Meditating on Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV/1, §57.1 (3-21), “God With Us.” 

It was moving, at times even thrilling, to chew on all the weighty implications of the Christian message, “God with us.” Too often simple phrases such as the one mentioned become trite, yet in this work Barth does not allow the reader pass it over so easily. 

I was first moved to stop and reflect on the fact of our shared history with God, or rather our existence within His history. Barth says, “a report about ourselves is included in that report about God. We cannot … leave it as the report of something which has taken place in a quite different sphere in which we ourselves have no place. It tells us that we ourselves are in the sphere of God” (p. 3). Christ’s “invasion of our history” is a manifestation of what has always been true, that all of history is by, from, and to Him. We do not live, we cannot live, in a separate world from God. Christ made that entirely clear, if it had not been before, by coming into “our” world so to speak, showing himself to be the object of all history.

All of this may seem obvious, but it is precisely that obviousness, that palpability, that struck me. Christ’s coming and bringing salvation is the point in time on which the whole history of God’s togetherness with man is fixated. Barth says, “all His activity has its heart and end in a single act” (p. 4). It is difficult to find words to express this. But in this way, in the fact that God demonstrated the whole of His togetherness with man in a particular event, He shows that salvation actually has come, not in pretense or only as a conception, but truly. 

An aside: Only God could do this. Man could never. It is so overwhelming to think that not only was man ordained for salvation but that salvation was ordained for man. Truly it is God’s story and God’s doing (p. 7). Though this is corny, as I read this section I kept thinking of a Hillsong lyric: “You didn’t want heaven without us, so Jesus, You brought heaven down.” In a very real sense, God desired our togetherness with Him, though He does not need it, He wants it. I found this so moving as I reflected on Barth’s work.

Back to the flow of my reflection: Christ’s coming and bringing salvation as the epicenter of all time and being connected with a later reflection I had as Barth expressed how Christ is the very object of our “We with God.” Barth writes, “our magnifying of God cannot seek and find and have its truth and power in itself, but only in God, and therefore in that one Man in whom God is for us, who is our peace and salvation. Our faith, therefore, can only be faith in Him, and cannot live except from Him as its object. Our love can only be by Him, and can only be strong from Him as its basis. Our hope can only be hope directed upon Him, and can only be certain hope in Him as its content.” (p. 9)

I thought of how so many in the world desire faith, hope, and love, or espouse some distorted versions of each, usually based on self. But the Christian’s faith, hope, and love, or participation in our togetherness with God, is based on a steady and firm object; on Christ. Even on his name. A name that encompasses the whole content of “God with us.”