January 09, 2009
Revealed
It’s interesting to see what God reveals, to whom He reveals it and when He chooses to reveal it. When I read where Peter publically declared that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God I wanted to say ‘Well duh Peter…What took you so long.’ Jesus however replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.” (Matt 16:17 NIV) When the time was right, it was the Father who revealed Christ to the disciples. Maybe that is what’s wrong with some of our evangelistic methods…we keep trying to pry open the eyes of the blind.
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Gail;
-----I do not see this revelation given to Peter by the Father as having come to him in a dream or vision. Peter had a personality and many months of observing Jesus’ preaching and interactions with people. God had directed Peter’s footsteps through his life to form his personality, just like Proverbs says. Jesus was precisely obedient to the Father, therefore He was an illustration of the Father, just as He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father….” (John 14:9 RSV) The Father developed in Peter a receptiveness that recognized Jesus Whom the Father placed before his eyes. I don’t believe there was any mysticism or abracadabra about this revelation. The point is that Peter had been experiencing a living example of the Father while having a receptive character.
-----There are two kinds of the blind, those who have no receptivity to light, and those who have no light to receive. It should be easy to tell which are which, just shine some light at them. If they receive it, they have receptivity. If they don’t, move on. But then, the difficulty of shining light is in being light. Jesus did not just preach the Father, He was the Father. He did not just preach righteousness, He was righteous. But the Pharisees also preached righteousness and claimed to be righteous. The difference was that Jesus submitted humbly to the Father. He did not use the Father to turn stones into bread. He did not use the Father to come down off the cross. He submitted to the Father. The Pharisees were not submitted to the scriptures, however they did use the scriptures. But the scriptures’ aims were not their aims. Their aims were whatever they could get the scriptures to do for themselves. Otherwise they would have known the scriptures instead of just using them.
-----The blind have no physical Jesus to see today. But they still have the light shining from those who reflect Jesus by humbly submitting to the Word. They use themselves for the Word’s aims. They do not cut and paste the Word, just as Jesus did not cut and paste the Father. To them, the whole Word is relevant, just as the whole Father was relevant to Jesus. Therefore, adjusting their individual light beams involves many knobs, switches, and buttons, because there are many Biblical aspects to thinking and acting rightly. Furthermore, most of us produce either a faint general light, or a bright narrow beam, some with a green hue, others with a blue. Any way, the receptive blind are left squinting to see between the shadows.
-----That is why Jesus prayed for our unity. (John 17:21) Not that we all have to get on the same board with other brothers who have received revelation of evangelical methods from God. Not that we all have to believe once saved, always saved. Or that we all have to believe in living by sober caution lest we loose our salvation. Not that we all have to believe that baptism must be done three times forward, or once backward. But that we do not insist our brothers believe like we do, for that comes from scripture serving us. We must simply accept one another as Christ has accepted us (Rom 15:7), not placing demands on one another, or expecting others to have the identical faith that we ourselves have. We must be gracious to the differences between us, honoring each other simply because each belongs to Christ. When we start loving one another according to whom we all belong, rather than according to our similarities, then our lights combine, general and narrow beamed, green hue and blue alike, and the shadows disappear so the receptive blind can more easily see.
-----Or we can just throw another program at them while praying, “Abracadabra!”
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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