WHY THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT?

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Why did God create the forbidden fruit? It’s a question for deep thinkers only. Some accuse God of cruelty for putting a temptation like “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the Garden of Eden. Such talk shows they either doubt God’s goodness or don’t know how temptation works, or both. When God pronounced everything He made “very good” (Gen 1:31) that tree was included. And long ago we were instructed about the nature of temptation in James 1:13-14,

When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.”
For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone;
but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire,
he is dragged away and enticed.

But the question remains, “Why the forbidden fruit?” If a tree’s fruit was dangerous enough to kill humans, then why did God create it and place it in Paradise [the literal meaning of Eden], right “in the middle of the garden”?

Nothing is directly stated about that tree’s purpose, but some clues in those first 3 chapters of Genesis point to its edibility and its function. We already know God deemed it “very good,” and Gen 2:9 tells us it was among trees that were “good for food.” God indicated its significance by centrally locating it next to the crucially important “tree of life.” But what was its function?
 
After “the serpent”—identified in Rev 12:9 as “Satan”—deceived Eve by saying, “You will not surely die” (Gen 3:4), both she and Adam ate that tree’s fruit, and they at once died, but not at first physically. Later, in the New Testament, we learn their immediate death was spiritual (Rom 5:12-24). But Satan had told them a partial truth about the fruit’s power: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God Himself confirmed this in Gen 3:22a (NKJV), “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil.” While this divine statement greatly supports the doctrine of the Trinity, it also gives us a hint about spiritual death.

God warned Adam and Eve in Gen 2:17, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” But when they did, He prevented them from living forever physically in their fallen, spiritually dead state. He removed Adam’s race from Eden’s source of everlasting life: “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever. So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden...” (Gen 3:22b-23a). Both alchemy’s old quest for the life-extending philosopher’s stone and the proverbial search for the fountain of youth express a human longing for regaining access to that “tree.” But Paradise and “the tree of life” have been relocated from our planet to Heaven (Rev 2:7; 22:2,14,19).

To see why fruit from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” brought spiritual death, we must first understand how the “Us” of the Trinity “know good and evil.” The Eternal Persons of the Triune Godhead have an absolute “knowledge of good and evil.” If Gen 3:22a is a divine Self-revelation, then They each “know” independently in Themselves—intrinsic to Their uncreated nature as God—the precise distinction between “good and evil.” No created being—angelic or human—intrinsically has that divinely accurate “knowledge.” While they can learn it (Heb 5:14), they are forever dependent on God for it. But in Eden, through this “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” God made a way for something “like” it to become a part of humanity. Evidently, God wanted human creatures, who already imaged the Trinitarian “Us” of Gen 1:26 (NKJV), “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness...”), to be able, at some future stage of progress, to “become like one of Us.” Since we were already bearing His representative “likeness,” this further “like”-status had to be of another sort, perhaps relational.

Human survival depends on the God of Truth, for “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deut 8:3). The exact story of fallen angels is obscure, but our own story is clear. Our human ancestors took and ate that fruit when it was forbidden to them, and its transformative power worked. It gave them independence in their “knowledge of good and evil”—an internal means, independent from God, for knowing and determining distinctions between “good and evil.” In other words, we became morally independent of divine guidance and direction, able to decide our own personal and cultural moralities, and that’s how human history has played out from our earliest days up to modern times. The spiritual death in such moral independence from God has proved to be blatantly obvious.

But in contemplating the Trinity—a Union of Three eternally distinct Individuals as One God, and so much One that They name and speak of Themselves in the singular (“I AM that I AM”)—we must come to terms with the mutual and simultaneous Self-Denial, even Self-Death, intrinsic to Their absolute Unity as morally independent Persons. God never asks us to do what He has not done or is not doing Himself. In Mat 16:24-25 (NKJV) Jesus called us to a self-death similar to His own: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Our self-denying self-death is a prerequisite for experiencing “life... in abundance” (John 10:10, CSB) by intimate union with Christ, and through Him, ultimate union with the Triune God.

Adam and Eve’s sin of not listening to and obeying God contained its own lethal consequence. It was much like the death of children who, being told not to do it, disobediently run into a busy street after escaping balls or abandoned toys and are killed in the traffic. The balls or toys did not cause their death, but their desire for them, outweighing their fear of the warning, tragically led them to it. If they had listened and obeyed, their parents might later have seen the traffic disappear, grabbed their hands and walked them safely into the empty street to help them retrieve their desired items.

Although the above illustration is inadequate, I believe it points to the possibility of God’s original intention for “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” as hinted earlier: a relational purpose. Created beings can never become the Uncreated, but God can invite us to become as “like” Him as He has become “like” us in Christ’s Incarnation. In His Plan A, He might have brought us to maturity in a self-death “like” His own Trinitarian one. In that case, humanity’s future might have had this tree’s fruit—deadly to us without that self-death—served to us on the table of “the wedding supper of the Lamb” (an unsacrificed one), for Whom we, “his bride [had] made herself ready” (Rev 19:7-9) through a much less difficult self-denial. But, deceived into acting on our own, we ate that fruit without divine permission, and in Plan B, “the Lamb” did have to die, to provide the way for us, the Church, to make ourselves ready as His Bride. Now—in a fallen world, surrounded by fallen people, and hampered with our own fallen sin natures—we must struggle daily to resist that internalized fruit of moral independence and to embrace a self-denying self-death that is much harder than it would have been, yet is still possible. Christ, living in us through the Holy Spirit, teaches us to practice His prayerful lifestyle of “not my will but Yours be done,” and the more we do, the more progress we make in our earthly sanctification.

