A Mountaintop View
By Jacob Hess
I really enjoy hiking, especially when there’s a great view at the end of the trail. When we lived in Washington, my wife and I climbed many mountains. The trails were often long and difficult, but when you got to the top, feeling the breeze on your face, witnessing the landscape laid out before you, the work to get there was always worth it. Life can often feel like a long and difficult trail. In the ups and downs of the daily grind, the purpose of it all can so easily be missed. Thankfully, God’s word gives us something of a mountaintop view. It frees us from the limitations of time and the days agenda, lifting us up out of the daily grind to see the world, and our story in it, from God’s perspective.
One passage that beautifully portrays this is Paul’s introduction to his letter to the church in Corinth. Paul writes,
“Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge—even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you—so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,” (1 Cor 1:1-9).
What to us might seem like nothing more than a flowery opening to a letter in which Paul had many hard truths to share, is in fact a beautiful exploration into the heart of Christian reality.
The church in Corinth was struggling with many issues. Disunity, misunderstandings about the gospel, sexual sin—it was all there in abundance. Is Paul just buttering up the church before he slams them with the truth? Not at all! Notice how often the language of grace is used in these verses? Paul himself, once a sinful Pharisee imprisoning Christians, was called by God into a life of service. Paul here reminds the Corinthians, sinful though they are, that they are called too! They have experienced a grace in the past that has changed everything for their present. The present grace of God is evident in verse seven, where Paul reminds the church that they have been enriched with gifts to share with a world in need as they wait for the return of the Giver to set all things right. What’s so amazing, is that Paul can even be sure that these sinful Christians will receive grace in the future, as he says of God in verse 8, “who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul isn’t sandwiching his criticism with false compliments by opening his letter in this way. No, he is stating what is most true about the Corinthian Christians, even if in many ways they weren’t living like it was true in their everyday lives. Paul is giving a mountaintop view of God’s grace, showing how God’s love is changing the Corinthians, and it changing us, little by little, into the holy and whole person we already are in Christ. God doesn’t ignore our sins. Jesus paid for them Himself. Now we can live a new life. And Paul here takes us up on the mountaintop, for just a moment, to see things as God sees them. Unobstructed from the limitations of time, we catch a glimpse of how every moment of God’s grace is connected to every other. We can look back and see His past grace in the sacrificial death of Jesus, down at His grace present, as Jesus walks with us in this life, and forward, to His grace to come, bright against the horizon, as we wait for Jesus to come again and make all things new.
This mountaintop view is difficult to maintain in day to day life. Sometimes, time itself seems more like a prison as it slowly drags on. Sometimes it feels like a limited resource that we never have enough of. Even so, take time in your busy week to walk up that long, difficult trail. Open up your Bible, seek God in prayer, and find that in Him your past, present, and future all come together as one wondrous gift. Celebrating this gift, and sharing this gift, is what life is all about.
