The wonder of God's relationship with Abraham was that there was God ... and Abraham. That is the wonder of it.
And because Abraham is the father of all who have faith in Christ, the wonder of God's relationship with us is that there is God ...
... and us. That is the wonder of it.
Theologians have long struggled to understand this question: If God is complete; if God is the very essence of Completeness, what room is there for Us?
Put more classically: if God is indeed The ONE, what room is there, why is there, how come there is ... the Many?
You have heard the saying: "There is a God, and you are not Him." How true.
In other words, there is The ONE, and this ONE is Complete and has no Lack. He has no need for anything.
But somehow, there is you, and you are not in this ONE -- (who is Complete, remember?, So where do You fit?) -- and yet this ONE made you and wants a relationship with you.
Abraham was put into that impossible quandry. And he believed. And it was counted to him as righteousness.
And then the Scripture says that this was not only Abraham's quandry. It is our quandry as well.
In a decisive sense we have it easier than Abraham, because we stand on this side of the advent of Jesus Christ, God come as man.
God's explanation for the paradox of the One-and-the-Many; God's explanation for the One (God) and the Many (who needs the Many?) is ... ... that the Many is ultimately made one IN Christ.
This does not make us God. It just makes our relationship with God so intimate that somehow the One includes us.
Jesus is God's solution to the paradox of the One and the Many. And if we don't get it, that just proves we are dealing with God, with a Wisdom that is beyond us.
And then here is another way we have it easier than Abraham: we find that the faith that enables us to believe is itself a gift of God the One.
Today I face some hard-to-solve riddles in my walk with Jesus. Hard to solve. I really don't know what to do.
But I am encouraged that all of it just means I am gaining on-the-ground experience in believing in the God of Abraham the same way Abraham believed in Him. And in Christ, it will be counted to me as righteousness -- I know not how.
Abraham may have had MANY sons, as that song "Father Abraham" intones. So he had many grandchildren.
But every one of Abraham's sons in faith is directly a son of God, because God has has no grandchildren.
And if we don't get that, it just means we are dealing with a Wisdom that is beyond us.
Logos2Go
Romans 4.19-25 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. 20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness." 23 Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.
Ephesians 2.8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God.
The wonder of God's relationship with Abraham was ...
Posted by
David Wang
Jun 28, 2009
3 comments:
As the Apostle Paul reflected on these things, he distilled the wonder of it all into three aspects: faith, hope, and love. And he saw that by far the greatest of the three was love (1 Corinthians 13:13). The ultimate wonder of God's relationship with us is that he loves us. Indeed, he IS love, and we can love because he first loved us. I believe love solves all riddles. Love made the Wisdom flesh (John 1:14), a Wisdom thus now no longer beyond us, but rather "near, in our mouth, in our heart" (Romans 10:8).
To a mathematician or a software programmer, 1 is unique, as opposed to 0, or any other number. But to a chemist, which I am, or a non-Newtonian physicist, 1 is a plural. To a chemist, 1+1 can = to 1, or 1+1+1... can equal to 1. What determines the outcome is the "reaction". In a large polymeric synthesis, 1 can be made up of 100 million. Not sure exactly how this relates with what you're saying. But to me, this one can be all inclusive, compounding, or comprehensive to include a little one such as me. - Tony
I don't know what it means either Tony, but it SURE IS GOOD to have you checking in. I think your insights to the fact that, in every discipline and area of human endeavor, we see shadows of the truth that is the Christ.
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