While Scripture has “the tree of life” in Heaven for us to eat from freely, we do not see there the misused “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” We already carry its fruit inside of us as now part of us. Even becoming “new creations in Christ” (2 Cor 5:17, CSB) does not erase its intended effect, for Christ Himself had its result in Him through becoming genetically human through Mary.[1] By learning from Jesus how to use our individual moral independence in the way God originally intended, we will make ourselves ready for our coming wedding with Him, our Bridegroom. It will be a true marriage of equal partners, because He became one of us, partaking fully of our human nature, so that we could become “like” Him as fully as humanly possible by partaking of “the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). Without that comprehensive sharing of natures, corporately redeemed humanity could not even have a friendship with Christ, let alone an equanimous marriage.

So, far from being a temptation, or even a test, as some teach, I believe the Biblical clues behind my speculation show that this, at first, deadly “tree” was to be an awesome wedding gift from our Creator. It allowed us, as lowly human creatures, to stand in exaltation forever beside Jesus in a mutually self-denying, eternal marital union.

Some people hate to read poems, probably because much poetry is written as enigmatically as Old Testament prophets sometimes proclaimed their prophecies. But I’ve tried to capture in a sonnet many of the concepts I’ve shared above. I hope it forms both an adequate review and an apt conclusion to this article.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

No, not a test, but gift put on reserve,
a present for unwrapping later on,
a prize to guard and carefully conserve
till youthful immaturity was gone.

But Satan knew the fruit upon that tree
could sow false independence in our race
and blind—through open eyes—ability
to fellowship with Maker face to face.

What would have served as food for marriage feast,
when Son of God would win His human Bride,
became a path of bondage to the Beast,
who laughed to think our destiny had died.

But Mary’s Son would crush that Serpent’s head
and rise to raise His Spouse back from the dead.

— David L. Hatton, 4/16/2018
(from Poems Between Fear and Faith © 2019)

— — — — — — —
[1] See my blog article, “THE FIRST ADVENT: THE INCARNATION,” which explains this in great detail.

IDENTITY AMNESIA

When we, as sinners, get concerned about our standing before God, we usually think first about our sins. We’ve broken laws, transgressed commandments, trespassed forbidden boundaries, omitted obligations and in many ways “missed the mark” (the literal meaning of sin in the Bible, from how poorly aimed arrows miss targets). This initial concern is natural for humans, and God may use it to get our attention. In John 8:24, Jesus told those who doubted that He was God’s Son, “if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” But earlier, in the same chapter, His words to a woman caught in adultery clearly expressed His Father’s attitude: “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

Because God is gracious to repentant sinners, He forgave sins and transgressions in the Old Testament, long before Jesus became the sacrificial Lamb of God. But, while guilt for sins was one problem the Cross addressed, God’s major target was the sin nature: our disposition to sin. Because God created us with an intrinsically united body-spirit nature—the human body created to be spiritual and the human spirit created to be incarnate—Adam and Eve could not help but genetically pass on to all their descendants this bent toward sinning. We all inherit it, and receiving pardon for sins doesn’t eliminate it. Genesis 3:1-7 tells how Satan strategically worked to get this functional source of sins inside of us as a race. But 1 John 3:8 proclaims that the Son of God showed up on earth to destroy “the works of the devil.” This was His pragmatic purpose, but not His motivating goal.

The motive of His heart was revealed when Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” We lost much in the Fall of our first parents, but the most crucial loss was in the memory of our created identity. Personal sins, whether in thought, word or deed, do not cause this spiritual amnesia. Sinning is a developed habit, bred and fed by deeming ourselves independent from our Creator. Yet this way of thinking seems to come naturally to us. We are born with no memory of our absolute and total dependence on God. Complaining that this ignorant situation isn’t our fault will change nothing. The effects of this missed mark on the human condition are universally persistent. The personal multiplication of sins, in acts or attitudes, continues to confirm this race-wide matrix of sin, which functions in this absence of an authentic, dependent relationship with our Maker.

Mark 1:4 states that “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (plural).” But when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to him, he said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin (singular) of the world!” (John 1:29). Oswald Chambers explained this theological difference between sins and sin extremely well:

The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin . . . entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Hebrews 9.26)—an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. (My Utmost of His Highest, October 5th)

By a preoccupation with sins instead of a focus on sin, many have misconstrued what happened in the beginning. We know from Genesis 1:31 that after completing creation, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” This divine evaluation included “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:9), even though its early misuse derailed its “good” purpose from being revealed. God merely told Adam to take care of it, to guard it, but not to eat from it, warning that, if he did, it would kill him. When Adam and Eve ignored this warning and ate that tree’s forbidden fruit, they immediately died spiritually, and afterwards, physically. What they took into themselves had the deadly effect of making them morally independent from God. Once ingested, it gave them their very own “knowledge of good and evil”—an ability to determine right and wrong for themselves. This laid the groundwork for humans to develop a myriad of conflicting personal and cultural moralities down through history, each relying on a knowledge not directly received from God.

When a father warns his child, “Don’t play with the gun . . . it can kill you,” and the child disobeys and dies, the disobedience may have led to the death, but a bullet killed the child. Similarly, when Satan duped Adam and Eve into ignoring God the Father’s warning, they disobediently consumed something that had the power to separate them spiritually from Him and from the divine life He wanted for them. The ultimate effect of imbibing moral independence from God was to kill themselves and us, their descendants. Incorporating this spiritually lethal fruit into their lives and into the human race was the precise point where “sin entered the world, and death through sin,” as described by Romans 5:12-19. But in that same passage, God’s gracious solution to the sin problem is also explained.

