When I first came to this forum, doctrines such as the Trinity meant little to me. You couldn't drag me into a discussion about the subject. Just not important at all. And reconciliation? I really didn't have a clue.
What is exciting to me is the growing awareness of just how intimately involved the big picture is to each of its several parts. You have the fall of man, judgment and the pronouncement of grace over and over again. We have Israel, failing in its true calling and Jesus, becoming the Israel of God - saving man as the Chosen were called to do. "Ontology" is a most important concept. Realizing that our very being is defined by a divine presence, a measure of grace, that cannot be rejected apart from the dynamic of self destruction.
I have been a disciple for nearly 48 years and never, on any occasion, realized just how everywhere God was ---------- not as pantheism might describe Him, but as my Dad wanted to be for me. I am that kind of Dad to my kids because I believe that I am one of the most powerful illustrations of what God is and can be ........................ and that awareness is increased when my children see my failures !! If Dad is good, just how great is our Father God?
Knowing that elements of the new covenant have always been in place; that mercy and contrition have always been the preference; that God has always been the same -- knowing all this makes His patient revealing over time the very evidence of one who longed to be called Father God from the beginning - and now, in this latter time, is known by that very name.
We have not gone from one covenant to another, from one dispensation to another. Our theology will never discover the true God if it remains a systematic theology -- linear to the core and rational in its nature. He is what He is to each of us and efforts to say "this is right and this is wrong" often restrict our understanding of this Father God.
That is perhaps the grandest lesson learned by me in recent times. We fuss and fight with each other over whatever -- but, in the end, God is real to each of us. An amazing statement, don't you think? God is REAL to each of us. We do not make Him real - He is that already and He is that to each of us.
JD
