Knowing God by J I Packer

KNOWING GOD

by J I Packer

KNOWING GOD

by J I Packer

FOREWORD

Picture of person sitting on high front balcony of Spanish house watching travellers go by on the road below.  The balconeers can overhear the travellers talk and chat with them; they may comment critically on way travellers walk or they may discuss questions about road, how it can exist at all or lead anywhere, what might be seen from different points along it and so forth but they are onlookers and their problems are theoretical only.  The travellers by contrast face problems which though they have their theoretical angle are essentially practical - problems of the "which way to go" and "how to make it" type, problems which call not merely for comprehension but for decision and action too.

Evil = balconeers problem is to find a theoretical explanation of how evil can consist with God`s sovereignty and goodness.  Traveller = how to master evil and bring good out of it.

Sin = balconeer asks whether racial sinfulness and personal perversity are really credible.  Traveller = knowing sin from within asks what hope there is of deliverance.

Godhead = balconeer is asking how one God can conceivably be 3, what sort of unity 3 could have and how 3 who make one can be persons.  Traveller = wants to know how to show proper honour, love and trust towards 3 persons who are now together at work to bring him out of sin to glory.

Ignorance of God - ignorance of both of his ways and of the practice of communion with him - lies at root of much of the church`s weakness today.  2 unhappy trends seem to have produced this state of affairs:

Christian minds have been conformed to modern spirit - spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God.  Set God at a distance if not to deny him altogether.  Have allowed God to become remote despite being preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligious world.  Thoughts of death, eternity, judgment, the greatness of the soul and abiding consequences of temporal decisions are all "out" for moderns and Christian church has formed habit of playing down these themes in just same way.

Christian minds have been confused by the modern scepticism.  Bible has come under heavy fire.  The foundation facts of faith are called in question.

Jeremiah 6 verse 16 "Stand ye in the way and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."

CHAPTER 1 The study of God

"Is our journey really necessary  ... why need anyone take time of today for the kind of study you propose?"  The questioner clearly assumes that a study of the nature and character of God will be unpractical and irrelevant for life.  Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives.  We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.  Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.  This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.

Where do we start from?  From where we are!

5 basic truths, 5 foundation principles of the knowledge about God which Christians have will determine our course throughout.

God has spoken to man and the Bible is His word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation

God is Lord and King over His world; He rules all things for His own glory, displaying His perfections in all that He does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore Him.

God is Saviour, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as His sons, and to bless them accordingly.

God is Triune; there are within the Godhead 3 persons, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; and the work of salvation is one in which all 3 act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.

Godliness means responding to God`s revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service.  Life must be seen and lived in the light of God`s word.  This and nothing else is true religion.

We shall have to deal with the Godhead of God - qualities which set God apart from men and mark the difference and distance between the Creator and His creatures: such as His self-existence, His infinity, His eternity, His unchangeableness.  Deal with the powers of God: His almightiness, His omniscience, His omnipresence.  Deal with the perfections of God, the aspects of His moral character which are maifested in His words and deeds - His holiness, His love and mercy, His truthfulness, His faithfulness, His goodness, His patience, His justice.  We shall have to take note of what pleases Him, what offends Him, what awakens His wrath, what affords Him satisfaction and joy.

What is God?  God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth - Westminster Shorter Catechism

What is my ultimate aim and object in occupying my mind with these things?  What do I intende to do with my knowledge about God, once I have got it?

Psalm 119 the Psalmist`s concern to get knowledge about God was not a theoretical but a practical concern.  His supreme desire was to know and enjoy God Himself, and he valued knowledge about God simply as a means to this end.  He wanted to understand God`s truth in order that his heart might respond to it and his life be conformed to it.  "blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.  Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart ... O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes." (verses 1, 2 and 5)  His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand.

Our aim in studying the Godhead must be to know God himself the better.  We must seek in studying God to be led to God.

How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God?  We must turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.

Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on and applying to oneself the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God.

 Chapter 2 - The People Who Know Their God

Not many of us would ever naturally say that we have known God.  The words imply a definiteness and matter-of-factness of experience to which most of us have to admit we are still strangers.  We claim, to have a testimony and can rattle off our conversion story; we say that we know God - this is what evangelicals are expected to say: but would it occur to us to say, without hesitation, and with reference to particular events in our personal history, that we have known God?  

Nor would we naturally say that in the light of the knowledge of God in which we have come to enjoy past disappointments and present heartbreaks, that they don`t matter.  To most of us they do matter.  We live with them as our "crosses".  Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them, which we frequently do.

"What things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ.  Yea verily and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that I may gain Christ and be found in him ... that I may know him ..." Philippians 3 verses 7 - 10

Paul means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind.  Yet this is what many of us do!  It show how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God.

We can state the gospel clearly, and can smell unsound doctrine a mile away.  If anyone asks us how men may know God, we can at one produce the right formulae - that we come to know God through Jesus Christ the Lord, in virtue of His cross and mediation, on the basis of His word of promise, by the power of the Holy Spirit, via a personal exercise of faith.

A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him.

First, one can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of Him.  We find in ourselves a deep interest in theology.  We read books of theological exposition and apologetics.  We dip into Christian history and study the Christian creed.  We learn to find our way around in the scriptures.   Others appreciate our interest in these things and we find ourselves asked to give our opinion in public on this or that Christian question, to lead study groups, to give papers, to write articles and generally to accept responsibility, informal if not formal, for acting as teachers and arbiters of orthodoxy in our own Christian circle.  Our friends tell us how much they value our contribution and this spurs us to further explorations of God`s truth, so that we may be equal to the demands made upon us.  All very fine - yet interest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing Him. 

Second, one can know a great deal about godliness without much knowledge of God.  It depends on the sermons one hears, the books one reads and the company one keeps.  It is possible to learn a great deal at second hand about the practice of Christianity.  Yet one can have all this and hardly know God at all.

The question is not whether we are good at theology or balanced in our approach to problems of Christian living; the question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is plain matter of fact, that we have known God and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us?  

What other effects does knowledge of God have on a man?  Think of Daniel ...

Those who know God have great energy for God.  Daniel 11 verse 32 "the people that know their God shall be strong and do exploits"  The action taken by those who know God is their reaction to the anti-God trends which they see operating around them.  While their God is being defied or disregarded, they cannot rest; they feel they must do something; the dishonour done to God`s name goads them into action.  Daniel and his 3 friends knew God and in consequence felt compelled from time to time actively to stand out against the conventions and dictates of irreligion and false religion.  Daniel in particular appears as one who would not let a situation of that sort slide but felt bound openly to challenge it.  Rather than risk possible ritual defilement through eating palace food, he insisted on a vegetarian diet to the consternation of the prince of eunuchs (Daniel 1 verses 8 - 16).  

When Darius suspended the practice of prayer for a month, on pain of death Daniel not merely went on praying 3 times a day but did so in front of an open window, so that everyone might see what he was doing (chapter 6 verse 10)

Those who know their God are sensitive to situations in which God`s truth and honour are being directly or tacitly jeopardised and rather than let the matter go by default will force the issue on men`s attention and seek thereby to compel a change of heart about it - even at personal risk.

Men who know their God are before anything else men who pray and the first point where their zeal and energy for God`s glory come to expression is in their prayers.

In Daniel 9 we read how, when the prophet "understood by the books" that the foretold time of Israel`s captivity was drawing to an end, and when at the same time he realised that the nation`s sin was still such as to provoke God to judgment rather than mercy, he set himself to seek God "by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes (verse 3) and prayed for the restoring of Jerusalem with a vehemence and passion and agony of spirit to which most of us are complete strangers.  Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God`s cause - energy, indeed, which can only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channelled into such prayer - and the more knowledge the more energy!

We can all pray about the ungodliness and apostasy which we see in everyday life all around us.  If however, there is in us little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.

Those who know God have great thoughts of God. In the book of Daniel there is no more vivid or sustained presentation of the many-sided reality of God`s sovereignty in the whole Bible.  In face of the might and splendour of the Babylonian empire which had swallowed up Palestine and the prospect of further great world-empires to follow, dwarfing Israel by every standard of human calculation, the book as a whole forms a dramatic reminder that the God of Israel is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that "heavens do rule" (chapter 4 verse 6), that God`s hand is on history at every point, that history, indeed, is no more than "His story" the unfolding of His eternal plan and that the kingdom which will triumph in the end is God`s.

The central truth which Daniel taught Nebuchadnezzar in chapters 2 and 4 and of which he reminded Belshazzar in chapter 5 (verses 18 - 23) and which Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged in chapter 4 (verses 34 - 37) and which was the basis of Daniel`s prayers in chapter 2 and 9, and of his confidence in defying authority in chapters 1 and 6 and of which God made to Daniel in chapters 2, 4, 7, 8 and 10 and 11 - 12 is the truth that "the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men" (chapter 4 verse 25, chapter 5 verse 21).  He knows and foreknows, all things, and His foreknowledge is foreordination; He therefore, will have the last word, both in world history and in the destiny of every man; His kingdom and righteousness will triumph in the end, for neither men nor angels shall be able to thwart Him.

These were the thoughts of God which filled Daniel`s mind - witness his prayers chapter 2 verse 20 and chapter 9 verses 4, 7, 9 and 14 - is this the view of God which our own praying expresses?  By this test we may measure how much or how little we know God.

Those who know God show great boldness for God.  Daniel and his friends were men who stuck their necks out.  They knew what they were doing.  They had counted the cost.  They had measured the risk.  They were well aware what the outcome of their actions would be unless God miraculously intervened, as in fact He did.  But these things did not move them.  Once they were convinced that their stand was right and that loyalty to their God required them to take it.   This is the spirit of all who know God.  They may find the determination of the right course to take agonisingly difficult, but once they are clear on it they embrace it boldly and without hesitation.  It does not worry them that others of God`s people see the matter differently, and do not stand with them.  By this test also we may measure our own knowledge of God.

Those who know God have great contentment in God.  There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them and that this relationship guarantees God`s favour to them in life, through death and on for ever.  Romans 8 verses 1, 16, 28, 30, 33 and 35.  This is the peace which Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego knew; hence the calm contentment with which they stood their ground in face of Nebuchadnezzar`s ultimatum - "if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?" Their reply?  "O Nebuchadnezzar we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.  If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us ... and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.  But if not be it known unto thee O king, that we will not serve thy gods"  The comprehensiveness of our contentment is another measure whereby we may judge whether we really know God.

Do we desire such knowledge of God? Then ...

First, we must recognise how much we lack knowledge of God.  We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts.

Second, we must seek the Saviour.  When He was on the earth, He invited men to company with HIm; thus they came to know Him and in knowing Him to know His Father.  The OT records pre-incarnate manifestations of the Lord Jesus doing the same thing - companying with men, in character as the angel of the Lord - Daniel 3 verse 25 a fourth person appeared in the fiery furnace, Daniel 6 verse 22 who shut the lions mouths?  The Lord Jesus is now absent from us in body, but spiritually it makes no difference; still we may find and know God through seeking and finding His company.  It is those who have sought the Lord Jesus till they have found Him - for the promise is that when we seek Him with all our hearts, we shall surely find Him - who can stand before the world to testify that they have known God.

 Chapter 3 Knowing and Being known

We were made to know God.  Our aim in life should be to know God.  The "eternal life" that Jesus gives is knowledge of God.  "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John 17 verse 3)  What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and contentment than anything else?  Knowledge of God.  "Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me." (Jeremiah 9 verse 23)  What, of all the states God ever sees man in, gives Him most pleasure?  Knowledge of Himself "I desire ... the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." says God (Hosea 6 verse 6)

This provides at once a foundation, shape and goal for our lives, plus a principle of priorities and a scale of values.  Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life`s problems fall into place of their own accord.  What higher, more exalted and more compelling can there be than to know God?

What are we talking about when we use the phrase "knowing God".  What activity or event is it that can properly be described as "knowing God"?

Knowing God is of necessity a more complex business than "knowing" a fellow-man.  Knowledge of something abstract like a language is acquired by learning; knowledge of something inanimate like Ben Nevis or the British Museum comes by inspection and exploration.  When one gets to living things, knowing them becomes a good deal more complicated.  One does not know a living thing till one knows, not merely its past history, but how it is likely to react and behave under specific circumstances.  In the case of human beings people cover up and do not show everybody all that is in their hearts.  We recognise degrees in our knowledge of our fellow-men; we know them, we say "well", "not very well", "just to shake hands with", "intimately" or perhaps "inside out" according to how much, or how little, they have opened up to us when we meet them.

The quality and extent of our knowledge of them depends more on them than on us.  Our knowing them is more directly the result of their allowing us to know them than of our attempting to get to know them.  When we meet, our part is to give them our attention and interest, to show them good-will and to open up in a friendly way from our side.  From that point, however, it is they, not we, who decide whether we are going to know them or not.

Well might God say through Jeremiah "Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me" - for knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a man`s heart.  The almighty Creator, the Lord of Hosts, the great God comes to him and begins to talk to him, through the words and truths of the Holy Scripture.  Perhaps he has been acquainted with the bible and Christian truth for many years and it has meant nothing to him; but one day he wakes up to the fact that God is actually speaking to him - him! - through the biblical message.  As he listens to what God is saying, God is talking to him about his sin, and guilt and weakness and blindness and folly and compels him to judge himself hopeless and helpless and to cry out for forgiveness.  He comes to realise as he listens that God is actually opening his heart to him, making friends with him and enlisting him a colleague, a covenant partner.

The relationship in which sinful human beings know God is one in which God, takes them on to his staff, to be henceforth his fellow-workers and personal friends.

What then does the activity of knowing God involve?  

First listening to God`s word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself.

Second, noting God`s nature and character, as his word and works reveal it.

Third, accepting his invitations, and doing what he commands.

Fourth, recognising and rejoicing in, the love that He has shown in thus approaching one and drawing on into this divine fellowship.

The bible uses pictures and analogies and telling us that we know God in the manner of a son knowing his father, a wife knowing her husband, a subject knowing his king and a sheep knowing its shepherd.  All 4 analogies point to a relation in which the knower "looks up" to the one known and the latter responsibility for the welfare of the former.  This is part of the biblical concept of knowing God, that those who know Him - that is, those by whom he allows himself to be known - are loved and cared for by him.

The disciples were ordinary Galileans with no special claims on the interest of Jesus.  But Jesus, the rabbi who spoke with authority, the prophet who was more than a prophet, the master who evoked in them increasing awe and devotion till they could not but acknowledge him as their God, found them, called them to Himself, took them into his confidence and enrolled them as his agents to declare to the world the kingdom of God "He appointed 12 to be with him and to be sent out to preach ..." (Mark 3 verse 14)  They recognised the one who had chosen them and called them friends as "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16 verse 16), the man  born to be king, the bearer of "the words of eternal life" (John 6 verse 68) and the sense of allegiance and privilege which this knowledge brought transformed their whole lives.

The only difference today is that, first, His presence with the Christian is spiritual not bodily and so invisible to our physical eyes, second, the Christian building on the NT witness knows from the start those truths about the deity and atoning sacrifice of Jesus which the original disciples grasped gradually over a period of years and third, that Jesus` way of speaking to us now is not by uttering fresh words but rather by applying to our consciences those words of his that are recorded in the gospels, together with the rest of the biblical testimony to himself.

But knowing Jesus Christ still remains as definite a relation of personal discipleship as it was for the 12 when he was on the earth.  The Jesus who walks through the gospel story walks with the Christians now and knowing him involves going with him, now as then.

"My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me" John 10 verse 27

"I am the bread of life ... the door of the sheep ... the good shepherd ... the resurrrection" John 6 verse 35, 10 verse 7, 14 and chapter 11 verse 25

"He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him.  Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life" John 5 verse 23

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me and ye shall find rest."  Matthew 11 verse 28

Jesus voice is "heard" when Jesus` claim is acknowledged, His promise trusted, and His call answered.

"I know them and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." John 10 verse 27

To know Jesus is to be saved by Jesus, here and hereafter, from sin, guilt and death.

First, knowing God is a matter of personal dealing, as is all direct acquaintance with personal beings.  It is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you and begin dealt with him by him as he takes knowledge of you.  You can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer  and a simple Bible-reader and sermon-hearer who is full of the Holy Ghost will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Saviour than more learned men who are content with being theologically correct.  The reason is that the former will deal with God regarding the practical application of truth to his life, whereas the latter will not.

Second, knowing God is a matter of personal involvement in mind, will and feeling.  "O taste and see that the Lord is good" Psalm 34 verse 8.  To taste is as we sya to try a mouthful of something with a view to appreciate its flavour.  The emotional side is often played down for fear of encouraging a maudalin self-absorption.  Knowing God is an emotional relationship as well as an intellectual and volitional one and could not indeed by a deep relation between persons were it not so.

Third, knowing God is a matter of grace.  It is a relationship in which the intiative throughout is with God.  We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us.  "Now that you have come to know God or rather to be known by God ..." Galatians 4 verse 9.  Grace came first and remains fundamental in our salvation.  "Know" when used of God in this way, is a sovereign-grace word, pointing to God`s initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and persevering.

"And the Lord said unto Moses ... thou hast found grace in my sight and I know thee by name" Exodus 13 verse 17

"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee." Jeremiah 1 verse 5

"I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine ... and I lay down my life for the sheep ... My sheep hear my voice and I know them .. and they shall never perish" John 10 verse 14 and 27

It is a knowledge that implies personal affection, redeeming action, covenant faithfulness and providential watchfulness, towards those whom God knows.  It implies in other words, salvation, now and for ever.

What matters supremely is that He knows me.  I am graven on the palms of his hands, I am never out of his mind.  All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me.  I know him, because he first knew me and continues to know me.  He knows me as a friend, one who loves me and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore when his care falters.

 CHAPTER 4 The only true God

Idolatry - there are some very subtle forms of idolatry.  Second commandment "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God ..." Exodus 20 verse 4.

If it stood alone it would be natural to suppose that it refers to the worship of images of gods other than Jehovah - the Babylonian idol-worship, for instance which Isaiah derided - Isaiah 44 verse 9 and chapter 46 verse 1 or the paganism of the Graeco-Roman world of Paul`s day - Romans 1 verses 23 and 25 "they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts and creeping things ... they changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator ..."  But in its context the second commandment can hardly be referring to this sort of idolatry, for if it were it would simply be repeating the thought of the first commandment without adding anything to it.

"Idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images." (Charles Hodge)

This means that we are not to make use of visual or pictorial representations of the Triune God or of any person of the Trinity for the purposes of Christian worship.  The commandment deals not with the object of our worship but with the manner of it; what it tells us is that statues and pictures of the One whom we worship are not to be used as an aid to worshipping Him.

What harm is there in the worshipper surrounding himself with statues and pictures, if they help him to lift his heart to God?  We are accustomed to treat the question of whether these things should be used or not as a matter of temperament and personal taste.  We know that some people have crucifixes and pictures of Christ in their rooms and they tell us that looking at these objects helps them to focus their thoughts on Christ when they pray.  We know that many claim to be able to worship more freely and easily in churches that are filled with such ornaments than they can in churches that are bare of them  What is wrong with that?  What harm can these things do?  If people really do find them helpful, what more is there to be said?  What point can there be in prohibiting them?  Some say the second commandment only applies to immoral and degrading representations of God, borrowed from pagan cults and to nothing more.

But the very wording of the commandment rules out such a limiting exposition.  God says quite categorically "thou shalt not make any likeness of any thing" for use in worship.  This categorical statement rules out, not simply the use of pictures and statues which depict God as an animal, but also the use of pictures and statues which depict him as the highest created thing we know - a man.  It also rules out the use of pictures and statues of Jesus Christ as a man, although Jesus himself was and remains Man; for all pictures and statues are necessarily made after the "likeness" of ideal manhood as we conceive it, and therefore come under the ban which the commandment imposes.

Historically Christians have differed as to whether the second commandment forbids the use of pictures of Jesus for purposes of teaching and instruction (eg Sunday School classes) and the question is not an easy one to settle; but there is no room for doubting that the commandment obliges us to dissociate our worship both in public and in private from all pictures and statues of Christ, no less that from pictures and statues of his Father.

What is the point of this comprehensive prohibition?  From the emphasis given to the commandment itself, with the frightening sanction attached to it (proclaiming of God`s jealousy and his severity in punishing transgressors), one would suppose that this must really be a matter of crucial importance.  But is it?  Yes!  The bible shows us that the glory of God and the spiritual well-being of man are both directly bound up with it.  2 lines of thought are set before us which together amply explain why this comandment should have been stressed so emphatically.  These lines of thought relate, not to the real or supposed helpfulness of images but to the truth of them.

They are as follows:

Images dishonour God for they obscure his glory.  The likeness of things in heaven (sun, moon, stars) and in the earth (men, animals, birds, insects) and in the sea (fishes, mammals, crustaceans) is precisely not a likeness of their creator.  Calvin "A true image of God is not to be found in all the world; and hence ... His glory is defiled and his truth corrupted by the lie, whenever he is set before our eyes in a visible form ... Therefore to devise any image of God is itself impious; because by this corruption his majesty is unadulterated and he is figured to be other than he is.  The point here is not just that an image represents God as having body and parts whereas in reality he has neither.  If this were the only ground of objection to images, representations of Christ would be blameless. But the point really goes much deeper.  The heart of the objection to pictures and images is that they inevitably conceal most, if not all, of the truth about the personal nature and character of the divine being whom they represent.