Any possibility of having restored human bodies, souls and spirits with clear memories of our original role in servant-leadership required a new humanity. This hope materialized when God’s Son became a body-spirit human being. Christ’s unique conception (Matthew 1:20) from one of Mary’s ova and from the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing (Luke 1:35) combined both the necessary genes of the sin nature, which Mary inherited from Adam, and the essential “seed” of a new human race, which the Holy Spirit’s breath freshly created from earthly matter (as God had first done in Genesis 2:7).

God’s Son becoming a human being is the greatest of all cosmic and celestial miracles. This marvelous Incarnation initiated a new human genome, one with an intrinsically divine nature. But the genetic presence of the sin nature in Jesus, and its utter defeat throughout His earthly life, allowed Him to take this disposition for sinning to the Cross. Paul describes this incredible fact in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” It’s the theological ground for his insistence that “our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin,” (Romans 6:6). This amazing facet of the Incarnation enables both Paul and us to say, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me,” (Galatians 2:20).

Because it’s our self-life of sin that produces sins, God’s goal in salvation was not just forgiveness but renewal. The DNA of the old Adam was nullified by Christ’s bodily death. But the new human genome, the immortal DNA in His resurrected body, made Jesus “the firstborn from among the dead” (Colossians 1:18), with many others to follow. Resurrection introduced a new order of human life, a new humanity destined to reign forever over “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1), led by Christ the Savior and King.

Our upbringing in a world alienated from God’s will and ways confirms and nurtures our sin-bent false self in sinning. God’s plan for us is that we stop being sinners and remember our true selves. Christ’s saving gift of new birth begins a new creation in us that reinstates our lost memory. By indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, He facilitates our growth in remembering and living out our true identity as servant-leaders, created “in the image of God,” the Supreme Servant-Leader (Genesis 1:26-27).

If you’re not a Christian, you’re still suffering from spiritual amnesia. God wants to remedy that, but He will not override your personal will in order to do so. You must freely choose to surrender yourself to Him, the Lord of heaven and earth Who came to restore your spiritual memory loss. Heed Christ’s warning in Mark 8:36, “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” Nothing is more eternally precious than the true self God intended you to manifest in creation. He calls you to forget your false identity of a self-directed self-sufficiency, so you can discover your forgotten identity as a uniquely designed servant who depends on divine guidance. Your success in that holy remembering is enabled by the special grace that accompanies your choice to obey Christ’s familiar invitation, “Follow Me.”

If you’re already a Christian, but have been so preoccupied by worldly concerns or distractions that you have forgotten “your first love” (Revelation 2:4), then you also must surrender. Choose to remember who you really are. Don’t let the world define your identity. Only your Maker and Lord can tell you who you are. If you wake up each day with your Christian memory foggy or fading, then realize your need for forming new habits. Start spending more time talking to God in prayer, more time reading His Word, more time focusing your mind on Christ and listening for His voice in your daily activities. Memorizing Scripture is one of the best habits to develop, and modern technology has brought modern help in that area (Google “the Verse-Locker app”). There’s really no such thing as a once-for-all surrender. The NKJV of Luke 9:23 records Jesus instructing each disciple to “take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”

The following verses offer a concluding summary and poetic reinforcement of these finals exhortations.

SURRENDER

Never wait until disaster
wraps your body in a ball,
or your limbs get set in plaster
after feeble flight and fall:
cease today to flee the Master,
slowing down to heed His call.

Boast no sinful self-reliance
to disparage Heaven’s Throne;
wave no scepter of defiance,
proudly claiming, “I’m my own!”
or you’ll drown in dark compliance
to a demon’s rule alone.

Inner conscience is observant,
when away from God we swim:
our Creator is a Servant,
calling us to image Him
with devotion full and fervent,
waylaid not by wish or whim.

God won’t confiscate decision . . .
we must relegate our will
to His radical excision
of the sin that made us ill.
Dream no shallow, quick revision:
we’ve a void He longs to fill

When a sinner’s heart is willing
to become a saintly soul,
Christ indwells by Spirit filling,
making broken places whole.
Even angels find it thrilling,
watching Jesus meet His goal.

— David L. Hatton, 10/17/2020

UNION LIFE’S INCARNATIONAL SPIRITUALITY

Everyone who knows me knows that the doctrine of Christ’s Incarnation blows my mind![1] But, a few months ago, my understanding of it took another gigantic leap. Actually, it was a return to a crucial insight I met some years ago. It began to take root, but the rigors of ministerial preparation, while employed full time, blocked my grasping its full impact. Perhaps, also, I was not yet ready for such a radical view of incarnational spirituality.

After more than a 2-decade hiatus, I was challenged at a Pastors’ Encounter retreat [2] to find a new spiritual discipline to help me move from “working for the Lord” to “working with the Lord.” Unwilling to alter my already fruitful quiet-time pattern, I chose to start a 2nd daily quiet time, using different devotional material. Back home, I felt led me to an unread book: Infinite Supply–The Best of Union Life 1976-1980 [3]—a compilation of the earliest articles from Union Life magazine, a vehicle for spreading the theological insights of British missionary, writer, and teacher, Norman Grubb.[4]

Before beginning ministerial studies, I found an issue of Union Life on a family-camp book table and subscribed to it, until its publication ceased in 1998. Despite my exposure to this magazine, its main theme both attracted and eluded me. But, while focused on learning to minister with instead of for Christ, this book’s first chapter was an epiphany. It went beyond proposing a life operating with the Lord. It described an incarnational spirituality: Christ’s life lived in us.

These early Union Life articles reintroduced a sacred seashore where I’d once barely waded in the shallows. I now realized it was time to plunge into the depths. An avalanche of insights into an array of familiar Scriptures burst on my mind—Bible passages I’d taken by faith for years without practically applying them to my thought-patterns in daily living. Previously, my highest idea of spirituality had been to become an imitator of Christ. This radical concept of union life called me to recognize that “he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:17, ESV). Because Jesus and I have become “one spirit,” Christ’s relentless incarnational intent is to live His divine life in, through and as mine, while He, at the same time, directly and personally experiences all the uniqueness of my own human individuality.

