Tag: Christ and Him crucified

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!”

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.

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?

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).

The Answer To The Universe

The Answer To The Universe is “beheld” with heart eyes in Revelation 5:6.

And I saw, and behold, in the midst of the throne, and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, was a Lamb standing, as having been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, having been sent out into all the earth. (LITV)

“Beheld” is set in quotes to tell the reader that I mean a different aspect of the word than what is typically understood.

To “behold” is a type of seeing that you do with your heart to understand nature of being. What flows out of your heart identifies the nature of your being. By heart flow I mean your inner thought life spurned on by motivations and premises subconsciously hidden beneath like a well’s source. Every human operates by a heart trajectory that is completely inverse to and opposite of what we see in Revelation 5:6. So much so, that it is in our blind spot of awareness and life.

Hearts can detect life flow, which is why heart eyes can become illuminated (Eph 1:17-18). In the quote of Rev 5:6, focus in on the phrase: “a Lamb standing, as having been slain.” Notice that standing is a living and risen reality, while slain is a being killed and made dead reality. Said differently, standing represents a resurrection standing; slain represents the end of a dying process that makes dead. Understand this apparent contradiction with heart eyes and you can become illuminated to a type of being unimaginable without direct spiritual intervention. I’ve chosen these words carefully for your personal discourse with the Holy Spirit, Who is The Intervening Teacher and Illuminator.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:24 (ESV)

A seed falls to the ground and dies… this is a trajectory. If it dies, then it bears much fruit… that is also a trajectory. So, where do we see this dying and rising process combined? We see it in a seed’s cycle. Jesus is personally claiming to be The Dying Seed and Rising True Vine. A mistake would be to assume that the first dying trajectory ended at the cross, rather than it being indicative and typical of Who Jesus always is. For what does Heb 13:8 tell us? Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Who Jesus is-being is constant. God spoke the universe into existence the same way He saves us. There is no turning of shadows in Him (James 1:17).

…giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:10b-11 (ESV)

In the quote above, Isaiah was pondering and contemplating this very reality of God speaking and creating in 6 days in Genesis 1. God’s Word goes out of His mouth, expressing His being and existing. Of course, Jesus is This Word and this Seed in John 1, Luke 8:10-12, and James 1:21. By seeing and “beholding” Jesus, we see Who The Father is-being, specifically What Kind He is within (John 14:9).

By “beholding” Rev 5:6’s “slain Lamb standing” by the Holy Spirit’s confirming brightness dawning in your heart, you begin to understand the nature by which our King governs and reigns. The world calls this foolishness. Paul said it was the power of God (1 Cor 1:18-25). Know your King; rather than just doing things for a correct religion (Matthew 7:21-23).

Transposition: Look To The Lamb

C. S. Lewis preached a sermon at Oxford University by this title – Transposition – to illustrate how Higher Order Reality (The Glory of God in the Face of Jesus in 2Co 3:18) transforms low-order reality (finite human beings) into conformity with itself. C.S. Lewis gives a number of examples to show how this transposition-reality already operates in the natural world of common human experience. The idea is that there is a Higher and more complex order seeking to communicate in a lower order with a limited vocabulary of expression. Lewis used the example of the body’s feelings to describe the lower, limited vocabulary. My example would be that we cry when we are sad and we cry when we are joyful. Physiologically we cry for both at the lower level of our body, yet there is a higher level of experiences operating in us that are far more complex and even opposite in meaning.

C. S. Lewis says the most obvious example of higher to lower transposition is how we draw the 3-D world onto paper with pencils. It is an “adaptation from a richer to a poorer medium.” Light and snow are both communicated as white paper. He notes that the natural materialist is stuck in the lower realm of limited white paper vocabulary. Just as I would point to food for a dog to eat, the natural materialist is like the dog and does not perceive the meaning, but just comes up to my finger to sniff it. Furthermore, he suggests that everyone living in a modernized society is a natural materialist by default. This is an added barrier we need to recognize, in order to accept the higher way and thought that exists beyond what physical senses can detect.

C.S. Lewis describes these levels of higher reality and order of complexity like that of higher dimensions of reality. We understand the 2-dimensional realty of a flat screen and how that differs from 3-dimensional reality. C.S. Lewis suggest that this is the same for our universal experience as humans living physical bodies in time and space. There is a higher dimensional alphabet, so to speak, but we are only capable of a flatter expression in a more limited alphabet. So, multiple letters from the higher dimensional alphabet must use the same lower-dimensional letter of the limited selection to express their various higher meanings, which from our lower dimensional reality virtually look the same.

