Who Are You, Lord?

You Are Who You Are

You are Jesus Christ The Nazarene; my Creator, my God, my Savior, and my LORD. This I confess. And this I believe with a confidence I can only poorly attempt to explain. A confidence grounded in Your Holy Word, in which I see the Person of You come alive more and more in the beautiful words You gave Your holy prophets, poets, and apostles to profess and write down for the blessing of all of us their posterity. Thank You, Lord, for each and every one of Your holy ones that You set apart for Your holy purposes, and for every jot and tittle that You inspired them to write.

You are my Everlasting Father who created me and molded me from the dust of the earth in Adam, who rebelled and sinned against You. You gave me the breath of life in the womb of my mother, and to her, in the womb of her mother before her, and so forth to Eve, who You lovingly fashioned from the living flesh and bone You took from Adam after You made him a living soul by breathing Your Spirit of Life into him. Thank You for the breath of life You provide mother to mother and thereby to all of us born of a woman. And thank You for the air You give us to breathe every few moments to sustain our earthly life.

You are the Son of God and my Everlasting Father and my God because You created me and You are the very image of Your God and Your Father and my God and my Father, the Supreme Almighty Holy One, Who is invisible and has no equal. You are the only begotten God, who makes Him visible. He is a consuming fire; I cannot be naked in His Holy Presence and continue to exist. Only You can see Him face to face, Holy Soul to Holy Soul, and only You are the face of Him Whom I cannot see. So I look to You and You alone. And I approach You as my Intercessor, my Mediator, my Advocate, and my High Priest before The Father. Only You can clothe me in Your righteousness and make me perfect in You – in Whom I live, move, and have my being – so that I can boldly approach the Father and His throne of grace where You sit at His right hand.

You are the Son of God, and You are the Great I AM from before the foundation of the world, the only begotten God Who is the firstborn of all creation. Your God and Father and my God and Father is One. You are the One and only thrice Holy Triune One, for You are The God-Man and You are Holy Body, Holy Soul and Holy Spirit. You are the Incarnate God from before the foundation of the world, begotten of the very essence and being of The Father, with a Holy spiritual and Holy physical body. The spiritual and the physical aspects of the triune reality I exist within can only exist in You because You were begotten of the very divine nature of The Father and glorified with a perfect and complete spiritual and physical nature. You are like Him by being of the same divine nature and yet unlike Him by being Incarnate. You, the only begotten God, are the Everlasting Triune One, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You are the One Who made me in Your image, body, soul, and spirit. You made Adam and Eve in Your image and all mankind descended from Adam, male and female, are Your image-bearers. But in Adam we all are dead, separated from You by our sins of deception and our sins of rebellion against You and Your Holy Will. Apart from You we have no hope for life, for we cannot sustain ourselves because we do not have eternal life within our own creaturely nature. We cannot raise ourselves from the dead and give our souls new flesh animated by a new spirit that we create. Only You can do so, not only for Your own Self, but also for all of us who are in You. So it is only in You that we can die and yet live again. Only in You can we die a physical death, returning to dust when our fallen spirit and soul depart our body upon our last breath, and yet come back to new life. Only in You by the power of Your living and active Word can our fallen dead spirit be separated from our soul and we can become a living soul, a new creation given new life by Your Holy Spirit. Only in You can we die the eternal death of complete separation from The Father, the Supreme Author and Giver of all Life, and our soul, our very own self, not perish, thereby ceasing to exist. For we are mere creatures and not self-existent like You are.

Thank You, Lord, for becoming the life-giving Spirit, for that is Who You are. From the souls of dead man on earth, male and female, from every tongue, tribe and nation, you are fashioning for Your own Self a divine bride, like you did for Adam. You are the True and Better Adam! You take of Your own Holy Spirit and breathe new life into our souls causing us to share in Your divine nature and to be Your living body. When you give us new life, You live in us and unite us in You, by the power and glory of Your Holy Spirit. You preserved and sustained the breath of life You breathed into Adam and then gave to Eve from Adam. Adam's breath of life ended with him after he willingly and knowingly rebelled and grasped at equality with You, falling into sin and death. In the Seed of the woman, from Eve – who was deceived by Satan and grasped at equality with You – to Mary – your favored one in whose virgin womb You chose to conceive by Your Holy Spirit, the Son of Man – in You, the Seed of the woman, You have provided salvation for all mankind.

You are the Son of God and the Son of Man, the Seed of the woman, Jesus Christ born in Bethlehem. You are the Babe in the manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, the Child Who was born unto us, a people perishing in darkness. But You are so much more than that, for You, although existing by Your very begotten nature in the form of God, did not grasp at equality with Your God and Your Father, but instead emptied Yourself, taking the form of a slave, the lowest of mere man on earth. And being found in appearance as a man, You humbled Yourself, bore our sins and our sorrows, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For our sake, Your God and Your Father, was pleased to crush You, to pour out upon You His wrath against sin and sinners, so that we might be forgiven of our sins. And He, after He turned His face away from You and utterly forsook You on the Cross, after You died, were buried, and on the third day rose from the grave, conquering death for all time; He highly exalted You and bestowed on You, Lord Jesus, His Name, the Name that is above all names, YHWH, the I AM WHO I AM, the Great I AM, so that at Your Name, Lord Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that You are the LORD of Lords and the KING of Kings, to the glory of God the Father.

This, Lord Jesus, is Who I believe You Are.

If I have erred and any of this I declare to be true is found by You to be false, then I pray You cause that which is false to be disbelieved and forgotten by me and any one else who believes it.

This is my will. Yet not my will, but Thine be done.

May You alone be exalted!