Monday, July 11, 2011
Three in One
The Trinity
I was on Tumblr (my other blog with all the same stuff I have in this one, but much more community based; it's like Facebook-style blogging... or maybe more like MySpace, since it's a world-wide community based on usernames and personal interests) yesterday, and a question came up about the Trinity and who we should pray to: Jesus or God. The resulting conversation was really interesting, and I learned a lot, so I thought I'd share it. Enjoy!
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Anonymous:
One question: If Jesus is the son of God, and God is the father, which one do I pray to? Like when I'm saying grace or something, do I praise the son or the father? Is Jesus an intercessor that relays prayers between me and God, or can I pray to him to directly answer my prayers? Forgive me, I know I said "one question" but I'm really trying to understand this concept.
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Bethany (uniting-all-christians):
I’ll try to answer this the best I can…
Matthew 6:9 says to pray to the Father. “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name,’”
You don’t necessarily have to say “Father” though… because the Father is also God, Lord, etc.
However, we’re supposed to pray to God in Jesus’ name.
“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” -John 14:13-14
Jesus does connect you to God. When Jesus died on the cross for your sins, THAT’S what made it possible for you to have a relationship with your Father :)
Hope this helps! If you’re still confused, please come back lol. God bless you<3
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Anon:
Ok I get what you're saying, but still a bit confused. If anything, I'd say that having to pray in Jesus' name takes away from my connection to my ultimate Creator. The way I see it is instead of sending 100% of my praise or prayer to God, I'm giving off a percentage of that to Jesus because I'm associating him with God. I guess my question is more on the lines of who takes credit for everything that happens? Jesus or God? Which ever one does is the one I'm completely submitting to, not both.
———————————————————
(after a few comments about the Trinity all being the same God, saying that by praying to One, you are praying to all three)
Anon:
Thanks to everyone that replied to my question! I'd still say that there's no way that God can be on the same level as Jesus, even if they existed as a trinity. God existed way before Jesus and He created everything including Jesus, so how can I place both of them on the same level? It doesn't make sense to me. After all Jesus was human, so it confuses me even more to say that I'm allowed to place a human being on the same level as God.
———————————————————
Me:
John 1:1-2 & 14 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
Even though Jesus was a Man, He was (and is) also God. God did not create Jesus. He created His body. But Jesus has always been with God, and He has always been God. When you make God and Jesus out to be two different beings, that's when you start running into trouble with asking, "Which one should I pray to?" The thing is that they're not two different beings. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three in One. Like someone else said earlier, if you pray to One, you pray to all three.
You absolutely can pray to Jesus, because He is God. But if you always associate Jesus with the Man and God with the Spirit in heaven, then you're separating the Trinity. In that case, praying to Jesus would be exactly like praying to a person. Jesus was just a Man. Yes, He was also God, and yes, He was a perfect Man, but He was a Man all the same. Praying to a man is just praying to an idol. We, as Christians, have to get out of the mindset that Jesus is the Man and God is the Spirit, because that's confining them to their locations: God is in heaven and Jesus was on earth. When we understand that Jesus is God and that God is Jesus, then we can pray to Jesus as if we're praying to the whole Trinity. But if you pray to the Man who performed miracles, taught humility, died on the cross, and rose from the grave, you're worshiping an idol. Pray to the Spirit of God that filled His body, because without the Spirit, Jesus would have been an empty shell of a man.
———————————————————
Anon:
Hi, I'm the anon from the "uniting all Christians" blog. Your answer seemed to make the most sense, so thnx for that. However, if we're not supposed to focus on Jesus as the man, then why are there so many depicted pictures and statues of him, or his body in this case? Isn't that the whole point of the cross? Because Jesus, the man, died on the cross, it became a strong symbol of Christianity?
———————————————————
Me:
Hey, anon! Thanks for the question and encouragement.
To tell you the truth, I think the whole thing that started the spread of the cross as a symbol of the sacrifice Jesus made was idolatry. Not to bring down anyone who wears a cross around their neck, but it is what it is. Of course, the cross is a great reminder of what Jesus did for us (I have one sitting next to my computer), but we have to be careful that we don’t start worshiping the image rather than the Person—the God—who gave the cross its meaning. (Basically, if you can’t pray to God without clutching your cross necklace for dear life, then you need to put that cross away for a while.)
