And just like that

 the curtains got ripped.

It was the final thing that happened.

Jesus the man, let out his final breath and pandemonium erupted in the temple¹.

To understand this you must have context. The Holy of Holies wasn’t accessible. It was the place that even the High priest went only once a year, knowing that one false move meant his life was over².

God and man stayed in very different realms.

That has been the reality of religion for as long as humans can remember.

Then came Jesus, with a totally different view of what a relationship with God was meant to look like.

Think about it. Jesus could have been born and died in infancy to atone for our sins. That didn’t happen.

He could have lived a private life and then died a quiet death to save the world. That also didn’t happen

Jesus lived privately and He lived publicly. He taught privately and He taught publicly, but at the center of the life He lived, was one theme.

He came to show us the Father.

Israel’s idea of God was a distant all – powerful being who reacted poorly if they didn’t behave perfectly when approaching him. Being logical, they trusted in middlemen. These go-betweens were known as prophets and priests. They were a specially dedicated group of people who had special access to the throne room and who would speak, pray and worship on behalf of the people. These were the elite who let the commoners know what God had in mind so the sanctity of divinity was not desecrated.

Thus the birth of religion.

Jesus disrupted all of that.

Where the religious wouldn’t show compassion because it was the wrong day of the week,³ Jesus healed.  Where the religious would starve the people because you couldn’t pick grain on the Sabbath, Jesus let his disciples sate their hunger⁴. The rigid rules set by the middlemen were torn down by the God made flesh who dwelt amongst us.

Over and over, Jesus showed what the Father would do by what He did. The Father would heal so Jesus healed. The Father would provide so Jesus fed. The Father felt our pain so Jesus wept; and the Father would forgive  so Jesus died.

It is one thing to know God as Father and it is  another thing to approach him as Father.

As long as barriers remained, God knew humans would look up to the middlemen instead of to Him when it really counted, thus when the greatest act of love was fulfilled on the cross, God confirmed His motives by removing the veil.

For hundreds of years we had to be cautious to not cross the threshold least we got our approach to God wrong, but now we got to be invited, to the Holy of Holies , to the place God dwelt. Because of the sacrifice of Jesus, our Father opened his hands, and we could transverse the divine realm.

It is easy to forget the access that we have in a world where religion often overshadows relationship. There is nothing wrong in having a pastor, a priest or someone older in the faith guiding your worship, but when you find yourself looking up to man more than you look up to God, you’re piecing together the veil God tore.

A good Father wants his children running into His arms, not shuffling their feet at the doorway.

You have a good Father

Go on and see Him.

¹Matt 27 v 51

²Exo 28 v 35

³Luke 6 v 6-8

⁴Matt 12 v 3-8

Have you ever felt like God is unapproachable?

Let me know.

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