THE NEARNESS OF GOD

 By Roger Salter

Special to VIRTUEONLINE

www.virtueonline.org

February 24, 2025

Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him. John 14:23. The Nearness Of God To The Believer.

Saint Augustine commented that God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. It is an astonishing assertion. But God is familiar with all the intricacies of our nature, the desires of our affections and the tendencies of our will. We can only take blurred snapshots of our conscious self. Changeability is the mode of our inner life. Our moods are ever moving and developing. Self-analysis is mere mental “scampering about”. Options are confusing. Toward minor ones we may exercise indifference but to those that really count we may become cautious and anxious. Genuine wisdom and stability can only come from common grace.

Special grace, the grace that saves, is utterly transforming. The life of natural man that prefers the absence of God suddenly becomes rapt in him. The relationship between the believer and the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, becomes one of mutual indwelling. The elect child of God is a being that lives in God.  There is nothing more intimate than “in-ness”. It is an enclosure. Within the Lord it is the reality of residing at the heart and center of the divine affection. We are in the grasp of the one true God - enclosed within his powerful, almighty hand. “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me [eternal election], is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” [John 10:28-30].

When we are in communion with God, we have joined the holiest circle of fellowship imaginable. We have been graciously admitted to the most cordial society that far surpasses the privileges of any other association. We are linked in to the compatibility of the threefold Lord to muse upon celestial secrets and mysteries that in this life emerge from the wisdom of Holy Scripture and invite our eager contemplation. Holy contemplation is the beautiful foretaste of heaven. Contemplation of God is our most enriching experience in which the loveliness of Christ is divulged to us. In contemplation he sees us ready for the encounter with the meek, merciful, majestic person of the Son of God.

Nathanael was in contemplation in his own home (under the fig tree) when the Lord Jesus came to him. It was a gracious and enlightening visit [John 1:43-51]. If only our homes in this life of unnecessary haste were centers of quiet Christian meditation. A quiet, orderly home is a priceless benefit. A happier condition is a peaceful heart. The extraordinary blessing supreme is when the Master of the universe, and all that exists, deigns to occupy his home within us.

                                                                                                                                           RJS