People worship in different ways. For some, it’s painting. For others, it’s sculpting. For some, it’s composing. For others, it’s acting. Whatever the method of worship is, we usually don’t intend to make those things into idols. We use diverse forms of worship to remind others of what God did for us, not so that they would worship the art we make.
This is a little bit off topic and will probably just make things harder to understand: Jesus died for our sins on the cross, but He also did much more than that. He actually descended into hell. I don’t think anyone will ever understand how that’s possible until we meet Him face to face. But I’m going to take a whack at reasoning through it. Jesus was a Man, so He had a soul and a spirit, just like every person. (The Bible makes several distinctions between the spirit of a man and the Holy Spirit of God.) The spirit/soul of a person is what goes to heaven or hell (although the Bible also says that we will be given new bodies when Jesus returns). This may not be biblically correct, but if it helps someone understand, then God can redeem it and use it for good (that same idea applies to what I said earlier about the different forms of worship not being intended to serve as idols): Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, but He also had His own human spirit. That human spirit was what descended into hell, because the Holy Spirit, being perfectly holy, could have nothing to do with evil. After all, God can’t be separated from God. So Jesus’ spirit—Jesus the Man—went to hell, carrying all the sins of the world. But because He had lived a perfect life, His human spirit was spotless and served only as a carrier, dropping off our sins in hell. The cross was the least of His suffering because He paid for our sins in hell, but when all of our sins had been paid for (because, no matter how many sins we commit, all our sins are numbered and there is an end to them), Jesus’ spirit was found to be pure and righteous, deserving to be set free from hell, kind of like holy parole that only God can earn. So His spirit, having escaped from hell, returned to His body on the earth, and He was carried up into heaven by the Holy Spirit, who had reunited with His perfect human spirit.
Sorry if that made things a thousand times more confusing. Remember that that’s just my idea of what when on “behind the scenes.” My point in saying all of that is this: The spiritual side of what Jesus did for us is far more complex than we could ever imagine. Because nobody has ever fully seen or experienced what goes on in heaven and hell and returned to tell about it, nobody knows exactly what heaven or hell are like. So we’re left to imagine it, and we have to resort to using things we do know so that we can describe what we don’t know. That’s why the cross and Jesus the Man have become such huge symbols in Christianity: The cross is the worst form of torture imaginable to man, so we use that to symbolize the infinitely worse torture in hell that Jesus suffered for us. Nobody has seen the face of God in heaven (we’d die if we did, because He’s so holy), but Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,” and Jesus said in John 14:8, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.” So because artists can’t paint God the Spirit, they have to paint God as Jesus the Man.
Sorry to make an essay out of this, but… In closing, the images and symbols used in Christianity serve not as idols to be worshiped, but as reminders of the One who deserves to be worshiped. Don’t let the paintings and sculptures of Jesus define the God you worship and confine Him to humanity, but let them remind you that the Almighty God saw it necessary, and even desirable, to become a mortal Man like us and to suffer for every wrong that we ever committed and ever will commit, so that we could spend the rest of eternity with Him.
I hope that helps a little. Sorry if that was too confusing. Haha. If it was, message me again, and I’ll try to do a better job of explaining.
———————————————————
Anon:
It's me again! Thanks for the long reply, it did clarify some things up for me. So you're saying at the end of the day that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all God, even though they're different entities and are referred to by different names? The way I see it is that there is one God and even though we don't see Him, He makes His presence felt through every intricate detail of life; whether it's through scriptures or messengers or even prophets that can perform miraculous things, it is God's way of making His presence felt. Which is where Jesus comes along; a human being chosen by God to deliver the one true message of monotheism that has always been delivered by all of God's chosen individuals. That makes Jesus and all other chosen ones a mercy to all of mankind, however, we must understand the ultimate source of that mercy, which is God, and worship Him alone. We can praise the Lord for blessing us with individuals like Jesus and Abraham and all the way back to Adam, but we must not confuse who is the All Mighty and who are His blessed servants.
