understandings, begging for upgraded study. So what you have is and was a very UNChristian power battle, down here: with everyone thinking himself holy. So state churches formed; so, they still linger, choking off all further growth from their adherents. Meanwhile, under all that furor, there were really growing believers in all the groups, who just kept on quietly learning whatever Word they could get. And they could get it, for God always provides. But the religions in either Protestant or Catholic camps, were (and are) all competing for the Rev17 mantle. Sorry, you can see it in history: apostacy is always political and always in the name of a holy crusade, as if God needed man's help: just as Rev17 depicts. Same stupid trend continues today, only this time, it's the independent churches who get on their political highhorses and ride in beastly fashion, decked in scarlet and purple.]
Believers then and now had this problem about the knowing, versus the do's. Then and now, we think of 'doing' something of extreme value. We also have the peasanty idea that if a thing requires a lot of body effort, it must be worth something. So we get real upset, when someone who isn't sweating like we are, gets more than we get. Or, when we see someone learned, we get upset that we aren't learned too -- or, intimidated, thinking ourselves hopelessly inferior.
Both attitudes prove this problem of eyes-off-God. We are looking at each other. And expecting that "God" values what we value AS we value. Well, He doesn't. So James and John (and Paul and Peter, etc.) take great pains to separate out the entire works question, to show that the premise is Learning God. Specifically, the Son of God (e.g., 2Pet3:18, which he wrote just before he died). All the NT authors trace how Word IN you is what works. God doesn't want your works, doesn't need your works, and your works don't really help people, either. John is particularly pointed about it in 1Jn3:17 -- parallel verse is in James 2:16. Both passages in context illustrate that absent the Word in you, your works are but empty, hypocritical wishes. For God Is Not In Them. As 1Jn explains, there's a gigantic difference between doing the Word and doing works, and this difference shows up in motivation. Both James and 1Jn stress this difference:
|
The one doing the Word, is motivated by IT; the one doing works, is motivated by them. |
So which source is your motivation? Like the widow who put in the two coppers, the one motivated by the Word is looking at it, not at what he does. But the one motivated by works, like those many rich before that widow who were putting in tons of money, were motivated to be 'seen' doing Much Money. So the money, mattered to them. Didn't matter, to her. Christ explained this (saying far more about it than I'm writing now), in Mark 12:42-44 and Luke 21:1-4.
| Because if the Word motivates you, you don't price what you do. But when works motivate you, oh -- how you do price them! |
Priced love is no love at all, for the Word is Priceless, Isa55:1-11. When the Word motivates you, you want to hide what good you might be doing, and you'll never believe it's good enough: because the Word IS Priceless. Pearl without price parable, ties here. By contrast, when works motivate you, you want to be praised and noticed for what you do, so you are constantly measuring in terms of PRICE, like the Pharisees (both of Jesus' day and today in Christendom). Big difference in love, huh. Bigger difference, in the object of love, huh. Which of the two, should God prefer?
Given all Scripture says in the post-Paul letters about false teachers (and even, during Christ's time, He said much about them, i.e., Matt7), those apostate believers must have been a real problem; which we also know historically, since that was the decade the Church Fathers began arising (90's AD). Sure can tell the difference between their writings, and 1John! How ironic that it's John who writes of this origin of antichrists, only to follow it up a few years later with their portrait, Rev17. False versus true 'spirits', false vs. true 'seed': the latter have the Word in them, the testimony in the Trial; the former claim to have the word in them (3:17,18a). Now 1Jn4:12-17 makes sense in the contemporary context, too. Rev1-3 shows some pretty apostate folks, esp. the respectable Laodiceans. No wonder John uses Temple keywords in 1Jn, since there was no temple (he skips right over the Temple prophecies, since they were already fulfilled, and instead spends three critical chapters on the post-salvation spiritual life, John 14-17, all taught on Christ's last night with his apostles). No wonder God is sarcastic about measuring the non-authorized Temple, in Rev11:1. We learn from Bible that we learn nothing from Bible.
So the quintessential characteristic of Satan&Co.'s involvement is therefore the suppression of Scripture; when they cannot suppress it, they suppress interest in it; when they can't do that, they distort it. Now you know why So Much Mistranslation, occurs. Satan&Co. are finite like we are, only bigger. But they still can't be everywhere at once. Because the Word "is alive and powerful", they can't afford to have its use go unmonitored. But they can't monitor everything. So they have to herd us in order to make their DIOS goal function effectively.
Hence their AIDS and abortion tactics. By getting us into works and getting us into people-people substitute 'holiness', they can all the better distract us, and hence dissuade interest in the Word; wrecking translations, stressing substitutes, encouraging disinterest. Any way they can do it, they will. Since the Word produces Love in you, and since the Love in you is the quintessential witness in the Trial, then suppression of the Word is all-important. And they did it very well, for nearly 18 centuries. But today, they can't suppress the original-language texts -- so must offer other substitutes. The Gospel, Caveats and "Right" Pastor? links on the Home Page spend much time on the nature of these substitutes, so little more will be said here.
Essentially, you can tell a satanic sponsoring of someone or something if the Word is given only lip service (or emotion). Every religion acts like this: not one of them know their own holy books, but vaguely; and instead, they get into many doo-doo's, pretending they are thus obeying their holy books. It's hysterical, what hypocrites we humans all are. So, with respect to the Real Word: if a teacher doesn't teach Bible, or just gives you snippets and sugary/emotional sermons; if you are taught by means of Madison-Avenue or emotional techniques, socializing and all manner of substitutes for teaching the Word -- it's not God who's in all that. Mind you, Satan&Co. don't exactly 'inform' their pawns; so you can be reasonably certain a satanic pawn very sincerely believes he's on good terms with a real God. It's at the end of his life (but hopefully much sooner!) he realizes he's been used. Better to never be born, the Lord observed of Judas. Judas, by the way, was a disciple -- so had to have been a believer, first. Would you want to know forever what Judas in heaven forever, knows about himself? So end up all of Satan's pawns, whether they live happily in heaven or happily in hell. [Nerd note: people in hell love it there, because they love feeling sorry for themselves. Read Luke 16:20ff to see why.]
God wrote the Word. God didn't write long tomes with windy erudition. God didn't say we should read the Church Fathers as if they were the summit of wisdom (what a crock -- read them yourself, and see). God didn't say we were to just intone or quote or otherwise parrot our teachers, as if it was respectful to learn nothing from what they taught. (Worst thing you can do to a teacher, is to not think out what he teaches you -- very disrespectful, sorry.) God didn't say we were supposed to memorize Bible verses and slap them around when we see behavior 'we' feel doesn't comport. Oh no. But Satan&Co. teach all that. So forget all the knowledge about what a surplice is, and how many Marys are in the Bible, and what Quelle is. Just Learn The Word. For itself. Not, for showing off at a 'fellowship' rally.
Granted, most Christians won't go to church if they don't get the razz-matazz -- people will leave if they don't feel the church is friendly, for example -- but then it's not God they want. Flee anyone who isn't teaching the Word AS the Word, for itself. Kissing the Word, oh-how-i-love-Jesus songs, potlucks and all that substitutes for the Word, so is evil. Satan is all about Dios -- his strategy for making God foreign to us. By Derision, Imbalance, Obfuscation, and Substitution. Implemented by the substitutes of Morality, Emotion, Gross sin, and Apathy (toward the Word). These characteristics are explained, respectively, in the Appendix of the "Thinking series" (SatStrat.htm) and in Part IVc (MEGA table) of that same series (LvS4c.htm).
Moral sinning comes from a need to be compensated for doing something unpleasant; there is no compensation to the moralist, except pride. He has to be his own god, so he has to be unrequited. That's why moral people are such a pain to be around: they have to be superior to everyone, in order to justify their own pride, which is the only 'compensation' they respect. It didn't start that way. See, we are too well aware of our physical limitations. We have to pee every day, for crying out loud. So to do the 'opposite' of that, like to deny ourselves or incur an expense, naturally upsets us, since we are sooo animalistic. So, if we treat that upset as making a 'sacrifice', well.. then we can (oh so quietly) call it evidence of how GOOD we are. Yeah, an extra "O", for Obfuscation, got put in God's name. So we make ourselves, gods. Real subtle, constant urge running from the body to the soul, to make the self god. Can't avoid it, unless you get God's DNA, His Son's Thinking. Constantly. It takes some years, to knit together.
So beware. What's most obvious, we least see. Because, without the Spirit, we are in darkness. It's our natural condition. And being in darkness, we fancy ourselves in the Light, just as John warns in 1Jn2. Look carefully at what John parallels as bad, given the purpose of his letter in Chapter 2: how the audience can know they are not like the believers who became apostate and left; which leaving believers, are now under the devil's sway; hence to beware of them (parallel passage in 2Tim2:26-3:7); for their objective is to sway the epistle's audience away from the Word. Moral sinners substitute their works and their power lust and then call themselves doing the will of God, viz., all Christian activism in any century (and especially, today). Worst evil is substitute holiness. Murders the spiritual life.
