From time to time I need to recall that it is not God’s intention to bless me specifically. In all actuality God, the Father doesn’t give me anything. Don’t misunderstand; I don’t mean to imply God doesn’t love us or intend to provide for us, but he doesn’t do anything specifically to or for anyone. He so loved the world—all of us in general—that he gave his only begotten Son, and there in lay all that we shall ever need from God!
John says:
John 1:16 KJV And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Everything we could ever need to please God is found in a provided for us through Jesus (Ephesians 1:3). Nothing comes to us, unless it is first found in him. My knowledge and understanding of God comes to me through knowing and understanding who Jesus is. I cannot know God apart from Jesus (Matthew 11:27). This would be impossible, for God is revealed to us only through him. To be sure, I can know God exists by considering the things he has created. I can even know he demands that I live a moral life, by reading his word revealed through Moses and other men of God (Romans 1:2), but I can only know God through Jesus (John 17:25-26). To know Jesus is to know God (John 14:6-9). To see Jesus is to see God. To believe Jesus is to believe God (1John 2:23; 2John 1:9), for Jesus is God come in the flesh (John 1:14). How can I say this? What right have I to conclude this? I can say only it is revealed in the Scriptures.
Paul tells us in Colossians 2:9 that the fullness of God dwelt bodily in Jesus, but consider what the writer of Hebrews says:
Hebrews 1:1-3 NASB God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, (2) in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. (3) And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
First of all, this Scripture contrasts the men who spoke in the name of God in verse-1 with God’s Son in verse-2. In other words neither the fathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), nor the prophets were the children of God in the same sense as Jesus is. Jesus is the heir of all things (so our inheritance is found in him—he gives gifts to men), and through him, that is through Jesus, God created the world! This is what this Scripture clearly declares.
Moreover, beginning in verse-3 we find that God is able to shine only as bright as Jesus, because Jesus is the radiance of his glory. How bright is the glory of God? –as bright as Jesus shines to us! Jesus is also the EXACT representation of God’s nature. How righteous is God? –as righteous as Jesus, or so says the word of God here. Next, the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power. Can you imagine anything more powerful than that which holds our universe in place? How powerful is God? –as powerful as Jesus is to us. We can imagine no greater power than this. Finally, we are told that Jesus, after he made purification for our sins, sat down upon the throne of God. How much authority does God have? –as much as is found in Jesus for he sits in the executive position of all authority upon the very throne of all authority. There is no higher authority than that of the throne of God where Jesus sits.
He is the “Fullness of God” and we are partakers of that fullness, grace upon grace—mercies new every morning. Praise God!
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