Introduction

“To be God is to be enjoyable, to know God is to enjoy him.” (Jenson )

This striking quote is definitely not the way the vast majority of Australians view their Creator, and at a deep level, this includes me. I have a theology of “the joy of the Lord” and am not lacking in intense experiences of the Spirit’s joy, but certain recurring phenomena in my personal journey make it patently clear that this joy does not penetrate my life thoroughly.

For many years I have been used to daily feeling under great pressure, several weeks ago this came to a head in an intense dream. The day before I had missed a casual appointment with three friends, and that night they appeared as three huge figures towering over my own diminutive self. Shortly after this experience I headed off to the Northern Territory to pray for a week into my troubled state of mind and to seek a resolution from God. The substance of this article is a summary of what I sensed the Spirit was saying to me up north.

The striking dream about me ranking myself against others is like a quote by the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras, “”Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.”” (Protagoras). This sounds very humanistic, but when applied to Jesus who “is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Heb 13:8) it is full of truth. In “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5) is to be found the meaning of “all things” in the created universe of heaven and earth extended over every part of space-time[1]; “ in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17).

From childhood I always wanted to know how things fit together, not primarily in a scientific but in a meaning–full sense. My own attempts to solve such puzzles nearly drove me out of my mind; especially since family and friends seemed not to care about such matters.  It was such an existential crisis over meaning that led me as a 20 year old to read the Bible and turn to Christ. A couple of years later I heard an exposition on Ephesians 1 titled “The Unity of All Things” whose impact has never left me[2].

Speaking personally, revelation about the unity of all things does not come easily. Most people have given up making sense of their lives, or are hanging out for heaven when all questions will be answered. So much of life seems to carry fragmentary and purposeless pain. Even more deeply, the truth of the unity of all things in Christ is fiercely resisted by evil powers who want to convince us that disorder is an ultimate reality. I am persuaded that most of the Church has an imbalance between grief and God-given joy. To redress this imbalance has proven to be one of the motivating forces of this article.

In the Beginning

In was praying on retreat to see more deeply into God’s purposes in Christ for “all things” I could sense the answer lay within the truth of Jesus relationship with the Father, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is in the heart of the Father, he has made him known.” (John 1:18)[3]. We cannot see into God’s purposes until we see that the Word through whom “all things” were made (John 1:3) has always indwelt the Father’s heart. Since God creates through the Word of his heart everything was made to radiate the deep tenderness and affection between the Father and the Son in the power of the Spirit. The entire plan and counsel of God, centred around creation, redemption and consummation in Christ (Eph 1:3-10), is to the three Persons of the Godhead a source of boundless joy, love and glory. Creation was completed within the loving circle of the life of God in which there can be no exclusion.

To be in touch with the wisdom of God in the creation is to be aware of the rhythm of the heart beat of the Trinity which pulsates with joy; “when he marked out the foundations of the earth. ³⁰ Then I (wisdom) was constantly at his side.  I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, ³¹ rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” (Prov 8:29-31 cf. Job 38:7). Creation is the outflow of the infinite joy that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have in one another. Paul preaches to pagans, “He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”” (Acts 14:17), and to the Church, “God…richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim 6:17). The divine wisdom, beauty, joy and glory in created things are media of the indwelling presence of the Spirit (cf. Ps 19:1-4). Of all peoples, fun- loving Aussies, basking in the richness of our nation’s sun, sea, surf, sky and stars should understand this. Yet somehow the connection between the creative Word (the Son) and his Father have been severed in our popular consciousness so that as a culture we are deeply attached to created things and so dull spiritually. To resolve this disaster will involve a revelation of the central truth that the Lord spoke to me about in the outback, inheriting the joy of God.

Given an Inheritance in All Things

The unfolding pattern of creation in Genesis is highly structured. God creates over the first 5 days through (a) a simple word of command, “God said…let there be…it was so…”, (b) followed by a pleasing result “God saw that it was good…” , and (c) a time sequence, “there was evening and there was morning the x^th  day”. Something significantly different happens with the creation of humanity. After the description of the making of the first people we read; “God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it… And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” (Gen 1:28, 31). The pleasure of the LORD in his own creativity[4] now escalates from “good” to “very good”, indicating that somehow human beings are central to God’s joyful purposes. What stands out most in the text however are the simple words, “God blessed them. And God said to them be fruitful…” Adam and Eve were made the custodians of the divine Word of command, participants and inheritors of the very Word through which the LORD had created “all things”. In the context of the original creation the greatest inheritance God could give to humanity is responsiveness his all powerful Word.  For this Word to be treasured and embedded in our heart however a challenge was needed.

