God reveals himself

Thursday March 18, 2021

God reveals himself

I gave them your word and the world hated them because they are not of the world like me, I am not of the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but to preserve them from evil. They are not of the world, just like me, I am not of the world. Consecrate them by your truth ! Your word is the truth. John 17: 14-17

What is the world of which the Lord speaks in this prayer to his Father ? It is all the men who organized themselves, after the fall of our first parents, without regard to the rights of the Creator. This world does not know God and does not want to know him. Yet over the centuries God revealed himself to men, then to the people of Israel. But humanity has shown that it cannot meet God's holy demands. The situation then seems hopeless...

But God still has one resource : his beloved Son. He sends her to this world that is so hostile to him. Coming from heaven as a man, Jesus Christ alone can reveal to men that God is love, that he desires their good and that he offers them his forgiveness and his favor.

Few are those who receive his message of grace ! The hatred of the world, against God and his Messenger, reaches its maximum at the cross where, out of love for men, Jesus undergoes in our place the judgment that our sins deserve. He gives his life on the cross, then goes back to heaven after his resurrection.

How then will the revelation of God continue ? By the Holy Spirit, the Comforter promised by the Lord (John 14:26). Christians, inspired by the Holy Spirit, record the life of Jesus in writing and complement and develop what is Christian faith and hope. Now, through the reading of the Bible and the action of the Spirit, the believer acquires a little more knowledge of God and of his thoughts every day.

By feeding on the Word of God, the Christian practically sanctifies himself, that is, he considers the world in which he lives as God sees it: a world which is opposed to him, which is corrupt and defiled. Above all, he learns what are the values ​​of heaven perfectly revealed by Jesus in his life : the love of God, his justice, his holiness, his peace, his joy, etc. Disciple of Jesus, his vocation is to be, like him, the bearer of these values, and to participate in the transmission to men of the revelation of God.

Source (Pleasing the Lord)