To illustrate this fact, 1Jn3 reminds his audience of Cain's sweaty religious sin of offering vegetables to God, instead of Abel's belief depicted by the lamb sacrifice; and hence Cain became jealous (instead of doing the same thing as Abel) -- and hence murdered Abel, 1Jn3:12 (see also Gen4:7 in context); the murder was done with a sacrificial knife in a sacrificial manner, mocking the Sacrifice-to-Come. (You can't see that from the English -- Greek word is specialized for sacrificing a lamb by slitting its throat, sphazw -- ties to Jn8:44, my pastor explained.) So John is very much, excoriating works and false spirituality. So you also have to know Cain was very moral and was ticked off all his hard farming work wasn't acceptable to God, but Abel's no-account sheep (which you just lead to pasture, you don't slave over it), God honored. If you don't know that about Cain you will miss John's definition of evil and sin and everything bad, in this epistle. Remember, John's parallelling what Christ said, to remind the reader, and Christ excoriated works at every turn, i.e., the Pharisees, in Matt23 (whole chapter, but especially vv12-15).
Worse Evil is white, not black, and the theme in 1Jn is to beware of false teachers. If teachers, then obviously the evil being warned against, is religious evil. Idols are always used by religion (i.e., the cult of rituals, taboos, relics, etc), the last warning in 1Jn. John's other two epistles are only on that topic, so.. looks like many of his initial audience, defected too. The theme that no Word or false word=no love is very pointed in 2Jn. So if you have trouble seeing it in 1Jn, look at 2&3 Jn, and Jude (each only a few paragraphs long, and written in some haste): note the Cain analogy in Jude 11, which John uses in 1Jn3 (tieing to the earlier Jude letter). Notice how "love" means turning away those false teachers. For 2Jn v.10-11 says, Don't even greet them; for then you yourself share in their evil. Pretty strong statement, huh. Wow: today, that behavior would be considered very unloving. So, again - it matters that you learn Bible's own definitions, not your own, lest you misread it. [Nerd note: notice that John is not telling the noble "lady" to go crusading against the false teachers, either. That's the other typical apostate behavior common throughout Christendom's sordid history, to crusade against what they consider "false". Truly disgusting, that Athanasius and his ilk. When will we ever rightly divide the Word of Truth?]
See how he writes 1Jn3:18 (corrected translation): "Children, we must not 'love' by means of mere words nor in lipservice, but [rather] in the sphere of Divine Work, even The Truth!" Pretty strong sentence: leaves no doubt, huh. In context, his socratic equation here contrasts all human works as mere words and lipservice, versus the Truth which is The Word. Only The Word, works. Heb10:24 is parallel syntax and construction -- mistranslated, of course. Same theme in James, also mistranslated. See for yourself: well, only in the Greek, never the English, lol. [Read the context from v.1Jn3:16, because the equations relate back to 1Jn2:6 on how the Lord walked; how by the Word, He gave up his Life. So here in v.18, lol -- "ergoi" and "aletheiai" are anarthrous, both of them. John is equating what is True Works, with the Truth -- after all, it's the Word which was IN Him, which paid for our sins, direct reference to Isa53:11's sunesei (da'ath, in Heb text, dalet ayin tau). But do you find that anarthrous quality indicating Divine Work in translation? Of course not! This is a pivotal verse, just like 1Jn2:5 is, and both are surgically mistranslated to reverse the meaning! Kill me now: in seminary one of the first Greek-geek things you're taught is to look for the absence of the "article" (nee: "definite article"). Absence stresses Quality, and particularly, Divine Quality. And the other big thing you're taught, is the Granville Sharp rule, where you treat "kai" as a hyphen, if there is an article for two nouns. But here there's no article, so how much more close, are the two nouns? They are equal, two sides of the same coin! So "kai" is not "and", but "even" (ascensive)-- John is equating, uniting the two anarthrous words. You'll find the same exact construction with the clever "kalwn" inserted, in Heb10:24, so that verse should say [hortatory subjunctive] "let us carefully discern among ourselves, resulting in the encouragement of Love=Word, even Divine Good Deeds." 10:25 therefore turns the noun into a foundational participle, "being encouraged" (there's no "one another" in the verse): so you know it's from Word, previous verse -- it's not between people, for crying out loud. Verse goes on to say how that encouragement results: by getting Bible Teaching (you went to church to get Bible Teaching, not social life, they didn't have tapes or internet back then)! But of course, Heb10:24 is reversed in translation! Sheesh! I'd never know what Bible said, from translations! It's a miracle anyone gets saved or lives the spiritual life! Thank you Father, my pastor taught from the original-language texts for 50+ years to his congregation, nearly every day! It hurts to see what others are stuck with. Man, my church and I have taken for granted the teaching we got, not realizing how poor the translations are. What a fool I've been! End ranting, sorry. ]
So much for all that claptrap about giving to the poor! So if I would feed the poor, I better get fed Word! Unlike people, God can really bless the poor. Unlike people, God won't use the poor to get money out of other people. Parallelisms of this in 1Jn2:9-11, 15-19, 3:4,6,8,10,12,15 and 4:20-21 show that religiosity was really a problem. After all, the devil is extremely moral, too. Angel of light, even. Religion murders the Word: see John 5:37-47, 15:18-27, 16:1-3. What you think defiles you, not what you do. So what you do, doesn't help you either, but rather what you think, Mark 7:14ff. So if defiled thinking, what must God do to any works thus contaminated, as Christ Himself, explained? Burn them up (2nd half 2Peter, 1Cor3).
So it bears repeating, that litmus of Motive and Where You Are Spiritually Living. As 1Jn explains, there's a big difference between doing the Word and doing works. This difference shows up in motivation:
|
The one doing the Word, is motivated by IT; the one doing works, is motivated by them. |
So which source is your motivation?
| Because if the Word motivates you, you don't price what you do. But when works motivate you, oh -- how you DO price them! |
For priced love is no love at all, for the Word is Priceless, Isa55:1-11. When the Word motivates you, you want to lay down your life: because the Word IS Priceless. By contrast, when works motivate you, you want praise for what you do; so you constantly measure like the Pharisees (both of Jesus' day and today in Christendom). Big difference in love, huh. Bigger difference, in the object of love, huh. Which of the two, should God prefer?
Do you begin to see how evil is the do-good-for-people claim? Does no one recognize that Matt4's temptations are temptations to good deeds? Of course not. Well: why are we so blinded? Surely it's not God who's blinding us. And you just know those touting good deeds are blind. For the claim sounds soooo nice. Soooo loving -- yeah, and chops out, God Himself! Think really hard: to Whom do you owe your first allegiance? Your parents. And Who is Your First Parent? Well, the Father Who Ordained Your Salvation. And to Whom did Christ sacrifice? He didn't turn stones into bread to feed the hungry of the world in Matt4:3, did He? Why not? Oh, it would have been a sin to do good deeds! And why? Because Father Wasn't The Recipient. First Commandment does not have the word "people" in it. And, excuse me -- by not 'caring' for the poor but instead going to the Cross for father, no little accomplishment was made on our behalf, right?
So, then: if Father is FIRST, and if Father is pleased with His Son's Thinking developing in us, then -- how do you think Omnipotent God likes to Express His Pleasure? Well, due to Christ we all got saved! So what do you think He'll 'save' in the world now, since those saved by Christ are learning what Father wants to hear? Won't He save people in other ways, far more than anything we can think or imagine, Eph3:20? So how evil are we, if we reject Learning His Son? Well, we are more evil than any murderer!
Can it be more evil, to refuse to do the one thing God really wants -- learning His Son -- so that the world can get from God, not you -- what God wants to give it? So if we are soooo busy giving the world what we think it needs, then we succeed in giving God nothing He wants, and we deny the world God's Gift on our behalf. Greater evil than that, well.. can't think of any worse.
More: as said earlier in this section.. can any work one does, BUY TIME? But, as Paul said in Col4:5 and Eph5:16 (and 6:13, indirectly), which letters were already well-circulated -- it's our job to buy time.The same way Christ bought it: learn the Word. For the Word became flesh and we flesh can thus become the Word in ourselves, since only God can do that. So only God can buy time. So only God knows how to help the poor.
Take this challenge, test the Gospels yourself and see: Christ never did anything that 'Christians' do. Not even once. He didn't run around witnessing (but rather kept on teaching, and told everyone to shut up about His Miracles and Identity, see Mark's Gospel); He didn't try to debate the validity of the Bible versus science, He didn't pass around the collection plate (and was excoriated for that); He didn't fast (except in Matt4, because that would weaken Him for better testing); He didn't tell others to be ascetic; He didn't condemn those who were rich or poor, He didn't get into activism. He only taught and died on a Cross. So, when John says repeatedly we should live ("walk" is the expression, a Hebraism) like Christ, well.. he sure doesn't mean religion. He sure does mean BECOMING something, since Christ became the Way the Truth and the Life. So how can we become that? By learning the Thinking of the Way the Truth and the Life through the Holy Spirit (1Jn4:13). Which is Spiritual DNA, Doctrinal DNA, Divine DNA. Changing us. Not, us changing a world which wants breaded stones.
Instead, Christ prayed that we be Sanctified (lit., set apart as holy, hence the term "saints") By Means Of The Truth -- John 17:17-21, 4:23-24. Truth, not works. Truth, not givings-to-the-poor, not rituals, not taboos, not revival rallies, not sing-alongs, not syrupy sermons, not prolife movements, not political crusading, not religion.. not anything like Christianity today. But instead, Truth: which results in glory and oneness with God, John 17:22-26. So much for the goofy idea that man's works do anything 'holy'! Yeah, works make one sanctimonious, but never sanctified! [Nerd Note: Greek preposition "en" is used with the dative, hence close Association, Relationship, Benefit is always the connotation. It matters that "in truth" uses that preposition, but "in" is not the only meaning, and "sanctify" is an action word, so you have to use "by means of", which of course results in "in". Look up all the meanings of the preposition "en", and test all the meanings when you find "in" used.]
