Growing up in church and especially when going to special youth camps or conferences, one is exposed to a large portion of the Old Testament narratives and often times challenged by the lives of this “great men of God” who dared to do the impossible, who dared to believed God and decided to step up into a new world of experiencing God himself and his mighty power. It´s impossible to forget about Abraham who believed in God´s provision and was willing to give up his son, of course we can´t forget about Joshua who saw the sun stand still, or what about Moses who spoke with God in many occasions, was used by Him to perform many miracles and even dared to ask God to show him His glory and He did (Exodus 33).
Many times I heard these stories used to challenge us to ask God to show us His glory and even sing songs about it, desiring that God would perform miracles through us, knowing that our God is the same God who showed Moses his glory. The problem is that at the end of the day, we end up a bit discouraged by the notion that deep inside we know that “these things happened in the Old Testament times” and from time to time when we are captivated by one of these narratives there is a glimpse of jealousy running through our veins desiring that we would of experienced these times in which God revealed himself in such a way.
The other day, I found myself pretty surprised as I was reading Hebrews 1:1-4 which says: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (ESV). After reading that, I was like... “Wow, hang on a minute... what?” I was really caught by the declaration that Christ is “the radiance of the glory of God”. Apart from this, is pretty obvious that the author of Hebrews almost ignores the awesomeness of the fact that God spoke before by the prophets and jumps right away to talk about the pre-eminence of Christ, and how now we get the privilege of knowing Jesus he who is “the radiance of the glory of God”, not just that but he also is “the exact image of his nature”, therefore, Jesus is God! This is simply awesome! All that longing for what the patriarchs and the prophets were able to enjoy and the Bible itself screams that we got the best deal in all of history! Jesus has been revealed by God to us and we can have direct access to him! While all these was going through my mind I remembered that there is a verse that talks about the prophets desiring what we have, and I found it in 1Peter 1:10-12, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” These verses are simply the opposite of that feeling of jealousy towards the prophets who experienced God´s glory and power; these verses are saying that they were the ones longing for this time in which grace would be revealed through Jesus Christ, it even says that the angels long to look into it. In other words, it does not get better than this, Jesus is the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and he has been revealed to us, and even though now we can´t see him physically, we have his revelation in the completion of the Word of God. We enjoy the blessing of salvation and this time of grace, we can directly talk to him, enjoy a relationship with Jesus and be filled with his Spirit. The problem is that we so easily forget about this, we forget that we have God´s most glorious revelation; He has spoken to us by sending His Son! Jesus Christ the one who created the world and upholds the universe together! (Hebrews 1:2-3). The people from the Old Testament had just a glimpse of God´s glory and for short periods of time, like the experience with Moses, God´s glory just passed by (Exodus 33) but Christ has come to stay with us, this is awesome! (Matthew 28:20). This is not a small deal, this is literally glorious. This is why the study of the Bible and especially Christological issues are so important and life changing for me, it is a huge reminder that the person of Christ is all I need, he is all in all, he is God, and my goal has to be to get to know him more and more, learning to marvel at his person, his acts and works, his grace, his love, his forgiveness and all there is in the scriptures for me to learn about him and what he wants to do in my daily walk with him.
As we consider these great men of God in the Old Testament we find a great gallery of many of their lives in Hebrews 11, the well know passage about faith and the great legacy of example these people left for us, but in the end it says: “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us...” (Hebrews 11 39-40). This better thing for us is nothing less than Christ and the grace that we receive from him! Again this reminds us that we got all the glory that we need, this is a call to rejoice in Jesus Christ and to behold his beauty, to fall in love over and over again with him and all he has done for us.
But the next question that came to my mind was; “ok, we got God´s radiant glory, but what about all those miracles that these people experienced?” And as soon as I think that, I acknowledge that God still is able to perform miracles whenever and wherever he wants but there is an amazing miracle that many times we overlook as such, this is that we, wretched sinners, who were rebellious against God, dead in our sins and trespasses have been caused by God to be born again! (Ephesians 2:1-10; 1Peter 1:3) This is a miracle that has happened in all of us who have placed our faith and hope in the person of Jesus to forgive our sins through his death and resurrection, knowing that he took our sins and he gave us his righteousness. Sadly we don´t marvel as much for this as we do with some of the visible miracles from the Bible, but this is without a single doubt the miracle that I´ll get to enjoy for all eternity and I need to learn to rejoice more and more in this reality.
Finally I want to mention what this revelation of Christ does in us while we are still on the Earth, in 2Corinthians 3:18 says: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from the degree of glory to another” (ESV). When we behold the glory of Jesus, and we look just to him, we love him, we get to know him deeper, and beholding this glory is that by the Spirit we are being transformed in to that same image!!! What more glory do we need than this? That we, humans and sinners can be transformed into the image of this glory, by this life long process called sanctification. This is real glory, this is far beyond anything else, the privilege of having been invited into the family of God, having our sins forgiven and the opportunity of a life lived to discover more and more of the person of Jesus Christ. I pray that God will help me to live in such a way that I could be in awe of the person of Jesus Christ, his sacrifice for me and the privilege that I have of being part of God´s family and being able to behold his glory! That I would understand that the life that he has given me is the greatest demonstration of his power that I need and that this should bring joy to my soul knowing that I have been reconciled with him for eternity! Glory be to God!
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