The Move of God
By John Gavazzoni

We speak of "a move of God" as descriptive of some unique activity of God in, among and through His people in the earth, but such a description only has validity in respect to THE (primal) move of God to which all moves of God are traced. That move of God was the sending of His Son, as in, "God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him might be saved," and "when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons."

Being sent would certainly indicate a movement, and imply from one location to another, yet without being skilled in the Word of God, one is inclined to think of the Son's journey....a journey, of course, implied by His being sent....as one covering a cosmologically-measurable distance. A mental picture forms in the mind of a babe in Christ of Jesus leaving some far-off heaven and traveling through space to arrive on earth. But leaving that elementary picture behind, we must move to a more mature understanding.

It's my experience that such growing in understanding always involves questions arising in the mind as one contemplates explicit statements of scripture, i.e., what is implicit within the explicit. One of those questions that arose in my mind years ago regarding the incarnation (the penultimate goal of the Son's journey), was whether the Son would have made the journey, would have been made flesh to dwell among us, if sin had never entered the world? Did God choose to send His Son to the world as a hopefully redemptive reaction to the problem our sin faced Him with?

Or could the sending of His Son be an experience God chose for Himself in the Person of, and as, His Son, according to a purpose above and beyond the sin issue, but with the sin issue being integral to His experience becoming all he intended? Consider please, dear brethren, that the incarnation must not be thought of as something anomalous in respect to the nature of God. Whatever God does must be understood as consistent with, and reflective of, who and what He is. It is the nature of God, and therefore the intent, purpose, and will of God, to embody the Spirit that He is. Incarnation: God made flesh, is really the full out-forming of who and what God is as pertaining to this world and the His administration within the ages of time.

Contrary to conventional thinking, to be Spirit does not imply being bodiless. The incarnation, necessarily being consistent with the nature of God, involved becoming embodied within the dimension to which He was sent consistent in a way with the embodiment-state from which He came. What He was in heaven, clothed with an embodiment of glory, He became on earth, to have an experience, to have experiences, as He journeyed into this world, and continues to journey through this world to experience His unlimited Being subjected to limitation.

Jesus, after all, became hungry and thirsty and weary in this world. He experienced exasperation, for instance, at the often unbelief of His disciples. He didn't float from one place to another, He walked like the rest of us. Then, He died; the Immortal died. He faced and fully experienced everything that was alien to who He was, even unto death. He, who was, who is, the effulgence of the Divine Nature suffered humiliation at the hands of evil men.

Philip, being transported from one place to another was not indicative of that normative kind of human experience that Jesus was intent on having, and God in Him. In the Book of Hebrews, it is explained that the Son learned obedience through the things that He suffered, and was perfected (made complete/mature) by the same. It's important to note that the Greek, there, conventionally translated as "suffered" conveys full experience, not merely the painful aspect of human living. Jesus learned obedience by, and reached His full human maturation by, His human experience, in company with His Father.

What we have here is the Being in which we all have our being, adding experience to Himself via an earthly journey, intent on enduring all extreme contrariety against His glory, in order to draw forth the full blaze of that glory from out of its depths. It was for us. What God experiences He does for us. This is why John wrote that the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. God meant for the Spirit of Christ to be poured out within and upon (ultimately) all mankind, replete with the human experience of incarnation, living, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, enthronement, and glorification. Nothing less would do.

You see, the human experience of the Son became integral with who He was and continues to be. The Spirit we have received since the glorification of the Son, is the Spirit of His glorified Humanity. That's why Paul is very specific in writing, "for there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the MAN, Christ Jesus." Jesus mediates to us His full human experience all the way to glory. Solving the sin problem was simply intrinsic to that journey. On the way, as it were, He saved us, because, of course, we needed to be saved in order to be glorified.

In short, Jesus saved us by going on a journey with us as integral to His nature. He didn't have to take a detour to save us. It was part of the journey, and our need was part of what made the journey all it was intended to be. Listen, dear brethren, leave behind, please, the notion that salvation is about God being problem-oriented in regard to salvation. No! God is purpose-oriented, and as to whatever sense a problem exists, it's part of the unfolding of His glory. Oh, the wonderful implications to be uncovered within Paul's statement that "He became sin for (over) us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." All that is short of the glory of God cannot be the righteousness/rightness of God. He became sin for us that we might become the [glorious] righteousness of God in Him.