A Fresh Insight on God’s Nearness and Love

Some of us may have found ourselves asking any of these questions at one or a certain time in our lives: “God, where are you?”, “Are you there?”, “Are you real?”, “Do you care?”, “Do you really love me?”, “Can I see you and touch you?” I am one of those who have asked these questions recently and in the past.

The fact is that God is a Spirit, and in this life, we live by faith and not by sight – which is not easy for beings like us who perceive things using our five physical senses and who live in a physical world. Just how near is God to us? Just how much does He love us? Is He real in the first place?

Through the pain, struggle, and the existential difficulty of calling on God who is a Spirit, I was given, must be by God Himself, a fresh Christian viewpoint on His nearness and love. This nearness and love were not really new and many others have realized this and written about this. But in my existential struggle and difficulty (like going through the dark night of the soul), the realization of how much God is near to us and how much He loves us came to me like a fresh insight, a fresh realization lately. Allow me to quote some verses from the New Testament Bible to illustrate my points.

First of all, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, wants to be so intimate to us that He is offering Himself to us as the living Bread. In John 6: 51, He said: “I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world”. In John 6: 56- 57, He said: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me”.

These verses show how much God, in the person of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ, wants to be intimate to each one of us. He is giving Himself to us as our life, our very life, the life of our souls and spirits, the eternal life. In another verse, He is offering us the living water that will spring up into eternal life. In John 4:14, He said: “But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life”. Christ is offering His divine life to us as the Living Water, His flesh and blood as our life, His very own self as our Life Supply, the Eternal Life. Eastern Orthodox Christians understand this as “uniting the human and the divine with the divine overcoming human mortality and weakness and, finally, exalting man to divine life” (as quoted in Coward, 200, p. 54). The true goal of Christian life is deification which means raising the human to the divine status or participation in the already deified humanity of Christ. These illustrate the reality that God in the person of Christ wants to be in us, wants to flow into us and fill us with His very own life, with His very own self so as to raise our humanity to divinity. He wants to unite us to Himself.

This is how much God is near and how much He loves us. He wants us to be one with Him, to partake of His eternal life. He wants to raise our humanity to the divine status. He wants to give His very own life and self to us. Our God must be very near indeed; our God must love us with a bridegroom’s love, and we are His bride. In John 15:9, He says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love” and in John 15:4, He said: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me”. Who could be sweeter than this? Our God is our divine Bridegroom! He is not only near; He is so near us as to be united with us, as to be in us. His love is strong, rich and pure, immeasurable, and never-ending.

This is His will for us, that we may be His bride and He will be our eternal Bridegroom. In fact, before His second coming on Earth, He wants a Bride consisting of those who love Him and have made themselves one with Him by receiving Him into their hearts and whole beings. Our God is a tender-loving God who takes great delight in those who love Him. Zephaniah 3: 17 says: “…He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with his love, He will rejoice over you with singing”.

We can rest in His arms of love as what Fanny Crosby wrote in the hymn “Safe in the Arms of Jesus”:

Safe in the arms of Jesus
Safe on His gentle breast
There by His love o’ershaded
Sweetly my soul shall rest.

Hark! Tis the voice of angels,
Borne in a song to me,
Over the fields of glory,
Over the jasper sea.

We can rest secure that God through His Son Jesus loves us so much and He wants to be so intimate with us as to unite us to Himself forever. Let this be our source of pure joy as we go through the vicissitudes and seasons of our lives here on earth until we see Him face to face in the Great Beyond.

About the author: Belinda F. Espiritu is a faculty member of the University of the Philippines Cebu. She holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and a PhD degree in Communication. She would like to hear from the readers about their feedback or comments on her articles through her email address: belinda.espiritu@gmail.com to set a conversation going even after her articles have been published.