"No man has ever seen God. The only God, who is at the Father's side, He has revealed Him". John 1:18.
Aside from the 'opening events' surrounding the Incarnation, virtually everything else in the four Gospels concentrates all we know about the fulfilment of this statement into three short years - into moments that centre us upon what Jesus says and what He did.
Everything that matters about Christianity springs from these revelations, both as a fulfilment of the works of the Patriarchs and the Prophets, and as the bedrock of the work of the Apostles - every vital truth is here, and at the centre of this astonishing unveiling, is a Saviour hung upon a tree and then manifestly raised from the grave again just three days after a savage execution.
Inspired insights often provide us with moments of glimpsing the majesty of what is above ourselves, but time and space, heaven and earth, comprehensively stagger at what is unveiled between such realms on the bloodied wood of Golgotha, as the voice of the beloved cries into the thick darkness.
"Who has believed our report?", asked Isaiah, for men and angels are equally shocked and undone by what is evidenced in the nakedness of God revealed as the Lamb slain.
No aspect of creation could begin to conceptualise of what was actually laid at its very root - that shoot which would spring from what could not sustain itself, or find rescue when it collapsed into the decay of sin and death. From the frailty of a world untethered from Eden, pierced by misery and agony, would come one that would fully identify with us and carry our severance and woes upon Himself, in Himself, at the altar called Calvary.
The distance of our souls from God is now measured by the severance that was broken upon that blood stained mound. The need we all bear is to look at the one hung there who lays down all that we might live.
Great indeed is this mystery - the vital nature of Godliness!
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