2002-01-01
Good Morning Faithful Ones,
It is always such a pleasure to be writing about the love God has given me for Him with fellow friends and believers such as you. He has given me a fresh curiosity about the method by which we come to faith and enter into the oneness of the covenant relationship with Him and with each other. Whether we are practicing the same faith that our parents taught us or we are coming to it from either no faith or a different one, we must each undergo a personal conversion to Christ. This happens at different times for different people and in different ways. I remember speaking with a faithful man who, while mentoring me, told me that it happened to him while he was in a fox hole under fire during WW II. Others have told me they can’t pin-point an exact day or time, it just came on them gradually. Some people know from the time they are young children that they were aware of Christ’s presence in their lives. Others, like myself, didn’t come to know and accept him until we were already adults. The story of Thomas, the doubter, is important, because so many of us are doubters when we are first exposed to the mysteries and the blessings of the Gospel.
JN 20: 24-29, “One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (called the Twin), was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ Thomas said to them, ‘Unless I see the scars of the nails in His hands and put my finger on those scars and my hand in His side, I will not believe.’ A week later the disciples were together again indoors, and Thomas was with them. The doors were locked, but Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then He said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and look at My hands; then reach out your hand and put it in My side. Stop your doubting, and believe!’ Thomas answered Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus answered him, ‘Do you believe because you see Me? How happy are those who believe without seeing Me.’” What a blessed thing it is to acknowledge Christ’s deity! I say that not only about Thomas’ finally coming to this understanding, but about anyone doing this. Peter’s revelation in MT 16: 16, “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,’” is an example as well. The same can be said for Christ’s half-brother, James (our parent-apostle, as I like to call him), who didn’t come to faith until after Christ’s resurrection. Note the delay in coming to faith by Saul of Tarsus [AC 9: 3-9] too. We must each examine how we came to faith and see how God has worked in our lives since. No discussion of this topic would be complete without the Bible’s definition of faith found in HE 11: 1, “To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.”
As we grow in our covenant relationship, we are taken by God from our initial skepticism, to commitment, and growth toward fullness of faith in Christ. Paul in his letter to the Colossians deals with what this means in COL 2: 6, 9-15. “Since you have accepted Christ Jesus as Lord, live in union with Him…For the full content of divine nature lives in Christ, in His humanity, and you have been given full life in union with Him. He is supreme over every spiritual ruler and authority. In union with Christ you were circumcised, not with the circumcision that is made by men, but with the circumcision made by Christ, which consists of being freed from the power of this sinful self. For when you were baptized, you were buried with Christ, and in baptism you were also raised with Christ through your faith in the active power of God, Who raised Him from death. You were at one time spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were Gentiles without the Law. But God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; He canceled the unfavorable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross. And on that cross Christ freed himself from the power of the spiritual rulers and authorities; He made a public spectacle of them by leading them as captives in His victory procession.” This circumcision of which Paul speaks is the same one as referred to in RO 2: 28-29, a “circumcision of the heart.”
This fullness of living “in Christ” is further illuminated in COL 3: 1-4, “You have been raised to life with Christ, so set you hearts on the things that are in heaven, where Christ sits on His throne at the right side of God. Keep your minds fixed on things there, not here on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Your real life is Christ, and when He appears, then you too will appear with Him and share His glory!” PS 22 is the Song of the Lamb, a cry of anguish and a song of praise. This very significant OT chapter actually prophesies Christ’s crucifixion. PS 22: 16, “A gang of evil men is around Me; like a pack of dogs they close in on Me; they tear at My hands and feet.” Just as Thomas inspected the scars from the nail prints of the risen Christ’s hands and the cut in His side, here we see the blood shed to seal the covenant of faith foretold as a proof that the Lamb really is the Messiah [Savior]. By living with the fullness of Christ, we have the assurance that salvation is ours and that we are being perfected in the process of sanctification so that we can answer the sound of the last shofar’s [trumpet’s] call to that meeting in the air [1 THESS 4: 13-18]. This should matter tremendously to each of us, because there is nothing more sublimely wonderful than to share in the eternal glory of Christ. Meditate on that today.
PRAYER: O Lord, there are some topics with patterns that a person new in the faith might not see. However, as we get further into studying Your word, You make them known to us for our better understanding of how You bring us to faith and lead us to spiritual maturity. I am reminded that real friends love and trust each other well enough to share even the most intimate confidences with each other. You are being a real Friend to us, not holding back on either what You know we need to believe for our good or the method by which You bring us forward in our faith walk with You. Nor, did You hold back the sacrifice of Your only begotten Son on the cross, so that we could be saved. You knew many of us would come to our first contact with the Gospel with skepticism. Yet, You have remained patient and compassionate as we struggled to come to have faith. In fact, it was You Who initiated that invitation to come to faith in the first place! We stand in awe of the love You show us everyday and offer You our gratitude and heartfelt dedication to placing trust in You and obeying You. Today, we come before Your altar in humility to offer You our adoration, worship, loyalty, glory, honor, trust, obedience, praise, and thanks. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, I am led to look at our covenant relationship in the context of anticipating sharing in Christ’s glory in a oneness with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that comes out of it. If we have time, we will look at the blood of the covenant and our participation of believers in it. As I reread to edit what I wrote today, I saw so many manifestations of God’s love in the citations I shared. I hope you do too. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn