This is What Intimacy with God Looks Like

Tim Chester

It was not enough for God to make us his children. He wants us to know that we’re his children. He wants us to experience his love. And that’s why he sent the Holy Spirit. Galatians 4:6 says, “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.”

The reason why God sent the Spirit is so that we can experience what it is to be sons and daughters loved by our Father. And notice how the Spirit is described. Most of the time in Galatians Paul simply refers to “the Spirit.” Often in the New Testament he’s described as “the Holy Spirit.” But here Paul calls him “the Spirit of his Son.”

Our experience of the Spirit is the experience of the Son, for the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son. The Spirit enables us to experience what Jesus experiences.

God Sent the Spirit of His Son So That We Might Know That We Are Sons

So the Father has given us the Spirit of his Son so that we can enjoy the experience of his Son, so that we know what it is to be sons like the Son, so that we can enjoy the love the Son experiences from the Father.

God gave his Son up to the whip, the thorns, the nails, the darkness, and the experience of forsakenness so that you could be his child. No wonder he sends the Spirit of his Son. He doesn’t want you to miss out on all that the Son has secured for you. This is his eternal plan: that you should enjoy his fatherly love.

The world is full of people searching for love and intimacy. Many sexual encounters and affairs are a desperate attempt to numb a sense of loneliness. Many people who seem to have it all feel empty inside. The actor and director Liv Ullmann once said, “Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool.” We were made for more. The reason why we yearn for intimacy is that we were made for intimacy: we were made to love God and be loved by him. And this is what the Father gives us by sending his Son and by sending the Spirit of his Son.

WHAT DOES THIS INTIMACY LOOK LIKE?

We Can Talk to God Like Children Talk to Their Father

“The Spirit . . . [cries], ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6). The Spirit gives us the confidence to address God as our Father. A number of our friends have adopted children. And it’s always a special moment when the adopted child starts calling them “Mom” and “Dad.” God is infinite, holy, majestic. He’s a consuming fire before whom angels cover their faces. He made all things and controls all things.

Can you imagine calling him “Father”? Of course you can! You do it every day when you pray—most of the time without even thinking about it. How is that possible? Step back and think about it for a moment, and you’ll realize what an amazing miracle it is that any of us should call God “Father.” But we do so every time we pray, through the Spirit of the Son. This is how John Calvin puts it:

With what confidence would anyone address God as “Father”? Who would break forth into such rashness as to claim for himself the honour of a son of God unless we had been adopted as children of grace in Christ? . . . But because the narrowness of our hearts cannot comprehend God’s boundless favour, not only is Christ the pledge and guarantee of our adoption, but he moves the Spirit as witness to us of the same adoption, through whom with free and full voice we may cry, “Abba, Father.”[1]

Think of those adopted children saying “Mom” and “Dad” for the first time. What must that feel like for them? Perhaps they do so tentatively at first. They’re still feeling their way in the relationship. And that’s often what it’s like for new Christians, feeling their way in this new relationship.

But think, too, what it means for the parents. It’s a joyful moment. It’s a sign that their children are beginning to feel like children. It’s a moment of pleasure. And so it is for God every time you call him “Father.” Remember, he planned our adoption “in accordance with his pleasure” (Eph. 1:5 NIV).

We Can Think of God Like Children Think of Their Father

“So you are no longer a slave, but a son” (Gal. 4:7). Slaves are always worried about doing what they’re told or doing the right thing. They fear the disapproval of their master because there’s always the possibility that they might be punished or sacked. Children never have to fear being sacked. They may sometimes be disciplined, but as with any good parent, it’s always for their good. God is the best of parents. And we never have to fear being sacked. You can’t stop being a child of God—you’re not fostered. You’re adopted for life, and life for you is eternal!

The cry “Abba! Father!” is not just for moments of intimacy. It was actually the cry that a child shouted when in need. One of the joys of my life is that I’m good friends with lots of children. Charis always cries out, “Tim!” when she sees me. Tayden wants me to read his Where’s Wally? book with him. Again. Tyler wants me to throw him over my shoulder and swing him around. Josie wants to tell me everything in her head all at once in her lisping voice. They all enjoy having me around. But here’s what I’ve noticed.

