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CHAPTER THREE

THE TRIUMPH OF TRUTH

The triumph of truth is an ultimate. It is completely dissociated from the thoughts of the heart of man, being sublime, the irradiation from the sun, in astronomical terms, where man is the receptor and not the donor.

Exquisite are the works of God:

    whether in glory to create a rational, free being, not autonomous,
but responsible and capable of realisation of divine things; or in
 

	the pageant of wonder in the phenomenal designs of colour, shape, form, harmony, innovation, creative fantasy, sober facility in flowers;
	the arboreal wonders of the Spring-tasseled oak, the flowering eucalypt, the clematis in its soaring explosion of beauty and grace, even the daffodil, in its enchanting simplicity into which complex tissues of variation of colour and adorning enterprise may enter at will;
	the seething and the peace, the thunder and the wonder of the ocean,
	the geometrical masterpieces, laden with individuality, artistic thrust,      gorgeous colour sensitivity found in the plumage of masses of birds,      prima donnas in appearance, as they quietly flit, wing,      or shimmer through the air with aeronautical design      that is breathtaking as often is their speed;
	the peaceable whiteness of the dimly sheened snow in Winter, crisp, delicate but robust in overlay and capped with delicate formations where configurations of gleaming  icicles capture the light and intensify its presence, or
	the foreknowledge of man's will and ways, stored into the realms of eternity, applied with precision, based in an entirety of love so intense and immense, that all other beauties are in line to be expressions of the spiritual texture of the sublime truth of that love.

Moving to the personal, where all motivation, imagination,
victory and understanding reside,
what a triumph is this,

that a man made

with an earthy physical base,
and the earthiness associated with a chemical and precise
set of forms and potential formulations for building by design with purpose
(as at a lower level, is sand for the fancies of the child at the beach,
where tide and articles of seaweed, sticks and items of form
can bring about castles to last a day);

with a heart that may be faithful in love and tender in truthfulness
or harsh in cynical arrest and tedious in self-exaltation;

with a mind susceptible to intimations
from the divine law-maker and fashioners of all things,
even their basis and their very existence,
by application, reason, research and disciplined imagination,
so showing the benefaction of the builder
that man himself might build and blend
existing divine law with persisting human imagination;

with a spirit that can soar to heights of perspective
and probe to depths of understanding,
ready for spanking or swanking, or more healthily, instruction from on high,

is readied for fellowship with God Himself.

That it can be, and has been defiled, is but an expression of the reality of the gift;
for what point is there in mere manufacture of crowds of mental robots,
imaginative trivia, programmatic items, systems to the abundance
of fascinating, yes intriguing combinations of mathematical splendour
and architectural finesse, miniaturisation spectaculars,
when life and love, understanding and responsibility lie apart,
as dead things, or worse, never brought to life!

Romans 5 details the case; Romans 7 the collapse; Romans 8 the cure.

Romans 1-2 exhibits the condition of man, as one whole,
as Romans 3 the divine fashioning of the cure,
to turn curse on voluntary defilement,
to remedy in divine incursion into man's realm,
the Lord's trinitarian entity sweeping sin into the form of Christ crucified,
sent for service, occupying His time here in salvation.
 

Thus has God acted,
spectacular in formulated information that satisfies not only the head,
but the heart, the mind and the understanding of responsive man,
with rejoicing within the spirit in itself,
charmed by such charity,
illumined with joy at such clarity,
stunned by such exquisiteness of fatherly care,
and what becomes brotherly concern.
What a wonder
that indeed there SHOULD BE a brother so compassionate (Hebrews 2-4),
not limited to the devices of man,
but accepting his situation so that He, being eternal and divine,
so acted for man,
that his joy might be full (John 10, 16).

Nor is ANY ONE to be disregarded.
Just as man is commanded
in the beauty of holiness in the salvation of God,
in repentance

       to restore Him to His place (Acts 17:24-31)
       where truth resides and from which it is displayed (John 14:6),

       and more, now adopted child of God,
       by faith where it is given,

       to love his neighbour as himself:

so is it the good pleasure of God,
having made peace through the blood of the cross,
as in Colossians 1:19ff.,
to reconcile ALL THINGS to Himself.

These are thus divinely regarded,
even whether in heaven or on earth,
such is the mounting splendour of His bounty,
the spectacular prodigy of His love,
the conscientious embracement of His comprehension of all,
in the remedial reality of His sheer exuberance of bounty.

