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CHAPTER ONE
THE PERSPECTIVE
OF
TAMPERING WITH TRUTH BY TEMPER
OR FINE TUNING TEMPER TO TRUTH
Worlds Apart, One led to Distress, the Other to Salvation
WHEN
MOSES LOST HIS TEMPER,
AND THE LORD JESUS DID NOT LOSE HIS
What Moses lost when he lost his temper,
and what Christ gained as He kept His!
Matthew 27:41-44,
Numbers 20:1-12
1. LOSS FROM LOST TEMPER
Moses had had enough of the brawling, bawling, turmoiled truancies from grace of
the seething mass of Israel. Since the recorded events of Numbers 14, when they had in
cowardice failed to confront the challenge of the promised land, did not enter
it but instead wept and
threatened Moses with stoning, they had tried him. It was as if he were the
culprit, not their lack of faith: and their shame was mingled with self-assertion. Moses was torn with
concern and frustration.
It was not a sudden matter. He had even pleaded with God
not to destroy so recalcitrant and blustery a people (Numbers
14:11-18).
The Lord had expressed to Moses the option of being in his own person the
substitute for such a people; but Moses did not opt for this, concerned for the
name of the Lord. He had an 'out', but did not take it. To be sure, the Lord may
have been seeking to show Moses that even in his own heart, he did not really
desire to have the people 'removed' so that he could do the job of testimony as
Jew, that they so signally were failing to do.
How badly they had failed, this nation of
Israel!
Imagine after being delivered from the Egypt of that day, then the most
sophisticated and mighty nation on earth, rescued from its entire army, pomp,
pride and power, as a nation of slaves, and brought out in the very face of
their chariot strength, through a parting sea which returned to drown the
pursuing host, and then failing to follow the Lord's leading, and in the apt
moment, declining to enter the land which was at last right in front of them!
Think of it, not only were they rescued in this omnipotent manner, but they had
been saved with even more spectacular action.
Thus when
Pharaoh had pursued them, to take them, a cloud came between that army and
the people; and this it did when the enemy's nearness was dangerous. More than
this, and after it: they had water for milling multitudes in the desert
presented when a rock was struck, and food from the heavens in the form of
manna, to keep them alive, and then what happened when they reached the desired
NEW LAND ? Was it not like the Pilgrim Father's when they reached the USA, and
were able to disembark and go and live in this new land! Not at all: those went
in, but Israel jibbed!
Can
you see it ? Now imagine if the Pilgrim Fathers had suddenly decided that it was
all rather too much, that they suddenly declined to disembark, and talked of
returning to England, to Europe. How different history would have been for a
significant sector of the USA! and for
Europe
itself, in the end!
This however, the Jews did: they reached THEIR new land, the promised land,
after episodes innumerable of divine power and grace, including a fire to guide
them by night, and a cloud by day (Exodus 13:21), and guidance on the strategy
of the enemy from whom they did indeed escape in this spread of divine grace,
wisdom and power combined. At last, safely, they were there.
It
was like a car after days of back-breaking toil, restored from a smash, and now
ready to go. They would not however press the starter, would not enter the land,
turned with tears from their opportunity, and were saved from entire destruction
through the INTERCESSION of Moses (Numbers 14:11ff.).
Moses was far from short-tempered, and indeed acted in a most godly, patient and
gracious, kindly manner, like a mother and father to the people! But then...
How
often we are pressed, tried and patient, and are coming through in triumph from
some particularly evil test situation, where folly beckons and evil laughs, and
win! Yet some trivial thing, some development suddenly finds a flaw in our
character, and instead of relying as normal on the Lord, we do something
foolish! Alas, this is the way of unwisdom, and even Moses could fall for it,
just as David did much later with Bath-Sheba. It is not only the folly of it,
but the ingratitude which in the end, is pathetically obvious.
Moses, the great man of God, fell: NOT when the people refused to enter, but
much later. It was when they were moaning as so often about lacking water (which
had been routinely supplied - it is one thing to need and ASK, it is another to
need and MOAN). The multitude of them were complaining as if Egypt were better
than this (and that, AFTER having wilfully failed to enter the promised land
when they reached it!).
