Prayer for Divine Guidance

Heavenly Father, I ask that your Holy Spirit bless and enlighten me as I read, reflect and rest in the boundless riches of salvation that Christ Jesus has won! Abba Father, draw me closer into the Divine Dance with You, Your Son, and Holy Spirit to continually transform my life here on earth to taste life with You in Heaven! Amen.

Reflection

When you think of salvation, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it knowing that God forgives you of all your sins? Is it knowing that you are going to heaven when you die? Those are surely wonderful, but what if your salvation means a lot more? What if your salvation has more to do with the life that God is giving you now, than the life you are waiting for when you die? What if your salvation means participating in the life of God here and now? What if salvation means Jesus Christ bringing you into the perichoretic Dance of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit now?

Salvation is more than God’s way of getting people into heaven, but God’s way of getting heaven into people. Salvation is the gift of God’s presence in you, not just your ticket to heaven. Salvation is saying “Yes!” to God’s love for us and accepting His invitation to share in His life. It’s not just that Jesus paid your debt, but that Jesus longs for you to live with Him in the eternal Dance of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

John 17 records Jesus praying to the Father shortly before His arrest and crucifixion, giving us one of the Gospels’ most intimate glimpses into Jesus’ relationship with the Father and our inclusion with them. In this chapter we get to listen in as Jesus talks with His Father about all who would believe in Him across the centuries: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

Notably, Jesus does not say that “eternal life” is unending existence or something we receive when we die, but eternal life is knowing God, starting now. It is not time stretching endlessly into the future, but participation in the dance of love that has no beginning or end. Eternal life is a quality of life, an intimate, ongoing relationship with the Father through the Son: “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” To know God is to be drawn into the mutual indwelling of self-giving love that is the life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son, and the Spirit gives that life to us (John 3:5-8; 6:63; 14:10- 11). Eternal life is to know and to be known, to love and to be loved, and to live within the eternal communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit now.

Sometimes the Gospel is presented as a transaction: you believe in God and you get saved. The goal is often explained as being forgiven, escaping judgement, and going to heaven. A Transactional understanding of the Gospel is not so much wrong, as it misses the full picture. God sent His Son not just to forgive our sins but to bring us into His family. The Gospel is not just that Christ cleared your record, but that He calls you “Beloved”! To see salvation as merely a transaction is to miss the heart of God: His longed-for oneness with us! The Gospel is not God offering us a transaction, but God offering us Himself. This is a Relational understanding of the Gospel: God graces us with an eternal and intimate relationship with Him. Jesus does more than pay our debt of sin: He brings us home as God’s beloved children.

Do you sometimes struggle to find words to express your love to the Lord Jesus? I do, and am sometimes helped in this by many saints through the centuries who turn to the Song of Solomon to tell Jesus their love. They find in the Song of Solomon more than just a poem of human love and longing, but a spiritual allegory of God’s love for His people and His longing to be loved in return. They read the Song of Solomon as intimate conversation between Christ, the bridegroom, and His beloved Bride, the Church, or the human soul. Paul echoes the words of the Song of Solomon about marital love: “Christ loved the church and gave himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

In the 12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux preached 86 sermons on the Song of Solomon without ever finishing the book. He found in the book perfect language to describe the love between Christ and His people:

“The Bridegroom desires nothing more eagerly than to be loved, and nothing so much as that He may love. For if He loves, it is that He may be loved in return, knowing that those who love Him will be blessed by loving Him.” (Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 83, On the Song of Songs)

You might find verses like the following from the Song of Solomon to help you talk with Jesus about your love:

Song of Solomon 2:16: “My beloved is mine and I am his.”

Song of Solomon 4:7: “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

Song of Solomon 7:10: “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.”

Such words embody the heart of the Gospel as Jesus not only forgives and saves us, but woos us, longs for us, to unite us to Himself today and forever!