Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
Jesus was the Lamb whose sacrificial self-offering on the cross made it possible for us to be set free from sin. This offering fulfilled all of the ancient precedents and types that pointed toward it. The blood of bulls and goats could not truly take away sin, but only the blood of the divine Lamb (see Hebrews 10:4). The power of this precious blood was efficacious in the lives of believers first through baptism. Although Jesus himself did not baptize, he did so through his Body, the Church, and thus it was true that he was "the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit". It was in this baptism followers were born from above, of the Father, made into daughters and sons of God.
See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
Yet so we are.
The fullness of the reality of our baptismal transformation is not automatic. We are made children of God, after which point we need to act like his children. And because of the power of his Spirit we can indeed do so. If we continue to live as children of the world or of the devil after our baptism that identity can still dominate us. We need not only to enter into communion with Jesus through baptism. We need to remain in him, by learning from him how to live our lives, to make ourselves pure as he is pure. We can't claim to remain in him if we are still knowingly and willingly giving ourselves over the serious sin. It is in this sense that "no one who sins has seen him or known him".
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We have warned ourselves against the possibility of backsliding and choosing less for ourselves than our baptismal birthright. But our motivation should not only be to avoid less but also to progress toward more, since there is always more. We need, not only fear of failing, but also hope for the things that await us, the "what we shall be" that "has not yet been revealed", what "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined" (see First Corinthians 2:9). We know that it is more "than all that we ask or think" (see Ephesians 3:20). It is this hope this draws us on toward the goal. The more it does, the more clearly we see God, as Jesus promised the pure of heart (see Matthew 5:8). The more clearly we see him the more we desire him, in a feed forward mechanism, until at last "we shall see him as he is" and our hearts finally come to rest in the fulfillment of their deepest desire.
Matt Maher - Behold The Lamb Of God
No comments:
Post a Comment