Yet, at the same time, this line of communication from higher to lower is also the lifeline by which we are transformed through transposition from the higher to the lower. The more the lower releases their grip on the lower reality, the more the higher can infill, so to speak. “Losing your psyche-life” as Luke 9:24 describes creates the “for My Sake” space of Jesus’ Life to be there and save it. James 1:21 tells us to hold tightly to this implanted Logos-Word, Who is able to save our psyche-lives.

Also, as with 2 Corinthians 3:18’s transformation from the glory seen in stories like Moses’ glowing face into the Big “G” Glory shining from Jesus’s Face, we see transposition. Even 1 Corinthians 15 brings it to the fore in verse 40 and surrounding, “the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another” (ESV). Most importantly, when Jesus tells Nicodemus about “Our Testimony” in John 3:11, He is referring to the “Our” of John 8:18, “I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” The “Our” is of Jesus and His Father through their shared Spirit. Thus, truly beholding the Father’s witness in the face of Jesus is Spiritual Reality that transforms us like how Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 3 – 4.

Jesus goes on in John 3:14 to connect the reality seen in Numbers 21:4-9 with His upcoming crucifixion. Beholding how the serpent is petrified on a wood pole on a hill depicts what He Who knew no sin will do to Satan when he throws everything at Jesus in His weakened state on the cross. Then as Jesus takes that Adamic reality inspired by the devil to the great hush of its nonfunctionally in His death, Jesus says that beholding this reality is actually to our practical healing from the satanic poison. Yes, hold on to the implanted Logos-Word! Look to The Lamb! Fix your eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:2)!

2Co 3:18’s Transformation Transposition functions as follows. The 2-D picture is the Bible story authored by the Spirit having place in many people. The Holy Spirit is like the 3-D reality in our illustration. Thus, our Bible record is a 2-D roll-out of the Holy Spirit’s 3-D Reality interacting with us. We can read the Bible stories like 2-D reality and never get past the moral of a story. However, the Spirit wants us to see Jesus. So, if we are set on seeing Him and thus knowing What Kind He is, the Spirit can “rend the heavens” so speak and communicate spiritually.

2Co 3’s example is Moses with a glowing face. The fact, that Paul uses this example, means that he has already taught it and the Corinthians are already familiar with it. How familiar are we with the story to the point we understand what the Hebrew word pictures about his glow, or the context of how this happened not long after Moses offered himself as a sacrifice in place of the people being destroyed? That such Jesus Pictures are not well-known, we see generally sloppy translations of 2 Corinthians 4:4, which alludes to Paul’s main point by using the rare Greek word augazó, “to beam forth like dawn”.

What a Berean would do, is camp in Exodus 34 and do some exploring of the Hebrew words that describe the glow in Moses’ face. If you take the time to read the 2-D picture of Exodus 34:35 in Hebrew, you will see that the verb used to describe the light beams means to grow horns. Light glowing like how horns grow sounds odd until you reflect how children draw triangles around a circle to depict the sun on paper. For Moses, it was a double, even triple-meaning from a higher vocabulary trying to express itself in a limited selection of flat letters.

In the Hebrew context of the Bible, horns always mean sacrificial animal, the animal’s power, and horns blown as a call to assembly in ancient Israel. All of these relate to us in the corporate body of Christ. Moses with a glowing face in the Bible story is depicted as the slain Lamb standing in all power, but our Reality is Rev 5:6, “…I saw a slaughtered little lamb standing…” at the throne of the heavens over the heavens.

Again, do not understand the words I have typed above – though necessary it is. Rather, allow the Holy Spirit of the Higher Reality to envelop you into Who Jesus is – What Kind He is giving Himself away completely. That is the ONLY reason why Moses’ face glowed, so that it would be a testimony of Jesus pictured for us today to know Him “as He is.” It is the beholding of this depiction of Jesus’s All-Authority Reality that is the key to living His Crucified Life. Jesus told Nicodemus so; Paul told the Corinthians and Galatians so, but do we even know it / Him? Behold The Lamb of God.

