Galatians 2:14 in the Crucified Life Translation (XLT, 2025)

Galatians 2:14 (XLT) ‘But this other (happened)’ when ‘I saw’ that ‘they did not walk straight-up’[1] ‘interfacing with’ the ‘un-concealed reality’ ‘of the’ ‘rosy message of it being done-well’. /

…that ‘they did not step orthographically’ (in the way of the cross, the four tassels’ crossway, and the living wheels bisecting wheels perpendicular cross pattern in Ezekiel that was upholding the resemblance of the ideal Human Son) ‘for interfacing with’ the True-Reality ‘of the’ “Best News Ever!”

‘I simply said’ ‘relationally with Cephas (the Construction Stone)’ ‘in the sight of’ all, “If you, yourself, ‘starting out from under being’ (a) Jew, actively-live ‘as a person of any nation’ and not Jewishly, (then) ‘how is possible for’ ‘you in compelling’ the ‘people of any nation’ ‘to be Jewish folk’?

[1] G3716 ortho-podeó = upright, straight up, even perpendicular + to move feet = to walk straight-lined, uprightly, in-line. This word is only used here. And given the crucified life, TJPs, and the crucified life context before and after, it is likely Paul has in mind a variety of passages with orthographic and orthogonal imagery such as the four tassels (Tzitzit) as four corners of a robe, four horns of The Altar, the bisecting wheel-rings of Ezekiel 1 and 10, and even other temple imagery such as how you enter and encamp around the four facades. There are other types of OT references such as Pro 2:7’s “walk uprightly (with integrity), but it is the orthogonal, right-angled images that speak “cross and crucified life” behind the words and stories. Literally, in this story moment, these Jews are wearing robes with tassels. And this word, and one look down towards your feet, will conflate all this imagery that silently asks “And I crucified with Christ? Am I walking as He did as “slain Lamb standing?” And the LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and tell them that throughout the generations to come they are to make for themselves tassels for the corners of their garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the commandments of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes (Num 15:37-39 BSB). This is an Altar inspired walk because they share the four corners (Rom 12’s living sacrifice). This is a North-South & East-West walk like how the temple was oriented and how people dwelled orthogonally in the shape of a cross relative to the temple as God’s Dwelling (Num 2). IOW, it is how we dwell together. This is the “open heaven visions of God” Ezekiel saw in Eze 1 and 10 of wheel-ring bisecting wheel-ring so that those wheels only moved in orthogonal directions North-South & East-West. The life was in those wheels as they moved – moved what? The wheel-rings carried God’s platform and throne upon which He governed in the form of a man (Eze 1:26). This is the core of God’s Dwelling Place Ezekiel has been brought into in order to see that God’s Ways are precisely in the pattern of the crucified life. Normally the high priest would enter orthogonally, but with Ezekiel, God comes to Him from the heavenly True Temple-Dwelling that the Holy of Holies of earthly manufacture merely represented. As I’ve said in Spiritual Knowledge, it is “perpendicular.” In my book, I initially meant that it was not seeable in the normal course of life and always came at us like a blind-sided revelation. Then I progress in the book to explain the cross-shaped nature of life that we can only engage in by Jesus’s Holy Spirit. Thus, when God walked in the “cool of the day” in Gen 3:8, it was really the literal meaning of “in the Spirit of the Day,” this Spirit essentially declaring “be focused on the cross as the end to a flesh living for itself.” Hearing this, Adam and Eve freshly awakened into a new state of “flesh living for self-preservation,” reacted self-defensively and hid from what sounded like death, but was the crucified life that never ceases to increase when people have everything to give for others. That leads to the life is in the wheel-rings that bisect to form a cross from a perpendicular point of view. But my emphasis here is what I believe Paul is triggering by use of this word to Peter, whether said in Greek or Aramaic-Hebrew like HaLaK ToM.

Philippians 4:7 Crucified Life devotional paraphrase

Before you read, it is helpful to recall that the central feature of the letter is chapter 2, verses 5 to 13. Specifically in verses 6 to 11, we have what is commonly referred to today as the Christ Hymn. The entire hymn is participatory because we are to share the same mindset. What kind of mindset is it? The answer is found in what The Christ Hymn pictures of the Lone Seed and His self-giving Life, even to death on a cross. Out from that death comes all the Life-increase, to the point that not only do people confess Jesus Christ bears The NAME, HaSHEM, YHVH, but also what the literal meaning of that Greek word is: speak the same out from the midst. The Mission of the Lone Seed from John 12:24 overlaps and overlays into the many He brought with Him out from death below to the above where He sits reigning at rest.

“And God’s peaceful-wholeness, the Higher Order Kind surpassing all human default understanding, will in union with Anointed-Ruler Jesus keep and guard your hearts and the result of what runs through your mind. Jesus, our Messiah-God, YHVH in a man, is at rest on His throne above. Repose well with Him. Do not get agitated by the temporal storms below. Default human does what default human is. The “born that way” human is cut off from eternal life-increase and using the tree of knowing both good and evil to stave off the termination of the afterglow of The Life that the first parents lost.

People are born to die. There is no True Life in the first birth. People from all ages have had to move within towards the witness of True Life. Today with Jesus as The True-Life-Path, we now can present Him Personally, so that humans no longer need to have inner dealings from God’s Witness left in His engineered cosmos.

People are blinded by The Matrix of knowing both fair and unfair, right and wrong, just and unjust as finite beings severed from the Path of Life-Increase, which always initially sounds like “lose your life.” The Dying Seed loses its life on The Path to True Life-Increase for others. Only God as uncreated and Infinite knows the pathway through that tree of good vs. bad knowing. He showed us the Roadway He is through it! Only conformity to the sound of His walking by the Spirit of His Day can carry us through and out of that tree.

