Abraham and the City Above

The Father of our Faith sought Jerusalem Above, Mother of us All

I am working my way through the Old Testament tracing the Son and City whom I believe that we mirror as man and woman. Last Substack, I introduced the typology at work in the story of Noah and the Ark. This week, I am considering Abraham and the city of God.

As I have written before, I believe that Genesis 1-2 gives us the template, code, or key for understanding ourselves as male and female. That code is our triune personal God who made us like himself, the one who loves us and purposed to give himself to us in a bond of never-ending fellowship. (1) He is one and he is many. And his oneness and manyness are equally ultimate and foundational to who he is. So are we. Like him, we are one mankind, and we are male and female called to fill the earth. (2) He is a unity of essence and he is a diversity of persons in an unfolding and enfolding order. So are we. We are one mankind bearing God’s image in Genesis 1, and yet we find that we are ordered in Genesis 2 . Man comes first and woman comes last. (3) His persons are equal in power and glory.  So are we. We find that the secondness of the woman does not mean that she is secondary or less. Her unique glory magnifies things that are coming, things that beckon us onward and upward, things that we receive together. Likewise, the man’s personal glory magnifies first things, things that pertain us as creatures from the hands of God, pressing forward in time toward the mountain of the Lord. (4) Father, Son, and Spirit receive their identity in relation to one another. So do we. The Son’s personal  identity depends on the Father who begets him, and vice versa. Likewise the Spirit receives his identity through the Father and Son from whom he derives his personhood. Though the Spirit exists as the entire essence of God without remainder or residue, he personally proceeds from the Father and Son, spirating forth in the analogy of exhaled breath. So do we receive our identity from one another. Adam becomes ish (man and husband) only in receiving his bone and flesh ishah (woman and wife) at the end of Genesis 2. 

We are analogs of this God, our triune Lord, our very great reward. We are one mankind, and we are a diversity of persons, male and female, living as tribes and tongues and nations filling the visible earth, yet called to ascend a presently veiled mountain (Is 2:2; Mic 4:2). Mirroring divine procession and embrace, the man is molded from this earth and the woman proceeds from his sacred side as his glory, and she is brought to the man to be embraced by him as his own bone and flesh. This embrace awaits us in our clinging to one another as one bride, destined to cling to one Groom for the endless age of ages. He has made us so that our thoughts about ourselves rebound to him in love and anticipation for what we are receiving in him. Far from denigrating or exploiting our neighbor, our thoughts about ourselves should fan into flame desire for him, God in three persons, our eternal blessedness.

What I have been trying to add to the important conversation that we are having, finally hearing one another on a scale unprecedented, is that maleness and femaleness are not about hierarchy. They are not about power or authority over our neighbor. They are not about natural superiority. They should not lead us to compare ourselves with our neighbors in order that we might exalt ourselves over them. They do not lead us to judge our neighbor by personal definitions of masculinity and femininity, demanding our standard as inspired and infallible. Rather, our thoughts should lead to love of God as we rejoice in the one from whom we have come and the one to whom we are going.  In other words, our maleness and femaleness should lead us to heavenly-mindedness, to the Son enthroned at the Father’s right hand . . . and to the Spirit, revealed in the heavens as the tent dwelling of God.  The ethical implication of what I am suggesting is love. When I consider my neighbor as male or female, I rejoice in him or her and my thoughts rise to the enthroned Son and his Spirit. Part of loving my neighbor is to see his or her strength and beauty as from God, reflecting God. My neighbor as distinctly male or female takes me to the Son and to his glory-Spirit respectively, our inheritance in the triune God who has made us for himself and offers us Sabbath rest.  I am also suggesting that an intentional blurring of our personal distinctions as male and female is expressly forbidden and judged because of the personal distinctions of our God (Deut 22:5; Lev 18:22). He has bound our maleness and femaleness to his own personal distinctions with a purpose — that we might know him and love him as Many, three distinct yet inseparable persons in ordered procession and embrace.

Last Substack, I wrote about the representation of the Son and his Glory-Spirit in the story of Noah and the Ark.  As I understand it, Noah as the son represents the eternal Son. The woman’s representation is bound up with the Spirit as the dwelling of God. Through the ark, we see the glory citadel of the Son, the epiphany of the Spirit in the heavens. To be with the son, Noah, in the citadel, the ark, means salvation from judgment and life beyond (Rev 22). When we come to the story of Abraham, we are again dealing with a son, Abraham, in the image and glory of the eternal Son, and we find a consecrated land flowing with life, a glory habitation for his people. The symbolism of the woman is again found in a place, the land. For this reason, Abraham’s hopes are bound up not only with a promised son but also with a promised land (Gen 12:1, 5-7). 

