Esther Meek: “With” the Most Christian Word

We addressed a bit of this idea last night at our School of Theology.  From her blog:

In the Christian religion, the ultimate reality is three Persons with each other in such perfect, dynamic communion that God is Three in One. Jesus is—my heart sings to say it—God withus, Emmanuel.  (Isaiah 7) The core promise of Scripture, I will be your God and you will be my people, comes to concrete incarnation in Christ. It comes to culmination at the end of the story: “Now the dwelling of God is with men…” (Rev. 20)

Consider this: the goal of Christian discipleship is to be godlike—not god-ish. Not even in the renewal of all things will we become God. God must like it that we are ourselves—a duh statement that somehow I continually must remind myself of. God is not interested in absorption.  It is wonderful to talk of being partakers of the divine nature, as Scripture does, union with Christ, and so on. But we may never hear in that the misinference that we disappear, as real beings, in the process. No—in fact, we become more distinctly ourselves in communion with God.

Read the rest.