Genesis_1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Divine Providence 46[3] …the divine essence is love and wisdom [and] divine love and wisdom are substance itself and form itself and…divine love and wisdom are substance and form in and of themselves…and God created the universe and everything in it not from nothing but from Himself. It follows from this that everything that has been created, especially ourselves and the love and wisdom within us, is real, and is not just an image of reality. If God were not infinite, then, nothing finite would exist; if the Infinite were not the All, there would not be anything; and if God had not created everything from Himself, there would be nothing real, nothing at all. In short we are because God is.
Today I want us to focus on the idea that “…we are because God is…” You will all be familiar with this reading from the Bible, it is of course the opening verses from the book of Genesis. I selected it as the basis for this talk because, as the first thing said in the Word, it has a special place in preparing the mind for everything that follows. This is particularly true for those who look to the Lord’s Word in an effort to think and feel from the wisdom and love that the Lord provides. It should be said from the outset that these verses from the book of Genesis describe in general how all things that truly exist come into being. The other thing that should be stated up front is that from the perspective of the teachings for a new church to be formed in us what’s being spoken about here has nothing to do with the creation of the material world as something independent and existing outside of ourselves. From a spiritual perspective the Bible when speaking of creation is talking about the creation of a new mind that lives a love of what is good and true.
It is clear from what the doctrines for a new church teach that our spiritual or mental health is a reflection of the quality of the thoughts and feelings that dominate the inner landscape of the mind. The phrase, …we are because God is… is a helpful reminder in this regard as it draws our focus back to the source of our mental health and wellbeing by emphasing that if the life of our mind is to be something truly spiritual then its activity needs to reflect something of what God is. When we talk about being or existing, or that …we are because God is… we need to be aware that we only truly exist as human beings when our mind is in the human form. You see it is not a given that our mind is human because we exist in a body that carries the label human being. What science calls a human being is not the same as what is defined as being human in the Heavenly Doctrines.
A healthy spirit or mind is one that is open and receptive and so attuned to the inflow of the Divine’s life i.e. of what is truly loving and wise. Unhealthy states of mind arise from being closed off to this inflow and this occurs when we fail to acknowledge our spiritual origins and end up being so tied up in lower earthly interests that higher things can’t really be said to be living in us. When spiritual things are not alive for us we can be said to be without form and void. We are, or live, when we have what is truly living alive in us. Living things are spiritual things, heavenly things, things that have to do with producing what is good and true in us. To live spiritually and so become a genuine human being one must love what is spiritual. When this kind of love is active in us then we will find the motivation arises within us to seek out and have removed those things that rob us of our humanity.
It is so that such things can be removed that we are given truths in a textual form called the Word and are then commanded to take these truths and live from them. To possess a love for what is spiritual will mean we will grow in our love for what is true or the Word. The first thing said in the Word is that…”In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Spiritual wholeness for those who look to the Word proceeds from accepting that what is offered in the text of Scripture is first and foremost from the Divine, and secondly, because it’s from the Divine it must be true. It must be true because by definition nothing false or evil can come forth from God. So we can have full confidence that all Scripture is true and because it is true it must lead to goodness in peoples lives. This doesn’t stop it being used in ways that are destructive but the mishandling of truth doesn’t do away with the fact of its divine origin or its value as truth.
To accept the first statement of the book of Genesis a person has to accept that God is and that through God what is called, “the heavens and the earth” are created. To see what’s involved here in terms of its application to the life of the human mind we need to begin to see that the terms used like God, Beginning, Heavens and Earth as well as the term Created don’t mean what they appear to mean on the surface. The natural meaning conveyed by the words is not their spiritual meaning. We can see this because the natural meaning gets us to focus on and understand the text in terms of the natural world we perceive in our senses. Meaning that is spiritual in character doesn’t direct our focus outward but rather it draws our focus toward internal things, the things within our minds. What the natural level of meaning does is two things, 1. It provides us with a container out of which spiritual meaning can be drawn and 2. It presents us with general principles that can lead us to see more universal applications of the text to the life of the mind.
The natural meaning of the words of the first verse of Genesis offers us a general principle that is so central to the idea of spiritual wholeness that we can miss it, and it is this, all things that come into being do so from a single source and that source is called God. But here is the question, what do we understand by this term God?
Now the key to understanding what this term God means spiritually requires us to ask another question: What does the word God relate to so far as my inner mental life is concerned? Clearly if the spiritual meaning of the text relates to our inner life then God too must be present as some form of spiritual phenomena related to human consciousness. Most of us have grown up with ideas of God that attributes natural human tendency and characteristics to the Divine. While this is appropriate for a religion of the natural man where the opening up a spiritual understanding of God is concerned the ideas of natural religion and in particular ideas that attribute finite human attributes to God are not overly helpful. We have to be able to lay aside to the best of our ability the natural ideas we carry associated with the term God if we are to see things is a different light.
The term God in the Hebrew text is Elohim. This is one of the two main terms (there are others) used to refer to the Divine in the Bible, the other is Yehovah. In the Old Testament of our English Bibles Elohim is translated God and Yehovah is translated LORD. Both refer to the One God but they refer to specific aspects of the Divine nature. Elohim or God is used were the subject has to do with the activity of Divine Truth or Divine Wisdom whereas Yehowah (Jehovah) or LORD is used where the subject is the activity of the Divine Good or Divine Love. So where we read the word God in the Bible it means the Divine Truth. It follows then that if God means Divine Truth we can legitimately transpose the term Divine Truth where the term God occurs. If we do that with Gen 1:1 we have… “In the beginning Divine Truth created the heavens and the earth.” Now the Divine Truth is nothing other than the Word for the Word is Divine Truth. So now the verse can be read;
In the beginning the Word created the heavens and the earth.
