We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
What We Long For
Image of Creation of Adam by ideacreamanuelaPps via Flickr
Augustine once prayed, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” We all have an unquenchable yearning in our hearts, a yearning for nothing less than to share in God’s own eternally full life. This is why our deepest desires cannot be permanently satisfied by anything in this world. More specifically, the life of God is nothing other than the perfect love that eternally unites the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this Triune God spoke creation into being with the ultimate goal of inviting humans to share in this life. This is what God created us to long for!
The great Puritan theologian and pastor Jonathan Edwards expressed this concept in a powerful way in his famous work A Dissertation Concerning The End for Which God Created the World. Edwards painted a portrait of the Trinity in which the love and joy of the three divine persons was so full and intense, it simply could not be contained. God’s fullness thus yearned to be expressed and replicated by sharing it with others. So this fullness overflowed, as it were, as God brought forth creation and that mirrored his triune beauty. And the pinnacle of this creation is created beings whose yearnings for God mirrors, in a small way, his yearning for them. But whereas God’s yearning comes out of his fullness, our yearning comes out of emptiness.
It’s a beautiful arrangement. The God of overflowing love longs to pour his love into others, so he created beings that long for his love to be poured into them.
It wasn’t God’s original intention for us to ever go a moment with this longing unsatisfied. Living without the fullness of God’s love is a reality we have brought on ourselves through our rebellion, and it’s completely unnatural to us. And try as we may to run from it or numb it, the pain of our unnatural emptiness is acute and incurable. The profundity of our emptiness is the negative reflection of the profundity of the fullness of the One we long for.
God’s ultimate goal in creation is nothing less than for the very same perfect love that the Father has for his own Son to be given to us and to be placed within us. Not only this, but his goal is for Jesus himself to dwell in us and for us to dwell in him (see John 15:4-5). We become the recipients of the Father’s eternal love for the Son because we are in the Son and he is perfectly loved, and the Son is in us, as he is perfectly loved.
God’s plan is to completely envelop everyone who is willing into the threefold loving eternal dance of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And as a result, the love of the Triune God will be replicated toward us, in us, and through us as we love God and one another. I can’t imagine a loftier and more beautiful goal for humanity than this!
—Adapted from Benefit of the Doubt, pages 57-60
Category: General
Tags: Benefit of the Doubt, Desires, Doubt, Longing, Love of God, Trinity, Triune Love
Related Reading
Quotes to Chew On: Doubt
Gisela Giardino via Compfight Marcus Goodyear wrote an article back in 2011 reflecting on Mother Teresa’s experience of doubt. Many now know that although Mother Teresa worked tirelessly in the slums of Calcutta, she struggled with doubt and spiritual isolation most of her life. Marcus finds this comforting in some way, and he relates to…
Why Bart Ehrman Doesn’t Have to Ruin Your Christmas (Or Your Faith) Part 7
This is the seventh of several videos Greg put together to refute Bart Ehrman’s claims published in the article What Do We Really Know About Jesus? In this segment, Greg argues against Ehrman’s claim that the Roman census in the birth narrative was fabricated. If you missed the first six installments you can find them here, here, here, here, here and here.
When You Doubt the Bible
Kit via Compfight Many people enter into conversations with ReKnew and Greg’s writings because they have questions and doubts about the Bible which they do not feel they can ask within their current church tradition. When they arise, and they will, what do we do with them? How do we process them in a healthy…
Does Jesus’ Abandonment on the Cross Destroy the Trinity?
In my previous blog I argued that Jesus’ experience of God-forsakenness on the cross was genuine and that, as a matter of fact, there was a genuine abandonment of Jesus by the Father on the cross. In fact, I am convinced that a good deal of our theology hangs in the balance on our affirming…
When God Abandoned God
On the cross, Jesus’ cried out, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” – which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mt. 27:46). These are arguably the most shocking, beautiful, and profoundly revelatory words found in Scripture. The cry reveals that on Calvary, the all-holy Son of God experienced God-forsakenness as he bore the…
Loving God With All Of Your Mind
Rebecca-Lee via Compfight David D. Flowers posted this essay on loving God with your mind that reflects our stance on intellectual integrity as we approach Scripture. It even features a video clip of Greg talking about maintaining humility when we encounter ideas that are new to us and challenge our current understanding. It’s well worth…