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Forth From Out of The Midst
By John R. Gavazzoni



From Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of The New Testament (JMT): "Because, forth from out of the midst of Him, then through the midst of Him (or: through means of Him), and [finally] into the midst of Him, [is] the whole (everything; [are] all things..." (End of quote) For brevity-sake, I haven't included the remainder of the translation. This portion of it suffices as to its alignment with, and confirmation of, a deep impression I'd had years ago re: Deity's unfolding of itself, and how that relates to creation. From that triggered-recollection has come the following article:

Forth from out of the midst is how Deity unfolds Itself, and likewise, consistent with its Source, so does all creation. Tracing to that dynamic within and forth from out of the midst of God, the destiny of all things will bloom-forth in all their glory, the glory of Him in whom all fullness dwells. It was a moment of reflection upon the incarnation that set my feet on the starting point (for me) of that path of understanding. Suddenly "out of the blue," it came to me: the incarnation of the Son of God, of necessity, had to be consistent with the Divine Nature. It could not be a matter, as some seem to think, that God was forced by the entrance of sin into the world, to add something to His Person that was unlike who and what He is.

It seems, at least to me, that the conventional understanding of what was involved in the incarnation is along the line of God needing to take on something contrary to His essence, i.e., a material body, the essential contrariety being that that body, according to systematized orthodoxy, was formed out of nothing. According to mainline orthodoxy we humans were formed out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), therefore it's not much of a stretch to conclude that if we came out of nothing, for God to become what we are would be strange and alien to Him.

In the main, Christian orthodoxy posits that in the incarnation God added to Himself humanness which had been formed out of nothing. The incarnation, according to conventional Christian thinking, did not occur from out of the midst of God, but was an occurrence, in some sense, out of sync with His nature....a necessity imposed upon Him by Adam's disobedience. Something for the reader to ponder: if Adam had not sinned, would God have incarnated in the Person of His Son? Re-worded, was the incarnation part of a plan B on God's part? Or, was the creation of Adam the introduction of, and preface to, the incarnation, with Jesus being its finalization. Delving further, is it the destiny of all humanity to be the fully fleshed-out out-forming of the Son of God becoming flesh?

Creation ex nihilo was an off-the-rails conclusion dating back to the systematizing of theology in the earliest days of the post apostolic era. On the path of understanding the Spirit of Truth had put me on, I came to realize that when God sent His Son into the world that the world might be saved through Him, God was simply continuing to be who and what He is. Salvation does not in any way involve God, as it were, ceasing to be spirit in order to become flesh.

What I've posited is completely consistent with, and a clarifying of, the truth that by becoming human, God did not leave behind His Deity, and in His resurrection and glorification, He did not leave behind His humanity. Whatever might be ones understanding of the kenosis (the self-emptying of Christ), it cannot mean that for Deity to be ages-immanent, journeying on through the ages to the goal set before Him before the foundation of the world, that Deity had to become something less than all It is. We need to understand Jesus' self-emptying as the complete pouring out of His royalty to the point of servanthood. "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. and give His life as a ransom for many." He came, emphatically, not to be served by the many, but to serve the many.

The conventional notion re: the incarnation could be imagined as the Son of God saying, "Father, really, to save those sinners, you mean I've got to put a gross physical body, I, like you, being pure spirit. Yuk! Gross, gross, gross! But if that's what I've got to do; if that's what we've got to do, let's get on with it, and get it over with."

When the Word became flesh (human), and dwelt among us, it involved, in time and space, a material out-forming of Deity Itself....God continuing to be who and what He is out from the timelessness of His Being into time. Spirit has form. Yes, it does! The Spirit of God, the Spirit which is God, was not formless before the incarnation. If God, as Spirit, was formless, His creation would have continued to be "without form and void." That could not have remained so, for God is reflected in His creation. In the opening of the Gospel of John, the KJV has it that the Word was with God, but the Greek there translated as "with" has the connotation of being "face to face." There can be no face-to-face relationship where form does not exist. All you would have would be an indistinguishableness personhood....a sort of mixed-into-a-soup of being.

For there to be such a face-to-face relationship within Deity...Father to Son, Son to Father, that Otherness involved implies substantive Form to substantive Form. When Jesus said God is Spirit, He wasn't describing some kind of non-substantive being of an ether-like nature. The glorification of the resurrected body is a restoration to its original state as intrinsic to the Divine Nature. God didn't raise up, and glorify something not intrinsic to what He is. I love the truth that in all the Lord's dealings with me, He just is always who and what He is, and He continues always faithfully to be who and what He is. God's faithfulness to us is out from within that unchanging essence of Being....Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and into the age(s).

Paul, on the mystery of godliness as a manifestation: "Great is the mystery of godliness, God MANIFESTED in the flesh...." What IS, is what is manifested, NOT what is NOT. What is uncovered, unveiled, is what IS, NOT what is NOT. God's dealing with us may involve administrative change, but never ontological change. The Son is the exact image of God, the effulgence of His glory, and it was as such that "the Word was made flesh."

On the above-described path of understanding the Lord had put me on, and on which I continue to travel to this day, there came that moment when He fixed my attention on the construction of the ark of the covenant, that it was of acacia wood and gold, AND the fact that the wood was overlaid with gold, i.e., that wood was within the gold, and not the opposite. Wood, in scripture, in shadow and type, indicative of man, and gold of the nature and glory of God. I was struck with the fact that the ark was not made of gold encased within wood.

Knowing that, in union with Christ, we are made partakers of the divine nature, it would be understandable for us to think of our humanity containing God (the gold) within us, rather than it being an overlay of our humanity (the wood), but the construction of the ark was such that our humanity (the wood) is within an encasement of Deity (the gold). The message to me was that humanness is intrinsic to Deity; i.e., the very "stuff" forth from out of the midst of God's timeless Being, is the constituent substance of our eonian creaturehood, and exists within God as intrinsic to what and who He is. When God created man - when God formed man of the dust of the ground - He did so forth from out of the midst of His inner being, that inner being as pictured by the ark.

This explains why any inspired study of the subject of God's glory always comes around to WHO is the glory of God, not WHAT is His glory.

JG
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