General revelation and God's love (Monday with Mounce 193)

We had a good week working on the NIV in Switzerland; lots of ideas for future blogs. I also had one day afterwards to do a little more site-seeing with the family, and had a really cool experience I wanted to share. More about Greek next week.

I have often said that while general revelation tells us something of God's divinity and power (Rom 1:20), it tells us nothing of God's love. I stand corrected.

We took a train to Zermatt, and then up a sequence of gondolas for about an hour. At the top of the final gondola you take an elevator up to the highest viewing platform in the Swiss alps. I stood there totally amazed, dumbstruck.

The Matterhorn is to one side, and Breithorn to the other (which for my money is just as awe-inspiring). As I was waiting for the cloud to pass the tip of the Matterhorn (and trying to keep my freezing fingers from losing their grip on the camera), a wave of God's love swept over me.

It shocked me as I tried to understand what was happening, and of course these experiences are rarely understandable. Not only was the mountainous display of his power more than I could process, but that he would share himself with me and my family was too much. I do not know how he did it, but he moved through general revelation to specific, that he is a God who loves, and that he is as loving as he is powerful.

Lately, my word for God is "lavish," and he truly is lavish in his dealing with his children. In both quantity and quality, he gives so much of himself that it is overwhelming. I don't think I will ever look at a sunset or the forrest or a mountain the same.

General revelation can, through the work of his Spirit, tell us more than merely his power and divinity. It can tell of his lavish love.

William D. [Bill] Mounce posts about the Greek language, exegesis, and related topics at Koinonia. He is the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Basics of Biblical Greek, and is the general editor for Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of the Old and New Testament Words. He served as the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version Bible translation, and is currently on the Committee for Bible Translation for the NIV. Learn more about Bill at BillMounce.com, and visit his other blog on spiritual growth, Life is a Journey, at BiblicalTraining.org.