Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the historic one-year lectionary.
An encounter with the living God is terrifying, and rightly so. We are not able to stand before the holiness and majesty of God. In Matthew 17, we should not be surprised that Peter, James and John were undone by God’s appearance.
Those who wish for an unmediated encounter with God would do well to take caution. None can stand in His presence. Rather, it is the Christ, Jesus, both God and Man, who is able to serve as our mediator. His humanity, standing in for ours, is able to stand in the presence of God. After all, Jesus possesses both a human and a divine nature. He, the perfect human, always stands in the presence of the perfect God.
This is a hard thing to comprehend. Jesus, our Mediator, makes us to stand before God without fear, as He did for His disciples in verse seven. It is by his presence as the sinless man who lives and dies for us that we can stand. So we are able to endure that encounter with the living God, only through Christ the Lord. We are rightly thankful for his presence and work on our behalf.
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