“Jesus said to his disciples, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father… And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” John 16:16 & 22
“By which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature…” II Peter 1:4
The Gospel for today is taken from a part of the Gospel of John called the “Farewell Discourse” — the idea being that the timing of these discourse are only hours from our Lord’s arrest in Gethsemane. The Gospels for this Sunday and the next two Sundays are all taken from our Lord’s last words to his disciples. Jesus is speaking to his inner circle of disciples at the last supper. It happened this way: Judas, having received his last bit of nourishment from Jesus’ hand, left the upper room. Then Jesus began the Farewell Discourse which continues to the end of John 17. John 18 begins with the fateful words:
“When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered.” John 18:1
That situates the discourse to time and place and that helps us draw out the meaning of the text that I have chosen for today:
“Jesus said to his disciples, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father… And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” John 16:16 & 22
I have chosen to preach on the Gospel because it throws light on the subject of deification, which I have preached on before. I have two reasons for this: First, over the next few months, I want to explore several issues: participation, deification, desire, & imitation. I want us to understand that these words refer to God’s active grace. Participation is our state of being “in Christ,” it is a state of God-given grace. Deification is God’s will for our life and later you will see why. Desire and imitation — what we long for, what we yearn for, as well as what we mimic, what we mirror, flow from God’s sacramental grace. Desire and imitation are gifts of grace that continually open us up to more of God’s grace. Chris has been taking us through the lives of Saints and in their lives you may see their desire to love God, as well as their imitation of Christ and other Saints.
I wish to speak about deification, to open it up, because the doctrine can be off putting and confusing and it is my duty to clarify the doctrines of the Church and in so doing to eliminate, as best I can, ambiguity and confusion. What is deification? Deification is God’s finality for human beings. God created us not out of necessity, not because he had to, but because he willed to do so, he willed to create us for his own reason. Deification is the reason he created us.
But understand this: the difference between the Creator and the most exalted creature is radically unrevisable; the Creator is self-subsistent; he depends on nothing and no one. On the other hand, the creature is completely dependent upon the Creator for his very being and continued existence. Yet the fledging Church in Jerusalem, her memory of Jesus life, death, and resurrection still fresh, declared her own self-understanding with the title, “children of God.” The first generation Church believed they were “children of God,” because Jesus taught her to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven.” Furthermore, John declares the same:
“as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name…” John 1:12
We are going to take the claim that we are children of God seriously just as the earliest Church did. That we are children of God is the beginning of the Church’s understanding of deification but it does not end there. Permit me to make one more point that I have made before: when I take my dog, Duke, to the vet his medical records are found under the name “Duke Spencer.” But no one thinks Duke is my child. The state of transformation that God, through his grace, is effecting in human beings, the achievement of our full potential as human beings, is to be his children and only the word deification does justice to that reality. We are the children of God, not his pets.
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” I John 3:2
Please note the importance the Beloved Disciple places upon seeing Jesus when he comes in glory and how that vision will bequeath knowledge of our selves and knowledge of God:
“Jesus said to his disciples, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father… And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” John 16:16 & 22
Exactly what did Jesus promise his disciple in the upper room when he said, “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father?” First of all, it is certainly the case that he is referring to the fact that they will see him after his resurrection — though they could not have understood what he meant since no one had ever experienced a resurrection like Jesus’ resurrection. But at that moment, they did not know what he was talking about as the text itself shows it because the disciples actually declare to one another that they had no idea what Jesus was saying. But after his resurrection they saw him and they rejoiced.
However with the figure of the woman in travail (who reminds us of the woman in travail in the Revelation) and the promise of everlasting joy, I submit that the text points to another vision of Jesus that will bring about final happiness to all creation:
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” I John 3:2
Salvation is more than a fire escape — salvation means to be made whole, to grow into our full potential as human beings, to realize our destiny as creatures meant for the Beatific Vision, bound to behold God face-to-face. And furthermore that part of our vocation, enlivened and energized by the Beatific Vision, is to bring the rest of creation to fruition. The most important end of deification is that it enables us to see the majesty and glory of God through God’s own eyes, through divine eyes. That is our true beatitude, our true happiness, our portion as human beings, the perfection of our nature by grace. And that includes the rest of the created order. Remember this: grace perfects our nature, grace does not annihilate nature; the supernatural grace of God enables us to realize our natural destiny as children of God participating in the divine nature of the God who is God. In his high priestly prayer in John 17 Jesus brings before his Father the destiny of the children of God:
“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” John 17:24
Someone asked me when the idea of our deification first came up in the Church and was it in the Bible. These are first rate questions. First, in the sense of being the first sort of questions we ought to ask concerning what we believe and hold to be really real: What is it? and Is it true?
I have shown that the doctrine of deification is there from the beginning of Jesus’ mission and that is what Peter could write:
“(Through) his precious and very great promises… you may become partakers
of the divine nature…”
II Peter 1:4
But eventually, we have to say what deification is and then we have to ask if what we say it is, is true. I have attempted to sketch out how deification will enable us to see God as he is, in his natural grandeur. This is the first assumption of the great Church Fathers like Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, and Athanasius — the doctrine of deification explains the Incarnation. But then came the first great challenge to the Church’s doctrine by Arius who denied the full divinity of our Lord. In no small manner it was the doctrine of deification that carried the day for Orthodoxy. In response to the Arian heresy and Athanasius’ defense of Orthodoxy, may of the Desert Father and the confessors that Chris taught about at Agape poured into the first great council. These men and women bore in their bodies of flesh the wounds of persecution — they were blinded, their tongues cut out, hands and feet cut off, ears and noses severed. They took it that Jesus’ flesh had become the place of judgement, and now they rejoiced that they had the honor of imitating Jesus in their bodies. These confessors are the one’s who came to Nicaea and immediately understood why Athanasius teaching became the slogan at Nicaea:
“for as the Lord, putting on the body, became man, so we men are deified by the Word as being taken to Him through His flesh… For He was made man that we might be made divine.”
Sometime back someone asked another excellent question: since angels are said, by our Lord, to behold the face of his Father, are angels also deified? You see the logic based on what I have said concerning deification and the Beatific Vision. The answer is no they are not deified. They do behold the face of the Father, as I suppose other creatures in heaven do, albeit angelic nature does not participate in the interior life of God as does human nature. For any creature to participate, to partake of the divine nature, as we do, requires first that God become, that God assume into his own divine life, the substantial life of that creature. God has assumed into his own divine life the life of the creature man, but no other creature, including the elevated, wonderful order of angels. Angelic nature is not this day participating in the very interior life of the Blessed Trinity, but human nature, your human nature received from the Blessed Virgin Mary, really and truly, world without end, does participate in the divine nature.
So what is it that the Angels behold when they behold the face of the Father? They behold the face of the Father as creature Angels must and only so. But our destiny is to behold the face of God as deified human beings, to see as closely as we creatures may, to see God through God’s own eyes, to “see him as he is” — that is our full potential.
I want to end by showing just how profound and wonder a reality deification is and I will do that by quoting at some length the Anglican author, C. S. Lewis on deification from Mere Christianity: