The secret of every man, whether he believes or not, is bound up with Jesus.
—Thomas F. Torrance
Love Himself can work in those who know nothing of Him.
—C. S. Lewis
Understandably, the disciples were slow to grasp the full meaning of Jesus’ identity and what was becoming of the cosmos and the human race in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. The implications are simply too staggering, too revolutionary for any of us to comprehend. Even in the upper room, after several years of walking with Jesus, they struggled to understand. John 14 records part of Jesus’ conversation with his disciples on the eve of his death and resurrection. It is then that Jesus summarizes the meaning of his life and work in a single statement. After promising the disciples that he and his Father will send them another soul mate, the Spirit of truth, and not leave them orphaned,1 he says,
In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.2
Take a moment to read Jesus’ words again. There are three critical truths: first, Jesus is in his Father; second, we are in Jesus; third, Jesus is in us. In astonishing grace and love he has done this for us, to us, and with us. Dying in our rejection, Jesus included us in his world with his Father and the Spirit. In the simplest of terms Jesus tells us of the world—his world, and ours in him—that awaits our discovery in the Holy Spirit. Such a world is inconceivable to us; but the Spirit of truth will bring us to know, not as theological axioms but as living experience, that Jesus is in his Father, and that we are not outsiders looking in but already insiders included in Jesus and his relationship with his Father. The deadening whisper of our separation from God, of our rejection and abandonment, is here exposed to be mere fluff. For Jesus has included us all forever.
This is the truth that sets us free.3 We are not spectators, not mere fans watching the beautiful life of the Father, Son, and Spirit from a distance. The trinitarian life has pitched its tent inside our humanity, inside our rejection and pain. We are included in this life, so much so that the music of the great dance is already playing in our lives; it’s just too close for us to see. As Thomas Merton said: “He is closer to us than we are to ourselves and that is why we do not notice Him.”4 “I am in you,” like “I am in my Father,” and “You are in me,” is not something we make true; it is the truth, part of what we will come to know as reality in the Spirit. As Mackenzie says, “That is almost unbelievable!” (115).
We are free, of course, to live our lives “on the steps” if we want, exhausting ourselves again and again with trying to get to God, or cynical and bitter because we can’t, or even grossly proud because we think we actually have; but the steps are merely an illusion. The real world is Jesus in his Father, and us in Jesus, and Jesus in us.
One Saturday afternoon years ago, when my son was six or seven, he and one of his buddies peered around the door at me as I sat on the couch in our den, sorting through junk mail and getting ready to watch a football game. They were decked out in camouflage, face paint, plastic guns and knives, helmets—the whole nine yards. Before I knew what was happening, two camouflaged blurs were flying through the air right at me. The attack was on. For five minutes or so we went through several mock explosions and fights before the three of us ended up in a pile of laughter on the floor. It was then that a sort of ticker-tape banner scrolled past the front of my mind: “Baxter, this is important; pay attention.”
I had no idea what the message meant. After all, it was Saturday, and a dad and his boy and his friend were just playing army on the floor of the den. Surely there was nothing extraordinary about that. The first clue came when I realized that I actually did not know this other little boy at all. I had never seen him, and didn’t even know his name. I thought to myself: Suppose my son was in the back room with our dog, Nessie, and this boy had appeared in the den alone. Presumably he would have known that I was Mr. Kruger, but that is about as far as things would have gone. Not in a million years would he have come flying through the air at me, not by himself.
The little boy did not know me; he did not know what I was like. But my son did—and that was my second clue. My son knows me. He knows that I love him, that he is one of the apples of my eye. He knows that I like him and that he is always welcome and wanted. So he did the most natural thing in the world: in the freedom of knowing my heart, he ran to me to play. The miracle was that his buddy was right in the middle of it all. Without even knowing what I was seeing, I saw my son’s relationship with me, his at-homeness and freedom with me, go inside that other little boy. And the other boy got to experience our fellowship. He got to taste and feel and play in my son’s freedom and joy with me.
Stop for a moment and take this in. “In that day, you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” What Jesus is saying is that we are the other little boy. As Jesus says to Mackenzie in The Shack, “My purpose from the beginning was to live in you and you in me” (114). And as Papa says, “We want to share with you the love and joy and freedom and light that we already know within ourself. We created you, the human, to be in face-to-face relationship with us, to join our circle of love” (126).
