The Circumcision of the Heart

13 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by jerusalemgraffiti in circumcision of the heart, The Holy Spirit, The Kingdom of Heaven

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born of the Spirit, circumcision of the heart, The Holy Spirit

by Lawrence Jones

Throughout much of history there have been men and women recognized as filled with the Spirit of God. Pharaoh said as much, speaking of Joseph. Conversely, throughout much of history there have been souls tormented by hostile spirits. King Saul, though visited by the Spirit of God upon his coronation, later rebelled against God, grieved the Spirit, and found himself tormented by an evil spirit. It would seem that there is an aperture in the human architecture, such that through that aperture we are able to open ourselves to the transcendent dominion of God or to surrender ourselves to the chaotic will of invisible mundane powers.

The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures describe man as a spiritual being created for communion with the Spirit of God. It is my goal here to chart the paths along which this communion is made possible. It would appear that the spirits of the earth are most readily discovered and adopted in settings of lawlessness. Meanwhile, the knowledge of the Spirit of God is associated with a heart that is devoted to the order of divine law. Only the passionate few discover the love of the law and the love of the Spirit of God. Of all those who actively seek the face of God, we are inspired by those who seek him with all their heart. So Isaiah wrote,

“My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you.” Isaiah 26.9

In a Psalm, David wrote,

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42.1

And in the ancient narrative of Job, he is quoted as saying,

“I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will seee God; I myself will see him with my own eyes — I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! Job 19.25-27

In the same way, the God who created us seeks communion with our spirit. As James wrote,

“He yearns jealously for the spirit he caused to live within us.” James 4.5

What does God intend here? Is his role passive? Is it his expectation, say, that we identify the presence of a static divine Spirit resident in the world and then somehow open ourselves to it as we might expose ourselves to art or music? Is the role of God more active? Does he make himself available as Spirit and shed a spiritual enhancement upon those who claim allegiance to him? Or is something far more sophisticated and far less subjective intended here?

Yeshua, in conversation with the Pharisee, Nicodemus, informed him that,

“no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born from on high.”

The response of Nicodemus was skeptical:

“How can a man be born when he is old?…Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” John 3.4

Yeshua then spoke more exactly:

“No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” John 3.5,6

To be born of water is undoubtedly a reference to birth from the womb of the mother. To be born of water might equally allude to the ritual of baptism in which the new follower of Yeshua is symbolically “buried,” only to rise from the water as a new person, marked and set aside to God. Baptism through immersion was a traditional rite marking the entry of the proselyte into Israel. The fact that John was baptising people who were already citizens of Israel reveals that the popular imagination understood that inclusion into Messianic Israel — the Israel of God — demands a certain purposefulness of the heart.

Before Yeshua began to teach, John led people in what was simply called “the baptism of repentance.” He was calling people to a change of heart in advance of the imminent arrival of their Messiah. It was only after the arrival of Yeshua to explicitly claim us for himself that baptism was “in the name of Yeshua the Messiah.” The baptism of repentance was understood to encompass the repentance of a heart rejecting its own sinfulness and hungering to turn from a life centered in self to a life centered in the knowledge of God. Baptism in the name of Yeshua Messiah was and is understood to recognize the accomplished work of Yeshua at the cross, in which he has taken upon himself the onus of our rebellion.

Baptism, for the believer, is a ritual reflective of repentance: metanoia, the turning about of the mind. Once Yeshua had come into the world, and once a person was aware of Yeshua’s work in the world, there was no reason to be limited to the baptism of repentance. One would expect to be baptized in the name of Yeshua, symbolically dying with him and then rising to newness of life.

A ritual act of baptism is a confession of the will which reaches out to the person of Yeshua in search of redemption. It is an act which lies at the threshold of being born of the Spirit. On the occasion of Pentecost, in the wake of the ascension of Yeshua to the heavenly throne, Peter told the onlookers,

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.” Acts 2.38,39

Yeshua, talking with Nicodemus, was more explicit. He did not simply say that repentance would lead to the gift of the Spirit and everything would be okay. He said that without being born of the Spirit nothing would be okay. That is to say that any knowledge of the excellence which God intends for us is fully conditioned upon both the redemptive work of Christ at the cross and the work of the Spirit of Christ in our hearts. We may imagine that in so being “born of the Spirit,” if there is any congruence with childbirth, a certain amount of labor and pain is to be expected.

Meanwhile, the human spirit that lives only “unto itself” remains stunted and never comes to know fulfillment or maturity. Such a soul, if it finds satisfaction, will only know it by the standards of the mundane world.

Scripture asserts that to live in rejection of or ignorance of the Spirit of God is to live in relative darkness, without access to the discernment of the most important truths – truths only knowable through the mind of the Spirit.

“The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” I Corinthians 2.11-12

It is the science of this union which we seek – knowledge of the path to the union of the human spirit and the Spirit of God.

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In speaking of “person” I mean to signify the individual in all its capacity to be conscious of itself, of others, of God: able to feel, to think, to choose, and, above all, able to act independently in response to information which one gathers within oneself. Being made in the image of God, the quality of being independent person is something which we share with God himself. The person is the fundamental unit [or “atomic unit”] of spiritual life.

The human spirit is the dynamic core of the human person. It is rooted in the essential being of the person. To test this we may look at the Scriptural narrative of creation. The first two chapters of Genesis describe the creation of mankind in two stages. In the fundamental creation, described enigmatically in chapter one, the essential being of man and woman is created:

“And God created [bara] the man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.” Genesis 1.27

Subsequently, the essential being of the person was married into the mortal body which God formed [yitzer] specifically for the person. At that moment the person became a living soul [nephesh].

In the opening of chapter two the work of creation is complete, and God has rested from that work. But the material reality of living things on earth – plants and animals and mankind – is not yet manifest.

“And every shrub of the field was not yet in the earth and every herb of the field had not yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was not a man to till the ground.” Genesis 2.5

At this point the man and the woman had identity, but, apart from the moment of their creation, they existed outside of history. God brought them into history by forming their bodies and grafting them into the life of the world.

“But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord formed [yitzer] the man of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul [nephesh chayah].” Genesis 2.6,7

God then put Adam into a deep sleep and took from him one side[1] of his body and formed it into the living being who was to be the first woman. Having come from his body [“bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh”] she was the partner who was to bring completion to Adam, as he to her. Their essential being had been created by God. With that essential being married into the unique body of each, they became spirited beings, spiritual beings, and, with the breath of God, that spiritual being was become a “living soul” – incorporeal spirit made physically manifest as living soul, man and woman.

