Blessed Are You Who Have Not Seen

In John 20.29, Jesus says, 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed'. Seeing Jesus would be a wonderful experience but it's given only to a relative few in number.

Peter also says to his readers, 'whom having not seen, you love' (1 Pet 1.8). Why are we promised blessing but don't share in the blessing of seeing the Lord?

One preacher I've just heard declaiming on Rom 10.8-21 says a fascinating and helpful thing about the Christian faith. He says that most faiths (the notable exceptions being the Abrahamic faiths) require the use of a god in tangible form for worshippers to see something. The Abrahamic faiths, particularly Christianity emphasise the fact that God speaks with the corresponding theme that we are invited and commanded to listen.

Some years ago, Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) wrote He is There and He is not Silent (1972). Apart from all of Schaeffer's other achievements, the emphasis he makes upon the speaking God is important.

And it's important because it presumes that the most singular part of our faith is the ability to hear what God is saying to us both individually and corporately.

The preacher talked also about the four soils in Jesus' parable about the Sower (Matt 13.3-23): the pathway areas, the rocky ground, the thorny ground, and the good soil. The parable is more about the four places that the soil lands than the Sower or the seed as such. In the first case, the 'heart' of the listener to the Word 'does not understand it' and it is snatched away 'by the wicked one'; in the second, the heart first receives it 'with joy' but when the inevitable trials and tribulations come his lack of a 'root in himself' means that 'he stumbles'. In the third heart, the thorns are the 'cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches' which choke the Word and the person 'is not fruitful'.

But the heart the receives the Word on good ground are those who receive it, understand it and are fruitful.