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| Children of Light |
Settling Our Eternal Conflict
Studies in the Gospel of John 8:51-59, #18
(58) Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." (59) So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’ Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home
(Stanza IV, “Ode on Intimations of Mortality” by William Wordsworth)
Each of us, who live in this world, having accepted Christ as Savior and Lord, must appropriate Christ, receive his Word. His life must become our lives, His essence and faith and disposition must become a part of us, if we are to resolve the internal conflicts of our human nature. These conflicts are brought on by life according to our sensory perceptions--what we see, what we think, what we feel, what we hear, what we allegedly know and what we fear. The Word of Christ, on the other hand, must be received spiritually. It only becomes a part of us through the working of the Holy Spirit in us, as we accept this work in faith. Do you thirst to know God – do you know God personally and in the power and depth of his love for you?
Jesus challenged the people of Israel to accept his word as the revelation of God. Christ’s claims challenged the very foundation of their belief and understanding of God. What are these claims?
First, Jesus Christ claims unique knowledge of God. Jesus claims that the only way to full knowledge of the mind and heart of God is through himself, the Christ of God. The only way to know God is through Christ.
Jesus Christ also claims unique obedience to God the Father. He thinks, lives and acts in the knowledge of his Father's Word. To look at his life is to "see how God wishes me to live." In Christ alone we see what God wants us to know and what God wants us to be.
When the Jews asked Jesus “Who do you claim to be? He answered, “Before Abraham was, I am.” This is the timeless God whom Moses encountered on Mt Sinai in the burning bush.
Christ is timeless, and this timelessness is his because of his union with the person of God.
How do we resolve our internal conflicts? We come to know “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).” Jesus was a man who came, lived, died, and then rose again. But he was more. He is the beginning and the end. He is the eternal logos, the essence of divinity, the spiritual prince ordained to rule over God’s sons and daughters. He is the immortal timeless One, the Christ of God, who joined in Creation, who appeared and blessed Abraham as Melchizedek, who guided Israel as the pillar of fire by night and cloud by day, who joined Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego in the fiery furnace, who always was and always will be.
In Jesus Christ is the spiritual and physical manifestation of the eternal invisible, immortal God. His death and rising make it possible for us to share in his eternal life. Do you live in the hope and joy of the resurrection?
Through faith Christ enables us to regain our unique knowledge of God, lost in the fall of humanity. Through Christ we are once again able to live in unique obedience to the command of God to love, for God is one, one soul, one heart, one Love. Through Christ we enter into God’s timelessness. There is no past for us, no present, no future. There is only eternity.
As finite we can only understand life as beginning and ending. But in Christ, life is always, it is eternal, it is everlasting, and so are we. These bodies that house our souls are temporary, but they house the eternal.
Through Christ and Christ alone, our internal conflict will be finally resolved—for we having been reclaimed as children of God, sons and daughters of light, will like Jesus, fully embrace the Christ of God, as we are fully embraced by the same. Through him, conflict ends, for love convinces us of our onenesss with each other, and the unity of ourselves as body, mind and spirit.
Amen.
