The Mandate

Greetings,

Today I am heading home after a great weekend with Pastor Paul Fowler and the CitiLife Church in Brian College Station, Texas. The church is healthy hear and God is ready to do good things. Thank you to all at CitiLife for a wonderful time.

Today I am going to continue with the theme of the word. Why do we need to speak the word? What does it mean to speak the word? What is the word and what is the purpose of the word? Is the word a what? Or is the word a who? What is truth?

God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is God the life-giver, God the expression of life, and God the power of life. He is the source of life, the word of life, and the testimony of life in all things. As human beings, we were created in the likeness and the image of God. We were created to know the life of God, to be expressions of life of God, and to bring the testimony of the power of God’s life into all things. We were created to be expressions of who God who is in heaven, in earthly form. In our creation, we were to be the word of God in flesh. We were to be spiritual beings of life and our destiny was to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue and have dominion in the earth.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The mandate of mankind was given by God to the substance of Himself in the earth. That substance was the masculine and the feminine expression of who God is, made known in earthly form. The creation of both male and female from the substance of the Spirit of God was to be the source of the mandate. They were to be one flesh comprised of dual expressions of the nature of God. God is both a giver of life and a nurturer of life. Mankind was the antidote to everything that is formless, void, and dark. They were to be rooted in the Spirit of God to be an expression of God in earthly form. By this they could be fruitful, multiply, and fill as living things do, but they could also subdue and have dominion as only mankind was destined to do. The testimony was to be one of authority and not merely power. Authority always gives life, while power alone grasps to take life from others. Men (male and female) were to be givers of life, not takers of life. By this they could give life to formless things and the order of life would unfold. They could fill anything void with life and thus fullness would prevail. They could bring life to darkness and light would arise. This would only be possible through intimacy with God as a living, growing extension of His family in the earth. A family tree, if you will, exhibiting the overcoming power of God as the tree of life. When man choose the external rule of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he/she disconnected from the able source of subduing and dominion. To subdue is to destroy death with life and to exercise dominion is to crumble every lie with truth. When mankind embraced an administration of human wisdom they embraced a disconnection from the true wisdom of God that leads to and brings forth life. Natural sight became more dominant than faith. The result was the loss of the ability to bring life to the formless, void, and dark places of the earth. The testimony was disastrous and the end was the removal of flesh apart from one family line that exhibited a conscience towards knowing God. When left with the rule of conscience, only one family sought intimacy with God over the administration of independence and self. Human conscience is the human spirit and it is an internal witness that cries out for the need to be joined to God in the Spirit. By conscience alone, man cannot subdue and have dominion. They can only know there is a God and they can only know their need for Him in their lives. God desired more for mankind and the commission of His life-giving authority in the earth. There was a need for the flesh of mankind to become the word of God in human form. Only by this could the mandate be fulfilled.

After the flood, man was given the harsh reality of ruling by law. Human law became the administration of mankind, but the ability to subdue and have dominion was removed from the commission of humanity. Even in the giving of Torah law, there was no greater hope than merely being fruitful, multiplying, and fulfilling. The law was added because of the transgression, but the ability to subdue and have dominion could only be restored through the reconciliation of man (male and female) to the source of life. The word had to become flesh so that all flesh could again become expressions of God’s word. Only by this could the mandate be restored and subduing and dominion could be given by to the sons of God (male and female in Christ).

Genesis 9:1 So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”

The missing pieces of the mandate could only be restored when the word became flesh, a man full of grace and truth to enable all men (male and female) to be filled again with grace and truth. Grace is the presence of the Holy Spirit at one with the human spirit to enable the human being to subdue death by the power of life. Truth is the testimony of life made known in the uniqueness of each one to crumble the lies and deceptions in the sphere of each one’s influence in life. By this the word becomes flesh and good news is restored for the formless, void, and dark places of the earth.

Blessings,

Ted J. Hanson