Ah
what a travesty, to complain of their own folly, and to wish themselves in Egypt
which had so evilly treated them, and so treacherously, and to act as if God had
let them down, Moses were a failure: when the fact was that their own cowardice
had turned away the whole point of the trip!
Moses snapped. You rebels, he cried, must we bring forth water for you! Who is
shown to be ungracious and powerful, better and brighter, in charge and
disposing power, in this ? Is it not Moses! But it is the LORD who enabled the
striking of the rock with the rod, to bring forth water. It was the same rod
with which Moses had struck the channel of the Sea (Exodus 17:5), to divide it
for their rescue from the Egyptian army, and even this did not speak: Moses LOST
HIS TEMPER. It is sad, because it was SO untypical of the man, and he was SO
tried!
The
water came, but so did the discipline. You did not glorify Me, the Lord
protested. It was fake! God ALONE has the power to deliver me and you from the
evils of this world, character defect, to restore and renew, to empower and to
purify. Even when there were priests, it was God alone to whom the power
belonged (Psalm 62:11).
There is NEVER any place for big-headed papacies,
priesthoods and presumption in the work and service of God, whether in the New
or the Old Testament (cf. I Peter 5:1ff., II Corinthians 1:24). Man is man and
God is God, and those who serve Him are agents, not princes! It is the Lord who
is elevated (Hebrews 7:23ff.): ministers are servants, not lords, for it is He
who is holy, harmless, higher than the heavens. It is not so much the
'priesthood of all believers' which is the central stress, but the high
priesthood of Christ; for it is HE and not ourselves, pastor or plurality of people, who does the
works!
As a result, Moses personally did not enter the promised
land, but Joshua and Caleb, these only of the older generation did so; for they
had counselled the people to ENTER it, when their cowardice misled them, and
Joshua had URGED them and pleaded with them! Is this not a lesson on exhorting
people in a timely fashion OUT OF LOVE, not exasperation or frustration! Indeed
Moses in the main is a splendid example of a servant of God, and it was he as
one, with Elijah, who spoke with Christ in the transfiguration of the death
which He was to accomplish in
Jerusalem
(Luke 9:31, Matthew 17:3).
He
was honoured; but he lost the magnificent joy of entering the Promised Land with
the next generation, who went in when the older ones, having refused at their
threshold, were dead! Thus we are reminded: let us meet each test with courage,
fight with fortitude, never yield to temptation and bring cries for grace, not
mumbling and stumbling to the Lord in our crises. Indeed,
let us turn now to the spectacle of His example and life.
2. GAIN FROM THE TEMPER OF TRUTH
Jesus Christ was taunted mercilessly. Consider Calvary. Not only had He just
been betrayed by Judas, ostensibly a spiritual member of the 12 near Christ, but
He had been condemned BECAUSE He told the truth to the priestly interrogators,
as was foretold by Isaiah:
"And they made His grave with the wicked,
and with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in His mouth."
Are
you the Son of the Blessed ? they asked. I AM, He replied (Mark 14:62). For
that, He was condemned: no, it was not for the positive test results on every
side, at the level only DEITY COULD perform, but rather for the REFUSAL to
believe, of His 'judges', just as the people had refused to enter Canaan, when Moses was leader.
Christ could equally have lost His temper at this stubborn refusnik approach,
this call of 'blasphemy' when the actual blasphemy was to dismiss the testimony
of His unique and divine works, with mere obstinacy. Indeed, He was tried still
more.
ON
the Cross, He was taunted (Matthew 27:41-44) by the obstinate refusniks of HIS
day, the chief priests with the scribes and elders. "He
saved others," they cried,
"Himself He cannot save."
In
fact, as foretold in Isaiah, it was in NOT 'saving' Himself, that His love had
effect, since He died vicariously for those whose sins merited death, as all sin
does. This taunt therefore set His dignity against His calling. If He would NOT
let them think He could not even do that, then He would surely have failed in
His mission. Therefore He said nothing to that, and suffered in the face of this
spiteful misconstruction, and so triumphed and prevailed. He did NOT lose His
temper, His mission's fulfilment or gain voice where silence was needed. He took
it, He endured, travailed and prevailed.