In the Scriptures we first encounter spirit [ruach] in the earliest moments of creation:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit [ruach] of God was hovering over the waters.” Genesis 1.2,3

There is then a clear connection captured in language between the ruach/Spirit of God hovering over the waters of earth and the Spirit/ breath of God with which God breathes on the first man and gives him the breath of life. Job, perhaps the most ancient book in Scripture, states this connection:

“But it is the Spirit [ruach] in man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.” Job 32.8

Job’s friend Elihu is here astute enough to note that the spirit that has understanding is the spirit that looks to the Spirit of God. In the same vein, Ezekiel noted that the spirit turned away from the Spirit of God fails in understanding:

“Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit [ruach] and have seen nothing.” Ezekiel 13.3

We see that Soul is portrayed as the union of essential being and living body. Within that union the life of the spirit of the person is made possible and has existence. Spirit owns all the intelligence and capacity and sensitivity of the embodied essential being. Spirit is then the spiritual and spirited dynamic core of the living soul. By the standard of Scripture,[2] the soul is the totality of the life of the human being. Historically, any reference to the “eternal soul” is reference to the fact that when we enter eternity in the company of our God we do so not as disembodied spirits but as souls with immortal bodies.

As the dynamic core of our being, spirit is the seat of perception, of understanding, of opinion, and of emotion. Spirit entertains hope, knows sorrow, suffers fear and anger and joy. It is alternately faithful or discouraged. It can be arrogant or contrite, willing or stubborn.

Spirit holds within itself great expectations. Spirit is highly sensitive to the frustration of these expectations. The pain of such frustration can become hard evidence that our individual existence is something greater than and prior to our own imagining. In tears and joy we feel the weight of existence, the incredible gravity of being.

If we accept that spirit is the dynamic core of the soul, and that the living soul is the totality, physical and spiritual, of the life of the human being, then we may accept that the center of that life is frequently called the heart. Recognizing that spirit denotes the dynamic core of the person, “heart” also denotes the dynamic core of the person, but with a slightly more expansive domain, encompassing both the spiritual core and the physical core. The heart, being both the physical and spiritual center of our life, may also be considered as the “home” of the spirit. Heart and spirit often seem nearly interchangeable in usage. Similarly, as the soul is the home of the spirit, the two words, soul and spirit, are at times used interchangeably. Consider these examples:

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51.10

“…a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him.” Psalm 78.8

“Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit….” Ezekiel 18.31

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Luke 1.47

In the early work of Yahveh to reconcile his Spirit with the spirit of men, Yahveh spoke in terms of the “circumcision of the heart.” Yahveh saw in Abraham the character and capacity to be the patriarch of the family and people which Yahveh desired as his own “inheritance” – as the realization of his purpose for mankind. Yahveh came to Abraham and revealed to him that he was to be the father of a people “set apart” for God. In order to mark them as set apart to God, Yahveh made a covenant with Abraham under which every male would be circumcised in the flesh.

“You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.” Genesis 17.11

By this covenant, circumcision was to be the material emblem of a greater reality – the expectation of Yahveh that the heirs of Abraham must undergo the circumcision of the heart – the removal of everything that is superfluous in the identity and function of the true person.

Circumcision of both body and heart remained the standard for Israel under the leadership of Moses:

“Yet Yahveh set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore,…” Deuteronomy 10.15,16

“Yahveh your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.” Deuteronomy 30.6

In this last quotation a very important aspect of the circumcision of the heart emerges. We surrender to Yahveh our hearts for circumcision. He performs the circumcision. The result of that circumcision – the painful process by which he removes excess from our character – is that we are liberated to discover ourselves made alive by his love for us, which engenders our love for him.

From ancient times the word of God teaches that our work is to have the faith in his goodness which allows us to surrender ourselves to him and allow him to bring healing to the chambers of the heart.

“I will not accuse forever, nor will I always be angry, for then the spirit of man would grow faint before me – the breath of man that I have created. I was enraged by his sinful greed; I punished him and hid my face in anger, yet he kept on in his willful ways. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him, creating praise on the lips of the mourners in Israel. Peace, peace, to those far and near, says Yahveh, And I will heal them.” Isaiah 57.16-19

The descendants of Abraham, within a few generations — Isaac, then Jacob and Jacob’s children – were driven by drought and famine into Egypt. As their families grew large and became tribes, they found themselves subjugated by the wary Egyptian powers. In alienation they became estranged from the God of Abraham. In the Exodus, Moses led them out of Egypt, and, at Mount Sinai, Yahveh made a new covenant with Israel, rooted in the ten commandments as parameters for the conduct of the nation. At the heart of the commandments lay this preamble, the shema, which begins,

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children…” Deuteronomy 6.4-7

The people of Israel struggled to get beyond the most formal adherence to the terms of the covenant. Yahveh was seeking individuals bonded in their hearts to the person of their God. Only the very few succeeded in realizing this bond. Generally speaking, the hearts of Israel, like the hearts of their neighbors, revealed themselves to be devoted to themselves. Jeremiah recorded these words of Yahveh:

“Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars…Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know…Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from Yahveh….But blessed is the man who trusts in Yahveh, whose confidence is in him…The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I Yahveh search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 17. 1,4,5,9,10

The more Israel fell away from the expectations of Yahveh, the more he allowed them to fall into the hands of the neighboring powers and discover the extent to which they had made themselves no different than other men. But Yahveh did not give up on the grand plan of his promises to Abraham. The more Israel fell the more the prophets held to the grand destiny of a people of God, and the more they spoke of the coming of a Messiah who would facilitate a true renewal of the human heart:

“I will gather you from the nations and bring you back…I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 11.17,19

“And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” Ezekiel 36.27

The outcome of history for the people of God was dependent on the possibility of the communion of the Spirit of God with the spirit of man.

