Jesus Paved the Golden Way

What Did Jesus Do?

...and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.
Revelation 21.21


With the birth of Christ the Father established a permanent lodgement, a beach head, if you will, whereby the Son planted and expanded the Kingdom of God on earth. God had tabernacled with Israel for more than a thousand years, had declared that Zion would be his “resting place forever.” (Psalm 132.14) But when the Son came, the foundations of a New Jerusalem, one not built by hands, were laid down. For nearly two millennia now the Church has been building on that foundation. Every soul saved represents territory annexed by the Kingdom, every place where believers tread extends the street of the holy city, so to speak, the golden street.

The New Jerusalem is embodied in the Son, manifest by the Holy Spirit, and present wherever and whenever believers gather. The light of God's glory, the brilliant transparency of the golden street, is born by the faithful when they stride the halls of a palace and address kings and emperors, and when they humbly enter a hovel and speak to the lowliest subjects. Glorifying God is not reserved for any particular people, class, or tongue; neither is God's glorification to be put off until the Day of the Lord. The Son came to glorify the Father, and that is what Christ's Church is to be about until he returns.

It matters not if we travel along the mean streets of a city, or a rutted rural dirt road, or a remote and narrow footpath, every highway and byway can and should be as the street of gold of the New Jerusalem. Thus, wherever we travel in this world as servants of Christ, the journey is a joyous one, even if the way should be difficult, disagreeable, or even dangerous. Grace and light illuminate this pilgrim way, evil and darkness are banished from it.

The sometimes bare, sometimes sandaled, feet of Jesus trod the dusty roads of Canaan, and everywhere he went those feet paved, as it were, the street of pure gold. As Christ's disciples our journey may take us just about anywhere in the world, yet everywhere we place our feet we travel but one road, the golden street of the city of God, paving the way for the lost to come to the Father through the Son. Paving the way for the lost to come to the Father. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4