I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
—Jesus
Perhaps if you approved of the plans of the Glad Creator, you would allow Him to make of you something divine!
—George MacDonald
Taking Jesus Christ seriously opens our eyes to the secret of our humanity, of our burdens and joys, loves and passions. It gives us eyes to see the astonishing dignity of being human in Jesus’ world. There is only one circle of care and love and creativity in this universe; only one burden for right and life and blessing; one circle of harmony and other-centered sacrifice, of joy and generosity and passion for peace; one desire for all things beautiful, and it is that of the blessed Trinity. We have not been blown into existence only to drift aimlessly through life without meaning or purpose or dignity. Jesus has crossed all worlds to find us—and he has—and in himself he has lifted us up into the life he shares with his Father in the Holy Spirit. “I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you.” Nothing is ordinary. “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows me shall never, ever walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life.”1
Such a vision is almost too good to be true. But so it is. As Papa says to Mackenzie in The Shack, “Like I said, everything is about him. Creation and history are all about Jesus. He is the very center of our purpose and in him we are now fully human, so our purpose and your destiny are forever linked” (194, my italics).
There are a thousand things that must be said here, but for the moment there are three critical points that need to be noted.
First, Jesus himself is the proper content and meaning of the great themes of the New Testament: the kingdom of God, salvation, adoption, atonement, reconciliation, justification, the new covenant, heaven. The kingdom of God is the very life and love and joy of the blessed Trinity—shared with us in Jesus—coming to unique and personal expression in our lives, in our relationships with one another, and in our relationship with all creation. The very identity of Jesus Christ as the One in whom the Father, the Holy Spirit, and all creation are bound together carries profound geopolitical, racial, social, environmental, economic, and educational implications, not to mention ramifications for physics, psychology, or theology. “I am the light of the cosmos.” As the Creator incarnate, Jesus, in his relationship with his Father in the Spirit, is integral to every sphere and area of human life and of the life of our planet. Nothing was left behind when he ascended to his Father’s arms. Nothing is outside of his anointing in the Spirit.
In Jesus, heaven and earth are united; the life and oneness of the blessed Trinity have crossed the infinite divide and embraced us forever. All things have become new. The covenant relationship between the Lord and Israel is now filled with the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Spirit.2 The new covenant relationship is Jesus himself, and all that he is and has and experiences in the Holy Spirit.
And what is salvation but our death in Jesus’ death, and our new life in his resurrection? What could be more at-one than Jesus face-to-face with his Father in the Spirit, and the human race in him? Immanuel, adoption, heaven, eternal life—these are all ideas that have their fundamental meaning in the staggering grace of the triune God in Jesus whereby we were lifted up into the Father’s arms, seated with Jesus at his right hand, and ushered into the world of the Holy Spirit. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”3
Second, the astonishing union that Jesus has established with us, and the life shared within it, does not mean that we become Jesus or that he becomes us. That would be the end of us as real persons, and the end of the dream of the blessed Trinity for us. In the life of the Father, Son, and Spirit there is oneness and utter union, the three Persons dwelling completely in one another, but no loss of their distinct and personal identities. They do not become one another. The Father, Son, and Spirit have found a way to give us a real place in their shared trinitarian life without losing us in the process. We are included, but not absorbed; united, but not so merged that we cease to be real. We share in the trinitarian life, but always as distinct persons with our own unique personalities. The blessed Trinity will have it no other way.
This vision walks between the extremes of pantheism, on the one side, and dualism or deism on the other.4 In pantheism the relationship between God and the world is collapsed, so that God and the world are a single entity. Humanity is so merged with the divine that we are no more than extensions of the divine being, drops of water in the divine ocean. There is no distinct and real “us” to share in the life of God. In deism, God is a spectator watching us from an infinite distance, so that there can be no real and meaningful relationship between God and humanity; we are truly strangers forever. In pantheism the distinction between the divine and the human is lost, reducing us to nothing more than computers with divine software, while in deism the distinction is so absolute that the divine and the human are never related except perhaps by way of external instruction, and our humanity has no divine life. But the trinitarian vision holds together both the reality of our union with the triune God and the distinction between us. The union gives us a real share in the trinitarian life; the distinction means that there is a real “us” to taste and feel and experience it.
Third, in Jesus we see who we are and why we are here, as well as what’s wrong and the way forward. Jesus has included us in his relationship with his Father, and in his relationship with the Holy Spirit, and in his relationship with every person, and in his relationship with all creation. Jesus is the center of it all.5 Life is about walking with him and participating in his relationships. We are never more alive, or free, or more ourselves, than when we are seeing with Jesus’ eyes, caring with his heart, loving with his love. Death is about being alone, doing our own thing in our own way, serving ourselves and our own interests.
Think back for a moment to our discussion of the Trinity. The mutual indwelling of the Father, Son, and Spirit is both the truth of being and the way of being of the blessed Trinity at the same time. There was never a moment when the Father, Son, and Spirit did not dwell in one another, and there was never a moment when their mutual indwelling did not express itself in love and relationship. But with us, time is involved.
What Jesus has made of us in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension is the truth of our being, but it has not yet become our way of being. We are not separated from the blessed Trinity, but included in the trinitarian life. This is our identity, the truth of our being, and our destiny of joy. We are loved, accepted, embraced forever, and adopted. But such has not yet become our way of life, and herein lies our calling: our identity in Jesus calls and frees us to become who we are as those loved, accepted, and embraced forever.6
On the one hand, becoming who we are involves letting Jesus’ Father love us, as my friend Bruce Wauchope puts it so beautifully. It’s about Mackenzie “learning to live loved” (177), letting Papa’s embrace have the run of the house in his soul. The truth calls us to change from believing that we are separated from God, cut off and abandoned, that we are alone and that it is up to us, to believing that in Jesus we are wanted, received, cared for, and included in the life shared by the Father, Son, and Spirit.