Paul’s Underlying Logos-logic

“Concerning all ‘of which’ ‘I am being called in for accusation’ by Jewish-men, O’ King Agrippa, “‘I am already being led (by an outlook)’ (that is) ‘primed for increase’ ‘by making contact with’ you, ‘as a man being about’ ‘to explain my underlying logic-logos’1 today,

Above is my Crucified Life Translation (XLT) of Acts 26:2. I’m getting close to finishing both it and the paraphrase, the Crucified Life Paraphrase (XLP). Both are devotional in nature. I’m close to completing the New Testament. After the book of Acts, the only two remaining books for me to translate are the two Corinthian letters. I’ve been saving the best for last, I suppose, since if you have ever read what I write or heard me speak, I frequently bring up the importance of 1 Corinthians 2:2 as being a finished and on-going and operative reality in and among us all.

I do not pretend to tell anyone that this is the official translation for everyone. I’m just one person, and I’m sure I make mistakes. Peer-review is especially important when making such a claim. No, the XLT and XLP are devotional, and the footnotes of the XLT are my reflections on the crucified life reality of 1 Corinthians 2:2 that is clearly missed in modern translations and so-called exegesis from both podium and pulpit. I try to do the paraphrase more like reading a modern novel by incorporating all the crucified life insights that the Holy Spirit has brought to my attention while wresting with the Greek text. I only make them available for others to look over my shoulder and see what I am seeing. And what I am seeing is category-shifting, for instead of writing about a topic – what and how – I see Him Who is my life.

The world is always “going to hell in a handbasket” as they idiom goes. Before any of us have come to be born on this planet, there has been a plan with Mordor-like intent to blanket the world with its type of “freeing” darkness. It is imprisonment without having the onus of the sun calling for seeds to die, so that increase can occur. Jesus has always been the target of this obfuscation, because if any of us would settle long enough at His feet like Mary at the end of Luke 10, then the Reality coming out of His heart through His mouth could potentially find places in our own heart’s soil. To this point I leave you here to ponder the “devotional” footnote at the word I translate as to explain my underlying logic-logos. Oh, yes, keep in mind that TJPs is the abbreviation for The Jesus Pictures or TaNaK Jesus Pictures. On the other page you can find print and Kindle books that will explain that.

[1] By repeating the word, there is clearly an emphasis here on the underlying logic and matrix from which Paul will speak to the situation he is in. Notice how I am purposefully avoiding the words defense and apologetic. I do not find these words helpful, but rather less precise and subject to a general misunderstanding of the logos-family of Greek words employed by Luke and Paul, even John and James. Obviously, defense is a fine translation – gold star for precision. However, when Jesus is the Logos / the Word, and knowing Him this way is key to transformation, then let us not haphazardly settle for the gold star of excellence in scholarship. Reality is knowing Jesus through Spirit-to-spirit Presencing, everything else is a side-show at best, a slide into death at worst. The underlying matrix of Jesus’ Eternal Spirit provides the only Living Definition of Reality to which we must be conformed to or suffer loss at best, or at worst, remain in a state ontological friction. Humans were never designed to undergo that experiential heat of having a contrary state of being. The entire anatomical design of humans, reflects the spiritual design of face-to-face intimacy and care for others through the corporate life-bearing of God’s Image and Likeness. Therefore, the Logos as the spoken assemblage of all underlying factors of reality coming to bear and account is paramount not to miss. Yet, we do in Genesis 1:1 all the time. For, “what is unseen is eternal” has its corresponding letters in Genesis 1:1 with a word that is unspoken and untranslatable. I mean this literally. Open an interlinear of Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew and stop at the first word with no translation. It is the fourth word, the 15th and 16th letters, in the entire Bible. Identify the letters. What are they? Aleph and Tav. As you probably know in Hebrew, this is the first and last letters of the alphabet. As you also likely know, each letter in Hebrew has meaning associated with it. For instance, the word “east” is spelled picturing that direction: Qoph (sun at horizon), Dalet (through door), Mem (to sea). Moreover, by 10 sayings, God creates the universe. Therefore, Logos / Word in Greek, written and spoken in its various forms by Hebrew Messianic believers, is filled with a universe of meaning reflective of the Creator’s original intent and eternal design for His creation and creatures. It could not be otherwise. Rather than dispassionately ignore such things, as cultural tourists, we need to stop making these scholarly faux pas, so that we can get into the right spirit of communication of first century Messianic Judaism to the Greco-Romans world. The Logos is The Higher Way and Thought of Isaiah 55:8-11. Php 2:5-11 and 3:8-14 are designed to get the Greco-Roman hearers into the proverbial “swing of things” – conformed to the ontological trajectories of Jesus as the Dying Seed on His Way through us for increase to bless others with His Life. We learn these best by the Spirit vivifying TJPs, illuminating His Spirit moving through the very lives that were designed to be expressive of That Image and Likeness.