PRESENCE OF GOD
When I think of what the Christian faith is all about, I think of the presence of God first of all. He was present in creation--Let us make man in Our image(1.26)--He was present at the Fall when the Lord God said to Adam--Where are you?(3.9) He was present with Cain and Abel when He said to Cain--Why has your countenance fallen(4.6). He was present with Noah, even remembering Noah (8.1), and with Abraham many times.


He was with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He heard the cry of His people in Egypt, sending them Moses and then Joshua and the judges and kings and prophets and prophetesses. He was with Israel in His own glory in the tabernacle and later in the temple of Solomon.

In the NT He was with Jesus at His baptism, Matthew 3.17, He was with Paul on the road to Damascus, Acts 9.4,5, He was with Peter in Acts 10.14, and He will be with us in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Yet, this is not all. What does the Bible say God was like in His presence? What the OT says first is that God is the origin of us all, the One who breathed on Adam and the One to whom we will return, Revelation 21.6. More than that, in the Psalms He is the One who provides us with our life, our planet and food and drink. But most important, He is the One who provides us with a person to be like, Gen. 1.26, Philippians 3.10, Colossians 1.28, Hebrews 3.14.

When we realize God gave us a person to be, we are close to Him, He is close to us.

At first God provides an altar, Gen. 8.20 by which Noah and his family could approach God. Then with Moses He provided a covenant, laws and a tabernacle, Exodus 24. Later He would provide a land, Joshua 1. And then in the NT God provided Jesus to take upon Himself our nature, as we had taken upon ourselves His nature in Genesis 2. Philippians 2.7 speaks of Jesus taking on the form of a man. The Greek word is morphe. In Homer used it to mean the outward appearance which revealed an inner quality. So in Odyssey 11.367 it is usually translated, grace. In the Philippians passage, Paul says Jesus--
emptied Himself, taking the form (morphe) of a bondservant

and being made in the likeness of men.


The human form Jesus took showed us His human form while revealing His divinity. This is reinforced by Paul when he says in Phil. 2.8 that he was found in the appearance as a man--He looked like a man. Paul is saying He appeared to be an ordinary man, even though his morphe indicated that He was more than that. This is the image of God mentioned in Genesis 1.27--an outward image revealing an inner quality. So when Jesus comes to fishermen in Matthew 4, they just drop their nets to follow Him. In Matt. 8 a leper calls Him, Lord. A demon calls Him, Son of God, Matt. 8.29. They all know Jesus is a man, but much more than that.

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When Adam and Eve fell, their inward quality was ruined although their outward form was not. As it turned out, God used their outward form, their morphe, to eventually renew their inward quality. This we see when God promised to send a savior through the seed of a woman.

What God is doing is beginning with His own nature, then enhancing it by giving His image to new creatures, Adam and Eve. When God provided an altar, He gave us the earth upon which to worship God. When He provided a tabernacle and the Law, He bestowed His presence in the midst of a nation so that the Jews could approach Him. And then He gave Himself to every individual, tribe, tongue and nation.

But that is not all. To make the circle of holiness complete, God gave His own nature and being to us through the Spirit, He took us into Himself that we would be in Him.

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Now if all this is true, how how are we in Him and He in us?

After the Fall and before Jesus was born, a great many people displayed great talents. The first instance of this is Cain. He left the presence of God in Gen. 4.16, built a city, and his descendants became livestock herders, musicians, and metal forgers, Gen. 4.20-22. Being out of the worship of God did not ruin Cain's talents and those of his descendants.

What this means is that when Adam fell he could never fall out of God's care. Even Cain is given a city and skills. And by the way, those very same skills will be honored and used by God when Moses builds the tabernacle out of animal hides, metal for utensils and musicians to celebrate the tabernacle. Does this mean that even Cain in all his failure has a place with God's economy? Possibly it does. Does it mean that Cain did all of what he did on his own, entirely separated from God? Probably not. He was sent out of God's worship presence in order that his descendants might be brought back generations later.

We have this same pattern with Jacob and Esau. They were enemies first--Jacob was sent away--but then reconciled years later, Genesis 32. Cain and Esau never did take the role in God's plan of redemption that Abel and Jacob did. Still we can say they were cast down by God but not cast off. The same thing is true of Israel--they were cast out of Palestine into slavery in Babylon but God brought them back to be in the land when their messiah Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.

God honored the image of God in man, even in Cain and Esau, no matter how defaced that image was.

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We might not even know that He is in us, but Paul says He is.
The apostle says in Ephesians 1.18 he is praying, that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of your calling... There is no other way to realize such glorious spiritual realities. They cannot be discovered on a scroll, by someone with special gifts or an overheated religious imagination, or someone possessing a secret map or language or viewpoint. Such insight must come from God.


Now we realize that what God did was true but not visible to us until we receive the inner sight to see it. What exactly are we to see? Hope, inheritance, power. The hope is His calling of us out of darkness, into light as John says in John 1.9. Our inheritance is the riches of His glory which is given to us now in part and then entirely when we reach heaven, Eph. 1.18. His power means the same power that raised Jesus from the dead will raise us up also, Eph. 2.6.

All of this is seen by grace, believed through faith. But as James says, faith is not alone for it always results in what can be seen. That brings us to the understanding that the presence of God in us reaches into our everyday life like bubbles coming to the surface of water. The woman caught in adultery saw forgiveness in Jesus. When Jesus healed a leper in Luke 5.13 Jesus tells the leper to go to the priest--
and make an offering for your cleansing, jus as Moses commanded, for a testimony to them.


Notice it is not a testimony against the priest, but to him. This is the faith which results in the works of love. It is the presence of God in us and among us which glorifies God.