Entering into God's Presence

Last night we had a night of prayer for Redemption Church. We gathered to try to pray the church into existence. We prayed for people all around us and for needs in our own lives that we're inadequate to handle. But most of all, we prayed in worship to our Creator, praising Him for the sense of His glory we have had and asking for more of the same with the expectation that it will transform us and the people around us.

Accessing God through prayer is a new phenomenon

As we prayed I got to thinking about how much of a gift it is that Christians get to enter into God's presence through prayer wherever we are--we often take this for granted, but this hasn't always been the expectation. Now the church (not the building, but the group of people who are being joined together as Christ's body) is God's temple, but for ages and ages before Jesus people only worshiped God (or even false gods) in physical temples. The idea that God was accessible everywhere was a mind-blowing change in the way things had always been.

Access to God: Based on Christ, in the Spirit

This access to God is one of the most important practical implications of the salvation Jesus died to give us. Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice, was the priest who presented the sacrifice to God, and now stands (in His resurrected body) in the presence of God where He mediates on our behalf. Because Christians are, as the New Testament repeatedly reminds us, "in Christ," we can come into God's presence just like Christ is. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we're united to Christ and have access to God, the Father—so in a very real sense we can once again do what we were created to do, live in the presence of Life.

This reconciliation whereby we enter into His presence remains incomplete until we get to physically live in His presence in the re-established and united heavens and earth at the end of all things, but it is already a reality through prayer. We can now draw near to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace, praying to our God with full freedom and confidence. This is a fantastic gift.

Now God sees us in Christ and gladly gives us all things

It's easy for all this to start sounding like theological mumbo-jumbo, so listen to what Jonathan Edwards says in the sermon below. He rousingly reminds us that we now have access to God based on our unity with Christ and this unity has overwhelming benefits:

Christ is their [Christians'] Mediator and head, and God begrutches [begrudges--Edwards apparently preached in his local dialect even though his books were written in proper English] nothing to him. If they were beheld as they are in themselves, anything would be esteemed too good for them; they would be looked upon as unworthy of any good at all. But God don't behold 'em so, but he beholds 'em as in Christ. And they don't look to God, or come to him, for blessedness in their own names, but in the name of Christ. Christ stands for 'em as representing them in his own worthiness and merits, appearing in that worthiness for them; so that they are in God's account, in some respect, as Christ. For Christ is pleased to place himself in their stead, to put himself to be for them, and as it were assume themselves to him to be as himself, even to a communion of names; so that the church is called Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12). So that God, in his acceptance of his Son, accepts them; in his being received, they are received; in his being delighted in, they are delighted in.

And the case being thus, we may be sure that [God] begrutches nothing as too good for his own Son.

Christ declares that the Father loves him always, and God declares that this is his beloved Son in whom he is well pleased; for that end, that his people may be encouraged that they shall be accepted in Christ's acceptance.

And besides, Christ is not only the legal head of the saints. As their head, he is their representative, and their head of government, but also their vital head, their head of influence and communication, and that both of holiness and happiness. He is as it were their head of enjoyment, so that they enjoy all things in him, and as communicating and partaking with him; as when many streams issue from [a] fountain, they all are united to the fountain, and partake of its fullness, every canal has its mouth inserted and immersed into that full fountain. And as the members of the body all partake of the life, and health, and welfare of the head by the nerves, those from every limb of the body are terminated in the head; so the saints, being in Christ as members of his body, or branches on a vine, all partake according to the measure of their capacity of his fullness. John 1:16, "And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace." So that as we may be sure God begrutches nothing to the head or fountain, so nothing is too much for the members according to their capacity {of his fullness}. For they are happy by partaking of Christ's glory and joy. John 17:13, "That my joy may be fulfilled in themselves." (Jonathan Edwards, “The Terms of Prayer,” Sermons and Discourses, vol. 19; emphasis added)