Respect for God
By
Larry White
January 9, 2021
You did not come from nothing. You do not have to invent a definition for yourself like the humanists do. They are existentialists. Also you do not have to have an ad hoc purpose for your life like the atheists, who must invent one for themselves. You are the offspring of one who is extraordinarily wonderful and powerful; who is vastly superior beyond anything you can grasp, whose essential quality of character is love.
He cannot be put into a context to be compared with anyone or anything, or to be circumambulated for inspection or appraisal. He is the context himself in relation to everything. As Francis Schaeffer said, he is the final point of integration for anything and everyone in existence. It has been my experience that to try to conceive of him in a context is to scrape my mind on eternity. There are limits to our mind's ability to think about God's being. He pointed to our limits when he revealed his name as, "I am" or "I am that I am." (Exodus 3:14) The overall point being, as I understand it, is that he is the self-existent source of everything we have needed or will ever need and therefore he is sufficient for us in every respect that we can imagine; therefore do not worry about his name or whether or not we can rely on him to help us. He announced to the world in the revelation to John:
"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,
says the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the
Almighty."
Alpha and Omega represent the logical limits that our minds can reach in contemplating beginnings and endings; in the West we would say the A and the Z - he is both. His existence relies upon nothing beyond himself - for there is nothing beyond himself; he is the beyond. Did you feel a mental circuit breaker snap when you read those words? If you did then you understand what I am saying. Do not fall in to the trap of the ancient Greeks who had other gods to keep Zeus company. God himself said, "there is no other God, I do not know of any." Do not fret that you cannot grasp the thought of his being. In the flesh; we are finite. We can only be aware of space and time. Solomon said,
"He has made everything beautiful in its time: he has also set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God makes from the beginning to the end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
God has set the world, olam, [possibly eternity] in our hearts, however we cannot find out the beginning or the end of what God is accomplishing, while God is both - the beginning and the end. We can only wait upon his sufficiency and let him reveal the deep things of his being and work. He has given us of his Spirit so that we can approach an understanding of what he has revealed. And he has declared to the world and proven in world history that there is no other God and that he cannot be compared with anyone or anything. (Isaiah 40-41)
Again, with our brains he cannot be fully grasped nor even contemplated - thought fails us. He has revealed no other context for himself than his love for his son and his love for us. (John 17) Then, for an eternal being such as he is, to suddenly create other beings after his likeness - his image, is to lay down a boundary marker consisting of beings who can look back at him and return his love - his image. However, to do that genuinely in his real image, he had to create beings with true free will. And there you have the primal and also the ultimate problem -- Love is a choice. Will we reflect his image or not?
The Old Covenant scriptures (the Old Testament), is the account of God's dealings with these beings, these others. With free-will, the main failure of mankind is in not being the human that God created us to be in his image; not loving - but turning away from God and not reflecting his glory; falling short of his glory, his image, which is the bible definition of "sin" (Romans 3:23), and thus we become anti-God failures, or enemies in our minds by wicked thoughts and behaviors.
But there were a relative few, a remnant that did turn to him and trusted in his word and promises to them, who came near to him by faith from a loving heart. He knew there would be some. So he provided a way for these people to be rid of the sin and be cleansed of their guilt and given life, being restored to his image and being reconciled to God. He provided a sacrificial man, his own son, come in the flesh, to represent all who sinned and that would take upon himself the sin of the world. He had planned this before he created anything. As Jesus says in Revelation 13:8 that he is, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
This loving God is the almighty Jehovah, the Lord of hosts, of the Old Testament scriptures. Solomon said that a respectful "fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom." (Psalms 111:10; Proverbs 9:10)
The New Covenant scriptures is the account of how God demonstrated his love and justice by giving up the human life of his only son, Jesus, as the sacrifice for the sin of mankind, to mercifully cleanse those who believed, while at the same time remaining just and righteous. Those whom God cleanses in the blood of Jesus, he makes alive in the spirit and adopts them as children of his own.
