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CHAPTER ONE

Psalm 103

The All-encompassing Grandeur of God in His Glory

 

The all-encompassing grandeur of God in His glory

Overwhelmed by the sheer scope and munificence, the boundless bounty of the lavishly liberal God, in His giving and presentations, David calls on his soul, his communing self-conscious life, indeed he extends it, saying "all that is within me," let it bless His holy name.  Thus girding himself to leave no part out, in his soul's delight in the Lord, and EXPRESSION of that delight, he also wants to ensure that NO PART of His benefits be forgotten or ignored.

 

His Vast Benefits

"Forget not all His benefits." Faced with fault, in His people, He forgives (just as we are challenged to forgive others at the end of the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6), and forgives all. He heals all your diseases. This David had found, and great were his trials and tribulations, perils and conflicts, privations at first and persecutions. While for all saints all  diseases are not in practice always cleared up, as in the case of Paul noted in II Corinthians 12, if this be so, it is for good reason. Thus in the case of the apostle, so great were his benefits, powers and privileges with God that lest his head swelled and his heart grew gross, he was by a 'thorn in the flesh', an affliction, kept in check. In the case of Job, it was a specified part of his trial,  to show that he was not a self-seeking, self-serving cynic whose only interest in God was what he could get out of it, as if on a commercial basis, this much in, that much out.

NO disease is beyond the Lord, and in the midst of His enormous strategies to bring man to heel, to repentance, to wisdom before he is ready to destroy his very world rather than repent (as is coming to be the case, as predicted in Matthew 24:22, sin  literally stopping at nothing), He can and often does heal beyond what could even be imagined. He relieves the distress as in Psalm 107, when folly has caught the heart, foolishness the mind and waywardness the spirit; and for just such cases, there He challenges man to praise the Lord and acknowledge the great goodness of the Lord, instead of hiding hatred or unbelief in some foppish form or invented procedure. It is for the heart to speak, and the mind to order its thoughts aright.

The Lord "redeems your life from destruction", David proceeds. Destruction is our due. Often one finds this thought. If civilisation in its child-abuse, slave-abuse, religious pretence to  forward rights abuse, civic authority to squash reasonable desires instead of finding how to meet them, God-abuse, in the form of dismissal with smirks when the folly is found in His denial, who made the power to have rational thought in the first place, for no chance can invent what is not there ... at all: if this proceeds, in the divine mercy the time comes when He answers the question, Would it be better REMOVED, instead of perpetuating horror and distress!  Sodom He removed, for  good reason, as also the North of Israel, this becoming the alien Samaria. Judah was exiled for 70 years a little later. Further, Babylon was smashed to nothingness (as foretold in Isaiah 13:19), with Nineveh, as predicted in Obadiah, and Tyre as in Ezekiel 26. Dramatically  in the case of Tyre,  in His judgment, duly fulfilled, came this sentence: "And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the LORD have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD."

It is a wonder to be redeemed from destruction: 

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1) bodily, in the resurrection to come with the return of the Resurrected Jesus Christ
(Philippians 3:20-21, Luke 24:39);
 

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2) in mind, in the renewal of the Spirit of God, which embraces,
encourages and illuminates (Ephesians 4:23);
 

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3) in spirit (Titus 3), where guilt departs with guile, and truth forms like an ocean,
illimitable and yet beautiful, tossing its glory on all sides,
 

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4) from  hell, that infernal given substitute with the supernal,
devastation with fulfilment, the haven for hatred in lieu of the glory of God,
with the peace of God and the sure prospect of eternity, friends with Him.
Who, knowing the Lord, could ever forget THIS deliverance!

Indeed, so great is that deliverance that the dismissal of destruction is a forerunner to the Lord who "crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies."  What was out of place, is placed outside, and what was not in place, now occupies it not as an occupying force, lordly in its take-over, but as a pitiful Father, glorious sovereign, source of meaning and object of desire, the founder of life, dashing to pieces what confounds and founding one on ROCK, even Christ (I Corinthians 10), God being the ONLY Rock for life (Psalm 62).

Moreover, when the asthenic, the weak comes  to disrelish life, He is able to bring fatness to the soul, renewing one's life like the eagle's. Where pride or apathy strikes, then weakness may ensue; but what joy He can give as if virtually to intoxicate with the elixir of youth (103:5), even when age reminds that this phase is drawing to a close (as in Isaiah 40:26ff.). He can indeed teach one things not foreseen,  like an eagle,  tossing its chicks on outspread wings, teaching them to fly with a solicitude and realism mixed (Deuteronomy 32:11-12).

 

His Magnificent Mercy

 

In Its Scope

Firstly, the Lord, despite the fallen and squalid state of much of the peoples of this earth, "executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed." Where His name is denied, so His grace may be missed; but when the Hebrews of old were as a covenantal people*, made into slaves following the fantastic gifts Egypt received through Joseph's rule under Pharaoh, a degradation occurring with new rulers, God took thought for them. Indeed, He manufactured a mission through Moses not only bringing them out of slavery but far from the enslaving land. In a non-theocratic land like our own, there is no such covenantal relationship to God, though it IS true that our Constitution has a Pre-amble which, whatever its legal standing,  states that the States agreed to unite as one Commonwealth  IN DEPENDENCE ON GOD-ALMIGHTY. Nor is there any question, in the then still cordially Britain-related land, which 'god' they had in mind.

That is one of the significant facts about all this talk on changing our Constitution. It is made to appear multi-cultural and good and all that; but in fact, if it is going to make each equal, then special privileges by race would not be tolerated, though they currently apply to a large degree. It is not law which is needed, but compassion mixed with intelligence and objective morals such as formally obtained in earlier times. It is useless to call that compassion with degrades and kills; and indeed an aboriginal leader has excoriated the practice of making mere dependents who have no challenge.

While a people who had some parts of Australia before us are by some made into some kind of religious ferment, with special impartation privileges, so that through this, an entirely different religion takes off, making anything as good as anything else in 'nature'  amidst all,  Australia tends to lose all character and to become the plaything of whoever and whatever wants to put its great or depraved foot in our land. Thus it is more and more divorcing from what coincided with its former greatness and solvency, in a falling phase of mere transformation by slackness. ITS benefits like those of any other kind of slackness, are that the slippery slope leads to that crushed, crashed meaninglessness where this or that moral or racial or civil germ flourishes to make a national pandemic, leading to deserved destruction.  That, it is almost the norm for many a nation, forgetting its base and becoming base itself, in both senses of the term.

However, where the people draw near to God, and His ways do exalt a nation (Proverbs 14:34), then as in Dunkirk, before much of the moral ruin that has afflicted Britain especially in its relationship with the Common Market, you find great deliverances. Indeed, great were those both for Britain and the USA, for many a year, before decline became a passion and alteration towards relativistic seediness became de rigueur for many. Where, however, the Lord's ways are made known, there is an  approach to righteousness and His delight in it.

Slow to anger is He (which you see in how long so many were  delivered amid peoples, individuals and nations), even amid growing evidences of falling, as from a high crag to the rocky base; but the time comes (Amos 4). He does not always strive,  we read; His is not a mere desire for a meaningless rigour but for a real righteousness, not founded on illusion, but on Him who made us and knows what He is about. Indeed, each Christian knows this, that "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities," Psalm 103:10.

 

In Its Profundity

How great is the mercy of the Lord ? In height, "as the heavens are high above the earth." In distance ? "as far as the East is from the West" has He "removed our transgressions from us." How personal is this mercy ? It is "as a father pities his children." While great and gross are unnatural follies even among parents, and amid States, which dare to tell them how NOT corporally to discipline at all  and as now is becoming more common amid a besotted culture, likewise to use drugs to deal with wrong channeling  of children's ways, as with attention deficits and the like, there is a better way. It relates to the natural tenderness and affection, care and responsibility of parents towards their young, prominent even amid magpies who do not let their babes tumble up, but bring them up. Mixed with truth, this is a continuing wonder.

