Veil Of The Temple (part 9 of 9)

If one believes in and confesses allegiance to Jesus the Christ/Messiah as Lord and King, then what can be known from that fact is that the Creator God indeed chose that one for Himself from before the foundation of the world to be part of His globally sourced covenant people that would rightly bear His image into the world.  Figuratively, the believer has been made alive in his or her tomb. 

When the power of the Creator God’s Spirit breaks in and demonstrates itself through the believer’s submission to what can certainly be looked upon as the wholly insensible claims of the Gospel (Jesus, a crucified and subsequently resurrected man is Lord of all), and thus the choosing that extends beyond the boundaries of ethnic Israel, encompassing individuals from all nations and ethnic groups, is made manifest for all the world to see and know, it is then that those that have been figuratively raised up, awaiting the final resurrection of the righteous to renewed life in the renewed creation, are then sent forth into the world, to appear to many and to preach that Gospel. 

In a sense, they are dead men walking, while at the same time, sharing in the gift of eternal life (being the place of the overlap of heaven and earth---bring the life of the age to come into the here and now through their words and deeds that demonstrates the Lordship of the Christ).      

The torn veil is why the Apostle Paul can write to the Romans, embracing the sweep of the Scriptural narrative and say, “Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory” (5:1-2).  That faith by which Paul insists that he and others have been made righteous, or justified, or brought into God’s covenant as part of His covenant people, or rendered legally “not guilty,” or put right before Him and now aligned with His purpose for them, is accomplished by a trust in Jesus as Lord as the response to what has become the obvious faithfulness of the covenant God. 

Believers are given access to Him, as the cherubim with flaming swords have been taken out of the way, because of that faithfulness that is expressed through the Christ.  Believers band together to collectively and individually rejoice in a hope that will not disappoint because they understand themselves to have been empowered by the Spirit to trust that their God will consummate His plans, and to work in and through them to complete the salvation of the covenant people and the creation, bringing about the final exodus, redemption, and end of the exile of being subject to cursing, raising them up in the same way that He raised up the Christ. 

In Jesus the Messiah the Creator God put Himself on display.  It is said that Jesus led His God out from behind the veil so that all the world could see His nature.  This is the goal of the believer as well.  Truly, this was so, because the veil was torn and man was reconciled to his Creator, with the sovereign God doing all of the reconciling of His entire creation and His image-bearers through belief in Jesus.