Opus 2026-479: Past the Focal Point

God has an unlimited number of dendrites flowing from His being, and each one of those dendrites goes to the heart of someone, someone who lived, someone who is living, or someone who will live.  That’s kind of the way I was thinking about it as I began meditating this morning.  At one end we have creation.  I was thinking that the other end was salvation.  One was universal; the other individual.

I was wrong in my first assumption.  Creation may be one end but salvation is a mass event.  Jesus died for all.  One event.  One cross.  One sacrifice, for all through all eternity.  It’s applied individually.  Each person has to make a decision.  But it is universally available.

I tend to think of history as a giant X.  On the left side beginning in the large open end, you have everything moving toward the focal point.  Every event in history is leading toward that center spot.  That center spot is the cross; how appropriate.  Everything in the Bible before Calvary is an ingredient putting together history in such a way as to allow God to make the sacrifice that redeemed His people.  That is the central moment.

On the other side of my giant X we have things opening up again and spreading out.  You have events.  You have experiences.  You have births and death.  Life just gets bigger and bigger and there are more and more individuals the further you go.

That kind of a picture needs something bigger than the unrepeatable event of the death and resurrection.  Jesus told the disciples that He had to go and if He didn’t go, there was something that would not happen.  What would not happen was the coming of the Holy Spirit.  And it was the Holy Spirit that would be able to involve himself individually with every human being from now until the end times.

What would be a better end point would be Pentecost.  The Holy Spirit abides.  He is the one who sets up residence in us.  He is the one who teaches us and works in us, and brings things to mind.  He’s the one who empowers and cleanses.  His work is not a one time event that was established for eternity.  His work is a continual interaction with those who have faith in Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is also referred to as the Spirit of Christ.  We have the mystery of the trinity.  The end point is Pentecost, not Calvary.  The cross is 2000 years ago.  The day of Pentecost is a few short weeks after that.  The application of Pentecost and the filling of the Holy Spirit is an ongoing event taking place as many times as necessary in order to make people what God wants them to be.

homo unius libri