In the beginning God…
Genesis 1:1
The LORD executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel.
Psalm 103:6-7
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?" "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen. Romans 11:33-36
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
John 17:3-4
“There is no more important issue in life than seeing Jesus for who He really is and savoring what we see above all else.”
John Piper
It has been said that in the beginning God created man in His own image and that man has been returning the favor ever since by creating God in his own image. In my own Christian journey I have discovered a huge chasm between the God who is revealed in the Bible and the God whom I was taught of in church and seminary. Too often instead of learning by hearing from Jesus and the scriptures, we have brought our views of God from outside of the Bible into the Bible.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
Thus says the LORD: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the LORD, exercising loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight," says the LORD.
Jeremiah 9:23-24
In his oracle the prophet rebukes every facet of man’s pride of self-reliance, self-centeredness, and self-sufficiency manifested in glorying in his wisdom, might, and wealth. Instead, he commends the man who glories in one key thing: that he understands and knows the Lord. But what is this knowing that Jeremiah spoke of? There is a kind of knowing that comes out of logic, reason, philosophy, and religion that is rooted in man’s own pride and self-exaltation. It is a knowing rooted in man’s own intuition, reasoning, worldview, and feeble attempts apart from grace, to understand infinite and multidimensional realities. It would be like a two dimensional being trying to understand from its own extremely limited reasoning and his two dimensional world, three dimensional realities. The only frame of reference it would have is to project its reality upon these higher or different realities.
Fallen man constantly tries to tame Jesus Christ. We revise Him according to our image to fit Him into our religion, lifestyle, philosophy, or political platform. We trivialize Him, attempt to tame Him, control Him, contain Him, neuter Him, create arguments in order to explain Him, apologize for parts of Him that make us uncomfortable, redefine Him, argue His existence, Unfortunately, all of man’s attempts fall exceedingly short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). Without God’s help man will always come up with a perspective of God who is dramatically less than God.
But with God, there is another kind of knowing that comes from His passion, desire, and willingness to reveal Himself as He is and His world truly as it is. God has given man a path to knowing Him. The Apostle Paul described it in 2 Corinthians 4:4-6:
“The god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God…For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
It is God who does a work in men’s hearts to be able to comprehend “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” He makes this path possible by His Holy Spirit and the portrait of Him through the Scriptures. (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21; John 1:14, 18; Hebrews 1:1-2). God not only reveals Himself, but also enables us to see, hear, and receive the glory and worth of what He has revealed. This is called illumination; God’s gracious enabling of His creation to see what is really there.
No wonder the Psalmist prayed,
“Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.”
Psalm 119:18
The Psalmist knew that without God’s help, he would not be able to see “wondrous” things; that is to say, the “peculiar” things of God and His world. How else could he describe God as anything but “wondrous”?
Hudson Taylor said that “The great need of every Christian is to know God. Indeed, this is the purpose for which he has given us eternal life.”[i]
Jesus himself said:
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent…Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” John 17:3, 24-25
I am convinced that we need a fresh understanding of God’s nature as revealed in scripture. What pleasure there is in knowing Him by seeing His exceeding beauty and greatness, savoring His ultimate worth and preciousness, being satisfied in Him alone, and showing His glory to all the nations, thus fulfilling His eternal purposes. In short, what we need is a fresh infusion of God’s “peculiar grace”. According to John Piper, this “grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.”
The grace that comes from God is a kind of “peculiar” grace that frees and empowers us to enjoy Him by making much of Him. This grace comes directly from his world, the biblical world. This grace cannot be found or replicated by man. All attempts end up with a Christianity that makes much of man and little of God.
When we receive this “peculiar grace” something wonderful happens within a person’s soul. Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
We begin “seeing” Jesus for who He really is and as we begin seeing Him, a miracle begins to take place and we progressively become like Him. A change takes place that comes from a gaze, a look, a beholding. We fall in love with the Beautiful One and our lives change. The beholding doesn’t change us; it is the beauty and glory of the One whom we behold. We are not transformed by an idea or a concept. We are transformed by beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus. Someday when Christ finally appears, we will see Him not only in the fullness of his beauty and glory but forever and ever. And the Bible makes us a wonderful promise:
Yes, dear friends, we are already God's children, and we can't even imagine what we will be like when Christ returns. But we do know that when He comes we will be like Him, for we will see him as He really is.
1 John 3:2 NLT
One day we will be completely transformed and it will be the glory of Jesus that does it. On earth His glory is often eclipsed, dimmed, blurred, fleeting, and distorted when we are left to ourselves and our vision. But God gives us “peculiar grace” to slow us down and see His wondrous glory.
To be continued...
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