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25th November 2024
MondayReflection
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'John Piper'
'founder and teacher of Desiring God.com'
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Does the Bible Say I Am Unique?
So first, God made every human.
He made them all intricately, with attention to everything about them genetically (and every other way) in their mother's womb.
You created every part of me; you put me together in my mother's womb.
..... Psalm 139:13
"You are not random. You are not a sample of humanity. You are you by God's creating and providential design."
Now, the point is this: The picture is not one of an impersonal assembly line.
The picture is of a God with knitting needles in his hands, fashioning a garment stitch by stitch.
God created you, by his infinite wisdom, including all the things that you like about yourself, all the things you don't like about yourself, all the strengths and all the weaknesses, all the abilities, all the disabilities - he was knitting all of that together in your mother's womb.
When Moses complained to God that he couldn't speak, and that God's promise to go with him and help him was of little comfort, God rebuked his doubt with these amazing words:
Who has made man's mouth?
Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind?
Is it not I, the Lord?
Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.
(Exodus 4:11-12)
So, that's the Bible's first premise: God made everybody, knitting us intricately and individually together in our mother's womb just the way we are.
Second, God's providence is the all-embracing, all-pervasive work over all of our experience.
Nothing happens to you, or has ever happened to you, or will ever happen to you, except what God plans.
Jesus made this point by picking one of the most random events in the world, and attributing it to God - and only to God.
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
..... Matthew 10:29
How insignificant are sparrows?
Millions and millions and millions of sparrows in this world, thousands dying daily, utterly insignificant and unknown to man, and not one of them falls from a tree apart from God's providence.
Now, if you're created by God, down to the very atoms and molecules of your DNA, and all of your experiences are planned by God, down to the slightest breeze that blows the strand of your hair - then what you are in all your physical, psychological, relational, spiritual peculiarities is owing to God. That's all owing to God.
Then you take those two truths and think about their implications.
And this is why I said it's not a direct teaching but an implication.
The Bible tells us to do that kind of thinking:
"Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding"
(2 Timothy 2:7).
You are the only person who can have your experiences.
Therefore, you are the only you in the world and in history - all of it.
And since God is the Creator of the experiencer in the womb and the governor of the experiences in life, the unique you is you by God's design.
You are not random. You're not a sample of humanity. You are you by God's creating and providential design.
And the reason that matters is that the Bible teaches that everything, including every individual, exists for the glory of Christ and the glory of God.
All things were created through Christ and for Christ - for Christ, for his glory.
From God, through him, to him are all things; all things are to him, to his glory - all things (Romans 11:36).
This means that the person you are, with all the uniqueness of your genetic makeup and all your experiences, exists for the glory of Christ and the glory of God.
You are like a prism, shaped like no other prism in the world, so that when the light of God shines on you, there is a kind of refraction, a combination of colours, so to speak, that only you can refract.
And that's why you matter. Your life devoted to God reflects his glory in a way no other life can.
Similar? Yes.
But not the same. Your uniqueness devoted to Christ is a glory to Christ unlike any other.
><(((°>
This is an edited version.
The full article, and Bible references, is avaiable on request
Scroll down for the continuation of this discussion.
'John Piper'
'is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary.
For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy.'
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Uniquely Attentive to You
As I've searched the Scriptures, looking for a more explicit statement about our uniqueness individually, the closest I have been able to come is Revelation 2:17, where Jesus says this:
"To the one who conquers . . . I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it."
"There is a unique attentiveness that Christ gives to every one of his people - a uniquely personal relationship."
Now, I can't prove that the name written on your stone, will be different from the name written on all the other believers' stones.
The text doesn't say that. But here's what it does say. (And this is what I was referring to way back at the beginning when I said that we would close on something more important than our unique existence.)
Revelation 2:17 does say that there is a unique attentiveness that Christ gives to every one of his people - a uniquely personal relationship - because he says, "Nobody knows your name except me and you."
In other words, he turns our attention away from the uniqueness of our name to the uniqueness of our relationship with him.
Whatever your name (and I do think it's unique, by the way), only Christ knows it, and relates to you personally with it.
So, I would encourage all of us, to devote the uniqueness of your existence to the glory of Christ, and treasure the uniqueness of Christ's attentiveness above your unique existence.
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