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Christ the Redeemer (#KnowMore Part 3)

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Hey, hey! Welcome back, guys! Hoping you had an amazing weekend. Here’s to a brand-new week! And, apparently, a brand-new month. I swear September was like 2 hours; just whizzed past like Roadrunner. Still, we thank God for His goodness throughout the month, and it is my prayer that He will safely guide us through October.

I gave a week’s pause on this series to organise some other things going on outside of the blog, and now that it’s all good, I pray it will be consistent as promised. Every Monday and Thursday will have a new part posted.

If this is your first read on this blog, feel right at home. We have been doing a series called Know More, which seeks to help us understand more about God, His plan for us, and our role in all this. It is my hope that through all this, we will (definitely) know more, be guided more by the Word, and effectively reach out more by sharing this wonderful story of the God who is there.

In past weeks, we have been looking at God’s attributes; that which He has revealed to be true about Himself in Scripture. We saw his holiness as His primary attribute, which is, all His other attributes are set apart (distinct only to Himself) and infinitely perfect. We looked at His righteousness, how all He does is good, and His justice in having to punish that which is wrong. Lastly, we saw His mercy, in that He punished sin as His justice demanded, but we who were the offenders did not receive the punishment meted out.

Today, we take a closer look at the Person of God who took our place. On Thursday, we will delve deeper into how the substitution was carried out, hoping God will enable me to do so clearly.

Let’s begin!

We all have to agree that the person who has had most influence on culture and worldview is none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Books have been written about Him, countless forums held to discuss who He is and what He was, and many other forms of media, including plays and films, which have all tried to answer the question; who is this man who, in a span of three years, was able to completely shake up the world, have a third of the current global population follow His teachings, and literally be the central figure who splits time into two eras (BC and AD)?

It would be good to note, as we have been doing, that any of our attempts to try and explain Him as we know (or think we know) would ultimately fall short of what He has been revealed to be in the Bible. Let’s look at His life story as outlined in the first four books of the New Testament, known as the Gospels, with an emphasis on that written by Luke.

A young lady, a virgin called Mary, lived in a quaint little town in Judea called Nazareth. She was engaged to a carpenter named Joseph of the lineage of the great King David, and I bet she, just like any other young woman awaiting marriage, was looking forward to finally settling down and having a family of her own. She, being a Jew and brought up in their ways and culture, was hopeful of a day when the one promised by God to deliver them would appear. Judea at the time was under Roman occupation, and many of the people clung to the promise of this conquering King given in Isaiah 9:6-7;

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

Isaiah 9:6-7 ESV

One day, as Mary was probably going about her own business, she received a visitor who greeted her in a very strange manner;

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”

Luke 1:28 ESV

Favoured one, she must have wondered. The visitor, who was an angel sent by God, then went on to assure her not to be afraid, for she had been chosen by God to be the one who would give birth to the foretold Promised One that she and her people had been hoping for; this son she would bear was to be called Jesus.

Well, Mary must have been quite disturbed to hear all this, and wondered how she would bear a child and yet was still a virgin. The angel told her that she would be overshadowed by the Spirit of God – the same Spirit that was present at creation and formed the world out of nothing. No human intervention was present, and thus the child born would be sinless, without the genome of Adam’s sinfulness transferred to Him.

The same power of God that would make this seemingly impossible thing come to pass had already done the same thing to Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, who, though advanced in age and considered barren, was already six months pregnant with a son who would later become the man to prepare the way for Mary’s own son.

It all might sound like a plot worthy of a bestseller, but it did happen as foretold, and God Himself came into the world as prophesied, not as a mighty King the Jews were expecting, but as a baby, helpless and crying, born in a stable because there was no room to stay in at the city of Bethlehem, where His parents had gone to be present for a census. A very humble way to enter the world He had created, and even more humbling to have to grow up as one of the people He had created.

What was the purpose of all this? Remember, we saw the Israelites had to constantly give sacrifices for their sin, or choose to follow each and every one of the 613 laws prescribed by God, with obedience from the heart, in order to be considered right before Him. Evidently, we couldn’t, and still can’t.

Only a lawgiver can spell out what they can attain.

God requires holiness in order to approach Him because He himself is holy. God therefore came down and took up our form and body to show us that it is possible to live a sinless, holy life of complete obedience to Him as He intended at the beginning.

So, His work as promised was not to lead Israel into a glorious triumph over the Romans and their oppressors. It was to redeem them and all of mankind from an even greater oppressor; sin and their own wicked desires and ways.

On Thursday, we will look at how exactly He carried out His redeeming work, and of equal importance get into a clearer understanding of what this word ‘sin’ is. Keep praying that this will impact us in our walk with God as we strive to know Him more.

Have an amazing week ahead.

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Holy, Just, Merciful (#KnowMore Part 2.2)

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Welcome to this last instalment of the second part of #KnowMore. Yesterday, we looked at the holiness of God, and saw why it is His primary attribute. As the great writer Arthur W. Pink says,

As His power is the strength of them [His attributes], so His holiness is the beauty of them; as all would be weak without almightiness to back them, so all would be uncomely without holiness to adorn them.

In our journey of trying to find out how to have a relationship with the God of glory, we realise that there is one thing that is stopping us from doing so; our own sinful state. I realise a question may have arisen from yesterday’s post; what is sin? Why is God the supreme authority to declare what is right and what is wrong? Is there a punishment for any wrong done?

In today’s post, we seek to shed more light on these questions, in the hope that they will illuminate
the parts in our lives we have to, literally, sever from in order to have a relationship with God.

I’ll take you back to a Sunday School favourite; the creation story. As outlined in Genesis 1, God made all we see from a formless void all by the word of His mouth. The echoing phrase, ‘Let there be’ was heard all across the universe, and what He declared to be was made. On the sixth day of creation, the phrase changes.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Genesis 1:26 ESV

He made man (that’s you and me) in His image and likeness. Out of the soil of the earth, He created us and breathed the breath of life into our nostrils (Genesis 2:7). It’s amazing that He made the stars, planets, fish and birds by the word of His mouth, but He made the human race with His hands. It gives me chills just thinking about it, like how cool is that! He measured out the universe, and made us with His hands. After all was done, He looked around and saw that it was good (Genesis 1:31); actually, it was very good.

This is where I will bring in the term righteous, with flourish.

Righteous

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the term righteous, applied to God, is the perfection and holiness of His nature. It is His having exact rectitude (rightness of principle or practice; exact conformity to the truth); essentially, He is blameless and without error.

The Bible uses the Hebrew tsaddik’ in the Old Testament, and the Greek dikaíos in the New Testament to mention God’s righteousness. Both convey the rightness, correctness or moral excellence of God. Therefore, like His other attributes, it is inherent to His nature; it is essential to Him.

Since morality is a part of His righteousness, His justice is an integral, almost similar, part of His righteousness. The Bible scarcely distinguishes the righteousness of God from His justice.

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.

Psalms 89:14 ESV

Seeing that holiness is His primary attribute, it is right to conclude that His righteousness and justice
are holy (infinitely set apart from all others). His idea of justice is not like ours; His idea of righteousness is way above what we think of ours.

But the LORD of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.

Isaiah 5:16 ESV

Back to the creation story. After creating man (Adam and Eve), He placed them in this glorious garden where they had all they needed, plus having an intimate, personal relationship with their Creator. There was one rule, however; not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which was at the middle of the garden. Why did He do so? By telling them not to eat of that fruit, He gave a command from His nature as one of moral excellence, knowing what was right and had to be done, and any wrong doing must be punished. The punishment for disobeying this command was death, some kind of separation.

We all know how the story goes. Through the trickery of the deceiver, Satan, man disobeyed God and ate of the fruit. God, being just, had to punish them for their wrong. He had prescribed death as the punishment. First, there was a spiritual death, a separation of man’s spirit from God (remember
we saw that God is spirit, John 4:23-24). Man was stained with the wrong he had committed, and God, in His holiness, could not continue to have an association with Him.

There also had to be a physical death, a separation from the body given; as a result, blood had to be
shed as payment for the wrong done.

and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Hebrews 9:22b ESV

Adam and Eve had to die in order for the justice of God to be upheld; their wickedness and wrong had to be forever blotted out from His presence. Here is where things take a dramatic turn.

God made skins for them to cover their nakedness of which they were ashamed of. The question is; did the animals He skinned keep on walking about, skinless and… oh, the image alone! I think not.

They had to die in order to be skinned. Had His justice been delivered? Yes; there had to be a death in order to uphold it. But Adam and Eve did not pay it themselves. The animals, innocent of the wrong done by man, paid the price for them.

Let’s look at His mercy, which ties all this up.

Mercy

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mercy as ‘compassion or forbearance shown especially to an
offender or to one subject to one’s power’. More than 300 times in the Bible is God’s mercy toward
His people directly addressed. David describes Him thus,

The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Psalms 145:8 ESV

The Hebrew word used in the Old Testament is rachûm, which directly translates to ‘compassionate, full of mercy’. He forgives those who have done Him wrong instead of punishing them. This seems to contradict with His justice; how then is His justice upheld?

In the case of Adam and Eve, the animals took their place and died so that they could live. As history went on, Adam’s sons and descendants realised that the only way they could be cleansed from the sin of their father was by the death of animals. The animals would pay for their sins, and God’s mercy would shine upon them, and His justice would be upheld.

In the light of all this, we may ask, ‘why then are there no more animals being offered up as a means for God’s justice to be upheld?’ And rightly so. Why are we no longer having to slaughter bulls and sheep every day to have their blood pay for the wrongs we do daily?

The answer is as glorious as it is shocking;

Did that surprise you? It sure did the same for me when I learnt about it for the first time, and still continues to baffle me even as I prepare to share some background info on it with you guys on Monday. He is the just God who justifies the sinner, and effects His mercy upon Him.

Have an amazing weekend.

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Holy, Just, Merciful (#KnowMore Part 2.1)

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Welcome back, dear reader. I am hoping your week has thus far been good and full of God’s goodness. I have been doing great, in between researching for this post and contemplating on an aspect only people wearing glasses can relate to.

All that aside, it’s great to have you here, and I am deeply humbled that you are along this journey of knowledge with me. Taking it one step at a time is important in having to understand and grow in the knowledge of these truths.

On Monday, we had a small glimpse at who God is. You can read it here if you haven’t yet. We established, from Scripture, that He is unchangeable, the creator of everything we see, and is not like us; He is infinitely higher and greater than we can ever be (this attribute is called transcendence).

There are other truths we didn’t expound on, but are critical in knowing and understanding who He is; eternal (He was from the beginning, and will be after the end), spirit (He doesn’t have a physical body like ours, thus He cannot be represented by an image, seen in Deuteronomy 4:15-19), and infinite (He cannot be contained by anything, stopped by anything, or made unknown of anything, Jeremiah 23:24).

Today, we will look at holiness. It being rather broad and of great importance, I shall split this part into two (particulate theory of matter). The following post will cover His justice and mercy. Let’s get this rolling, shall we?

Holiness

What comes to mind when you hear the word holy? I bet it’s this; a man or woman dressed in long flowing robes with hands constantly folded in prayer. Or that guy who doesn’t drink or smoke, or that girl who dresses modestly. Oh, and all three are always found in a church setting.

Sadly, that isn’t what holiness is. Secondly, we ought to remember that it’s God we are talking about, and He is not like us, so using human examples will, in one way or another, ultimately fall short. The only way we can define how God is holy is through His word.

Holiness is used as a term to mean two things; set apart and free from sin or blemish. When we say
God is holy, it means He is absolutely free from any trace of stain or of sin.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

1 John 1:5 ESV

In addition, He is holy in that He is set apart and distinct from all His creation and any other thing. The word used for holy in the Old Testament is ‘qodesh’ and that in the New Testament is ‘hagios’. Both carry the connotation of something that is separate, set apart, and purity of the highest degree.

In Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4, we see a term used only twice in the Bible to describe our God.

And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

Isaiah 6:3 ESV

The seraphim (angels of light ministering before Him) fly back and forth, singing this anthem aloud and with unanimity. The same song is sung by the four living creatures in Revelation 4.

In the Hebrew language, repetition is used as an emphatic (I hope my English there is correct).

For example, in many of Jesus’ teachings, He says ‘truly, truly I say to you,’ to emphasise on the truth of the matter. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes says ‘vanity of vanities, all is vanity’ to lend emphasis to how the pursuit of happiness in earthly things is a worthless pursuit.

However, the term holy here has been used not twice, but three times.

If you’re like me, the first ‘holy’ will have you like, ‘yeah, that’s true’.

The second one, ‘ok, not just an ordinary kind of holy, but a greater one’.

The third, ‘hold up. Are you talking about a holiness that is greater than even the greater one I can think of?’ Drops mic. Booom!

The fact that it is used thrice indicates how absolute and infinite His holiness is. Nowhere else do we see another attribute given such emphasis as holiness is.

In addition, His works, titles and all things associated with Him are designated as holy. His name is holy.

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

Isaiah 57:15a ESV

David called His temple holy (Psalm 5:7) because it was where He dwelt, whether in heaven or on earth.

This can lead to one conclusion. If the angels are in awe of God’s mercy, they would cry out ‘merciful, merciful, merciful is the Lord’. We don’t see it, however. Neither is love, or wrath, or kindness. All things associated with Him are designated as holy.

If holiness is given such emphasis, it means it must be His primary attribute, and rightly so. If His power were not a holy power, it would be a terror to us. Were His love not tempered by holiness, it would be permissive even to what is evidently sinful. Indeed, our God is a holy God.

This must have an implication to us having a relationship with Him. How can we have fellowship with a holy God?

We have seen that one meaning of holiness is ‘free from any trace of stain or sin; pure’. Is our condition pure? In our natural state, are we free from sin and darkness?

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Romans 3:23 ESV

We all have no purity, in fact, we are polluted through and through.

In the earlier passage of Isaiah we mentioned, after beholding the glory of God and hearing the angels declare Him thrice holy, Isaiah cried out,

“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

Isaiah 6:5 ESV

Hearing the angels declare God as holy, holy, holy, when they themselves were considered such pure and holy creatures by Isaiah must have broken him down as such. He recognised his own state before God, having spoken evil from an unclean heart that had stained his lips, dwelling among a people who lived and breathed wickedness.

We cannot, in our polluted state, have a relationship with the God of utmost purity and blamelessness. What makes the matter grave is that God cannot tolerate sin, and cannot even look upon it.

You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong,

Habakkuk 1:13a. ESV

He being of utmost power, thus, has to deal with it, and remove it from before Him. Where does that
place us?

In tomorrow’s post, which will wrap up these three attributes of God by looking at His justice (tied to His righteousness) and His mercy.

We will see why He is the highest moral authority, and how he deals with sinfulness and wrong. I pray that as we go along, we will keep growing in knowledge of Him and His plan for us.

Who God Is (#KnowMore Part 1)

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Hey there. So glad you have been able to take time to pass by and make the first step in this journey with me. I am very excited (I wish you could see me jump up and down with joy) to be able to share this with you guys. The impact such a study has had on me and relationship with God is life-changing; as we forge on, I pray that you will let the truths of God’s word make a difference in your life.

After much consideration, I saw it best to be doing two posts on #KnowMore a week; Monday and Thursday. That way, we will all be able to keep in step with what God has in store for us as revealed in Scripture. Plus, it’s a good way to keep me on my toes and refresh my knowledge of these things.

I have a bit of amazing news too. I have been able to talk to my guest writers, who I know are planning something really awesome for us all to learn from and be edified through. I would ask that you keep them in prayer as they finish up their contributions, and that it won’t be for their glory, but to God alone.

We’ll kick off this ten-part (you heard me right) series with a verse some of us know from childhood. The very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1;

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

There most probably has been this very simple question that may have bubbled to the surface many times in your life; who is God?

It seems really innocuous at first, but take a step back and ask yourself again; who is God? What is
He? Where did He come from?

We have looked for answers to these questions, either consciously or not, from ages ago. I often
look at some really simple things, like the flight of birds, the rising of the sun, the way the wind blows through the trees, and I find that they operate almost perfectly, like clockwork. It cannot cross my mind how a giant galactic explosion can be credited to creating such order and neatness.

From ancient times, people have always looked up to the sky, seen the stars and the shifting planets, and wondered, ‘Where did all this come from?’ However, instead of further pondering more behind the question, they turned to adoring and worshipping these created things and not the one who created them. We, who have been further enlightened, can definitively state that there has to be something, chiefly a Someone, who actually had to sit down and make all these things we see. The question still remains, where did He come from?

The Bible, which happens to our sole and sure source of wisdom and knowledge that leads to salvation and laying a foundation about understanding who God is, does a very interesting thing; it doesn’t attempt to prove God’s existence, rather assumes He existed before the very beginning.
When Moses writes in Genesis 1 that He made the heavens and the earth, that means He was there before even they were formed. The fact of His existence has been made manifest and clear to all mankind, and is even present in our consciences.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal
power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

Romans 1:20 ESV

A thought may come, that if He is then the one who, like us, can make a variety of things, then He is
like us. He is not like us,

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV

The sky and the heavens are eternally above the earth. Even at the top of magnificently high features like the Himalayas, guess what? There’s still the sky above you. That is how His ways, thoughts and way of thinking are above ours. We cannot even get close to His patterns of thought even in our greatest wisdom.

Well, if someone can have such great creative power, and have exceedingly great thoughts, there is
a possibility of erraticism, being as shifting and changing like the wind. However, we have
established that He is not like us, thus He is unchangeable.

You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.

Hebrews 1:10-12 ESV

As clothes are changed, so will that which He has
created change. They will fade away after standing
the test of time, but He remains just as He is and has always been.

I could go on and on, giving more examples from the Bible of who God has shown Himself to be.

What’s the point of all this, anyway? Why would He, the Supreme Creator, unchanging and perfect One, decide to make these attributes about Himself known to us through His word? There must be a reason to why He has done all this; an explanation to why He has chosen to reveal all this to us.

I can give a simple allusion to aid in answering why; I wouldn’t have the friends I already do if I hadn’t shown some aspects about myself. The fact that I opened up to them to see who I am made it easier for them to create a relationship with me.

Similarly, God wants us to enter a loving, communal relationship with Him, which is why He has allowed for us to know about Him, and He has made Himself known through His word.

This Thursday, we’ll look at three more attributes of His nature as revealed through the Bible, and what role they play in having a relationship with Him.

It is my hope and prayer that you have gained some little more knowledge about who God fundamentally is. The comment section is alive and well;
if you have a question, anything to say; feel free to drop it in the box below.

Grace and peace to you all.

Starting Today; #KnowMore

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A lovely morning to you! I trust you had a splendid weekend of rest and reflection.

As promised, my new series, #KnowMore, is kicking off today. The first part will be up soon.

If you are probably wondering what exactly shall be covered in this series, here’s a breakdown I have done for you;

  1. Who God Is
  2. Holy, Just, Merciful
  3. Christ the Redeemer
  4. Overwhelming Sacrifice
  5. Made Anew; Regeneration (guest post)
  6. Made Clean; Sanctification (guest post)
  7. Considered Righteous; Justification (guest post)
  8. I Will Send You A Helper
  9. Now These Three Remain.
  10. Three In One (bonus post)

I hope you’re as eager as I am for this. Cause I am pumped 🕺🕺

Peace ✌️

New Series Alert! #KnowMore

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Hey hey! Hoping you have had an amazing week, and looking forward to a great weekend.

This is going to be rather brief. I’ll be starting a new series from Monday, and thereafter a follow-up
every Thursday.

The title of this project is #KnowMore. Why that (and why the hashtag?? 😅😅)?

It’s something I have been having in mind for a while to share that which I have gained from various
Bible studies, fellowships and fora (is that the correct plural for forum?🤔) and stored in notebooks and my memory banks.

It’s essentially about knowing more about God, knowing more about His plans for us, which will eventually lead us to know more about ourselves and why we crucially need Him.

It might be a huge undertaking on my own, so I am considering to invite a few guest ‘speakers’ to
hand in a fresh perspective (that voice you have in your head that’s associated with me can be quite
monotonous). I assure you, they know their stuff.

Oh, the hashtag. For easy sharing, of course. And for easier referencing of posts; that can get quite
difficult.

So, buckle up guys. It’s gonna be a ride you will not forget and one I pray you will greatly benefit from for Christ’s glory.✌️✌️