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Identity in Christ
Most who are over 50 years old will remember Nikita Khrushchev. He was a colorful, stormy character who, as a leader of the former Soviet Union, slammed his shoe on the lectern when speaking to the United Nations General Assembly. He was also known for his explanation that the first man in space, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, "flew into space, but saw no god there." As far as Gagarin himself is concerned, there is no record that he has ever made such a statement. But Khrushchev was right, but not for the reasons he had in mind.
For the Bible itself tells us that no man has ever seen God but one, namely God's own Son Jesus. In John we read: “No one has ever seen God; the firstborn, who is God and is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him to us” (John 1,18).
Unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, who wrote about the birth of Jesus, John begins with Jesus' divinity, and he tells us that Jesus was God from the beginning. He would be the "God with us," as the prophecies foretold. John explains that the Son of God became man and lived among us as one of us. When Jesus died and was raised to life and sat at the right hand of the Father, he remained human, the glorified man, full of God and full of man. Jesus himself, the Bible teaches us, is the highest communion of God with humanity.
Out of love, God made the free choice to create mankind in his own image and pitch his tent among us. It is the mystery of the gospel that God cares so much about humanity and that he loves the whole world - this includes you and me and every person we know and love. The ultimate explanation of the mystery is that God demonstrates his love of humanity by meeting humanity by meeting each and every one of us in the person of Jesus Christ.
In John 5,39 Jesus is quoted as saying: “You search the Scriptures, thinking that therein you have eternal life; and it is she that testifies of me; but you do not want to come to me that you might have life.” The Bible is there to lead us to Jesus, to show us that God has bound himself so strongly in Jesus through his love that he will never let us go becomes. In the Gospel, God tells us: “Jesus is one with mankind and one with the Father, which means that mankind shares the Father's love for Jesus and Jesus' love for the Father. So the Gospel tells us: Because God loves you so completely and irresistibly, and because Jesus has already done everything you could not do for yourself, you can now repent with joy, believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, yourself deny, take up the cross and follow him.
The Gospel is not a call to be left alone by an angry God, it is a call to accept the infallible love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and to rejoice that God unconditionally loved you every moment of your life and will never stop loving you forever.
We will not physically see God in the universe, any more than we physically see Him physically here on Earth. It is through the eyes of faith that God reveals Himself to us through faith in Jesus Christ.
by Joseph Tkach
