Monday, 5/13/`13
Jesus was about to be deserted by his disciples. They would
leave him alone; but he said he would not be alone because the Father was with
him.
In a way each of us could say the same thing. We are never
alone, because God is always with us. But when Jesus was saying the Father was
with him, he seemed to mean it in a way that was special to him. It has me
recalling the opening words of John’s Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
In that first chapter John will go on to say that the Word
became flesh in the person of Jesus. So we are inclined to think that when
Jesus said the Father was with him he was talking about their relationship
within the Trinity.
The Trinity is so high above us that we feel we are
incapable of understanding anything about it. But does that make it right for
us to ignore what God is telling us. No, it doesn’t. Let me again go over what Chapter One of
John’s Gospel seemed to be saying.
“In the beginning was
the Word.” There, John seems to be thinking about the Greek philosophers
who believed in something like Mother Nature. They called it the Logos, which is Greek for word. So, John is just agreeing that the Word,
what the Greeks called Mother Nature, was always there.
Next, John wrote, “And
the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There he said that what
Greeks saw as something subsisting only in Nature, actually had existence as
a person outside and above Nature.
If John were speaking about anyone other than God, for him
to day he was God and he was with God it would be just gobblydegook. To get at
John’s meaning there I employ my imperfect version of what Aquinas said about
this. Namely, God has a mental picture of himself, and that picture is three
things. First, it is a complete copy of himself. And secondly, it is so
pleasing that God never turns from it. Thirdly, it
is so wonderful that he loves it.
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