By the Incarnation, God became our human Messiah and Savior. But His fleshly embodiment was also the Prototype of a new humanity, showing us our true calling and destiny. Jesus—God in flesh as an authentic human being—lived His earthly life in union with His Father, as He told us in John 14:10 (ESV), “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.” But, from His perspective in that union, His calling was one of submission, as seen in His Gethsemane prayer: “Not my will, but thine be done.” This pushes His meaning in “Follow me” beyond walking in His footsteps or imitating His behavior to that of living in union with and in submission to Him, as He had lived in union with and submitted to His Father.

The 1st Adam, created to do God’s will, failed. The 2nd Adam, incarnated to do God’s will, succeeded. The difference was not in their humanity; both were fully human image-bearers of God. But Jesus fulfilled His human mission by submissive union with God the Father who indwelt Him. He allowed the life, will, and love of His Father to be so clearly manifested in His life that He could ask an inquisitive disciple in John 14:9 (ESV), “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

We often use that striking verse as evidence for Christ’s identity as God, due to His unity with the Father as the 2nd Person of the Trinity. Truly, that is His personal identity, and He never lost it by becoming one of us. But He had so fully “emptied Himself” (Philippians 2:7) by becoming “the son of man” that His name, “the name that is above every name,” was only returned to Him after His redemptive work on earth was accomplished (Philippians 2:9). The awesome reality is that this Name —“LORD” [kurios], which is “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” in the Greek Old Testament—has been “bestowed” on a resurrected and glorified human being. He is the “firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), implying that He is the first one, with more humans to follow. But, even before the Resurrection Day comes, His exalted but ongoing humanity gives the Church something that was impossible for Old Testament saints: union life.

Jesus is God, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, who left Heaven to become a man. But, in being fully restored to Trinitarian fellowship, He did so as a real human being. Out of everything in cosmic or celestial creation, only human nature is privileged to inhabit the Godhead. Though He remains Deity, Christ’s true humanness allows Him to unite as “one spirit” with other humans. Eventually, this union will join the Church, the corporate Bride of Christ, to the Trinitarian family as an “in-law” by marriage. But during our earthly lives, this means what it meant to Jesus in His earthly human life and ministry: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Repetitively in the New Testament, this incarnational language now describes our relationship with the exalted and glorified Christ. For instance, Romans 8:1 (ESV) says we are in Him: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And Colossians 1:27b (ESV) describes Him being in us: “. . . the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

While we anticipate physical resurrection at Christ’s 2nd Coming, Jesus has already returned to us personally through the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Even now, both He and the Father spiritually inhabit believers, as He promised in John 14:23 (ESV), “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” This means that Christ’s Incarnation—once limited to one body, in one cultural location, and in one short period of time—began and continues to multiply incarnationally through an ever increasing number of believers across centuries, countries and cultures. Once Jesus started manifesting the glory of God the Father in human flesh, He has never stopped and never will. He’s still doing it in us, when our attitude is: “Not my will, but thine be done.”

What does all this mean practically? It means so much more than this little blog article can describe! But primarily, it means that following Jesus is a daily death to self so that our union with Christ can manifest His life through us the way He manifested the Father through Himself. It means that Jesus was serious when He said in John 20:21b (ESV), “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” It means that Paul was describing reality, when He said in Galatians 2:20a (ESV), “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

As Christians, we confess belief in these statements and even affirm the wording in them that disallows evading or explaining away such extravagant claims. Yet we tend to avoid personalizing a mindset that we, by being “joined to the Lord” become “one spirit with him.” We may even doubt the possibility or practicality of a lifestyle matching the clear implication that “as he is so also are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). But once we start thinking and living as if these statements are reality, many Scriptures come alive in a new way.

One of my favorite messages left by Jesus is in John 16:33 (NASB), “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” As much as I’ve loved this verse, I always wondered how Christ’s success in overcoming the world directly applied to my own earthly journey. The concept of personal union with Him explains it: “so that in Me you may have peace.” Christ, the Overcomer, lives in me and I in Him. Anything happening to me happens to Him, or rather, to us. If I live the truth of this reality, listening for His voice in every sorrow, every situation, then no trial, trouble, or tribulation can ever steal my peace or courage.

In union with Christ, the Anointed One, we too are christs, anointed by the same Holy Spirit as He was. Our union with the supreme Prophet, Priest and King makes us also prophets, priests and kings, for “as he is so also are we in this world.” Union life with Jesus means that we are not tools in His hand or material for His workshop, but “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17, NKJV). A concept of Christian life or service based on anything less than incarnationally being “one spirit with him” misses God’s mark and falls short of the “glory of God” inherent in our union with the indwelling Christ.

I’ve been exploring this theme of union life for a few months now, but the following poem spurred me to write down some of my thoughts. If you have begun to see their practical direction, then you will see why I am concluding with this poem-prayer by George MacDonald:

          The Carpenter

O Lord, at Joseph’s humble bench
Thy hands did handle saw and plane;
Thy hammer nails did drive and clench,
Avoiding knot and humouring grain.

Lord, might I be but as a saw,
A plane, a chisel, in thy hand!—
No, Lord! I take it back in awe,
Such prayer for me is far too grand.

I pray, O Master, let me lie,
As on thy bench the favoured wood;
Thy saw, thy plane, thy chisel ply,
And work me into something good.

No, no; ambition, holy-high,
Urges for more than both to pray:
Come in, O gracious Force, I cry—
O Workman, share my shed of clay.

