CANCER AND THEOSIS

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I had just emerged from a horrifying two year "dark night of the soul" experience where I was reduced to just a physical and psychological shell of a man. This was four years ago and I "didn't care whether I died or lived" and that is the constant that has remained, as neither death nor life holds any sway with me even today. I am His and I know all is for good and without fear when He is Lord of all.

This sets the stage and describes the period of my life surrounding the moment when my physician would announce to me that I probably had prostate cancer and needed another test to confirm it. My plate was already so full of trials and tribulation I laughed and with a wink I replied to the Doc's diagnosis, that we wouldn't worry nor talk about cancer any further. I knew that I was receiving a Theosis treatment from the "Great Physician" and my "lesser physician" and I indeed never did talk about that cancer ever again. After my doctors appointment I went home to find rest in God's will for my life, or better said "my death." For a couple years the pain of both the cancer and Theosis did a number on me. Praise God, today it is Theosis that remains while the cancer has been eradicated and is long gone.

With my awkward introduction you might ask, "what is Theosis?", and with the rest of this message I will attempt to define it for you.

"Theosis" is a Greek word that describes our Divine union with God and in other words is our Deification or Divinization. Theosis is also synonymous with our consecration and sanctification. It is a gift and calling of our God and it was once considered the goal of a Christian life but today most just want to make it to heaven. Sadly they do not know going to heaven is a progressive state where one enters into the Kingdom of Heaven with their born again experience and then proceeds to dwell in this Supernal realm more fully with each day of their walk if they are on the right path.

Now, carrying on with the task at hand of explaining Theosis let me share with you once again a poem I have published a couple times in the past week which succinctly illustrates this great spiritual phenomenon. This is the poetic rendition of a prayer by Jesus recorded in the John 17:21. First the prayer and then the poem:

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

How strange it should be,
That we who seemed four,
Are now become Three.
And We Who are Three
Are yet become One,
Father, Spirit and Sons in the Son.


So with the prayer of Jesus and the poem illustrating our union with God please allow me to extend to you some random excerpts taken from a couple of writings intermixed with my clarifying thoughts. If you are not already familiar with the subject of Theosis please pray and read this slowly, taking time to contemplate this most glorious truth ...... and I pray you be blessed.



Theosis better defined

Theosis was one of the most important of early Christian doctrines, but it has become such a well-kept secret, that is nearly unknown to most contemporary laymen. It means participating in, and partaking of, God's Divinity. It is likely to sound so alien to our ears that we might quickly dismiss it as some heresy, rather than realize this is the heart of the Christian calling.

From the second-century St. Irenaeus, to the twentieth-century C. S. Lewis, some theologians have used the most shocking language to bring home how shocking this gift of God is: "becoming gods," or even "becoming God."

Like all creation, we ultimately come from God. But it is quite another to believe in the biblical usage of the words children and sons, because their implications of likeness, growing up, and inheritance are much stronger than that. "the power to become children of God," (John 1:12)

Theosis is transforming union with God that makes us also Christ, at once human and divine, as Jesus was. This is the completion and perfection of salvation, to become Sons and Daughters of God with, within, and like him, the Son of God.

Paul teaches that as Adam was the first man, so Christ is the "last Adam," superseding all that has come before. All who are born in him will be children of God, so even more surely than we are children of Adam, we are the children of Christ. Elsewhere, he describes us as being given the "spirit of sons," and declares that "the Spirit and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God. And if we are children, we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christs, sharing his sufferings so as to share his glory." (Rom. 8:15-17) Sharing his glory. I don't know how many times I might have read that or heard that without letting it hit me. We will share his glory!

Theosis and the Bride of Christ

Another image is the "divine marriage." Jesus is the Lover of the Church and the Christian soul. He is the Bridegroom and we are the Bride. He will marry us, and we will become one with him.

Christ's unfailing and total passion for us is that which changes us. Theosis is considered the fruition of grace and love, passionate, ardent, joyous and life-giving. Paul describes this transformation of love as leading to a union so profound there are no barriers: "the two will become one body...This mystery applies to Christ and the Church" (Eph. 5:31-32. Christ lives in our bodies, and together, we are his body.

In other words, the Incarnation was not a just a one-time event, but is the pattern of how Christ chooses to work on Earth. As God the Son was incarnate in Jesus, the risen Christ indwells us, enfleshed in all his people. He literally lives within these cells of skin and blood. And if Christ, who is both human and divine, lives within us, we become both human and divine as well. A book title I saw recently said it well "One Jesus, Many Christs." Or, in Jesus' own words "I am the vine, you are the branches." How close is a living branch of a vine to that vine? It is part of the very same organism!

Theosis and the Second Coming

Theosis has eschatological implications which are seldom addressed. Christ is returning. and his parousia (literally presence, but usually mistranslated as "coming") will be bodily. But his body has changed. We are his body. Theosis also has much to do with a divine manifestation of Christ throughout his whole body, a body of millions and millions of members, a body which covers the earth, which he longs and prays for to become more and more perfect, more holy, manifesting Him more clearly, for the purpose of ultimately bringing in everyone.

J. Preston Eby, examines this idea in depth. "Looking for His Appearing" is a series of 48 booklets now available on the Web containing well over 250 pages of intense Biblical examination of the ideas of parousia and theosis, written from a conservative Protestant perspective. As of yet I have found absolutely no better resource for the Biblical evidence of theosis.

