Year 4, Day 105: Leviticus 16

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up, Father, King

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.
• Father: This is the pinnacle of the Covenant Triangle.  God is the Father.  He is the creator.  He is love.  Our relationship with the Father is rooted in His love for us.  We get our identity through Him.  When the Father is in our life, obedience becomes clear.
• King: This is the pinnacle of the Kingdom Triangle.  When we look towards God’s position in the universe, we acknowledge that He is an omnipotent king.  Authority comes from Him.  Power comes through His authority.  He is looking for representatives for His kingdom.

With all this talk about scapegoats and sacrifices for the Day of Atonement, it is hard not to have an upward focus.  God did not need to forgive us.  He did not need to love us.  He did not need to atone for our sins.  He could have abandoned us to our sinful ways.  But He did not.  He does not.  He will not.  He is God and He desires relationship with us.  Why shouldn’t we worship Him for all that He has done yet needed not do?

This is what it means to be the Father.  He created us in His image.  He desires that we should be like Him.  When we turn away into our sinfulness, He calls us out of our sinfulness and back into a relationship with Him.  When we turn to our sinful nature, the Father desires for us to repent so that our sins can be atoned and we can return to living out of the identity that He created us to have.  He loves us enough to call us beyond our sinful nature.

This is also what it means to be King.  God is powerful enough to let us destroy ourselves in our sinful self-centeredness.  He could wash His hands and be done with us.  But that is not His desire, either.  He desires to break into our life and empower us for something greater than our own desires.  He desires to give us the authority to impact the world around us for His ways.  He could abandon us; but rather He breaks into our world, takes away our sinfulness, and empowers us to go and do His will.  That is what atonement is all about.

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