Sunday, December 17, 2006
As I said in the last post, the precise nature of the prophecies about Jesus Christ got my attention. God's existence gains creditability with such evidence. The reason for Christ's birth is what held my attention. I suspect my experience with religion was much like everyone else at some level. Some how I needed to measure up to some standard in order to please God or achieve some higher state of existence. Not only did none of that appeal to me, but none of it made sense when I really thought it through. That is the short hand version of my thinking at the time.
Jesus Christ came to us because we could not go to Him. His motivation was love. Love not only for the creation collectively, but for individuals as well. That was a new idea to me. I admit it took some time for me to process the concept. Mainly because up to that time I had always seen it as the ball being in my court. God taking the initiative was new to me and I recognized it as unique to Biblical theology. That God might do things differently from how I would should not have been a surprise, but it was.
Humans tend to be merit based in their relationships. God interacts with us through grace which is the opposite of merit. His love is derived from Himself. When that was first shown me in the Bible it made sense. How could I ever expect to communicate with the mind that created the universe. I could not, He had to communicate Himself to me. He did that by becoming like me. The Christmas story is not a story it is history. God becoming a man so we could know Him.
One issue remained for me to understand. My sin or short comings were what separated us. God being perfect needed to impute perfection to me in order to make me acceptable. That is the last of the four points I want to cover.
Jesus Christ came to us because we could not go to Him. His motivation was love. Love not only for the creation collectively, but for individuals as well. That was a new idea to me. I admit it took some time for me to process the concept. Mainly because up to that time I had always seen it as the ball being in my court. God taking the initiative was new to me and I recognized it as unique to Biblical theology. That God might do things differently from how I would should not have been a surprise, but it was.
Humans tend to be merit based in their relationships. God interacts with us through grace which is the opposite of merit. His love is derived from Himself. When that was first shown me in the Bible it made sense. How could I ever expect to communicate with the mind that created the universe. I could not, He had to communicate Himself to me. He did that by becoming like me. The Christmas story is not a story it is history. God becoming a man so we could know Him.
One issue remained for me to understand. My sin or short comings were what separated us. God being perfect needed to impute perfection to me in order to make me acceptable. That is the last of the four points I want to cover.
