Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ,
We enter the month of April in a few days and Palm Sunday begins Holy Week leading to the great celebration of life in Jesus Christ, Easter!
God initiates rescue!
After this Jesus, knowing that all was finished, said (to fulfil the scripture), “I thirst.” A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:28-30)
What was finished? Jesus’ life work of obedience to the Father’s will of coming to his people to offer salvation to all who believe in Jesus saving work! Jesus spoke of this in his great prayer:
And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do; and now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made. (John 17:3-5)
God has always initiated salvation by coming to his people. The crucifixion of Jesus during the celebration of the Passover festival should bring to mind God coming to his people to save and deliver them. Jews honor and celebrate Moses, and he was a great servant of God, but it was God who took the initiative and convinced Moses to have faith that God might save his people.
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and as he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here am I.”…Then the Lord said, “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians,” (Exodus 3:2-8) We witness of the clear and compelling truth Jesus knew why he came, he would faithfully and obediently offer himself for the salvation of humanity. Jesus knew nothing is more important. We gladly seek to lead everyone into a life-changing relationship with Jesus and live out his glorious salvation!
Because we come out of the divine nature, which chooses to be divine, we must choose to be divine, to be of God, to be one with God, loving and living as he loves and lives, and so be partakers of the divine nature, or we perish. Man cannot originate this life; it must be shown him, and he must choose it. God is the father of Jesus and of us—of every possibility of our being; but while God is the father of his children, Jesus is the father of their sonship. For in him is made the life which is sonship to the Father—the recognition, namely, in fact and life, that the Father has his claim upon his sons and daughters.
We are not and cannot become true sons without our will willing his will, our doing following his making. It was the will of Jesus to be the thing God willed and meant him, that made him the true son of God. He was not the son of God because he could not help it, but because he willed to be in himself the son that he was in the divine idea.
And so with us: we must be the sons we are. We are not made to be what we cannot help being; sons and daughters are not after such fashion! We are sons and daughters in God’s claim; we must be sons and daughters in our will. And we can be sons and daughters, saved into the original necessity and bliss of our being, only by choosing God for the father he is, and doing his will—yielding ourselves true sons to the absolute Father. Therein lies human bliss—only and essential. The working out of this our salvation must be pain, and the handing of it down to them that are below must ever be in pain; but the eternal form of the will of God in and for us, is intensity of bliss. –From Creation in Christ by George MacDonald
God is initiating rescue and redemption today. Jesus calls us to share the truth of God’s saving love, his redeeming work; that forgiveness of all sin, deliverance from eternal death, and freedom from condemnation (which every human deserves) might be received by choosing faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior and receiving the gift of his Holy Spirit to live within us. God initiates rescue, let us tell the good news!
God loves you and we love you!
In Jesus, Paul and Nancy Wier