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Chapter 8
The GRANDEUR of GOD’S GRACE
- The Lament of Love
- The Call to Arms (His)
- The Challenge to Listlessness
PRELIMINARY
ACTIONS AND FINAL RESULTS
In Malachi we
found in the first chapter of this volume, a certain enervation, disregard,
indifference or slipperiness about religion, about the Lord, about His service.
We did not however concentrate on one of the worst of the examples provided by
this prophet in the divine rebuke to the nation.
It
is found in
· “You have wearied the Lord with your words;
· Yet you say,
o
‘In what way have we wearied Him?’
· “In that you say,
o
‘Everyone who does evil
o
Is good in the sight of the Lord,
o
And He delights in them,’
Or, ‘Where is the God of justice?’ ”
Here is
spiritual sloth epitomised. Not only have they been opining, “It is useless to
serve God” (
It is
however much worse. Not merely are they sardonically signalling their
indifference to God, they even put a plume of impudence into this assault on
His integrity. “He delights in them” – in whom
? In those who do evil. Think of putting this proposition to an earthly king
concerning his reign! It is tantamount to alleging his entire corruption, moral
indifference, interest in other affairs to which these, the moral, are merely
subordinate so that you could not tell what the outcome might be until you
found the king’s actual motives. Only this would show the moral fall-out, which
has no integrity of its own. Worse, the king actually loves the evil doers,
they acutely take his fancy.
Clear from
the next line is this, that there is an element of protest in these
propositions. They are not less for that, but it alters slightly the tone.
There is a charge levelled now at God:
§
‘WHERE ARE YOU ? there is so much
injustice here that we cannot discern your presence at all.’
Like God
calling to Adam in the garden of Eden, hidden because he had sinned against the
Lord, so there may be here an implicit call to God to show Himself, to show His
judgments, for there is such a decline and a fall into moral cess that there
appears too little evidence of His activity or interest. Yes, their thrust
continues, He delights in the evil doer,
for look how well he does!
This seems
then to be the satiric condemnation of God, the sleazy spiritual attribution of
evil to Him, the careless, enervated illicit and indirect conversation with God, to make of the
speakers the Judge, and of God the criminal.
God’s
answer, as in Malachi 3, is to indicate that so far from this languid and
dissipated talk being true, He will send a Messenger clad with authority,
instilled with directives, One who meets the spiritual zenith, in whom is just
delight, appointed to be Judge of men. As to Him, He is coming suddenly to His
temple, and there will expose the corruption which freedom brings, when it is
misused, and shame spiritual fraud in which the land has been immersed.
Further, such will be His zeal and power, that He will be like a refiner’s
fire, with the people the metal, and the priests will be purified. A “swift
witness” will the Lord be, to expose the moral follies of the nation, with
their emasculated spirituality, their deadly drives and alienated perspectives.
It is God
who is here making a declaration. They have pierced His name with maundering
words, piquant darts or the thrust of foul, crusading words: He will pierce
their hearts with shame.
He, the
Lord does not change (Malachi 3:6), and it is only because of this fact that in
His mercy and truth, reliability and
faithfulness He has kept this people at all,
thus avoiding their entire destruction. He itemises their frank fraud on
tithing for His work, a place where the people are implicated, clearly showing
their indifference and lassitude (3:7ff.). With all this, in His unchanging
constancy, He INVITES them, the people, to resume this part of their OWN
DUTIES, and promises a reward of dramatic proportions.
In fact of
course, faith is first required and the insolence of the attack on the Lord by
those who break willfully His commandments, forsaking tithes for His work,
penurious though far from impecunious,
is really a resurgence of their own indifference, their undutiful
failure. They merely reflect with His light,
their own darkness, like a shadow on an X-ray screen, and have the
impudence to impute that it is HIS darkness, and not their own. Why, they do not even seriously keep His
word, and they complain to HIM, as if it were His inaction when it is their
own unfaithfulness! “Robbers” they are, but they indict! delinquents, yet they
loiter with words against Him whose work they despise, whose name they
mischievously misuse.
We note as
Malachi proceeds, that some, seeing the
exposure of the highway to hell on which many are travelling, seek to detach
themselves from this mêlée, to meet together and write a book of remembrance in
fidelity to the Lord (3:16ff.). But what was the item which preceded this
action. It is found in those dire words of 3:14-15, where the proud are called
blessed and the futility of serving God is asserted – a normal reaction of
those who, loving this world, and merely wanting a little religious lift to add
to it, find that it COSTS to serve God and that material rewards and prestige
are not identical with taking up your Cross.
SO does
hypocrisy fleer at the Lord, who declares,
“Your words have been harsh against Me!”
– Malachi3:13.
This too
they have said: “Those who do wickedness are raised
up: they even tempt God and go free” – Malachi
The implication
here is this: that you can be arrogantly disdainful, or openly brash in
rebellion against God, without, like Bernard Shaw and his challenge to God to strike him dead as he opened his
watch, if he would – suffering for it. Why then worry ? is the response. What
however is the exposure of motive in the critics of God in this instance ? It
is this. That they WANT to be raised up, that they WANT not to suffer, that
they WANT a world in which you get swift rewards or become rich and powerful,
one altogether lovely in situation for them, when you do what you have to do,
are paid in ready coin for being good. It is a site where you really do not WANT to be good, but use
goodness purely instrumentally for your own advancement.
This
appears to be their desire. What MATTERS to such people, is the reward.
God and goodness are merely MEANS, for
theirs seems merely instrumental religion, God like forceps for picking
something up.
Now in all
love, what must be said ? that if you treat people as means, it is fraud. Job
as we saw is one large illustration of the utter necessity of love being
sincere, of suffering being no criterion of it, and a willingness to bear it
merely an expression of its reality (cf.
SMR 95, 358, 373, Christ Jesus: the Wisdom of God
and the Power of God Ch. 2). Christ in His love
bore specifically a false charge which in turn became the opportunity to be a
sacrifice for sin. What was their charge against Him ? It was one of denial of
His status, place, authority, position, identity. Since this false charge was enshrined in the words and
testimony from their lips, that He was
NOT the Son of God, that was a slander that in itself crammed in all the sins
of man, the fruit of disfaith (q.v.)
and rejection of God.
You can
love a photograph of someone, but if when you meet him, you slap his face, it
is apparent that the reality is scorn of that person, not admiration or
acceptance. So when God sent His Son, the reaction was the criterion of the
brand of disfaith which lurked where faith should have been!
