All my Christian life I have been made to think that sinful people could not see God. The primary reason for this is because of their sin; that if they came into God’s presence, their sin would automatically trigger upon themselves immediate and complete annihilation by God’s holiness.
But something today questions the accuracy of my thinking. No, I am not changing my theology, but I believe these thoughts are noteworthy.
Isaiah, upon seeing the Lord in this today’s reading, is not destroyed. Isaiah first goes into a description of the setting and afterwards says in 6.5, “It’s all over! I am doomed for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” Isaiah remarked at his unexpected outcome, “yet I have seen the King…”
I remember now that God sought out and spoke to Adam and Eve “post-sin”. I remember that God spoke to Abraham. God spoke to and had a notable relationship with Moses. God met with Elijah as well. Here today, Isaiah sees and converses with God. All these encounters had their own unique circumstances, but none of them resulted in the ‘immediate and complete annihilation’ for those seeing God.
Was God unaware of their sinful nature? I don’t think so. Did God give these guys some special favor? I don’t think so. Do we need to review our ideas? I think so.
We have so “holy-ized” God (after all, it is a powerful leverage tool), that we have utterly failed to “mercy-ize” Him in our assessment of His character (cool words, huh?). Why do we do that? I believe it is all a part of Satan’s plan to dupe mankind into erroneous thinking that actually serves to further bind us in sin. The enemy of man’s soul wants us to be afraid of (and therefore altogether avoid) God! We must be careful to avoid this deception!
OK, I will not attempt to build a theology here. I’ve just been thinking…
God, I am so thankful for Your mercy and grace. I am so thankful that You have proven to seek us out even if we aren’t as “clean” as we need to be. I am thankful that You have made the Way for us to be made clean and whole in Your presence through Jesus’ death on our behalf.
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