The Law of Opposites
The fundamental law of the universe is that there are pairs of opposites, and that nothing operates except by the one swallowing up the other (2 Cor. 5:4), the one using the other as its means of manifestation. Thus there are light-dark, hot-cold, sweet-bitter, hard-soft, yes-no, the positive-negative of electricity, and the proton-electron of the atom. Or, taken into our own reality as selves, there is self-loving or self-giving self: self-for-self or self-for-others.A
This is why it says of God Himself that He cannot lie. In other words, He is dead to being a self-for-self (a liar) and is unalterably fixed as being the Self-for-others. The eternal fact is that He has never been a loner, but brought His own Son into being. Thus He is the eternal other-lover (John 5:20; 3:35). (See Alan Parker’s pamphlet The Cross in the Heart of God.)
Thus, created selves can only know themselves and function by being confronted by the choice of opposites. This was true also among those whom we speak of as heavenly beings. Lucifer was the chief one close to the throne of God (Isa. 14:12-14; Ezek. 28:12-15). He was created to be the manifestor of the Creator’s fixed nature of other-love (Lucifer means “light-bearer”). But he chose in his freedom to be the expresser of the opposite, alternative nature of self-for-self to which God had died. He brought into manifestation the hidden fire-nature rather than the light-nature of God (Heb. 12:29; 1 John 1:5). He imagines himself to be an independent self (Isa. 14:12-14) but is deceived as to who he really is. Jesus called him the expression of negative light (Matt. 6:23). There was war in heaven and Lucifer was cast out (Rev. 12:7-9).
God’s Purposes To Be Fulfilled by His Family of Sons
God utilizes the choice between alternatives in us to fulfill His eternal plan “to the praise of His glory” (Eph; 1:3-14). He is bringing into being a vast family of sons in His image, whose created selves (with no independence of their own) express His fixed other-love nature. They will manage the universe with His Son (Heb. 1:2; Rom. 8:17) by ministering to it in His eternal other-love, and thus serving and liberating it to fulfill itself in the love of one to the other (Isa. 11:6-9; Rom. 8:19-21), so that the whole universe will be one eternal song of praise, worship, harmony, mutual love and delight (1 Cor. 15:24-28).
This then necessitated that we who are created in His image be confronted by the reality of the opposites in ourselves and choose to express the deity nature of either self-for-others or sell-for-self. Therefore, the first created couple had to be confronted with the symbol of the two trees in the Garden. They were at first unconscious expressers of God’s other-love nature. Adam was in harmony with all creatures and could give each its proper name (Gen. 2:20); they knew no opposite to other-love in union with the Father.
In order to become conscious operating selves, and not merely continue like spontaneous infants, God used Lucifer, the wrathful expresser (Rev. 12:12) of that opposite fire-nature, to entice and deceive Eve. She responded to Satan’s (the serpent’s) lies about God and began to express his self-for-self nature in herself by taking the fruit which God had forbidden. Adam consciously chose to identify with Eve’s self-for-self disobedience (1 Tim. 2:14).
Thus they became conscious of the opposites through the attraction of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The good is a self which expresses God and other-love; the evil is a self which expresses Satan and sell-loving love. They became expressers of their Satan-father’s self-for-self nature, Satan’s “seed” (Gen. 3:15; 1 John 3:8-10; John 8:44). In their expression of him (Eph. 2:1-3), they became tricked into the false concept of seeing themselves as independent selves, even as their false father Satan was deceived into thinking he was an independent self. (In reality he expresses that negative fire-nature in God, which rightly used in God became the source of the light-nature of other love.)
So we transmit what we are or think we are. Therefore, it was God’s purpose that Satan, the serpent, should transmit his deceived concept of his independence into us his seed. As a result we fallen humans think we are independent selves. But in reality we are merely expressers of Satan’s self-for-self nature. Note the word “deceiveth” in that plainest word in Scripture concerning his lying effects on us (Rev. 12:9). And thus by this deceitful means we destined sons of the Father could once for all experience the bitterness of this lie and discard it through the Last Adam, Jesus Christ.
