The promise…

To us (part 6)

Because of Christ’s death God has flung the doors open to a new relationship with him – which, Romans 5:1-2, promises three things: first of all, peace with God. Secondly, absolute confidence in approaching him. And thirdly, using the Phillips translation, “happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.” So the three things promised are peace, confidence and certainty.  

Peace and confidence have been covered previously, but what about this “certainty” bit? Can we really know for certain what God “has for us in the future”? But didn’t Jesus also say in John 16:13, that “when the Spirit of truth comes….he will tell you what is yet to come”?  

According to Jesus, then, we are now part of a new world where the future is known, and we can know it too. But what does the future “yet to come” revolve around? Jesus made that clear in verse 14, that the Spirit of truth “will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”  

This certainty about the future and what is to come, therefore, revolves around coming to know what Jesus is all about. Because, quoting one writer, “No man has ever grasped all that Jesus came to say. No man has fully worked out all the significance of his teaching for life and for belief, for the individual and for the world, for society and for the nation.” 

The Holy Spirit’s job, therefore, is to constantly open up and expand the truth about Jesus. Because that is the future “yet to come” for all of us: it’s coming to know Jesus for real, so that we’re left in no doubt what he’s up to, what his motives are, what his end goal is, what he thinks of us, what he’s head of the Church for, what his teachings mean, what glorious things he has in mind for us when he returns, and how it all fits in exactly with his Father’s plan and purpose through and for him.  

And it’s the Spirit’s job to make all this come to life for us. So that’s what we can expect to happen in the future for the rest of our lives, then. It means a constant revelation by the Spirit of things just waiting to be discovered about “the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” 2 Peter 3:18. No wonder Paul wrote back in Romans 5:2 that we “rejoice,” because here we are now, already experiencing our future…(more on this tomorrow)