The Analogy

We who call ourselves Christians, having a firm belief in the God of the bible, undoubtedly hold to numerous beliefs about Him.  One that is foundational, and therefore agreed upon by all, is that He is One God, while at the same time being three separate and distinct persons.  Much criticism has been hurled our way for this, as if all things could not be possible with the Being who is from Everlasting to Everlasting.  And so, from time to time we like to show the unbeliever how the Three In One concept can have validity to it.  What better way to do this than to go to work on some analogies.  Consequently we told them about the egg, made up of the yoke, the white and the shell – yet it is one egg; we’ve told them about water in its liquid, solid, and gaseous states; and I’m sure that many who have anchored their faith in the Triune God have thought up other examples.  But if I were to be honest, I’d have to say that I was never very impressed with any that I’ve heard.  To add, I do not think that there is an analogy that can be contrived by the mind of man that could do our tripartite God any real justice.  But even in saying that, I would now awkwardly have to admit that an analogy came to me some time back.  Though I also admit that it too must miss the mark by a good stretch.  Still, one plug that I’d have to put in for it is that the similarities between this analogy and the Triune God are more than just a couple, its relevance rising far above that of an egg or an ice cube.

Let me begin all of this with a question.  Did you ever envision our God as a family?  A family, you may ask?  How about another question?  Are there not three Persons in the Godhead?  One God, true, nevertheless three Persons.  Besides, what else can they be when described as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but Family?  I for one cannot help but seeing the God of heaven and earth as Eternal Family – no beginning or end.  They are the Family who is God – Father, Son and Spirit, the Eternal Living Circle.  It always was and will always be, and how It does Live! And so, haven’t the families of men, who have been made in His image, become living analogies of who He is?  Yet here is the greatest part of all.  It is that all who are of faith go beyond the analogy, and in actuality go to the place where they become living members of the Family of God.  How is it that we can enter into the unthinkable, taking our places there?  It is through the fantastic miracle that the Father has bestowed upon us, when by the Spirit He placed each one born of faith into the body of His precious Son.  Since we have become of One Body with Him, we the members of the Body, with Christ as the Head are recognized by the Triune God as family.  Inasmuch as we have entered into this covenant with the Son, by which we have become united with Him, it then is a partnership that cannot be annulled, eternal in the heavens.

Besides the families of men being made up of multiple members, just like the Godhead, there is another way in which we mirror God as a family.  In the Holy Trinity there is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  In these Persons they are all Three separate from one another.  But it is the title, God, that unites them as One Being – still not a perfect picture of the Trinity, since it is a mystery far too complex for comprehension.  Still, the fact of the matter is that the family unit consists of father, mother, and offspring.  As each functions in their role, they too are viewed as individuals.  Nevertheless it is their surname that brings them together as one; three lives or more, yet bound together by one name, intimately joined each to the other to form one family, just like their Creator.  Just like Him?  Never.  But analogies will always fall short of a perfect copy of the real.  The parallels go on.  Though the Son of God is equal to the  Father and the Spirit in all of His properties, He nevertheless willingly submits to both.  In scripture we read of Him being led of the Spirit.  This would be an impossibility if our Lord wasn’t submissive to the  Spirit.  And once He told us that He does always what He sees His Father doing.  Again, His pleasure is only to be of one mind with the Father, therefore being perfectly submitted to Him.  Not only this, but never do we read where the Father or the Spirit submit to the authority of the Son.  This is only for the seed of Adam to do.  Though the Son in his essence is all that the Father and the Spirit are, He of his own will ever chooses to submit both perfectly and forever to Both.  This is the joy of the Son; it is His delight – it is even His meat.

The families of men were made to be much like the Godhead.  And so even in family life are we made in His Image.  A family begins with a man and a woman.  Then, in the coming together of the two, a child is born.  The child is as human as are the father and the mother – of the very same makeup.  Nevertheless, the role of the child differs from that of the father and the mother.  It is a role of submission.  But really, all three roles differ.  The father is to be the leader of the family, with his spouse being his companion and his helper as they work out matters together.  Yet the child submits to both.  However, this is the ideal.  But because sin indwells every human family, the ideal can never be, at least not day in and day out.   

