How God Stretches Our Understanding

by David Gibson

Moving beyond what we know

God designed our minds so we can absorb new insights much more easily if we can connect them with something we already know.

So often, Christ drew parallels between common things in everyday life and less familiar spiritual concepts, using figures of speech such as similes (“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed”) and metaphors (“I am the good shepherd”) (Matthew 13:31; John 10:11 NASB).

Jesus is far too large for any one single comparison to be adequate. Jonah, for example, is quite unlike Jesus in some crucial ways, but in at least one narrow sense there is a parallel, and in that one respect Jesus draws an analogy (Matthew 12:38-40).

The New Testament compares baptism to a birth (John 3:3-5) and to death (Romans 6:3-7). In one way, baptism is an end (death to the old life of sin). In another sense, it is a glorious beginning (a new birth).

Moving beyond what we’ve experienced

The Bible prepares us for life beyond anything we’ve ever experienced. And so, God uses His word to help us make that challenging transition from the physical world we are so familiar with to a life that far exceeds anything we’ve ever known. God uses Scripture to develop in us a whole new way of seeing so that “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (II Corinthians 4:18).

What exciting vistas God lays out before us! Are we willing to move beyond the familiar here-and-now to the less familiar but so much more wonderful then-and-there?