I have a puzzle I'm working on in my brain. I know that God is love, He is good, He loves Jesus with a perfect love; I know that God loved us and sent His Son; that while we were yet sinners, yet helpless, yet enemies of Christ, Christ died for us; I know that we do nothing good of our own strength, that we are like sheep that have gone astray, that our righteous deeds are like filthy rags, that our default tendency is unfaithfulness to Him; that we deserve nothing good but only punishment in hell.
I know that Jesus says that "Who of you, being evil, when his son asks for a loaf of bread will give him a stone?" And yet we, before our world even exists, are God's gift to His only-begotten Son. A gift for whom Jesus will give His life, and who He will purify and complete, and then He will take us as His bride for all eternity. How and why all this works together, how we being so lousy work into God's perfect and holy plan, I can't comprehend.
Jesus starts out with us being worthless in terms of His kingdom view. I understand that. While we are awaiting heaven, He refines us, teaches us, helps us, grows us. I think that we are not saved and valued because of what we are when we are saved but what we will summarily be by the time we reach heaven. Not that heaven is about us, but that we will rejoice in Him and glorify Him, and understand how great He is and what He has done for us. He did it for us, but ultimately to bring glory to Himself.
He values us enough that He tells the story of the prodigal son and the story of the woman and the lost coin and the story of the shepherd with 99 sheep accounted for who goes to look for the one who is lost...He makes sure we understand that He wants us to be with Him. He has gone to great lengths for us!
Still, it's mind-boggling. How did God devise this idea? I sure wish I had a peek into His thinking, not how He knew the end result, but why He would dream up such a complicated means of achieving that perfect result, knowing that so many would be cast into hell in the process and that so relatively few would be saved.
And still again, I am so thankful to be part of it, not because of any worthiness of mine but only of His. Wow! He is so great, so beyond my imagining.
1 comment:
I've just begun reading the Old Testament. Talk about a complicated, and meticulously detailed plan. So many of the O.T. heroes had some of Christ's saving quality in them, but not quite enough to be the Messiah. Noah saved his own righteous family, plus all the animals. Abraham fathered a nation, and all men are blessed through him. Joseph was a type of savior for his brothers, saving them from famine. Adam, 1 Corinthians says, was the first type of Christ, the first man who's image all other men bear. And I'm only in the middle of Genesis! I haven't even gotten to Moses, the leader of God's people, or any of the prophets, etc.!! The Old Testament sacrificial system, the Passover, the way that is perfectly reflected in Christ, is absolutely jaw-dropping!
Post a Comment