Beyond The Smoky Barrier

We need full strength truth. Diluted truth has benefits but not the same benefits as full strength truth.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 ESV

Right now we are looking at life through a smoky glass. The light reaches us but it is filtered by our fallen perceptions. Faith, hope and love live here on the Earth now. Even through a smoky glass we perceive these things. They are on full display through the life of Christ.

We see Jesus' faith. We see Jesus raised from the dead and we begin to have His hope. We see Jesus go to a cross in our place and Heaven's love is on display.

Face to face will one day transform us on the outside as well as the inside. It will be a reunion like no other. God sees us now. He sees us very clearly. We just have a hard time seeing Him.

Grace when it is undiluted it is full strength truth.

Grace is unmerited favor. Grace sees people as the finished product. Grace makes moves with the end game in mind. Thinking in grace is God's thinking. It is a place where we can agree with Him fully with all the barriers taken away. Condemnation is nullified.

Jesus took our sin away at the cross. It has been taken as far as the east is from the west. Yet here we are failing at times and that truth is challenged because the glass is smoky.

"We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness." - Romans 6:9-13 ESV

"We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf" - Hebrews 6:19-20a ESV

Jesus is has passed through the curtain of death and His vision is crystal clear. We make a reckoning that we also have gone with Him because the bond of love links us. We decide to think the way that the one who loves us thinks.

"And Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' And they cast lots to divide his garments." - Luke 23:34 ESV

What a stark contrast.

God forbid we should dilute what God has been working in our lives to distill. People need to experience truth in it's undiluted form in order for it to heal them. Jesus is undiluted truth.

God please let people see Jesus when they see us. We are often frail and contradictory people but the Book you have given us reveals the Son You have given us so quicken us to mix faith with Biblical thinking. We want to see with eyes of faith by Your Spirit because we have an anchor within the veil.

"May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." - 2 Peter 1:2-4 ESV

Precious promises. Oh how I love them. They move our minds past the smoky barrier and cause us to partake of the nature that lives seated at the right hand of the Father in Heaven.

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