Jesus the Demon's Fear

And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” (Mark 3.11)

Can we imagine what it must have been like for the demons? They had spent years tormenting, undisturbed by the weak faith of the masses, twisting the bodies and abusing the souls of men and women. And then one day in the midst of all their mischief who should appear, not a mere Jewish exorcist but Jesus, the Son of God!

Before their fall they had worshiped at His throne. Before they had followed Lucifer in his vain folly they had seen Jesus in His eternal glory, enthroned at the right hand of the Father. And here they found themselves, face to face with divinity! What horror! Read the gospel account of Mark we need not read a malicious intent into their proclamation, as if the demons are trying to expose Jesus' true identity. I see shock, unadulterated terror, as they recognize Jesus: the source of all the demons' fear. They are hopeless at the hand of God Himself.

And this gives us a beautiful moment of pause. That same authority, that same unparalleled power has seen fit to dwell in us, frail jars of clay. Jesus, the demons' fear and the angels' rejoicing has poured out His Spirit on us. We have no need to tremble as we walk in righteousness at the appearance of the enemy because Christ Himself stands with us. He places His arm around us, empowers us with His Holy Spirit, and drives out demons.

Jesus, you are the demons' fear, the One true God who is supreme over the visible and invisible. Thank you for delivering me from sin and delivering others through our Spirit-empowered prayer.

Jesus the Master Craftsman’s Tool

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2.10)

It never ceases to amaze that we have been made with purpose and intention. There was no haphazard accident that produced each and every individual through the course of human history. The same deliberate care that God took forming Adam from the dust, shaping Eve from his side, is the same intentional loving care with which God shaped and formed us in our mothers’ wombs. Our Father is a loving and conscious creator. Just as the painter takes each stroke into mind as He brings images to life so the Father shaped our personalities through His Son Jesus. Just as the composer pens each note, every inspired trill carefully placed on the sheet so the Father placed the impressions of Jesus onto the sheet music of our souls.

Jesus is the tool that our Divine Master Craftsman used to create us. Every man, woman and child have been made in the loving hand of the Father. Jesus is the etching tool that cuts through the clay of our mere existence and gives our lives purpose. As we baked in the kiln of this life each symbol, each expression of Jesus’ beauty is fired on to our form.

And this is where Jesus’ work becomes all the more rich. We have not only been made, we have been made useful, made functional, made intentionally for a purpose. We have been made in Jesus for good works, expressing the love of the Father and the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit before the nations.

Jesus, as I look over my life today I can see where you have been at working cutting away and creating, shaping me and producing holiness in my life. I rejoice that I have been created in you.

Jesus the Liberator

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood (Revelation 1.5d)

See Jesus there. His body held by nails to the cross, held by His love. Crucified is the one who loved us from before the creation, before we were formed by His hands and knit together in the womb. Raised before all humanity in hatred and disdain is the one who loves us—is loving us—without ceasing. His words, suspended from the cross, were not justified condemnation. We nailed Him there. We mocked Him as we placed a crown of thorns on His brow. Instead, He spoke forgiveness. He speaks forgiveness still. His sacrificed life spoke love. He speaks love still.

In Jesus’ enduring love we find undeserved freedom! Bound in slavery by our failure and fears, Jesus bore our sin and shame and invites us to everlasting freedom. He loosed the chains of our sins by His death and liberated us for eternity by His resurrection. Liberated, Jesus has commissioned us as His kingdom of priests to carry His cross. In every language, among every people, across space and time we lift up His crucified body as a light in the darkness beckoning oppressed people to freedom. We proclaim liberation for the captive, not from a place of power, but beneath the wide spread arms of the crucified King.

John, exiled on the island of Patmos and far from the persecuted people he pastored, was given a great revelation. John saw in the face of the resurrected Christ the enduring promise of God’s redemption. Exiled John was no stranger to grief and isolation. He experienced them at the foot of the cross, one of the few who followed Jesus there. To his persecuted people John reminds them—He reminds us—of Jesus Christ the liberator, the one who loves us and looses us from our sin by His blood.

