The Holy Spirit is going to take what is Jesus' and share it with us! What do the Father, Son, and Spirit have? Unity, delight, joy, love, hope, and wonder. Within their connection there is no shadow, no fear, no shame, no worry or anxiety. They share other centered love and delight. They are creative, and they take great joy in goodness.
The plan from the beginning of creation was to include us in the relationship that the Father, Son, and Spirit share with each other. "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to son-ship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will--to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves (Ephesians 1:4-6)."
The Father, Son, and Spirit created us out of love; not for some obscure purpose or goal, but for the simple joy of relationship. They created us to share with us the life that have together! A life of union, joy, peace, and love. In that passage it says that He predestined us in 'love', and that he chose us to be holy and blameless in His sight. Holiness isn't some sort of squeaky clean moral rightness. Holiness is how set-apart, unique, and wholesome the relationship is that they share. It is their life, their essence, their goodness and love that makes them holy. We are destined to be blameless so that we can stand naked and unashamed before each other and God, just like Adam and Eve did in the beginning.
We do not have some sort of obscure practical purpose here on Earth. We were created out of love to exist in love; both with each other and with our creator. A dance of intimacy, wholeness, and goodness that produces joy! Our purpose is to live in the dance of His love and to participate in that relationship; nothing more, nothing less.
The fall was humankind turning away from face to face interaction. It was a turning from the dependence and dance of other centered love to pursue independent existence. An existence that we were never created for. Eating from the tree of good and evil brought conscience into our existence, and with our conscience came shame. Instead of intimacy, vulnerability, and other centered love, we became ashamed, pretentious, and self-centered. We turned in on ourselves in our hurt and pain. We couldn't see God for who He actually was, and our guilty conscience tainted our perception of the world around us. Out of our desire to hide from ourselves, we ran from Him and His love. God became an evil being in our eyes because we could not bear to stand in His all consuming love.
God never changed His original purpose. In love, we were predestined for adoption. This, the Father, Son, and Spirit would still accomplish; but because of our brokenness, it was going to be adoption through pain and suffering. Pain for us, because we would have to be confronted with our deepest hurts and shame; pain for God because in order to unite us to Himself He would have to enter into our brokenness and blindness. Our pain and shame caused us to reject and hate the God of pure love. Because He is love, He would do anything to reconcile us to Himself, to show us who He really is, and to show us how loved we are by Him. How He did that is what we call the Gospel!
Jesus entered into our world; in the likeness of sinful flesh he entered into our sense of separation. He was the light in the darkness, the image of the invisible God. He came to show us who the God of Israel actually was, our loving Father. He came to His own, but we did not recognize Him. Jesus did not make sense to our minds, our hurts, and our shame. Jesus came and declared that 'no one knew the Father'. We were messed up, blind, and confused. No one knew the Father but the son, and if we wanted to know the Father we would have to come to Him.
Jesus was not accepted, and not understood; instead He was spurned. Jesus submitted Himself to our anger and frustration. Out of our angst, pride, and hurt, we killed the loving God that created us, holds us, and sustains us. Jesus took all of our sin as we vented our frustration by crucifying Him as a criminal on the cross. We could not handle who He was, and what He represented. Our shame and pride could not stand in His presence. He died under our bondage, under our hurt, on account of our transgressions. He hung on cross and entered into our blindness, 'My God my God why have you forsaken me.' That was the first time Jesus had said 'God' rather than Father. He entered into our alienation, and in that place of feeling alone He met His Father face to face, "Into your hands I commend my spirit."
Jesus, just like Adam, represented all of us. He united Himself with us at our worst, dying for us while we were dead in our own sins. The apostle Paul talks about this mystical union we have with Christ. When He died we all died, when He rose we all rose, when He ascended we all ascended. On the cross Jesus adopted us into the relationship He has with the Father, not when were are at our best, but when we still were rejecting Him. We are united to Him because He chose to adopt us. Our faith is the waking up to that reality. The Apostle Paul met Jesus and he declared that, 'God was pleased to reveal His son in me.'
Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would come and share with us what is His. That on the day of the Spirit we would come to realize that Jesus is one with the Father, that He is in us, and that we are in Him (John 14:20). We have been wrapped up in the Father's embrace, into the holy life of God. Our walk of faith is to see Christ in us the hope of glory who is producing Himself in us, sharing the intimate embrace of the Father in our deepest places of hurt, rejection, and isolation. We are no longer separate from God even in our darkness, for the light still shines there. God was in Christ reconciling the whole world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).
Now the question is how do we participate in that relationship? What is our walk of faith? How do we see and experience our union. Where is God in our hurt, confusion, and pain? That we will look to tackle in the next blog post!
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