Only union and oneness with His heart and mind frees us who are born captives. This why we are all “called out, ek-klesia” and on an exit-path, exodus, out from the land of first birth captivity. By being in God’s many-membered Son as Passover showed, we leave to enter in the Eden-land again. On the way, we learn conformity to the crucified life, Jesus’s death, just like how corporate Israel encamped in the shape of a cross around God’s portable Eden-tent in the wilderness. We can only enter by sharing Joshua’s view.

The first generation, the default “born that way” human needs to lose the captivity mindset and heart that promotes and identifies in the initial generation life you were born with demanding, “Mine, mine, mine!” That first generative way is not allowed into the promised Eden-land where humans and God can co-live. That entire flow from Adam-town must cease! That is how the second generation may enter the promised Eden-land. Only then, by dropping the “are you for me (good) or against me (evil)” shtick, are you able to take down the lowest and cut off the oldest human habitation under command of God’s type military force and flesh-hacking sword.

And it is an upside-down type of force: what default humans think of as strong military force and skill in the art of warfare, is entirely eroded and undermined by God’s type of force, which is perceived as weakness to the flesh. Yet weakness to the flesh trapped in the prison of good vs bad is the disconnect needed to leave the prison. Jesus opened the prison door on the cross of history. And seeing the meaning of Christ and Him crucified has ongoing ramifications as The Path out by Resurrection unto Life-Increase. The out-froming after burial of the old is His True-Path Resurrection Life out from death!”

True Life-Increase

“Participating in the Divine Nature” is “having this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus,” and is “hospitably receiving the implanted Word-Logos that is able to save your soul.”

Peter said, in 2 Peter 1:3-4, says everything we need comes through our firsthand knowledge of Jesus’s Person. And there is a divine power at work involving His Own glory and Higher Order excellency. Through this Higher Way that Isaiah 55:8-11 speaks about, there are effects of His Self-committals, so that through His Self-committals you may become partakers of the Divine Nature. The Divine Nature is not tied down to the desire and decay of this world with all its good and bad. Thus, partaking means having escaped all that.

Peter’s “participating in the Divine Nature” is also Paul’s “having this mind in you” in Philippians 2:5. Once again, Isaiah 55:8-11’s Higher Thought and Higher Way applies. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and God’s ways are not our ways. We would be clueless unless He intervened somehow to show us, and allow us to participate and partake. That is what Philippians 2:6-11 intends to describe and depict. God has started a work in us in Philippians 1:6, and this work mirrors the mind and heart of Christ seen in this passage. What do we see?

Thanks to a recent scholarly publication entitled the Divine Heartset by Crispin Fletcher-Louis some gaps in prior research have revealed a key mistranslation in verse 6. In contrast to what you have typically read about this One not seeking something to grasp such as existing in the form of God, that something is actually of the flesh! It is grabbing hold of beautiful flesh for multiplying more flesh. Once all ancient references to the underlying word, harpagmon, are looked at, the word was used in the common cultural context of bride-knapping. It is what typical Greco-Roman gods did when they incarnated: see beautiful flesh and take it, and pour into it, so that more powerful flesh is made. Moreover, the term “god-equal,” likewise commonly referred to a dominate males’ ability to steal other men’s wives, procreate at will, etc.

The mind of Christ Jesus was to do the inverse of that with the flesh. Jesus did not incarnate in the familiar way that the first century church would have known of the god’s who incarnated. There was no taking and making powerful flesh; but rather hushing the flesh and giving in a different way. This way invoked a decrease and self-lowering. Instead of the typical Greco-Roman god making their demi-gods through seducing pretty flesh by looking like humans, Jesus became human in a different way that took His flesh into inaction and death, even by the excruciating cross!

At this low point where Jesus radically emptied Himself, God then hyper-exalts Him. Why, because this is The Higher Way and Higher Thought of Isaiah 55. God’s word, which leaves His mouth, does not fall into the lowly ground and remain void. Rather, like a seed, God’s Word accomplished the purpose to which His Word was sent, and there is a harvest. And now raised up, every tongue now “says the same thing out from themselves” as God’s Word that exited His mouth and went on this seed cycle. Do you hear that? The word commonly translated as “confess” in Philippians 2:11, really should be either “confess out from the midst,” or more literally, coming to the “same spoken conclusion out from the midst.” Sharing the mind of Christ Jesus is selflessly giving yourself away to the other members of the body of Christ, who also should be engaged in the same Divine Nature and Lifeblood circulation.

If other Christians are on track with the seed-cycle portrayal of the Diving Nature, then true Life-increase happens. There is a fleshly resistance to losing your own soul-life, because seeds do look like there are going into a hole to die and get buried. Adam and Eve’s kneejerk reaction to hearing the sound of God walking in the garden in Genesis 3:8, was to self-preserve, because the spirit of that sound was a call unto the death of the flesh-life that they had just been fooled into taking at the forbidden tree. But had they come out from their hiding place and its flesh-irritating attire, they would have learned how God breezes through all the trees alike, even the tree forbidden to Adam and Eve.

This is why James 1:21 tells us to welcome and hospitably receive the implanted Logos, often translated as “Word.” The implanted logos is this seed. Like a seed has DNA, a logos is an underlying matrix that accounts for all the factors. Jesus is This Logos-Word as John says in the opening words to his Gospel. This Higher Way, and Higher Thought of Jesus kept tightly in our hearts, defining the core reactions and responses, provides that Higher Power. Jesus’s Way and Thought becoming our way and thought saves our soul-life. If you want to save your soul-life, Jesus said to lose, ruin, and destroy it. You cannot keep your default soul-life that hides from God and doesn’t know what is good for it. Your best choice is to lose yours and gain congruency with His.

Thus, all these three passages, 2 Peter 1:3-4’s parking in the Divine Nature, Philippians 2’s having this same mind in you, and James 1:21’s “receiving the implanted Word-Logos” are all saying the same thing, just coming at it from different angles. Moreover, all leverage the seed-cycle imagery once you take Isaiah 55:8-11 into account. God has a way in Him that expresses out of His mouth like seed that follows the cycle of His Higher Way and Higher Thought. Or said another way, true life-increase looks like the seed cycle that continues to increase and increase life. Anything not that is not life increasing. Another word for this idea of “life not increasing” is death.

The Kingdom of God is a matter of what?

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14:17 ESV

God’s kingly rule and reign is not about religious efforts and rituals, but it is this other: righteousness, a peaceful wholeness, and the joyful awareness of grace’s dynamic relationally with and by the Breathing Spirit of Otherness. Holiness is otherness, which is “other than you and your default.” What society promotes is not holiness. It has a twisted idea of “no one can have fun,” much like the strawmen caricatures of Christians in popular media and shows like on the Simpsons.

Otherness is entirely other than you. In a sense it is “not you.” Another way of saying it is that every human is born with a blind spot. All our natural defaults and identities are clueless to the reality in that blind spot. We are just not aware of its existence, because the trajectory of that being and existing runs counter to our typical flow. It never comes to mind.

When we first encounter the Heart Trajectory of Jesus on the cross, it is the Holy Spirit showing us the Operational Reality inside Jesus. To “behold” the trajectory of His heart by your heart is the first sign of your union and participation with The Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4). Some call this exposure to “as He is,” or the “Slain Lamb Standing Nature” from Revelation 5:6, or The Dying Seed, or The Crucified Life. We struggle for words, because from the outside view of people in their default, The Otherness Trajectory appears as foolishness. Regardless of what you call it, His Otherness Glory beheld is transformative (2 Corinthians 3:18). Or as The Chosen has amply shown with their image of fish swimming in a stream, you change direction. God’s Way of Being as seen in the Face of Jesus makes us swim opposite the flow of the default (2 Corinthians 4:7). It has pristine-sourced creative power.

The revelation that caused us to accept Jesus’ sacrifice for me that forgave sin is supposed to continue in dealing with me, by putting me away. The way I was born with its identities and defaults must go away. We are supposed to keep seeking that revelation of “Who He is” by sticking with Him. Psalm 63:8 says “my soul – “everything about me” – follows hard after You. It is like someone clinging on and never letting go. Yet, like Philippians 2:12-13, when I see my energy is really Him energizing me as I stay focused on Him, then you can say with the psalmist that it is His right hand keeping you going after Him. You behold the trajectory and you go after it, because only He has it. And as you stay in union, you come to realize it is Him, not an “it.”

When you encounter the “Otherness Life” for the first time, that is when you are touched by The Same Life within as if Jesus had just healed a leper. I am not talking about salvation, but a freedom realization that makes the sanctification process clearly all about Him, specifically His Image and Likeness having home and sole possession of your inner being. As far as I know, you can only get there by beholding the reality of His going into death, which is greatly helped by the Old Testament / TaNaKh pictures of this scattered about in the Hebrew Scriptures. (A place to start is John 3:14 mixed with 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Philippians 2:5-11.)

Furthermore, habitually beholding “What Kind Jesus is” is our designed daily sustenance, both with power to keep a person “no longer I” He is being alive to His Father (Galatians 2:20, Romans 6). This is why Paul calls certain Christians “bewitched” in Galatians 3:1 when they stop focusing on the beforehand graphic portrayal of Christ crucified in a finished and ongoing way. The word “crucified” is in the Greek verb tense called “perfect.” The action is complete with lingering reality. Before the cross made a way out of space-time into eternity, people lacked access to the creative source of LIFE. Death is separation from LIFE, even though living things can keep on creating new generations of living things from the afterglow of LIFE. Jesus is, by BEING, Resurrection and LIFE (John 11:25). Death is not a thing to Someone Who can make what is not come into being.

As I have said elsewhere, there is a life-begetting reason why our designed food in Genesis 1 is from trees that bear fruit with seed in it. As far as we are concerned, the seed-cycle reflects His Life-sustaining Way having place in us. It is both the grace-dynamic of God and the love of God to share with us the begetting reality of the Only Begotten One from John 3:16 and Genesis 22. He shares this Son with His unique source of life, so that He is first in the begetting of what exits out from our soul, then our face, which impacts the world. That is His kingdom BEING on earth as it is in heaven.

The Church says, “Love is…”

Christian love always embraces the cross that ceases you.

Love that allows the flesh to stay, “just as I am,” is antichrist and satanic. Antichrist means “against Christ.” The meaning of “satanic” is explained below. “The flesh” means whatever default is living in us from birth.

Apostasy is losing this relationship to love defined as Jesus no longer breathing on the cross.

The sign of apostasy in the church is loving people without leading them to their co-crucifixion with Jesus. In Galatians 2:20, Paul says he is co-crucified with Christ and in 1 Corinthians 2:2 Paul says he only wants to see that reality operating within a church.

A sign that a body of believers is apostating is when they lack reference to the cross – not the event, but the daily reality that keeps your flesh ceased, because Jesus did it already.

Discipleship always begins with this reality of the cross.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26

A discipleship program that does not begin with this defining statement, or worse, makes no reference to it, is antichrist, and consequently satanic.

Shocking? Do you not recall how Jesus defined it after calling Peter “Satan?” In Matthew 16:21-23, Peter tried to hinder Jesus from going to the cross.

“Get behind me, Satan! For you have the things of mankind on your mind.”

The phrase “the things of mankind” exceeds the scope of this post. But I hope you can see that it is fundamentally allowing humanity to remain in its default state inspired by Satan and with no savior. The default human state began by being tricked into disobeying God through reaching out to attract what is apparently good while simultaneously displacing what is apparently bad. The nature of the “tree of knowing both good and evil relative to a finite individual” is also beyond the scope of this post, but has been addressed in my other posts and books. “Satanic” means to trick or deceive simple minds into complexities, especially generative complexities like sexuality. “What is Satanic” uses this domain of attracting the good and pushing away the bad as a logic base.

The Savior hung on another tree, the cross, to show the way out! The fleshly paradigm instigated at the forbidden tree in Genesis 3 was “mapped over” by Jesus hanging on the cross to transcend the default human nature by ceasing it, putting it out of sight, and then to allow God to be life out from this place of cessation. The cross takes what is default in humanity and makes it all cease in Jesus’s body both good and bad. As Jesus gets closer to his last breath on the cross, default human flesh is becoming nullified and the entrapment of Genesis 3:1-7 overturned.

Those who are Jesus’s have crucified the flesh. Galatians 5:24

Have a young love-pair memorize that next time they come for Christian counseling on relationships, love, and marriage. How is shacking up having crucified the flesh?

Love and marriage without the cross that crucifies the flesh is antichrist. At the end of Ephesians 5, Paul frames love and marriage in the context of Jesus Christ as The Second Adam and the Church as a second Eve. He does this by quoting from Genesis 2 of how Eve was made from the side of Adam – literally from a hole made in his side taking stuff from within him. Eve was the bride from his side. Paul says the new Eve is the bride from Jesus’s side. You know what I am referring to from John 19:34-35; the spear hole and the water and blood that came from Jesus’s side at the place of ceased breath in the flesh fulfills the picture of Adam put deep down under for his operation to gain a bride like him.

…the two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:31-32

Genesis 2:24 refers to Christ and the church. Eve is composed of this very heart that made the flesh cease within it. You can see this foreshadow of the cross in Genesis 2. Adam is a lone seed, like Jesus in John 12:24. And just like any lone seed, in order for there to be increase and multiplication, a seed needs to go into an opening in the earth and be buried. And out of an opening will arise life from that place of death just like Eve is formed from Adam going down into a ceased state. Adam is even made of adam-ah, the dirt, and Eve is called “mother of all living” in Genesis 3:20 to show she is the risen reality of Adam’s pictured death in the earth.

Eve’s “of-ness” is from Adam in this ceased state of fleshly living. Likewise, the church’s composition is supposed to be from Jesus’s defining act of love on the cross where the flesh was made ceased. Anything other than that is satanic, for it has the things of humanity in mind, keeping active “just as it is” and calling that love. In other words, making a claim to be the church that lacks the “of-ness” of Christ ceased in the flesh “he was made with” is fake, false, deceptive, antichrist, and consequently satanic.

Satan masquerades as an angel of light according to 2 Corinthians 11. Peter perfectly depicted how it is done by claiming closeness with Jesus. But Greater Love came into definition by Jesus laying down His life to cease the flesh with breath in it (John 15:13). It God’s weakness in the flesh that subverts human strength in 1 Corinthians 1.

Look at the church around you. How are they doing on the definition of love himself as seen on the cross? Is their emphasis loving everyone just as they are so that they flourish in that default flesh without ceasing daily by the cross’s end to the flesh? Do churches hide the cross from seekers? Either way, it amounts to the same. A crossless church projects the same message as loving a seeker without leading them to their end of the flesh where Christ ended it.

Deceptions work because people do not realize they are being deceived. When are the sheep going to wake up to the wolves in sheep’s clothing who are intent on redefining love without embracing the cross? This is the era when it will happen: global telecommunications and mass-marketing. Never before has there been an opportunity for thieves and the wolf! Would a thief really pass on such an opportunity? Can a wolf really restrain itself from eating a helpless little lamb?

I am The Door…My sheep hear my voice (John 10).

Embrace The Door. Embrace the cross’s openings in Jesus’s flesh. Jesus ceased the flesh and out of that place of cessation is Life, Him as The Life! “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27). Do not think that there is eternal life apart from Jesus Who is this Reality. Christian love always embraces the cross that ceases you, because of the One Who overturned “just as we are.” By exploring these openings Jesus made in His flesh on the cross – these “out from death” life portals that connect Old Testament stories to Himself like we saw in Genesis – we discover Jesus as the key for freedom, justice, and love. The bride says that love is the cross that includes you ceased where Jesus ceased, so that “born that way” can be put out of sight and buried away to form a bride “reborn of The Way.”

Communion and Conformed to Another [Person]  

Partaking of communion identifies our conformity with the Person of Christ, specifically at the cross. Paul would say, “I’m co-crucified with Christ, no longer I…”   Paul expands on this reality at the end of 2 Corinthians 5 where we will begin with verse 17…

2Co 5:17  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 

2Co 5:18  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 

Let’s pause for a moment and zero in on what it means in English “to reconcile.” The Mariam-Webster dictionary says that reconcile word means to restore to friendship or harmony, to settle or resolve, to make consistent or congruous, to cause to submit to or accept something unpleasant, to check a financial account for accuracy.

However, the underlying Greek word has a very different shape of meaning (semantic domain). If we were to bubble-diagram the English word for reconcile and the Greek word, which is put in English letters as katallassó, we would discover that they are two rings that only overlap in part of their meaning. This Greek compound word of kata and allassó literally means “down according to change” or “down exactly at the level of other altered.” You can see how the meanings can overlap.

Then we look at the context to see it relative to God through Christ. “In Christ” speaks to a new creation. Therefore, whatever reconciliation means, it must be relative to that. In fact, it is reconciliation in the sense of “correspondingly altered and changed” in the context of the person of Christ! It is not merely being brought not “harmony” (AMPC) or “making peace” (BBE, CEV) or “restored relationship” (GW) without any corresponding change to the person of Christ. The primary and intended meaning is conformity to the Person of Christ, then secondarily it would be harmony, peace, and relational restoration as a consequence.