The Trinity really does make monotheism so complex when it really isn't. There is one God and only one God and we owe Him 100% of our worship. No intercessors in this life, no one to speak on our behalf, and definitely no one to remove our own sins. We have a relationship with God, and we can speak to Him whenever we want, and we can repent and ask for forgiveness so our sins can be removed. There isn't anything or anyone in between the creation and their Creator.
———————————————————
Me:
I'm glad my rambling made sense to you! But I think part of what I said might have been a little misleading. I said that Jesus' human spirit was what descended into hell to pay for our sins. But that doesn't make Jesus any less than God. Yes, Jesus was a Man that God chose to send to preach salvation by repentance, but if God hadn't been in Him, then He wouldn't have been sent. In other words, the Person of Jesus only existed because God chose to manifest Himself in His body. Luke 1:35 says that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary so that she would give birth to Jesus. Think of it this way: Humans give birth to other humans, right? (I would hope so.) Babies are born by the combination of the genes of the father and the mother; therefore, the baby only exists because the father and mother have come together to form one being. In the same way, if God were to give birth, His child could be nothing other than God. To use evolution as an analogy (I don't believe in the theory of evolution, by the way), humans don't give birth to apes that are less than human; so God can't give birth to anything less than God. So Jesus was born fully God because He was God's Son, and He was fully Man because He was Mary's Son. Mary's humanity gave Jesus His body, and God's... Godhood? gave Him His Spirit. As C.S. Lewis puts it, "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." Jesus was God in the flesh.
I'm not an actor, but let's pretend I am. I go backstage and put on my costume, then I come out on stage as the Cowardly Lion. Am I the Cowardly Lion? Yes. But am I really? No, I'm Michael, just an average person playing the part of the Cowardly Lion. At the end of the day, I'll take off my costume and resume acting like myself. Does that make me any less Michael while I'm acting as the Cowardly Lion? No. Behind the scenes, God made a body—a costume—for Himself and came to earth in the form of a Man as Jesus. Was He a Man? Yes, but only for a time. In reality, Jesus was and is God, even while He was a Man. And at the end of His time on earth, He ascended into heaven and shed His earthly body to reveal the fullness of His true identity as God. He wasn't any less God while He was a Man, but He chose to play the part of a Man while still existing as God.
Yes, Christian monotheism is very complicated, but if we understood everything about God, then He wouldn't be an infinite God, would He?
You're on the right track with your last paragraph, but you have to be careful about the way you say that. You're right that there is nothing separating us from God... anymore. Because Christ served as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, our sins are paid for and we are now wholly righteous in God's sight. But if we have not accepted Jesus as our sacrifice, if we have not laid our hands on the Lamb as the Israelites did (Leviticus 4:24), then our sins have not been passed on to Him, and we are still guilty of all our sins. We are completely separated from God until we repent and come to Christ. Yes, we can speak to God directly whenever we want, but only because Jesus cleansed us of our sins and tore the veil between us and God (Mark 15:37-38). But now, because of Him, the Spirit now lives in us, and we can never be separated from Him again. As Paul says in Romans 8:38-39, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neithe the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." I hope that helps, because none of this was from me. I never could have come up with any of this stuff, especially the whole thing about birth and acting. So I have to thank God for telling me what to say. This actually helped me a lot too. Haha.
Have a great day/night, and God bless!
———————————————————————————
There may be more to come. We'll just have to wait and see.
———————————————————————————
Anonymous:
One question: If Jesus is the son of God, and God is the father, which one do I pray to? Like when I'm saying grace or something, do I praise the son or the father? Is Jesus an intercessor that relays prayers between me and God, or can I pray to him to directly answer my prayers? Forgive me, I know I said "one question" but I'm really trying to understand this concept.
———————————————————
Bethany (uniting-all-christians):
I’ll try to answer this the best I can…
Matthew 6:9 says to pray to the Father. “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name,’”
You don’t necessarily have to say “Father” though… because the Father is also God, Lord, etc.
However, we’re supposed to pray to God in Jesus’ name.
