Drawn Into The I AM - Augustine

 

I’ve been pondering the following section from Augustine’s Confessions for a few days. The image of us taken into the Trinity is striking. It reminds me of St. Athanasius saying, regarding the Incarnation, “He became as we are, that we might become as He is.”

 

Are we focused on the wonderful eternal life and koinonia that Jesus Christ has purchased for us and called us into? Do we realize the Niagara of His love for us? (Ephesians 3:14 – 21).

 

Excerpts from St. Augustine’s Confessions, 7.10.16 (NPNF). Lightly edited with updated English.

 

“…He who knows the Truth knows that Light; and he that knows it knows eternity. Love knows it. O Eternal Truth, and True Love, and loved Eternity! You are my God; to You do I sigh both night and day. When I first knew You, You lifted me up, that I might see, and yet it was not I [in and of myself] that did see. You beat back the infirmity [weakness] of my sight, pouring forth upon me most strongly Your beams of light; and I found myself to be far off from You…

 

“[and then]…I heard this voice of Yours from on high:

 

“’I am the food of strong men; grow, and you shall feed upon me; nor shall you convert me, like the food of your flesh, into thee, but you shall be converted into me.’”

 

“And You cried to me from far away, ‘Yes, truly I AM THAT I AM.’”

 

“And I heard this, as things are heard in the heart, nor was there room for doubt…”

The Glory of Sonship in the Son (5)

 

 

“…but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.’” (John 20:17b).

 

Is this the message which the Eleven expected to hear? After all, they had deserted Jesus and one of them had explicitly and vehemently denied Him. They might not have been surprised to hear Jesus speak to them of God, but how could Jesus speak of God as their Father considering their abandonment of Jesus? Friends do not abandon friends, brothers do not abandon brothers, how then could Jesus say, “My Father and your Father?”

 

Not only that, but that evening in the Upper Room Jesus says, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21). That is, as the Father has sent His Only Begotten Son, He is also sending His many sons and daughters; indeed, the sending of the Father’s Only Begotten continues, just as the Incarnation continues. The Elder Brother is sending His younger brothers and sisters. “As the Father sent me,” Jesus is saying in a sense, “This is how it’s done, now go.”

 

Jesus is saying, “I’ve manifested the Father’s Name to you, now go and manifest His Name to others. I’ve suffered for others, I’ve laid down My life for others, now go and do the same. I’ve spoken the Word of Life to others, indeed, I’ve been the Word of Life for others, now go and do the same in Me.”

 

I know a family in which the children never use the terms, “Dad, Daddy, Papa,” or even father when speaking to or referring to their father. They call him “Mr. Smith.” Mr. Smith once boasted to me that he never played with his children when they were growing up; this was a boast, it was not a regret. Perhaps this is along the line of, “Being a male is a matter of birth, being a man is a matter of choice.” That is, there are biological fathers, and then there are biological fathers who are also fathers in the moral and spiritual sense of the word.

 

How do we see the Father? Is He Mr. God or is He our father in the sense that we cry out, “Abba (Daddy)! Father!”? (Rom. 8”15; Gal. 4:6). When I listen to the language of Christians, including pastors, I often hear the language of a Mr. God relationship – He is a God far away and not near; He is a God who has erected barriers between us and Him, He is remote. We speak the language of distance, we live lives of distance; the language of Fatherhood and Sonship is foreign to our thinking and speech.

 

This is a tragedy, for Jesus Christ came to proclaim sonship to us, He came to bring us into an intimate relationship with “His Father and our Father, with His God and our God.” Jesus came to proclaim the Father’s heart to us, that the Father’s purpose is to bring “many sons to glory” that Jesus Christ might be “the Firstborn among many brethren” (Heb. 2:10 – 11; Rom. 8:29).

 

And yet so many professing Christians can only speak of God as if He were at a great distance, as if He is remote; they have been taught to reject their identity as sons and daughters and instead live as slaves, as sinners, as those outside of the glorious inheritance that they have in Jesus Christ and their Father.

 

How many Sunday school classes and small groups have I been in, in which people speak of God as if they do not know Him? Too many to count. They speak this way because they think and live this way, because they have been taught this way. O dear friends, the veil of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, on the Day Jesus Christ was crucified to demonstrate that the Holy of Holies is now the place where we are to live, in communion with the Trinity and with one another (Heb. 10:19 – 25).  

 

Just think, from all eternity God our Father has desired intimacy with us, and in Jesus Christ He has destroyed all barriers between us and Himself so that we may freely and in joy live in koinonia with Him – and that we may do so now, right now, not tomorrow but now.  This is the Gospel, this is what all preceding elements of the Gospel lead to; this is what Jesus is teaching us in John chapters 13 – 17. O how glorious and wonderful to live with one another in the koinonia of the Trinity!

 

A Kingdom of Priests (5)

 

Are we learning to see as God sees? In our last post we considered 1 Corinthians 1:1 – 9 in the light of 2 Corinthians 5:16, “Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.” Are we learning to see as God sees, which is seeing based on the glorious and perfect work and Person of Jesus Christ? (Consider Christ’s glorious work of salvation as set forth in 2 Cor. 5:14 – 21, it is this context which allows Paul to write 5:16 – do we believe this passage?)

