It all started in the beginning- or, actually, before the beginning. It’s crazy to think and even more difficult to imagine how, that “the beginning” itself was created. I guess, then, it never really started at all. Or, actually, He never really started at all. He was, and is, and will be. Before the beginning He was- laughter, joy, love, and then… Creativity. He was, they were, three yet one. A God, three persons in perfect, harmonious community out of whom flowed, really inside of whom flowed, love that was creative. It’s tempting from a finite perspective to speak of this creativity pouring out of the three, to forget the fact that there is no “outside” of these three. They are. There is no greater, or other, or more. “All”, as big as we can grasp, as much we can grasp, has nowhere to be but in the Three. They are Reality.
The first act of creativity, then, was not “positive” or “external” of God. His first act was not actually speaking. It is true that God created, in the beginning, heaven and earth. But He needed first to create the beginning or, better yet, space for the beginning in Himself. Remember, they were not a god surrounded by emptiness, the way our minds unconsciously imagine Him when they read Genesis 1, an emptiness that they speak into. If they were, and there was no-thing else, then their first act of creation was to make space, in themselves, in the midst of their perfect community, for “the beginning”, space to create in.
Their first act of creation is inward. It is retreat, drawing themselves back and therefore self-limitation, self-humiliation. And so the first act of creation is mighty and great, and the degree to which we misunderstand the relationship between self-humiliation and greatness is the degree to which our definitions of each miss the mark or, in other words, are sinful (the word “sin” literally means “missing the mark”). The Cross was great, in part, because it challenged, shattered, and reordered the world’s definition of power, i.e. might and greatness. The display of power on the Cross stood in direct contrast to the way Rome displayed power; Rome displayed its power but hanging people on crosses, God displayed His power by hanging Himself on a cross. And what we see when we look at God’s first act of creation, or his action before creation, is that the way the Cross defines power is rooted in eternity, in God’s first action before creation. “Power” is measured not, first of all, by one’s ability to force but by one’s ability to surrender. What’s more, God’s surrender is always, in a sense, forceful (and purposeful). The powers and principalities of this world were forcefully defeated through God’s self-surrender on the Cross; the cosmos in all their grandeur are the result of God’s self-limitation in eternity.
We see also, when we look back before the beginning, not only the type of Creator they are, but the type of creation they made. We see what it is. Not an arbitrary hobby or pastime of God’s. Not His vain means of self-glorification. That He is infinitely greater than it and not identical to it (as in the pantheism of Eastern religions) because it was indeed created. That the creation is rooted and flows from love, the love that defines His eternal community. It exists to glorify its Creator only within the boundaries of love, and its glorification of its Creator springs from love, not visa-versa.
We see where it is. Not in a formless void, or in darkness, but very literally in the circle of love that They are because, indeed, there is no other place to be. Paul was very serious when he said, “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Even evil itself and the very depths of hell do not escape the boundaries of His love because, to beat a dead horse, there are no such things as boundaries to His love. And it is in this sense that He is all-powerful, all knowing, and everywhere at all-times, because everything- all power, all knowledge, and all space- are contained within Himself.
This is the stage on which the story of the redemption of the universe plays out. This is our God.
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 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.
Romans 8:31-39
No comments:
Post a Comment