Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
—Saint Paul
There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes.
—Richard Rohr
Adoption is not the dream of a naive God; it is the simple and stunning truth in Jesus Christ. In becoming human, Jesus has crossed the impossible divide between the divine and the creaturely. And in bearing our enmity, he has established a real relationship with us not merely in our humanity, but at our broken worst. As the Father’s Son incarnate, he has brought his own relationship with his Father into our fallen world, overcoming our sin and embracing us in the Father’s love. And since Jesus is also the Anointed One, establishing a relationship with us at our worst means that he has brought the Holy Spirit into our world of flesh. Adoption means that in and with and through Jesus and the hostility he endured at the hands of sinners, the Holy Spirit has descended into the inner catacombs of our hell, never to leave until those catacombs become to us the bosom of Jesus’ Father. Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” and “the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.”1
Like the Incarnation, Jesus’ anointing in the Spirit took time to become what it was. At no point was he without the Spirit, but the relationship had to develop at each stage of his human growth. Conceived by the Spirit, Jesus’ entire life was lived in the Spirit, yet there was growth, development, and maturity. The Father’s Son became a real human being. He lived out his sonship and his anointing in the Spirit as a man. The Holy Spirit is not a divine liquid that could be poured into the container of Christ’s humanity. She is a person to be welcomed and known and loved. Jesus’ anointing was personal and relational, not mechanical or extrinsic; it was both a fact and a relationship. Jesus loved and lived in the Spirit, saying “Yes” to her at every moment of his life, and so ever becoming what he always was. Stretching from his miraculous conception into his life and death, Jesus’ anointing in the Spirit reached its mature expression in his resurrection and ascension.
At the same time, Jesus was penetrating our darkness to the point of suffering death at our hands on the cross. His anointing was fulfilling itself not only in his humanity, but also through his suffering. He lived out his eternal sonship in the trenches of our broken world, under the menacing harassment of evil and inside the brutal pain of our rejection. Jesus learned what it meant to be the Father’s Son incarnate through the things that he suffered.2
It is fascinating to think of God “learning”—who could possibly know what that might mean?—but as creation itself was something new for God, so was the Incarnation, and so was living inside our darkness.3 Surely the blessed Trinity anticipated what it would be like to become human, but there is a difference between anticipation and personal experience. Once the triune God called forth the cosmos and humanity within it, the trinitarian life began expressing itself within a new world of relationships. In the Incarnation, the blessed Trinity has “become” what it forever was and is, but in a new way—now in relationship with us as fallen creatures. And as Jesus lived out his sonship as a man, the Holy Spirit was not a bystander watching from a distance. She did far more than hand him a box of tissues as he suffered at our hands. She was in the suffering with him.
In fellowship with the Father’s Son, as he endured the trauma of our blind judgment, the Holy Spirit “composed himself,”4 as Thomas F. Torrance says, or “accustomed” himself, as the great Irenaeus puts it, “to dwell in the human race.”5 Jesus suffered, and in his pain the Holy Spirit was becoming accustomed to our humanity, and to our alienation—from the inside. Through nurturing Jesus in the agony that he bore from us, the Holy Spirit was making our broken world part of hers.
I think the Holy Spirit “learned” how to meet us in the darkness through Jesus’ affliction, through her steadfast ministry to the suffering servant of God. Just as “the Word of God was on the road to becoming flesh”6 in the relationship between the Lord and Israel, and as that Word has in fact become flesh and dwells among us, so the Holy Spirit was “on the road” to dwelling with the fallen children of Adam, and in Jesus has “learned” to do so forever. To speak of the Holy Spirit “learning” is, of course, a wild speculation, but at least it helps us take the Incarnation seriously as something new for the Father, Son, and Spirit. Who knows? Who can say for sure? But what we do know is that the great Lover of life and freedom and wholeness has made her way inside our hell in Jesus. And here she cannot possibly sit still or be quiet; her passion for life becomes a passion for our liberation.
