In our previous post, we saw how God never ever changes! This Truth brings a deep assurance of our being unconditionally Loved. Nothing we do can ever persuade God to Love us – our having changed His indifferent Heart. He Is Love and such Love is the womb and sustaining Life of humanity. Religion strives to earn love and acceptance by believing one must appease God’s inconsistent and undecided heart. But Jesus came to end all religion and reveal Father’s True Heart toward you.
Sitting on their father’s lap, a child can neither rest nor feel safe and secure or experience joy, if they believe dad, by nature, is angry and is repressing such, until…
Thankfully, Jesus revealed there is no hint of a hidden agenda in the heart of our Loving Eternal Father: God never ever changes!
“There was never a time, St. Athanasius argued against the Arians, when the Son of God was not, and the Father was alone and therefore just God and not Father. There was never a time when God was some naked, faceless, solitary, divine omni-being. From all eternity God IS Father, Son and Holy Spirit sharing a life of unchained fellowship and intimacy fired by passionate self giving love and mutual delight.”
C. Baxter Kruger “The Light of the Cosmos”
Here’s a thought… How was The Triune God before family and creation became a Love explosion? What were They like? How did They live? How did They relate? Was the Son living to appease Dad, striving in all to prevent His anger erupting? Was Father ever the correcting and fault-finding judge, condemning and punishing the Son? Was this a divided, shame-riddled and dysfunctional family? Was Holy Spirit keeping the peace? Ridiculous, right?! Surely, the Triune God Lived In – and Was – Unspeakable Bliss, Unimaginable Love, Unfathomable Joy and Unsearchable Wonder. No Fear. No separation. No condemnation. No hidden agendas. No shadow of turning. The Triune God, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit Live in Ineffable Pleasure and Joy: a Love Freely Expressed and Experienced. Such Other-centredness is beyond our wildest imaginings. The Triune God, cannot be otherwise, for God never, ever changes!
In a very real sense, as God Was before creation He Is still, now and for evermore. It is this God Who Is Love we see revealed in the Incarnate Son. Specifically, the Love revealed on the Cross is not a one-off expression of heart…it is who God Is. The love He poured out on the cross is the same love with which he is loving you right now! Always has and always will. How wonderful that God never, ever changes!
Such is the womb of creation and all humanity. It’s where we are, where we belong and from where we live. All Creation is In this Triune Circle. Nothing exists outside of it. What we see in the Incarnation, is this Life revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ. What we see in the Word of God, is the stunning announcement of our Inclusion In Christ Jesus. And it’s this Love that recreated All mankind In the resurrection and ascension of Christ.
On the Cross, Father was not punishing Jesus by pouring out His Wrath upon Him: we did that! And yet, in beautiful redemptive Grace, as we poured out our wrath upon the Eternal Son – scourging, beating mocking and crucifying Him – God, at that very moment, poured out His Wrath upon Sin and Darkness: the poisoned delusion that was the architect of our wrath. The cancer of Sin and Death was judged and He turned our betrayal into our Salvation! You cannot change tHis heart! God is not so, that you can persuade Him to love. He is not a reluctant Lover or Father. He does not withhold Love. He has revealed and Given Himself completely as the Loving Father of All.
Can we please agree with God Himself, once and for all, that we are saved by Grace! Not faith! Not works! Not our self-salvific efforts or obedience to any legal servitude or religious initiations. Grace. Can we please agree further, that if Love can be wrestled from the Hand of God, it cannot be Love. If Grace can be bought, it’s not Grace. If Mercy can be persuaded, it’s not Mercy.
Love Loves. It knows no bounds nor barriers. Father Loves, for to do otherwise would be to deny who He Is. Oh… in case you forgot, He never asks for anything upfront or in return!
Jesus Christ is All, In All. There is no Truth outside of He Who Is True: and He never, ever changes! You can rest on Father’s lap, trusting Him entirely, knowing permission is granted for you to just be. Holy Spirit is awakening us to see and know our “Abba!” It’s a revelation of who we are too. For as we see Dad we know we are His beloved child.
It would be bizarre would it not, to require your child at some point in their life to progress or graduate into now becoming your child? To insist and decree they complete specific rituals, oral or otherwise, fulfilling all initiations to only now become (who they already are!) yours! Why do we see God thus? We are His, simply because He is Papa! No-one nor no thing can take that away from us. It is established in His unchanging Heart and is sealed upon ours by Holy Spirit. All this, not to make it so, but to affirm and assure us of who we truly are! It is we who are changed by the witness of Holy Spirit, not God. As we believe Him, He renews our orphaned mindset that we may fully awaken In our sonship In Christ. We all, lost our minds (Col 1:21) and embraced a darkness that was killing us, believing the lie we were separated, alienated and, therefore, unloveable until we did something. We had to buy redemption and forgiveness, earning love to escape God’s Wrath and a roasting in the eternal fires of hell. Delicious!
May I suggest Father sees you differently? He wants you to know yourself as you have always been known: His beloved child, alive In Christ and In Him Alone. His is an unwavering, unchanging devotion to you, so you come into – by experience and expression – the Love of the Triune God.
I love Francois Du Toit’s narrative on Hebrews 13:8 in The Mirror Bible:
“Jesus is the same, yesterday today and forever; there is a history to our salvation that carries more authority and relevance than anything that ever happened in our past, or anything present in time or still to happen in the future. Imagine the enormity of eternity in His sameness before time was; and we were there in Him all along! See (Rom 8:34) What further ground can there possibly be to condemn mankind? In His death He faced our judgement; in His resurrection He declares our innocence; the implications cannot be undone!”
Knowing God never ever changes, love the Love Loving you right now as you sit on Papa’s lap and rest!
You are As He Is!
Ger