The Self-Emptying God

What first comes to your mind when you think about God? Take a moment and consider.

Your answer to this question may well be one of the most important things about you. Why? Because how we see God, what we think when we think about God, influences how we see and think about everything else – ourselves, others, life, the universe - the lot. It influences priorities, motivations, decisions, actions and reactions. It becomes central to who we are and how we live.

So what we think about God (our theology) is vitally important. Not as philosophical musings, but because it brings us into the very heart of the universe and into the very heart of who God is in eternity. Thankfully, our theology doesn’t save us – only God does. But our theology profoundly influences how we experience this life, and experience our relationships with God and one another.

Try this for a minute: marginalised, humiliated, scorned - written off as nothing. Betrayed, insulted, despised. Suffering a brutal death, the ultimate punishment, executed as a condemned criminal. Not much of a biography! No success story here; not a storyboard that is likely to sell in Hollywood or the advertising industry. Yet this is the cosmic story we are reminded of each Easter.

Scripture tells us that the ultimate, full and final revelation of God is in Jesus Christ. Jesus comes from the very inner life of God to show us who God is, what God is eternally like. Not just to talk about God, like the prophets did, but as God in the flesh.

In his life on earth, his incarnation as a real flesh and blood person, Jesus is the human face of God. He shows us the Father (John 14:9; Matthew 11:27). There is no God other than the God revealed in Jesus. There is no angry Father behind the back of Jesus, who Jesus has to placate, soften, appease, so the Father doesn’t destroy us in a fit of rage.

Lessons from the Cross: Carpenter or Caesar?

As Christians celebrate Easter, we focus again on the death of Jesus on the cross, and his resurrection and ascension. The cross can only be understood fully through the resurrection, of course. Nevertheless the cross is often used as a kind of shorthand for Jesus’ whole life, death and resurrection. (As Calvin wrote, the whole life of Jesus was nothing but a sort of perpetual cross.) The cross is the central symbol of that life because it shows us something essential about the eternal nature of God.

This is something we would do well to heed, because in every age the challenge to Christians and to the Christian church is to choose – to choose between the message of a humble Galilean carpenter, or the seductive appeal of sheer, blatant power of Caesar. Which kingdom is our home?

At a moment in human history, Jesus reveals through the cross the changeless being and nature of God. And the heart of it is this: God eternally gives his life to us, generously, lavishly, graciously, sacrificially. Despite our complete unworthiness, in his grace, mercy and love, he forgives and invites us into fellowship, relationship, to share his life and love. His “vast eternal plan” is that he has chosen, in his perfect freedom and love, to share himself with us, to unite himself with us, even in pain and suffering, so we might live together in communion with him for all eternity.

If Jesus shows us the Father, then the cross is the event that explains and settles discussion about who God is and how God works in the world. And it is nothing short of astonishing. It still shocks and astounds, no matter how many Easter celebrations we share.

Love is...

In the words of Paul (Philippians 2:5-11), in the cross Jesus shows us that God is a humble servant, to the point of being self-emptying in his sacrificial and other-centred love. He doesn’t exploit, or even grasp tightly his dignity, his might, his power – in fact his power is displayed in giving it away, in sharing it with others.

God reigns, but in grace, gentleness and patience. In an unassuming way, that doesn’t constantly draw attention to itself, shouting at us through a megaphone. His still, small voice offers hints, touches, transforms. God’s power is not just any kind of power, but the power of love.

God is love, and always has been and always will be, and has his very being in relationship, fellowship. In his divine freedom, he cannot and does not act without love. His nature is giving, not taking; sharing, not grasping; blessing others, not manipulating them; grace not greed; gentleness not harshness; kindness not cruelty. Thankfully, we start with love, not with rules and regulations. Thankfully, our focus is on the Son, not on the sin.

We speak of someone being “full of themselves”. We are even encouraged today to think of ourselves as a brand – You Inc. Yet here is God emptying himself in humble service to others, his nature revealed, the story of the New Testament.

“It is not too much to say that the fullness of God consists in God’s self-emptying, God’s power to give up God’s very life for the sake of others, indeed of every other. It is this which we see in the incarnation: Christ empties himself for the sake of humanity, and in this act of supreme self-surrender Christ affirms the fullness of God’s almighty love”, writes theologian Michael Jinkins.

Or as John wrote, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers...God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (1 John 3:16, 4:16). Simply put, Christ became what we are in order that we might share all that he is, as sons of God by adoption.

In Jesus, the love of God is shown to be the free offering of oneself to another by self-gift. God himself does not force himself upon us. His power is that of self-emptying, other-centred service, not that of spectacular brute force and assault. Jesus is willing to meet humanity in all its darkness, evil, sin and mess, and suffer the worst humanity can do to him.  Jesus, in his birth, life, teachings, death, resurrection and ascension back to the Father, takes our humanity into his and redeems it. He joins himself to us – forever, as the Son of God and the Son of Man, whereby the Son of God becomes man that man may become sons of God.

At-one with God

After the resurrection, his disciples began to understand that his death had meaning not just for them, but for all humanity for all time. He died once, Hebrews says, for the sins of all mankind. Paul says, “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them”. Indeed, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:19, 21).

This is not just a legal solution to the problem of sin. Atonement is found not in a legal transaction, but in the person of Jesus – his whole life and being. This was not just to balance the books, to satisfy the solicitors, to move numbers from one column to another. It was not just to restore the old order of things. It was to produce a completely “new creation”. In Christ, human history is not simply reversed or restored; it is given new birth, a radical new creation. The prime purpose of this is to lift humanity up to share the life and love of God. In Christ, all parts of our salvation are complete; we are saved from sin and isolation for relationship, sonship with the Father.

Through the cross, Jesus reveals that God is not a harsh, vindictive legalist, a self-righteous moralist, a hanging judge, self-focused and self-concerned, given to anger, demanding satisfaction for offence and damage to his dignity. Nor is he removed, aloof, a cold abstraction of philosophical thought. Jesus did not come to change the mind of an angry God, but to reveal the loving heart of God toward all humanity.

In grace, he comes to us and saves us from ourselves, our darkness, misunderstandings, pain and suffering. He empties himself that we might be filled with the fullness of his love. In Jesus, the Triune God has forever united himself with us, enfolding us in his love, embracing us in the circle of life that is the Father, Son and Spirit, the eternal communion of the very being of God forever.

Mission and National Director John McLean