The Change of Reality

This is an article written by David Carson titled "The Change of Reality":

"We spend a great deal of time within the church discussing how God is our total sufficiency, but few of us really believe it. Many claim such a belief, but their lifestyles and attitudes deny it. This parallels the distinction between Matthew 7:21 and Romans 10:9. In Matthew Jesus is quoted as saying, 'Not every one who says to Me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.' The Romans passage appears to be a contradiction: 'If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.' The distinction is drawn between merely saying Jesus is Lord and confessing Him as Lord. Anyone can say Jesus is Lord, but to confess Him as such means that Jesus is indeed the Lord of one's life.

"This same distinction extends to a Christian's reliance on God. Though he claims that he depends wholly on God, his habits and everyday conversation may confess that God is no more real to him than is the man in the moon. Sadly, many new Christians fall into this category. It is little wonder, therefore, that outsiders rail accusations of 'hypocrisy' against the church.

"When Jesus said in John 17, 'They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world,' He was not only saying that we have something that the world does not have. Nor was He merely speaking of a distinguishing trade-mark. He was saying that we are totally different, as day is from night and as white is from black. Blind eyes now see and deaf ears now hear; only now they perceive a new reality. All that once appeared to be real now grows dim and is recognized as merely a reflection of true reality.

"The person who exists within this new dimension is spiritually restored to the original position of Adam and is able to gaze in wonder upon the eternal truths that are unfolded before him. He now has the very life of God within himself. God said, 'Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.'

"And after God had formed man from the dust of the ground, He Himself breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The life of God was breathed into Adam, and God looked upon the one whom He had created as one who was even as Himself. God then placed this superior creature, who had His very life, within creation, in order that he might reign over it, revealing the glory of God throughout it. Though man was in creation, he was in some sense apart from it, for he knew nothing of the good and evil within it. In accord with God's ultimate plan of restoration, Adam chose to eat of the tree that would give him the knowledge of good and evil. Thus man became an intimate part of the world. At the same time that his eyes were opened to good and evil, man's eyes were closed to the reality that stood behind all this; for by his own choice he had temporarily lost the life of God within himself.

"Just as God once saw man as one who was even as Himself, now we find Jesus saying, 'They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.' This life is restored to us and we begin to function as new creatures, no longer concerning ourselves with the follies of this world but finding our whole desire centered on Him who is eternal and true. We may lose all the things of this world, but no power can ever take Christ from us.

"Are we perceiving of true reality? Do we know the dimension of life that is not of this world? Do we live as well as proclaim our reliance on God? Two personal experiences have vividly contrasted for me the 'yes' and 'no' answers to these questions.

"Several years ago, while a student in college, I had the opportunity to go abroad on a summer missions program. A number of other students were also going to various parts of the world. Each person was responsible for raising his cost for the trip. For those who were going to the more distant lands, this was a considerable amount, especially for a college student. One day a man came from the mission headquarters and spoke to us on the Lord's provision for our making the journey before us. He told us that we could trust God to care for those financial needs which were upon us. He then took a turn and said, 'Let's be realistic about this though,' and proceeded to speak of the empirical means of raising one's support. Unfortunately, this attitude is common among us. We talk at length about dependence on God, but it is not at all realistic to us. It is not realistic, for God does not exist in our reality. He is looked upon as the ideal, but by no means as the real. Our reality lies in human endeavor and empirical means. The irony of all this is that we claim to have salvation in that which is not even real to us.

"Of course, these are all steps through which God leads us. Eventually we begin to see that true reality lies in that which is unseen, that which is spirit. A year after the summer missions program, I heard a Wycliffe Translator home from the mission field tell of an incident in his life. He had come home from the field because of his wife's illness and was uncertain as to when he would be able to return. One day he received a letter in the mail from one of his supporting churches stating that it was withdrawing its support since he was unsure as to how long he would be before returning to the field. He said at first it made him angry, for now, with his wife's illness, the financial demands upon him were greater than ever before. He thought how heartless the church must be not to realize these needs. Then, however, God began to speak to him, and he saw where his dependence must be. He sat down and wrote the church a letter, saying, 'If you believe that God has led you to withdraw your support from me, feel free to do so, for I have no need of it. I know that my God shall supply all my needs according to His riches in glory.' Through a faith in the invisible God his eyes had been opened to receive a glimpse of true reality, the reality that is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

"Talking about this reality is one thing. Living in it is another. It is hypocrisy to claim to know, understand, and be a part of this true reality, only to continue in the mundane sphere of existence common to those who have no knowledge of it whatsoever. To live in this reality means to assert oneself upon it in every decision one makes, for decisions are the very substance of one's true inner self. Only through the act of volition does the intangible consciousness become tangible. It is not enough simply to recognize the fact that Jesus died on a cross. One must be subjective to the point of living in the knowledge that just as Jesus' death was my death to sin and my life is changed accordingly, so this new reality is my reality and I am to live in it. Only then can we know things as they really are.

