Emmanuel
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Unit II-N
Is Jesus Really Emmanuel – “God with Us”?
© Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D./Magis Institute July 2011
Two final considerations may help the reader to synthesize the evidence in this book from the vantage point of the heart and the mind:
1) Evidence of the heart in Paul and John (Section I), and
2) Evidence of the mind – a final synthesis (Section II).
Contents
Evidence of the Heart in Paul and John
After reflecting on the six sources of evidence for Jesus’ divinity and unconditional Love (i.e., the resurrection as spiritually transformed embodiment; the gift of the Holy Spirit – the power of God; Jesus’ miracles – particularly the raisings from the dead; Jesus’ self-revelation – particularly as the exclusive Son of the Father; Jesus’ words of love; and Jesus’ works of love – particularly the Eucharist and the passion), Saints Paul and John affirmed not only that Jesus is Unconditional Love, but also that the Father is Unconditional Love, and therefore that Jesus participates with the Father in divine status (“in the form of God” – Phil 2:6; and “the Word was God” – Jn 1:1). Their remarkable expressions of this intimate connection between God (the Father), Jesus, and Unconditional Love can scarcely be improved, and so I thought a brief synopsis of them might provide a suitable summary of the heart’s affirmation of Jesus as Emmanuel.
The Unconditional Love of God in Paul
As noted in Unit II-E, Paul connects love to his experience of the Holy Spirit:
…[A]s it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” – but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God…. …[N]o one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us (1Cor 2:9-12).
Paul links this experience of the Spirit to the preaching and passion of Jesus. This leads him, in turn, to an awareness of the unconditional Love of God (the Father) and to a deep appreciation of Jesus as the Son of God:
My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:2-3).
This “logic” is beautifully manifest in the letter to the Ephesians (3:14-19). Paul begins with linking the Holy Spirit to the “risen Christ in our hearts” and then links both the Spirit and Christ to love:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner man (being), and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.[1]
Notice that Paul’s experience of the Holy Spirit in connection with his knowledge of Jesus leads to his affirmation of the unconditional Love of Christ. This deepens his awareness of Jesus as Emmanuel, the divine Son, which he finds confirmed by the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ resurrection, and His passion.
Paul’s appreciation of love as the highest and all-encompassing virtue is not only grounded in the Spirit’s interior confirmation, but also in the preaching of Jesus. He virtually quotes Jesus’ commandment to love in the Letter to the Galatians (5:14): “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”[2] He is also acquainted with the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Eph 4:2).[3] Paul’s awareness of Jesus’ passion and death compel him to conclude to the unconditional Love of Christ: “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rm 5:8). And again, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal 2:20). And again, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly beloved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:1-2).
Therefore, Paul attributes his awareness of the nature of love and the unconditional love of Christ and the Father to an interrelated threefold revelation:
This threefold revelation of love is so powerful that it enables Paul to define the nature of love and to unqualifiedly proclaim it as unconditional in Christ and the Father. He expresses this in two particularly moving passages: 1Cor 13 and Rm 8:31-39. The first passage concerns the nature of love:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. … And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love (1Cor 13:1-13).
The second passage speaks of the unconditional Love of God (the Father) through the unconditional Love of Jesus Christ:
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is He that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rm 8:31-39).
By combining these two passages, we can show the unconditional Love of God (from Rm 8:31ff) within each of the specific attributes of love (given in 1Cor 13). This can be done by substituting “God” for “love,” and adding the adverb “unconditionally” before every positive attribute of love (or “unqualifiedly” before every negative attribute of love) in the 1Cor 13 hymn:
God is unconditionally patient,
God is unconditionally kind.
God unqualifiedly does not envy.
God unqualifiedly does not boast,
God unqualifiedly is not proud.
God unqualifiedly is not rude,
God unqualifiedly is not self-seeking,
God unqualifiedly is not provoked to anger,
God unqualifiedly keeps no record of wrongs.
God unqualifiedly does not delight in evil,
but unconditionally rejoices with the truth.
… God never fails.
If the unconditional Love of God is truly a reflection of the unconditional Love of Christ, and if the unconditional Love of Christ is truly confirmed in His preaching about love and Abba; His Eucharist and passion; and the interior confirmation of the Holy Spirit, then the above reconstruction of the Hymn to Love in 1Cor 13 is really a hymn about God, and concretely reveals the unconditional Love of both God the Father and Jesus Christ, His Emmanuel.
The Unconditional Love of God in John[4]
The Gospel of John, which might be subtitled, “The Gospel of Love,” has correctly focused on the essence of Jesus as being at once Unconditional Love and the Son of God from all eternity. Inasmuch as the Evangelist and his followers reflected deeply on the six sources of evidence for Jesus’ unconditional Love and Lordship (which are set out in Units II-C – II-M of this part of the encyclopedia), a brief synopsis of the Johannine theology of divine love may serve to conclude our thoughts about Jesus as Emmanuel.