 

Let’s consider an example of how Jesus Christ sees us.

 

“I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.” (John 17:6 – 8).

 

“O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:25 – 26).

 

Jesus is praying these words on the night of His betrayal, shortly after this prayer He will be arrested and taken before the religious leaders, then they will send Him to Pilate for execution. In these verses He is talking to the Father about His apostles (note 17:20 where Jesus includes all of us in His prayer). What can we learn about these men?

 

To begin with, let’s acknowledge the exception to the Twelve in 17:12, one of them is “the son of perdition.” What can we learn about the Eleven?

 

In 17:6 we see that the Father gave these men to Jesus; they were taken by the Father out of the world system, they belonged to the Father and He gave them to Jesus. How does Jesus describe these men?

 

“They have kept Your word…they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You.” They received the words which Jesus gave them and “truly understood” and Jesus came from the Father and “they believed that You sent Me.”

 

Then in 17:25 Jesus says that while the world has not known the Father, that these men have known Him and have “known that You sent Me.”

 

Based on these words of Jesus in His prayer to the Father, what do we see about these men? How does Jesus describe them? How might you describe them in your own words?

 

Consider 17:10, “…and I have been glorified in them.”

 

Jesus’ portrayal of the Eleven is that of men who are keeping the Word of God, understanding that Jesus came from the Father, and having the insight that the Father is giving Jesus what Jesus is giving to them. This is hardly a picture of immature, frightened, and cowering men. Yet, what will shortly happen? Jesus will be arrested and the Eleven will scatter. Not only does Jesus know this as He prays, He has told the Eleven that this is what will occur.

 

“Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.” (John 16:32).

 

Knowing that they are going to leave Him, to abandon Him to the mob, how can Jesus say the things about the apostles that He says in His prayer to the Father? How can Jesus describe the Eleven as men who have kept the Word of God and who have insight into the relationship of Jesus Christ and the Father? Is Jesus wrong? Is His prayer wishful thinking? Is Jesus playing a positive – thinking game? Is this the way you would have expected Jesus to describe the Eleven?

 

In 1 Corinthians 1:1 – 9 we see Paul describing the Corinthian Christians in a way that we probably would not have done; in John 17 we see Jesus describing the Apostles in a manner that, once again, we likely would not have considered. How can these descriptions be accurate? How can they be true?

 

Let’s recall 2 Cor. 4:18, “…we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

 

Looking at the things that are unseen means, among other things, that we begin to see the eternal counsels of God and the perfect work of Jesus Christ. This in turn means that we learn to see others and ourselves not as we appear to be with the natural eye and mind but rather according to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit – we learn to “see” according to what God has said and not according to what we think on our own.

 

Jesus “saw” the Eleven quite differently than we see the Eleven on the night of His betrayal, this is most remarkable in the context of their impending flight and subsequent fear in the Upper Room with the doors shut (John 20:19). Whose thinking and understanding are amiss? Is it Jesus or us?

 

Considering the above, is it all that strange that God calls His People a holy priesthood? Why do we think it strange that we are called “saints” throughout the New Testament? After all, this is not about us, it is about Jesus Christ, His Father, and the Holy Spirit. Why cannot we embrace the true meaning of justification? Not only are our sins forgiven, but God sees us as having never sinned, and as having always kept the Law of God. If we cannot live in the eternal reality of justification, if we insist on being mired in sin  management and thinking, how can we ever embrace Romans 6?

 

Perhaps we ought to rethink just who Paul is addressing in Romans 6:1 - 2, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”? Considering the context of these words, it may very well be that Paul is addressing well – meaning Christians who are convinced that considering themselves “to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11) is impossible.

 

We are called into unbroken union with the Trinity, as we abide in the Vine, our Lord Jesus Christ. As Reformed pastor Andrew Murray wrote:

 

“Dear souls, little do they know that the abiding in Christ is meant only for the weak and is so beautifully suited to their feebleness. It does not demand the doing of some great thing or that we first lead a holy and devoted life. No, it is simply weakness entrusting itself to a Mighty One to be kept – the unfaithful one casting self on One who is altogether trustworthy and true. Abiding in Him is not a work that we have to do as the condition of enjoying His salvation, but a consenting to let Him do all for us, in us, and through us. It is a work He does for us: the fruit and power of His redeeming love. Our part is simply to yield, to trust, and to wait for what He has engaged to perform.” Abide in Christ, Andrew Murray, Whitaker House, 1979 (updated edition) page 28.

 

We are a holy priesthood because Jesus Christ has made us such in Him, this is not about us, it is all about Jesus. Having established this, will we respond in obedience to His call in our lives…as individuals, as families, as marriages, as congregations, as His Church?

A Kingdom of Priests (4)

 

In 2 Corinthians 5:16 we read that because of Jesus Christ and His glorious work of salvation that, “Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.”

 

Sadly, for the most part, we are trained to evaluate others, and indeed life, according to the flesh, according to what our natural eyes see. We are trained to see ourselves not in the Light of God’s Word and Jesus Christ, but according to naturalistic understanding, according to the world, the flesh, the devil…and O so sadly, according to much of the professing church which is mired in the gravitational pull of the earthly and not the heavenly.