"To perceive true reality is possible only to the person who has the life of God within him by the new birth, the birth into that higher dimension wherein is truth. Apart from God a person cannot accept as truth anything but the material world around him, for as a fallen creature his eyes have been partially blinded and that is as far as he cares to see. He is the person that hears and does not hear, and sees and yet does not see. Everything has only its face value to him. The Word of God is no more than the words of men to him, for, no matter how vehemently he may deny such a fact, God does not exist in his reality. To be sure, God exists in his ideals, but by no means in his reality.

"Separated man cannot perceive God-reality--for he is blind to it. He has never known it. He is like a man standing beneath a two-way mirror. In his fallen state he looks up, and all he can see is a reflection of himself and those things around him. When he rises above the mirror he can see what is above and then with understanding look down through the mirror into the material world and see man as he really is. The new perspective will change his whole set of values. He knows something of what lies beyond and what its true meaning is.

"An illustration of this vision would be the perception we have of a two dimensional drawing. We may look at a drawing of a house and some trees and, even though it is only two-dimensional, we may see three dimensions. We see the three dimensions in the world in which we live. Imagine, however, that we had never known three dimensions. Imagine that we, along with everything around us, existed as cartoon characters, existing only in two dimensions. If this were the case and we were to look at a two-dimensional drawing, no matter how skillfully the artist had attempted to represent a third dimension, all we could possibly see would be two dimensions. The person who has known three dimensions, however, would look at a two-dimensional drawing and immediately see three dimensions.

"It is in just such a way that the non-Christian cannot perceive of reality, for he has never known that dimension. He is as the Jews were when Jesus said, 'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.' They argued among themselves over how Jesus could give them his flesh to eat. They had no idea of the mystical union of which he spoke. They could only take Jesus' statement at face value, because they had never known that higher dimension.

"Our confusion of these dimensions is partly due to our use of certain Christian jargon. We refer to our 'spiritual lives,' and we say that a man with no knowledge of Christ is 'spiritually dead.' The terminology which categorizes things as 'spiritual' seems to be an attempt to separate those things from our 'secular' life and so confine them to the church. One can then comfortably say, 'Here is my spiritual life, and here is my secular life. Everything has its place.' The man, however, whose eyes have been opened by the new birth sees and understands that no things are secular. All things are spiritual. When we speak of 'spiritual' life and death, what we fail to understand is that this is the real life and real death. The truth is that physical death is not death at all. It is only the moving into the fulfillment of what one has already known: perfection with Christ for the Christian, and fulfillment of the sinful life in hell for the sinner. 'Spiritual death' is the true death, for it is the absence of true life, the life of God. How sad it will be for so many to someday realize that what they thought was life was only a dream. They will have missed out on that which is real and eternal.

"Our separation of the spiritual from the secular has also given us a false notion of priorities. I have heard more than one person say that Christ is first in his life, his family second, his job third, etc. As admirable as such a declaration may seem, the tendency has been to group Christ with a lot of priorities, because we have failed to see that He is not limited to our service within the church or to a daily time of devotion. Christ is to be all; He is our reality. All these other things we have listed as priorities are to be reflections of Him, not separate entities. Jesus is not a priority. He is, in Himself, reality.

"This true reality must become our reality if we are ever to rise above the mundane existence of everyday life. Entrance into this reality is entrance into life itself, since it comes by being born into it. This birth comes from God Himself, because it is His life that is born into the one who chooses to give his all that he might have this life within himself. Paul wrote of this reality and this life when he wrote to the Colossians of 'the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.' The mystery is revealed by the life of Christ Himself within the believer, for Paul later speaks of 'the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.'

"When Christ is born into a person's life, his eyes will be opened, and he will perceive reality for the first time. He will be as any other blind man who sees for the first time. Before, nothing within him could conceive of what vision itself would be like, much less of the things he would look upon. But now he sees. No one needs to tell him he sees, for he knows it, and never again will he close his eyes to become blind as he once was."