If God has
elected to make man free, so that he CAN criticise God, if he wants to, instead
of regarding the truth or reforming his own life and finding the meaning of
life in the word of God; if He has given spirit to man so that, made in the
divine image, he CAN follow ignorant superficiality and charge God with human
sins, as if freedom meant nothing and love were absurd: then is this a crime ?
Is existence as human to be deleted ? It will be, but not yet.
There is
first of all a harvest (as in Matthew
24!), when the reapers will reap, and the crops are man. That is the importance
of Malachi 3:16ff., where of those who dissociate themselves from this
swaggering sardonism of 3:13ff., it is said: “They
shall be Mine … on the day that I make them
My jewels, and spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.
Then you shall again discern between the righteous and the wicked, between one
who serves God and tone who does not serve Him” – Malachi 3:17-18.
There is an
end to every test, for there is a limit to the power of what is tested in all
creation (cf. Isaiah 57:14-18). Let us see the divine disclosure of this.
“And one shall say,
‘Heap it up! Heap it up!
Prepare the way,
Take the stumbling block out of the way of My people.’
“For thus says the High and Lofty One
Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
‘I dwell in the high and holy place,
With him who has a contrite and humble spirit,
To revive the spirit of the humble,
And to revive the heart of the contrite ones.
“ ‘For I will not contend
forever,
Nor will I always be
angry;
For the spirit would fail
before Me,
And the souls which
I have made.
“ ‘For the iniquity of his covetousness
I was angry and struck him;
I hid and was angry,
And he went on backsliding in the way of his heart.
“ ‘I have seen his ways, and will heal him;
I will also lead him,
And restore comforts to him
And to his mourners.
“ ‘I create the fruit of the lips:
Peace, peace to him who is far off and to him
who is near,’
Says the Lord,
‘And I will heal him.
“ ‘But the wicked are like the troubled sea,
When it cannot rest,
Whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
“ ‘There is no peace,’
Says my God, ‘for the wicked.’ ”
You will
observe in Isaiah 57:15, made bold above, that there is indeed A LIMIT to the
striving with man, to the exhortations and imbuings, challenges and calls; for
man is not an infinite being. There are reasons why God seems to hide Himself
(following verse, above) and this included in the case in point, covetousness,
and waiting for realisation. There was a distancing from the divine, and it was
by no means accidental.
Yet the
Lord desires peace for His people, and has ways of bringing it both by His
Spirit to those receptive (as in Isaiah 63:14 in that beautiful picture of
spiritual contentment and rest), and by His Son ultimately whom He sends to
rectify the ledger, bear the sin and bring the cost of the covenant to zero for
man, infinity to God.
This
however is for FAITH, which accepts invisible things on irrefutable grounds,
but in heart and openness, a receiving of the Lord without deceiving.
Certainly,
the wicked are like the troubled sea as we see here in Isaiah, and as to the
nature of their way, it cannot rest, whether in its sardonic spewings or
mournful mewlings: it has nothing clean and its actions and atmosphere, whether
in speech or in spirit, is awry, confused and slack.
In Isaiah
58, following the above citation from this prophet, you find the clarion call
of the trumpet of truth to the people, to put their morals where their
allegiance is, and DO the things that God prescribes, for this is the outcome
of faith in the presence of divine power.
From Isaiah 58, we find, immediately
following the above, these words.
“Cry aloud, spare not;
Lift up your voice like a trumpet;
Tell My people their transgression,
And the house of Jacob their sins.
“Yet they seek Me daily,
And delight to know My ways,
As a nation that did righteousness,
And did not forsake the ordinance of their God.
They ask of Me the ordinances of justice;
They take delight in approaching God.
“ ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and You have not
seen?
Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?’
“In fact, in the day of your fast you find pleasure,
And exploit all your laborers.
Indeed you fast for strife and debate,
And to strike with the fist of wickedness.
You will not fast as you do this day,
To make your voice heard on high.
“Is it a fast that I have chosen,
A day for a man to afflict his soul?
Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush,
And to spread out sackcloth and ashes?
Would you call this a fast,
And an acceptable day to the Lord?
“Is this not the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the heavy burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that you break every yoke?
“Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out;
When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not hide yourself from your own flesh?
“Then your light shall break forth like the morning,
Your healing shall spring forth speedily,
And your righteousness shall go before you;
The glory of the Lord
shall be your rear guard.
“Then you shall call, and the Lord
will answer;
You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
The pointing of the finger, and speaking
wickedness …”
That then is
a fuller answer to the moral lassitude seen in Malachi. It means that human sincerity is required for
divine blessing, not in terms of works to OBTAIN divine covenantal relationship
(Isaiah 55:1-3, 53:6ff.), for that is by faith, but in terms of good trees
bearing good fruit. If you want something real, then DO IT, and you will find
that there is a SPIRITUAL peace and a spiritual presence of the Lord who, for
those following Him in the first place, loves serious spiritual living in the
second place. Indeed, is it not natural
that those who sincerely seek Him, find
Him, and that those who toy with dead deeds and complain of Him, as if they were blind to their unfaithfulness
to Him, and marveled at His seeming distance from them (‘hiding’), find mere acid
mouthings and specious complaints!
In Isaiah,
the focus soon moves on to Isaiah 61 and the Messianic coming. In this case. It
moves swiftly from the Saviour in His tenderness, to the eventual judgment, for
those who want judgment, which surely comes. In Malachi, it now moves in the
intense denseness of the verbal and
behavioural provocation, to the revelation of judgment in Malachi 4.
“ ‘For behold, the day
is coming,
Burning like an oven,
And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble.
And the day which is coming shall burn them up,’
Says the Lord of
hosts,
‘That will leave them neither root nor branch.
“ ‘But to you who fear My name
The Sun of Righteousness shall arise
With healing in His wings;
And you shall go out
And grow fat like stall-fed calves.’
”
There is
the ultimate division of the sheep and the goats, the believers and
disbelievers, the morally mutant sliders and the spiritually inspired children
of God. It comes when the examination results are posted. The criterion is
Christ; and the consequences are life, and life lives, expressive of both the
divine dynamic and the faithful blessedness brought on the hearts of those who
know Him. Knowing God is far more evocative and intense than knowing anyone
else, for it is to know your own Creator, who understands your mind and all
minds, your motives, cleans your heart as a dairy farmer cleans his milking
run, and brings help to your spirit as a mother to her child, and wisdom as a
father.
