PARABLE OF THE HUMAN DIVINE SPIRIT BARRIER

PARABLE OF THE HUMAN DIVINE SPIRIT BARRIER 

Today we are revisiting the last parable that we looked at where Jesus was describing the four types of soil that the Sower sowed the seed into, symbolising the four states of the human heart in receiving and understanding and acting upon God’s word to us. Seed was sown by the wayside, some on stony places, some on thorny ground and some on good soil. 

The type of heart soil that spoke to me the most was ‘Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun was up they were scorched. Jesus explained that these hearts receive the Word with joy; yet they have no root in themselves but endure only for a while and because they had no root in themselves, they withered away. This speaks of our human heart needing more resilience or staying power when life gets difficult and our faith gets tested at the root level of who we are.
It speaks to us about not understanding that root level of ourselves that makes us feel anxious about enduring through our feelings of loss or disappointment or difficult life situations and thinking ‘can I really trust God to be with me and for me in this situation?’ The Greek word for ‘endure’ here is eimi which means ‘I am’, and we often don’t understand the depth of our ‘I am’ with God. But God digs into the stony soil of our hearts and enriches it to let us know that his ‘I am’ can cross the seemingly impassable barrier between the human spirit and the Divine Spirit allowing us to be found within the ‘I am’ of Jesus. 

I would like to explain that seemingly impassable barrier between the Divine Spirit and the human spirit. the Bible says ‘For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (John 1:16). The faith and grace that Jesus brings into our world crosses the Divine Spirit to human spirit barrier and allows the Divine nature to supersede and achieve what our human nature is unable to achieve. The material world and the Divine Spirit world are two distinct worlds and two distinct realities. God lives in the Spiritual world of the unseen as an uncreated being and we live in the world of the seen, as created beings. We can comfortably occupy this magnificently created world and see it and hear it and measure it and use it and appreciate it, but we need different eyes and ears to see and hear the unseen world.

God had to cross from the unseen world of the Spirit into the world of created humanity and find a way to get humanity into the world of the uncreated unseen world of the Spirit. The Bible says ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.’  Jesus entered into humanity with his Divinity, and we enter into his Divinity with our humanity. This is a two-way transaction. This was God’s plan to make us partakers of his Divine nature and to create what the Bible calls the ‘New Creation’. 

The Bible tells us what this supernatural two-way transaction is and how it takes place. It is called ‘Reconciliation’, and Paul is the only one who explains what that means and how the supernatural miracle work of reconciliation acts upon humanity through Jesus.
The word Reconciliation in the Bible here is katalasso – meaning ‘to change mutually’ (Strong’s Concordance). The word for reconciliation used here is different to the more common Bible usage of the word reconciliation (dialasso) about forgiving someone who has offended us. 

Katalasso means that two things act upon one another to become one new thing. The supernatural miracle of God’s act of reconciliation for us is that he caused both himself and us to experience a change of Being to become a New Creation Being through Jesus. This miraculous mutual exchange is catalysed or enabled by the faith and the grace of Jesus that he brings into the equation. The Bible says we were saved by grace through faith and that was not of ourselves, it was the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). And that is what it means for us to have our new spiritual being in Christ.

2Cor 5.17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, all things have become new. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself… 
God became one of us – forever – both now as the risen Christ in Heaven, and in making us one with him within our hearts to become ‘partakers of his divine nature. We are in him, and he is in us - We are reconciled. It can be illustrated as an equation.

DIVINITY + HUMANITY + CATALYST (faith and grace of Jesus) = NEW CREATION.

Paul teaches about reconciliation but Jesus did not need to teach a parable of Reconciliation because the whole Bible is that parable - the story of the plan of God from before creation to send Jesus into the world to finally bring humanity through that impassable Divine barrier by the grace and faith of his Son. 
But there is a modern-day parable about the crossing of another impassable barrier that wasn’t available in the time of Jesus. It is found in Medical Science, and it is called the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB). This impassable barrier protects the brain from substances in the bloodstream that are harmful to brain activity, selectively allowing only certain substances to pass through into the brain. But that barrier also makes it difficult for the delivery of a very effective hormonal substance into the brain which helps to restore and enhance neuronal brain function in Parkinsonism. It’s called dopamine - a large complex protein molecule.
To overcome this, a substance was synthesised called Levodopa which is able to pass through the blood brain barrier where it is catalysed by an enzyme in the brain that converts levodopa into dopamine – which then acts upon the nervous system allowing more bodily movement and positive motivation and enhancing heart function and peripheral blood flow. 

When Jesus crossed the Divine/human barrier, through his faith and grace, the Bible said ‘All this is from God’. That supernatural work allows the Divine nature within us to supersede and achieve in us what we are not able to achieve in our own strength. Jesus brings Divinity through that human barrier so that he becomes the being and doing within us, and we can understand who we are and what we can do. That barrier is called the ‘veil’ in the Bible (Hebrews 10:x19) and on our side we need the faith and understanding of God’s miraculous work of reconciliation – the mutual exchange of our humanity with his Divinity. (Roman 5:10).

We play a role in this New Creation spiritual journey by cultivating a surrendered faith, believing that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:1). This involves "labouring" to enter into the rest of faith (Hebrews 4:11), which means ceasing from our own efforts and enduring the limitations of our humanity with patience. While we might often rely on our own strength to try and feel worthy of achieving this fulness of God, the gifts of faith and grace we have in Jesus says NO to this approach. Instead, we must practice holding together at the one time the reality of our world of human *struggles and the reality of our world of New Creation faith – it takes practice – and neither of these worlds can be denied or avoided. 
The Holy Spirit can then enable us to choose the world of the faith and grace of Jesus’ at work in us to overcome the world of human struggles. *Struggles include tedious tasks and personal suffering of pain and sickness and loss and - burdens of prayer – Burden = spiritual struggle – Matt 11.28. This holding together and overcoming disposition means living in an unceasing state of hope for what God will show us what he is doing in our lives.

The Bible says that Faith is the evidence of things NOT seen (Hebrews 11:1), and what is not seen is the supernatural work of God on our behalf in the world of the unseen. The more we learn to endure the afflictive nature of this world upon our damaged souls the more we can enter into the rest of the faith of Jesus in his real world of the unseen (and that takes more practice). It is here where we can say ‘I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me’ because we are doing his things and yet in an awesome kind of way, they have become our things. We thank you Lord that we can cross that human Divine barrier because we have been invited to live life together with you in the true reality of your healing and saving world of faith no matter how the other reality of the material world tries to disrupt our peace and oneness with you – in Jesus’ name - Amen.