The New Testament is not only about the ancient Jews of the first century, it is mainly about the revealing of the Sons of God. In the spirit they are not Jews or Gentiles, masters or servants, nor even male or female. They are all one in Jesus Christ - children of God. Jesus is their Creator, Author, Prince, Leader, Captain, Lord, Brother, Savior and Friend - which is the multifaceted character of him with whom we have to give an account of our lives.
In the New Testament scriptures we have a snap-shot of the first century, AD 0 to 100, the time when the Kingdom of God was about to come or be established in the world. It was both the time of the ending of the Age and also the close of the Old Testament period with all of its members living or dead to be judged according to what they had done in the body, whether it was good or bad, and it was also the time of God's creation of the New Covenant through Christ Jesus, to gather all things in heaven and in earth under this one head, or chief of humanity. Everything in the universe was created through him and for him. He is "before" (primary, elite) all things, and it is by him that everything consists, that is, holds together and continues to be.
Nuclear physicists wonder how matter can change from a wave form into a particle just by looking at it. Consciousness, or Mind is what wills it to be a particle. We apparently share that ability with our creator, because we are in his image in a very, very limited way, and on a very minute scale; while the entire universe is willed into being by this primary creator, this Son of God, this Jesus, and it is "the good pleasure of his will" and by the "word of his power" that the universe continues to be. We talk about power and energy, but honestly, considering Jesus, we really have no idea, no concept of what power means. We just look at it in awe and give it a name.
Scientists look at these particles, that they named electrons, and wonder how an amalgamation of them could have that quality we call Life and be Conscious. Well, it isn't in the particles of matter to have life or consciousness. Life is only in the conscious entity that God creates, a spirit that comes into being through the one whom and for whom he created everything - Jesus Christ - he is the life.
It is my understanding that through the Spirits called "the living creatures" (Ezekiel 1:5-19) that God has created and stands before him always, he causes all life on the Earth to live. (Revelation 4:6-8) Every living creature on the Earth has been given life from God who is a Spirit. He makes every creature, including man, to have life and be animate. This attribute we call a Soul, is that which causes all physical beings to live. When I was a child they called it the Spark of Life. Eastern nations call it Xi or Chi. In the USA they now call it Gaia. The Greek word used in the Bible is [ψυχή] psyche, the vital force, translated Soul - the life of the body. The man who cares for nothing higher than this life on earth is a soulish man, a natural, sensual man as opposed to a spiritual man.
Among all creatures on Earth, God created Man to house a spirit like Himself, to be like he and his Son. He created us as spirits incarnated into a living body of flesh and bones; a carnal body perfectly suited for a physical life on this planet. We, of all earthly life, are created in His image, which is a personal, intelligent, godlike, spiritual being who can search for God and find him. To be clear, the thing about us that is in the image of God is our spirit, because God is a spirit. (John 4:23-24)
So there is a higher life than just the physical one that we have on Earth, which is only made of the same elements as the dirt; born from the womb, lives and grows old and dies.
"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7) Eternal life is in the spirit, that is, in the spiritual realm.
As I understand it, the light of men is their self-reflecting intellect, which is able to reason and consider and even search and find God. The life is spirit based, not based in the material creation. So your brain is not you, it is a biological tool that you use to function "in the flesh." "God is light and in him is no darkness at all." (1John 1:5) The light is the absolute reality of Truth.
God created man to be in his image, but on the whole, historically, man has gone into darkness turning away from the light. He loved darkness where he could be without restraint to practice his behaviors of anti-love in the blindness and illusions of his own making. (John 3:18-21) The problem with that behavior is that it is not life, but leads to death. God is life. If man turns away from God, there is no life - no love - no light - no truth, and that is Death. The Earth is a training ground, a boot camp in which we can be exposed to both good and evil, both truth and lies, both God and Satan. We can choose our destiny. We have the choice of Life or Death. Therefore choose Life, choose God. The true light is not the Illuminati, that is the deceit of Satan.
It was said about 1900 years ago, "The darkness is past and the true light now shines." (1 John 2:8) It is Jesus Christ. Nothing has changed since then.
LW |