Lord God, help us – we are so woefully short of what you want us to be, what you want us to know and what you want us to do!
I am talking in particular about our acknowledging and responding to the magnificent, mysterious love that resides in – no, “resides in” is not correct – I should say, that IS God and permeates His very being (since love is God) and reaches out with tender care to His sin-ridden creatures. We just don’t understand; we haven’t a clue; we have neither the intellectual ability nor the spiritual depth and intimacy with God to see how much the Father loved the Son - His only begotten Son Jesus.
What I am attempting to do would be ludicrous if it were not so critical to the spiritual well-being of you and me. I, who am not the greatest intellect nor the most spiritually well-informed person around (not even in my small circle of colleagues), am reaching avidly for a better understanding of the tremendous love of God while simultaneously I am trying just as avidly to impart to you what few crumbs I have picked up from under the table so that you and I can both grow in Christ.
God has been gracious to me in my ignorance and He has given me vague hints (I don’t have the mental or spiritual capacity for other than a hint) of the immense love the Father has toward His only begotten Son; and these intimations have left me pleading to see more of this wonderful love. There is so much more for us to know about the love that existed (and still exists – to forever) between the Father and the Son (and stretches even to mankind). I know I shall fully understand that love and become enthralled with it in heaven, but I am pleading now for a better comprehension of this beneficent, addictive LOVE that thrills my soul just to think of it.
We are undeniably made in the image of God and after His likeness, but we are not divinity and only divinity can love as only divinity loves. Only divinity can fully appreciate divine love.
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...'" (Gen.1.26 - NIV) This is a very interesting choice of words because the triune God did make man in the image of God's own threefold being. (Please, don’t get upset over the word, “triune.” It does not mean there are three Gods. It indicates only that there are three facets of God in one appearance or expression whether it be Father, Word/Logos or Holy Spirit.)
“God is Father, Word/Logos and Holy Spirit. Man is body, soul and spirit. The body of man is his visible representation to other creatures and corresponds to the human Jesus who was the Son (Word or Logos – John 1.1) of God. The soul of man is man’s essential being, corresponding to the position of the Father in the Godhead. The spirit of man is the life force, that which gives man life and enables him to do, and has a role parallel to the Holy Spirit's in the Godhead. The Holy Spirit gives the body of Christ (the Church) life and enables it to do God’s work in the world.” (Excerpted from a presently anonymous work.)
Divine love is an esoteric quality that is too good for the coarse sinner to recognize it and to desire it – were it not that God first drew near to His sin-ravaged creatures and drew them to Him with bands of love.
"I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them." (Hos.11.4)
And with the firm establishing in Scripture that God is strictly ONE God, not two or three, we logically conclude the three Expressions of God are not separate and distinct. They (Father, Word/Logos and Holy Spirit) are three primary facets of the one priceless diamond that is Almighty God.
The Godhead is surely a mystery of love and selflessness on the part of the Father and His Son who are one and the same; and yet the two, along with the Holy Spirit, are without doubt three different expressions (or aspects) of the nature of the one only God.
The Scriptures do not place much emphasis on the love the Holy Spirit shares with the Father and Son because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Himself that came back on the Day of Pentecost to shed more light on what Jesus had spoken to His disciples for the past three and a half years. The Holy Spirit would also lead them into all Truth. At times it seems we are moving into that “all truth” at such an agonizingly slow pace! But we are moving, for which we thank God. A slow pace is better than no progress at all.
There is more for us to contemplate in the love of God and it shows us that the love of the Father for His Son Jesus or the love of Jesus for the Father cannot be fully discussed without bringing in the love of both Father and Son for the creature named Man. The following narrative is an account of what happened that demonstrated divinity’s love for mankind. It is a parable, not a literal fact; it only represents facts that are difficult to tell as they really are:
The Father loved the Son (the divine Jesus or Word or logos – the human Jesus did not exist until He was born) with an ironclad, unbreakable love and the union of Father and Son was indissoluble. Then at some point in eternity the Father and Word/Logos realized (since they are of one mind) that man was on a one-way sin-induced ride to hell.
The love that existed between Father and Son (Word/Logos) would also turn out to be an ironclad yoke (although not unwitting to Jesus or His Father) that would desolate the Godhead; and after viewing all the apparent options it was clear there could be no real “options”; there could be only a rupturing of the Godhead (by the Father’s rejection of Jesus as the human Son of God because He was blackened with the sins of the world) that could save man from damnation. God was severely restricted by His own righteousness and justice to one method by which He could save mankind. There was only one path to take: God had to give His own life for the life of His fallen creatures. God the Creator of the Universe had to die! And what did He die for - some great person or at least a saint? No; God, in the person of Jesus, died for the vilest of slimy creatures: Man!
If this were a story told in real time, we would have to say that pandemonium reigned in heaven over this contretemps; the heavenly machinery was stalled in its tracks; it could not move until the matter was resolved. But of course there never has been an impossible situation with God. He has known from an eternity ago what He would do in any situation.
God is a spirit and as such He could not die. Nevertheless divine love would not be denied: God fashioned a body in the womb of a virgin and God Himself resided in the body. The Son of God thus formed was named Jesus and the Spirit of God resided in Him, emanating from and pervading the body from the moment of conception until He (God) had to reject it because Jesus, with the assent and collaboration of His Father, had voluntarily taken upon Himself the sins of the world.
In this manner God died in the Person of Jesus Christ although the Spirit of God that was in Christ did not die. Because of the tragic rejection of Jesus by the Father, Jesus plunged into the lowest hell – not for man’s sins; solely because of the extreme step the Father took when He rejected Jesus, which went against the nature of divinity – until the Father raised Him on the third day. The whole horrible story (that is, horrible until the glorious resurrection) was known beforehand to the Father and His Son Jesus and it was precipitated by a mutual divine love that would not let the sinner die unforgiven and damned for an eternity.
There is no other such love penned by man or conjured up by the weavers of folklore and myth. The mightiest and most powerful Being in existence came down to earth and was vilified and tormented by the lowest creature on the universe at the time. Man was made by God with great potential, but he SINNED in the Garden of Eden and became wretched and deformed – yet despite that God loved him for no discernible reason and, as the human Jesus, He gave up everything He possessed for fickle undependable Man!
How can you turn your back on such a dazzling display of the only pure love the world has ever known? If you – or I – go to hell, we deserve it!
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