Thursday, February 11, 2016

Unthinkable Love

Unthinkable Love

        If we seemed out of our senses, it was for God; …And this is because the love of Christ overwhelms us when we reflect that if one man has died for all, then all men should be dead; and the reason he died for all was so that living men should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised to life for them.  …And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here.  It is all God's work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ … In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men's faults against them, …For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God.” (2Cor 5:13-21)
        If I had never heard the Good News of God’s love and mercy, I too would have considered St. Paul to be out of his senses.  It is incomprehensible, that an all Powerful, Holy and Perfect God, who exists in Eternity, whose Presence contains the speck of our Cosmos, would choose to take on our sin –that he would relinquish the Rights of Godhood, that the Immortal would take on immortality, that he would become what he created, and in assuming our humanity, being humbler yet, he would come in the meekness of a servant, a Sacrificial Lamb to take on the Sin of the world.
        Jesus, the Lord God, came to exchange his Pure, Innocent Goodness for the wretchedness of humanity.  The Creator of Fruitfulness submitted himself to the Fruit of Sin.  He took on Death, Depravity, the Dregs of humanity’s attempt to be god.  Jesus, the Pre-Existing Word, foresaw the Garden of Gethsemane, where he sweat drops of Blood, as he bore the foreshadowed consequences of our sin.  Before he willed his conception within the New Eve, he knew the suffering of Calvary, the weight of that Cross, the betrayal, abandonment and desolation -all wrapped in the deepest fear and pain that humanity had to offer its Savior.
        How can anyone believe this fantastical story of fanatical love?  How can anyone believe that our God and Father, would send his Beloved Son, to die for us who were lost in sin, that we might not die in the mess we made of our life, but that we might become a New Creation, destined to live forever in his Love?  How can anyone believe a Redemption so grand, a Love so unthinkable?
        I cannot explain how another Believes.  I can only speak of my own unbelief.  My eyes were opened by an Unstoppable Mercy.  God’s Gentle Love used my sins -the consequences of my selfishness and pride- to reveal the depths of my need …and those Depths of Darkness shown bright the Hand of God.  He took on my sin, that I “might become the goodness of God.”  
        He entered into Death, that I might find Life.  He poured out his Blood, like a mantle it cloaks me.  His Life Given has become my own, his Cup is now the Blood of my blood.  With his eyes I can now see, with his Love I can now love.  “It is all God's work.”

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