"If,"
they pursued, "He be
the king of Israel, let
Him now come down from the Cross, and we will believe Him."
No doubt they would: forlorn and lost in this world, afraid of truth, hiding in
ceremonies, ignoring the substance in Christ fulfilled BEFORE THEIR VERY EYES,
they would believe if He showed Himself a fraud, like themselves. No doubt of
it! But what did that show ?
Thus we see as so often, that to judge is to be judged (except it be application
of the word of God), for with what measure you mete, it will be meted again to
you, as Christ declared it. THAT is the sort of Christ they WOULD believe: One
whose earthly lust mastered His spiritual mission. Yet Christ, the only begotten
Son of the living God, was not like that, or like them for that matter! If you
were Abraham's children, He had told them, you would do the works of Abraham. It
was no such work to seek to kill Him! (John 8:37-40). Thus, there was no need to
answer these taunts now.
"I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill
Me,
because My word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with My Father,
and you do what you have seen with your father." They answered and said to Him,
"Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham’s children,
you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me,
a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do
this."
Christ on the Cross, then, did not reply to these taunts. It was like those of
Israel of old, who sought to stone Moses when they had failed to enter the
Promised Land (Numbers 14:10). These did not stone Christ, they killed Him with
taunts and nails mixed, like rubble from an al Qaeda bomb. Killing is ever the
way where truth is trifled with; and taunts are the path when truth will not do.
They went further: He trusted in God, let HIM deliver Him,
since He trusted in Him! this was their cry. What their eyes, blind and
to be blind as type, for two more millenia in Israel's officialdom, did not see
was that it was BECAUSE He trusted in God, as sent Messiah from heaven, that He
stayed on the Cross. What cries (Hebrews 5:7) had come from Him in anguish, as
He faced ahead of time, the death not only for sin but WITH IT, like a burden,
that He knew to be coming on Him, as His role, mission and mercy to man! Now
that it had come, prepared, He stayed put, and put up with it, and when put
down, did not hang up on the divine communication. He remained on call!
Having come to save, He saved by continuing on the Cross (cf. the resolution in
Hosea 13:14).
Instead of losing His temper, indeed, He called out as
foretold in Psalm 22:1, that Messianic Psalm, showing the sense of desolation as
sin, which always tends to separate from God, struck Him like an atomic bomb. It
was all disciplined, high in wisdom, without sin, beautiful in composure, yet
human in agony. THIS, it was this that saved us, and in not 'saving' Himself, He
became saviour for millions.
He
endured, committing His Spirit into His Father's hands, first pausing to seek
and save one of the thieves being crucified with Him, who asked Him to remember
Him, when He came to His kingdom, thus believing in His righteousness, mission
and the cause of His suffering.
When it was finished, then and then only did He declare this, so removing all
sacrifice for ever, from the domain of sin-bearing (Hebrews 7 1-10), and
falsifying those who pretend to continue such work. He completed His divine
mission, commission, payment through grace for our race.
THIS, it was this that saved us; and in not 'saving' Himself, He became saviour
for millions, indeed for all and any who receive Him as He is, for what He has
done, and relish the One resurrected bodily, as He endured bodily, from the
dead, making display of that eternal life which is His free gift to those who in
faith so receive Him, a gift as eternal as the life, as sure as His word (John
10:9, 27-28).
3. SERVICEABILITY IN SPIRITUALITY
It is not in seeking
popularity, praise or showing proud face and hollow heart, or in frustration,
irritation or dismay that spiritual service is wrought. Instead, its path lies
in KNOWING what you are meant to be doing, and doing it in self-discipline, with
courage, the splendour of the Lord in your heart, and His word in your ears,
seeking always to do what pleases Him . Christ is our example in this
(cf. John 8:29).
