What a privilege it is that God gives us the opportunity to probe the depths of who He is! In our discussions in class today we tackled some heavy theological concepts and questioned some ways we have talked about God. I hope you realize that we got to these questions because we are taking a closer look at the Bible and in this case specifically Paul's letters.
The Bible will force us to reconsider what we believe and what we say about God, salvation, humanity and the world. As true Protestants the core understanding of the way we approach Scripture is that Scripture continually reforms us as God's community. We submit to the story in Scripture, to what God speaks to us through those He inspired to write, so that we are continually getting closer to the truth of who He is and who we are in light of Him.
In particular, the one question we shared today is that of what happened on the cross in terms of Jesus' relationship with the Father and the giving of himself for our sake to deal with sin and recover our relationship. Biblically there is no ground to consider that the Father needed to look away when Jesus suffered on the cross. The argument is an assumption that as Jesus begins to quote Psalm 22 ["My God why have you forsaken me? ] the indication is that the Father needed to turn away because he could not look on the Son dying on the cross taking the sin of humanity on himself.
There are several problems with this view. First of all, we need to realize that Jesus died on the cross as the Son of God. The implication in this is that God was experiencing the very alienation of sin and the suffering of the same. For the Father to look away, so to speak, is to forget that Jesus Himself was God on the cross. The theological reality of this is that as God, Jesus shares the pain and suffering of the cross with the Father and the Spirit. At this moment of alienation, the two persons that do not forsake him are the Father and the Spirit. It is this relationship that Jesus neither gives up in terms of the incarnation nor is forsaken of at His death on the cross.
What we must maintain above all is the unity of the persons of the Trinity. There is no division among the persons and the persons live in deep communion, fellowship and intermingling. The Early Church Fathers referred to this relationship of the persons of the Trinity by using the term perichoresis. The significance of this term is its reference to the persons of the Trinity "indwelling" each other. That is they are so involved in the life of the other that there is no separation or division and so maintain the unity and oneness of their being God.
The important observation is that by Jesus quoting these introductory words in Psalm 22, he recalls both in his mind and in the minds of those surrounding him at the cross that the Psalm is the introduction to the three Psalms that were read together in Hebrew worship - Psalm 22, 23 and 24. The Psalmist begins with the sense of alienation and ends with the hope of the King of Glory entering our world and restoring the Glory of God among the land of the living. Right in the middle of these Psalms is the passage about travelling through the valley of the shadow of death and fearing no evil because God's rod and staff accompany the traveller through this dangerous territory.
We miss this part because we fail to think Jewish. We forget that Jesus was a Jew, that Jewish history and theology are the backdrop of his life and all that He said and did. Jewish roots are the foundation for understanding both the heart of God and His desire to draw all people to Himself. John reminds us in his gospel that when Christ is lifted up on the cross he will draw all men to himself. This is the picture of the God we read of in the OT whose desire is to draw all people back to Him - to restore them to relationship with Him and to wholeness as human beings. In the act of Jesus being lifted up on the cross is also the picture of the Father and the Spirit working to draw all people.
I suggest to you that for all the things we experience when we read the Bible - such as hope and encouragement - we also experience challenges to our way of thinking that must submit to correction, discipline and new thinking. This is the on going effect of repentance or metanoia as we have already visited in class. What a wonderful role the Bible plays in our journey of faith with God. The point of it all is that God is truth - ultimate truth and that truth will always reside in Him and we must always defer to Him in all things. Yet God is patient, tolerant and relates to us with his deep kindness and love and gives us room for His Word to work through our hearts and minds so that we may get closer to Him in the process. We need to be patient with each other in this way as well.
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