Illustration: Aaron made a golden calf (a bull image).  It was meant as a visible symbol of Jehovah, the mighty God who had brought Israel out of Egypt.  No doubt the image was thought to honour him, as being a fitting symbol of his great strength.  But it is not hard to see that such a symbol in fact insults him; for what idea of his moral character, his righteousness, goodness and patience could one gather from looking at a statue of him as a bull.  Aaron`s image hid Jehovah`s glory.  The paths of the crucifix obscures the glory of Christ, for it hides the fact of his deity, his victory on the cross and his present kingdom.  It displays his human weakness but it conceals his divine strength; it depicts the reality of his pain but keeps out of our sight the reality of his joy and his power.  In both these cases, the symbol is unworthy most of all because of what it fails to display.  And so are all other visible representations of deity.

We should not look to pictures of God to show us his glory and move us to worship; for his glory is precisely what such pictures can never show us.  And this is why God added to the second commandment a reference to himself as "jealous" to avenge himself on those who disobey him: for God`s "jealousy" in the bible is his zeal to maintain his own glory, which is jeopardised when images are used in worship.  In Isaiah 40 verse 18 after vividly declaring God`s immeasurable greatness, the scripture asks us "To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?"  The question does not expect an answer, only a chastened silence.  Its purpose is to remind us that is as absurd as it is impious to think that an image modelled, as images must be upon some creature could be an acceptable likeness of the creator. 

Images mislead men.  They convey false ideas about God.  The very inadequacy with which they represent him perverts our thougths of him and plants in our minds errors of all sorts about his character and will.  Aaron by making an image of God in the form of a bull-calf, led the Israelites to think of him as a being who could be worshipped acceptably by frenzied debauchery.  Hence the "feast" to the Lord" which Aaron organised - Exodus 32 verse 5 became a shameful orgy.  Again it is a matter of historical fact that the use of the crucifix as an aid to prayer has encouraged people to equate devotion with brooding over Christ`s bodily sufferings; it has made them morbid about the spiritual value of physical pain and it has kept them from knowledge of the risen Saviour.

Psychologically it is certain that if you habitually focus your thoughts on an image or picture of the one to whom you are going to pray, you will come to think of him and pray to him, as the image represents him.  Thus you will in this sense "bow down" and "worship" your image and to the extent to which the image fails to tell the truth about God, to that extent you will fail to worship God in truth.  That is why God forbids you and me to make use of images and pictures in our worship.

The realisation that images and pictures of God affect our thoughts of God points to a further realm in which the prohibition of the second commandment applies.  Just as it forbids us to manufacture molten images of God, so it forbids us to dream up mental images of him.  Imagining God in our heads can be just as real a breach of the second commandment as imagining him by the work of our hands.

Those who hold themselves free to think of God as they like are breaking the second commandment.  At best, they can only think of God in the image of man - as an ideal man, perhaps or a super-man.  But God is not any sort of man.  We were made in his image but we must not think of him as existing in ours.  To think of God in such terms is to be ignorant of him, not to know him  All speculative theology which rests on philosophical reasoning rather than biblical revelation is at fault here.  Paul tells us where this sort of theology ends: "the world by wisdom knew not God." 1 Corinthians 1 verse 21.  To follow the imagination of one`s heart in the realm of theology is the way to remain ignorant of God and to become an idol-worshipper - the idol in this case being a false mental image of God "made unto thee" by speculation and imagination.

The positive purpose of the second commandment becomes plain.  Negatively it is a warning against ways of worship and religious practice that lead us to dishonour God and to falsify his truth.  Positively it is a summons to us to recognise that God the creator is transcendent, mysterious and inscrutable, beyond the range of any imagining or philosophical guesswork of which we are capable and hence a summons to us to humble ourselves, to listen and learn of him and to let him teach us what he is like and how we should think of him.  "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways ... for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55 verse 8.  Paul speaks in the same vein "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord?" Romans 11 verse 33.

God is not the sort of person that we are; his wisdom, his aims, his scale of values, his mode of procedure, differ so vastly from our own that we cannot possibly guess our way to them by intuition or infer them by analogy from our notion of ideal manhood.  We cannot know him unless he speaks and tells us about himself.  But in fact he has spoken.  He has spoken to and through his prophets and apostles and he has spoken in the words and deeds of his own Son.  Through this revelation, which is made available to us in Holy Scripture, we may form a true notion of God; without it we never can.  Thus it appears that the positive force of the second commandment is that it compels us to take our thoughts of God from his own holy Word and from no other source whatsoever.

That this is the commandment`s positive thrust seems plain from the very form in which it is stated.  Having forbidden the making and worshipping of images, God declares himself "jealous" to punish, not image-worshippers as such but all who "hate" him, in the sense of disregarding his commandments as a whole.  The natural and expected thing in the context would be a specific threat to image-users; why, instead is God`s threat generalised?  Surely this is in order to make us realise that those who make images and use them in worship and thus inevitably take their theology from them, will in fact tend to neglect God`s revealed will at every point.  The mind that takes up with images is a mind that has not yet learned to love and attend to God`s word.  Those who look to man-made images, material or mental, to lead them to God are not likely to take any part of his revelation as seriously as they should.

In Deuteronomy 4, Moses himself expounds the prohibition of images in worship along exactly thse lines, opposing the making of images to the heeding of God`s word and commandments as if these 2 things were completely exclusive of each other.  He reminds people that at Sinai, though they saw tokens of God`s presence, they saw no visible representation of God himself, but only heard his word and he exhorts them to continue to live, as it were, at the foot of the mount, with God`s own word ringing in their ears to direct them and no supposed image of God before their eyes to distract them.

God did not show them a visible symbol of himself, but spoke to them; therefore they are not now to seek visible symbols of God but simply to obey his word.  If it be said that Moses was afraid of the Israelites borrowing designs for images from the idolatrous nations around them, our reply is that undoubtedly he was, and this is exactly the point: all man-made images of God, whether molten or mental, are really borrowings from the stock-in-trade of a sinful and ungodly world and are bound therefore to be out of accord with God`s own holy word.  To make an image of God is to take one`s thoughts of him from a human source, rather than from God himself; and this is precisely what is wrong with image-making.

How far are we keeping the second commandment?  Are we sure that the God whom we seek to worship is the God of the Bible, the Triune Jehovah?  Do we worship the one true God in truth? or are our ideas of God such that in reality we do not believe in the Christian God but in some other, just as the Moslem or Jew or Jehovah`s Witness does not believe in the Christian God, but in some other?

How can I tell?  The test is this.  The God of the Bible has spoken in his Son.  The light of the knowledge of his glory is given to us in the face of Jesus Christ.  Do I look habitually to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as showing me the final truth about the nature and the grace of God? Do I see all the purposes of God as centering upon Him?

If I have been enabled to see this, and in mind and heart to go to Calvary and lay hold of the Calvary solution, then I can know that I truly worship the true God and that He is my God and that I am even now enjoying eternal life, according to our Lord` own definition, "this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John 17 verse 3)

 CHAPTER 5  God Incarnate

It is no wonder that thoughtful people find the gospel of Jesus hard to believe, for the realities with which it deals pass man`s understanding.  Take the atonement for instance.  How they ask, can we believe that the death of Jesus of Nazareth - put away a world`s sins?  How can that death have any bearing on God`s forgiveness of our sins today?  Or take the resurrection - how can we believe that Jesus rose physically from the dead?  It is hard to deny that the tomb was empty but surely the difficulty of believing that Jesus emerged from it into unending bodily life is even greater?  Or, again, take the virgin birth - how can one possibly believe in such a biological anomaly?  Or take the gospel miracles; many find a source of difficulty here - how can one believe that he walked on the water, or fed the 5000 or raised the dead?  Stories like that are surely quite incredible.  With these and similar problems many minds on the fringes of faith are deeply perplexed today.  The real difficulty, because the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us, does not lie here at all.  It lies in the Christmas message of incarnation.  The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man - that the second person of the Godhead became the second man determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race and that he took humanity without loss of deity so that Jesus was as truly and fully divine as he was human.  Here are 2 mysteries for the price of one - the plurality of persons within the unity of God and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus.  It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie "The Word was made flesh" (John 1 verse 14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.  And there was no illusion or deception in this; the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality.  

It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring.  But once the incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.

If Jesus was the same person as the eternal Word, the Father`s agent in creation, "through whom also he made the world" (Hebrews 1 verse 2) it is no wonder if fresh acts of creative power marked his coming into this world, and his life in it, and his exit from it.  It is not strange that he, the author of life, should rise from the dead.  If he was truly God the Son, it is much more startling that he should die than he should rise again.  And if the immortal Son of God did really submit to taste death, it is not strange that such a death should have saving significance for a doomed race.  Once we grant that Jesus was divine, it becomes unreasonable to find difficulty in any of this; it is all of a piece and hangs together completely.  The incarnation is in itself an unfathomable mystery, but it make sense of everything else that the New Testament contains.

For the gospel writers the point of the story lies not in the circumstances of the birth (save in the one respect that it fulfilled prophecy, by taking place in Bethlehem) but rather in the identity of the baby.  The New Testament has 2 thoughts to convey in this respect:

The baby born at Bethlehem was God

He was the Son of God.  The Son, note, not a Son: as John says 4 times in the first 3 chapters of his gospel, in order to make quite sure that his readers understand the uniqueness of Jesus, he was the "only begotten" Son of God.  What does the bible mean when it calls Jesus the Son of God?  John was writing for readers of both Jewish and Greek background.  He wrote, as he tells us, in order that they "might know that Jesus is ... the Son of God; and ... believing ... might have life through his name."  It is as Son of God that he presents Jesus throughout the gospel. John wanted to make sure that when he wrote of Jesus as the Son of God he would not be understood (that is misunderstood) in such senses as these and to make it clear from the outset that the Sonship which Jesus claimed and which Christians ascribed to Him, was precisely a matter of personal deity and nothing less.  John speaks first of the Word.  Old Testament readers would pick up the reference at once, God`s Word in the Old Testament is his creative utterance, his power in action fulfilling his purpose.  The Old Testament depicted God`s utterance, the actual statement of his purpose, as having power in itself to effect the thing purposed.  Genesis 1 tells us how at creation "God said, Let there be ... and there was ..."  "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made ... he spake and it was done." (Psalm 33 verses 6 and 9).  The Word of God is thus God at work.   John takes up this figure and proceeds to tell us 7 things about the divine Word:

"In the beginning was the Word" verse 1.  Here is the Word`s eternity.  He had no beginning of his own; when other things began, he  - was.

"And the Word was with God."  Here is the Word`s personality.  The power that fulfils God`s purposes is the power of a distinct personal being, who stands in an eternal relation to God of active fellowship.

"And the Word was God."  Here is the Word`s deity.  Though personally distinct from the Father, He is not a creature; He is divine in himself, as the Father is.  The mystery with which this verse confronts us is thus the mystery of personal distinctions within the unity of the Godhead.

"All things were made by him"  Here is the Word creating.  He was the Father`s agent in every act of making that the Father has ever performed.  All that was made was made through him.

"In him was life."   Here is the Word animating.  There is no physical life in the realm of created things save in and through him.  Here is the Bible`s answer to the problem of the origin and continuance of life, in all its forms, life is given and maintained by the Word.  Created things do not have life in themselves, but life in the Word, the second person of the Godhead.

"And the life was the light of men."  Here is the Word revealing.  In giving life, He gives light too; that is to say, every man received intimations of God from the very fact of his being alive in God`s world and this, no less that the fact that he is alive, is due to the work of the Word.

"And the Word became flesh."  Here is the Word incarnate.  The baby in the manger of Bethlehem was none other than the eternal Word of God.

And now having shown us who and what the Word is - a divine Person, author of all things - John indicates an identification.  The Word, he tells us, was revealed by the incarnation to be God`s Son "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father."  The identification is confirmed in verse 18 "The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father ..."  Thus John establishes the point at which he was aiming throughout.  He has now made it clear what is meant by calling Jesus the Son of God.  The Son of God is the Word of God; we see what the Word is; well, that is what the Son is. 

When, therefore the Bible proclaims Jesus as the Son of God, the statement is meant as an assertion of his distinct personal deity.  The Christmas message rests on the staggering fact that the child in the manger was - God.

2.  The baby born at Bethlehem was God made man

The Word had become flesh; a real human baby.  He had not ceased to be God; he was no less God then than before; but He had begun to be man.  He was not now God minus some elements of his deity, but God plus all that he had made his own by taking manhood to himself.  He who made man was now learning what it felt like to be man.  He who made the angel who became the devil was now in a state in which he could be tempted - could not, indeed, avoid being tempted - by the devil; and the perfection of his human life was only achieved by conflict with the devil.  The Epistle to Hebrews, looking up to him in his ascended glory, draws great comfort from this fact "In all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren ... For in that he himself hath sufferd being tempted, he is able to help them that are tempted."  "We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 2 verse 17, 4 verse 15)

The mystery of the incarnation is unfathomable.  We cannot explain it; we can only formulate it.  perhaps it has never been formulated between than in the words of the Athanasian creed "Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man; ... perfect God, and perfect man; ... who although he be God and man; yet is he not two, but one Christ; one not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by taking of the manhood into God."  Our minds cannot get beyond this.

How are we to think of the incarnation?  The New Testament encourages us to worship God for the love that was shown it.  "He who had always been God by nature ... did not cling to his prerogatives as God`s equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man.  And, having become man, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying and the death he died was the death of a common criminal." (Philippians 2 verse 6)  And all this was for our salvation!  The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary and we do not understand it till we see it in this context.  2 Corinthians 8 verse 9 "ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich."  Here is stated the meaning of the incarnation - the taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way which shows us how we should set it before ourselves and ever view it - not simply as a marvel of nature but rather as a wonder of grace.

In Philippians 2 verse 7 the phrase translated by Phillips as "stripped himself of all privilege" and by the AV as "made himself of no reputation" is literally "emptied himself".  Does not this together with the statement in 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9 that Jesus "became poor" throw some light on the nature of the incarnation itself?  Does it not imply that a certain reduction of the Son`s deity was involved in his becoming man?  This is the so called kenoss theory, kenosis being the Greek word for "emptying".  The idea behind it in all its forms is that, in order to be fully human, the Son had to renounce some of his divine qualities, otherwise he could not have shared the experience of being limited in space, time, knowledge, and consciousness which is essential to truly human life.  The theory has been forumlated in different ways.  But the kenosis theory will not stand.  For, in the first place, it is a speculation to which the texts quoted for it do not give the least support.  When Paul talks of the Son as having emptied himsef and became poor, what he has in mind, as the context in each case shows, is the laying aside, not of divine powers and attributes but of divine glory and dignity, "the glory which I had with thee before the world was" as Christ put it in his great high-priestly prayer (John 17 verse 5).  There is no scripture support for the idea of the Son shedding any aspects of his deity.

The impression of Jesus which the gospels give is not that He was wholly bereft of divine knowledge and power, but that He drew on both intermittently, while being content for much of the time not to do so.  The impression, in other words, is not so much one of deity reduced as of divine capacities restrained.

How are we to account for this restraint?  Surely, in terms of the truth of which John`s gospel in particular makes so much, the entire submission of the Son to the Father`s will.  Part of the revealed mystery of the Godhead is that the 3 persons stand in a fixed relation to each other.  The Son appears in the gospels, not as an independent divine person but as a dependent one, who thinks and acts only and wholly as the Father directs.  "The Son can do nothing of himself, I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5 verses 19 and 30)  "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." (John 6 verse 38)  "I do nothing of myself ... I do always those things that please him." (John 8 verse 28).  It is the nature of the second person of the Trinity to acknowledge the authority and submit to the good pleasure of the first.  That is why he declares himself to be the Son, and the first person to be his Father.  Though co-equal with the Father in eternity, power and glory, it is natural to him to play the Son`s part and find all his joy in doing his Father`s will, just as it is natural to the first person of the Trinity to plan and initiate the works of the Godhead and natural to the third person to proceed from the Father and the Son to do their joint bidding.  Thus the obedience of the God-man to the Father while He was on earth was not a new relationship occasioned by the incarnation but the continuation in time of the etenral relationship between the Son and the Father in heaven.  As in heaven, so in earth, the Son was utterly dependent upon the Father`s will.

The God-man did not know independently any more than he acted independently.  Just as he did not do all that he could have done, because certain things were not his Father`s will (Matthew 26 verse 53) so he did not consciously know all that he might have known but only what the Father willed him to know.  His knowing like the rest of his activity was bounded by his Father`s will.  And therefore the reason why he was ignorant of (for instance) the date of his return was not because he had given up the power to know all things at the incarnation, but because the Father had not willed that he should have this particular piece of knowledge while on earth, prior to his Passion.  So Jesus`s limitation of knowledge is to be explained, not in terms of the mode of the incarnation, but with reference to the will of the Father for the Son while on earth.  And therefore we conclude that, just as there are some facts in the gospels which contradict the kenosis theory, so there are no facts in the gospels which are not best explained without it.

We see now what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself and become poor.  It meant a laying aside of glory (the real kenosis; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally a death that involved such agony - spiritual, even more than physical - that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it.  It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely men, who "through his poverty, might become rich."  The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity - hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory - because at the Father`s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that 30 years later he might hang on a cross.  It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.

So many Christians go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord`s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet them) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side.  

For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellowmen, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need.  There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be.  

 CHAPTER 6 HE SHALL TESTIFY

The God whom Christians worship - the triune Jehovah.  The heart of Christian faith in God is the revealed mystery of the Trinity.  Trinitas is a Latin word meaning three-ness.  Christianity rests on the doctrine of the trinitas, the three-ness, the tri-personality of God.

In the opening sentence of his gospel, John introduces us to the mystery of 2 distinct persons within the unity of the Godhead.  This is the deep end of theology, no doubt, but John throws us straight into it "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."  The Word was a person in fellowship with God and the Word was himself personally and eternally divine.  He was Father.  John sets this mystery of one God in 2 persons at the head of his gospel because he knows that nobody can make head or tail of the words and works of Jesus of Nazareth till he has grasped the fact that this Jesus is in truth God the Son.

In his account of our Lord`s last talk to his disciples, he reports how the Saviour, having explained that he was going to prepare a place for them in his Father`s house, went on to promise them the gift of "another Comforter" (John 14 verse 16)  It denotes a person, and a remarkable person too.  A Comforter - variety of renderings in different translations.  The thought of encouragement, support, assistance, care and the shouldering of responsibility for another`s welfare are all conveyed by this word.  Another Comforter - yes because Jesus was their original Comforter and the newcomer`s task was to continue this side of his ministry.  It follows, therefore that we can only appreciate all that our Lord meant when he spoke of "another comforter" as we look back over all that he himself had done in the way of love and care, and patient instruction and provision for the disciples well-being, during his own 3 years of personal ministry to them.  He will care for you, Christ was saying in effect, in the way that I have cared for you.

He went on to name the Comforter - the Spirit - the Holy Ghost.  The name denoted deity.  In the OT God`s Word and God`s Spirit are parallel figures.  God`s Word is his almighty speed, God`s Spirit is his almighty breath.  Both prases convey the thought of his power in action.  The speech and the breath of God appear together in the record of creation - "The Spirit (breath) of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said ... and there was ..."  "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath (Spirit) of his mouth" Psalm 33 verse 6.  John told us that the divine Word spoken of here is a person.  Our Lord now gives parallel teaching to the effect that the divine Spirit is also a person  And he confirms his witness to the deity of this personal Spirit by calling him the Holy Spirt, as later he was to speak of the holy Father.

Note how Christ related the Spirit`s mission to the will and purpose of the Father and the Son.  In one place it is the Father who will send the Spirit as it was the Father who had sent the Son (John 5 verse 23).  The Father will send the Spirit, says our Lord, "in my name" - that is as Christ`s deputy, doing Christ`s will and acting as His representative and with his authority (John 14 verse 26).  Just as Jesus had come in his Father`s name (John 5 verse 43), acting as the Father`s agent, speaking the Father`s words (John 12 verse 49), doing the Father`s works (John 10 verse 25, 17 verse 12) and bearing witness throughout to the One whose emissary he was, so the Spirit would come in Jesus` name to act in the world as the agent and witness of Jesus.  The Spirit "proceedeth from the Father" (John 16 verse 26) just as previously the Son had "come forth from the Father". (John 16 verse 27)  Having sent the eternal Son into the world, the Father now recalls Him to glory and sends the Spirit to take his place.

In another place, it is the Son who will send the Spirit "from the Father". (John 15 verse 26)  As the Father sent the Son into the world, so the Son will send the Spirit into the world (John 16 verse 7).  The Spirit is sent by the Son, as well as by the Father.  Theus we have the following set of relationships:

The Son is subject to the Father, for the Son is sent by the Father in his (the Father`s) name

The Spirit is subject to the Father, for the Spirit is sent by the Father in the Son`s name

The Spirit is subject to the Son as well as to the Father, for the Spirit sent by the Son as well as by the Father.

John records our Lord`s disclosure of the mystery of the Trinity: 3 persons and one God, the Son doing the will of the Father and the Spirit doing the will of the Father and the Son.  And the point stressed is that the Spirit, who comes to Christ`s disciples "that he may abide with you for ever." (chapter 14 verse 6) is coming to exercise the ministry of a Comforter in Christ`s stead.  If therefore, the ministry of Christ the Comforter was important, the ministry of the Holy Ghost the Comforter can scarcely be less important.  If the work that Christ did matters to the church the work that the Spirit does must matter also.

Is the work of the Holy Spirit really important?  Why, were it not for the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel, no faith, no church, no Christianity in the world at all.

In the first place; without the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel and no New Testament.  The disciples were responsible for going and making disciples of all the nations.  But what sort of witnesses were the likely to prove?  Christ sent the Holy Spirit to them, to teach them all truth and so save them from all error, to remind them of what they had been taught already and to reveal to them the rest of what their Lord meant them to learn.  The promise was that, taught by the Spirit, these original disciples should be enabled to speak as so many mouths of Christ so that, just as the Old Testament prophets had been able to introduce their sermons with the words, "Thus saith the Lord Jehovah" so the NT apostles might with equal truth be able to say of their teaching, oral or written, "Thus saith the Lord Jesus Christ."

