For the love of God
For the love of God
Our merely human relationships are designed to show us the love of God in practical and obvious ways. Husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children, cousins, lovers, all degrees of love in their intention. Calling the God of the universe who called the worlds into being, and to whom the nations are like dust Abba, daddy, Father, is not an easy one to wrap our minds around.
For a while everyone wanted Jesus to be your pal, your buddy, just one of the guys with an emphases upon the ‘humanness’ of God to the exclusion of a sober and respectful apprehension of the character of Him with whom we have to do. Lots of immanence; light on transcendence. These days things might be a little to the extreme in the other direction. He is so ‘other’, He is “wholly other”. That is very, very other. The problem being, a God that cannot be known as He really is, is exactly as interesting as a God that does not exist. If He cannot be known, or if mere human language cannot meaningfully communicate the truths of His character and nature, He would be irrelevant even if existent. Besides all this, the unknowable analogous god of modern philosophy is neither the God we meet in Holy Scripture nor the God of the historic Christian faith. At best he is an analogous god for an agnostic people in a nebulous faith with an inestimable content.
Swaying to this side of the spectrum, we might even miss that so important truth that we have been emboldened, persuaded, commanded, to approach the throne of God in Christ with a full and overwhelming conviction that the Lord of all things has become a Father to the Fatherless, and a Savior to the lost. That He is accepting even now the contrition and repentance of those that come to Him with sincerity of heart. We need to know Him, and to know this about Him.
If we were more meager theologians, and every Christian is a theologian to some degree, we might think that our boldness to enter into the presence of God might be built upon our own inconsistent moral performance. As if the law of God in its completeness had not already been performed entirely in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. As if there were still something for us to do, to complete, to fulfill that were lacking in the moral performance of the Eternal Son of God, made flesh, for us.
But here is where we find those dual truths of the Lord being one who will not pass by justice in the pursuit of mercy, and yet a loving friend that always has in mind what is best for those that love Him. Always acting so that children avoid the consequences of every act, whether good or ill, is not what a loving parent does. A true friend tells us the truth even to our own sorrow. A true lover is the lover of our soul more than our flesh. So constant a companion as the God whom we know, will not abandon us as if we were orphans in the very process of bringing us into the fold of His heavenly family. He judges all by His law, in a sense, even when He indulges them by His grace. Our own children we love in everything through grace but still have the full intent to mold their consciences and character through instruction and consequence, though it hides nothing of our love when we do, and all of these things are given from one primary and irreducible intent on our part, the edification of the one we love.
As with God Himself, for His children who are known by Him, and called by His name, His active love toward them might at times look deceptively like His actions toward those whom He does not know, but His intent in these things is different in every particular. The untrained eye untutored by Scripture and experience might look at the circumstances that the Christian finds themselves in and think to themselves that there is no difference between the compassionate doting of a loving Father in His discipline of the Children He loves, and the harsh visitation of judgment upon those whom He knows not. But this would be to think of God as the world thinks, thinly, and apart from the deeper wisdom.
The Christian, to be certain, is not under the Law nor will he be judged by the Law, because the dead man he was, that guilty and brutal criminal he was born, has born all possible judgments in the Christ and Him crucified. There is nothing left to bear, for Christ has borne the world. And this is why He will conform us as dearly loved children to the likeness of Christ Himself in all of His glorious and perfect moral excellence. And why even in the love of God, for our good and not at all for our destruction or despair, a measure of light suffering and bearable crushing has been appointed for our glory, that is not comparable to the wonders that await us on the last day of our blessed hope, because we are beloved children of a loving God.
That Christ was for us, a partial Savior, or the idea that there is a real and not merely a categorical distinction between His ‘active’ and His ‘passive’ righteousness, is best left to those struggling to discover some righteousness of their own with which to bribe the Deity. The Son of God in His work for us did not distinguish between that of ours for which he suffered and that of ours for which worked. The work of Christ on our behalf is of one life lived in our place, one entire personal labor, and gives us all that we need both now and ever to make us complete in Him, apart from the tally of any of our attempts to gain ground with God through some kind of cosmic karma. In our Justification, our works, are at best, sins, and Christ’s intent, is to save that which was lost, and He has achieved His goal to the utmost.
Christopher Neiswonger