This then is
the climate of conduct, the spiritual culture, the divine dealing with man
exposed to the truth, and fewer and fewer are those in our own generation who
are not so exposed! There is divine detestation of injustice and fraud,
spiritual or commercial, the latter a function of the former.
§
One
well remembers an acquaintance, telling one that he was approximately without
sin, at which one protested that certain of his business dealings did not appear of that type! His reply:
‘Oh, that was
business!’
It is as if the mere use of a name for a species of action
exempts it from all morality. Why not then, take it further for some others:
Oh yes, some other person might say, certainly I killed that man, but that was part of my social living.
Man is keen
to exempt himself and to implicate God in his specious and supremely selfish
dealings, in masses, but it does not alter the facts.
What
however of God in His love ? We have been seeing something of His misconstrued
patience, and of His testings, of His sending
the Messiah to be murdered for a vicarious substitute for the sinner who
receives Him in faith, and of His coming in judgment when the Play reaches the
final Act. What however of the love of God in the midst of all these dealings ?
How does He respond to this lassitude, to this enervation, to this moral drift,
and to all this continual provocation ? How much does He plead, what emotions does He exhibit, how
deeply does He feel this and what is the divinely available beauty of holiness
to which a man may seek ?
There is a
trap for the fox, but with God is there is a bounty to the smitten ? In what
ways do we see this, and what does His word say of this ?
What is the
coherence of His divine passion for justice and mercy, for reality and
integrity, for love and lovingkindness, with what He has done ? How is it seen
in consistency in His word ?
FIRST,
BEGINNINGS AND ENDS
Frequently,
as in Malachi, you are seeing in the words of the prophet, a penultimate, a
most developed situation, in which over many years, a spiritual lassitude,
boredom, indifference and really, lack of faith in the Lord, has been wedded to
outward profession of His name. Then, as in a school situation when a
particular Class has been rowdy, or noisy, or lacking in order or application
for some time, you find the RESULT section. This does not indicate what
happened BEFORE that PHASE. IN fact, there may have been multiple rebukes, or
exhortations, pleasantries and helps, kindnesses and mercies, calls and
responses, before it becomes apparent that it is a heedless case and not
needless is discipline.
To see only
the final episode would be a grossly misleading thing, were there no record of
what went before in patience and pity, thrust and response, evaluation and
stimulus. It is rather like the sinking of the Titanic. Dramatic pictures of
its sinking should be preceded (as they are in one of the film coverages
reconstructing the situation) by an awareness of the dash and derring-do, the
almost absurd self-confidence, the wrong motivation of the speed, the
compromise of safety in the interests of glory and so on. It is in this setting
that the moral is told.
So far,
then, we have seen the capacity of mankind to come to the point of virtual execration
of God, as in Malachi, charging Him with their own sins, and requiring of Him
an active intervention so that life by reward might replace life by faith, and
the whole history of the universe could become meaningless. Not so is it with
God, who at will, may indeed hide Himself from hypocrisy, and leave to “the fruit of his doings,” a slithery heart, that
seeks only its own, using spurious words of ostensible morality, when only
pleasure and profit, prestige and power are the real aim. As to God, in this scenario, He becomes the
sought after means.
On that
basis, He is simply not available, and many might cry as they inherit the
whirl-wind, having sown the wind, Where
is He! The answer is not far to seek. He is found in the humble and
contrite heart which believes Him, and lives for Him! (Isaiah 57:15, 66:2,
Psalm 51).
It is time
to look to earlier phases where the love of God for those who become obdurate,
brassy and indifference, mouthing evil and priding themselves on their own
pollutions is shown, is available. How often do people look to the Lord a
little, with the proviso that it must be strictly profitable (in terms of
money, or position, or power, or pleasure, or prestige, or pleasantness or some
other substitute for God Himself), and then, degree by degree, harden
themselves as they are actually unwilling to pay the cost of purity, to place
the hand of simple faith in the reality of God, and walk with Him. So do they
temporise, until they become frankly
evil!
In fact,
making use of God for your own purposes is simply a contradiction in terms: for
the ultimate is prior, not posterior, and the Leader is in front, and not
behind. In reality, the self-centred
activist is NOT the centre of the universe, however proudly he may be that of
his own fictitious copy of it.
You must
find and love God for the Being that He is, for the prodigy of kindness that He
provides, for the purity that is His, for His place as your Creator and His
provision for your redemption, for the blessedness that is in His holiness, and
above all, for the glory of HIS name, not your own. If you do not approve of
His justice, His mercy, His kindness, His call, His covering of the cost of
redemption, and His resurrection, so be it. That is your affair. It is then
that only judgment remains. Our present interest however is before that, or
should there be repentance, after it: it is in the disposition of God’s mercies
and the expressions of His love over history, towards man, to people.
The end,
then, as in Isaiah 1 indeed and the conditions of the call of Isaiah in Ch. 6,
can be both decisive and dire. Even then (Isaiah
As the way
proceeds, the light of love discarded dulls, and the end being seen, the Lord
may lament; just as godly people too, for the unresponsive, may lament.
THE LAMENT
OF LOVE
The lament of love is seen
in many ways, situations and with high drama or quiet reflection.
The Lament of Elisha
Look for
example at Elisha. How often had he shown to the people of the land, a merciful
kindness and a miraculous aid. You see
it in the case of the school of the prophets, relative to their building
program, their food; you see it with the indebted widow, with the Shunamite
woman and his tender care for her, indeed the raising of her son from the dead.
You witness his concern for the life of a lady who had been sincere enough to
care in the first instance (II Kings 4, 6), with thoughtful righteousness
seeking the agreement of her husband for a little ‘prophet’s room’ for ELisha’s
help as he traveled intensively in his work, and often passed by.
You even
find it (II Kings 5) where Naaman comes from hostile
This
kindness is discovered for the grossly sinning nation, in time of dire need and
distress (Dunkirk is a modern parallel), as in the prophetic recounting to the
King of Israel, the disposition of the warring Syrian forces, frustrating many
of their planned exploits against Israel, so that that King of that land had
forces looking for Elisha, presumably to slay him! (II Kings 6:8ff.). However
God blinded the Syrian soldiers, and Elisha with clever irony, took them in
their sudden affliction, to the “man whom you seek”, namely himself, first
leading them in their blinded state, to the King whose country they were
attacking! At Elisha’s instance, they were fed and returned to their land, an
example of the kindness of God, always available, as with Naaman, when humility
and seeking enter in.