Then I, at bench, or desk, or oar,
With knife or needle, voice or pen,
As thou in Nazareth of yore,
Shall do the Father's will again.

Thus fashioning a workman rare,
O Master, this shall be thy fee:
Home to thy father thou shall bear
Another child made like to thee.

-----------------------
NOTES:
1. See my blog post "THE FIRST ADVENT: THE INCARNATION"
2. A recurring retreat in Northern California (https://www.rhythmsofgraceca.org/encounter/).
3. Almost all the articles from Infinite Supply–The Best of Union Life 1976-1980, an out-of-print book, are downloadable from http://www.christasus.com/InfiniteSupply.htm.
4. Links about Norman Grubb’s life, work, and teachings:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Grubb
  http://www.normangrubb.com/
  https://www.lighthouselibrary.com/about-norman-p-grubb/

THE CRÈCHE AND THE CROSS

The Nativity scene, or “Crèche,” was once a common American sight during the Advent season, not only on church properties but in homes and town squares. Today, secularization has banished its presence from many public places and governmental locations. Yet Christmas has survived the political “humbugs” of modern scrooges, despite how its true meaning is often lost in the annual busyness of holiday activities.

When set up inside or outside a church, Christ’s Crèche may be in visual proximity to His Cross. Both sights, taken together, offer crucial insight into the true meaning of Christmas, as expressed in John 3:16 (NKJV), “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

The name Christmas comes from “Christ’s Mass,” a Eucharistic celebration to honor the birth of Jesus. Yet the bread and wine on the Table is a spiritual “communion” with His body and blood, sacrificed on the Cross to purchase salvation for all who believe. It was a divine plan: Jesus was born in Bethlehem so that He could die on Golgotha’s hill.

In 2006, while taking Holy Communion at a Christmas Eve service, I was meditating on Christ’s words in John 6:54-56, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” It put this bond of the Crèche with the Cross to the forefront of my thoughts, and on Christmas Day I wrote the following poem:

CHRISTMAS EVE COMMUNION(1)

Last night I fed on Christmas in the broken bread and wine.

I tasted sacred nourishment that brought God’s life to mine.

With thoughts of Mary’s holy Child, by candlelight and songs,

I worshiped at the Table where all Adam’s race belongs.

I pondered how the sweetness of our Lord’s nativity

Should never be seen separate from His death upon the tree;

How God, wrapped up in human flesh, sojourned with human need,

How hands that sculpted human form could feel our pain and bleed;

How incarnation taught Him through life’s weariness and sweat;

How only after learning these, He chose to pay our debt.

Last night I fed on Christmas, and the strength I gained was real.

Our present peace and future hope draw meaning from that Meal.

Our banishment is ended; our empty lostness gone.

The Babe and Lamb of Bethlehem is Whom I feasted on.

— David L. Hatton, 12/25/2006

When I wrote that poem, the union of the Crèche and the Cross wasn’t new to me. I had poetically tried to capture the same concept 14 years earlier in another, longer poem. In it, I attempted to intermingle Mary’s heart of grief at the foot of the Cross with her remembrance of the Christmas story as recorded in the Gospels:

MARY AT THE CROSS (2)

Time suspended, time that stops

In between the crimson drops:

As they tumble to the ground

Somehow she can stare around

Seeing scenes of yesterday,

Hearing angel’s words that say,

“Highly favored, have no fear!

From your virgin womb this year

By the Spirit’s power alone

Comes the King for David’s throne,

Sinner’s Savior, Holy One,

God Almighty’s only Son.”

Then, the words her cousin told

(As it trickles red and cold,

His life-blood before the tomb),

“Blest, the fruit that fills your womb!

Blest are you of womankind,

Mother of our Lord Divine!”

And her song sung in reply,

“My soul praises God on high!

In my Savior I rejoice!

Making me His humble choice,

Causing all to call me ‘blest,’

God has done for me the best!

Mighty is His holy name,

Ageless grace, and endless fame!”

As she stands before His cross,

Feeling pain, heart-rending loss,

She remembers public shame,

Pregnant with no man to blame.

She recalls dear Joseph’s care:

Taught by dreams her task to share,

How he guarded her from scorn

Till the baby boy was born . . .

Worried when her pains began

As they came to Bethlehem,

He implored each house and hall

Just to find a stable stall.

In its filth the baby came

’Neath an oily torch’s flame.

Wakened by a holy light,

Shepherds visited that night.

Angels beckoned them to run

To the town to find the One

Called the Christ whose wondrous birth

Brought down Heaven’s peace to earth.

On the hill called Calvary

Witnessing his agony,

Aching with a dreadful sob,

Hearing laughter from the mob,

She, with other women’s tears,

Weeps and dreams back through the years

To the visit of the Three:

Magi from the East to see

Little Jesus on her lap

Swaddled in a woolen wrap.

Frankincense and myrrh and gold,

“Royal presents,” they were told.

One day he would reign as King. . .

How could they have said this thing,

When with torment now he cries

Up to cold and silent skies?

Darkness gathers, shadows fall,

Thunder echoes with his call. . .

Mournful cry: “My God!  My God!”

She falls prostrate on the sod.

Then she somehow overhears

Whispered words that ease her fears,

Words that re-ignite the dream

Shattered by her son’s last scream.

“It is finished!” he had cried.

Now the guard that pierced his side

Whispers when the deed is done,

“Surely He was God’s own Son!”

Mary keeps that faithful word

In her thoughts until she’s heard

Peter tell her, “He arose,”

Smiles, and nods as if she knows. . .

How could it be otherwise?

And again her heart replies,

Filled with overwhelming love,

“My soul praises God above!

In my Savior I rejoice!

