“Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord . . .” Hebrews 12:14

I often think about the above passage, and apart from Jesus Christ it is daunting. My inmost desire is to see God, to have the visio Dei. Without holiness it is impossible to see the Holy God. This is the human dilemma: according to the Apostle Paul we inhabit bodies of death. These bodies, with their fallen-earthy desires are incapable, in themselves, of seeing anything other than their own navels. This reality leaves me in dire straits. I long to see God, the triune God of threeness in oneness and oneness in threeness (De Deo trino, De Deo uno). But I keep sinning, even though I’ve been redeemed from the slave market of sin, having become a slave of righteousness. I am a redeemed sinner, thrust to and fro between a longing for God’s holiness, and a lust for pleasure; I am simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner). I was born into this dilemma, not knowing the rip and tear that only faced me as I entered this world; a rip and tear between my natural desires to live for and worship myself, and the new desire, provided for by the risen Christ to be a child of a different country, a faraway land brought near by the Son of Man pro me. How can I stop sinning in this body of sin; how can I worship upward rather than inward; how can I be holy as He is Holy? These realities face me every waking moment of every day. I sulk in my sinful self, at moments, only to be revived by the in-breaking reality of God’s holiness as it confronts and contradicts my sad state of depression and oppression, as I sit there languishing in the sullenness of my broken reality. It seems I need a miracle from God to deliver me.

“But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.’” I Corinthians 1:30, 31

‘He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.’ ‘By His poverty we have been made rich.’ God is His own miracle for us in Jesus Christ. God freely elected our sinful humanity for Himself, in the Son, that a wonderful exchange (mirifica commutatio) might obtain, and the deliverance of God might come for us wrapped in the flesh and bone of Jesus Christ. This is my hope: while I continue to sin, day in, day out, I have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ. His ad-vocation isn’t one that is faraway, but it is near, it is here from within the very sinful estate I was born into. He graciously born Himself into my fallen status, into yours, and here He became us that we might become Him by the adoption of grace. It is in this new reality, this new creation, in the new humanity, the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ that the surly bonds of this old earth are shaken to its core, and what’s left standing is the bedrock of God’s Kingdom, where His holiness covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. I now stand in this creatio ex nihilo reality of a re-created humanity, a humanity that not only can see God, but who now inhabits the inner-environs of the Holy of Holies of God’s inner-triune Life. I cling to this hope, and it keeps me from sin. When I sin, I cling to this hope, and it washes me anew afresh from sin and once again, over and over elevates me into the beatific vision wherein I see God’s smiling face shining back at me in the face of Jesus Christ. When I err, when I go crooked, God makes straight; and it is in this, God’s straightness for me in Jesus Christ, that I find hope, I worship God.

I am writing this from a repentant heart, as that has been provided for in the heart of flesh I have been given in Jesus’ heart for me. I find renewal and hope in the tabernacle of God’s holiness for me in Jesus Christ. Without this hope I faint away, I’d wither like the grass and blow away with the winds of this world. There is hope, ‘bruised reed,’ don’t grow weary, but mount up with wings like eagles and sore afresh anew on God’s ruach, His wind for you as He breathes that through the lungs of Jesus Christ. I am relieved. Selah