JESUS, THE AUTHOR AND FINISHER OF OUR FAITH (APRIL 8)

". . . looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2 NKJV).

IF WE ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST, WE MUST NOT GET TO THE POINT WHERE WE TAKE IT FOR GRANTED. We must never fail to appreciate the magnitude of what God has achieved in His Son, Jesus, who is the “author and finisher of our faith.”

THE AUTHOR AND FINISHER OF OUR FAITH. Faced with persecution, the original readers of Hebrews needed to fix their eyes on Jesus and His faithfulness in hard circumstances. He is the supreme example of faith: both the archegos (“leader, pioneer”) and the teleiotes (“completer, perfecter”) of faith’s endurance. As far as “the faith” is concerned, He is both the Originator and the Consummator of it.

HAS SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE THRONE OF GOD. Following His resurrection and ascension, Jesus took His place at the right hand of God, in fulfillment of the prophecies of the Messiah (Psalm 110:1; Acts 2:32-35). He rules today over the kingdom of God as the King of kings. “And he is the head of the body, the church . . . that in everything he might be preeminent” (Colossians 1:18).

All of these great things are leading up to a climax that will occur at some point in the future. Concerning our resurrection at the return of Christ and the ultimate victory that will then have been won over Satan and his forces, Paul wrote, “Then comes the end, when [Christ] delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:24-26).

So when we say, as we often do, that Jesus is our “Savior,” we are saying a great deal. If we don’t see the magnificence of that, it is because we don’t see the horror of what we had to be saved from or we don’t appreciate the wisdom, love, and power that it took to rescue us. After we cut ourselves off from God, we could never have gotten back to Him. To be delivered from death, it took more than a Great Teacher or even a Courageous Martyr. It took a Savior.

"God has set a Savior against sin, a heaven against hell, light against darkness, good against evil, and the breadth and length and depth and height of grace that is in himself for my good, against all the power and strength and subtlety of every enemy" (John Bunyan).