Reflections on Hebrews with Andrew Murray (9)

 

“God… has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the ages. Who being the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power…” (Hebrews 1:1 – 3).

 

Murray writes, “We know that whatever a man sets his heart on exercises a mighty influence on the life, and leaves its stamp upon his character…He that sets his heart upon the living God will find the living God take possession and fill the heart.”

 

Murray then says concerning Christ that we “should know Him aright and have our heart filled with all that God has revealed of Him. Our knowledge of Him will be the food of our faith…”

 

Again and again and again Murray points us to Jesus Christ; to seeing Christ, knowing Christ, being filled with Christ, feeding on Christ. As Jesus says (John 6:35), “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”

 

Reflecting on the above passage in Hebrews, Murray wants us to see that God appointed Jesus to be the Heir of all things. “The great object and aim of God in creation was to have an inheritance for His Son.” Let us make no mistake about this, for while we indeed have an inheritance, our inheritance is in Jesus Christ; more than that, our inheritance is Jesus Christ. As the Psalmist prays (Psa. 73:25), “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.”

 

As Paul writes (1Cor. 1:30 – 31) to those who are seeking philosophical enlightenment, as well as to those seeking supernatural experience, “But by His [God’s] doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the LORD.’”

 

Murray wants us to see that the Son is “the Final Cause, the End of all things.” In Ephesians 1:10 we see that “in the fullness of the times” that all things will be summed up, brought together, rolled up, and find their completion, in Christ, “things in the heavens and things on the earth.”

 

The Son is also the beginning, for we see that the worlds and ages were made through Him. As Murray puts it, “He is the origin and Efficient Cause of all that exists.” As the Apostle John writes (John 1:3), “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”

 

Murray then points out that Jesus Christ is not only the reason and purpose for all things, not only is He the End of all things, not only is He be Beginning of all things, but that He is also the Middle of all things; for the Son, “upholds all things by the word of His power.” In Colossians 1:16 – 17 we read concerning Christ, “…all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

 

Do we see Jesus Christ as the, “Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13)? Do we see Him as holding together all things, as sustaining all things, as giving us every breath we take, every sunrise, every drop of water; every sense of beauty, of truth, of goodness? Do we see Jesus Christ as the reason and purpose of our lives?

 

The person who would place Jesus Christ alongside any other person who has ever lived is a person who, no matter how well intentioned, has not seen Jesus Christ. Just as Moses was never the same after his encounter with God at the Burning Bush, so we can never the be same after we see Jesus.

 

But also, just as the Burning Bush inspired a desire within Moses to know God ever more intimately, so when we see Jesus Christ we are compelled to desire Him more and more. Moses desperately desired to see the Face of God, and as we know Christ Jesus, and are changed from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18), we continually cry out, “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship (communion, koinonia) of His sufferings, being conformed to His death…” (Phil. 3:10). We cry out that we might, “Press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14).

 

We cry that our Father and Lord Jesus might purify us, sanctity us, setting us apart unto God as living sacrifices, that we may see the Face of God (Matthew 5:8; Romans 12:1 – 2; Hebrews 12:14).

 

If I say that “Christ is all in all” what do I mean? If I mean that He is “my” all in all, that I love Him, and that I am praying to learn to love Him with all of my heart and soul and mind and strength; that is well and good…but it is not enough…for if that is all that I mean then I relegate and confine the “all in all-ness” of Christ to the personal – and what is solely personal eventually becomes so subjective that it loses its definition and articulation, for we make it subject to our “personal” whims and fancies.

 

Yes, I desire that Christ ever become my “all in all” in a personal and relational sense, but I must, I absolutely must, also behold Jesus Christ as the great I AM THAT I AM, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last – and my (hopefully) ever-increasing intimacy with Jesus Christ finds its nexus in my ever-increasing vision of Him as God of very God. As I bow before Him in the cosmic and transcendent grandeur and glory of His “all in all-ness” my personal life in Him is grounded before, and in, the Lamb of God and the Throne of God. Christ encompasses all of me as I behold Him encompassing all that there is.

 

Why does God in Christ reveal Himself through Revelation as the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last? Certainly it is, at least in part, to assure our first century brethren that nothing the Roman Empire can do to them can damage their souls. Certainly it is to assure them that fidelity to Christ and the Gospel is worth all that they are enduring. Certainly it is to encourage them to confess their sins, to purify their lives and their congregational teaching and practices. Certainly it is to call them out of Babylon. In other words, a vision of God in Christ as all encompassing is meant to transcend all the other visions and images of Revelation. If God is for us, who can be against us (Romans 8:31)?

 

We do not need more books about the End Times (as popularly understood), O that we might be spared from such endless speculation and merchandising. What we do need are books and sermons about Him who is the Beginning and the End, that Christ is all in all.

 

Christ either is everything, or He is nothing.

 

Which is it?