The House of His Father

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich” (2COR 8:9).

In the genius of the blessed Trinity, our cruel rejection of Jesus became the way of our adoption; our bitter abuse became the way of the Father’s embrace and the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. For how could our unfaithfulness and contempt and treachery, or the enslaving lie of the evil one, or death itself break the love and oneness and life of the blessed Trinity?  In dying at our hands, Jesus brought his life into our death, his relationship with his Father into our gnarled pathology, his anointing by the Holy Spirit into our twisted darkness. Out of his boundless love “he was dishonored that he might glorify us,” (Gregory Nazianzen, Orations, I.5.) “he endured our insolence that we might inherit immortality”( Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God, §54). Suffering our abuse to give us grace, he met our cruelty with his kindness, our rejection with his merciful acceptance, and our dead and despairing religion with his joy.  By accepting us at our very worst, by submitting himself to us in our great darkness, he entered into our world with his, thus transforming the shack of Adam’s horrid fall into the house of his Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit.

In a variation on St. Paul’s great statement we might say, “For you know the stunning grace of the Father’s Son: that though he was rich in the shared life of the blessed Trinity, yet for our sake he became poor, suffering our wrath to meet us, and that now through his suffering we who were so poor have been included in Jesus’ own rich relationship with his Father in the Spirit.”

Who Rejected Jesus?

“Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners” (Matthew 26:45). 

“For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart” (Hebrews 12:3). 

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and will deliver him up to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify him...” (Matthew 20:18).

The inherent legalism of the Western Church trains our eyes to see Jesus’ suffering as the judgment of God upon our sin, and virtually blinds us to the more obvious point that Jesus suffered from the wickedness of humanity. It was the human race, not the Father, who rejected his beloved Son and killed him.  The wrath poured out on Calvary’s hill did not originate in the Father’s heart, but in ours.  The humiliation that Jesus bore, the torment that he suffered, was not divine but human. We mocked him; we detested him; we judged him. We ridiculed him, tortured him, and turned our face from him. It was not the Father or the Holy Spirit who abandoned Jesus and banished him to the abyss of shame; it was the human race. We cursed him.

Either the Father, Son, and Spirit were caught off guard by our corporate rejection of Jesus, or there is a redemptive genius at work here that is too beautiful for words. Was the Jewish and Roman rejection of Jesus not foreseen by the triune God? Was the Father surprised when we killed the solution? Was Jesus bewildered and the Holy Spirit shocked when things went south and the crowds turned against him? No, of course not. The animosity of the human race towards the Father’s Son was anticipated, and indeed counted on, and literally incorporated (See Acts 2:23) as the critical part in bringing about our real relationship. Here is amazing grace. In breathtaking love, the Lord’s way of relationship and reconciliation involves the shocking acceptance of our cruelty. The Incarnation involves the inconceivable submission of the Trinity to our bizarre darkness and its bitter judgment.

And the point of such shocking grace is to find us, to meet us, to relate to us and to embrace us as we really are as broken, deceived, wounded, terror-filled, and rebellious creatures.  Here is the heart of the grace of the blessed Trinity.  Jesus bowed to suffer from our loathsome enmity.  He took a dagger to the heart.  He willfully and astonishingly submitted himself to us in our profound darkness—and we damned him—and in submitting himself to us he embraced us at our very worst. 

What does this mean?  It means that Jesus took our treachery, our betrayal, our murder and turned them into the way of his Father’s embrace and into the Holy Spirit’s anointing.  We killed him.  Jesus is saying to us on Good Friday: “I can take your murder, and I can let it happen, and in so doing I am accepting you as you are, and I am bringing my relationship with my Father, and my anointing with the Holy Spirit into your murderous darkness.  I use your murder to be the way I bring you into real relationship with my Father and the Holy Spirit. 

Our contribution to our adoption was to pour our wrath out upon Jesus.  And on this day we did.  Jesus took it, and drew us in all our anger and brokenness and sin into his Father’s arms.  Shocking, stunning, beautiful grace. It is not ‘dark’ Friday, but ‘good’ Friday.

A Few Gems

"And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people" (Rev 14:6).

"Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him, in love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will (Eph 1:4-5)

"...who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity" (2Tim 1:9).

First Words

The first words of Jesus in John’s gospel are a question: “What do you seek?”  Twice John the Baptist had pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Two of the Baptist’s disciples followed behind Jesus.  It was then that Jesus turned and asked them, “What do you seek?”  Such a simple question, yet so loaded.  What?  What is it that you want?  What are you after?  What is driving you?  What is the prize you seek?  What is the object of your desire?  You?  What do you want?  Here the searching eyes of Jesus touch the heart.  This is not an abstract question, not even theological.  This is personal, profoundly so, searching.  Jesus himself turns his penetrating gaze upon two young men.  He has no time for surface conversation.  He wants to know what they think.  He cares about where they are in their journey of understanding, where they think they are.  What do you seek?