So came our Messiah, not to overthrow Rome – not for now – but to make a way for the renewal of the human heart. To this end, John, heralding the arrival of Yeshua, told those who came to him for the baptism of repentance,

“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Matthew 3.11

It is the Spirit of God which brings about the circumcision of the heart. Paul taught,

“A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.” Romans 2.29

In his letter to Ephesus Paul clearly stated that the work of the Spirit is much more than a sprinkling, much more than a makeover or glorification. The work of the Spirit is the re-creation of the heart through the surrender of the heart to the dominion of the person of God. For the assembly of believers at Ephesus, Paul described the Spirit of God penetrating into our essential being, making known to us his own love and mercy, bringing us under the power of that love, and teaching us from the endless resource of his own wisdom:

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is at work within us, to him be glory…” Ephesians 3.16-21

We see here that love lies at the architectural center of what the Spirit of Yeshua is working in the heart, the capacity to give all that we are for the sake of another. We begin to see clearly here that the much heralded advent of the Spirit is in fact the advent of the living spiritual presence of God himself within the architecture of our “heart’s house.” So Yeshua would say in Revelation:

“Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and sup with him and he with me.” Revelation 3.20

Here we see our God not standing on formalities. For instance, there is always time for the literal rite of baptism. For us, Yeshua is at this moment before the heart’s door. At this moment we, as we are, may open the door, and he will in no way turn away from us.

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” John 6.37

When Yeshua enters the heart the opportunity of profound communion begins, without regard for the imperfection of our state of understanding. He is there to lead us, stumbling, to the truth, the truth which begins in him.

In his letter to the Roman assembly Paul described the power of Yeshua as double -ended, as he spiritually enters our hearts and is bodily on the heavenly throne, interceding for us with the Father:

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will …Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” Romans 8.26,27,34

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The moment we choose to own Yeshua as redeemer and lord, we are free to open our heart to him and give his Spirit dominion over every chamber of the heart. Other than ignorance or stubbornness, there is nothing to prevent this. However, in the moment of first choosing to take Yeshua as lord, very few of us are really cognizant of the true cost of discipleship, and much less are we capable of projecting or seeking the new birth signified by the reign of the Spirit of God within us. For this reason, in the gospels and in the book of Acts we find the Spirit coming to believers under a variety of protocols.

Peter could say, “Repent and be baptized and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” There in the presence of the great Pentecost dispensation of Spirit, the onlookers had been given some ground of expectation and Peter led them right away to share in the experience they had witnessed.

At a later date Philip, the apostle, went into Samaria, and taught the people about Jesus. Many turned to him, many were baptized, many were healed, and in some cases evil spirits were driven out. The apostles in Jerusalem heard of this and sent Peter and John to visit with him. Philip had not yet introduced the Samaritans to an understanding of the work of the Spirit. Peter and John then introduced them to this as a separate and second teaching.

“When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.” Acts 8.14-17

Peter, in another time, met with a group of Gentiles at the house of Cornelius in Caesarea. Peter explained to them that God had made Yeshua a sacrifice for their sin. Faith grew in them as they considered the truth of what Peter was telling them; then the Spirit, being always sovereign, moved suddenly upon them, without regard for any prior baptism:

“While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God….Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.’ So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” Acts 10.44-48

One additional episode emphasizes the fact that many follow Yeshua and know to love him and serve him, yet, without hearing the call of Yeshua to open the heart and give him residence, they live their faith ignorant of the sustenance of the Spirit. Late in the book of Acts we learn of a Jew named Apollos, who, by his own passion, led others to the knowledge of Yeshua as Messiah and redeemer.

“Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately….He vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. Acts 18.24-26,28

Significantly, attached to this account of Apollos we find a brief account of Paul’s arrival in Ephesus. Here again we find men who are “disciples” but are still unaware that there is a call to open the heart to the enduring presence of the Spirit of God.

“While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They answered, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’ So Paul asked, ‘Then what baptism did you receive?’ ‘John’s baptism,’ they replied. Paul said, ‘John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.’ On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.” Acts 19.1-6

Here Paul distinguished between John’s rite of repentance in expectation of the Messiah and the rite of baptism based on the finished work of Yeshua at the cross, the work which satisfies the expectations of the Father and tears down every barrier between our spirit and the Spirit of God. For the spirits of these men, that ritual of baptism marked them as belonging to God and the Spirit came to them. As frequently the case at that time, the Spirit came with dramatic signs — tongues and prophesy.

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Now we must distinguish between the simple opening of the heart to the Spirit and the actual labor of being born of the Spirit. We cannot stop at the moment of collision between our own spirit and the Spirit of God and declare that we have arrived at the life which God intends for us. No matter how genuine the impulse of turning to Yeshua, no matter how dramatically real the initial collision between the Spirit of God and our own spirit, it is not the case that Yeshua simply floods us with so much love that our weaknesses are no longer significant. It may feel that way for a time. It may look that way for a time. But Yeshua needs no publicists. And he is not interested in our appearances. He is interested in our innermost character. Paul said, “what counts is a new creation.” Peter said “you must be born anew.” Paul spoke of his new “creations” as infants attending to the maturing of Christ himself within them.

“My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…” Galatians 4.19

A genuine encounter with the person and Spirit of Yeshua – the hearing of his knock at the door and opening the door – is the most pivotal and transformative moment of life, but what follows is not pure bliss. If our encounter with Yeshua is serious, what follows is the peacefulness of his enduring love winding across a landscape of bitter train wreck. As we turn initially to Yeshua to heal us and give us the liberty to come into the presence of God, only the rarest of persons has any idea of the extent to which our habit of personal autonomy is ingrained within us and we are little aware of the extent to which we rely on our selves, our possessions, our friends and connections, for the sake of our welfare: All these bonds will be tested [and often severed] in order that we may learn to find our every support in him alone.

John Newton, author of the hymn, Amazing Grace, wrote another great hymn which honestly confesses the tests we must endure if we truly want to give Yeshua dominion over our lives.

“I asked the Lord that I might grow/ In faith and love and ev’ry grace,/ Might more of His salvation know,/ And seek more earnestly His face.

“’Twas He who taught me thus to pray,/ And He, I trust, has answered prayer./ But it has been in such a way/ As almost drove me to despair.

“I hoped that in some favored hour/ At once He’d answer my request/ And, by His love’s constraining pow’r/ subdue my sins and give me rest.

“Instead of this, He made me feel/ The hidden evils of my heart/ And let the angry pow’rs of hell/ Assault my soul in ev’ry part.

“Yea more, with His own hand He seemed/ Intent to aggravate my woe,/ Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,/ Humbled my heart and laid me low.

“’Lord, why is this,’ I trembling cried;/ ‘Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?’/ ‘Tis in this way, ‘ the Lord replied,/ ‘I answer prayer for grace and faith.’

“’These inward trials I employ/ From self and pride to set thee free/ And break thy schemes of earthly joy/ That thou may’st find thy all in Me.’”

