Knock Knock
We have all been at home to hear this sound echo throughout the house, “Knock! Knock!” It naturally invokes a response. Some run to the door, check the peephole, and decide whether or not to engage. Some run to the door and gamble; without any peephole foresight, they fling that door wide open. Then the wave of excitement or regret ensues. The more advanced pull up their phone, check the doorbell app, and decide if it’s even worth getting up. Then others just ignore it, either because they are busy or they just don’t want to answer. No matter what, the knock invokes a response.
The Bible refers to us as a temple of God. In 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” A synonymous word for temple is house. We are called the house of God in Hebrews 3:6, “but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” If we consider these two scriptures together, we can see that God dwells in us fully and completely as a dwelling place. It is important to note that we are not being asked to do anything to be fully filled by God.
The if in Hebrews 3:6 isn’t saying, “if you hold fast your confidence and your boasting in your hope, then God will fill you.” The “if” there is contingent on your belief that you are indeed a house: a structure hosting the fullness of God. If you believe, then you will live as you already are – a house and one filled with God’s Spirit. We see this completed work in other scriptures like 2 Peter 1:3, “For His divine power has bestowed on us [absolutely] everything necessary for [a dynamic spiritual] life and godliness, through true and personal knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” God has given us all of Himself. In totality, not in partiality. We have absolutely everything we need, in and through Him, and it’s His spirit dwelling in us.
Additionally, we see in scripture that we are fully reconciled in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:19, “that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” When I synthesize these scriptures, I see that we are fully reconciled, with God’s Spirit fully in us, and we are His temple (a house). His dwelling place. In Revelation 3:20, “Here, I’m standing at the door, knocking. If someone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he will eat with me.” We are a house. We are reconciled, us to God! He has filled us. If we see ourselves in this reconciled way, and Jesus is knocking at the door, my question is –
What side of the door is He on?
If we believe Jesus isn’t already in us but He is on the outside of us, separated from us, that belief flies in the face of the scriptures just mentioned. Is there separation between us and God? If so, then is it up to us to bridge that gap? To address this, we need to look at a few more scriptures:
Romans 8: 38-39, “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Here we see a very definitive no-separation-between-us-and-God’s-love message. Think through this scripture with me for a moment. “Neither death nor life…” Speaking for myself here, I have sourced my thoughts and words with death and with life. For a season, I didn’t even know or believe in God – death. Sometimes I knew of God and still made decisions that were against His nature. “Neither angels nor demons…” I have also entertained angels and the demonic in my life. “Neither our fears…” I have lived in fear and worry, sometimes both at the same time. “Not even the powers of hell…” I have been oppressed at times by the power of hellish belief systems, tactics, and thoughts. I have been in varying levels of unhealthy relationships, where I was the unhealthy one. “Nothing in all creation…” In all this, even the ungodly stuff, scripture says, I was never separated from God’s love. Jesus still knocks.
The Psalmist David cries out:
Psalm 139:7-10 NLT, “I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.”
I can never escape from God’s Spirit. Some translations will exchange the grave for hell. David uses a combination of spiritual and physical locations to depict that no matter where we are, God is there. In our heavenly moments of life and our hellish moments of life, God is there. Whether we are flying high in life or dwelling in the depths, God is there. Our language is limited when it comes to explaining God, His love, and His expanse. Yet David tries. Using high and low language, both in the natural and the spiritual, he concludes, “nothing can separate us from God.”
Wait, what about sin? Sin definitely separates us from God. Doesn’t it? Let’s look at the scripture in Isaiah 59:1-2 that says, “Listen! The Lord’s arm is not too weak to save you, nor is his ear too deaf to hear you call. It’s your sins that have cut you off from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not listen anymore.” If we were to define these words properly, they break down like this:
Cut you off – This phrase defined in Hebrew is to build a barrier. We can build a barrier, or in other words, a door that hinders our perspective. At the writing of this document, I have been married 24 years. I know that I can be in the same room with my wife, in her presence, and have a barrier. The barrier doesn’t denote separation, God from us, it denotes a separation in how we see Him and ourselves in relation to Him.
