The Face of God
Why did Christ have to be incarnated? What made the Father choose to send Jesus to live an earthly life?
When Christ laid down His life, He became the atonement (you could think of atonement as “At-One-ment,” by which Christ made us one with God), the Bridge, needed to destroy sin’s control of humankind and to transform the systems of this world. Christ’s death and resurrection made way for the Spirit of God to inhabit, reshape and transform believers’ mindsets, beliefs and actions.
In a sense, the Cross is an earthly symbol of a heavenly altar where we lay down all of our attempts to be whole and holy, and we take up the life of Christ as the power within to do what only God can do: to love others, even those who are different—even estranged--from us.
Although Christ accomplished this redemption and reconciliation at once for all who would come to Him through the Cross, we see glimpses of God’s work of redemption in several Old Testament examples.
One of those is the account of two brothers, deceived and deceiver, in whose story God intervened to reconcile them to each another. But prior to that real-time reconciliation and reunion, God had to get a hold of the deceiver, Jacob.
Peniel was the place where God revealed Himself to Jacob face-to-face, where God re-named him “Israel” after wrestling with an angel all night. (See Genesis 32:30-31.)
In anxious anticipation of meeting his (presumably enraged) older brother Esau, Jacob held onto God’s angel to receive a divine blessing, and afterward God granted him the name “Israel”: “he struggles with God.”
Jacob-Israel, having received God’s blessing, named the place “Peniel", meaning “Face of God”; it was where Jacob “saw God face-to-face, and yet [his] life was spared.” (v. 30) At this point Jacob, forever changed inwardly, received a physical injury, a limp in his gait as a reminder that he needed to remain humble and broken before God so reconciliation could take place between people. He walked away a new man, having “overcome” the old self and having received the “mark” of one transformed by God.
I believe that is what happened to Jacob that night. As a result, he was forever changed.
Have you been there? Have you been to the place where you and God “duked it out” until you finally surrendered to His will and way? Have you been to that place of death to self and received full life in Christ? Have your thoughts, desires, dreams, and ambitions been “conquered” by Christ Jesus himself? Are you dying daily so that the life of Christ may be magnified through you?
This is why we chose the name Peniel CrossRoads for a ministry of biblical unity. We believe that unity in the Body of Christ can be found--discovered, explored, embraced, lived out—only through death to self and the infilling of the Spirit’s life—only after a face-to-face encounter with God. It is when we come to the end of ourselves that we are able to recognize the perfect unity God has for us together in Christ.
Will you join me at Peniel? Will you join me at the Cross of Christ? Will you allow the death of self to give way to the life of Christ? Jesus died to redeem us and make us ONE.
For Jesus’ Sake,
Chris & Julie
“I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ Jesus lives in me. And the life I live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loves me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20
“How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard…” Psalm 133:1, 2