Now while
such things were proceeding (and the provision for the Shunamite woman went to
the extent of advising her of a coming famine and a divine provision for the
later restoration of her lands and income to her, when it was over and she
returned from abroad – II Kings 8), there came a most moving episode.
Elisha was
very near to God in miracles and mind, in kindness and grace, acting for Him at
His will, as a prophet of no mean empowering (cf. II Kings 2:8ff.). When however
one of the divine provisions for the end of this longstanding matter of
Israel’s defiant idolatry came near (cf. Jeremiah8:5ff., 9:12ff.), Elisha became gripped with sorrow, tears ran down his
cheeks, and he could scarcely control himself, so smitten was he with a grief
of divine origin, and human expression (II Kings 8:12). Speaking to Hazael who
was to be anointed king of
Our present
point is the extremity of Elisha’s grief. Notice first that it shows complete
certainty in the divinely appointed role for Hazael, for he is to be used to
rebuke the nation for its intransigeance, its unfaithfulness and its failure to
regard the word of its (ostensible) God, whom it served so ill, afflicting its
own people and its children (cf. Psalm 106). If it was his wish, then it was
orchestrated by the Lord for His own purposes, so blending freedom and His own
authority.
As to God,
He was simply not prepared to have such adultery of spirit (not to mention body
(Hosea 7:4ff.), such misplaced trust (Jeremiah 7:11ff.), such misuse of His
name, such false testimony to continue indefinitely. Long He endured it, often
He protested it, sometimes remedies arose. Many a time had there been revival,
often had people sought him, as in the day of Hezekiah, back further, of Jehoshaphat,
and near the end for Judah before its exile, of Josiah. Yet these were but
temporary spirallings in the downward thrust. Since forbearance is not another
name for laxity, in the end He acted decisively. It was rather like reluctant
but necessary surgery when smoking lead inveterately to cancer in the lung.
Following
Thus, the
anguish in the end inseparable from chronic, defiling sin in the very face of
the Lord had to come, and it is entirely parallel to the weeping of Christ over
Yet WHEN it
was beginning to be implemented, the prophet Elisha, knowing the love and
compassion, the pleadings the exhibitions of deliverance already given so
freely from God, KNEW that the tragedy was to be appalling. His heart could
scarcely bear it; he set his face and wept. Sadness was his friend, grief like
a mother.
Such is the
love of God. It is not indifferent to truth, seeks for its implementation in
mercy, on the truth of the Cross of Christ,
from the first in view (as seen in the protevangelium, Genesis
The Lament of Christ
Himself
Looking at
“If,” said Christ, as He lamented, musing
on the city, “you had known.” Here you see
deity dealing with knowledge. It is clear that He would have liked them to have
the knowledge in question. He is lamenting because they did not.
There is no
question of capering about with Jesuitical intricacies. If they had only known
– “especially in this your day,” He continued,
showing the dramatic heights to which their long history had now led them, when
the Messiah Himself, the critical and crucial test, was personally present. If
in many ways and days they had not known, this would be for a grief; but not to
know in THIS DAY, their own day, their field day, their sports day, their day
of exposure and performance relative to their God, above all other days … this
was disastrous.
If they had
only known, in this special and spectacularly crucial day, “the things which belong to your peace…” What then
makes for peace with God ? Recognition of His being, recognition of His speech,
recognition of His salvation, identification of the Saviour when He came,
reception of the Lord in His humble form, cleansing through His sacrifice,
faith in Him to follow Him, the grip of the New Covenant in His blood to instal
them as children of God, and assure that blessed resurrection that would follow
His (Daniel 12, I Thessalonians 4, Matthew 24, I Corinthians 15), in the due
season when the Gospel thrust having gone through the world, the reaping takes
place.
They did
not know it, they did not know Him, were in fact soon to crucify Him, and
indeed the history tells us that many of the Jews were crucified by the Romans
outside Jerusalem when the Roman push came to take over Jerusalem (or what
would be left of its sacked and salted site), just as the Jewish push had
attempted to take over Christ, by summary death. It is apparent that this
prospect for the city, though its authorities were to kill Him as foretold, is
felt as a most grievous thing even by their intended victim, the Lord Himself.
It is this which brings the weeping of lament to Christ, though the destruction
of the city, already certain in His mind,
had not yet happened; for here is the Good Shepherd coming to do the
work Himself, as He promised in Ezekiel 34, and the people themselves rise up
to kill Him!
What a
congratulation for His compassion, care and coming! What a judgment however
this entailed, as if the
How He
yearns that it might have been otherwise, laments because of what now must be,
despite all that He has done and is about to do! There is no slightest
intimation of any reluctance to save them, but of a sensitive passion that He might
save, and deliver. It is as in Colossians 1:19ff. (cf.
Here then
is the breadth of love, of love with salvation in view: it is encompassing
those about to be condemned, except for those who would believe in Him (John
To be sure
their concepts of universal redemption were erroneous, for those for whom
Christ bore the sins, are those healed by Him as Isaiah 53 makes exceedingly
clear, and the same is found in Romans 8:32 where those for whose sins He is
delivered up inherit all things. Thus, though offered like the national
sacrifice in Leviticus, for all, He is redeemer, providing atonement only for
those receiving it by faith (Deuteronomy 29:18-21); just as the individual
sacrificer ALONE received the cover. Mere formality receives fulmination rather
than blessing from the Lord (cf. Isaiah 1, Malachi 2:2!). Let not such a one
think he will receive anything! as Moses declares.
Christ, in
fulfilment, does not pay for the sins of ANY who do not believe, or do not
come, for equally surely is it found in John
This brings
to mind a whole realm of shadows. Flirting with faith can burn all hope, as if
to incinerate the applicability of the remedy, and this once done to the
utmost, it is indeed fatal (Hebrews 6, 10 cf. Divine agenda Ch. 9): yet to all there is the simple
provision, receive the Lord by faith in repentance, as He is and for what He
has done, and nothing can either prevent your entrance or ruin your
relationship. His sheep HE KEEPS! He says so. What IS His, being redeemed,
stays just by Him, and His sheep follow Him and to them He GIVES eternal life,
and they shall never perish. How valuable is each word from the Saviour; but
then it is He who is the Word of God incarnate! This is one of the illimitable
verifications in its consistency and majesty, that truth always brings.
