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By Lindsay Christerson
I was recently asked a heart-examining question in a Bible study.
Is it easier for you to conceive of God as almighty or as personal?
My response was logical, cultural, and emotional all at once, but it has taken me a minute to fully process the spiritual implications. Before I go on to tell you my answer, what is yours? Do you connect to an almighty, all-powerful, creator God who is holy? And by holy I mean set-apart, other, transcendent—and as a result maybe feels somewhat distant, distinct, or far off? Alternatively, is it easier for you to conceive of God as personal, intimate, closer than a friend—not “other,” not set apart, but a part of who you are and who is with you always? The two in many ways seem mutually exclusive. How can God be both set apart and a part of you? It is hard for finite minds to hold both at once, which I suppose is where the question came from in the first place.
I am so grateful that God in His providence gave me this question mere weeks before the start of Advent. I most easily conceived of God as personal. But what has been lost or hollowed out if I don’t also hold the transcendence of God just as closely? As I approach advent, how does the idea of Immanuel, “God with us,” lose its power if I don’t engage with His omnipotence? How could recapturing a reverence reshape the miracle of the Incarnation?
Reverence: a deep respect for someone or something.
On this side of the cross, we are spoiled. It’s not a bad thing, it is a result of God’s immeasurable, lavish, and overtly generous grace in uniting us with Jesus. He has given us access as a beloved child of God. This intimate access is unique—no other world religion encourages their believers that their deity is their refuge, that they are held by their creator, that they are co-heirs with their high prophet. This access we have been given is so open that we forget we don’t get to equate Him with our need for caffeine as our “Jesus and Coffee” sweatshirts might suggest. We are able to enter the throne room of the creator, almighty God—not as a slave or a convict as we deserve. Instead, we run right up to the feet of our Father and present our flawed, selfish, sin-colored requests, ideas, and attempts at adoration and thanksgiving straight into His adoring, loving, forgiving face, and this delights Him to no end. It is what He made us for. It is the whole point of history, to create humans in His image that could freely love Him and enjoy His goodness.
But that access is ridiculous. Imagine telling a Hebrew woman from 100 BC about your prayer practices. She would be dumbfounded. What we enjoy would be unprecedented, unthinkable, and unimaginable to her. Yahweh had to shroud His presence because it was so terrifying. To the Hebrews at Mount Sinai, He was a quaking display of fire, lightning, and mountain shaking presence, to Job He was a hurricane, to Moses He was a blazing fire, and to Joshua He was an armed man of war. The people of Israel had a deeply ingrained and abiding reverence that perhaps defined the relationship between them. It was not intimate; it was filled with awe, fear, and deep respect.
Who am I? How could I possibly? The audacity I enjoy without consequence, when a high priest of Israel would die immediately with the smallest mistake or misstep. Any access they enjoyed as the people of God came with the utmost reverence. Reverence is something we have misplaced in modern, or post-modern, or post-Christian culture. Our daily life is increasingly irreverent. We take very little seriously anymore. Very few roles, titles, or authorities are revered. Thus, we can often misplace our reverence to God without thought or intention.
But God is good. Not good like we can be good. His essence is good. He can’t not be good. He is the source of good. Anything that is good has its origin in Him. He is the one that we can have deep respect for without being disappointed. So good that He sent this transcendent but intimate, almighty but personal, beautiful contradiction that could only be held by the Son of God to earth. He came and showed us both how personal and powerful He is. He knew people by name and could speak their thoughts out loud to them, but with His word He calmed the tempest that the disciples were in. And the Gospel of Mark says, “And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him” (Mark 4:33 ESV). Jesus held all the power of the universe and restrained it on behalf of the friends that He loved. They revered and loved Him.
This is the point. We enjoy unfettered access to God that His ancient people could not conceive of, but we take it for granted when we lose the reverence that God’s people had before the Incarnation. I think about the apostle John, the disciple that Jesus loved. He frequently leaned up against Jesus’s chest and heard His heartbeat, yet when the full glory of Jesus was revealed to him in the Revelation he said, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades,” (Revelation 1:17-18).
How can we recapture this reverence for the unimaginable access we have to the omnipotent, glorious, holy God this season so that Immanuel can truly thrill our hearts and make us long for the day that we hear, “A loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away,” (Revelation 21:3-4)?
How could recapturing a reverence reshape the miracle of the Incarnation? I’m not here with the answer, but I have a prayer for my own heart, and it will be a prayer for yours as well.
Lord, help us hold you in our hearts as the God that can do away with all of evil and will wipe away our tears. The transcendent and the intimate while we are in the already but not yet. Give us hearts to receive you more fully and wisdom to hold all the complexity of your goodness. As we walk through a season of advent, restore an awe and a reverence to our hearts that we cannot muster up on our own. A reverence that could only be received as you graciously reveal more of yourself to us by Your Spirit. Amen.
