Love and the Vulnerability of God
\nCopyright by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n
The willingness of unconquerable strength to make itself vulnerable, for the sake of love, is the essence of God\u2019s incarnation in Christ. It was for intimate union with the only beings made in his image that the Sovereign of the universe so humbled Himself. If we have no inkling of how divine love compelled this emptying of divine power then we will have trouble knowing what makes the one true God different from all the other \u201cgods\u201d our race puts its faith in, and we will be profoundly the less for it.<\/p>\n
Scripture tells us God is love. Love in its highest form is found in Him and all true love comes from Him. There is something we need to understand about love and, thus, about our Lord. Love is apparently more important to Him than power. If power alone was the concern of God He would never have incarnated Himself as a man. Such condescension would be unthinkable for a being that existed solely to rule and reign over his creation for the sake of ruling and reigning. The God of the Bible is all-powerful, make no mistake about it, but He is more than that. He also loves.<\/p>\n
God wants us in deep communion with Him. He wants to know us and be known by us. He wants our purest affection to be for Him because His pure affection is directed towards us. In short He wants us to love Him and be loved by Him. Apparently the only way this could come about was for God to make Himself vulnerable to us and the only way that could happen was for Him to become one of us. <\/p>\n
Perhaps this is because we could never fall in love with a God who remained completely different from what we are, who forever existed so high above us that we could have nothing in common with Him. Love, it seems, requires that its giver and its recipient share something essential. In Christ God shared in something essential, our humanity, and made it possible for us to fall in love with Him in a way we never could before.<\/p>\n
What this required of our Creator was a, to us, incomprehensible descent. He emptied Himself of the full power of His Deity to be born in a stable in an obscure town in the backwaters of an empire. As far as physical and emotional vulnerability He incarnated Himself as much a human as any human he had ever made, even to the point of sharing in the danger of being rejected and killed by other humans. Why did God do this? He did it because any possibility for intimate union with us required it. <\/p>\n
He did it because love requires such vulnerability. The possibility of love cannot be divorced from the possibility of rejection. An irresistible force cannot be resisted, but it cannot be freely loved either. Coercion and love are antonyms, \u201ccoerced love\u201d an oxymoron. God\u2019s love for us was so powerful that divine power itself had to be in some sense given up to enable us to respond in kind, and so it was when He came to earth in the form of the Son of Man.<\/p>\n
It may be possible for human beings to worship any number of \u201cgods\u201d who are unwilling to pursue us so ardently, but it is impossible for us to be in reciprocal love with them. That kind of relationship requires a God Who both removes the stumbling block of power for power\u2019s sake and Who risks rejection for the sake of His desire for us. Only the God of Jesus Christ fits this description and because of this only He is worth both knowing and loving with all our hearts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Love and the Vulnerability of God Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved The willingness of unconquerable strength to make itself vulnerable, for the sake of love, is the essence of God\u2019s incarnation in Christ. It was for intimate union with the only beings made in his image that the Sovereign of the universe so… <\/p>\n