A Ramble About The Expensive Pearl

In one of His parables, Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven was like a very expensive pearl or treasure hidden in a field, which when a person finds it, goes and sells everything he has to buy that field. In other words, gaining the Kingdom of Heaven is worth giving up, letting go of, everything else as though it was worthless in comparison.

So, the question then becomes, what about the Kingdom of Heaven is so worth it? Whether we like to admit it or not, this is a question which we ask ourselves. And I know this is a serious question, a question of doubt, which we ask ourselves by how we act, and the choices we make in what we pursue. What is the expensive treasure that Jesus said would be so worth it? In other words, why should we do what Jesus said? Why bother renouncing everything? Why bother denying yourself? Why not just fake it? Just sit in the pew on Sundays and put on a “good Christian facade?” It's a heck of a lot easier to try and stay out of the line of fire in both directions than the alternatives.

We need to understand what's at stake. We already know about the one direction, backwards. We know what awaits us there, and it is terrifying. But what about forwards? What goal awaits us on the other end of the trials, the poverty, the humiliation, the self-control, the picking up one's cross in humble obedience? What is the final goal of all of this?

God Himself.

The entire goal of salvation is what is called in Greek, “theosis”, and in English “deification.” Put simply, it is a human being taking on the nature of God, sharing His life fully and completely in everything except His Essence or Substance. The Fathers of the Church wrote about it in explicit terms which would make a lot of Christians do a double take, and perhaps even have heart attacks, at the language used (citations are taken from the Wikipedia.org article on “divinization”):

St. Irenaeus of Lyons: “[God] became what we are in order to make us what he is himself.”

St. Clement of Alexandria: “he who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through him … becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh.”

St. Athanasius: “God became man so that men might become gods.”

St. Cyril of Alexandria: “[we] are called 'temples of God' and indeed 'gods,' and so we are.”

St. Gregory of Nazianzus: “become gods for God's sake, since (God) became man for our sake.”

St. Augustine: “God was made man, that man might be made God.” ... “It is clear that he called men gods being deified by his grace and not born of his substance. For he justified, who is just of himself and not from another, and he deifies, who is god of himself and not by participation in another. … If we have been made sons of God, we have been made gods; but this is by grace of adoption and not of the nature of our begetter.” … “Our full adoption as sons will take place in the redemption of our body. We now have the first fruits of the spirit, by which we are indeed made sons of God. In other respects, however, since we are not yet finally saved, we are therefore not yet fully made new, not yet sons of God but children of the world.”

St. John of the Cross: “In thus allowing God to work in it, the soul... is at once illumined and transformed in God, and God communicates to it His supernatural Being, in such wise that it appears to be God Himself, and has all that God Himself has. And this union comes to pass when God grants the soul this supernatural favour, that all the things of God and the soul are one in participant transformation; and the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation; although it is true that its natural being, though thus transformed, is as distinct from the Being of God as it was before.”

Orthodox Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) Ware writes, “By virtue of this distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies, we are able to affirm the possibility of a direct or mystical union between man and God—what the Greek Fathers term the 'theosis' of man, his 'deification'--but at the same time we exclude any pantheistic identification between the two: for man participates in the energies of God, not in the essence. There is union, but not fusion or confusion. Although 'oned' with the divine, man still remains man; he is not swallowed up or annihilated, but between him and God there continues always to exist an 'I—Thou' relationship of person to person.” (“The Orthodox Way”, Kallistos Ware, SVS Press, 1979-1998)

The purpose of the Cross was for us to enter into union with God through our union with Christ in baptism (see Romans 6). This is the beginning of our union with Him, but it is by no means the end or culmination. The process of sanctification is to further that realization of union achieved largely through prayer, Sacraments, and obedience as I have discussed previously. But the culmination of that union is full theosis where we take on the full nature of God without losing the distinction between us.

The Fathers agreed that full deification couldn't be achieved in this life until after the death of the body, but by Grace the goal and purpose of our discipleship is to progress towards full deification in this life. In this, there is no middle ground. Either we progress towards this kind of “ascension”, or we regress into our sin disorder and eternal darkness. There is no “safe” place where we can just remain static for fear of the cross, or fear of hell. Let me say this again just to be clear, you either progress on the path of Jesus Christ towards deification, or you fall backwards. There is no way to stand still.

Because of our union with Jesus Christ, the promise of what we will be is something mind boggling and hard to wrap the head around. It is achieved only through cooperation with the Grace of God, and letting go of those things which are behind and reaching forward to what is in front of us” as St. Paul said, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:7-14, ESV)

So, I ask you, is this worth it? Would the prospect of inherited deity be enough to renounce everything and follow Jesus Christ? In the garden, the serpent promised that Adam and Eve would be like God if they ate the fruit of the tree because they would know good from evil. What they got was a hereditary insanity which we all share that makes us all think we know better than God or anyone else. What God promises us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ is nothing short of being made like Him in every way but His Essence or Being.

Theosis is Eternal Life. It is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the treasure waiting on the other side of the pain and loss. Is that worth it to you?