When God Missed His Son...

When God Missed His Son

Something so very terrible happened in this country that the Black man’s

mind was stripped of its commitment to be either husband to the woman or

father to the son. In order to save their lives the Black man was forced to

reject them, else see them used as threats to enforce human debasement.

Having a wife, a son, a daughter gives a man a fresh exploration of a

precious truth that so many take for granted today. The advantages of

fatherhood and sonship are not afforded. What might it be like to miss that

which is of you? God’s missing His Son is a mystery that highlights the divine

love of the Triune while forecasting the humanly love that was intended for

the created beings of God. The mystery that Jesus himself became

something of a prodigal son for our sakes. He left the house of his heavenly

Father, came to a foreign country, gave away all that he had, and returned

through a cross to his Father’s home. All of this he did, not as a rebellious

son, but as the obedient son, sent out to bring home all the lost children of

God. Jesus is the prodigal son of the prodigal Father who gave away

everything the Father had entrusted to him so that we could become like him

and return with him to his Father’s home. We who are Israel is God’s Son, in

effect, Jesus is the ultimate Israel.

He who did not withhold His own Son, but gave him up for all of us. No

christological designation is as essential as ‘Son of God’. Jesus is indeed the

Son of God and that the title ‘Son of God’ carries far more truth and wonder

than we can imagine. If we want to know Christ let us first consider how much

His Father missed him. Christ was only always with the Father. Jesus did not

become Son of God through the virgin birth, he was always the Son of God.

This Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the

Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made,

being of one substance with the Father was graced to man that we might

know God. Before anything was brought forth, from everlasting to everlasting

Christ was with God. So close that they were incomprehensibly one. Who

was in heaven and came down? Who gathered the wind in his fists? Who

wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who established all the ends of the

earth? What is His name, and what is His son’s name? Surely we know! Was

Christ here with us? Is he still our Savior in heaven and weeping for us still

even though he has finished his atoning work? Christ’s suffering was not just

limited to the cross. He misses his children until his Father declares that “it

is done”. Privations of the flesh are still his until surety of the full performance

of the Alpha and the Omega. Because God is the Triune, He enjoyed perfect

companionship within Himself before ever anything was created. The

Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loved each other, shared in the

divine glory, and had a perfect relationship to each other. God missed His

Son when he became incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ, He took on a

human body and nature. God’s Son had to set aside His divine glory and

independent use of His divine powers which were rightfully His. The Father

knew He would again glorify His Son just like they had been for eternity

before the creation of the universe. Jesus so wanted to be glorified again and

to be with the Father, and to let his disciples see his glorification as well. Their

togetherness was so characterized by love, that it was that love that

grounded the Son’s request for his Father’s will to be done. God did not

create us because He needed companionship or that He was lacking

something. God already had perfect, complete fellowship within Himself with

His Son. Such a uniquely unfathomable love that God did not need anyone

outside Himself to love, because the members of the Triune love each other

was wholly complete. So complete that we are chosen by God in Christ His

Son before the foundation of the world.

It is important to know how closely love is connected with God and His Son’s

plan for the kingdom. They didn’t need a kingdom - they already had

everything they needed within God Himself before creation. God created the

Kingdom for His Son, but also for us, whom He wanted to bless. The ultimate

purpose of salvation is to glorify God—but it also results in our glorification

when we love His Son Jesus. There is this reason why God will remember

sin no more. God exists outside of time, He is timeless. Rather than

experiencing a sequence of events, God experiences all events as an

eternal now. If God would not cease to remember then that crushing, heart-

wrenching pain of watching His Son die, and the sense of deep loss that

lingers afterwards in the heart, is the pain that God would experience for an

eternity over the death of His Son. But likewise He eternally experiences the

joy of being with His Son for eternity. So, God missing His Son is not in the

same vein as a human. When Jesus lived on earth and died on the cross, it

is true that God did not experience his absence and his death the same way

that humans’ experience is. But this does not mean that there was no loss

on the part of God, that there was no pain, that there was no suffering. God

experienced greater loss, greater pain, and greater suffering than do

humans. God is holy, righteous, and good. He is love and light. What then

must it mean for His Son who knew no sin to become sin for us? What must

it have been like for God to see the holiness of His one and only son get

exchanged or covered by flesh, or whatever term satisfies the theology of

the atonement with the totality of all sin ever committed by every human in

caused a rift to open

the history of the world? We humans cannot imagine the suffering and the

torment that this must have caused. Think of the moment the sin that Jesus

bore caused a rift to open in his relationship with God the Father. God the

Father had to hear that cry from the cross. This is the cry of God the Son

experiencing for the first time in eternity a separation from God the Father.

God the Father and God the Son have existed eternally in relationship with

one another. Sin caused them to be separated.

Let’s reason this way: plants are “alive” and by sense, they do experience

pain or loss when one of their created relations, and particularly their related

species of plants die. Every life form must be able to do that in order to react

appropriately. The first falling leaf experienced pain showing the first signs

of decay. Adam and his companion mourned. Animals, though without

conscience, experience pain or loss when one of their offspring dies. We

humans experience the greatest pain and suffering when we are separated

from our children. The path to greater harmony between all life forms was

the object of the order of creation. At creation, man held converse

with leaf and flower and tree, gathering from each the secrets of its life. With

every living creature, from the mighty leviathan that playeth among the

waters to the insect mote that floats in the sunbeam, Adam was familiar. He

had given to each its name, and he was acquainted with the nature and

habits of all. Let’s up the creation spectrum above the creature level to the

creator who is infinitely higher in every way. Even though our faith tells us

that our loved ones who are right with God will be with us again if we are

right with God, that truth does not diminish that fact that we miss them

profoundly. How much more so for God knowing that He not only missed His

Son, but He knows our heart’s condition when we miss our loved ones. God

suffers with us. He cries with us.

