Made In His Image
"And God said, let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness. . .
So God created man in His own image, MALE and FEMALE created He them."
Genesis 1:26 & 27
The following exeprt was taken from Chapter Three of J Preston Eby’s book, The Ashes of A Red Heifer. Happy reading!
"This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord has commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke" (Num. 19:2).
All the offerings in the Bible are bullocks and rams, but here there is an exception - a heifer, a female cow. Through Moses the Lord commanded the people to bring a red heifer to Him. Notice that it was NOT a bullock but a heifer. Sex has its significance in the Bible. All that pertains to truth and testimony is represented by the male sex, while all that speaks of experience and life is symbolized by the female sex. This is a principle in the study of the Bible. Abraham represents justification by faith, and Sarah stands for obedience. Faith is objective, truthful, a testimony; obedience is subjective and experiential. The Church as seen in the Bible is always referred to by the feminine pronoun because she represents the subjective work of the Lord upon men. The work of the red heifer is therefore subjective, not objective, in nature.
In the Old Testament days, then, when any was defiled by contact with death, the ashes of the red heifer were brought. It was a female sacrifice, and a female sacrifice free from any blemish, a red heifer taken in the time of that heifer's prime, when the heifer was not only alive herself but able to produce life. The more we study the Bible and the more we see its themes unfold, the more we will discover that its many truths are in fact but ONE TRUTH. They are like the sweater that has been knitted and has front, back, sides, collar, and sleeves, but when unraveled is seen to be but one single skein of thread. I now venture to propose that when God, in the beginning, formed the body of Adam from the dust of the ground, He did not make two persons, a man and a woman, for ADAM WAS BOTH IN ONE - after the image and likeness of God. The image of God is not a body with a torso, two legs with two feet and ten toes, two arms with two hands and ten fingers, and a head with two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth. The image of God is the NATURE of God. You see, the Bible states clearly that in the beginning there was only God - omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, holy, perfect...who is love. But because God had a Father Nature, He had to birth a Son: because when one has a father nature, the deepest craving of his nature is to beget and bring forth from his own being an offspring in the likeness of himself. Therefore, because God had a Father Nature, He had to birth a Son; but the problem was He didn't have a Wife. Now this would have been a problem for us, but it was not a problem for God, because He had His Wife in His own side, for in that beginning before human flesh was, God was both Male and Female in Himself. We know this to be true because everything in the whole vast universe has come out from God, and if God had not been Male and Female within Himself in the beginning, we could not have male and female in the earth today - in His image! "And God said, let us make man IN OUR IMAGE. So God created man in HIS OWN IMAGE, MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM" (Gen. 1:26-27).
The Word of God bears immutable testimony to this wonderful truth. Father Abraham heard the call of God and got him out of his own country, from his father's house and his father's kindred, and sojourned to a land that God showed him. God gave to him the promise of a seed and that in this seed all the families of the earth would be blessed. After many years of experience in Canaan, this man of faith, yet without the promised seed, and seemingly without hope, was visited by the Lord and we read in Gen. 17:1-2: "When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the ALMIGHTY GOD; walk before Me, and be perfect. And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly."
Now this name, GOD ALMIGHTY, is both interesting and touching. In the Hebrew it is "El Shaddai". God (El) means "might" or "power" and signifies the "Strong One". "Shaddai" is different, though it also describes power; but it is the power not of force, but of all-bountifulness. "Shaddai" primarily means "Breasted", being formed directly from the Hebrew word "Shad", that is, "the breast", or more exactly, a "woman's breast", and is so used in Gen. 49:25; Job 3:12; Ps. 22:9; S. of S. 1:13; 4:5; 7:3; 7:8; 8:1,8,10. Thus "Shaddai" means "the Pourer or Shedder forth" of life as a woman bears her child and then feeds and sustains it with the milk from her breast. God is the giver out of His own life as He bears out of His own Spirit-substance His offspring and then feeds and sustains and strengthens it with the "milk" of His Word. Can we not see that all natural things have spiritual counterparts and that "the invisible things of Him are clearly seen in the things which are made," as Paul said in Rom. 1:20.
