God is wearing Son-glasses

As a dog person I’ve somewhat learned to “speak dog”. At least I can read my own dogs pretty well and tell when they’re uncomfortable or they’re getting ready to react to something (suspicious objects like umbrellas, strollers or a man in a baseball hat, or a leaf rustling in the wind). Cats are a different story. I do not trust cats. They’re finicky creatures and they will turn against you on a dime. When they wag their tails I think it means they’re irritated, but I’m not sure. I have been petting cats, thinking we were having the best time and a second later the cat turned around and scratched me. I’m just not a cat person per se. I wouldn’t go as far as agreeing with my husband who says that cats are evil. (But on the other hand – I’ve never seen a dog on a witch’s broom). Dogs can teach us a lot about loyalty and trust. And cats can teach us about independence and mystery.

I’ve always loved languages. When I first started learning English as a child I would speak English to myself or even pray in English sometimes, since there was no one else to talk to, in English. I knew how to count to ten in Finnish, Swahili and German and I was collecting the phrase “I love you” in as many languages I could get across (remember – this was before the internet!). When I was learning French in middle school I would record it on my old tape recorder and then play it back to myself. I just liked to have the sounds in my mouth, the melody, the rolling R’s. Although I studied French for six years I still have a really hard time putting together even one sentence in French because I never spent any length of time in France. I have never been steeped in the French language or culture. But I lived in Spain for a few months after high school and that is when my Spanish started becoming a little more fluent.

I’ve recently been reading a version of the Bible, called the Passion Translation by Brian Simmons. I absolutely love it, especially the comments that give me a deeper understanding of the culture where the Bible was written as they give me an insight to Hebrew and Aramaic. The other morning I was reading from Hebrews 1:3. “God now speaks to us openly in the language of a son.” And from the comments: “We speak in English, God speaks in “Son”, for Jesus is the language of God. The sonship of Jesus is the language he now uses to speak to us”.

Wow. This puts everything in a new light. God is a God of Covenant. Nothing God says or does makes sense if we don’t see it through the lens of His Covenant with us and His people. All through the Bible we see God revealing Himself gradually as a God of covenants although we usually miss a lot of the significance of it since we are not familiar with the language. We don’t use covenants anymore but we use contracts in our modern world and we tend to interpret our relationship with God in the same way – as a contract. The signers of a contract agree to hold up their ends as long as the other signatories hold up theirs too. With a covenant, both parties agree to hold up their ends regardless of whether the other party keeps their part of the agreement. This is a fundamentally different approach! In our minds all of our agreements are contingent on both parties holding up their ends. Consequently we bring this thinking into our relationship with God and we assume that if we don’t hold up our end of the agreement of salvation, God won’t hold up His. We focus on everything we do wrong. We know that the standard is perfection and we know we’re not perfect and that makes us discouraged and ready to give up – or try harder. In reality, we as human beings can only relate to God in the framework of Covenant. God has already committed to treat us in light of Jesus’ perfection, even when we don’t measure up, as long as we choose to believe it. This is fundamentally good news. In the same way as my inheritance will be legally mine after my parents death since I am in their will, my spiritual inheritance, the righteousness of Jesus, is rightfully mine, now that Jesus has died for me. I cannot change this with my behavior or a bad attitude. It is a legally binding fact that I receive through faith in the same way I would receive an inheritance in the natural, unless i chose not to for any peculiar reason.

The New Covenant is the Covenant in His Son. Sometimes we forget about this and we act out of an “orphan-mentality”. We have a religious mindset where we think we need to be good, behave and earn His goodness. The whole Western, industrialized world suffers from this mindset. We’re more of human “doings” than human beings. We have an industrialized mindset where we’re working for our wages in life. “You get what you deserve” seems to be an universal truth. “Work hard and you can be anything” is a mindset, especially in the United States where hard work always seems to be rewarded (where social reforms, in countries like Sweden, put a roof on your rewards). This mindset has brought a lot of material blessings on our society but it has messed with our hearts and brought curses spiritually. We are alienated from our true value as human beings and measure our value through the lens of achievement. This is not the lens of God. He’s wearing Son-glasses. Whenever he looks at us (which is All-The-Time) he sees us in the light of His Son. That’s His language. Now I want to get really fluent in Son.