The Lord is awe-inspiring, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him in 1 John 5:1a,
“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God…”
This is really astonishing to me as I look at things “from a bird’s eye” perspective!
In Genesis three I read of Adam and Eve, our progenitors, turning their backs on the God who created them. God told them if they ate from the tree in the middle of the garden or even touched it they would die. Rather than taking God at his word, Eve and then Adam rejected what God had to say and followed the serpent’s suggestion. Paul’s observation on this act is found in Romans 5:12, 16b, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned… The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation…” As Adam’s offspring, we are now under condemnation as we all face death in the judgment of God. Adam and Eve were given fair warning by God, they turned their backs on him anyway and it resulted in death for them as well as all their offspring.
“But…” as Paul wrote Titus, in 3:4-5, “when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” And just what does he require of us to be saved from our eventual certain deaths? To simply believe in him! To simply acknowledge the existence of our creator (imagine that!) and what he has to say. As John puts it in his gospel, 1:12, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
As I say, to me this is just astonishing! Look at it from God’s perspective… having given us existence, he now asks those he has created to acknowledge his existence! Having provided truth and light in his creation he now asks us to believe in him! Having sent his Son to die a miserable death to pay for the penalty of our sins, that is, to satisfy his own sense of justice, he asks us to believe in him!
I just find it truly remarkable! He could have asked us to measure up to certain standards, that he would take only the best, the brightest, the most beautiful, the most talented of us to be his. He might have established standards of behavior for us to earn our way into eternal life, to demonstrate we really “deserve” it. But he doesn’t. He holds his arms out to us and simply asks us to believe in him!
I don’t think that is too much for our creator to ask of us! What do you think?
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your theme of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We’d love to hear from you!
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