Now why would He pray that? Because Truth Is What Father Wants To Hear; obviously, since Christ never prayed against the Father's Will, did He. So Truth is what Father wants to hear. Truth, not 'works'. If you work for a boss, and that boss is pleased with your work, he pays you. Pays you more, if especially pleased. Then you can spend that money as you choose. Ok: so what if God, your ultimate Boss, is pleased? Well, He pays you by taking care of the world for you, since you need the world and it (the more) needs you in it. But you are so busy learning, not doing all those kooky works the world pants after. So God Does Bigger WorkS. Well, isn't that better than you directly getting the money, and having the hassle of giving it away? It is a hassle: people won't treat you like a human being. They drool too much. So, God spares you all that hassle, and gives the world TIME, WEATHER, and all manner of stuff only God can do. Plus, competence -- because on our own, we're not competent. God is Love. Grace is His Expression of that Love. No one else can Justify that expression, but the One Who Grew Up. Of Whom, we are growing up. See the parallel?
I've left out one other Huge Blessing God Grants Because You Are Learning His Son: your entire nation is Blessed. My pastor has taught this for decades as "the pivot"; since 1997, he's warned us that due to lack of interest in Word, the US is about to be punished with extinction as Israel was -- but then discovered through the parallel of Moses, that a few "Pleroma" people are enough to justify the continuance of a nation, despite itself. Years later, through the math on Bible verses about certain Bible believers, I learned of God's Blessing System for Time (Mirroring.htm). That's a separate blessing system, from the one which benefits your home nation. So you are worth much!
Given the Moses parallel, a ratio of about 1:6 million is needed. But when you look at the parable in Luke 8, that ratio might be much higher: LvS4b.htm spends time on how such ratios leverage blessing, and how such ratios might indicate how God builds the Church for the Rapture (not trying to date it, just to understand the voting parameters). So: for the US, my pastor guesses that between 10-50 people alone carry us. We are too far gone. When national debate can center on steriods and stem cells and Federal Marriage Amendments -- headed by dingdong Christians who wouldn't know law or the Bible if It Bit Them -- then you know we are a nation of rotten figs (metaphor of believer apostacy, in Jeremiah). So only a few are spiritually-mature enough, and the US limps along. I shudder to think of the sad condition of other countries, for Bible seems to be much more loved here than anywhere else (except maybe South Korea and Brazil). [I'm not at all sure that the Bush administration is 'into' all these issues. They seem to be adopting the stance to keep their dingdong Christian Right, having decided that political support in other sectors is too small. What's interesting is that they really only talk about the issues, always managing to do very little of substance about them. That's an encouraging sign, but someone in the Administration ought to read Isaiah's many warnings against trusting "Egypt" -- the prototype of trusting the Wrong persons for your safety. God first and only. To hell with the stupid dingdong Christians, don't count on them. God disciplines His Own (Heb12:5ff), so we don't go punishing others, but we don't go relying on them, either...]
Apart from the Word, then, one is just like the straw man in James 2, wishing everyone to be clothed and fed -- but no one can feed, but God. The straw man, the works person, fancies himself doing God's work by doing body works. But God has no body. But there are so many poor. Do you help but one, and that one, scantily? When you can do what Christ did, learn the Word and produce such a sweet savor that God blesses the world to express His Pleasure?
Through the Spirit, you can do much. So to not abide in Him, when you can, 1Jn3:17 -- well, that's like the false good wishes everyone hypocritically banters: Have a nice trip. Happy Christmas. Hope you have a good week next week. Christ turned Satan's good-deeds temptations down in Matt4. In favor of, the Cross. To get to which, He had to learn learn learn learn for a lifetime. Surely if we are given to learn, then God wishes to make more of that, than we could wish to do ourselves. Even were we able.
And if you love God, oh how you ache to solve another's suffering! And how well you know, since you know HIM -- that Only God can solve suffering! Didn't He solve your own suffering? For capacities determine relationships, and everything is relative to those capacities and relationships; so the world has no soul capacity, and therefore it suffers. Well -- how then do you pray? For you know unless you pray, the world cannot be helped, since it rejects Him. And you know unless you grow, your prayer won't be heard, since no prayer is heard from someone outside God's System. God should get from us, right? And doesn't the world need Him to be pleased with us? You are So Royally Powerful, you've no idea -- well, hopefully you've some idea by now -- use that power well?
John writes 1John so believers can know what constitutes being "spiritual" for God; what constitutes good evidence in the Angelic Trial we are in, because we can't see anything from down here; and we can't see them (the demons, angels, God, etc). So John outlines four types of things which in that Trial are used to demonstrate God's handiwork. He's referencing and elaborating on Heb11:1 (in the Greek), which they all knew. What they didn't know, was what now that the Temple is gone, and God seems to have gone silent?
Gist: the Coming of Christ was a cataclysmic event with widespread, worldwide repurcussions owing to the kind of Prophecy His Coming was. Salvation and the end-of-the-world were to be simultaneous. That prophecy was known throughout the world, and His 30 years of 'silence' after His Birth, gave the world enough time to decide for or against going to Israel, to see Him. That's why John the Baptist and not Christ, was visible. It was a Period of Voting. Since the world was to end with the ending of Messiah's paying for sins, the world needed time to decide how to vote. So Messiah doesn't show up on the world's stage, until the last three years. Everyone could know when those last three years would be, owing to the timeline in Daniel 9:25-26. So after He came and was crucified, the world turned upside down. Proof of His Coming was evidenced by spectacular spiritual gifts, to give the Jews and the world yet another 40 years, to decide how to vote: Paul chokes up about that, in Romans 9:22 (aposiopesis between v.22 and v.23). Because, the message was.. He's Coming Back. This time, as a Rapture, which would kick off the end-of-the-world sequence known in the OT by various names -- which we know as "the Tribulation".
But those visible spiritual gifts pretty much terminated with the 08/28-29/70AD end of the 2nd Temple, and probably by that date, most of Scripture had been completed. Then, a 'silence' ensued: only John's 'portion' of the Bible, didn't yet exist. In the 50's and 60's AD, Matthew, James, Luke, Acts, and Paul's huge portion of Bible, were all written and disseminated. In the spate of Christian persecution following Paul's execution in 68AD (beginning the Year of the Four Emperors, a very bad time in Roman history), you got Peter's letters (written from Babylon, that's how bad persecution was), the Book of Hebrews, Mark's Gospel, Jude. So from 70AD forward, a period of silence ensued. No Rapture happened (which was expected), either. And it kept ON not happening.
So by the time John writes in the 90's AD, the other Bible books had been in circulation for nearly a generation; everyone had grown weary of the 'silence'; and wary, from all that waiting for the Lord's sudden "exanastasis" ("Rapture", in modern parlance) -- which "exit resurrection", had obviously not occurred. As a result, there was a terrific breakout of legalism and 'Christian' gnosticism (an ancient, morphing idea underlying many Eastern religions). So people were defecting away from Word in droves. It wasn't 'fun' like the competitors' offerings. So John is the last Canon writer (which he deftly informs them, in 1Jn Chapters 2-3). (PopeMyth.htm has a chronological list of NT book-writing dates, near the top of that webpage.)
Back when the 2nd Temple was built (circa 536BC-516BC), there had been excitement; but it wasn't anywhere near as glamorous as that 1st Temple had been, and the Glory of the Lord did not fill the 2nd Temple: it was promised only for the Millenium (i.e., in Ezekiel and Habakkuk). There was no Ark, either: just the Bedrock in the Holy of Holies. Still, there were plenty of prophets, and plenty of prophecy, too. So the people were sustained by the progress in building, by the prophets, and by the hope of Messiah. Understand, it wasn't easy to build the 2nd Temple and Jerusalem -- people kept on persecuting the rebuilders, so building took something like 90 years (circa 536BC-446BC); and Messiah-to-Come, wouldn't come for another 400+ years: the Daniel 9:25 timeline was precise. So that rebuilding generation, was the first generation to know when He would come.
But His Arrival, was too far away. So about 10 years after Jerusalem around the Temple had its walls finished, boredom and weariness set in again. So by about 434BC, Malachi, who was raised up by God as a prophet, was ending his ministry: so he wrote what was known as the last book of the OT. Then, there was silence. All you had to go on was the promise of Messiah's arrival per Daniel 9:25, and the Writings. Which you knew, were completed. No new revelation would come, until Messiah came. Which date, was a long way off.
If you trace God's messages and messenger styles, you'll find a progressive DISappearance of visibility. And in each case, the disappearance tallied to negative volition. As men waited and waited and waited, they tired. Those who did have a lot of faith, got a lot of visible feedback from God; those who didn't, didn't.. until some judgement had to occur. So by the end of Malachi, negativity of an ascetic nature had taken hold; so no more prophets, even, were sent. If you read Malachi, you'll see why. It ends abruptly. The next person to arrive, would be Messiah. Meanwhile all they had, were the Writings.
So here in the 90's AD, believers faced a parallel situation, but in a kind of reverse impatience: the Rapture can come at any moment ("if He should appear" clause in 1Jn2:28, 3:2), but it's been so long, and it hasn't come yet. Will it come at all? Believers a generation earlier had the same weariness, so Peter wrote them scathingly about how the Lord is not slow as "some count slowness", in 2Peter. But then Peter died. Mark's Gospel had come out soon after; the Temple was destroyed within two years afterwards; and of course Paul had been executed by Nero, in 68AD, which had kicked off that second spate of Scripture writing (Peter, maybe Jude, Hebrews, Mark's Gospel). But since all those climactic events which kept people going -- nothing happened. So here in the 90's AD, people wondered what to believe. Most just up and left or morphed the Bible into something it was not.. as usual. Notice the parallel, and the switch: the Rapture was imminent, not far off. But because it didn't happen as expected, people drifted off.