Let us
however finish Christ’s lament displayed in Luke 19, in its critical thrust. IF
ONLY they had known the things that belong to their peace, AT LEAST in this
their day, “BUT NOW they are hidden from your eyes.” Don’t
use it, lose it is a common sentence in physiology, applicable all the more as
the body ages.
The
spiritual heart of man, that in the last resort, at the critical phase, rejects
salvation readily becomes one from whom the Lord becomes HIDDEN! Just so it was
Judas, who in isolation, hanged himself, not seeking the Lord. Christ proceeds
in Luke 19 to declare the detail of the destruction to come to
His
conclusion is precise: and it gives the reason. This ? as in Jeremiah 8, it is “because you did not know the day of your visitation.” It
is NOT because He was not interested AT THAT LEVEL, but rather in demonstrable
fact, because so massively great was His interest: that Christ wept concerning the negative
result. It was spiritually dead, morally corrupt, to life fatal, an abortion of
profundity in the interests of slick superficiality. It held ruin, just as , in
advance of all penalty for them, it exhibited it!
The ONLY
way they could come was by faith in Him as Saviour, that is to salvation; and
the ONLY thing they would not do was that. To this, the EXACT response of deity is this, that it
is so lamentable and desecratory for them that, become man, so that He who sees
Him has seen the Father (john 14:9): He
weeps.
How sad
that the children of men insist on extreme forms of contradiction of the text
either
v
1 - by pretending that God is NOT really interested
in saving those who in fact go to hell, recalcitrant in irrevocable rebellion,
or
v
2 - that He has redeemed all, including those,
who being paid for, somehow manage to avoid the fact of their liberation and
get there anyway.
Is it then some inane purchase or ineffectual payment ? Heaven forbid! For
those who do not believe fail to do so, not AS His sheep, but “BECAUSE you are not My sheep” . Those are His words:
“You do not believe because you are not My sheep”
(John
IF then, they believe, they are His
sheep (John
As shown
above, and often before, neither of the two statements listed
above, is correct. HE IS really
interested to the point of being almost devastated that they do not so come in
faith to Him; and HE DOES NOT cover their sin, which remains their own, with no
sacrifice left.
The limited
atonement is unanswerably correct (Romans
This is
surpassingly beautiful, greater than all that man has or could be, coming from
a situation of mere giving, in which the very construction of the universe is a
give-away, a provision for the sharing of His wonders with His people (cf.
Isaiah 51:16, and see … Immovable Faith Ch. 3). Here then is no religion of violence, seeking
to contain, control or grasp the earth as from those whose it is not, as in
Romanism, Islam and Communism: rather it is one of giving, seeking in love to
illuminate, and in those who receive Him, to redeem from the disasters of sin
to the magnificence of salvation, restoration and adoption by God Himself.
Whom, however, He redeems, He keeps, though this is wholly
inapplicable to mere, wordy false claimants and derogated pretenders for whom
satire can depict their hypocrisy (cf. SMR Appendix B on Peter).
Jonah’s Rebuke
This
same measured patience, self-control, forbearance and desire, so dedicated and
so beautiful is found in Jonah’s rebuke. The prophet, sent to warn
Jonah
had to learn to be more a prophet of love, the power being merely for the
outcome, not the income.
Hence we
see him, in Jonah 4, hostile and hurt, complaining and almost campaigning
against God because the people, who amazingly DID repent, are now not to be
destroyed.
Ø
“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. So he
prayed to the Lord, and said, ‘Ah,
Lord, was not this what I said
when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I
know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and
abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it
is better for me to die than to live!”
Ø
“Then the Lord said, ‘Is
it right for you to be angry?’
Ø
“So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city.
There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might
see what would become of the city. And the Lord
God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for
his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the
plant.
Ø
But as morning dawned the next day God prepared a worm, and it so
damaged the plant that it withered. And it happened, when the sun arose, that
God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he
grew faint. Then he wished death for himself, and said, “It is
better for me to die than to live.”
Ø “Then God said to Jonah, ‘Is
it right for you to be angry about the plant?’ And he said, ‘It is
right for me to be angry, even to death!’ But the Lord said, ‘You have had pity on the plant for which you
have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a
night. And should I not pity
God HAD
PITY. He did not “willingly afflict the children of
men” (Lamentations
Jeremiah 9: Lament in
Prospect
In Jeremiah
9 you read that the prophet would fain have his head a reservoir of waters and
his eyes a fountain, so that from it would flow rivers of water, a continual
weeping that flooded into external dimensions: such was his lament, his grief,
his inconsolable sorrow for his people whom he sees already as “slain”, so sure
is the impact of the divine judgment about to come upon them.
Yet it is
to no avail, however great the grief, the sincerity and the willingness of the
prophet . As time progressed, burdened with the cost, Jeremiah yet realised his
task afresh, and renewed by the Lord, proceeded as needed to suffer, (as when
challenged, in Jeremiah
Hard, they
would not relent. Assured, they would not repent. In Jeremiah 17, you read this
other side.
Ø
“The sin of
With the point of a
diamond it is engraved
On the tablet of their heart,
And on the horns of your altars,
While their children remember
Their altars and their wooden images
By the green trees on the high hills.
O My mountain in the field,
I will give as plunder your wealth, all your treasures,
And your high places of sin within all your borders.
Ø
“And you, even yourself,
Shall let go of your heritage which I gave you;
And I will cause you to serve your enemies
In the land which you do not know;
For you have kindled a fire in My anger which shall burn forever.”
This is the obverse
side of Jeremiah’s lament: the national obduracy of his people, their sin set
as with the engraving of a diamond. There is the love and the judgment, for in
the repudiation of the Lord’s mercy, there is the necessitation of the impact of
justice upon the delinquent. God is not about to destroy heaven in order to
accommodate sin. He rather allows Christ to be crucified, so that He may redeem
sinners, and covered in His grace, allow them, made new, into His kingdom, and
later, as the spirits of just men made perfect, fit for resurrection, to
inhabit heaven. There is no iniquity there, none at all (Revelation
Was the prophet
indifferent ? Did salvation simply not apply ? Was grace involved in apartheid
? Far from it, and the word of God is
destructive entirely of any such distortion, or caricature as Spurgeon called
it of the love of God. He WEPT and wanted to weep without ceasing, head a lake
of water to allow eyes without cease to lament.