As I read it, the disciples are a little shaken, perhaps dazed. Who wouldn’t be?  There is no hiding with Jesus.  No wiggle room.  It was one of those moments when you know that he knows that you know that he knows.  It was a moment in the crosshairs of grace, which necessarily judges or exposes the inner world and its confusion.  Taking our cue from what Andrew, one of the disciples, did next and said—found his brother Peter and announced, “We have found the Messiah”—and the cascading ripples and implications that take shape immediately thereafter, we can see that a lot was happening in this simple discussion. The disciples answer Jesus with a question.  “Rabbi, where are you staying.”  I suspect this was a recovery question of sorts.  They knew how to handle the Baptist and his fiery passion, but Jesus and his question are so simple, so authentic, so real they were stopped in their tracks and rendered momentarily speechless.  The best they could do was, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” 

For John the gospel writer, their question too is loaded.  At first it seems arbitrary, if not inane.  The prophet had just declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and these disciples get a chance to talk with him personally and all they want to know where he is staying?  Why the translators chose to use ‘staying’ instead of ‘dwelling’ is a mystery to me.  For the gospel writer, their question is dead on as well, and he gives them quite a compliment.  Jesus where are you dwelling?    In terms of the flow of the gospel, John had just written that Jesus is the one who was face to face with the Father from the beginning, and that Jesus is the one who dwells in the bosom of the Father, and the one upon the Holy Spirit dwells. 

In his ‘discussion’ with the religious delegation sent out to discover his identity, the Baptist answered, “I baptize in water, but among you stands One whom you do not know.”  Among you stands.  He is here, present, not absent, in your presence, and you do not know him.  The Baptist’s disciples, unlike the religious group, hear their leader, turn and follow Jesus.  They see something in Jesus.  They want to know where he dwells.  Jesus does not give a theological answer about his dwelling.  He does not name the place or describe how to get there.  He does not give them a map—if he did, no doubt, we would all try to get there without him. 

Jesus had to be thinking to himself, ‘so, you boys want to know where I dwell?’  With what must have been a wry smile, he simply says to these two young men, “Come, and you will see.”  Walk with me and you will know for yourself.  You cannot find the answer you seek in your heads.  This is not about five esoteric principles that can you apply to your life for your own betterment.  This is not about a place where the Father’s blessings are housed, and can be accessed.  This is about relationship.  Jesus is the one who knows the Father and dwells in his bosom.  Jesus is the one upon whom the Holy Spirit dwells.  He has come to be with us.  He is the living one.  He has life.  We cannot have what he has without him.  He commands us to walk with him.  This is a command of relationship, full of eternal promise.  Walk with me.  Put your agenda away, let go of your ideas, walk with me and I will show you who I am, and who my Father is, and the Holy Spirit, and thus who you are, and what your souls actually seek, and you will dwell with me in my Father’s bosom in my anointing in the Holy Spirit.

“In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (14:20). 

Revelation

Of all things, I have been drawn of late to study John’s Revelation.  The book has scared me since my early Sunday School days, and every time I’ve read it since—even Peterson’s The Message—it strikes me as bizarre, ungracious and brutal.  This time, I have been reading it with Darrell Johnson’s help (Discipleship on the Edge) and at last the utter Christ-centeredness that you would expect from John shines through.  Darrell has done a fantastic service to believers everywhere.  Note what Jesus says of himself to the seven churches.  Each affirmation is so profoundly personal to each particular struggle of the individual church.  Each is strong, simple, and so much bigger than our Western minds.  Jesus is the center of all creation, always has been and always will be.  One day we will all see it.

“The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands” (2:1).

“The first and the last, who was dead, and has come to life” (2:8).

“The One who has the sharp two-edged sword” (2:12).

“The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze” (2:18).

“He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars” (3:1)

“He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens” (3:7).

“The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning [arche, source and meaning] of the creation of God” (3:14).

The seven stars represent the whole of creation.  The seven spirits represent the complete anointing of Jesus in the Spirit.  He is the one and only person in Biblical history who received the Holy Spirit as an abiding, immeasurable gift.  The seven lampstands represent the whole church.

Take some time and reflect on what we are being told about Jesus here.  The One who is at the center of the cosmos and the church; the One who is the source and meaning of all things, the One who died and rose again; the One anointed with the Holy Spirit; the One who sees and discerns; the Truth; the Father’s Son; the true witness; the One who opens doors than none can shut; this One is in our midst. There is a reason that again and again John simply says, “Look!”  “Behold!”  No doubt, we, like the individuals and the churches in John’s day, face serious turmoil, especially in our darkness.  John’s answer is to shine the light on Jesus.  He is where the buck stops.  Jesus is where all pretentious arguments cease.  Before Him everyone will know that He knows that we know that He knows.  Jesus has overcome.  His victory is eating its way through the (and our) darkness. Meantime: “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).  