By her breast the mother has almost infinite power over the child. Some of my readers perhaps have heard the old Greek story of the babe laid down near some cliff by its mother, while she was busy with her herd of goats. The babe, unperceived, crawled to the edge. The mother, afraid to take a step, lest the child should move further and fall over the precipice, only uncovered her breast, and so drew back the infant to her. It is this figure which God Himself has chosen in this name EL SHADDAI, by which to express to us the feminine element in His Almightiness! His Almightiness is of the breast, that is of bountiful, life-giving supply! Therefore He can quiet the restless, as the breast quiets the child; therefore He can nourish and strengthen, as the breast nourishes; therefore He can attract, as the breast attracts, when we are in peril of falling away from Him. Ah, this is the "Almighty" who appeared to Abraham and assured him that he would be blessed according to promise. How wonderful are these things!
Long millenniums after Abraham's encounter with God Almighty, El Shaddai, the "Breasted One", John the Revelator, in exile on the barren Isle of Patmos, heard behind him the voice of One who trumpeted into his ears this message: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come, THE ALMIGHTY" (Rev. 1:8). As John turned to see the Voice that spoke to him, with astonished countenance he beheld the wonder of this One "clothed with a garment down to the foot, and GIRD ABOUT THE PAPS with a golden girdle" (Rev. 1:13). The word "paps" is the Greek word "mastos" used exclusively in Greek for the female breasts! "And it came to pass, as He spoke these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto Him, Blessed is the womb that bare You, and the PAPS (mastos) which You have sucked!" (Lk. 11:27). On Patmos we have the woman's dress and the woman's breast while yet the speaker is THE ALMIGHTY! It would not be possible to describe more vividly the dual nature of our God who is both Male and Female, the Strong and Mighty One, our Father, who is also "El Shaddai", our Mother, the Pourer-forth who pours Himself out for His creatures; who gives them His lifeblood; who draws them in tenderness to His bosom; who satisfies them with milk from His own breast; who sheds forth His Spirit and His Soul, and says, "Come unto Me, and drink": "Open wide your mouth and I will fill it": who thus gives Himself and His very nature to those who receive Him, that they may grow to become HIS SONS AND HIS DAUGHTERS, HIS MANCHILD AND HIS BRIDE! Can we not now see how it is that our Lord Jesus Christ must be, on the one hand, the bullock, the male cow, the sin-offering, forever justifying our SPIRIT before God, and, on the other hand, the heifer, the female cow, the water of separation to cleanse our SOUL from the defilements of the world, the flesh, and the devil?
[Website Authors Note: From this perspective, we now read John 1:1 & 14, 1 John 5:20, John 1:18, John 14:6 and 2 Corinthians 4:6 with our eyes open to the true nature of God’s Son, The Christ who. . .”In the beginning was THE WORD, and THE WORD was with God, and the Word WAS GOD”, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and TRUTH”, “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him [The Father] that is TRUE, and we are IN HIM that is TRUE, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is THE TRUE GOD, and ETERNAL LIFE”, and “No man hath seen God [The Father] at any time; the only begotten Son, WHICH IS (“now”, “at this present time”) IN THE BOSOM OF THE FATHER, He hath declared Him”, that is - made Him visible - because He is the outward manifestation of He that is TRUE! “Jesus saith unto him, I AM the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” My dear friends, this is the very “image” of The Father that is being FORMED in us through His WORD by the person JESUS CHRIST! “For God, who commanded the light [the WAY] to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Oh! Hallelujah! That we should see the HEART of the Father revealed to us in the COUNTENANCE of Our Lord Jesus Christ! Praise God!]
Picking back up with Eby. . .
