Editor’s Note
by Editor(s)

Some of us through the years had the privilege of hearing Norman Grubb’s unique presentation of what he boldly called The Total Truth. We came to know that at a certain point in his talk (and it is the same in his books) he would launch into a section called the law of opposites. "We can only know a thing by its opposite," he would say, and go on to explain that we could not know sweet without bitter, had with–out soft, light without dark, etc. and that the one swallows up the other. In his final years he at times dwelt on this topic to the almost total exclusion of more traditional "Bible teaching" or exegesis, presenting it as the linchpin of an understanding of God’s nature and thus our own as a result of our union with Him.

To all this we may have responded with "that’s nice" or "I know that," or "when is he going to get to the part about living daily life?" Some of us may have truly recognized that all human knowledge does indeed stem from confronting opposites, and all action from saying "yes" to one thing and therefore "no" to everything else. But perhaps as we delve further into these "deep things of God" we can find an immediate application of this truth in our lives, and indeed one which is much more far-reaching that we might have imagined.

Very simply put, all the pairs of opposites by which existence is manifested (cold/hot, light/dark, hard/soft, need/supply, etc.) are meant to operate as unities: as a quarter by its very nature has two sides–headshails. We can’t know a quarter by knowing "heads" only. One is simply the flip side, or backside, of the other. So God intended darkness to simply be the lack of light which highlights "light" and makes it what it is, emptiness to be the lack of fullness by which we know total filling, vessels (us) to be the lack of God through which He expresses Himself.

Eternally fixed as a self for others– total outpoured love for His creation–God said an eternal "no" to the opposite of Himself. Thus "not love" was the opposite of love, "not light" the opposite of light, and they were destined by God to remain simply that which He said "no" to so that we and all creation could experience only the kingdom of His "yes."

Satan was not content to be simply a vessel–a non–Creator–to be filled by the Creator. He wanted to be some–thing in and of himself. So in his will–fulness he turned the kingdom of God’s "no" into the kingdom of his "yes"; yes to self-for-self, yes to hate, yes to darkness. He, as it were, split the opposites apart from one another, and what was to have remained the hidden high–lighter of God’s positive became an actual sphere of evil.

At the fall all these cooperating unities were split in our consciousness into two camps–light vs. dark, creature vs. creator, weakness vs. strength: this was the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. Lost was the viewpoint of life as a unity, with one thing only an indicator of the other thing–indeed, the lack of something proving the supply of that very thing, its opposite. How could we have this wrong divided out look changed and be restored to seeing as God intended? By faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, when He took that Satanic outlook to the grave, and was raised with a unified outlook, seeing God’s perfection at every sign of imperfection. Need becomes evidence of its "flip side," supply; weakness and inability are seen to be the receptacle for His perfect strength and competence–there at the moment of need, because they are simply one side of the complementary pair of opposites.

This gives us a revolutionary way of viewing all the problems of life, great or small. Every difficulty is God’s perfect circumstance presenting us with an opportunity to "die" to what we naturally perceive as need, problem, heartache, tragedy and replace this divided view with His view, His seeing through us. As seen with eyes of faith, we see all in perfect balance. We really have His faith–He believing in Himself in us. He alone sees His creation as it is intended to be. It is only Satan who sees need without supply at hand, problems with no hope of solutions. As He in us as us dies to this lie and replaces it with His integrating Spirit (the lack signalling its opposite supply), He carries on His unifying work through us. This is "the bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus" that God’s light and life can flow redemptively through us into a situation of apparent darkness and death. Thus we become co–operators with Him, believing and operating His positive into every apparent negative cranny and crevice. This is part of what an understanding of the law of opposites entails–we are He in action reconciling all things unto Himself. A high calling.