And the thing happened.  The Holy Spirit came to the disciples and testified to them of Christ and his salvation, according to the promise.  Paul writes, "God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit ... we have received ... the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.  Which things also we speak not in the words which man`s wisdom teacheth but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." (1 Corinthians 2 verses 9 - 13)  The Spirit testified to the apostles by revealing to them all truth and inspiring them to communicate it with all truthfulness.  

In the second place: without the Holy Spirit there would be no faith and no new birth - in short, no Christians.  The light of the gospel shines; but the "god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not" (2 Corinthians 4 verse 4) and the blind do not respond to the stimulus of light.  As Christ told Nicodemus, "except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God ... he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." (John 3 verse 3, 5)  Christ went on to explain that the inevitable consequence of unregeneracy is unbelief - "Ye receive not our witness" (verse 11)  The gospel produces no conviction in them; unbelief holds them fast.

Is preaching the gospel a waste of time and is evangelism a hopeless enterprise, foredoomed to fail?  The Spirit abides with the Church to testify of Christ.  To the apostles, he testified by revealing and inspiring.  He testifies by illuminating: opening blinded eyes, restoring spiritual vision, enabling sinners to see that the gospel is indeed God`s truth and Scripture is indeed God`s word and Christ is indeed God`s Son.  Men come to faith when the gospel is preached.  But without the Spirit there would not be a Christian in the world,

Do we honour the Holy Spirit by recognising and relying on his work?

Do we slight him by ignoring it and thereby dishonour, not merely the Spirit but the Lord who sent him?

Do we acknowledge the authority of the Bible, the prophetic OT and the apostolic NT which He inspired?

Do we read and hear it with the reverence and receptiveness that are due to the word of God?

Do we apply the authority of the Bible and live by the Bible whatever men may say against it, recognising that God`s Word cannot but be true and that what God has said He certainly means, and will stand to?

In our witness: do we remember that the Holy Spirit alone, by His witness can autheticate our witness and look to Him to do so and trust Him to do so and show the reality of our trust as Paul did by eschewing the gimmicks of human cleverness?

Can we doubt that the present barrenness of the Church`s life is God`s judgment on us for the way in which we have dishonoured the Holy Spirit?

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

CHAPTER 7 - GOD UNCHANGING

Difficulty in reading scripture to know God - we become more and more puzzled as we read.  We are not being fed.  Our bible-reading takes us into what, for us, is quite a new world - namely, the Near Eastern World as it was thousands of years ago, primitive and barbaric, agricultural and unmechanised.  It is in that world that the action of the bible story is played out.  We meet Abraham, Moses and David and the rest and watch God dealing with them.  We hear the prophets denouncing idolatry and threatening judgment upon sin.  We see the Man of Galilee, doing miracles, arguing with the Jews, dying for sinners, rising from the dead and ascending to heaven.  We read letters from Christian teachers, directed against strange errors which, so far as we know, do not now exist.  It is all intensely interesting but it all seems very far away.  It all belongs to that world not to this world.  We feel we are on the outside of the bible world looking in.  "Yes God did all that then, and very wonderful it was for the people involved, but how does it touch us now?  We don`t live in the same world.  How can the record of God`s words and deeds in bible times, the record of his dealings with Abraham and Moses and David and the rest help us have to live in the space age?  We cannot see how the 2 worlds link up and hence again and again we find ourselves feeling that the things we read about in the bible can have no application for us.

Most bible readers have known this feeling.  not all know how to counter it.  Some Christians seem to resign themselves to following afar off, believing the bible record, indeed, but neither seeking nor expecting for themselves such intimacy and direct dealing with God as the men of the bible knew.  Such an attitude, all too common today, is in effect a confession of failure to see a way through this problem.

But how can this sense of remoteness from us of the biblical experiences of God be overcome?  The sense of remoteness is an illusion which springs from seeking the link between our situation and that of the various bible characters in the wrong place.  The link is God himself.  For the God with whom they have to do is the same God with whom we have to do.  It is the truth of God`s immutability - God does not change!

God`s life does not change.  Psalm 93 verse 2 "from everlasting", Romans 1 verse 23 "incorruptible", Jeremiah 10 verse 10 "an everlasting king", 1 Timothy 6 verse 16 "who only hath immortality", Psalm 90 verse 2 "before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God."  Psalm 102 verse 26 earth and heaven "shall perish but thou shalt endure: yea all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same and thy years shall have no end."  God says he is the first and the last.  Created things have a beginning and an ending but not the Creator.  He was always there.  He exists for ever; and he is always the same.  He does not grow older.  His life does not wax or wane.  He does not gain new powers, nor lose those that he once had.  He does not mature or develop.  He does not get stronger or weaker or wiser as time goes by.

God`s character does not change.  In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically but nothing of this sort happens to the Creator.  Exodus 3 God announced his name to Moses as "I am that I am" - a phrase of which Yahweh (Jehovah the Lord) is in effect a shortened form.  The name is not a description of God but simply a declaration of his self-existence and his eternal changelessness; a reminder to mankind that he has life in himself and that what he is now, he is eternally.  Exodus 34 God "proclaimed the name of the Lord" to Moses by listing the various facets of his holy character "the Lord, the Lord a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children" (verse 5).  God`s moral character never changes.  James 1 verse 17 speaks of a God "with whom  there is no variation or shadow due to change".

God`s truth does not change.  Men sometimes say things that they do not really mean, simply because they do not know their own mind; also, because their views change, they frequently find that they can no longer stand to things that they said in the past.  All of us sometimes have to recall our words, because they have ceased to express what we think; sometimes we have to eat our words, because hard facts refute them.  The words of men are unstable things but no so with the words of God.  They stand for ever, as abidingly valid expressions of his mind and thought.  Psalm 119 verses 89 and 152 "All thy commandments are truth ... thou hast founded them for ever."  The word "truth" carries with it the idea of stability.  We need to remember that God still stands to all the promises and demands and statements of purpose and words of warning that are there addressed to New Testament believers.  These are not relics of a bygone age, but an eternally valid revelation of the mind of God towards his people in all generations.

God`s ways do not change.  God continues to act towards sinful men in the way that he does in the bible story.  Still he shows his freedom and lordship by discriminating between sinners, causing some to hear the gospel while others do not hear it and moving some of those who hear it to repentance while leaving others in their disbelief; thus teaching his saints that he owes mercy to none and that it is entirely of his grace not at all through their own effort that they themselves have found life.  Still he blesses those on whom he sets his love in a way that humbles them, so that all the glory may be his alone.  Still he hates the sins of his people and uses all kinds of inward and outward pains and griefs to wean their hearts from compromise and disobedience.  Still he seeks the fellowship of his people and sends them both sorrows and joys in order to detach their love from other things and attach it to himself.  Still he teaches the believer to value his promised gifts by making him wait for them and compelling him to pray persistently for them, before he bestows them.  So we read of him dealing with his people in the scripture record and so he deals with them still.  

God`s purposes do not change.  Balaam "God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man that he should repent, hath he not said and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken and shall he not make it good?" (Numbers 23 verse 19)  Samuel "The strength of Israel will not lie nor repent for he is not a man that he should repent." (1 Samuel 15 verse 29)  Repentance means revising one`s judgment and changing one`s plan of action.  God never does this; he never needs to, for his plans are made on the basis of a complete knowledge and control which extend to all things past, present and future so that there can be no sudden emergencies or unlooked for developments to take him by surprise.  What God does in time he planned from eternity.  And all that he planned in eternity he carries out in time.  And all that he has in his word committed himself to do will infallibly be done.  He confirmed this to Abraham for his assurance and ours too.  So it is with God`s announced intentions.  They do not change.  No part of his eternal plan changes.

God`s Son does not change.  Hebrews 13 verse 8 "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today and for ever."  It still remains true that "he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." Hebrews 7 verse 25.  He never changes!

Where is the sense of distance and difference then between believers in bible times and ourselves?  It is excluded on the grounds that God does not change.  Fellowship with him, trust in his word, living by faith, standing on the promises of God are essentially the same realities for us today as they were for Old and New Testament believers.  This thought brings comfort as we enter into the perplexities of each day, amid all the changes and uncertainties of life.  If our God is the same as the God of New Testament believers, how can we justify ourselves in resting content with an experience of communion with him and a level of Christian conduct, that falls so far below theirs?  If God is the same, this is not an issue that any one of us can evade.

 CHAPTER 8 - THE MAJESTY OF GOD

"Majesty" comes from the Latin meaning greatness.  When we ascribe majesty to someone, we are acknowledging greatness in that person and voicing our respect for it.  In the Bible it is the thought of the greatness of God, our Maker and our Lord.

Psalm 93 verse 1 "The Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty ... Thy throne is established of old."

Psalm 145 verse 5 "I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works."

2 Peter 1 verse 16 "we ... were eyewitnesses of his majesty." recalling vision of Christ`s royal glory at the Transfiguration.

In Hebrews the phrase "the majesty" twice does duty for "God"; Christ we are told, at His ascension sat down "on the right hand of the majesty on high", "on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens." (Hebrews 1 verse 3 and 8 verse 1)  The word `majesty` when applied to God is always a declaration of his greatness and an invitation to worship.  The same is true when the Bible speaks of God as being `on high` and `in heaven`; the thought here is not that God is far distant from us in space but that He is far above us in greatness and therefore is to be adored.    The Christian`s instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God.

Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we are - weak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic.  But this is not the God of the Bible!  Our personal life is a finite thing; it is limited in every direction, in space, in time, in knowledge, in power.  But God is not so limited.  He is eternal, infinite and almighty.  He has us in His hands; but we never have Him in ours.  Like us He is personal, but unlike us He is great.  In all its constant stress on the reality of God`s personal concern for His people and on the gentleness, tenderness, sympathy, patience and yearning compassion that He shows towards them, the Bible never lets us lose sight of His majesty, and His unlimited dominion over all His creatures.

Look at the opening chapters of Genesis.  Right from the start of the Bible story, through the wisdom of divine inspiration, the narrative is told in such a way as to impress upon us the twin truths that the God to whom we are being introduced is both personal and majestic.

"Let us .. " Genesis 1 verse 26 - he brings the animals to Adam to see what Adam will call them (chapter 2 verse 19).  He walks in the garden, calling to Adam (chapter 3 verse 8)  He asks people questions (chapter 3 verse 11, chapter 4 verse 9, chapter 16 verse 8).  He comes down from heaven in order to find out what men are doing (chapter 11 verse 4, chapter 18 verse 20).  He is so grieved by human wickedness that He repents of making man (chapter 6 verse 6).  The God with whom we have to do is not a mere cosmic principle, impersonal and indifferent but a living Person thinking, feeling, active, approving of good, disapproving of evil, and interested in His creatures all the time. 

These same chapters rule out all such ideas of God`s knowledge and power being limited, by setting before us a presentation of God`s greatness no less vivid than that of His personality.  The God of Genesis is the creator, bringing order out of chaos, calling life into being by His word, making Adam from earth`s dust and Eve from Adam`s rib (chapters 1 and 2).  And He is Lord of all that He has made.  He curses the ground and subjects mankind to physical death thus changing His original perfect world-order (chapter 3 verse 17).  He floods the earth in judgment, destroying all life save that in the Ark (chapters 6 to 8).  He confounds human language and scatters the builders of Babel (chatper 11 verse 7).  He overthrows Sodom and Gomorrah by a volcanic eruption (chapter 19 verse 24).  Abraham truly calls him `the Judge of all the earth` (chapter 18 verse 25) and rightly adopts Melchizedek`s name for him, "God most High, maker of heaven and earth." (chapter 14 verses 19 - 22).  He is present everywhere, and observes everything; Cain`s murder (chapter 4 verse 9), mankind`s corruption (chapter 6 verse 5), Hagar`s destitution (chapter 16 verse 7).  Well did Hagar name Him El roi, `a God that seeth` and call her son Ishmael, `God hears` for God does in truth both hear and see and nothing escapes him.  His own name for himself is El Shaddai, `God Almighty`, and all His actions illustrate the omnipotence which this name proclaims.  He promises Abraham and his wife a son in their nineties and rebukes Sarah for her incredulous laughter "is anything too hard for the Lord?" (chapter 18 verse 14).  And it is not only at isolated moments that God takes control of events either; all history is under His sway.  Proof of this is given by His detailed predictions of the tremendous destiny which He purposed to work out for Abraham`s seed (chapter 12 verses 1 - 3, chapter 13 verses 14 - 17, chapter 15 verses 13 - 21). 

How may we form a right idea of God`s greatness?  The bible teaches us 2 steps that we must take:

Remove from our thoughts of God limits that would make him small

Compare him with powers and forces which we regard as great

Psalm 139 the psalmist meditates on the infinite and unlimited nature of God`s presence and knowledge and power, in relation to men.  Man, he says, is always in God`s presence; you can cut yourself off from your fellow-men but you cannot get away from your Creator "Thou hast beset me behind and before ... Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or wither shall I flee from thy presence? If I should go up into heaven (the sky) or down into hell or away to the world`s end, I still could not escape from the presence of God - behold thou art there." (verse 5)  Nor can darkness, which hides me from human sight, shield me from God`s gaze (verse 11).

There are also no bounds to his knowledge of me - just as I am never left alone, so I never go unnoticed "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me  Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising (all my actions and movements), thou understandest my thought (all that goes on in my mind) afar off ... and art acquainted with all my ways (all my habits, plans, aims, desires, as well as all my life to date).  For there is not a word in my tongue (spoken or meditated) but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether." (verse 1)  I can hide my heart, and my past, and my future plans, from men, but I cannot hide anything from God.  I can talk in a way that deceives my fellow-creatures as to what I really am, but nothing I say or do can deceive God.  He sees through all my reserve and pretence; He knows me as I really am, better indeed than I know myself.  A God whose presence and scrutiny I could evade would be a small and trivial deity.  But the true God is great and terrible, just because he is always with me and His eye is always upon me.  Living becomes an awesome business when you realise that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient Creator.

The all-seeing God is also God almighty, the resources of whose power are already revealed to me by the amazing complexity of my own physical body, which he made for me.  Confronted with this, the psalmist`s meditations turn to worship "I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are thy works." (verse 14)

Here then is the first step in apprehending the greatness of God; to realise how unlimited are his wisdom, and his presence and his power.  Many other passages of scripture teach the same lesson; notably Job 38 - 41, the chapters in which God himself takes up Elihu`s recognition that "with God is terrble majesty" (chapter 37 verse 22) and sets before Job a tremendous display of his wisdom and power in nature and asks Job if he can match such `majesty` as this (chapter 40 verse 10), and convinces him that, since he cannot, he should not presume to find fault with God`s handling of Job`s own case, which also goes far beyond Job`s understanding.  

Isaiah 40 verse 12 - here God speaks to people whose mood is the mood of many Christians today - despondent people, cowed people, secretly despairing people; people against whom the tide of events has been running for a very long time; people who have ceased to believe that the cause of Christ can ever prosper again.  Now see how God through his prophet reasons with them.

Look at the tasks I have done, he says.  Could you do them?  Could any man do them?  "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and meted out heaven with the span and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?" (verse 12)  Are you wise enough, and mighty enough, to do things like that?  But I am; or I could not have made this world at all.  Behold your God!

Look at the nations; the great national powers at whose mercy you feel yourselves to be. Assyria, Egypt, Babylon - you stand in awe of them and feel afraid of them, so vastly do their armies and resources exceed yours.  But now consider how God stands related to those mighty forces which you fear so much.  "Behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance ... All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity (emptiness)." (verse 15)  You tremble before the nations, because you are much weaker than they; but God is so much greater than the nations that they are as nothing to him.  Behold your God!

Look at the world.  Consider the size of it, the variety and complexity of it; think of the 3000 odd millions who populate it, and of the vast sky above it.  What puny figures you and I are, by comparison with the whole planet on which we live!  Yet what is this whole mighty planet by comparison with God!  "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" (verse 22)  The world dwarfs us all, but God dwarfs the world.  The word is His footstool, above which he sits secure.  He is greater than the world, and all that is in it; so that all the feverish activity of its 3000 bustling millions does no more to affect him than the chirping and jumping of grasshoppers in teh summmer sun does to affect us.  Behold your God!

Look at the world`s great men - the governors whose laws and policies determine the welfare of millions; the would-be-world-rulers, the dictators and empire-builders who have it in their power to plunge the globe into war.  Do you suppose that it is really these great men who determine which way the world shall go?  Think again; for God is greater than the world`s great men.  He "bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity." (verse 23)  Behold your God!

Look lastly at the stars.  The most universally awesome experience that mankind knows is to stand alone on a clear night and look at the stars.  Nothing gives a greater sense of remoteness and distance; nothing makes one feel more strongly one`s own littleness and insignificance.  Our minds reel; our imaginations cannot grasp it; when we try to conceive of unfathomable depths of outer space, we are left mentally numb and dizzy.  But what is this to God?  "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host (the stars) by number; he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth." (verse 26)  It is God who brings out the stars; it was God who first set them in space; He is their Maker and Master; they are all in his hands, and subject to His will.  Such are His power and His majesty.  Behold your God!

Let Isaiah now apply to us the bible doctrine of the majesty of God by asking us the 3 questions which he here puts in God`s name to disillusioned and downcast Israelites.

"To whom then will ye compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One" (verse 25).  This question rebukes wrong thoughts about God.  Our thoughts of God are not great enough, we fail to reckon with the reality of His limitless wisdom and power.  Because we ourselves are limited and weak, we imagine that at some points God is too and find it hard to believe that He is not.  We think of God as to much like what we are.  Put this mistake right, says God; learn to acknowledge the full majesty of your incomparable God and Saviour.

"Why sayest thou, O Jacob and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord and my judgment is passed away from my God?" (verse 27)  This question rebukes wrong thoughts about ourselves.  God has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job.  He never abandoned anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, every lose track of his sheep.  It is as false as it is irreverent to accuse God of forgetting or overlooking or losing interest in, the state and needs of his own people.    

"Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary." (verse 28)  This question rebukes our slowness to believe in God`s majesty.  God would shame us out of our unbelief.  What is the trouble? He asks: have you been imagining that I, the Creator, have grown old and tired?  Has nobody ever told you the truth about Me?  The rebuke is well deserved by many of us.  How slow we are to believe in God as God, sovereign, all-seeing and almighty!  How little we make of the majesty of our Lord and Saviour Christ!  The need for us is to "wait upon the Lord" in meditation of his majesty, till we find our strength renewed through the writing of these things upon our hearts.

CHAPTER 9 - GOD ONLY WISE

What does the bible mean when it calls God wise?  In scripture wisdom is a moral as well as an intellectual quality, more than mere intelligence or knowledge, just as it is more than mere cleverness or cunning.  To be truly wise, in the Bible sense, one`s intelligence and cleverness must be harnessed to a right end.  Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.

Wisdom is in fact the practical side of moral goodness.  As such, it is found in its fullness only in God.  He alone is naturaly and entirely and invariably wise.  God is never other than wise in anything that he does.  Wisdom as the old theologians used to say, is his essence, just as power and truth and goodness are his essence - integral elements that is in his character.

Wisdom in men can be frustrated by circumstantial factors outside the wise man`s control.  Ahithophel, David`s turncoat counsellor, gave sound advice when he urged Absalom to finish David off at once, before he had recovered from the first shock of Absalom`s revolt; but Absalom stupidly took a different line and Ahithophel, seething with wounded pride, foreseeing, no doubt, that the revolt was now sure to fail and unable to forgive himself for being such a fool as to join it, went home in despair and committed suicide (2 Samuel 17).

But God`s wisdom cannot be frustrated in the way Aithophel`s "good counsel" (verse 14) was, for it is allied to omnipotence.  Power is as much God`s essence as wisdom is.  Omniscience governing omnipotence, infinite power ruled by infinte wisdom, is a basic biblical description of the divine character.  "He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength." (Job 9 verse 4)  "With him is wisdom and strength" (chapter 12 verse 13).  "He is mighty in strength and wisdom" (chapter 36 verse 5)  "He is strong in power ... there is no searching of his understanding." (Isaiah 40 verses 26 and 28)  "Wisdom and might are his." (Daniel 2 verse 20)  The same conjunction appears in the NT: "Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel ... God only wise ..." (Romans 16 verses 25 and 27)  Wisdom without power would be pathetic, a broken reed; power without wisdom would be merely frightening, but in God boundless wisdom and endless power are united and this makes him utterly worthy of our fullest trust.

God`s almighty wisdom is always active and never fails.  All his works of creation and providence and grace display it, and until we can see it in them we just are not seeing them straight.  But we cannot recognise God`s wisdom unless we know the end for which he is working.  Misunderstanding what the bible means when it says that God is love (1 John 4 verses 8 - 10), they think that God intends a trouble-free life for all, irrespective of their moral and spiritual state, and hence they conclude that anything painful and upsetting (illness, accident, injury, loss of job, the suffering of a loved one) indicates either that God`s wisdom or power or both have broken down, or that God after all does not exist.  But this idea of God`s intention is a complete mistake.  God`s wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable.  Not even to Christians has he promised a trouble free life; rather the reverse.  He has other ends in view for life in this world than simpy to make it easy for everyone.

