Chapter 3 Summary: The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

What Jesus Knew: Our God-bathed World

Knowledge about reality is empowering. Those who have a keen understanding of what really is find that they are able to operate with confidence and absolute trust; while those who operate off of mere assumption and guesses operate, at best, with suspicion.

What Jesus knew about God and his creation allowed him to operate in this world with the utmost freedom and joy. If we are going to place our trust in him and live in his kingdom, we will have to come to terms with our views of the world and the God who made it, and learn from Jesus how we are to see things for what (or whom) they are.

For Jesus the world is a beautiful place full of possibility because it is all under God’s control and filled with God’s presence. He viewed God as a being of intense and endless joy. To be sure, he saw his Father as the most joyous being alive. Willard suggests that the first step to understanding what Jesus knew to be true is to begin to “think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy.”

Think about the sights that fill us with joy: a beautiful beach, a school of fish, the Grand Canyon, a brilliant sunset, the grandeur of mountain scenery. We view these things and are rendered speechless as joy floods our souls because of what we are taking in. But what we only experience from one angle, as it were, “God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness.”

This is God’s life! We must learn to see God living this life—a life full of inexhaustible joy.

If this is God’s life then it is also the life of his Son. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:9)” So, like father, like son, as they say. The same joy the father had filled the life of the son. Indeed, the life of Jesus bears witness to the fact that God’s kingdom is here, therefore those alive in his kingdom have nothing at all to fear in this world.

This is why Jesus could teach us “not worry about tomorrow... about what clothes you will wear... about what you will eat... (Matthew 6).” These words are heard today, as I’m sure they were then, as idealistic or pretty, but not sound teaching. But for one who sees God the way Jesus did these teachings are obvious. Worrying about tomorrow’s food, to a person alive in God’s kingdom, is as foolish as worrying about the sun rising. God will provide both if we need it.

We can trust that God knows what we need because he is always with us. Biblical record states that he is present in “the heavens.” This phrase causes many to think of some place in another galaxy out there somewhere; but it is better to understand it as “the atmosphere." God, then, is present in the space that surrounds our bodies. This knowledge is either extremely comforting (Psalm 145:18), or absolutely frightening (Revelation 6:15-16).

Jesus not only helps us see God and his universe in a correct way, but he helps us understand our lives properly. In him we understand that we are “never-ceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny” in God’s universe. With that in mind Jesus comes to teach his students how to live in light of the fact that they will never die. Or, as it says in John 8:51, “whoever keeps my word will never see death.” Oh, their physical bodies will certainly die, but they will never experience what is called death. They will simply go from life to life, suddenly aware of a new and glorious reality. They will experience a transformation from glory to glory, into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).

This transformation process is happening right now. This is part of what it means to place ones confidence in Jesus now. It is acknowledging that he is capable of leading you in your life right now, and then trusting him to do it. Therefore, the student (or apprentice) of Jesus, is constantly learning from Jesus how to live their life, the way that he would live their life, if he were they.

All this is possible because of the kingdom Jesus comes to reveal. It is a kingdom that is, "at hand;" the God of this kingdom is always in the same room as us. This God is full of joy, and invites all to enter into his kingdom by placing their trust in the capable and proven nail-pierced hands of his Son.

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