The essence of both the Father and the Son is exactly the same. We can

say that the Father engenders the personal subsistence of the Son, but

thereby also communicates to him the divine essence in its entirety. So

wonderfully of God it was one indivisible breath of a whole divine essence,

without any derivation, division, alienation, or change. For this cause God

created loneliness in His heart. He missed Adam.

The bible tells us that God grieves. It is an expression of His love. The Holy

Spirit dwells within all who know and love Jesus and we know that God loves

His Son and we know that the Holy Spirit is as much the essence of God the

Father as is God the Son. The Holy Spirit is God’s personal presence and

the third person of the Triune. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all,

in a very real sense, God. The Holy Spirit is therefore a person whose identity

"let mine eyes run down with tears"

is God. God, having sent His Son to die for humans shows His great love for

us while also expressing the depth of His missing His Son. Grief is a powerful

emotion that can be associated with death; however, it can mean intense

sorrow of any kind including missing someone or caring deeply. God is holy,

God is spirit, and God is from all eternity to all eternity. God as spirit does not

cry tears but His is such a release of emotion that His longing for us to be

home is such that He sent His Son in human flesh to shed tears for us. God

incarnate, a supreme Being who says, “let mine eyes run down with tears”.

When we express sorrow, grief, for another, it is closely connected with

love. We grieve when we love and the depth of our grief is proportional to the

depth of our love. And scripture clearly states that all three Persons of the

Godhead can and do grieve. This is where reason and mystery enters. How

can divine God miss someone and feel grief as to how we can understand

it? Consider that man was created in the image of God. We actually receive

our ability to emote from Him! We can experience emotions because He is

the cause, He is an emotive Being. God’s foreknowledge does not negate

this characteristic. What does God grieve and why? God grieves because of

our sin. Because of our sin He had to flood the entire earth. Because of our

sin He had to miss the presence of His Son and He had to see His Son

offered for us that we can be saved. We cause Him pain, sorrow, and grief.

Our sin ruined His “very good” world. And what grieves Him most is that He

knows we choose to do this thing called sin. This sin not only separate

ourselves from the God who loves us more than we can ever fully appreciate,

but it separated Him from His only begotten Son.

Not merely from a biblical or theological perspective, but from a personal,

circumstantial perspective consider the sobering assignment of exiting the

vastness of creation to come to dwell with man. God, because He so deeply

loved all He created, gave up the only one who would qualify as a holy

sacrifice to pay the price for humanity’s sin, God missed His Son. This kind

of love plunges to the deepest recesses of how, what, and why we feel. Can

it be truth that God having observed all things in the Determinate Counsel

purposed this excruciating sense of mourning in order to suggest to us the

assault that sin placed upon all things holy? There was never night in heaven

and there will be no night when we are with God. Could He have purposed

to let there be light divided from darkness that we might reason that for six

thousand years the God of all creation would have a weeping spirit, a spirit

that is cloaked in the mystery of godliness that we might come to miss being

with Him? God was revealing to us the dark night of the soul that man would

go through. There would be a time of stillness where we must be anchored

by a spiritual necessity. This would be our transition in the last day from soul

work to spirit work. Soul work is the inward movement of the mind. It is the

endeavoring to disconnect with what is dark and not necessarily pleasant.

Spirit work involves the upward, ascending movement of the mind. It is during

spirit work that we find renewed meaning and joy in coming to Christ.

The scriptures are profoundly aware that most heartbreakingly manifested in

the life and the experience of our Lord Himself is his not being with His Father

as he was the Word with God and the Word as God. Jesus was described

as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. His acquaintanceship with grief

was not merely a sympathetic or empathetic awareness of other people’s

pain, but of what sin was costing God. He is God, he felt it within himself. His

sorrow was the result of his perception, not of his own shortcomings, but of

the great evils that plague this world. It is God’s foreknowledge and our faith

that does not allow this sorrow to turn into bitterness. To do that would allow

sorrow to abscess and become poison. God purposed the cross to turn

sorrow into joy. Jesus despised the shame because of that joy. Christ is our

example. We are to understand how God missed His Son and examine the

sorrows and griefs we experience and take care that they never become the

occasion for sin. In the realm of spiritual discernment and time God waited

and watched eagerly for His Son’s return. His longing at the cross

overshadowed the sinfulness that was represented of the son. The memory

of their goodness showed in the embrace and kiss of approval honoring the

Son. God's ability to suffer does not disturb His peace of mind. His fatherly

love that shares the sorrows of His human family contains no anxiety over

our eternal welfare. With Divine serenity His wisdom has planned for the

eternal welfare of all, and in His serenity He knows His Divine love and power

will attain that end. This is why the bible says “we are known of God”. The

scriptures speak of God dealing with only a few for a specific purpose. When

the testings of this life are over, as we stand at the threshold of eternity, we

will thank God for every sorrow. Compared to eternity, it will seem but a

moment. And when "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there

shall be no more death neither sorrow, nor crying" - then God too will have

stopped crying. And in the realm of spiritual discernment will be heard, “who

is this King of Glory…the Lord”.

.

"God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death neither sorrow, nor crying"