Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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Christ Is God
Chapter 49 – A Map of God’s Journey Through Christ
I thought it might help you to visualize God’s journey if I mapped it. So here is such a map. You can view it online and/or print it.
Although what you have read in the book allows you to understand this map without explanation, I thought it might reinforce your understanding if I added some notes. Here they are:
Note that the map begins and ends with the invisible God. The God of eternity past is the same as the God of eternity future – except that the God of eternity future now has a history. The God of eternity past had been completely unknown to us. His journey produced this history.
History is one of the most unchangeable things in the universe. The biblical period – that is, the period of time from the origin of Messiah, and the creation that followed, to the Second Coming (the coming of the kingdom of God) – produced a historical record of God. More particularly, it is a biographical record.
During the biblical period, God made a name for Himself…and that name is Christ. And it’s Christ because that name encompasses all the other names.
Looking at the map left to right, there is YHWH, which translates to English as LORD. Then there’s Jesus. And then there is Christ. Thus He is “the Lord Jesus Christ. All that remained was for Him to inherit His Father’s Name (God and Father) and His throne at the Second Coming.
How could an invisible God teach humanity about Himself? He had to become visible…and He chose to do so in different forms in order to maximize the fullness of His self-disclosure.
Adam and Eve knew who God was, but they couldn’t possibly have understood Him. That’s why they sought to avoid Him when they sinned. Had they understood Him, they would have rushed to Him in order to seek His mercy and find a way out of the dilemma they had created.
Adam and Eve passed on the little they knew about God to their descendants, but it was not enough. God eventually had to destroy all of humanity and start over with one family: Noah’s.
Although Noah understood God better than Adam and Eve, and passed this knowledge on to his descendants, it still was not enough. In order to avoid another near-extinction-like event, God chose one man to work with: Abraham.
God began teaching Abraham and his descendants about Himself. Eventually, the number of Abraham’s descendants reached a point where the establishment of a nation was possible. At that point, God chose Moses to begin putting God’s self-revelation down in writing. This was the beginning of the Bible.
God did all this in the name YHWH (LORD). He had the consciousness of an angel – the greatest angel of God – doing the will of the unseen God. This remained the case until the advent of Jesus of Nazareth: God in the flesh.
As Jesus, God had the consciousness of a man – a man serving God with all his heart. He had the Old Testament to guide Him. He followed that guidance until it got him killed. But He rose from the dead and continued his mission.
At the right hand of God, this risen Christ represented God just as he had done when He was YHWH. Only now it was clear that He was the face of the invisible God.
At the Second Coming, the revelation of God was full and complete. There was no more reason for Him to be visible – even occasionally. Invisibility is essential to the power, wisdom, and nature of God. We shouldn’t begrudge Him His invisibility. He gets to be with all of us all the time.
Through Jesus Christ, the unknown God of eternity past has become the known God of eternity future.
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