I’M SURE WE can remember as children when certain relatives of ours came over to visit; how we would get excited because of the gifts they brought, but how many of us looked so forward to them coming over just to be with them? How many of us have been guilty of wanting to associate with a person because they are generous and always giving? How many of us have friends that we want to be around just because of who they are?

I wonder how many of us long to be in God’s presence just to be with Him – not to get anything out of Him, but just to gaze on Him with wonder and be in awe of Who He is? Has He not already given us what eternity could never repay? “My goal is God Himself, not joy, nor peace, Nor even blessing, but Himself, my God” – Frances Brook.

It is without doubt that when we seek to be with God in such a way, we are actually worshipping Him in spirit and in truth. The Father seeks such and here I believe is where a greater closeness with God is reached. Here is where we will know friendship with God, but never with overfamiliarity; there will always be unspeakable awe of God. There is no end to our insignificance to even dare consider the thought of being compared with such an infinite and incomprehensible God, Whose vastitude is immeasurable, Whose grandeur is unfathomable and Whose ways are past finding out. “What is man that You are mindful of Him…?” What is fallen man that You, O LORD would even look upon Him? Oh, we are made in the image of God, but how humanity has trampled such beauty under foot. There is only one thing we will ever deserve – and what a blow to man’s satanic-driven pride – we are only fit for hell; we are by our fallen nature fuel for God’s wrath. Indeed, we are the prodigals, clothed in Christ’s righteousness – if we are, of course, sons of God by adoption.

Does this offend you reader; is this not pampering to your ego? Do you really understand your Bible? Do you truly understand – not fully fathom – the Gospel; do you know why Christ was made sin in order that you might become the righteousness of God? I only repeat what millions of others have said over the last two millennia: we can never understand the love of God if we fail to acknowledge His righteous anger – His wrath. No, no reader – you can think all fanciful things about the love of God and still be light years away from even starting to comprehend it. Never has there been an era, until the last fifty years, where God’s love has been so misinterpreted, misrepresented, misunderstood, made so cheap, common and shallow.

It’s the Cross. That is where we start. “When I survey the wondrous cross” wrote Isaac Watts. Where do we begin to survey? Why did the Son of God have to suffer such unutterable agony? Why did it please the Father to bruise and crush His own Son? Why did Christ really have to die? Without the spotless Lamb of God, God could never have been righteous in forgiving us; without the Son of God taking the full blow of the Father’s wrath, God could never have been just in justifying us. Indeed, it was because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to be forsaken by Him and slain by His wrath; it wasn’t the mere physical agony that expired the Son’s life; it was the blow of God’s righteous anger upon the body of His Son Who bore the nature of our filth (sin: another word that is so misunderstood today). Neither was it Christ’s mere body that endured our punishment, but also His spirit. Oh it was a FULL sacrifice; it was an entire agony. The Son did not commit His spirit into His Father’s hands until He had drunk the FULL measure of God’s judgement against sin. “When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died…” What do we see, what do we feel? Depth untold, depths unknown. We are never done surveying the mystery of “heaven’s peace and perfect justice [that] kissed a guilty world in love.”

Our chastisement, laid upon Christ, has brought us our peace with God. Such is God’s way of reconciling us to Himself.

Would it not be an insult to even say God has already done enough for us? He has given us more than we can ever comprehend and as Paul prayed in Ephesians, may our eyes be opened to it: to comprehend the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Beyond the blessing; beyond obtaining ‘things’ from God, but that I may know HIM – the Pearl of inestimable price.