 

What is it to “know Christ according to the flesh”? It is to know Him other than He is revealed in Scripture, and this “other” is myriad. We can know Him as a good man, but of course, that cannot be so; as C.S. Lewis articulated (building on those who had gone before him), Jesus is either Lord, liar, or lunatic; Jesus Christ did not give us the option to consider Him a good man.

 

We may know Christ as an American, but not just any American, but most certainly as belonging to our own political party. We may know Him as an economist, supporting our personal economic theories and agendas. We may know Him as belonging to our racial and ethnic heritage. We can know Him according to the flesh any number of ways, but the most dangerous way to know Christ according to the flesh is to know Him according to our ideas of righteousness and religion, allowing them to be the interpretive lens through which we read the Bible and think about Him, ourselves, and others.

 

As the Pharisees and scribes demonstrated, when we see and know Christ according to the flesh, according to our natural instincts and way of thinking, the assured result is that we will kill Him, we will put to death the revelation of Christ in the Bible, in our hearts, and most tragically, in the hearts of others. And here is a frightening thing, our thinking can look so good, for it can focus on good works, on self-improvement programs, on sociology; we can be like Peter on the Mount, “Let’s make three tabernacles!”

 

Think of Paul, the man who wrote 2 Corinthians 5:16; here is an example of someone who was O so righteous when seeing Christ and His Body according to flesh, persecuting the Body of Christ, being complicit in Stephen’s murder; yet Paul would come to a place when he would write, “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (Phil. 3:7).

 

Let’s ponder two examples of what it looks like to see others beyond the natural, the flesh, and to see them as God sees them, we’ll take an example from Paul and one from our Lord Jesus.

 

Suppose you were asked to speak to a congregation that had split into factions, was tolerating sexual promiscuity, showing up drunk for worship and fellowship, and creating chaos during corporate worship. What mental picture would you form in your mind as you prepared to speak on Sunday morning to these people? How would you “see” them? How would you begin your sermon? Paul faced a similar situation, the difference being that since he couldn’t travel to speak to the congregation, he wrote a letter. How do you suppose his letter began? How did he set the stage for dealing with the above problems? Let’s read what he wrote:

 

“Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,          To the church of God which is in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

“I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, just as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you eagerly await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:1 – 9).

 

Paul calls the Corinthians “sanctified” and “saints.” He thanks God for the grace they have in Christ Jesus and says that they have been enriched in Him in everything, “in all speech and knowledge” and that they are “not lacking in any gift.” Paul is confident that Christ will “confirm them to the end, blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

Does Paul’s approach make any sense? How can he write these things to a congregation so messed up?

 

He can do it because what he is writing is based on and in our Lord Jesus Christ, it is about the marvelous and miraculous love and grace of God in Jesus Christ, as especially manifested in the Cross. This does not mean that the Corinthians are not accountable, it does not mean that they do not need to repent of their present sin, it does not mean that they do not need to grow in their love and understanding. In fact, much of the rest of Paul’s letter is taking them to task for their immaturity and their sin, and instructing them in godly living in Jesus Christ. But first Paul sets the stage by affirming Jesus Christ in them and them in Jesus Christ – Paul does not address them as sinners but as saints.

 

Paul desires that they live in Christ as who they are in Christ, and thus the letter begins with affirmations of the work of God in the Corinthians, a reminder of who God is and of who the Corinthians are in Him. This is not the way we would normally think but it is the Way of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

There is a sense in which we can only say hard and difficult things to our brothers and sisters when our brothers and sisters are secure in their relationship with Jesus Christ. There is a sense in which God can only speak hard and difficult things to the depths of my soul, to the depths of who I am, when I am secure and assured of who He is in me and of who I am in Him. Without an assurance of God’s love for me and of the perfect and complete work of Jesus Christ on the Cross I will likely interpret God’s conviction of sin and disciplines in my life as His rejection, when in fact it is a manifestation of my Father’s love for me.

 

Paul was not viewing the Corinthians “according to the flesh” but seeing them in the Holy Spirit as who they were in Jesus Christ. Paul was not basing his ministry to the Corinthians based on appearances, but rather based on Jesus Christ and the Cross (see 1 Cor. 1:30 – 2:5).

 

I suppose I should say that for Paul to have written the first nine verses of his letter and then to have kept going in that vein without exposing and dealing with immaturity and sin would have been an example of the false teaching that we see today, a teaching that wants to seduce us by having us feel good without the Cross, without repentance, without obedience to the Word of God. Paul was not ignoring the chaos and sin in Corinth, in fact, he was writing because there was sin and chaos. 

There is also a sense in which Paul ends his letter the way he begins his letter, for in 1 Corinthians 15 we have the theme of the resurrection, of our glory in Christ and of our being taken out of Adam and into Christ – a reminder again of who we are as Paul directs our attention to our consummate destiny.

 

In the next post in this series we’ll consider an example of Jesus Christ saying things that, according the flesh, just don’t make sense.