“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” -John 14:13-14
Jesus does connect you to God. When Jesus died on the cross for your sins, THAT’S what made it possible for you to have a relationship with your Father :)
Hope this helps! If you’re still confused, please come back lol. God bless you<3
———————————————————
Anon:
Ok I get what you're saying, but still a bit confused. If anything, I'd say that having to pray in Jesus' name takes away from my connection to my ultimate Creator. The way I see it is instead of sending 100% of my praise or prayer to God, I'm giving off a percentage of that to Jesus because I'm associating him with God. I guess my question is more on the lines of who takes credit for everything that happens? Jesus or God? Which ever one does is the one I'm completely submitting to, not both.
———————————————————
(after a few comments about the Trinity all being the same God, saying that by praying to One, you are praying to all three)
Anon:
Thanks to everyone that replied to my question! I'd still say that there's no way that God can be on the same level as Jesus, even if they existed as a trinity. God existed way before Jesus and He created everything including Jesus, so how can I place both of them on the same level? It doesn't make sense to me. After all Jesus was human, so it confuses me even more to say that I'm allowed to place a human being on the same level as God.
———————————————————
Me:
John 1:1-2 & 14 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
Even though Jesus was a Man, He was (and is) also God. God did not create Jesus. He created His body. But Jesus has always been with God, and He has always been God. When you make God and Jesus out to be two different beings, that's when you start running into trouble with asking, "Which one should I pray to?" The thing is that they're not two different beings. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three in One. Like someone else said earlier, if you pray to One, you pray to all three.
You absolutely can pray to Jesus, because He is God. But if you always associate Jesus with the Man and God with the Spirit in heaven, then you're separating the Trinity. In that case, praying to Jesus would be exactly like praying to a person. Jesus was just a Man. Yes, He was also God, and yes, He was a perfect Man, but He was a Man all the same. Praying to a man is just praying to an idol. We, as Christians, have to get out of the mindset that Jesus is the Man and God is the Spirit, because that's confining them to their locations: God is in heaven and Jesus was on earth. When we understand that Jesus is God and that God is Jesus, then we can pray to Jesus as if we're praying to the whole Trinity. But if you pray to the Man who performed miracles, taught humility, died on the cross, and rose from the grave, you're worshiping an idol. Pray to the Spirit of God that filled His body, because without the Spirit, Jesus would have been an empty shell of a man.
———————————————————
Anon:
Hi, I'm the anon from the "uniting all Christians" blog. Your answer seemed to make the most sense, so thnx for that. However, if we're not supposed to focus on Jesus as the man, then why are there so many depicted pictures and statues of him, or his body in this case? Isn't that the whole point of the cross? Because Jesus, the man, died on the cross, it became a strong symbol of Christianity?
———————————————————
Me:
Hey, anon! Thanks for the question and encouragement.
To tell you the truth, I think the whole thing that started the spread of the cross as a symbol of the sacrifice Jesus made was idolatry. Not to bring down anyone who wears a cross around their neck, but it is what it is. Of course, the cross is a great reminder of what Jesus did for us (I have one sitting next to my computer), but we have to be careful that we don’t start worshiping the image rather than the Person—the God—who gave the cross its meaning. (Basically, if you can’t pray to God without clutching your cross necklace for dear life, then you need to put that cross away for a while.)
People worship in different ways. For some, it’s painting. For others, it’s sculpting. For some, it’s composing. For others, it’s acting. Whatever the method of worship is, we usually don’t intend to make those things into idols. We use diverse forms of worship to remind others of what God did for us, not so that they would worship the art we make.