We humans are dependent on the visible for motivation. What we can't see, we don't remember very long. Two people are close friends, but one moves away. Their closeness fades, as a result. So, too, with learning God: there was no visibility, except an aging set of books a few old ones could tell stories about, back when they and the books were younger. So old peoples' stories, by now. The younger ones, ached for something they could get their hands on or see. But there was nothing. First generation in history to have total invisibility, these younger ones post-70AD, felt like fish outta water. And, they were.
For the hardest test you'll ever experience, is nothingness. Doing nothing to be saved, John 3:16. Not seeing God, 1Jn4 (and refrain, elsewhere). Not seeing what your belief in Him signifies, Heb11:1. This Trial phase is the hardest one. Beginning, with that generation of believers who lived after the Temple 'died'. And that phase, is the one you are still in. For the Rapture still can happen at any moment, but it's now been, about 2000 years. Once the Rapture happens, it all goes back to the visible: the official Tribulation, followed by the Millenium. So again, this is the hardest Trial phase. Because, all we have we think we can see.. is a dusty set of books few read, and fewer still, understand. Yet no greater proof has ever existed, either before that set of books was completed, nor ever after. For what you cannot see, you can better know. The 'eye' isn't in the way, anymore.
Scripture in the original-language texts is conclusive proof, in and of itself, that God wrote it. By Content, what the words mean. Written across a span of 1500 years, one cohesive package, consistent and comprehensible from Genesis through Revelation. Without a doubt. If God never did any visible miracle, and even if He did all visible miracles He could do -- this one, is the greatest. Bar none. Reading these texts is looking God in the very 'Face'. Just as Paul forecast, back in the last half of 1Cor13.
Oh, but there is a catch: without the Spirit's Brains, you have no eyes. So without the Word, you have no way to know how to get the Spirit's Brains. Hence we have John's writings, which explain how to 'see' without our eyes. Faith is not blind, but a superior sight. Which is why a person can read Bible until he's blue in the face, and learn nothing. Takes the Spirit's Brains and you believing in the Word He teaches you, to see anything: that's the main theme of 1Jn.
For the world wants to see the world's way, but God stopped all that visibility, since the world is too negative. Prove it quickly: See the Dome of the Rock? It's the latest in a long series of "abominations of desolation" since the 160's BC! And this particular Dome has been dumbly standing Over the Rock which is the Holy of Holies, for 14 bleeping centuries! Is it not big enough, not often enough in the news, is it not easy to read Matt24 and Dan9:26? Why, then, don't we see Bible is from God? So if a truly gigantic building with a well-established history no one disputes, Goes on Testifying to Bible's Divine Origin and is yet UNseen, well.. why should God do more? Not to mention, virtually every natural law including math, economics, history, patently displays a Hypostatic Pattern -- can God make it more obvious?
Now you have a better inkling why we Church alone can become Battlefield Royalty, the true and only Royalty for all eternity: kings under the King of Kings, Rev1:6, 5:10. Just as He was in the world, so are we, 1Jn4:17. Kinda like John the Baptist had been, we are now the only visible evidence of Him: so like Him, we are On Trial. But the world can't see us. We can't see the Trial, and we can only live on this Bible.. invisibly. That's the hardest battle for a human being. No visible support, no human systems of perception or courage. Just silence.
No one really sees a King. They see his body, and hear his voice. They see his property and servants, but they don't see his inner life. That, he lives alone, independent of all others. Else, he's not a good king: even within his own immediate family, he must draw the line, be somewhat isolated. In his own mind, he must stop being a person, and instead become an entity. Which entity, he then obeys. For the king to be a good ruler, he himself must internally be, the most ruled (Peter's palindrome, "huparchein", in 2Pet3:11). He has advisors, but he makes the decisions. He has lots of help, but no one can help him BE king. They can only help the outers and behaviors which attend the king. So for a person to train to BE a king, requires much inner isolation, to gain the necessary independence. For which, one needs strength with power, Eph3:16-17. Spirit, Word, Christ, Word, Love. That's your inner life, now. So you can see how it becomes valid to be crowned a king, if you finish the course all the way through Eph3:19's "Pleroma" completion. Invisibly.
They say that in Russia, one of the really bad punishments rendered was to lock you in a red room for about a month. You'd come out of it, crazy. Man can't take invisibility, isolation, independence. He needs feedback. Well, in this spiritual life, you don't get any: only the boys on the opposite side of the Trial, will be urging you out of your shell. So: if you're not held together by the Word in you, you'll fall apart. That's the spiritual life Christ had, and that's His Legacy to us. Welcome to reality.
So Father silently answers Son's John 17:17-21 prayer by putting His Son's Thinking, which is the Truth, in us hapless earthen vessels. Consequently, for Trial purposes, these four major demonstrations of Invisible God are the "Work" God is accomplishing in us. These four are listed in 1Jn4:12-17. Put too simply, these four are:
Because, we are truly spiritually-born, and it's all the Spirit's DDNA, proving the authenticity. Not, how nice we are to people.
This invisibility is just like all the other Trial witnesses of the Bible. Who saw Abraham sacrifice Isaac? Who saw Job pass the test? Who saw Christ on the Cross? The angels, not people. So who is seeing you now? The angels, not people down here. Search on "angels" verses in the NT, see how many Trial references are made to them. It's so bald in the OT and NT that this Angelic Trial is going on (fuzzed over in translation, of course), it's totally amazing that all our fascination with them doesn't yield a more sober understanding. My pastor has taught this extensively for over 50 years, as have some others. Consequently, we have no reason to be so obtuse about the fact that the Trial is before the angels; not at all, before mankind.
So people have very little to do with this witness. So we need to have little to do with people, but a lot to do with God. Once we are "rooted and grounded in Love", Eph3:17, we'll have enough discernment and proper motivation from Word to know what, if anything, we do in witnessing (etc) to people. Frankly, God's not too coy about what He wants: he just flat brings people to you when He thinks you are the appropriate mouth for whatever He wants. Then, they run around and tell everyone they know what you said. You never see the person again, after that. Ships that pass in the night. So God, not you, remains the sole focus. After all, you get chateaubriand, Him. Why should your brethren then settle for you, who are dog doo-doo?
But Up High in the 3rd Heaven, beyond this universe, those who know the difference between what is normal human and Bible Doctrine IN the human, are the unseen combatants in the Trial. They are very involved with humankind. They intently watch us down here. Peter uses "epithumousin angeloi parakupsai" to describe them craning their necks, like you would from up in the stands at a NASCAR race or a football game, totally involved in the 'play' -- one of my pastor's favorite reminders, 1Pet1:12. Think of us as a stadium (1Cor4:9, Greek), as a laboratory, where the results of Satan's implanted thinking versus the Lord's implanted thinking are all on display (viz., beginning of Job1 and 2, Eph3:10, 1Tim5:21). Now you get a better sense of what 1Jn4:12-17 is about. This Trial is real. You are onstage. You are being watched. By God, by the angels. So forget the people thing: you are part of something of so much greater importance, you can't even imagine. As a result, your potential impact on the human race right now is so vast, you can't even imagine. So forget the works thing, too. Stay In God's System, not works! John keeps repeating. Now you know why.
Here's a quick list of the tangle of conflicts and issues this spiritual life creates due to the Trial, and especially due to the diffferential between Infinite God putting His Own Truth in you.. and your own nature. Each of the items below is happening within each of the above four dimensions of this DDNA buildup. This DDNA transmutation, is a killer!
So it's an occupational hazard, to step 'out' of God's System, as this burgeoning discernment, beckons you to react. Cling to 'Mom' (the Holy Spirit) in the Word with all your heart and soul (aka "mind") and strength. Breathe through it, hanging onto whatever Doctrine you know, learning what you can about our hapless condition as humans. It's a normal part of the growth process of knowledge, to suddenly see and need to react. Hang on in the Word. Use 1Jn1:9, get up, and keep going. Over and over and over. It's spiritual LaMaze, frankly. "Me amal", Hebrew prep phrase of birthing in Isa53:11, depicting His 'labor pains' of the Cross; being paradigmally played for your benefit IN you, fulfilling Isa53:11, fellowship of His Sufferings. Couldn't be a more valuable experience, one you will come to cherish. Fourth Aspect will cover this topic in more detail.
"My Food is to do the Will of Him Who sent Me," said the Lord in the Gospels. And what is the Will of Him [Father] Who sent Him [the Son] into the world? To Do Nothing. Be a lamb. Let Holy Spirit carry you to and through the slaughter of the Cross. Lambs don't care for themselves, and neither should you.
DDNA is very small. All life depends on it. Quarks are very small: all the cosmos depends on them. Aggregations of the small stuff thus get big, whether in biology or cosmology (vacuums 'unite' quarks and general theory of relativity). So the 'big' stuff gets all the attention, since we can see it; but big is little, really. So the Holy Spirit focuses on the 'little' thoughts you have, lovingly. Thereby turning spiritual fission, into spiritual fusion. Biggest power in the Universe: "not by might, not by power, but By My Spirit, saith the Lord", Zech4:6. The Holy Breath, Invisible. On Whom, all life depends.