Yet He did not save by His example, but WITH it, as in this splendid spiritual
setting, He actually paid for what no one of us could begin to pay, the sins of
man, as many as received Him.
Jesus put it like this, as
seen in Matthew 20:25-28:
"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and
those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among
you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.
And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave -
just as the Son of Man did not come to be served,
but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
Taunts may thus be borne with silence but not with capitulation, and frustration
at people's blindness; and accepted with patience, not irritation. Through all
this, service proceeds with joy in the Spirit of God pointing the way, even though
obstinacy and vile words come like Chinese floods from the River of
Sorrow, the Yellow one, so prone to inundate. We are set upon a
rock, and though the world flood, we stand firm; and though the world laugh, we
weep for those who fail, and seek to deliver some, even if we must take up our
cross, and follow Him! How often ?
The
divine prescription, it is this: DAILY (Luke 9:23, 14:27). Each one, then, to
acclaim his Master, must accordingly "deny himself".
The cross he or she must TAKE UP, that is bear daily, and not shirk.
It
is not a case of thumping it, as if Moses were striking the rock TWICE, as he
did on that fateful occasion we noted, but of carrying it. In what do you carry
it ? It is in this: that you bear what is necessary and walk as prescribed, with
patience doing the will of God, at whatever cost. Truth is like that. Nothing
changes it; and the power of God is sufficient (Luke 1:37), as He said,
"My grace is sufficient for you! for My strength is made perfect
in weakness" (II
Corinthians 12:9).
The
very flower of God, as faith works through love, it is grace with power, the power which
both parted the sea for
Israel, and sin in its guilt and rule from man, through Christ, epitomised in
the resurrection (Romans 1:4, Ephesians 1:19).
4. DIVERGENT DATES WITH DESTINY
Divers Fates with De Facto and De Jure Domains
Where however does this impact in Biblical Christian
Apologetics ?
Initially, we note the stark contrast, for this
field, between two major entities.
Firstly, there is the domain of
what sin does - deviate, decline and shelve spiritual value and
consummation, leaving the way of righteousness as defined by the
anti-self-serving triumph of grace which is characteristic of the Lord.
Secondly, there is the domain of deity in
His saving work, in which the antidote to what sin does, is achieved and
then applied. This sovereign and superb supply is to counter and enable the
cancellation of the dynamic of deviation and decline, which once started, and
unless interrupted, becomes self-sustaining towards entire destruction, like a
well-fed cyclotron. As to that counter, it is introduced with a finality which
many decline to receive, and hence, deceiving themselves, simply feed the more, the flames
firing towards
spiritual dissolution.
Let us consider the concept of finality in
these affairs.
Creation had finality: when man was made it was
final. It was not some slack business of gasping half-wits hypnotised by
barbarity and intellectuality in dim divergencies of horror; it was man as such.
This has been discussed to the point, in
The gods of naturalism have no go! for example. Presently, however,
our concern is perspective. Let us pursue this.
Man is a function of all the integral
systematics of mind, spirit and highly organised units of matter, woven in
chemical industry into brilliant organic specifications, with those automated,
while beyond all this, is the scope for the utilisation by his will,
imagination, courage and desire: and he is no product of what lacks the potency
of these
things. To seek potential from what does not possess in whole or in part, in
systematics or programmatics, the means, is merely dreaming. Fun ? Perhaps, but
costly when applied in endless vain wars as has happened not a little.
That, arrival without such a ground, is to ask for magic, unsourced
provision of specifications which have no known interface; but here comes, like
the bride who failed to be born or grow up, what is simply
supplied by a word. Lazy is he who thinks a word from his restless soul or
irrationalised mind will
spell construction! It takes what the product has to have, for resource, so that
the course for every plane of being will not only be made, but integrated in
poly-potentiated systems, which move on and up to the various heights of which
man is as a being capable (cf. Glory, Vainglory and Goodness
Ch. 1, The Defining Drama
Ch. 2).
This is thought, not sport, substance, not
magic and work, not a jaunt in jubilation in a sixties world where parents pay,
and youth spends (here the philosophy becomes rampant with a similar unreason,
treason to what is ignored, which does not however remove either its presence or
its necessity!).