The Jonathan Mitchel New Testament JMNT has it right: “transforming us to be completely other [than we were] (or: bringing us into another place or state of being; changing us to correspond with other [perceptions and conceptions]; altering us to be conformed to another [person]; changing us from enmity to friendship…” it is this type of reconciling.

So, let’s re-read this and use that terminology, specifically “conformed to another [person]” and be sure to emphasize “Christ” as you read it or say it out loud.

2Co 5:17  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

2Co 5:18  All this is from God, who reconciled “conformed” us to himself through Christ (His Person) and gave us the ministry of reconciliation “conforming to another Person”:

2Co 5:19  that God was reconciling “conforming” the world to himself in (the Person of) Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us The Word of reconciliation “conforming to this other Person”. 

2Co 5:20  We are therefore Christ’s (This Other Person’s) ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to “conformed to the Other Person relationally with” God. 

2Co 5:21  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

You see, conformity to the Truest Human, Jesus in His role of Messiah, Anointed One, Christ allows what is of Him qualitatively to be shared with us (1Co 1:30). And we might even ask, what is righteousness? Righteousness is nothing abstract, but “the way it should be, with well-ordered living and right thinking” sourcing from God and of His Person. Taking communion is serious business! By taking communion we agree to, vow, and bow to the conformity to the Person of Christ at His putting away of Adam (the old man of the old creation, the life we are all born into). Don’t take communion in an unworthy manner – in a manner that is not along this axis or judged on this balance scale… of conformity to The Person (1Co 11:27).

Types and Shadows vs. Seeing Jesus in The OT

Do you believe everything in the Bible? How many times have you heard people say something similar? “It is true, from Genesis to the maps!” Some people say it, but do they really believe it?

Take, for instance the first part of Romans 11:36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”

Does the “all things” include the all of the Old Testament?

Just look around at any local church, browse Christian book website, watch a little so-called Christan TV… they talk 99+% about other things, something other than Jesus being The Source, The Media and Means, and The End Object or Goal of whatever they are talking about. Count it sometime. In other words, in practical reality, 99%+ of Christians from all stripes do not believe their Bible or else you would constantly be hearing another insight about Jesus from obscure places in Leviticus, Ecclesiastes, or stories like Esther.

What Jesus said in Luke 24:27 was common knowledge with the early Church. It was commonly shared content in the first decades of the beginning Church. Deviating from Jesus as “The All” of the gathering was grounds for Paul to say things like Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.”

Were the Galatians at the historical event of the cross? Were they at the hill of Gol-gath-a, place of the skull where Jesus was publicly crucified? No, obviously not. Then where did they see Jesus publicly portrayed as crucified? This is in the Old Testament – not merely according to the dozen or so types and shadows people generally put out on parade when the topic comes up, but all the Old Testament – like how Hebrews 10:7 and Psalms 40:7 describes it, or like how Peter 1:10-11 says it, or like how Revelation 19:10b gives us the spirit of it. Let’s look at each of these.

“… it is written of Me in the volume of the book” (Heb 10:7, Psa 40:7), or better, “whatever is between the scroll handles, like a book cover, it is written of Me.” Pick your Bible scroll-book. It is written of the Anointed One coming to do God’s will. Do you believe it? Given the long apostasy from this, most Christians do not know it, and it sounds off when you focus on Jesus showing His heart in all the stories from 1 Samuel!

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” 1Pe 1:10-11 says what was within the prophets? The Spirit of Messiah was within the prophets. Do you believe it? Is Romans 11:36 true? Who has failed to tell and show you how this True-Reality works and is so? I’d say almost every Christians you have ever known, every leader and especially the popes and their religious entourage and the slick TV preachers, who in reality highlight themselves, often feigning to know God like conversant buddies when they do not even know the first basics of seeing the Spirit of Messiah Jesus in the Old Testament. (They are not talking to Jesus!) There is the spirit of Anointed One, and then all other spirits who like to name-drop and make themselves look spiritual. There is the kind of life Jesus has, and then whatever people call life, which is death. Anything not directly in flow with Jesus’ spirit is not in the eternal life trajectory. Does anyone really know Jesus’ spirit?

“For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Rev 19:10’s last phrase takes a moment to settle in, lest you think you need to go door-to-door testifying about how Jesus changed your life. Sure, it is good to tell how Jesus gave you the peace that passes understanding, but do you know why and how? Some languages think in a reverse order syntax from English, like how German likes to put all their verbs bunched up at the end of many sentences. Elements in Greek syntax often need what is said at the end to be relocated at the front to make more sense in English. Let’s do that here and see what we get.

“Prophecy’s spirit is Jesus’ testimony.”

That is solid Bible math! But if you listen to someone talking about prophecy, do you hear Jesus’ testimony? How far have we apostatized! You know exactly what I mean if certain TV preacher is prophesying something about x, y, z and another certain end times channel is going off about a prophecy report. What is the spirit of that prophecy? What is Jesus’ testimony? These prophecy channels are devoid of prophetic reality, which is the spirit of Jesus testified to and evidenced from all the Scriptures!

In the New Testament, Jesus’ testimony, Jesus’ witness is giving evidence of Jesus from the Old Testament. The Hebrew Scriptures were composed by folks who had the spirit of Messiah in them, and this spirit congealed into the Old Testament. At the end of 2 Corinthians 3, Paul says that when a heart turns to see the Lord instead of the historical story of Moses, or whatever, the spiritual undercurrent that caused the story’s record can be seen and beheld like uncovering gold while digging. Seeing the gold of the original spirit of authorship under the story is transformative, because it is Him beaming His glory. How can this not change the one seeing Reality?

