Learning Love

I’ve been engaging recently in a lot of reading about the loving nature of God. This love is Trinitarian  and eternal, which is why Jesus says what He says in the so-called High Priestly prayer of John 17: “Father I desire that they (my followers), whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24).  It is a remarkable notion that God and the Son loved one another before the foundation of the world. That means that before God is rule-giver and even Creator, He is Father and Son in loving relationship.

This undergirds why the Gospel is all about family and loving relationship:
   -Family - being adopted into God’s family so that the believer is an heir with Christ who calls on God as Abba Father (Jn. 1:12-13, Gal. 4:5-6);
   -Loving relationship - living in the reality that your Father hears you, is looking out for your very best, and is working for your good (Lk. 18:7-8, Rom. 8:28, 1 Jn. 5:14).

It is in his nature to be this way: A loving Father who expresses that love to his children in whom he delights.

What Salvation Is

But this also explains what salvation is: The restoration of the relationship which was lost in Eden. If the Fall is the descent from knowing God in truth (so that now, “none seek for God,” Ps. 14:2, and now there are “strongholds raised against the knowledge of God,” 2 Cor. 10:4-5), then redemption is Jesus’ descent to us in order to consequently ascend us back into the relationship with the Father for which we were created.

Notice that Jesus ends the aforementioned prayer this way: “I made known to them (my followers) your (the Father’s) name, and I will continue to make it known...” why? “That the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (17:26). Make two very important notes here: First, that the the name of the Father is an expression of His love for His Son. That is, God’s self-expression is a statement about His eternal love for His Son. Think of Jesus’ baptism - “This is my son, whom I love” (Mt. 3:17). To know the Father is by necessity to know His love for His Son. This means that, if I can be so bold, before you can appreciate his love for you, you have to appreciate his love for the Son. Only when this Trinitarian love settles into your mind can you understand that He therefore loves you too because you are united by faith with His Son.

And secondly, notice that once the knowledge of this Father and Son love is acquired, that very love comes into the believer along with Jesus’ own presence. This is a knowledge that is more than intellectual ascent. Rather, it is a knowledge that enters into our hearts and changes us. This is why Paul says that with the heart one believes and is justified (Rom. 10:10). Further, note that Paul elsewhere says that this love of God is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). When Jesus prayed this prayer in John 17, he had just finished telling the disciples about how the Holy Spirit is his very presence with them: About the believer, “(My Father and I) will come to him and make our home with him ... the Spirit of truth (will) .. be with you forever” (Jn. 14:23, 16). At 17:26 He is praying that the Holy Spirit will continue bringing home His very presence as the disciples continue to grow in knowing the love of the Father and the Son.

I think this is why Paul prays in Ephesians 3:18 that the Christians in Ephesus would be able to comprehend “what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that (they) may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18-19): When your heart learns this love of Christ and the Father, Christ and the Father enter into your heart by the Holy Spirit. So, Paul prays for it. The fullness of God consists in the enjoyment of the love of the Father and the Son. Far from being a theologian’s theoretical construct, the Trinity is actually the very shape of Christian faith. Maybe this is why the ancients spent so much time trying to articulate the doctrine accurately: The Trinity is more than a doctrine - instead, we’re talking about God’s own nature, and that which we are brought into when we come to Christ.

Running From, or Running To God

I know this is all theoretical and heavy theology, but let me make it personal: The essence of the fall in Eden was Adam and Eve’s giving into Satan’s temptation to think that God doesn’t love them, is instead lying to them, and isn’t out for their good. Read the first six or seven verses of Genesis 3 - that is exactly the temptation: God is lying to you, don’t listen to him. And I would suggest that that wrong belief is the fuel for the world’s continued run from God, whether atheistic and anti-Christ societies, or young adults in a generally Christian society growing up in church and then leaving it behind: Wrong thoughts about God and whether or not He loves you enough to tell you the truth about yourself, the world, and how to become the you you were made to be. Usually it is a God who is first concerned with rules from whom people are running. And of course He is the Lawgiver and, as Creator, demands our acknowledgement of Him and loving fear (Prov. 1). But what if before anything else, He is a loving Community who invites people into life with Him so they can enjoy His love as they journey into eternity? In other words, what if, instead of following your heart, you were made for “the fellowship of the Father and the Son” (1 John 1:3), and it is not until His love fills your heart that you can trust your heart enough to follow it?

Jesus offers himself at the cross as the demonstration of the fact that even if you don’t believe it, God’s heart is a Father’s heart. And He will not only have you, but He’ll embrace you, clean you, save you, and give you your life back.

Run to him.

Jesus’s Uniqueness

I’ve made a practice over the years of talking in sermons and lessons about Jesus’s uniqueness. Examining him as the gospels present him (as well as how the apostles spoke of him in their preaching and letters), there is no doubt about it: He’s perfect. The perfect human - indeed more than human - but human, and so perfectly.

Michael Reeves, the president of Union School of Theology in Wales, is one of my two favorite living theologians (along with Graeme Goldsworthy). Reeves has an arresting two paragraphs on Jesus’ uniqueness that is worth devoting a whole blog post to. In terms of sheer power, I place this short passage up next to CS Lewis’s famous Liar, Lunatic, or Lord passage in Mere Christianity.

Enjoy:

“Generous and genial, firm and resolute, (Jesus) was always surprising. Loving but not sloppy, his insight unsettled people and his kindness won them. Indeed, he was a man of extraordinary - and extraordinarily appealing - contrasts. You simply couldn’t make him up, for you’d make him only one or the other. He was red-blooded and human, but not rough. Pure, but never dull. Serious with sunbeams of wit. Sharper than cut glass, he out-argued all comers, but never for the sake of the win. He knew no failings in himself, yet was transparently humble. He made the grandest claims for himself, yet without a whiff of pomposity. He ransacked the temple, spoke of hellfire, called Herod a fox, the Pharisees pimped-up corpses, and yet never do you doubt his love as you read his life.

“With a huge heart, he hated evil and felt for the needy. He loved God and he loved people. You look at him and you have to say, ‘Here is a man truly alive, unwithered in any way, far more viral and vigorous, far more full and complete, far more human than any other.’” (Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ, 54-55, emphasis in original)

The reason I’m a Christian is not because I was raised in it or because America is a Christian nation (in fact, compelling studies have suggested that it is doubtful that even 15% of American self-professed Christians are truly living in Jesus.) Rather, I’m a Christian because of what Reeves distilled above: Jesus is perfect, and his identity, genuineness, and truth are unassailable. To know him is to know life, and life to the fullest. Hence, “He is the true God and eternal life” (1 Jn. 5:20). If taking up a cross daily, whether literally or figuratively, meant drawing closer to Him, it would be worth it, because in him is life and life eternal