On the Subject Nature
By John Gavazzoni

With only a minimal exposure to such intellectual luminaries as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle...though we could include quite a number of others...one can hardly miss how to a large extent they were occupied with the subject of nature, or we might say that said occupation was central to their thinking. Their minds craved to understand what is natural. Whole schools of thought continued to faithfully grant the same importance to that fundamental consideration. What we call western civilization owes what is best about it to those ponderings of old: that there was some inner essence, some fundamental substructure to things that appear to our senses. The Bible addresses the subject in the words in Heb. 11:3: "...what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen." (NLT) If one wishes to have their intellect well exercised, they'd do well to read those thinkers who deal much with "natural law."

There is an invisible, ultimately determinative, essence within all of creation, man most certainly included. Things will finally become what they inwardly are. Nature will out, as it were. All progress toward a true disclosure, a true manifestation of things is always from the inside out. A flower seed becomes a flower. It is a flower in seed-form first. There is an authority inherent in nature, in natural law, that is the source of the power for a thing to become what it is. John wrote in his gospel, "But as many as received him, to them gave He authority/right to become the sons of God." In receiving Christ, we have given to us in His person the authority/right to become what we really are, though for a time that sonship is not visible, as in, "it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

This appearing is essentially an inward appearing. He appears to and within our spirit by the unveiling, uncovering, disclosure of Himself to us as He (really) is. So this brings us to the theologically terribly abused subject of human nature. How often we've heard the observation of some act, some behavior, within the range from the mildly dysfunctional, all the way to the egregiously destructive, "well it's only human nature." Well, I'm here to tell you, it's not human nature, it's human nature forced to act unnaturally, not from the inside out, not out from its essence, but in reaction to what has been imposed upon it, but upon it so as to reach into that periphery of our existence in this present, evil world. Paul: "Therefore I conclude, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in my, that is, in my flesh."

Fundamentalists lay the blame for the human condition at the feet of man's sinful nature. Man's nature is not sinful, as in having a constitution of sinfulness. Man's nature suffers from what is unnatural to it. Man's nature suffers being afflicted. Jesus described our condition as needing to be liberated, healed of our woundedness, released from our captivity as you would release a caged eagle to soar into the heavens. Enter Jesus....He sets the prisoner free, He heals the brokenhearted, he declares release to the captives. Only He can release that authority inherent within nature to become what it is, FOR HE IS THAT AUTHORITY. When He reveals Himself to us as Lord, the process of deliverance begins.

Nature is powerless to become what it is without being acted upon from within by grace. Grace activates nature. Grace does not provide something foreign to nature. Grace is the embedded friend of nature. That might be a good definition of grace among others: God's action within us to release us to be who we are, for then, "we shall know as we are known." What we're dealing with here is Paul's explanation of the source of the existential human condition: "For all creation was subjected to futility/frustration/vanity, not of its own will, but by the will of Him who subjected it...." The creature cannot become what it is of/by itself. Of itself it is left in its state of futility until the revelation reaches it that it is not left to itself. Many years ago, I was delivered, by a vision of Christ, from the anguish of three and a half years of deep depression that could be described as a state of, in my consciousness, being left alone, a state of aloneness, of desperately needing a Presence to release me from my isolation.

That Presence came and set me free from my solitary confinement, and released me into that which was my inheritance within the communion of the Holy Spirit...to be a partaker of the Divine Nature, to know the fellowship of the saints, to be granted a participatory heavenly citizenship, and that, according to nature, not against nature. Like Abraham, I'd been seeking a city whose Architect and Builder was God. I once, many years ago, asked Harry Robert Fox what was it that Abraham was seeking. He answered in one word: "community." We are, by nature a communing, interdependent community. We are members of a body. We are members of a community where each one is given a measure, an allotment, of faith from Christ for the benefit of the whole community, and that community will, in due time, be composed of the whole body of humanity.