Loving Like God

Just as with the new birth, relationships that come from God are not a matter of human decision or husband’s will. That is, they are not calculated or contrived at a human level. They are born of Spiritual passion – not human negotiation. They are born of the Passion of Christ in the crucible of new love – not in the pottage of human agenda.

To know what relationships in Christ look like, all we need do is look at Christ and what His relationships cost Him. This is how we know what love is. In short, relationships that come from God can and will get you killed.

I return to this subject once again because there are two very costly mistakes that undifferentiated passion makes. One has to do with the flesh connection, i.e. a reliance on the flesh. The other has to do with a failure to learn the relational lessons that God has built into old creation life. In a sense they both have to do with the flesh; the first has to do with the foolhardiness of the flesh, and the other its inability to see the invisible truth built into created things. On the one hand we are to put no confidence in the flesh, and on the other, we need to learn the invisible things about God that he has built into the created things – things like family, in this instance.

Over the years of living in “relationships that come from God” I learned some painful lessons. The first painful lesson was not to put any stock in the flesh connection. It was one thing to see and appreciate this connection in the old covenant where flesh was only a shadow of things to come. Here, for instance is perhaps the strongest statement of the kind of relationship we are speaking about, only in the flesh: “I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than the love of women.”

This is certainly a very powerful statement, and one which crosses gender lines. I believe that the love between David and Jonathan was mutual, so that we can read this verse in the following sense, “the love we shared, was to me, wonderful…”

Here’s where it goes bad in a New Testament context:

“David asked, ‘Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?’ Now there was a servant of Saul’s household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, ‘Are you Ziba?’ ‘At your service,’ he replied. The king asked, ‘Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?’ Ziba answered the king, ‘There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.” 2 Samuel 9:1-3

This was certainly an appropriate relational kindness under the Old Covenant. The problem under the New Covenant is that it does not work in the Spirit, because it is rooted in flesh and blood relationship. Time and again, over the years I tried to be there for the flesh and blood relatives of those with whom I had spiritual relationships, and it was a disaster on every occasion. Flesh wars against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. The cost over the years has been very high for me personally as well as for my family.

The next very costly mistake has to do with the possibility of moral failure. It was only recently that I saw that the Apostle Paul dealt with this as a matter of first importance. His first attempt apparently fell on deaf ears: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.” – 1^st Corinthians 5:9-11

Apparently they didn’t get it. In fact they were so far from getting it that they were proud of their tolerance for immoral conduct and people. The previous letter he mentioned, that we don’t have, must have been written after Paul’s first missionary journey to Corinth. Paul was still very much in a learning curve. First time out, he went with Barnabas and Mark, and didn’t make it as far as Corinth. The second time out, Paul had Timothy with him, and his learning curve was much more effective where Paul’s own understanding of relationships was concerned.

Paul saw things in the fellowship at Corinth, that it apparently took him some time to process. The closeness or intimacy of Christian fellowship can be so close that it becomes an occasion for moral failure. This problem was so important that it was addressed in what we know as Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, as well as in a previous letter that has been lost to history.

In any case, the issue has such high priority that only Acts and Romans precede it in the chronology of the scriptures. Both Acts and Romans set the context: Acts with the historical order of Paul’s ministry, and Romans with moral order and context of the Kingdom of God.

Paul finishes his rebuke of this problem at Corinth with the following:

“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you,” – 1^st Corinthians 5:12 & 13.

How then are we to escape even the appearance of sexual immorality in the face of such great salvation, such great intimacy of fellowship, and such relational oneness? The law is no match for such a high calling. Only the invisible things of God revealed in the things created provide us any hope of understanding such passion in the context of human relationships: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse,” Romans 1:20.

The question in the first instance is, “How does God do life?” And in the final version, the more abundant version of life, the question remains the same. We are without excuse if we don’t get how God does life from the created things, for this is how we have an idea how God does life in the new creation. God puts the solitary in families, and this is what Jesus promises us in his new creation – 100-fold of family – all conditional on our willingness to allow the Lord to change our priorities.

The old creation teaches us how it should be between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and brothers and sisters. All of these relationships in the first instance are nothing if they are without passion – passion perfectly appropriate – and without moral failure in every case. Family is where we learn how it is to be in life together without moral failure. This is also where we learn about appropriate content, not only for each kind of relationship, but appropriate to every situation, circumstance, and season. If we don’t get it here, Romans tells us that then we will be turned over to perversity – moral failure:

“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them,” – Romans 1:24-33.