What is he after then?  What is his goal?  What does he aim at?  When he made man, his purpose was that man should love and honour him, praising him for the wonderfully ordered complexity and variety of his world, using it according to his will and so enjoying both it and him.  And though man has fallen, God has not abandoned his first purpose.  Still he plans that a great host of mankind should come to love and honour him. His ultimate objective is to bring them to a state in which they please him entirely and praise him adequately, a state in which he is all in all to them, and he and they rejoice continually in the knowledge of each other`s love - men rejoicing in the saving love of God, set upon them from all eternity and God rejoicing in the responsive love of men, drawn out of them by grace through the gospel. 

This will be God`s "glory" and  man`s "glory" too, in every sense which that weighty word can bear.  But it will only be fully realised in the next world, in the context of a transformation of the whole created order.  Meanwhile, however, God works steadily towards it.  His immediate objectives are to draw individual men and women into a relationship of faith, hope and love, towards Himself, delivering them from sin and showing forth in their lives the power of his grace to defend his people against the forces of evil; and to spread throughout the world the gospel by means of which he saves.  In the fulfilment of each part of this purpose the Lord Jesus Christ is central, for God has sent him forth both as Saviour from sin, whom men must trust and as Lord of the church, whom men must obey.  We have dwelt on the way in which divine wisdom was manifested in Christ`s incarnation and cross.  It is in the light of the complex purpose that the wisdom of God in his dealings with individual men is to be seen.

No clearer illustrations of the wisdom of God ordering human lives can be found in the scriptures.  Abraham - capable of repeated shabby deceptions, which actually endangered his wife`s chastity (Genesis 12 verses 10 and 20).  Plainly, then, he was by nature a man of little moral courage, altogether too anxious about his own personal security (chapter 12 verse 12 and chapter 20 verse 11).  He was vulnerable to pressure; at his wife`s insistence, he fathered a child upon her maid, Hagar and when Sarai reacted to Hagar`s pride in her pregnancy with hysterical recriminations he let Sarai drive Hagar out of the house (verse 16).  Abraham was not by nature a man of strong principle, and his sense of responsibility was somewhat deficient.  But God in wisdom dealt with this easy-going unheroic figure to such good effect that not merely did he faithfully fulfil his appointed role on the stage of church history, as pioneer occupant of Canaan, first recipient of God`s covenant (verse 17) and father of Isaac, the miracle-child; he also became a new man.           

What Abraham needed most of all was to learn the practice of living in God`s presence, seeing all life in relation to him and looking to him and him alone, as Commander, Defender and Rewarder.  This was the great lesson which God in wisdom concentrated on teaching him, "Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward." (chapter 15 verse 1).  "I am God Almighty, walk before me and be thou perfect (single-eyed and sincere) (chapter 17 verse 1).  Again and again God confronted Abraham with himself, and so led Abraham to the point where his heart could say, with the psalmist "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon upon earth that I desire beside Thee ... God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever." (Psalm 73 verse 25)  We see in Abraham`s life the results of his learning this lesson.  The old weaknesses still sometimes reappear but alongside it here emerges a new nobility and independence, the outworking of Abraham`s developed habit of walking with God, resting in his revealed will, relying on him, waiting on him, bowing to his providence and obeying him even when he commands something odd and unconventional.  From being a man of the world, Abraham becomes a man of God.

As he responds to God`s call, leaves home and travels through the land which his descendants are to possess (chapter 12 verse 7) - though not he himself, Abraham never possessed any more of Canaan than a grave (verse 23) - we observe in him a new meekness, as he declines to claim his due precedence over his nephew Lot (chapter 13 verse 8).  There is also a new courage, as he sets off with a mere 300 men to rescue Lot from the combined forces of 4 kings (chapter 14 verse 14).  We see a new dignity, as he deprecates keeping the recaptured booty, lest it should seem to have been the king of Sodom, rather than God most High, who made him rich (chapter 14 verse 22).  We see a new patience, as he waits a quarter of a century, from the age of 75 to 100, for the birth of his promised heir (chapter 12 verse 4 and chapter 21 verse 5).  He becomes a man of prayer, an importunate intercessor burdened with a sense of responsibility before God for others` welfare (chapter 18 verse 23).  At the end he is so utterly devoted to God`s will and so confident that God knows what he is doing, that he is willing at God`s command to kill his own son, the heir for whose birth he had waited so long (verse 22).  

Jacob, Abraham`s grandson needed different treatment; Jacob was a self-willed mother`s boy, blessed (or cursed) with all the opportunist instincts and amoral ruthlessness of the go-getting business man.  God in his wisdom had planned that Jacob, though he was the younger son, should have the firstborn`s birthright and blessing and so become the bearer of the covenant promise (chapter 28 verse 13); also he had planned that Jacob should marry his cousins Leah and Rachel and become the father of 12 patriarchs to whom the promise was to be passed on (chapters 48 and 49).

But God in his wisdom had also resolved to instil true religion into Jacob himself.  Jacob`s whole attitude to life was ungodly and needed changing; Jacob must be weaned away from trust in his own cleverness to dependence upon God and must be made to abhor the unscrupulous double-dealing which came so naturally to him.  Jacob, therefore must be made to feel his own utter weakness and foolishness and brought to such complete self-distrust that he would no longer try to get on by exploiting others.  Jacob`s self-reliance must go, once and for all.  With patient wisdom (for God always waits for the right time) God led Jacob to the point at which he coud stamp the required sense of impotent helplessness indelibly and decisively on Jacob`s soul.  It is instructive to trace the steps by which he did this.

First over a period of 20 years, God let Jacob have his head in weaving complex webs of deceit, with their inevitable consequences - mutual mistrust, friendships turned to enmity and the isolation of the deceiver.  The consequenes of Jacob`s cleverness were themselves God`s curse upon it.  When Jacob had filched Esau`s birthright and blessing (chapter 25 verse 29 and chapter 27), Esau turned against him (naturally) and Jacob had to leave home in a hurry.  He went to his uncle Laban, who proved to be as tricky a customer as Jacob himself.  Laban exploited Jacob`s position and bamboozled him into marrying, not only his pretty daughter, whom Jacob wanted, but also the plain one with bad eyes, for whom he would otherwise have found it hard to get a good husband (chapter 29 verses 15 - 30).

Jacob`s experience with Laban was a case of the bitter bit; God used it to show Jacob what it was like to be at the receiving end of a swindle - something that Jacob needed to learn, if he was ever to fall out of love with his own previous way of life.  But Jacob was not cured yet.  His immediate reaction was to give tit for tat; he manipulated the breeding of Laban`s sheep so astutely, with such profit to himself and loss to his employer, that Laban grew furious, and Jacob felt it prudent to leave with his family for Canaan, before active reprisals began (chapter 30 verse 25 - chapter 31).  And God, who had hitherto borne Jacob`s dishonesty without rebuke, encouraged him to go (chapter 30 verse 11, chapter 32 verse 1); for he knew what he would do before the journey ended.  As Jacob went Laban chased after him, and made it perfectly clear that he did not want to see Jacob come back (chapter 31).

When Jacob`s caravan reached the border of Esau`s country, Jacob sent his brother, a polite message to tell him of their arrival.  But the news that came back made him think that Esau was bringing an armed force againt him, to avenge the stolen blessing of 20 years before.  Jacob was thrown into complete despair.  And now God`s time had come.  That night, as Jacob stood alone by the river Jabbok, God met him (chapter 32 verse 24).  There were hours of desperate agonised conflict, spiritual and as it seemed to Jacob, physical also.  Jacob had hold of God; he wanted a blessing, an assurance of divine favour and protection in this crisis, but he could not get what he sought.  Instead, he grew ever more conscious of his own state - utterly helpless and without God, utterly hopeless.  He felt the full bitterness of his unscrupulous, cynical ways, not coming home to roost.  He had hitherto been self-reliant, believing himself to be more than a match for anything that might come, but now  he felt his complete inability to handle things, and knew with blinding, bizarre certainty that never again dare he trust himself to look after himself and to carve out his destiny.  Never again dare he try to live by his wits.

To make this doubly clear to Jacob, as they wrestled God lamed him (verse 25), putting his thigh out of joint to be a perpetual reminder in his flesh of his own spiritual weakness and his need to lean always upon God, just as for the rest of his life he had to walk leaning on a stick.  Jacob abhorred himself; with all his heart he found himself for the first time hating, really hating, that fancied cleverness of his.  It had set Esau against him, not to mention Laban, and now it had made his God unwilling, as it seemed, to bless him any more.  "Let me go ... " said the One with whom he wrestled; it seemed as though God meant to abandon him.  But Jacob held tight, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." (verse 26).  And now at last God spoke the word of blessing; for Jacob was now weak and despairing and humble and dependent enough to be blessed. "He weakened my strength in the way" said the Psalmist (Psalm 102 verse 23); that was what God had done to Jacob.  There was no particle of self-reliance left in Jacob by the time God had finished with him.  The nature of Jacob's 'prevailing' with God (verse 28) was simply that he had held on to God while God weakened him, and wrought in him the spirit of submission and self-distrust; that he had desired God's blessing so much that he clung to God through all this painful humbling, till he came low enough for God to raise him up by speaking peace to him and assuring him that he need not fear about Esau any more.  True, Jacob did not become a plaster saint overnight; he was not completely straight with Esau the next day (chapter 33 verses 14 - 17); but in principle God had won His battle with Jacob and won it for good.  Jacob never lapsed back into his old ways.  Limping Jacob had learned his lesson.  The wisdom of God had done its work.

Joseph.  Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt where, traduced by Potiphar's venomous wife, he was imprisoned; though afterwards he rose to eminence.  For what purpose did God in His wisdom plan that?  So far as Joseph personally was concerned, the answer is given in Psalm 105 verse 19 "the word of the Lord tried him."  Joseph was being tested, refined, and matured; he was being taught during his spell as a slave, and in prison, to stay himself upon God, to keep cheerful and charitable in frustrating circumstances, and to wait patienty for the Lord. God uses sustained hardship to teach these lessons very frequently.  So far as the life of God's people was concerned, Joseph himself gave the answer to our question when he revealed his identity to his distracted brothers.  "God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God ..." (Chapter 45 verse 7)  Joseph's theology was as sound as his charity was deep.  Once again, we are confronted with the wisdom of God ordering the events of a human life for a double purpose; the man's own personal sanctification and the fulfilling of his appointed ministy and service in the life of the people of God.  And in the life of Joseph, as in that of Abraham and of Jacob, we see that double purpose triumphantly fulfilled.

The same wisdom which ordered the paths which God's saints trod in Bible times orders the Christian's life today.  We should not, therefore be too taken aback when unexpected and upsetting and discouraging things happen to us now.  What do they mean?  Why, simply that God in His wisdom means to make something of us which we have not attained yet and is dealing with us accordingly.

Perhaps he means to strengthen us in patience, good humour, compassion, humility or meekness by giving us some extra practice in exercising these graces under specially difficult positions.  Perhaps He has new lessons in self-denial and self-distrust to teach us.  Perhaps He wishes to break us of complacency, or unreality or undetected forms of pride and conceit.  Perhaps His purpose is simply to draw us closer to Himself in conscious communion with Him; for it is often the case, as all the saints know that fellowship with the Father and the Son is most vivid and sweet, and Christian joy is greatest when the cross is heaviest.  Or perhaps God is preparing us for forms of service of which at present we have no inkling.

Paul saw part of the reason for his own afflictions in the fact that God "comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God" (2 Corinthians 1 verse 4)  Even the Lord Jesus "learned ... obedience by the things which he suffered" and so was "made perfect" for his high priestly ministry of sympathy and help to his hard pressed disciples (Hebrews 5 verse 8) which means that, as on the one hand He is able to uphold us and make us more than conquerors in all our troubles and distresses, so on the other hand we must not be surprised if He calls us to follow in His steps and to let ourselves be prepared for the service of others by painful experiences which are quite undeserved.  "He knows the way He taketh" even if for the moment we do not.  We may be frankly bewildered at things that happen to us, but God knows exactly what he is doing and what he is after, in his handling of our affairs.  Always and in everything He is wise; we shall see that hereafter, even where we never saw it here.  Job in heaven knows the full reason why he was afflicted though he never knew it in his life.  Meanwhile we ought not to hesitate to trust his wisdom even when he leaves us in the dark.

But how are we to meet these baffling and trying situations if we cannot for the moment see God's purpose in them?  First by taking them as from God and asking ourselves what reactions to them and in them, the gospel of God requires of us; second, by seeking God's face specifically about them.  If we do these 2 things we shall never find ourselves wholly in the dark as to God's purpose in our troubles.  We shall always be able to see at least as much purpose in them as Paul was enabled to see in his thorn in the flesh (whatever it was).  It came to him, he tells us, as a "messenger of Satan" tempting him to hard thoughts of God.  He resisted this temptation, and sought Christ's face 3 times asking that it might be removed.  The only answer he had was this "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness."  On reflection, he perceived a reason why he should have been thus afflicted; it was to keep him humble, "lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations."  This thought and Christ's word were enough for him.  He looked no further.  Here is his final attitude: "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." (2 Corinthians 12 verses 7 - 9)

This attitude of Paul is a model for us.  Whatever further purpose a Christian's troubles may or may not have in equipping him for future serice, they will always have at least that purpose which Paul's thorn in the flesh had; they will have been sent us to make and keep us humble and to give us a new oppotunity of showing forth the power of Christ in our mortal lives.  And do we ever need to know any more about them than that?  Is not this enough of itself to convince us of the wisdom of God in them?  Once Paul saw that his trouble was sent to enable him to glorify Christ, he accepted it as wisely appointed and rejoiced in it.  God give us grace in all our own troubles, to go and do likewise.

 CHAPTER 10 - GOD'S WISDOM AND OURS

Genesis 1 verse 26 "God made made man in his image" God communicated to him qualities corresponding to God's spirituality, freedom, omnipotence along with all His moral attributes - goodness, truth, holiness, righteousness etc.  God made man a free spiritual being, a responsible moral agent with powers of choice and action, able to commune with Him and respond to Him and by nature good, truthful, holy, upright; in a word, godly.

The moral qualities which belong to the divine image were lost at the Fall; God's image in man has been universally defaced, for all mankind has in one way or another lapsed into ungodlinss.  But the bible tells us that now in fulfilment of His plan of redemption, God is at work in Christian believers to repair His ruined image by communicating these qualities to them afresh.  This is what scripture means when it says that Christians are being renewed in the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3 verse 18) and of God (Colossians 3 verse 10).

The bible has a great deal to say about the divine gift of wisdom.  The first 9 chapters of book of Proverbs are a single sustained exhortation to seek this gift "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom and with all thy getting get understanding... Take fast hold of instructions let her not go; keep her; for she is thy life." (Proverbs 3 verses 7 and 13)  Wisdom is personified and made to speak in her own cause, "Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.  For whoso findeth me findeth life and shall obtain favour of the Lord.  But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate me love death." (Provrbs 8 verse 34)

As a hostess, wisdom summons the need to her banquet "Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither" (Proverbs 9 verse 4).  The emphasis throughout is upon God's readiness to give wisdom (pictured as wisdom's readiness to give herself) to all who desire the gift and wil take the steps necessary to obtain it.  Similar emphases appear in the New Testament.  Wisdom is required of Christians ("walk ... not as fools, but as wise ... be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is." (Ephesians 5 verse 15; "walk in wisdom toward them that are without ...." Colossians 4 verse 5).  Prayer is made that wisdom may be supplied to them ("that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom ... Colossians 1 verse 9).  And James in God's name makes a promise "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God ... and it shall be given him." (James 1 verse 5)

What steps must a man take to lay hold of this gift?  There are 2 prerequisites, according to scripture.

First, one must learn to reverence God "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: (Psalm 111 verse 10, Proverbs 9 verse 10, Job 28 verse 28, Proverbs 1 verse 7, 15 verse 35).  Not till we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God's holiness and sovereignty ("the great and terrible God"), Nehemiah 1 verse 5, 4 verse 14, 9 verse 32; Deuteronomy 7 verse 21, 10 verse 17, Psalm 99 verse 3, Jeremiah 20 verse 11, acknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours.  It is to be feared that many Christians spend all their lives in too unhumbled and conceited a frame of mind ever to gain wisdom from God at all.  Not for nothing does Scripture say "with the lowly is wisdom" (Proverbs 11 verse 2) 

Second, one must learn to receive God's word.  Wisdom is divinely wrought in those, and those only, who apply themselves to God's revelation.  "Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies", declares the psalmist,  "I have more understanding than all my teachers", why? "for thy testimonies are my meditation" (Psalm 119 verse 99)  So Paul admonishes the Colossians "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom" (Colossians 3 verse 16)  How are we to do this?  By soaking ourselves in scripture, which as Paul told Timothy "are able to make thee wise unto salvation: through faith in Christ and to perfect the man of God for "all good works" (2 Timothy 3 verses 15 - 17)

What sort is God's gift of wisdom?   What effect does it have on a man?  It is true that when God has given us guidance by application of principles He will on occasion confirm it to us by unusual providences, which we recognise at once as corroborative sins.  But this is quite a different thing from trying to read a message about God's secret purposes out of every unusual thing that happens to us.  

Ecclesiastes means simply the preacher; the book is a sermon with a text, ("vanity of vanities ..."), an exposition of its theme (chapters 1 - 10) and an application (chapters 11 and 12).  Much of the exposition is autobiographical.  The preacher identifies himself as "the son of David, King of Jerusalem (chapter 1 verse 1)  Whether this means that Solomon himself was the preacher or that the preacher put his sermon into Solomon's mouth as a didactic device.  The sermon is certainly Solomonic in the scene that it teaches lessons which Solomon had unique opportunities to learn.

"Vanity of vanities saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."  In what spirit and for what purpose, does the preacher announce this text?  The author speaks as a mature leader giving a young disciple the fruits of his own long experience and reflection (11 verse 9, 12 verse 1 and 12).  He wants to lead this young believer into true wisdom and to keep him from falling.  Apparently the young man (like many since) was inclined to equate wisdom with wide knowledge, and to suppose that one gains wisdom simply by assiduous bookwork (chapter 12 verse 12).  Clearly, he took it for granted that wisdom when he gained it, would tell him the reasons for God's various doings in the ordinary course of providence, what the preacher wants to show him is that the real basis of wisdom is a frank acknowledgement that this world's course is enigmatic, that much of what happens is quite inexplicable to us, and that most occurrences "under the sun" bear no outward sign of a rational, moral God ordering them at all.  As the sermon it shows, the text is intended as a warning against the misconceived quest for understanding; for it states the despairing conclusion to which this quest, if honestly and realistically pursued, must at length lead.  We may formulate the message of the sermon as follows:

Look (says the preacher) at the sort of the world we live in.  You see life's background set by aimlessly recurring cycles in nature (chapter 1 verse 4).  You see its shape fixed by times and circumstances over which we have no control (chapter 3 verse 1; chapter 9 verse 11).  You see death coming to everyone sooner or later, but coming haphazard; its coming bears no relation to good or ill deserts (chapter 7 verse 15; chapter 8 verse 8).  Men die like beasts, good men like bad, wise men like fools (chapter 2 verse 14, 17; chapter 9 verse 2).  You see evil rampant (chapter 3 verse 16; chapter 4 verse 1, chapter 5 verse 8, chapter 8 verse 11; chapter 9 verse 3); rotters get on, good men don't (chapter 8 verse 14).  Seeing all this, you realise that God's ordering of events is inscrutable; much as you want to make it out, you cannot do so (chapter 3 verse 11; 7 verse 13; 8 verse 17; chapter 11 verse 5).  The harder you try to understand the divine purpose in the ordinary providential course of events, the more obsessed and oppressed you grow with the apparent aimlessness of everything, and the more you are tempted to conclude that life really is as pointless as it looks.

But once you conclude that there really is no rhyme or reason in things, what "profit" - value, gain, point, purpose - can you find henceforth in any sort of constructive endeavour (chapter 1 verse 3; chapter 2 verse 11 and 22; chapter 3 verse 9 and chapter 5 verse 16)?  If life is senseless then it is valueless and in that case what use is it working to create things, to build a business, to make money, even to seek wisdom - for none of this can do you any obvious good (chapter 2 verse 15 and 22 and chapter 5 verse 11); it will only make you an object of envy (chapter 4 verse 4); you can't take any of it with you (chapter 2 verse 18; chapter 4 verse 8; chapter 5 verse 15) and what you leave behind will probably be mismanaged after you have gone (chapter 2 verse 19).  What point is there then, in sweating and toiling at anything?  Must not all man's work be judged "vanity (emptiness, frustration) and a striving after wind (chapter 1 verse 14) - activity that we cannot justify as being either significant in itself or worth while to us?  It is to this pessimistic conclusion, says the preacher, that optimistic expectations of finding the divine purpose of everything will ultimately lead you (chapter 1 verse 17).  

And it is true!  The God who rules it hides himself.  Rarely does this world look as if a beneficient Providence were running it.  Rarely does it appear that there is a rational power behind it at all.  Often and often what is worthless survives, while what is valuable perishes.  Be realistic, says the preacher, face these facts; see life as it is.  You will have no true wisdom till you do.