Jesus, thank you for freeing me in your love, through your immense sacrifice.

Jesus the Ruler of Earth's Kings

Grace to you and peace… from Jesus Christ… the ruler of kings on earth. (Revelation 1.5c)

The way of the cross is excruciating. Every year men, women and children across the world remember the journey Christ made to the cross. We remember how He was spit upon. We remember how they jeered and cursed His name. We remember how He was beaten and whipped, mocked and tormented. On the way to the hill where He was crucified, with the cross heavy on His torn shoulder He was bruised for our transgressions, crushed beneath the weight of our guilt. Above His head, swollen and discolored, hung the inditement of His crime: King of the Jews. He died a rejected king.

As people we don’t sit well with grief. We want to rush through the pain to resolution, from the broken moment into the victory. Jesus on the cross is too painful for us to sit with for long. But as Good Friday looms on the horizon, as the hours of this night will lead Jesus from the table with His disciples to the crucifixion in the morning, may we choose to walk Mary and Salome and the nameless ones. May we weep with the women at the foot of the cross.

Yes, we know the end of the story. We know the resurrection is on its way. We know that the Easter sun will chase away the overcast skies of the crucifixion. We know that Jesus is more than just the King of God’s chosen people! We know that with His resurrection Jesus’ rule opened the pathways of the world to His throne. No emperor or dictator is His rival. No president or chancellor His equal. Jesus’ reign is extended over all the kings on earth. In death and resurrection He proclaims a new, everlasting Kingdom to all peoples. We have been saved for more than salvation! We have been redeemed for purpose, for life, for a transformed obedience as a Kingdom of priests.

May we see the face of King Jesus, today, on the way to the cross.

Jesus, thank you for enduring all for the sake of my soul, the sake of my life, redeemed in your love and transformed in your sovereignty. Give me strength to walk with you and carry this cross.

Jesus the Living Seated One

…according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1.19b-20)

We meet with God in Jesus. There is no diverting this path. One cannot approach the Father without meeting with the Son. One cannot please the Father without first recognizing the Son. If we aspire to nearness with the Father and atonement from our sins against Him then there is no other means of access than to draw near to Jesus, the very image of the invisible God, and find our forgiveness in His self-sacrifice on the cross.

And in-here rests another beauty of our Lord Jesus. Jesus is our risen Lord, our Savior raised by the Father and seated with all authority, power and dominion within His hands. Jesus is above all! And yet in His unparalleled supremacy He is still our access-point. Jesus is the Shepherd and the sheep-gate. He is our guide through this life but He also our entryway to life itself.

Led by the Holy Spirit the Apostle Paul aims to express the bounty of what the Father has done in our lives through Jesus the living, seated one. He longed for the Ephesians to see the same miraculous power that the Father exercised in raising Jesus is at work in us. Paul prayed that the Church would come to know three powerful realities for our lives in Jesus: the immense hope of our calling, the incomparable riches of our glorious inheritance and the immeasurable greatness of God's power directed toward us. All of these we find as we drawn near to Jesus, living and seated His eternal throne.

Jesus, thank you that even as you sit enthroned in glory you are thinking of me, interceding and inviting me home. You are stoking the flames of my hope, securing my inheritance and working in my heart.

Jesus the Forgiver

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us (Ephesians 1.7)

Have we stopped recently and rejoiced in the immensity of our redemption? One cannot truly fathom the depths to which the Lord descended to redeem us, the pain which His heart endured to purchase us from our own failure, the strong love that held His arms to the cross for our salvation. May we run from any glimmering sense that we can atone for our own sin, that so many prayers, so many good deeds, so many self-flagellations can counterweight even one sin from the condemnation of our souls.

Only in Jesus our forgiver do we find redemption. Only in the blood of Jesus, who freely gave His life for us, do we find forgiveness for our sins. And in true God fashion, Jesus does not just give us a morsel of redemption, a barely visible taste of salvation. No, our Savior King Jesus lavishes His grace on us. Jesus washes over us with deep mercy. Jesus pours out redemption over us from his ceaseless riches.

