Sunday March 27, 2016 | Greg Boyd
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
This Easter we heard from Greg Boyd on how the resurrection confirms that Jesus is the true revelation of God. Jesus is the exact representation of God and the truth is that the mercy of God triumphs over judgment. It is our task to align or re-align our picture of God with the person of Jesus seen in the resurrection.
The resurrection confirms that Jesus is the true revelation of God. Greg begins by looking at the passage in John 14:8-9 where Jesus proclaims to Philip that if you want to see the Father you just need to look at Jesus. This type of statement confronts us and requires us to make a choice. We can either dismiss Jesus as a lunatic or we can worship him as Lord.
Your picture of God is the most important question related to your relationship with God. Greg grew up with a jaded view of God and was always in trouble with authority. He was saved in a church that believed you are only as saved as your last sinless moment. As a teenager struggling with an addiction to pornography he was saved and un-saved almost daily in this battle. He eventually got to a point where he gave up on the game of trying to live perfectly to appease God and this sorrow and frustration moved to rage towards God. In the midst of this anger Greg threw open his Bible and read Romans 8:1, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” and had his eyes opened to a God whose mercy actually triumphed over judgment. This picture of God seen in the person of Jesus loves us without qualifications and without expectations on us to determine how worthy we are of this love. The resurrection of Jesus confirms that this is the ultimate picture of God since the crucifixion and resurrection shows a God that would die for his enemies in hopes that they might come to Him. The love of God is greater than all things and this love is perfectly seen in the person of Jesus. As is noted in Hebrews 1:1-3, while there were glimpses of God in the past the exact representation and picture of God is seen in the life of Jesus.
If the God of the universe looks like Jesus then you are loved with an everlasting love that can’t be extinguished. The only question is whether we will trust that love and surrender to that love so that it can begin to transform us and make us whole again.