Among the 7 deadly sins of medieval lore was sloth - a state of hard-bitten joyless apathy of spirit.  Today there is a lot of this around in Christian circles; the symptoms are personal spiritual inertia combined with critical cynicism about the churches and supercilious resentment of other Christians' initiatives and enterprise.  Behind this morbid and deadening condition often lies the wounded pride of one who thought he knew all about the ways of God in providence and then was made to learn by bitter and bewildering experience that he didn't.  This is what happens when we do not heed the message of Ecclesiastes.  For the truth is that God in His wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which He is working out in the churches and in our own lives.  "As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the work of God who doeth all." (chapter 11 verse 5)

The preacher has helped us to see what wisdom is not.  He gives us an outline of what wisdom is - "fear God and keep his commandments" (chapter 12 verse 13); trust and obey him, reverence him, worship him, be humble before him, and never say more than you mean and will stand to when you pray to him; (chapter 5 verses 1 - 7); do good (chapter 3 verse 12); remember that God will some day take account of you (chapter 11 verse 9, chapter 12 verse 14), so eschew, even in secret, things of which you will be ashamed when they come to light at God's assizes (chapter 12 verse 14).  Live in the present, and enjoy it thoroughly (chapter 7 verse 14, chapter 9 verse 7, chapter 11 verse 9); present pleasures are God's good gifts.    Though Ecclesiastes condemns flippancy (chapter 7 verses 4 - 6), he clearly has no time for the superspirituality which is too proud, or 'pi', ever to laugh and have fun.  Seek grace to work hard at whatever life calls you to do (chapter 9 verse 10) and enjoy your work as you do it (chapter 2 verse 34; chapter 3 verse 12; chapter 5 verse 18, chapter 8 verse 15).  Leave to God its issues; let Him measure its ultimate worth; your part is to use all the good sense and enterprise at your command in exploiting the opportunities that lie before you (chapter 11 verses 1 - 6).

We have said that wisdom consists in choosing the best means to the best end.  God's work of giving wisdom is a means to His chosen end of restoring and perfecting the relationship between Himself and men for which He made them.  Wisdom is not a sharing in all His knowledge but a disposition to confess that He is wise and to cleave to Him and live for Him in the light of His word through thick and thin.

The effect of His gift of wisdom is to make us more humble, more joyful, more godly, more quick-sighted as to His will more resolute in the doing of it and less troubled than we were at the dark and painful things of which our life in this fallen world is full.  The New Testament tells us that the fruit of wisdom is Christlikeness - peace and humility and love (James 3 verse 17) and the root of it is faith in Christ (1 Corinthians 3 verse 18, 1 Timothy 3 verse 15) as the manifested wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1 verses 24 and 30)  Thus the kind of wisdom that God waits to give to those who ask Him, is a wisdom that will bind us to Himself, a wisdom that will find expression in a spirit of faith and a life of faithfulness.

 CHAPTER 11 - THY WORD IS TRUTH

2 Facts about the Triune Jehovah are assumed, if not actually stated in every single biblical passage.  The first is that he is king - absolute monarch of the universe, ordering all its affairs, working out His will in all that happens within it.  The second fact is that He speaks - uttering words that express His will in order to cause it to be done.  The first theme, that of God's rule, has been touched on in earlier chapters.  It is the second theme, that of God's word, that concerns us now.  The study of the second theme will in fact advance our understanding of the first theme, for just as God's relations with His world have to be understood in terms of what the bible tells us about His word.

An absolute rule such as all kings were in the ancient world will in the ordinary course of things speak regularly on 2 levels and for 2 purposes. On the one hand, he will enact regulations and laws which directly determine the environment - judicial, fiscal, cultural - within which his subjects must henceforth live.  On the other hand, he will make public speeches, in order to establish, as far as possible, a personal link between himself and his subjects and to evoke from them the maximum of support and co-operation in the things he is doing.  The bible pictures the word of God as having a similar twofold character.  God is the king; we His creatures are His subjects.  His word relates both to things around us and to us directly: God speaks both to determine our environment and to engage our minds and hearts. 

God's word takes the form of a sovereign fiat - "let there be ..".  In the latter connection, the sphere in which God's word is addressed to us personally, the word takes the form of royal torah (the Hebrew word translated 'law' in our OT, which actually denotes 'instruction' in all its manifold forms).  Torah from God the king has a threefold character: some of it is law (in the narrow sense of commands, or prohibitions, with sanctions attached), some of it is promise (favourable or unfavourable, conditional or unconditional); some of it is testimony (information given by God Himself, and men, and their respective acts, purposes, natures and prospects).

The word which God addresses directly to us is (like a royal speech, only more so) an instrument, not only of government, but also of fellowship.  For, though God is a great king, it is not His wish to live at a distance from his subjects.  Rather the reverse: He made us with the intention that He and we might walk together for ever in a love relationship.  But such a relationship can only exist when the parties involved know something of each other.  God, our Maker, knows all about us before we say anything (Psalm 139 verses 1 - 4); but we can know nothing about Him unless He tells us.  Here, therefore, is a further reason why God speaks to us; not only to move us to do what he wants, but to enable us to know Him so that we may love Him.  Therefore God sends His word to us in the character of both information and invitation.  It comes to woo us as well as to instruct us; it not merely puts us in the picture of what God has done and in doing, but also calls us into personal communion with the loving Lord himself.

We meet the word of God in its various relations in the first 3 chapters of the bible.  

Genesis 1 - part of the purpose of this chapter is to assure us that every item in our natural environment has been set there by God.  The opening verses states the theme which the rest of the chapter is to expound  - "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth".  The second verse pictures the state of affairs in terms of which the detailed analysis of God's work is to be given: it is a state in which the earth was lying waste, empty of life, dark and completely waterlogged.  Then verse 3 tells us how amid this chaos and sterility God spoke "And God said, Let there be light."  What happened?  Immediately 'there was light'.  7 times more (verses 6, 9, 11, 15, 20, 24, 26) God's creative word, "let there be ..." was spoken and step by step things sprang into being and order.  Day and night (verse 5), sky and sea (verse 6), sea and land (verse 9), were separated out; green vegetation (verse 12), heavenly bodies (verse 14), fish and fowl (verse 20), insects and animals (verse 24) and finally man himself (verse 26), made their appearance.  All was done by the word of God. 

But now the story carries us on a further stage, God speaks to the man and woman whom He has made, "God said unto them ..." (verse 28).  Here is God addressing man directly; thus fellowship between God and man is inaugurated.  Note the categories into which God's utterances to man in the rest of the story fall.  God's first word to Adam and Eve is a word of command, summoning them to fulfil mankind's vocation of ruling the created order ("Be fruitful ... and have dominion ..." verse 28).  Then follows a word of testimony ("Behold ... verse 29) in which God explains that greenstuff, crops and fruit have been made for man and animals to eat.  Next we meet a prohibition, with sanction appended; "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in that day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (chapter 2 verse 17)  Finally after the Fall, God comes near to Adam and Eve and speaks to them again and this time His words are words of promise both favourable and unfavourable - for while He undertakes, on the one hand, that the woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head, on the other hand He ordains for Eve grief in childbirth, for Adam frustrating labour, and for both certain death (verses 15 - 20).

Here within the compass of 3 chapters, we see the word of God in all the relations in which it stands to the world, and to man within it - on the one hand, fixing man's circumstances and environment, on the other, commanding mans obedience, inviting his trust, and opening to him the mind of his Maker.  The rest of the bible sets before us many new utterances of God, but no further categories of relationship between God's word and His creatures.  Instead the presentation of the word of God in Genesis 1 - 3 is reiterated and confirmed.

Thus on the one hand, the whole bible insists that all circumstances and events in the world are determined by the word of God, the Creator's omnipotent "let there be ..."  Scripture describes all that happens as the fulfilling of God's word, from changes in the weather to the rise and fall of nations.  The fact that the word of God really determines world events was the first lesson that God taught Jeremiah when He called him to be a prophet "See God told him, I have this day set thee over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant" (Jeremiah 1 verse 10)

Jeremiah's call was not to be a statesman or a world potentate but to be a prophet, God's messenger-boy (verse 7).  How could a man with no official position, whose only job was to talk, be described as the God-appointed ruler of the nations?  Why, simply because he had the word of God in his mouth (verse 9); and any word that God gave him to speak about the destiny of nations would certainly be fulfilled.  To fix this in Jeremiah's mind, God gave him his first vision "Jeremiah what do you see?" ... "A rod of almond" (shaqed) ... "You have seen well, for I am watching (shoqed) over my word to perform it." (Jeremiah 1 verse 11) 

God through Isaiah proclaims the same truth in this form: "As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth and bud ... so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please ..." (Isaiah 55 verse 10)  The whole bible maintains this insistence that God's word is His executive instrument in all human affairs.  Of Him, as of no one else, it is true that what He says goes.  It is in truth the word of God that rules the world, and that fixes our fortunes for us.

And then on the other hand, the bible consistently presents the word of God as coming directly to us in the threefold character in which it was spoken in the garden of Eden.  Sometimes it comes as law - as at Sinai and in many sermons of the prophets and in much of Christ's teaching and in the evangelical command to repent (Acts 17 verse 30) and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (1 John 3 verse 23).  Sometimes it comes as promise - as in the promise of of posterity and the covenant promise, given to Abraham, the promise of redemption from Egypt, the promises of the Messiah and of the kingdom of God and the New Testament promises of justification, resurrection and glorification for believers.

Sometimes again it comes as testimony - divine instruction concerning the facts of faith and the principles of piety, in the form of historical narration, theological argument, psalmody and wisdom.  Always it is stressed that the claim of the word of God upon us is absolute: the word is to be received, trusted and obeyed, because it is the word of God the king.  The essence of impiety is the proud wilfulness of "this evil people, which refuse to hear my words" (Jeremiah 13 verse 10)  The mark of true humility and godliness on the other hand, is that a man "trembleth at my word" (Isaiah 66 verse 2)

But the claim of the word of God upon us does not depend merely upon our relationship to Him, as creatures and subjects.  We are to believe and obey it, not only because He tells us to, but also and primarily because it is a true word.  Its author is the "God of truth" (Psalm 31 verse 5, Isaiah 65 verse 16), "abundant in ... truth" (Exodus  34 verse 6); His "truth reacheth unto the clouds" (Psalm 108 verse 4, 57 verse 10), ie is universal and limitless.  Therefore His "word is truth" (John 17 verse 17). "Thy word is true from the beginning" (Psalm 119 verse 160).  "Thou art God and thy words are true." (2 Samuel  verse 28)

Truth in the bible is a quality of person primarily, and of propositions only secondarily; it means stability, reliability, firmness, trustworthiness, the quality of a person who is entirely self-consistent, sincere, realistic, and undeceived.  God is such a person; truth in this sense, is His nature and He has not got it in Him to be anything else.  That is why He cannot lie (Titus 1 verse 2, Numbers 23 verse 19, 1 Samuel 15 verse 29, Hebrews 6 verse 18).  That is why His words to us are true and cannot be other than true.  They are the index of reality; they shows us things as they really are, and as they will be for us in the future according to whether we heed God's words to us or not.

Let us work this out in 2 connections.

1. God's commands are true.  "All thy commandments are truth" (Psalm 119 verse 151).  Why are they so described?  First because they have stability and permanence as setting forth what God wants to see in human lives in every age; second, because they tell us the unchanging truth about our own nature.  For this is part of the purpose of God's law; it gives us a working definition of true humanity.  It shows us what man was made to be, and teaches us how to be truly human, and warns us against moral self-destruction.  This is a matter of great importance and one which calls for much consideration at the present time.

We are familiar with the thought that our bodies are His machines, needing the right routines of food, rest and exercise if they are to run efficiently and liable, if filled up with the wrong fuel - alcohol, drugs, poison - to lose their power of healthy functioning and ultimately to "seize up" entirely in physical death.  What we are, perhaps, slower to grasp is that God wishes us to think of our souls in a similar way.  As rational persons, we were made to bear God's moral image - that is, our souls were made to run on the practice of worship, law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control and service to God and our fellows.  If we abandon these practices, not only do we incur guilt before God; we also progressively destroy our own souls.  Conscience atrophies, the sense of shame dries up, one's capacity for truthfulness, loyalty and honesty is eaten away, one's character disintegrates.  One not only becomes desperately miserable; one is steadily being de-humanised.  This is one aspect of spiritual death.  We are only living human lives just so far as we are labouring to keep God's commandments; no further.

2. God's promises are true; for God keeps them.  "He is faithful that promised" (Hebrews 10 verse 23).  The Bible proclaims God's faithfulness in superlative terms.  "Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds" (Psalm 36 verse 5); "thy faithfulness is unto all generations" (Psalm 119 verse 90); "great is thy faithfulness" (Lamentations 3 verse 23).  How does God's faitfulness show itself?  By His unfailing fulfilment of His promises.  He is a covenant keeping God; He never fails those who trust His word.  Abraham proved God's faithfulness, waiting through a quarter of a century of old age for the birth of his promised heir, and millions more have proved it since. 

What is a Christian?  He is a man who acknowledges and lives under the word of God, he submits without reserve to the word of God written in "the Scripture of truth" (Daniel 10 verse 21), believing the teaching, trusting the promises, following the commands.  His eyes are to the God of the Bible as his Father and the Christ of the Bible as his Saviour.  He will tell you, if you ask him, that the word of God has both convinced him of sin and assured him of forgiveness, His conscience, is captive to the word of God and he aspires to have his whole life brought into line with it.  The promises are before him as he prays, and the precepts are before him as he moves among men.  He knows that in addition to the word of God spoken directly to him in the Scriptures, God's word has also gone forth to create, and control, and order things around him; but since the Scriptures tell him that all things work together for his good, the thought of God ordering his circumstances brings him only joy.  He is an independent fellow, for he uses the word of God as a touchstone by which to test the various views that are put to him and he will not touch anything which he is not sure that Scripture sanctions.

 CHAPTER 12 - THE LOVE OF GOD

John's repeated statement "God is love" (1 John 4 verse 8 and 16) is one of the most tremendous utterances in the bible - and also one of the most misunderstood.  False ideas have grown up round it like a hedge of thorns, hiding its real meaning from view, and it is no small task cutting through this tangle of mental undergrowth.  Yet the hard thought involved is more than repaid when the true sense of these texts comes home to the Christian soul.

To know God's love is indeed heaven on earth.  And the NT sets forth this knowledge, not as the privilege of a favoured few, but as a normal part of ordinary Christian experience, something to which only the spiritually unhealthy or malformed will be strangers.  When Paul says "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us" (Romans 5 verse 5), he means, not love for God but knowledge of God's love for us.  

3 points in Paul's words deserve comment.  First notice the verb "shed abroad".  It means literally "poured (or tipped) out."  It is the word used of the "outpouring of the Spirit Himself in Acts 2 verse 17, 33, and chapter 10 verse 45; Titus 3 verse 6.  It suggests a free flow and a large quantity - in fact, an inundation.  Paul is not talking of faint and fitful impressions, but of deep and overwhelming ones.

Then, second, notice the tense of the verb.  It is in the perfect, which implies a settled state consequent upon a completed action.  The thought is that knowledge of the love of God having flooded our hearts, fills them now, just as a valley once flooded remains full of water.  Paul assumes that all his readers, like himself, will be living in the enjoyment of a strong and abiding sense of God's love for them.

Third, notice that the instilling of this knowledge is described as part of the regular ministry of the Spirit to those who receive Him - to all, that is, who are born again, all who are true believers.

1. "God is love" is not the complete truth about God so far as the Bible is concerned.  It is not an abstract definition which stands alone, but a summing up from the believer's standpoint of what the whole revelation set forth in scripture tells us about its Author.  This statement presupposes all the rest of the biblical witness to God. The God of whom John is speaking is the God who made the world, who judged it by the Flood, who called Abraham and made of him a nation, who chastened his Old Testament people by conquest, captivity and exile, who sent His Son to save the world, who cast off unbelieving Israel and shortly before John wrote had destroyed Jerusalem and who would one day judge the world in righeousness.  It is this God, says John, who is love.  It is perverse to quote John's statement as if it called in question the biblical witness to the severity of God's justice.  It is not possible to argue that a God who is love cannot also be a God who condemns and punishes the disobedient; for it is precisely of the God who does these very things that John is speaking.

If we are to avoid misunderstanding John's statement, we must take it in conjunction with 2 other great statements of exactly similar grammatical form which we find elsewhere in his writings, both of them, interestingly enough deriving directly from Christ Himself.  The first comes from John's gospel.  It is our Lord's own word to the Samaritan woman, "God is spirit" (John 4 verse 24).  The second comes from the opening section of this very epistle.  John offers it as a summary of "the message which we heard of him (Jesus) and declare unto you" and it is this "God of light" (1 John 1 verse 5).  The assertion that God is love has to be interpreted in the light of what these other 2 statements teach and it will help us if we glance at them briefly now.

"God is spirit" - when our Lord said this, He was seeking to disabuse the Samaritan woman of the idea that there could be any one right place for worship, as if God were locally confined in some way.  "Spirit" contrasts with "flesh"; Christ's point is that while man, being "flesh" can only be present in one place at a time, God, being "Spirit" is not so limited.  God is non-material, non-corporeal and therefore non-localised.  Thus (Christ continues) the true condition of acceptable worship is not that your feet should be standing in either Jerusalem or Samaria, or anywhere else but that your heart should be receptive and responsive to His revelation.  "God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

God has no body - therefore He is free from all limitations of space and distance, and is omnipresent.  God has no parts - this means that His personality and powers and qualities are perfectly integrated, so that nothing in him ever alters.  With Him "there is no variation or shadow due to change." (James 1 verse 17).  Thus He is free from all limitations of time and natural processes and remains eternally the same.  God has no passions - this does not mean that He is unfeeling or that there is nothing in Him that corresponds to emotions and affections in us, but that whereas human passions - specially the painful ones, fear, grief, regret, despair - are in a sense passive and involuntary, being called forth and constrained by circumstances not under our control, the corresponding attitudes in God have the nature of deliberate voluntary choices and therefore are not of the same order as human passions at all.

So the love of God who is spirit is no fitful, fluctuating thing, as the love of man is, nor is it a mere impotent longing for things that may never be; it is, rather a spontaneous determination of God's whole being in an attitude of benevolence and benefaction, an attitude freely chosen and firmly fixed  There are no inconstancies or vicissitudes in the love of the almighty God who is spirit.  His love is "strong as death ... many waters cannot quench it" (Song of Solomon 8 verse 6).  Nothing can separate from it those whom it has once embraced (Romans 8 verses 35 - 39).

But we are told, the God who is spirit is also "light".  John made this statement against certain professing Christians who had lost touch with moral realities and were claiming that nothing they did was sin.  The force of John's words is brought out by the next clause "and in him is no darkness at all."  Light means holiness and purity as measured by God's law; darkness means moral perversity and unrighteousness, as measured by the same law.  John's point is that only those who "walk in the light" seeking to be like God in holiness and righteousness of life and eschewing everything inconsistent with this enjoy fellowship with the father and the Son; those who "walk in darkness" whatever they may claim for themselves are strangers to this relationship (verse 6). 

So the God who is love is first and foremost light and sentimenal ideas of His love as an indulgent, benevolent softness, divorced from oral standards and concerns, must therefore be ruled out from the start.  God's love is holy love.  The God whom Jesus made known is not a God who is indifferent to moral distinctions, but a God who loves righeousness and hates iniquity, a God whose ideal for His children is that they should be "perfect" even as your Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5 verse 48).  He will not take into His company any person, however orthodox in mind, who will not follow after holiness of life and those whom He does accept He exposes to drastic discipline, in order that they may attain what they seek "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth ... for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness ... it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby" (Hebrews 12 verses 6 - 11).  God's love is stern, for it expresses holiness in the lover and seeks holiness for the beloved.  Scripture does not allow us to suppose that because God is love we may look to Him to confer happiness on people who will not seek holiness, or to shield His loved ones from trouble when He knows that they need trouble to further their sanctification.

2. "God is love" is the complete truth about God so far as the Christian is concerned.  To say "God is light" is to imply that God's holiness finds expression in everything that He says and does.  Similarly, the statement "God is love" means that His love finds expression in everthing that He says and does.  The knowledge that this is so for him personally is the Christian's supreme comfort.  As a believer, he finds in the cross of Christ assurance that he, as an indiviidual, is beloved of God, "the Son of God ... loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2 verse 20)  Knowing this, he is able to apply to himself the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8 verse 28).  Not just some things, note, but all things!  Every single thing that happens to him expresses God's love to him, and comes to him for the furthering of God's purpose for him.  Thus, so far as he is concerned, God is love to him - holy, omnipotent love - at every moment and in every event of every day's life.  Even when he cannot see the why and the wherefore of God's dealings, he knows that there is love in and behind them, and so he can rejoice always, even when, humanly speaking, things are going wrong, He knows tht the true story of his life, when known, will prove to be, as the hymn says, "mercy from first to last" - and he is content.

But so far we have merely circumscribed the love of God, showing in general terms how and when it operates and this is not enough.  What essentially is it? we ask, How should we define and analyse it?  In answer to this question, the bible sets forth a conception of God's love which we may formulate as follows:

God's love is an exercise of His goodness towards individual sinners whereby, having identified Himself with their welfare, He has given His Son to be their Saviour and now brings them to know and enjoy Him in a covenant relation.

Let's explain the constituent parts of this definition.

1. God's love is an exercise of His goodness.  The bible means by God's goodness His cosmic generosity.  Of this goodness God's love is the supreme and most glorious manifestation.

2. God's love is an exercise of His goodness towards sinners.  As such, it has the nature of grace and mercy.  It is an outgoing of God in kindness which not merely is undeserved but is actually contrary to desert; for the objects of God's love are rational creatures who have broken God's law, whose nature is corrupt in God's sight and who merit only condemnation and final banishment from His presence.  it is staggering that God should love sinners; yet it is true.  God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would have thought) unlovable.  There was nothing whatever in the objects of His love to call it forth; nothing in man could attract or prompt it.  Love among men is awakened by something in the beloved, but the love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused.  God loves men because He has chosen to love them - and no reason for His love can be given save His own sovereign good pleasure.  The Greek and Roman world of NT times had never dreamed of such love; its gods were often credited with lusting after women, but never with loving sinners; and the NT writers had to introduce what was virtually a new Greek word agape to express the love of God as they knew it.

