The Diagram Of Love

When St. Paul tells us that we were crucified with Christ, he is not inviting us to imagine two neighboring crosses silhouetted against the same darkened sky, Christ suffering here and we suffering there, bound together only by a coincidence of hour and place. That picture is far too small for the burden Paul lays upon it. He is not describing nearness, but participation; not companionship, but inclusion— something far more intimate and far more unsettling.

In our feeble attempts at putting this great Gospel— which transcends words— into words, we would all do well to remember that the Apostle Paul himself speaks of an incomprehensible ecstasy (2 Corinthians 12:2–4): being caught up into Paradise, shown things too great for human language— things no man would be able to grasp or utter in speech.

Let us not forget, then, that the ultimate expression of the Good News— the Glad Message of the Happy God (1 Timothy 1:11, Rhm)— is not explanation, absolute clarity, nor mastery, but indescribable, appalling, and awfully wondrous trembling joy.

It is ecstasy in which the mind is dissolved into absolute unknowing; the reality of being assumed into Uncreated Light, where drooling and babbling like babies at the breast— drunk on Love eternal— is the likely expression. The praises of babes who have nothing left to say other than the sweet cooing sounds of those who have tasted the thick milk of a grace too great for words.

For this is man’s ultimate purpose:

joy unspeakable, unfathomable. 

God is pure hedonist.

The act of creation was an explosion of unrestrained delight, for we were brought forth for His pleasure (Rev. 4:11).

We were not created that WE might chiefly please God, but that HE might take pleasure in us.

In the fixed & immovable act of the Incarnation, Death, & Resurrection of Christ, it is His good pleasure that divinity assumes humanity so that humanity assumes divinity— that is to say, becomes truly human, bearing the Imago Dei, the Divine Image after the Archetype of Humanity Himself, Christ— His Face, in our face.

Our adoption into divinity is not a repair, nor a “Plan B,” but our inescapable destiny— fulfilled in the Man Jesus Christ, who is Himself the New Creation, the divine ground of all existence.

So then— let us take our pleasure in Him, as He takes pleasure in us. For our ultimate expression of worship is ecstasy— ineffable, terrible, terrific, trembling joys— as sharers in His own delight.

It is impossible to exaggerate the goodness of God manifested to us in the Incarnation of Christ— God in skin, blood, and bone. The trouble is not that He is elusive, but that He is too definite. He does not come as an idea one might debate, nor as a principle one might refine, but as a man one might meet. He takes up space. He casts a shadow. He can be followed down a road and pointed out in a crowd.

Here, goodness ceases to be a concept and becomes a person. It cries in a manger, grows tired on the road, reaches out with hands, eats fish by the fire, weeps at a tomb, and laughs at a joke. The Divine Life does not remain safely general; it commits itself to a particular voice, a particular face, a particular hour in history— to a name: Jesus, “God is Salvation.” God does not merely mean something— He is Someone, irreducibly Himself.

Language trembles here, not because the revelation is thin, but because it is dense. Words were fashioned to gesture toward realities; Christ stands before us whole. He is not unclear; He is overwhelmingly and precisely Himself. We reach for abstraction only because our speech cannot keep pace with such concreteness. The Word transcends words.

Thus, the Incarnation exposes a mystery too great for speech: it is not God who is difficult to grasp, but language itself that proves too abstract. God does not offer an explanation of goodness— He is goodness, the person. He does not define love— He walks among and within us as love in the flesh.

Have you ever wondered at the name "Jesus?" His very name means "God Is Salvation." Christ the person is Salvation Incarnate. We may beg or believe, sing or spit - it matters not. The act is done. It is finished. Drink deeply of the ineffable mystery of The Incarnation of Christ in this episode as Benjamin shares an ecstatic Hymn on The Diagram Of Love, Christ Himself.

In the Incarnation of the Son of Man, divinity assumes humanity so that humanity might assume divinity—that is to say, we become truly human.

Forever, there is a human being within the Trinity - and in His union with us, with humanity, we are sharers of His divine life.