All the offerings in the Old Testament are slaughtered and offered to God, but this offering of the red heifer, though killed and burned, is very different from the rest. While all other are offered to God to meet current claims - that is, the sin-offering, the burnt-offering, or the peace-offering according to the need of the day - the red heifer alone was not for the present need. It was offered to meet future needs. Here lies the uniqueness of the red heifer. Unlike other offerings, which had only their blood sprinkled before God, the ashes of the red heifer were kept for future use. Its efficacy was in the blood. The ashes which were collected from the burning of the red heifer together with the cedar and hyssop and scarlet were stored in a clean place. What was the purpose? It was that one day when an Israelite became defiled by touching something unclean, he might then go to the priest who would mix the ashes with the running water and sprinkle them upon the unclean person to make him clean. The ashes were used to take away defilement.
According to the Old Testament, an offering was required for every sin. But here it is different. Here is a man who has already presented his offering and then later on has touched a dead body. Because he has been defiled his fellowship with God is broken. What should he do? He does not go and offer another bullock for sin, but he should go to the priest for the water of separation that his defilement may be cleansed. This is quite a different type from the other offerings. The ashes of the burned heifer were kept for the cleansing of the many such defilements of future days. It was burned not for the sake of past sins, but rather to prepare for future defilements of flesh due to contact with uncleanness. In this we see another aspect of the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus Christ, quite different from that of which the bullocks and rams of the Old Testament speak. All believers ought to know this aspect of the Lord's work, the aspect typified by the ashes of the red heifer. All the efficacy of redemption is embodied in these ashes! As the MASCULINE NATURE of God in Christ is made available to us for the quickening and justification of our SPIRIT, so, in the sacrifice of the red heifer, is the FEMININE NATURE of God in Christ made available to us for the cleansing of our SOUL from the negative influences of the death realm around us. The ashes of HIS WORD mingled with the running water of HIS SPIRIT effects a most powerful cleansing from all the external influences of the world upon our minds, emotions, and consciences, praise His wonderful name!
I must make one thing very clear. I speak plainly because it is necessary. I am a plain man and I speak plainly. There is absolutely no ground in Scripture for addressing God as "our Mother-God". Some today foolishly refer to God as "She" and "Her" and even intone prayers to "our Mother which art in heaven." Such conduct is utterly absurd and ridiculous. As Eve was contained in Adam and the two natures in one constituted MAN, so the feminine element of God is contained within His masculine nature and both are beautiful and precious realities within OUR FATHER. True, Eve was taken out from Adam, and the Bride is taken out from the Christ. But in the end all is "gathered together into one in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 1:10) that duality may be swallowed up into ONENESS.
It is interesting to note that in most languages of earth, nearly all words have endings which classify them in one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. This means that not only are living things classified as male and female, but a great number of other things as well. The truth is, however, that a word classified as feminine in one language may appear as masculine in another! Even between the Hebrew and Greek of the scriptures there are these differences. For instance, in Greek the word soul is feminine whereas in Hebrew it is just the opposite – masculine. Can we not see by this that it is not primarily grammar that truly determines whether a thing is masculine or feminine; rather it is usage. Usage determines meanings – the writer’s usage, not ours. For example, the word “spirit” and all that pertains to the life of that realm is by its usage in scripture clearly show to be masculine in character.
Some contend that the Holy Spirit bespeaks the feminine attribute of God, but such cannot be true for “Holy Spirit” is never used in scripture in either the Old Testament or the New in such a manner. Note when the angel Gabriel was speaking with the Virgin Mary about her conception of the Christ child, Gabriel stated that “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee (as a man covers a woman in procreation): therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the SON OF GOD” (Lk. 1:35). Matthew, in his Gospel, adds this unmistakable confirmation: “Mary… was found with child OF (BY) THE HOLY GHOST” (Mat. 1:18) yet on several occasions Mary’s “soul” is referred to in relation with her pregnancy thus signifying the soul as feminine while the Spirit is masculine. Multitudes of other passages could be cited in demonstration of this reality.
