God’s Wondrous Mystique
The last session, dated 7/2/08, left us pondering some questions still needing answers, such as when do we come into Christ’s new covenant, what God expects of us, and how we can find his fullness of blessing. My personal opinion, and conclusion sees that we must look even further into God Himself if we are ever to find an adequate answer to such questions. I think that we have to look further into an area that I like to term God’s special mystique.
Now what, do you suppose, do I mean by that? Well I would define this word, in keeping with Miriam Webster’s dictionary, as that air of mystery and reverence that develops around someone, like God, as we come ever closer to Him. It would likely be also as we get to know Him a bit better. One might say that it is his special appeal that He reveals to us through the workings of his new covenant, especially. It is in his new covenant that He really reveals Himself to us in a number of very appealing ways.
It is, of course, in the things that He has done on our behalf therein especially that makes Him our dear Father. In this relationship He bestows on us his overcoming victory that is so completely tied into his dear Son Jesus and all that He did on our behalf, so that we could be reunited to God the Father.
The Father sent the Son to die in the sinner’s place. We read in Romans 5:6-9:
“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” (See also through v. 17.)
If this one great and selfless action does not win us to Him, then we most likely can never be won, and will spend eternity forever without Him. For we cannot belong to Him if we cannot ever love Him enough to come to Him and let Him bear our load of sins as He came to do for us.
The third Person of the Holy Trinity is the Holy Spirit. It is He who works within us to melt our stony, rebellious hearts, to quicken us and give us spiritual life. He must do this on our behalf, for we, in the natural man, have all fallen under Adam, our first parents. And so we are very helpless without God. In us dwells no good thing (Romans 7:18. See all of ch. 7.), nor any righteousness (Rom. 3:10-20).
And so we must come unto Him if we would gain the things that we lack. It is in Him that we are reborn from on high in the spiritual sense, and He gained the victory for us before God the Father. It is in his victory that we gain the victory that so eludes us. It is in Him that we gain eternal life.
This is where we come into the new covenant. It is all of his work on our behalf that brings us there, and none of our own. Thus is the very special mystique and appeal of our great and loving God. What of the other pagan gods of men’s minds would die for the lost creation, and redeem it back unto Himself? No more of endless pain in hellfire for those who love Him. Ah, no. In this is hope! He invites us to linger long upon this, and to savor it as his heavenly breezes lure the starving spirit into the most enchanting and romantic land of his undying love and kind mercy to the lost.
Bethlehem’s child came here to bring us into his life more abundant (Jo. 10:10, Phil. 1:26, Eph 3:20, Titus 3:6), and home to his kingdom on high. It is in this that we can happily linger long in his green pastures, as the sheep of his fold. The sacred Scriptures provide such a recourse, and lead us along the straight and narrow way of his new covenant!. Here is the Gospel essence! Here is the center and core of new life in Christ! Through the auspices of his new covenant He leads us into new life at its very best and most wonderful at no cost to us but at all cost to Him, who in transcendent splendor reaches down to us from heaven’s throne room and bids us come up higher to his fresher, purer place of comfort and rest (Mt. 11:28-29).
This is that golden city set upon Zion’s hill where lost sinners can come and drink deeply of his refreshing waters and never thirst again (Jo. 4:13-15).
It is this mystical quality of this kind and loving God who stoops so far down to rescue perishing men in the desert place of earth. In this is set into motion the grandest mystique that ever a mortal could find on earth! This is not a mere shrine or grotto set up by men as an imitation that they claim as the real thing. It far surpasses any and all of man’s attempts to provide some imitation that can never reach as far as the things of God that the truth of his Word reveal to us. It is paradise found in all of the provision of his great, effusive love that takes us upward “to ride upon the high places of the earth” (Isa. 58:14), and up further still into that heavenly land of magnanimous spaciousness with Him who does nothing in a small way at all!
God had a great plan in sending his dear Son to this sin-darkened earth. We must not shortchange this in any wise, for it is our very lifeline! His new covenant is not something that we have heard much spoken of, and this is our great loss! The world will never realize the full wonder of God’s plan nor feel the great, winning mystique that draws us ever closer to the God that the angels adore without that vital work in the new covenant! And the world will flounder in its misguided directions today if it chooses not to care. For in this one credential the church will come into its own in Christ. And so it must attend to this without further delay, for without it it is defenseless against Satan’s arrows aimed at its very heart today.
There Is A Kingdom, by Anita Whalley has much more on this very vital topic. You need to pick it up and read it today. It is readily available on Amazon.com in the religious and inspirational books division.