O, what cause for rejoicing! Jesus our forgiver has seen us in our lowly state, burdened with death and sin and, stretching out His hand, embraces and envelopes us in His love. Today is a day of rejoicing! No past chain of sin can hold our arms from reaching high toward our Lord seated in the heavenlies at the right hand of the Father! We are free! We are His! And Jesus is ours!

Jesus, how can I find words enough to express my tears of joy, my warmth of heart, my love borne from your love? Jesus, I love you.

Jesus the Heart's Guardian

Rejoice in the Lord always… And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4.4a, 7)

Peace of mind. A phrase found in the words of all people. How can we find peace of mind? How can we remove the anxiety from our hearts? The stress and strain of life is too much and the exhausted intellect and careworn heart seek relief, but where? Could the answer truly be rejoicing? We are not seeking out some temporary solution, some finite fix that in time with fade or worse exacerbate the pain through delay. No, we long for the peace of God, the divine serenity that can withstand the chaos of this tumultuous world.

And the King of Glory comes in, Jesus the guardian of our hearts and minds. Jesus awaits us to lift our voices in worship, to rejoin the heavenly choir rejoicing in His love, mercy and grace. Our words to others find a grace we’d lost as we praise Jesus’ faithfulness. Our anxiety drips from the heart like a squeezed sponge as we silence the brutal world around us and kneel at the cross of Christ. Our minds meet the Messiah and we find his enduring mercy.

We cannot even begin to understand the peace God the Father is pouring into our lives. It surpasses all understanding. And our Father does not leave that peace exposed to the elements, unattended and endanger. The Father has set a guardian for our peace of mind and quiet hearts: Jesus. Let us rejoice together in Jesus, our minds’ keeper, our hearts’ guardian.

Jesus, I rejoice in your great love that secures me in the peace of the Father! You are guarding my heart and mind. I will rejoice and speak life to others.

Jesus the Saving Transformer

We await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (Philippians 3.20-21)

The mighty empires of Roman and Babylon that stretched beyond the horizon fell. The British empire enjoyed an epoch when the sun did not set on it’s global holdings but dusk came all the same. As great as our countries may be they will eventually fail. This can cause us discomfort because the physical security and comfort we are experiencing now blinds our eyes to the greater comfort of heaven. For the church living in collapsing kingdoms and totalitarian dictatorships the hope in our celestial citizenship is deeply important. We are not dedicated for destruction, we have been bought with a price and in spite what happens here and now, we hold firmly to the hope we will be made new by Jesus, our Savior and Lord.

We cannot bring ourselves to envy the creature comforts of the lost because in their decadence and greed they are setting themselves for eternal destruction. Rather than envy them we weep for them. Jesus speaks transformation over our lives. On that day when we pass from this life to the next we will see Him as He is and He shall cloth us in His glory. What an incredible joy to know that the best we could ever experience here could only be considered the worst heaven has to offer. We shall rejoice with glorified bodies in the very presence of Jesus on that far side of eternity.

Jesus, thank you for setting my eyes on you and letting me see that all my hope has its foundation in You. You will remake my lowly body to be like Your glorious and everlasting body.

Jesus the Lord of Our Open Confession

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3.14)

What is the substance of our confession? This is something we must ask ourselves from time to time as followers of Jesus, as confessors of Christ before the world. What is the substance, the core assurances, upon which we build our faith and life? Do we believe that God is triune? Do we believe that the Father foresaw our sinful falling and, before creation, set in place a means of atonement for which He Himself would pay? Do we believe that through the death and resurrection of Jesus we find redemption of sin and restoration of relationship with God? Do we believe?

If we believe these things and their substance affirms our questions above then we must ask ourselves if we are holding firm in them. Are we acting upon the substance of our confession? Are we confessing before the lost and dying world our abiding faith in Jesus? Is Jesus truly the Lord of our open confession?