If it is unnatural for a father to misuse his children rather than care tenderly for them, how much more is it so with the God of all creation, when HE deals with His own special children whose faith in Him began in repentance, was founded in truth, based on redemption,  covered with mercy, stretching, as is becoming for the Eternal God, TO eternity (as in I John 3:1-3). In these, His adopted children, His "seed" remains,  as surely as Jones or Brown seed remain in the physical being of such as bear those names (cf. John 5:24, Ephesians 1:11).

While pretence is always noxious, and superficial dreaming is no substitute for any kind of reality (Hebrews 6:4), nor is tasting swallowing, nor touching finding, nor knowing about the truth the same as receiving it (Hebrews 10:26-29), it is still true that what by faith takes His covenant in His own blood, trusting not man but God, this in the day of His coming (John 6:51,54, 4:14),  He will raise up, vindicated and victorious through His life (Matthew 20:28, Colossians 3:1-3, Philippians 3:20ff.). It is SUCH a challenge to mean thinking: the MORE you rely on Him only, the MORE you gain of Him altogether, and when you try to supplement the basis of your salvation, you merely deny it (as in Romans 10). Affirming it, you grow.

It is WHEN you are saved that works abound with joy, WHEN you are planted that fruit becomes relevant! (Matthew 15:13).To try to FIND salvation through your contribution of will (John 1:12, Ephesians 2:1-10) or any other current part of you, however, is to risk becoming co-saviour and mere worker of folly. Since He desires all (Colossians 1:19ff.), it is necessary in repentance to trust Him ALSO for His willingness beyond your own will, and simply CALL on Him, knowing there is no mystery about His mind to man, and that it is not man but his irreconcilability that He hates, with man trying to make himself acceptable in himself, or by himself, slighting the Gospel, walking in pride or pretence, heart amiss. Those who do not merely give to Christ their calling card, but call on Him in faith as Lord above all people, trust Him  as Saviour above all including themselves, rely on His mercy and being regenerate,  KNOW God (John 17:1-3), who being His children, rest in Him (Matthew 11:27ff.): These are equipped with eternal life (Hebrews 6:19, 9:12,10-10-14, John 4:14). HE is their anchor!

It is a thirsty site, hell, but there is no thirst for those who once drink of the water He gives, eat of the bread or take His sacrificial offering to heart by faith (John 6:62-63), for on these, He has conferred eternal life, His body and blood the necessary entry fee. It is these whom HE, being Himself therefore risen,  raises up at the last day (John 6:51-58), who having once so eaten and quenched their thirst, are moved to continue as a life in Him, so to imbibe and to feed,  faith in His bodily resurrection the catapult to trust! (John 6:54, Romans 10:9).  As He abided in His Father,  so these abide in Him (John 5:24). There is no treachery in truth, nor mud in His mercy. What a Father God is, and what a Saviour is Christ, the Christ of God, "the Lord's Christ"! (Luke 2:26).

We still at least have no difficulty in knowing what the love and cherishing of parents towards their young MEANS! Like that is the tender-hearted pity of the Lord, who sees and seeks for His children, born again by His Spirit and word into His kingdom (John 3, I Peter 1:23,Titus 2-3, I John 3).He knows those who have a reverential trust in Him, who relish His authority and delight in His wisdom (Ps. 103:13-14). Not His are weird notions about the nations or individuals, for He knows how we were fashioned from the elements as chemical basis, and inhabited with spirit as a living mode. He is not some kind of self-filled zealot, like many socialists, who dictate their will, often divorced from God and acting as if to replace Him, or  Communists, who kill for conformity, or sects, which instil their own personal authority into what could have been churches, and  make new notions the rule. God Himself does not alter, nor does His word, nor does His way for man: it is intensively merciful, and not without discipline and pity (James 5:11, Heb. 12, Ps. 102).  

