The God who comes to you is not the God whom many people know. They mainly know the God to whom they have to come.
The religions and legends of antiquity all tell the same story, that somehow humanity, through its striving, can achieve the permanence of divinity. That’s the idea behind the tower of Babel, the story of the Greek Hercules, the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh, and the meaning behind the pyramids of Egypt. This pervasive and ancient concept is also at the heart of most misguided philosophies and religions today.
The message of the Bible is loud and clear. You can’t come to God. From the beginning to the end, God is the God who comes to you.
The God Who Comes to You has Always Been There
Even right from the start, after the first sin in the Garden of Eden, it was God come came to us:
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:8–9.)
The rest of the New Testament is the story of how the word of the Lord continually came to his people to save them. He also came to appeal to them to come back to him when they wandered away, which was often. God repeated the promise, that had been made in Eden, of a coming Saviour who would restore humanity and conquer evil.
The time came when the spoken and written word were not enough, and the Saviour came from heaven. The most unexpected and astonishing thing was that in Jesus, God himself came in the flesh, himself to be one with us. He didn’t call to us from heaven. He came to save us where we were.
The beginning of the gospel of John tells us of how Jesus came to us. Here, Jesus is called, “the Word”:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning…
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him…
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1–2,9,11,14.)
We Don’t Come to God. He Came to Us.
The fact that God has come to us in the person of Jesus, in order to save us, is the fundamental message of Christianity. We don’t come to him. He came to us. What we could not do, he did.
Throughout his time on earth, we see Jesus repeatedly coming to those who needed him. The Samaritan woman at the well, the blind man outside Jericho, and the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda are some among many examples of those to whom Jesus came, becaue they couldn’t come to him.
In Luke 15 we have three parables of “lost” things being found: there is a lost coin, a lost sheep, and a lost son. Lost things cannot find themselves. Someone has to come to find them.
In the parable of the lost sheep, it is the shepherd who comes to where the lost sheep is to find it and carry it home. This is how it always is. We are the ones who are lost and Jesus is the Great Finder, who always comes to search for his own.
God is Still the God Who Comes to You
In the book of Revelation, Jesus presents himself in the following way:
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8.)
Followers of Jesus also look forward to the time when he will come again. That’s why, the book of Revelation ends with these words of Jesus:
Yes, I am coming soon (Rev. 22:20.)
In every other religion, faith system and spiritual philosophy in the world, it is we who must find ourselves, it is we who must come to God. Only in Christianity do we find a God whose love for you is so great, that he comes to you.
Article supplied with thanks to Dr Eliezer Gonzalez.
About the Author: Dr Eli Gonzalez is the Senior Pastor of Good News Unlimited and the presenter of the Unlimited radio spots, and The Big Question. Sign up to his free online course called Becoming a Follower of Jesus to learn about Jesus and His message.