How man can discredit the majesty and power of
the deity, who has even given to him a spirit which has been enabled, thanks to
no creative work of man's own, to envisage, plan, execute and attain with
brilliant counsel and marvellous outcomes, the most complex schedules, all in a
brief period, and not perceive the irrationality of this magic, is a testimony
to the further truth of the Bible, which declares that just such foolishness is
the lot of those who, forsaking God, mistake product for Producer (cf. Romans
1:17ff.). To imagine valid, what talks truth when it denies its very ground of
existence, is a work of callow art, like the all orange painting that wins a
prize. But let us move elsewhere for a moment.
Take the car.
Synchronising in modern assembly,
many units of wit and technical wisdom for one prodigious outcome in short
order, there with power, pressure, craft and consummate intelligence, there
comes the finished product. It does not, because without intelligent aid, it
cannot come from systems incapable of spawning thought or will or spirit or
rebellion. It requires the systematic and cohesive thought which gives birth to
products at the level of thought. That is the principle underlying our example,
a logical one.
It does not arrive by a natural process. None
such is known. We do not even know of any process which invents information
without intelligence*1. By its very nature, it involves the correlation of
concept with reality, the depiction of data in symbolic form, integrable with
other such creations, enabling consistent and cumulative co-ordination of
understanding, and not only so, but this at many levels*2.
Man can do this, and his own Creator cannot!
(cf. Psalm 94); man sees the wisdom of total unitary construction of what works integrally,
with abundant systematics organised and the totality directed as to type, but
the Creator is dim! It is almost beyond ridicule, as if you were to explain to a
little child that you did not buy him at a supermarket (with apologies to Calvin
of comic fame), and wonder at his ignorance, while smiling gently. It is other
with adults.
Of course the car is simplicity compared with
the wit apparent in the construction of man by DNA, which is programmed
intelligence in symbolic logic, arraigned and invested with continual
scheduling, which can do this; yet he imagines that God is fuzzy, and
fools about, or even stumbles on things, or does not bother to be around, while
the results which in all observation and logic, require His action, simply mill
around in millions, their coherence in works of combined art and multi-stage
magnificence stunning to the wit of man! Little more obtuse in fiasco by dimness
can be imagined that man using the powers which lack validity without God, to
dismiss God, and the reason which lacks source without cause of its type, to
proclaim his own greatness, beating the capacities of each phase by having the
next arrive through some kind of surge or urge, which is to lack base, basis and
rationale.
Then he complains that his peace and order is
progressively dismissed, with ironies which would be delicious if not
unspeakable in gauntness, because of wilfulness, arbitrariness and
irrationality, solemnly wedded in the greatest unhumorous farce of all time.
Such is man and such is his beckoning not to some futuristic spectre, a phrase
in daze, but to damnation.
To ruin such a globe as this, to ransack such beauty
as we have, to mimic with madness the design demarcations of morals, to ignore
the only verifiable, valid and testable word of God*3,
which exceeds all expectations just as one would expect in such a case, and to
proclaim his own words in an emptiness which makes vacuum look fulsome by
comparison, this is the great work of man. Yet he languishes that his greatness
is not carrying the earth on its shoulders, and mouths woes with grimaces and
grimness, as he lurches from this destructive extremism to that, founded on
nothing, on dreams stated to be such or merely by implication.
Thus does that unsought and to many
unanalysable spirit of man who can do such things, take what surpasses his
function to a vast degree*2, for granted, as if a few words uttered idly,
could produce such a prodigy, from that worse-than-moron, matter! This is
actually envisaged by some, as if in a trance; while even Shakespeare needed
rather more, such as the intelligence and imagination and the understanding the
control of symbolic expression and the use of logic as an art form in
interspersed lightnings of comprehensibility and agility within the words, to
make just one play! and it did not have to reproduce itself, though others, also
with intelligence, did so, yet even then, not by wit of creation, but of
reproduction, an entirely separate prodigy of its own.