 

His Covenantal Faithfulness  and Strength for Obedience

"His kingdom rules over all," (Psalm 103:19) and what doubts it has many opportunities such as that classic in the case of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4), to find it out! He is very deep and the superficial parodies of Him and His authority which man sets up have become intensively oppressive, disruptive, draining and dictatorial, often fearful of free speech, or even removing it on specious pretexts. In a little (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), that will become most obvious (Psalm 2, 72, Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11), but amid the lavish freedoms given to man, He still teaches these things amid our ceaseless calamities, and brings pause to the corruptive arrogance that so soon sweeps over man and his governments, like a misty haze dangerous to shipping in the early morning. He knows man's weakness and yet apportions His own strength to His own people, to endure, to understand, to attest Him, while the divine drama comes to its last act. To children's children His covenantal mercies rush ahead, like scouts in a new territory, even for all who realise His truth and are bound to His will and ways, freely by love, joyfully by faith.

This they do in mercy and pity, in compassion and in dutiful courage, if by any means any may even now be found - if you will, in the byways and in the hidden places. Strength He gives (Ephesians 3:16), and those who find this (Acts 5:32), let them also "bless the Lord," even His angels and missionaries, servants and disciples, to whom God gives His Spirit, doing His word. Do not even professional doctors have keys and paradigms to follow; how much more the word of God for those who fear Him, and love Him, and delight in Him, not cutting off His mouth in some figment, but loving every word of it. Bless the Lord O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.

 

NOTES

*1 EXCURSION

ON WHAT REASON REQUIRES

AND REVELATION PROVIDES

The relationship of man to God by covenant is fundamental. God is not mocked by arbitrary and unsustainable irrationality, which would reduce Him to becoming a mere participant in what avoids creation by being there always, so that all that is, good and bad, evil and brilliant, sick and strong, corruptive and redemptive becomes rolled like a thin cream, into a surface that erupts from time to time. That avoids the necessity for a sufficient cause for the entirety of delimited, legislated, ordered and organised differentiae, by simply bypassing it. Begging the question may be fit for a dog, in that the master can hand to its mouth the tit-bit desired. It is not adequate for rational thought for the very reason that it takes for granted what has in that case no source for the grant at all! You cannot have it both ways. Have God and find the grant; have only the Being structure and there is no source either for it or for anything it needs. It becomes like a derelict car, never made, always rusting, useless for lack of care and concern as to its purpose. Take the BEING type of religions. All is one or one is all (cf. SMR p. 1012). Either the entirety is made into one roiling, embroiling, unaccountable whole, or evacuating of anything but process, it yields by self-contradiction the truth about itself, from a source not consulted, so that the nature of process is to be found from process, as if it lectured on itself, without mind. If all were process, how would you know! (cf. SMR Ch. 3).

 

Of what use is it to have the entire world conceived as the body of some Brahmin, for example, in relative independence, but not his nature, when 'body' is in its very meaning, an appendage which is personal and expressive of what is the will of the mind and the desire of the spirit, as a means! This is mere contradiction in terms. If only one system is all, with its various entities and sub-entities and forms and forces, good and evil, mad and sane, then there follows an inescapable conundrum.

First, it is contrary to reason. The marriage of opposite in a unity is mere talk: it is logically impossible, just as having an account for 10,000 dollars credit is not the same, nor alignable as one with a debt for the same amount. Vacuous verbiage achieves nothing.

Secondly, it is without reason. What is the basis for this conglomeration, with its varied members, ranks and files, contradictions and appendages ? Why has such a series of mini-systems, moving within macro-systems able in its unwieldly and inapposite clashes, come to be ? If it has all these forces and dynamics,  dealings and design features so that it is in its multiplicity of beings and forces, kinds and characteristics, blights and creativities, then notionally put them in a 'god' bag or not, what is its ground ?

It just is ? In that case, it is without ground, basis or origin of its orienteering. It is a begging the question  entity, invented by the mind of man who as such, has no access to truth, since it is all embroiled with a total system of truth and lie, with multiple powers which limit, harass or counter others, whatever titles may be given. Though causes exist within it, for its multiplicity of entirely diverse and dynamic entities, it has no cause. It presents an oversight of itself, an overview,  from an entity within it, and yet this is a totality in which the results are incorporated in the cause, so that it does not ab initio produce them, but merely co-exists with them.  What is the ground for the concept of operative causality in the midst of causative results ? How can there BE such a BEING as this entity, which is allegedly all one, when it is already in being, and so CANNOT be the ground of that being!