The core of John’s Gospel might best be captured in Jesus’ final commandment to His disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). There are several reasons for believing that the Evangelist wrote this Gospel around this commandment. First, he is concerned to show that the Father’s core identity is love (specifically the love of His Son which extends to the disciples).[5] Secondly, the Evangelist names himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”[6] In Semitic culture a name refers to a person’s core identity, so John’s name reflects the most important thing that ever happened to him, namely, that he was loved by Jesus.[7] Thirdly, the Gospel is concerned with the Father’s and Jesus’ love for the disciples and the world as a central theme.[8] Though all thirty-four of the references (given in the above footnotes) to the Father’s and Jesus’ love are important for revealing their conjoint core identity (as Love – Agape), we need only mention three specific passages to show how this core identity impacts Jesus’ final commandment (“Love one another as I have loved you”).
John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”
This passage shows God’s unconditional Love for humankind manifest in His sending (giving up[9]) His only begotten Son, whom He loves unconditionally. The Father’s sending of His beloved Son is done not to condemn humankind, but expressly to save humankind from condemnation. The Father unconditionally offers salvation to anyone who accepts His perfect gift through belief.[10] Since the Father’s love is absolute and unconditional, one cannot grasp it fully, and so is constrained merely to probe the depth of this love through prayer, contemplation, empathy, and the help of the Holy Spirit.
John 15:9. “Just as the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you; abide in My love.” This passage comes from Jesus’ discourse to His disciples. In it, He tells them something almost unbelievable and incomprehensible – that He has loved them as much as the Father has loved Him! We have now moved from the Father’s unconditional Love for the world (John 3:16) to Jesus’ unconditional Love for His disciples. John provides a series of pericopes throughout his Gospel seemingly designed to reveal this love concretely through the response of Jesus’ beloveds. John takes the time and effort to incite empathy within his narratives. One may get an insight into or a feeling for Jesus’ love through the responses of trust, love, courage, and healing shown by His mother, Peter, John (“the one whom Jesus loved”), Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan woman, Martha and Mary (the sisters of Lazarus), Nathaniel, the man at the sheep pool, the man born blind, and others. These manifestations of the depth and power of Jesus’ love are but a tip of His universal proclamation, “Just as the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you.”
John 17:23-24. “…You [Father] sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. …for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” Jesus prays ardently for His disciples prior to His death. In His prayer, He affirms that the Father has loved the disciples as much as He has loved Him, and subsequently affirms that the Father has loved Him prior to creation! In other words, John is proclaiming here that the Father’s love for the disciples (and those who accept His love through belief) is the same unconditional Love He has for His Son in all eternity. Again, this affirmation is so unbelievably good and beautiful that one is reduced to mere superficial appreciation.
Nevertheless, this proclamation stands out as a conclusion to the Gospel of John and the observations made in Part Two of this book. It reflects the deepest meaning of Jesus’ eucharistic words and actions, His passion and death, His proclamation of the Prodigal Son, His encouragement to address God as Abba, His proclamation of the beatitudes, and His community with sinners and transgressors of the law. It also expresses what the Holy Spirit has revealed to Paul about the God of love, and what Paul attempted to express in summary fashion in Romans 8:35ff (“What can separate us from the love of Christ…”). Difficult to believe as it may seem, the Johannine proclamation of the unconditional Love of God (the Father loving us in the same way that He loves the Son), is not inconsistent with the preaching of Jesus, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of Saint Paul, and the understanding of the synoptic authors.
For this reason, we have rational and responsible hope to replace fear with unconditional trust in the unconditional Love of God manifest through Jesus Christ. If Jesus is Emmanuel, then God is Unconditional Love; and if God is Unconditional Love, then we can afford to repent (metanoia – be converted, turn our hearts more closely to the Lord) and even be in a continuous state of metanoia as we journey with the Lord toward the unconditionally loving end for which He has created us.
This trust in the unconditional Love of God is summed up in the First Letter of John (4:15):
Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another …. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. … There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.
If the Spirit compels, if your heart is moved, if your inner being resonates with the truth of this love, trust and follow Him.
Synopsis
We return again to the questions we have probed throughout this book. Would Emmanuel (“the unconditionally loving God with us”) give Himself to us as a self-sacrificial gift? Would He devise a method of giving that self-sacrifice to us again and again in perpetuity? Would He want to be our scapegoat? Our paschal lamb? Would He “hang around” with sinners and people of lowly descent? Would He declare love to be the highest commandment? Would He express the love of the Father through the parable of the Prodigal Son? Would Emmanuel address God (the Master of the universe) as “Abba”? Would He have elucidated love as humble-heartedness, gentle-heartedness, peacemaking, mercy, purity of heart? Would Emmanuel have shared His love through miracles, manifested Himself in resurrected glory, and given us His own Spirit? Would He have offered us His life with the Father in all eternity? If this is what an unconditionally loving God might say or do to “be with us,” then it would seem difficult to resist believing that Jesus is the One.
