Who are we that God should reveal Himself to us? Yet He did just this when His Son visited this earth. For three and a half years the Lord Jesus Christ spent time revealing His Father to those chosen to carry the message of the gospel around the world. No one had seen the Father at any time, but His Son declared Him. (John 1:18)
For seven years He confirmed the new covenant promised to the nation of Judah in Jeremiah, the covenant with many–three and a half years through Himself and three and a half years through His chosen apostles. After that the promise was extended beyond Judah as the first Gentile converts began to become joined to His glorious body–the church. In the middle of these seven years, His death on the cross put an end to sacrifices and oblations–the temple veil was ripped from top to bottom. The Lord Jesus had offered Himself as a sacrifice to pay for sins once for all. Where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. (Daniel 9:27; Hebrews 10:18)
The Lord Jesus fulfilled every promise ever made about Him. He fulfilled the Law in Himself, and when He sent the Holy Spirit, His sheep were regenerated, and, as promised in Jeremiah, the Law was written on their hearts. (Jeremiah 31:33)
What began as a simple message of God’s provision of salvation was soon complicated by those called the Judaizers, who felt that it was still necessary to have some kind of Law to follow, rendering the redemptive work of the cross of Christ virtually insignificant. If righteousness were to come by the Law, then Christ died in vain. Instead of embracing Abel’s simple and prophetic sacrifice of innocent, blameless blood, many in the early church adopted Cain’s prideful ambitions of an offering produced by his own earthly works. And, when told it was not acceptable, they reacted violently—much in the same way as Cain.
Over the course of almost twenty centuries now, the Lord Jesus’ simple message of worshipping in spirit and in truth, of loving God with all that you are, of fearing God in His mercy toward us, of knowing that our salvation is a gift without price, and of forgiving others in all humility, is all but lost.
The church has taken the focus off our glorious Lord and switched it right back onto us humans. Suddenly it is all about us–our goodness, our gifts, our talents, our desires, our prosperity, our health, our walk, our choice to follow Him, our sacrifices, our obedience to His teachings, our views, our purpose, our best life now–and we have become demigods. One can almost hear Lucifer declaring, “I will be like the Most High.” Only he is attempting to accomplish this in the bodies of God’s creation–mankind. It was what he tempted our parents with in the Garden, and it is what he tempts us with still.
Yet, through all this, our heavenly Father continues to reveal Himself to us, faithfully carrying out His plan and purpose, despite our faults and our foolishness. And when He brings one of us out of our spiritually dead state and causes us to pass from death to life, it is a glorious thing. Glorious because it is all His work. Anything good in us comes from Him. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. It is the Lord’s doing, and it is glorious in our eyes. (Ephesians 2:10; Psalm 118:23)
Who am I that God should consider me? Yet may I glory in Him and in His profound grace and mercy, and know that it is right and good that He considers me–only if it is because all that He does is right and good. And who am I to question what He does? (Romans 9:20)
Therefore, all I can do is to attempt to express gratitude, although even that is far from adequate. I await the day in which we will be with Him, in incorruptible bodies, and perhaps better equipped with heavenly words that are more suitable for worshiping Him.
