Jesus Put An End To "Hide And Seek"

What Did Jesus Do?

Jesus Put An End To “Hide And Seek”

“But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.”

                                                                        2 Corinthians 3:16

Remember playing “Hide and Seek” as children?  It was critical to hurry and find a good hiding place because, when the “Seeker” got to 100 it was, “Ready or not, here I come!”  It was no fun getting caught, was it?  But is sure was great to be able to evade being found, and to shout “Home Free!”

There was a time when people had a kind of “hide and seek” relationship with God.  Why? Well, it all started the first time people felt compelled to hide from God, and he had to seek us out.  Recall that terrible incident in the Garden?  Man and woman disobedient, ashamed, hiding…God seeking, discovering, and cursing.  And so, the hiding and seeking began, but it wasn’t a game, and it sure wasn’t fun.

Think about it.  In the beginning, there was nothing at all between God and Man.  They took delightful strolls together in the Garden in the cool of the evening.  They thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company.  But, with the Fall, something came between God and us.  Well, not something, let’s call it what it is—SIN.  An impassable barrier was erected, a deadly barrier.  For the glory, the holiness, of God simply cannot abide by sin.  So, for sinners to come into the very presence of God, our Creator with whom we once enjoyed unfettered intimacy, meant death.

Therefore God would mute his presence, tone it down so to speak, into something like a burning bush, or a pillar of fire or column of smoke.  These contained his glory, but not in its fullness.  The other thing God did was shield people from his holiness by commanding the crafting of curtains and veils, as in the tabernacle and temple, to screen people and spare them from the unbearable presence of his glory.

At best, all this muting and shielding was an expedient, a makeshift.  It was a kind of “work around” that permitted a certain intercourse between God and sinful humanity, but which never actually resolved the issue of sin itself.  So it was that the “hiding and seeking” that had begun in the Garden continued.  And the intimacy which God had always intended to exist between himself and the ones he created in his own image remained unfulfilled.

Then the Father sent the Son.  And Jesus put an end, once and for all, to the hide and seek relationship between God and Man.  By his atoning death Christ brought about the tearing asunder of the curtain, the removal of the veil.  The himself bore in his flesh the stripes of our sins, his body was crushed, as it were, for our iniquity.  Through the obedience of the Son, even unto death, the Father accomplished the words of Psalm 103 Verse 12, removing our transgression from us “as far as the east is from the west.”

As hard as it is for us to accept, as difficult as it is for us to believe, as challenging as it is for us to trust, the Father has, in the Son, restored the intimacy which had been forfeited in the Garden.  So long condemned to hide from God, who yet sought us in our estrangement, we now have, in and through Christ, been set free!

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image (HIS!) from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Christ IS All!

Jim

Marion, NC

PS 37.4