The Most Glorious of Truths

As a believer of the Lord Jesus Christ, born of Him, I have received many wonderful revelations from God in my lifetime of knowing Him. As can be expected, all have had great impact upon me and upon all those with whom I have had to do in any significant way.

Great has been the controversy and confusion of who Jesus was and is. So very much has been written and spoken on this issue. I have also spent years wondering and searching. I now rest with great peace and joy.

The greatest and most glorious Truth of which I am aware, though it is so great and all encompassing, is so simple; it was taken for granted among the believers of Jesus’ day, before the days of perversion and confusion. That wonderful truth is that Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, was none other than the One Lord, Creator, and Father God of all, manifest in the flesh. He was the incarnation of the God of Israel. Yes, He is our Maker, Redeemer, Savior, Alpha and Omega, First and Last, Beginning and End. He is the Last Adam, Creator of the first Adam who was called the son of God. Jesus Christ is the Author and Finisher not only of our faith, but also of all things. We will one day all say with Thomas, as we fall on bended knee before Him, “My Lord and my God!”

This truth, though it appears to create many questions, answers all. With patience and persistence, the sincere seeker of the Truth - Jesus Christ, as He declared (John 14:6) - will be made free, and “if the Son makes him free, he shall be free indeed” (John 8:32-36).

“Behold the man!” Pilate, the Roman governor, declared before the chosen people of God, who cried for His blood. Yes, behold the Man, indeed! God was saying, “This is My intention for the creature I have created in My own image. This is Who I am, this is what I am like and desire all mankind to be, and this is Who all mankind will be. Behold, I show you.

“You will know that man is an expression of Me; I am he, and he is Me. I AM THAT I AM. I make no image as man makes images. When man, in his incomplete state, makes images, he must necessarily make a copy of the real, and that copy always falls short of the original. But when I create an image, I duplicate or manifest the very likeness; I repeat the likeness, not only in appearance, but also in very substance of the original. Fallen man’s image of God or anything else is a counterfeit, but I make the real thing. Therefore, when I make man in My own image, I manifest Myself.”

Muslims chafe at the truth that God has a son, supposing it is suggested that He married and had children. However, the allegory of God’s having a son declares that He gave Himself human form and appeared to mankind on his level in this realm. God spoke and gave form to His Words, manifesting His Nature by embodying His essence. Jesus Christ was the spoken Word given physical form. God was saying, in effect, “Here I Am. This is Who I Am and What I Am Like.”

In His human form as Jesus Christ, Yahweh demonstrated in all reality how He, the Creator, wills that man, in his created state, relate to Him as Father God. By living example, He was saying, “This is what I am doing with you, and this is what you will eventually become.”

He gave man choice to exercise. The purpose of choice is to teach man, by experience, that though he is being created in God’s image, he cannot create himself in God’s image. While man is being given to have the knowledge of God, he cannot attain to the status of God by his own doing.

Man has no desire, much less the ability, to seek after God or to be as He truly is. It is God’s desire to make man in His image. It is His work and we are His workmanship. To Him alone belong all credit, praise, honor and glory.

A grain of corn will duplicate itself in perfect substance. That which it produces did not initiate the process, and it does not exist by itself. Yet it does exist in the original seed.

Jesus is the Original. He produces the fruit. The fruit does not produce Him, not in the beginning, not in the interim, and not in the end, any more than grapes at any time produce the vine; though the time will come when grapes “lose their lives” and spring up from the “grave” as a new vine, which produces more grapes. All proceeds from the former.

Victor Hafichuk