Making me His humble choice,

Causing all to call me ‘blest,’

God has done for me the best!

Mighty is His holy name,

Ageless grace, and endless fame!”

— David L. Hatton, 2/8/1992

In my 25 years of helping laboring moms in the hospital, I had to work half of my Christmases. It was always a sentimental thrill to see babies delivered on the day set aside to celebrate Christ’s birth. The joy of their entry into the world, however, could be dampened by knowing that each of them would someday have to face their departure from this life. But that same contemplation on Christ’s Creche and Cross—and the hope they together offer to the human race—makes a Christian’s journey from the cradle to the grave extravagantly hopeful.

Christmas reminds us of that hope, if we have placed our trust in Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem and the sacrificial “Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” As the Advent season closes the old year and initiates a new one, so faith in Christ ends an old self-directed life and begins a new God-directed one. And, as my favorite quote at Christmastime says:

“Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,

 If he’s not born in thee thy soul is still forlorn.

 Should Christ be born a thousand times anew,

 Despair, O man, unless he’s born in you!”

  — Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)

___________________________
(1) from Poems Between Birth and Resurrection ©2013.
(2) from Poems Between Darkness and Light ©1994.

THE FIRST ADVENT: THE INCARNATION

“The Incarnation Blows My Mind!”

The physical nature of the human body and its sexuality are major components in God’s plans. He created the race of Adam as an alloy of matter and spirit. This incarnate amalgamation prepared us to be special mediators between the cosmic and the celestial worlds. As body-spirit beings “created in the image of God,” we were to serve as the Triune Godhead’s unique representatives (Gen 1:26). Our job was to bring physical and spiritual creation under a single, universal, government. So crucial was this divine plan that, when it got off course, God became human to fulfill it.

For over 30 years the Incarnation has never ceased to blow my mind! The eternal Word, Creator of all things, actually “became flesh,” (John 1:1-2,14). The Second Member of the Trinity became the Second Adam (1 Cor 15:45), “firstborn” (Col 1:15) of a new human race. Jesus Christ is now the human King who will lead redeemed humanity in ruling over “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1).

The Incarnation has magnificent implications for human destiny. But the bodily aspects of God’s strategy have often been ignored. Religious infatuation with Gnostic ideas has exalted the spiritual to the exclusion of the physical. God’s goal is to bring the two into unity, and His express manner of doing so is through the body-spirit nature of humanity.

The Sexual Physiology of the Incarnation

The Bible is biologically correct. Avoiding human sexuality and its anatomical realities as a religious taboo is neither biblical nor Christian. Yet the popular, even traditional, exclusion of sexuality from theological thought has caused many to overlook what actually occurred in the Incarnation.

Right after the Fall, God promised a Savior who would be a woman’s “seed” (Gen 3:15)—not a man’s offspring. The virgin Mary descended from Abraham, in whose “seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 22: 18). But Mary’s DNA also carried the genetic code from Adam, which she contributed to the Incarnation in an ovulated egg. In this way, Jesus sexually inherited from Mary the nature of Adam’s fallen race as half of His unique human nature.

A biologically functional conception did in fact occur (Luke 1:31), but Mary’s egg was not fertilized by a sperm from Adam’s fallen race. Although authentically human, it wasn’t from an earthly man. Joseph was told, “that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Mat 1:20, ESV). Genetically, the other half of Christ’s human nature, was formed by God. This newly created human “seed” was not of this world. But Scripture’s revelation that Mary had a true conception implies that this totally new, divinely created human sperm—or at least the exact complementary human DNA material necessary for a real conception—was the location where “the Word became flesh.” If this is where God entered cosmic creation, where He physically embodied His personal and divine Identity, then when that new human DNA joined with the ovum of Mary, the Son of God became one of us, a true human being.

Biology and theology dovetail here. God formed Adam “of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature,” (Gen 2:7, ESV). In the same way, God’s Spirit [“breath”] directly fashioned and vitalized this holy haploid of human DNA. I personally believe God had no qualms about becoming an authentically fleshly sperm and carrying out the DNA transfer in the normal way of conception. But regardless of how it happened, the genetic material in that transfer—although truly human, sexually functional, and equipped with the gene determining male gender—was not a part of our fallen world. It was an entirely new creation and the beginning of a new humanity.

Theological and Sacramental Implications

This was no mere supernatural manifestation. God really did become one of us, with a human body, a human soul, a human spirit. But in His Incarnation—this strategic union of the old human race with a new humanity—Jesus came to die. His nature as a sinless new Adam allowed Him to pay for fallen humanity’s sins (2 Cor 5:21). But His union with the fallen human race allowed Him to take Adam’s nature [“our old man”] to the Cross with Him (Rom 6:6). The sacrifice of His dual humanity provided exactly what sinners need: freedom from both sin’s penalty and its power.

Salvation isn’t automatic. It resides only “in Christ,” and we access it only by personal faith. (Gal 2:20; Phil 3:9). But Christ’s bodily Resurrection shows that it isn’t limited to the spiritual realm. Nor is faith in Christ limited to heart-belief, for “with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,” (Rom 10:9-10, NKJV). As bodily signs of our faith in Him, Jesus stipulated both Baptism (Mat 28:19) and Holy Communion (Luke 22:19-20). Yet both these body-focused sacraments go beyond illustrating His plan to resurrect and glorify our physical bodies (1 Cor 15:42-43). They exemplify God’s original intent for the spiritual and the physical to be brought into unity. Faith and works do not stand and cannot be understood separately (James 2:14-26). Trust and obey are as divinely wedded as the “one flesh” union of human marriage, and what “God has joined together, let not man separate,” (Mat 19:6, ESV)

As a Christian rite of initiation, water baptism uses the body to declare faith. But Paul goes deeper, expounding its metaphysical ability to unite us with Christ’s death, which is valid only if Jesus actually took our old Adamic nature with Him to the Cross:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:3-5, ESV)

Christ’s words about Holy Communion were so physically shocking that they turned away many early followers. Some otherwise faithful Bible teachers still balk at taking them at their face value. But if our personal, faith-filled baptisms put us into Christ, uniting us with His incarnational death of the old human nature, then our ongoing, faith-filled nourishment at the Lord’s Table puts into us His new resurrected life as the Second Adam:

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (John 6:53-56, ESV)

These words are no surprise. Early on, God said we do “not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD,” (Deut 8:3, ESV). If spiritually true of His written Word, how much more eagerly should we spiritually feed on the living Word Incarnate?

