My God

 God wanted to fellowship with living beings that, of their own free will, would choose to fellowship with him, of their own free will, and so He created humanity.  There were the angels but because the angels were “in God” and God in them, it could be argued that they were not in fellowship of their own free will. They did have free will but no incentive to exercise that will. Satan was created with a slightly different agenda.  When God created Satan, he was the angel given the task of putting questions to God.

God knew what would happen if he gave Satan that ability.  But God saw it as important for all the future because he knew that questions needed to be answered. Any question that could be asked by any being at any time, would need to be answered.  He knew what Satan would eventually do.  Satan began to think about why God should decide the rules.  Why should there be a God that set certain limits?  Satan began to wonder why he could not be as good at ruling as God, whom we refer to as Father.

               At some point in time, Satan separated himself from God because he believed he could be as God.  When he broke away from God, he lost the goodness that was from God and became the creature that we know as evil.  He became the father of lies.  Truth resides and comes from God, whether it is scientific truth or philosophical truth or any truth.  Truth comes from God.  Satan lost the truth and exists with self-deception, in self-deception.

Without God, he is ruled by fear, anger, greed, lust, and every other vile thing. 

               Humanity plays a big part in answering Satan’s question of why God should rule.  We have a free will.  Our relationship is not as clearly defined as the angels.  God does not intrude or exude himself into us with his will.  With our will, we must choose.  The problem is that God set some rules for fellowship with him.  Even if we choose to fellowship with God, we broke the rules of fellowship.  Eve was the first to do that back in the beginning before Satan had power in the world.

God created our world and the first human beings.  He gave them a wonderful world to live in with the perfect climate, food and drink.  He walked and talked with them.    Then Satan questioned Eve. He caused her to ponder the question of why God would tell her she could eat of any tree except that one tree, in the middle of the garden. He suggested the fruit would open her eyes causing her to be like God knowing good and evil.  Not to be god but to be like God.

               Now all of humanity would have liked Eve to take that question back to God for an explanation.  She chose a different route, one many of us take.  We try it for ourselves to do it without God’s input.  We never do think through all the consequences, after all, we are not God and we do not know all the consequences. The consequences of course were global. 

God had given Adam and Eve dominion and authority over all the world.  They were to rule. They were to care for the world and every living thing in it.  Satan had no power nor authority in the world until Eve gave it to him by choosing his voice over God’s.  When we choose to hearken to any voice other than God’s, we give that voice authority over ourselves.  Sometimes, that voice is from Satan.  So sin entered the world.  Adam and Eve knew they were naked and in the shame they felt, they him themselves from God.  Guilt and shame do not come from God or because of God.  They come from distancing ourselves from God and doing something we recognize as not from God.

               There is the dilemma.  How does God get them back to a place of restored fellowship if the nature is that he would not force himself upon them?  They chose to know evil and God cannot dwell with evil.  In order for them to know evil, they had to be driven out of Eden and eke out an existence away from the perfection and ease of Eden.

               The whole Old Testament speaks about people’s inability to live in such a way that they retain God’s blessing.  There were, on rare occasions, people that did walk with God.  Enoch and Elijah did not “die”.  But those were the only two rare exceptions.  If we cannot gain freedom to make our way back to God and walk with him, then how?

               First, God must know what we suffer in this world so that he understands us.  God must come to deal with the limitations of this world as the world we inherit from others.  Second, we must be able to come through a righteousness not of our own because we have proven, throughout the history of time, that our righteousness is not good enough.  Isaiah 64:6 “Our righteousness is as filthy rags.” Compared to the holiness of God, we are unclean.  God does not fellowship with the unclean.   He must become then, one of us.  This would answer Satan’s accusation of not understanding mankind and therefore unable to make judgements concerning them.    
               There are many religions and beliefs in this world.  But there is only one belief system that takes into account the ramifications of the vast divide between God and man and how to bridge that divide.  The one way is Jesus Christ.

               Jesus, according to the book of John, was with God (we refer to as Father) in the beginning of creation.  John says that all things were made through “him”, through Jesus.  Jesus is often referred to as The Word made Flesh.  The Word is the way God created all things.  God spoke the Word and that spoken word materialized as our world, and the things in our world.  On the first day God spoke the word for the creation of light, “and there was light”.  Now if you and I had been present, we would not see the light immediately for the spoken word of faith must be allowed to “materialize” in God’s time.

(To God the Father, what he says is already done because he is not confined to our world or our concept of time.  He sees the end and the beginning at once.) 

Jesus must be the spoken word for John writes that without Jesus, nothing would be made.  The Father took his creative power, his word, and made it human flesh, as Jesus.  And Jesus was given life in himself. John 5:26.  Jesus was God and is God.  When he had life in himself, he maintained his being as part of the God-head by exercising his will to the Father’s will.  “…It is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.” John 14:10.  As such, Jesus suffers and dies at the hands of those he came to save.  But his life was not taken away.  He gave his life as the blood sacrifice to pay for all the sins of the world. There was no other way because of the Father’s purity and righteousness.  There is a price for sin.  And Jesus paid it.

It is only through the blood and righteousness of Jesus that we can be reconciled to God and separated from the evil in the world and in ourselves.  God knew all this when he created Satan and when he created Adam and Eve.  It is only through Jesus that God can understand disunity and shame.  When Jesus was on the cross he said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The Father could not maintain oneness with Jesus when Jesus bore the sins of the world.  The Father cannot dwell with sin.  At that moment, Jesus experienced what it meant to be distanced from the Father, and to bear the weight of sin.  He understands isolation.  He understands the weight of sin.  He has been to hell, he understands it all.  Yet hell could not hold him because he was innocent of any wrong.  He understood deception and how to rise above it. Satan was defeated and no longer held the keys of death and Hades.

Why?  To answer questions that might be asked in eternity.  Why should God rule?

It is not true unity if the only relationships you have are beings you have mirrored from yourself. There must be “life in itself”, apart from God.  It must be free-will of choice.  God does not impose himself on his created beings.  We have life in itself.  We must choose to be united with God.  We must choose to let him into our lives and to let him be the God in our lives.  If we have studied history and know how impossible it was for a chosen people to remain one with God, we can appreciate the work and life of Jesus, of God.  To do all so that we would let him be God in our lives. 

If we want an Edenic life, we have to choose to Not be God.  We have to choose to Not know evil.  We have to walk, by faith, in the power and authority God gives us through the blood and righteousness of Jesus.  We have to choose to Not be deceived.

God seeks those who will worship in truth and in the spirit. John 4:23-24. Do we really have to “worship” God?  Ah, isn’t that the crux of the matter.  Isn’t that why Satan separated himself from God and enticed Eve to do the same?  Eve was deceived by Satan.  Satan was deceived by himself.  If goodness is found in God and evil is not, then the choice is clear.  History tells the story.

               “Worship”, or honor, reverence, and homage to God for his perfection, greatness, and goodness. According to the Essential Bible Dictionary.  It is reserved for God alone, not angels nor any human. It is for God alone.

Pascal’s wager is considering which is better, to bet there is a God and live accordingly or bet that there is no God.  Pascal proposes that a rational person will bet there is a God and in doing so suffers very little compared to eternity, if he lives according to the idea that there is a God who created him for himself and it proves to be true.  But if he wagers there is no God and lives accordingly and there is a God, he suffers eternal damnation.  If he wagers there is a God and there is not, what does he lose; pleasures that are fleeting anyway.  It is far better to wager that there is a God.

I have friends that believe there are many paths to God, not just believing in Jesus Christ as the only way.  But if not Jesus, then that person who believes in many ways does not acknowledge the true depravity of human nature.  And then how do we obtain grace from God if not through someone who paid for our mistakes and limited understandings.  A person who must be part of the god-head or it is not true payment.

I had a dream.  In this dream, I was with a man whom I recognized.  There was no surroundings, no ambience, no backdrop, nothing but the man.  I had a profound feeling of completion and wholeness and I knew it was because of this man. There was a oneness.  When you feel complete and whole there is nothing to be sorry for in the past, no yearning and nothing to prepare for.  There is only now. When I awoke, there was still that feeling of wholeness and completion and I realized it was not dependent on anything external except the man. God gave me a glimpse into eternity, into Adam and Eve and God before the downfall.  He showed me what was meant for eternity, what love should be.  What we should be, unity only found in God.  Oswald Chambers, in Utmost for His Highest, said we have eternal life not from God but eternal life IN God.