The Veil -God Coming Out

I was thinking this morning about the veil that was torn in two at Jesus’ death. Matthew records it like this:

“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.”

Certainly there is a lot of truth that can be gleaned from Matthew’s description (Mark and Luke describe a similar occurrence) of this event. The truths are all important truths. Truths like our access into God and his presence is now available to all through Christ’s finished work.

The writer of Hebrews does a great job describing some of the benefits made available to us:

And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,  "THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM," He then says,  "AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE." Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:15-22.

The point of Hebrews and most writers (and rightly so) is our access into the Holy of Holies. God has made a way into his presence through Christ.

But as I was thinking about this, and it struck me that maybe there was something else at work. Just as much as God was making a way for us to ENTER IN, he was also signaling that he was COMING OUT. That the veil and temple worship that kept God in the temple, in Jerusalem, in a localized way, was coming out. He was not just the God of the temple worship, or the God of Israel, but the God of the whole world. God was on the move (Aslan!), redeeming his world.

I think we get a glimpse of this (God moving out into His world) in Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus in John 3. Keep in mind that John 3:16, (We all remember this famous passage. I think we remember it so much we forget the context of Jesus’ words, as they were directed to Nicodemus) “For God so loved the world……” is Jesus responding to Nicodemus questions.

Think about Nicodemus’ conversation with Jesus.

Nicodemus meets Jesus late in the evening and pays him a compliment:

"Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."

Jesus as he always does, answers a question that Nicodemus is not asking, but should be,

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

Many evangelicals go for the salvation jugular around “born again” and “seeing the kingdom of God”. The interpretation is: Get saved (born again) and you are going to heaven (see the Kingdom of God). I am not sure this was what Jesus was saying. And I don’t believe this is what Nicodemus was hearing.

I think we need to look at this in nationalistic terms. We also have to see it in light of the covenant that Nicodemus was living under. Nicodemus was not concerned about getting to heaven. He was not concerned about his salvation. But he certainly understood that being “born again” meant a different citizenship than what he currently was living under. For him, the kingdom of God, Messiah, the temple, Jerusalem, and Israel were all tied together. In one sense you couldn't talk about one without talking about the other.

What Jesus was saying and what he was trying to get Nicodemus to hear and see, was that God’s kingdom and his work was no longer localized to just Israel, or the temple or Jerusalem. If he wanted to “see” the kingdom of God he was going to need a different citizenship. He had to be born of “water and spirit”. That which is born of the flesh is flesh (nationalistic Israel), that which is born of the spirit is spirit (God’s Kingdom people). Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus understand that if he was going to really see Him as Messiah, if he was going to see God’s kingdom at work, he (Nicodemus) would need a new pair of eyes. And the only way to get those new pair of eyes was to be born again. He had to shed the confidence he had in his genealogy. That fact that he was a Hebrew under the covenant would not be enough. It would only limit his sight. It would limit his view. He would misinterpret God’s work and he was going to misinterpret Jesus.  What I hear Jesus saying is,  "God is coming out!"

For the sake of time and space, keeping in mind what I just said, let’s look at John 3:16 (and verse 17) again. Let’s look at it through Nicodemus’s eyes, through his ears. Let’s look at it from what Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus see. What Nicodemus is about to hear, is ground breaking news that would disorientate him, knocking him out of what he thought was a secure place for him. Listen to these words through Nicodemus’s ears:

"For God so loved the world (not just Israel or Jerusalem, or your idea of what it meant.... yes, God loves all those Gentiles or Romans, his creation), that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

God was coming out! The temple, Jerusalem, or Israel (which had long ago stopped representing him well) could not hold onto him any longer. He was God of the whole world! The veil had been ripped in two (from top to bottom, meaning God did it, not man). The idea that God loved his world, would not have sat well with a good Jew/Pharisee like Nicodemus. Being born again to not only see, but enter into the Kingdom of God was a hard pill to swallow. But swallow he would need to, if he was going to see God coming out in Jesus, God loving his world, God at work in His world. 

I am not diminishing all that is meant by our ability to enter into God’s presence through Jesus’ shed blood. But at times, as we have emphasized one aspect, we have become like Nicodemus stuck in seeing the Kingdom of God at work in only one way. It is usually localized and parochial in nature. We too, like Nicodemus “must be born again” if we are going to see God at work in his world. God is breaking out. The early church left Jerusalem (with a little help from Stephen and a lot of help from Paul) and by the end of Acts ended up in Rome.  In AD 70 Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. God was on the move. He was redeeming His world. He was not going back! He was moving forward.

Of course these are just my thoughts.