To Whom Does God Show Himself?
John 14:1 (NKJV) “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.”
When Jesus spoke those words He was talking to His disciples, men who had believed in God all their lives. Unlike the “new atheists” of today, they had not been brainwashed for generations to suppress their natural inclination to sing of themes such as “the heavens declare the glory of God” and “what is man that you are mindful of him” and “the law of God is perfect, reviving the soul.” They knew that God cares for man and that the law of God, the moral order, is part of the natural order built into God’s creation for man’s good. They also knew they were the people through whom God had given His Word, the scriptures that reinforce and build upon the natural revelation that is available to all people everywhere in the created order. Those scriptures also told of a Redeemer who would come to free them from their oppressors. So when Jesus said “you believe in God, believe also in me,” he was saying belief in God, the Creator, is the starting point, but your faith must take you farther because God has shown himself more fully in the scriptures and in His Son who was foretold by the scriptures.
The condition Jesus puts on manifesting himself more fully to any man, woman, or child is simply “love God, love His Word, and love his Way.” The reason the “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins don’t “see” God, even in His creation, is because they choose not to see Him. They are atheists by choice because they don’t want God tinkering in the world, and especially they don’t want Him tinkering in their lives.
1 comment:
The question then becomes...why do atheists (and all non believers) not love God? Because they are cut from the same stock of fallen Adam...they are lost and they CANNOT love God.
Unless God moves and regenerates a lost person they are unable to believe and they are unable to love God. This is total depravity...not that each man is as bad as he can possibly be (else we'd all make Hitler look like a boyscout!) but that man is spiritually dead and incapable of believing, let alone loving God.
"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
(Eph 2:1-5)
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