The Method is the Message

Why fire?  Couldn’t God just speak and make it happen?  That’s how He created the universe. Nothing is beyond His ability or required of God.  He doesn’t use the means and methods that He uses because He has to or thinks they would be ‘best’. He does it because He wants to. With this as a presupposition, we can enjoy watching how God does things and learn about God’s pleasures and desires.  God likes to use fire to purify and refine.  He enjoys and finds great pleasure in the way He does things.  This is also quite clear when we think about the way we are to come to Him.  Jesus is His way, His truth and His life.  He is the way God likes to realize His ultimate intentions.

Meditating grace is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Jesus said, it is better that I go that I might send the Holy Spirit.  Jesus is mediating Himself to us through the Holy Spirit (John 14 – 17).  Mediating grace is also expressed in spouses to each other, bosses to employees, parents to children; we are mediating Christ’s life to each other. “Why doesn’t Christ just do it directly?”, because His nature/pleasure is mediating grace. Life flows to us through the bridge (mediators) of God to us. For example, Jesus is our life yet we don’t eat Jesus, we eat plants and animals. They must give up their life so that we can live.  To relate to these things out of the context of understanding He is the source, not acknowledging Him, breeds pride, independence, indulgence, perversion and death (Romans 1:20-25).

By the tool of science we mediate God’s dominion and stewardship of His physical creation. Why does Christ give mankind revelation and wisdom in regards to technology?  It is so that we can exercise His nature His way for the advancement of His purposes and His kingdom. Ultimately it is for releasing of the atmosphere of heaven here on earth.  It is not so that we can make our lives easier or so we can be more comfortable; or so we can consume all the extra time on pleasure and self indulgence.  No, it is so that we can devote ourselves, in a greater way, to searching out the scriptures that we might accurately mediate the life of Jesus in the sphere that we’ve been placed.