Who do you say I am?

We can see God as a The Law Giver or as Our Lover. The way we know God will dramatically affect our lives and the lives of those connected to us. It will determine whether we make those we love smaller of larger. How we see God will determine if rivers of life or rivers of sand flow from our being. The complete definition of God is Jesus. Jesus is the love of God for us and with us.

‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven’ Hebrews 1.3 NIV.

Unconditional love makes its way into us and possess us by supernatural means. This ‘means’ is the Spirit of Christ entering our being so that He becomes us and manifests His life through us.  Thus we are filled with the Spirit of Life and we love.  As Christ grows within us we become love. Well is that cool or is that cool?!

There are enough glimpses of the Father in the Old Testament to reveal that God does more than judging. However an old testament view of God is a most incomplete view of the Father. It is incomplete because we see Him through the lens of the knowledge of good and evil. We received this lens from Adam. But we have a new lens in Jesus. Until the appearance of Jesus there was no accurate way to perceive the Father. Now anyone who sees Jesus sees the Father.

‘Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?’ John 14.9 NIV.

We make a terrible mistake if we attempt to interpret the New Testament through the Old Testament. Jesus is the lens through which the Bible should be read. We cannot do better than interpret life through Jesus. Don’t reverse what God has done in His Son. We neutralize the Father’s Gift of Jesus if we view Jesus through the law. And only through the looking glass of Jesus can the Father be seen as He is. Only in Jesus can we see that GOD IS LOVE, because GOD’S LOVE IS JESUS.

Only in Jesus can the New Testament be interpreted in a way that reveals the Father as He is and His sons and daughters as they can be. In Him we have the ability to love themselves, other people and the world. It is Jesus alone who is God and represents God in His completeness. To see the Father is to see Jesus. To know God is to know Jesus. To love is to have Jesus love in us. Gregory Boyd writes, ‘The revelation of God in Christ ought not to be qualified by other previous or subsequent revelations … Christ is “above all.”

 

Keith Allen