When one considers the contents of Part Two of this book, one may be moved to affirm the reality that Jesus and God (the Father) are Unconditional Love. When this is combined with the evidence of His divinity or “Lordship” (from Part One of this book), one can recognize divine confirmation of this unconditional Love – in the divine power of the Holy Spirit, the divine glory of the resurrection, the divine power of His miracles, particularly raising the dead, and in His self-revelation.
As one scans the evidence presented in Units II-C-M, one may come to a simultaneous threefold realization that Jesus is Lord (Units II-C-G), that God the Father is Unconditional Love (Unit II-J), and that Jesus is Unconditional Love (Units II-K-M). The interplay between these conclusions gives a concurrent answer to the three questions with which we have been concerned from the outset, namely, would God be Unconditional Love? If so, would He come to be with us (as Emmanuel)? If so, is Jesus the One? The simultaneous affirmation of Jesus’ Lordship, the Father’s unconditional Love, and Jesus’ unconditional Love would serve to answer these three questions in the affirmative. This would mean that the unconditional hope we spoke of in the Introduction is warranted. The diagram at the end of this Conclusion may help to clarify the flow of evidence underlying the affirmation that Jesus is Emmanuel (“the Unconditional Love of God with us”).
Recall the declaration made in the Introduction to this book: If Jesus truly is the Son of God, then we cannot doubt the promise expressed so profoundly in the Gospel of John:
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. (3:16-17)
If Jesus truly is the Son of God, then God has come to be with us in an act of perfect empathy (Emmanuel), and if God has come to be with us in perfect empathy, then God is Unconditional Love. Now, if God is Unconditional Love and has come to be with us, then we are created for an eternal life of unconditional Love and unconditional Joy with Him. Simply put, if these propositions are true, then all other truths pale by comparison, for these truths not only ground an unconditional hope in absolute fulfillment through love, but also hope in the future of every human being, and even the future of the world. This message of Unconditional Love tells us who we truly are, what our purpose in life is, and where the meaning of suffering is to be found. It tells us what love truly is both in its simplicity and complexity; in its joy and in its self-sacrifice. It tells us about the possibilities for human culture and community and demonstrates definitively that whatever effort we put into love in this life will be carried forward in God’s loving eternity.
Footnotes
- ↑ See also Romans 5:5, “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.”
- ↑ This theme is reiterated in Col 3:14, “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” and 1 Cor 13 (discussed below).
- ↑ Recall that “poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3) may be roughly translated as “humble-hearted” and that “meek” (Matt 5:5) may be roughly translated as “gentle-hearted.”
- ↑ For an extensive treatment on the commandment of love in the Gospel of John – its origin in the historical Jesus and its relationship to the synoptic tradition, see Meier 2009, pp. 558-572.
- ↑ “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand” (Jn 3:35); “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing” (Jn 5:20); “Just as the Father has loved Me…” (Jn 15:9); “…You [Father] sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me” (Jn 17:23). Notice here, John’s recognition of what Paul saw, namely, that the Father is calling us to be beloved even as His Son is beloved; “…for You [Father] loved Me before the foundation of the world” (Jn 17:24). Notice the explicit reference to Jesus’ belovedness not only in His pre-incarnate existence, but also in a pre-worldly (pre-creation) existence; “…I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17:26).
- ↑ The Evangelist presumably refers to himself in the following passages: “There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23); “When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’” (John 19:26); “So [Mary Magdalene] ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him’” (John 20:2); “Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord’” (John 21:7).
- ↑ The same would hold true for Jesus’ self-identity in the Synoptic Gospels, “beloved Son” (Mk 1:11, 9:7 and par.). Recall that Jesus likely referred to Himself as the beloved Son in the parable of the Wicked Vintners (see Unit II-G, Section II.B.3). Belovedness describes the core identity of Jesus in addition to His Sonship. Though John does not recount the parable of the Wicked Vintners, he does mention belovedness explicitly in several other passages (see the previous two footnotes for citations).
- ↑ John 3:16, 35; 5:20; 8:42; 10:17; 11:3, 5, 36; 13:1, 34-35; 14:15, 21, 23, 28, 31; 15:9, 10, 12-13, 17; 16:27; 17:23-24, 26; 21:15-17.
- ↑ This passage probably refers not only to Jesus’ incarnation (being sent), but also to His crucifixion (anticipatorily). This is not an unreasonable interpretation in light of Jesus’ definition of optimal love (“laying down life”). “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).
- ↑ “Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into condemnation, but has passed out of death into life” (Jn 5:24). The term “belief” here is not meant to exclude those who have not heard about Jesus because they were born into a circumstance which did not allow it (e.g., a time before Christ, or a place in which missionary activity had not occurred, or a family who did not have the opportunity to freely hear the Gospel, etc.). Therefore, the above passage would seem to require, at the very least, a hearing of Jesus’ words. Jesus does not say anything about those who have not heard His words, but it would be nonsensical to assert that He would hold them responsible for something that they have not had the opportunity to hear or understand.