Thus, SPIRIT is masculine - the life giving force, essential being, substance, strength. SOUL is feminine - that which proceeds out of spirit: mind, desires, emotions, etc., as in the Garden we see Eve "taken out" of Adam. Spirit is BEING and soul is EXPRESSION. Spirit is objective, while soul is subjective. For the sake of understanding, the soul can be said to have five senses just as our physical body has the five senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. The soul comprises your INTELLECT - that is your mind with all its mental capacity for knowledge, understanding, and reason. Then you have your WILL - the mental power to choose and the forces directly urging you to action. Then there are the EMOTIONS - strong forces of personality and passion with many aspects such as love, hate, joy, peace, grief, anger, fear, etc. Then come the DESIRES - the faculty of wishing or longing or craving. Finally, there is the AFFECTION - heart attachments, the power to search out and cleave to that for which we have a natural feeling, passion, predisposition, or propensity.
Is it not the SOUL, with its senses, which is defiled by daily contact with the influences and pressures of world of death about us? A great portion of our tears of sorrow and sympathy are related to this world's system. Much of our emotional outburst is triggered by the pressures of the situations and circumstances imposed by this world. Our mental attitude is strongly influenced by this world's spirit. The world demands our time, pressures our will, beats upon the emotions, excites our desires, saps our strength, and cries for our attention. We do not like our emotions and impulses moved upon by this world. We do not like our thinking, attitudes, reasoning, or will bent to conform to this world's ways. How we DETEST it all, how we LOATHE the contamination acquired by contact with the corruption and death of THIS WORLD!
And, blessed be God! He has made a gracious provision. Not only did Jesus come as the blessed Son of God in the power of the SPIRIT to offer Himself as a sacrifice, a male sacrifice, fulfilling the typology of all the bullocks, rams, and he-goats of the Old Testament, taking away our sins, quickening OUR SPIRIT with HIS SPIRIT, giving eternal life; but He also poured out HIS SOUL unto death, the feminine nature of His being, becoming, too, the red heifer, the female cow, offering Himself as El Shaddai, the "Breasted One", the Pourer-forth who draws us to God's bosom and satisfies us with milk, quieting our soulish restlessness and agitation, as the breast quiets the crying babe; nourishing and strengthening as the breast nourishes and strengthens; wiping away our tears and healing our pain with the caress of love as only a mother can do! The Word of God is by no means lacking in its vivid descriptions of our Lord's redemptive work. CHRIST IS BOTH the bullock for our sin-offering, and the heifer, the ashes of which daily cleanse our soul-life from the corrupting and contaminating influences of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The specification of the Lord was "a RED heifer without spot," that is, without any white or black hair on its hide. Ancient Jewish authorities make the most incredible assertion that altogether, from the time of Moses to the final destruction of the Temple, only nine such red heifers had been offered: the first by Moses, the second by Ezra, and the other five between the time of Ezra and that of the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans. I only add that the cost of this sacrifice, which was always great, since a pure red heifer was very rare, was defrayed from the Temple treasury, as being offered for the whole people.
The heifer provided for this sacrifice must be of pure red color - a most rare and difficult thing to find in the world, among the thousands of cattle on its hills, one heifer answering completely to this description. The word for red in the Hebrew is "adumah" and the word for blood is similar, "dam". The word for man is "A-dam". There is a relation between the color red, the blood, and the man. "And God said, Let us make MAN (A-dam) in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). "Adam" means "ruddy; to show blood in the face; to flush or turn rosy".
The book of Genesis gives two accounts of the creation of man in its first two chapters. As I have studied the Word of God, many things have become very evident, one of which is that there are two distinct creations or works of God revealed in chapters one and two of Genesis. In Gen. 1:26-27 the first of these creations, in respect to man, is presented and as we consider the wonderful advent of man created "in the image and likeness of God" we can only conclude that this is a SPIRITUAL MAN brought forth out of the very Spirit-substance of God Almighty and bearing His own divine nature, character, and attributes. The image of God is the nature of God reproduced in man. The second work of God wrought upon man is related in Gen. 2:7 where we see this significant action taking place: "And the Lord God FORMED MAN OF THE DUST OF THE GROUND, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man BECAME a living soul." Reading this passage we have the definite assurance that, as man has been first "created" on the sixth day in the spiritual image of God, a further work is being carried forth and the man is now being "formed" into another expression: "F-O-R-M-E-D of the dust of the ground," and so "B-E-C-O-M-I-N-G a living soul" - manifest in the earth realm. The first is the "created" man, the second the "formed" man. The first is a "spiritual" man, the second a "physical" man. The first bears the image of the "heavenly", while the second bears the image of the "earthly". The first is known unto God in the Spirit, the second is manifest to the physical world. The very fact that the Scripture states that ADAM "BECAME" A LIVING SOUL, reveals that there was a process of descending from pure spirit existence, into a lesser realm.
The point of special interest to us here is the fact that God first called man ADAM, or RED - SHOWING BLOOD IN THE FACE - when He created him a SPIRITUAL MAN. Man did not "become" Adam when he was "formed of the dust of the ground" - it was not the earthly man who was first characterized as red, or showing blood in the face - but the heavenly man! And this Adam was created "in the image and likeness of God". No poet or philosopher or prophet could possibly describe the glory and eminence of THIS MAN! I have long known that the "face" in symbolic terms bespeaks the outward expression and revelation of the deepest inward parts of man's being - the heart. All that a man thinks and feels and is inwardly is written and expressed outwardly upon the countenance, known and read of all men. Blood bespeaks LIFE. To "show blood in the face" is to show life in the countenance - to outwardly reveal the inner condition of life!
Ah, that spiritual man in the image of God, that heavenly man after the likeness of God was indeed set in the midst of God's magnificent creation to be the REVELATION OF GOD'S LIFE. He was indwelled by heaven's own divine life. In union with man God was the power of his life. Man was full of light, abounding in heavenly wisdom and knowledge, fearful in power and dominion, ethereal as a spirit and radiant with the nature and resplendent glory of God. Here, then, was man's terrible loss in the fall! He lost all. He lost his glory, his dominion, his wisdom, his knowledge, his dignity, his happiness, his purity and his peace - all was gone from him. And after four millenniums of sin, sickness, sorrow, depravity, perversion and the stupefying darkness of the carnal mind, where, on all this sin-cursed earth, could be found a man typified by the RED HEIFER - a man REVEALING THE LIFE OF GOD! Thank God. One was found. Only one! "In many separate revelations and in different ways God spoke of old to our forefathers in and by the prophets. But in the last of these days He has spoken to us in the person of a Son, Whom He appointed Heir and lawful Owner of all things. He is the SOLE EXPRESSION OF THE GLORY OF GOD - the LIGHT-BEING, the OUTRAYING OF THE DIVINE - and He is the perfect imprint and VERY IMAGE OF GOD'S NATURE" (Heb. 1:1-3, Amplified).
This Son is the out-shining of God's glory, and the express image of His person. How like Adam in the beginning! As we only know the sun by the light that shines from it, so is the Christ THE OUTSHINING, the revelation of GOD'S GLORY. As the light that shines from the sun is of the same nature with it, so the Son is of one nature with the Father. And as a son bears the likeness of his father, because he has his life and nature from him, so the Son of God is THE EXPRESS IMAGE OF HIS SUBSTANCE. He is of one substance with the Father - its express image - and has therefore life in Himself, even as the Father has life in Himself. "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST" (II Cor. 4:6). This is the second man, the LAST ADAM with blood in the face, life revealed in the countenance, the GLORY OF GOD IN THE F-A-C-E OF JESUS CHRIST!
"...a red heifer WITHOUT SPOT, WHEREIN IN NO BLEMISH" (Num. 19:2). "For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ASHES OF AN HEIFER sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who OFFERED HIMSELF WITHOUT SPOT to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Heb. 9:13-14). The power of Christ's blood consist in two things. The blood of Christ has its value, first, not from the mere fact of physical suffering and death, but from the inner life and disposition that animated the Christ who shed it. The blood of a man is of more worth than that of a sheep. The blood of a king or a great general is counted of more value than hundreds of common soldiers. The blood of the Son of God! - it is in vain the mind seeks for some expression of its value; all we can say is, it is His own blood, the precious blood of the Son of God who offered Himself WITHOUT SPOT!