Pentecost is the inevitable fruit of Jesus’ ascension, and of ours in him. Embracing us in our darkness, Jesus was also including us in his own anointing with the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus the Holy Spirit was poured out on all flesh, as prophesied by Joel.7 The Spirit’s passion is to educate every human being—to make subjectively, personally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually real to us in our darkness that which is already real in Jesus Christ: that we are loved, accepted, and embraced forever, included in the trinitarian life itself. She is determined that “the wonderful exchange” move from the truth of our being to our way of being.
Inside our darkness is the one, special, and unique Spirit of the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit. And she is the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of grace, and the Spirit of life in Christ, working with and within us that we may become who we are in Jesus. But like a briar patch, our inner world is a tangled mess of guilt and shame and anxiety, of self-centeredness, hiding, and fear, all of which coalesce to give us a profoundly wrong way of seeing. “Mack,” says Jesus in The Shack, “there is far more going on here than you have the ability to perceive” (174). The Holy Spirit has come to do with us what we alone could never do in a million years. She walks with us relationally and in great tenderness, meeting us where we are in our hurt and confusion, gently untangling the mess to give us new sight so that we may choose life with all our hearts.
Several points emerge here that are critical for us to note. First, the Holy Spirit meets us in our broken inner worlds. In The Shack, Sarayu is present and at work in the garden that turns out to be the “mess” of Mackenzie’s broken soul (140). And she is not horrified. While she does not rejoice in our sin or approve of our unrighteousness, the Holy Spirit is not a puritanical prude who cannot cope with our humanity. She is not like a sheltered young girl who knows nothing of the dark vagaries and vicissitudes of life on planet Earth. She is not shocked by our primitive crudity and devious shenanigans. More like a seasoned nurse in a mental ward than an old maid disgusted with our brokenness, the Holy Spirit has seen it all in Jesus. She knows our hell, our pain, our insane cruelty. She is not put off by the dirty job of our liberation; in fact, she loves it (140). She is the answer. As in Mackenzie’s garden, the Holy Spirit is full of joy and having the time of her life in ours.
And this joy is shared by the Father. “At that moment, Papa emerged down the walkway carrying two paper sacks. She was smiling as she approached” (139). When I first read these two lines I did a double take, and then reread them to make sure they actually said what I thought they said. When I had the chance, I asked Paul about Papa smiling as she walked in Mackenzie’s garden.
“Please tell me,” I said, “that you wrote that on purpose.”
“Well, of course,” he said simply, with a huge grin on his face.
This scene of Sarayu’s joy and Papa smiling in the middle of Mack’s mess is worthy of a serious pause. Do not miss this. Both Sarayu and Papa are inside Mack’s darkness and pain. Herein lies the deeply personal meaning of “the wonderful exchange.” As much as I love Papa’s embrace on the front porch, I think this scene in the garden is even better. Paul Young here reveals the astonishing truth of the Incarnation. The Holy Spirit and Jesus’ Father are not up there somewhere watching us from a safe and unspoiled distance; they are inside our world of sin and shame. This is what Paul Young discovered in his personal despair—Jesus, his Father, and the Holy Spirit, smiling and overjoyed. “Instead of scrapping the whole Creation we rolled up our sleeves and entered into the middle of the mess—that’s what we have done in Jesus,” says Papa (101).
Second, the Holy Spirit comes to liberate us. Her presence in our inner world is not the end, but the beginning. For the dream of the blessed Trinity is not only that we would be included in the trinitarian life, but also that we would come to experience this life for ourselves. What has happened to us, with us, and for us in Jesus must become real in us. But such a dream can never reach fulfillment against our will, and our will is intertwined with our blind, wrong believing. So the Holy Spirit has a herculean job on her hands. She must lead us to turn against our own blindness and to believe, trust, and give ourselves to Jesus and his Father.
Never one to confuse the fruit with the root, she is not preoccupied with our sins so much as with our sin—our unbelief. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment,” and he goes on to say, “concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me.”8
We bring into Jesus’ relationship with us a most bizarre and alien way of thinking and seeing, which, of course, makes perfect sense to us, and to which we cling with a vengeance. And as we cannot hear our own accents, neither can we see our own blindness. It is impossible for us to push aside the weeds of our fallen minds and believe in anything other than what we perceive through our blindness, but Jesus has penetrated our darkness and brought the Spirit of truth with him.