Anticipating the Second Advent

The Son is back in heaven sitting beside the Father. But now a Human Being fills the seat. Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection introduced physical humanity into the Trinity. Jesus left Heaven to obtain a human Bride. As in the first Adam’s deep sleep, when God opened his side to create Eve (Gen 2:21-22), so in the Second Adam’s sleep of death on the Cross, His side was opened to create the Church.

Revelation 19:7-9

Our destiny, as redeemed humanity, is corporate marriage to the Son of God, whose genetic conception on earth wedded Adam’s flesh to a new humanity. His bodily Resurrection empowers those who receive Him to become God’s spiritual children by new birth (John 1:12-13). But we join all of creation in eagerly longing for redeemed humanity's full manifestation, when we receive “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:19-23), bodies that match the resurrected body of our Bridegroom (Phil 3:20-21).

The first Advent brought us the Incarnation, and because of it, the second Advent will bring us a Wedding. When Jesus returns to reign, those united to Him by faith will be literally taken into the Trinitarian Family as in-laws. Forever married to our Husband-King, the incarnated God-Man, we will be the new humanity ruling with Him over all the realms He has ever created or will create.

In the meantime, to those who don’t have this faith and hope,

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Rev 22:17, ESV)

And I join the Apostle John in praying this last prayer in the Bible: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20, ESV).

POEMS BETWEEN HERE AND BEYOND - Introduction

(My books are available on Amazon at this link.)

(Before becoming a preacher, a nurse, an amateur artist, or a massage therapist, I was a poet. I still am. Getting my poetry published in more than homemade binders had been a dream for years. Health challenges and the rise of modern book-publishing technology merged to motivate me to make the effort. This and my other books are published through Kindle Direct Publishing in both paperback and Kindle editions.

I wanted to put the introductory essays for each poetry collection on my blog. If you want to know what makes me tick, my poems tell it better than a biography.

This "Introduction" and the concluding poem are from my 5th book of poems. To read the posts from my others, click on these links:

Poems Between Heaven and Hell

Poems Between Darkness and Light;

Poems Between Death and Life;

Poems Between Birth and Resurrection;

Poems Between Fear and Faith;

Poems Between the Beginning and the End.)

“Introduction” to

Poems Between Here and Beyond

Ancient Chinese wisdom aptly pictures humans with feet on earth and heads in heaven. We inhabit two worlds, one tangible, measurable, concrete; the other intangible, difficult to measure, often elusive. Men and women are body-spirit beings, participating simultaneously in two modes of existence: material and mental. We’re not spirits wrapped in flesh or bodies with souls, but a marriage of them, a wedding of the animal and the angelic, an amalgamation of the chemical and the transcendent, a unique union embodying God’s image.

We can’t escape being replicas of our Creator. If we try denying our God-likeness, human art betrays us in paintings, plays, novels, songs, poems and other creative works. We image a Supreme Artist. Or if we try denying God as the Decider of “good and evil,” we empty our own personal moralities of meaning. We can’t remove an Ultimate Authority from the human equation without forfeiting the divine certainty that we are “very good” parts of creation (Gen 1:31).

Confidence in a Self-revealing God gives us a much more solid and human-friendly perspective. His existence (God reveals Himself in Scripture as “Father”) makes creativity and morality not just gifts but callings. As image-bearers of the Designer and Judge of all things, we were meant to mimic Him. He calls us to create new designs and to live holy lives.

Communicating truth is also part of that divine image. God is love, and love communicates. So, the God of truth and love is also a Communicator, sharing truth with us and infusing into us a persistent attraction to it. This explains why human creativity is often an attempt to communicate, using story, song, poetry, music, dance, drawing, sculpture.

Perhaps our greatest purpose in imaging God is to be His ruling representatives. He made us mediators, belonging to both the cosmic and celestial worlds. Ultimately, His revealed plan is to bring both realms under a single, divine government administered by human servant-leaders.

This coming reign has a human King, in fact, “the King of kings and the Lord of lords” (Rev 19:16). The Old Testament foretold His First Advent—the transcendent God’s incarnation into creation as a human being “to reconcile all things to Himself” (Col 1:20). The New Testament culminates in His Second Advent: the God-Man’s return in His resurrected body to reign over “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1). Although this renewed universe awaits future fulfillment, it has already begun in the hearts of those following this Savior, Jesus Christ. In a real sense, the future is already here while still on its way.

This kingdom context is where I live, think, preach, and write poetry. Along with others in Christ’s Body—His Bride, the Church—I serve as one of the King’s royal ambassadors in a familiar but foreign land. It’s familiar, because He created it, sustains it, and plans to fully renew it. But it’s foreign, because human sin and selfishness have misshapen it. His kingdom has come, but it’s still coming. Jesus initiated God’s salvation plan, but we still pray for His reign’s full consummation, using the familiar words He taught us: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10). Christians live in a world of already but not yet. So does everyone else, even if unconsciously.