Losing the Inheritance

The one personal Word which seemed the very opposite of an inheritance bequeathed by a loving Father was, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” (Gen 2:17). Satan’s line of attack was to persuade the first couple that God’s command embodied the worst sort of social exclusion; “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” (Gen 3:4-5). Satan defines God-likeness as living deathlessly through knowing good and evil, and promises that immortality can be attained without divine help. For Adam and Eve to desire immortality would have pleased God (Rom 2:7), but to seek it in the way they did was fatal. They sought to enter into the realm of divinity without union with the Word. The very way in which they were created and commissioned as humans in the divine image should have been enough to reveal to them that God is only God through his spoken Word. They should have known that God-likeness is sharing in his Word, and that this involves obedience to his commands.

Adam’s great sin was that he delighted in the prospect of living forever in the pleasures of Eden more than the pleasure of hearing the Word that proceeds from the Father’s heart. The prohibition that confronted the first couple was a divinely appointed limitation in the realm of the knowledge of good and evil that emphasised the limits of their humanity. It was not an attempt to cramp their space, but to move them to rely on divine speech more intensely. The intrusion of Satan into the Garden was ordained by God so that under the pressure of a temptation too great to humanly resist Adam and Eve would look to God’s Word and promise by faith alone. Had they done so the Word of god would have dwelt in their hearts more intensely (cf. Eph 3:17) and the “eyes of the heart” of the first couple would have been open to see the vast expanse of their rich inheritance in God who created all things (Eph 1:18; 3:9). The eyes of Adam and Eve were in fact opened, but to a radically different reality than what God first intended.

“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” (Gen 3:7-8). Instead of seeing themselves in the eternal Word they saw that there was now nothing in them pleasing to God[5]. This absolutely terrifying moral awareness struck them with a sense that they deserved certain death. Dishonouring the glory of God (Rom 1:21-23) they were filled with shame and became deeply aware they no longer had an inheritance in God’s world. God’s great purpose for them was to be enclosed in his self-communicating joy, but in sowing to the selfishness of their flesh they reaped corruption (Gal 6:7-8). Lacking the soul-satisfying joy of the presence of the Lord, fallen humanity is driven to fill all possible spaces in the world with its own presence. This dynamic is far more pervasive and subtle than we realise, and the most profound arena where disbelief about the generosity of the divine inheritance is sown is the family.

“Grace is always surprising.” and God certainly had a surprise for me on my retreat.  At my 60^th birthday in July someone gave me a secular book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I thought the subject would be uninteresting but in order to honour the giver I determined to read it whilst away[6]. Gladwell described two sorts of families. One embodies a culture of cultivation and intentionally prepares children for the world by imparting a sense of opportunity and entitlement. Such individuals readily accept that they have an inheritance; on the surface this sounds like a good thing, but it has become a recipe for tragedy. Whereas in previous times the rights of entitlement were restricted to a privileged few, such as the aristocracy, the explosion of affluence in Western nations has produced an entire generation of entitled people[7]. This is the cohort who believes they are owed certain rights and benefits without further justification; such as higher salaries, flexible work hours, ample time off, perfect sexual partners etc. These folk owe no loyalty to denomination or local church but expect organised religion to provide them with a service. They anticipate God will provide their needs for a marriage partner, vocation and lifestyle of an abundant sort. This leads to a strong aversion to any message that couples the kingdom of God with suffering.

The other family type described by Gladwell keeps children in their place through social exclusion as a means of punishment. Physical punishment, verbal abuse and/or the withdrawal of emotional attachment are the control mechanisms within the family home.  This instils subdued expectations in life and “learned constraint”. A common response to being pushed to the margins in these sorts of families is psychological withdrawal. Gladwell’s stories about people whose achievements had been inhibited by their inner constraints immediately resonated with many of my life experiences. I think that I have this in common with many others. On numerous occasions from early childhood up until only a few months ago, I have been excluded from one social group or another, often within the Church. The spiritual and relational impact of these encounters is to withdraw inwards.

On the face of it the two types of family may seem to have radically different outcomes with respect to inheriting the Father’s joy; but at a deeper level the two dispositions are essentially identical. The “natural entitlement” people are readily geared to inheritance and anticipate “the good life” is their right, but it is their presence and joy that is to fill all things. The “learned constraint” population are much more introverted, and the world which they seek to fill with themselves is their own inner life. They are very present to themselves in a much more downhearted sense than the “entitlers”, but the ego is as much at the centre as it is for those with a disposition to “natural entitlement”. These two tendencies work themselves out in a polarising way in relation to joy. The first group sincerely believe that they are “the life of the party”, sane minded persons should enjoy them being around as much as they enjoy being around others. The second group however have never seen themselves as enjoyable and do not enjoy others. Neither group however understands the offer of the Father’s inheritance in the Son is a gift and his greatest point of joy. To undo the deep polarities in human experience which exclude the joyous inheritance of God requires a sacrifice beyond our comprehension.

