A Birthday Surprise

God gave me an incredible birthday gift this year. It was a follow-up to a different gift he gave me on my 30th birthday. Some of you know the story of the “diamond on the carrot.” The day before I turned 30 I put a real diamond ring on a carrot and hung it from a stick and showed it to a group of people who were being trained to work with people caught in addiction. I told them that this was a picture of what the religious systems and drug rehabilitation programs of the world subtly communicate: Freedom is a carrot on a stick. If you do this and do that then you will find freedom. But the reality is, there a diamond of freedom already inside of us. This diamond is our true identity as perfectly loved children of God. This is our original blessing, I explained, and it predates and overrides any brokenness that has invaded our lives. 

The next day, on August 16, 2017, news broke out that a woman in Canada had dug up a carrot in her garden and found her long lost diamond ring on it. This is a picture of it from BBC News:

This was one of the craziest signs and wonders I’d ever experienced, and God has continued to affirm this message of original blessing in wild ways (including on other birthdays of mine). This past month, the day I turned 36, something crazy happened once again.

The day before my birthday I was praying and I had this image of blueberries come to my mind. It came in such a vivid way that I felt it was from God, although because I was on vacation on Mt. Desert Island off the coast of Maine (the land of blueberries), I figured it easily could have been my own mind making the association. Nonetheless, as I was praying and pondering this image further, I had this deep impression I was supposed to get a book, and that it was somehow connected to blueberries. Ok, I know that sounds weird. And spoiler alert: I didn’t find a diamond on a blueberry. However, something else incredible occurred.

The next day, August 16, 2023, our plans for the day got canceled. We ended up doing a last minute trip to a different part of the island where on the way I saw a sign for a used book sale. The sign said “Blueberries and Books.” I took immediate notice and stopped the car to see what was there. I walked up to a bunch of tables set up outside, each of which had boxes upon boxes of books on them, and the first box I approached had this inside of it:

Do you see it? There was a book inside called Original Blessing… Now you have to understand, this is not a common phrase. Nor is this a famous book. In fact, I’d never read it before. However, on my birthday (the same day God once put a diamond ring on a carrot in a lady’s garden to confirm this message about “original blessing”), God clearly led me to stop at a “Blueberries and Books” sale and the first box I see contains a book called Original Blessing.

The Genos of God

So let me explain this a bit more. First of all, I find it providential that God has used my birthday to confirm this message, especially because of what original blessing points to. It declares that from birth, a human being carries intrinsic and divine value. The very “blessing” of God’s own life has been deposited into each and every person, sustaining and upholding their existence. In the words of Paul to a group of pagan Greeks: “In him we live and move and have our being… We are also his offspring!” (Acts 17:28) The first part of that verse is saying that people have their “being” — their entire existence — in God. In case you weren’t aware, the Holy Spirit is God; therefore people everywhere have their life and being in the Spirit of God.

Now the next part of that verse is even wilder. Paul tells this group of unbelievers that they are God’s “offspring.” These were Athenian Greeks and so he was most certainly using Greek language to communicate this. The Greek word behind our English word “offspring” is the term genos. This is where we get the word “genes.” Paul is clearly telling this group of people about their divine origin as true children of God.

Ok, well, this message doesn’t always bode well with some people in the Christian world. Many believe you can only become a child of God and possess the Spirit of God as long as you have repented and believed in Jesus. They would give many Scriptures of their own to back up that position. And that leads me to the real heart of this article. I believe both perspectives are simply that: perspectives. They are a particular view of a large and sweeping vision that is bigger than perhaps our minds are comfortable with. My goal here is to paint a wider and hopefully more unifying picture of both vantage points, connecting humanity’s true identity with the call of salvation (i.e. the restoration of that identity through Jesus the Messiah).

I think the best way to do this is to start with something from the life of Jesus…

Jesus’s Baptism: The Way Forward

In the Jordan River, Jesus of Nazareth received the Spirit of God. It says in the gospel accounts that the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus like a dove and empowered him to go out and share the good news of God’s kingdom (read Mark 1:10 & Luke 4:14). Now, here’s a question: Did Jesus have the Spirit before this?

Of course he did! He was and is God.

But there was something he was demonstrating on our behalf as those who are made in his image.

Like Jesus, all of us are children of God. Jesus is the eternal genos of God, the original blueprint of a son or daughter. We were created in his image, meaning we are now the genos of God as well. We carry the life of God in the same way a child carries the genetic life of their parents. Unlike Jesus, however, we have fallen into darkness and need to come to a place of restoration. This is what salvation is all about and it is linked with the term repentance.

These days, a lot of people are challenging the traditional views of this word, and rightly so. They are calling out the Latinization of the original term metanoia where the word was infused with the medieval concept of buying “penance” to pay for your sins through human works (something that is to be done over and over again, hence the prefix “re.”) As a result, many are highlighting the fact that this word literally translates to a “change (meta) of mind (nous).” It’s wonderful that we are getting away from the archaic connections to paying our own penance for sin; however, the danger with the deconstruction of this term is that many people are moving into a more philosophical version of Christianity instead of one that involves a life-transforming and sin-conquering faith.

