That minute white dot there in the middle---is us---our whole world, the air we breath the ground we walk on, the wisdom we claim, the love we say we have, the truth we say we speak, the hate and selfishness and pride we're so good at-----that little speck is us. And He laid Himself down for that speck, for the little ants crawling, around on it, sinning around on it, falling away on it--us. The grandeur of that love screams out to us of this "God who takes delight in that which He does not need but nevertheless desires."
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| taken by Voyager 1 from 4 billion miles away before it left the solar system |
"Only God can love in absolute freedom, desiring the other without needing the other."
That's why "He loves even those who do not return His love, and He loved us eternally even while we were enemies".
"God's goodness is evident in creation and providence, of course, but the clearest evidence of the complete consistency between God's goodness and His sovereignty, justice, wrath, and righteousness is Christ's cross. There we behold the face of the God-Man who cries out, "It is finished." There, with unparalleled clarity, we see how far God is willing to go in order to uphold all of His attributes in the simplicity (God's attributes are identical with His being) of His being."
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For Him, there was a beginning of the misery but no end.
Every day was as an old beginning, never new, never ending. Day after day there was no time, like an athlete pressing on in a race, straining, hurting, running, pressing, foregoing looking up in the pain of running, but hopeful—yet this was different. In this place there was no hope. All the pain and strain and exhaustion were there, but there was nothing to run for—the prize had already been won. This prize of all the ungodly—it was merited before the race began. The prize was ease in this first life; the right to do and live and love and deride and curse and hurt and sin as one chose. That was the reward. The earning was destined to take eternity.
This perfect Son, having lived the perfect life, now endured the judgment due for a flagrant life. All this, this world, this eternal life, He bore for us, when He yielded up His Spirit--the Son of God entered this realm of sweat and no hope, pain and no comfort, bleakness and no sunshine, claws, but no birds, and He existed eternity in this state. He took the rejection of His Father, His Light went out.
The Father saw Him and said “No”. That small, piercing, gut-wrenching word. He said no to His Son because His Son had given His holiness to us, and He stood before His Father in my sins. He was black and the Father turned away. For me.
He was cosmic, infinite, eternal, glorious, holy, perfect. I am human, mortal, weak, small, horrid, dirty, sin-loving, pride-clinging. And He descended into hell for me. Three days, thirty six hours—in human time. In God-time, it was the entire span of time. It was all of eternity.
And then the Father raised him from the dead, brought Him up out of hell. Where did He go from there? Did He celebrate and fly through the sky and fling off all the uncomfortable, itchy humanness, and soar with the eagles and teach the stars to dance? He sat down at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us now. He is there when we bring our requests. He makes sure they go through. And the Spirit intercedes for us with groaning which cannot be uttered.
And we don’t pray because we don’t have time? What an extravagant gift we are we letting fall into dilapidation!?
(quotes from Michael Horton's "The Christian Faith", pgs 265,6)
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