The Late Call before
Lament: Jeremiah 17:19ff.
Small
wonder then that the prophet would relish the offer and opportunity provided by
the Lord as seen in Jeremiah 17:19ff.. They had now merely not to bring in
loads on the day of rest, and to hallow the Sabbath in the Lord. If they would
merely do this (a spiritual test in reality, but one easy for those who so love
God that His day is an opportunity to rest from this world, and both to prepare
for the next unmolested by toil and labour, and to work what is good without
necessitation), then the beauty of Jerusalem would be preserved, its kings and
its structure.
What an
offer!
In fact,
however, the people’s hearts were set on sin; yet this love is evocative,
persistent, insistent, consistent, calling. Worse, when the people showed some
willingness to release unlawful slaves, instead of carrying even this small
reform package into fulfilment, they reneged – even at that. This was the work
of those conscripted by their own deeds, to darkness, faithless, unbelieving,
and to them then surely it came (Jeremiah 34:8ff.).
It is no
more a question either of God’s sincerity in the scope of His love so
categorically asserted, and obvious since He IS love, or of the lack of
opportunity.
The Truth and the Taunt
In Proverbs
8, following Chs. 1, 2, 3, and 7, where
wisdom calls and a father cries for the ‘children’ to take heed, you find that there is a warmth and
heartiness in the cry, an earnestness in the appeal, but where as so often
there is obduracy and contempt in the reply, then instead of sharing life with
the very Wisdom of God (revealed in I Corinthians 1:30 as Christ cf. Proverbs 8) whose grand arts in the work of creation
were so brilliant, you find that you have a kind of flirtation with death,
ending in damnation (cf. Proverbs 1).
Thus in
Proverbs 8, we find this ending:
Ø
“Now therefore, listen to me, my children,
For blessed are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
And do not disdain it.
Blessed is the man who listens to me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.
Ø
“For whoever finds me finds life,
And obtains favor from the Lord;
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul;
All those who hate me love death.”
Does not Proverbs 15:24 add this:
“The way of life winds
upward for the wise, that he may turn away from hell beneath.”
The energy and ‘romance’ of love, to
use the oft-employed biblical figure of marriage and its adventurous delight of
mutual affection, from the early meetings onward, is laid out with all the
divine grace imaginable; and yet the cost of the Cross is the measure of the
doom, not merely impelled, but just for those whose love is darkness without
the truth, or is convenience for the self, society or situation of choice, in
lieu of God.
Nathan to David
and
David’s Lament as a Type of Christ
In II Samuel 12, you read one aspect of the love of God, of
His grace, when David sins; and in II Samuel 18:29-32 you read of David’s lament when someone else
sinned, and so tore himself from life, just as he could not stand moral virtue.
David, restless, had seen a beautiful woman, lusted, sinned
morally and sexually both, and acted deceitfully in one large, lush field of
folly that was so totally contrary to the whole man’s life, that it was like a
black patch on a sea of sand. When he was rebuked (and the rest of his life
held admonitory exercises to sensitise him, including domestic griefs of his
own, measured but severe), then the word of God to him holds something very
beautiful and material to our present topical interest.
“Why have you despised the commandment of the
Lord to do evil in His sight … Now
therefore the sword shall not depart from
your house, because you have despised Me…”
That is the prelude to the beautiful part. Notice that this despising was an episode, and though a
somewhat prolonged and multipartite one, it was not characteristic of David.
Yet was it so gross that the correction had to be rather severe, though it was
not in the ways of this world, severe: David was not imprisoned, killed or
quartered for it. However he suffered, as a spiritual man, extensively as his
own family became awry, first in one way, and then in another, just as he had
misused the family of someone else, first in one way, then in another! God has
His own ways of correction of those whom He loves.
Such included neither the provision for the mere continuance
of breaches of holiness amounting to despising Him, nor yet merciless severity:
His way with His children is meaningful, effective and wise.
Now, in this case,
the Lord remonstrated with David a little before this statement, and in
terms of the liberalities of His grace, which are characteristic, consider
this.
· “I gave you your master’s
house … and gave you the house of
There is the prodigality, the liberality, the willingness
that is divine, that is seen on the left and the right, to the unconverted in
the munificence of the payment made that is sufficient for all, so that it may
be received freely (Isaiah 55, Romans 3:23ff., 6:23, Ephesians 2), and to the
converted in love seeking more and more of the wonder of His giving for them.
There is nothing difficult about the wonder of the divine love; except for
this, that so many prefer the blemished flowers of their own making, mere
petals of a day.
Later on, tragedy hit David’s house. His favoured son
Absolam - trying to fly too high, as if to take the kingdom from his father,
guileful and deceitful as if to remind his father of his famous error in the
matter of the false love-making - met his end when David’s commander killed the
young man. On hearing this, the King made a lament famed for all time. The
military commander had disobeyed the king’s directions in killing Absolam, but
a practical man, he did not see point in continuing slaughter when the leader
of the rebellion could be killed.
David’s word of lamentation here, are a type of the love of
God, a parallel to the divine in a sinner’s heart, yet a heart in which God
Himself dwelt. They evoke remembrance of Christ’s lament for
· “Then the king was deeply
moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept. And as he went, he
said thus:
o
“O my son Absalom—
o
my son, my son Absalom—
o
if only I had died in your place!
o
O Absalom my son, my son!”
Notice
that Paul felt he could die for his own people, if it had been of any value
(and he did die for the proclamation of the Gospel) – as seen in Romans 9:1-3.
Die ? No more, he felt willing to “be accursed” for the sake of his
countrymen!
So here King David could wish that instead of having the
rebellion put down, with death to Absolam, against his own desire (God would
have ALL men to come to the knowledge of the truth – as in I Timothy 2), he
himself had died for his son.
Now as for Christ, He DID die, for it WAS valid in this
case, applicable for any but applied for all who come in faith to Him! He did
not merely find Himself willing (as in Psalm 40 cf. Joyful Jottings 22) to be accursed in order to redeem. He
actually did it (Galatians 3:1-13); and indeed it was called for by the
strength of justice, just as it was paid for, by the strength of grace. That,
it is the love of Christ, and you see it here in David, as in Jeremiah. Indeed,
let us look at a further example from the latter prophet.