He has turned away – The phrase defined in Hebrew is more of a hiding or concealing. This dovetails to the first point. We erect perspectives about God and ourselves that hide the truth. It doesn’t mean He’s not there. He is still there. He is truth and it is we who have hidden Him from our eyes. He hasn’t (and won’t ever) hide Himself from us.
He will not hear – This one is a bit more nuanced. Even though the phrase “He will not hear” seems clear and self-explanatory, it does need explaining. When I pair this phrase with the scripture in Matthew 7: 21-23 (which I’ll paraphrase). Jesus says, “You cry to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ and I say, ‘Depart from Me, I never knew you.’” What needs to be understood here is God is always seeing, communicating with, relating to the reality of who we already are in Him. We are complete and perfect in Him, and anything outside of that is an illusion. So, this illusory self is a non-existent self. This scripture isn’t saying God (out of anger) is saying, “I’ve had enough and I am giving you the silent treatment.” No! The sin of that person is talking. The illusion of who that person is speaks. The falsehood of that individual’s identity cries out and God says, “I am not listening to that.” Frankly neither should we.
Consider behavior of any kind. We behave on the basis of who we believe we are. A belief system is formed by either a truth or a lie and supported by reference points. So, when we sin, it’s not about the sin. It’s about the misbelief you have about who you are (or aren’t) and the lie it’s coming from. We see ourselves wrongly because we see God incorrectly or incompletely. This scripture is saying our sin (distorted beliefs) hide our faces from Him. It is also saying that His heart is to speak to the reality of who we are, not the false and illusory self.
Jesus is knocking. He is knocking on each of our heart’s door and the question is – What side of the door is He on? Is He on the inside of our hearts or is He on the outside of our hearts? The answer is, yes! There is no separation, so our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is both in our hearts and with us as we stand on the outside. What does that mean? The way I would phrase it is, God’s heart is to constantly, in every moment, introduce us to ourselves. To say, “Have you met you? You are wonderful, lovely and amazing! I would really love for you to get to know you.”
This is the knock we hear. The knock from a reconciled non separated Jesus inviting us into ourselves, the self we have yet to meet. Additionally, Jesus is with us as we stare at the door knob of our heart. We hear the invitation, we sense the tug, we even temper some of the excitement as we reach for the knob, only to pull back. Jesus is with us there too. At the same time Jesus is both inviting us in to ourselves and encouraging us that He is with us everywhere we are.
There is no separation. We see this in the embodiment of Jesus. Jesus was fully God and fully man and He remains forever God and man – no way to separate the two. We see in 1 John 4:17 AMP, “In this [union and fellowship with Him], love is completed and perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment [with assurance and boldness to face Him]; because as He is, so are we in this world.” The message is union: we are unified already with Him and He is inviting us into an awareness of that reality. We may not fully believe the truth of His union message. That’s why He knocks! He’s inviting us in to our unified self. He has already unified us with Him and He wants to show you! That scripture says “as Jesus is, so are we.” Jesus is perfectly unified. God and human. And so are we.
What does one do with this? Well, have faith, but not a faith that you feel responsible to drum up inside of you. Have the faith God has for you. God is our source and He first has faith in us before we can ever have faith in Him. We see in Romans 10:17 that faith comes from hearing. We don’t need faith to hear, the God of all faith is speaking to you now. Listen, you will receive faith. To stop and listen to God is hard in a loud and busy world or maybe the insides of your mind and heart are noisy. I want to encourage you; God is speaking to you even now. God is inviting you to become aware that you are with Him in the space where He already is. Where you already are.
Take a minute and say, “God if you’ll show me, I will look.”
He is showing you who you really are. Not who your family, friends, mistakes, teachers, pastors or even you say you are. There is a real you. A you that is fully formed and perfectly unified with Jesus. He has invited you (Knock! Knock!) to see Him face to face. Allow Him to reflect you to you. How beautiful you are! How radiant you are! How accomplished, how fulfilled, how at peace, and how joyful you are! Jesus will never tire of knocking. He will never grow faint in His desire to introduce you to the reality of who you already are in Him and who He already is in You.
Will you open the door?