In boast and in bombast, man parades his
disdain for scientific method*4, insisting on NOT looking for what does this, but
for what is never found to do so, in all observation; ignoring himself and
inventing new fields of action for what does not display it. as if its maker
were a fool, or ass, or moron or worse, wholly unintelligent though His product
is ... well as intelligent as man, who so demeans by abused intelligence and
lapsed logic, the source of his own powers. himself the product of the God who is
envisaged as if He messes about in long term.
However man's construction to construct on his
own part, and the construal of man that he might construe, and the establishment
of a universe susceptible to logic by the logic of an agent enabled to leave or
list for logic at will, is not the work of what is equal to man; it is not the
parent for the child: it is the myriadfold, myriadform marvel of mind and
machination, the ultra-genius dower of supra-design, who puts power to designate
and design alike, into his work, and calls it man.
Matter did it, they chant, and how matter got it does not matter; and never mind
how mind came, or why kind is so secure and without susceptibility to create new
works of like kind*5,
and how information will not be forced to make itself! So does the hilarious
hiatus proceed! Just say it does. Such science! such chatter.
This is the adult parallel to the paradigm, the
copy of the modern 'teen-age molestation by
minors of authority, with that sleeping conscience which tends to disdain what
is above, and to reduce what is wise to stricken dimensions, brought to its
own height, which in turn is diminished in model, while increased in desire. Small wonder this development proceeds in undisciplined households while
un-self-disciplined thinkers, make by thought, thought to be a wind and logic an ignoramus, and
science a particularly vapid form of philosophy, whenever God is in view.
How precise is the scriptural designation of
the progress of such things in Romans 1!
Thus we have on the one hand, classic cases of
the sin schedule, its domain and its products! With this, we have what sin loves
to ignore, just as the speeding motorist often seeks to ignore the flashing
light, or approaching police car, when conscience has already rammed his mind,
like an erratic collision artist. Yet it is far from erratic in this
case. It is dramatic and it is dire. We watch it progress.
On the other hand, we see the classic mastery of the
Creator in matching and indeed if possible surpassing His artistry, brilliance
and splendour in creating, with the provision of a plan of salvation, a thing
always known in the mind of the One who makes minds, and can mind His own
business as well, being light which is illimitable, with understanding
indefectible (cf. Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4).
What suffering man has, the Creator surpasses:
for in finite folly, or in the ricocheting sequences of sin, man suffers; but
God in deliberate and redeeming intent, suffers for many, what each has earned,
and He does so in the negation of evil, voiding in His own virtue, the swamp of
pride and the derelict of lèse-majesté towards Himself - that reality from which
man was created! (cf. Psalm 51:4).
We see that love is not on lease, a contract
which being broken, leads to prison. In fact, it is without limit, but is so
allied to truth that though God bring suffering to His incarnate Son, yet it is
not cleared except where these conditions met, they are received, in person from
Personal God, in peace to make peace (John 1:12, 8:24). It is faith not wraith
which restores man; and it is not faith as object, but as connective tissue,
linked to the Lord, who alone has done and does the works. As to the past, it is
finished; as to the present it is applied (cf. Hebrews 9:12ff., I Thessalonians
1:4-6, Revelation 21:6, 22:17).
So has acted the Saviour (and there is no
Saviour but God Himself - Isaiah 43:10-11), that justice be met, the books cleared and the dissipation made up with
restoration, the Word of God fulfilling in counsel the work of God. Thus does
that Spirit who is God, surpass in suffering in His
infinitude for man, what man suffers in his finitude for sin. In our next
chapter, the sinrise and sinset, the cynosure and the sindication of things,
will all be explained in more detail.
In this initial chapter, for impact, we have
sought to define the ultimate contrast, that between the reward of sin and the
taking of this in the love and mercy of God, as if it were positive, rather than
death, because love gives and justice obliterates in redemption: so that the response to sin is the award of life everlasting
(John 4:14). There both grammatically in the Greek term for 'drinks' and in
terms of the episode, the case is simple: before you came often, and laboured
for water, repetitively; now you have a spring within, no travel needed, and it
springs up for its part, not for a nullifiable domain, but into everlasting
life.