We may find ourselves in places of persecution, places where assent to the exclusive salvation found in Jesus the Messiah is dangerous. How will we respond? Our confession must be more than just one of private intellectual affirmation, but also of public expression. Jesus Himself had to stand and confess Himself before the men who beat Him, crowned Him with thorns and crucified Him on the cross. Yet, He remained steadfast, not only for Himself, but for us. We must speak the brilliant glory of Christ into the darkness of this world. We must boast of our hope in Jesus, the Lord of our open confession.

Jesus, build up my faith and give my shoulders strength and my mouth voice as I confess you, my hope and joy, before the hostile lost.

Jesus the Firstborn of the Dead

Grace to you and peace… from Jesus Christ… the firstborn of the dead (Revelation 1.5b)

What does it mean to be firstborn of the dead?

As people born into families we are accustomed to the range of emotions experienced when a new child enters our little familial communities. Generations gather and celebrate the newborn, the child who shares the combined features of the mother and father; a combination woven together into a human life. It’s breathtaking. Grandparents smile on as their children welcome in a host of joys and griefs, celebrations and sorrows.

As people born into a fallen world we are all too well acquainted with the mourning of death. We lay our loved ones to rest, as they fade before ours eyes to occupy a still and quiet place in our memories. We reminisce on ‘that one time’ we spent together, the little quirks and habits that brought us joy, the funny stories we tell by heart. Grandchildren crease their eyes in grief as they say goodbye to the ones they never got to know as well as they wished.

Before Jesus, the best we could hope for after death was an eternity in sheol, that nebulous underworld of shadow and mystery. We gazed to the horizon of our lifetimes, to an end where we were gathered to our fathers, beyond memory. And then Jesus transformed our broken existence with His death and resurrection. He showed the way to pass through death into eternal life. We are no longer burdened with the void of a timeless space, but reborn in Christ to an eternal land of new life with Him before God the Father! Death has lost its sting. In Jesus, the firstborn from the dead, we have immeasurable grace and everlasting peace.

Jesus, thank you for transforming how I see the horizon of time. Thank you for redeeming me and securing my new life in your grace and peace.

Jesus the Faithful Witness

Grace to you and peace… from Jesus Christ the faithful witness (Revelation 1.4b-5a)

It is an incredible blessing to meet with Jesus every day. To find Him waiting for us in the stillness of quiet places. It is easy to find him there if we look. In comfort we rejoice that He is faithful to His word to be with us always. But when the world is spinning out of control like a maniacally turning whirligig, the rapid revolutions of this orb distorting the image of God (the image of God we should see in one another) we find it more difficult to search Him out of the crowd. Our heart cries for Him in the haze of jagged humanity as our eyes are blinded in a blur of color. Our overstimulated eyes cannot discern His features or find His face.

In the hard times, in the difficult and pressing seasons, are when we must learn to fix our eyes on Jesus the most. We need His solid, infinite presence as we stumble through the tragedies of this life. We must be like a class of young dancers learning to keep dizziness at bay, fixing their eyes on a single spot as they pirouette. In this erratic world Jesus is reliable. In these deceitful days Jesus is trustworthy. Jesus is the faithful witness who cuts through the visual and emotional distractions with His good news: The Kingdom of God is at Hand.

In mourning, Jesus is there weeping with those who weep. In rejoicing, Jesus can be found among the tax collectors and sinners proclaiming the love of God. In anxiety, Jesus is there with His arm around us, interceding before the Father and speaking peace to our trouble hearts. In persecution, Jesus stands before His image bearers and He reveals His nail-pierced hands and wounded side. No matter the circumstances, not matter the storm, we find grace and peace in Jesus Christ the faithful witness.

Jesus, guide my eyes through the swirling crowd and breaking waves where I can fix my eyes on you. Take your glory from my life as I receive your faithful testimony of your Father.

Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath

And [Jesus] looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. (Mark 3.5)

Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. In the beginning, within His triunity, He modeled for us a time of rest and reflection after He completed the work of creation. In the law, spoken by His Spirit, He set down a day to be kept holy, set apart, honored by humanity as a day to rest. Over time though the people of God warped their blessed time of rest and reflection into a mandate of boredom and rigid displeasure; for what is more pleasing to God: to see His people fed in their hunger and freed from paralysis or seeing them needlessly starved and crippled?

