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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Pastoral Ponderings ~ A Work of Love that is No Work at All

          Earlier this week, as I was considering that my next Sunday message will focus on how we can both experience and express the love of God, I found myself immersed in a new lesson of this gift of grace. It comes down to the thought that love must show what it is doing so that the beloved is able to join the work of love.

          Today my attention was drawn to these words of our Savior: For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.”[1]  It cannot be different from this. The Triunity of God is glorified in this, that the invisible God shows the image of God all that he himself is doing, so that the image of God is able to work in full harmony with what the invisible God has in mind.

          Jesus spoke these particular words after he was attacked for doing the good work of healing a man on the Sabbath.[2] His answer thoroughly shocked the religious leaders of the day. He replied to their accusing thoughts by declaring, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”[3] Jesus expanded the issue into something that was even more offensive to the religious hypocrites than they had initially thought. Not only was Jesus “working” on the Sabbath, but Jesus was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”[4]

          Jesus went on to explain himself by declaring, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.”[5]

          In other words, Jesus took the opportunity afforded by the animosity of his opponents to teach his disciples a wonderful lesson. Since Jesus was “God with us”[6], “deity in bodily form”[7], “the Word become flesh”[8], he was the Son of God in the body of a man (while not being a son of Adam, of course[9]). The Son of God was just as much “the image of the invisible God”[10] while in the body as he was prior to his incarnation. As the Son of God, he was in a fellowship with his Father that could only be described as doing nothing independently of his Father, and missing nothing of what the Father was doing (since ‘whatever’ the Father did, the Son also did).

          All of this brings me to this question: since believers in Jesus Christ are “in Christ”,[11] is it fair for us to say that, because the Father loves his adopted sons, he will also show us all that he himself is doing? While I love the thought of this, my love for God is greater than good thoughts, and so I want to know if he tells me anything so clearly as what Jesus expressed about himself and his Father. Can I find Scripture that says that, because we who are the adopted sons of God are “in the Beloved”,[12] we can have this same experience of knowing what the Father is doing, and joining him in his work?

          The answer comes very clearly in something Jesus said to his disciples on the night of his betrayal and arrest. He told them, No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”[13]         Jesus assured his disciples that they could think of themselves as his friends because of this characteristic of his relationship to them, that he had made known to them all that he had heard from his Father. He had said that the Father loved him and showed him all that he was doing. Jesus had told the disciples that he was the vine and they were the branches,[14] and that he had the greatest kind of love for them, as he was about to show by laying down his life for his friends.[15]In that love, he was making known to them what the Father was doing, and inviting them to share in his work as he shared in his Father’s work.

          Jesus had already told his disciples, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”[16] Since Jesus had said that, greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel,”[17]we can see a parallel in what Jesus says to his disciples.

          This picture assures me that, because God’s children are created and recreated in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord, we can walk in this same kind of love relationship with our Savior where we can know that he shows us what he is doing. This will come in circumstances that suddenly invite us into a good work that we could not have planned in any kind of board or committee meeting we could imagine. It will come in our hearts being burdened to put a certain Scripture into practice by reaching out to a particular person. It will show up when we find ourselves moved to pray for specific people, only to find later that they were going through something at that time that required fellowship in prayer with other believers.

          The point for me was that, on the day prior to this lesson, God had given me a day filled with divine appointments, and the next day he gave me his commentary on why it was happening. It was not because I was exceptionally good and deserved a reward. It was not because I was so filled with faith about my life-circumstances that God just had to do good things in response. It was simply that my Father wanted me to know his love in the same way Jesus spoke of it, that God shows us what he is doing because he loves us. It is not the only nuance of the love of God, but it is one that Jesus pointed out in reference to his life, and so it was a delightful surprise when he pointed it out in my life as well.

          From my heart,

          Monte


© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)





[1] John 5:20
[2] John 5:1ff
[3] John 5:17
[4] John 5:18
[5] John 5:19
[6] Matthew 1:23
[7] Colossians 2:9
[8] John 1:14
[9] It is a very significant and wonderful truth that Jesus was the only man who came into the world “of a woman”, not of a man, thereby being the only man who did not inherit Adam’s sin nature. There are much more joyful  things that could be said about this, but let this divinely orchestrated piece of information thrill your heart that God brought about such a miracle as the virgin birth, something he promised in Adam’s last moments in the Garden of Eden when he told the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)
[10] Colossians 1:15
[11] The New Testament makes this an emphasis, with a strong focus in the book of Ephesians
[12] Ephesians 1:6, in context of vss 3-14.
[13] John 15:15
[14] John 15:5 in context of 1-11
[15] Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
[16] John 14:12
[17] John 5:20

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