THINGS MOST SURELY BELIEVED - As to the Son of God #2
/by Joesph L. Watkins.
“Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.” I Tim. 3:16.
My purpose in this series is to share with our family of readers what I hold to be the true teaching of God on the principle doctrine of the Bible.
The great subject we are considering at present is perhaps the most difficult of all to express ourselves on. “God manifest in the flesh” Oh, how could this be? God almighty -in human form- just think of it! The most-high God, the power and cause of all, come to this planet Earth in human form. Oh, what a great mystery this is! Yes, a mystery, but no longer a secret for the word of God has much to say on the subject. Yet it remains a great mystery, “…no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son…” Matthew 11:27.
Please allow me to put a handle on this for you that has been a help to me. Let us go back in time, even before time, before all creation, a time as we reckon it, when God in His first essence was and nothing else was, for all came forth of Him. A time when no other intelligence existed but the power force and person we know as “God the Father”.
In Acts 17:25 we learn that “God needed nothing”. So the question comes to us, why did He create? Turning to Rev. 4:11, we find the answer “…for Thy pleasure they are and were created.”
Now some would tell us that God is love and He had no other to love, so He created that He might love and be loved. Let me hasten to say that I don’t disagree with them, but there is an aspect to this that must be understood first. To love in the truest sense of the word one must first know the object of that love. So at the heart of the purpose of creation is God’s desire that He might be known. For this to happen two things must take place. First, other intelligent beings must be created, beings that could hear and see; that could come to know and love Him. Secondly, God must be manifest. He must become knowable. In Col. 1:15 we learn that God is invisible; John 1:18 – no man hath seen Him; John 5:37 “Ye have neither heard His voice nor seen His shape.”
Make no mistake. No being will be created with the capacity to see or hear or know God in His first essence. So then, how can He be known? There is but one way. He must take unto Himself a form, an outward shape and image. This He did, and we know that image as “the Son”. The Son is God almighty in audible, visible, and knowable form.
Now let me hasten to say that the Son did manifest God in many ways and places long before the child was born to Mary. Search and see it throughout the Old testament.
