Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Is it possible that the Lord Jesus Christ in His glorified state is discouraged with the slow progress of His church on earth? Their progress, that is, in getting ready for His second coming? He says He wants to return, "that where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:3). Their lack of spiritual progress delays that homecoming.
We may not say that He is "discouraged" (we are told that "discouragement" is a sin); but the word that we may use to describe how Christ feels is "disappointed." Divine "disappointment" cannot be described as a sin, but it is very painfulfor Him to endure while we go on generation after generation in a spiritual state that is childish. His "disappointment is beyond description." We should be growing up to be a bride for "the marriage of the Lamb" (cf. Rev. 19:7, 8), but generation after generation goes by with each repeating the spiritual childishness of its predecessor. In fact, it's century after century!
Can you imagine the "beyond-description disappointment" that the Lord Jesus feels?
He loves His corporate people who are His church; yes, He loves them individually. He loves youas an individual, yes you, the one-of-a-kind person you are; but He also loves His church corporately.The church has a corporate personality that in Scripture is given the female pronoun (Rev. 19:7, 8).
A teacher is disappointed "beyond description" when his student makes no progress in learning. Such was my first violin teacher's feelings about me as a student. I was working to hold the bow correctly, etc., but my heart wasn't in it. Nothing in violin music attracted me until one day I discovered an old broken Victor Red Seal record of Jascha Heifetz. My mother had left it before she died (when I was two); my father glued the two halves together on the back of another record. Heifetz was playing a Schubert-Wilhelm melody on the G-string of a genuine Stradivarius violin.
I thought, if that's what a violin should sound like, I love it! From then on my teacher saw progress.
This is a crude illustration; but when God's people learn to appreciate the kind of love (agape) that motivated Jesus to die the world's "second death," that is, when they see the "width and length and depth and height" of that love "which passes knowledge" (Eph. 3:18, 19) their progress will become phenomenal--yes, in one generation!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 15, 2007.
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