God With Us

For many years I wrote a monthly column for Tabletalk magazine titled “Coram Deo.” That little Latin phrase meant a great deal to Martin Luther, who in turn means a great deal to me. It means “Before the face of God.” Luther reminds us that we live our lives before His face. Such insight went far in breaking down the steep barrier Rome had erected between the sacred and the profane, between nature and grace. This in turn gave birth to the Protestant affirmation of the priesthood of all believers and the pursuit of a full orbed Christian worldview. Woot, says I.

On the other hand, it is possible, I believe, to look at this concept in a wrong way. Some might find the idea of God’s omnipresence and omniscience to be disconcerting. Seeing God as a cosmic voyeur that one can’t escape from was, for instance, abhorrent to the existential philosopher John Paul Sartre. There is no “privacy” from the Most High. When we are afraid, however, of those who stand against Him, we find comfort that He stands beside and behind us.

Which ought to be cause for great celebration. Life in the presence of God not only makes every moment matter, it not only serves as a hedge against our temptations, it not only brings comfort in times of trial, but it is what we are made for. It is precisely because of the impact of our first parents’ fall that we think that the worst of what they lost was the ideal environment, the labor devoid of hardship, the harmony of their relationship with each other. These are deep losses indeed but are not worthy to be compared with being expelled from His loving presence. The glory of the garden was the presence of the Gardener.

Which is precisely what has been restored to us by the work of Christ for us. We get a hint of this when, on Resurrection morning, Mary Magdalene, upon seeing the risen Jesus, “mistakes” Him for the gardener. Could she make this mistake because He is the Gardener? The New Adam meeting with a representative of the New Eve in the garden takes us back to Eden. In like manner, just as the angelic guard’s flaming sword blocked the way to the garden, now the angelic heralds announce that He is risen. The doorway to paradise, which is at its essence the blessed presence of the Father, has been opened as certainly as the veil blocking the way to the Holy of Holies was torn asunder, from top to bottom.

The one named Immanuel, God with us, has brought us into His loving presence. The Spirit that indwells us assures us that this we will never again lose. He is near. Oh glory, He is near.