Seeing Nothing from 18.11.16
Personal Matters
How is it possible for most of us who know Jesus to walk past those considered nothing in the eyes of the world, the strangers, naked, homeless and imprisoned and not “see” the “Lord” (Matt 25:41-45)? Why do we lack the faith of the Old Testament saints to “see him who is invisible” amongst the needy and be moved to bring Christ’s presence to the poor, ignorant, diseased, discarded and broken (Heb 11:1, 7, 13, 27)? Surely as born again people our stony hearts have been turned into flesh washed by the Word enabling us to “see the kingdom of God” (Ezek 36:25-26; John 3:3, 5; Eph 5:26). Who can deny that “the eyes of our hearts” need greater “enlightenment” to see as God sees; especially to see the nothings of this world as especially loved (Eph 1:17-18). We are struggling in the midst of a cultural crisis suffocating Western Christianity. Instead of seeing through the heart of Christ crucified we are seeing from a worldy perspective.
Seeing From whose Heart
Peter explains our call is to, “become partners in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world due to sinful desire” (2 Pet 1:4). If our desires are lustful and covetous our hearts are corrupted and never see as God’s heart sees (James 4:1-3). This is what happened in Eden. When Eve was tempted by the devil to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil she rightly, “saw that the tree good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,” (Gen 3:6). However her real problem was that lied to by Satan she desired all these things she saw for herself. Her lustful eyes reflected a covetous and idolatrous heart (Eph 5:5; Col 3:5; James 1:14-15; 1 John 2:16). Eve thought being “like God” meant personal possession and entitlement to goodness, beauty and wisdom (Gen 3:5). The terrible sin of Adam and Eve was a judgement on the character of God; they judged that the LORD had created them, Eden and the knowledge of good and evil solely for his own selfish purposes. If by faith Adam and Eve had trusted in the invisible God to in due course give to them the fullness of goodness, delight and wisdom all would have been well (Rom 1:20). Instead they wanted what God had solely for their own pleasures. Self-centred desire is the reason people can no longer see as God sees, why they cannot want nothing for themselves for the sake of others. This is why fallen humans are blind to the invisible things of Christ’s kingdom and the glory in the cross.
Nothing Like the Cross
Though God is seen in various forms throughout the Old Testament Jesus challenges his biblically literate readers, “the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen,” (Gen 3:8; Ex 24:10; Isa 6:1; Amos 9:1 etc., John 5:37). Though having the testimony of scripture the Jews lacked spiritual sight to see the Word now made flesh standing before them as the Revealer of the Father (John 5:39). Blindness had come upon Israel because it thought it possessed the blessings of God as an entitlement rather than a gift (Rom 9:7-10). Experiencing the blessings of God had led them to conclude they were something in themselves, rather than nothing. Israel wanted a different sort of God than the one revealed in Jesus. As “the image of the invisible God” Christ “made himself nothing” to save all those who think they are something (Gal 6:3; Phil 2:6-8; Col 1:15). This is pre-eminently true of the cross where Jesus becomes “a worm and no man”, a complete derelict and zero in the eyes of the world (Ps 22:6). In the weakness, emptiness and suffering of the Son of God we see God as he really is, a God no sinful human has ever desired. In his laying down all rights and entitlements however Jesus receives from his Father “the name above every name (Phil 2:7). “God makes him Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36) and he “inherits a name” above the angels (Heb 1:4). Where fallen humanity always seeks to possess for itself the entitlements of creation, Jesus is given every title by his Father. Unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus had no access to a pristine creation but only to one fallen and corrupted. The kingdom of the new creation comes in Christ by his embracing nothingness by faith. All the goodness, delight and wisdom originally intended for humanity are now his in indestructible eternal splendour (1 Cor 15:42ff.). And they are ours in him by faith.
Seeing Like Jesus
Jesus sees himself in the derelict impoverished sheep of this world (Matt 25:34ff.). But his is a seeing by faith; “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb 12:2). By faith in the invisible God Jesus saw through the emptiness of the cross the coming into being of a whole new creation. It was this seeing of things not yet real that motivated Christ to suffer in our place (Rom 4:17). We are called to see like Jesus saw, to see in the same Spirit who took him to the cross and raised him from the dead (Rom 8:11; Heb 9:14). When our eyes see from his heart we will see that in him “all things are ours” and so seeing we are freed from the lust to possess good and beautiful things NOW (1 Cor 3:21ff.). In Christ’s Spirit we will be moved to bring the fullness of his life into all the empty and broken spaces of this world (Eph 1:22-23). A desire to be like and see like Jesus moves us to ask; what is the problem with the average Western Church?
Church Blindness
The grasping character of the Church as the Bride of Christ is illuminated in the title of a book written by the wife of our nation’s most famous pastor; “I’ll Have what She’s Having”. This attitude of spirituality for personal benefit is one with that of the Corinthian Christians; “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you!” (1 Cor 4:8). Like these immature believers so many contemporary Western Christians want it all NOW, they want all that they can see; material happiness, wisdom to financially succeed and a physical overcoming of this world’s ills. Such Christianity is grasping entitlement to the things belonging to the future kingdom of God NOW, but does not in any way desire to see through the nothingness of Christ crucified.
Conclusion
There is a perfect correlation between the covetousness of our culture’s lust for visible goods and its blind denial of the reality of the invisible God (Rom 1:21-23). Such unseeing is the fate of idol worshippers. Because so many in the Church share in society’s idolatry the Spirit is too grieved for us to see Jesus’ work with power in our midst (Eph 4:30). The Lord longs to teach his people to see once again through the lens of the emptiness of the cross. In “seeing nothing” we will in fact see in an entirely new way, we will see in the Spirit the reality of a new creation that is coming through the death-and-resurrection of Christ. Seeing by faith into a time when all the titles of the new world will be given to us we are empowered to serve the derelicts and nobodies of this world, as Jesus would. We do this not because we are super spiritual people but because we see such nothings in the light of the crucified Lord. We will see such things clearly when we have a revelation that apart from Jesus we ourselves are “nothing” at all (John 15:5; Rom 7:18; 1 Cor 1:28; 13:2; 2 Cor 12:11).