Chapter 14<\/p>\n
Good Monday Morning to this week 15 of 2020<\/p>\n
Jesus is the one mediator between God and man. He is thus the hermeneutic principle for every word from God. Thus the prime question to put to every text in the Bible is about how it testifies to Jesus. Graeme Goldsworthy<\/p>\n
Philip said, \u201cLord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.\u201d
\nJesus answered: \u201cDon\u2019t you know me, Philip,
\neven after I have been among you such a long time?
\nAnyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
\nHow can you say, \u2018Show us the Father\u2019?\u201d John 14:8\u20139<\/p>\n
As I dig into another Chapter of Greg Boyed’s book I’m coming to some key chapters
\nof his work: The dark side of the Bible. We might get to that later on in my blog, a few weeks down the road, when we can look back to Covid-19 and have more time for these very hard questions.<\/p>\n
Yet, let’s get to the significance of Jesus, the Christ, even while reading the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
When God no longer confined himself to speaking through men but made himself the human utterance of revelation, he obviously introduced the final revelation.<\/p>\n
Yes, just having experienced Easter, this makes so much sense. Yes, Jesus introduced God to us in a new way, God introduced himself through Jesus to us, and together they introduced a next chapter in the story of God and the story of man.<\/p>\n
A Hebrew view: The Son alone is the radiance of God\u2019s glory as well as the one and only exact representation of God\u2019s very essence.<\/p>\n
Jesus the flawless expression of God’s nature!<\/p>\n
In the Son alone, however, do we capture the full brilliance and full truth of God\u2019s glorious character, for he is the exact representation of God\u2019s eternal nature.<\/p>\n
C.S. Lewis: Jesus is what the Father has to say to us! Jesus is the total content of the Father\u2019s revelation to us, wherever and whenever this revelation comes to us.<\/p>\n
O.T. Balthasar comments: All that God has to say to man he has spoken once and for all in Jesus, so that each of us must individually acknowledge and make his own all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ.<\/p>\n
Jesus is not only the perfect expression of God\u2019s essence, he is also the perfect expression of God\u2019s purpose for creation. He is the ultimate reason for everything. Along similar lines, Paul states that Jesus is the embodiment of all of God\u2019s wisdom<\/p>\n
Another O.T. Balthasar quote:
\nThe central Word which God speaks and which comprises, as their unity and end, all the manifold words of God, is Jesus Christ, the incarnate God.<\/p>\n
David Dockery similarly concludes: For Jesus, the key to understanding the Old Testament was located in his own life and work, for everything pointed to himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
N.T. Wright: Jesus was teaching that the story of the Bible as a whole, had been rushing forward toward the events of his own death and resurrection. His death and resurrection are to be seen as fulfillment, not simply as a shocking turn of events.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of how \u201cdiligently\u201d we may study the Old Testament, we can never say we have arrived at the full, complete interpretation of any passage until we have disclosed how it bears witness to Christ and, more specifically, to Christ\u2019s death and resurrection.<\/p>\n
N. T. Wright argues that for NT authors as well as for us, the very fact that God was present in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that the very meaning of the word \u201cGod\u201d has to be \u201cagain and again rethought around the actual history of Jesus himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karl Barth who perhaps best captures the absolute nature of the revelation of God in Christ when he says that the meaning of \u201cGod\u201d cannot be gathered from any notion of supreme, absolute, non-worldly being. It can be learned only from what took place in Christ, who the one true God is, we have to discover, from His becoming man, from His incarnation and from what He has done and suffered in the flesh.<\/p>\n
Jesus makes the astounding claim that \u201call things have been committed to me by my Father\u201d and that \u201cno one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him\u201d (Matt 11:27).<\/p>\n
Whatever value ancient \u201cGod-breathed\u201d writings have in showing us the way to God, revealing the truth about God, and bringing us the life of God, it is only because they point toward, agree with, and participate in the One who is himself the way, the truth, and the life. Immediately after making this astonishing claim, Jesus said, \u201cIf you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him\u201d (John 14:7).<\/p>\n
Jesus as the \u201cWord\u201d and \u201clight\u201d of God is reflected in Paul\u2019s remarkable declaration that Christ is \u201cthe mystery of God\u201d and that in Christ \u201care hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge\u201d If all the \u201ctreasures of wisdom and knowledge\u201d are in fact in Christ, to the point that Christ can be identified with God\u2019s wisdom, then we surely cannot consider Christ to be a source of wisdom alongside of whatever other wisdom we might find in the OT or anywhere else. To the contrary, all the treasures\u2019 obviously includes all the truths of all the verses of Scripture. All of them are hidden in Christ.\u201d G Boyd.<\/p>\n
I conclude with a passage from T. J. Gorringe \u201cGod is not inscrutable, there is nothing beyond or behind what we see in Christ. We are taught to keep our spiritual eyes fixed on Jesus. For we can only behold \u201cthe light of the knowledge of God\u2019s glory\u201d by seeing it \u201cdisplayed in the face of Christ\u201d, and it is only as we \u201cbehold the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, with our \u201cunveiled minds, that we are \u201ctransformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another\u201d.<\/p>\n
In short, our knowledge of God, our salvation, and our spiritual growth all depend on our keeping our eyes fixed singularly on Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
Wishing you a very blessed Week as you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.<\/p>\n
Philemon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chapter 14 Good Monday Morning to this week 15 of 2020 Jesus is the one mediator between God and man. He is thus the hermeneutic principle for every word from God. Thus the prime question to put to every text in the Bible is about how it testifies to Jesus. Graeme Goldsworthy Philip said, \u201cLord, … <\/p>\n