Winter2009
To know the love of Christ
Fr. MattaEl-Meskeen
“To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”(Ephesians 3:19)
CHRIST’S LOVE IS TWOFOLD: First: His Father’s love for Him and His love for the Father. This is the great Divine love. It is not only extremely perceptible but is impossible to fathom. For divinity
is beyond man’s understanding or even of its revelation. Second: Christ’s love for sinners also surpassing perception, because that Christ should love man as a human being is one thing but that He should love sinners and the wicked is beyond all thought. As Christhas said to love the righteous is logical(Matt 5:46-47; Rom 5:7) but to love the sinner, adulterer, blasphemer and licentious is illogical, because the known nature of love among us is to reciprocate love with love, if not it ceases and becomes impossible.
What Christ accomplished is something that never happened, nay cannot be understood as it is beyond understanding. Yet it actually happened. For the reader to imagine the stature, depth and impossibility of loving sinners he should look at what Christ did in the garden of Gethsemane as He prayed a great deal kneeling with tears, sighs and supplication, nay crying out to the Father to let this bitter cup pass. This cup is not, as some fathers imagine, the cup of the pain of death as it is contrary to the process of incarnation on the whole and in detail. For Christ became incarnate so as to die. He could not be exempt from death but bore the cross for the sake of the joy placed before Him, i.e. the salvation of man from the fear of death, domination of sin and the devil.
What Christ feared nearing the hour of His crucifixion was that He would be reckoned as opposed to the Father and a blasphemer against God, an adulterer and evil doer of sin, while He actually was holy without blemish or evil, nor was there any deceit found in His mouth (1Pet 2:22). He loved the Father and it is impossible to depart from loving the Father and be reckoned His enemy as the high priests had depicted Him. He was presented to death on the basis of being a sinner and evil, a blasphemer, seeking to rule. For that reason and only for it did He ask His Father with insistence, great restraint and a guilty conscience to release Him from being a blasphemer of the Father and considered as His enemy. He repeated the demand with tears and continual worship for the Father to remove this cup from Him. But that which eased His conscience was that He knew it was the will of the Father, and that He, the Father, knew very well what the cross entailed, what its shame was, and Christ’s position as Son, via God’s position as Father. He thus said His famous words: “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done”(Lk 22:42).
Here in the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians he asks us to know Christ’s love that is beyond understanding so that when we know Christ’s love of the Father in spite of being crucified as a blasphemer, then and then only will we attain the stature of the fullness of God. What is the stature of the fullness of God? It is the knowledge of the limits of the Father and of the Son in God. Because the fullness of God is the Father and the Son in the farthest and deepest limits as They are One.
The Apostle Paul’s words that we be also filled with the fullness of God means we must realize every work of the Father manifest in the Old Testament, and every work of the Son manifest in the New Testament. This means that all the fullness of God is the Gospel and the Torah together not as specific to either of the Father and the Son but as the revelation of the work of the Father and the Son in God. This shows that the Holy Bible in both its Testaments is the revelation of God.
(Life with Christ, Chapter 62 , July 4, 2005)
IN THIS ISSUE
The English Section:
The First Article is, “The Word And The Spirit” by Metropolitan George Khodr. The author explicates the role of The Holy Spirit in enablingthe apostles to write the scriptures, and in helping the readers to perceive them.
The Second Article is “Jesus Christthe Life of the World (2)”by the Late ReverendJohn S. Romanides, Ph. D.This study is in six parts. The 2st part, “Initiation Into The Life And Into All The Truth Of Christ By The Spirit Of Truth On Pentecost” includes Orthodox theological study with mystical applications on Theosis & Eucharist. We shall offer other parts of this study in future issues in sequence.
The Third Article, is,“The Letter to the Galatians, part (5)”. This part, “Why the Law?” discuses thefunction of the Mosaic law and answer the question of St Paul why the low had been added?
The Fourth Article is,“Introduction to the Coptic Lectionary” by Fouad N. Youssef.
The Arabic Section:
The First Article: is“The Healing of the Paralytic” by Fouad N. Youssef. After we completed the study of the Gospels of St. Mathew and St. Mark, in this issue we start a new series of articles for studying the Gospel of St. Luke.
The Second Article is “Christ in the 1st Letter of St. John” byJoseph M. Faltas, Ph.D. The writer explains the theological idioms which St. John acquired in his Epistles. ‘The Son of God’ & ‘Jesus is Christ’ are the idiom presented in this issue.
The Third Article is “The Resurrection of the Dead - Part II” by Said Hakim, Ph.D. In this issue we present ‘Belief in Resurrection’.
The Fourth article is "Christ The Teacher - Part III” by George Awad, Ph.D. This part presents Christ the teacher in the Gospel of John,
The Fifth article is “The end ofthe world & The Second coming”by Raouf Edward, M.D. In this issue we display the Introduction.
Farewell, Dr. Nabil EL-Shammaa” by Fouad N. Youssef. Dr. Nabil had departed our temporal world to eternity on October 2, 2008. He was one of the key founding members of “Saint Mark’s Orthodox Fellowship”.
We thank every person who offered help in publishing and distributing the magazine, asking the Lord to reward them with His heavenly blessings. Also, we ask for your prayers
REMINDER
We remind all members to renew their subscription for the Seventh Volume of Word of Life Magazine.