9.2 God Is Travail
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
I enjoy the Hercule Poirot movies played by David Suchet. From them I have learned an important principle of discovering the truth about anything. While the inspector was busy following the big and obvious clues to dead ends, Hercule Poirot looked only for the odd and insignificant clues that seemed to have no meaning. Once he discovered the meaning of those insignificant clues, he knew the answer to the mystery.
If any “bigger picture” does not answer to full satisfaction the odd and insignificant clues, it cannot be the truth. Before we can know Jesus as He is inside of and through us, we must first know God as He is.
Two Odd Clues. And there are two very odd, seemingly tiny and insignificant clues in the New Testament missed by almost all, clues that must be answered before we can know God as He IS. Any picture of “God” that does not include the full answer to these two clues cannot be the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have already seen both of those clues in this text. The first is the fact that the cross was transferred from Jesus to another on the way to Golgotha. The second is these words of Paul. – Likewise, the Spirit also joins as help together with our weakness; for the things necessary that we should pray for we do not know, but the Spirit itself brings us in line [with Father] for the sake of others, with inexpressible groanings (Romans 8:26).
Two Critical Questions. You cannot know God as He is, you cannot know Jesus as He is, you cannot know yourself as you are unless you can give a full heart answer to the following two questions.
What is a God who falls on His face in the mud under a cross He cannot carry?
What is a God who groans in travail to give birth?
When you know this God all through your own being, then you will know Jesus Sent, for you will be just like Him. But look at those two questions, for are they not the story of your life? Has your life always been God as He is expressing Himself through you?
What is a God who groans in travail?
God Seen and Known. In order to begin to understand any answer to that question, let’s look again at God’s original desire.
That which was from the beginning [from the source or origin]; that which we have heard; that which we have seen with our eyes; that which we have gazed upon [observing to understand], and our hands have touched and handled all the way around the Word of life; and the life was made visible {God seen and known}, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the life that unfolds the ages, which was [I am] connecting with the Father and was made visible to us (1 John 1:1-2).
For all shall know Me (Hebrews 8:11). God seen and known, God touched and handled.
Willing to Believe. All the outward difficulties of the human race and all creation exist only because God is not known.
Jesus said to His disciples, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain” (John 15:16). That “fruit” in its completion is God seen and known through you, for you are His image, sharing the same form together with Jesus as the revelation of the Father.
But why is God blocked from making Himself known? God can make Himself known only through humans who are willing to believe that He IS sharing their lives with them and that He IS revealing Himself in travail through their difficulty.
For the Sake of Others. The Spirit also joins as help together with our weakness… the Spirit itself brings us in line [with Father] for the sake of others, with inexpressible groanings.
As you devote yourself utterly to Father, so you know that He has already utterly devoted Himself to you, sharing your life with you including all of your weakness and difficulty. But you have turned around! God is not sharing your difficulty with you for your sake. You live already in full and complete Salvation. God, through His Spirit, joins together with your weakness, your stumbling, your tears, your mistakes, your joys and triumphs and strengths – for the sake of others.
Made Perfect in Weakness. Here is how Paul stated his own discovery of this truth that God joins with our weakness for the sake of others. Jesus said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect [comes to its full completion] in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
And then Paul said this: I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church (Colossians 1:24).
A False Image. I realize that I have given you a whole lot to think about and to incorporate into your understanding of your everyday life. I want to change tack for a bit and talk about a common temptation of the evil one.
God’s great difficulty with humans from Adam until now is that all are lusting after an image of “Christ” that is not Jesus. That image is of some sort of “super-Christ,” an “above-you Christ,” a “Christ” that is far separate from your lowly human life and limitations in this world and who requires of you to “perform” in some outward way to be “worthy” of him. And in response to this “super-Christ” humans pretend with all the pretending they can do – yet always falling short.
Temptation. And so the evil one has likely already tempted you to think something along these lines. “I feel miserable this morning. What I did yesterday was so wrong and embarrassing. I am so weak and fleshy. Christ isn’t like this. Christ lives above my human stupidity. All my Christian friends now know how fleshy I am. This “union with Christ” stuff is so stupid. If Christ were living as me, then I would walk above all these petty limitations of my rotten self.”
You must understand what is really happening from all angles in moments like this. First, you are agreeing with the evil one that lowly humans CANNOT be the image of God. And you are lusting after the same exalted “super-Christ” Adam preferred – in order to impress your own self-conscious imagination of what you think other people think about you.
The Problem. Now, none of that is a problem for Jesus. He IS living as you, sharing Himself with you through all things; He IS carrying your griefs and bearing your sorrows entirely inside Himself.
It’s not a problem for Jesus, your Savior and your Salvation, but it is a problem for you and for Father. It’s a problem for you because, in that moment, you are blocking yourself from the strength of knowing that Father shares all things with you. And it’s a problem for Father, because His heart’s desire, to be seen and known through your weakness, is not known.
But let’s take this whole thing, including the temptation and all your agony, and turn it right around.
Inside of Christ. Here is Paul’s statement that allows us to turn around with confidence. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself… (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).
God is inside of Christ Jesus through every stumbling step of the way, inside His agony in Gethsemane, inside His pain from the whips and the thorns, inside His humiliation and nakedness, inside His wrenching cries of aloneness. And inside of all that travail, God is doing what Father is. God is reconciling the world to Himself.
Jesus Believed. And how was Father able to do such a thing inside of Jesus?
Father was able to move through Jesus’ agony BECAUSE Jesus believed with all His heart that “God IS inside of Me, reconciling the world to Himself through My difficulty.” And Jesus believed that, with zero outward evidence, only because He KNEW that He could do nothing of Himself, that Father directed His every step inside of Love, and that Father had sent Him into the world to seek and to save what was lost.
For that reason, Jesus knew that the Spirit of His Father was joined together with His weakness and was travailing for the sake of others in order that the knowledge of God, God seen and known, might enter into the experience of every created thing.
Turn It All Around. And then Paul said, “And God has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 2:19). This word of reconciliation cannot be anything other than Christ Himself living in your heart and God inside of Christ reconciling the world to Himself together with you inside your confidence that He IS. Yes, there is an outward expression of that word of reconciliation to others, but it comes first only out from Father inside of you, sharing all things with you.
Let’s go back to the agony and frustration that you felt when those words of separation were rolling around in your mind, the humiliation over being human and the lust to be the “super-Christ.” Let’s turn it all around.
Pray out Loud. “Father, I walk every step embedded utterly inside of Your Love, and You walk as one with me, sharing all things with me that we go through together. Father, this agony I feel, even in the midst of and in spite of the temptation of the evil one, this agony is Your deep sorrow inside me, Your Spirit joined together with my weakness. Father, You are inside of me, inside our every step together, regardless, reconciling the world to Yourself through my confidence in You.
“Thank you, Father, for sharing Your Heart with me. Thank you, Father, for sharing my heart with Yourself. Father, You are, in this moment, seen and known through me, exactly as You wish and for Your desire.”