Restoring the Inheritance

Jesus came as a human being in order to restore our promised inheritance. In the Word becoming flesh (John 1:14) the Father’s own eternal heir enters into our fragile history. That Jesus is the heir is the first attack point of Satan,. “”Worship me” he commands, and offers the whole world in exchange (Matt 4:8-9). Knowing that he is indeed the heir of the world the Son refuses to occupy the space of this age by direct claims to greatness. Unlike Adam, Jesus understood that submission to his Father’s Word in humble service was the way to immortality and godly kingship (1 Cor 15:24-28).  He grasped that to submit to the Father was the essence of his identity as the Son in the joy of the Lord, “I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”” (Ps 40:8). Over the course of his obedient earthly life the Father indwelt Jesus’ heart with ever increasing intensity. Only an act of absolute faith could however issue in a union between Christ and God of unlimited proportions. The truth, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father” (Luke 10:22), could only become operative through death and resurrection.

As he approaches the cross Jesus prays, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”” (Mark 14:36). The agony of Gethsemane represents not the diminution of Jesus’ faith but the threshold of its ultimate expression. If the primeval sin was an attempt to fill all things in space and time with an undying human presence apart from God, then this is what Jesus must endure for our sakes on the cross. The terrible cry, ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34) means that Jesus is experiencing the complete absence of the presence of God in all things. The Word himself is plunged into Wordlessness. For Jesus to be without his Father is to occupy a place in time and space that is totally empty of meaning and purpose. This is a non-event, it is hell. Christ experiences himself as a totally minimalised, marginalised, purposeless person. Most acutely, the agony of Jesus must be understood in relation to the withdrawal of the Father’s joy. Since God takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezek 33:11), when Jesus endures our eternal death on the cross (Rom 5:6) he is totally stripped of any sense of the Father’s satisfaction. Yet the Lord is not swallowed up in his own darkness and introspection, he calls out to God as his God with all his strength.

God must crucify own heart (John 1:18) to reveal to us his plan never purposed wrath for man[8]. Only at the cost of the absolute joylessness of the Son of God can we be persuaded that God has always predestined us for joy. If this dimension of the agony of Christ embraces the dark and depressive dimensions of the introverted character of humanity, there is yet another and equally horrible aspect to the cross.

As he was dying Jesus endured the most barbed taunts; ““You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” 41 So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, 42 “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”” (Matt 27:40-43). The temptation to descend imperiously from the cross must have been unimaginably powerful, but not for the reason we would imagine. Jesus has no “entitlement complex”, he is not attracted to demonstrating by an unquestionable display of supernatural authority his identity as Son by bringing all his enemies in submission to his feet at the cross. He does desire however to demonstrate to the world that the Father is an ever present Father who keeps all of his promises. Jesus’ faith is extended to the utmost limits to keep holding on to the belief that he will in fact inherit the kingdom in God’s perfect time by being raised from the dead. Yet we must not think that the Father is a passive bystander to all these events.

As I was praying on my wilderness retreat I had a great sense of the Father looking at Jesus hanging limp on the cross; but the cross was surrounded by a cloud of glory. Inside this cloud there can be “no wrath” for the Father cannot be angry with the dying Son. Paradoxically, the cross is the source of the Father’s greatest pleasure, “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Eph 5:2). God’s greatest delight is to be able to say wholeheartedly “I have no wrath.” (Isa 27:4). “In Christ” the children of God are “seated with him” (Eph 2:6) inside the cloud of glory. God speaks his Word to us in this place as a Father without wrath.  The pleasure of God which washes over us is like sharing in the delight of the LORD before sin entered into the world.

Releasing the Inheritance

As the Son is the heir of the Father, the Father’s inheritance is in the Son. The exaltation of Jesus into heaven marks the end of the humiliation of the Word and his exaltation that he might “fill all things” with the life of the Father (Eph 4:10). As the sole rightful heir of the Father’s world (Heb 1:2), Jesus’ greatest joy is to share what he knows of the heart of his Father by bringing “many sons to glory” (Heb 2:10). The powerful Lordship he possesses over “all things” is not a naked force, but the authority to adopt men and women into the family of God by joyfully communicating his life in the Father through the gift of the Spirit (Heb 1:3; Luke 15:7; Gal 4:4-6). We must not hear the Great Commission in the way that Adam and Eve heard God’s command concerning the tree of knowledge (Gen 2:17); it is not a joyless obligation. “To make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” is to join with Jesus in bringing men and women into his joy-filled inheritance of the Father (Matt 28:18-20). Faith in our inheritance is crucial not only to the mission but also the unity of the Church.

