On Changing Nature
“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:12-14 RSV
The Christian conception of God and man is that they are fundamentally different in nature -- Creator and created, eternal and temporal, transcendent and limited. To use an analogy of C.S. Lewis, a painter and his painting are separate and distinct things. Lewis notes that a painting is in some manner a reflection of the artist and may tell us something about him, but it isn’t the same thing as the artist himself.
This conception is one element that distinguishes Christianity and other monotheistic religions from certain other belief systems that view nature as fundamentally a part of God (or of a Supreme Being, life force, or whatever the idea may be.) The notion that the stone, blade of grass, beam of light or antelope is actually part of God is not shared by the Christian. The Christian believes that the created thing -- whatever it may be -- may tell us something about God and witnesses to his creative power and majesty, but is essentially separate and distinct from God himself.
Christianity asserts that all of creation (ourselves included) is temporal -- limited and passing in its nature. But it also offers the prospect that God wants us to join him is his transcendence -- to make the leap from our nature that is imperfect and fleeting to union with his, which is perfect and eternal. This is what Christianity identifies as heaven.
The question that logically follows is something like, “If God is omnipotent and perfectly loving, as Christianity says he is, then why doesn’t he just make paradise happen and save all of us the misery and trouble of life as we know it here on earth?” As Lewis also points out (I don’t make any claims to original thought here) that would betray the point. God is looking for fellowship with us in a love relationship. That can’t be accomplished by his will alone. Love, in its essence, is a voluntary act. It has to be chosen in the context of the absolute freedom not to choose it. Love of him is the one thing that God can’t create. If God compelled us to love him, it wouldn’t be love at all. We would simply be automatons having no more ability to really love than so many stones. God would be alone like a boy in his room with the toy soldiers of another Lewis analogy.
The risk, of course, (and love is always a risk) is that, given the choice, we may choose not to love God. In this sense, the freedom God allows us puts him at risk of being rejected -- and perhaps even, in some way, emotionally wounded. But apparently he believes it a risk worth taking. We need only turn on the television or read the papers to see the results of failing to love God. Part and parcel of loving God is to love our fellow human beings. Both history and our ongoing present existence are rife with the effects of choosing not to love. The fruits of that choice are war and murder, loneliness and heartache -- all manner of human misery. But they are the results of human choice. And in the Christian belief that God loves and aches for each of us, those choices regularly wound him, indeed.
How, then, is the choice manifest? By what means does God enable us to choose whether to love him or not -- to remain in the temporal order, subject to death, or to opt for blessed escape into his eternal, loving nature? We find the answer in John 1:12:
“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God”
John writes here in the past tense about those who had already become Christians in his time, but the same applies to us today. If we choose to receive him (Jesus) and believe in his name, he will give us the power to become children of God. Note John is telling us that we aren’t the children of God by virtue of our mere existence. He makes a distinction here. Our existence only establishes that we were “born . . . of blood . . . the will of the flesh . . . the will of man.” To become children of God is something else, something beyond our nature. By human nature, we are merely made. In becoming one with God’s nature, we become more than made -- we become begotten. That is, one with God in his nature. And it is arrived at by our choice to love, accept and obey Jesus Christ.
To enable the choice to become begotten -- the fulfillment of God‘s desire for us -- he has to provide us the means by which to join him in his nature. Because our nature is not that of God’s, we cannot, by that nature, join in his. Our imperfection, if joined to God uncorrected, would render imperfect the whole, changing God’s nature, which cannot change. There has to be a way for our nature to be transformed into that of God’s. The imperfect has to have the means by which to become perfect. It is necessarily impossible for us to do this on our own. We must have God’s help. He must provide us a bridge, if you will, by which we can cross from our nature into his. That bridge is Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that God, while remaining fully God, yet also becomes man, enabling our nature to connect with and be transformed into his, to wit:
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth . . . “
Here John tells us that though the Word (God in Jesus) became flesh, he remained “full of grace and truth.” That is, God became human yet retained the fullness of his Godly nature. (This is what is meant when Christians call Jesus “fully human and fully God.“) In retaining his Godliness, he is capable of offering us salvation; by becoming human, he makes that salvation attainable. God’s assumption of human nature brings that nature -- our nature -- to a summit point at which it connects to his own. Thus, the impossible becomes possible. That which is human is empowered to become divine. The bridge is built and it is ours to freely cross, fulfilling God’s desire and ours.
It's important for us to remember, however, that this bridge was built at a cost. To be perfect in his humanity, Jesus had to be perfectly obedient to the Father -- even unto the point of death in unimaginable agony. Salvation wasn’t effected in a vacuum. Humanity’s sins against God were and are real. God’s perfect justice requires that they must be atoned for by humanity. God’s perfect love moves him to become human himself so he can do the atoning for us in the person of his Son. Our role -- our sacrifice, and an unspeakably mild one -- is to simply accept and participate in our own salvation by acknowledging it through acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
One other note on this piece of scripture, and it’s an important one, so I want to go back to the verse as it is written:
“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”
I think it’s important to recognize that John doesn’t tell us that by receiving Christ and believing in his name, we are made children of God. Rather, belief in Jesus gives us the power to become children of God. Implicit to this is that we also retain the power not to become children of God. To our peril, there is still time and opportunity for the believer to reject the inheritance he has so freely been given. This is why I believe the doctrine that says “once saved, always saved” is a fallacy -- and a dangerous one at that. It's true that by baptism -- a necessary step in any brand of Christianity-- we are immersed in the grace of God through Jesus. I believe that God, in his love and generosity, wants to be very lenient with us and will give us as broad a shot as possible, but the choice is still ours to make. And it will remain so until the day we die.
And so we must continue to pray, to read scripture, to be in fellowship for improvement, strength and endurance, and to constantly practice Christian charity. These are the necessary exercises to keep us ready and willing to keep the promise of our baptism alive. Accepting Jesus is just the beginning -- rather than the culmination -- of gaining eternal life in God.
posted by cjamster @ 3:18 PM
2 Comments:
If i knew not you, the writer, i might think by your view works-based, what with the final paragraph. But the piece as a whole - quite a length for a blog - might be said to live and move and have its being in the tension 'tween Philippians 2 v12 and v13.
mh
As we both are well aware, works alone ain't gonna cut it, and I certainly don't mean to suggest it will. But neither do I accept that faith alone is enough -- though it is undeniably (obviously) necessary. The demons know (and therefore, have faith) that God is God and Jesus his Son -- "and shudder."
Likewise, the human who knows and believes in his heart of hearts the same thing but lives a life of all manner of behavior in contradiction to that is endangering his soul. True, at any moment he can repent and confess and access grace, but he can also fail to do so and perish. A birthright given is not necessarily one that can't be squandered, by my way of thinking. Why else should we care about living a moral life, a subject that Jesus has always been pretty big on?
To live by the maxim "sola fide" ("faith alone," if my Latin be on target), is, it seems to me, a way of essentially saying that with baptism, my ticket's been punched so my behavior doesn't really matter.
I think that any Christian must reasonably agree that faith and works are both essential. After all, if memory serves, we have it on pretty sound authority that "faith without works is dead."
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