We cringe at the Old Testament Law… all those blessings and curses, obey and disobey. The Law is filled with ultimatums, or so we think.
Let’s for a moment reimagine the Law and its intent. Let’s presume that God doesn’t actually desire to curse, in fact, he’d rather not.
Let’s consider that humanity’s partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil truly resulted in our knowing and experiencing, both good and evil in all areas of life and that part of that is experiencing the tug-of-war with blessing and curse.
Reimagining Blessing
In Hebrew the root variation of the word Eden means to delight, to take pleasure in. When God created male and female he declared them to be not only good, but ‘very’ good. He delighted in creation, all of creation, thus naming the garden, Eden, a place full of what God delights and takes pleasure in. God’s delight is reflected in his blessing– bestowing the goodness of his presence on the object of his delight. Life in Eden could be defined as experiencing the perpetual blessing and goodness found in the presence of God who personally delights in us.
The root word for blessing in Hebrew (bāraḵ) infers that creation depends on God for continued existence and function—our being, living and thriving is only possible through God’s initiative. Our mere creation is an expression of blessing because the act itself is God’s delight. Blessing is an extension of sacred presence. In the beginning, creation was an extension of God’s presence, his blessing. Adam and Eve not only enjoyed the blessing of being made in the image of God (extension of sacred presence), but also co-existed with the sacred presence in the garden in an intimate relationship. This image is the heart of what it means to be blessed.
Therefore, being blessed by God is not the #blessed movement or getting everything we pray for, or living the #goodlife where we never experience suffering and have a comfortable financial nest egg that assures our future comfort. I’m not sure how this became our working definition of blessing in America, but I think it’s time we stopped and began to rework our understanding.
The Israelites understood blessing to be God’s engagement with them in a covenantal relationship dwelling among them. The tabernacle, where his Spirit hovered among them, was a profound symbol and reality of God’s blessing to them because it signified his presence, their chosen-ness. Early followers of Jesus were blessed because he walked among them in the flesh. Present day Christians are blessed because they are chosen co-heirs, a royal-priesthood, adopted sons and daughters, working and serving in cooperation with God through the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. God’s blessing has little to do with winning the lottery and everything to do with the relational presence of a Triune God with his beloved creation. Salvation through Christ is the ultimate blessing because it makes it possible to once again enjoy the presence of God in delightful union as it was in Eden.
The Opposition to Blessing
The Garden of Eden emanated blessing, but the fall introduced the inverse of blessing; the curse. Now knowing good and evil we experience the parallel, or opposite, of everything good and delightful that existed in Eden. Life and death. Love and hate. Joy and sorrow. Plenty and want. Blessing and curse. In our new, fallen world, we experience both polar opposites in all situations. Our world and minds are torn and conflicted, in constant discernment between the two and often wrestling to understand either side of the coin while failing to define them clearly. Our judgement can be convoluted and contradictory, thus leaving us to live in a constant game of tug-of-war. As we toil in our daily lives, God doesn’t leave us without relief because he has compassion on our suffering and so provides the antidote to the curse.
When we read the Bible and notice God talking a lot about blessings and curses, he is not just bringing it up to tell us to ‘be good or else.’ He’s simply speaking in terms of the state of existence in which we live teetering on good and evil. He gave the Law, and now Christ, to guide us toward relief from the curse so that we can enjoy blessing once again. Whether we choose to receive the blessing, is up to us.
It is inevitable that we will experience the curse side of our world because if blessing has everything to do with God’s presence in our lives, then God had to make a way for us to be receive his blessing because the fall separated us from his presence. And since blessing is God’s initiative, we can’t conjure it up or be good enough to earn it. This is where he offers grace, his favoring presence, out of deep love.
The Object of God’s Delight
I think when we think of the curse, we forget that God first and foremost delights in his creation. When is the last time you delighted in another person? Delight is a wistful, audacious, carefree, head-over-heels type of emotion that we, if we are honest, rarely experience. If this is how God feels about his creation then he must be broken-hearted that we are far from him. When he expresses his jealousy, he is grieving his true love lost. He grieves for us, he misses us, which is why he’s making a way for us to enjoy and know his blessing, but he also knows that if we don’t delight in his blessing, his presence, we will without a doubt experience the curse. A curse that he is not inflicting on us because we’ve denied him, but a curse that we enacted when we desired know the scope of good and evil.
So we may look at the Old Testament with disregard, or even cringe because we think God is vengeful, but I encourage you to think again, look again, reimagine from God’s point of view. God gave the Law out of love because that is his nature. He is so loving that he desires to bless us with his divine presence in whatever way possible. The Law was a command because God was that passionate about not seeing his creation suffer. If you are a parent you know how we can sometimes be commanding over our children because we really want them to make good, life-giving choices because we can’t bear seeing them hurt when they make poor decisions.
The Law was meant to redirect our gaze from the downward spiral that is self-obsession which perpetuates the curse. In the garden, our delight and object of affection was toward God himself because he was the source of our life, blessing, joy and love, but now we experience the opposite—self-focused delight which leads to selfish motives and attitudes towards others as well as self-deprecation. We live with misdirected affections. It is no wonder the first Commandment was to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength (Deut. 6:5, 11:3 & Matt. 22:37). If we could just get the first one right, the core of all blessing, then our lives would overflow with blessing and be a blessing to others. When we revel in God’s presence in our lives, we can begin to glimpse our life in Eden that was full of blessing.
Awakening to God’s Blessing
God didn’t stop with the Law because he knew its shortcomings and the struggles we’d face in obeying it. He knew our fallen nature was prone to forgetting our original design, the source of our true longings. Jesus came to enact blessing in the flesh before our eyes– a tactile, visual reminder of who we were created to be; recipients of God’s perpetual presence and blessing. Jesus being wholly divine and wholly human as God’s incarnate blessing is his way of saying, ‘I love you, I’ll never stop wanting to be with you, bless you and delighting in you.’ Jesus came to mediate God’s blessing to humanity beyond the Law, to awaken our memory and our longings to whom we desire most.
On Sunday May 23 we will celebrate Pentecost, the day Christ sent the Holy Spirit upon his followers signifying the continuation of his work through his Church. Pentecost happens ten days after Christ ascended into heaven. God’s ultimate gift of blessing comes through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Because Christ broke the curse once and for all we can now live united with God, while on earth, through the Holy Spirit living in us. He’s provided the ultimate way for us to experience mutual delight, creation and Creator, forever whilst living in a world where we also experience the scope of good and evil (John 13: 17-21).
While we live in a world that experiences the curse, Christ’s death and resurrection made way for us to enjoy God’s sacred presence in a fuller, more permanent way by making himself at home in us. This is what a life blessed by God looks like.
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Jesus’ prayer for all believers, John 17:22-23
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References: Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, Curse and Blessing. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary, Blessing, Blessed word study.
