Lent, day 21: God gets what he wants

The goal of God’s enfleshment is a universe as he intends it, where are all things are in their place–in, through, and to his Son. To some, this may appear self-centered of God as well as controlling and deterministic.

• Certainly it is self-centered of God to expect the universe to be the way he wants and to direct it toward his self. But the Self of God is Love, the Love shared by the Father, Son and Spirit, eternally being poured out in that divine community. A freely propelled centrifugal force, the Divine Love pours out in creation and grace.
• As to control, it is a curious kind of control to get what you desire through self-sacrifice.
• And it is determinism of the best kind. God determines the fate of the universe, and our fate in particular, in such a way that all thing s achieve the heights of their nature. And we humans are set free to enjoy such heights. God had originally determined that we be free but we had sold that inheritance for less than nothing. In Christ, the truly free man, God restores our freedom. We are predestined to be free and it is destiny that we cannot stop.

God stops at nothing to get his way and his way is to “present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.”

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Next week (3/19-23) we'll explore what it means to be baptized - to die with Christ and be raised with him.
The week following (3/26-30) we'll look at what religion looks like when God does all the work. Is religion even necessary? (I'll answer in the affirmative.)