You could isolate if you would, the creative part, or the legal or legislative part, or parts, as you prefer, and put them all notionally into a vast pot, making them a variety of being, and yet it is still on the adjoining fire, part of the entirety and not operative as its preceding Creator. It therefore neither is ground for the multiple non-conformities of the creation, nor explanation, nor basis. It exists with all the rest that exists.

Moreover, truth is not available in such a system. If it were, then the relative independence of the 'body' of Brahmin, so long as it is conjoined in being with him, limits objectivity, and interprets multiplicity. Nothing constituted by clashing clangours and mutually impelling force, let  alone contradictory passions and mutually destructive entities is able to arise above its constituents. It may appear  to  do  so,  or have this ascribed to it, but as far as mutual interaction goes, necessary for what is in part constitutive of a Being, truth does not and cannot have place. There is nothing free from it all absolutely which is not subjectible to any of it, and yet is aware as from without it, of what it is doing in fact. Incorporation is not illumination.

That is why you have this churning, yearning for truth and immense difficulty with 'roaring silence' and the like, the complete inability summon direct to the mind and soul, the spirit of man, the essence of the whole, leaving a sort of evacuation program, so that with the elimination of all the 'parts' you find nothing is left, nothing specifiable or characterisable, an impersonal target always escaping connotation for its being.  You see this in such an approach as found in the Taitinya Upanishad*2.

In fact, either the originative is the origin, or there is no originative cause, and irrationality is the summary of the whole.

Thus if only any entity or god or theme be within what is eternal, then being a mere part, it cannot be free as is a separable being: for if it were,  the whole would be no whole at all, what is in view, not one but two, with one a separable entity, the ground and basis of the other. That is what is normally called God: origin, maker, Creator, one without contradiction, need of explanation as no series of systems is attached, but one changeless and everlasting Being, self-sufficient and sufficient for all that is, and is not itself.

Knowing all because Creator of all, without attachment of any kind, as God, with creation, but related only by will and decision, program and intention, He is not a looming or underlying principle, person or power, but singular in character, single in being, and ultimate explanation of all, He is the judge of all and the saviour for all. HOW is He the saviour of all  men,  especially of those who believe (I Timothy 4:10). This as is in Isaiah 48:15ff., is wrought by the nature of His singular Being. Reality is to be found out, not guessed, whether in a new continent, star or in the Creator. You learn by finding out. God exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Son the incarnation of His word, by which He rules and created the universe (Colossians 1:15ff). He sends (as One, the Speaker), goes (as One the Word) and with His Spirit acts. Salvation comes from God as God for man as man. You may take it or leave it, but not alter it, any more than any other gift beyond your own power, and available as you pass (Proverbs 1). 

It is NOT as a principle which mingling with destruction has a character which does not rule, but exists in unsolaced complexity, inept and inadequate to be itself, participant in what contradicts itself which likewise is even part of it. It is not that. God did not give us reason in order to be unreasonable, or the power to argue in order to abuse it with irrationality as if this were a possible course for it, mingling its overthrow with its use.

GOD Himself can tell what He has done, if He so chooses, and why, and what is needed for its current position,  objectively. He can likewise do what it takes for it, just as He made it; and truth is the obverse of His own majesty actions. What He says and does are correlatives, though access to that truth is on His own conditions, as is so much that is of value in general, adorned with conditions. With Him, you have to find it, though it has been made clear for millenia (cf. SMR Ch. 1). It is however freely given. Just as creation was, salvation is,

It is a matter of work: His. That is why self-saving modules of philosophy or religion are so vain. We require work to be and to be put right when swerving and careering amiss.  Creation is work as we all know by our own experience.  Giving form and format, character and expression, being and distinctiveness to things according to one's mind, plan and purpose is a labour of mind and power, imagination and discretion, with such further plans as mind and purpose devise. So likewise is salvation. It is not part of destruction, or allied  to it in any way except what is by definition logically the case: contradiction. That is just one reason why ONE BEING religions fail, and must do so (cf. SMR pp. 996ff., 1011-1026). Salvation is not associated in any being with its opposite, or any system of thought of a unitary character.