The conditions do indeed apply; but they are
not ANY payment by man, in ANY form, but reception of redemption of the
resurrected Christ, by faith. If it were otherwise with payment, that would be to make man God, so that sin
is not sin, and evil not evil, so that hearts impure are happy in an unhallowed
pseudo-heaven, not even a haven at that, in any such case. The condition is the reception of relief, the
repentance from what deludes, the cancellation of the place for confusion and
the turning to light, which alighting in the heart, regenerates with purity, and
restores to the image of God. That is the glory of the energic dynamic.
As to the character of man, though the panel-beating may resound in the soul,
yet the regeneration comes from above, and the pounding is one of dissolution of
wickedness, which yet seeks to pollute, but fails (Galatians 5), and not of
construction, which is a pure work like the first creation (cf. Titus Chs. 2:3
-3:7! Colossians 3:9-10, Ephesians 4:22-24, John 3).
Tampering with the truth by temper is common.
The 'temper', however, is not just the irritable sort, but includes as in steel which is
tempered, the whole question of the nature of the state of what is tempered: in
this case, that of man.
If he seeks to
temper things by his own powers, and stand, as a product, on his own ignorance,
there is no limit to the journeys in the limousines of fancy, to the crashes of
autonomy, witlessly ignoring the actual condition of creation, which is man's
and hence the disparagement or denial of the rules of the road and of the roadster alike! Intemperate tampering
with truth has been the special function of philosophy and false religion for
muddling millenia; and
man has grown in pangs as the issues of these fancies are set in volumes, lining
the walls of many a library and the halls of horror in human history. We have often
reviewed these, but here merely assign them a place (cf. SMR
Chs. 3, 9, 10, and
pp. 422Eff.).
Fine tuning the temper, the attitude, the
manner and the spirit to truth, on the other hand, is the opposite thrust. It
can only occur when the assemblage called man is reconstituted, for like a car
after an accident, or a spirit restored from drugs, these being spiritual and
mental, man needs to be back in a newly reconditioned, indeed regenerated form,
before he can fine tune.
It depends, as does all, first on creation to
make the gifts which can meaningfully disturb the confines of his being, and so
in sin make the obfuscation on which folly so relies, and on which world history
so relies. It requires likewise the restoration from this desecration, as a
basis for better and more acute relationship with the Creator, whom in his
folly, man left (cf. II Peter 3:18).
This in turn requires the FAILURE of the
Redeemer, to replace in standing and to be exemplar in practice. Thus Christ
could not
lose His temper, in any sense, either in rage or in rampage, in self-affirmation
in self-will or impatience, as alas in Moses' case, with follies innumerable, so
that truth itself fell. To do so, would not only be to deny His deity, but to
reduce to shambles His spiritual task of redemption. You do not redeem by debt!
In so failing, Christ succeeded; for if you fail to lose
what is necessary, it is great gain.
The picture is not hard to follow. The
suffering is dual, the deity has provided both creation and restoration, and man
both sin and desecration, to which he now adds, revolt from redemption, the
final scene in the litany of shame, sometimes called history.
It has other aspects as well, however. These
include the shame-swallowing salvation of Christ, where not merely is the shame
avoided, but the shambles resulting are voided. Thus has God done, with black
and white thoroughness.
Indeed, In being, One, in
persons three, His is community with unity, and facility for creation, even
incarnation; though in His eternal wisdom, He has from the first made clear to
sinners in mankind, the consequences of sin. Yet with this, such is His divine
mercy, that He has also growingly shown the solution to this devastating misuse
of liberty. Through redemption has there has been achieved the conquest and resolution
of sin, not grossly or en masse, but adequately and while adequate for all,
applied to many, AS many as received Him. As persons, man fell; as persons, each
of this kind, this image of God kind, is redeemed.
Thus from the coming OF a resolution to sin, to the mode of the execution of the
remedy, and its application, God has made it plain, as salvation is secured in
time, for eternity (cf. Barbs ...
