Pairs of Opposites: The Operating Law of the Universe

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All the universe, from God Himself down through all His manifestations, only operates as pairs of opposites. The one expresses itself by utilizing the other for its manifestation (see 2 Cor. 5:4), and there is no consciousness except by opposites. Light can only be seen by its “swallowing up” dark; sweet by bitter; heat by cold; yes by no; hard by soft, and so on ad infinitum. In an armchair, the soft cushion must utilize the hard framework to make a comfortable chair. So too in abed. A cook can only make a dish sweet by the sweetness overcoming the nonsweetness. Our decisive “yes” only has its strength by swallowing up the alternative “no.” Electricity only functions by the interaction of positive and negative; the atom by the combination of proton and electron. So it is with our personal consciousness. We don’t let an infant go near a hot stove or he will burn himself, or near a pool of water when he doesn’t yet know the difference between water and dry ground.

But as this is so on every level of our material world, it is equally and fundamentally true of our inner selves. We are only conscious of ourselves when we have discovered we are either expressers of a self-getting nature (Satan) or a self-giving nature (Christ). Our human “being,” with all its potential, can only express in its quantity the quality of the spirit-nature which indwells it, either that of “the spirit of error” or alternatively “the Spirit of Truth” (1 John 4:6). Blake, the poet, describes a tiger and lamb as having the same essential physical make-up but with different natures manifested by them. We have already mentioned a modern illustration of this: a computer with untold potential but only operating and expanding the nature of the subject the programmer has put into it. And we humans only become consciously functioning humans when we have been confronted by the two trees in the Garden, and made our fateful choice.

Behind that fact about us as created persons, Paul states that God Himself has a limitation: “… God that cannot lie… ”(Titus 1:2).’ In other words, He has from eternity been the Trinity, in His Father-Son relationship of love, each for the other, and the Spirit being the Reproducer of Him (Them) in His nature in the universe. If God had remained just a “One” in all His Almightiness, as a Loner He would have been a Self-for-Self, compared in Scriptures to a self-consuming fire. But by a “death” to Himself as a Loner, He brought His beloved Son into being. To use a human expression (the spoken word which proceeds from a thought thus through to a manifestation) the Son was His “express image” (Heb. 1:3), and thus He moved into an other-love relationship, just as lire becomes light. Fire consumes, light blesses. We now know that that outer “fire,” the sun, consists of hydrogen atoms which fuse into helium atoms, and the energy released in the fusing is the light we live by.

So, if the Eternal One is only the Love Person by virtue of a ‘death” to one alternative of being by Himself as a consuming lire, and a “life” in an eternal love interchange with His Son, so surely all those created in His image as persons can only be conscious selves by being confronted with the possibility of expressing a self-for-self false spirit nature, or the self-for-others God-Spirit nature. That is why the Scripture says God “created evil” (Is. 45:7). Evil is only a person expressing self-for-self mid good is a person expressing self-for-others. If God Himself had to have that settled for Himself (when it says He “cannot lie” and thus express a self-for-self), so every created person must confront and have those opposites fixed in the one potential “swallowing up” the other. Therefore, when God created persons, He could only do so by persons having their freedom in those alternative choices. Thus, He “created evil” as the other necessary alternative which was “swallowed up” in Him, and He cannot create persons as persons without their having their freedom of choice as persons.

Lucifer was the first person revealed by the Scriptures as made perfectly in God’s image (as we all are). By being so entranced by his own perfections (Ezek. 28:11-17) that he chose to be a self-for-self, even to appropriating the throne of God (Is. 14:12-15), he became the exposer of the necessary opposite swallowed up in God. Thus, he was named “the spirit of error,” and in his nature as the opposite of God, was “cast out of heaven.”