The second element that gives the blood its value is the holy obedience of which its outpouring was the proof; the blood of Christ who OFFERED HIMSELF WITHOUT SPOT UNTO GOD. He came to live the life of man, such as God had meant him to be, in creating him. He gave up His will to God, He pleased not Himself but sought only the Father's pleasure, He yielded His whole life that God might reveal Himself in it as He pleased: HE OFFERED HIMSELF TO GOD! He took and filled the place man was meant to fill. And that WITHOUT SPOT. His self-sacrifice was complete and perfect, and His blood, even as the blood of a man, was, in God's sight, inexpressibly precious! The apostle shows that Christ was indeed the RED HEIFER, without spot. And now, praise God, in the power of the Holy Spirit the blood of Christ effects a mighty, divine cleansing, full of heavenly life and energy. The Spirit that was in Christ makes us partakers of its power. His victory over sin, His victory over the world, His victory over the flesh, His victory over the devil, His victory over death, His victory over all obstacles, and His oneness with the Father - the soul that fully knows the cleansing of the WATER OF SEPARATION in its power will know these blessings too!
"And you shall give her (the red heifer) to Eliezer the priest, and he shall bring her outside the Camp, and she shall be slaughtered before him. Eliezer the priest shall take some of her blood with his finger and SPRINKLE IT TOWARD THE FRONT OF THE TENT OF MEETING seven times" (Num. 19:3-4, Amplified). The sacrifice having been killed, one of the priests (not Aaron, the High Priest, but Eliezer, his son) took the blood and sprinkled it "toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times," which is the place of communion, for the subject here is not justification, but communion. It was sprinkled seven times, not around about the altar, but TOWARD THE TABERNACLE, to represent our forward walk in God as we follow on to KNOW HIM in all His glorious fullness! - End of Chapter Three
Website author’s questions:
Is God three persons in One? Or, has God The Father been manifested in the ONE Person of Jesus Christ?
The following is a short, but essential excerpt from Chapter Four of Eby’s book.
People have great difficulty understanding an abstraction or a force. It must be personalized and that is why God has come in the person of Jesus Christ so that we might see Him and see what God is like. The only begotten Son, He has revealed Him. God has been personalized in Jesus Christ, and this personification, the embodiment of God Himself, HUMBLED HIMSELF! That One who walked by the sea of Galilee and throughout the dusty roads of Palestine was none other than the Living God, the Creator who emptied Himself and humbled Himself and came into this world. Humility, self-abasement, serving, laying down OUR LIVES to POUR OUT to others - these are the very principles of the Kingdom of God! "Whosoever therefore shall HUMBLE HIMSELF as this little child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mat. 18:4). "But he that is greatest among you shall be your SERVANT. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall HUMBLE HIMSELF shall be exalted" (Mat. 23:11-12).
This is the character of the hyssop: God, not merely the Scarlet Thread. . .the mighty exalted King with dominion and power, but God identified with man, sitting where we sit, living where we live, feeling what we feel, experiencing what we experience, and TRIUMPHING IN IT! This is the humility of God, the servantship of God, the priesthood of God. "Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God. . .for in that He Himself has suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted" (Heb. 2:17-18). "For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).
God said, "I will invade humanity and come down in the person of My Son, limit myself to a human, physical body just like man has, with all its appetites, emotions, possibilities of suffering hunger, weakness, and death, and I will demonstrate the character, the life, the love and the power of God on the human level." The incarnation was God manifesting Himself within the limitations of a human body. Christ could not fly, He could not see further than anybody else, He could not run faster than the other young men in His day, He got as tired as anybody else, He got as tempted as anybody else, He got hungry, fell asleep, they could spit on Him and finally kill Him. Yet in Jesus Christ you have the perfect expression of God. The meaning of the incarnation is that God could drink out of a bottle if Jesus drank out of a bottle, God in Him learned to crawl before He learned to walk, God learned a language and stumbled over the words before He got it straight, His mind could increase.