In our time, people believe in “mind” because it is clearly substantiated by synapses and gray matter. We are much less likely to believe in heart, except in the “suspension of disbelief” inspired by poetry and romance. We do not necessarily believe that the existence of a physical heart indicates the existence of a spiritual heart. Or, should we allow the existence of the spiritual heart, we may be deeply skeptical, even fearful, of what might be found within it. Archetypal dreams abound in which the heart is a black box which the owner fears to open.

The heart unchallenged goes unnoticed. But the heart challenged is a wild place of passionate reaching for its desire or, alternately, a center of pain in the loss of hope. Passion and pain teach us that there is something far above our own imagining which beats within us, an unseen existence straining to be known, acknowledged and honored. It will not be still unless it is granted its desire, or endlessly thwarted, or silenced in death.

Too often its most profound object of desire is misinterpreted as person or possession or seductive pleasure or seat of power. But the enlightened heart above all seeks the peace and order that comes from being loved by the one who brought it into the world. That love and that order are consummated in the heart when the heart opens itself to the loving rule of him who sits in royalty on the heavenly throne, who comes to us on the breath of Spirit. It is not just poetic dressing that Christ offers as he speaks to us in metaphors of consumption. It is the desire of Yeshua to employ poetic metaphor to open our minds to the fact that our knowledge of him truly must begin in taking him spiritually deep into the chambers of the heart.

In the gospel of John, we repeatedly find evidence that in opening ourselves to the Spirit we are giving ourselves over to the care and dominion of the person of Christ himself. John records a variety of occasions in which Christ employs strong metaphor in order to conjure in the minds of his audience the radical nature of his own Spirit assuming its place in communion with our inner being. John also records the powerful speech of Yeshua to his disciples in which he tells them of his impending departure and explains how, through the Spirit, he will come to live in each of them, love them, teach them, and keep them for eternity.

Early in the book of John, when Yeshua met with the Syro-Phoenician woman at the well in Samaria, he asked her for a drink. In response to his request, she parried,

“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”

[Jewish men rarely spoke to women other than their wives, and they definitely did not talk freely with Samaritans.] Yeshua showed no reticence to talk with her. He also wanted to tease her with the prospect that he was not only a Jew but even a Jew “of some stature.”

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Yeshua was intimating to her the depth of his good will toward her. As was his habit, Yeshua also disoriented his interlocutor by taking the material object of conversation and transubstantiating it into its spiritual double. He identified the Spirit metaphorically as “living water” and literally as “the gift of God.”

Like Nicodemus, the woman took the words of Yeshua at face value.

“Sir…you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

She was clearly curious about the possible mystical meaning of living water because he had questioned her awareness of “the gift of God.” She also wanted Yeshua to know that, Samaritan or not, she came from the same line of patriarchs as every other Jew. If there is a gift of God, then she had as much right to desire it as any other.

“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

“Sir,” she said, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

The woman still wanted to take his words at face value, for the alternative was to take “living water” as metaphor and have to ask what it means. Now she was doing the teasing, urging him to set before her this water which wells up to eternal life.

Not to be outdone, Yeshua stalled: “Go, call your husband and come back.”

She was compelled to reply, “I have no husband.”

Yeshua then revealed to her that he knew her life completely, even though they had never met before this moment.

“You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

At this, the woman suddenly appeared to sidestep Yeshua, changing the subject to avoid embarrassment. In reality she was responding to Yeshua by going to the heart of the question. She wanted to know what matters most, the letter of the law or the spirit of the law:

“Sir…I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Now came the time for Yeshua to allude to the spiritual meaning of living water, and to reveal that something new was coming, the liberty of the Spirit of God to reach from the throne of the heavens into the hearts of men and women:

“Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Then the woman asserted that she did in fact believe that between them there was a common ground for knowing the truth of spiritual worship, and that was the coming Messiah.

“I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

The next metaphor arose as Yeshua taught a large crowd following him along the shore of the sea of Galilee. There, miraculously, he had fed five thousand people from five loaves of bread and two fish. That evening his disciples got into a boat and crossed the lake. Yeshua followed along on his own. In the morning the crowds set out in search of Yeshua. Finding him on the other side of the lake, Yeshua bluntly told them that it was not so much the miracle that interested them as the fact that they had eaten their fill of bread and their stomachs were satisfied.

Then he admonished them, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

They immediately asked, What is this work that endures to eternal life?

Yeshua replied,

“The work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent.”

The question that remained was, Of the one he has sent, what is it that we are to believe? Yeshua consistently taught that it is not a matter of belief “about” him. It is belief in him. It is something which comes to life between himself and ourself, and with the idiom of bread Yeshua would make it more clear.

The crowd wanted Yeshua to prove the authority of his claims by giving them a sign. They suggested something along the order of the manna, the “bread from heaven,” which their forefathers ate in the desert. Yeshua responded:

“I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world….I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6.32,33,35

We are to recognize that Yeshua is the Messiah, the anointed king of the Israel of God, and we are to believe that the life of Yeshua himself, the Spirit of Yeshua, is the food that heals. The proof of that belief is that we open the heart to his dominion, that he should rule the heart’s house; yield the heart to the spiritual diet which begins and ends in the life of Yeshua, the Logos of God. Metaphorical bread and water are in reality the lifeblood of the Logos, the lifeblood of Yeshua. His life is eternal and his life sustains both the health and the immortality of our souls.

“And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6.39,40

There we have it literally, that the eternal life is the life which is grafted into the life of Christ within us. Eternal life is not just a matter of duration. It is a matter of quality, a matter of essence, a matter of living a life that is not wasted in activity that dishonors our selves and our God.

* * * *

Yeshua was not yet satisfied with the message he had given them. Perhaps he doubted that they had any idea of the cost of this bread, the cost which Yeshua would pay on the cross. It appeared that he yet needed to impress on them the reality that the life, the eternal living, which Yeshua intended for mankind is dependent upon the literal ingestion of his spiritual being into the heart’s house. And so he expanded the metaphor to include his physical body:

“This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world….I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

He had now returned to the message given to Nicodemus: Without being born from above we cannot know the kingdom of heaven.

“For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”

But his disciples, like Nicodemus, like the Samaritan woman, are struggling with the metaphor and inclined to take his words at face value. Yeshua had to speak to them directly and make it plain that he was speaking of his Spirit.

