“Everywhere and always God is with us, near to us, and in us, but we are not always with Him since we do not remember Him; and – because we do not remember Him – we allow ourselves many things which we would not permit if we did remember. Take upon Yourself this task: to make a habit of such recollection. Make Yourself a rule always to be with the LORD, keeping Your mind in Your heart, and do not let Your thoughts wander; as often as they stray, turn them back again and keep them at home in the closet of Your heart, and delight in converse with the LORD….” (Saint Theophan the Recluse)
Besides the fact that Saint Theophan is one of my favorite mystics, he hits upon here the very essence of being a disciple of Y’shua. For my first Theological article, i would like to post today a writing addressing – if one wants to be in a Truly significant relationship with his/her Creator that matters on a moment-by-moment basis – the fundamental primacy, absolute necessity, and essential joy of intimacy with the LORD Most High. i am convinced that nothing – yes, i meant to say “nothing” – is as important in the Life of a disciple of Y’shua as intimacy. There is nothing more central to our identity, nothing more grounding in terms of our purpose, nothing more awakening regarding the warfare surrounding us, nothing more moving in our relationships with other human beings, nothing more tempering to our carnal responses conditioned in a world under they influence of our enemy, nothing more jarring to our selfish proclivities than intimacy with what the great philosophers call “the Other.”
The Westminster Confession states, “The chief end of humanity is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever,” (notwithstanding John Piper’s adjustment that yields “…to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.”) This debate seems to me to be an important one, but it all slightly misses the point, in my estimation.
A recurring theme in the Theological articles posted here will be the need to view issues from the heavenly places in which we were seated when adopted in Love into Y’shua Christos and then given the mind of the Messiah as He trains, equips, and teaches us. Normally, we see, for example, issues from the temporal viewpoint instead of the eternal viewpoint. With regard to intimacy, i would argue that we observe it most generally from the human-centric viewpoint instead of from the divine-centric viewpoint. What’s lost in viewing intimacy from our standpoint rather than God’s perspective? Everything. When we do that, everything is lost…
While i can appreciate Piper’s interest in shifting the emphasis of the confession from enjoyment of God as a result to enjoyment of God as a means, it still rings a bit hollow in me. The point is not, as the confession asserts, to glorify God. i understand how people may think that before they know God, but i am more dubious as to how they would continue to think that after meeting Him. Indeed, such a belief as taught by the Confession seems intuitive to someone who has read about God in the Bible or who has heard of his faithful relatives discussing their Friend or who longs for protection & provision in her Life from her Maker. But that such a belief is intuitive does not make the belief True. Truth is a person, and His Name is Y’shua Christos. So, if we are to discuss what’s “True,” then we must discuss Him and what He says. That is why one of His many monikers in the compilation of writings that tell His story is “the Word,” because it is what He says and writes and defines and interprets that is Truth – not what we say or codify or define or interpret, even if we are discussing the same things as He is discussing.
Once a person has met the LORD Most High, and – yes – i mean that literally, i cannot then understand how they can think in a way native and intuitive to a world consigned to disobedience, as Paul asserts. Such an encounter should shift a person to seeing things from the perspective of the “Other.” This is given as the antidote to the curse on Israel by both John the Baptist and Y’shua which is often mistranslated as “repentance” as they announced the arrival of the Kingdom of God.
You have already heard that i do not believe the chief end is to glorify God, and that i think the way people arrive at that conclusion is based on a distant proximity instead of a near propinquity. So, what should be the point? What is the chief end of man, if it is not to glorify God?
i believe the chief end of man is koinonia, but that is for another time. Today’s topic is intimacy, and it is at the heart of koinonia.
One reason i believe that intimacy trumps glory is that God could have designed our chief end to be anything. So, what if He had proclaimed it to be glorifying Him? Well, then the Confession would be correct. But if He had chosen anything else, then the Confession would be wrong. However, by choosing – as He did – koinonia, He showed what He describes as His Own essence: Love.
