I. Can't. Even.

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

                                                               Colossians 1:19-20

Writing is hard work.  Plain and simple.  Most writers will tell you that writing isn’t something that they want to do but something they have to do.  It is a compulsion rather than volition.   It goes way deeper than just thoughts flung across a page.  There is an underlying disturbing tension that flip-flops between the factual and the creative, fashioning brilliance versus producing trash and paranoia in general about what ultimately lands on the page.  It is never good enough, profound enough or punctuated enough.  Yet write we do.  We must.  It isn’t a suggestion for us.  It is our breath.  To do it means to embrace torture, to not do it is equally excruciating.  We are an enigma.  Yet we are committed to our craft.

This is where you find me this week with the above verses from Colossians.  I want to run from these verses.  They are too strong and the truth impossible to bear.  I have walked past my office more than a few times this week hesitant to go in.  Peering at my laptop on my desk from the edge of the doorframe, knowing, fully knowing that eventually I have to cross over and write about Colossians 1:19-20.  I don’t want to but I have to.  Truth be told, I can not wrap my mind around these verses.  As much as I want to embrace them and allow them to reach into the depths of my person I push back.  I can’t let them in.  They are too strong and mean too much.  I can’t fathom them.  Not with this earthly mental capacity and frail human heart.  It isn’t possible.  Not for me.

What pleases God?  Therein rests my turmoil. We learn in the above verse that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.”  By fullness, Paul is referring to God’s deity.  (Col 2:9)   I am good with that.  Whether doctrinally, theologically, experientially or any other “ally”, I am fine with it. 

My question, “what pleases God?” doesn’t have anything to do with what we can do to please God but rather what does God do to please himself.  If God wanted to do something to bring Him pleasure, what would it be?  Here is my debilitating quandary.  According to this verse, not only was He pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Jesus but He was pleased to reconcile all things to Him by making peace through Christ’s blood shed on the cross.   Christ his dearly beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.  Jesus’ death on a bloody cross brought Him pleasure.  That is what it says.  Plain as day.  I. Can’t. Even.

Perhaps, you are a skeptic.  Perhaps you think I am reading to deeply into this verse.  Let your skepticism thrust you, as it did me, deep into the subtlies of the scriptures and their accompanying individual word meanings starting with Isaiah 53:10.(NASB)

“But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.”

The scripture is from the intensely prophetic passage referencing Jesus as our suffering servant and messiah.  The LORD was pleased to crush Him.  Read the definition for the Hebrew word “pleased” that is used in this verse but often translated “will” unfortunately in different translations. 

ḥā·p̄êṣ - “to find pleasure in, delight in, be pleased with, have an affection for; to desire, choose.”  (The Key Word Study Bible) 

Absorb how the word is used in this Psalm and many similar passages in scripture. 

 “The LORD does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths.”

                                                               Psalm 135:6

God’s will is to do whatever pleases Himself.  His pleasure was to rescue us by crushing His son.  I. Can’t. Even.

You see I have two sons.  There is not even a fraction of the kind of love in me that would embrace the notion of personally directing either of my sons to give up their lives for a good person let alone a depraved and rebellious sinner, of which I am one of them.   So are you.   I just can’t go there.  What kind of love is that? 

I always like to think that God sent Jesus out of compulsion to pay the penalty of reconciliation.  It was kind of like “I guess I have to do this and rescue them”.  No, scripture tells us that it wasn’t compulsion but love.  He was pleased about it.  Really?  My love for my sons drives to protect them, not give them up.  Sorry, I am not God.  Not even close.  It was the objects of His love that compelled Him.  I am one and so are you.  God was pleased to sacrifice His son.

I am really wrestling with embracing this kind of love.  There are no earthly parameters that I can equate with this.  There is no frame of reference.  I. Can’t. Even.  I struggle.  Perhaps you don’t.  I am happy for you, really.  Mazel Tov.

It took more love for God to give his Son to die than it would to die himself.  You would a thousand times sooner die yourself in your son’s place than have him taken away.  If the execution was about to take your son to the gallows, you would say, “Let me die in his stead; let my son be spared.”  Oh, think of the love God must have had for this world that he gave his only begotten Son to die for it.

                                                      Dwight L. Moody