So you only win in the spiritual life by God CARRYING you, since Only His Power does Everything, and.. since you're not God, you can't properly use all the power He makes you BECOME. Satan&Co. will try to USE that power He makes you become. Hide in 'Mom', the Holy Spirit. Just stand still, as Eph6 counsels. Stay below-radar, just keep on learning Him. Don't give into the temptation to come out from 'under' the Holy Spirit, but instead "abide in Him". Like a soldier staying at his post, not giving into the taunts to leave (i.e., to help defeat the enemy). God Does All The Fighting. He did it all in the OT, and He still does. Stay Put. Be a 'faithful wife' and stay at home, no matter how it seems you glorify your Husband if you do it yourself. Christ never used His Deity for Father: Satan was baiting and berating Him for that, in Matt4. Jesus always could have done so, even on the Cross. But Christ Stayed Put. So must we. That's 1Jn's strident, never-ceasing warning.
In practice, you'll mess up over and over and over. Think of it like training in your favorite sport. For example, in racquetball, for every killshot you make, you'd previously shot a thousand high balls. But with continued practice, you get more killshots per 1000 bad ones. So keep breathing 1Jn1:9, try again. And again. And again. John's style of Greek writing is over and over and over, very driven, very repetitive. That's how success in the spiritual life, is built. That's how even biological DNA is constructed. One nucleotide upon another in a gigantic chain; one moment chained to the next, repeatedly. No flash.
In the previous section, I explained how in college I was training for a career in diplomacy; but God didn't want me in that field. So, I didn't go into it. So what I might have owed the world in that field, HE paid by answering a prayer I prayed during my too-dumb-to-know-Bible days. I don't need to tell you that the breakup of the Soviet Union completely changed the balance of political power in the world. Additionally, all those hard-working diplomats on both sides, not to mention the now freer peoples, got to be involved in that change. Not in a million years' training, could I have directly helped them that much. But God is Infinite, whereas I am infinitesmal.
So: I'm not the only believer on the planet, am I? So what must He be paying on your behalf? Gotta be at least that big, huh. For we are equal in Christ, per Romans 6, 2Cor5:17, all of Galatians. Our status in eternity might not be equal, but we're still down here and thus are equal as Priests. And all of us, are Kings-in-Training. So the world gets a king's ransom out of us. Or a king's worth of damage, if we try to play on this world's turf. Avoid all power motives -- and Churchinanity claptrap -- like the plague. They only make touchdowns for Satan's team.
So: if the relationship lasts long enough and becomes close enough, you'll get or sense an ultimatum to give up your interest in God as the 'price' of the relationship. For, they become jealous of that interest, wanting that interest on them. All kinds of vindictive behaviors then ensue, if you don't give up your interest in God. You see this story time and again in the Bible -- especially with respect to Christ Himself -- and you'll see it in life. I could tell real-life stories about it, but God will show you how this theme plays in your own periphery. One category you can research: a good pastor is always excoriated by those jealous of his flock. That you can research on the internet, and find play throughout history (Paul, Jeremiah are two quick Biblical examples, to see the pattern). Also study Canonicity (i.e., read Christopher DeHamel's The Book, a history of how we got our Bible), for the same pattern is exhibited there. [Or see "Satan's Kidnapping Scheme" table in SatStrat.htm.] This pattern happens the most on a personal level, because the Rapture occurs when enough believers have reached Pleroma maturity; so the individual is the main target; the objective is to entice you away from the spiritual life, or to make you miserable for not 'giving in'. You are being pursued, and as you grow up in God's System you'll one day maturely recognize that. Meanwhile, just remember: You Can't Afford To Live Outside God's System. Cling to 'Mom' (the Holy Spirit) for dear life!
We aren't evolved, we instead Transmuted Down (devolved, but it was instantaneous); so we are nuts, ever since we wigged out against God and for Satan (who is the craziest of them all), back in Gen3. Our Devolving State is all on Bible paper any psychologist can read in any US hotel room. See how economical God is? He saves us millions upon millions of dollars in researching cosmological theory, evolution, and psychology. Not to mention, saving lots of pockets hourly fees they no longer need to spend, 'on the couch'. We Are Incurable. Only salvation and getting Word, will produce "sanity, without illusion.. as God has assigned to each one, a standard of thinking From Doctrine", Romans 12:3 (my pastor's corrected translation).
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via the Uniting Holy Spirit, Who is the Hydrogen (bond) and Sodium of our lives, God Adds Christ's Thinking. Is Christian activism against knowing the Word, genetic engineering, stem cell research and cloning because all those things are the Very Plan Of God? Sure looks like it. See Gal4:19, Eph3:17, Phili2:5-10, Col1:25-27, Rom8:10, Heb8:8-12, Heb10:15-17, all of John 14-17; not to mention the cloning words like hupogrammos (in Peter), lithoi, etc. Not to mention all the transmutation verses like Romans 12:1-3 (mistranslated), and 2Cor5:17-21 (also surgically mistranslated); not to mention the transmutation/cloning process which is run by the Spirit through each pastor, Eph4:11-16 (always mistranslated). Then there are the "sons of God" references in Galatians, Romans, Colossians, 1Jn3. Propagating: God is propagating His Son! See how God is the Ultimate, Cloning Geneticist. Repeating: the four major demonstrations of Invisible God are the "Work" God is accomplishing in us. These four are listed in 1Jn4:12-17. They are demonstrations, functions, foundations, dimensions. Of a living building which keeps on getting, 'additions'. Specifically, the building God makes of you, inside yourself. Put simply, these four prove the superiority of what God does versus what Satan&Co. do; versus what mankind does. So superior are these results, that mankind can't even see them. So neither can you. (Body-thinking is too limited to perceive the changes Spirit is making; what it thinks it perceives, is foolishness to it, 1Cor2, Rom8:1-10.) So 1Jn is about how you can nonetheless know what's happening. 1Jn4:12-17, summarizes that process. And God's Work needs to be happening in you, because the person needs to be remade by God, to be good enough for God: to be happy. It's not God who needs anything from us: we need everything from Him. To not be God, is to have a hellish life, so God moves hell and high water to make us "sons of God in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3). That's what true good, is. All else will be burnt, 1Cor3, 2nd half of 2Peter. Again, it's hell.. to be a cell. So we might look like and behave like 'cells' now, but that's not what we are becoming. Rather, our 'cells' are designed to be replaced with His DDNA cells, just as was done to Him (especially, on the Cross). Repeating, but now on a macro level: 1Jn4:12 introduces the LOVE=WORD building structure's DIMENSIONS and demonstration. Love is a Thought Pattern Of The Word In You, so it can't show up on any radar screen except heaven's. This demonstration of DIMENSIONS, completes the Dimensions of God's Testimony in the (Satan&Co.) Divorce Trial. John loves Greek drama. God has him write epic themes. So John writes in socratic equations, and he always stresses the FIRSTs: that's another Greek listing technique. Idea that the first in a list tells you what list is in view, so only the first item needs to be mentioned. Also, first of importance, first as foundational, first as sine qua non. So his writing style's seeming simplicity is lost on the modern reader, who glazes over it; but the Greek reader of his day would be thunderstruck. This passage is very dramatic, in Greek: the simpler the sentence structure, the more dramatic it is. So if you're reading 1John in translation, Turn Over The Words' meanings many times, Thinking Out What They Mean, and Keep On Noticing The Parallels he draws to the Gospel of John, esp. Chaps 14-17 (he uses them as a 'base' in writing, and from there ties in ALL of the Bible except 2&3Jn and Rev, which hadn't yet been written). Oh: and change most of the verbs in 1Jn to the progressive tense, when reading: John is writing pictorially about actions in progress, as any good dramatist would. Translators all know that, but stupid translation rules only used for Bible, prohibit recognizing John's pictorial style in proper English. [The stupid rule is that you must use one English word per Greek word. But you can't ever do that, and be loyal to the source language, when translating. Incredibly bad rule, this. No translating company on earth holds to that rule, and you'd be fired from the UN or any embassy, if you followed such a rule. But this is the Bible, so it can be trashed, lol, who cares about God!] And here's the reason for the epic drama: This Trial Witness is not even playing to the world. It's playing, to God. And thus, to the angels on both sides of Him, in the Angelic Trial. So what constitutes a work, is what plays to God. Not ever, what plays to mankind. Heck, you need merely read Revelation in translation, to know that: notice how Heaven Watches, but the earth has no clue, not even when informed by the Witnesses in Rev11, or the angels in Rev14, for example. We are blind, so what's the point of playing to the world? Hint hint! Therefore, your life is measured in these Four Dimensions (referencing Eph3:18-19, but John plays out the dimensions in reverse order), since they "perfect" (complete) the contract of God: which is to bring to completion, Christ's Love-Thinking in our souls, 1Jn4:12. This creates an aggregate 'building' of Hero-Love Thinking in the believer, who is here dramatically depicted in aggregate. To wit:
Hence 2Pet3:9, which is the strongest verse I can find to indicate that those in Hell can get out, but don't want to. God knows now how it will be then, and He Never Wants anyone to perish, but have eternal life with HIM. He's not imposing, but Proposing. Forever. For Better and for Worse, and He Knows Both. For God's Capacity is Infinite, Endless, and so He can save anyone at any time. But from what you've just read about what happens to our capacities.. we won't want to be saved, in hell. We are too shallow, too short, too narrow to want anything but vibrating hatred. That's how Satan is now. God is using Satan, like He did Pharaoh, to Wake The Rest Of Us Up. Because He really is NEVER willing that anyone should perish, Satan included -- but we are willing. Caveat emptor. [If you're also under my pastor, you might recall his reversal of whether angels had eternal life, so were not paid for on the Cross, back sometime in 1999 or so. I'm not disagreeing with that, but rather refining what I think it means. Somehow God must be paid for ALL shortfall in all creation, but how it got 'booked' -- as direct cost or indirect cost -- I don't know. Further, since God had to be paid, then the 'funds' exist and He's Omnipotent, so it's not a matter of whether He can save -- and we know from 2Pet3:9 that He Never Stops wanting to do that -- but it's a matter of what happens to volition in someone who always refuses John 3:16 (and its equivalent, for Satan&Co). Clearly the volition becomes scelrotic and permanently negative. So all the flames of hell are designed to save the person, still -- even if out of a natural desire to avoid pain. But, looking at Luke 16:20ff and Satan&Co.'s continued behavior, clearly even that pain doesn't register so much as the self-insanity addiction they've so carefully dDNA'd over all the years. Makes you wanna weep forever. LordvSatan2.htm has a table on this topic of what-if-no-angelic salvation; you'll see it linked at that pagetop. LordvSatan5.htm's last section is on the (imo, defensible) premise that even those in hell, can still believe in Christ to get out, but (likely) never will.] So it becomes critical to get Fully-Dimensioned IN God, before you die. Let's review these Dimensions He builds in you: All the while, your human nature is completely side-swiped by the spiritual life. You're living in two antithethical worlds, and for all your Spiritual Dimensions, your body is none the wiser. It can't 'hear' or 'see' what your soul sees, theme in Rom7-8. Whatever understanding you have, your body will distort. Your body is something you have to keep on fighting, the most. Like Paul explained, you have to box it, constantly. This pressure of hypostatic growing distance is the closest experience to Christ's own -- for He is God-Man, and the differential couldn't be greater. Being Perfect Humanity is much harder, since the Perception is Perfect. Our dead body blunts the perception of the difference, comparatively. But it's a killer, that growing differential, like being on "the rack". Your Internal Incompatibility Increases, Not Decreases, As You Mature In Christ. Thus your own body is like a 'cross', which is used to Leverage The Love=Word Dimensions, even further. Think of leverage in finance or physics, and you'll see what God does with 'bad'. It's just capital, baby, DNA which He uses to make DDNA, the most. Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" movie focused on the Day He went to the Cross. It's a gruesome movie, but His Constantly-Trudging LOYALTY is well-depicted. That's how the spiritual life plays, and that's how 1Jn is composed in Greek, a steady rhythm: menw menw menw abide remain stay rest hupomenw stand under understand keep going trudge day in day out keep going. Even and especially when you think you can't go another step, when it seems you're not growing or learning or 'doing' anything for God, even when it's so shallow a life, so menial, so.. empty. Yeah, that's His Trudging toward Golgatha. Fellowship of His Sufferings, Isa54:1 being birthed! So don't be surprised that your learning seems to produce no improvement on your body's behavior. Body is dead, Gen2:17. When you're spiritually young, you don't really know that. Like DNA production, the first step in spiritual growing pains, is Division. God progressively divorces you from all your human attachments, and Grafts In DDNA attachments. At some point in spiritual adulthood, you experience a reversal of your old attachments, consciously. And from that point forward, this world is not where you want to be, anymore. Usually the awareness of the changeover is traumatic, but it's been a gradual replacement, all along. So as you age, you'll mistake your growing awareness of your deadness, for some new 'flaw' in you. It's not new: you're just newly aware of the shortfall ("come short" clause in Rom3:23), so for a long time you will angst over it, thinking yourself a spiritual failure. Just keep using 1Jn1:9 and living in God's System, and even this angst the Holy Spirit will resolve. The body gets left behind. You will grow to understand that. For It's Not About Sin, Not About Works, So Not About The Body, At All. But rather, it's about "Christ in you, the Confidence of glory", Col1:25-27. Love Glory, Eph3:20, which comes right after all those Dimensions are completed, in Eph3:19. Which comes as a Result of Learning Him, last clause in 2Pet3:18.
So: Eph3:16 explains that if you are to have power, you need strength: for Church the Highest Levels of both are given. When you ride a horse, the horse has power, and you need the strength to control that power; control requires self-restraint. The foremost use of power is to hold it, not flap it around. Judicious Restraint constitutes the wise use of power. Which thus requires strength. So: when you pick up something, you need strength not only to pick it up, but to control how you do it, and most of that control, is a kind of waiting. Hence you need a certain body strength, which in turn requires integrity of mind to focus, to be aware, to have the right values so you can be competent in using your strength and power over the horse, over your arms, etc. Without strength to hold power, it will crush you. We are subject to two warring powers, down here: Satan's power, and God's Power. We are no match for either. Surely all the Bible mistranslations in my websites should prove that to you by now: our best and brightest scholars screw up the Bible, and not a one of them intends or even believes he is doing that. But the evidence is overwhelming. So: if our best mess up so badly, we the laymen-puny don't stand a chance! Hence 1Jn1:9 is our lifeline. Literally. Love is the greatest power there is, and hence the greatest wealth. Love is also integrity and strength (Latin "virtus" depicts this meaning well). But we humans, have no integrity and no strength and no power, so can't handle this Divine Love. So, Eph3:16 explains that the Holy Spirit produces it via Bible's doctrine in your head (mistranslated "faith", in English Bibles). Notice those components: strength in your soul, and power in your soul, and Spirit running both, and Bible-in-your-head is the means He uses to do this running. No rituals, work. No taboos, work. No amount of charitable giving, works. No amount of altruism, works. In short, no works, work. Bible alone works (main theme in James, always mistranslated and misunderstood). So This is True Wealth: His Thinking in Your Head, His Love-Word in your words, 24/7, main theme of 1Cor (always mistranslated, too). Paul advances that theme here in Ephesians, and John dramatically summarizes the meaning and effects of both 1Cor and Ephesians, in 1Jn4:17. Bema Blessing Is based on Bible in your Spiritual Brain, BY the Brain, the Holy Breath. No Breath, no Brain, no Bible, no Bema Blessing. Period. One can't help empathizing with Satan's motive to rebel. Satan was made the highest of God's creatures, at that time. Imagine the burden he came to know: Oh, all I'll ever be is second-fiddle to the Most High Himself, and yet HE will pay for future "humans"? They can sin, but I cannot? It's very rough to be high. You have all the burden, and those below you are so far below you, the satisfaction of 'fellowship' with them is rather unfulfilling. So either you Grow Further and Learn to Love The Burden, or.. you do what Satan did, and decide to shake your fist forever. We Christians face an even higher burden than Satan did, since Our Progenitor IS that Most High, Who Became (YH+WH), Jesus the Christ, Heb12:1-2, Greek. Higher burden, higher blessing. For God really means to make us Like His Son. You can't transmute without suffering. Even exercise teaches you that. So it's to gain something, not to sacrifice something. But as you pursue this Blessing Life, Phili3:14, you will be attacked. Those not wanting such a life won't let you pursue it in peace. People born to royalty and immense wealth, face these same problems on a much smaller scale. Many of them end up bitter. Others get into the royal/rich honor code, which has from time immemorial, helped the poor without any legislation. Don't kid yourself about status and wealth: it's a killer, not a party. (Frankly, the parties are boring.) Christ was crucified for being the Richest Person in the Universe. We are in the world even as He was, so our status -- and fate -- will be the same. Playing quietly, on every demonic radarscreen near you. So this life is about Two Warring Powers: the power of sin, which is death (i.e., 1Cor15, Rom7), run by Satan&Co.; and the power of Love, which is Life, run by the Holy Spirit (Eph3:15-19, Rom8). We humans have no ability to control either one, and we mess up whichever power we get. So both sides build that ability, and keep having to nurture it. The Trial demonstrates the results of each side's 'building': the dimensions, the resultant strength, the resultant "production" (1Cor3), etc. Notice the contrast: the apostate version of Christianity -- run by Satan&Co. -- is all about visible works. So bad is this works-tainted thinking, our Bible translations are all slanted to it. So really, you're not reading The Bible God Wrote, in translation. At best, you get a vague idea of what God might mean. At worst, you get infected with the power of a whole lot of lies. So of course, you'll end up loving death, and hating life, by life's end. For the idea that you just study the Word to get His Thinking IN you, isn't even visible in translation. Whereas in the original-language texts, that's all you see harped on, over and over and over. So the world can't see even from the Bible, what God says. Much less, how to obey Him. They had the same problem, even back when the original-language texts were new and everyone could read them. So we know it's the world's blindness 'powered' by Satan&Co. which we prefer, rather than the deadness of the ancient Greek. If you read 2Jn and 3Jn, you'll notice that a whole lot of folks still kept peeling off, hankering for the world's religious self-praise. Funny how to this day, religious Christians are utterly blind to the tremendous excoriation of religion in every verse of Bible, especially in 1Jn. To their blind eyes, Bible buttresses their religious arrogance. Amazing. For as 1Jn stresses over and over, all religions are Rev17 harlots, competing for customers. But the real believer really growing in Christ, is Just Like Christ, quietly learning, turning down the Matthew 4 temptations of the world. Sure, we aren't as 'big' as Him -- but we are reflecting Him, since we are being made of the same 'spiritual genes'. Even a little piece of a mirror, still reflects the Big One from Whom it came. Gemstones reflect, whether big or little. And we are stones of the BedRock ("Petra", big Greek Keyword for Christ in OT, designating the Holy-of-Holies Arkstand, on which Isaac was almost sacrificed). Being made into, Diamonds. So this is a big Trial between Two Big Powers, and we hapless humans are caught in the middle. But we are given the means to know and choose and hence be made strong. Which way, though? Satan's huff-and-puff power, or God's Quiet Breathing Power? That's the drama of it, that's what gets answered with us Church, that's the decision you face every second you breathe... So now you know why 1Jn is written as it is. The believer privately lives this life. The spiritual life is choosing God, not works. So God is thus Juridically Free to do God's Own Works. Directly. I'm sorry, but that's a far bigger 'work' for 'you' to do, than all the world's works put together. For the world rejects God, so God must stand off. But you, puny believer, are Learning Him. Look how God granted 490 years to the entire planet, just because Daniel admitted Israel's sin and prayed for a reconciliation, in Dan 9. That's not a work Daniel did, capisce? It was an Attitude. Oh, how we underestimate the value of knowing God... So follow 1Jn's Script, live in God's System. No one but the unseen and you will know how you are doing, this side of heaven. And pay no attention to the loud mouths, for they aren't playing in heaven; they are playing on the Wrong Playing Field -- 2Jn9, still fancying themselves actors in the world's play, though God removed them from that cast, the first nanosecond they believed in Christ. (See Romans 6-8, 1Jn2:15-19. When reviewing 2Jn9, my pastor always stops to explain "proago" in simile: like a quarterback hotdogging it with the ball. No points added to his team, just a lot of childish blather.) So Christ told even the demons to shut up about Him in Mark's Gospel (awesome Gospel), so we aren't to run around advertising ourselves, either. Learn And Live On The Word. One day at a time. Then, you will truly be becoming like Your Savior, as the Spirit deposits all that DDNA in you. Then, at the Bema, 1Jn4:17 will be your victory shout. |
In sum: Christ could have just died on the Cross, and having done so, creation can stop: its purpose is fulfilled, by producing Him. But God replies (as it were) Oh yes, that's true! So now that purpose is fulfilled, it's time to make sons! Hence Doctrine is DDNA, His Thinking is spiritual genes; which elaborate code, play like fractals throughout the life: line upon line, precept upon precept, day after day, from glory to glory, once seeing as a child, but now with unveiled face. We who are a new creation in Christ (2Cor5:17) get filled up with Righteous Thinking (Romans 8:4, in context) and thus are transmuted (Titus3:5 parlaying into Romans 8 into Romans 12:1-3). So to become pregnant with Him (Eph3:15-19), and thus in labor like He was on the Cross (me amal, Heb of Isa53:11), groaning (Rom8:11ff); so to become raised up a spiritual body (1Cor15), in glory. To the Glory of Father, thus fulfilling John 17.