As I’ve aged, I’ve become more aware of the body-spirit nature of humanity. The here-and-now of the material world is quite blatant. We spend time and energy maintaining the body and its health, engaging in labor and leisure, accumulating and managing possessions. But the beyond of the spiritual world impinges on these material dimensions of life with a long list of immaterial values and virtues, some of which are listed as fruits of the Holy Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23).

While our spiritual lives anticipate a destiny hereafter, our future afterlife begins here and now. Christ’s First Advent firmly planted the future’s presence in historical time. His earthly work established an ongoing beachhead of God’s Kingdom in our fallen, sin-scarred world. Tradition calls this holy battalion the Church Militant—Christ’s loyal followers still engaged in earthly spiritual warfare. The Church Triumphant comprises that group of faithful souls who now rest from life’s labors, awaiting a reunion with their physical bodies promised by Christ’s resurrection. Yet, by that mystery described in the Creed as “the communion of saints,” these departed believers are still surrounding us as “a great cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1), watching our progress in faith and cheering us on to victory. Christians live between a present here and future beyond.

All my previous poetry books are “poems between.” While this introduction explains the name of this fifth one, its title certainly doesn’t account for the wide variety of themes and thoughts expressed by the poems included—some written years ago and some included merely for comic relief. But this long preface does describe where and in what frame of mind most of them were written. At this stage of my life, I feel even more keenly my location in this “between” mode of living. Yet, although less active now, since my retirement from hospital nursing, I also feel in the midst of dynamic momentum.

We never move through time; time moves through us. Our present is without dimension, sandwiched between an irrevocable past and an unfurling future. The now dividing them cannot be subdivided, but it can be wasted. We can ignore our calling as God’s image-bearers, squandering the remaining days of our sojourn between here and beyond in trivial pursuits. I pray these poems paint pictures, sing songs, preach sermons, tell tales that will stimulate awareness of time’s limits and encourage decisions of personal involvement in the present and future reign of the King.

— David L. Hatton

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

BABIES

All babies bring from heaven
Some vestiges at birth
To modify the burdens
And daily grind of earth.
Angelic light still gleaming
From eyes that know no guile,
They capture us with wonder
And charm us with their smile.

When parents are devoted,
Their inborn love protects
These precious little infants,
Just as the Lord expects.
But this is not the reason
He calls adults to share
Their sweet maternal nurture
And strong paternal care.

God sends us helpless babies,
So innocent and dear,
To challenge selfish habits
That we’ve picked up down here;
To lift us from our folly
And fill our empty cup;
To teach us precious lessons
And help us to grow up.

— David L. Hatton, 10/5/2015
(Poems Between Here and Beyond, © 2016)

For more single poems from this volume, visit my website's “Poetry Page.”

WHY JUST ONE GOSPEL?

Among my favorite writers is a man who was way ahead of his time—the missionary statesman and prolific devotional writer E. Stanley Jones. One of the paragraphs in his Mastery devotional not only answers the above question but reflects on why the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the paramount doctrine behind a true hope for the human race:

The Gospel then begins with the Incarnation. All religions are man’s search for God; the Gospel is God’s search for man; therefore there are many religions—there is but one Gospel. All religions are the Word become word; the Gospel is the Word become flesh. Therefore all religions are philosophies; the Gospel is fact. Philosophies may be good views; the Gospel is Good News. The Gospel is not primarily a philosophy—it is Fact. The philosophy grows out of the Fact. The Fact of Jesus is our starting point and is our Gospel. It is the Gospel of Jesus before it is the Gospel of God or the Gospel of the Kingdom. The Gospel lies in His Person-He didn’t come to bring the Good News-He was the Good News. This Gospel is not spelled out, therefore verbal; it is lived out, therefore vital. Jesus didn’t come to bring the forgiveness of God—He was the forgiveness of God. There is no other way to God, for Jesus is the Way from God. He is God coming to us. Therefore there can be no other way.

Those who insist that every religion is a valid way to God are like those who argue the unfairness of failing their math test. The teacher grading them is not bigoted or narrow-minded for insisting on mathematical accuracy but merely being realistic. Man’s search for God runs off in as many directions as finite human thinking can imagine. But logically, if the Maker of matter and mathematics, the Engineer of time and space, is on a hunt for lost humanity, His search would be as precise as the natural laws that run His universe. He would make a straight and narrow bee line to find those who have wandered from Him.

Do an exhaustive study of the religions, or be so bold as to invent your own. You will discover the “good news” of Jesus Christ light years beyond their reach. His Incarnation—God becoming human to search and rescue wayward humans—is without parallel among the belief-systems devised by human minds. The way of the true God, the God Who really exists, is that of a Shepherd searching for lost sheep, that of a loving Father seeking His wayward children. The Creator’s way is as insistent and accurate and absolute as His math.

Michelangelo's sculpture

As E. Stanley Jones said, “there can be no other way” than His for resolving and repairing the shortcomings of the human condition. God had to get involved personally and intimately by becoming one of us. But the only way God could get any closer to humanity than by taking upon Himself our human flesh was to take upon Himself our human sins. This makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ the most uniquely human-friendly faith conceivable. Theologically and spiritually, it does not get any better than this!

There is no greater affirmation to our fleshly humanity than the Bethlehem manger,  no greater demonstration of God’s divine love for us than the Cross of Calvary, no greater proclamation of true human hope than the empty tomb of Jesus Christ. The Christian Gospel is matchless, unparalleled, outstripping all other religious claims and concepts. That’s why it’s exclusive . . . why it alone is authentically “good news” . . . and why any honest student of religion, who really grasps the message of Christ in the New Testament, will be forced to conclude, “If there is a Gospel, there’s only just this one.”