Whatever the chief end of man, the LORD Most High wanted it to be in a particular context of koinonia. And why is koinonia valuable? What makes it of such great worth as to be God’s chief end for man?
The answer to that query is intimacy. Whatever tangential notion of a relationship with the Almighty we are discussing, at the heart of the answer is intimacy. John Wimber understood this, and, therefore, even when he taught about power or spiritual warfare or encounters with the demonic, intimacy was still the primary concern. This essential Truth is evident in Y’shua’s ministry. It is the point, i believe, of the foreshadowing Samson narrative. It recurs over and over again in the typological story of King David. Koinonia, based on intimacy, is the chief end of each human and the purpose for which he or she was created…
Worship is, perhaps, the most easily accessible context in which to consider intimacy. In His conversation with the woman at Jacob’s well, Y’shua informs her that God is a spirit and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in Truth. Well, of course they must. The Holy Spirit indwells those who are disciples of the Truth, otherwise known as Y’shua (or “Jesus” to most Westerners). What shouldn’t be lost on us is not so much the “Spirit” or “Truth” parts, but the “in” part. This gets into another discussion completely about what it means to be “in Christos” (a key formulation is Saint Paul’s language) or to have “Christos in us” (another key formulation in both John and Paul), and so i won’t go into detail here. Suffice it to broach that it is the “in” part that is the key, and “in” implies intimacy.
When we worship, it can be in a multitude of ways: building altars, mowing a neighbor’s grass, not returning evil for evil, eating in sacred fellowship with gratitude, keeping reverent silence, shouting joyful noises, bowing low, dancing, etc., but many times we use music – to which we alluded yesterday. Why music so often? Because singing Love songs to our Lover has been an appropriate expression of worship for millennia.
The word “intimacy” starts with “in.” The etymology of the word “intimate” reveals the following: “[Latin intimtus, past participle of intimre, to make familiar…]” Did You see that? The Latin term is talking about the process of making two who are not family into family. When we say that a husband and wife are intimate, we are describing, oftentimes, the physical process of sex that takes two people from non-related streams and divergent backgrounds which consummates the legal recognition of those two “separates” becoming family (on paper) by becoming “intimates” (in physics). And how is a marriage consummate? With in-tercourse. The man is “in” the woman.
It is a process that strikes fear into the heart of an enemy who wishes with all his might to retain isolation for that woman, to haunt her with loneliness, to dangle his meager, terrorizing scraps over her head and make her act like a yelping dog desperate to merely survive instead of the kind, bountiful provision & protection gently supplied from her Lover that allows her to thrive while resting. A woman, once entered by the one she Loves with all her heart, will never be the same. Not on paper, where the state recognizes the union that turns unrelated strangers into related folk. Not in her body where she welcomed a Lover who could have taken for himself his own measure of pleasure, but instead – in seeing to the meeting of her needs – was given pleasure by her as she was given pleasure by him. And not in her heart, where a calm peace and emotional security and intense bond form to let her know that she is not alone, not susceptible, not vulnerable – except to the trustworthy one in her Life. Her worth is not up for dispute, she is not uncherished, she is not unpursued, she is not left to her own devices, and she is not discarded to provide in whatever degrading indignity or prideful capability she can muster. No, she has experienced intimacy. Someone who she Loves was in her, and he made her his family.
That is the story. As Christmas approaches, the Christian religion focuses on the birth – and that is a worthy thing to remember. But births don’t occur without intimacy, and – even in the case of the virgin Mary – the birth was not without intimacy. It just wasn’t human-to-human physical, sexual intimacy; it was our Creator bending the natural to a supernatural moment where He could highlight the purpose of it all: His making us family by changing our status from strangers to intimates. The process of the Holy Spirit “overshadowing” Mary and sparking the physical Life of the Messiah in her was a type of what was to be shown in Y’shua – that He would make each of us family if we would but receive Him into ourselves.
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