3. God's love is an exercise of His goodness towards individual sinners.  it is not a vague, diffused good-will towards everyone in general and nobody in particular; rather, as being a function of omniscient almightiness, its nature is to particularise both its objects and its effects.  God's purpose of love, formed before creation involved, first the choice and selection of those whom He would bless and second the appointment of the benefits would be procured and enjoyed.  All this was made sure from the start.  Paul writes to the Thessalonian Christians, "we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God chose you (selection) from the beginning (before creation) to be saved (the appointed end) through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth (the appointed means) (2 Thessalonians 2 verse 13).  The exercise of God's love towards individual sinners in time is the execution of a purpose to bless those same individual sinners which He formed in eternity.

4. God's love to sinners involves His identifying Himself with their welfare.  Such an identification is involved in all love: it is, indeed, the test of whether love is genuine or not.  It is not for nothing that the bible habitually speaks of God as the loving Father and Husband of His people. It follows from the very nature of these relationships that God's happiness will not be completed till all His beloved ones are finally out of trouble.  God was happy without man before man was made; He would have continued happy had He simply destroyed man after man had sinned; but as it is He has set His love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by His own free voluntary choice, He will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till He has brought every one of them to heaven.  He has in effect resolved that henceforth for all eternity His happiness shall be conditional upon ours.  Thus God saves, not only for His glory, but also for His gladness.  This goes far to explain why it is that there is joy (God's own joy) in the presence of the angels when a sinner repents (Luke 15 verse 10) and why there will be "exceeding joy" when God sets us faultless at the last day in His own holy presence (Jude 24).  The thought passes understanding and almost beggars belief, but there is no doubt that, according to Scriptures, such is the love of God.

5. God's love to sinners was expressed by the gift of His Son to be their Saviour.  The measure of love is how much it gives and the measure of the love of God is the gift of His only Son to be made man, and to die for sin, and so to become the one mediator who can bring us to God.  No wonder Paul speaks of God's love as "great" and passing knowledge! (Ephesians 2 verses 4 and chapter 3 verse 19)  Was there ever such costly munificence?  Paul argues that this supreme gift is itself the guarantee of every other: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8 verse 32)  The NT writers constantly point to the Cross of Christ as the crowning proof of the reality and boundlessness of God's love.  Thus, John goes straight on from his first "God is love" to say, "In this was manifested the love of God towards us because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.  Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4 verse 9)  Similarly in his gospel, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should ... have everlasting life." (John 3 verse 16)  So too Paul writes, "God commendeth his love towwards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5 verse 8)  And he finds the proof that "the Son of God ... loved me" in the fact that He "gave himself for me" (Galatians 2 verse 20).

6. God's love to sinners reaches its objective as it brings them to know and to enjoy Him in a covenant relation.  A covenant relation is one in which 2 parties are permanently pledged to each in mutual service and dependence.  A covenant promise is one by which a covenant relation is set up.  Biblical religion has the form of a covenant relation with God.  The first occasion on which the terms of the relation were made plain was when God showed Himself to Abraham as El Shaddai (God Almighty, God All-sufficient) and formally gave him the covenant promise, "to be a God unto thee" (Genesis 17 verse 1, 7).  All Christians inherit this promise through faith in Christ, as Paul argues in Galatians 3 verse 15.  What does it mean?  It is in truth a pantechnicom promise: it contains everything. 

Is it true that God is love to me as a Christian?  And does the love of God mean all that has been said?  If so, certain questions arise.

Why do I ever grumble and show discontent and resentment at the circumstances in which God has placed me?

Why am I ever distrustful, fearful or depressed?

Why do I ever allow myself to grow cool, formal and half-hearted in the service of the God who loves me so?

Why do I ever allow my loyalties to be divided, so that God has not all my heart?

John wrote that "God is love" in order to make an ethical point "if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4 verse 11)  Could an observer learn from the quality and degree of love that I show to others - my wife? my husband? my family? my neighbours? people at church? people at work? - anything at all about the greatness of God's love to me?

Meditate upon these things.  Examine yourself. 

 CHAPTER 13 - THE GRACE OF GOD

Grace is a pesonal activity, God operating in love manwards.  The Greek NT word for grace (charis) like that for love (Agape) is a wholly Christian usage, expressing a notion of spontaneous self-determined kindness which was previously quite unknown to Graeco-Roman ethics and theology.  God's Riches At Christ's Expense.  There do not seem to be many in our churches who actually believe in grace!

There have always been some who have found the thought of grace so overwhelmingly wonderful that they could never get over it  Grace has become the constant theme of their talk and prayers.  Paul said "By the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Corinthians 15 verse 10).  But many church people are not like this.  They may pay lip-service to the idea of grace but there they stop.  Their idea of grace is not so much debased as non-existent.  The thought means nothing to them; it does not touch their experience at all.  Talk to them about the church's heating or last year's accounts and they are with you at once; but speak to them about the realities to which the word "grace" points and their attitude is one of deferential blankness.  They do not accuse you of talking nonsense; they do not doubt that your words have meaning; but they feel that, and the longer they have lived without it the surer they are that at their stage of life they do not really need it.

What is it that hinders so many who profess to believe in grace from really doing so?  Why does the theme mean so little even to some who talk about it a great deal?  The root of the trouble seems to be misbelief rooted, not just in the mind, but in the heart, at the deeper level of things that we never question, because we always take them for granted.  There are 4 crucial truths in this realm which the doctrine of grace presupposes, and if they are not acknowledged and felt in one's heart, clear faith in God's grace becomes impossible.  Unhappily the spirit of our age is as directly opposed to them as it well could be.  It is not to be wondered at, therefore that faith in grace is a rarity today.  The 4 truths are these:

The moral ill-desert of man.  Modern man, conscious of his tremendous scientific achievements in recent years, naturally inclines to a high opinion of himself.  He views material wealth as in any case more important than moral character, and in the moral realm he is resolutely kind to himself, treating small virtues as compensation for great vices and refusing to take seriously the idea that, morally speaking, there is anything much wrong with him.  He tends to dismiss a bad conscience, in himself as in others, as an unhealthy psychological freak, a sign of disease and mental aberration rather than an index of moral reality.  For modern man is convinced that, despite all his little peccadiloes - drinking, gambling, reckless drive, fiddling, black and white lies, sharp practice in trading, dirty reading and what have you - he is at heart a thorougly good fellow.  Then, as pagans do (and modern man's heart is pagan make no mistake about that), he imagines God as a magnified image of himself and assumes that God shares his own complacency about himself.  The thought of himself as a creature fallen from God's image, a rebel against God's rule, guilty and unclean in God's sight, fit only for God's condemnation, never enters his head.

The retributive justice of God.  Modern man's way is to turn a blind eye to all wrongdoing as long as he safely can.  He tolerates it in others, feeling that there, but for the accident of circumstances, goes he.  Parents hesitate to correct their children, and teachers to punish their pupils, and the public puts up with vandalism and anti-social behaviour of all sorts with scarcely a murmur.  The accepted maxim seems to be that as long as evil can be ignored, it should be; one should only punish as a last resort and then only so far as is necessary to prevent the evil having too grievous social consequences.  Willingness to tolerate and indulge evil up to the limit is seen as a virtue, while living by fixed principles of right and wrong is censured by some as doubtfully moral.  In our pagan way, we take it for granted that God feels as we do.  The idea that retribution might be the moral law of God's world and an expression of His holy character, seems to modern man quite fantastic: those who uphold it find themselves accused of projecting on to God their own pathological impulses of rage and vindictiveness.  Yet the Bible insists throughout that this world which God in His goodness has made is a moral world, in which retribution is as basic a fact as breathing.  God is the judge of the earth and He will do right, vindicating the innocent, if such there be, but punishing (in the Bible phrase, 'visiting their sins upon') law breakers (Genesis 18 verse 25).  God is not true to Himself unless He punishes sin.  And unless one knows and feels the truth of this fact, that wrongdoers have no natural hope of anything from God but retributive judgement, one can never share the biblical faith in divine grace.

The spiritual impotence of man.  "By the deeds of the law (ie morality and churchmanship) shall no flesh be justified in his sight." declares Paul (Romans 3 verse 20).  To mend our own relationship with God, regaining God's favour after having once lost it, is beyond the power of any one of us.  And one must see and bow to this before one can share the biblical faith in God's grace.

The sovereign freedom of God.  Ancient paganism thought of each god as bound to his worshippers by bonds of self-interest, because he depended on their service and gifts for his welfare.  Modern paganism has at the back of its mind a similar feeling that God is somehow obliged to love and help us, little though we deserve it.  The God of the bible does not depend on His human creatures for His well-being (see Psalm 50 verses 8 - 13, Acts 17 verse 25) nor, now that we have sinned, is He bound to show us favour.  We can only claim from him justice - and justice, for us, means certain condemnation.  God does not owe it to anyone to stop justice taking its course.  He is not obliged to pity and pardon; if He does so it is an act done, as we say, "of His own free will" and nobody forces His hand.  "It does not depend on man's will or effort, but on God's mercy" (Romans 9 verse 16).  Grace is free, in the sense of being self-originated, and of proceeding from one who was free not to be gracious.  Only when it is seen that what decides each man's destiny is whether or not God resolves to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision which God need not make it in any single case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.  

The grace of God is love freely shown towards guilty sinners contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit.  It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity, and had no reason to expect anything but severity.  We have seen why the thought of grace means so little to some churchpeople - namely, because they do not share the beliefs about God and man which is presupposes.  Now we have to ask; why should this thought mean so much to others?  The answer is not far to seek; indeed it is evidence from what has already been said.  It is surely clear that, once a man is convinced that his state and need are as described the New Testament gospel of grace cannot but sweep him off his feet with wonder and joy.  For it tells how our Judge has become our Saviour.

"Grace" and "salvation" belong together as cause and effect "By grace ye are saved" (Ephesians 2 verse 5)  "The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared" (Titus 2 verse 11)  The gospel declares how "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3 verse 16), how "God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5 verse 8), how a fountain has been opened, according to prophecy (Zechariah 13 verse 2), for sin and for uncleanness and how the living Christ now cries to all who hear the gospel, "Come unto me ... and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11 verse 28).  The New Testament sets forth the grace of God in 3 particular connections, each of them a perpetual mavel to the Christian believer.

Grace as the source of the pardon of sin.  The gospel centres upon justification; that is upon the remission of sins and the acceptance of our persons that goes with it.  Justification is the truly dramatic transition from the status of a condemned criminal awaiting a terrible sentence to that of an heir awaiting a fabulous inheritance.  Justification is by faith; it takes place the moment  man puts vital trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour.  Justification is free to us, but it was costly to God, for its price was the atoning death of God's Son.  Why was it that God "spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Romans 8 verse 32)?  Because of His grace.  It was His own free decision to save which brought about the atonement.  Paul makes this explicit.  We are justified, he says, 'freely' (ie with nothing to pay) by his grace (ie in consequence of God's merciful resolve) through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God set forth to be a propitiation (ie one who averts divine wrath by expiating sins), through (ie becoming effective for individuals by means of) faith, by his blood" (Romans 3 verse 24, Titus 3 verse 7).  Again Paul tells us that in Christ we have "our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace." (Ephesians 1 verse 7).  

Grace as the motive of the plan of salvation.  Pardon is the heart of the gospel, but it is not the whole doctrine of grace.  For the NT sets God's gift of pardon in the context of a plan of salvation which began with election before the world was and will only be completed when the Church is perfect in glory.  Paul refers briefly to this plan in several places (Romans 8 verse 29, 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 12), but his fullest account of it is in the massive paragraph - for, despite subdivisions, the flow of thought constitutes it essentially one paragraph - running from Ephesians 1 verse 3 to 2 verse 10.  As often, Paul starts with a summary statement and spends the rest of the paragraph analysing and explaining it.  The statement is "God ... hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places (ie the realm of spiritual realities) in Christ" (verse 3).  The analysis begins with eternal election and predestination to sonship in Christ (verse 4), proceeds to redemption and remission of sins in Christ (verse 7), and moves on to the hope of glorification in Christ (verse 11) and the gift of the Spirit in Christ to seal us as God's possession for ever (verse 13).  From there, Paul concentrates attention on the act of power whereby God regenerates sinners in Christ (chapter 1 verse 19, 2 verse 7) bringing them to faith in the process (chapter 2 verse 8).  Paul depicts all these items as elements in a single great saving purpose (chapter 1 verse 5, 9, 11) and tells us that grace (mercy, love, kindness; chapter 2 verses 4 and 7) is its motivating force (see chapter 2 verses 4 - 8), that "the riches of his grace" appear throughout its administration (chapter 1 verse 7, 2 verse 7) and that the praise of grace is its ultimate goal (chapter 1 verse 6, 12, 14, chapter 2 verse 7).  So the believer may rejoice to know that his conversion was no accident, but an act of God which had its place in an eternal plan to bless him with the free gift of salvation from sin (chapter 2 verses 8 - 10); God promises and purposes to carry His plan through to completion, and since it is executed by sovereign power (chapter 1 verse 19) nothing can thwart it.  

Grace as the guarantee of the preservation of the saints.  If the plan of salvation is certain of accomplishment, then the Christian's future is assured.  He is, and will be, "kept by the power of God through faith into salvation" (1 Peter 1 verse 5).  He need not torment himself with the fear that his faith may fail; as grace led him to faith in the first place, so grace will keep him believing to the end.  Faith in its origin and continuance, is a gift of grace (Philippians 1 verse 29).

It has been said that in the NT doctrine is grace, and ethics is gratitude; and something is wrong with any form of Christianity in which, experimentally and practically, this saying is not being verified.  Those who suppose that the doctrine of God's grace tends to encourage moral laxity ('final salvation is certain anyway, no matter what we do; therefore our conduct doesn't matter') are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about.  For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure; and the revealed will of God is that those who have received grace should henceforth give themselves to "good works" (Ephesians 2 verse 10, Titus 2 verse 11) and gratitude will move any man who has truly received grace to do as God requires.

Do you claim to know the love and grace of God in your own life?  Prove your claim, then, by going and praying likewise.

 CHAPTER 14 - GOD THE JUDGE

Do you believe in divine judgment?  Do you believe in God who acts as our Judge?

Many it seems do not.  Speak to them of God as a Father, a friend, a helper, one who loves us despite all our weakness and folly and sin, and their faces light up; you are on their wavelength at once.  But speak to them of God as Judge and they frown and shake their heads.  Their minds recoil from such an idea.  They find it repellent and unworthy.

But there are few things stressed more strongly in the bible that the reality of God's work as Judge.  'Judge' is a word often applied to him.  Abraham, interceding for Sodom that God was about to destroy, cried "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18 verse 25).  Jephthah, concluding his ultimatum to the Ammonite invaders, declared "I have not sinned against thee, but thou doest me wrong to war against me; the Lord the Judge be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon." (Judges 11 verse 27)  "God is the Judge" declared the psalmist (Psalm 75 verse 7); "arise O God, judge the earth" (Psalm 82 verse 8).  In the NT the writer to the Hebrews speaks of "God the Judge of all" (Hebrews 12 verse 23).

The reality of divine judgment as a fact is set forth on page after page of Bible history.  God judged Adam and Eve, expelling them from the Garden and pronouncing curses on their future earthly life (Genesis 3).  God judged the corrupt world of Noah's day, sending a flood to destroy mankind (Genesis 6 - 8).  God judged Sodom and Gomorrah, engulfing them in a volcanic catastrophe (Genesis 18 - 19).  God judged Israel's Egyptian taskmasters, just as He foretold He would (Genesis 15: Exodus 7 - 12).  God judged those who worshipped the golden calf, using the Levites as His executioners (Exodus 32 verses 26 - 35).  God judged Nadab and Abihu for offering Him strange fire (Leviticus 10 verse 1) as later He judged Korah, Dathan and Abiram, who were swallowed up in an earth tremor.  God judged Achan for sacrilegious thieving; he and his were wiped out (Joshua 7).  God judged Israel for unfaithfulness to Him after their entry into Canaan, causing them to fall under the dominion of other nations (Judges 2 verse 11; 3 verse 5 and 4 verse 1).  Before ever they entered the promised land, God threatened His people with deportation as the ultimate penalty for impiety and eventually after repeated warnings from the prophets, He judged them by fulfilling this threat; the northern kingdom (Israel) fell victim to the Assyrian captivity and the southern kindom (Judah) to the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 17; 22: 15, 23: 26).  In Babylon God judged both Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar for their impiety.  The former was given time for amendment of life, the latter was not (Daniel 4 verse 5).  Nor are the narratives of divine judgement confined to the OT.  In the NT story, judgment falls on the Jews for rejecting Christ (Matthew 21 verse 43; 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 14), on Ananias and Sapphira, for lying to God (Acts 5) on Herod, for his pride (Acts 12 verse 21), on Elymas for his opposition to the gospel (Acts 13 verse 8) and on Christians at Corinth who were afflicted with illness (which in some cases proved fatal) by reason of their gross irreverence in connection particularly with the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11 verse 29 - 32).  And this is only a selection from the abundant accounts of divine acts of judgment which the Bible contains.

When we turn from Bible history to Bible teaching - the law, the prophets, the wisdom writers, the words of Christ and His apostles - we find the thought of God's action in judgment overshadowing everything.  The Mosaic legislation is given as from a God who is Himself a just judge and will not hesitate to inflict penalties by direct providential action if His people break His law.  The prophets take up this theme indeed, the greater part of the recorded teaching consists of exposition and application of the law, and threats of judgment against the lawless and impenitent.  They spend a good deal more space preaching judgment than they do predicting the Messiah and His kingdom!  In the wisdom literature, the same viewpoint appears; the one basic certainty underlying all discussion of life's problems in Job and Ecclesiastes and all the practical maxims of Proverbs, is that "God will bring thee into judgment", "God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil (Ecclesiastes 11 verse 9 and 12 verse 14).

People who do not actually read the bible confidently assure us that when we move from the OT to the NT, the theme of divine judgment fades into the background; but if we examine the NT even in the most cursory way, we find at once that the OT emphasis on God's action as Judge, far from being reduced is actually intensified.  The entire NT is overshadowed by the certainty of a coming day of universal judgment and by the problem thence arising; how may we sinners get right with God while there is yet time?  The NT looks on to "the day of judgment", "the day of wrath", "the wrath to come" and proclaims Jesus, the divine Saviour, as the divinely appointed Judge.  "The judge" who stands before the door (James 5 verse 9), "ready to judge the quick and the dead" (1 Peter 4 verse 5), "the righteous judge" who will give Paul his crown (2 Timothy 4 verse 8) is the Lord Jesus Christ "He is the one who has been designated by God as judge of the living and the dead" (Acts 10 verse 42).  "God ... hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world by that man whom he has ordained."  Paul told the Athenians (Acts 17 verse 31) and to the Romans he wrote, "God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel." (Romans 2 verse 16)  Jesus himself says the same "The Father ... hath committed all judgment unto the Son ... the Father ... hath given him authority to execute judgment ... the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation" (John 5 verses 22, 26 and 28).  The Jesus of the NT who is the world's Saviour, is its Judge too.

But what does this mean? What is involved in the idea of the Father, or Jesus, being a judge?  4 thoughts at least are involved.

The judge is a person with authority.  In the bible world, the king was always the supreme judge because his was the supreme ruling authority.  It is on this basis, according to the bible, that God is judge of his world.  As our Maker, he owns us, and as our Owner, He has a right to dispose of us; He has, therefore, a right to make laws for us, and to reward us according to whether or not we keep them.  In most modern states, the legislature and the judiciary are divided, so that the judge does not make the laws he adminsters; but in the ancient world this was not so, and it is not so with God.  He is both the Lawgiver and the Judge.

The judge is a person identified with what is good and right.  The modern idea that a judge should be cold and dispassionate has no place in the bible.  The biblical judge is expected to love justice and fair play and to loathe all ill-treatment of man by his fellow-man.  An unjust judge, one who has no interest in seeing right triumph over wrong, is by biblical standards a monstrosity.  The bible leaves us in no doubt that God loves righteousness and hates iniquity and that the ideal of a judge wholly identified with what is good and right is perfectly fulfilled in Him.

The judge is a person of wisdom, to discern truth.  In the biblical world, the judge's first task is to ascertain the facts in the case that is before him.  There is no jury; it is his responsibility and his alone, to question and cross-examine, and detect lies and pierce through evasions and stablish how matters really stand.  When the bible pictures God judging, it emphasises His omniscience and wisdom as the searcher of hearts and the finder of facts.  Nothing can escape Him; we may fool men, but we cannot fool God.  He knows us, and judges us, as we really are.  When Abraham met the Lord in human form at the oaks of Mamre, He gave Abraham to understand that He was on the way to Sodom, to establish the truth about the moral situation there.  "The Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know." (Genesis 18 verse 20)  So it is always, God will know.  His judgment is according to truth - factual truth, as well as moral truth.  He judges "the secrets of men", not just their public facade.  Not for nothing does Paul say "we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ." (2 Corinthians 5 verse 10)

The judge is a person of power, to execute sentence.  The modern judge does no more than pronounce the sentence; another department of the judicial executive then carries it out.  The same was true in the ancient world.  But God is His own executioner.  As He legislates, and sentences, so He punishes.  All judicial functions coalesce in Him.

