Heavenly Mindedness (49)

 

By it [the discipline of not yet receiving the fulness of the Promised Land in this life] they were led to reflect that, since the promise was theirs beyond all doubt, and yet they were not allowed to inherit it in its material form, that therefore it must in the last analysis relate to something far higher and different, something of which the visible and sensual is a mere image. Thus the conception of another sphere of being was introduced into their minds: henceforth they sought the better country. Not as if the things of sense were worthless in themselves, but because they knew of something transcendent that claimed their supreme affection.

 

Their tastes and enjoyments had been raised to another plane. The refinement of grace had been imparted to them. For bodily hands there had been, as it were, substituted spiritual antennae, sensitive to intangible things. They had come to a mountain that could not be touched and yet could be felt. In all the treasures and promises of religion the one valuable thing is this spiritual core.”  Geerhardus Vos

 

Consider what lies behind the logo of a corporation, think of Coca Cola or Toyota or Pillsbury or General Mills or Ford. Have you ever been driving down a busy highway, looking for a particular business, and ahead of you, down the road, you see the logo of the business you’re looking for? Among the dozens of signs and logos on the highway you are able to pick out a particular logo because you are looking for it; you can’t read the name of the business because it is too far away, but you can identify the logo.

 

Corporations vigorously guard their logos, for their logos represent who they are, they are their trademarks, they are known by their logos. When we see golden arches, we don’t need a name to tell us that a Big Mac awaits us if we go into that building.

 

Think about the shapes of traffic control signs; stop signs, yield signs, signs that indicate speed, they all have particular shapes and colors. Think about symbols on a weather map. Think about body language, how is it that we can “read” body language?

 

While we may not think about this, much of our communication and understanding is based on images, symbols, colors, and other non-verbal or non-written expression. No one has to sit us down at a particular age and have a conversation with us about communicating in various non-verbal forms because we naturally learn to do this, just as we naturally learn our native language. To be sure some of us have careers in these forms of communication and understand them better than the rest of us, just as English professors might justly cringe when they read some of my writing, but most of us function well in the world of non-verbal communication without having advanced training.

 

When Vos writes about “something of which the visible and sensual is a mere image. Thus the conception of another sphere of being was introduced into their minds…” and about being “sensitive to intangible things…” he is writing about God communicating the invisible to us via things which are visible. Again, while we may be unaccustomed to thinking and seeing like this, the ancients well understood that the things that we see represent things we don’t see. Consider Paul’s words to the Romans (Rom. 1:20):

 

“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”

 

Do we clearly see these things from creation? It’s probably fair to say that most of us don’t, which shows just how far we’ve fallen from the vision and understanding that previous generations have possessed. Rather than make excuses for our blindness, we ought to cry out to our Lord Jesus to open our eyes to the glory of His work in creation so that we may see Him more clearly.

 

Our Father is consistently communicating with us through all elements of life, all of life is sacramental, there is never a moment when Christ is not with us, when the Trinity is not living within the sons and daughters of the Living God. Both holistically God speaks to us, and in the particular God speaks to us. That is, God speaks through the forest and He also speaks through the individual trees of the forest. I recall once pondering an oak tree for thirty minutes, within which I saw a dance of creation consisting of birds and squirrels and leaves and twigs and branches and bark – that has been years ago, but I still visualize that dance.  

 

God our Father pours His grace into us throughout each day in myriad ways, and He gives us opportunities to share His grace with others; through prayer, through words, through deeds – if we are a holy priesthood then we are called to serve those around us every day. Our Father shares His life with us in every moment, and we are to share our lives with Him; we are also the share His life with others.

 

(And may I say that the reason professing Christians don’t witness isn’t that they don’t know how to witness; it is because they don’t know who they are nor that the Trinity lives within them.)

 

“They had come to a mountain that could not be touched and yet could be felt. In all the treasures and promises of religion the one valuable thing is this spiritual core.” 

 

Friends, the first commandment is to love God with all that we are; heart, mind, soul, and body. Love has feeling, it has emotion, it has depth, it has transcendence. Paul wanted the Ephesians “to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.” (Eph. 3:19). He writes to the Romans that “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). We are called to live life in the Holy Spirit, called to live seeing the invisible, called to live sacramentally – a way of life in which we look beyond what we see with the natural eye into the realm of the unseen. We are called to live this Way as individuals, and we are called to live this Way as congregations…and yes, we are called to live this Way as Christ’s Church in this generation.

 

The church in Ephesus, in Revelation Chapter Two, had sound doctrine, but they had “left their first love,” and if they didn’t repent Christ was going to remove their candlestick. We can be doctrinally “correct” to the point where we have the equivalent of the world’s “politically correct” speech, and yet if we don’t love Jesus Christ and are not being led by the Holy Spirit and are not seeing the invisible – we have but a scribal form of Christianity.

 

I have been in doctrinally – oriented environments where everyone used the same language, the same phrases, and wrote the same way, even used the same speech patterns; there was little if any individual expression, everyone was the same – every “i” doted the same, every “t” crossed the same. How can this be if we are indeed the Body of Christ? Many of these environments would have heartburn with Vos writing “yet could be felt,” if people were to take these words seriously.

 

Picture please a group of fifty men, all married. The first one is asked to describe his wife and marriage, then the second, then the third, and so on until all fifty had described their wives and marriages. But then picture that the second man used the same description as the first, and the third the same as the second, and the fourth the same as the third – until all fifty had described their wives and marriages the same way with the same words and speech patterns. What would you think?

Would you think that these men really knew their wives? Would it be possible for them to have bought into a doctrine of what a wife and marriage should be and that they had been trained (and pressured) to mouth what was expected, what was considered “sound marital doctrine”?

 

And suppose number 27 really had a deep relationship with his wife, and that he really wanted to share about his wife and marriage in his own words – what are the chances that he would overcome the peer pressure and the risk of exclusion?

 

Friends, if we can’t put our relationship with Christ in our own words, and if we can’ read the Bible and put what it says into our own words (not to supersede Scripture, but to communicate Christ through Scripture), then have we really made Christ our own, has Scripture really come to live within us?

 

Vos speaks of feeling the reality of the invisible, and this includes the invisible God in Jesus Christ. Are we living as men and women whose citizenship is in heaven and who are not of this world, but rather of that City whose Builder and Maker is God?