Jesus kindly chided Nicodemus in John 3 for not realizing this Testimony even though he claimed to be a teacher of Israel. Of all the Bible stories Jesus could have chosen, He singled out the one from Numbers 21:4-9 about the bronze serpent on the pole. Everyone had been poisoned from the mouth of serpents in that story. This pervasive “venomization” is analogous to all humans being poisoned by the lie from the serpent’s mouth each of us inherited from Genesis 3. The only solution was beholding and seeing one bronze serpent immobilized on a hill on a pole suspended between sky and land. It was physically transformative in that by beholding the stilled snake on the pole, by reflection from the stillness position, the snake’s poison in you was stilled. It sounds like 2 Corinthians 3:18 to me.

But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a reflection the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2Co 3:18)

This transformative reality is the purpose of seeing Jesus pictured, or as Paul said in Galatians 3:1, “publicly portrayed as crucified…” seen and beheld as already crucified in an ongoing way from the before-writings of the Old Testament. What I just wrote expresses the actual Greek action of the verb we skeletally translate as “crucified” for readability in our English renderings. The action of Greek perfect tense describes a finished action with ongoing functionality and lingering reality. It is not past tense, and missing that action is the root of much misunderstanding.

A good translation will give you something like this from Revelation 13:8, “the Lamb who was slain from the creation-foundation of the world.” It is the same with Revelation 5:6, “…in the center of the throne…in the center of… a Lambkin standing, as though slain…” Rev 13:8 describes the messianic spirit seen in the Old Testament from Genesis 1. Moreover, Rev 5:6 describes the same spirit reigning on into eternity. This specific spirit is very “crucified with ongoing reality” in the Greek perfect tense! The little Lamb reigning from heaven’s core is both slaughtered and standing in resurrection life.

I have often said that Rev 5:6 is the Answer to the Universe verse, and it is true! Herein is the entire sweep of Jesus’ spirit pictured. If we like technical terms, then Jesus and Peter described what we should be looking for in the Old Testament in Luke 24:26, 46, and 1Pe 1:11. We generally read over these technically termed “trajectories of being” that picture “slain” and “standing.”  The passages cited above use the terms, “sufferings” and “rising, glories.” Jesus began with Moses to talk about these two trajectories pictured there and Peter says these trajectories define what the prophets composed – not just the literal prophets, but the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures was collated, if not entirely produced, by the prophets of old. And what did Rev 19:10 say? “Prophecy’s spirit is Jesus’ testimony.”

There is an action, a trajectory of BEING, to be seen and beheld from seeing Jesus’ martyr-witness spirit in the Old Testament. This is what defines a Jesus Picture in contrast to the modern notion of types and shadows, which have stripped down to the seeing of Jesus merely being predictive of His future events. It is an intellectual exercise as opposed to the means of spiritual transformation.

Like I said, do you believe Romans 11:36? Is spiritual transformation from, through and unto Jesus?

My hope someday is that people will share Jonathan’s strategy in 1Sa 14:8 for God’s victory over the uncircumcised. It is a Col 3:4 exposé. Col 3:4’s glory is not the far off future, but the rising and glory part in stories like 1Sa 14:8, which then allows what is uncircumcised to be cut down. The entire battle strategy for Jonathan, who was picturing Jesus in the story, was to let himself be seen. Jonathan’s strategy was the revelation of The Son. That is it… to show himself with the one who was with him heart and soul! That is where the mortifying of the earthly members is made real like the sickness vanquished in Num 21:9! Jesus seen and us seen with Him like the armor-bearer is transformative! It allows the mortifying action of Col 3:5 to be real, because it is not you trying, but Jesus BEING The One having come up out from death (the wadi-gully in the story).

The early church was not set up for the paid religious pulpit provider for life, but so that the assemblies could participate in this exchange of this beheld Messianic spirit with each other and then gain new insight for a period of months when an itinerate preacher would arrive to share additional insights from other Christian gatherings beholding Jesus from the Hebrew Scriptures. In the early decades, Church planting equaled assisting believers in the seeing the meaning of Christ and Him crucified in an ongoing way that worked within and among their community (1Co 2:2). The emissary represents Jesus by showing His resurrection priority as outlined in Luke 24. Any deviation off from the Author and Perfector is not Jesus, nor of His life (Heb 12:2). What spirit are you?

1 Corinthians 15:28 XLP

The XLP stands for the Crucified Life Paraphrase. It is a devotional translation that seeks unity with the Holy Spirit’s communicating thought in the passage as either conceived of by the original author or in harmony with the original author. What do I mean by that?

Had there been endless paper space to write, and some knowledge of the current audience now removed nearly 2,000 years later, the focus on the Crucified Life’s Spirit could have manifested as what the XLP translation states. That is a bold statement, to say that I know what the Holy Spirit focuses on. I am certainly not worthy to communicate His words if it were not for His revelation of Jesus’ Heart to me through a waking vision. What the Holy Spirit showed me is more real to me than anything I know, and I cannot help but continue saying the same thing as it manifests and multiplies with new life.

When I do a translation from Greek, I start with the literal translation, the XLT, specifically from the ground that the Holy Spirit showed me. And I now can confirm that the Crucified Life, only knowing and seeing the meaning of Christ and Him crucified in and among a people, is the only reality we need to share at church. Once the XLT is mostly in place, I take the devotional time with the Holy Spirit further into the flow and thought of the New Testament book from that revealed ground. I’m preparing to release my latest work in The Crucified Life New Testament, 1 Corinthians. I started with Galatians in 2015 and I will end with 2 Corinthians about 10 years later. Now without further ado, here is 1Co 15:28.  

Thus, whenever YHVH arranges all things under Adon’s feet, like Psalm 110:1’s footstool, then the Son Himself, Adon, shall also be properly arranged in order under His Father Who put everything under the Son’s feet. With The Son perfectly out-from His Father in this way, then God can be The All within everything!