The Holy Spirit is not a spectator watching from the outside, giving abstract and external instructions that she hopes we will apply to our lives. She meets us in our gardens, in our garbage cans, in our shacks, bearing witness to the “unbelievable” world of Jesus and his Father—and our world, too. She works within us to help us see through our own blindness to know the truth in Jesus, and in this way to help us take “baby steps” (176) against our own fear and judgment, prejudice and alienation. But we are a hardheaded lot, strong-willed and obstinate. Like first graders who think they are college professors, we know it all and cannot be told a thing, even as we leave a trail of wreckage behind us. So the Holy Spirit gives us time to do it our own way, all the while working deep at the core of our being, bearing witness with our spirits9 that it is true—that we are indeed sons and daughters of the Father himself—and crying the exclusive words of Jesus, “Abba! Father!” within us.
If you’ve ever written a poem or a letter, you already have an illustration of how this internal witness works. Writing, like so many other things, is a process of trial and error. Many times I write and then rewrite a chapter before I even know what I’m actually trying to say. Then there are almost endless revisions. A poet crafts a phrase or a word picture, but then scratches through it and tries again. Before long there are piles of wadded paper on the floor. But if she stays at it, and bears the gut-wrench of saying what cannot be said, the poem emerges.
But how does the poet know that this or that word is not the right one? How does she know that this turn of phrase, or image, or metaphor, is inappropriate? How does she know when they are right, and the poem is finished? The answer is simple, yet profound: she has two “knowings” at work within her.10 One is the knowing of her mind, and the other is the knowing of her heart, what MacDonald called “the something deeper than the understanding—the power that underlies thought,”11 and Michael Polanyi called “tacit foreknowledge.”12 What the poet already knows in her heart, the “spirit knowing,” scrutinizes her thoughts, words, and phrases, calling her to repent, to expand her thoughts “till they are worthy of the theme,”13 until the understanding in her mind grows to express the deeper knowing of her heart.
This is what the Holy Spirit does within our hearts. “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ ”14 She gives us an internal “knowing” that we belong to glory, that we are special, loved, made for life and not death, for joy and goodness and grace, not sorrow and Great Sadness. But the wounds, the trauma, the neglect, the divorce, the personal failures and disappointments, the wretched theology, all shout another message.
Mack knew that what he was hearing, as hard as it was to understand, was something amazing and incredible. It was as if her words were wrapping themselves around him, embracing him and speaking to him in ways beyond just what he could hear. Not that he actually believed any of it. If only it were true. His experience told him otherwise. (104)
There are two knowings within us. The one is the knowing of the Spirit, the other is the knowing formed in the crucible of our own experience and the whisper of the father of lies. The witness of the Spirit gives us a divine basis, within our own darkness, for repentance and new faith, which leads into liberation and life. Repentance is a radical recasting of our minds, a deep and wide and fundamental change in the way we think and see and understand. It is nothing short of a revolution in the way we see God, ourselves, others, and life itself. The Spirit’s witness forms a new knowing within us, creating a suspicion that we may be blind as bats and dead wrong about God, and giving us permission within our own souls to believe in the goodness of Jesus’ Father against our own entrenched prejudices and mythology. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”15 “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”16
Third, the Holy Spirit treats us with profound respect. We are real to the blessed Trinity, and we matter deeply. Overriding our hearts and wills is simply not part of the trinitarian way of life; that would be to destroy us as distinct persons. We are highly treasured and precious to the Father, Son, and Spirit. They relate to us as we are in our hurt, darkness, and confusion. “Without the violation of one human will” (127), and “without brutalizing anyone” (183), the Holy Spirit works with a purpose in our hearts, always enlisting our participation in the process. As Sarayu says to Mack, “I would like your help clearing this entire plot of ground. There is something very special that I want to plant here tomorrow, and we need to get it ready” (133). “Together, you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart” (140).
Freedom and respect, honor and patience are themes throughout the biblical story as they are in The Shack. Only moments after the front porch embrace, Papa realizes that although she has made her way into Mack’s darkness and embraced him, he is hesitant to open up. She sees that he is not ready. “That’s okay,” she says, “we’ll do things on your terms and time” (85). This is the heart of the biblical story. The blessed Trinity takes us seriously. The Father, Son, and Spirit want relationship and shared life with us.