When God invaded humanity in the body of Jesus Christ, He took upon Himself human nature and limitation, was made in the likeness, not of glorified flesh, but of sinful flesh, and for thirty three and a half years lived, walked, slept and died in that body, manifesting God in the scope of humanity. Being mocked, God was living in Him. Asleep in the boat, God was living in Him. When He was weary, pressed, persecuted, hated, spit upon, His back beaten, His brow crowned with thorns, His hands and feet nailed to a cross, His side pierced, yet, dying on the cross in agony with the spittle running down His face, GOD WAS LIVING AND MANIFESTING IN HIM, God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.
Do you see what God did? He made it possible for Himself to be at home in human bodies! "The tabernacle of God IS WITH MEN" (Rev. 21:3). Not with angels, with man. "And the Word was MADE FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (Jn. 1:14). It means that God can, by His Spirit, Jesus can, by His Spirit, come in and live in these human bodies of ours, grow up in the fullness of His nature, mind, and power within us, living in us, loving in us, and manifesting Himself in us until with the Christ we can say, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father; I and the Father are one."
Paul grasped the deep reality of this when he said, "For me to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21). He didn't say, "For me to speak in tongues, dance in the Spirit, fall out under the power, heal the sick, cast out devils, be spiritual and get into the 144,000 is Christ." No, no. He said, "For me to LIVE is Christ." Living for Paul did not mean those obviously supernatural moments when he was seeing visions and hearing voices and being caught up into the third heaven. It meant for Paul to walk from one town to another on the dusty roads with Christ walking in him. It was for Paul to sew tents, with Christ making tents through him. It was speaking to people and manifesting the love of God, with Christ manifesting that love through him. The everyday living out of his life in the nitty-gritty of human experience - WAS CHRIST!
George Warnock has written these precious words: "Jesus comes on the scene, and immediately we are made to realize that here is One that is Great because of His humility. Here is One who can take note of the things that are meaningless to others; for He (like the hyssop) was but a 'Root out of a dry ground.' Here was One who 'had no form nor comeliness.' One who could not get enthralled about the mighty and the noble; or share the enthusiasm of the disciples about the splendor of the Temple; but who saw beauty in the 'lily of the field.' One who would not break the 'bruised reed,' or quench the 'smoking flax.' True greatness does not stand apart, above, or beyond the ordinary. True greatness is always identified with humility and weakness and insignificance and lowliness. That is why the great and mighty God of the universe who created all things could not forever remain high and lifted up in the heavens, He must come down and show Himself as He really is. . .meek and lowly and compassionate. God takes special note of the 'hyssop' because He is so Great. He tells us that He 'dwells in the high and holy place,' and then He is quick to remind us, 'I dwell also with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit' (Isa. 57:15). Now we are talking about 'hyssop' which is one of the ingredients of this Fountain of Life. Only the humble will see thereof, and be glad. Only the humble will partake of it, because only the humble can get low enough to discover God's dwelling-place (and don't forget, you will never enter into this kind of life until you discover God's dwelling place, and then abide with Him there)" - end quote.
God's dwelling place: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is WITH MEN." Ah, beloved, God is here within us by His Spirit, not only as the Scarlet, but as hyssop, an humble priest to identify with us and bear us up in time of trouble and cleanse from all that defiles. The Spirit of the one WHO HAS LIVED OUT GOD'S LIFE IN THE FLESH has come within, not the God in heaven who CAN do it, but the God who HAS done it. This is the hyssop cast into the fire! When we know Him thus, what a cleansing is effected from the defilement around us. God is nigh! He is here! In our today! In every situation and circumstance! To live out HIS LIFE in us, praise His name!
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