I do want to take a moment to explain something you might be missing through hardened religious thought. Parallel this last statement I made of God being “The All of everything” with the time in Genesis when God finally declared “very good” on the seventh day of the creation week. The vehement wholeness of the seventh day being termed “very good” in Genesis 2:3 stands in the context of Genesis 2:18’s “not good” statement made before Adam’s sin. This is why many of our sages have argued for “Thus the heavens and earth were finished” in Genesis 2:1 to be the header of a recapitulating section or chapter, if you will, describing “the generations of the heavens and earth when they were created.”  In other words, these are the generating actions that finished creating heaven and earth.

Do not think of generations as birthing new generations of people but of the creative generating of creation by how it all was formally concluded on the 6th day. Genesis 2 slows down to show us how creation became functional at the end of the 6th day – how the seed cycle began. Before that, God had to keep making everything from scratch. He made creatures twice that day, once in an instant, and a second time slowly for Adam to see “what kind” they were. That was followed by the mystery of the making of Eve, the mother of all living. Then the initial creating process ended as the sun set on the 6th day.

Therefore, Genesis 2 reflects on the making of male and female in Genesis 1:26 in a unique way that explains why Genesis 2:5 tells us that no new plant had yet grew (tsaw-makh’). Yes, God had created the plants three days earlier, but the plants had not yet been initiated in their generating process. In other words, the seed cycle has not yet had its energizing initiation – that dominion waiting for its king to lead the way by a special tilling and unique cultivation, so to speak. You see, what was created as a tree or shrub on day three came up from the land into full maturity and was only prepared to multiply, and continued waiting under orderly arrangement for its king to initiate the process.

You may have heard this saying, “Which came first, the tree or the seed?” Hebrews have never had to deal with this quandary. We know it is the trees with seed-bearing fruit that came first. The seed cycle had not yet happened until God initiated it by making Eve from the opening in Adam’s, that is Dirt-man’s side. If a tree existed, as described on day 3, it existed in its mature form out of nothing and waiting for its ruling man, Adam, to cultivate and work (aw-bad’) properly.

Thus, the seed-cycle song began with the making of male and female on day 6 as pictured in Genesis 2:21-23. Before then the orchestral movements were being composed and tuning up. This seed-cycle action also set the universal theme for Jesus making His bride from the spear hole opening in His side as the Last Adam. That is the crescendo if you will, this two becoming one, because of that seed going its way unto living increase. It is also no mistake that after the “dying seed Adam” produced “risen bride Eve,” he appropriately named her as “mother of all living” in Genesis 3:20. Adam lowered into a picture of death and Eve rose therefrom as a picture of all living; the two made one of Adam’s kind of life.

In case what I am saying is still alluding you, due to past religious inflexibility, I am saying seed-cycle equals the narrow path of Jesus equals Isaiah 55:8-11 equals John 12:24 equals the picture of baptism equals death, burial, and resurrection. Right? I am writing about resurrection here that can only be attained through the decline into death, the fellowship of His sufferings conforming us to His death. This is the only way to truly know the Messiah and the power of His resurrection. Jesus’ death-burial-resurrection trajectory initiated the functional reality of the new creation.

Thus, the process wherein God is seen as “The All” in everything traces the path of the seed. This is how God’s Image and Likeness reverberates, increases, and multiplies. Out of what we currently perceive as death, comes living increase just like how a seed shows us by being of a living reality from the A-origin to the Z-fruit with seed in it.

A Constellation of Verses for Knowing “What Kind of Person” Jesus is

This post is for hearts that thirst for Jesus.

Read each verse listed below, then contemplate it, ponder it, and discuss it in your heart with the Holy Spirit.

Try to read each verse in multiple translations, or in Greek or Hebrew if you can.

As you follow along, visualize in your heart a circulation of Life that is Jesus having Presence in us by the Holy Spirit.

1Co 2:2 – Paul’s only knowing: οἶδα “see the meaning of” Christ crucified in and among a people

Luke 24:26, 46 – Jesus’ #1 Priority: said twice = seen in OT = a personal trajectory down, then up

Php 2:5-11 – The Mindset / Heartset: Jesus’ personal trajectory down, then up operating in people

John 12:24 – Lone Kernel of Grain: Jesus the Dying Seed, like Adam = down, then up as much fruit

John 16:28 – His Life as Roundtrip: I came from Father into world; I now leave world and go to Father

John 1:1-4 – Jesus is The Word / Logos: Λόγος = “In the beginning, God” … by Him all is generated

Gen 1 – God spoke 10 times and created-generated everything: A Word comes out by speaking (mouth)

Isa 55:8-11 – God’s Word out of His mouth is like a seed: it returns full, it succeeds in purpose

Luke 8:11-12 – Jesus is a Sower speaking a word that goes into heart soil: down, then rises up

Gen 1:11-12, 29  – Day 3 and 6 focus on seed-bearing: Seed-bearing things are our food

Gen 2:7 – Adam is made from ground-soil. The word for dirt-soil in Hebrew is the adamah: הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה

Gen 2:18 – Adam is alone like Jesus as the Kernel of Grain John 12:24: God will make a complement-ally

Gen 2:21-23 – Eve is made by Adam going in a seed cycle: Trajectory down: then openings: then up

Gen 2:21-23 – Eve made in below from stuff near His heart: Seed went down, God composed risen Eve

Gen 2:5 – Adam’s seed cycle starts Earth’s seed cycles: that is why no shrub or plant had yet sprung up

Gen 3:20 – The Dying Seed produces Eve = Life = “mother of all living”: Cycle = The two are one flesh

John 14:20 – Christ in us, us in Christ: The cross below made us one

1Co 6:16-17 – We are One Spirit with Christ: ultimately picture of Adam and Eve is Christ and the Church

John 19:34 – Spear hole side at the cross below fulfills Adam’s side in Gen 2:21-23

Eph 5:31-32 – The Profound Mystery: creation of male and female union pictures Jesus with Christians

Col 2:12 – We were co-buried with Jesus and were co-raised with Jesus: one flesh does that

John 15:13 – Greater Love lays down His life: seed cycle expresses what Greatest Love looks like

1Co 2:8 – The cross correlated with Who God is: “you can’t save yourself saving others” (Mat 27:42)

John 7:38 Belief is life alignment: The rivers of living water out of Jesus means the same out of us

John 7:37-38 = Isa 55 and the Higher Thought and Higher Way that is Greater Love: thirsty?

