The Bible is God’s written self-revelation of the truth of His glory, of His incomparable beauty and dignity found in the infinite perfections of His eternal being. It is the revelation of His glorious purpose in creation, particularly His creation of mankind in His image and likeness so that He could manifest/display His glory in us and to us and through us, for our eternal joy, pleasure and satisfaction in relationship with Him. (Romans 11:33-36) (Psalm 16:11). As beings created in His image and likeness with His righteous nature and character (Ecclesiastes 7:29), we would be able to relate to Him, one another and the world around us in a manner that upholds and displays His glory and secures our eternal happiness in Him.
However, Romans 1:18-21 tells us that despite all of creation, as well as our individual conscience witnessing to us that there is a great and glorious God to whom we are accountable and dependent on, we suppress that truth in unrighteousness, meaning that in our thoughts and words and actions we no longer image His righteous nature and character, and in fact live in contradiction and opposition to it. As such, we have made ourselves the objects of His judgement and wrath. The consequences of this are enumerated in Romans 1:24-32.
We are told in verse 25 that this is all a result of our exchanging the truth of the infinitely glorious God for the lie, the lie that originated with Satan in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3: 1-4) and continues in our culture and world today; namely that true happiness and ultimate fulfillment are found in the freedom and ability to do as we please, whenever we please, however we please, accountable to no one – just like God – but independent of God. Thus our greatest joy, our greatest pleasure and satisfaction, would not be found in relationship with God, our creator, but in the creation itself; a creation we are told was cursed by God (Genesis 3:17-19) in response to Adam and Eve believing and acting on the lie.
In our pride and rebellion against God we seek to glorify ourselves – to lift ourselves above any dependence upon or accountability to God. This has been true throughout human history; however, it seems truer than ever in our present God ignoring culture.
David Wells notes this in his book, The courage to be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketeers and Emergents in the Postmodern World: “Today in our modern world what seems implausible is that there is a God who is objective to us – who stands outside of us who is the measure of truth and who holds us accountable (to that truth). We simply do not experience this in the course of our life and our (subjective) experience inclines us to believe that it (His existence) is probably not true.”
We, as a race and as individuals, see ourselves ultimately in charge and in control and we will have no other gods before us telling us how to live our lives; telling us what is right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust. Thus, in our man centered world we look to other fallen, sinful men and women to manifest their glory to solve our intractable social problems and to meet the deepest needs and desires of our hearts; both of which only God can do.
Because our minds have been darkened – clouded and corrupted by sin – we live in this world willfully ignorant of the truth of the glory of God, alienated from the glorious life of God for which we were created and thus destined for eternal judgement. For just as we have believed and lived our lives according to the lie of Satan, we will join him in the everlasting punishment God prepared for him and his angels. (Matthew 25:41-46)
The good news is that it was never God’s intention to leave mankind in this lost, condemned condition, but to demonstrate His glory, His righteousness in saving/redeeming a people out of this sin cursed world, rescuing them from the eternal consequences of their truth suppressing sin and restoring them to the glorious relationship with Him for which they were created. This ultimate demonstration of God’s righteousness and expression of God’s love was first noted in Genesis 3:15, where we have in somewhat cryptic terms, the promise of a Messiah, a redeemer, a savior who will appear at some point in human history to overcome Satan’s lies and restore men back to right relationship with God. This promise will not be fulfilled right away, but God will order all human history around His coming (Galatians 3:15-16).
Thus the Bible reveals Jesus Christ, God the Son, to be the fulfillment of that promise; the one who 2000 years ago took upon Himself the form of a man and came into this sin cursed, truth suppressing world to accomplish two things 1) to bear witness to the truth of God’s glory – to the infinite perfections of His eternal being that have been slandered and suppressed and belittled by mankind’s sin and rebellion against God and 2) to save His people from their sin – from the power of sin over their lives in this world and from the eternal consequences of their sin and rebellion in the world to come.
We will look more closely at both in my next post, and identify from the Bible who His people are.
Grace and Truth ×