Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
God knew us, and if Adam and Eve had gotten to the tree of life, they would have remembered their Father, and refused Satan's wiles. But they were ignorant, and took the tree of blindness, and were cut off from life. But when we hear the name of Jesus we "remember" our Father.
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Jesus remembered His Father, and thus when Satan tried to "cut a deal" with Him, Jesus refused. He knew the way home to the Father and never was dissuaded. When He knew that the ruler of the world was coming to Him Jesus said, "In Me he has nothing." (John 14:30) Thus Jesus' unbroken connection with His Father has become the way of salvation to us all who were cut off from the Father.
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I have another take on the "lonely God". I believe that God likes to act through intermediaries. Hagar, speaking to an angel, said in Genesis 16:13, "You are the God who sees me". God sits on a throne and around Him spins a wheel of immense magnitude, whose rim is full of eyes. These angels of God are His eyes, running to and fro; not one sparrow falls but God does not know about it.
These angels are pure, they have no will apart from God. So when they speak, God speaks through them. Gabriel said to Mary, "No word from God will ever fail" (Luke 1:37). When Gabriel spoke to Mary, the Father was speaking through him. Gabriel never distorted the word, but carried it faithfully and truly through darkness and tribulation to reach a poor Jewish girl in occupied Judea.
And look at Revelations 1 through 3. God on the throne speaks through Jesus the Word of God, who is walking through the golden lampstands. Jesus speaks to the angel of the church of such-and-such, and then you read "...what the Spirit is speaking to the churches". You have a chain of custody: God-Son-angel-Spirit-churches. You have an unbroken chain of faithful mediatorial agents.
My point is what? First, that at the center of this "great wheel" God's throne is secure. No bumps when the pram goes on the tube (when the baby carriage enters the subway), because the wheels are so immense that the cover any gap with aplomb. Through His many mediatorial agents the "rough places" are surely made smooth.
Second, to think that God is lonely in the middle of this great wheel of creation is rather ridiculous, when you consider that the thought comes from a disobedient and sinful human (WL), while God himself is surrounded by obedient creatures. Jesus the incarnated Word truly reflected the Father's speaking will, but our ideas should be held as suspect. Remember, we are not yet perfected!
That is why when WL departed from the safety of the fellowship of the flock, and became ensnared by his own logic, it became a source of uncorrected error for many. It only mattered to us that "Bruther Lee said..." and that was held as the content of reality itself.
Likewise, my ideas on mediatorial agents, of whose service we repentant and becoming-obedient humans are supposed to be entering into, are merely the ideas of a wanna-be. I do not hold them as something to overturn the centuries-old counsel in the flock. They are merely my ideas.
But do I see a "lonely God" in the middle of this great turning wheel? Hardly.