From what has been said, it becomes clear that the bible's proclamation of God 's work as Judge is part of its witness to His character.  It confirms that is said elsewhere of His moral perfection, His rightousness and justice, His wisdom, omniscience and omnipotence.  It shows us also that the heart of the justice which expresses God's nature is retribution, the rendering to men what they have deserved; for this is the essence of the judge's task.  To reward good with good, and evil with evil, is natural to God.  So, when the NT speaks of the final judgment, it always represents it in terms of retribution, God will judge all men, it says, "according to their works" (Matthew 16 verse 27; Revelation 20 verse 12).  Paul amplifies "God ... will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life; but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil ... but glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good ... but there is no respect of persons with God ..." (Romans 2 verses 6 - 11)  The retributive principle applies throughout: Christians as well as non-Christians, will receive "according to the works".  Christians are explicitly included in the reference when Paul says "we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad." (2 Corinthians 5 verse 10).

Thus retribution appears as a natural and predetermined expression of the divine character.  God has resolved to be every man's Judge, rewarding every man according to his works.  Retribution is the inescapable moral law of creation; God will see that each man sooner or later receives what he deserves - if not there, then hereafter.  This is one of the basic facts of life  And, being made in God's image we all know in our hearts that this is right.  This is how it ought to be.  Often we complain that, as the gangster put it (not, in his case with very good warrant) "there ain't no justice".  The problem of the psalmist who saw inoffensive men being victimised and the ungodly "not in trouble as other men" but prospering and at peace (Psalm 73) is echoed again and again in human experience.  But the character of God is the guarantee that all wrongs will be righted some day; when "the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God" (Romans 2 verse 5) arrives, retribution will be exact, and no problems of cosmic unfairness will remain to haunt us.  God is the Judge, so justice will be done.

Why, then, do men fight shy of the thought of God as a Judge?  Why do they feel the thought to be unworthy of Him?  The truth is that part of God's moral perfection is His perfection in judgment.  Would a God who did not care about the difference between right and wrong be a good and amirable Being?  Would a God who put no distinction between the beasts of history, the Hitlers and Stalins and His own saints, be morally praiseworthy and perfect?   Moral indifference would be an imperfection in God, not a perfection.  But not to judge the world would be to show moral indifference.  The final proof that God is a perfect moral Being, not indifferent to questions of right and wrong, is the fact that He has committed Himself to judge the world.

It is clear that the reality of divine judgment must have a direct effect on our view of life.  If we know that retributive judgment faces us at the end of the road, we shall not live as otherwise we would.  But it must be emphasised that the doctrine of divine judgment, and particularly of the final judgment, is not to be thought of primarily as a bogey, with which to frighten men into an outward form of conventional 'righteousness'.  It has its frightening implications for godless men, it is true; but its main thrust is as a revelation of the moral character of God and an imparting of moral significance to human life.

It is not always realised that the main NT authority on final judgment, just as on heaven and hell, is the Lord Jesus Christ himself.  For Jesus constantly affirmed that in the day when all appear before God's throne to receive the abiding and eternal consequences of the life they have lived, he himself will be the Father's agent in judgment, and his word of acceptance or rejection will be decisive.  

The clearest prefiguration of Jesus as judge is in Matthew 25 verse 31 "The Son of man shall ... sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations and he shall separate them ... Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit ... Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire ..."  The clearest account of Jesus' prerogative as judge is in John 5 verse 22: "The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father ... the Father ... has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man ... the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment."  God's own appointment has made Jesus Christ inescapable.  He stands at the end of life's road for everyone without exception "Prepare to meet thy God" was Amos' message to Israel (Amos 4 verse 12); "prepare to meet the risen Jesus" is God's message to the world today (Acts 17 verse 31).  And we can be sure that he who is true God and perfect man will make a perfectly just judge.

Final judgment, as we saw, will be according to our works - that is, our doings, our whole course of life.  The relevance of our 'doings' is not that they ever merit an award from the court - they are too far short of perfection to do that - but that they provide an index of what is in the heart - what, in our words, is the real nature of each agent.  Jesus once said "on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned." (Matthew 12 verse 36)  What is the significance of the words we utter (which utterance is, of course, a 'work' in the relevant sense)?  Just this: the words show what you are inside.  Jesus had just made this very point.  "The tree is known by its fruit ... how can you speak good, when you are evil?  For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (verse 33)  Similarly in the sheep and goats passage appeal is made to whether men had or had not relieved Christians' needs.  What is the significance of that?  It is not that one way of acting was meritorious while the other was not, but that from these actions one can tell whether there was love to Christ, the love that springs from faith, in the heart (Matthew 25 verse 34).

Once we see that the significance of works in the last judgment is that of a spiritual character index, it becomes possible to answer a question which puzzles many.  It may be put in this way.  Jesus said "he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5 verse 24).  Paul said "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body" (2 Corinthians 5 verse 10).  How can these 2 statements be fitted together?  How does free forgiveness and justification by faith square with judgment according to works?  The answer seems to be as follows.  First the gift of justification certainly shields believers from being condemned and banished from God's presence as sinners.  This appears from the vision of judgment in Revelation 20 verses 11 - 15, where alongside 'the books' recording each man's works 'the book of life' is opened, and those whose names are written there are not 'cast into the lake of fire' as the rest of men are.  But, second, the gift of justification does not at all shield believers from being assessed as Christians, and from forfeiting good which others will enjoy if it turns out that as Christians they have been slack, mischievous and destructive.  This appears from Paul's warning to the Corinthians to be careful what life-style they build on Christ, the one foundation.  "If any man builds upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire ... If any man's work abide ... he shall receive a reward.  If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire." (1 Corinthians 3 verses 12 - 15)  'Reward' and 'loss' signify an enriched or impoverished relationship with God, though in what ways it is beyond our present power to know.

Final judgment will also be according to our knowledge.  Everyone knows something of God's will through general revelation, even if they have not been instructed in the law or the gospel, and everyone is guilty before God for falling short of the best they knew.  But ill-desert is graded according to what that best was; see Romans 2 verse 12 and compare Luke 12 verse 47.  The principle operating here is that 'where a man has been given much, much will be expected of him." (verse 48).  The justice of this is obvious.  In every case the judge of all the earth will do right.

Paul refers to the fact that we must all appear before Christ's judgment seat as "the terror of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5 verse 11) and well he might.  Jesus the Lord, like His Father is holy and pure; we are neither.  We live under His eye, He knows our secrets and on judgment day the whole of our past life will be played back,  as it were, before Him, and brought under review.  If we know ourselves at all, we know we are not fit to face Him.  What then are we to do?  The NT answer is: call on the coming Judge to be our present Saviour.  As Judge, He is the law, but as the Saviour He is the gospel.  Run from Him now, and you will meet Him as Judge then - and without hope.  Seek Him now, and you will find Him (for "he that seeketh findeth") and you will then discover that you are looking forward to that future meeting with joy, knowing that there is now "no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8 verse 1).

 CHAPTER 15 - THE WRATH OF GOD

"Wrath" is an old English word defined in dictionary as "deep, intense anger and indignation."  "Anger" is defined as "stirring of resentful displeasure and strong antagonism by a sense of injury or insult"; "indignation" as 'righteous anger aroused by injustice and baseness'.  Such is wrath.  And wrath, the bible tells us, is an attribute of God.

The modern habit throughout the Christian church is to play this subject down.  Those who still believe in the wrath of God say little about it; perhaps they do not think much about it  To an age which has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of greed, pride, sex and self-will, the Church mumbles on about God's kindness but says virtually nothing about judgment.  The fact is that the subject of divine wrath has become taboo in modern society and Christians by and large have accepted the taboo and conditioned themselves never to raise the matter.

The biblical writers engage in it constantly.  Both Testaments emphasise the reality and terror of God's wrath.  There are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury and wrath of Gd than there are to His love and tenderness.

The bible labours the point that just as God is good to those who trust him, so he is terrible to those who do not.  Nahum 1 verses 2 - 8.

Paul's expectation that the Lord Jesus will one day appear "in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints." (2 Thessalonians 1 verse 8)   In fact, throughout the New Testament 'the wrath of God', 'the wrath' or simply 'wrath' are virtually technical terms for the outgoing of God in retributive action, by whatever means, against those who have defiled him. (see Romans 1 verse 18, 2 verse 5, 5 verse 9, 12 verse 19, 13 verse 4; 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 10, 2 veerse 16, 5 verse 9; Revelation 6 verse 15, 16 verse 19; Luke 12 verses 22 - 24)

Nor does the bible make known to us the wrath of God merely by general statements like those quoted.  Bible history, loudly proclaims the severity as well as the goodness of God.  The bible could be called the book of God's wrath for it is full of portrayals of divine retribution from the cursing and banishment of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 to the overthrow of 'Babylon' and the great assizes of Revelation 17 - 18 an 20.

The root cause of our unhappiness seems to be a disquieting suspicion that ideas of wrath are in one way or another unworthy of God.

To some, for instance, 'wrath' suggests a loss of self-control, an outburst of 'seeing red' which is partly, if not wholly irrational.  To others, it suggests the rage of conscious impotence, or wounded pride, or plain bad temper.  Surely it is said, it would be wrong to ascribe to God such attitudes as these?

The reply is: indeed it would, but the Bible does not ask us to do that.  There seems to be a misunderstanding of the biblical habit of describing God's attitudes and affections in terms ordinarily used for talking about man.  The basis of this habit is the fact that God made man in his own image, so that human personality and character are more like the being of God than anything else we know.  God's love, as the bible views it, never leads him to foolish, impulsive, immoral actions in the way that its human counterpart too often leads us.  And in the same way, God's wrath in the bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is.  It is, instead a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil.  God is only angry where anger is called for.  Even among men, there is such a thing as righteous indignation, though it is, perhaps, rarely found.  But all God's indignation is righteous.  Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as He did in good be a good God?  Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in this world be morally perfect?  Surely not.  But it is precisely this adverse reaction to evil, which is a necessary part of moral perfection, that the bible has in view when it speaks of God's wrath.

Then to others, the thought of God's 'wrath' suggests cruelty.  They think of Jonathan Edward's sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.'  In this sermon Edwards, enlargin on his theme that 'natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell' use some most vivid furnace imagery to make his congregation feel the horror of their position, and so give force to his conclusion - "therefore let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come."

God's wrath in the bible is always judicial - that is, it is the wrath of the Judge, administering justice.  Cruelty is always immoral, but the explicit presupposition of all that we find in the bible is that each receives precisely what he deserves.  "The day of wrath" Paul tells us is also the day of 'revelaiton of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds' (Romans 2 verses 5).  Jesus himself - who actually had more to say on this subject than any other NT figure - made the point that retribution would be proportioned to individual desert - Luke 12 verse 47).

God's wrath in the bible is something which men choose for themselves.  Before hell is an experience inflicted by God, it is a state for which man himself opts, by retreating from the light which God shines in his heart to lead him to himself.  When John writes 'he who does not believe (in Jesus) is condemned (judged) already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God', he goes on to explain himself as follows "And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil" (John 3 verse 18).  He means just what he says: the decisive act of judgment upon the lost is the jugment which they pass upon themselves, by rejecting the light that comes to them in and through Jesus Christ.  In the last analysis all that God does subsequently in judicial action towards the unbeliever, whether in this life or beyond it, is to show him and lead him into, the full implications of the choice he has made.

The basic choice was and is simple - either to respond to the summons "come unto me ... take my yoke upon you, and learn of me." (Matthew 11 verse 28), or not; either to 'save' one's life by keepign it from Jesus' censure and resisting his demand to take it over, or to 'lose' it by denying onself, shouldering one's cross, becoming a disciple and letting Jesus have his own disruptive way with one.  In the former case, Jesus tells us, we may gain the world, but it will do us no good, for we shall lose our souls; though in the latter case, by losing our life for his sake, we shall find it (Matthew 16 verse 24).

But what does it mean to lose our souls?  To answer this question Jesus uses his own solemn imagery - 'Gehenna' (hell in Mark 9 verse 47 and 10 other gospel texts), the valley outside Jerusalem where rubbish was burned; the 'worm' that 'dieth not' (Mark 9 verse 47), an image, it seems for hte endless dissolution of th e personality by a condemning conscience; 'fire' for the agonising awareness of God's displeasure; 'outer darkness' for knowledge of the loss, not merely of God but of all good, and everything that made life seem worth living; 'gnashing of teeth' for self-condemnation and self-loathing.  These things are, no doubt, unimaginably dreadful, though those who have been convicted of sin know a little of their nature.  But they are not arbitrary inflictions; the represent, rather, a conscious growing into the state in which one has chosen to be.  The unbeliever has preferred to be by himself, without God, defing God, having God agaisnt him and he shall have his preference.  Nobody stands under the wrath of God save those who have chosen to do so.  The essence of God's action in wrath is to give men what thy choose, in all its implications; nothign more, and equally nothing less.  God's readiness to respect human choice to this extent may appear disconcerting and even terrifying, but it is plain that his attitude here is supremely just, and poles apart from the wanton and irresponsible inflicting of pain which is what we mean by cruety.

We need, therefore, to remember that the key to interpreting the many biblical passages, often ighly figurative, which picture the divine King and Judge as active against men in wrath and vengeance, is to realise that what God is hereby doing is no more than to ratify and confirm judgments which those whom He 'visits' have already passed on themselves by the course they have chosen to follow.  This appears in the story of God's first act of wrath towards man, in Genesis 3, where we learn that Adam had already chosen to hide from God, and keep clear of his presence, before ever God drove him from the garden; and the same principle applies throughout the bible.

The classical NT treatment of the wrath of God is found in the epistle to the Romans which contains more explicit references to God's wrath than all the rest of Paul's letters put together.  What does Romans tell us about God's wrath?

The meaning of God's wrath.

The wrath of God in Romans denotes God's resolute action in punishing sin.  It is as much  the expression of a personal, emotional attitude of the Tribune Jehovah as is his love ot sinners; it is the active manifesting of his hatred of irreligon and moral evil.  The phrase 'the wrath' may refer specifically to the future crowning manifestation of this hatred on 'the day of wrath' (chapter 5 verse 9, chapter 2 verse 5) but it may also refer to present providential evens and processes in which divine retribution for sin may be discerned.  Thus, the magistrate sentencing criminals is 'the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer' (chapter 13 verse 4).  God's wrath is his reaction to our sin, and 'the law worketh wrath' (chapter 4 verse 15) because the law stirs up sin latent ithin us an cuases trangression - the behaviour that evokes wrath - to abound (chapter 5 verse 20, 7 verses 7 - 13).  As a reaction to sin, God's wrath is an expression of his justice, and Paul indignantly rejects the suggestion 'that God is unjust to inflict wrath upon us' (chapter 4 verse 5).  Persons 'fitted for destruction' he describes as 'vessels of wrath' - that is, objects of wrath - in a similar sense to that in which he elsewhere calls servants of the world, the flesh and the devil, 'children of wrath' (Ephesians 2 verse 3).  Such persons, simply by being what they are, call down God's wrath upon themselves.

2. The revelation of God's wrath 

"The wrath of God is revealed from heaven agaisnt all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold don the truth in unrighteousness" (chapter 1 verse 18).  The present tense, 'is revealed', implies a constant disclosure, going on all the time; 'from heaven' which stands in contrast to 'in the gospel' in the previous verse, implies a universal disclosure, reaching those whom the gospel has not yet reached.

How is this disclosure made?  It imprints itself directly on every man's conscience; those whom God has given up to a 'reprobate mind' (chapter 1 verse 28), to do uninhibited evil, still know 'the ordinancce of God, that they which practise such things are worth of death' (chapter 1 verse 32).  No man is entirel without inklings of judgment to come.  And this immediate disclosure is confirmed by the revealed word of the gospel, which prepares us for its good news by telling us the bad news of a coming 'day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God' (chapter 2 verse 5).

Nor is this all.  To those who have eyes to see, tokens of the active wrath of God apper here and now in the actual state of mankind.  Everywhere the Christian observs a pattern of degeneration, constantly working itself out - from knowledge of God to worship of that which is not God, and from idolatry to immorality of an ever grosser sot, so that each generation grows a fresh crop of 'ungodliness' and unrighteousness of men'.  In this decline we are to recognise the present action of divine wrath, in a process of juicia hardening and withdrawal of restraints, whereby men are given up to their own corrupt preferences and so come to put into practice more and more uninhibitedly the lusts of their sinflu hearts.  Paul describes the process as he knew it from his bible and the world of his day, in Romans 1 verses 19 - 31, where the key phrases are 'God ... gave them up to uncleannesss', 'God gave them up unto vile affections', 'God gave them over to a reprobate mind' (verses 24, 26 and 28).  If ou want proof that the wrath of God, revealed as a fact in your conscience, is already working as a force in the world, Paul would say, you need only look at life around you, and see what God has given men up to.  

3. The deliverance from God's wrath

In the first 3 chapters of Romans, Paul is concerned to force on us the question, if 'the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men' and a 'day of wrath' is coming when God will 'render to every man according to his deeds', how can any of us escape disaster.  The question presses beacuse we are 'all under sin', 'there is none righteous, no, not one'; 'all the world' is 'guilty before God' (chapter 3 verse 9, 10 and 19).  the law cannot save us, for its only effect is to stimuate sin an show us how far short we fall of righteousness.   The outward trappins of religion cannot save us either, any more than mere circumcision can save the Jew.  Is there any way of eliverance, then, from the wrath to come?  there is, and Paul knows it.  "Being now justified by his blood," Paul proclaims, 'we shall be saed from (God's) wrath through him" (Romans 5 verse 9).  By whose blood?  The blood of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.  And what does it mean to be 'justified'?  It means to be forgiven, and accepted as righteous.  And how do we come to be justified?  Through faith - that is, self abandoning trust in the person and work of Jesus.  and how does Jesus' blood - that is, His sacrificial death - form a basis for our justification?  Paul explains this in Romans 3 verse 24, where he speaks of 'the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood'.  What is a 'propitiation'?  it is a sacrifice that averts wrath through expiating sin, and cancelling guilt.

This is the real heart of the gospel: that Jesus Christ, by virtue of his death on the cross as our substitute and sin-bearer, 'is the propitiation for our sins' (1 John 2 verse 2).  Between us sinners and the thunderclouds of divine wrath stands the cross of the Lord Jesus.  If we are Christ's, through faith, then we are justified through his cross, and the wrath will never touch us, neither here nor hereafter.  Jesus 'delivers us from the wrath to come' (1 Thessalonians 1 verse 10).

 CHAPTER 16 - GOODNESS AND SEVERITY

"Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God' Romans 11 verse 22.  The crucial word here is "and'.  The apostle is explaining the relation between Jew and Gentile in the plan of God.  He has just reminded his Gentile readers that God rejected the great mass of their Jewish contemporaries for unbelief, while at the same time bringing many pagans like themselves to saving faith.  Now he invites them to take note of the 2 sides of God's character which appeared in this transaction.  "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee goodness."  The Christians at Rome are not to dwell on God's goodness alone, nor on His severity alone, but to contemplate both together.  Both are attributes of God - aspects, that is, of His revealed character.  Both appear alongside each other in the economy of grace.  Both must be acknowledged together if God is to be truly known.   

Today, men say they believe in God but have no idea who it is that they believe in or what difference believing in him may make.  The Christian who wants to help his floundering fellows into 'safety, certainty and enjoyment' is constantly bewildered as to were to begin; the fantastic hotch-potch of fancies about God that confronts him quite takes his breath away.  

People have got into the way of following private religious hunches rather than learning of God from his own word; and we have to try and help them to unlearn the pride and in some cases misconceptions about scripture which gave rise to this attitude and to base their convictions not on what they feel but on what the bible says.  

Secondly man thinks of all religions as equal and equivalent and draws his stock of ideas about God from pagan as well as Christian sources; and we have to try and show people the uniqueness and finality of the Lord Jesus Christ, God's last word to man.  

Thirdly men have ceased to recognise the reality of their own sinfulness, which imparts a degree of perversity and enmity against God to all that they think and do; and it is our task to try and introduce people to this fact about themselves, and so make them self-distrustful and open to correction by the word of God.  

Fourthly people today are in the habit of dissociating the thought of God's goodness from that of his severity; and we must seek to wean them from this habit since nothing but misbelief is possible as long as it persists.

The habit in question, first learned from some gifted German theologians of the last century has infected modern Western Protestantism as a while.  To reject all ideas of divine wrath and judgment and to assume that God's character, misrepresented in many parts of the bible, is really one of indulgent benevolence without any severity, is the rule rather than the exception among ordinary folk today.  It is true that some recent theologians, in reaction, have tried to reaffirm the truth of God's holiness but their efforts have seemed half-hearted and their words have fallen for most part on deaf ears.  Modern Protestants are not going to give up their 'enlightened' adherence to the doctrine of a celestial Santa Claus merely beause a Brunner or a Niebuhr suspect this is not the whole story.  The certainty that there is no more to be said of God (if God there be) than that he is infinitely forbearing and kind, is as hard to eradicate as bindweed.  And when once it has put down roots, Christianity, in the true sense of the word, simply dies off.  For the substance of Christianity is faith in the forgiveness of sins through the redeeming work of Christ on the cross.  But on the basis of the Santa Claus theology, sins create no problem and atonement becomes needless; Gods active favour extends no less to those who disregard his commands than to those who keep them.  The idea that God's attitude to me is affected by whether or not I do what he says has no place in the thought of the man in the street and any attempt to show the need for fear in God's presence, and trembling at his word, gets written off as impossibly old-fashioned - 'Victorian' and 'Puritan' and 'sub-Christian'.

Goodness, in God as in man, means something admirable, attractive and praiseworthy.  When the biblical writers call God 'good' they are thinking in general of all those moral qualities which prompt his people to call him 'perfect' and in particular of the generosity which moves them to call him 'merciful' and 'gracious' and to speak of his 'love'.

