No Longer Orphans

[HKHaugan]

No Longer Orphans

Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you (Jn.14:18).”

Continuing our way to look at wrath as separation from God and the loneliness it produces, we tread even further within. The inner self is always going to be unsettled unless there is a settlement with our Creator. God is not angry with you, condemning you or out to get you. He loves you and has created you for a life of acceptance and love in Him and others. He is simply being who He is and when we don't trust Him we try doing life without Him. That is what real aloneness is all about. Aloneness is a spiritual problem that only a relationship with Him can solve. What happens in this world is our trying to overcome personal aloneness without God. What we fill our time with is our attempt to offset that inner struggle.
Without Him our only recourse is trying to fit into what others want us to be. It simply doesn't work. The pressure of always trying to fit in will wear you out. No matter who you meet, where you work, how you feel or change, unless you find that inner source of peace and what really fulfills your humanity you will be at the mercy of every next person's agenda, group expectations and cultural conformity you run into. People who try wilderness living, getting out of society, traveling to escape, or an occupation that demands no interpersonal contact, find it worse than when they started their trek. We are made in the image and likeness of God and until we get a grip on that fact despair is the only alternative.
What we feel to be God’s wrath is really the exposure of who we are without Him. His perfect acceptance and love exposes the fact that we are neither perfect, nor accepting, nor loving and sin is the issue. It is not a planned wrath but rather the sin in us rejecting God and the sheer power of His perfection and holiness. He loves us and it is our rejection of His love that is our problem. We all want acceptance and love but it has to begin with Him. That's why He sent His Son. He wanted to show that when we believe, trust and have faith in Him even death can't separate us from Him. Unlike us who pick and choose, His love is unconditional. He is determined to love and accept us. It's our self centered attitude that blocks Him. He hates evil and sin but not us. It's when we enter those dark courts to which sin leads us, we leave His presence. That's when we feel wrath.
His Son bore the sin that caused those courts to exist. He chose to let sin and sinners kill Him. He felt that aloneness on the Cross which is why He said,”My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” He said that for us so we could identify with how much the Father really loves us and sent His only Son to take our place on the Cross, to forgive us and bring us back to Him through faith. We were made to have a relationship with Him. Without it there is only emptiness in us. Our refusal to let Him live in our hearts results in the self-centeredness that isolates us, makes us feel alone, angry and unfulfilled instead of accepted and loved. It's a wrathful experience.
God is the way He is, accepting and loving. He is what a loving relationship is all about. He will not and cannot change. He was the same before Creation as He will be after Jesus’ return when there will be a new Heaven and a new earth. In Him perfection and pure holiness are more powerful than their opposites, sin and evil. They arrive later on earth’s scene, after Creation, and are in total contradiction to His nature.
In stark contrast man’s wrath is displayed in pride, fear, malice, revenge, vindictiveness, hate, irrationality and uneven application. Man’s wrath is born in sin. It is the imperfect extension of his aloneness, its fear and pride. Sin is the spiritual disease of the individual mind and heart choosing to think, analyze, decide and act apart from God. The devil used this process to lure, tempt and persuade Adam and Eve to accept it as their way to live. This process opened the floodgates of evil spirits, the devil’s conspiratorial tools to separate mankind from God and in turn to separate people from one another until their destiny is total isolation from God, one another. That is an eternity of fear and aloneness for each person.
This isolating condition and its violent internal damage is described in vivid detail in Genesis 3. The massive torrent of evil began with man’s willingness to compromise with the evil one, then rationalize and justify the process. In their momentary flirtation with the devil, they and all their succeeding descendants were burned. They experienced fear for the first time and found themselves hiding from God and looking for someone to blame for their isolated condition from which they found they could not escape. The escalation of sin and evil enveloped all of mankind from that point on. The wrath of God was experienced in guilt, aloneness and separation on every level, never understanding why.
The whole Old Testament can be viewed as man’s inevitable journey ending in the pit of Hell. Also however, in its pages the blurry vision of a yet-to-come single deliverer, a Messiah, progressively emerging within the thorny thicket of man’s chosen self-destruction to offer release from that awful inevitability. On the horizon of this lost wilderness the deliverer appears. He becomes a clear picture of the actual presence of God, Jesus the Messiah, God the Son, coming to literally save us; the perfect 'Life'guard with the perfect skills, equipment and attitude to bring us to His shore. His appearance, life and teachings make up the enthralling personal portrait presented in the New Testament.
There too the greatest historical achievement in history is recorded, the neutralization of God’s wrath by the sacrificial shedding of the perfect Son of God’s blood. He took the punishment, the judgment for all mankind’s sin, the wrath of God and bore its penalty, the death sentence, in our place. This He did for all humanity in mind, heart and body through perfect faith in His Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 1:18-3:20 is the summary of the depths of the fall of mankind into the lost wilderness east of Eden far from God’s presence, a wilderness from which we have been rescued by Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf. Php.2:6-11 is how He came.
The only way we can avert the wrath of God is to receive the grace and love of Jesus Christ by accepting Him as our personal Savior and Lord by faith. It is then and only then that the human mind, heart and spirit have the ability to identify not only the love of God but what prevents that love from reaching us within. We must realize the depth to which sinful fear and pride have taken us and then receive the relational lifeline the Lord throws to each of us for the rescue. Anything less will only end up in aloneness, our isolation from forgiveness and love, and our alienation from the One person who gave His life so that we could be whole as He intended.
When Jesus asks us to take up our cross He means for us to follow Him into every next moment by faith. We don't know what will happen in that moment but to know He is with us is the path through the underbrush of uncertainties each moment brings. The unexpected, the surprises both good and bad, the images of past failures and blessings He brought us through, glow when we were repentant and thankful and saw that only praising Him for it all made sense. In His grace, love and forgiveness He frees us from the burden of our personal sin and its aloneness. Made one with Him our confidence is restored, our ability to let Him love through us returns and we have our life eternalized in Him. It's then we bring His name before the world. What a blessing and what a privilege. How much we have been given and how much we have to share.