LAMENT
ON LAMENTATIONS
To do justice to Jeremiah’s lament is almost like doing
justice to Raphael in art. In the book of lamentations you have such cries!
Consider just three in Ch. 1.
“Is it nothing
to you, all you who pass by ?
Behold and see
If there is any sorrow
like my sorrow,
Which has been brought on
me,
Which the LORD has
inflicted
In the day of His fierce
anger.”
“How lonely sits the city
That was full of people!
How like a widow is she,
Who was great among the
nations!
The princess among the
provinces
Has become a slave.”
“Her uncleanness is in her skirts;
She did not consider her destiny;
Therefore her collapse was awesome;
She had no comforter.
O Lord, behold my affliction,
For the enemy is exalted.”
Then look at the
enduring confidence in the Lord. Remember it was Jeremiah who at risk to his
life, and in continual obloquy had warned and pled with his people, providing
hope in the Lord’s name, but they would not hear; and note that it is he who
laments – whose warnings and whose person were despised! Yet does he love them,
and yet does he weep for their plight.
Now consider his depth of earnestness while he seeks to be
oriented to the Lord, and to hope for the future, which like the present then,
has been assured to him for his people in a rebuilding.
“Remember my affliction and roaming,
The wormwood and the gall.
My soul still remembers
And sinks within me.
“This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
“ ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘Therefore I hope in Him!’
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
“It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear
The yoke in his youth.
“Let him sit alone and keep silent,
Because God has laid it on him;
Let him put his mouth in the dust—
There may yet be hope.
“Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes
him,
And be full of reproach.
For the Lord will not cast off forever.
Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
“For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.
To crush under one’s feet
All the prisoners of the earth,
To turn aside the justice due a man
Before the face of the Most High,
Or subvert a man in his cause—
The Lord does not approve.
“Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass,
When the Lord has not commanded it?
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
That woe and well-being proceed?
“Why should a living man complain,
A man for the punishment of his sins?
Let us search out and examine our ways,
And turn back to the Lord;
Let us lift our hearts and hands
To God in heaven.”
So does love find the source of love, and finding the
necessity of purity and even purging, look to the Lord in surrender, knowing that
from Him is the purity to be found which, after all, only the most obstinate
sin had so tarnished that the rupture of this people and the destruction of
their city proved necessary. Indeed, where was faith at all, in such infamy as
left truth fallen in the street! (Isaiah 59:14).
Alas, it was so then, and it is becoming ever more so in
many a nation, now!
So does a nation fall – just as a generation died in the
desert before the entry to the Promised Land with Joshua – though some, as
then, within it are delivered. In that, Daniel in his own day, for example, in
part paralleled Joshua of old! Faith is free access, but it must BE faith (cf.
I Corinthians 10, Hebrews 4:2).
The Evangelical Call
and Lament
Isaiah 55, 12,
59:13ff., 48:17ff., Ezekiel 34
PART
of the grace of God is thus seen in this, that you do not pay. You are to be
redeemed without price and without money says Isaiah, says Peter (Isaiah 55:1-5
with 53:4-12, I Peter 1:18ff., 2:22ff.), freely, says Paul (Romans
In stark
contrast is the morally perverse, spiritually corrupted scene of Isaiah
59:13ff., so that “justice is turned back, and
righteousness stands afar off, for truth is fallen in the street, and equity
cannot enter.”
Love does
not love licence to lie, to commit fraud, to be proud, it ignore reality, to
sacrifice truth for convenience and the integrity of God for the lie (Jeremiah
7:8-12, II Thessalonians 2). It loves what is the sinner, and seeks his
elevation from the pit to the pilgrimage, and the pilgrimage to the redemption
and the redemption, therefore being now covered, to heaven. It does not bring
heaven down to earth, but sinners up to heaven; but the KINGDOM of heaven it
makes available on earth, by the Spirit of Christ and in His name, for those
who seeing it, enter (John 3).
Grace
provides all of this; but it is no part of the work of grace to defile the only
lasting beauty there is, to prostitute truth or to abash equity. Hence there is
only one way, and that is the Redeemer, who lives and operates in the hearts of
His chosen people, moving them to become not frigid pictures, but a limned
portrait, a living letter from the Lord (II Corinthians 3:2-3, cf. To
Know God … Ch. 1).
In Isaiah 48:18,
you see the divine lament, and in this passage (vv. 17-20), the practical call.
The past is lamentable; the future requires action by faith, and at once.
When truth
has come, then in Old as in New Testament, these with joy draw water form the
well of salvation (John 4, Isaiah 12), one more illustration of the coherence
of both Testaments, and further, of the bud in one becoming the bloom in
another, the former taken up with intimate precision by Christ in the work of
actual salvation on particular persons, even in Samaria, where the glory shone!
It is free since, having penetrated fraud,
God Himself came to do the true work of a Shepherd, as He foretold (in
Ezekiel 34 in categorical terms!). The deity does not charge for His salvation.
How He protests light amid darkness (Isaiah 59:1-2), His practical willingness
in the place of pollution, and in correlation, laments at their uptight
pretension in the midst of fragmentation of their very spirits.
“Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
The Holy One of
‘I am the Lord your God,
Who teaches you to profit,
Who leads you by the way you should go.
‘Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!
Then your peace would have been like a river,
And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
Your descendants also would have been like the
sand,
And the offspring of your body like the grains of
sand;
His name would not have been cut off
Nor destroyed from before Me.’ ”
Then in the next verse or so: GET OUT OF BABYLON, that is
that religious syncretistic, multiple- godded palace of iniquity, itself to be
doomed in a little! The prototype of the World Council of Churches and of many
a fallen denomination in this century, it provided to the unchaste, an
opportunity for immediate declaration of intent for purity, reformation and
relief!
In all this, the untruncated love of God, His outthrusting
of grace, like solar flares from the sun, moves in the intensity of His heart
and the purity of His passion. Its summit on the Cross interprets it, displays
and implements it, for without exception, those who receive THIS redeemer, will
require no further lamentation, but rather discipline only, upbringing and
moulding in the way of light, life and truth.
The Duality in Isaiah
61:1-3
In Isaiah
once more, we find the very passage read by Christ at
Ø
“The Spirit of the Lord
God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has
anointed Me
To preach good tidings to
the poor;
He has sent Me to heal
the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the
captives,
And the opening of the
prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
To console those who mourn in
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
In the 4th couplet, he
stops before adding the words, “and the day of vengeance
of our God” (so that these read words are here italicised for easy recognition).