On the other hand, it involves giving ourselves—our minds, hearts, and wills—to participate in what Jesus is doing. Our agenda, our independence, our confused self-will must die, so that the life and concerns, the burdens and joys, the music and other-centered love of the blessed Trinity can come to undiluted and unique expression in us. As Jesus says to Mack in The Shack:
Seriously, my life was not meant to be an example to copy. Being my follower is not trying to “be like Jesus,” it means for your independence to be killed. I came to give you life, real life, my life. We will come and live our life inside of you, so that you begin to see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, and think like we do. (151, my italics)
“Abide in Me, and I in you,” Jesus says in John’s Gospel. “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”7 As Mackenzie learned, we cannot walk on water just by flexing our faith muscles, but only as an act of participation in what Jesus is doing. We are free to fill a thousand water pots and to invent charms and chants and recipes of our own devising, but the water will never become wine unless the Lord performs his work. It’s about relationship, about the free submission of our hearts and wills to the love and life of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
Faith has no power without truth. Without reality, without Jesus, faith is simply a form of magic where we try to weave our spell over someone or wrest the cosmos to our will apart from Jesus. As we shall see, we are remarkably free to dream our own dreams of life and power and success; but how could our independent attempts at lordship and life ever work in Jesus’ world? The question of Sarayu, Papa, and Jesus to Mackenzie is directed to all of us: “How is that working for you?” (199); or as The Message asks, “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?”8
Life in this universe is about walking with Jesus in real relationship. This will mean saving the whales, finding ways to purify water, to serve and heal the sick, to care for the poor, to be mothers and fathers, teachers, workers and farmers, cooks, musicians, and coaches. It will mean saying “No!” to racism, sexism, social injustice, denominationalism, fragmentation, and dualism of every kind, but never in our own strength and time. “ ‘This always works better when we do it together, don’t you think?’ Jesus asked, smiling” (176). And later he tells Mack,
If you try to live this without me, without the ongoing dialogue of us sharing this journey together, it will be like trying to walk on the water by yourself. You can’t! And when you try, however well-intentioned, you’re going to sink. (182)
It is here that we can begin to understand what it means to be sinners. Sin is not simply breaking a divine law, unless by “law” is meant the real world in Jesus. In this sense, sin is any thought, act, motive, or word that violates our inclusion in Jesus and his relationship with his Father, the Holy Spirit, and all creation. Yet at a more fundamental level, sin is not about acts or behaviors so much as it is about the blind pride of the great darkness. Sin is insisting that Jesus Christ repent and believe in us. It is our secret demand that Jesus betray himself and pretend that he is not in the Father, that we are not in him nor he in us. Sin is our command that Jesus give up his world with his Father and the Spirit, and believe in us and ours, that he participate in our dream and agenda, and our timing and will. And in a way he does, for Jesus meets us in our darkness, accepts us, and loves us as we are; he will “travel any road to find you” (184), and he has. But he will never betray the fact that real life is living in the Father’s embrace in the Spirit. So he meets us in our darkness and sin and confusion, and his presence means that he is our Savior, working through love to save us from our false selves so that we may become who we truly are in him and experience real life.
It is fascinating that the first words of Jesus in John’s Gospel are a question. John the Baptist has pointed his disciples to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So John’s disciples begin to follow Jesus. As they walk behind him, Jesus turns and asks them, “What do you seek?”9 It is a simple question, but loaded. Can you imagine Jesus himself looking straight into your soul and asking, “What do you want?” John’s disciples, like all of us, are dazed by the question. Who wouldn’t be? Simple as it was, it cut through all pretense.
John’s disciples did not know how to answer. At length they managed a question of their own in response: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” At first reading, their question seems irrelevant if not inane, but then you realize that the word translated “staying” is the word usually translated “dwelling.” “Rabbi, where are you dwelling?” Can you not see Jesus smiling in his mind’s eye and thinking, So, you want to know where I am dwelling? The theologians among us wish that Jesus had given a careful theological answer about “dwelling” in the bosom of his Father. But to the disciples’ question, “Where are you dwelling?” Jesus offered a simple command: “Come, and you will see.”
It all comes down to this. On the one hand there is Jesus’ question, “What do you seek? What are you after? What do you want? Is it life, real life? Do you want peace, hope, meaning, freedom to be, to live, to love, to die?” On the other is his command, “Come, and you will see.” Jesus speaks to our hearts with the inviting command of love and relationship. “Walk with me. Put your agenda away and come with me. Follow me.” In George MacDonald’s words:
To follow him is to be learning of him, to think his thoughts, to use his judgments, to see things as he saw them, to feel things as he felt them, to be hearted, souled, minded, as he was—that so also we may be of the same mind with his Father.10
Given who Jesus is, what he has made of us in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and who we are in him, his abiding question is, “Which world are you going to live in today; your own, or mine?” As Jesus says to Mackenzie in The Shack, “We’re meant to experience this life, your life, together, in a dialogue, sharing the journey. You get to share in our wisdom and learn to love with our love, and we get… to hear you grumble and gripe and complain, and…” (177). He sets before us two choices. “I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love.”11 “If you want to do your thing, have at it. Time is on our side” (151, my italics).