Isa 55:8-11’s cycle is the Higher Way and Thought we who are thirsty come to and align with by Luke 8

Rev 5:6 – Full Cycle Jesus reigns: slain lamb, standing = slain is the down trajectory; standing is the up

Php 2:12-13 Work with God on Jesus’ seed cycle in you all = “Php 2:16’s Word- Logos of Life” = seed cycle

If the Seed does not go full cycle, then there is no life.

The only kind of life increase follows the Dying Seed’s Higher Way.

Jesus is the Only Kind of Eternally Living Increase there is.

Php 3:10’s way to the Risen Life – like a seed sprouting, is through shared death

Php 3:13’s One Thing Paul does = Paul’s one knowing in 1Co 2:2

You can learn “What Kind” Jesus is by seeing His Spirit in action in OT / TaNaK Bible stories. See Spiritual Knowledge

What Are The Jesus Pictures?

The Jesus Pictures are, as you might guess, pictures of Him in the Old-Original Testament (OT). TJPs is the abbreviation. The “T” can also stand for TaNaK / Tanach, because the pictures of Jesus I refer to are found exclusively in the Jewish Scriptures just as Jesus and the apostles said in many places.

Before anything material or of time was created, there was the spiritual. The spiritual exists and existed before the material and before time. God’s Holy Spirit moved through time and painted pictures of Jesus in people through history. These Jesus Pictures became recorded as the OT / TaNaK / Hebrew Scriptures.

Some TJPs are more obvious than others, depending on how the people in the story flowed with the Spirit of Christ, resisted the Messiah’s Spirit, or were just plain ignoring God and His Spirit of the Anointed One (1Pe 1:11). TJPs are not explicitly spelled out in the actual sentences that tell a historical OT story. Nor are the TJPs seen when you discover the moral to the OT Bible story. Rather, they are spiritually beheld. In the NT, the Apostle Paul writes about only wanting to see the meaning of, and thus know Christ already crucified with ongoing reality in and among a people (1Co 2:2). (By the way, that is exactly what the Greek means.)

Likewise, in Galatians 3:1, Christians are bewitched when they do not maintain these graphic portrayals of Christ and Him crucified – that is maintain “seeing their meaning.” The reason why is that you can learn who Jesus is and what kind of person He is by beholding the spiritual reality seen within these OT pictures. How does this work?

The same Spirit who caused the pictures to be recorded in the OT, is the same Spirit who can open our eyes to seeing them. Moreover, if we are indeed seeing them by that authoring light of the Spirit who caused them to be recorded, then the very same Spirit now seen and recognized can transform our spirits in the present (2Co 3:18). Of course, the “god of this world” strives to keep Christians blind to this (2Co 4:4). Most people do not even know why Moses with the glowing face is used by Paul as his example for this.

(Note: the “unbelievers” of 2Co 4:4 are not secular folk, but people claiming to be Christians who disbelieve this. They are redeemed people who are not spiritually congruent to Jesus as head of His body (1Co 2:16). The Spirit of His mind is not known in a personal and narrowly, specific way that is life-giving. After all that was the Corinthians’ problem with all their divisions.)

For instance, it is possible to merely read Daniel and the lion’s den as a Bible story with a moral to it. But if you share in the same Spirit of Christ that moved through Daniel’s life and his circumstances, then you can see Jesus pictured in the story. A quick overview is the opening in and out of the lion’s den. Think of Jesus’ tomb. Daniel went one-way into an opening for his death. The stone was rolled over the opening. The stone was sealed by the government. Daniel was in a place of death. But death could not keep Daniel, because he was righteous. The devourer could not open its mouth. Thus, Daniel came out the same opening with life. The king was so amazed by Daniel’s God that he wrote letters to many nations. That sure sounds like Jesus’ burial and resurrection in the NT letters, because it is a picture of Jesus’ reality.

I am not talking about predictive prophecy or types and shadows as they are commonly taught. But I am talking about seeing Jesus (Heb 2:9). The aspect of Jesus I am seeing is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8). Jesus is The Promised Seed, singular in Gal 3:16. In other words, He is the Promised Seed of the woman in Gen 3:15. Jesus can be seen all the way from the start with Gen 1:1 to the end of the OT.

But learning to recognize and identifying that is not the end goal. Merely seeing Jesus pictured in the story is not yet eternal reality. It needs to be more than just staring at you right in the face. The final and most important part is engaging with the Holy Spirit regarding the picture of Jesus seen. Why? Because in that spiritual conversation, there always is the potential for the eternal and spiritual glory that moved through the story of old to shine into your present times here on this earth. You cannot really control anything about this last part. it must be entirely given by the Holy Spirit showing you what kind of person Jesus is. Then you will understand why Paul only was determined to see the meaning of, and thus know only one thing (1Co 2:2, Gal 6:14, Php 3:13). What does the Holy Spirit reveal? The answer is Jesus “as he always is,” literally being unto us righteousness – not some commodity (1Co 1:30). When beholding by the spirit with heart eyes illuminated, you realize that you are united with Jesus now (Eph 1:17-18). You know as a fact that you are seated with Him now (Eph 2:5). Yes, you are knowing what kind of person He is now, was, and always will be!

I know that sounds mystical, and it better be! Because if that Mat 7:22-23 conversation happens, you won’t need to say that you did all this stuff for Jesus, but rather, He will know you, because you took the time to get to know Him. Learn to see Him “as He is.” (1Jo 2:27-3:3).