What view we have and what horizon is visible in our mind’s eye depends on how we understand the world. Having a view and cultivating foresight are not a matter of course. They are often achievements. It is the way we deal with ourselves and with the world. Here are a few notes from the Letter to the Romans, with which you can explore your own horizons. Can you determine this for yourself? Can you put it away for others?
Views about myself
- I am loved regardless of what is behind me (Rom 5:8)
- God is 100% witnessed to me, namely through Christ Jesus, immovable and sure (Rom 8:31-39)
- But may the God of confidence fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may overflow with confidence, “in the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:13 CNT).
- But the God of peace be with you all! Amen! (Rom 15:33)
Views about others
- Accordingly, just as by the one offense there came to condemnation for all men, so also by the one judgment there comes to justification of life for all men (Rom 5:18)
- The creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption to the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8:21)
- God includes all in unruliness so that He may have mercy on all (Rom 11:32)
- From Him, through Him and to Him is the universe. Amen! (Rom 11:36)
Horizons
What horizon do we have and what horizon do we promote in our conversations, home groups, communities and churches? Is there an outlook and confidence so stunning that we can share that joyfully and without arrogance where appropriate? So that other people can also participate? Do we have a broad vision that includes others, or do we exclude others through supposedly better knowledge? Do we live by God’s grace and lead into it, or do we demand righteousness and following rules, assumptions, and certain worldviews?
These are the questions at stake if we want to stand fruitfully in the world. How do we recognize ourselves in the grace of God, and how do we see this world in the same grace of God (Col. 4:6)? Or are we making distinctions here? Do we divide into “us” and “them, the others”? Do we share God’s view of this world as well as His outlook? Do we think it is possible that this world, which is His world, will also be set right by Him? Because that’s what we read in Romans, for example, and in many other passages in the Bible.
An experiment of God?
For some, the world is an experiment of God, which has slipped out of His hand. The sin was an accident. God is now trying to save what there is left to save and the remaining 95% is lost forever. Is that really foresight? Or is that more of a disaster in thinking? The Bible gives every reason to believe that our God and Father is excellent with His creation. It can be reasoned that the Fall was not an accident and that God was not at all surprised by it. He was always God. He always had the overview. After all, it is His world on which we walk.
And this God has good plans for His world. He has the clear goal of once becoming “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). Everything in us and everything in everyone else. No more differences. All in all. Not everything happens today, not everything tomorrow, but with foresight He certainly reaches His goal – as is also testified in the Bible verses here above. There are many more such verses. For then the world is not an experiment of God that has gone out of hand, but it is a world that is totally dependent on Him, which is what Paul is talking about when he testifies at the Areopagus in Athens:
“The God who created the world and all that is in it, He, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He served by human hands as if He needed anything; yet He Himself gives life and breath and all the rest to all. He has also caused every nation of men to dwell from one on the whole face of the earth. He has set assigned time limits and residential boundaries for them, so that they should seek God, whether they would like to grope for Him and find Him, although He is not far from each individual among us; for in Him we live and move and are …”
Acts 17:24-29
We can read about what that speech did. Some of the Greeks are addressed by this message and believe, while others run away debating. So I guess this reaction is also part of this world we live in. However, this did not stop Paul from pointing out in many of his letters that God nevertheless arrives at His destination. God is in charge. This is an integral part of the Pauline letters. In it there is a vision, confidence and trust, knowledge of God and understanding of Christ.
“The last enemy to be abolished is death… But if the All is subordinate to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subordinate to Him who subordinated the All to Him, so that God may be all in all.”
1Cor 15:26-28
“For truly there is yet an end, and then your hope will not be destroyed.”
Prov 23:18
“Everything He has made beautiful in its time, even He has put eternity in its heart, except that man does not fathom the work that God has done, from beginning to end.”
Eccl 3:11
It’s the end that matters.
There is the vision that reaches into the present.