Very few Christians are grasped by the enormity of the inheritance they have received in Christ. Paul seeks to heal the schismatic tendencies amongst the Corinthians by lifting their minds to a higher level, “All things are yours, ²² whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, ²³ and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” (1 Cor 3:21-22).  The Corinthian divisions might seem petty to us, but if we replace the names “Paul, Apollos and Cephas” with Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Pentecostal, Catholic, Reformed, Orthodox, Baptist, Vineyard….. our own small mindedness in identifying ourselves by names other than “Jesus” becomes clear. Ephesians speaks of the Father’s plan for the Son and his Body, “he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all things in every way.” ((Eph 1:22-23 cf. Eph 5:18; Col 3:16).  This is vision vastly greater than exciting meetings with large numbers of people singing stirring songs, hearing good preaching and being ministered to by spiritual gifts! It is a vision as all encompassing as Christ himself and at its heart is great joy.

To explain his passion in reaching out to “tax collectors and sinners” Jesus told three parables, about a lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son. In each case the return of what was lost issues in unbridled communicative joy, “‘Rejoice with me, for I have found…” (15:6, 9, 32). Similarly, if we were living in the strength of God’s joy in saving us we would be inwardly motivated to share the source of this joy with others (Neh 8:10; 1 Thess 1:6). When the Church fails to reach out to the lost with the gospel this is a clear sign that we do not believe that God enjoys us!

Waking shortly before sunrise in the Northern Territory it was great to hear the birds singing, to see the sun shining and the blueness of the sky starting to appear. An even greater awareness however was the sense that Jesus was enjoying all these things and was giving glory to his Father through them. Jesus is a joy-filled person who humanises God’s infinite all-encompassing joy and makes it available to us in every circumstance of life. My journal for the same day says, “God enjoys people, enjoys me, enjoys talking to me.” In the pleasing plan of God every person and every sphere of social existence (enterprise, art, science, family etc.) is destined by God for a place of joy and glory (Eph 1:5, 9). To see this plan reach its complete joy is the goal of all Christian ministry (2 Cor 1:24; Phil 4:1).

Joy through the Cross in All Things

The Church commonly quotes the following verses to encourage its members, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God”, but the passage is incomplete without its conclusion,  “17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Rom 8:14-17). The joy-filled inheritance of the children of God is only real when we embrace the way of the cross[9].

This is the apostle Paul’s great prayer to “the Father of glory” on behalf of the Church; “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” (Eph 1:18-19). This prayer can only be realised when the people of God are spiritually illuminated to “see” that all things in creation are framed to the crucified and resurrected Word. The way to the indestructible joy of resurrection life is the way of the death of the Son of God. We must look “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). Glory radiates out of the life of the Son of God because he perfectly intended that others might share his eternal joy, whatever the cost to himself. In the light of this great truth the presence of the crucified Lord becomes the prism of glory imprinted on every circumstance of suffering and despair in our lives.  Such a supernatural God-glorifying joy radiates outwards to include others in the circle of God’s family.

Of all Christian writers Paul most clearly embodies this truth, saying, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake” (1:24) and, “I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory” (3:13 cf. 2 Cor 1:6). For the apostle the death of Christ encompasses “the loss of all things” (Phil 3:8). As a thoroughly crucified man Paul experienced the joy of resurrection life through all the events of his life (Gal 2:19-20)[10]. Seeing the cross in all things imparts a foundational wisdom about God’s purpose for the whole universe (Gal 6:14) and moves us moved to glorify our Father’s will in all our trials and sufferings (cf. Mark 14:36). Such a life of faith is most acutely tested in the case of social rejection.

If Christ alone is the source of my life then I must view my many episodes of social exclusion as within the wise purposes of the Father.  In everything he is moulding reality to the shape of the new creation which has come in the resurrection of his Son from the dead (Rom 8:28-29; Eph 1:13). By faith[11] I can grow in dying to the old order of things and share in the new creation in Christ. The result of such surrender to God will be an increase in “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Pet 1:8). Despite so many appearances such joy is God’s goal for us in all things. The more we realise this the more we grasp by faith that in Christ we have a “deed of title” to all created things (1 Cor 3:21-23). It is not all up to us however.

The Holy Spirit has a special role in imparting the reality of our future inheritance, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” (Eph 1:13-14). To be filled “with joy and the Holy Spirit” (Acts 13:52) is a foretaste of our heavenly inheritance when everything will be full of God (1 Cor 15:28). In such an ecstatic state the presence of God’s all pervasive glory is very clear. As we by faith see into God’s indwelling our joyful union intensifies and the reality of our inheritance becomes more pronounced. These are wonderful things, why then do we struggle so much to live in their goodness? The answer is found in the arena of the intense spiritual conflict which constantly surrounds the children of promise. This is the focus of the second portion of this article.