In short, life makes the boundaries of intimacy so clear that we are without excuse if we miss them. I know this is very hard hitting, but now as then moral failure in the context of supposedly Christian fellowship is epidemic.

Love!
Jay

“On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, ‘They have no more wine.’
‘Woman, why do you involve me?’ Jesus replied. ‘My hour has not yet come.’His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water’; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.’ They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, ‘Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.’

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” John 2:1-11 NIV

The first and the last – the Alpha and Omega of The Great Mystery – Christ and His Church.

“These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!” Acts 2:15

The day of Pentecost began with what would be the ongoing consummation of a wedding feast that continues to this day. Just as in Cana, there was plenty of wine, enough so that uninvited onlookers thought them drunk. On that day a wine became available, a wine of more abundant life that no one had ever seen, tasted or experienced before. It was a wine that had never before been served because “… Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” John 7:39b

This wedding, this consummation, this wine, not only gets better with the unfolding of human history, but it gets better over the consummated lifetime of each saint. And that is what we who know Jesus are.

As an old saint, I can testify that the wine at the end is even better than what was served at the first. And let there be no question about the ongoing consummation – without the Galilean wedding, the new birth would be illegitimate.

Love!

Jesus had said: “Call no man father,”  yet it wasn’t long before the “disciple whom Jesus loved” wrote to ‘fathers.’ (1 John 2:13)

What’s wrong with this picture? Assuming that the Same Spirit inspired both communications, there must be something beneath the surface that we need to better understand. (Perhaps it turns out to be “above the surface.”)

They both must be understood by the Spirit, and cannot be properly understood in the flesh. John was clearly writing to fathers in The Spirit, because they “knew Him that is from the beginning.”

Let’s take a look at John’s context:

“I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.”

Clearly, all those to whom John is writing know the Father on some level. “Father” is a word that has meaning only in the context of relationship, and it derives more from having children than it does from having a father. So these are fathers in a spiritual sense, and in a spiritual relational context. That is, these are those who have spiritual children in some way or other.

So then, what could Jesus possibly have meant when he said “Call no man father”? My own understanding of this has had a great deal of help from two sources: (#1) the way life is. (i.e. The way God does old creation life which foreshadows the way He does the more abundant life that Jesus came to bring us) and then, (#2) is in one of Paul’s prayers:

“For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named:  That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inward man:  That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts: that, being rooted and founded in charity,  You may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge: that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” – Ephesians 3:14-19

I have chosen the Douay Version here because it puts the focus where it belongs. It more accurately translates the original, which is most often translated “family,” but is more accurately translated “fatherhood.” For today’s readers, that communicates a little better than “paternity.” That said, I’ll put it in my understanding of its plain meaning:

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth derives its name.”

In heaven we all have one Father. Down here in the “hoods” we have multiple fatherhoods, they get their meaning from our Father which art it in Heaven. These “fatherhoods” are not only recognized in heaven, but are sanctioned by our defining Heavenly Father.

Here is another piece of evidence of the legitimacy of fatherhoods, even spiritual fatherhoods here on earth, albeit in the spirit:

“See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” Malachi 4:5, 6

This was never meant to be God’s “plan b” for earthly fathers. No, this was meant to be the beginning of whole new fatherhoods. This was God’s promise of putting in place in the new creation what had been lost to the old creation. Here is the primary focus of its fulfillment: “And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.’ And again he says, ‘Here am I, and the children God has given me.” Hebrews 2:13

It gets better: “Here am I, and the children the LORD has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel from the LORD Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion.” Isaiah 8:18 (In other words, this is another one of those “this is thats.”)

This was not only fulfilled in Jesus, but it continues to be fulfilled in us who believe – this is our inheritance in The Lord! What Jesus wanted to be clear about is that this was not about earthly fathers, but about our heavenly father “hooded” in earthly fathers, and legitimate only so long as it was rooted in and reflecting God the Father. Many hoods, one Father. Jesus didn’t want us taken in by religious pretenders to fatherhood.

In this light we can identify and honor God the Father in His earthly representatives. This has mostly to do with our need for a second or even third witness to our heavenly validation in Christ.

At 73 my Spiritual fathers have all gone on to be with the Lord, their validating work done in my own spiritual life. Soon I will be joining them. (I’m already living in Biblical over time, which is to say, beyond “threescore years and ten.”) Meanwhile the validating witness goes on in my own life for those that God has given me in Himself. We are for signs and symbols – in short we are witnesses.

Love!

• By Jay Ferris, First posted April, 2012