Isaiah 38:1-40:31
Here is your God! But he is not really here. He is too great to be summed up in a few words, no matter how poetic and glorious. To whom can you compare God? How can you fashion a way of speaking about him that is not woefully under-representative of his eternal existence? We are all men (and women) too poor to present such an offering. We all furnish ourselves with thrones but only his is above the circle of the earth. We all form ourselves some sort of space but only he formed the heavens, only he stretched out all visible matter like a canopy. We all exert some sort of influence on others but only he sweeps away prime ministers like chaff. He has never learnt from anyone or even learnt anything at all - he has always held all knowledge and understanding within himself. He has never been enlightened or grown in any way - he has always defined impeccable perfection from everlasting to everlasting. The great cacophony of cultures and places that we love to visit on this earth amount to just the tiniest drop in his bucket. Every headland and continent is just like a tiny piece of dust so insignificant that he doesn’t even bother recalibrating his scales when they land on them. None of us even gets close to being equal with him. He is completely unaffected by our existence - he is neither greater or less or richer or poorer for us being around. Every single star adds not a single jot to his being or his immensity. And yet he carries us like lambs close to his heart, he gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Here is our God, speaking tenderly to his people.
Galatians 2:11-3:9
As always with Paul, the question he is answering is not so much “how can I be saved?” as “who are we?”. If we approach this passage looking only for an answer to the first question then we miss out on some exquisite treats. Paul starts by saying that we are justified by putting our faith in Jesus Christ. That is pretty incredible. That talks about how the verdict over us is changed from guilty to innocent. But what is next? What do we do now? That is what seems to have got the Galatians, and even Peter, in a pickle. They knew they had been justified but they didn’t quite know what that meant about how they should live. I think the vast majority of Christians live in that place - mildly grateful that they have been forgiven of their sin but shuffling their feet in slight bemusement about what they are ‘meant to do’ next. Paul can get our shuffling feet leaping and advancing with this dynamite, crack-a-jack phrase - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me”. Paul is saying that the gospel is not just about something that has been done for us but is about something that has been done to us. We have been killed off. A new us has been formed within. And the captain of this new us is not us but Christ. We have been completely and utterly changed. So our question is not “what am I meant to be doing?” but rather “what does this new me act like?”. Paul calls for us to really know who we are, to go back to all the questions we asked ourselves and came to conclusions upon while we were growing up and to ask them again and to come to new conclusions on them. Our lives have been completely redefined by the death of Jesus and by the presence of Jesus in us. If we grasp that, then our lives will be filled with goodness.
Psalm 107:33-43
...consider the great love of the Lord
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