unseen. love. joy
“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:8-9
Unseen. This is probably one of the hardest things for people of the world to understand. We cannot see God; how do we know Jesus is alive? It’s hard because our finite minds can’t wrap our minds around an infinite God. That’s why it’s called faith. It is literally the conviction that what we don’t see is still real (1). We don’t have to see Jesus to know he is there and moreover that we trust him. Jesus himself calls any of us blessed who believe in him without seeing (2). He knows it’s hard! But he wants us to know there’s so much more to life than what’s right in front of us. Elisha’s servant got a glimpse of the things we don’t usually see in 2 Kings 6. He was scared out of his wits when he saw an army coming against them; but when Elisha asked God to open his eyes, it says, “...behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (3) God is unseen, but he’s always there– and more powerfully so than we can imagine. We don’t waste our time focusing on the things that are seen but rather the things that are unseen. Because the things we see will fade, but the unseen things are eternal (4).
Love. So, we don’t see Jesus– but we love him. The word “love” has been taken to mean so many different things now. It ranges from a superficial feeling to the deepest longing. But if we mirror the love God has for us (since that’s what we do as his people) (5), then that love is off the charts. It is incomparable to any type of love we’ve ever known. It’s a mixture of all of the deepest love we could know on earth– the love of a Father (6), the love of a brother (7), the love of a husband and wife (8)-- and then even more than all of those put together. It’s a love that is loyal beyond any other, that forgives the deepest hurts, that is there in the most vulnerable moments, and that sees us for who we could be in Him (9). That’s our God’s love for us– and that’s our love for him.
Joy. And though we don’t see Jesus, we are filled with joy! And here in 1 Peter it describes it as two things: inexpressible and glory-filled. It’s like those golden moments in our lives– not just when we’re satisfied or on a high of happiness, but when we have joy so full we feel we could burst! With Jesus, it’s not something that goes away because it’s dependent on something that will fail. Jesus is our constant, forever alive and forever dependable, and in him, our joy is complete. No one, not even the devil, can take our joy away from us (10). And it is filled with glory, the magnificent and pure presence of God.
Though Jesus is unseen to us right now, we know without a doubt that he is more present than anyone else we do see. We love him with the deepest of all loves, a love that we know because he first loved us. And we are filled with a joy we can’t even describe, a joy filled with the glory of God.
1 - Hebrews 11:1
2 - John 20:29
3 - 2 Kings 6:17
4 - 2 Corinthians 4:18
5 - John 15:12
6 - Luke 15:11-32
7 - Philippians 4:1, John 20:17
8 - Ephesians 5:25, 29
9 - John 21:15-17
10 - John 16:22-24