Often does He announce this as in I Timothy 2, Titus 2-3, John 3,
where He clarifies His charity - it is the world He made
that He came to save,
it is NOT His desire in so coming in Christ, to judge it, for so He declares,
but in this act of enthralling charity of heart and sheer splendour of mind,
He has come so that whoever believes in Him
should have eternal life, no more prone to perish but delivered forever.
In this God, allowing the responsibility of man's construction,
to suffer no constriction,
but to be wholly operative before Him,
is ensuring that NOTHING of God,
but ONLY what is of man on a differential basis,
interferes with the glory of the loving outcome in view,

and that ?

it is salvation for man.

Guarantor before time was, as in Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:30ff.,
knowing the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10),
and disdaining mere contemplation of works (Romans 9:11-12)
for God looks to the heart,
He has exposed all mankind to His loving attitude
seen in Christ in Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff.,
as in diverse manners in Ezekiel 33:11, Jeremiah 48:35-36,
Isaiah 48:15ff., Proverbs 1 and many other lairs of loveliness.

If you had NOT heard and seen the deeds and words no other man
spoke or did, Christ told Jews of recalcitrant heart (John 15:22ff.),
then you had not had sin; but now there is no cover for your sin.
The question in view, in that case, was the standing spiritually of those Jews,
the issue then in point, amid the universal diligence of the Lord.

The divine answer, as distinct from human imaginations,
ever the bane of man when ogling things divine without restraint,
just as its omission is a bane
when it is absent from due contemplation,

is this.

Condemnation would not have been for you,
Christ told them in this locale,
if so seeing now, in Christ the criterion of mercy,
you had received Him, believed Him, believed in Him,
put your own heart's trust in Him.
However, now is the case utterly and entirely changed in this,
that there remains no way your sin can have a cover!
If there is one way to be rid of a cancer, by the knife for example,
then a refusal of the knife is fatal.

So here the refusal of the knife which induces repentance,
cuts the tissues of self-will,
removes the imaginary splendour of sin,
excludes the dire dominion of the deceitful and deceptive devil,
leaves NOTHING for those people seen in John 15,
nothing but what ?
It leaves nothing but due and just condemnation,
despite the mission without omission of the Christ of divine mercy,
sent into the whole world, with no intent to judge any,
that it might be saved.

THAT is statedly why there is no EXCUSE, for God would have all,
though many would have none of them.

This is the most exquisite of all, that God SO loved,
not in the thrall of mere admiration, for sin is never admirable, and all have sinned,
nor in the indulgence of majestic sybaritism, as if to add to His pleasurable contentment,
whose are all things,
but in the effulgence of impelled concern,
so that there is no one person
who is consigned to oblivion
despite the encompassing breadth, extent and quality of this divine love,
except for one thing:
before the eye and knowledge of God, 
it is this: doing despite to His love, grace and salvation in Jesus Christ,

How so ?
It is because His motivation is cited and defined
as in Colossians 1:19ff., John 3, Ezekiel 33, I Timothy 2,
leaving nothing beyond the thrust and scope of His desire
(I John 2:1-2, John 3),
for there is no other name given among men by which they must be saved
(Acts 4:12),
and He would have all; 
and His might and skill is infinite,
as is His truth.

Over Christ's dead body is the only way therefore and thence, to hell
(Hebrews 10:29-31, Luke 19:42ff., Isaiah 48:15ff.,John 3:19),
to that condemnation which all deserve so richly,
which nothing but divine grace
could even envisage in terms of effectual remedy,
or by incandescent kindness conduct
to its achievement and conclusion on the Cross
and in the resurrection, acme of demonstration and vindication (Romans 1:1-4),
so that man might live with a lively Saviour and not a product of disaster.

Thus just as none will be condemned
without the equivalent of such confrontation before God,
knowing all things from eternity,
of rejection of the light,
of preferring darkness to light, in particularity and individuality,
to abort the embrace:
so none will be accepted without this visa of faith,
saving faith in Him,
who applying the Gospel when and how He pleases,
gains in practice what He envisaged in purpose from the first,
as God always does (Ephesians 1:11).

Exquisite with this is the wonder of it all,
that He could be bothered,
that He COULD love so much,
that He WOULD contrive so perfectly,
that grace overflowing all bounds,
lovingkindness all constraints,
truth implacable,
pity impelling,
His sacrifice is great enough for the whole world (I John 2:1-2).

Profound enough to miss none, is His wisdom, nor to be fooled by any.
Thus in heaven, reality rules, light penetrates, sincerity flashes like diamonds,
modest in themselves, responding when exposed to illumination.
Indeed, His energy of proclamation and intimation
is exposed as so vast
that even when what might seem ready to participate in salvation
does not do so,
yet does He stretch the hand of salvation to highway and byway,
to discover what knows Him not (Matthew 22),
to those having neither hope nor any basis for anything (Ephesians 2:12)
but eternal guilt in oblivion from grace.

