Of course, what always set everyone off was that thing about “three days in the tomb and then…” Hadn’t the Greeks guffawed over that one! A corpse hopping off his stone slab? A stiff traipsing about town? Hah! But what entertained the Greeks incensed the Jews. How dare a mere mortal claim the same rank with the Almighty! Especially a bastard rabbi from the backwoods who polluted the Sabbath with his so-called healings and infested teachings!1 He was double a fool for having gotten himself crucified!
But Paul had seen this Rabbi. After the burial. Less than a decade afterwards. This Rabbi had appeared to Paul and his caravan on the road to Damascus—enveloped in eye-sizzling glory, speaking from the third heaven, and majestic beyond words. Unquestionably risen from a stone-cold tomb. This incident alone convinced Paul that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the long prophesied Son of God—come to meet death for the sins of the world in order to grasp life again and lavish it on others.
Hours later this same risen Christ had appeared in softer tones to a Christian man in Damascus, telling him to find and baptize Paul. The message ended with an announcement: “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:15-16).
The proclamation proved true. Paul was destined to spread the fame of Jesus more than the other apostles combined. Yet he suffered intensely in the process.
How we admire him! How often we quote him! We yearn to live that nobly, speak that boldly, fight our vices that manfully. We long to mirror his heart and soul, totally recast by Christ’s death-plundering power.
Some friends of Paul in his own day longed for the same. “We want to be like you, Paul. What’s your secret? How can we know God like you do?”The apostle confided to them in a letter. He described what fueled his remarkable spiritual life and what he craved:
All I care for is to know Christ,
to experience the power of his resurrection,
and to share in his sufferings,
in growing conformity with his death…
(Philippians 3:10, NEB)
“All I care for is to know Christ,” Paul wrote.
Yes, we say in our best moments; we want the same. Life is happiest when we’re on good terms with our Maker.
“All I care for is…to experience the power of his resurrection.”
Absolutely! Bring it on. We want to rise above our circumstances just like he rose from the dead. We could use a good soul-scrubbing. Heaven knows the help we need to wrestle down our vices. We all want to do better.
“All I care for is…to share in his sufferings.”
Uh, wait. Perhaps the apostle overstates himself a bit. We don’t actually want a share of sufferings, Christ’s or anybody else’s. On further thought, however, we grant that hard times in moderate doses can be a good tonic for the soul. This topic of suffering, no doubt, is an important part of Christian living that we all should know more about. Just keep the heat down to a manageable level.
“All I care for is…growing conformity with his death.”
What? Becoming like Christ in his death? we ask. As in martyrdom by crucifixion? As in a living death where we “carry our cross” and God slowly wrenches from us everything we hold dear? You mean likeness to Christ’s death as in being force-fed things I don’t want while wanting things I don’t have? Having suffering shoveled down my throat by God-who-says-he-loves-me? Ugh!
Wait a minute, you say. If the apostle Paul is our prototype, if God points to Paul to show us we can do the same, does he—or the God he represents—have an inkling of the pain I have endured?
Has a husband walked out on him and left him a mountain of bills? Was he born with a facial scar that drew playground taunts and stares? Has he groaned and burned with longing for simple, sensual pleasures I will never know again? Does God sit in an Iranian jail, blindfolded and bewildered? Does he slowly freeze to death in January on a New York sidewalk? Live with the memory of abusive parents, incest, or rape? Has he watched people he cherishes—children, for God’s sake—twitch with torment in body and soul? Get real!
Who is this God I thought I knew?
Who is this God who bids us crawl over broken glass just for the pleasure of his company?
Section I
WHO IS THIS GOD?
Two
ECSTASY SPILLING OVER
Long, long before matter existed, before the cosmos took its first breath, before the first angel opened his eyes, when there was nothing—God had already lived forever. He had not just lived forever. He had been contented forever. And whatever God was, he still is and always will be.
An odd thought for us moderns. Who says God is contented? Assuming it’s true, is it good news? After all, the entire human race is trudging through pain. Should God be allowed to watch it all happen with his feet up in a hammock? Maybe the notion of a satisfied, untroubled Creator disturbs you. But it shouldn’t. For if God is to rescue anyone from heartache he had best not be bleeding himself.
Few people today believe in a contented God, not even his alleged fans. Consider the recent fireside discussions about Genesis hosted by public television’s Bill Moyers. In the show, biblical scholars are seated around the room discussing Moses’ book. Look at the God most of them discover there. He is worried, unsure, petty, jealous, even vindictive. Adam and Eve caught him off guard by eating the fruit, and now he has Big Problems on his hands. First he’s biting his nails, then he’s blowing his stack, overreacting, making heads roll. He’ll probably feel bad about it in the morning.
But the Bible calls him “the blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11). Not a threatened, pacing deity starving for attention but “the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal…” (1 Timothy 6:15–16). One translation actually reads “the blissful God.”1 Ancient Greeks used the word to describe the rich and powerful—society’s upper crust—and to label the gods, who could have whatever they wanted and do as they pleased. Jesus used it when he said, “Blessed are the meek…the poor…the peacemakers.” He meant that such people are fortunate; we should envy them; they’re the truly happy ones.
