JESUS — THE VERY IMAGE OF GOD

Belief is a strange thing. In science, ‘belief’ would be considered a variable. Faith is belief over some amount of time: Faith is belief divided by time (F=B/t). However, since even the demons believe, then belief seems too general. What specifically is belief?

For that let’s turn to scripture: 

He saved others; Himself he cannot save. If He be the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if he will have Him: for He said, “I am the Son of God.” (Mat 27:42-43)

 “He saved others.” Jesus made others whole. Perhaps they were thinking of the woman with the blood issues; “She said within herself, ‘If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole’” (Mat 9:21). The woman realized that something was missing from her existence. She realized that wherein she came short of that something that Jesus could complete her.

She had had the blood issue twelve years and was so weakened by it she realized that only Jesus could fix what was wrong with her. The blood issue had been there twelve years. Unknown is what the issue of the blood might be. Perhaps it was an issue caused by social contact. Perhaps she had contracted a sexual disease, but it could have been hereditary; something like hemophilia that had worsened as she aged.

He made the woman whole; she had only reached out near Jesus (touching only His garment) and good dynamics left Him into her. In the Greek that is dynamis, ‘virtue.’ Goodness left Jesus, weakened Him somewhat, but gave her Holy Power.

Her ailment, if it was genetic or even something else, was corrected. Paul wrote: 

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)

 Coming short of God’s Glory is being no longer whole. The woman with the blood issue was no different than anyone else; she was born not whole, coming short of some thing from birth. Jesus not only fixed her tainted blood but every nuclear cell within both her blood and flesh. She was born in iniquity; she was depraved, even at birth. She had a little ‘beast’ in her genetics that Jesus fixed.

The virtue that left Jesus into her replenished her tainted blood and the beast within her was removed. She was no longer naturally self-centered but became God-centered, having been engendered by God from the Power of Jesus.

Paul wrote that faith comes from belief, not just belief in anything but belief in Jesus Christ. Since even the demons believe, as it is written, “The devils also believe, and tremble” (Jas 2:19); belief is something more than acknowledgement that Jesus is Christ, but that He is God in the flesh of a man.

As a variable, belief has magnitude that ranges from casually thinking that something is true all the way to entrusting something. The belief of the devils is them knowing that truly Jesus is the Son of God. However, their belief does not go so far as trusting Him. In fact, they fear Jesus because they know He is their Destroyer.

As a child, I believed in Jesus, and now I trust Him. I trust Jesus for my well-being so much that foolish as it may be, I never wore masks for my benefit nor received a vaccine to take care of my blood issues during the pandemic. I generally do not take shelter during tornadoes because I know that when God is ready for me, I shall be taken. (I am not stupid, I do wear seat belts, exercise, and endeavor to eat my fruits and vegetables because I am not a fool!)

I trust Jesus to take care of me! Many times, I have defied the odds and overcame the world, not by my own power but power from above. In a sense, belief in Jesus has made me somewhat of a ‘Superman’ like my hero, Jesus. My blood issue was original sin, and when I was born again (John 3:17), Jesus, from heaven from that distance, fixed my issue of the blood — my genetics from the Wicked One.

So, it is not just belief that completes the person, but trusting Jesus to be who He claimed to be and that He can do for me what He did for the woman with the blood issue. Indeed, I came short of the Glory of God — not being made in His Image — and the virtue from Jesus made me whole, removing the evil in me and replacing it with goodness, or “righteousness,” as Paul said it.

Paul indicated that there is no difference between me and the woman with the blood issue, nor even King David who was made in iniquity (Psalm 51:5). None of us are born righteous and everyone, regardless of position, are not whole, thus coming short of the Image of God.

Now back to the trials of Jesus. They said that if Jesus was the true king, for Him to just come down from the Cross and they would believe in Him.

They saw the Cross as nothing more than a ‘throne’ and the foot support His ‘footstool.’ They recalled scripture, “The heaven is My throne, and the Earth is My footstool” (Isa 66:1). If He was that King, Jesus could just step off or arise from His place. That was exactly what Jesus did! His Holy Ghost, in accord with Platonian philosophy, left the Cross as Jesus gasped His last breath.

The Holy Ghost, according to Plato’s reasoning, if he had been alive, would be that the Holy Ghost was just as much God as Jesus was God. Jesus was the reality of God and the Holy Ghost the Phantom ‘Image’ of God (Selem in the Hebrew). Jesus did just step off the footstool and abandon His earthly throne and immediately His Spiritual Image was in Paradise.

