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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Pastoral Ponderings ~ The This/And Fellowship That Replaces Either/Or Exclusion


          There is one “either/or” scenario that never sits right with me. It is characterized by statements like, “It’s all about me,” vs, “It’s not about you.” It is the belief that the highest experience of knowing God involves the deepest experience of losing ourselves. Obviously, if we are only able to be about one person at a time, we will either be about Christ, or we will be about ourselves.
          At times, this Either/Or exclusivity is validated with John the Baptist’s expression that, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”[1] The sense is that we must choose between whether it is about us, or whether it is about Jesus (whatever “it” is).
          When we take a step back from misapplied quotes like the words of John the Baptist, we discover that the Bible is not written in Either/Or terms. It is written in a mindset of fellowship that can only be understood as This/And. Scripture tells us that there is a “this” we can focus on at the same time as there is an “and” that goes along with it every single time.
          John 15:11 gives us a wonderful demonstration of this. Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” When a disciple is conscious that Jesus is speaking, he is also conscious that his own ears, and heart, are hearing. When people are conscious that Jesus is speaking, but with no consciousness that they are hearing, we call them deaf.
          In this relationship where we are conscious of Jesus speaking, and conscious of ourselves hearing, there is a wonderful thing that happens. Through receiving Jesus’ words in the conscious-of-each-other way of fellowship, Jesus’ joy may be in us, and our own joy may be full.
          It is impossible for us to have Jesus’ joy in us and not be conscious we have Jesus’ joy in us.  In Jesus’ own words, we are able to be conscious that his joy is in us, and that our own joy is filled to the full. Knowing the joy of Jesus means knowing our own joy in Jesus at the same time. We cannot “rejoice in the Lord always,”[2] without knowing we are rejoicing, and that it is in our Lord and Savior that our joy is filling up.
          Jesus was not introducing a distinctive characteristic that would sometimes happen, but one that is universal, all the time, for every Christian, in every situation. We would always be able to have an experience of Jesus Christ where his joy and our joy were fully conscious of each other at the same time.
          This This/And focus begins in the very first chapter of the Bible. Genesis 1 begins with, “In the beginning God…”[3] and leads to the final work of creation in which, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”[4] From that point on, everything God’s book reveals to us is a relationship between God and man in which both are always fully aware of each other.
          Of course, sin came into the picture very quickly and ruined the fellowship.[5] However, God’s work of redemption continues to tell us how much God is focused on us in order that we can know him in his knowing of us. We cannot dissociate from how we feel when we set our minds and hearts on him, since focusing on his glory causes all kinds of good and wonderful feelings to take place inside us. We cannot delight ourselves in the LORD without also feeling that he is satisfying us on the inside with the real desires of our hearts.[6]
          Why is this so important to me? Because the Either/Or mindset robs us of the personal experience of our joy filling up as we focus on Jesus’ words that fill us with his joy. If we think we must deny our joy while focusing on his joy, we lose the gift of God so graciously given to us. How can we so focus on God’s work that we are unaware of ourselves when God’s work is for our joy?
          Think of it this way: God the Father and God the Son are always fully aware of each other. They always know each other. They know and are known all the time, in a level of perfection that we cannot comprehend.
          The Triune God made us in their image (note the plural “OUR image and likeness” of Genesis 1:26-27). Their image includes relationship in the very essence of who God is. None of the members of the Godhead, Holy Spirit included, are ever unaware of themselves in their being aware of the other two. They share a God-consciousness that is supposed to be in us as well. God so loved the world that he gave us his Son in order that we would not perish but have eternal life,[7] and Jesus said that eternal life is to know God the Father and God the Son.[8]
          Which means that, Jesus wants us to know that his joy is in us, and he wants us to feel our joy rising to the full. It isn’t just about his joy, and it isn’t just about our joy. It is a fellowship in which, when his sheep hear his voice, his words cause his joy to enter us, and permeate us through and through, resulting in us being fully aware that our own joy is coming to life, and growing, and maturing.
          In the same way as a branch abides in the vine, and the vine sends life into the branch, the believer in Jesus Christ is always aware of himself and God at the same time. We are conscious of how we work out our salvation with fear and trembling as we are also conscious of how God is working in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure.[9]