Whenever any of them falls over or gets knocked, my parental instinct kicks in, and I rush to help. But it’s not me they want in those moments. They run past me looking for Mom or Dad. They cry out, “Dad!” and Tim won’t do. That’s what “Abba! Father!” means. When we’re in need, we cry out to God because the Spirit assures us that God is our Father and that our Father cares about what’s happening to his children.

We Can Depend on God Like Children Depend on Their Father

“And if [you are] a son, then [you are] an heir through God” (Gal. 4:7). When Paul talks about “sonship,” he’s not being sexist. Quite the opposite. In the Roman world only male children could inherit. So when Paul says “we” (“male and female,” 3:28) are “sons,” he’s saying that in God’s family, men and women inherit. Everyone is included. And what we inherit is God’s glorious new world. But more than that, we inherit God himself. In all the uncertainties of this life, we can depend on him. He will lead us home, and our home is his glory.

What could be better than sharing in the infinite love and infinite joy of the eternal Father with the eternal Son? Think of what you might aspire to in life—your greatest hopes and dreams. And then multiply them by a hundred. Think of winning Olympic gold or lifting the World Cup. Think of being a billionaire and owning a Caribbean island. Think of your love life playing out like the most heartwarming romantic movie. Good. But not as good as enjoying God.

Or let’s do it in reverse. Think of your worst fears and nightmares: losing a loved one, never finding someone to marry, losing your health, not having children. Bad! But Paul says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). The only time Jesus is quoted as saying, “Abba, Father,” is in the Garden of Gethsemane as he sweats blood at the prospect of the cross (Mark 14:36). Even when you feel crushed by your pain, God is still your Abba, Father.

Where does joy come from? It comes from being children of God. How can we enjoy God? By living as his children. How can we please God? By believing he loves us as he loves his Son.

[1]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill,  trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics 20–21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 3.20.36–37.

Content taken from Reforming Joy: A Conversation between Paul, the Reformers, and the Church Today by Tim Chester, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org. 

Tim Chester is a pastor of Grace Church in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, and a faculty member with the Acts 29 Oak Hill Academy. He was previously research and policy director for Tearfund and tutor in missiology at Cliff College. Tim is the author of over thirty books, including The Message of Prayer, Closing the Window, Good News to the Poor, and A Meal with Jesus. Visit Tim’s website and read his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Posted at: http://gcdiscipleship.com/2018/10/11/this-is-what-intimacy-with-god-looks-like/

Confessions of a Reluctant Complementarian

Rebecca McLaughlin

Editors’ note: 

A version of this article first appeared on the author’s blog.

I was an undergraduate at Cambridge University when I first grappled with Ephesians 5:22. I’d come from an academically driven, equality-oriented, single-sex high school. And I was repulsed. “Wives, submit to your husbands, as to the Lord.” You’ve got to be kidding me.

I had three major problems with this verse.

The first was the premise that wives should submit. I knew women are just as competent as men—often more so. If there is wisdom in asymmetrical decision-making in marriage, I thought, surely it should depend on who was more competent in that area: sometimes the husband, sometimes the wife.

The second was the idea that wives should submit to their husbands “as to the Lord.” It’s one thing submitting to Jesus Christ, the self-sacrificing King of the universe. It’s quite another to submit to a fallible, sinful man—even as one thread in the fabric of a much greater submission to Christ.

The third—which perhaps grieved me most—was how harmful I believed this verse was to my gospel witness. I was offering my unbelieving friends a radical narrative of power inversion, in which the Creator God laid down his life, in which the poor out-class the rich, in which outcasts become family. The gospel is a consuming fire of love-across-difference with the power to burn up racial injustice and socioeconomic exploitation.

But here was this horrifying verse seeming to promote the subjugation of women. Jesus had elevated women to an equal status with men. Paul, it seemed to me, had pushed them back down. I worried this verse would ruin my witness.

Picture of Christ and the Church

In my frustration, I tried to explain Ephesians 5:22 away. In the Greek, the word translated “submit” appears in the previous verse, “Submit yourself to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21), so I tried to argue that the rest of the passage must be applying submission as much to husbands as wives. But this didn’t stick: the following verses lay out distinct roles for husbands and wives.

