Our Relationship with God: 4. The natural and supernatural gifts of Man
1 October 2016
Something similar occurs with our natural gifts: when man puts all his confidence in them, giving them absolute value, then his very gifts obstruct the road that leads to the acquisition of supernatural gifts that are conferred by God in His goodness. In our relationships, we notice the same thing: if they are not founded upon the assurance of our holy relationship with God, they will be weak and brittle, always ready to collapse and in danger of becoming an unending source of grief and torment. That is why the Lord says that every wise man who is taught the mystery of the Kingdom of God ‘bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old’.[1] This means that he acts in such a way so that all the natural features of his unredeemed nature may serve the increase of the supernatural gifts which God grants in accordance with the process of his spiritual regeneration for the glory of God and the salvation of all men.
Certainly, all that happened to those of old, was nothing but shadows and types of that which God was about to reveal in the last days. In the Person of the Lord Jesus He passed down to us the perfect truth and we came to know the perfect relationship with God and with men. During His life in the flesh, Christ made manifest the perfect relationship of love which exists in the bosom of the Holy Trinity. The Son reveals and glorifies the Name of His Heavenly Father and the Father glorifies the Son and bears witness repeatedly that the Son lives wholly in the Father and the Father in the Son and that He is ‘the Son of His love’[2] and of ‘His good-pleasure’.[3]
[1] Matt 13:52.
[2] Col. 1:13.
[3] Cf. Matt. 3:17, 12:18, 17:5, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22.