A few moments later Mack asks Jesus what he is supposed to do:
“You’re not supposed to do anything. You’re free to do whatever you like.” Jesus paused and then continued, trying to help by giving Mack a few suggestions. “I am working on a wood project in the shed; Sarayu is in the garden; or you could go fishing, canoeing, or go in and talk to Papa.”
“Well, I sort of feel obligated to go in and talk to him, uh, her.”
“Oh,” now Jesus was serious. “Don’t go because you feel obligated. That won’t get you any points around here. Go because it’s what you want to do.” (91)
Our freedom is not an illusion. We are free to be exactly what we are. For the Father, Son, and Spirit want the real us, not the Sunday church version, to experience their shared life and love.
This respect for us as real persons with our own hearts, minds, and wills, broken as they are, shines in the conversation about Mack’s children. “When he spoke of his concerns for Kate, the three only nodded with concerned expressions, but offered him no counsel or wisdom” (108). They do not rescue Mackenzie. Jesus, Papa, and Sarayu listen. They want to know, to hear, to understand what is going on in Mackenzie’s heart. They are more interested in knowing him as he is than offering quick suggestions. Sarayu explains a moment later: “We have limited ourselves out of respect for you. We are not bringing to mind, as it were, our knowledge of your children. As we are listening to you, it is as if this is the first time we have known about them, and we take great delight in seeing them through your eyes” (108).
Seeing through the eyes of others is the hallmark of intimacy and real relationship. The Holy Spirit cares deeply about where we actually are in our understanding and believing (and lack of same), and cares about what we want. She gives us plenty of time and space to make a mess of ourselves. We are shockingly free to do our own thing, to chase one scheme after another, to try to be sorcerers and wizards imposing our own will upon others and creation. She lets us live with ourselves and the consequences of our vaunted ideas, our appalling self-righteousness, and our sin. In the words of Mr. Raven in MacDonald’s Lilith, “Indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself one, and become wise.”17 The Holy Spirit does not forsake us in our folly, but is quick to utilize every opportunity in her determination that we come to know the truth, and experience its freedom and life. For the dream of the blessed Trinity must become ours, too.
I, for one, would prefer a quick fix, but zapping our blind eyes with light cannot make them see. And even if it could, we would never believe what we saw. This is about relationship, and it’s about the education of our fallen minds, and the liberation of our wills. It takes time. It is about our coming to know Jesus, and knowing in the Bible is a long way from just reciting information, quoting Scripture, or going to church. Knowing involves repentance, the radical conversion of our minds; and it involves personal experience, trust, and self-giving, communion, and oneness. The Spirit of adoption wants us—the people we are—to believe, to trust, to walk with, and give ourselves to participate in Jesus’ life with his Father. It has never crossed her mind to force her will upon us. In Jesus she has come to relate to us in our darkness and hurt, and gently bring us to see.
Fourth, the Holy Spirit never sleeps, but works around the clock to bring life out of our misery, good out of our wrong, and healing out of our personal disasters. I love this the most about the Father, Son, and Spirit. They don’t have a hair trigger. They are patient and brilliant strategists in their love.
Young captures this beautifully in three places. The first is in the garden with Sarayu; Mack and Sarayu have been preparing the garden, and he realizes that he has made a mess. “But it really is beautiful, and full of you, Sarayu. Even though it seems like lots of work still needs to be done, I feel strangely at home and comfortable here” (140). Papa and Sarayu cannot help but look at each other and wink, as Mack has no clue. Sarayu enlightens him:
And well you should, Mackenzie, because this garden is your soul. This mess is you!… And it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in process. To you it seems like a mess, but to me, I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive—a living fractal! (140)
The second illustration comes when Jesus and Mack are talking after Mack’s “visit” with Sophia about judgment, and after he has “seen” Missy alive and playing. Mack asks Jesus why he has not told him before about Missy, and Jesus answers:
I’ve been talking to you for a long time, but today was the first time you could hear it, and all those other times weren’t a waste, either. Like little cracks in the wall, one at a time, but woven together they prepared you for today. You have to take the time to prepare the soil if you want it to embrace the seed. (178)
The third comes when Papa and Mackenzie are enjoying scones on the front porch. It is a meeting of hearts, as Mack is apologizing for having judged Papa and thought such ill of her. Then Papa opens her heart and lets Mackenzie in on a simple, but rather life-changing secret about how she works:
“Let’s say, for example, I am trying to teach you how not to hide inside of lies, hypothetically of course,” she said with a wink. “And let’s say that I know it will take you forty-seven situations and events before you will actually hear me—that is, before you will hear clearly enough to agree with me and change. So when you don’t hear me the first time, I’m not frustrated or disappointed, I’m thrilled. Only forty-six more times to go. And that first time will be a building block to construct a bridge of healing that one day—that today—you will walk across.” (189)
This is beautiful—and absolutely true—and Paul Young did not learn it in a book. This insight, this hope-begetting, joy-inspiring revelation, comes only when we get real with ourselves and honest with the Father, Son, and Spirit.
