The Architectural Design of Jesus the Apostle Part 2

The Creative Work of the Intercession of the Cross

The Intercession of the Cross is the creative work and design of the Jesus the master architect who is the builder, and the blueprint. The Word on the Cross is birthing new creation into being through the travail of his death. Through his incarnation, he enters humanity and begins to create through intercession as The Apostle and High Priest of our faith. 

John 16:21 declares that a woman giving birth (tikto) to a child has pain because her time has come; but when the baby is born she forgets the anguish because her joy that a humanbeing has been born into the world.

The Greek word tikto (travail or birth) and tektomai (to build or construct) share a common root which means to  “bring forth or to produce”.

In John’s gospel, the sorrow turned to joy is the sorrow and pain of the death of the cross and joy is the “joy of the resurrection”. Verse 21 likens Jesus’ death on the Cross to travail and birth (tikto) which indicates that his death was a womb bringing forth, producing, designing and building new creation. 

His cross shaped nature becomes the kanon, rule, and meaure by which his body, the church, is built….and birthed. Build according to the pattern of his prints…the blueprint is red prints.

The Virgin Church that continues to preach the Crucified and Risen Lord is a womb that continues to give birth to the Word of God to continue the incarnation.

The intercession of the Cross is the power of the tomb becoming a womb and through travail new creation (a new human being)comes forth.

I will end with these words from the treatise On the Christ and the Antichrist, from Hippolytus of Rome. He beautifully brings together the Passion of Christ and the incarnation of the Word, woven from the fabric of scripture, through an extended metaphor.

I believe this is why for several years I continue to see a vision of someone called the weaver. I don’t believe there is a being named “weaver”, but it is a metaphor of the Holy Spirit weaving the mystery and revelation of Christ in us the hope of glory.

Exodus 35:30

He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of workman or skilled designer.

“For the Word of God, being fleshless, put on the holy flesh from the holy Virgin, as a bridegroom a garment, having woven it for himself in the sufferings of the Cross, so that having mixed our mortal body with his own power, and having mingled the corruptible into the incorruptible, and the weak with the strong, he might save perishing man.

The web-beam, therefore, is the passion of the Lord upon the cross; and the warp on it is the power of the Holy Spirit; and the woof is the holy flesh woven by the Spirit; and the thread is the grace which by the love of Christ binds and unites the two in one; and the rods are the Word;

and the workers are the patriarchs and prophets who weave the fair, long, perfect tunic for Christ; and the Word passing through these, like the combs (or rods), completes through them that which his Father wills”.

Hippolytus of Rome