On the contrary, it is resolution of destruction: it is from this that it saves. It is free from it, enters into it, deals with it, and leaves it redeemed. It is done by labours within what is to be saved, as one works on a panel-beating for a smashed vehicle. It is not part of its object of salvation, or it would participate in its ruin. It is not responsible for the ruin, being as Creator the institutor of the exact opposite.

Salvation is a labour of the Creator who, seeing the abuse of his creation, acts to rescue within it. But what does He rescue ? Is man with his responsibility in weighing courses of action, and resolving issues according to his satisfaction or will, or some vision of his own, to be absolved as if he knew only what can pass muster as rational and responsible, as if he were some angelic being ? Does he not both wreak vengeance and indulge ambition to overcome by guile, what is far better ? Is he not conscious when he bypasses the gifts and power of God, and acts in his own psyche ? Is not lust in his ways and intoxication in his dreams, which seizing the reins of power, become other people's nightmares! Is man to be blind because history is awake!

Since man daily acts in ambition, devastation whether of the morals which make him workable, or the design which makes him an assignable entity, or in, on or over the bodies or minds of those obliterated or obfuscated by his follies, what is the use of pretending that goodness is his nature ? It is contrary to the evidence. If some prefer to ignore their Maker, what is good in that  ? If others prefer to make fresh versions of Him,  contrary to the evidence, what is the value in that ? If some want to force their imaginations on other people, as in Communism (Index-Mini) Islam (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4) in many of its ways and codes, Romanism as in the Inquisition (Ancient Words ... Ch. 14) and participation in counsel of kings (SMR p.921), what is good about that ? Is not conniving and surviving and forcing without ground, elevating what has no evidential authority over millions, a folly that wreaks vengeance on man, before any divine retribution!

To obviate man's wreckage, which continues to wreck, since at present it is only partial and threatening as Christ foretold (Matthew 24:22), is the power and pursuit of an  imagination that refuses to face the disease. Imagine something, call it religion or atheism or agnosticism, and gallop! This is not so much begging the question but ignoring it, like a flighty horse. To rectify man amid his wreckage, this is labour and in the God of truth, verification and  validation is expressed in the Bible (cf. TMR Ch. 5, Barbs ... 6    -7, Deity and Design ...  8); and it is called salvation.

It does not apply to this world until the contradictions and contrary dynamics, instead of interminably confronting each other, are overcome in judgment; but when that time comes,  so does a time to exhibit in this world, the glory of God as in Isaiah 11 and Psalm 72, Revelation 20.

In the meantime, which is now, a testing time amid the various forces, with God in His own being, not one of them, or with them, or contained with them, but their Creator, what occurs from Him, which is beyond, over and for it ?  It is the salvation which by Him, together with creation is work done; and it is made available just as bodies were made available for the spirit of created man  at the first. This salvation has two parts.  First and now, when found and accepted, received and applied, it is a coverage of the guilt of contrariness without God (cf. Isaiah 52-53), or in war on Him, or in indifference to Him (like a child ignoring the rules of the table, or a horse those of the stable), a provision to exempt by sacrifice, from a vast and literal impertinence on the part of fallen man. It proceeds through repentance to redemption by this self-same sacrifice of the Saviour.

By labour in bearing this sin, a work available for one and for all, in application, and covering as many as will come (Romans 8:32), by HIm, guilt is covered through sacrifice. The adequacy of the covering is in itself covered by the blood of the sacrifice, which being that of the only begotten Son of God, sent in major thrust for this very purpose, is a sufficient atonement, bearing the debts with credits, the evil by the overpowering liberality of divine good, the dynamic of devilishness with the power of God. So does He act  for the spoiled design of God, fallen man, gifted with an abused liberty, and a surging licence!

