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The Primal Deficiency
By John R. Gavazzoni
Deficiency is at the heart of all creaturely maladies; deficiency rooted in deliberately planned deprivation....not of our own will, but by the will of Him who has so subjected our creaturehood. We are deficient because we have been temporally denied existential sufficiency. Very early, as I contemplated writing on this subject, Jesus' words came to mind: "To him that hath, more shall be given, and to him who hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away." Wow! Harsh words. I imagine that those whose view of God will not allow them to think of Him as other than nice, encountering such a shocking statement in Holy Writ would necessarily find them baffled at how they can make sense of such and remain faithful to their favorite theological paradigm.
It may be that the Lord warmed me to the subject at hand by opening my understanding, at about 50 years of age (35 years ago at the time of this writing), the importance of recognizing the prevalence of nutritional deficiency in the typical American diet. This led to developing, over many years, a regimen of nutritional supplementation. Eventually, Jan, my wife, joined me in that quest. It is clear to me looking back, that had we not done so, in time we would have suffered some serious life-debilitating consequences. That journey was totally of God, and any wisdom involved was grace-given.
The Lord, in time, opened to me how this creaturely dilemma is at work, most importantly, in the spiritual dimension. "The human condition," spiritually, traces to deficiency of the knowledge of God. By the knowledge of God, I mean not mere conceptual knowledge, not merely giving intellectual assent to biblical facts, but of "gnosis," the experiential, intimate knowledge of God which is intrinsic to "the fellowship of the Holy Spirit." Paul prayed that believers would be given "a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him." Why? Because they/we, came into this world deficient in that knowledge due to a deliberate deprivation. Even after experiencing initially the beginning of the Spirit's regenerating work in our hearts, we still suffer an ongoing deficiency until we progressively leave behind, i.e., are healed of, that affliction as we are drawn into the full brightness of the light of Christ.
Death, the last enemy that shall be defeated, is an existential state of deficiency of the knowledge of God; nothing more, nothing less. That's what death is: the consequence of THE PRIMAL DEFICIENCY. Growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ is the only answer to the affliction, and it is an affliction. We've been, by divine design, temporally afflicted by deep life-draining deficiency down to the cellular level of our creaturehood, spiritually, soulically, and physically. It's a deficiency by which we suffer a disconnect from the being that we have in God ("in Him, we live, and move, and have our being"). It applies across the board to our tripart creaturehood. We suffer disconnection (from our end only) of consciousness from God and from ourselves. We are, left to ourselves, deaf to the I AM voice within, and blind to the Light out of which we came.
We have suffered a disconnect of being at all three levels. It is not a natural state, it is unnatural to our being within THE all-inclusive Being. If you think, "well, it's just natural to be sick," think again. It's really unnaturally natural. Our God-derived creaturehood suffers terribly from being left without the required sufficiency to know, believe, and live as the children of God which we are. The very kingdom of God within us is under attack (I hasten to say, of course, such insanity of attack will be dramatically displayed as unsuccessful in "the regeneration"). The Lord Jesus was/is the personification of the kingdom of God, and He was attacked by the forces rooted in profound deficiency ("Father, forgive them for they know not what they do"). By the resurrection we are brought from lacking of the glory of God to being filled with the knowledge of His glory.
Jesus said, and Paul echoed, that we are light, but we are light while enduring the clinging on of the darkness that seeks to keep us from being what we are. Experientially, our way forward on The Way is one of utter dependence upon being granted light. We don't light our own path, NOR it is given to us to choose, at any given point, to become, or become more, enlightened. Think not that God awaits your decision to seek enlightenment. In each of our lives, there is that initial moment, and then the many moments progressively following, when God says, "Let there be light." And then, and only then, is there light. "No man," said our Lord, "comes to me except the Father draw Him."
We need the full revelation of our fullness, our completeness, in Christ, yet, at the same time being fully conscious of that complementary neediness that draws from His fullness. Utterly needy, utterly helpless, utterly without strength, pathetically floundering in our ignorance and incompetence are we.
The physical experience of this syndrome ought to lead to a clarity of understanding. We are never ill because we lack a prescription from the doctor. If we suffer from sickness, from DIS-ease, from un-wellness, from a condition lacking in goodness; it is ALWAYS a matter of nutritional deficiency...always! Even in the case of what is called congenital illness. Explanation: according to Paul, upon Adam's sin, it was specifically death that was passed on to all men, passed on from generation to generation. Congenital deficiency, which is an element of that death, is passed on, in and with, that death.
You might counter with the fact that we make bad choices as to what we take into our bodies and what we generally subject our bodies to that contributes to nutritional deficiency. But I must point out that such behavior is rooted in that underlying deprivation to which we have been subjected sovereignly. When will we learn how utterly dependent we are upon the divine, and only the divine, initiative to be made whole? When it seems, in scripture, that God is dependent upon some contribution of will-initiative on our part, that is not the case at all. On the occasion, for instance, when Jesus asked a lame man, "Wilt thou be mad whole," our Lord was not depending upon some will-initiative on the man's part, but rather, He was, by His question, connecting the man to the goodness-bestowing will of God so that that will would become his will. It was that Seed of the kingdom within the man that Jesus' question regenerated.
We are, it is true, enjoined to "follow the Lord," but that imperative does not stand alone, for we must be drawn to follow Him, drawn by, and according to, His initiative. From the Song of Solomon: "draw me, we will run after Thee...." No man seeks after God. All seeking of God is the seeking of that Spirit that searches out the deep things of God, and that draws us into a participation in that search. God's knowledge of Himself is not static. He is forever...and delightfully so...increasing in the knowledge of Himself in His union with mankind, out of the depths of that perfect knowledge that is implied by His name, I AM.
Carefully translated from the Greek, Paul dared to write, "the body grows/increases the growth/increase of God," conventionally translated as, "the body grows by a growth from God." God enjoys an increase of Himself in His union with us as the body of Christ. Eve, from out of Adam, became to Adam more of all that he was and is....consistent with their being created in God's likeness. So many go on and on about oneness, yet hardly scratching the surface of the wonder of it all.
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