Tag: Discipleship

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.”

The Great Commission: Make Learners of Him, because out from Him is all the Living Estate

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 ESV

“Make disciples” is better understood as “make learners” of Jesus, His Person, not merely about the things He did and said. Too often, people can see this as making converts for a religion, but Jesus never envisioned the next global religion. Rather, He is talking about Himself Personally. Go out into the nations and make learners of Me, “What Kind of Person I am.”

All authority is His. But don’t limit authority to things; rather include Who He is as the Firstborn, Who has been given all the Estate, like all the hills and all the cattle (Psalm 50:10). But are we only talking about things as commodities, territories, or a reality of life out from death?

And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. Colossians 1:18 ESV

The Great Commission is given after Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus presented Himself alive! Out from death, He lives! Jesus’ “all authority” is linked to His Firstborn status as Owner of all (Romans 8:29, Hebrews 12:23, Revelation 1:5). In fact, pondering Revelation 5:6’s image of the slaughtered, yet standing little lamb on heaven’s throne, we can see that this life out from death sits and the very core of His eternal kingdom.

Therefore, the authority of the Firstborn is out of His Being that exits death and its realm. If you study the most widely available resources on this word, exousia, it is not easy to find anyone telling you about the word ousia, which is the same word lacking the prefix ex-. Ousia only occurs twice in Luke 15:12-13. In fact, the context is about receiving an estate out from which one lives from. Or you could say it as a bank of resources out from which one can be in the world.

The prodigal took those resources for being in the world and squandered them. The prodigal received an estate for living and simply wasted it on his own pleasures. Think of the property in Luke 15 in that way, in a living way. And the person who is in charge of handing out this estate for living is the firstborn, who inherited it all as his means for living and providing life to others.

Jesus is the Firstborn out from the dead. Jesus’ living estate is of a quality that lives out from the dead. He always had this Life in Himself going to the cross (John 5:26). The cross event in history just played to His ultimate resource, whereby death was gutted.

…in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. 1 John 5:20 ESV

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26 ESV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life… John 14:6 ESV

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. John 17:3 ESV

As Firstborn out from the dead, Jesus has a way of being out from the dead too. There is a way to learn Him at this level of Eternal Life, Himself. We just need to migrate in our minds away from Jesus giving me things, to Who Jesus is. In Luke 10:42, Jesus tells us what the one needful thing is: cease your efforts and ideas of serving Him like Martha, and simply sit like Mary and hear what comes out from His heart.

So how do you do that? How do you hear?

How does the Great Commission end? It says He is always with us. He is with us in a better way now after the Resurrection, because we can be connected as one cosmic body. In fact, it is even better than what Mary had, because she had her physical senses as barriers for mishearing. In the Resurrection, we share the same Spirit. We can actually learn His heart, which willingly took up the cross to the end of the earthly flesh’s ability to move.

It is true that if you seek Him you will find Him, assuming you seek Him with all your heart. In places where the Bible is hard to find, people can encounter Christ in dreams and promptings. However, in places where the Bible is easy to find, the devil’s number one attack point just so happens to be Jesus’ top priority engagement on Resurrection Day. I am talking about what Jesus said on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. Jesus wanted His followers to learn Him from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Jesus Pictures, Spiritual Knowledge, Life Portals, and 24:27 are books that delve into this on the other page of this website. There is a way of seeing Jesus in the Hebrew Scriptures that is alive. He did say He is Life. Knowing Him is eternal life. God has created design patterns for us to learn. The main design patterns are the simplest of shapes that show a flow, a way of being that can flip any narrative on its head. Yet, they are not just templates, but expressions of His Life in a people designed to live by Him. It is why we have Bible stories – to see Him moving through history in a way by which we can presently know Him within. As I’ve said before, the real territory that needs Joshua’s conquest is your heart.

By writing these books and making them available on the web and Amazon, I believe this is fulfilling the Great Commission of helping people be a learner of The Living Jesus, not just a convert to a religion. And when I say living, I mean living out from death. I am writing about His Crucified Life. Learn Him from within. Who He is being, is everything we need out from our current estate (James 1:21).