“Does this offend you? …The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” John 6.61,63

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As the Passover sacrifice drew near, the disciples began to see that their Messiah, the one whom they loved with all their being, was on a path to separate himself from them. Inconceivable that the Messiah, anticipated for century upon century, should now, in just a few years, be about to go away. Witnessing this growing awareness in the disciples, Yeshua spoke plainly of the plan which was in place from the beginning of the world, the hidden implication of what John had proclaimed even before Yeshua’s baptism, that “he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

In the course of his long discourse during the Preparation Day supper, Yeshua laid out the details of what was soon to happen. Yes, bodily he would depart – for a limited time. But his Spirit would soon return, in power and sustenance for each one of them. This bond of Spirit, linking each believer to the heavenly throne, would become the radical power that would re-engineer Israel from a geopolitical nation to a transcendent people scattered across the globe.

Yeshua reminded them of their work: to trust in him. Then he told them that when the time was right they would be physically gathered to him. But what about the interim? He promised them the presence and power of the Spirit, the Spirit being the spiritual presence of Yeshua himself:

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live….All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

So does Yeshua promise the communion of the Spirit of God with our own spirit.

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At the moment when Yeshua told the crowd that they must work, not for the food that spoils, but for the food that lasts into eternity, the ever literal-minded Jews asked him,

“What is the work of God?

Yeshua replied that the work of God is to believe on the one he has sent.

Contrary to what many would believe, he did not say that the work of God is to make yourself good and teach yourself to stop sinning. Why did he not say this? Because Yeshua is the first to know that in mankind “The heart is deceitful beyond measure.” This is our spiritual inheritance from the rebellion of our first parents.

Yeshua knows that the heart itself must be transformed and that he is the only one who can heal the heart. Yet even here, with the work of healing in his hands, our spirit has its own will and is ready to resist radical surgery, to resist his interventions in a domain which has so long stood at the core of our identity. The work of believing becomes the inner battle to surrender to him unexplored chambers of self-centered life.

Even Naaman struggled with his pride when he came to Elisha to be healed. Elisha was ready to mediate the will of Yahveh to heal his leprosy. With Naaman, as with ourselves, Yahveh needed him to open his heart in trust, in belief. So he told him that his leprosy would be healed if he would complete the ritual act of washing seven times in the Jordan River. But Naaman was disgusted at this lowly idea. He expected that healing from God himself would take place only under the noblest of circumstances. To Naaman, commander of the armies of the king of Aram, the Jordan was nothing but a muddy creek.

We are more than ready to see an end to things which clearly harm us, but we resist the loss of food or clothing or houses which contribute to our welfare, our security and our apparent dignity.

Worst of all, there is a trip wire strung across the entrance of every chamber of the heart, and at every opening it must be cut down. That very wire was first strung when Satan seduced our first mother. He told her that the boundaries laid down by God were of no great consequence. He told her that if she could rise above the impediment of the boundaries of God, if she could answer first to her own desires and her own will, then she would be like god: no one to stand above her, a goddess in every respect.

It was not the fruit itself that she could not resist, although Satan did encourage in her a lust for it that would blind her to reflection on her rebellion. She was seduced by the satin-robed glory of the act by which she assumed total power over her own self and became a goddess. She went “beyond good and evil.” Of course Satan wanted her to believe that in the process she would ascend to the understanding of the nature of good and evil – “as simply the construct of a self-effacing god.” The consequences of her act would teach her the true boundary between good and evil: alienation from the God who created her.

Deep within our character lie the remnants of that ancient sin, a fascination, an addiction to personal autonomy. As we draw near to those trivial indulgences which we ask God to overlook, we discover that it is not the objects of desire, big or small, to which we are addicted. It is our secret, unobstructed Liberty, our dominion over ourselves, which we fear to lose.

Those objects of desire to which we are addicted – they are merely the idols through which we worship the intoxicating state of belonging to ourselves. It is built into our souls. It is built into our lives. It is built into our culture, as captured in this sketch of the culture of Babylon, the empire of the world:

“In her heart she vaunts, ‘A queen I sit, no widow I, tears I shall never know.’” Revelation 18.7

Everywhere we are given idols of autonomy to adore, in advertising, in literature, in the examples of our parents, our peers, our teachers, and our celebrities. We are taught daily and hourly that only the most insipid persons surrender their autonomy. Only the weak, the slaves, who give up their right to themselves.

It is only the presence of the Spirit of Yeshua that can reveal to us that the life and the possessions and the activity of this little kingdom have no eternal value, and we are all about eternity. As Paul said, the outward appearance of piety is honored among men, but the circumcision of the heart is recognized only by God.

Personal autonomy is precisely what we are to surrender to Yeshua. As Oswald Chambers once said, There is nothing else we possess to surrender to Yeshua but our right to ourselves. In Psalm 50 Yahveh speaks,

“Gather to me my consecrated one, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”

This is the sacrifice to which he refers, the offering up of our heart’s house to his radical and thorough dominion. It is only in this sense that the sermon on the mount is a call to strength, to his strength:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

When Jesus offended the crowd by telling them they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, he turned to his disciples and asked them, “You do not want to leave too, do you?”

In poverty of spirit Peter answered him,

“Lord, to whom whall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the holy One of God.” John 6.68,69

However much we are enabled by our own capacity for Reason and philosophy, when we are our own beacon, we die. True eternity does not lie in the “timeless things.” True eternity lies in being born of the Spirit of the person of the Logos, who is Yeshua. In surrender to his Spirit we discover Yeshua himself as our beacon of understanding, the loving person of God ruling within our hearts.

Yeshua brings to us his own heart, his Spirit. That Spirit becomes the full inspiration of our spirit. From his Spirit we learn to say “Abba, Father.” We learn from him the love of the Father. In the past we lived as orphans. We are no longer orphans. It remains for us to turn our backs on the dying calls of the spirit that savored independence and alienation. It remains for us to keep our hearts open to the voice of Yeshua, to honor the reborn spirit growing within us, to use the heart he is giving us.

[1] “rib” is a mistranslation. “Side” is the better translation.

[2] This is not the standard of classical Greek thought, Plato or Aristotle or the gnostics, for whom the body is imperfect. They would have it that an incorporeal soul is in itself perfect and that all the troubles of mankind can be blamed on the imperfection of the mortal body, the imperfection of which they blame on the limitations of the creator, whom they call the demiurge.

To Him Alone

10 Friday May 2013

Posted by jerusalemgraffiti in Abrahamic promises, Faith, The Israel of God, The Kingdom of Heaven, The Messiah of Israel, Uncategorized

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Darwin, Ecumenism, faith, the covenant, the cross, the heart, the heavenly throne, the kingdom of heaven, the ladder to heaven, the promises to Abraham, the soul

An inviolable truth

Solomon holds his sword high, about to cleave the infant in two. The false mother says, “Let it be done. Divide the child. It is just.” The true mother cries out, “No! Let my own hopes be crushed, but let the child be kept whole!”