This is a little bit off topic and will probably just make things harder to understand: Jesus died for our sins on the cross, but He also did much more than that. He actually descended into hell. I don’t think anyone will ever understand how that’s possible until we meet Him face to face. But I’m going to take a whack at reasoning through it. Jesus was a Man, so He had a soul and a spirit, just like every person. (The Bible makes several distinctions between the spirit of a man and the Holy Spirit of God.) The spirit/soul of a person is what goes to heaven or hell (although the Bible also says that we will be given new bodies when Jesus returns). This may not be biblically correct, but if it helps someone understand, then God can redeem it and use it for good (that same idea applies to what I said earlier about the different forms of worship not being intended to serve as idols): Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, but He also had His own human spirit. That human spirit was what descended into hell, because the Holy Spirit, being perfectly holy, could have nothing to do with evil. After all, God can’t be separated from God. So Jesus’ spirit—Jesus the Man—went to hell, carrying all the sins of the world. But because He had lived a perfect life, His human spirit was spotless and served only as a carrier, dropping off our sins in hell. The cross was the least of His suffering because He paid for our sins in hell, but when all of our sins had been paid for (because, no matter how many sins we commit, all our sins are numbered and there is an end to them), Jesus’ spirit was found to be pure and righteous, deserving to be set free from hell, kind of like holy parole that only God can earn. So His spirit, having escaped from hell, returned to His body on the earth, and He was carried up into heaven by the Holy Spirit, who had reunited with His perfect human spirit.
Sorry if that made things a thousand times more confusing. Remember that that’s just my idea of what when on “behind the scenes.” My point in saying all of that is this: The spiritual side of what Jesus did for us is far more complex than we could ever imagine. Because nobody has ever fully seen or experienced what goes on in heaven and hell and returned to tell about it, nobody knows exactly what heaven or hell are like. So we’re left to imagine it, and we have to resort to using things we do know so that we can describe what we don’t know. That’s why the cross and Jesus the Man have become such huge symbols in Christianity: The cross is the worst form of torture imaginable to man, so we use that to symbolize the infinitely worse torture in hell that Jesus suffered for us. Nobody has seen the face of God in heaven (we’d die if we did, because He’s so holy), but Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,” and Jesus said in John 14:8, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.” So because artists can’t paint God the Spirit, they have to paint God as Jesus the Man.
Sorry to make an essay out of this, but… In closing, the images and symbols used in Christianity serve not as idols to be worshiped, but as reminders of the One who deserves to be worshiped. Don’t let the paintings and sculptures of Jesus define the God you worship and confine Him to humanity, but let them remind you that the Almighty God saw it necessary, and even desirable, to become a mortal Man like us and to suffer for every wrong that we ever committed and ever will commit, so that we could spend the rest of eternity with Him.
I hope that helps a little. Sorry if that was too confusing. Haha. If it was, message me again, and I’ll try to do a better job of explaining.
———————————————————
Anon:
It's me again! Thanks for the long reply, it did clarify some things up for me. So you're saying at the end of the day that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all God, even though they're different entities and are referred to by different names? The way I see it is that there is one God and even though we don't see Him, He makes His presence felt through every intricate detail of life; whether it's through scriptures or messengers or even prophets that can perform miraculous things, it is God's way of making His presence felt. Which is where Jesus comes along; a human being chosen by God to deliver the one true message of monotheism that has always been delivered by all of God's chosen individuals. That makes Jesus and all other chosen ones a mercy to all of mankind, however, we must understand the ultimate source of that mercy, which is God, and worship Him alone. We can praise the Lord for blessing us with individuals like Jesus and Abraham and all the way back to Adam, but we must not confuse who is the All Mighty and who are His blessed servants.
The Trinity really does make monotheism so complex when it really isn't. There is one God and only one God and we owe Him 100% of our worship. No intercessors in this life, no one to speak on our behalf, and definitely no one to remove our own sins. We have a relationship with God, and we can speak to Him whenever we want, and we can repent and ask for forgiveness so our sins can be removed. There isn't anything or anyone in between the creation and their Creator.
———————————————————
Me:
I'm glad my rambling made sense to you! But I think part of what I said might have been a little misleading. I said that Jesus' human spirit was what descended into hell to pay for our sins. But that doesn't make Jesus any less than God. Yes, Jesus was a Man that God chose to send to preach salvation by repentance, but if God hadn't been in Him, then He wouldn't have been sent. In other words, the Person of Jesus only existed because God chose to manifest Himself in His body. Luke 1:35 says that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary so that she would give birth to Jesus. Think of it this way: Humans give birth to other humans, right? (I would hope so.) Babies are born by the combination of the genes of the father and the mother; therefore, the baby only exists because the father and mother have come together to form one being. In the same way, if God were to give birth, His child could be nothing other than God. To use evolution as an analogy (I don't believe in the theory of evolution, by the way), humans don't give birth to apes that are less than human; so God can't give birth to anything less than God. So Jesus was born fully God because He was God's Son, and He was fully Man because He was Mary's Son. Mary's humanity gave Jesus His body, and God's... Godhood? gave Him His Spirit. As C.S. Lewis puts it, "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." Jesus was God in the flesh.
