“I I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives 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 give Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20.
The past two weeks I have explored Hebrews Chapter Two with a group of men in Christ. Upon reflection I feel like an optometrist working with a patient with lenses of varying strengths. “Better or worse?” “Better or worse?” First one eye, then the other, finally both eyes. “Read the smallest paragraph you can.” “Read the line the farthest down the chart you can.”
Isn’t this what we do when we teach and mentor and work with one another? Don’t we help each other to see better? We all suffer from blindness of one form or another; we are collectively and individually blind - we need one another, we don’t see it all, we can’t see it all.
Sadly, when we insist on associating only with people who see the same things we do we often limit our understanding and vision. This is not to say that there should not be limits in some forms of associations, for we ought not to desire to “see” evil the way some see it, but it can be fruitful to see life from different perspectives; while it may not result in us exchanging one pair of glasses for another, it may result in sharpening our vision, it may require an adjustment in our own prescription glasses.
But why am I writing about Hebrews Chapter Two if I am reflecting on Galatians 2:20? Because I am thinking about how we “see” what we read, or whether when we read we “see” at all.
What do we see when we read, “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies (makes holy) and those who are sanctified (made holy) are all from one [Father]; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.”? (Hebrews 2:10 - 11).
Do we see that Christ calls those who know Him brothers and sisters? Do we see that we have the same Father as Christ? Do we see the mystery of Jesus Christ being perfected in His humanity? (There is perhaps more explicitly written about the Incarnation in this chapter than in any other NT document, with the exceptions of Matthew and Luke). When I ask whether we “see” these things I mean do we live in the reality of them. Do we live and breathe them? Do we live in the nature of their reality - the nature of the Trinity. The message is that Christ became who we are (without sin) so that we might become who He is - but do we see this? Do we believe this? Do we speak of this? Do we relate to one another in the light of this Message, the greatest rescue and redemption story of the cosmos?
It is difficult to see Hebrews Chapter Two if our mantra is less than the Gospel, less than the story of Redemption, less than the fulness of the work of Jesus Christ. If we insist on always adding a “Yes but” to the Gospel the fulness of the Gospel is not likely to accomplish its work of grace within us. We are imprisoned within a false identity that fails to exalt the glorious work of Jesus Christ on the Cross; we focus on our insufficiency rather than Christ’s all-sufficiency.
When we read the Bible with a “yes but” mentality we will not see what is there, we will not know the fulness of Christ, and we will fight against His amazing grace in our lives. What is perhaps worse, we will reinforce the “yes but” way of thinking in others to the point that when someone suggests that the emperor has no clothes that we do our best convince him (or her) that he can’t possibly be right. The Israelites preferred to remain in Egypt; they later wanted to go back to Egypt; we are more comfortable with what we know, even if what we know is slavery.
Suggested reading: Romans 8:14 - 17; Galatians 4:1 - 7.
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