Then I turned my attention to the command to husbands. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). How did Christ love the church? By dying on the cross; by giving himself, naked and bleeding, to suffer for her; by putting her needs above his own; by giving everything for her.

I asked myself how I would feel if this was the command to wives: Wives, love your husbands to the point of death, putting his needs above yours, and sacrificing yourself for him.

If the gospel is true, none of us comes to the table with rights. The only way in is flat on your face. If I want to hold on to my fundamental right to self-determination, I must reject the message of Jesus, because he calls me to submit completely to him: to deny myself and take up my cross and follow him (Luke 9:23).

Then, the penny really dropped. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church. This model isn’t ultimately about any individual wife and husband; it’s about Jesus and the church. God created sex and marriage to give us a glimpse of his intimacy with us.

Because our marriages point to a greater marriage, the roles are not interchangeable: Jesus gives himself for us; we submit to him.

Three Concerns

So, much to my surprise, the three problems I had when I first read Ephesians 5:22 were resolved. But I now have three concerns about how complementarian marriage is often taught.

1. Attempts to summarize

Complementarian marriage is often summarized as “Wives submit, husbands lead.” But this summary doesn’t reflect the biblical commands. Wives are indeed called to submit (Eph. 5:22; Col. 3:18; 1 Pet. 3:1). But the primary call for husbands is love (Eph. 5:25, 28, 33; Col. 3:19), and the additional commands call for empathy and honor (1 Pet. 3:7). The command to wives in Ephesians certainly implies that husbands should lead with the sacrificial love of Christ. But if we must boil the Scriptures down, “Wives submit, husbands love” is a more accurate reflection of their weight.

2. Attempts at psychological grounding

Hoping to uphold the goodness of God’s commands, Christians sometimes try to ground complementarian marriage in gendered psychology: women are natural followers, men are natural leaders; men need respect, women need love; and so on. I’ve heard the claim that women are naturally more submissive, but I’ve never heard anyone argue that men are naturally more loving.

I’ve also heard people argue that we are given the commands because they address what we’re naturally bad at: women are good at love, men are good at respect, so the calls are reversed. But to say that human history teaches us that men naturally respect women is to stick your head in the sand with a blindfold on and earplugs for good measure.

At best, these claims about gender are generalizations, analogous to the claim that men are taller than women—though far less verifiable. At worst, they cause needless offense to a generation that already misunderstands and misrepresents what the Bible says about gender. They also invite exceptions: if these commands are given because wives are naturally more submissive, and I find I’m a more natural leader than my husband, does that mean we can switch roles?

If we look closely, however, we’ll see that these claims are nowhere to be found in the text. Ephesians 5 grounds our marital roles not in gendered psychology, but in Christ-centered theology.

3. Attempts to justify “traditional” gender roles

Ephesians 5 sticks like a burr in our 21st-century, Western ears. But we must not misread it as justifying “traditional” gender roles. The text doesn’t say the husband is the one whose needs come first and whose comfort is paramount.

In fact, Ephesians 5 is a withering critique of traditional gender roles, in its original context and today. In the drama of marriage, the wife’s needs come first, and the husband’s drive to prioritize himself is cut down with the axe of the gospel.

One Challenge

But my greatest concern when I hear Ephesians 5 taught is my failure to live up to it. I’ve been married for a decade, and it’s a daily challenge to remember what I’m called to in this gospel drama, and to notice opportunities to submit to my husband as to the Lord—not because I’m naturally more or less submissive, or because he is naturally more or less loving, but because Jesus submitted to the cross for me.

My marriage isn’t ultimately about me and my husband, any more than Romeo and Juliet is about the actors playing the title roles. My marriage is about reflecting Jesus and his church.

Ephesians 5:22 used to repulse me. Now it convicts me and calls me toward Jesus: the true husband who satisfies our needs, the one man who deserves our ultimate submission.

Rebecca McLaughlin holds a PhD from Cambridge University and a theology degree from Oak Hill seminary in London. She is a regular writer for The Gospel Coalition and her first book, Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion, will be published by Crossway in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter or at www.rebeccamclaughlin.org.

Posted at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/confessions-reluctant-complementarian/

The Good Gift of Relational Conflict

Paula Marsteller 

Relational conflict has dogged me recently, in spite of the fact that I’d naturally rather offer up a limb than experience—or inadvertently cause—conflict.