So in the courts of philosophy and religion. Many are the false midwives who are ready to see the truth divided, declaring all inspiration to be equal: “Let the Hindus sport a leg and the Buddhists an arm and the Catholics a severed head: in the end it’s all one truth, and we, in an orgy of mediocrity, can celebrate together our love for the semblance of truth.”

But the few who know their God will never let that knowledge be divided or degraded. They will never agree that a limb or a head has the worth of a truth more precious than life itself. This is the faith of the martyrs, that faith which is offensive to the world, that faith which enables those who have it to live and speak without compromise.

How does one come to such a faith? What is this faith that I should want it? In whom is faith that I should trust and follow? What bond is faith that I should never let him go?

The soul as the medium and residence of faith

In searching beyond what is given, in searching beyond the witness of the senses and beyond the conclusions of reason, faith begins.

The scientist undertakes his research with “faith” that some unknown can be found. However, to establish his discoveries, he only allows the witness of a logic rooted in experimentation, observation, and measurement. This is appropriate to the study of the material world. Any claim that all truth must submit to such a program is equivalent to a pre-judgment that there is no reality beyond the material.

Just such a narrow perspective has held dominion in the last century. Yet, in times past, men of science, believing that the spectrum of reality stretched beyond the material world, were not so stunted in their thinking that they could not enjoy both the witness of the senses and the witness of the heart. Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Faraday and a host of others found no conflict between the investigation of matter and a certainty of God which begins in faith. For them, thinking and logic were relevant also to faith, though faith be rooted in the private judgments of the heart.

Faith, then, is a faculty which appropriately belongs to such a person, to someone who believes that the scope of reality surpasses that which the tools of science are able to ascertain and who believes that the heart can be a reliable witness in determining that truth. This faculty, belief in the witness of the heart, can only be exercised by those who believe that the word “heart” may refer to something more than the organ which pumps their blood.

It is essential – in spite of all that science or Darwin might have to say – it is essential that we recognize that a human being transcends mind and body: that we have an essential core which is our invisible and eternal Address; that we have a core which owns expectation and purpose and suffering and discernment such as appear from deep within ourselves, such as far exceed the memories and conclusions and generalizations of experience; in sum, that we have a core which in and of itself is capable of extreme intelligence.

Just as Genesis describes separately the creation of the soul and the formation of the body, so King David in the Psalms refers to the two levels of our being:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. …My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.” Psalm 139.13,15,16

Darwin’s journey upward out of the primeval slime implicitly portrays the eternal and independently existing soul as incongruous with his “human animal.” Since the folly of Darwinism has been radically successful in the modern age, rooting out belief even in our own existence, there remain very few individuals who are ready for profound faith.

Since faith becomes that faculty by which the human person reaches through the unknown and touches God, there must be something real at both ends of the mystical wire – a real God and a real and conscious soul inhabiting “the heart’s house.”

It is our soul that is our address, that center in us which goes to God apart from all loss of mind and body. Our soul gathers to itself multiple terms: person, spirit, ego, heart, self. In dreams the soul reveals itself surrounded by history and purposes and wounds which are unknown to us in our conscious experience. Spirit is associated with soul. However difficult “spirit” might be to identify, we popularly refer to it as an indicator of the life of the soul.

The soul has other accoutrements to which we commonly refer. It is normal to speak of rationality, propriety, and sexuality as independent and warring forces within the heart, as in dreams they often appear in the guise of independent personae. In our daily conduct it is normal that we do not “bare the soul” or present to the world the whole sum of who we are. Rather we present to the world an edited version of ourselves which is commonly called our Persona. There is a great complex environment surrounding the soul, and it is for this reason that it can be useful to speak not only of the soul but also, more inclusively and metaphorically, of the “heart” or “heart’s house.”

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Spiritual perception and the ring of truth

Believing in the existence of my own soul, I am able to believe that I truly exist. This is belief which often comes only through pain, through listening to cries which emerge from deep within our own being, cries which we have not imitated from another source, cries which call out from dark corners which we never knew. These are the cries of trauma, of hope, of ambition, of despair – cries so earnest that they frighten us because we are shocked at the urgency of their appearance. It is perhaps no accident that the ability of the soul to recognize God seems more acute when we are in distress.

Within these cries, if we are fortunate and have not had our spirits crushed, there may emerge a cry that calls out for “the one who brings order to the heart’s house, the awaited one, the anticipated one.” This is the One who is sought in faith, whom only faith can find, whom only a life of faith can come to know.

Believing in the existence of my own soul I am made able to learn that I have significance in the consciousness of my Creator, that I am seen, that he knows me.

“You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Yahveh.”

Psalm 139.2-4

The promise of Yeshua is even more radical:

As for the scientist or the composer or the artist, early faith is labor in hope: it is a great deal of searching and experimenting, a great deal of thrashing about. But faith becomes informed. For the composer, he is informed by his own efforts, by the compositions of those who have come before him, and by the sound that rings true. For the one who is searching for God, he is informed by his own persistence, by the words of God preserved in writing, and by the very presence of God speaking to the heart. The living God reaches into our lives. He has made us to seek him and he has ordered the world and our individual experience to make it possible that we should find him, that he should ultimately hold us in his embrace.

Intelligent faith eventually arrives at belief in the existence of a real object of faith. That object is God as Person, for the satisfaction of the quest of faith will not ring true until the searcher recognizes in the object of his faith that same passion and hope and suffering which distinguishes and describes his own person. God made us in his image. He made us in the image of his person. The person is the atomic unit of spiritual reality.

Belief in the in-historical God leads to fire and smoke

Belief is the threshold of faith. Is it the whole of faith? James, brother of the Messiah of Israel, said No:

“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder….” James 2.19

Belief must become life, so that our original goal is attained – that we touch God, know God, live with God, and become bound to God.

The believer must learn the character of his God through study of the history of all that God has done to gather mankind to himself. This basic education must come from the recorded words of God.

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55.10,11

In the course of this education we discover that our God is at the heart of human history and that he is with us in the present moment. We learn that he is not like the god of Aristotle, rapt in introversion at the center of the heavens. Rather he is the God of Abraham and Moses and David, the God of fire and smoke, reaching out for mankind:

“Our God comes and will not be silent; a fire devours before him, and around him a tempest rages. He summons the heavens above, and the earth that he may judge his people: ‘Gather to me my consecrated ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.’” Psalm 50.3,4,5

The perception that our God is conscious of us may overwhelm us and leave us stricken with despair: he may seem to threaten our being because of the vast difference between us of and scale and virtue. Evidence of the one whom we seek renders us increasingly concerned that he is more than we can know.

