Personal Matters
There are areas of my life where the triumphant joy of Jesus’ resurrection rarely seems to break through. In meditating on the root causes of this a foundational traumatic episode from early life came to mind which I believe is illustrative of a root problem many of us share.
I clearly remember a day when my father flew into a rage, chased me down and belted me without explanation. I sensed that I had somehow violated a “sacred space” but had no idea what this was. Uncomprehending fear of a wrathful father is very real to me. Whilst I now sense that the real sacred space violated years ago was my own childhood innocence; believe that the Lord wants to impart to his Church a mature sense of the hallowed nature of our lives. He has a surprising strategy for achieving this.
Temple wise
In the ancient world temples were built as places where deities could rest from their labours and from which they could exercise their rule. The creation story in Genesis is a picture of the one true God building his own cosmic temple as a place of goodness where he can rest and reign (Gen 1:31-2:2). The whole universe is framed as a place of worship; the sun and the moon, for example, are not neutral light-bearers, but mark out “signs and seasons” on the sacred festivals calendar of Israel (Gen 1:14). The pinnacle of the construction of any temple is the final object which is placed in the sanctuary, the divine image. In the cosmic temple of Genesis 1 this is us (Gen 1:26-28)! We are at the centre of a holy world temple, and the rest and rule of God is to find particular concentration in our lives (2 Chron 7:16; Isa 66:1-2). Thus all human activities- marriage, sexuality, family, work, recreation were to be indwelt by the LORD’s presence.
Sacred no More
Everything becomes holy to the LORD when we obey his Word in our hearts (Gen 2:17; John 17:17; Eph 2:22; 5:26). Disobedience however means falling away from that sacred bond of intimacy with God which imparts an awareness of a Holy Father. Sin does not usually however extinguish a sense of the supernatural. All traditional cultures believed in a world held together by a divinely ordained order. The God/gods needed to be feared, for if their sacred order was broken wrath would be poured out. No-one doubted that life and nature were sacred.
Uniquely in human history modern Western societies experience almost no area of life is as holy. Science has supposedly abolished the mysteries of the world and concern for immediate pleasures far outweighs thoughts of life after death. Materialism and sexual immorality witness to a growing loss of the sacred in the Church. The loss of God’s intimate presence is no longer feared amongst us for all that really matters is ‘ME’. Only a renewed vision of Jesus can restore to us an awareness that everything is sacred to God.
The Sacred Son
For Jesus all of creation is holy, not only human life but the realm of nature which illustrates his teaching and parables (e.g. Matt 6:25ff.). Beyond what he said and did, Christ conveyed the preciousness of life to his Father by how he felt. In an especially illuminating passage about divine anger we read that Jesus “looked at them (the Pharisees) “with wrath, grieved at their hardness of heart” (Mark 3:5). That the Father’s anger is always mingled with lament is a revelation that only the Son and his sacrifice can bring (cf. Gen 6:5-7; Hos 11:8).
The crushing sorrow on Christ in Gethsemane, ““My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” and on the cross ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 14:34; 15:34) is a cry from inside the heart of God. Jesus grief reveals that the true content of wrath is being deprived of the pleasure of knowing the joy of the Father. The sacred and wounded heart of the Son of God unambiguously discloses that anger is not the normal condition of divine fathering (Isa 28:21; Lam 3:32-33). The ultimate motivation for the taking away of the wrath of God by the cross is not merely that we might “get to heaven”, it is that God might be known as a holy loving Father (1 John 4:10). This is the ache of Jesus’ whole being and it has been accomplished by his death, resurrection and return to the Father (John 19:30).
In Jesus everything is re- hallowed and Christians are part of a new creation where the whole realm of nature and life have been made sacred by the blood of the cross (Col 1:20). With Christ dwelling in ‘ME’ I have become a sacred vessel (2 Tim 2:21) with no need to fear the displeasure of God (1 John 4:17). Why then does the ‘ME’ in all of us struggle so much to live as the very sanctuary of God. The answer lies in a deep inner confusion about the meaning of pain.
Sacred Again
As children of God each of us is disciplined by our loving Father so that we increasingly share in his holiness, all such discipline however is painful (Heb 12:9-11). That self-centred part of ‘ME’ the Bible calls “my flesh” interprets the discomfort of discipline as an angry God distancing himself from us (Rom 7:13-20). This is a deception created by sin and causes our hearts to harden against the Holy Spirit (Heb 3:13). By grieving the Spirit (Eph 4:30) we feel even further from the Lord and even less his sacred and intimate dwelling place. Under these circumstances most believers turn to unholy pursuits to try to cover over their feelings of spiritual abandonment and failure. The loss of God’s sacred presence in the Church today can thus be traced back to a heart belief that the Father is fundamentally displeased with us.
The answer to this problem is not some special experience but faith. To live as a crucified ‘ME’ means to “live in the flesh…by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20). Instead of trying to cover up painful feelings of anxiety, shame, depression, anger or fear etc….I need to embrace by faith that I am the sanctuary of God and that my heart is sprinkled clean by Christ’s blood from all of sin’s power to separate me from God (Heb 10:22). Through faith my heart is cleansed (Acts 15:16) from the crippling fear of experiencing once again the traumatising impact of a F/father’s anger. I am freed to enjoy by faith that the grief that God causes me as his son and the fear which he instils in my heart are bonds of the closest affection (2 Cor 7:1, 5-14 cf. Ps 103:4).
Conclusion
A godly brother rang me recently to confess that he had falling back into a habitual sin. Immediately I felt the deep grief of the Father’s heart that this son had subjected himself to the destructive power of evil. It is the revelation of God’s wounded that breaks the power of sin and dissolve those traumas about an incomprehensibly angry Father which for so long have kept us back from enjoying the fullness of who we are in Christ. The surest sign that revival has come to Australia will not be spectacular miracles or huge rallies but weeping men grieving and groaning in their spirits in pain over the failure of our nation to know the love of a true Father (Jer 33:8-9; Luke 19:41; 1 Cor 2:3).