When someone accused me of sin, I prayed, “Lord, don’t let me flatter myself in my own eyes that my iniquity cannot be found out and hated” (Ps. 36:2). I know I’m stained with sin, but I couldn’t see my specific sin in this particular situation.

But then, through Romans 5:3–4, God called me to get off my knees, climb out of the weeds, and look at the bigger picture:

We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope.

Perseverance

Hadn’t I just bemoaned to a friend that I had no perseverance? I realized this after a difficult week with my husband. He was depressed, and I took it all personally and acted desperately. My friend’s response was enlightening: “Don’t beat yourself up. You’ve only been married two-and-a-half years. You haven’t had enough hardships to grow that perseverance in you.”

Oh, right. Perseverance is produced through suffering.

Do you want the peace and fortitude you see that woman exhibiting in the midst of chemo? Do you long to withstand raging winds like that flexible palm tree? The only way to grow this kind of perseverance is through accepting the suffering God sends your way. How thankful I am for John Calvin pointing me back to God’s providence:

The Lord has willed it; therefore it must be borne, not only because one may not contend against it, but also because he wills nothing but what is just and expedient. To sum this up: when we are unjustly wounded by men, let us overlook their wickedness (which would but worsen our pain and sharpen our minds to revenge), remember to mount up to God, and learn to believe for certain that whatever our enemy has wickedly committed against us was permitted and sent by God’s just dispensation.

Character

Relational conflict produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character. Not just any character, but the character and image of Christ. I love how Joni Eareckson Tada and Steve Estes paint this picture in their book When God Weeps:

An artist in Florence, Italy once asked the great Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo what he saw when he approached a huge block of marble. “I see a beautiful form trapped inside,” he replied, “and it is simply my responsibility to take my mallet and chisel and chip away until the figure is set free.”

The beautiful form, the visible expression of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” is inside Christians like a possibility, a potential. The idea is there, and God uses affliction like a hammer and chisel, chipping and cutting to reveal his image in you. God chooses as his model his Son, Jesus Christ, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). Suffering fashions us into a “holy and blameless” image of Christ (Eph. 1:4), much like a figure sculpted out of marble.

Hope

Relational conflict also produces hope in us. The word Paul uses here isn’t the “hold your breath, make a wish, cross your fingers” kind. It’s, as John Piper says, “the full assurance and confidence of good things to come.”

How does relational conflict contribute to our full assurance of good things to come? As we cry out to God to help us love those who have hurt us, it gives us assurance that our faith is real. While it is obvious to us that we cannot produce love for that person who has wronged us, we see the Spirit of Christ at work in us, prompting and empowering us not to defend ourselves but to pray for that person who has wronged us, to love the unlovely.

This is hope to hang your hat on—a hope far greater than “hoping” everyone will think you’re pretty great or “hoping” you won’t experience any more relational conflict this month.

God

While I was reminded that this relational conflict would produce perseverance, character, and hope, that didn’t contain my anger for long. I had searched for my sin in this conflict, but I had come up empty-handed. The accused “offender” (me) was really the offended.

I wanted my name cleared, until I saw that God offered me even more than perseverance, character, and hope. Joni Tada and Steve Estes put it this way:

When your heart is being wrung out like a sponge, an orderly list of “sixteen good biblical reasons as to why this is happening” can sting like salt in a wound. . . .

Purified faith is never an end in itself; it culminates in God. Stronger character is character made muscular not for its sake, but God’s. A livelier hope is more spirited because of its focus on the Lord. To forget this is to tarnish faith, weaken character, and deflate hope.

“If you have these qualities existing and growing in you then it means that knowing our Lord Jesus Christ has not made your lives either complacent or unproductive” (2 Peter 1:8PHILLIPS).

“Knowing our Lord Jesus Christ” is keeping your eye on the Sculptor—not on the suffering, or even suffering’s benefits.

Amen. May your relational conflict and mine be used of God to produce perseverance, character, and hope. But more than that, may He use these conflicts to draw us back to Himself, our great and only Good.

Article posted at: https://www.reviveourhearts.com/true-woman/blog/good-gift-relational-conflict/