I'm not an actor, but let's pretend I am. I go backstage and put on my costume, then I come out on stage as the Cowardly Lion. Am I the Cowardly Lion? Yes. But am I really? No, I'm Michael, just an average person playing the part of the Cowardly Lion. At the end of the day, I'll take off my costume and resume acting like myself. Does that make me any less Michael while I'm acting as the Cowardly Lion? No. Behind the scenes, God made a body—a costume—for Himself and came to earth in the form of a Man as Jesus. Was He a Man? Yes, but only for a time. In reality, Jesus was and is God, even while He was a Man. And at the end of His time on earth, He ascended into heaven and shed His earthly body to reveal the fullness of His true identity as God. He wasn't any less God while He was a Man, but He chose to play the part of a Man while still existing as God.
Yes, Christian monotheism is very complicated, but if we understood everything about God, then He wouldn't be an infinite God, would He?
You're on the right track with your last paragraph, but you have to be careful about the way you say that. You're right that there is nothing separating us from God... anymore. Because Christ served as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, our sins are paid for and we are now wholly righteous in God's sight. But if we have not accepted Jesus as our sacrifice, if we have not laid our hands on the Lamb as the Israelites did (Leviticus 4:24), then our sins have not been passed on to Him, and we are still guilty of all our sins. We are completely separated from God until we repent and come to Christ. Yes, we can speak to God directly whenever we want, but only because Jesus cleansed us of our sins and tore the veil between us and God (Mark 15:37-38). But now, because of Him, the Spirit now lives in us, and we can never be separated from Him again. As Paul says in Romans 8:38-39, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neithe the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." I hope that helps, because none of this was from me. I never could have come up with any of this stuff, especially the whole thing about birth and acting. So I have to thank God for telling me what to say. This actually helped me a lot too. Haha.
Have a great day/night, and God bless!
———————————————————————————
There may be more to come. We'll just have to wait and see.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
I am because I AM
"God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you."'" ~ Exodus 3:14
This is probably one of my favorite verses of the Bible. For the first time in history, God makes Himself known by His name: I AM. YHWH (Yahweh). The LORD. This was the name that the Israelites dared not speak nor write because it was considered too holy to be uttered by mortal lips or written by mortal hands. But why is that His name? Why is God simply "I AM"?
Well, I started thinking about verb conjugations last night as I was reminded of the post on the Beatitudes that I was supposed to be writing. And as I traced I am back to to be, it hit me. When we introduce ourselves, we say, "I am [insert name here]." Notice how God's name enters that sentence? Here's why I think that is: because in Him, we find our being.
I'm not talking about identity here. I'm talking about existence. Think about it: God made us. We exist because He exists, and only because He exists. Without God, we would cease to be; in fact, we never would have come into being in the first place. I am because He is.
A few years ago I saw a video by Rob Bell where he relates the Holy Spirit to breathing. In the beginning, God breathed the breath of life into man—a part of Him, His breath, entered into man. The Spirit consumes us and gives us life, just as our breath does. And in the same way that the Holy Spirit is the breath in our lungs that sustains us, God is our being. His existence allows us to exist. That's why we have to say His name when we say ours. If He didn't exist, I wouldn't be able to say, "I am Michael." I would have to say, "My name is Michael." And that kind of takes away the human element. I no longer exist as a being; I only have a name. My name isn't who I am. It's like the saying, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." You could call a rose a rock, but does that make it a rock? No, it's still a rose. So if God didn't exist, I could say that my name is Michael, but that wouldn't change the fact that I don't exist.