And so Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath speaks to us as He did on that Sabbath day in the synagogue. He asks us not only what is lawful, but what is best. Whether we cast ourselves as the man with the withered hand, one of Jesus’ disciples or a hardhearted Pharisee, we must answer His question: How are we acknowledging His Lordship in our rest and reflection? As He surveys us, will He be grieved with what He finds? We see in the Lordship of Jesus His supremacy in our repose. We find in the meditation of our life, our brokenness and our need for a willing and gracious Savior. Jesus is ready to stretch His hand out and heal us. We will find restoration on the horizon when we honor Him for who He is: Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath.

Jesus, thank you for healing me and setting times to rejoice, days to rest and refresh myself in your presence. It is not the day for itself, but the day for you!

Jesus the One Greater than Moses

For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses— as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (Hebrews 3.3)

The Old Testament is filled with incredible men and women, one by one these heroes brave and true emerge from the distant past, revealing the greatness of God. Women like Deborah and Ruth. Men like David and Abraham. In all their obedience and failure, repentance and wrestling with reality, we see the fingerprints of God’s call and faithfulness on their lives. Of all of them, who cuts as large a figure as Moses? The third culture kid, survivor of childhood trauma (literally raised by the people most responsible for the wonton slaughter and oppression of his people); the runaway murderer who was chosen to lead his people out of Egypt, the giver of God’s law and conveyor of God’s design for the tabernacle.

Every Jewish man, woman and child in Israel and across the globe would know his name and celebrate the ritual heritage God gave them through his life and ministry. Is it any wonder then that the writer of the letter to the Hebrews would use Moses as another example to show us Jesus’ greatness and glory? As important as leading God’s enslaved people to freedom was, as integral as the formation of the spiritual practices His people would use to drawn near to God for millennia was, the task given to Moses pales in comparison to the task given to Jesus. Moses was a mediator of the law, Jesus fulfilled it. Moses was a member of that great and honorable house built together, Jesus is the builder.

What a great and awesome, terrifying and humbling truth: we share in the same holy calling as that great cloud of witnesses who stands alongside Moses! With these men and women deserving of glory and honor we hold fast to the same bold resolve as we boast of the greatness and grandeur of Jesus Christ, the one greater than Moses.

Jesus, thank you for building me into your Kingdom. I fix my eyes on you and rejoice in your love. You are worthy of all praise, all glory, all honor.

Jesus the One Who Is, Was and Will Be

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, (Revelation 1.4b)

Grace. Peace. Eternity. Do we have any hope of ever understanding these words, these overloaded ideas and concepts? Grace. God’s grace at the heart of Jesus’ good news is more than just the charming favor of one person to another. It is more than the generosity of spirit of one injured toward another. It is more than simple acts of undeserved mercy toward others. It is more than the meager lovingkindness sourced in the human heart. Peace. Genuine, lasting peace is beyond humanity that all the hopes of cloak wearing politicians and altruistic advocates. True peace can only find its foundation and sustainability in God’s divine power and love.

In the tumult and harshness of this fallen world is it any wonder the Apostles prayed for grace and peace in the lives of the redeemed men, women and children? Humanity cannot help itself. Our attempts of grace and peace are fleeting, shortsighted and, far too often, secretly self-serving. In the burned out, brittle and war-torn world, the Apostles prayed for God’s grace and peace over the lives of those scarred by persecution and targeted by hate.

The source of grace and peace was Jesus Christ. John watched grace flow from His life and peace from His ministry. The source of grace and peace is Jesus Christ. Two millennia after John penned the revelation of Jesus on the island of Patmos, divine grace and peace are still found exclusively in Jesus Christ. The source of grace and peace will forever be Jesus Christ. Jesus is unwaveringly consistent and on that everlasting truth, let us build our lives.

Jesus, you are the everlasting source of grace and peace for all who set their eyes on you. Thank you for speaking grace and peace into mine.