Back

Folks,

Thanks for your patience.  I am making my way back from a long journey of writing and completely refurbishing our house.  There are several things in the works, which I will be writing about soon.  The main project has been my book The Shack Revisited, which I am pleased to tell you will be available around the world in October, published through Faith Words, a division of Hachette.  Meantime, it was published in Brazil by Sextante Press in September, and in four months reached number 11 on the non-fiction, best-seller list.  Not sure how to handle that, but, 'Thank you, Holy Spirit, we will have more please' is definitely in order.  It is clear that the spiritual climate around the world is changing.  People are tired of the emptiness of religion, and they are open and hungry for the truth.  What could be more beautiful?  The ancient gospel is being recovered and people are ready to hear it.

Over the last year I have been reading and re-reading a good bit of the great George MacDonald.  His book, Unspoken Sermons, which has been republished by Regent College Publishing as Christ in Creation: Unspoken Sermons of George MacDonald, edited by Roland Hein (available on Amazon), is so beautiful it is beyond words.  I read several of these sermons years ago, perhaps all of them, but I was not ready to appreciate what our brother was saying.  He grew up in harsh world of Calvinist Scotland, with an exceptionally loving father and and equally harsh school master.  His life long question related to holding together the love of Jesus' Father with what is called 'the justice of God.'  Unlike most of those of the growing liberal persuasion in his day, MacDonald was not willing to throw out the hard passages of Scripture to fit the softer God of the day.  So what you find in MacDonald is an extraordinary vision of the Father heart of God—the best I have ever read anywhere—with an equally extraordinary vision of the fact that this Father will never let us off with anything—again, the best I have ever read anywhere.  We must be clean, MacDonald would say, else we would never enjoy our Father and life in his house, and what Father would want that for his children?  Who really wants to go to heaven only to hide from the Father?  That is a rather honest and huge question.  What emerges in MacDonald's thought, through some 50 plus novels, fairy tales, sermons, lectures etc, is a picture of the self-sacrificing nature of the blessed Trinity for our benefit, and a sacrificing love that demands that we have not a feather of evil in us so that we can enjoy forever the life of the Father, Son and Spirit.

"All that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind must be destroyed."

For MacDonald, judgment is not vindictive punishment for sin, the overflowing wrath of a disapproving deity, but a discerning, and a dividing of our false selves from who we are in Christ, so that we may live.  All that is alien in us to the trinitarian life of God has to be removed.  The judgment of God is the same as his mercy, love and goodness.  For what merciful God would ever allow us to be miserable in our darkness?  "If a man refuse to come out of his sin, he must suffer the vengeance of a love that would not be love if it left him there."  Jesus alone (not the church) is able to discern the demarcation between what we have become in our darkness and sin, and who we are in him, and he will strike his mark in patience, tenderness and grace.  No doubt it will hurt, but it is a good hurt, a redemptive hurt, a burning unto real purification and life.  So MacDonald does not throw out hell as an anachronistic bit of religious superstition; he gathers it into his vision of the determined Father heart of God.  It is redemptive.  We will be ready for the glory given to us in Jesus.  Thus we must be discerned in utter love—and righteousness, holiness, justice, mercy, truth.  We will be brought to the place where we run to Papa and beg him to judge us to the core of our being, for nothing will be more precious to us than life his house, life with Jesus and in the free-flowing fellowship of the Spirit.

How we get there from here lands us in the center of the ministry and the mystery of the Holy Spirit, the lover or our souls.    

A Word from John McLeod Campbell

My friend John MacMurray emailed these quotes from John Mcleod Campbell's The Nature of the Atonement.   

"If the atonement is rightly conceived of as a development of the incarnation, the relation of the atonement to the incarnation is indissoluble; and in a clear apprehension of the incarnation must be felt to be so. Further, if the eternal life given to us in Christ is that divine life in humanity in which Christ made atonement for our sins, then the connection between the atonement and our participation in the life of Christ is not arbitrary, but natural: and thus the incarnation, the atonement, and man's participation in the divine nature, offer to our faith one purpose of divine love, reaching its fulfillment by a path which is determined by what God is and what he wills that man should be.

"Yet I cannot forget that there are earnest and deep thinking minds in whose case the faith of the incarnation and their acceptance of it as the fundamental grace of God to man to the light of which all that concerns God's relation to man is to be taken, has issued, not in the recognition of the atonement as a development of the incarnation, but on the contrary, regard the atonement as in the light of the incarnation alike uncalled for and inconceivable."

"So soon as the incarnation... is accepted as itself the light to which the subject of the atonement must be taken, we are prepared to find that all conceptions of the atonement, which accord not with the love of the Father of spirits to mend his offspring manifested in the incarnation, will be rejected."