The Most Amazing Relationship

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:1-2

Before time and before space. Before any one thing existed. Before all creation. There was only one thing. There was the Word and God, or the Word-God. This Word was not only with but was. How can something be with but also is? We are taught in school that two objects can’t occupy the same place at the same time. This simple law of physics, applicable to all created things subject to space and time, has no hold over the eternal Triune God. He is the one who operates outside of space and time. He is the omniscient and omnipresent One. He is three distinct, but not separate persons. How can this be? I have no idea. However, I am not God and as such am limited by this most basic law of physics, among plenty of other things! Now the goal of this isn’t to dive into the deep mystery of the trinity, for while some may argue, the bible is good enough for me and even all those that hold the faith common to all believers (Jude 3). But what we can see is the most unique and special relationship in the universe.

In the birth of Jesus Christ there was the incarnation of this God in the flesh. God became a man. God brought His divinity into humanity, into mankind, embodied in a little man from Nazareth. In verse 14 of the same chapter John says, And the word became flesh and dwelt (literally “tabernacled”) among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality. Just as in the Old Testament God lived with and among His chosen people through the building of a tabernacle, a tent (Exo. 25:8-9); in the incarnation He did the very same thing! The entire world came into existence by His word, but the world didn’t know Him. He came to His own, to live among the very man that He created in His image and likeness, but they didn’t receive Him (John 1:10-11, Gen. 1:26). This Word that became flesh, this Jesus had the closest and most intimate bond with His Father. All the time He and His Father were one, were together, were “with” one another. So close and so intimate that even the oldest couple on earth that have begun to “look like one another” and “finish each other’s sentences” pale in comparison to the Father and the Son.

This Jesus came in the name of the Father, He spoke the Father’s words, He sought the Father’s glory, He expressed the Father, He lived because of the Father, He did the will of the Father and He taught the Father’s teaching. He glorified the Father and the Father glorified Him. He prayed to the Father and even answered and finished His Father’s prayers (Matt. 11:25). He even said if you have seen me, then you have seen the Father (John 14:9). So here, as the bard would say, lies the rub – He not only lived and expressed a perfect, sinless life by God. He not only came for a testimony that in Him was life and light. He not only came to declare the God whom no one had ever seen (John 1:4, 18) – He came so that He could manifest, so He could display this most amazing relationship! Oh, don’t you see, this is real and genuine oneness. This is the reality of harmony and peace. We can’t be one and in agreement with anyone. Our family, our spouse, our friends, our boss; go long enough and there will always be some separation, small or big. Hell, we can’t even be one with ourselves sometimes! What kind of oneness is this? What kind of love and peace is this?

Now let me ask you a question. What was the greatest suffering that the Lord endured through His entire life including His death on the cross? Do you believe it was being punched? Do you think it was pushing against the nails in His hands and feet in order to breathe? Or maybe you believe it was the psychological and emotional suffering of being that despised, that forsaken, that mocked, that hated? Some consideration should be given to the night the Lord was in the garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion. He prayed to His Father “remove this cup from Me; yet, not My will, but Yours be done”. That night He prayed so intensely, so earnestly that He was in “agony” (a word only used once in the entire New Testament) and his sweat became like great drops of blood. Jesus was in the most grueling and fierce conflict of His entire life (Luke 22:42-44). He who knew no sin, was about to be made sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21). While certainly the sheer weight of all the sins of the entire world pressed upon Him, it was out of an immeasurable amount of love for mankind and obedience to His Father that he carried on. Here as a bookend to the cosmic scene of the garden of Eden, the son of Eve, the seed of the woman resisted the serpent’s temptation (Gen. 3:15).

Again though, I ask the question – What was His greatest suffering? I cannot, just as no one can, say for sure; for who has known the mind of the Lord and who has become His counselor (Rom. 11:34)? However, this only Begotten Son of God, the Word that was eternally with God in the closest union to ever exist was about to endure not only psychical and emotional pain; but an “agony” that He had never known – the loss of that relationship! While the Lord was on the cross, in the last three hours, when darkness came over the land, the righteous and holy Father economically removed Himself from His son. He broke the connection, shut off the light, removed the fellowship. Was it suffering of mere metal nails? Was it the people below mocking Him to come down off the cross? Was it for this He cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” Oh, how we should see our relationship with God from this heavenly and eternal view! For eternity the Son had always been “with” the Father. Always felt His presence. Yet out of the full spectrum of eternity He lost that relationship for a number of hours and suffered a profound loss and isolation that we may never understand.

Yes, our righteous and holy Father abhors sin; but if you search His heart and understand the motivation behind His divine plan then I believe you might find something else. I believe you will find a God of mercy! A God who decided to pour out His love into our hearts and commends that love to in us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:5-8). So, can he really hold sin in such a high regard if He is willing to close the gap, bridge the divide and meet our need while we were in sin and lawlessness? Again, I am not advocating or even condoning sin but He values this relationship above all else. Even at the time of man’s creation, God who made us in His image and likeness said that it’s not good for the man to be alone (Gen. 1:26, 2:18). It’s as if God were standing in front of a mirror speaking about His situation. It’s as if He were the one that wanted an “Eve”, a match and a counterpart. It’s as if He wanted us to be brought into this close and intimate relationship. He values this oneness above all else. Don’t you want to be a part of that? Don’t you want to be brought into that type of fellowship?

Well, praise the Lord, in His Father’s house are many abodes; and He went to prepare a place for you and for me. And since He has prepared that place for us, He has come again and received us to Himself, so that where He is, we also may be (John 14:2-3). That house isn’t some “mansion in the sky”. That house isn’t heaven with everything your soul could ever desire. That house is God! We have become His tabernacle; His dwelling place and He has become our home and our rest. It’s with this view and under a divine utterance that the prophet Isaiah says – Thus says Jehovah, Heaven in my throne, and the earth the footstool for My feet. Where then is the house that you will build for Me, and where is the place of My rest? For all these things My hand has made, and so all these things have come into being, declares Jehovah. But to this kind of man will I look, to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word (Isa. 66:1-2). Oh, brothers and sisters, it’s to man that He is looking! He is looking to you, to me to have a home. He wants to bring you into a place of perfect peace which is found through this most amazing relationship. So, forget the things which are behind, press forward to the things which are before and in front of each one of us (Phil. 3:13). For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father in order to ask that Christ may make His home in all our hearts through faith (Eph. 3:14-17).