Jesus the Recliner

And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. (Mark 2.15)

We have all experienced the deep contrast of rejection and acceptance. A personal hero or local celebrity that does not live up to our expectations because as we went to express our excitement to meet them we were rebuffed with indifference. We are left alone with our shattered expectations and disappointment, we thought we knew who they were (and perhaps in our hurt do not consider the unknown circumstances that may be preoccupying them). Likewise we have been surprised at the acceptance and celebration of meeting someone who elevated us beyond our assumptions of them and ourselves.

The Pharisee’s experienced a deep rejection from Jesus because they did not consider the circumstances that preoccupied His focus. He was more considered with the sick than the well. It is not to say the healthy are unworthy of a check up from their doctor but the plagued and expiring must be treated first. Jesus chose to share His life with the unworthy.

And this is Jesus the recliner, Jesus who seats Himself among the unworthy and speaks into our human shells’ eternal worth! Jesus saw the tax collectors and sinners as He sees us today: we find our worth in His loving words, His call to repentance, His embrace with nail-pierced hands. He reclines at the table and tells us to recline with Him. He puts us at ease with His comfort, His unexpected love, His undeserved recognition of us by name. Our souls find peace in Jesus who dwells among us in peace.

Jesus, thank you for inviting me to the table, truly carrying me to the table like Mephibosheth, and calling me to enjoy your love and my soul’s peace in your presence.

Jesus the Surpassing Worth

I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. (Philippians 3.12b)

Jesus. Jesus is worth it all. All else is loss when weighed against him. This is key. It is not equal or zero-sum. Christ-lessness is not equal to zero, nothing; the smooth line on the horizon. Without Jesus everything we have, all the joy, all the impulse, all the good things are losses. There is no merit apart from Christ. Left unchanneled through Jesus our good and great things, those things that bring us happiness and contentment, are dangerous negatives because they belie the economic reality of our souls. We are beyond bankrupt. We are destitute and steeped in crushing debt.

And indeed when we see Jesus for who He truly is all those great things are cast aside for His surpassing worth. Our love for father and mother, brothers and sisters cannot compare to His love. If they have kept us from His embrace they are deficits. Jesus longs to redirect them. Jesus desires to produce love in our lives so that He might produce love in theirs as well.

Jesus is our transcendence. He saw us in our impoverished debt, holding precious bobbles of corrupt clay like pearls of great price and He made us His own. He claimed us as His own and paid our debt in His blood. Knowing Jesus is of such surpassing worth that we press forward, we strain against the bobbles of our past to experience His glorious nearness. Knowing Jesus who has made us His own stirs within us a passion to pursue Him with all our zeal.

Jesus, loosen my hands from the things of the past and guide my outstretched arms to your presence.

Jesus the Glory of Circumcised Hearts

For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3.3)

In our modern time we do not see ready parallels to the Judaizers of Paul's day and our own. But we only need to step back and admit we continue to add unnecessary stages to being a true Christian. Can we admit we have those same pharisaic tendencies? One says to be a true Christian we must affiliate with a particular political platform. Another says we must abandon our antiquated beliefs governed by ancient texts. One says build up higher hedge laws around our faith, another says tear them all down and reject absolute truths. These are our modern day Judaizers, emphatic about their disruptive beliefs and demand others concede to their whims through outward and verbal expression.

But Jesus, the glory of our hearts, does not demand of us visibly external acts. Jesus desires invisibly internal response. Jesus calls to us as the seed of Abraham, through whom God established the rite of circumcision, and reminds us what the Holy Spirit spoke through Moses: God will circumcise our hearts and the hearts of our children so that we might holistically love Him with our hearts and souls. Access to God the Father is glorious. Confidence in our security before God is worship-inducing and we glory in Jesus, the One who circumcises our hearts.

We need not swing the pendulum from ultra soul-constricting conservativism or soul-loosing liberality. We stand assured that we can bring glory to Jesus through our Spirit-filled worship knowing that we are His and He is ours.

