The Advent of the Sons of God

Advent, the prelude to Christmas, a season of waiting and anticipation for the birth of the Messiah, and in some circles, a  focused wait in hopeful anticipation of Christ’s second coming. I understand all that. Those thoughts take me back to when I was an acolyte in our church, and the advent season came with the promise of more candles to light for the next four weeks leading up to Christmas.

For me as a 12 year old that was a wonderful time preparing for the annual Christmas celebrations and feasting that would come as side dishes. We were not Christians in those days, but we were devoted to the traditions that would inspire, provide comfort and peace for a few weeks during the dismal winter.

Fast forward to this year as I heard the first mention of the season and what it was all about, a very strange and interesting thought pierced my mind. God lives in hopeful anticipation of the coming of the Sons of God. All of creation is standing on tiptoe waiting for the  manifestation of the sons of God.

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he states, ” The mystery that was hidden for ions is now made known to us, this mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory”. Glory can be seen as God’s ultimate intention going out to mankind and coming back to Him fully realized. Imagine God having an intention for man that is beyond the usual Christian rhetoric of preparing for Messiah’s birth (again), having your sins forgiven and flying away to heaven.

You can be sure of one thing, any hope that lies in the heart of Pappa, is a hope beyond that which has been conceived by man. A hope so huge and unlike anything I can imagine; a hope that embodies an intention for man beyond man’s comprehension of seeing it apart from Christ. This hope has been concealed in a mystery until now, and the mystery is Christ in you. 

According to the apostle, this mystery has been revealed to God’s people. It’s no longer a mystery in the sense that it’s no longer hidden. But I see it hidden from many Christians. I don’t have an explanation for what I witness, but it’s like we are living in a dispensation we have no business being in. We live void of the understanding of Pentecost and the release of the anointing which we all have received through the resurrected Christ.

I see it hidden in the way we speak, the way we treat others and the way in which we think about ourselves. The way we speak reveals what we see and if our language is void of the knowledge and experience of Christ in us, then this mystery is still hidden.

I’m not talking about our new birth experience, but what the new birth really means from God’s place of hope in seeing this glory manifested. Man’s calling is to stand before God and develop by obedience from the lowest point of conscious innocence to the highest reach of unconscious holiness with no intermediaries. This is man’s calling as God created him. and that is why He will never leave us alone until the blaze and pain of His fire has burned us as pure as He is Himself.

I was recently reading an article in which the author was giving the reason for the failure in Christians living. The reason for our failing was a quote from Jeremiah 17:9, “the heart is desperately wicked and beyond cure”. Wow, I thought, “I remember when I thought that way”. But if my heart is desperately wicked and beyond cure, then Jesus should have kept the thought to himself when He uttered the words, “Only the pure in heart can see God”.

Isn’t it ironic that Jesus, master of the human heart, said only the pure in heart can see God. There’s a gap between what Jeremiah spoke and what Jesus said. Somewhere in that gap is the new birth. I’m weary of folks telling me the reason for their failures is that, well, you know, we’re just broken? If I’m still broken, then the new birth is much to do about nothing!

The reason for my failures is that I am a work in progress, a work that God has great hope in; a work that is nobly difficult, but He who has begun this work in me will perform it until its completion. No, this is not an out for crossing over into heaven’s realm with a limp, this is a statement without resignation to my obstinate heart addicted to self rule that comes with a tightly bound right of entitlement to self.

I can do whatever I want, and as long as I desire to have my own way, I can have it. Pappa is not taking any prisoners against there wishes. A great part of this hope He has for me, is to be holy and sovereign while yielding to His life in me, just as my elder brother lived His life, knowing He could do nothing on His own and yielded to the life of Pappa.

I love the Christmas season. It gives me a warm glow in my heart. But it is also a reminder of how fenced in we all are about the love of God and His undaunted hope for the human race, of which He became part. The Christmas season seems to be like some kind of inebriate for the masses getting high off a feeling of some indescribable sensate experience while looking for their lost car keys in the snow. Those lost keys are people’s reflex actions to a feeling after God while swimming in the ocean of carols, gift giving, holiday meals and all sorts of family traditions – even church going!

One of my favorite Christmas carols is O Come, O Come Immanuel. The melody is hauntingly moving and the lyrics are compelling describing the time of Israel’s dark 400 years of utter silence from God. For four centuries, there were no prophetic words. In short, the lyrics plead for God to do what He’s already done.

And that’s my point here. We are living in a dispensation mentally that doesn’t exist. And as a man thinks, so is he. It’s not sinful, it’s ignorant. Ignorant of what is while living in what is not, past or future. The Christmas season is a powerful testimony that annually pleads for extenuation. But the compelling nature of this voice is in competition with the rightness of our own judgment. The result is, we are not moved off our bastions and all the evidence that shouts at us is invalidated, because somehow we are not confirmed by it.

Faith does not grow in the house of certainty and nothing that deserves to be called the Truth could ever be arrived at by ignoring the parousia (Gk) of the moment because it seems so strange.