The Lord knows His own, in love predestined,
and none of these is ever missed who first foreknown -
when grace before time was shown (Ephesians 1:4),
before creation stirred into reality,
before sin snarled or the first dawn arose -
by grace alone is then, in due course,
freely encompassed in the thrust of His all-embracive compassion.

So known, all is set, and predestination is the ensuring that nothing so known,
misses the bus of beauty, the train of desire, the presence of the Lord,
the gift of His salvation. Such is the order of things in Romans 8:29ff.,
and here lies a harmony so spectacular that nothing can equal it,
liberty being vindicated, not merely for sin to squawk but for the heart to be known,
so that just as love is indicated, so is salvation formulated,
responsibility sustained, truth attained with no remainder.

Not only is this magnitude of mercy so,
but as we see  in Jeremiah 17 and the developments preceding this,
the Lord's love does not lie prone,
even where grace is despised and patience is discarded.
In the heated heart of abandoned man,
He continues to seek, to proclaim, to intimate, to address the addiction to folly,
making the way easy as in that proclamation in that Chapter 17,
where He is seen offering rest amid the most reckless renegacy,
with a spiritual kindness that is forever even to the judgment,
the sight,
even for macular degeneration to see;
for He even offers to MAKE His desire known to those who turn,
to instruct where ignorance makes a mish-mash of confusion,
and so turn darkness into light (Proverbs 1:20-24),
giving a new heart for the receptor,
a new spirit for the agent of activation,
as in Jeremiah 31, John 3, as in Titus 2-3,
that the old might be lost, like a snake-skin out of use,
and the new might come like the Spring in its intensity.
Then all things, not just natural but here in the entirety of man's relationship
to the supernatural, become new (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).

In sovereignty, God simply carries out the ways of wisdom, nothing failing;
in love He shows Himself for the kind of sovereign He is,
in a category of One, for there is none like Him.
In splendour He selects without self-indulgence,
where love comes like a river engulfing;
in mystery He performs all things with a depth that is infinite,
but in principle He acts precisely on the basis which He defines,
decrees and abundantly clarifies.

Thus is He extending to man
not a mystery of appalling omissions,
which some might clamber and clamour to avoid
in its implications,
but one of a love so deep, so willing, so often biblically expressed,
so associated with a divine grief at human responsibility misused,
as with divine delight in the decisive differential,
where anyone is found
and salvation comes to rest,
that it is like a tender plant (cf. Isaiah 53:2).
 

Apparently it is helpless,
but it is one in which the apparent fragility
is the mark of a tenderness not to be lost,
amid the seemingly heartless movements of matter,
toward life or toward death.
Even for man this tenderness is found where matter was made,
and man in particular,
was made a matter for mental concern,
spiritual seeking
and moral uplift
to restore him to the sure
and certain wonder of the Almighty
in His own Being,
in the Person of Him sent from eternity.
For this He came, to bring many children to eternity,
where alone can the spirit of man rest,
where none is shanghaied,
nor any denied,
where the gate is as narrow as the cross
of guilt cancellation by sheer bounty of grace,
without admixture,
to bring back what was irremediably lost
and could not even contribute to its own salvation.
 

How was this done but by the finding of the way through that Redeemer
who accepted the incomparable loss,
paid for it,
and offered freely the result of that payment,
that ransom (Matthew 20:28),
that plight from God for the blight of sin.
Enduing man thereby through faith
with an allocation in eternity,
so that he is equipped with a body for the purpose (II Corinthians 5),
one immortal, incorruptible (I Corinthians 15),
the production of Him who made the first one for things temporary,
God acts to complete the expression of the redemption which brings adoption
as children of the Almighty.

Thus is His salvation
consummated in the work to associate man with eternity,
not as an inherent property of his own nature,
but as a gift of all encompassing grace,
in the face of which no redeemed party
can boast of ANYTHING, but of the Lord Himself (Ephesians 2:8-10).
 

How pure is the love of God, how bathed in splendour is His salvation,
how wise are His ways, who divulges divine principles,
character criteria, the way He is,
and shows these to man,
not to condemn him, but to save,
but who yet does not enslave or twist,
receiving many children to glory,
taking none by device or deception,
through desire or disorder,
but doing all things well.
Thus, even though there be not many wise or remarkable (I Cor. 1:27-30),
yet those who come are freely His own,
where grace rules, hearts are radiant with reality,
softened with sincerity,
and everything is as it seems.