“I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved.” (Rom. 9:5, Msg)
In the previous teaching we concluded by noting that foundation of jealousy, including spiritual jealousy, is the notion that you do not experience yourself as being loved.
In her book, The Broken Image, Leanne Payne makes this simple, yet profound statement: “Evil is, in actual fact, seperation, seperation from which completes me.” (p. 30). Take a minute to think about that.
Because of the fall, rejection is humanity’s deepest wound. In my opinion the immense despair of man’s separation from God, the loss of the glory of paradise, the shame of his nudity, the trauma of being cast out of paradise, the physiological and psychological results of sin, illness and death, with our “trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul” (Deut. 28:65), we who have no calm nor rest (Job 3:26), the loss of wisdom, brain capacity, mind and spiritual powers and abilities, and the constant guilt and cosmic loneliness had a cataclysmic influence on humanity. It formed a collective wound of rejection, a root memory, from which we can never truly be healed, and which became the primal wound from which all subsequent rejection of the human condition is founded. We are irrevocably tainted, we disgust ourselves.
We are the species who in the wake of this rejection “dwell in houses of clay,
whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before a moth? They are broken in pieces from morning till evening; they perish forever, with no one regarding. Does not their own excellence go away? They die, even without wisdom.” This indeed rings true for fallen man’s entire history – “paranoid loneliness … all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants … an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided live … a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage” (Gal.5:20 & 19, Msg).
This is the case, Donald Miller notes in his profound book Blue Like Jazz, “Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall …”
It then comes as no surprise that the following takes place as early as Gen. 6:5-6: “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”
Throughout the Old Testament this wound is the main subject which concerns the prophets, especially the prophet Jeremiah. It is continuously lamented in the following phrase: “the hurt of the daughter my people”:
- 8:11- For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ when there is no peace.”
- 8:21 – “For the hurt of the daughter of my people I am hurt. I am mourning;
Astonishment has taken hold of me.” - 14:17 – “Therefore you shall say this word to them: ‘Let my eyes flow with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people
has been broken with a mighty stroke, with a very severe blow.’” - 2:11 – “My eyes fail with tears, my heart is troubled; my bile is poured on the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the children and the infants faint in the streets of the city.”
- 3:48 – “My eyes overflow with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people.” And then this terrifying metaphoric atom bomb that expresses this decay like nothing else:
- 4:10 – “The hands of the compassionate women have cooked their own children; they became food for them in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
The following passage in Ezek. 16:4-8 illustrates this trauma within the imagery of a birth: “As for your nativity, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you; you were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you; but you were thrown out into the open field, when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born. And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you thrive like a plant in the field; and you grew, matured, and became very beautiful. Your breasts were formed, your hair grew, but you were naked and bare. When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine, says the Lord God.”
The photograph with which we started this teaching was taken of a 21-week old fetus who, during an operation, slid his hand through a slit in the womb and grasped the surgeon’s finger. To me this photograph exemplifies man and his deepest wound, one of existential aloneness.
It is indeed true what the English poet Rod McKuen has said: “I know the dying heart needs the nourishment of memory to live beyond too many winters.” But even memory is often, on a personal, but also collective level, a memory of severing and of pain, full of the psychosis of anxiety separation. Despite a lot of spiritual revelation in their lives, many believers still experience this gaping wound of lack. Jer. 8:20-22 sketches this situation in metaphoric terms: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved! For the hurt of the daughter of my people I am hurt. I am mourning; astonishment has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there? Why then is there no recovery for the health of the daughter of my people?” Thus: the balm of the Anointed is missing; the oil in her lamp is lacking; she has no physical strength; she struggles to understand her calling and purpose; she is despondent and feels like she cannot carry on; but most of all – she does not feel as if she is one of God’s beloved.
How can this deep emotional vortex of rejection be trumped? How can the Bride be transformed and healed to become “Anointed” (Dan. 9:25)? Ezek. 16:9 explains how this process of restoration works: “Then I washed you in water; yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood, and I anointed you with oil.” Once the Beloved has been anointed, he is clothed with Christ (Rom. 13:14; Gal 3:27): “I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin; I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists, and a chain on your neck. And I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey, and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful, and succeeded to royalty. Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through My splendor which I had bestowed on you, says the Lord God.” (Ezek. 16:10-14).
We know what is said of the Bridegroom in Ps. 45:7 and Heb. 1:9: “Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” The following is said about the Bride in Ecc. 9:8: “Let your garments always be white, and let your head lack no oil.” Our relationship with the Bridegroom needs to be sealed by anointing – this is the only way in which we can heal a corporate wound. The taint and curse of the garden of Eden can only be healed by anointing the rotting bones, if Ps. 109:18 is used as guiding force – “As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment, so let it enter his body like water, and like oil into his bones.”
There is however a complete lack of “most holy faith” (Jude 1:20), in who I am, and in how God thinks of me as his beloved. God is tired of Adam’s desperate attempts to please Him through physical and carnal acts. He desires an acceptance of Christ’s grace. Nothing but the Voice of the Bridegroom will matter once you can hear his call from behind the veil. Song of Songs 2:9 – “My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, he stands behind our wall; he is looking through the windows, gazing through the lattice.” And He says: “Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come …”
Pierre Benoit’s years of study and searching for the revelation of what it is that God whispered to Jesus when He, broken on the cross, started screaming: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” is quite shocking. Benoit argues that God whisphers Song of Songs 2:10-14 to his Son: “Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come. For see, winter is past, the rains are over and gone. Flowers are appearing on the earth. The season of glad songs has come, the cooing of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree is forming its first figs and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance. Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come. My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock, in the coverts of the cliff, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely.”
But this is also exactly what Jesus whispers to the Bride in the desert of her spiritual life! Hos. 2:14: “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her.”
The great church father Augustine considers the following: “If God is love, then there must be in Him a Lover, a Beloved, and a Spirit of love, for no love is conceivable without a Lover and a Beloved.” Jer. 31:3-4 – “The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful.” Have a look at how beautifully the Message translates Rom. 9:25 – “Hosea put it well: I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies; I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved.”
We know that God is love (1 John 4:8 & 18), but allow the following verses to flood through you, the beloved:
- Joh 15:9 – “I have loved you the same way the Father has loved me. So live in my love.”
- Joh 17:23 – “I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
- Joh 17:26 – “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
God is not a partial God (Acts 10:34), and thus loves everyone in the same measure – no one receives preferential treatment. Yet you become the apple of his eye when you accept the revelation that you are indeed immensely loved (Deut. 32:10). In The Shack (p.175) Jesus says to Mack: “Learn to live loved.”
- Selah: “Learn to live loved.”
- Read: Ex. 14-21
- Memorise: Ex. 15:3
