19. Immanuel

WITH many, nothing stands quite so much as an obstacle in the way of the practice of intimate fellowship with God as the saying of Jesus to the Samaritan woman at Sychar "God is a spirit, and.they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24).

In all our attempts to make representations of things, and no less in all our processes of thought, we begin with what we can see, hear, smell or taste. Our thought has no grip on that which is not material, and when we want to talk about it, and try to picture it to ourselves, we have no way of doing it except as we compare what is invisible with something that is seen.

We know that we have a soul, but no one has ever seen his own; and even the question in which part of our person our soul dwells, can only be answered approximately.

It is the same with the spirit-world and with the spirits of the departed. Good as well as bad angels are bodiless. They have neither shape nor form by which they can be recognized. Whether an angel needs space in order to exist, no one knows. Whether in illness our sick-chamber can hold a thousand angels or not, no one can tell. Only when in order to appear to us an angel receives form is the difficulty lifted. As long as he is pure spirit without form, he utterly escapes our observation.

And it is not otherwise with those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. The dead exist until the return of the Lord in a purely spiritual state, in separation from the body, and we can form no idea about the souls of the departed.

And we are troubled by this selfsame obstacle when we try to lift up our heart unto God.

God also does not discover Himself to our visible eye. He is Invisible because He is Spirit and the Father of spirits. And for this reason, in the way of our ordinary knowledge and discovery, God is never found or met.

The touch of our soul with God takes place in a spiritual manner.

It takes place of itself in Immanuel.

What is it that makes us feel at once at home, when in foreign parts we unexpectedly hear others speak our own language?

Is it not the sense that this language is common property with us and our fellow-countrymen, a language by which we live, and by means of which we come into closer touch with others than is possible in a foreign tongue?

We are similarly affected, only far more strongly by the company of animals. Highly organized animals approach man at a high level of intelligence. In the association of a shepherd or hunter with his dog or of a horseman with his horse, it comes not infrequently to a very significant relation. And yet, however close sometimes an animal may come to us, when we join company again with a fellowman, at once another and a far richer world discloses itself to us. He is flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, a soul like our soul. This creates fellowship and makes it more intimate.

This is especially marked when we come in touch with people who are of the same mind and aim with us. There are groups among us, classes, professions and a number of other distinctions. And if one desires to become acquainted with us and to know us more closely, so that there is a mutual opening of heart to heart, he must belong to the same group, to the same kind, and, as it were, be embarked with us on the sea of life in the same boat. And this is the significance of "Immanuel."

In the Babe of Bethlehem God Himself makes approach to us in our human nature, in order in our language, through our world of thought and with the help of our imagination, to make Himself felt in our human heart according to its capacity.

In our nature: This means that it is not required of us that we shall go out from our nature in order to find God by a purely spiritual existence. No, God, our God, wills to bless us, and from His side makes the transition which is spared us. Not that we go to Him but that He comes to us. Not that we must lift ourselves up to Him but.that He descends to us, in order afterward to draw us up to Himself. He enters into our nature, takes it upon Himself, and lies in the manger in the ordinary condition of our human nature.

Here the distance between God and ourselves is taken away. The effort is spared us of trying to grasp this by becoming purely spiritual. What we receive, is human nature. What we hear, is human speech. What we observe, are human actions. Through and behind all this, there plays and glistens an unknown brightness, a mysterious loftiness, a transparent holiness, which now does not repel us, but rather attracts and fascinates, because it approaches us in our human nature.

So the human nature of Immanuel is not merely a screen to temper the too dazzling-glories. No, it is the means and instrument to bring the Divine life naturally and intimately close to our own heart.

It is as though the human nature in us identified itself with the human nature in Jesus in order thus to bring God and our soul into immediate contact one with the other.

We do not say that this by itself was necessary. It rather seems that the fact that we are created after God's image supplies us with everything that is indispensable to our fellowship with God.

But bear in mind that sin ruined this image of God.

And now in this weakened, undone estate only a gift of holy grace could fill in the gap, and this has taken place in Immanuel, in the coming of our God to us in the auxiliary garb of our human nature.

That this was necessary, even idolatry affirmed when it imaged the Lord of heaven and earth after the likeness of a man; and therefore the Christian religion could undo idolatry and paganism, since in Immanuel it alone presents the true Image of God anew. Is it not true that only under Christ this intimate fellowship with the living God has been brought about, which has so gloriously expressed itself in psalm and hymnody?

Apart from Immanuel, there is merely a philosophy about God, denial of God, or, at most, idolatry and cold deism.

In and through Immanuel alone there is a life in and with God, full of warmth, uplift and animation.

In Immanuel God draws near to us in our own natural existence, and through Immanuel our soul spiritually mounts up from this nature to the Father of spirits.

In Immanuel is the passage, not the goal.

It begins with Jesus but it ends with the fact that the Father Himself makes tabernacle with us, when also the day breaks on your soul of which Jesus said (John 16:26): "In that day I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you."

Then unfolds itself the rich activity of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, Who could not come until after Jesus had been glorified.

Let there not be anything artificial, therefore, or conventional, in our seeking after God. No intentional, premeditated, going out after Jesus with our suppositions, in order thus to find fellowship with our God.

What Immanuel brings us is reconciliation, so that we dare draw near again, and, at the same time, the Divine in human nature, so that we can draw near again. What we owe Him is the Word, the rich world of representations and thoughts, the result of His work as our heritage, the supply of powers of the Kingdom which inwardly renew us.

But with all this, it is always the personal touch, the actual fellowship with our God that remains a hidden spiritual motion, so that inwardly we hear His voice, and we can say with Job (42:5): "Now mine eye seeth thee."

This is fellowship with our God as man with man.

Jacob at Peniel !