Doubtless, this follows from the
fact that, as He told them in the recorded meeting in Luke 24, that they should
have realised that there was to be FIRST suffering and ONLY THEN, glory to
follow. His Gospel mission was then
starting, but it would be long before the other half, the glory to come, would
proceed. This was not in His present domain, and it was omitted in that savour of
the Gospel opportunity, when He read the then relevant part in the synagogue.
God does not delight in sorrow, insists in bearing grief Himself
if by any means any should receive Him (and of course knows His own who will do
so, pays for them, and conducts them, receipted, sealed and adopted, to His own
side where He has prepared a place for them – John 14, Ephesians 1). When He
came, it was like the first part of Isaiah, in the verses actually read in
Isaiah 61:1-2. It was if to say:
I LOVE YOU AND PAY ENOUGH FOR ANY OF YOU. Enter this ark.
The meaning of the Isaianic passage, dropped in the middle of
our verse, does however continue, as if
to say:
But if you will not, it is because of the realities of life,
which accrue to those who love not its Founder, its nature or its rock; and these
being impelled by their contempt, will receive their due reproof.
The emphasis from the Lord at
This would appear clearly to be the point: so He left that part
of Isaiah out for the time. It is like heavy rain: Put on your coats! comes the
call. Is there need yet to add: If you do not, you will be drenched! Those at
Nazareth, for their part, nevertheless were not slow to show that the meaning
continues, as seen in their murderous thoughts, in the hearts of some, seeking
His destruction if it were in their power! To this, they were impelled, not by
the Lord in His ceaseless grace, but by the depths of their own hearts.
v
Thus Christ omitted, further words from the delicious provision
in Isaiah 61, at this point.
v
Yet He did not, in the grace of God, leave out His OWN payment,
simply not exacting love of any, and intercepting justice in Himself, for all
who would call on His name in faith, even that of the Messiah Jesus Christ.
God knows what He is doing, and does not have another notation
or address, let alone several other sobriquets. He is one Being, not a gallery,
shown by His Son, revealed by His Spirit, constant in His Gospel, consistent in
His grace, enemy of duplicity, pomp and pretence, seeking for man, not by works
of attainment to impress from some one or other, but by consignment to grace,
from grace, so that in love the redemption would be applied, and the entire
transformation of status and strength, performed. He is not like Lucy, a comic
character of extraordinary mutations! He is God, the Creator of all created
minds, incorruptible, immutable, beautiful in holes, triumphant in grace!
His word so portrays Him without cease, filled with a love which
is tenacious, but pure, incapable of seduction, willing for any price that is
pain and suffering, which brings man to His side but unwilling to grasp by mere
power. His Son has portrayed Him so no less, and in these millennia, so has His
word continued in those whose faith is in Him ONLY, and not in flesh, the
feebleness of philosophy or the rule of culture.
LAST:
Lessons
on Lassitude and the Limitless Profundity of Love
The Position in Principle
The love of God, the grace of God, the exuberant kindness of
God, the wise provisions of God, the pure procedures of God, the exceedingly great
liberality of God, all this is shown in its concerted consistency. When refusal
makes the ultimate refusnik into a sort of spiritual refuse, this is the
intrinsic nature of the case (cf. Mark 9). Leave to God the nature of time in
this reprobate case, but do not ignore the nature of spirit. However, one of
the great beauties of predestination is this (Romans 8:29ff.), that in His
eternal knowledge and foreknowledge (cf. Ephesians 1:4) God misses nothing.
Love neither SEIZES its own, to lacerate their reality as in God’s image, nor
does He leave it to tide and turn of events. He knows His own and secures them
(cf. John 6:65), infallibly, resourcefully, graciously.
Indeed, the divine yearning comes to the fore in those
intimately glorious invitations as in John 7:37-38. Again comes the liberality,
for love is not secretive and selfish. Those who drink being thirsty, these
will not only have their thirst beautifully quenched, but issuing from within
them will be STREAMS of living water, we read: fresh and abundant, as if drenching the pastures about.
This is a
love which insists on purity and is willing to give it away at cost, provided
only that it gets to its target. This is the love of God. It relents when its
necessary quality is dismissed. Yet this only with grief, the measure of which
is that of Christ’s willingness to bear it, in order to dismiss it – as a door
thus freely open.
You cannot
escape the love of God, therefore, except in dismissing Christ’s love in
practice, at the Cross. Then there is nothing left of love to give you: its
whole entire concentrate, despised, it leaves the one who loves love’s loss,
with the very loss he seeks.
Grace
spurned at its sublime height, love despised in sin’s sterile depths, this is
the formula to make the soul become an eternal absentee from these things,
coiled in its own contempt. Daniel 12 speaks of this.
Ø Perhaps you lament ? Christ
lamented.
Ø You are in anguish: so was the Lord.
Ø You are alone, so was He, crying,
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!”
precisely as predicted (Psalm 22, Joyful Jottings 25);
for sin separates, whether it be your own or that which He bore, and His
cry is its attestation.
Ø You are misunderstood, He the more.
Ø You are slated to die: so was He.
Ø Grief is your companion ? so was it
His (Isaiah 53:3, Luke 22:39ff., Hebrews 5:7).
God’s grace is greater. Why ?
He did not have to do it.
Love chauffered His visit to earth. Power erupted in His breach of
death. Mercy showed His face before it was systematically marred – a face HE
did not have to take. Great as is human suffering, God suffered more. Man is
found in circumstances that impel; God had no compulsion but freely created and
then came. Further, in coming, instead of spoiling man of his opportunities, He
offered eternal life as a child of God, not some mere probation. That, it is
grace of the purest notation, kindness not personified, for it gains its name
from Him, but in its very source.
Man is set in creation, and has grief; God made the creation
and freely took that grief, the black gusher from sin. Worse in impact on Him, He took what man
created, sin, a spoliation of the creation, and did so as Creator! What however of the person who still wishes
to be grievous and retain the ground of grief without the Giver of respite ?
What of the one who despises deliverance through redemption already paid,
enough to be able to cover all, but applied to His own ? In his or her
intemperate heart, is there yet a cleavage ? In such a case, it is not to
suffer so much as to caterwaul, rebelling like a playful pup pursuing
well-clawed cats. There is really no need. This is not where you belong.