Whatever is good and perfect ...
So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession. James 1:16-18 NLT
I absolutely loves these words. These are the words that I think of when I read about Jesus in the gospel accounts. He was good and perfect. Full of light and life. He was the true Word of God given to us to show us what God is like. In his life, teachings, ministry and death he gave us a picture of the good and perfect God of love. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, Jesus in the flesh was "the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being".
In contrast to these words from James some choose to see God as an entity that casts a shifting shadow. These offer us a God who at times he is angry and lurks in the shadows waiting to trip us up. These see the Lord as the see themselves - divided and inconsistent. These forget about Jesus and present an image of the Father which is very different from the Son. When I hear such things I simply remember what James says here - good comes to us from a good God.
Lord, we are thankful today that you are consistently and perfectly good. Help us to radiate your glorious goodness today.
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I guess what trips most of us up is the parts of scripture where God doesn't seem to kind. I have to find ways of dealing with those.
ReplyDeleteI try to use the Jesus filter when I read those parts of scripture Ma. Difficult at times because that old view of God is so ingrained in my brain. What it comes to for me is that either Jesus showed us what the Father is really like or he did not. I either accept what flawed men wrote about God or I fully believe what Jesus showed us about Him. Not that it is easy. Old habits die hard. :)
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