Biblical Foundation for The Glory of a Grieving God

“I will commit myself to you in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and tender compassion. I will commit myself to you in faithfulness; then you will acknowledge the Lord.”

“The Lord said to me, ‘Go, show love to your wife again, even though she loves another man and continually commits adultery. Likewise, the Lord loves the Israelites although they turn to other gods and love to offer raisin cakes to idols.’”

“Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites! For the Lord has a covenant lawsuit against the people of Israel. For there is neither faithfulness nor loyalty in the land, nor do they acknowledge God.”

“Come on! Let’s return to the Lord! He himself has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us! He has injured us, but he will bandage our wounds! He will restore us in a very short time; he will heal us in a little while, so that we may live in his presence. So let us acknowledge him! Let us seek to acknowledge the Lord! He will come to our rescue as certainly as the appearance of the dawn, as certainly as the winter rain comes, as certainly as the spring rain that waters the land.”

“For I delight in faithfulness, not simply in sacrifice; I delight in acknowledging God, not simply in whole burnt offerings. At Adam they broke the covenant; Oh how they were unfaithful to me!”

“Woe to them! For they have fled from me! Destruction to them! For they have rebelled against me! I want to deliver them, but they have lied to me. They do not pray to me, but howl in distress on their beds; They slash themselves for grain and new wine, but turn away from me. Although I trained and strengthened them.”

“O Israel, do not rejoice jubilantly like the nations, for you are unfaithful to your God. You love to receive a prostitute's wages on all the floors where you thresh your grain.”

“When Israel was a young man, I loved him like a son, and I summoned my son out of Egypt. But the more I summoned them, the farther they departed from me. They sacrificed to the Baal idols and burned incense to images. Yet it was I who led Ephraim, I took them by the arm; but they did not acknowledge that I had healed them.”

“How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? I have had a change of heart! All my tender compassions are aroused! I cannot carry out my fierce anger! I cannot totally destroy Ephraim! Because I am God, and not man – the Holy One among you – I will not come in wrath!”

“Ephraim has surrounded me with lies; the house of Israel has surrounded me with deceit. But Judah still roams about with God; he remains faithful to the Holy One.”

“But you must return to your God, by maintaining love and justice, and by waiting for your God to return to you.”

“Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for your sin has been your downfall! Return to the Lord and repent! Say to him: “Completely forgive our iniquity; accept our penitential prayer, that we may offer the praise of our lips as sacrificial bulls. Assyria cannot save us; we will not ride warhorses. We will never again say, ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made. For only you will show compassion to Orphan Israel!’ “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger will turn away from them.”

“Who is wise? Let him discern these things! Who is discerning? Let him understand them! For the ways of the Lord are right; the godly walk in them, but in them the rebellious stumble.”

(Hosea 2:19-20, 3:1, 4:1, 6:1-3, 6:6-7, 7:13-15, 9:1, 11:1-3, 11:8-9, 11:12, 12:6, 14:1-4, 14:9)

 
[For a more complete context of these passages taken from Hosea read Ezekiel 16, which is fittingly entitled "God's Unfaithful Bride" in the NET.]

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part I

Without adequately taking into consideration how God is agape (love) and phos (light), conceptions of who God is and what is the Glory of God will inevitably be misunderstood. Such misconceptions leads to a hazardous conception of what it means to glorify God according to a conception of God where His to-be is not defined as self-emptying Agape. This further leads to a misleading way of understanding what it means when our guide tells us that the “Lord [our] God is a consuming fire; He is a jealous God” (Deut. 4:24). Our observations along this journey have clearly shown that all such conceptual idols that although may have emphasized phos and noumenos, they have wholly neglected agape, which itself is a caricature of God that ceases to be God. This is not to say that love is God, but that a conception of God that fails to recognize that God is love in the sense that His very infinite to-be is essentially self-giving. A God who is not an essentially self-giving Loving One is not the God revealed throughout the pages of our Guide, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Our God is the one who tells us the following immutable disposition of God’s part of the covenant between Himself and mankind even in spite of the unfaithfulness of man: “Do I actually delight in the death of the wicked, declares the sovereign Lord? Do I not prefer that he turn from his wicked conduct and live? For I take no delight in the death of anyone, declares the sovereign Lord. Repent and live!” (Ez. 18:23, 32).

