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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

When the Invisible Man Meets the Image of the Invisible God


          If one of our brothers or sisters in Jesus Christ has a spiritual virus that keeps telling them they are silent, invisible, and worthless, what will happen to their relationship with God and his people when they try to be part of the work God is doing in the church?
          One thing that will happen is that they will tend to relate out of either the “too much” or “nothing at all” pendulum extremes. Some people who have come to believe they are silent, invisible, and worthless cannot seem to help themselves from trying way too hard to get people to hear them, see them, and value them. Others will respond to the same inner-condition by giving up any hope of anyone hearing them, seeing them, or valuing them, so they shut down all together.
          If churches do not understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit to heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds,[1] or that God has a special interest in being close to the broken and contrite of heart,[2] they will look at the busy-beavers in the church as though their activity is proof of the Spirit-filled life, rather than the evidence of an unmet need to know God.[3]
          I remember growing up hearing that the most active members were the “committed” people. If I wanted to be part of this well-respected elite group, I needed to sharpen up on my activity commitments. Commitment and activity gave status and recognition. These are very poor facsimiles of the feeling of significance and worth we are longing for, but when there is a famine of treating one another with God-sized feelings of worth, counterfeits can be quite addictive.
          What I realize now is that many committed people in the church are broken people trying to get someone to hear them, see them, and value them. I also realize that many uninvolved attenders are broken people who have given up all hope of anyone hearing them, seeing them, or valuing them.
          What, then, is the connection between people who feel invisible, and Jesus Christ who is the image of the invisible God?[4]
          It is this: that Jesus Christ came to bring us into a relationship with God where we know him as the Father who knows us. Everything to do with our significance rests in God. We are his dream. We are his creation. We are his design. We are the one and only creature in the whole world that was created in God’s own image.[5] We are the special object of his attention in conforming us to the same image as Jesus Christ “from one degree of glory to another.”[6]
          We know that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,[7] and give us eternal life.[8]However, Jesus’ description of the eternal life that is given to saved sinners is this, “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”[9]
          Do you see the two-way relationship? God sent Jesus so that Jesus could bring us to know God. To live in the mutual relationship of knowing and being known is part of being in the image and likeness of God. The triunity of God reveals a relational God who is constantly in the reality of knowing one another, and being known by one another. They made man for this, and saved man for this.
          Just before Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, this is what he prayed for us: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”[10]
          Jesus described a relationship within the Triune that was Jesus in the Father, and the Father in Jesus. His prayer, which the Father is most certainly answering, is that we could be in them, just as they are in one another. This relationship of being in Christ, gives is the greatest significance of all, the very significance and worth we were created to know and enjoy.
          So, what does the invisible child of God do when even the church has trouble seeing him, hearing him, or valuing him? He looks to Jesus who is not ashamed to call him brother,[11] to the Father who considers him a beloved child,[12] and seeks to know them in their fellowship of knowing him.
          The hope set before such a child of God is that there is coming a day Paul described like this: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”[13]
          In this lifetime, we may be much more aware of seeing in a mirror dimly, and knowing only in part. But we keep growing in love relationships with God and his people because we are constantly being conformed to the image of the invisible God from one degree of glory to another,[14]and, the God who will carry on to completion the good work he has started in us,[15] will one day cause us to just as fully know as we have been fully known from before the foundation of the world.
         
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)





[1] Psalm 147:3
[2] Psalm 51:7; Isaiah 57:15; 66:1-2
[3] I do not mean that everyone who is active in the church is operating out of this unmet need, only that we need to look at those who are the most committed to make sure they have a testimony of knowing God as the one who fully knows them.
[4] Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3
[5] Genesis 1:26-27
[6] II Corinthians 3:18
[7] I Timothy 1:15
[8] John 3:16
[9] John 17:3
[10] John 17:20-21
[11] Hebrews 2:11-13
[12] Ephesians 5:1-2
[13] I Corinthians 13:12
[14] II Corinthians 3:18
[15] Philippians 1:6

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