This is the word the Bible picks to describe God. So to be accurate, contented doesn’t say it strongly enough. God is actually happy. Scan the Bible’s big picture and you’ll find that he’s rapturously happy. He doesn’t just get by—he flourishes.2
What’s God so happy about? Think about it. Unlike us, he lacks for nothing. He’d be that hard-to-shop-for person at Christmas. He once reminded some worshipers who thought they were doing him a favor, “I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:9-10). No teachers, bullies, bosses, coaches, drill sergeants, OSHA inspectors, or wacked-out guys with loaded pistols order him around, for “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Psalm 115:3). He’s not behind schedule, low on energy, short of clout, or awaiting bank approval and a zoning permit to fulfill his plans, because “no one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35).
Imagine the pleasure he must take in everything he’s made. You’ve seen the satisfaction in the child’s face whose crayon masterpiece “House With Tree” is taped onto the fridge. You know how you feel after serving the lauded dinner, typing the compelling term paper, coaxing up the eye-pleasing flowers, or finalizing that corporate merger. We keep returning to admire that brick sidewalk we laid, the model clipper ship sailing proudly across the bookshelf, the restored ‘64 Ford Mustang in the garage. We grin ear to ear after pulling off the perfect prank on Uncle Frank. How did Robert Frost feel holding the first copy of his collected works? Or Michelangelo gazing up at the last bit of drying paint on the Sistine Chapel dome? What runs through Steven Spielberg’s mind at the premiere of his latest film?
Small potatoes all, for God. What do you think surged through him the min
ute after a billion galaxies came into being? With typical understatement, the Bible tells us: “God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:18). After standing back to take in the panorama, he rested—not to catch his breath from exhaustion but to savor the moment.
That’s contentment.
Any job well done is doubly gratifying with someone around to notice. God had this as well. He told Job that as the earth’s foundations were laid “all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). How they fell prostrate at the sight! Is it possible to grasp that heavenly scene? With everything God ever did, from ages past:
Day and night the smoking incense of praise ascended before him from golden vials held by spirits who bowed in reverence; the harps of myriads of cherubim and seraphim continually thrilled with his praise, and the voices of all those mighty hosts were ever eloquent in adoration…Can you imagine to yourselves the sweetness of that harmony that perpetually poured into the ear of…God?3
Such pleasure and worship to drink in! But we still haven’t considered what utterly steals his heart.
If you were God, where could you go to be impressed? After all, you have created everyone and everything. It’s all wonderful, doubtless, but lesser than you. Conversation with any of your creatures, even the grandest, costs an infinite lowering of yourself. What could truly entertain your limitless mind? What idea would intrigue you? Whose company would charm you? Whose character and accomplishments take you aback? Where could you find beauty and grace enough to ravish you?
There is only one answer. Nothing can satisfy an infinite being but an infinite being. For God, the real intoxication comes as he stares in the mirror.
Where is this mirror?
It’s in the Trinity.
Eternities before the cosmos, before the angels, prior to heaven itself—the one and only God existed as three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To deny this, you cannot be a Christian. Yet to fathom it, you would have to be one of the Three.
God has therefore never been alone. Three-As-One, he draws life and being and ultimate enjoyment from no one but himself. He sustains his own existence and fans the flame of his own emotional life. He is his own best friend.
The Spirit is the quiet One. Sharing equal deity and status with the others, he nevertheless eternally flows from the Father and Son. His task is to honor the Son by applying to us the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Father and Son both “send” him. The Spirit doesn’t resent this. He has never resented it. The Three have eternally agreed to this. It’s the Spirit’s very nature to point to the Son. He knows exactly how the Son and Father think, and burns with love to them, for the Three are God together. The Father and Son love the Spirit for this.
But in the Bible, it’s the Son who commands center stage. He is God, absolute divinity, on a par with the Father and the Spirit in every way. The Father never tires of bragging about him:
“Here is my…chosen one in whom I delight…” (Isaiah 42:1).
“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).
The two are so close that the Son is “in the bosom of the Father”—that is, resting his head on his chest, as close friends did while reclining on carpets around a low dinner table in the Middle East (John 1:18 KJV). Furthermore, God has taken the universe and turned the shop over to the Son: “All things have been committed to me by my Father” (Luke 10:22).
Why does the Father treasure him so? Because he sees himself in his Son. His own perfections are flawlessly reflected there. The Son is God standing in the mirror. In him God sees the fountain of all the intelligence, grandeur, and goodness that ever was. We look in the mirror and are almost always disappointed. God looks in the mirror and is riveted. To put it almost ridiculously, if the Father ever had any “cravings,” they are more than met by the Son. The eternal Threesome revels together in a swirling dance of mutual love. The Trinity enjoys pleasure beyond comprehension.
Does this blow your mind? It should.