The bible is constantly ringing the changes on the theme of the moral perfection of God, as declared in his own words and verified in the experience of his people.  When God stood with Moses on Sinai and 'proclaimed the name (that is the revealed character) of the Lord (that is, God as his people's Jehovah, the sovereign saviour who says of himself "I am what I am" in the covenant of grace)', what he said was this, 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ...' (Exodus 34 verses 5 - 7).  And this proclaiming of God's moral perfection was carried out as the fulfilment of his promise to make all his goodness pass before Moses (Exodus 33 verse 19).  All the particular perfections that are mentioned here, and all that go with them - God's truthfulness and trustworthiness, His unfailing justice and wisdom, his tenderness, forbearance and entire adequacy to all who penitently seek his help, his noble kindness in offering men the exalted destiny of fellowship with him in holiness and love - these things together make up God's goodness, 'in the overall sense of the sum total of his revealed excellences.  And when David declared "as for God his way is perfect." (2 Samuel 22 verse 31 = Psalm 18 verse 30), what he meant was that God's people find in experience, as he himself had found, that God never comes short of the goodness to which he has laid claim.  "His way is perfect; the promise of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all who take refuge in him".  The psalm as a whole is David's retrospective declaration of how he had himself proved that God is faithful to his promises and all-sufficient as a shield and defender; and every child of God who has not forfeited his birthright by backsliding enjoys a parallel experience. 

Within the cluster of God's moral perfections there is one in particular to which the term 'goodness' points - the quality which God specially singled out from the whole when, proclaiming all his goodness to Moses.  He spoke of himself as 'abundant in goodness and truth' (Exodus 34 verse 6).  This is the quality of generosity.  Generosity means a disposition to give to others in a way which has no mercenary motive and is not limited by what the recipients deserve, but consistently goes beyond it.  Generosity expresses the simple wish that others should have what they need to make them happy.  Generosity is, so to speak, the focal point of God's moral perfection; it is the quality which determines how all God's other excellences are to be displayed.  God is 'abundant in goodness' - ultro bonus, as Latin-speaking theologians long ago used to put it spontaneously good, overflowing with generosity.  Theologians of the Reformed school use the NT word 'grace' (free favour) to cover every act of divine generosity, of whatever kind, and hence distinguish beetween the 'common grace' of 'creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life' and the 'special grace' manifested in the economy of salvation - the point of the contrast beween 'common' and 'special' being that all benefit from the former, but not all are touched by the latter.  The biblical way of putting this distinction would be to say that God is good to all in some ways and to some in all ways.           

God's generosity in bestowing natural blessings is acclaimed in Psalm 145 "The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works ... The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due seson.  Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing." (verses 9, 15 and 16)  The psalmist's point is that, since God controls all that happens in his world, every meal, every pleasure, every possession, every bit of sun, every night's sleep, every moment of health and safety, everything else that sustains and enriches life, is a divine gift.  And how abundant these gifts are!   But the mercies of God on the natural level, however abundant, are overshadowed by the greater mercies of spiritual redemption.  When the singers of Israel summoned the people to give thanks to God because "he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever" (Psalm 106 verse 1, 107 verse 1, 118 verse 1, 136 verse 1), it was usually of redemptive mercies that they were thinking: mercies such as God's 'mighty acts' in saving Israel from Egypt (Psalm 106 verse 2).  His willingness to forebear and forgive when his servants fall into sin (Psalm 86 verse 5) and His readiness to teach men his way (Psalm 119 verse 68).  And the goodness to which Paul was referring in Romans 11 verse 22 was God's mercy in grafting 'wild' Gentiles into his olive tree - tht is, the fellowship of his covenant people, the community of saved believers. 

What now of God's severity?  The word Paul uses in Romans 11 verse 22 means literally 'cutting off'; it denotes God's decisive withdrawal of his goodness from those who have spurned it.  It reminds us of a fact about God which He himself declared when he proclaimed his name to Moses; namely, that though he is 'abundant in goodness and truth', he 'will by no means clear the guilty' - that is the obstinate and impenitent guilty (Exodus 34 verse 6).  The act of severity to which Paul referred was God's rejection of Israel as a body - breaking them off from his olive tree, of which they were the natural branches - because they did not believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Israel had presumed on God's goodness in his Son; and God's reaction had been swift - he had cut Israel off.  Paul takes occasion from this to warn his Gentile Christian readers that if they should lapse as Israel had lapsed, God would cut them off too.  "You stand fast only through faith.  So do not become proud, but stand in awe.  for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you." (Romans 11 verse 20)

The principle which Paul is applying here is that behind every display of divine goodness stands a threat of severity in judgment if that goodness is scorned.  If we do not let it draw us to God in gratitude and responsive love, we have only ourselves to blame when God turns against us.  Earlier in Romans, Paul addressed the self-satisfied non-Christian critic of human nature as follows, "the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance" - that is as J B Phillips correctly paraphrases, 'is meant to lead you to repentance".  "Thou that judgst doest the same things" - yet God has borne with our faults, the very faults which you regard as meriting his judgment when you see them in others and you ought to be very humble and very thankful.  But if, while tearing strips off others, you omit to turn to God yourself, then "thou ... despisest ... the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering" and thereby "after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath" (Romans 2 verses 1 - 5).  Similarly, Paul tells the Roman Christians that God's goodness is their portion only on a certain condition - "if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." (Romans 11 verse 22)  It is the same principle in each case.  Those who decline to respond to God's goodness by repentance, and faith, and trust, and submission to his will, cannot wonder or complain if sooner or later the tokens of his goodness are withdrawn, the opportunity of benefiting from them ends and retribution supervenes. 

But God is not impatient in his severity; just the reverse.  He is "slow to anger" (Nehemiah 9 verse 17; Psalms 103 verse 8, 145 verse 8; Joel 2 verse 13, Jonah 4 verse 2) and "longsuffering" (Exodus 34 verse 6; Numbers 14 verse 18; Psalm 86 verse 15).  The bible makes much of the patience and forebearance of God in postponing merited judgments in order to extend the day of grace and give more opportunity for repentance.  Peter reminds us how, when the earth was corrupt and crying out for judgment, nevertheless "the longsufferng of God waited in the days of Noah" (1 Peter 3 verse 20) - a reference probably to the 120 years respite that is mentioned in Genesis 6 verse 3.  Again in Romans 9 verse 22 Paul tells us that down the course of history God has "endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction".  Again, Peter explains to his first century readers that the reason why the promised return of Christ to judgment has not happened yet is that God "is longsuffering to us-ward", not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3 verse 9) and the same explanation presumably applies today.  The patience of God in giving "space to repent" (Revelation 2 verse 4) before judgment finally falls is one of the marvels of the bible story.  It is no wonder that the NT stresses that longsuffering is a Christian virtue and duty; it is in truth a part of the image of God (Galatians 5 verse 22; Ephesians 4 verse 2 and Colossians 3 verse 12).

We can learn 3 lessons:

Appreciate the goodness of God.  Count your blessings.  Learn not to take natural benefits, endowments and pleasures for granted; learn to thank God for them all.  Do not slight the bible, or the gospel of Jesus Christ by an attitude of casualness towards either.  The bible shows you a Saviour who suffered and died in order that we sinners might be reconciled to God; Calvary is the measure of the goodness of God; lay it to heart.  Ask yourself the psalmist's question - "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?"  Seek grace to give his answer - "I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord ... O Lord, truly I am thy servant ... I will pay my vows unto the Lord now ..." (Psalm 116 verse 12).

Appreciate the patience of God.  Think how he has borne with you, and still bears you, when so much in your life is unworthy of him and you have so richly deserved his rejection.  Learn to marvel at his patience, and seek grace to imitate it in your dealings with other men; and try not to try his patience any more.

Appreciate the discipline of God.  He is both your upholder and in the last analysis, your environment; all things come of him, and you have tasted his goodness every day of your life.  Has this experience led you to repentance and faith in Christ?  If not, you are trifling with God, and stand under the threat of his severity.  But if, now, he in Whitefield's phrase, puts thorns in your bed, it is only to awaken you from the sleep of spiritual death and to make you rise up to seek his mercy.  Or if you are a true believer, and he still puts thorns in your bed, it is only to keep you from falling into the somnolence of complacency and to ensure that you 'continue in his goodness' by letting your sense of need bring you back constantly in self-abasement and faith to seek his face.  This kindly discipline in which God's severity touches us for a moment in the context of his goodness, is meant to keep us from having to bear the full brunt of that severity apart from that context.  It is a discipline of love and must be received accordingly.  "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord" (Hebrews 12 verse 5).  "It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes." (Psalm 119 verse 71) 

 CHAPTER 17 - THE JEALOUS GOD

"The jealous God" - doesn't it sound offensive?  For we know jealousy "the green eyed monster", as a vice, one of the most cancerous and soul-destroying vices that there is; whereas God, we are sure, is perfectly good.  How, then could anyone ever imagine that jealousy is found in him?

The first step in answering this question is to make it clear that this is not a case of imagining anything.  Were we imagining a God, then naturally we should ascribe to him only characteristics which we admired and jealousy would not enter the picture.  Nobody would imagine a jealous god.  But we are not making up an idea of God by drawing on our imagination; we are seeking instead to listen to the words of Holy Scripture, in which God himself tells us the truth about himself.  For God our creator, whom we could never have discovered by any exercise of imagination, has revealed himself.  He has talked.  He has spoken through many human agents and messengers, and supremely through his son our Lord Jesus Christ.  Nor has he left his messages, and the memory of his mighty acts, to be twisted and lost by the distorting processes of oral transmission.  Instead he has had them put on record in permanent written form.  And there in the bible God's 'public record'  as Calvin called it, we find God speaking repeatedly of his jealousy.

When God brought Israel out of Egypt to Sinai, to give them his law and covenant, his jealousy was one of the first facts about himself which he taught them.  The sanction of the second commandment, spoken audibly to Moses and "written with the finger of God" on tables of stone (Exodus 31 verse 18) was this "I the Lord, thy God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20 verse 5).  A little later, God told Moses, even more strikingly, "the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34 verse 14).  Coming where it does this latter is a most significant text.  The making known of God's name - that is, as always in scripture, his nature and character - is a basic theme in Exodus.  In chapter 3, God declared his name as "I am that I am" or "I AM" simply and in chapter 6 as "Jehovah" ('the Lord')  These names spoke of him as self-existing, self-determining and sovereign.  Then in chapter 34 verse 5 God had proclaimed his name to Moses by telling him that "the Lord is 'merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy ... forgiving iniquity ... visiting the iniquity ..."  Here was a 'name' that set forth his moral glory.  Finally, 7 verses further on, as part of the same conversation with Moses, God summed up and rounded off the revelation of his name by declaring it to be 'Jealous'. Clearly, this unexpected word stood for a quality in God which, so far from being inconsistent with the exposition of his name that had gone before, was in some sense an epitome of it.  And since this quality was in a true sense his 'name' it was clearly important that his people should understand it.  

In fact the bible says a good deal about God's jealousy.  There are references to it elsewhere in the Pentateuch (Numbers 25 verse 11; Deuteronomy 4 verse 24, 6: 15, 29: 20, 32: 16, 21), in the history books (Joshua 24 verse 19; 1 Kings 14 verse 22), in the prophets (Ezekiel 8 verses 3 - 5, 16: 38, 42, 23: 25, 36: 5, 38: 19, 39: 25, Joel 2: 18, Nahum 1: 2, Zephaniah 1 verse 18, 3:8, Zechariah 1 verse 14, 8: 2) and in the Psalms (78 verse 58, 79: 5).  It is constantly presented as a motive to action, whether  in wrath or mercy.  "I will be jealous for my holy name" (Ezekiel 39 verse 25); "I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy" (Zechariah 1 verse 14); "The Lord is a jealous God and avengeth" (Nahum 1 verse 2).  In the NT Paul asks the presumptuous Corinthians , "Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy?" (1 Corinthians 10 verse 22).

What is the nature of this divine jealousy?  How can jealousy be a virtue in God when it is a vice in men?  God's perfections are matter for praise; but how can we praise God for being jealous?   The answer to these questions will be found if we bear in mind 2 facts.

First biblical statements about God's jealousy are anthropomorphisms - that is, descriptions of God in language drawn from the life of man.  The bible is full of anthropomorphisms - God's arm, hand and finger, his hearing, seeing and smelling, his tenderness, anger, repentance, laughter, joy and so forth.  The reason why God uses these terms to speak to us about himself is that language drawn from our own personal life is the most accurate medium for communicating thoughts about him that we have.  He is personal, and so are we, in a way that nothing else in the physical creation is.  Only man, of all physical creatures, was made in God's image.  Since we are more like God than is any other being known to us, it is more illuminating and less misleading, for God to picture himself to us in human terms that it would be if he used any other.

When faced with God's anthropomorphisms, however, it is easy to get hold of the wrong end of the stick.  We have to remember that man is not the measure of his maker and that when the language of human personal life is used to God none of the limitations of human creaturehood are thereby being implied - limited knowledge or power or foresight or strength or consistency or anything of that kind.  And we must remember that those elements in human qualities which show the corrupting effect of sin have no counterpart in God.  Thus, for instance, is wrath is not the ignoble outburst that human anger so often is, a sign of pride and weakness, but it is holiness reacting to evil in a way that is moraly right and glorious.  "The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God" (James 1 verse 20) - but the wrath of God is precisely his righteousness in judicial action.  And in the same way, God's jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy and spite, as human jealousy so often is, but appears instead as a (literally) praiseworthy zeal to preserve something supremely precious. 

Secondly, there are 2 sorts of jealousy among men and only one of them is a vice.  Vicious jealousy is an expression of the attitude, 'I want what you've got and I hate you because I haven't got it.'  It is an infantile resentment springing from unmortified covetousness, which expresses itself in envy, malice and meanness of action.  It is terribly potent, for it feeds and is fed by pride, the taproot of our fallen nature.  There is a mad obsessiveness about jealousy which, if indulged, can tear an otherwise firm character to shreds.  "Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming; but who can stand before jealousy?" asks the wise man (Proverbs 27 verse 4).  What is often called sexual jealousy, the lunatic fury of a rejected or supplanted suitor is of this kind.

But there is another sort of jealousy - zeal to protect a love-relationship or to avenge it when broken.  This jealousy also operates in the sphere of sex: there, however, it appears, not as the blind reaction of wounded pride, but as the fruit of marital affection.  This sort of jealousy is a positive virtue, for it shows a grasp of the true meaning of the husband-wife relationship, together with a proper zeal to keep it intact.  Old Testament law recognised the propriety of such jealousy and prescribed a 'jealousy offering' and a cursing ordeal whereby a husband who feared that his wife had been unfaithful and was possessed of a 'spirit of jealousy' in consequence might have his mind set at rest one day or the other (Numbers 5 verses 11 - 37).  Neither here nor in the further reference to the wronged husband's 'jealousy' in Proverbs 6 verse 34 does scripture hint that his attitude is morally questionable; rather, it treats his resolve to guard his marriage against attack and to take action against anyone who violates it, as natural, normal and right and a proof that he values marriage as he should.

Now scripture consistently views God's jealousy as being of this latter kind: that is as an aspect of his covenant love for his own people.  The OT regards God's covenant as his marriage with Israel, carrying with it a demand for unqualified love and loyalty.  The worship of idols and all compromising relations with non-Israelite idolaters, constituted disobedience and unfaithfulness, which God saw as spiritual adultery, provoking him to jealousy and vengeance.  All the Mosiac references to God's jealousy have to do with idol-worship in one form or another; they all hark back to the sanction of the second commandment.  In Ezekiel 18 verse 3 an idol worshipped in Jerusalem is called 'the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy.'  In Ezekiel 16 God depicts Israel as his adulterous wife, embroiled in unholy liaisons with idols and idolaters of Canaan, Egypt and Assyria and pronounces sentence as follows, "I will judge you as women who break wedlock and shed blood are judged and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy" (verse 38).

From these passages we see plainly what God meant by telling Moses that his name was "Jealous".  He meant that the demands from those whom he has loved and redeemed utter and absolute loyalty, and will vindicate his claim by stern action against them if they betray his love by unfaithfulness.

God's jealousy over his people, as we have seen, presupposes his covenant love and this love is no transitory affection, accidental and aimless, but is the expression of a sovereign purposes.  The goal of the covenant love of God is that he should have a people on earth as long as history lasts and after that should have all his faithful ones of every age with him in glory.  Covenant love is the heart of God's plan for this world.  And it is in the light of God's overall plan for his world that his jealousy must, in the last analysis be understood.  For God's ultimate objective, as the bible declares it, is threefold - to vindicate his rule and righteousness by showing his sovereignty in judgment upon sin; to ransom and redeem his chosen people and to be loved and praised by them for his glorious acts of love and self-vindication.  God seeks what we should seek - his glory in and through men - and it is for the securing of this end, ultimately, that he is jealous.  His jealousy in all its manifestations, is precisely 'the zeal of the Lord of hosts' (Isaiah 9 verse 7, 37 verse 32) for fulfilling his own purpose of justice and mercy.

So God's jealousy leads him, on the one hand to judge and destroy the faithless among his people, who fall into idolatry and sin (Deuteronomy 6 verse 14; Joshua 24 verse 19; Zephaniah 1 verse 18) and indeed to judge the enemies of righteousness and mercy everywhere (Nahum 1 verse 2; Ezekiel 36 verse 5; Zephaniah 3 verse 8); it also leads him on the other hand, to restore his people after national judgment has chastened and humbled them (the judgment of captivity, Zechariah 1 verse 14, 8 verse 2; the judgment of the locust plague, Joel 2 verse 18).  And what is it that motivates these actions?  Simply the fact that he is "jealous for (his) holy name" (Ezekiel 39 verse 25).  His 'name' is his nature and character as Jehovah, 'the Lord", ruler of history, His 'name' to be known, honoured and praised.  "I am the Lord: that is my name and my glory will I not give to another neither my praise to graven images."  "For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory unto another" (Isaiah 42 verse 8, 48 verse 11).  Here in these texts is the quintessence of the jealousy of God. 

What practical bearing has all this on those who profess to be the Lord's people?  The answer may be given under two headings.

The jealousy of God requires us to be zealous for God

As our right response to God's love for us is love for him so our right response to his jealousy over us is zeal for him.  His concern for us is great; ours for him must be great too.  That the prohibition of idolatry in the second commandment implies is that God's people should be positively and passionately devoted to his person, his cause, and his honour.  The bible word for such devotion is zeal, sometimes actually called jealousy for God.  God himself, as we saw, manifests this zeal and the godly must manifest it too.

The classic description of zeal for God was given by Bishop J C Ryle.

Zeal in religion is a burning desire to please God, to do his will and to advance his glory in the world in every possible way.  It is a desire which no man feels by nature - which the Spirit puts in the heart of ever believer when he is converted - but which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called 'zealous' men ...

A religous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing.  It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit.    He only sees one thing, he cares for one thing; and that one thing is to please God.  Whether he lives, or whether he dies - whether he has health, or whether he is poor - whether he pleases man, or whether he gives offence - whether he is thought wise, or whether he is thought foolish - whether he gets blame, or whether he gets praise - whether he gets honour, or whether he gets shame - for all this the zealous man cares nothing at all.  He burns for one thing; and that one thing is to please God and to advance God's glory.  If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it - he is content.  He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him.  Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal.  If he cannot preach, work, and give money, he will cry and sigh and pray ... If he cannot fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work of Moses, Aaron, and Hur on the hill (Exodus 17 verses 9 - 13).  If he is cut off from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter, and the work is done.  This is what I mean when I speak of 'zeal' in religion.

Zeal, we note, is commanded and commended in the scriptures.  Christians are to be 'zealous of good works'  (Titus 2 verse 14)   For 'zeal' after rebuke the Corinthians are applauded (2 Corinthians 7 verse 11).  Elijah was 'very jealous for the Lord God of hosts' (1 Kings 19 verses 10 and 14) and God honoured his zeal by sending a chariot of fire to take him up to heaven and by choosing him as the representative of 'the goodly fellowship of the prophets' to stand with Moses on the mount of transfiguration and talk with the Lord Jesus.  When Israel had provoked God to anger by idolatry and prostitution, and Moses had sentenced the offenders to death, and the people were in tears, and a man chose that moment to swagger up with a Midianite party-girl on the arm, and Phinehas, almost beside himself with despair, speared them both, God commended Phinehas as having been 'jealous for his God', 'jealous with my jealousy ... so that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealous' (Numbers 25 verse 11, 13).  Paul was a zealous man, singleminded and at full stretch for his Lord.  Facing prison and pain, he declared, 'none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God' (Acts 20 verse 24).  And the Lord Jesus himself was a supreme example of zeal.  Watching him cleanse the temple, 'his disciples remembered that it was written, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.' (John 2 verse 17)

What now of us?  Does zeal for the house of God and the cause of God eat us up? - possess us? - consume us?  Can we say with the Master, 'My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work' (John 4 verse 34)?  What sort of discipleship is ours?  Have we not need to pray, with that flaming evangelist George Whitefield - a man as humble as he was zealous - "Lord help me begin to begin?"

2. The jealousy of God threatens churches which are not zealous for God.

We love our churches; they have hallowed associations; we cannot imagine them displeasing God, at any rate not seriously.  But the Lord Jesus once sent a message to a church very much like some of ours - the complacent church of Laodicea - in which He told the Laodicean congregation that their lack of zeal was a source of supreme offence to him.  'I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot.'  Anything would be better than self-satisfied apathy! 'So then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth ... Be zealous therefore and repent' (Revelation 3 verse 15 and 19)  How many of our churches today are sound, respectable  and lukewarm?  What, then, must Christ's word be to them?  What have we to hope for? - unless by the mercy of the God who in wrath remembers mercy, we find zeal to repent?  Revive us Lord before judgment falls!