When man fell, he gave up life in exchange for knowledge (Gen. 3:6). Without life — without newness — man became old. Since then, humankind has endlessly pursued “knowing” things in the old creation, yet lost the ability to sense the life of God. Whenever we encounter something, we like to objectively understand it, “indexing” it or classifying it into something we think we already understand. Knowledge, however, will never satisfy us or fulfill us; it will never answer the deepest questions of human life: Why are we here? What were we made for?
As believers, we have something much more powerful than dead knowledge (2 Cor. 3:6). We have been made alive — brought back to the source of life — by eating Christ, the tree of life! When we take Him in, the Spirit gives life (Rom. 8:11). Our journey now is in seeking out the Lord we love in every moment, engaging with Him according to our inner sense of life as He reveals Himself to us. This is the path that leads us from being old to being ever new, the path that leads us to His return.
Yet even after we have believed, we often still have the tendency in our fallen nature to “index” God into creeds and doctrines, thinking we know exactly what God is like and what He wants. Ironically, His word shows us that when He first came, those who sat in the seat of religious authority completely missed His arrival. Both John who came to prepare His coming and the Lord Himself were rejected by the Jews (Matt. 11:18-19), who did not recognize “that something greater than the temple” was right before their eyes (12:6). Today, we can declare that we know Christ, yet we completely miss His Person among us because we are stuck in our own concepts, religion, and dead knowledge. Just as that generation rejected Him due to their religious knowledge, this generation today is also in danger of thinking they know everything and missing what the Lord is doing to prepare for His own coming. The Lord always comes in a way that fools the “wise and intelligent” religious ones, instead revealing Himself to “infants” (11:25).
Brothers and sisters, let’s not miss His coming again! It’s time for our inner sense of life to be awakened. Our maturing in life will never come according to our outward knowing, but according to our spirit within. We are not constituted by old knowledge, but by the truth — truth made ever new by living in fellowship with Him. As we prepare for His return, if we cling to our old concepts, we may not be able to recognize the expression of Christ through His church — even when it is right before our eyes. Like those going out to see John, now is the time to confess our oldness. But even more than John, we are part of the new creation and have the Spirit. Let’s experience Christ in newness and catch the moment of His coming to us.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 9/8/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)