“You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” Psalm 139.5-7

Even the finite appearance of the Angel of God caused dread to the parents of Samson in the time of the judges:

He [the angel] replied, “Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding.”…Manoah took a young goat and sacrificed it on a rock to Yahveh….As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of Yahveh ascended in the flame…Manoah realized that it was the angel of Yahveh. “We are doomed to die!” he said to his wife. “We have seen God!”

Judges 13. 18-22

The perception that the Creator of all worlds holds us in his consciousness leads us to consciousness of our helplessness and unworthiness, strangely compounded with the opposing conviction that we are intensely desired by our God.

Healing the breach: the Messianic prophesy and the advent of Yeshua

How are we to deal with this? Our first reaction might be anger, as if we have been led into the discovery of an unbearable gulf which can not be bridged, led to the desire of that which we can never know. But the education of faith must lead us to the discovery of all that our God has done to gather us to himself. Isaiah told us of it all, and he wrote it down, centuries before it ever happened: the messianic [designated king] Son of God would come in all the being and presence of the Father:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” Isaiah 9.6,7

What does he do that makes the difference? He comes to show us the way to himself.

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned…He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young…” Isaiah 40.1,2,11

How does he bridge the gulf between us? Here is the mystery which offends mankind. He bridges the gulf at the cross.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – every one – to his own way; and Yahveh has laid on him the iniquity of us all. …Yet it was the will of Yahveh to put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring;…Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” Isaiah 53.4-11

How does restoration come about when we have known nothing but rebellion? He penetrates our individual lives and brings us the healing presence of his Spirit.

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made….I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,’ says Yahveh, ‘and I will heal him.’” Isaiah 57.15-18

We discover that Yeshua of Nazareth, born into Israel twenty centuries ago, is the one who has come to fulfill all the prophecies of Isaiah.[1] We learn that he entered the world and went as king to the cross, standing in for us his people, dressing us in his colors, making us his own, opening for us every freedom to come into the presence of our heavenly Father.

The response of faith is to acknowledge what Yeshua has done and to give up every effort to achieve our own righteousness before God. As Isaiah wrote,

“…all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Isaiah 64.6

We give up the labor of making ourselves righteous and by faith we trust in him and what he, Yeshua, has done to make us whole and restore us to our God – even conquering the curse of death which stood over us since the fall.

The one who enters and brings order to the house

Is this the journey of faith, to come to him for our redemption? Yes, it is faith, but it is only the beginning. We set out on a path and we ran into a great obstacle: our willful sinfulness and rebellion and finitude up against his majesty and honor and faithfulness. We discovered the reconciliation which He alone accomplished by reaching into history and becoming one of us and taking upon himself the whole weight of human rebellion. We are reconciled to him. But we must go farther.

We have heard his call and we have come to him to know him. We have come to him for healing. We have heard his promise of healing. We know that if we are to have a life in his presence we must be healed, not only of the stains in our history, but also healed in our present being, so that we can know him openly and freely. He must give us a new heart. He must bring order and peace into the heart’s house.

How does order come to the house? Order comes to the house when the house is yielded to the one to whom it rightly belongs. He alone can rule the house with authority and love and understanding. He alone can know the deepest aspirations of the human heart and instruct us day by day in all that we need to know in order to fill out the great hope of our humanity, that seed which he planted in us. He our God has come to us and we must open the secret core of our being to him.

“Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me.” Revelation 3.20

This day must come. We must open ourselves and yield to his entry. Yeshua said,

“I am the bread of life….I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh which I give for the life of the world…..Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” ….Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? …The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” John 6.48,51,53-57

Yeshua was speaking as graphically as possible to tell his disciples that they must truly open their core being to the presence of the Spirit of Yeshua himself, and that this becomes their sustenance and their healing.

This life of intimacy with our redeemer becomes that life in which we go beyond all academic knowledge of him. We become like the neighbors of the Samaritan woman after they spent hours at his feet:

They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” John 4.42

We also are led by him to know him through the historical record of all that he has said and done, this record being all the Scriptures of both the old and new covenants. The role of Yeshua begins in the first verse of Genesis, as John has told us clearly:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men….The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known. John 1.1-4,14,18

In our broadening knowledge of our redeemer we are led into all the vast mysteries of this world and encouraged by God never to stop asking questions, never to cease to explore the riches of his person. As Paul wrote,

“My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge….all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together…..For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Colossians 2.2,3; 1.17,19,20

Who is this whose life stretches from the cross to the present to the depths of Creation? It is our God, even the one who would inhabit the human heart. His Spirit is meant to rule within our heart, to instruct our souls, to encourage our spirit, to honor him. It is only someone of intrinsic worth who can be said to deserve a great teacher. We are that person of worth. He is that teacher. It is for us to become honor to him.

vii

Royal power, the throne of heaven and the celestial architecture

But we must go farther. We have opened our hearts to him, and we are learning to love him, and we are discovering the peace which he brings to the court of our soul’s house, and we are made conscious that this power which he exercises over our entire being is greater than any power on earth. Until he comes, the soul is at war with itself, battling through darkness, desperately attempting to give the reigns of power to the voice of the warrior or the scholar or the lover or the cynic or the tyrant, never finding peace for lack of the only hand that knows and cares and guides and truly loves the human heart.

By his power the heart is healed. And the certainty of his healing and his presence is the certainty that there is some function of the celestial order which binds the heavens to the surface of the earth. As Jacob saw and as Yeshua himself avowed, the heavens are joined to earth by a ladder, a stairway, and that stairway is Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel.

He [Jacob] had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Genesis 28.12

Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” John 1.51

In the presence of his power in the heart and in consciousness of his royal seat in the heavens we are pressed to recognize that his royal kingdom spreads on invisible cords throughout the world. We cannot help but see throughout the old covenant Scriptures that Yeshua alone fulfills the Messianic expectation, a rule which reaches to his subjects in this world and binds them to himself, yet a kingdom which transcends the form of the kingdoms of this world. This our kingdom is that rock cut out of a mountain but not by human hands, that rock to be formed in the time of the historic earthly kingdoms:

“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands.” Daniel 2.44,45

We can not help but see Yeshua as our king, as royal lord over all that we are. And now our mind is opened to all that is written in the Scriptures to assert his kingship.