The Word is the agent by which the heavens and the earth are created. This is a remarkable thought. The Word or the Sacred Scriptures that you hold in your hands today are the agent by which the heavens and the earth are brought into being. Now just as the term God has a meaning that applies to the internal world of mind so too do the words “heavens and earth.” The heavens being spoken of here are not those that make up the sky above us, not does the term earth refer to the planet beneath our feet. These are natural ideas tied to the literal meaning of the words used. In very general terms though the word heavens gives us the idea of what is higher and the word earth of what is lower. So in simple terms heavens and earth refer to what is higher and lower within the human mind. In spiritual terms higher means what is more internal and lower what is more external. When we talk of internal and external things that belong to the mind we can only be referring to mental phenomena or thoughts and affections that can be divided into what is of a higher and lower quality.
We now come to the term beginning. Again this word like the others we have looked at has a spiritual application and as such doesn’t mean a point in time when the external physical universe came into being. Spiritually it refers to the first state of a genuine spiritual life. This first state of life is called the beginning and is when a person is receptive and so begins on the path of regeneration or being born again. That beginning is a state of mind in which the Divine is first acknowledged and is seen as the source of ones life. It is only when Divine Truth is freely accepted into the mind that the heavens and earth or the internal and external mind of a person can begin to be created in the image of God.
The word created is only ever used in the Word in relation to the renewal of the human mind. The Hebrew Word is bara and it means to form or fashion by cutting. The Heavenly Doctrines for the new church teach that implements, tools, and weapons that are associated with the idea of cutting in the Bible correspond to the things of our thought life. The material that enables us to cut down false ideas, or dividing and separate what is useful from what is not are truths which are able to shed light on things. So what we have described in this the first verse of Genesis is the means by which all that is truly real, or what is spiritual within the human mind comes into being. We see that for things to progress spiritually for us truths, must be active in our life. It is the Word and the Word alone that provides the material through which the mind can be refashioned and built up in the image of God or what is reflective of the Divine Truth.
On the use of the term bara in other places in the Word we have the following…
Psalm 51:6-12 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, That the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.
Psalm 102:15-22 So the nations shall fear the name of the LORD, And all the kings of the earth Your glory. For the LORD shall build up Zion; He shall appear in His glory. He shall regard the prayer of the destitute, And shall not despise their prayer. This will be written for the generation to come, That a people yet to be created may praise the LORD. For He looked down from the height of His sanctuary; From heaven the LORD viewed the earth, To hear the groaning of the prisoner, To release those appointed to death, To declare the name of the LORD in Zion, And His praise in Jerusalem, When the peoples are gathered together, And the kingdoms, to serve the LORD.
We can see from these quotes from the Word that bara or to create has to do with the recreation of the human the mind – create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me – the clean heart is a heart centered on love to the neighbour and a renewed spirit is a new understanding of the Word based on that love. Notice that in Psalm 102 it speaks of …a people yet to be created… being able to …praise the LORD… This speaks of those who are yet to be regenerated. But what is it that is regenerated in us? It actually is the Word itself that is regenerated of made alive in us and this occurs through the opening of its spiritual sense. The spiritual sense exists within the letter and it is when its inner meaning is released into our life that we are empowered to deal with those things in our inner life that rob us of our true humanity. The spiritual meaning of the text exist to address the inner life issues of a person. But it remains bound up in the literal meaning of the text until a person is prepared to use truths as the basis for self reflection. Until then it is described in Psalm 102 as the “groaning as a prisoner” in need of liberation.
This is why in the second verse of Genesis it says of the external mind or earth that it is “…without form and void;” and that “darkness was on the face of the deep…” This is the state of mind of those yet to be created or regenerated. It’s important that we see here that the human mind can only be said to be created once it has been raised up into the goods and truths of the internal sense of the Word. Prior to this a person can’t be said to really alive, for to live means to be spiritually alive to the inner things of the Word, to love them and to be living from them. Where this is not the case the mind is effectively without form and void and filled with the darkness due to it being ignorant of what good and truth really are.
Moving back to the statement …we are because God is… we can see that we only truly come into being when Divine Truth is allowed to recreate our minds. This occurs when we recognise that the Word we have access to as the Sacred Scriptures is the basis for the life of our minds. The last part of verse two is filled with hope for where the Word is, so is the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God being the Divine Truth that comes forth from the Word and is able to enter into the darkness and void to brood, or hover or vibrate over the faces of the waters. These waters represent those things of a higher quality planted within us that the Spirit of truth is drawn to. This is the mercy of God protecting what can used to lift us out of the darkness of a self centered life.
But the spirit of truth makes its presence felt only as we look to apply the commandments or the Word to the inner life of our mind. Truths need to be used to assess the quality of our thoughts and affections if we are to be empowered to use them to reject what is detrimental to our spiritual well being…so it is in the Gospels we read…
John 14:15-17 “If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
It is right and necessary that we live from the commandments as to our external life but this is not how a person is regenerated, it is merely the stepping off point. For regeneration to begin we have to discover how these commandments are to be applied to the life and activity of our mind as well. The Helper is the Spirit of Truth who dwells with us but it is not enough that it is with us it must be in us and this can only occur when we take truths and apply them to our internal life so that we can live from spiritually sound principles.
John 16:13 …when…the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.
So it is that …we are because God is….
Amen.
