Transparent Imagination from 16.12.16
Personal Matters
An old joke about the influence of prosperity theology misquotes 1Timothy 6:5, “godliness with great gain is contentment”. At the heart of the issue Paul is tackling is folk “imagining that godliness is a means of gain.” (1 Tim 6:4). Why cannot people see the truth of Ecclesiastes, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and…there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” (2:11). We live in a time when the human imagination is totally out of control, the fantasising of pornography, the motivational techniques of visualisation, the boundless world of virtual reality. Christmas is certainly a time when people’s imaginations run wild about a secular season of happiness none of them have ever experienced. When I hear of believers pleasure cruising the oceans I know the ability of the human mind to conjure up another Eden is as real inside as outside the Church. The Lennon classic “Imagine” boldly states, “Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try…no hell…no religion”. In Lennon’s secularising prophecy we are left with humanity at perfect peace in a world without war, greed or need. This is very much the thrust of the temptation story in Eden.
Pride Ends it All
Ancient Christian tradition sees the Fall as the outcome of proud humanity’s attempt to create for itself a substitute world to the one God had made. A situation affirmed by the Spirit inspired words of Mary, “he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts” (Luke 1:51). But why would Adam and Eve dwelling in the delights of Eden be arrogant enough to want to imagine another world? Why would they, and us after them, “raise up lofty opinions against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor 10:5)? The answer is found within the warning, “in the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall surely die.” (Gen 2:17). These words of God were not spoken dispassionately, but through a Heart transparent to the reality of “the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.” (Rev 13:8). The LORD already foresaw how his heart would be “filled with pain” because “every imagination of man’s heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6:4, 6). Since this warning in Eden was spoken not in relation to God’s loss but ours, it was one of pure, perfect, selfless transparent love (cf. 1 John 4:18). The word about death spoken to Adam was a painful word for God to speak and for the man to hear, but the purpose of pain is to be a warning. To the corrupted mind pain means loss rather than gain and this is exactly how Satan put it. ““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). So “the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” (3:6). This was a blatant wilful decision to gain a wisdom that transcended the likeness of a God for whom pain was a real experience. Who wouldn’t want to gain a life of painlessness; especially if the way you knew “good and evil” meant freedom from guilt and shame? Of course Satan’s promise was illusory, for the loss of the glory of God meant precisely the gaining of shame and guilt.
Jesus
Whereas lost humanity rejected being in the likeness of a completely selfless God for whom pain was real, the true Son “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:6-8). When Christ warned, “what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” he directly attacked the profit motive at the foundation of our consumer culture, a drive he personally denied when tempted by the devil in the desert (Matt 4:8-10; 16:26). The climax of Jesus’ humility comes at the cross where pridelessly he prays, ““Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”” (Luke 23:34). So lowly is the Son of God that he refuses to take pleasure in angrily imagining the punishment of his crucifiers (1 Pet 2:23). The pinnacle of his pain for us is expressed in the cry, ““My God…why have you forsaken me?””; this is the place where in taking on our selfishness he is unable to share the pain of his Father over our sin (Mark 15:34; 2 Cor 5:21). Where Jesus feels completely unlike God he is most completely like his Father (Ezek 18:32; 33:11). The sole goal of Christ’s suffering is to move the state of our humanity from degradation to exaltation; this he has perfectly realised. Now on our behalf “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name” (Eph 1:19-21; Phil 2:10).
Seeing the Word
“In the Spirit” the apostle John “saw the voice” of the glorified Christ and the result was the vision of Revelation (1:10, 12). How is it that contemporary Christians indwelt by the same Spirit cannot see the sin in their lives (Gal 4:4-6)? What has happened to the transparency of our spirits to the Word so that there is no grief over sin? Our problem is that we want to share Christ’s majestic status without sharing his suffering (Phil 1:21; 3:8-10). Whereas all who empathise with the griefs of God see clearly in the Spirit, we avoid the very persecution that alone can bring us revelation of the things to come (Acts 9:5; Rom 9:1-3). We shall judge the world and angels, but the great challenge for the Church today is to experience cosmic exaltation with the mind of Christ without feeling pride (1 Cor 2:16; 6:2). Paul’s painful “thorn in the flesh” dissolved all pride and taught him to be “content” in lowly estate (2 Cor 12:7, 10). So many Western Christians however really do think “godliness with great gain is contentment” rather than “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim 6:6). Discontentment is the mother of vain imaginings; contented believers never imagine a bigger home, better holiday, richer sex life, more ecstatic spiritual experience etc. (2 Cor 10:5).
Conclusion
John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, is one of a completely “transparent” city (Rev 21:2, 9). No presence of evil obscures the revelation of the glory of God because all is seen through the presence of the Lamb (21:22-23). Every painful Word of judgment has from first to the last has been resolved in his resurrection from the dead (Gen 2:17 etc., Rev 5:6). God is seen as God is in the perfect purity of his selfless love that takes away the fear of punishment on the day of judgement (1 John 4:17-18). It this painful love that must be seen through the Church today if the fallen human imagination is to be healed. Through the transparency of our lives the glory of God seen in the crucifixion-and-resurrection of Jesus must be seen. There is however an order to all this (1 Pet 4:17). Transparency is a precondition for the Spirit’s revelation of sin in the Church and the repentance which sparks the revival we desperately need for the glory of God.
Let us pray: ‘Lord please send your Spirit to help me bring all my useless imaginings to the cross so that I might only do what I see you are doing, however painful this may be. For your glory I pray. Amen.’