There is more to the analogy.  In the letter to the Colossians we read that “ … in Christ there dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”  This is another way of saying that both the Father and the Spirit are in the Son.  Near the end of the gospel of John, not long before the crucifixion, Jesus speaks these words.  … that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You.  If you really think about it, how can you keep from forming the idea that God is Family?  How so?  Simply put, it is because the Persons of the Godhead cohabit.  That is to say that They exist together – even within one another.  Let us take a look once again on how a family is formed.  It begins with the man going into the woman, and there planting his seed.  But remember that at one time the seed was in the man.  However, now the seed becomes an embryo in the woman.  The genes then, from both the man and the woman, enter into the life that has now been conceived.  Does this not make for much intimacy between the three – or for much existing together?  Surely it does, just like with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.  You may say that some of the similarities between the Godhead and the families of men can also be present in other species of life on earth.  True. But the scripture does stress man alone as In His Image.  

In the eleventh Psalm it reads,” If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?  If our eyes and our ears have been attentive to all that has been unfolding before us in the times in which we live, then we know that far too many foundations are giving way.  Probably the one that saddens me most is the ever disappearing family unit.  Once we were a strong nation, made up of strong families.  But today the foundations of family life is crumbling.  The family unit, as we once knew it, is quickly dissolving away.  What has happened to us?  What has happened is that Satan’s time upon the earth is drawing to an end – and he senses it.  Consequently, he and the armies that he commands are determined to have one last fling – to wreak havoc among the people of our world, like he has never done before.  His targets no doubt are many.  And one, that he is sure is near to the heart of God, is the family unit.  He has done more than simply attack it, while shaking it to its core.  He has humiliated it.  How?  It has been by moving in the hearts and minds of our leaders to recognize a marriage between two people of the same gender as being legal ; and with the households that they govern being called families.  And why is it that the family has become one of Satan’s favorite targets?  It is because he knows that the God of heaven and earth has created it to be a picture of who He is – The One God in Three Persons, the Eternal Family Unit, Father, Son and Spirit.  The enemy of our God may be able to destroy the analogy; but he knows he can never come near to even touching the Real Thing.  Now the good news is that if we have been born of this One Great God, then we have been adopted into the only True Family in all of creation.  In Christ  we belong to The Godhead, though it be by adoption.

Oh how close Adam’s seed is to the Creator and Sustainer of all things.  It is why the apostle Paul spoke these words to the men of Athens. … And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, “ For it is we who are His offspring…”

J. Pecoraro

 

Abram The Mere Man - Abraham The Giant

Once there was a man whose name was Abram, who lived in a city called Ur.  Ur was the ancestral city of Abram and his people, being located in southern Mesopotamia.  This was the very area where the Tower of Babel was constructed, though some centuries before the time that Abram lived.

There came a day when Terah, Abram’s father, took Abram and his grandson Lot, along with his daughter – in – law Sarai, Abram’s wife, and they went out from Ur to go and live in the land of Canaan.  They had come only as far as Haran, and this was where it was decided that they dwell.

In time Terah had died.  This meant that soon and the stage would be set.  It would be now that the One True God would choose but a single man, so that through this man He would have His heart and His mind become known.  And so the Almighty, the God of all things created, began to speak to Abram.  To Abram would He eventually unfold a plan that would more than boggle the mind of any man upon the Lord’s green earth – and I suppose we all know by now that Abram would stand as the kingpin in it.

There came a night when Abram had become downhearted.  And so the Lord came to him in a vision.  He however was difficult to console, since he hadn’t a child of his own for an heir.  But it was on this night that the Lord told Abram that he would have an heir – and one who would come from his own body.  Abram then was brought outside.  “Look now towards the heavens and count the stars if you are able to number them.  So shall your descendants be,” said the Lord to Abram.

For thousands of years it has been none other than this man Abraham – the name his God had later given him – who would become recognized as the father of the Jewish race.  Though also he would become the father of Arab nations.  And what many do not know is that he wasn’t just the forerunner of the Semitic people.  Abraham, you see, was also to become the Head of another race of people.  In scripture they are alluded to as a peculiar people.  They are the church – the body of the Son of the Living God.

These are the faithful, no matter where on our globe they reside.  It is these who have anchored themselves in the Innermost Sanctuary; and it is in them that there forever resides the Spirit of the Living God.  Never were they of this world.  And in this their peculiarity is seen by all who have made this world their home; they emulate their father Abraham.  Of him it has been written that he looked for a city that has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God.

But how is it that Abraham has become the father of all true believers?  The answer to this would hinge on a single word.  The word is FAITH.  Faith – to believe things that we know to be true, though for the present time we understand that they have not yet materialized.  When the only true God sees this at work in the hearts of His children, it is then that He is made glad.  Also, faith unlocks doors – doors that we would never venture through, were it not for what we believed.

