Saturday, February 6, 2016

HOW DO YOU DRAW NEAR TO GOD?

There are TWO ways to draw near to God: through law (Hebrews 10:1) and through Christ (Hebrews 7:25). Since God is good he must have a reaction against all irreverence and unrighteousness. For you to draw near through law in a good way means to have no lack in your goodness. But we all have violated goodness and are law breakers. Thus God can't welcome us in that way without wrath.
But God is goodwhich means that he is righteously generouswhich means that he doesn't want us to be under his wrathwhich means that he as the creator is responsible to provide resolution to that problem. Therefore he delighted to open a new way, one of substitutionary deathJesus' death as the death of all mento honor the law fully without any help from us. Thus we can draw near God apart from our goodness and solely in his goodness.
The Jews hated Jesus because they pridefully thought God would welcome them drawing near to him through partial obedience to law. Jesus in many ways clearly declared that they could not come to God unless God provided a new way for them to draw nearthrough the pride-shattering death of the lamb of Godthrough pure grace. The Jews were finally so enraged that they killed Jesus their king and lord.
But this revealed God's great surprise: that those who killed Jesus were the first ones invited into the new way of drawing near into God's celebration of life.

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