| John's Index | Greater Emmanuel | Email John |
The Lord Giveth and
the Lord Taketh Away
By John R. Gavazzoni
This matter of the Lord giving and taking away: God is, as we might say, into it with a passion. This study concerns the Lord giving life and taking away life. As repugnant as it is to some folks' thinking, God does take away life. As the Giver of all life, it is His prerogative to take it. All life belongs to Him from the time He gives it, through the time that the recipient of the gift of life presumes self-ownership, all the way to when He takes it back. Paul made it clear to the believers in Corinth that they didn't belong to themselves, that as a temple of the Holy Spirit, they were bought with a price. They were not their own; they belonged to God. Peter concurred that we were redeemed (bought back) by the precious blood of Christ.
Redeemed indicates that we were originally God's, but had become lost to knowing as we are known: God's priceless possession. God bought back that which was His. All other ownership claims are based on a lie. To lose our life (Greek: psuche/soul-life) for Christ's sake, means to lose it as it is presumed to be ours. Waking, the morning of this writing while still lying in bed, I had an epiphany. I was given to understand something so dear and precious about God's giving and taking of life: it has always been first, foremost, and fundamentally, God's experience of which we are made partakers.
Being granted insight into the mystery of the cross of Christ involves coming to understand that the death of Christ is the consummation of the whole history of death. In the death of Christ, we see that every death, all dying, all death, is God, in Christ, giving His life to the world. We see that all death is violence against life that serves to draw forth the best of life, out of the depths of life. From the very entrance of death, by sin, into the world, and that death being passed on to all mankind in all that death, the principle of the cross of Christ was at work: life given in death for life's sake.
Death involves a commencement, a process, and an end-goal: to die in order to live life fully in all its glory. In each and every death is the self-emptying of God, in Christ. Peter explained the nature of that self-emptying, not to become empty, but to empty out fully as provision of life: "God hath poured forth this, which ye now see and hear." All death, every man's death, every woman's death, every child's death, has within its working that mystery of "life, and that more abundantly" by life through death to resurrection to glorification.
Of His impending death, Jesus said, "...I lay down my life that I might take it again. No one taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself." God has been giving His life freely through death all down through history, through each person's death. There is coming a day when death shall be no more for Jesus gave His life once for all. Paul understood it. Facing his impending death, he explained it as the time of his offering being at hand. His death, an offering. An offering for the sake of what? For life out of death in union with Christ.
Paul wrote of Jesus, resurrected and ascended, sitting at the right hand of God....specifically, sitting, yet, as he was being martyred, Stephen saw Jesus standing. Still at the right hand of God, but standing. This speaks to me of our Lord's holy excitement at seeing the sacrifice of His death continuing on so victoriously in Stephen's death, and in a manner just like His own. Jesus died praying, "forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do." Stephen, in the throes of death, prayed, "Lay not this charge against them." As Jesus released His life with the words, "Father, into Thy hands, I commit my spirit," likewise, Stephen, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
I've quoted him often, but I must again: E. Stanley Jones, "The historic cross of Christ lights up the cross in the heart of God." Jones peered into the mystery of the cross and saw something beyond, but certainly intrinsic to, the historic event, to a holy disposition within the heart of God. John saw it as a Lamb in the midst of the throne of God.
| John's Index | Greater Emmanuel | Email John |