When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.’…

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’

‘I tell you,’ he replied, ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.

Luke 19.37-40

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king.” John 18. 36,37

“These are the words of the true Holy One, who holds the key of David, who opens and none shall shut, who shuts and none shall open.” Revelation 3.7

“These are the words of the first and the last, who was dead and came to life.” Revelation 2.8

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations….and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me. And the conqueror shall sit beside me on my throne as I myself have also conquered and sat down beside my Father on his throne.” Revelation 3.20,21

“Grace be to you and peace from he who is and was and is coming, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the prince over kings of earth.” Revelation 1.4,5

“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” Colossians 2.9,10

The Israel of God is not one of the nations, nor shall our Messiah ever cast a vote in the assemblies of the nations. Yeshua is one with the Father and his kingship is eternal, from the beginning of time to the end of time. He came iconically into Jerusalem on a donkey to demonstrate that as king he came to bring peace to his people, to as many as receive him.

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” John 1.13

When Yeshua made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem it was not a dress rehearsal for some future event. When Yeshua shall return in splendor to destroy the armies of lawlessness, John tells us that,

“On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” Revelation 19.16

Between that day when Yeshua entered Jerusalem on a donkey and the day when he shall return in splendor, there is no mention of a coronation in Scripture, for he is king on the heavenly throne – the throne over eternal Israel – yesterday, today, and forever.

viii

Heirs of the promises to Abraham

“Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” John 19.19

When Charles DeGaulle was asked to compromise his expectations in the provisions for nations after World War II, due to the fact that only a minority of the French populace had openly opposed the Nazis, he replied, “I fought the Resistance: France fought the Resistance!”

So Yeshua stands in the council of heaven before the throne of God, announcing to all, “I paid the price of sin: my people have paid the price of sin.” By God’s grace we are accepted in identity with Yeshua our king. As king, Yeshua stood in for us his people. He went to the cross for us, the king for his people. In learning that Yeshua is King of the Jews, in learning that he is king over my soul in all royal power, I discover that I belong to the ancient holy people of God. I discover that I share in the ancient promises to Abraham:

“You are all sons of God through faith in Messiah Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Messiah have clothed yourselves with Messiah. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Messiah Jesus. If you belong to Messiah, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3.26-29

This means that the promise which is the very definition of the hope of Israel is my promise also. I live in the hope of Israel for eternity and I live in the hope of Israel in this present moment. Furthermore, the birth pains of Israel are my birth pains, for the salvation of my life has depended on every nuance of the history of my people. My own life was being saved as Moses led the descendants of Abraham out of Egypt.

The law given at Sinai was coming to earth for me, to guide me and direct me to know the ways of my God.

I ask, as Moses asked, “Teach me your ways so that I may know you and continue to find favor with you.” When Yahveh, as royal Lord over Israel, calls his people to keep his commandments and be bound to him by covenant, my heart is there, seeking to be bound to him by covenant.

Like the people of Israel, I discover that my heart fails, that I am wayward, that I am prone to reserve certain chambers of my heart as my own, places where I am amazed that he must also rule. I, like Israel, wait in my heart for the realization in me of the new covenant:

“The time is coming,” declares Yahveh, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them,” declares Yahveh. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares Yahveh. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Jeremiah 31.31-33

“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.” Ezekiel 11.19,20

“And afterward I will pour out my Spirit on all people….” Joel 2.28

The new covenant: the heart called to the last measure of devotion

As Yeshua last commemorated Passover with his disciples he lifted a cup of wine and told of his blood about to be given sacrificially at the cross to initiate and seal the new covenant:

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26.27,28

What is a covenant? It is a binding oath between individuals who wish to make the care and purpose of their lives coincident one with the other, even to the point of death. As a life and death oath it is usually marked either by the enduring witness of some commemorative object or by the event of sacrifice, so witnessing the seriousness of the oath.

There are covenants of loyalty between equals. Since ancient times, there are also covenants by which a sovereign binds himself to his people, where all the power of the king stands in defense of the life of his subject, and where the life of the subject is totally devoted to his king. In such covenants there are expectations and there are promises, from sovereign and subject alike. Such was God’s original covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai.

Under the old covenant it became clear that the guidance of the law and the will of a man are not sufficient to elevate him to grounds of real intimacy with his God. The miracle of the new covenant is that God provides his Spirit to nourish us and teach us and give us a heart which desires his law, his will.

Yeshua held up the Passover cup, representing the shedding of his blood, and within hours he gave his life in covenant loyalty to redeem his people. The significant fulfillment of his revolutionary promise, to impart to his subjects his Spiritual presence, was then initiated within days, on the feast of Pentecost.

In the journey of faith, we come to this moment when we are called beyond simple faith and trust, now to know that the sustenance of a life of loyalty within the covenant will come from God himself. Yeshua says, Believe in me! And then, to those who have a vision of his reality, he says, Follow me!

We are called to share in this covenant. We are called to raise that glass and acknowledge his blood as shed for us. We are called to enter into baptism claiming that his death is our death, claiming that we in our sinfulness are covered by the cleansing power of his blood.

Should we go so far, then we go far beyond that simple belief which might have led us to that moment of baptism: we pass into the dreadful seriousness of a life and death covenant with the God who made us.

A people apart

Our lives are now his alone. We have accepted that with the price of his life he has bought us back from death and we are not our own. We now share the understanding of Jeremiah:

“A man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.”

Jeremiah 10.23

Our new life: He in us, and we in him, our lives contained in him:

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.

John 10.27,28

“Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.” John 12.26

We are contained in him and we are sustained by him:

“If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me….The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” John 14.23,24,26

Inside this covenant relationship with our God, we are separated, set apart to God:

“If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” John 15.19,20

“I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify [set apart] myself, that they too may be truly sanctified [set apart for God].” John 17. 14-19

The final words of Yeshua’s great prayer before going to the cross are a promise that the journey to our God will never end, that he will continually draw us deeper and deeper into the knowledge of him, that more and more clearly we will discover the face of our God until that day comes when we see him as he is:

“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” John 17.25,26

Lawrence S. Jones

Chicago, 2013

email: lawrencestewartjones@gmail.com

[1] Colossians 2.9; Colossians 1.15,19

Jerusalem Graffiti

~ The person & politics of Yeshua my king

Category Archives: The Kingdom of Heaven

The Circumcision of the Heart

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