Sunday, March 17, 2024

GLORY AND GLORIOUS

The Greek word, doxa, is translated ‘glory’ in the English. Glory is difficult to decipher, because like beauty, glory is in the eyes of the beholder. Some consider glory as ‘splendorous’ because they think of the Light of God; although that is true, doxa can also be translated as “dignified” of which we think of royalty (a sovereign) who deserves to be highly esteemed.

Why should God be highly esteemed? He is the Creator of all things. As the only Existence (YHWH), all things came from Almighty God. He is the Progenitor of all things.

As such, in the beginning, Adam and his mate were created glorious because they were progeny of God, made in His very Image (Gen 1:27).

Scripture says that all things He made were “very good.” That is an understatement… very good comes short of the glory of God. All things were literally, “me’od tob” in the Hebrew — “wholly good” or “right” (Strong 2006).

As such, glorious is wholly right, or reduced to one word, “righteous.”

Now compare that to the loss of righteousness — iniquity, or depravity. Paul wrote the following:

Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. (Rom 3:22-23)

 Righteousness, Paul said, comes from faith in Christ Jesus. Faith makes wrong, right again. The nature of man is wrong; Jesus makes the nature of the Christian right again — glorious.

Righteousness is without sin. Sinners come short of the rightness of God who is right, or without sin, in all respects. Coming short of the glory of God is essentially being unlike God in even one quality. If God is entirely righteous, then sinners, to some degree, are unrighteous and inglorious.

Since righteousness is the supra-nature of God, then unrighteousness — depravity — is the nature of sinful man.

Paul went on to say that the depraved, “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24). So ‘justification’ is making right wherein sinners all come short of righteousness. It is certainly not just as we never sinned, but that everyone has sinned, is guilty, but redeemed by Jesus.

“By grace” has an underlying meaning; redemption is not for the righteousness because we all come short of that; it is for the unrighteous. Hence justification is more so inglorious sinful men that are made right. The act of making right was by the blood of Jesus, who propitiated His blood “for sins that are past” (Rom 3:25).

Most readers gloss over for sins that are past. Redemption by the blood of Jesus was for all the sins of Adam and Eve from the original sin to now. He redeemed mankind in total for we all, since original sin, are no longer right. Something has gone wrong with the original sin to mutate the Image (Selem) of God that was in our kind to the image (nahas) of Lucifer.

Selem — the Image of God — is a ‘Shadow’ or ‘Phantom’ of God (ibid). God created the phantom of man first, then put that Image within a vessel of sorts. The Shadow of the man was a fragment of the molded image (adama; Gen 2:7). Adam was the inner substance of the Man and adama the outer. Adama was Adam’s kind, and the only one of any of the kinds that had a ‘phantom,’ or a soul.

Adam’s soul was the Image of God, and his body the image of the world — the ground. It was the soul of Adam that was like God. His flesh was nothing more than a substance that enabled His soul to do things alongside the animal kingdom, and perhaps for Adam to appear to be an upright man, and ‘anthropos’ in the Greek. The image of man does walk upright as anthropoids, but his soul is what was made upright.

Now for the key verse: 

When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory. (Mat 25:31)

 “Son” in that passage is huios in the Greek; it refers not to the maternity of Mary, but that Jesus was of the genetics of the original mankind, Adama. His genealogy through Mary proves that (Luke 3).

Jesus was fully adama and fully God. Just as Adam had the genetics of God — His Image — Jesus was also of the same substance as Adam. He was fully man as well as fully God.

Mary was not the ‘mother of God;’ Jesus alluded to that; “Who is my mother, or my brethren?” (Mark 3:33). Mary was a ‘transporter,’ or vessel, to carry the Spirit of God in phantom from another realm to the world. Think of her as the vessel that carried Jesus from there to here… an ‘Ark’ of sorts!

Mary’s composition, as in all of us, was identical to the ground and even in the same proportions by percentage. The material that held the Image of God in Jesus, as the ‘Last Adam’ was from the substance of Mary, but Mary was not the mother of Jesus in a biological sense. God imbued her with His Holy Spirit and made that Spirit a living soul in the same manner as Adam. Mary like Eve did not really make a man! (Gen 4:1); God did.

Jesus was not the paternal son of God but identically God. He was the Image that was in Adam. God formed the vessel (or cup) in the womb of Mary, and then filled that material vessel with His Phantom Image, to wit: “The Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, You are my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). Maybe I am wrong, but the soul of Adam was made first, then God made an image (adama) to contain the soul. Implied is that He filled the soul with His Spirit and made the man a living soul.

The soul of Jesus pre-existed His coming in the flesh. (John 1:1). God made for Jesus a vessel of flesh that at His baptism by John descended from above in “bodily shape.” Hence, God took the Old Testament “Word” and spoke it unto the flesh that Mary carried. Jesus may have been immersed in the Jordan, but His baptism was of the Holy Ghost.

The point therein is that Jesus was the ‘Son of man,’ not by the Mary’s egg, but by her maternal DNA that resided in all women since original sin; that was because Eve is the ‘mother of all living.’ As such, since mitochondrial DNA is passed down by the mother alone, Jesus had the DNA of Eve in His flesh. As the “mother of all living” (Gen 3:20), Eve was the mother of Jesus. Mary passed down the genetics of Eve to Jesus. Mary may have carried Jesus, but she also carried the DNA of Eve and passed it down to Jesus.

Jesus was the Son of man through Mary and Eve. Eve was another kind that resulted because of sin. Before sin, she was of man, but afterward, she became a much different kind, and Adam called her ‘Eve’ because of her new nature. She went from of Adam to of herself with that one sin. It was she that made for Adam, not another Adam, but an ‘Is (pronounced Eesh; Gen 4:1).

That the Son of man shall come in “His Glory” means that Jesus will come as wholly God and without sin. He will indeed have flesh, but flesh that never sinned.

Then, after He comes, Jesus said about Himself, “Then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory.” Remembering that the Glory of God is his sovereignty and dignity, He will sit in the royal throne of God in heaven. Scripture says about the ascension of Jesus, “After the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19).

Jesus is God; how can He sit next to God? His place is not locational at all but in authority. At the Crucifixion, Jesus was made glorious (John 7:39) to overcome the world at His ascension. He was made glorious, or wholly like God, with the dignity of God. He did not sit on God or beside Him; He received His rightful place having the dignity and authority of the Father.

So, Jesus is not the ‘Son of God’ in a paternal sense, but He is the very Image of the Father. The Father went into Jesus at His baptism and made Jesus a living God! Jesus is the Son, not in a biological sense, but think of Jesus as the very Identity of God, YHWH, in the Person of a Adama.



 (picture credit: Vance Morgan Professor of Philosophy at Providence College)

 

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