“Oh dear friends, the time is almost up, and I’ve only just scratched the surface of all the Lord has shown me – the deep things of Gawd!! You must press on to see these things, friends, strive to enter in! I tell you, you’re not going to hear these things anywheres else! If you knew what I haven’t told you yet, you wouldn’t let me out of here!” We saints went to lecture upon lecture hoping to really grasp the deep things of God. But I always came away from a seminar feeling I had gotten a just glimmer of something great and mysterious, a “buzz” from hearing God’s true servant give us the “overflow of his heart”, but not quite getting it. After a few days or weeks the buzz would slowly dissipate, and I would need Brother George’s next seminar to truly open my eyes

I notice that Paul in I Corinthians 1 and 2 gives quite a different picture. He scolds the Corinthian believers for dividing from one another over which teacher had the best message, the most wisdom. He says the only true message, the only true wisdom, is the foolishness of God’s plan in Christ to rescue the perishing, the weak, the lowly, and become for them their righteousness and redemption.  He says that understanding what God has freely given us in Christ is the deep things of God.

George always pooh-poohed that and said it was just the beginning of salvation. If only he had used all those hours of lectures to unpack for us what has already been given us by the work of Jesus and by our union with him. There’s no special revelation here, no special secret – it’s the gospel we already know, understood and experienced in its fulness. God’s grace has (past tense) brought us into the circle of the Father’s love and acceptance, has put all our sins behind his back, has brought us near to him, so close we are indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus.

Learning to live so dearly loved is our task. Peter says we are to grow in this grace, grow in the knowledge of Jesus who has perfectly demonstrated for us how it is possible. The deep things of God are reached by sinking our roots more and more deeply into this reality, believing it more and more strongly.