Word of Encouragement (4/7/2020)
Today, we continue our reflection on the importance of starting our prayer with adoration.
If we should praise God for His creation and providence, we should praise Him all the more for His redemption. This is so because our redemption is the ultimate goal, for which God does everything in His providence. The reason that God preserves this fallen world by His common grace is so that all of His elect might be saved in due course and time. God’s providence is the stage on which God’s redemptive drama takes place. We can say that even God’s creation was for our redemption. God intended the first creation, which is characterized by physicality and temporality, to be replaced by the new creation, which is characterized by spirituality (which does not do away with our body but incorporates our resurrected and glorified body) and eternity.
If our redemption is the goal of everything God does, including His creation and providence, it is because our redemption is the greatest blessing God can give us. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul”—to lose his soul to eternal damnation in hell? There can be no bad days for those who know that they were delivered from the unspeakable misery of hell.
But God’s redemption is much more than simply being spared from the punishment of our sin, or from hell; it is ultimately to be joined with God in covenantal unity. We don’t find our soul by simply getting out of hell; we can find it only by being united with God, in whose image we are made: “My soul is restless until it rests in God.” For the Lord our God is the Way and the Truth and the Life. So, Jesus said, “this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). He doesn’t speak of eternal life as simply living forever; he speaks of eternal life as (covenantally) knowing God and His Son (and the Holy Spirit). This is because the triune God is the Life and apart from God, there is no life. What blessing of this world can compare to the gift of God Himself—not only because all blessings flow from Him but also because He is the most blessed One, whose glory and beauty are surpassed by none? If by our redemption, we come to possess God as God claims us as His treasured possession, how blessed we are! Shouldn’t our redemption be, then, the greatest of our praise to God?
We can say that the greatest demonstration of God’s power was in creation. We can also say that God demonstrates His most constant care for us in providence. But “His most awesome work of God was done in the frailty of His Son,” which He willingly endured for our eternal salvation. This will be the theme of our eternal praise in heaven. Shouldn’t it be ours even on this earth? And it should be the anchor of our soul as we go through times of God’s dark providence in this life. And it will be the only anchor of our soul when this first creation will be shaken and burned up as Christ ushers in the new creation in all of its glory.