I think that it would surprise many who are of Abraham’s spiritual seed – the church – to know that his way was never the way of the law.  To begin with, he walked the earth a few hundred years before Moses – to whom the law was given.  And so Abraham never knew anything about all of the laws of God, which were to be imposed upon Israel, following their coming out of Egypt.  In view of this, Abraham’s journey through this world had nothing at all to do with LAW, though it had everything to do with FAITH.  And are we not told over and again in the scriptures that our salvation is not of the law – neither is it of works – but we are saved through faith alone. 

And so, remember this.  In the amazing faith to which we have been called, there has been but one man, appointed by God, as a forerunner to us all.  You have probably heard him referred to as father Abraham.  And it has been this one man, who has shown by example to all who have believed, the way in which we must go.

Did you ever stop to think of how the scriptures are full of irony?  Years ago, I was part of a small church of about forty adults and maybe twenty – five kids.  Always liked those small churches -  more intimate, and to add it would often be the church members themselves who would take the platform for a short time and speak.  I remember one Sunday morning when a young man went up and spoke a bit about the mercies of God.  About midway through his talk he pointed towards two of the men in the front row.  “Now, you take Jack and Tim over there, “he said.  “You know that the Lord had to go fishing in some awful muddy waters to save those two.”  Everybody laughed, including Jack and Tim.  That was over thirty years ago now; today they do well.

Back to muddy waters and irony.  I’ll bet that most who read this article would have never imagined that the Lord went into some filthy and bad smelling river in order to catch hold of Abraham.  The father of faith was born and raised in a society filled with paganism, and having no shortage of pagan gods [demons].

To add to this, the Babylonian kings would pride themselves in the heights of their pagan temples.

Despite all the sin in the land of Abraham’s upbringing, you can believe that the eyes of the Lord were upon the little guy – yes, even from the womb.  When he had come of age he was called out from among his people – this to live a nomadic life in the land of Canaan, moving from place to place and pitching his tents.  Remember however, that all this time Abraham’s vision was set on a city – a city whose Builder and Maker is God.  Just more of the ironies – from a tent to a city.  But this would not just be any city.  We can read of it in the Revelation of Jesus, in the final book of the bible, how this city will be fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height being equal.  Who is amazing but our God!  And we have barely begun to learn of Him.

Yes, for sure, God had told Abraham to get out of his country and go to a land that He would show him.  Abraham obeyed and never looked back.  But whenever any person is drawn by the Spirit to enter a New Life in Christ, then they likewise are told the very thing that Abraham was told.  The difference is that because of the many attractions that call out to us today, from the world which we’ve departed, we often times do take a journey back to that country from which we came out.  Once there, we tell ourselves that it will only be for a short time.  But the fact is that we often stay somewhat longer than we planned.  When we return back to the land of promise, we find that things have changed.  We do not quite have the same heart for our new homeland that we have abandoned for a time.  It may be a while before we come to adapt again.

Only a few days ago I believe I was shown a matter that really took me by surprise.  This too can be seen as irony.  Often it is His way.  Abraham was a pagan – brought up in a pagan society.  On the other hand Moses was born into the race of people that worshipped the True God.  Yet it was to Moses that the law was given – the law that could not give life but only condemn.  On the other hand it would be the covenant that was to bring eternal salvation that the onetime pagan would become privileged to walk in.  More than marvelous are His ways.

Surely our father Abraham was called to be a forerunner to the church, knowing nothing of the law – though in good standing with his God through faith alone.  Even as it reads in Galatians 3:8., “ and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the nations by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, “ saying, “ In you all the nations shall be blessed.”

Abraham, a former pagan, chosen to walk the New Testament walk, many hundreds of years before Jesus made it possible for the rest of us.  And so, Abraham, the father of both the Jews and the Gentiles – one by the flesh, the other by the Spirit, had sampled the salvation of God for us all -  a very extraordinary man.

I wouldn,t  doubt if this man Abraham wasn’t the first to enter the kingdom, upon Jesus leading the righteous Old Testament souls out from paradise.  Can you imagine it?  Our Divine Saviour and King of kings opens wide the gates and leads the way.  And who would be most likely to follow close behind, but the beloved father Abraham.  Yet would it surprise us so if even he were led into our eternal heavenly home – by way of a little child?

J. Pecoraro