The Unveiling of
our Sonship
By John Gavazzoni

The Father both veils our sonship and unveils it. He covers it, and uncovers it. He hides our begottenness, and brings it forth to shine. "For (our) life is concealed with Christ in God..." BUT "when Christ shall appear then shall we also appear with Him in glory." "Shall" there is not meant merely to convey a future event, but "shall" as decidedly emphatic. The child, Jesus, God's only/uniquely- begotten Son, on into His young adulthood, lived mostly for thirty years without His Sonship being brought out into the open. Where we have Paul writing, as conventionally translated, "...the manifestation of the sons of God," it is, more accurately, the unveiling or uncovering. It simply is true that God veils FOR the purpose of unveiling. With our glorified Lord, Jesus Christ, as the Content of our sonship, it is a matter of unveiling Him in us, and us in Him, rather than having to do to do something or anything to make it be.

It's mostly in those times of the veiling of our sonship that God deals with the flesh that covers us as the kin of God. I know: "let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." But the preview of such shining involves times of God deliberately keeping our light from the eyes of those around us. It was through the rending of Jesus' flesh that the Holy of Holies was opened to mankind, and conversely, it was opened for our sonship in union with Him to come forth out from behind the veil. Our flesh needs supposed good works to its credit to assure it that it has a claim on God's goodness. The flesh needs to create a persona of righteousness that will speak back to it that it has merit before God.

Given the nature of God's sons to shine forth with the glory that Jesus has given them, a pressure to shine builds up within them that is served, paradoxically, by the circumstances that keep their glory under wraps. In that complex of interrelatedness, the pressure building up within to come forth is disproportionately greater than the adversarial pressure seeking to hold it back. Thus it is so that that which obstructs becomes a catalyst for God's glorious construct. It is so with God's grace, in that "where sin abounds, grace does much more abound." When faced with our sin, a pressure of grace builds up within God within our spirits for release at a time of His choosing. There's a principle having to do with damning up the river of the water of life, until such a pressure builds up against the dam's wall, that when the gates are opened, grace comes in "like a flood."

The kingdom which has been given to the saints of the Most High, Jesus said, "cometh not by observation." We might think of that unobservable pressure build-up as integral to the coming of the kingdom. Clearly though the kingdom of God comes not by observation, that does not mean it is never observed. "How silently, how silently the wondrous Gift is given. While mortals sleep the angels keep their watch of wandering eyes." Another aspect of this dynamic involves God bringing us face to face with our neediness as the necessary complement for His provision. A dam set high in a mountain, when its gates are opened, flows much more forcefully down into a deep valley than onto a plain. God hollows us out to be a valley of reception, and then exalts the valley by His filling, as in, "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

A body of flesh is intrinsic to true humanness, and while that body of flesh on one hand... particularly in its corrupted state..., veils "the liberty of the glory of the children of God," YET on the other hand it is that same flesh-body that is the object particularly of glorification. "All flesh shall see it (the glory of the Lord) together." Jesus was raised bodily from the dead "by the glory of the Father," and that same glory which raised Him from the dead was what made Him the radiance of God's glory. The effect of the unveiling of the sons of God is for the benefit of all creation that it might be delivered from its bondage to decay, but let us not forget that we, the sons, in our mortal bodies, are both the subject and object of that unveiling. Yes we, together with all creation are in travail awaiting the unveiling of the sons of God.

Much confusion can be cleared up when we come to understand the distinction between our begotten being as sons of God in union with THE Son, and the formation of ourselves from the dust (actually wet soil) of the ground. Same person in different dimensions of existence. Regularly, I'm reminded of that moment when the Lord spoke these words to me: "you are the fruit of my loins, and the work of my hands." There is a distinction to be understood in that seminal statement. The former provided the substance for the latter. It was out of the timeless spirit-stuff, the timeless spirit-substance of my sonship that God formed me into the creature that I am in time. Sonship is timeless; creaturehood is eonian. Sonship is incorruptible, creaturehood meant to suffer corruptibility. When the former is unveiled, the suffering of the latter will end...in glory!