The recovery world teaches us that it is essential to take the time to write out a personal inventory of our lives. Such an inventory, “fearless and searching” as they call it in Alcoholics Anonymous, is to be brutally honest and as exhaustive as possible, a veritable catalog of all our sins, lies, character defects, and personal failures. Facing yourself honestly is the scariest thing in the world, but as you do, you see not only your own brokenness; you meet the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the compassion—indeed, the humor—of his Father, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”18
I was shocked when I understood this. The fingerprints of the blessed Trinity were all over my life; not for a second had I ever been abandoned. And the best part was seeing how the Holy Spirit used my mistakes, my character defects, and outright folly to help me see that I was loved and included. She transforms our shame into sacraments of our Father’s love.
Just as the Holy Spirit accustomed herself to dwell in our flesh, she is, step-by-step, helping us grow accustomed to Jesus’ world and Papa’s fondness. Just as she “learned” in Jesus to meet us in our darkness, she is helping us learn to live loved, because we are loved—and she uses our own blunders to do so. Perhaps the robe of Stephen, the first martyr reported in the book of Acts, became a sacrament of grace and love to the apostle Paul, who had watched approvingly as he was killed. Who knows, the ladybug pin left as a calling card by Missy’s murderer in The Shack may become a sacrament to him and to Mack, a visible sign of the unsearchable love of the blessed Trinity.
Fifth, in the Spirit the sheer love of the blessed Trinity becomes a fiery judgment within us. Jesus died in our loathing and rose in our hell, and we cannot kill him again or separate ourselves from his presence. As Karl Barth says, “We cannot break free from this Neighbor.”19 And his presence is one of love and grace and acceptance, and therefore of judgment. “For love loves unto purity,” as MacDonald put it.20 “God will never let a man off with any fault. He must have him clean.”21 The love of the blessed Trinity would never have us alien to the trinitarian life. “Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed.”22
Missy’s murderer is not going to skip through the pearly gates playing with ladybugs. To begin with, heaven is where the blessed Trinity dwells, and the evil that has hijacked and so horribly twists and misuses this man avoids the light at all costs. While this murderer is forgiven, loved, and accepted, while he is embraced and included, he does not know it by any stretch of the imagination, and such unknowing leaves him writhing in pain and trapped in the clutches of darkness. He belongs to the Father, Son, and Spirit—always has, always will—but he has given himself to participate in darkness. He acts out of the lie of the evil one and its grotesque meaninglessness, wreaking havoc in the lives of all around. He has become a terrible monster, living an alien form of existence in violation of his true self in Christ, and this alien existence must be transformed in the fire of Jesus’ love.