Eby contends that many of the "end-time" prophecies concerning the return of Christ, are fulfilled by the ultimate revelation and perfecting of Christ's presence in us. Eby's insights are sometimes astounding:he points out that the word astrapê translated as "lightning" in Matt. 24:27 (one of the main "proof texts" that supposedly show the parousia of Christ is a sudden event), is the same word translated as "shining" in Luke 11:33) With this in mind, context indicates that the image is not of lightning, but of sunrise. A better translation would be:

If, then, they say to you, "Look, he is in the desert," do not go there; "Look, he is in some hiding place," do not believe it; because the presence (parousia) of the Son of Man will be like shining (astrapê) in the east and illuminating (phainetai) far into the west. (Matt. 24:26-27)

When the mistranslations are corrected, the emphasis shifts from suddenness to the gradual dawning of the Presence of the Lord. Thinking that he could be secretly "here" or "there," is contrasted with His Presence revealed unmistakably everywhere. Eby has hundreds of other thought-provoking examples as well.

I have come to believe that God has also entrusted us with far more of the responsibility of saving the world than we might commonly suppose. He is the vine, we are the branches. He is the Light of the world, and we are the bulbs through whom it shines through. Christ is creating little Christs, flooding the world with mini-Christs, and our responsibility is to transform ourselves and our world through the love of Christ, and the light of Christ, the Good News of Christ, into ever more and more Christedness. Theosis is one more reason why I believe the "emergency airlift" idea of "the Rapture" is completely mistaken.

Theosis and the Goal of Creation

However, theosis doesn't end here. St. John wrote that there is more to come. "My dear people, we are already the children of God, but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is." (I John 3:2) So what it means is something we don't know. Something that hasn't been revealed. Something presently beyond us, in spite of the fact that we are already children of God, already his bride, already his body, and already his light. The one thing we do know, whatever it means, it means becoming like God.

St. Paul seems to have had a similar revelation, and he declares this final event is nothing less than the climax of all creation itself. "The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal his sons... From the beginning until now, the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth." (Rom.8:19,22)

Where does it end? Where does it lead? What does "becoming God" actually mean in its consummation? Paul wrote that all the enemies of God will become subject to God, and then Christ will subject himself to the Father, and when everything is subject to God, God will become "all in all." (I Cor. 15:28). All in all. Perfect union.

There are people yielding themselves to God so humbly that you would not think that there is anything unusual about them at all. Yet they have yielded their selves to the point where God is filling them almost completely, and they are almost always aware of being "one with God."

This transformation comes by choosing to be so empty that God can fill us totally. The ego gets lost, just as a wax form is lost when a jeweler pours molten gold to make a ring. It is a process which demands self-emptying, which most of us resist, and resistance makes the emptying too painful. In many of the references to theosis in the Bible, suffering and death are also mentioned. Christ died to demonstrate the complete selflessness of perfect love, and our union with him also involves the death of the ego and eventually the death of the body. Uniting ourselves to Christ changes us through love and humility. A willingness to "share his sufferings so as to share his glory" (Rom. 8:17) leads to a truly great glory, living in divine Presence. This is a gift beyond any and all possible merit, a gift of the most unspeakable grace. Whenever I think about the divinization that God is calling us to, calling me to, I am filled with deep awe, amazement, and immense gratitude. I don't think anyone who can speak blithely about this understands it. I myself do not. All I know is that our God is good.


St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote, God became human so humans would become gods. His statement is an apt description of the concept. What would otherwise seem absurd, that fallen, sinful man may become holy as God is holy, has been made possible through Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate.

As God became man, in all ways except sin, He will also make man God,

St. Irenaeus explained this concept, "the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."

St. Maximus the Confessor wrote, "A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the incarnation of God, which makes man god to the same degree as God Himself became man." ..... For it is clear that He who became man without sin (Heb. 4:15) will divine human nature ...... and will raise it up for His own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man's sake. This is what St. Paul teaches mystically when he says, '...that in the ages to come He might display the overflowing richness of His grace' (Eph. 2:7)."

Theosis goes beyond simply restoring people to their state before the Fall of Adam and Eve, teaching that because Christ united the human and divine natures in his person, it is now possible for someone to experience closer fellowship with God than Adam and Eve initially experienced in the Garden of Eden, and that people can become more like God than Adam and Eve were at that time.

So, the holy God and sinful humanity are reconciled in principle, in the one sinless man, Jesus Christ.

Christians' lives are more than mere imitation and are rather a union with the life of God Himself: so that, the one who is working out salvation, is united with God working within the penitent both to will and to do that which pleases God.

The 'doer' in deification is the Holy Spirit and prayer is requisite.

When I was but two weeks old in the Lord I read Romans 8 and it made the Spirit within me stand up because it had been written in my spiritual heart before I was even born. I knew then that Jesus was the first Son and the pattern of, and for a great company of sons to come later. (quote from yesterday's blog)

Thirty something years ago I recognized Theosis. Today I know I am experiencing Theosis and I pray you also are enjoying this tremendous calling and gift today. It is quite painful and yet glorious as self dies and Christ arises from His Kingdom within. This is our death and resurrection.

Jack

(some material taken from Wikipedia and
another writing with no author listed)

This is a link to the Eby series mentioned earlier in
this message. I read it years ago and it changed my life.
Should you read it your self you will definitely come
away with a different concept of Christ's coming. It is
entitled, "Looking For His Appearing"

http://www.kingdombiblestudies.org/Looking/Looking1.htm


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