Hebrews tells us something more of Abraham’s quest. Abraham, the son of faith who became our father, was looking for a city, our mother above (Rom 4:16; Gal 4:16; Heb 11:10). Abraham sought a city with eternal foundations that God designed and built. Like the woman of Genesis 2, she is from the Son’s sacred side, proceeding from him as his glory. Like Eve, Abraham recognizes her as the joy before him. Abraham sought that place, Zion, and her people, synonymous with that place, built on Jesus Christ the cornerstone. In other words, Abraham, a true son of God and father of us all, lived in the hope prefigured in a holy land and fulfilled in a holy city. The city that Abraham sought in Hebrews 11 is nothing less than the holy mountain of Hebrews 12, the New Jerusalem, the glory citadel of the living God and the assembly of the firstborn Son, Jesus (vss. 22-24). 

Although Vos does not go as far as to link woman’s symbolism to Zion (John Schmitt) and Zion to the eternal Spirit (Meredith Kline), Vos’s sermon, “Heavenly-Mindedness,” gives us a son of faith leaving and cleaving to a city (107).¹  Vos recognized that Abraham’s sights were set much higher than Canaan.  Through faith, Abraham’s soul saw an unseen city and a future Sabbath day. Abraham no doubt “rejoiced in the historical Jerusalem around which gather(ed) so many glories of God’s redemptive work,” yet the goal he sought was the heavenly city, the “bosom of eternity” (104). Vos writes, “The patriarchs had their vision of the heavenly country, a vision in the light of which the excellence or desirableness of every earthly home and country paled” (111). Abraham longed for the life above, a ceaseless coming to the Son in the Spirit, the glory-City. For Abraham, “a heaven that was not illumined by the light of God, and not a place for closest embrace of him, would be less than heaven” (122-123).  

Vos gets closest to what Kline is saying with the continuation of the quote above: “ . . . God as builder and maker thereof has put the better part of himself into his work. Therefore those who enter the city are in God.” For Vos, the city is “the better part of God,” but for Kline, the city simply is the third person of the Trinity, God manifest, the eternal Spirit “endoxate.”² The city is the visible image of the invisible Spirit, the effulgence proceeding from God and the Lamb upon the throne. The Spirit reveals himself in heaven as the luminous tent dwelling, the Glory Cloud. This is the end for which Abraham as sojourner endured. Abraham shows that the Son and his City are central to true religion. So important are they, I suggest that God has stamped them upon us in making us male and female. We can never escape them because we simply are the created symbols of the uncreated God whom we are receiving.  Our creation as man and woman key our hearts to the metanarrative of our lives as we move toward what awaits us with the Son in the Spirit. In Vos’s words, “Ever since the goal set by the covenant of works came within his ken, man carries with him  . . . the sense of belonging to another . . .” For Vos, the deepest currents of our lives carry a pilgrim people there, to a Son and City (114).  I surely would count our existence as male and female among those deepest currents.  

The son Abraham and his city are introduced in Genesis 12 against the backdrop of another son in Genesis 10 and another city in Genesis 11. The antithesis of the son Abraham, the sojourner by faith seeking a city whose builder and maker is God, is Nimrod. His kingdom begins with an infamous city and tower in Genesis 11 (Gen 10:8-12). Though many stress the tower, the tower is never mentioned without the city, and the city comes before the tower when the tower is mentioned (vv. 4, 5). The city also stands alone once without the tower in verse 8. The tower is part of a city built by human hands as the glory citadel of mere man. The contrast is clear.  Abraham seeks an invisible heavenly city; Nimrod builds Babylon and the renowned cities of ancient Mesopotamia. Nimrod’s Babylon in particular has an enduring legacy in the Scriptures culminating in the woman of Revelation 17 and 18 whose sins, like a tower, reach to the heavens (18:5). The destruction of the anti-kings of the earth and the anti-city, their glory, make way for the son and his city in the wedding of the Lamb and his bride in chapter 19, the final and enduring reflection of the Son and his Spirit-city. 

When we come to the patriarchal narratives of Genesis and see the genealogies, far from bewilderment or boredom, our hearts can rejoice in the man’s symbol as son, in the image and likeness of the Son. And when we come to what may seem like endless details concerning the construction of the tabernacle in Exodus and Leviticus, our hearts can rejoice in the woman’s symbol as sacred space, a microcosm of the eternal city, in the image and likeness of the Spirit. We are meant for this triune God, and he is placing our sights there, not least through ourselves as male and female in his image and likeness.

Next Substack, I hope to continue writing about man and woman as symbols of the heavenly Son and Spirit in the Genesis narratives of earthly sons seeking a city. I more than welcome any comments.

1. Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory, “Heavenly-MIndedness,” (103-123).

2. Meredith Kline, God, Heaven, and Har Magedon, 10-17.