This man, like each of us, must be judged by the living Word of God.23 That is to say, he must be divided; the evil must be discerned, and separated from his true self in Jesus. “Much in us will appear to us ourselves, and especially to the Judge, as worthy of damnation; it belongs in the fire,”24 writes one theologian. All that is alien in us to the trinitarian life and way of being must die. The poison of the darkness must be removed from us so we can become who we truly are in Jesus. We must repent and believe, not in order to be accepted and loved and included, but to live in that reality.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption, and therefore in our darkness she is a refining fire.25 “All that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed.” Otherwise, we are doomed to be included in a life we can never live. Thus the Spirit works to free us so that we may choose to forsake our sin and flee all that is not truth, all that is foreign to the other-centered, self-giving love and grace and life of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Her transforming and freeing fire is her witness, “Abba! Father!” She uses the truth—our adoption, our salvation in Jesus Christ—to bring us into judgment, creating the crisis of our personal liberation.26
“Abba! Father!” is a cry full of hope for us, the new life already alive within us yearning and pressing for expression, and at the same time it is inevitably the white paper against the walls of our twisted inner worlds, exposing our darkness as darkness. Such exposure or judgment is painful, even withering.27 But as the songwriter says, “Burning ember, let me never curse the pain you bring.”28 For the pain of exposure is the fruit of our salvation; indeed, it is our salvation saving us, our adoption finding us out in our insanity and fear and alien way of being, the love of the triune God loving us into freedom to let go of that which is destroying us. Hence, the songwriter continues, “Somehow I know I will be whole in your burning.”
The Holy Spirit draws our minds and hearts and wills away from ourselves to focus on what became of Jesus, and on what became of us in him: “I am in my Father, you in me, and I in you.” The Spirit works within us to reveal this truth, this fact, this reality, this Person. “Abba! Father!” is not simply a Bible phrase; it is the voice of Jesus himself in us. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus not simply to us as a distant object, but in us,29 leading to a personal encounter with Jesus himself. We gaze upon him whom we have pierced,30 and find ourselves undone by his unaccountable and unsearchable love. We begin to know Jesus and ourselves. We begin to understand that there is more to us than we ever dared dream, that we belong to glory, that we are known and loved and a delight to Jesus and his Father. We begin to see our motherhood and fatherhood, our relationships, our farming and work, our botany and burdens and music, even our theology in a glorious new light. And at the same time, this encounter reveals the life we are living as an unholy labyrinth of freedom and bondage, joy and sadness, hope and desperation, participation and perversion, riddled with insecurity and self-centeredness, pride, fear, hiding, lust, greed, and envy.
The revelation of Jesus Christ in the Spirit is at once grace and judgment, painful hope and burning light, for it reveals both the stunning truth of who we are in Jesus and how shockingly far we are from being ourselves. In revealing Jesus, the Spirit of adoption brings us into the crosshairs of divine judgment, where “there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”31 As with Mackenzie in the cave with Sophia, so it is with us: before Jesus there is nowhere to hide. He sees right through us. He is not moved by the lip-quiver, dazzled by marketing hype, or confused by religious dress or political rhetoric. In his presence there are no calls to make, no strings to pull, no deals to cut. “Before his gaze all falsehood melts away.”32 We know that he knows that we know that he knows. We are naked. And such judgment is inescapable grace—the exposing, discerning, enlightening, withering, healing, and liberating love of the blessed Trinity.
Here in our own shacks, naked, vulnerable, and helpless, we meet not shame or disappointment or condemnation, not the angry gods of our fallen imaginations, but the one true God, the blessed Trinity—Jesus, his Father, and the Holy Spirit—and that love which never seeks its own, but suffers all things, endures all things, hopes all things, and never fails.33
Here, inside our own souls and our great darkness—inside our garbage cans, where we have hidden our heartache, our gut-wrenching wounds, our guilt and shame, where the whisper of evil has enslaved us and the lie “I am not” was born, at the fountainhead of our fear of abandonment and our terrifying insecurity—we encounter the real Jesus. His pierced hands free us to allow ourselves to be known and loved in his Father’s embrace, to be (in the words of C. S. Lewis, quoted earlier) “united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” Our traumatized souls hear Papa shout our names, and Jesus’ own unearthly assurance baptizes us in the power of the Spirit of adoption. We are free to rest, to let go, to weep in love’s embrace. Peace and hope and joy are born in our pain and Great Sadness. We are called to a radical change of heart and mind, to rethink everything we thought we knew, to forsake the lie and believe in Jesus, the Father’s Son and the Anointed One, our crucified Lord and Savior and our salvation and life. In the corridors of our shame, the truth of our being becomes our way of being.