Purging by purifying, pardoning by accepting the bill, He has intervened once for all, sufficient for all, effective for some, relatively few, but overall, very many indeed (I John 1:7-2:2, Matthew 7:15ff., Revelation 7). Thus God who senbt made Him whom He sent,  who knew no sin, to become sin for us (that is a sin offering, bearing it as in II Corinthians 5:17ff.). As always, it affects only those who receive it by faith (John 8:24), for those whose sin He bears as in Isaiah 53, these are those who are HEALED by His stripes. He does not throw spiritual cash about, but assigns and consigns it where it comes to lodge.

That is a gift sent FROM outside this world and no part of it; but it is PLACED inside this world, just as the Saviour was in His incarnation time so to act;  and it is sufficient for any sinner within this same world, while entirely useless for those who, like impudent children, refuse to know their sin, and seeing nothing beyond themselves and their squinting vision, are wilfully limited by their selves. The convicting power of God can be resisted (as in Acts 7:51-53). Laundry that is never deposited is never washed. What is never washed but far from perfect, is never clean. Thus God speaks in Jeremiah 13:27:

"Woe to you, O Jerusalem, will you not be made clean  ? when shall it once be ?

Certainly this is selective. God who selected first what the creation should be, then acted to make it with labour, saves some and not others. Some do not DESIRE salvation, some do not admit they need it, others fear to consider it: but in the end, each takes or does not take it. It is present from the power of the Creator-Redeemer, who is not a principle or feature or functionality within it, but its origin, explanation and historic institutor; and it is capable of rejection by man who surveys with the power of the spirit put in him, and the evidence presented to him, and  using his own will, seeks what he wants.

He may want purity but refuse to pay the price; he may not want purity and love to find in its denial, a temporary satisfaction. He may want to BE God, or to be PART of God or some other ruinous feature contrary to reason, revelation and demonstrable reality. There are many reasons WHY man may avoid salvation, free though it is (Ephesians 2, Galatians 3, Romans 5). He may prefer to confuse himself, lest the light come to his mind and the guilt stain himself so obviously that it can no longer be hidden (as in Matthew 13:15ff.).

However, equally he may yield and surrender to the call to be clean (Luke 14:31-33), from God, and accepting washing from evil (Titus 3), find in this same Christ release from the debt of guilt, and acknowledging the claims of God as his Author, become an adopted child of God. Certainly, his now damaged equipment, whether in mind or will,  is a liability for such choice. However PART of this salvation from God is precisely the provision for the operation of the will of man, without violation or seduction.

Thus though being surrounded by internal sin, man in and by himself CANNOT choose God, yet it is God who can operate the will of man, having known each one of our race before time brought that one to be, that choice to issue or that issue to resolution. This is called foreknowledge, and truth has it. When man comes to the point of salvation, then, God is there before him in time, in knowledge, in foreknowledge, and the result in truth is known to Him; for the clouded will of man does not shroud from God, and the deadened spirit of man is not exempted from the transformative presence of God, and lifelessness is not identical with inability to revive. Yet for all that, man does not choose in the flesh, but as enabled by the Spirit in terms of what God knew before time worked to warp man and disease blinded him towards God.

What God releases, rather like the power in an atomic bomb, but for construction not destruction, is the truth in man's disposition, for or against God, as freely apparent before time. As it IS the truth, there is no complexity, and the desire obscured is now the fire released and man becomes freely a child of God.

God does all things well.

There is all but unspeakable myth-making and obfuscation by man; but the soul that finds God, as with David, blesses God with ALL his being, seeking every part to praise Him, as He in every part releases man from his doldrums, false dynamics and other components of the storms on spiritual norms, which being vested in God, are found for their termination, likewise only in Him, and in His salvation.

 

*2

See SMR p. 996.

In this area more extensively, see also Appendix to Religion, Religiosity and Reality in Christ Jesus,
and *6 therein, in particular.

The title of this Appendix is

APPENDIX to CHAPTER FOUR

CLUBS USED ON CHRIST

HIS PEOPLE AND HIS WORD.

The volume itself is found here.

In this field more broadly, see SMR  1011- 1026,  with emphasis on Buddhism, and 996-1008 - more concerning Hinduism and such categories