I have been in a quandary, trying to determine what the initial steps would be on my path to Resurrection this year. In the early hours of this morning, I felt very specifically nudged to focus on the book of John, with an eye to reviewing lessons Jesus taught then - and by extension, teaches us now. I'm excited to have a direction to head. I committed to the journey without having a plan - and I really needed the first few flagstones of the path in view....
But, first, my journey requires clarifying basics. I have recently become poignantly aware of the reality that the words we use don't mean the same thing to all of us. I want to establish some groundwork for the rudimentary basics of what I mean when I identify God: Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
There is only one GOD. YWHW, the tetragrammaton, which is the unspeakable and unstated Name of G-D to Jews, is most often translated Jehovah, or written with vowels inserted as Yahweh.
God always was and always will be. He is eternal. He is and has always been the one and only true GOD. There is no other.
GOD is a plural word, and GOD is represented in three specific identities: God, the Father; God, the Son; and God, the Holy Spirit. Together they are one triune GOD. We refer to the 3 separate 'persons' of the Godhead as the Trinity. That's hard for us to wrap our heads around. It is confusing to some people because it sounds like we worship three gods. Not so! When I was writing the children's musical, A Letter From G. O. D., I felt inspired to write devotionals to go with it, and for one of them, God inspired me with an object lesson that really helped me explain this concept in a kids' eye view:
Water is H2O. Ice is H2O. Steam is H2O. When we think of H2O we generally identify it as water - but the other two forms of H2O are equally H2O. They definitely represent three different forms of one 'thing'. Tuck that in your memory bank, and it should help when we grapple with John.
As a slight editorial aside, just to be perfectly clear, a man cannot become a god. Ever.
When I say God, I am most often referring to God the Father, but the Triune God is inextricably coalesced, so that distinction is in my mind, not His.
Yeshua ha Mashiach (Jesus the Messiah) is God's one and only birthed son. (When His name was translated to Greek it became Ioseos Christos, which, when translated to English became Jesus Christ. The actual translation directly from Hebrew to English would actually be Joshua Messiah.)
Jesus is not a brother to Satan. Satan was a created being - at one time a very beautiful angel named Lucifer - who defied God and was cast out of heaven, along with a third of the angels, who made the choice to follow his lead and defy God with him.
Jesus is fully God and fully human. Literally, God Himself took on the form of man and came to this earth to bring salvation to humanity. It is a mystery beyond our understanding, and is a truth we accept by faith. God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit was a spirit-sperm donor. Mary was a virgin when she conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, just as the Angel Gabriel announced to her she would. It is God's Word, and His Word is true!
The Holy Spirit is the active presence of God with us. At Pentecost, 50 days after the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit became available to all of us equally. Jesus could only be one place at one time in His physical form, but the Comforter can be everywhere. He is 'the pouring out of God's Spirit' on the world 'in the latter days'.
God the Father. GOD is a gender-neutral word. But - - since Jesus referred to God as Father, and since Jesus, the only physical form of God was male, what was good enough for Jesus as clarity is good enough for me.
John 1:1-5 (ESV)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The Bible is God's written Word. All of the Old Testament looks forward to the coming of the Messiah. The New Testament reveals Him. Jesus was the living Word. He is the most perfect revelation of God to us, and my yearning is to see Him more clearly as we journey to and past the cross that He came to pour out His love to us on.
I love the beginning of the book of John. GOD in entirety is the Creator. The Word was in the beginning, was with God and was God. In Him was - and is - life. His light stills shines - to us and through us. Yes, there are moments when it seems it is obscured, but light illumines darkness, just as a candle makes the darkest black of night flee. Darkness cannot overcome light,because light dispels darkness.
This week, traveling through Yelm, there was a sign at J Z Knight's compound declaring it to be a place of illumination. How very sad when light is called dark, and dark is called light. Saying it does not make it so. Satan is a liar, and the father of lies, and the greatest lie is the one with the most truth in it - one that is hard to identify, but which discolors and minimizes Truth.
Last week my granddaughter was trying to find a song to sing for auditioning for a play at school, and in the process she looked up the lyrics to Anything Goes. These few lines state precisely what has happened in our world, "The world has gone mad today, and good's bad today, and black's white today, and day's night today....anything goes."
Jesus has a different view. I'm looking forward to immersing myself in the book of John and exploring God's truth revealed through the living Word in the written Word and the power and insight of the Holy Spirit.
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