From creation to the birth of Jesus, the womb of the Incarnation was being prepared. In Jesus, the dream of the blessed Trinity for our adoption was fulfilled inside our darkness. And from Pentecost on, human history is about the Holy Spirit’s work within us, corporately and individually, bringing us to encounter Jesus within our own brokenness so that we can begin to discern good from evil, light from darkness, life from death, and heaven from hell.
Hint by hint, line upon line, insight following insight, the Spirit is leading us into a radically new mind. We are beginning to smell the rat and see through the powerlessness of our religions. We long for home, for glory, for life, for truth and freedom and justice, for shalom. A baby step of hope in Jesus releases a baby step of the Spirit’s freedom and power—and all her gifts—in us. One little “amen” of faith in Jesus is an “amen” of accepting our acceptance; it is opening our hearts and letting the Father love us, so that Jesus’ own parrhesia—his unearthly assurance, confidence, freedom, boldness, and life—is free to thrive within us. His anointing with the Holy Spirit begins to flourish in our broken humanity, in our relationships, our music, our gardening, our work and play. Our self-centeredness and detestable pride, our fear and prejudice and judgment, our greed, envy, and lust, our terrible anxiety, all begin to die. We become free to love Jesus for his sake, and others and creation for their own benefit.
The hope of the human race is that we belong to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we always have, and always will. And the Spirit of adoption will not give up on our coming to know that truth personally and corporately. The Spirit’s passion is to bring her anointing of humanity in Jesus to full and personal and abiding expression in us, and not only in us personally, but in our relationship with the Father through the Son, and in our relationships with one another, and indeed with the earth and all creation.
The Spirit of truth, the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of grace will not rest until we are all judged to the roots of our souls, and until our reconciliation, adoption, and anointing—made real in Jesus himself—have taken shape on earth and throughout the cosmos. As the apostle Paul says, “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”34 In the meantime, humanity lives under the judgment of the love of the blessed Trinity, in the unnerving and liberating crisis of Jesus’ real presence and the Holy Spirit’s revealing ministry, between the revelation of the beauty of the trinitarian life of grace and freedom and its exposure of the mess we are making of our own.
Some, perhaps, are won with the Spirit’s first “Hello,” but most of us run and hide, burying the dream and living in compromise—for now. We are Israel desperately trying to run from the Lord, Peter in the boat with Jesus, Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road—and perhaps Mackenzie shaking his fist at God. But even when we run, or shake our fist, the Holy Spirit does not forsake us. Having met us in our cruel rejection of Jesus, she is able to find us in our sin, and even in our wildest heresies. She meets us in our running, and in time turns our mistakes, our character defects, our blunders and shenanigans into a way of revealing the truth to us again—leaving a trail of sacraments behind her. Only three hundred more to go, or perhaps it’s three million; who knows? “The whole thing is a process, not an event” (183). It does not happen overnight, but through a lifetime, and perhaps beyond.35 Is this not what history is about? Our prayer, like Mackenzie’s, is simple: “So please, help me live in the truth” (201).
Life in the world of the Holy Spirit is always personal and relational. She is determined and faithful, kind, mostly gentle, and always true. She is most competent to meet us where we are in our darkness; and without overwhelming us or violating our will, she leads us to begin to use Jesus’ right mind, to risk leaving our own darkness and its strange comfort (172) in order to embrace the shocking new world of the Father and his incarnate Son. In the words of Papa to Mackenzie in The Shack,
The Truth shall set you free and the Truth has a name; he’s over in the woodshop right now covered in sawdust. Everything is about him. And freedom is a process that happens inside a relationship with him. Then all that stuff you feel churnin’ around inside will start to work its way out. (97)
As my friend Ken Blue likes to say, “Thank you, Holy Spirit; we will have more, please.”
“Jesus?” he whispered as his voice choked. “I feel so lost.”
A hand reached out and squeezed his, and didn’t let go. “I know, Mack. But it’s not true. I am with you and I’m not lost. I’m sorry it feels that way, but hear me clearly. You are not lost.” (116, my italics)
Holy Spirit, have your way with us, that we may feel the squeeze of Jesus’ hand, and hear his Father shout our name. Do what you must, that we may repent and believe and so taste and feel and experience the life and freedom of our adoption in Jesus.