So in 1Jn, just like all the other epistles and especially the Gospel of John, Isa53:11 is altogether in view, as well as Paul's use of Love to mean Word in You, by John's deft crafting in 1Jn4. Awesome stuff. DDNA! Doctrinal DNA! 1Jn 5:4, Doctrine overcomes the world!
Every Bible book's definitions are determined by references to other Bible passages with the same words in them; or, a Bible book's beginning sets up its own definitions of the metaphors to be used (usually both devices are used so you know where and how to define the words). Then you track the definitions thesauretically. Especially in 1Jn, which is very sophisticated; the whole epistle is crafted in parallelism, like math formulas where variables are changed to show an EQUATING matrix. Makes me think of what it must've been like to see Einstein quickly writing his general theory of relativity, on a blackboard. John repeats the variables over and over in formulaic patterns; so what you look for, are the CHANGES in the formulas. So, for example, you compare all the abide-in-Hims to see that numberset of variables, etc. It's always important to get the overall BIG picture of a Bible book before you analyze any verses in it. Else, you can mistake the import of the verse(s) you're examining. This would be a great book to print out and color code the parallels: for example, it's like tic-tac-toe in 1Jn1:5-10, each clause in a vertical parallel with its brother clause in each following verse.
Lemme give you an example. In Greek, a very common way of incorporating a whole list by reference, is to but mention the FIRST item on a list. If you don't know that, you'll never understand 1Jn, since one of his main themes, is first-things-first, First Commandment. Without which, you can throw the rest of the list (i.e., of commandments, do's, your entire life).. away. So, he crafts his epistle in 'firsts', so to the English reader, it seems kinda basic, almost child-like. Not at all. This was a very sophisticated dramatic technique, and required of the reader, extreme concentration: it's like Einstein's formulas, swiftly written. John stresses so much that without the Word in you, the First Commandment is spit on, you almost can't read it. His very insistent, extremely fast-paced style, is totally reversed in English to a simpering, sugary, pitch. That's not the translator's fault, but the fault of how English is as a language (a language of diplomacy deliberately fuzzes over, and that's what held England together for centuries, its ability to fuzz over -- a great genius, but no good for understanding the Word of God).
So John keeps referring to first-list items, so the reader knows which list John is referencing. Further, the OT was popularly summed up as follows, which you'll find in the Gospels: the whole law was the sum of 1st Commandment and Lev19:18, which meant: love God, love your fellow man. If you did that, you obeyed the whole law. But underneath that simple statement was the implicit and well-taught understanding that "love" meant Knowing The Word. Hence the commandments in OT for tassels, leather strips, prayer shawls, and all manner of mnemonic devices, so you would have the Word cycling in your head, 24/7. The Psalm 119 people, who were daily raped and stabbed and tortured on their death march from Jerusalem to Babylon, put it this way: "I have guarded Your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against You." That whole Psalm is a kind of acrostic, each first verse standing for a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. First things first. John is incorporating all that meaning, when he writes. So, he keeps to firsts, thus always stressing the First Commandment. Can't love someone you don't know. Can't know someone you don't study. Can't study someone you don't want to know. Can't study someone if you're running around paying attention to people. For "people" isn't in the First Commandment, but in the subsequent ones. So, John keeps stressing: if you don't love God, you're not loving your brother, either. So if you don't have the Word in you, then you're not loving, period. It's real dramatic (John must have loved Greek drama and the philosophers): it smokes on the page. But sleeps instead of smokes, in translation.
By crafting his letter in firsts, he sets up equations. He's equating getting Word in you, with being saved; with having eternal life; with loving your brother; with food/shelter/clothing (bitingly, near end Chapter 3); with being in the light (another term for Word, used by Isa in Isa53:11, LXX) or in the darkness. Stark contrasts, sine qua nons. So the reader is pounded with the insistent rhythm: one foot in front of the other in the Word in the Word in the Word just as essential as breathing and just as low slow constant high drama playing on earth treasure in earthen vessels keep moving keep guarding the Word just as essential as your salvation keep thinking don't deviate from the course. Now you know you love Him now you know you are abiding in Him now you know you are in the Spirit now you know you overcome the evil one now you know you will be rewarded at the Bema now you know Him now you see Him now you are testifying to the angels about Him...
And on and on and on. Phrased in linked verses which take what was said before, change the equation a little, so you see that the prior and the current equation, are Word In You. Equals Love. Equals victory. And anything else, is bupkis. Anything else, is fornication. Being a seed of the devil. John is not, coy. He likens being in the Word to being a faithful wife at home, not straying from her husband (menw, big keyword in John 14-17). Like a soldier faithfully remaining at his post. Faithful Bride. Which "from the beginning" (tieing to Ephesians 1 deliberately, and to Gen1 and to John 1), was the Plan of God. Who was With God. Who is God. So now, you are in Him. So now, Be With Him In Your Thinking. Which means, walking in the Word, it guides your every thought. Faithfulness. Marital intimacy. Oneness, John 17. For obviously, if the wife doesn't share her husband's thinking, she's not being really faithful. Kinda like being inert when intimately alone. Sorry, it's a main theme of the Bible, that sexual metaphor (see Eze16, a truly blistering chapter).
Talk about smoky! John also heavily weaves in the by-then-long-famous, Passover night discourse of the Lord, which John finally reduced to writing, in (Gospel of) John Chaps 14-17. It's all about marital oneness with Christ via your own soul being so Filled with His Thinking, you are 'pregnant' with Him. Even as, He was pregnant with your sins. So: look for sexual innuendo, because that rhetorical style is critical to understanding the meaning in not only 1Jn, but Ephesians and doggone near every other Bible book. Bible makes very heavy use of sexual innuendo, since the theme of the entire Bible, is God making sons for His Son; of which, we are to be a Fertile Bride. But translators are ascetic, and finding the sexual innuendoes in lexicons is a pistol. You almost have to look in other Greek literature, to find the meanings.
Satan is thoroughly ascetic. That's how he can fancy himself like the Most High. Satan's first act on taking over from Adam when Adam sinned, was to command Adam cover his genitals. My pastor reminds his congregation of this fact every time he covers that aspect of Genesis, noting that Gen3:11 should be translated "Who denounced you...". So, I must conclude that ascetics would rather malign God and make Him a liar (compare end Gen2) by translating it "Who told you...", than admit there's no shame in being naked: since the better lexicons clearly agree with my pastor's translation. Satan denounced nakedness. Because he can't bear to see his own. Don't imitate him. God invented marriage and sex as a unit. Satan wants divorce. God invented pleasure. Satan wants pain. Love frightens Satan, because love means weakness, to him. Again, he can't bear to look at his own nakedness, so he makes doggone sure God's Word is 'clothed', in translation! God is not so insecure. Neither need you be.
