God -- Must be Believed (Too Great for Our Senses)

In one meeting, I was chatting with one guy, a teacher who loved to crack jokes, and he loved to make fun of religion.

He hated Jesus Christ, and believed that the whole Gospel story was just too much of a bunch of nonsense.

That meeting met about five years ago, a frustrating time for me who had no idea what I was doing, where I was going, and frustrated once again by how hard teaching really could be.

I also had not learned that Jesus Christ saved me not just once, when I received Him as Lord and Savior, but that He wants to save me every day!

He is the propitiation for the sins of the entire world, not just for mine:

"2And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." 91 John 2: 2)

This verse takes us out of ourselves, certainly, but also engages us to understand how grand, how great, how giving is the love of God:

"10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4: 10)

This verse does not quite do justice to the original verse because of the added italics. This verse does not sound of a mission which is about ot be accomplished, but rather explicitly identifies Jesus Christ as "The Propitiation -- the Mercy Seat -- for our sins!"

That is who He is - the Beloved Son of God who is evermore ministering on behalf of fallen man, the he may be reconciled forevermore with God the Father, receive the Spirit of Sonship and be one with Christ, seated at the Right Hand of the Father.

The problem for most people, for all of us, is that we need to sense, to touch, taste, and feel that Jesus Christ is real.

Yet if our five sense could discern God, then he would no longer be infinite, yesterday, today, and forever

"While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4: 18)

Then Paul writes:

"(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)" (2 Corinthians 5: 7)

Of course, we do everything by faith, anyway:

"20I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. 21I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." (Galatians 2: 20-21)

Unless we believe that Jesus Christ has done all things for us, we will be alienated in our minds against God, convinced that He is angry with us, and rebel in unbelief.