The Vicarious Self 4.

If the symbolism of the first 6 words of John’s book about Jesus is not clear to his reader, the next 18 will be. He writes, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” This man, Jesus, “the Word,” and God are one and the same person to John. Moreover “Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.” There is no doubt. John’s three years with Jesus and the years that followed in close company with the “Spirit of Truth,” convinced him that “the Christ,” “the Son of God” is the “Creator,” “God.”

The ramifications of this for people who believe it are amazing. The Creator, “the Lord God,” who “formed” our race “from the dust of the ground and breathed into” us the “breath of life,” making us “living beings,” is Himself living among us. More than that He will, if we’ll believe He is whom He claims to be, give us “Life.”

Apparently Creation is ongoing. We are of great value to God and He is here to make sure we understand this. He wants us to finally, fully experience the quality of “Life” for which we’re designed. He values us supremely. His “Life,” lived in our lives, demonstrates, like nothing else can, how valuable we are.

Dallas Willard, in a very important book, The Divine Conspiracy, writes about the necessity of our realizing this. We “must,” he writes, “at least be sure in (our) heart of hearts that (our) life must be a good thing … Saint Clare, won in her youth to a life of complete devotion to Jesus … had these for her last words: ‘Lord God, blessed be Thou for having created me!’ This should be the daily breath of every Follower of Jesus. … before her last words, she was heard to murmur to her soul, ‘Depart in peace … Go forth confidently to Him who has protected thee and loved thee as a mother loves her child.’ We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are absolutely sure that it is good for us to be, and to be who we are. This means we must have no doubt that the path appointed for us by when and where and to whom we were born is good, and that nothing irredeemable has happened to us or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God’s full world.”

This is the confidence of the “Vicarious Self.”