I’ve got a lovers quarrel with this human synthesis of immanence and transcendence. I need transcendence, but I seem mired in immanence. I seek transcendence, but I always seem to find immanence. In fact, I am like Icarus—precisely when the winds have born me into the upper ether, the sun melts the wax in my wings and I plummet to the sea. I can go directly from a day of singing hallelujah to a night of sloth, procrastination, and lust.
It must be that we begin in utter immanence. But utter immanence is swimming under water—deep under water. We need air. In our desperation for it, we search out any bubble we can find. Sooner or later, though, the gas in those bubbles proves noxious. We are not fish. We do not have gills—we have lungs.
When I find myself plummeting, flecks of wax trailing above me, and then weltering in the surf in a wrack of plumage, my inclination is to feel like the Israelites who say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off” (Ezekiel 37:11). I may not say it to myself after every fall, but always in my heart I believe, to some degree, that I will never get out this flying-crashing rollercoaster. I may simultaneously know that I will repent, run to Christ, and spread my wings again, but part of me doesn’t believe I’ll sustain flight. To this part of me, I think God says this:
“Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. And I will put My Spirit within you, and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it” (Ezekiel 37:12-14).
This is a challenge to believe, and it deserves some thought. Ezekiel received this as a prophetic vision. He was a messenger sent to the nation of Israel before the time of Christ. God didn’t just inspire him to write this for the sake of 21st Century subjectivism. But in light of the New Testament, do we read this as some fulfilled prophecy that applied metaphorically to the pre-Messianic people of God? Or is it about the post-incarnation people of God—the church? My theology tells me that it doesn’t not apply to the church. And as a member of the church, I’ve got to heed this message for myself. I must believe God’s promise.
And how does this apply to a believer whose sanctification is not complete? Where am I in God’s process of regeneration? Surely, a believer cannot still be a skeleton lying in the dust. Surely an unperfected character cannot be clothed in skin, breathing, and reposed in the land of Israel. So have my bones been collected? Is sinew knitting me back together? Has the flesh begun to grow back over me? Surely a believer—one born again—at least has breath in his lungs, since this breath seems to stand for each body’s portion of the Holy Spirit.
Here’s what I’ve got to conclude: by God’s grace, I’ve got breath in my lungs. I didn’t receive that breath for my ability to stay in the air. I received it because God loves me, died for me, and sent the Holy Spirit as a gift. The cross means that when I crash, I really have to square myself to the fact that God isn’t mad at me, that He poured all his wrath, all the punishment I deserved for my sin, on his Son. And by simply accepting that gift, I am covered in the righteousness of God. Nothing I do can ever mess that up. No matter how hard I fall, I cannot disqualify myself from grace. Yes, sin begets more sin, but I don’t have to fear that God will punish me by some sort of karma.
What is left then? The only thing to do is to take God’s hand, get back up, and take flight again. Only, it’s likely we’re meant for flying about as much as we’re meant for breathing underwater. The purpose of our wings must be to let God’s breath carry us and place us on land. So maybe my mixed metaphor—a shameless blend of myth and Scripture—is mistaken. Perhaps to be like Icarus is to forget that you were one skeleton among many, and that God’s work in your life is not to give you wings, but to give you flesh, to put breath in your lungs, and bring you where you belong—“on your own land” (vs. 14).