 

Our God is unconditionally the Loving One, for even in spite of the persistent unfaithfulness of the beloved, Israel, God remained ever faithful, such that when reflecting on this covenant while condemning the beloved for finding no place for repentance to her unfaithfulness, He grieves with the following lament: “I spread my cloak over you and covered your nakedness. I swore a solemn oath to you and entered into a marriage covenant with you, declares the sovereign Lord, and you became mine… I will deal with you according to what you have done when you despised your oath by breaking your covenant. Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish a lasting covenant with you” (Ez. 16:8, 59-60). Thus, even when giving the beloved over to consequences of stubborn unfaithfulness in spite of His persistent patience and longsuffering, He cries out one last time: “Repent and turn from all your wickedness; then it will not be an obstacle leading to iniquity. Throw away all your sins you have committed and fashion yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why should you die, O house of Israel?” (Ez. 18:30-31). This is the manifestation of the heart of the Loving One who is unconditionally self-giving, for to be anything less would be to-be untrue to who He is. Though what is also necessarily entailed in being self-giving is that the Loving One does not force the beloved to repent, instead endeavors to discipline her and woo her back, but ultimately is willing to let the beloved go, if the beloved so desires (Hosea 1:2, 2:6-7, 2:14-17, 2:19-20; 3:1-5, 6:1-3, 7:13, 11:8-9, 14:1-2, 14:4).

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part II

It is the absurdities revolving around this paradox that make it what it is: a divine unconditional gift freely given without regard for whether or not it is returned by a reciprocation of an authentically free self-giving disposition. This gift is essentially a self-sacrifice of divine love, characterized as absurd by the human understanding in view of a love willing to risk being grieved by unfaithfulness in spite of God’s absolutely unwavering faithfulness all for the sake of the realization of authentic infinite-finite communion rooted in mutual self-giving. This mutual self-giving is often identified throughout our journey as a dialectical circle of love that brings to completion the love of God and thereby truly manifests the glory of the God who is Agape (I Jn. 4:16-19). The end of this passage states the following which is an affirmation of the absolute paradox of God’s unconditionally loving disposition towards all of us: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love. We love because he loved us first” (I Jn. 4:18-19). This reciprocation of love is a freely poured out self-giving that itself is fueled by the love of God that invokes this response in the heart of the sinner who comes to wholeheartedly believe in the veracity of this absolute paradox. It invokes weeping to hear Christ say from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing,” in view of one’s conviction that he or she is rightfully deserving of eternal punishment, seeing as he or she has not just been unfaithful to their neighbor and themselves, but ultimately has been unfaithful to the one “who loved them first” and never stopped loving them with ‘His’ loyal love that is unconditionally faithful in spite of how our stubborn prodigalness has grieved ‘Him’ so (Luke 15:11-32, 23:34; I Jn. 4:10, 19).

One who wholeheartedly risks believing in this absolute paradox, can only weep at the Loving One’s inhuman response of not just forgiveness but lavishly pouring out His love upon the unfaithful beloved who has returned with the desire to be true to the covenant: “Bring the best robe, and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! Bring the fattened calf and kill it! Let us eat and celebrate, because this son of mine was dead, and is alive again – he was lost and is found!’” (Luke 15:22-23). With such a sinner who comes to believe in this absolute paradox, comes to believe in the absurd notion that God not only does not give us what we deserve for our repeated offences, licentious faithlessness, and decadent prostitution, but wholeheartedly pours Himself out to the truly repentant faithless love with the aim at establishing a lasting intimate infinite-finite koinonia of the God-Relationship, with this “person the love of God is made complete, for the fear of punishment has been cast out” in view of what the absolute paradox has shown God to truly be (I Jn. 4:18). Now that God has bought back the adulterous beloved, the beloved when she believes in this absolute paradox and holds firm to this conviction comes to the subsequent response of declaring, “You bought me to set me free, now all I want to do is be your slave and to pour my life out You as an offering. Though such an offering of my life, is a gift I can only give if You teach me how to give freely of myself to You, just as You have given freely Yourself to me.” 

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part III

Contrary to the opinion of many who postulate a doctrine of God, the fact that God grieves is not something that exposes weakness on the part of God and neither is it something that detracts at all from His glory, omnipotence, or absolute self-sufficiency. A grieving God may not be the God of the philosophers or many theologians, but it certainly is the God revealed by the voice of our guide. Some would even postulate that it is more comforting to believe in a God who always exerts absolute sovereignty to the degree that the free will of the beloved is compromised. As for me, I contest that it is far more comforting to believing in a God who grieves in spite of my abuse of the free will ‘He’ has bestowed on me as part of ‘His’ vow of unconditionally love for me, whether I remain faithful or forfeit my covenant with ‘Him’ for another lover. I find it far more moving to my soul and a sweeter melody to my ears to hear the voice of our guide revealing to us that our God has created us to be beloved who can only enter and remain in a covenantal relationship with ‘Him’ by an authentically free self-giving reciprocation of ‘His’ unconditional self-giving, which is a self-giving on the part of the Loving One that is potentially received by all, even though such a story involves the contingency that the beloved stubbornly continues in being hardhearted towards this unconditional gift of God. This is the absolute paradox I saw when I looked upon the cross with the eyes. It was the absurdity of a God who risks being grieved all for the sake of having an intimate relationship grounded in mutual self-giving that stirs within the soul the composition of loving adoration as I pour out my thanksgiving at the foot of the cross.