Jesus did exactly what they said about Him. He did come down from the Cross and saved Himself, but they did not have the faith to believe what others would see. Those who wrote about the Ghost leaving Jesus saw it. In essence, to strongly believe in God, God must enable you.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). If you see Jesus as Yahweh God, then that is faith, providing that is what you hope, and not what you fear.

Faith is trusting in Jesus over some amount of time; either until death or until you are snatched away. You must endure the world until the end to be saved (Mat 10:22). You must remain sober and vigilant or be robbed of your faith by devils (1 Pet 5:8). While you are least aware is when your faith can be stolen, and you lose your God-induced vitality.

The accusers wanted to see Jesus come down from the Cross. They missed that. The repentant thief would have seen the Holy Ghost come off the Cross and even believed He could before He did so! He understood that the Holy Ghost was as much God as Jesus, and Jesus was indeed ‘King.’ He was indeed King, but not just of the Jews; His kingdom was not of this world but in another realm (John 18:36).

The repentant thief was saved when he died. That day, he was with Jesus, obviously, in Spirit, the moment he died. From the moment he first believed, when he saw Jesus as God in the flesh, he was safe from Satan and Hell. As he died, soon after Jesus, he was in Paradise. Like Jesus, the Spirit within his soul was as much him as his flesh.

What did it take for the thief to be saved? He was made whole. His soul was as much him as was his flesh, even more so. His body remains in the ground, but his soul is in Paradise to this day with Jesus. The thief understood who Jesus really was! He did not see just the man, but He saw deeply within Jesus. He had bright eyes enough that he could see that God was in Jesus and that the Body of Jesus was for those with dull vision.

The doubters all saw the same thing as the thief, but Dismus — the thief — knew that God was within that Man even before He showed Himself.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that Jesus is God? Do you believe that the Holy Ghost that left the Cross is as much God as the visible Image? That is a great beginning, but do you trust Jesus to do for you what He did for Dismus? I do! The devils know that they will never be in Paradise. The blood of Jesus would not save those beings that have been alien to Him since before the foundation of the world.

Jesus was accused of saying, “I am the Son of God.” Jesus never said that; He said, “You say that I am” (Luke 22:7). They said it, but did not believe it, let alone trust in Him.

Now to clear up some theology: How could Jesus be both ‘God’ and the ‘Son of God’? Jesus was not born in the manner as humans; “In the beginning was the Word (made flesh), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Jesus preexisted time. He was always the Word that Invisible Substance was made flesh (John 1:14), so that the world could behold His Glory. Indeed, Jesus is the ‘Glory of God’ and we do come short of that because we are not God!

His Body was not what was glorious; it was His innermost being — the Image of God within the Man. The Holy Ghost is the ‘Glory of God’ not the flesh of the Man. It is the Spirit within the Person that is ‘The Glory.”

Jesus told Philip who questioned His Person, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father; do you not believe that I am in the Father?” (John 14:9-10). Many had seen Jesus, but many less saw the Father in Jesus. The Father was the Spirit, or ‘Holy Ghost’ in Jesus — the ‘Phantom’ Image of God from the beginning of time.

The Jews saw the Father all along, but when Jesus came unto the world, they were blinded; they saw only the flesh of a person, not the Existence of God in the Man. They believed in the person, Jesus, but not that He was the Father, Yahweh.

Now for some semantics: Jesus was called both ‘The Son of David’ and “The Son of God.” However, anyone knows that David was not the father of Jesus, but the genealogical accounts indicate that Jesus has David in His human blood.

In the same manner, God was not the Father in a physical sense, but in a genetic manner. His genetics in His flesh was David’s and His Spirit, Yahweh’s. He was the ‘Son of Man’ via the genetics of David, and the “Son of God” via the Phantom Spirit of Yahweh. Jesus was not the ‘Son of God’ as many think, but was the Father engendered in the flesh of a Man. He was in truth God in the Man. Jesus was the figurative Image of the Invisible God within, so that any person, even sinners, could see Yahweh!

‘Belief’ is seeing that Yahweh is within the Person of Jesus. Trusting God is trusting that He is Jesus and that by the Name of Jesus, God can do anything that Yahweh did. Yahweh created and Jesus can recreate because it is Yahweh that is in the Man, Jesus.

Dismus saw Yahweh in Spirit leave Jesus, doing what His skeptics tempted Him to do; Leave that Cross, man, if you are really God! Jesus did just that, but they failed to notice… except a few that understood that Jesus was God in the flesh.

picture credit: wallpapwers.com