Reflection on God's reflection

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about God's grace. I think it's one of those concepts that take a looong time to understand and grasp. Probably an eternity. But that's exciting. I think if i could ever get to fully know and understand God's grace, in other words: if there was a limited amount of time that would be necessary to reach the point of perfectly and completely understanding it, I would like to delay that moment as much as possible just because of how wonderful it is to find out new things about it. Thankfully, I don't have that problem and i can confidently ask for more and more knowledge about God and get it and there will always be more to find out.

There's something about God's grace that I've known for a pretty long time but yesterday two verses came to mind that confirmed it..

Eph 2:8a : "For by grace you have been saved through faith."
Psalm 80:3b : "Cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved."

So I guess the thought was that God's grace is Him making Himself seen, known, enjoyed. That's just so perfect!

In small group we've been reading Jonathan Edwards' "The end for which God created the World". There's a lot of stuff in it that I already knew, just from listening to John Piper. But it's been so good to think about it and wrestle with his ideas on my own and get to my own conclusions on the subject.

One of my favorite quotes so far ...

"Another [of God's] emanation of divine fullness is the communication of virtue and holiness to the creature; this is a communication of God’s holiness, so that hereby the creature partakes of God’s own moral excellency, which is properly the beauty of the divine nature. And as God delights in his own beauty, he must necessarily delight in the creature’s holiness which is a conformity to and participation of it, as truly as a brightness of a jewel, held in the sun’s beams, is a participation or derivation of the sun’s brightness, though immensely less in degree. And then it must be considered wherein this holiness in the creature consists, viz. in love, which is the comprehension of all true virtue; and primarily in love to God, which is exercised in a high esteem of God, admiration of his perfections, complacency [i.e., satisfaction, delight] in them, and praise of them. All which things are nothing else but the heart exalting, magnifying, or glorifying God; which, as I showed before, God necessarily approves of and is pleased with, as he loves himself, and values the glory of his own nature."

I just love the idea that we see God's beauty in His holiness, because I know that seeing God's beauty is the most satisfying thing for the human soul and I know the Scriptures talk a lot about God's holiness so my soul can find the satisfaction it is seeking for by learning about God's holiness from the Bible. This also changes my attitude towards the Bible, what to expect and pray for when I'm reading it.

The other thing I really like about this passage is the fact that we are mirrors that reflect God's holiness and that if we love God and esteem Him highly and delight in Him and seek His face, and by that, live a holy life, committed to follow Him, God looks at us and sees Himself as in a mirror and delights in looking at Himself and at His beauty. I find that thought very humbling and very encouraging at the same time.

I just want to say I am so thankful that God ordained that we would have this study and be thinking about these things together.. fellowship is just such a blessing!