When the gospel becomes a memory recovery program, the cross becomes an illustration. Follow that framework to its conclusion and what disappears is the covenant, the blood of the specific seed, and everything accomplished at Golgotha that no other act in human history could have accomplished.
Document 5 of 10
The previous document established what the covenant text says about Adam, beginning not completion, the spiritual comes after the natural, the teleios (completion) had not yet arrived for any of the covenant people. This document follows the alternative framework, the one that says Adam was originally perfect and the gospel restores that perfection, all the way to where it leads. Not to dismiss those who hold it. To show precisely what it does to the cross.
A framework can sound like grace and arrive at a destination that is not the gospel. The test is not how the framework begins. The test is where it ends. And when the mystical union framework, the one that says humanity was always already in divine perfection and only forgot, is followed honestly to its conclusion, it ends at the dissolution of the specific, once-for-all, covenant-completing work of the cross. Not by intending to go there. By following the logic of its own premises.
A framework can sound like grace and arrive somewhere the gospel cannot follow. The test is not how it sounds at the beginning. The test is where the logic of the premises leads at the end.
The mystical union framework begins with a reading of Genesis 1, humanity made in the image of YHWH, breathed into by YHWH, in intimate union with YHWH. So far so does the covenant reading. But then the framework makes its distinctive move. It says that union was original perfection, complete, unbroken, fully inhabited. And it says Genesis 3 describes not a genuine change in the human condition but a forgetting. A loss of awareness. The house was always inhabited. The human being simply stopped knowing it.
On this reading the gospel has one task, to remind humanity of what it always was. To awaken the sleeping awareness of divine union. To hold up the mirror, as the mirror Bible framework (a reading that presents the gospel primarily as humanity discovering its own divine reflection) explicitly proposes, so that humanity can see what it already is. The proclamation is not news of what was accomplished. It is the recovery of what was always true.
Follow that logic one step further. If the human being was always already in divine union, if the house was always already inhabited, then what specifically did the cross accomplish that the original creation had not already accomplished? The answer the framework must give is: the cross demonstrated. It illustrated. It showed with dramatic clarity what was always true, that YHWH loves humanity unconditionally, that nothing can separate the created being from the creating one, that death cannot touch what is eternally alive in the divine. The cross is the most powerful possible demonstration of a reality that already existed. A lesson in divine love written in blood.
If the house was always inhabited, the cross demonstrated what was already true. A lesson. An illustration. The blood of any sufficiently innocent and loving person could have served the same demonstration. The particularity of Yeshua, the specific seed of the specific covenant, becomes unnecessary decoration on a universal reality.
And here is where the framework reaches its most dangerous conclusion. If the cross is a demonstration of a universal reality, if it illustrates the divine love that was always already present for all flesh, then the specificity of Yeshua’s blood becomes theologically unnecessary. The blood of any sufficiently innocent human being, dying in sufficient love, could have made the same demonstration. The covenant sealed while Avraham slept, the specific covenant for the specific seed who is Mashiach, is not the foundation of the gospel on this reading. It is the occasion for the demonstration. And a demonstration does not require a specific actor. It requires a sufficient illustration.
This is precisely what some teachers within this framework have concluded. That the blood of the cross could be the blood of any man. That what matters is the principle demonstrated, YHWH’s unconditional love for humanity, not the specific covenantal act of the specific seed passing between the specific pieces in the specific aloneness that the specific covenant sworn by YHWH alone in the specific dark while Avraham slept had always required. The covenant disappears. The particularity disappears. The once-for-all completion disappears. What remains is a beautiful illustration of a beautiful truth, which is not the gospel.
The gospel, as this entire series has been establishing from the first letter of the first word, is the specific, once-for-all, covenant-completing, blood-sealed declaration of one YHWH who swore by himself in Genesis 15 because he had no one greater to swear by. The covenant was sealed for the specific seed. The seed is Mashiach. The completion of the covenant at the cross is the specific passage of the specific seed through the specific pieces in the specific aloneness that the specific structure of the covenant had always required. You cannot substitute any other blood for that blood without dissolving the covenant itself, because the covenant was sworn to a specific seed and completed in a specific person and the completion is the foundation on which the universal declaration rests.
The universality of the gospel rests on the particularity of the covenant. All flesh is held because the specific seed passed between the specific pieces for all flesh. Remove the particularity and the universality has no foundation. The blood of any man is not the blood of the specific seed for whom the covenant was always sealed.
The covenant reading and the mystical union reading agree that the gospel is for all flesh. They agree that nothing can separate humanity from YHWH. They agree that the love of YHWH is unconditional and universal. But they arrive at these conclusions by completely different routes, and the route matters because it determines whether the cross is necessary or illustrative, whether the blood is specific or generic, whether the gospel is news of a completion or a reminder of an original.
The covenant route: the house was built, the house was not yet ready, the covenant was sealed unconditionally by YHWH alone for the specific seed, the cross completed the covenant and made the house ready, the resurrection declared the completion, all who slept are held in what was sealed for them, the gospel is the announcement of a completion that was accomplished at a specific time by a specific act of a specific seed whose blood sealed what YHWH swore by himself.
The mystical union route: the house was always inhabited, the covenant illustrates what was always true, the cross demonstrates the love that was always present, the blood teaches the principle of unconditional divine acceptance, the resurrection confirms that death cannot touch the divine nature that humanity always was. Beautiful. Moving. Not the gospel.
The difference is not whether YHWH loves all flesh. He does. The difference is whether that love required the specific completion of the specific covenant at the cross, or whether it was always already complete and the cross simply made it visible. The covenant text is unambiguous. The completion was required. The teleios had not yet come. The spiritual comes after the natural. The house was not yet ready. And the cross is what made it ready, not by demonstrating what was always true but by accomplishing what had never yet been true, the house completed in righteousness, sin abolished, righteousness constituted universal, judgment finished, for all who slept, for all flesh, by the blood of the specific seed for whom the covenant was sealed in the specific dark while Avraham slept.
The cross is not a lesson. It is the completion. The builder moved into the house he had been building toward since the first letter of the first word before anything was made. And no other entry, no other blood, no other seed, no other passage between the pieces, could have opened the house for all flesh. Because the house was sworn to a specific seed. And the seed is Mashiach.
The cross is the completion of the specific covenant sworn to the specific seed. Not a lesson. Not an illustration. The once-for-all act that made the house ready for all flesh forever.
The mystical framework: the house was always inhabited.
The cross demonstrates what was always true.
The blood of any man could serve the demonstration.
The covenant text:
The house was not yet ready.
The covenant was sealed for the specific seed.
The blood of Yeshua is the blood of that specific seed, not any man’s blood.
The cross accomplished what had never yet been accomplished.
The cross is not a lesson. It is the completion. The builder moved in.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams