“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek”-Romans1:16
LIGHT FOR NOW: God does not delight in destruction.
In our previous study, it was established that God’s power when regulated is regulated to save. God’s power does not destroy and cannot be explained or seen in destruction. You cannot find destruction in God’s power, just as you cannot find destruction in God. Thus, to have the best view of God (God’s power), it is pertinent that you look at Jesus, what He does and what He doesn’t do will explain what God does and does not do. This is because the person of Jesus explains the character of God. Jesus is God. If you lose sight of this fact, then you won’t be able to understand the operation of God (what He does and what He does not do) because it is in the operation of Jesus that we can find the operation of God.
John in his synoptic account clarifies this fact that Jesus is God. “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God” (John 1:1). In the context of this scripture, Jesus is the word. Observe ‘the word (Jesus) was God. In essence, John in context, is saying Jesus who is the word pre-existed as God and became a man upon incarnation. That is why in verse 14, he says, “And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth”. The word, ’became flesh’ means God became a man. Thus, the humanity of Jesus will be a vital experience of God. In what Jesus does, we will know what God does because Jesus is God. Paul echoed the same fact in John 1 in his letter to Timothy (a mentee of his) with much more clarity in 1 Timothy 3:16 which reads “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory”. The statement, ‘God was made manifest in the flesh’ means God became a man (this is the person of Jesus). So the incarnation of Jesus is the person of God manifested as Christ Jesus the man.
Thus, the man (Christ Jesus who is the incarnated one) will explain God to us. Having established the fact that Jesus is God, it then sufficies us to say that our view of God’s character, nature, person must be founded on the person of Jesus. So, in God becoming a man in the person of Christ, He will now explain His character for us in clarity because the Old Testament prophets in their enquiry about God made a lot of assumptions as regards the person or character of God; they mutilated God’s character. They tried to know God but they failed in their attempts to know God and thus they assassinated the character of God. A perfect example is 1 Samuel 16:14 which we saw in our previous studies where the prophet implied that that an evil spirit came out of God and troubled Saul. It must be noted that God has no dealings with evil spirits. In fact, Jesus who is the God revealing himself corrected this error upon His earthly walk. He (Jesus) casted out devils and evil spirits. If evil spirits come from Him, He would not have cast out what is from him. And moreover, in Mark 16:17, He gave us an order to cast out devils “And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new talks”. This further buttresses that fact established in previous studies that in the Old Testament the words that came from God in the utterances of the prophets are the words they spoke concerning Christ and the words that came from the prophets are words spoken by them in their assumptuos state or view of God. That is why, it takes the revelation of the character of God in Christ in the New Testament to correct the impressions of the prophets in the Old Testament.
INSTRUCTION: If you do not know Jesus, you do not know God. So, know Jesus.
PRAYER: Father I thank you for the revelation of your personality in your son Jesus Christ. I absolutely rely on your consistent character that has never changed throughout the ages, in Jesus Name. Amen.
QUOTE: It takes the revelation of God in Christ to correct the impressions of the prophets about God in the Old Testament.
DAILY BIBLE READING: MORNING: MARK CHAPTER 16; EVENING: JAMES CHAPTER 1
LIGHT FROM THE WORD 