Jesus, thank you for cutting to the heart. Help me find my joy and security in you and identify the areas of my life where I try to earn salvation through communal belonging.

Jesus the Transfigured

And [Jesus] was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. (Matthew 17.2)

Repeatedly through the Gospels we find the Triune God interacting within Himself. At Jesus’ baptism we hear God the Father speaking over His Son as the Spirit descends on Him like a dove. Once again at Christ’s transfiguration we see God’s triune glory, the radiance of Jesus brilliantly shining in the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit enveloping all those present like cloud (just as the Spirit did at the dedication of the Temple). Again we hear Father speaking His Divine pleasure with the Son.

Like the disciples all that Divinity can produce in us terror at seeing God in His eternal glory; and this beautiful moment is intentionally shared with humanity. Like Moses on the mountain top, like Elijah swept up on a chariot of fire into a heavenward whirlwind, the disciples are invited into an audiovisual expression of God’s greatness. Jesus is transfigured, while still in among His people, into His heavenly glory. And Jesus invites us to see Him this way too, not only on an Israeli mountainside with the prophets and priests of old, but in our own daily lives. In our space and time we can choose to recognize Jesus as our everlasting Prophet, Priest and King.

Jesus the transfigured reaches down to our huddled mass, places His hands on us and tells us to rise, to stand fearlessly before Him like Moses and Elijah. Enveloped in the Spirit and directed by the voice of the Father we see with our own eyes the loving Savior, Jesus the transfigured, Jesus the Son of God.

Jesus, thank you for loving me and inviting me to see you in Your Triune glory. May I worship you more fully, more correctly, more passionately.

Jesus the Author of Salvation

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2.10)

Jesus is the author of our salvation. As Christians we readily agree that Jesus created the salvific bridge that brings us face to face with God the Father. What becomes more difficult when we stop to reflect is the means by which he composed that bridge of salvation. It is difficult, in our hunger for comfort, to receive Jesus as the author of our salvation because He generated our salvation through suffering.

We kneel before the cross but do we truly recognize his suffering? Jesus did not leap to the cross and, in a moment, die. He endured countless hours of beating and abuse at the hands of men just like you and I. He suffered the humiliation of watching his closest followers betray Him in His time of greatest need. He suffered over decades by the emptying of Himself to step down into our sin-broken abuse of His creation.

In His suffering He is united to us through His humanity, and through His suffering we are now united through His perfect salvation with the Father. Can we truly fathom the love of our Lord Jesus, the author of our salvation who knew the beginning, the end and the excruciating middle of the story? From the eternal word of His mouth Jesus spoke into existence our salvation through His suffering; and by His passion we have been brought into redeemed relationship with God! We can rest assured that our personal stories—beginning, end and middle—are being guided by our Divine Author toward glory.

Praise you Jesus, the author of my salvation. I weep at your suffering and thank you for not holding back from it for my sake.

Jesus the Taster of Death

…Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2.9)

It was common in ancient times for kings to have food-tasters, people who would sample the food and drink at the royal table, cupbearers, to keep the king from being poisoned. Nehemiah is a perfect example of this lived out in the Bible as a servant who lays his life on the line day in and day out for the sake of preserving the life of his sovereign. There is something noble about this high view of royalty.

And yet, as always, Jesus turns our worldview on its head. He is the sovereign and eternal King, the matchless one, the everlasting God but he took the bitter cup set before us. As His servants we are ready to taste the cup in His hands but he placed it His own lips and drank deeply of its death. He is the cupbearer for the nations. He tasted death for all of humanity, the redeemed, the unreached and those still lost in the darkness of unbelief. Jesus, crowned with all the glory and honor of the government on His shoulders, took the cup for us.

Now, Jesus invites us to take the cup. He has tasted death and consumed the poisonous sting. We may suffer martyrdom but the fear of death has been destroyed. We can take up the cup knowing that the suffering in its liquid is only a temporary gate through which is the presence of our Jesus the taster of death, our abiding cupbearer.

Jesus, thank you for tasting death and removing its sting from my servanthood that I might have everlasting life.