Through his death Jesus has included us in his life with his Father in the Spirit. There is thus far more going on in our lives than we have ever dared to dream; in Papa’s words, “There is more going on than you could imagine or understand, even if I told you” (104). Jesus Christ is already sharing himself with you, with me, with us all. The love and joy, the music and laughter, the care and sacrifice, the beauty and goodness of the blessed Trinity, are already within us. This is the mystery hidden in past ages, but now revealed in Jesus: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”5 This is the secret behind the richness of our experience of our own motherhood and fatherhood, of our love and sacrifice, of our music and art and joy, of our lives.6
Let us look at this shocking truth from another angle. When Jesus transformed the water into wine, he first asked the servants to fetch water and fill the six water pots.7 Each pot held about 30 gallons, which totals around 180 gallons of water. That is a lot of water, and a lot of work. Have you ever wondered why Jesus asked the servants to help? Think about it. If you can turn water into wine, why not just create the wine and save the servants the trouble of getting all that water? Why involve the servants at all?
Having lived forever in a fellowship of love and sharing with his Father in the Holy Spirit, Jesus is not the sort of person who does things alone. In fact, he never does. While “you and I are not necessary,”8 the Lord “does not will to be God without us,”9 to borrow a profound point from Karl Barth. Of course Jesus did not need the servants, but this Lord is about sharing, about giving us a place in his life and in what he is doing. The servants got to participate in Jesus’ life with his Father in the Spirit. “The prime purpose of the incarnation… is to lift us up into a life of communion, of participation in the very triune life of God.”10
Here is another example. I was on my way to speak at a college in the Midwestern States not long ago. A young man picked me up at the airport and we started driving to the college. It was a part of our country that is extremely flat, and for mile after mile we passed farms with farmers plowing in the fields. Along the way I asked the young man what he planned to do when he graduated.
“I’m planning on going to seminary,” he said.
“Do you want to be a missionary?”
“No,” he answered, “I don’t think so; probably a pastor.”
About that time a huge tractor made a turn in the field in front of us. I pointed to the farmer and asked, “Have you ever thought about how Jesus relates to farmers and their families?”
The young man paused and said, “No, I can’t say I have,” and looked at me like I had a third eye.
“That farmer and his family spend sixty or seventy hours a week farming. It’s what they do with most of their time. More than likely you’ll have a church full of farmers and their families. So it’s an important question, isn’t it?”
“Well, when you put it like that, it sure is. But I don’t know how to answer it.”
“When you get back to your house tonight and sit down to eat, what will you do before you take your first bite?”
“I’ll thank the Lord.”
“Thank him for what?” I asked.
“For the food,” he said with that same look on his face.
“Of course, but why? Why thank the Lord for something that the farmer grew? Why not thank the farmer and his family?”
“Well, I guess I should thank the farmer, but are you saying I’m not to thank the Lord?”
“No, of course not. I’m only trying to help you see that you already know how Jesus relates to the farmer’s life and work. You don’t have a theology that allows you to see what your prayer already knows.”
“I’m not following you,” he said.
“Think about it. You thank the Lord for food that the farmer grew. Now what does that tell you about the farmer?”
He paused, clearly processing his thoughts. Then a huge grin came over his face. “I think I get it. That is so cool! The farmer is part of the way the Lord provides for us.”
“That’s it,” I said, “and so are teachers, garbage collectors, welders, workers, truck drivers, the men and women who make household cleaning products, secretaries, and scientists, to name a few. They all participate in what Jesus is doing.”11
Jesus does not need the farmers any more than he needed the servants to get the water at the wedding in Cana. He does not need parents to make babies and care for them, or teachers to teach, or doctors and nurses to heal, or musicians to make music, or artists to create, or oilfield workers, clerks, secretaries, inventors, explorers, or theologians. He could simply command and it would all be so. But such a thought has never crossed the mind of the Father, Son, and Spirit, for that would be to pretend that we are not wanted or included in their shared life.
Not long after my conversation with the college student, a young mother walked into my office with a stack of newsletters in her hand. She had tears in her eyes as she slammed them down on my desk, shouting, “I feel like a pile of crap!”
“What in the world has happened?” I asked.
“I’ve been reading these newsletters from friends and missionaries all over the world. They’re all out there doing these wonderful things for God. Even their children are perfect. And it just hit me what a worthless life I have. For Pete’s sake, I do three loads of laundry a day, and when I’m not doing laundry I’m grocery shopping, and when I’m not grocery shopping I’m unloading the groceries, or cooking the groceries, or cleaning up after cooking them. And somewhere in there I try to keep my mess of a house presentable, stay in touch with my kids, keep them clothed and on schedule, and find a little time for my husband. By the end of the day I’m too tired even to read my Bible. What do I have to offer God?”
“Wait!” I said. “Just wait a minute. We need to punch the Pause button and rethink all of this.”
“I sure hope so.”
“Do you remember what you told me the other day about your daughter’s coat?”
“Which part?”
“The whole story.”