Despite the literal translation, repentance is not a mental thing. When you actually search out the way this word was used in the days of the apostles, the word still involved a “turning” of one’s life. That’s how people would have understood this radical “change of mind.” But here’s the beautiful thing about this that I know will resonate with those who are trying to tear down the religious connotations surrounding the word “repentance.” The original term insinuates a turning back to a place you were before. When you connect this with the truth of humanity’s original blessing, true metanoia is about coming home! This fits right in with what many people are wanting to focus on — the reality that all belong to God. No one can be lost unless they first belong. “The earth is the Lord’s and ALL who dwell within it,” as it says in Psalm 24.

Real Transformation

With this understanding of repentance, we are still left with a very tangible call to leave our present state of darkness and enter into a relationship with our true Creator and Father. God will give a person all the grace they need for this, but they still have to receive the gift (and not just think about it). And this is what baptism points to when a person’s entire body (including their thinking brain) is immersed in water.

So again, this is not just changing how we think about God and self. That is certainly part of it. And I want to say here that I appreciate certain philosophical teachings that shift people’s perspectives in these areas and break down religious concepts. However, many times these kinds of teachings are spoken to groups of people who have already chosen a path of faith. Many have already had a true “born again” experience but somewhere along the way got burnt out by religion and are now trying to tear down any association to the old order. But such teachings are not always translating into helping people caught in bondage to things like addiction, unbelief, and sexual brokenness find the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

But this is what Jesus demonstrated for us in the Jordan. In that very real act of turning toward God on our behalf, Jesus received a transformative encounter with the Holy Spirit. Even though he already lived and moved and had his being in the Spirit of God, Jesus experienced a relational connection with the Holy Spirit that anointed and transformed his entire life from that point forward. This is what every human genos of God is called to experience. Without it, salvation is only an idea and not the true manifestation of God’s dream of heaven coming to earth. Without it, the prodigal son stays in the famine of darkness and death (see Luke 15).

Confirmation of the Spirit

All of this connects to a powerful revelation found in the book of Romans. Ironically, it’s from what I like to consider my “birthday verse.” Check this out:

“The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God.“

– Romans *8:16*

When a person believes in Jesus, when they turn to him with their whole life and put their trust in him (which would involve following what he said to do, which is to get baptized), something happens with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes in a clear way and testifies…or confirms…who they really are. Because of this, the Spirit empowers a person to be who they were truly created to be, the offspring of the Creator. In view of that, I love how Eugene Peterson translates John 1:12:

But whoever did want him,
    who believed he was who he claimed
    and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
    their child-of-God selves.

John 1:12 (MSG)

I am very grateful for how people are rediscovering and re-emphasizing the important truths of people’s origin and identity. This is what God emphasized to me on several birthdays and on many other occasions. It changes so much of how we see and treat those around us, especially those who are outside our Christian bubbles. It gives fresh dignity to people and empowers us with hope in knowing that the seed of God’s glory exists even in the darkest of hearts. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is still a difference between someone who has “received the Spirit” and someone who hasn’t, even if that feels contradictory to what Paul stated to the Athenian pagans. For people who like things black and white (including those who are against black-and-white legalism), this can be a tough pill to swallow. But it is true nonetheless.

All people are beloved children of God, no matter what, but many are in bondage to a very real (though deceptive) realm of darkness and need to be saved from it. This “salvation” comes by the transformation of the Spirit through a heart that surrenders to the Father. This surrender is not a “work” in the legal sense, or some kind of penance people pay. This is the response of a soul who is relationally moving back toward his or her Creator because they’ve discovered his love and acceptance (primarily revealed through Jesus’s work at the cross, though the revelation of the love of God can come in many ways). This is how one “receives the Spirit” who has already been freely given. (And by the way, the Greek word used for “receive” in the New Testament entails taking something that already belongs to you!)

Any honest reader of the New Testament will see this invitational side of the Gospel. In Acts 20, Paul himself gave an overview of his message to the world. He proclaims that he “testified both to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul and the other apostles did not go out and give their lives to espousing good ideas. They went and called people to place their entire lives into the hands of a living, breathing Christ, the only One who can restore (and reveal) our true selves.

There is a fresh Jesus Revolution emerging and I believe it will be centered on this revelation of awakened identity. This is why the enemy (who is also more than a philosophical idea or thought pattern) is working very hard to dismantle the identity of this generation. Now on that note, there’s one more amazing part of my birthday story that I didn’t get to share before, and it adds a whole other layer of understanding to these things….but I think that’s enough for now. We’ll get to that next time.

Until then, grace and glory to you.