Even when we ask someone else, "Who are you?" we are taking God's name and applying it to that person by conjugating the verb to be. To be is God. That sounds nice and poetic, and Paul even says something similar when he says "to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21), but it's such a profound idea that I can't wrap my mind around it. I can't explain that four-word sentence except by saying that God is present in every moment of our existence. But I know this: I exist because He exists. I am because He is. I am because the I AM is. I am because I AM.
This is probably one of my favorite verses of the Bible. For the first time in history, God makes Himself known by His name: I AM. YHWH (Yahweh). The LORD. This was the name that the Israelites dared not speak nor write because it was considered too holy to be uttered by mortal lips or written by mortal hands. But why is that His name? Why is God simply "I AM"?
Well, I started thinking about verb conjugations last night as I was reminded of the post on the Beatitudes that I was supposed to be writing. And as I traced I am back to to be, it hit me. When we introduce ourselves, we say, "I am [insert name here]." Notice how God's name enters that sentence? Here's why I think that is: because in Him, we find our being.
I'm not talking about identity here. I'm talking about existence. Think about it: God made us. We exist because He exists, and only because He exists. Without God, we would cease to be; in fact, we never would have come into being in the first place. I am because He is.
A few years ago I saw a video by Rob Bell where he relates the Holy Spirit to breathing. In the beginning, God breathed the breath of life into man—a part of Him, His breath, entered into man. The Spirit consumes us and gives us life, just as our breath does. And in the same way that the Holy Spirit is the breath in our lungs that sustains us, God is our being. His existence allows us to exist. That's why we have to say His name when we say ours. If He didn't exist, I wouldn't be able to say, "I am Michael." I would have to say, "My name is Michael." And that kind of takes away the human element. I no longer exist as a being; I only have a name. My name isn't who I am. It's like the saying, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." You could call a rose a rock, but does that make it a rock? No, it's still a rose. So if God didn't exist, I could say that my name is Michael, but that wouldn't change the fact that I don't exist.
Even when we ask someone else, "Who are you?" we are taking God's name and applying it to that person by conjugating the verb to be. To be is God. That sounds nice and poetic, and Paul even says something similar when he says "to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21), but it's such a profound idea that I can't wrap my mind around it. I can't explain that four-word sentence except by saying that God is present in every moment of our existence. But I know this: I exist because He exists. I am because He is. I am because the I AM is. I am because I AM.
The Beatitudes
I've been meaning to type this up for three weeks, but it just hasn't happened until now. So we'll see if I remember everything. If not, then God must not think those forgotten ideas were necessary. Either that, or He's waiting for the perfect time to reveal them again in the future. But anyway, here it is.
So three weeks ago at Hillside's Thursday night college Bible study, we studied the Beatitudes. It was interesting because there's so much more to learn from Jesus' first statement in the sermon on the mount than you might notice at first glance. To start, what are the Beatitudes?
After Jesus had called His disciples and had begun His ministry of healing, He went up on a mountain to give His famous "Sermon on the Mount." This sermon takes up the entirety of Matthew 5-7. The Beatitudes are found at the very beginning of this sermon in Matthew 5:1-12.
Actually, let me stop there. For the next few days, I'm going to try to make (relatively) short posts for a change. So I'm going to take each statement of the Beatitudes one at a time, since we talked for a long time about each one of them at the Bible study.
So for today, I just want to present this idea (not my own; Ross Wesely mentioned it at the Bible study, and he was referencing what he had heard from someone else): beatitude is a weird word, isn't it? What does it mean? Well, literally, it means "blessedness." But is Jesus really just saying, "You will be blessed if you fall into one or more of these categories"? There has to be more to it than that. There's a reason He's advertising the blessings that come with these qualities: so that we would strive to fit His description of the ones who will be blessed. He wants us to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to be peacemakers, and to be persecuted because of righteousness and rejoice because of it. If you break down the word beatitude, you can separate it into the words be and attitude. To be is a verb. Great, thanks for the grammar lesson. Now look at Exodus 3:14: "God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you."'" I am is the first person conjugation of the verb to be, right? So if you replace the be in beatitude with I AM, or in other words, with God, the Beatitudes now become "God-attitudes": the attitudes of God, the behavior of the Lord, the manner in which Jesus carried Himself. Jesus was the most highly blessed Person to ever walk the face of the earth. Why? Because of who He was, not only in His identity as the Son of God, but also in the type of Person people saw Him as.
The Beatitudes aren't just Jesus' way of saying, "Guess what? If you can describe yourself as any of the things I'm about to mention, then good job! You deserve a pat on the back." They're a command with a promise: "Become the man (or woman) I am describing, and you will be blessed. Allow My Father to mold you to be like Me, and all these blessings will be yours. So what are you waiting for? Get to work! Come to Me, and I will send My Spirit to dwell in you to guide you in My footsteps."
So three weeks ago at Hillside's Thursday night college Bible study, we studied the Beatitudes. It was interesting because there's so much more to learn from Jesus' first statement in the sermon on the mount than you might notice at first glance. To start, what are the Beatitudes?
After Jesus had called His disciples and had begun His ministry of healing, He went up on a mountain to give His famous "Sermon on the Mount." This sermon takes up the entirety of Matthew 5-7. The Beatitudes are found at the very beginning of this sermon in Matthew 5:1-12.
"Now when He saw the crowds, He went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to Him, and He began to teach them, saying:
'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
'Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.'"
Actually, let me stop there. For the next few days, I'm going to try to make (relatively) short posts for a change. So I'm going to take each statement of the Beatitudes one at a time, since we talked for a long time about each one of them at the Bible study.
So for today, I just want to present this idea (not my own; Ross Wesely mentioned it at the Bible study, and he was referencing what he had heard from someone else): beatitude is a weird word, isn't it? What does it mean? Well, literally, it means "blessedness." But is Jesus really just saying, "You will be blessed if you fall into one or more of these categories"? There has to be more to it than that. There's a reason He's advertising the blessings that come with these qualities: so that we would strive to fit His description of the ones who will be blessed. He wants us to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to be peacemakers, and to be persecuted because of righteousness and rejoice because of it. If you break down the word beatitude, you can separate it into the words be and attitude. To be is a verb. Great, thanks for the grammar lesson. Now look at Exodus 3:14: "God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you."'" I am is the first person conjugation of the verb to be, right? So if you replace the be in beatitude with I AM, or in other words, with God, the Beatitudes now become "God-attitudes": the attitudes of God, the behavior of the Lord, the manner in which Jesus carried Himself. Jesus was the most highly blessed Person to ever walk the face of the earth. Why? Because of who He was, not only in His identity as the Son of God, but also in the type of Person people saw Him as.
The Beatitudes aren't just Jesus' way of saying, "Guess what? If you can describe yourself as any of the things I'm about to mention, then good job! You deserve a pat on the back." They're a command with a promise: "Become the man (or woman) I am describing, and you will be blessed. Allow My Father to mold you to be like Me, and all these blessings will be yours. So what are you waiting for? Get to work! Come to Me, and I will send My Spirit to dwell in you to guide you in My footsteps."
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Where I Belong; Cory Asbury
I miss Freshley.
That was my first thought when I listened to this song today (as well as the other two I posted earlier). I miss the joy I feel when I’m around all my Christian friends from the UGA Wesley Foundation. I miss being able to hang out with them every day. I miss living five minutes’ walking distance from them. I miss the music and the messages. I miss small group discussions.
But why was that my first thought? Why do I want to end this separation so much more than closing the gap between me and God? I haven’t been spending as much time in the Word and in prayer as I would like to. But the thing is that, if I really wanted to spend time with God, I would do it.
Father, help me set my priorities straight, and give me a desire to seek Your presence above all else. After all, it’s where I belong.
That was my first thought when I listened to this song today (as well as the other two I posted earlier). I miss the joy I feel when I’m around all my Christian friends from the UGA Wesley Foundation. I miss being able to hang out with them every day. I miss living five minutes’ walking distance from them. I miss the music and the messages. I miss small group discussions.
But why was that my first thought? Why do I want to end this separation so much more than closing the gap between me and God? I haven’t been spending as much time in the Word and in prayer as I would like to. But the thing is that, if I really wanted to spend time with God, I would do it.
Father, help me set my priorities straight, and give me a desire to seek Your presence above all else. After all, it’s where I belong.
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