The “pleasure of God’s soul” – There is something unsettling, yet compelling about that phrase. Unsettling because I don’t think of God as having a “soul”. Clearly, He is Spirit (John 4:24). But the idea of Him “having a soul” is somehow foreign. Unsettling also, because it seems that I might have something to do with this pleasure . . . and compelling for the same reason. Also compelling because it seems like a good thing for God’s soul to have pleasure. If I can impact that . . . Wow!
It is this idea – the “pleasure of God’s soul” – that draws me back to Hebrews 10-11. It is so powerful that I memorized Hebrews 10:35-39 a few years ago –
“Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. ‘For yet in a very little while, He Who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.’ But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.”
Right there in the middle is the idea that draws me – “. . . and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him . . .”. God is speaking, ascribing a soul to Himself. And the pleasure of His soul is linked to our choices. Very unsettling. How do we “shrink back”? As I read on, it seems that the destruction of my soul is at stake. How can that be? I thought we were saved “by grace, through faith”. What about eternal security?
This confusion reveals a flaw in our understanding of the Gospel. We have condensed the message down to this – “God is mad at you because you are a sinner, and He is going to punish you, unless you trust Jesus, who will take your punishment for you. If you do that, then everything will be ok, and you can go be with Jesus when you die.” The flaw begins in our description of the problem. Yes, we are objects of God’s wrath. But our problem is much bigger than that. Which means that the Gospel – the Good News – is much more comprehensive as well.
So, what is the problem – the Bad News, that the Good News answers? We find that at the beginning of the story.
We were created in God’s image. That means that when you look at us, you should see Him – He created us to represent Him. As His representatives, He gave us two responsibilities – fill the earth with life, and rule over creation. The responsibility to “rule over” involves “subduing” creation, so that everything is brought into conformity with His agenda. This gives fuller meaning to our role as “His representative”. Not only were we to physically represent Him in creation, but as His representative, we were to enforce His agenda. Thus, in a given situation, we would make the decision He would make.
At this point, the problem becomes evident. As we look around us, it seems pretty clear that there is a lot going on outside His agenda. Further, consideration of our own lives reveals very little clarity regarding God’s agenda for even ourselves. If we are uncertain about God’s agenda for our own lives, there’s no way we can know God’s agenda for all of creation, much less, how to resolve all the conflicts with that agenda.
Clearly, we are not what we were created to be. What went wrong?
We made a choice – a choice to walk away from all that God created us to be. Rather than representing Him, we chose to pursue life on our own terms – to be the master of our own fate, the captain of our own ship – to be like God, deciding right and wrong for ourselves. This choice was made when we ate.
Life and Death
Remember God’s warning to Adam, about eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – “for in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die”. Originally, they had life. Eating from the forbidden tree would bring death. Of course, that does not turn out like we anticipate – we expect them to keel over the instant they eat. But they didn’t. So, either God lied, or our understanding of death is flawed.
I’m going with option two.
To see what God meant, let’s observe what happened when they ate. Right away, they felt shame, and, even before God acted or spoke, they began to hide from Him. When He arrives, He curses the serpent, the ground, and them. The woman is impacted in her primary relationships. Instead of the fulfillment and significance that was to be hers as a mother and wife, she would suffer pain and domination. Likewise, the man’s significance is muted. Futility will be the reward for his strenuous labor, until he disappears into the dust. For all his effort, he will have no marked impact. And, since he stopped making the decisions God would make – he no longer represents God. This, in turn, renders him incapable of ruling on God’s behalf.
So, before we ate, we were alive, possessing all the identity and significance that came with representing God. We were fulfilled, experiencing all of the sustenance, beauty, and intimacy of life in the Garden. But in the day that we ate, we abandoned all of that. We died. And now we are rebels, objects of God’s wrath. That is the Bad News.
So what’s the Good News? We’ll have to save that for next week, but I can assure you that it’s a lot more than simply being forgiven.
The pleasure of God’s soul. I think in my own mind and experience I have come from having no idea whatsoever about what that means, to a vague appreciation that it must somehow speak to a place in God’s existence that I will never hope to know this side of heaven, to hopefully it is not anything close to the pious be happy in Jesus perspective that reflects a superficial (and thus not true) Christianity, to a life of good works done seemingly tirelessly, to what I saw this morning when I went back and read chapter 10. It speaks about our faith, and our confidence in what He has done (the good news you will get to next week) and a conviction that says His work was worthy, trustworthy, and I will therefore put my trust in Him.
I feel like I am new at this, taking baby steps as it were as I begin to try to capture in my own words what it means to bring pleasure to God, but I see it more clearly in scripture, in chapter 10 than I have ever seen it before. In contrast, I also see Hebrews 10 speaking to the mentality that some mistakenly gravitate toward, i.e., license to sin.
I am very mindful of that way of life, license to sin, as I saw it played out by my roommate in the military in 1975 when I came to now Christ. I shared my conversion experience with my mom and dad over dinner a week ago yesterday before she started her trip home to West Virginia following my daughter’s graduation, and caught myself pausing in a reflective way about that mindset after telling my story. Tom, my roommate back in 1975, was from a Baptist tradition, and I remember asking him before he went home on leave how he could call himself a Christian and live the life he was living (getting high, drunk and taking trips to Nevada to the houses of prostitution that awaited him there). He went home, and apparently asked his pastor about the theology (but sure he did not use that word), that seemingly overlooked his lifestyle, and in so many words told me when he came back to base that he is covered. Within the week or so of his return I went on leave, and ended up coming to Christ one Monday evening after spending a full day in the company of four Christian college girls going to summer school where my high school buddy was attending during the fall and spring semester. The way they loved each other and treated us as guests that day just opened my heart to His invitation that came in a very surprising way later that evening. My conversion was dramatic, and fairly late that Monday evening, and so my buddy and I spent the night and left early the next morning. I remember the last and only real word of advice, when you get back to your base get into a Bible study (which I did and was promptly introduced to the Navs). I got home at 9:30 or so Tuesday morning (we left early!), and within a short time thereafter got a call from the military. My roommate was dead. He died Satruday night driving back from a beer garden in the foothills of the mountains northeast of the base. He was drunk, missed a turn and drove right into a resevoir. The car was under water such that they did not find his body until either Sunday or Monday night (I have forgotten exactly which now, but I think it was Monday). The news hit me hard. I had Christ now to comfort me, anchor me, but I slept little that Tuesday night. I realized fairly quickly that God took that man out of my life for a reason, the least of which from my vantage point was so that he would not be a stumbling block to me.
Hebrews 10:26-31 reminded me of this story from my past because it illustrates most poignantly the license to sin mentality. In this passage, it stands in contrast to God’s pleasure, and specifically the pleasure He has when we take His work and promise with the same weightiness with which He has offered it. Not weight in terms of heaviness, but in terms of that which is fundamental to life. There is so much more in this passage, but work is calling and I must give it time and space to properly form up in me. I am looking forward to understanding more as I consider this passage, and the timeliness is suprisingly fresh. With both of my kids off to college this fall, God is moving in me to establish me in the new journey that awaits me as I consider how I need to view the future (10:35-39), without my kids so close to home.
I continue to enjoy your blog Garth. Thanks.