But how does it help the cancer patient coughing up blood? Or the prisoner sitting on death row? Or John McAllister as the ants wage war on him?
Think of it this way. Your car breaks down a hundred miles from home on a back road, and you’re no mechanic. The kids are whining and hungry in the backseat. You have misplaced your wallet. You walk half a mile to the nearest town. As you walk, you feel a flu coming. From a phone booth you dial friends, collect—no answer. The auto shops are closed. You scan Main Street for someone to drive you to your car, possibly to peek under the hood, but definitely to find your family a place indoors to wait until someone can wire money.
Whom will you approach? That elderly gentleman stepping from the funeral home, wiping his eyes? Those teenagers shouting put-downs at each other across the street? The middle-aged man storming from that row house, cursing as the door slams? The woman in the tattered coat shuffling down the sidewalk with a dirty-faced kid in tow? Or those two neighbors on adjoining front porches, gossiping and chuckling?
You’ll pick the neighbors. Why? Because the others have worries of their own—some of them might even snap your head off. But the neighbors seem in a good mood. People in a good mood are most likely to help others.
God, we might say, is in a good mood. He’s not depressed. He’s not misery seeking company. He’s not some bitter, cosmic Neanderthal with his finger on a nuclear weapon. God is joy spilling over. This is where his mercy comes from. The full tank of love he enjoys is splashing out over heaven’s walls. He swims in elation and is driven to share it with us. Why? Simply, as he put it, “so that my joy may be in you” (John 15:11).
But God is nobody’s water boy. As the solemn Monarch of all, he shares his gladness on his own terms. And those terms call for us to suffer—to suffer, in some measure, as his beloved Son did while on earth. We may not understand his reasons, but we are insane to fight him on this.
He is in ecstasy beyond words.
It is worth anything to be his friend.
Okay, so God likes being God. He’s enjoying himself. But does he care about us? Sunshine in Hawaii doesn’t stop sleet over Boston—what about sunshine in heaven? Lovers at a candlelit table are notoriously oblivious of others—the café has closed, everyone’s gone home, they don’t even notice. God too is in love. The Trinity is happy. But we’re down here drowning in misery. How do we know he even thinks about us?
We know his Son.
The Son “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). He’s “the exact representation of [God’s] being” (Hebrews 1:3). “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John l:18).4 Take this reverently: snap a photo of Jesus and you’ve got God on film.
What did God look like as he walked in our sandals? He was likable. People enjoyed the kid who worked with his dad at the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth. An intelligent boy, yes, but it didn’t spoil him—his parents noticed how well he listened. “All spoke well of him” and admired his gracious way with words (Luke 2:51-52; 4:22).
Reaching manhood, he swam against a life of self-indulgence like a salmon to the spawning. Watch him spend his days. Chapter 1 of Mark is a documentary, a typical day in the life. On a Sabbath morning he is attending synagogue at Capernaum-on-the-Lake. There he feeds hungry hearts with a kind of bread no one can buy. Halfway through his sermon a maniac shrieks from the crowd. “Come out!” the Teacher shouts. The offending demon instantly and hatefully obeys, and the poor man is restored. The service ends, and now it’s to Simon and Andrew’s modest home. But Simon’s mother-in-law is bedridden with fever, a common killer. Jesus doesn’t speak from across the room—he goes to her, takes her hand, and helps her up. Her brow becomes cool and she serves them food.
The sun sets. This means that the Sabbath is over and work is now allowed—work like carrying one’s sick in a stretcher to the house down the street. Did you hear that she was cured today by you-know-who? They come, “all the sick and demon-po
ssessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons…”
But early next morning, before anyone knows, he slips out into the dark and finds a quiet field away from town. His companions have to search for him. There he is—praying again. Don’t you know everybody’s looking for you?
He knows. But, “Let’s go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” So begins the most selfless three-and-a-half years ever lived.
A leper throws himself on the ground. “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Breaking all protocol and natural revulsion, Jesus reaches forward. “I am willing.” Not for a very long time has the man been touched. Sickly white skin blushes, and a neighbor can return home (Luke 5:12-13).
A somber crowd funnels out through the town gate at Nain. They carry a dead man, the only son of his mother, a widow. Who will care for her now? Jesus and the disciples are approaching the town. As the two groups pass each other, Jesus stops. Eyes shift nervously. He’s actually going to touch the bier. Some in the crowd are protective. What right does a stranger have? But they don’t know his mind or his power, for “when the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her.” He speaks to the woman—“Don’t cry”—then to the dead man—“Get up.” And he does (Luke 7:11-15).
That is how it goes with blind beggars, spine-twisted women, and people who have run out of wine at weddings.
A boat drifts on Lake Galilee. How quiet except for the wind snapping the sail. Lately, there have been so many people—the Master and his close friends scarcely have time to eat. So they’ve taken this little getaway together. But the crowd has figured out where they will land and runs around the water’s edge to meet them. The outing is ruined, but “When Jesus landed…he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things” (Mark 6:34).
When God Weeps Page 3