“Of course, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, you told me you had spent all morning shopping for a coat for your daughter to keep her warm. And not just any coat, mind you, but one that she would like, and one that would be large enough to wear next year but not look like it this year, and one that was on sale!”
“Well, did you just decide that you were going to be a good mother and flip a switch that created this concern for your daughter? Did you take a ‘good mother’ pill?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m asking about the origin of your love for your daughter, and for your family. What is the source of your determination that they eat right every day, that they be safe and loved and nurtured and clothed?”
“I’m their mother. Who thinks about stuff like that?”
“I do, for one. These are important questions, and they might just have some serious freedom in them for you—and dignity.”
“Okay, but what’s your point?”
“My point is that Jesus is not up there watching you from a distance. He’s not waiting for you to do something for him in his absence. He is here, in you.”
“I’ve always believed that, but what does it mean, really?”
“Well, it means that through you, the Father, Son, and Spirit have created several unique persons. Never before in the history of the cosmos have your children existed. They are one of a kind, and now that they were born through you, they will live forever in Jesus. That seems like a rather huge thing to me. It is loaded with serious dignity.”
“I see that, on my good days. Somewhere inside, I know that’s true, but it’s hard to feel it every day.”
“And it means that Jesus is sharing his love for his sheep—your family—with you. It means that he put in your heart his own concern for your daughter to have a new coat. You woke up in his love, shopped all morning in his joy. You gave yourself to participate in what he was doing, and you loved every minute of it. His joy filled your heart. It made you sing. And you found the coat. But you don’t know who you are, and you can’t see what is happening in your life. It is not simply your concern and delight, but his, and there is no more noble thing in all the world than cooking a meal for your family. For that is nothing short of the Father himself, through his Son and in the Spirit, sharing his royal feast with his loved ones. You are in the middle of it. There is far more going on in your life than you ever dreamed. If you don’t see it, the newsletters will kill you with shame, opportunities will become exhausting burdens, life will become a long frustration, and you will not know the joy of who you are.”
One more story. On my first flight out West I made sure that I had a seat by a window. At that point I had never seen the Rocky Mountains, so I was determined that I could at least see them from the air. As it turned out, the middle seats throughout the plane were empty, so everyone had plenty of room. The flight attendant closed the door and we started backing up to depart. Then the plane stopped and pulled forward, and the attendant opened the door. In a flash, a man who looked like Indiana Jones stepped onto the plane. He had the hat, the vest, and the leather satchel. Somehow I knew where he was going to sit. And he did. He walked twenty-five rows back and sat beside me.
As I greeted him, he introduced himself and sat down. He said he was a “systematic, microevolutionary microbiologist.” He was returning from what seemed to me to be very much like an Indiana Jones–type expedition in the Caribbean. It was, in fact, a research trip dedicated to studying various species of plants.
We were hardly in the air before he began talking about plants, especially rare species that the average person doesn’t even know exist. He knew their Latin names. With real fire in his belly he launched into this story about plants that were on the verge of extinction, how important they were, what could be done to save them, and why we must. He simply could not bear the thought that we had already lost, and were now losing, whole species of plants to extinction. He even pulled out a couple of napkins and drew diagrams and charts. I must say, I was truly fascinated.
Somewhere over Idaho he finished and looked over to me. “I suppose, being a theologian, you want to talk about evolution?”
“No, not really,” I said, “but I do have a question.”
“Which is?”
“Where did you get your passion for plants? I mean, it’s not every day that you meet someone who has such a deep burden for the welfare of plants. I’m just curious as to its origin. Did you grow up around botanists? Were your parents botanists? Did you just decide one day that you were going to love plants?”
“I’ve never really thought about it much, or even at all.”
“It probably just evolved,” we both said at the same time.
“Or perhaps not,” I said as I pulled out a napkin and began drawing three interrelated circles. In one circle I wrote “Father,” and in the other two I wrote “Son” and “Spirit.” Pointing to the circles, I said, “I know the origin of your deep passion for plants, and I know who you are. That fire in your belly is not yours; it comes first from the Father, Son, and Spirit. It is the blessed Trinity who cares so deeply about creation. They share their passion for creation with you through Jesus, and through his Spirit he humbly shares with you his delight in plants, his burden for their welfare, and his desire for their wholeness. And you are living in it! You go to sleep at night, wake up in the morning, and work all day in his concerns and creative ideas. You are living in Jesus’ life, participating in the relationship that Jesus has with his Father in the fellowship of the Spirit, and in their zeal for the blessing of creation. You live in the circle of the triune life of God, and you’re not sure that God even exists!”
“Well,” he said, “if that’s true, why haven’t I ever been told?”
“You just were.”