Big hint: Love=Word In You. If you don't know that is what the Greek is saying, you'll screw up interpretation. I didn't get this for a long time. In fact, it wasn't until my pastor started revising his presentation of the Integrity of God back in 1997, that the meaning hit me. Specifically, he was circling on 1Cor12:31, Eph3:19 and 1Cor13:1-3, then v.4. It was when he got to verse 4, that I recognized how "huperbale" is used in 12:31 and Eph3:19; Romans 5:5 skyrocketed my spiritual life back in 1995 when I was listening to a 1977 Romans series exegesis on the verse. So, all of a sudden, everything clicked. So I looked into the Greek of 1Cor, to see WHEN Paul started to introduce the idea that Love=Word in you. He starts right away, in 1:5 -- but you'd never know that, in translation! All that talk over believer schisms in Chapter 1, is used to jump into the Union of the Body with Christ -- not in a religion, for crying out loud.
But again, the translation is so pitiful (lots of sexual innuendo words in 1Cor, especially since they all had a hedonism problem), you can't see what Paul is tweaking. Basically, he says this why settle for body animalism/schism, when you can have marital intimacy on a spiritual level with Your Husband? It's beautiful, the way he develops that concept. So by the time he introduces the Husband as the Head of the Body in Chapter 13, you are ready for the Love=Word In You meaning. So by the time I realized all this, I was ready to see it everywhere else in the Bible, the same theme is developed. Like, in 1Jn. As you can see, this coalescence of understanding took approximately 5-10 years. So maybe it won't now take you so long...
Yikes, what Incredibly Deft writing, therefore, in 1Jn! John is restating the Head-completed-in-you theme in 1Cor, for the post-temporary-gifts generation of believers, so is reminding them of what they already know -- and assuring them that it's still true. Tying it to John 14-17, which they newly had. (They knew about the material in John 14-17 for a long time, for all of 1Corinthians is based on it, as is Ephesians: that material was a prophecy, technically, so the NT books being written were explaining, gradually, how that Vine and Branches structure, was going to work. But they didn't have John's testimony in writing, and he was an eyewitness on that Passover night. God staggers out the witnessing so that each witness circulates, so not to confuse people. God knows our limitations.) No wonder my pastor spent so long exegeting 1Jn verse by verse! It was a watershed book for him, culminating in what he'd come to call the "Divine Dynasphere"; his teaching really ramped up after that, and he was already advanced compared to anyone else I could find. In short, it's worth the time to really understand 1Jn.
My pastor is one of the braver ones, not shying away from all the sexual innuendo like so many feel constrained to do. Scholars know about all this innuendo. They are embarrassed over it. My pastor, is not; he feels that if God writes a word, He means it to be understood and taught as He wrote it. That attitude nearly cost him his whole congregation, back decades ago when he had to teach the graphic Ezekiel 16 and Song of Solomon (back in the 1950's or 1960's, if I remember rightly). But he hung in there. And the congregation, reshaped and stuck with him. So because I'd been under him steadily since '81, and many times heard him equate marital intimacy (Corporate Testimony of Christian marriage, is the name of the doctrine currently) with 1Jn and the topic of Love every time he brings up the Integrity of God (to teach the parallel between them), I was alerted to look for the innuendo in 1Jn, Paul, and the rest of Bible. But if you don't have a pastor like that, you'll have a real hard time seeing all this intimacy meaning: and you will miss out on the most fabulous information about God's Plan for you! Don't let a tendency to ascetism ruin learning Your Holy Savior, k? Don't let all that stupid distortion of sex (which God created, to depict this Infinite Intimate Desire) which the world likes to do (God never divorces marriage and sex, but the world always does) -- don't let the world's animalistic distortions color your learning of Your First and Only Love!
This is especially true with the "abide" (menw) clauses.
Again, when you read any Bible book, you have to know its own definitions. Trouble is, the Greek language at the time John wrote, had very refined definitions which don't port over to English. So you can see the same words in English, and entirely miss the meaning. You have to know the definitions in the Greek, so that when you read the English, you can understand. For, John is writing Socratically and in terms of Greek drama. [Even the dumbest person in the empire was familiar with these concepts, since the whole language was based on them. So this isn't intellectualism. It was everyday language and thinking. Dramas were for the common people (same, for Shakespeare's, in his day; same, for operas when they were composed). We've gotten so stupid since those times, we call all this stuff high-brow, now. Well, it wasn't. We've just become incredibly animalistic, eschewing thinking.]
Of course, you can only know all that if you are reading IN the Greek. And that means, you have to know Socrates' definitions, and the Greek drama concepts, or you can't understand what you are reading. For, John takes those definitions (as all Greek writers did), and builds from them, God's definitions. Furthermore, John weaves into these, the OT definitions. Furthermore, John is weaving all the NT known at the time of writing, to show how it all comes together to glorify God, reaching a series of crescendoes. So if you don't know all those definitions, 1Jn will be greek to you. Especially, in the English.
So here are some critical definitions to keep in your head as you read 1Jn in the English.
Whew. Now you see why Christianity is so messed up. No one bothers to really learn the Bible in the languages God actually wrote! So much for our vaunted "oh how I love Jesus", and all the people who think a translated Bible is just as good as the Real One Which God wrote. Oh well.
John depicts the order of building in the reverse of Paul's listing, to make it goal-oriented and chronological, since you always start by building a foundation, and you always have an eye on height, when building the rest of the structure (so that the integrity of the structure is secure, its building goals are met). Paul talks about this building first in terms of the superstructure you see, because his point of departure is that you already have one. So John is reminding his audience of Eph3:18 -- the four dimensions, which are impersonal substantives, each relate back to Eph3:17's "Love", the burgeoning Spirit-deposited, Christ's Love-Thinking in you.
There's a double-entendre meaning to "depth". It's true that depth has both a negative and a positive connotation. That the depth is supposed to keep on increasing means your soul is getting bigger; hence depth and height are mentioned together, so the 'foundation' of you is getting bigger, too. So think of depth both in terms of getting back into fellowship via 1Jn1:9, and rising no higher than the foundation of salvation if you are not; but also, the positive idea of "depth", living in the Spirit and on Doctrine (since the deep moments of life are usually the very unpleasant ones, "deep" in the sense of really hitting you hard).
The next big thing to note is that verses 14-15 (which 'threw' me for 20+ years, even though I've heard my pastor teach this passage dozens of times) are probably a Greek idiom of repeating the first thing on a list, to incorporate by reference ALL of a previously-stated list. You'll see the same kind of structure, for example, in Hebrews 6:6's "repentence" (just after he'd listed basic doctrines, beginning with that one (another Bible keyword to denote the function in 1Jn1:9, which was always true, even in OT -- metanoew); which they were supposed to have learned, but didn't). The see-and-testify, and the Who-is-Son are the first things John mentions in his letter. Which is John's point, in 1Jn4:14-15, i.e., Keep Looking At Him Who We See And Have Testified -- idea that, you yourself see Him and could testify. Also, idea that you yourself keep admitting He is that Son, because you see Him and want to abide in Him. Which of course you couldn't do, unless you were seeing Him and abiding in Him (staying online with the Spirit, 1Jn1:9 used and learning His Thinking).
So John is talking about all the letter, and hence all of Canon, by referencing those two firsts in vv14-15. Idea that you should be remembering all of it, and since you actually can, you must be abiding under the Spirit and in God, since it takes God's Power (John 14:26) to enable such comprehensive understanding and rememberance. So you have EVIDENCE that you are in Him, by means of this function; so you are being demonstrated AS Evidence in the Trial, by means of this function.
Dramatic or really important passages in Greek are written by dropping objects, prepositions, and leaving just a stark verbal noun or verb seemingly dangling -- to indicate Comprehensive And Absolute Function of that verb or verbal noun. So you track such verbs or verbal nouns in a passage to see how they interrelate. So when saying His Love is brought to completion in us, he's saying this is a culmination-of-history (so in all ways and at all points, with respect to all objects, brought to completion). Same kind of structure is in Eph3:18's dimensions. That's why in Eph3:18 you don't see breadth of any one "what" ("love", though, is the antecedent noun the impersonal substantives relate to) -- because Love is the foundation for all "breadths". John is picking up on that comprehensiveness and elaborating on it when he words 1Jn4:12-17. By this he also ties back to Eph1, incorporating the entire chapter by reference. See how the deceptive simplicity of John's words are instead, the most sophisticated?
So you are to interpret verses 14-15 as hubs or foundations, baselines from which all other Word-learned seeing and testifying, abiding, spring. Which in practice, they do, since at the lowest moments of your life you'll find yourself USING those facts to motivate breathing your next breath, viz, "You're God, and that's all I know". "He's My Lord, and that's all I know." Absolute belief, in the trenches. So after v.17, you see the results of that Witness, contrasted with the world's: no fear, loving God and His Word (aka "commandments"), hence really loving the brethren, overcoming the world (Our Doctrine, 1Jn5:4), you keep on believing, and your 'blood' is His Thinking -- big tipoff there of the nature of DDNA -- by agency of the Spirit, you are in agreement with Father's Testimony. So now you know you have eternal life, seeing the evidence of what once you believed, but didn't actually know. So you have confidence in prayer, staying power (1Jn5:18 should be translated with progressive tenses, in English -- verse is not about salvation, but post-salvation fellowship). So one knows He is Genuine and we are genuinely from Him and in Him (v.20 looks like a parallel to unveiled face verse in 1Cor13).