Christ All and In All

(Search the Scriptures)

Through Him, by Him, and for Him all things exist that we see with our natural eyes.  And blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.  We must look, that is search earnestly for Him, so that He might find us.  Yes, He is the one who does the finding.  God called to Adam, “Where are you?”  It is the Good Shepherd who goes out to find that one lost sheep.  We are saved by grace so that we can never boast.  Yet it is also absolutely true that we must pursue Him.  How wonderful is the collision!  But not always a joyful occasion.  No two encounters with Christ are the same.  Not even in our individual lives.  Consider David.  His days as a shepherd over Jesse’s sheep were challenging.  He honed his abilities with that slingshot.  And he had a great victory over Goliath.  Then he was chased by Saul.  After all that, in a weak moment he indulged his flesh, and had to bear the consequences throughout his family.  He had been mighty and now he had fallen.  The Lord did not quit in his life and restored him.

It was all Christ at work in David.  Well before His coming the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Christ was working.  Years ago I heard David referred to as a new covenant man.  I understood that immediately.  Now I keep thinking that we of His church still think as if we are in the shadows.  David knew more of the Lord than most of his day.  Yet he did not become a forerunner by his own will.  He became such as he grew to know the Lord.  Again, consider his story that he spent his youth in a lowly position as a shepherd boy.  I think we could see his later failures can be tied to a loss of that early humility.  Similar experience attended Moses who spent 80 years in preparation, Elijah who comes on the scene having learned to stand before the Lord, and the Savior Himself who grew for 30 years before His revealing to the family of Jacob.

Christ has fulfilled the law, the feasts, and all the requirements.  He is God’s provision for every spiritual need.  And as our Father, He attends to every earthly, material need.  I stop here in the mystery of His name being called everlasting Father.  The Godhead is a mystery.  Yet He calls us to come and know Him.  Above all it is to know Him as agape, this love that has no beginning, no end, no bottom, no limitation.  We must also know Him as unapproachable light but also as Abba, daddy God.  Who can fathom the depth of His love to come to us, knowing His time here would be marked with grief and anger culminating in a Roman torture and cross.  He knew the end from the beginning and knew the joy set before Him.  We must know that joy so that we may endure to the end.  How do we find that?  Know Christ, pursue Christ, eat His flesh and drink His blood.  He offers all of Himself to us.

How sad He must come to some of His own and say, I spit you out.  Yet then He says, I am knocking and if you open the door, I will come in like I did at Bethany, and I will sit at the table with you and we can have communion.  We will share a meal.  And if you have followed me but denied me in your fear and weakness, I will find you at a job and invite you to breakfast.  If I find you feeding my sheep, I will gird myself and come with my Father and we will serve you.  What kind of love is this?  It is part of the gift of God to mankind, offered freely that we may know Him, be joined to Him, grow as beloved children, and look forward to be part of a marriage celebration so wonderful we could not bear it in this mortal flesh.