17).
He did not create, and then lament His lack of power to incarnate to secure
salvation; but creating, He knew the resolution of the fall, and so in control,
acted when the time came, as He had devised before our time was even created (as
in Isaiah 51:16, cf. 49:3, Ephesians 1:4).
The composure has been perfect:
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man with his inbuilt facility to fall, if his love lapsed, and his freedom was
misused,
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soon victim to vice;
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God with His trinitarian truth,
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able to sent His eternal word to speak the salvation of eternity to the pilgrims
of time,
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and then to seal it not with a signature of word, but blood, life for life;
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and to secure the imprint of the result, personal in transformation,
dynamic in intensity and driven in power, through the Holy Spirit in those who
received Him
(Ephesians 3:16, Titus 3:4-7, John 3).
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Thus has God being who He is, moved to make and to save man being made what he
is, all things being competent in inter-relation, empowered with authority,
secured with certainty, and yet exposed with purity, that as man in his kind,
spirit and mind is tested, so as man, has God been tested, that in all things
He, the Messiah, might show not mere power, but cordiality, reliability and
wisdom. In this, He has proceeded to match and meet, to fire and beat the
problem in a majesty where love is like a rainbow, and mercy like a river, rich
in waterfalls in little rills, placid streams and roaring torrents, as it passes
through the way.
This has all the brilliance of resolution, the
perfection of plan, the wit and the wisdom shown in the modes of creation of
life, their methods of working and their sheer multitudinous programmatics and
varieties. It is like the work of the most prolific of artists, married to the
most energetic of engineers, with powers of making laws, as in physics (they do
not invent themselves by magic, nor does nothing kindly supply them without
charge - which of course, it could not impose in any case, since by definition,
in the ultimate, nothing could never have been there).
Man is surpassed, in being made and in being
redeemed. Many resent the former, and reject the latter. The result becomes much
more like the basis of the model of history, where not only creation and
desecration, but ambiences near to salvation, and roamings becoming rompings
from it, mingle with shameless fudging of issues in manifold religions, which
present answers without the truth being in voice, or able to speak, or else some alleged
'word of God' from sources both untested, unverified and unvalidated.
So it goes. It came; He came; and it will go,
this creation. But it remains, what He has done. It exists which is redeemed,
the finished creation.
While it is still working, it is well to
enquire: To what am I going! It is a fair question, and having but one answer,
it becomes an answerable one at judgment, for what spurns or turns from
redemption, realistic royal redemption, divine ransom by deity, divine display
by infinite power, divine invitation by untampered love.
The meaning of turning from light is this:
turning to darkness. Yet the screening for turning to the light, the love and
the wisdom of God, featured in His eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12), it is
this: receive this light and you become a harbour for it (Colossians 1:27), and
can work before the night comes, in which no man can work; and rest in the
relief of completion, when the light has led our pilgrimage not to extinction,
but to consummation in the Christ whose resurrection is your goad (Philippians
), whose grace is your goal, whose everlasting life is your liberation from
being sin-struck into the way that is salvation-bound. It is not that it binds
you, but that it is your girding!
Like dynamite, you see its power, and realise
its result; but with this, it is construction not destruction, illumination not
darkness, continuance and not mere eruption, indeed divinely wrought not humanly
devised.
NOTES
*1
See on this:
The Desire of the Nations
and the Crystalline Fire of the Faith Ch. 2,
Epilogue,
Little Things Ch. 3
(esp. *3),
Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4,
Dancers, Lancers, Prancers and Answers Chs.
3,
5.
*2
Denton, micro-biologist, makes this
point almost acridly, and certainly acutely in his Evolution: A Theory in
Crisis. On this, and its environs, see SMR pp.
114-122, TMR
Ch. 1, News
94.
*3
See the following volumes or sets
of volumes:
Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer
The Meaning of
Liberty and the Message of Remedy
Light
Dwells with the Lord's Christ.
*4
See the volume:
Scientific Method,
Satanic Method and the Model of Salvation.
*5
Turn to :
News
74; The Defining Drama Ch.
10.