Jesus

Has it been a long time since you were deeply, genuinely wonderstruck at the nature of God? One of the healthiest things we can do is recalibrate our perceptions of God by looking afresh at his Word. Put simply, the Bible is impressed with who God is. And rightly so, because of who God actually is.

Jesus promised his disciples that he would one day return to bring them to a place that he prepared for them. It is a place where all things are made new, free of sin and sorrow. As Christians, we seek not fame or fortune but a heavenly city whose builder and maker is God.

Friends, humility is the only soil in which unity will grow. Only when Christ is more precious to us than our reputations, will we give up our petty rivalries and personal agendas. Only when his glory eclipses all else in our eyes will we live for him and not for another purpose. The peace and unity we so desperately need will be, friends, the fruit of a fresh humbling before the glory of Christ. It is only the gospel, the good news of Christ our saviour, that creates true peace. The gospel creates peace, and the gospel defines peace.

our hope is not in the what of our glorification, but the who of our glorification. When we see Christ as he is, it will be a vision unfettered by sin and thus we can experience the reality of Christ’s presence in a way that no human has experienced.

Our merciful High Priest will never make a harsh observation, nor ask a rasping question, nor pronounce a crushing sentence. Go to him only, for there is none like him.

Behold the beauty of Jesus, which is the beauty of the Triune God—this beauty is able to save because it is not merely the beauty of a man, but is rather the timeless beauty of the incomprehensible, unchanging, self-existing, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, all-holy, all-just, all-gracious, loving, undiminished glory of the Trinity. That glory is able to save. And when we look at the crucified and risen Savior in this precious book, we are looking at that glory of that God.

The gospel is refreshing for the inmate because it reconciles and restores them to a right relationship with God. It brings them joy in the darkest of places. It makes their wrongs right. It grants them a new identity in Christ.

You see, our understanding of God doesn’t begin with his identity as “Creator” or “Ruler” or even “Redeemer” because these things require creation. Our God is above creation. He’s infinite—beyond all spatial and temporal limitations. Therefore, our understanding of God must move beyond creation to his chief identity. Which is what? He’s Father. This is who he is eternally.

The humility we learn at the foot of the gospel, glorying in Christ and not ourselves, therefore turns out to be the wellspring of all evangelical health. When our eyes are opened to the love of God for us sinners, we let slip our masks. Condemned as sinners yet justified, we can begin to be honest about ourselves. Loved despite our unloveliness, we begin to love. Given peace with God, we begin to know an inner peace and joy. Shown the magnificence of God above all things, we become more resilient, trembling in wonder at God, and not man.

Jesus really came to give us what Adam did not receive in the garden. Not just “no more death,” but constant fellowship with the source of all life. No unclean place outside the camp, because the whole earth will be the camp of Heaven, where God the giver of life dwells with us. There will not merely be no deaths; the very notion of death will be nonsense. The obituary columns will not be blank; they will be inconceivable.