I find it sweeter and more moving than if I were to believe that I can never fall away from my covenant with God because of the absolute compulsivity irresistible grace that necessitates absolute perseverance on my part in ‘committing’ myself to the infinite-finite dialogue that is in actuality God ruling out the contingency that the gift is rejected in spite of ‘His’ desire and will for it to be received. If this were true reciprocal self-giving would in actuality be impossible which would render the dialectical circle of love not truly authentic to the love made manifest in scripture. The dialectical circle of love between God and the single individual only exists where the absolute paradox is presupposed, only then is the drawing of the beloved to the place of repentance is not merely a decree of the mind of God but a wooing of the heart of God. A marriage covenant build upon anything less ceases to be a covenant grounded upon mutual commitment that is authentically exchanged by a self-giving commitment to unconditional faithfulness that becomes a covenant based on love because it is built on the risk of unfaithfulness that comes with the possibility for departure from the koinonia of the marriage covenant. Therefore, the Koinonia of Agape presupposes the existence of such a risk when it involves a finite entity, who is himself or herself not essentially self-giving. Only with such an enigmatic equation of mutual self-giving inter-course does the infinite-finite dialogue take on its distinctive theme as essentially a love story, though such a theme of this is not build around a melody of sanctified ‘hedonism’ but rather a melody of self-emptying agape. 

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part IV

Let us refer once again to the parable of the prodigal son that is the exemplary illustration of the absolute paradox of a God who is essentially and unconditionally self-emptying (Luke 15:11-32). In doing so, we will interpret this parable via the theological context of our journey into discovering God’s self-disclosure throughout the oikonomia of finitude. According to this Biblically rooted theological paradigm of the infinite-finite dialogue as it revolves around the realization of the God-relationship, it can be said that the prodigal son’s father is glorified as being one who unconditionally and faithfully remained one who is Love no matter what the conclusion turned out to be regarding how the prodigal’s son carried out his part in this covenantal illustration ultimately. The Father would have been glorified both if the son returned, which would have evoked the delight of the father conveyed by Him rejoicing, and if the son did not return, which would have evoked sorrow in father conveyed by Him grieving. The reasoning of man would deny this conjecture, yet this is a tainted reasoning of a finite entity who is not love, as such he or she calculates the degree of being being glorified in a relationship based on the outcome not on the disposition of the loving one in this relationship. In relation to the story of Hosea and his relationship with his wife, the exceptionally reasonable people would have certainly scoffed at Hosea for repeatedly taking back his unfaithful wife who turned to prostitution time and time again, even when He bought her back and had more than proven his faithfulness, commitment, loyalty, and devotion to her. They would have condemned him as one whose glory was being ruined by his lovesick blindness that from their perspective should be pitied rather than held up as an exemplary form of agape. 

The Glory of a Grieving God: Part V

Both outcomes of rejoicing and grieving over the final outcome of the relationship between God and each of His most beloved creation manifest who God is throughout the Narrative of Finitude affirming that God is who He is. Such outcomes declare in a reverberating fashion the name of God given to His beloved, “I AM who I AM,” and consequently both equally bring glory to God’s namesake. The difference, however, lies in whether or not the beloved, which in this case is the prodigal son, has the occasion for sharing in this glory by becoming one who reflects who God is. This reflection occurs as the dialectical circle of love is made complete. This happens when the beloved becomes one who is unconditionally and sacrificially loving, and this reciprocal love is only aroused by the love of God (I Jn. 4:10, 12, 16-17, 19). Though such seeds of reciprocal love can only grow in the soil of a humble and repentant disposition. Only by letting go of one’s stubborn pride can one consciously and willingly be open to the unconditional and sacrificial love of God with the intent of believing in Him. This love of God is made contextually manifested to the beloved in works of loving that unconditionally remain intent on making right what has been made crooked by the unfaithfulness of the beloved. 

In regards to the prodigal son, this would have meant him repenting and positively responding to the father’s disposition of love that the father had perpetually manifested by his unconditional desire to make right their covenant via the possibility of reconciliation offered his faithful extension of merciful forgiveness. If he had returned his father’s self-sacrificial love with heartfelt sorrow and passionate commitment to become one with his father in the re-establishment of the covenantal relationship, then the son would have become open to the occasion of receiving the robe and the ring that signified that restoration of the covenant by the father’s act of sanctifying the son, setting him apart to fulfill the position correspond to being his faithful child. Yet to believe in such a self-emptying is a risk on the part of the son, for it appears to be an absurd proposition that seems too good to be true. Consequently, the son must believe in the actual self-emptying disposition of agape that his father unexpectedly displayed toward him, seeing as he reasonably and intuitively was previously convinced that since he had “sinned against heaven and against his father that he was no longer worthy to be called his son, and consequently expected to be treated like one of his father’s hired workers” (Lk. 15:18-19).