          Whether we think of Isaiah knowing how he felt as he witnessed the glorious holiness of God,[10] or Peter being fully conscious of what he felt inside himself the moment he saw Jesus looking at him after the rooster crowed,[11]or Job regretting that he had ever spoken a word questioning God the moment that God began speaking to him,[12] or the “sinful” woman knowing the salty release of her tears as she came into the house overwhelmed with her love for Jesus,[13] or how Jacob felt while wrestling with the angel of the LORD and his hip suddenly went out of joint,[14] or the way David felt in himself as he poured out his heart to God in songs of worship,[15] the consistent picture in Scripture is that, ever since Jesus breathed life into the corpse he had made out of the dust of the earth,[16] man’s consciousness of God has always made us conscious of ourselves at the same time.[17]
          Some time ago, while completing a series on the first chapter of Genesis, I suddenly realized that there was a distinct message in the creation account that began with, “in the beginning God,”[18] and ended with God creating man in his own image and likeness.[19] The message about God was that he is the center of everything, and the message about man was that we are the center of his attention.        
          Ever since that time, I have been growing in my understanding and appreciation of the fellowship that God wants with his people. John describes it as, “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”[20] The apostles wrote the churches so that everyone could share in a fellowship with each other, and with the Father and Son, at the same time. John continued writing this letter with many assurances of how we could know we were part of this wonderful fellowship. He wanted us to experience the feeling, the certainty, of knowing we had fellowship with God.
          And then John tells us what he was aiming for in his letter. He said, “And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”[21]As we saw earlier, Jesus had told John, along with the other apostles, that the things he had spoken to them on this night of his arrest were for his joy to be in them, and their joy to be full. John fulfilled his apostolic ministry by writing those things that would complete the joy of Jesus’ brothers.
          The reason we cannot separate our joy from Jesus’ joy is because God created us to be in his image, and in fellowship with him. The more conscious we become of him, the more conscious we become of our own joy in him.
          This also explains why so many people talk about facing deep, inner troubles as soon as they begin opening up their hearts to God. The explanation? That Jesus, in order to bring us to have wonderful fellowship in his joy, must bless us with the consciousness of our poverty of spirit, and bring us to mourn anything that is empty of knowing him, and lead us to that meekness that agrees with him that we can do nothing to fix what is wrong within our souls, and to awaken within us a hunger and a thirst for the righteousness we see in him, joyful as it is, only experienced by faith in him and his salvation.
          When we have felt this transformational work, what I refer to as the Beatitudinal Valley, we understand why we must feel the weight of our distance from God if we ever want to know what closeness feels like. We must feel the weight of our emptiness if we will ever know the satisfaction of fullness. We must know what poverty of spirit feels like on our way to experiencing the richness of Christ in us, the hope of glory.
          I will leave it at that for now. I hope that you can see that knowing God is not a matter of being conscious of him and unconscious of ourselves. To know God in the eternal life he has given us means that the more we truly know him, the more we know that we know him. He wants us to be fully aware that we are his beloved children so that we are able to imitate the wonderful gift of love he has given us in his Son.[22]
          So, seek to enjoy God with all your heart. Listen to Jesus’ words so that his joy can be in you, and your joy can be full. Read I John (along with all the apostolic letters, of course) and see what fellowship you can have with the apostles in their writing that brings us into deeper and better fellowship with the Father and the Son, and an ever increasing awareness of how wonderfully good this fellowship is.
          One day, any experiences of this fellowship of joy will be superseded by the perfections of heaven where, as Paul put it, “then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”[23]The best thing to do while waiting for that grand crescendo eternity of knowing God is seek to know him so fully now that we cannot separate how much we are feeling Jesus’ joy, and how much we are feeling our own. God’s will is that both happen at the same time, so let’s enjoy them both rather than trying to decide which one to focus on.

© 2015 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 3:30
[2] Philippians 4:4
[3] Genesis 1:1
[4] Genesis 1:26-27
[5] Genesis 3
[6] Psalm 37:4
[7] John 3:16
[8] John 17:3
[9] Philippians 2:12-13
[10] Isaiah 6:1-5
[11] Luke 22:60-62
[12] Job 40:3-5
[13] Luke 7:36-50
[14] Genesis 32:22-32
[15] I’m quite sure that any of David’s psalms would do.
[16] Genesis 2:7; John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-17
[17] Who can enter into the beauty of Psalm 8:1-9 without feeling wonderful things at the same time as consciously recognizing wonderful things in God?
[18] Genesis 1:1
[19] Genesis 1:26-27
[20] I John 1:3
[21] I John 1:4
[22] Ephesians 5:1-2
[23] I Corinthians 13:12

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